In the Beginning: Unpacking the First Verse of the Bible

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk

about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome

to the Bible Guys. My name is Chris. This is Jeff, my

faithful companion, and we are here today with excitement. We are here to

just brighten your day. Well, that's why I'm here. I'm here to

brighten everybody's day. Well, you break my day, Jeff, So i'd

imagine I can only imagine what it might be like to you can only imagine

movie. That'd be great. Hey, So, so I don't know why

you're here, but I'm here too. Well, everybody, we don't know

why the listeners are here. They too, they keep have their day brightened.

Chris, I just told you well to learn about the Bible, okay,

and you get to know more about us. Yes, in fact,

that is a great segue into the first segue. That's right. What is

it called, yes into the segment? That's correct, it's called story time,

story time. Yes. And so we're starting a brand new Shanes today,

right. So we just finished up two hundred and fifty events in the

life of Genie. Let's all the way through the four Gospels and that was

pretty great, Yeah for sure. And thanks for carrying me through that whole

thing. Well, you know, I do what I can. Yeah.

And then now we're going all the way back to the very beginning. We're

going to go back to the Book of Genesis and we're going to take the

highlights of the Old Testament. Right now, we have one hundred and five

highlights laid out, but there's a bunch more. I just haven't finished the

work of laying them all out yet. But yeah, we'll go through a

couple hundred. Probable we'll get there. These things take time, exactly.

So anyways, we're gonna go through the highlights of the Old Testament. So

today we're going to share a funny story about something that happened to you when

you first started doing ministry full time. Wow, a funny story that happened

to me when I first started doing ministry full time. Yeah, And I

have to give you a caveat if your story is long. She has here

for time purposes. It's okay if only one person shares a story, right,

right, So it's almost like Desiree knows. Yeah, well, do

you have one off top of your head, I do, I have a

couple, Okay, go ahead and share one and then I'll think of mine.

So depending on if you're long. Right after I started working full time

in ministry, it was at a Baptist church down in Texas, and we

had a big baptistry on the back of the stage. So if you think

of the big stage, and it was one of those ones they had thrones,

you know, where all the pastors sitting froze, and then there was

the choir loft behind that, and then up above there was a big baptistry

and there's like a little glass window along the bottom and you could see the

water, you see people going to anything. So it's kind of deep because

that meant both people had to get into this big baptistry. And the guy

who did most of the baptistizing was our youth pastor. He was assistant pastor

there, but he'd been there the longest we were. Both the senior pastor

and myself were both young, hadn't been there very long. He'd been there

long time, so most people wanted Monroe to baptize. So it was a

suit and tie church. We always wore suit and tie, right, We

always looked really good. So there was a baptizing suit coat for each of

us that we could wear over top of waiters, so you wouldn't see that

we were wearing waiters, but you'd see us wearing our suit eye you were

in the water because we were down in the water. That's right. So

we go. So Monroe goes in and Monroe was maybe still is I was

gonna say, was hi Monroe, if you're listening, what is five six?

Maybe five seven? And he goes down in this water and at the

time he probably weighed one hundred and fifty pounds max. One hundred and forty

five pounds max. And this lady comes in and she's easily six feet tall

and she's two and a half times his size. Oh right, sure,

So he leans in. I saw him whisper to her and then she nodded

and everything. And so he goes to the thing here plug your nose,

and he baptized the name of the father son jun spirit. When he went

to dunk her, she panicked going under the water, and she grabbed me

and she pulled him under the water with me. So I'm just sitting there

watching and all of a sudden, she disappears Monro disappears under the water.

There's just thrashing. It looked like it looked like like a shark attack,

you know, just water flying, feet and hands everywhere. And Monroe comes

up out of the water for a breath, and she grabbed him and pulled

him back down. So and you can just see, because there's that little

glass window you could see below the water. You see panic on his face.

He's trying to get out. So finally everybody's laughing. That was the

only baptism that day. She gets up, she goes out, but now

his waiters are full of you know, like one hundred gallons of water.

He can't get out, he can't get out of the baptistry. He just

stuck there. We had to cut him out of his back, out of

his uh w, out of his waiters. So that was one of the

funniest things I've ever seen in my life. Wow, that is unbelievable.

