Bible Study Genesis Part 3-In the Beginning, God...

Welcome to the program Study in the Chapel.

God's Word is supreme in chapel ministries.

We consider it absolutely essential to a proper relationship with God.

We study it, we love it, we rely on it every minute of every day.

The following program is an edited recording of the regular Bible studies we hold.

And we decided to share these with you in the hope that you too will be able to find inspiration, encouragement, and ultimately salvation through discovering Christ in Scripture.

Our intention is to travel all the way through the Bible.

It will be a challenging journey, one that will undoubtedly bring you to a decision.

Through this study, you will be faced with either believing or rejecting what God has said to us.

It is our intention to provide you with enough knowledge to make an informed decision about God and his word.

We strongly encourage you to listen intently and diligently, because though at the moment you may not realize it, these things are truly a matter of life and death.

In fact, these are matters of eternal life and eternal death.

Never treat what God has said lightly.

There's truly nothing more important to you.

Now join us as we seek God's will through his inspired word.

We are back in our study of God's Word.

We're going to be here in this book for a while, I think.

Not as long as you might think, but it is a setup book.

I call it a setup book.

It's called Genesis because it is the beginning.

We talked a lot about what the word Genesis means in previous setup lessons, intro lessons.

Now we're going to get into the meat of it, and you're going to see as we go along that there is a reason why it's called the beginnings.

It is not the end.

Revelation is the end.

You will see that when we get to the end of Genesis, it feels like there's a lot more to talk about, and there is.

Genesis bleeds right into Exodus.

You'll see what I mean when we get there.

It's 50-something chapters ahead.

We'll be here a while.

Anyhow, let's get started.

Genesis 1:1.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Now, what amazes me is that the Bible starts right out with a statement that's actually beyond human comprehension.

You know, a lot of people criticize the Bible because it doesn't tell us everything we want to know.

Well, this statement alone should tell you that there's really no way God is going to be able to get our heads around even the details He decided to give us.

In the beginning, God.

In four words, we have two head exploding statements.

Actually, in the Hebrew, it's only two words, but let's not get too technical.

There's too much to consider as it is.

First of all, the beginning.

When could that have been?

You know, there was a time when scientists thought that the universe didn't have a beginning, and some are still trying to peddle that nonsense.

To this day, it comes up from time to time in the scientific literature.

I'm sure at least part of the reason some posited this ridiculous theory is simply so that they can cast doubt on what God has said.

You see, in the Bible, Scripture makes claims that scientists just can't unpack.

In the Bible, scientists have a real problem.

And if they don't marginalize the Bible, then they'd have to face some things that they just wouldn't be able to explain.

And they think that if they can't explain something, that we'd lose interest in their opinions.

Admitting that there are some matters that science can't reach means we, the regular ignorant schmoes, don't or won't hang on their every word.

Doubt in our minds just might lead us to think critically about what science tells us is an indisputable fact.

We might just start thinking for ourselves and decide to actually dispute those indisputable facts.

And they don't like that.

You see, long ago, science decided that our respect isn't enough for them.

They want more than that.

And listen, I love science.

I respect what scientists can do.

Now that may that may surprise people based on statements I make regularly here, but I do.

Also, my fundamentalist Christian leanings also cast me in an unfavorable light in the eyes of society with respect to secular knowledge.

Those that hear me say I believe in the Bible say, then you must not believe in science.

Listen, it's not me not believing you.

You don't believe me.

Nonetheless, I do think science is an essential part of life.

And I believe scientists, listen to me, if they look to God for guidance, will bless mankind by their efforts.

I've said before that I believe that God purposely gave us the brains and the platform, the environment, the conditions necessary to discover more about his creative process, to fill in the gaps he left in the biblical narrative, to explain the details he didn't include since they weren't part of the story.

We talked all about that a lesson or two ago.

I respect science and I respect what good scientists are trying to do.

I think most people do, I think most Christians do.

As long as they stay in their lane, as the saying goes.

As long as science doesn't try to shape our opinions, we'll respect them.

If they stick to their purpose of unveiling the secrets of the universe in an objective way, most of us, including us Bible-believing Christians, will give them our due appreciation.

But you see, that's no longer enough for the scientific community.

They have become corrupt and power hungry.

Mere acknowledgement of their value as an institution seems to no longer satisfy them.

Instead, they want worship, plain and simple.

They don't want anyone questioning their position, their conclusions on matters.

No one should be allowed to say they're wrong about anything, not even their own kind.

If one scientist doesn't tow the party line, they are to be discredited, belittled, and expelled from their fellowship.

And whatever you do, don't bring up the Bible to them.

If you're a scientist and you want to be respected among your peers, do not refer to the Bible.

But why?

I'll say it again.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Or Romans 11, 33.

Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out.

Unsearchable.

Past finding out.

Why, that's preposterous.

That's me a scientist.

That's preposterous.

You like that.

I'm a scientist.

There's nothing I can't search and discover.

And do you think I'm mocking them?

It's the way they act.

And oh my gosh, do not bring this one up.

This one will not win you any friends.

James 1:5.

James 1:5

If you, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.

That's just humiliating to that crowd.

Very few 21st century scientists would ever ask God to help him figure a problem out.

Next time you're at the Metropolitan, I guess that's natural history museum where Neil deGrasse is, go up and ask him, hey, the next problem you come up with, ask God to help you with it.

He'll kick you out of the building.

Yeah, no doubt.

Don't bring up the Bible.

And if you do, they'll poo-poo you and make you feel like an ignorant savage for doing so.

Now let me warn you, as we go through the Old Testament, I'm going to do my best to put science and scientists in their place.

This will come up again and again, and I make no apologies for it.

