According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): Pointing out some of what is gleaned from Genesis, here's Pastor Damian Kyle.

Damian Kyle: The origin of the universe, of the heavens, of the earth, of plant life, of animal life, of man, God's institution of marriage, of the origin of evil and sin, the origin of death, the origin of multiple languages, of nations, government, and so forth. You simply cannot make any ultimate sense of the world that we live in apart from the historical account that is given to us in the book of Genesis.

Guest (Male): You know, one of the most basic of questions has to do with our origins or our beginnings. For if you don't know where you've come from, how can you accurately chart where you're going? Well, today and in the coming days here on According to the Scriptures, we'll be exploring this with Pastor Damian Kyle. We're beginning a brand new series out of Genesis. Here now to introduce us to it is Pastor Damian.

Damian Kyle: I want to start a new series that I have entitled Gleanings from Genesis. As most of you are aware, on Sunday nights for 35 years, we've gone through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation on that service—a chapter or two or a few chapters at a time. I don't know how many times we've been through the Bible now in the course of these years.

And though in that learning and studying the word of God on the Sunday nights, though I think it's very substantive, in order to make adequate progress on that journey through the Bible, it still has to be an overview. So what happens is we do this overview of the passage, and there are all of these incredible nuggets that are found in the books that we studied that really warrant more time and they warrant more development, but that format doesn't allow for that to happen, or we'd be bogged down and never make our way through the scriptures as a whole.

As a result of that, in this series in Genesis, I want to make these kind of passages our focus. Passages that have been instrumental and foundational for me in my Christian life, and passages that are important that every single Christian understands and that it's a part of our relationship with God. Subjects like the creation of man, the fall of man, the flood, wrestling with God, going back to Bethel. Some of the subjects that we'll look at will be theological and some of them will be highly theological, some of them will be highly devotional, and all of them will be a combination of the two.

Fairly recently, a prominent, very prominent and influential younger pastor created quite a stir within Christianity in the United States and really worldwide when he proposed that we as Christians unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament. He further declared, and I quote him when he said, "I'm convinced that we make a better case for Jesus if we leave the Old Testament or the Old Covenant out of the argument." It's jaw-dropping that any Christian would say that, much less a pastor would say that.

One of the many problems with that is that it completely contradicts not only New Testament teaching but even the teaching of Jesus himself. The writer of the book of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 7 declares concerning the Old Testament scriptures and their relation to Jesus that the volume of the book, both Old Testament and New, is written of him, that is, of Jesus. Jesus plainly declared to the religious leaders of his day, he said, "You do search the scriptures," talking about the Old Testament, "for in them you think you have everlasting life; but these are they which testify of me."

You look at the Old Testament scriptures and all they are to you is the dos and don'ts and this and that, but they're all about me supremely. And to miss me in the Old Testament is to miss the entire supreme focus of the Old Testament. You remember when Jesus on the day of his resurrection, later in the day on that Sunday, he's walking with two disciples on the road to Emmaus? Jesus, as he began to speak into their confusion, we're told in Luke chapter 24 verse 27, "beginning at Moses and all of the prophets, he that is Jesus expounded to them in all the scriptures concerning himself."

John chapter 5 verse 46, again Jesus to the Jewish religious leaders: "If you had believed Moses," that's the Pentateuch, that begins with Genesis, "if you had believed Moses, you would believe me because he wrote of me." The reason that I take the time to establish this at the beginning of the series is because there is a significant number of people, and even a significant number of Christians, who are completely convinced that the Old Testament is all about God the Father and the New Testament is all about Jesus.

And they don't have the slightest idea that the entire book is about Jesus, looking forward to him and then recording him coming and so forth. The New Testament and the Old Testament in terms of the focus of Jesus, they're completely united in all of this. There's an old saying that I think is important to at least hear in life as a Christian and really worthy of committing to memory that speaks to what we're talking about now concerning the Old and the New Testament. It goes like this: the New is in the Old concealed, and the Old is in the New revealed.

They are absolutely intertwined in their message and what they are about. The fact of the matter is that nobody, no matter how steeped they are in the New Testament scriptures, nobody can fully appreciate Jesus—not his life, not his teaching, not his death, not his burial, not his resurrection—independent of the Old Testament scriptures. Additionally, without an understanding of the Old Testament scriptures, there'd be a whole world of things that we would live our lives as Christians and otherwise in complete ignorance concerning.

The book of Genesis, the name Genesis is a Greek word and it means origin or beginning. Without even a knowledge of Genesis, we'd be completely in the dark about the origin of the universe, of the heavens, of the earth, of plant life, of animal life, of man, God's institution of marriage, of the origin of evil and sin, the origin of death, the origin of multiple languages, of nations, government, and so forth. You simply cannot make any ultimate sense of the world that we live in apart from the historical account that is given to us in the book of Genesis.