Okay, mine is very fast. One of the first times in my entire

life that I was going on a trip. I was only maybe twenty years

of the first times you've ever I'm sorry, as a youth pastor. It

was one of the first trips I ever took as a leader. As a

leader that said it better. So then I went to the U Hall place

and they were that was waiting in line, and there's a bunch of people

getting a U haul and I was just trying to hook up a one of

those U hauls attached to a van like the little you know, the little

attachment right there. Well, I'm just waiting and waiting and nobody's helping me,

and so so anyway, I got kind of bored and I noticed that

my uh, you know, the thing was reserved for me. So I

picked it up and I pulled it and I set it on top of the

ball right right. But I didn't lock it in and I didn't chain it

up at all, right, So I just I just sort of had set

it there. That's all I did. Well, apparently the guy who was

helping me came out, looked and saw that it was on my truck and

thought to himself, oh, look, this young man looks competent. Well

he knows what he's doing, or he thought another employee did it for him,

right, But he looks like, oh, it's already hooked up.

So he goes inside and he says, okay, you're all set boom bom,

boom boom. Well I'm assuming that he's hooking it up out there,

right, so you know, so anyway, so I that's that's the mistake.

So I pull out and I go down. I'm probably like a quarter

of a mile down the road. I'm up to like forty miles an hour,

and all of a sudden, this thing comes off. Well, it

turns out that he noticed that the chains weren't on, so he went ahead

and hooked the chains up. Okay, oh yeah, so but he didn't

screw the the ball thing on. Well, the ball thing came off,

Well you know what happens. It's got like a okay, so it fell

first, and then when it falls down, it launches like a catapult,

right, does it make sense? So the chains held it so it was

still there, but it came off of the thing the hitch, and it

falls down. It catapults and it slams into the back of my van.

And then because the change are on, it's continuing to slam against the van

and it literally smashes the van to smithereens on the back end. Oh my

goodness. And by the way, I'm getting this the day of the trip.

Is this the church van? This is a church van. And we're

talking like the kids are waiting on me and the parents are waiting on me.

Okay, so you know, last minute kind of thing. So I'm

driving down the road and all of a sudden when it smashes the glass and

this is a fifty pastuer van had flown up and hit the back of my

head. Hit the windshow that's how that's much impact. So all of a

sudden I hear ba ba ba ba ba bad van, and I'm like,

oh no, oh no, So come find out, like you know,

everything was delayed a couple hours. They drove out, and then they try

to blame me, and then all of a sudden, it was my boss

who went in and said, okay, come on, he goes, you're

liable for this. So then they had to end up paying for the repair

of the van. Wow. Yeah, it was terrible. Wow, But

it was me. I was just being incompetent. Me. Well, no,

you were being helpful and somebody didn't finish their job. That is actually

accurate. There you go. Yes, we'll see. I'm on your side,

Chris, Yes you are here. We are thirty years later. I

wish you would have been there that day. That's right. You were just

trying to be helpful. It wasn't your job to hook it up. But

okay, so or the other side is mind your own business. Let somebody

do their work. Yeah. Yeah, well that's that's what I got.

Yeah, back then, that's what I got. Okay, yep, Well

there you go. I hope that suffice. That was our first time ever

with storytime. Yes, and it was seven minutes. Yeah, so good

job on that one. Yeah, that's a lot. Well. Hey,

as we said, we're kicking off a brand new series called what are we

calling it? I don't even know what we're calling it. I would say

highlights of the Old Testament. Highlights of the Old testament' that's the sound bite.

I don't know. Okay, so, hey, we're gonna make up

time because today it's only one verse. Is this the only time we've ever

done one verse? Oh? For sure it is, Yeah, for sure,

I think so. Yes, we've done a couple that were two or

three verses, but this is the first ever. But the good news is

there's a lot packed in here because it's the most important verse of the Bible.

Yeah, I guess so. I guess it's the most. None of

the rest of the Bible matters if the first verse doesn't isn't true Genesis one

one. There you go, So, would you like me to read it

or would you like no, no, no, it's all you. It's

me. Buckle up, here we go. Gis read this one. Okay.

The Bible says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the

earth. There you go. Okay, thanks for tuning in. We'll see

you tomorrow. No, no, no, it's it's it's unbelievable. In

the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And you could break

that down. We're by word in the beginning, God, God, in

the beginning, God in the meeting was God? What created the heavens and

the earth? There was no heaven, there was no earth. Avoid what

I mean, there's so many implications just in that one verse. Yeah.