Scientists in our modern day, and by that I mean since the age of so-called enlightenment around the 18th century, since that devilish era, scientists, pure and simple, have set themselves up, and society has set them up as idols.

And anyone who dares question them is guilty of sacrilege.

Well, I'm not gonna have it.

Modern science, by and large, is nothing short of man-centered vanity.

Now it wasn't always that way.

As little as 300 years ago, scientists revered God.

If a proposed scientific theory didn't align with God's word, it was rejected.

Obviously, if scripture were silent on a certain matter, then the theory could move ahead, but only as long as it respected God's truth.

That was the way science viewed our world.

They sought answers through the lens of Scripture.

To them, they were probing God's creation.

They were seeking answers from Him, like James said.

Listen, I know that's hard to believe today.

Men like Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and none other than Isaac Newton saw God's hand in all of the operations of the universe, and they would have never rejected the biblical view of anything.

Modern scientists loudly and viciously attack any attempt to reconcile God's viewpoint with their work.

Even if that path seemed to be the most logical.

And if they go and they'll go to great extremes to suppress anything the Bible says about anything, but especially creation.

And their absurd theory of an eternal universe, as an example, gained a great deal of traction.

It is at least a strong motivation to push such boulder dash.

If God said this, we say that.

Okay, side trip over.

Let's get back to Genesis.

In the beginning, right off the bat, right out of the gate.

God gives us this mind-bending statement in the beginning.

The beginning of everything.

How do we process that?

It just might be too evocative, too hard to conceive of, too hard to imagine.

You know, none of us have ever seen anything that's truly new.

That's what this means.

In the beginning, means the moment, the very moment of newness, purely new.

No human on earth knows what's that what that's like.

We've never experienced something genuinely original.

And that is why this may be the hardest statement in the whole Bible to imagine.

I can kind of imagine the resurrection.

I can kind of imagine the loaves and the fishes, the feeding of the five thousand.

This I cannot imagine.

That in the beginning.

Things we call new are just in a different composition.

Now we're going to talk more about that next time.

So back to in the beginning.

Genesis starts out by stating, in the beginning.

If we're really paying attention, we'd be flabbergasted by this.

I mean, the first and most obvious question this statement generates is if the universe had a beginning, what was there before the beginning?

You know, I suspect that's why those early scientists concluded that the universe was eternal.

It's just too hard to think that it could be anything else, right?

It's easier to think of something being eternal than there being something before beginning.

Because you have to ask yourself, was there anything before the beginning?

Or is that really just a nonsensical question?

I repeat, our minds are not capable of processing something like that.

To us, there really is no such thing as nothing.

In our minds, before the beginning of everything, had to be the time of nothing.

But nothing just can't exist by definition.

John, do we really have to start another book by beating something to death?

Why are we doing this?

Because I'm trying to get you to engage with the Bible.

I want it to stimulate your thought processes.

And to be honest, that's no more important than when we're studying Genesis.

There will be a lot here, especially in these first few chapters, that will challenge your intellect.

The temptation will be to shut everything out because it's going to sound so foreign to your life experience.

Besides, the world is going to encourage you to turn your back on it because, well, simply because Christians find it sacred.

They're going to tell you it isn't worth scratching your head over because it's all imaginary.

Well, I want you to see it differently.

I want you to see that the Bible isn't just some cold, boring collection of fairy tales.

This book is alive if you'll just stop and let it seep into your thinking, even if you can't get around some of the tough parts.

If you treat this as a reality, it will, it should make you curious.

If this means something to you, then you couldn't help but become interested in these first few words.

In the beginning, you'd ask, was there something before the beginning?

If there was, then what?

But then again, if there was something before the beginning, then the beginning wasn't the beginning, was it?

Whatever came before in the beginning was the beginning.

If there was something before the beginning, then this statement is misleading.

Can it be ignored?

But if there wasn't anything before the beginning, doesn't that make God a very interesting person to get to know?

Why do you say that, John?

Well, doesn't it read, in the beginning, God?

That's what Genesis 1:1 says, in the beginning, God.

Genesis 1:1

That naturally means, listen to me, that when the beginning began, God was already there.

And not only was he there, but he had the power and intelligence to do something in the beginning.

He had to have that power and intelligence before the beginning.

If God did something at the beginning, then he could not have been a part of that beginning.

On the other hand, if God began at the beginning when everything else began, then he would not have been able to do anything until after the beginning.

But the Bible says, in the beginning, God.

I mean, that's just logic.

Genesis 1:1 says, in the beginning, God did something.

Genesis 1:1

We'll get to that something eventually.

But right now we're sort of stuck on in the beginning, God.

When we hear that statement, listen, the only conclusion we can come to when we read in the beginning, God, the message that conveys to us is that God actually caused the beginning.

He began the beginning.

Which leads to another series of big questions.

What was God doing before the beginning?

That's also beyond our capabilities.

That's beyond our brain power.

Before the beginning, let's just keep moving or I'll get brains all over that camera.

Here's another question.

If the universe didn't exist before Genesis 1-1, where did God live?

Was there anyone with him?

And while we're at it, why did he begin the beginning?

And by the way, it's okay to ask questions.

God's not going to smack your knuckles with a ruler.

The only people that do that are the people that don't know the answers to your questions.

God knows all the answers.

But I'm going to warn you, we may not get the answers to these questions.

Not all of them, anyways.

I want you to be prepared for that.

So next time, we will continue to ask questions.

There's still so much more to talk about in these four words.

So we'll pick it up right there next time.

We hope this study has blessed you.

God's word is a great treasure, and it's our belief that a thorough, purposeful study of it will bring all of God's children to an understanding of his eternal plan of redemption.

It is our prayer that this will be so for all of our listeners.

Please join us again soon.

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