You cannot even begin to understand the world around us. You cannot process all of it properly. We could not even hope to navigate life and our place in the universe safely and wisely without the revelation that is found here. And we would live our lives completely ignorant concerning the meaning and the purpose of life. In other words, if we do not understand the beginning of something, whether it is a play or whether it is a movie or whether it is a novel, then it will be impossible to fully understand the place in the plot that we find ourselves introduced into in terms of human history.

And then how much more concerning the universe and concerning life and concerning the circumstances of life. Without knowing the beginning, without knowing the origin, we would just be living life and just blindly flailing away at it without any real understanding of what we find ourselves in the middle of. And our flailing would not just be spiritual, but it would be physical, it would be emotional, it would be mental.

As one novelist wrote, he said, "If you don't know where you've come from, then you don't know where you are. And if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong." And there's a lot of truth to that statement. In the beginning, again, God created the heavens and the earth. Now that's quite an opening sentence to a book. I mean, it's a remarkable sentence.

If you were to Google or if you read these kind of things in literature and all, which is worth being involved in, if you were to look at what do the experts on all of this consider to be the best opening lines in literature in the world? And they list those kind of things for our curiosity. Always at the top or near the top is Charles Dickens's book, A Tale of Two Cities. And it reads like this: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. It was a season of light, it was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."

Well, you read something like that, it's got you right from the opening sentence. There's other examples that are given on these kind of lists. George Orwell, if you're familiar with his work, 1984, it begins in this way: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Wow, I mean, you're not going to stop there when you read a line like that that starts the book. Ralph Ellison, who wrote The Invisible Man, he opened that book with, "I am an invisible man."

There isn't any little boy or young boy that reads that opening line and his mind doesn't explode with anticipation at what might follow. Ford Madox Ford, he wrote a book called The Good Soldier and it begins with the line, "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." C.S. Lewis in the opening line of his book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he began it this way: "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

And I mean, all of these lines, they're literary marvels, but nothing approaches Genesis 1:1. And not only in terms of arresting our attention, but also how it immediately overwhelms the reader with the implications of the truth of that opening line because unlike these other books, when the opening line of the book of the Bible is an opening line not of fiction, but of non-fiction. In Genesis 1:1, God himself provides us with a firsthand account of creation—the creation of the heavens, the earth, everything that is in them, including man.

He doesn't supply us with in the opening sentence kind of a theory, a postulate, some food for thought. It's not introduced in any way like that. This is introduced as God's eyewitness testimony to the events. And because this is God's eyewitness account of the event, the person who has absolutely zero education but accepts the truth of Genesis 1:1 knows more about the origin of the heavens and the earth than the most brilliant scientist or the most brilliant philosopher who does not.

And as someone might complain and say, "Well, all of this is just simply circular reasoning on your part. I mean, here you have God declaring himself to be the creator of the heavens and the earth, and we're being asked to believe it simply because he has declared it. So in order to convince me, in order to move me related to the subject, you're going to have to supply me with independent firsthand accounts of the same event." Well, if that's your demand, you've got a problem because only God was present at the event.

And he's upfront about it. When the writer of the book of Hebrews writes to us and says, "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things that are visible." The writer of the book of Hebrews is not saying that those who believe in the Bible's account of creation do so on the basis of blind faith. He is saying that we accept it by faith for the simple reason that we were not present to witness it.

There is only one eyewitness account of the creation of necessity, simply because there was only one eyewitness present at the time, and that was God himself. And this is not only the only eyewitness account we have, it is the only eyewitness account we can have. And this is a fact that God brought up to Job and he would bring up to anyone else that wants to protest related to the issue. And you remember when Job was pretending he was God and questioning God and asking all these questions of God?

And then finally Job goes silent and God begins to talk to him. And he posed the question to Job in Job 38 verse 4, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding." Job couldn't break the silence. No human being can ever break that silence. Only God could break that silence and give us the revelation that he has supplied to us. And one of the things that's interesting and I think refreshing is that God is unflinchingly dogmatic and unapologetic on all of this for the simple reason that he alone was and is not only an eyewitness to all of it, but he was and is the actual creator of the heavens and the earth.

Now there are some very powerful witnesses to that truth, which we'll talk about in just a moment or two. I want you to notice as well that the heavens, the earth, and all that are in them, including life, they had a beginning. Nobody in their right mind would dispute this. You have the second law of thermodynamics and witnesses to the fact that the world and the universe that we live in is not eternal. It cannot be eternal. It had to have a beginning because it is winding down, and slowly winding down.

Don't be concerned about cashing in your IRAs or running up debt on your credit card in the hopes that it's going to be anytime soon. The scientists estimate that if it's left to itself, the universe will wind down in 10 to the 26th power years and that it will die in a heat death. And so everyone acknowledges what God states plainly here, and that is the universe is not eternal but it had a beginning. Notice as well that the heavens, the earth, and all that are in them began when God created them.

And the word "created" is as it's there in that verse. The Hebrew word that is used there is an interesting one. It's the word *bara*. In the Hebrew language, there are different words that are used for creating something out of something, taking raw materials, clay or whatever, and you then create something out of existing material. The word *bara* is distinct from all of those words in that it means to create something out of nothing. And that Hebrew word *bara* as it's used in the Bible, it is only used and always used only of God because only he can do that.

As human beings, we can create all kinds of things, but we need some other section and portion of creation to be given to us in order to create out of those things, those materials. He created all that we see of creation from nothing. He created everything that you will ever see in the course of your life with the naked eye, with a telescope, with a microscope, he created it out of nothing. And not only did he create it out of nothing, but he created it by speaking it into existence. How big is this God? How awesome is this God to be able to do that? To create out of nothing and to do it by speaking it into existence? Amazing.

John Phillips, in his commentary on Genesis, he wrote in this regard. He said some years ago researchers announced that they had been able to create artificial protein in the laboratory. Protein is the basic building block of life, so the achievement took the scientific world by storm. Saturday Evening Post interviewed a number of notables to get their reactions. Dr. Vincent Alfrey of the Rockefeller Institute declared, "This is the biggest story of the century."

A famous biochemist said, "This century will go down in history as the century when life ceased to be a mystery. Life is only chemistry." A British scientist was confident that in a few more decades, one would see scientists creating life. And he confidently asserted, "I no longer find it necessary to believe in God." Well, Saturday Evening Post, back when journalism represented both sides of a position, they interviewed some Christians related to all of this, churchmen, including Monsignor George A. Kelly, who was a spokesman at the time for Cardinal Spellman of the Archdiocese of New York.

And he was unimpressed with the boasting of the scientists and he declared, "When a biochemist is able to create matter and energy out of nothing, then I should like to talk to him." And he makes the point there's a world of difference between speaking something into existence out of nothing and fashioning out of raw materials that have already been provided to you. I want you to notice as well that when the beginning began, God already was.

And so he was there to begin the beginning of all that had a beginning, that is, everything but him. And the fact that God created all things differentiates him from his creation. And there are two great categories within all of the universe. Everyone fits into one of those two categories. And the first category is Creator, and that is God. And then everything else fits into the second category of creation. And the creation always owes a debt to the Creator, the debt of the lesser to the infinitely greater, that is to God himself.

And what we owe to God as Creator, as a result of being his creation, is our worship and our service. Any human being who worships or serves anything of the creation, worships anything other than the Creator of the creation, that person is engaged in an irrationality because the Creator is always greater than his creation. Paul brings it out in the New Testament in the book that we just recently finished in Romans, Romans chapter 1 verse 24. He said, "Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves who exchanged the truth of God," that is the truth of his existence, "for a lie," and that is that God doesn't exist, "and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever, amen."

Sometimes people will ask, "What was God doing before he created the heavens and the earth?" And the fact of the matter is we really have no revelation of that. We know certainly that God is eternal and he existed before anything that he created. The oldest, in terms of chronology, oldest verse in the Bible is not really Genesis 1:1. It is John 1:1 that speaks of Jesus within the Godhead and the existence before even the creation of anything.

But in terms of what he was doing before the creation of the heavens and the earth, we have no revelation in scripture of that. Maybe we'll know in heaven, but personally, I don't have a problem with not knowing that. I figure that God tells us what we need to know, and I don't have any problem with mystery in a relationship with God, not understanding everything. The fact that anytime you're going to have the infinite, that is God, in a relationship with the finite, that is man, then you're going to have to get used to mystery.

Guest (Male): That's Pastor Damian Kyle here on According to the Scriptures. While there's mystery, there's much that God has revealed. We'll explore it next time when Pastor Damian returns to take us deeper into this foundational passage. Today we introduced our new study of Genesis, and you can access our introductory message online at accordingtothescriptures.com, oneplace.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you'd like to support According to the Scriptures, simply go online to accordingtothescriptures.com or write to us: 4300 American Avenue, Modesto, California, 95356 is the zip code. And you can also donate through the app. Well, that's all the time we have today. Join us next time here on According to the Scriptures when Pastor Damian Kyle offers up more gleanings from Genesis. This program is presented by Calvary Chapel Modesto.