So, first of all, this one verse establishes the fact that there's a

God. Yes, right, So for a Christian or you know, this

was the in Moses gave us this in the Pentituke, So this would have

been for the Christian and the jew This is the defining verse that establishes that

there's a God, and that there's a God who is active in the universe.

He actively created what was, so there was nothing and then God said,

I'm going to make it, and there was everything. That's that's how

the process happens in the book or in the first chapter of the Book of

Genesis. So tomorrow we're going to pick up and I think we're reading where

God creates humanity, right. But what you'll notice is if you read through

the rest of these passages, God speaks, right, it's always speaking.

He says, let there be light, and bang, there was light.

And then he goes, let there be space between the waters, you know,

separate the heavens and the earth and all those things. So he's speaking

out creation over these six days. And so it establishes first of all that

there's a creator. I pulled up an idea here or a thing that highlights

the eight major elements of Genesis. Chapter one, verse one, it says

God is the creator. Right. So these very first words in the passage

and beginning God created make it clear that according to scripture, God's the ultimate

cause and he's the ultimate source of creation. It's it's very significant. We're

not just finding a God, and I think sometimes people are attempted to go

find a God for good luck. Right, what they're thinking is, man,

you know what I need. I got problems. I need somebody better

than me to fix them. Rabbits foot right, Yeah, exactly, And

it goes way beyond that. Now, God does, you know, intervene

and does step in and help help us in our problems. But ultimately,

first we have to understand it goes way beyond his great desire to solve your

problems. Yes, God is the creator of everything. He's the author of

everything. He's the source and the cause of everything. Are you gonna expand

on every point like that? No? I was just highlighting this one idea,

Yeah, because that is an unbelievable thing to talk about. Just there.

That's a podcast right there. I set it up because I wanted you

to ask it. Yes. Well, I mean there's so much time because

I usually give like the facts and then you give the color commentary. Is

that yeah? Yeah? Yeah, It's kind of like we're calling a baseball

game and I'm like the picture and then you're like, you know, he

could throw one hundred and five miles an hour, right right? Okay,

Well, my favorite show that I watch every day. I think it's every

I think it's every day is Big Bang Theory. Oh and it's based on

the fact that it's the Big Bang, right, I mean, I mean

the title is at least right. But there is some sort of religion thing

where his mom's totally religious and she believes in God and then he and he's

a scientists and all these kind of things. You've never seen it, right,

never seen it an episode? Okay, yeah, it's pretty wonderful.

So anyway, the point is is that in what you just said in that

first thing, that God is the creator of all things, is you know,

it matches up with creation versus evolution. I mean, that's not only

just a podcast, that's a series. Right. So the idea that people

think that, you know, science and God cannot go together and the unbelievable

thing is this science. The more people dig into science, those scientists who

aren't even Christians, would you know, There's been like Blaze Pascal, there's

been different scientists over the years who have started off not as Christians, and

then when they try to, you know, press into the Big Bang theory

and the precision of the universe and they try to get into all these different

details, they become Christians because they say, the more you press into science,

the more you realize it goes hand in hand with genesis. Right,

They don't have to be separate. But I think a long time ago,

when we were kids, it felt separate, didn't it. It felt like

it was either evolution versus creation, and these two were pitied against each other,

as if science and genesis were enemies and they could not go together,

mainly because there is billions and billions of years old versus no, no,

no, you know that's only thousands and all that kind of stuff, right,

Yeah, I think it's funny. This verse, specifically for me,

is always of interest whenever I run into somebody who this happened to me.

This happened to me. I'm on playing a lot. It happened to me

just before Christmas. So a couple months ago, this guy was talking,

asked me what I do. I mentioned I was a pastor, and so

it leaned into I'll talk about this faith thing. He just was really interested

in why somebody would give their life to talking about faith, and he kind

of implied maybe I was a Charlottean, you know a little bit, and

then he goes, well, you know, I just believe in science.

And I said, that's amazing. So do I right, That's what I'm

talking about. And he goes what he says, so, you're a pastor

who believes in science. I said absolutely. I said, so, thus

far, I've only ever seen science corrected by the Bible. I've never seen

the Bible corrected by science. He goes, give me one instance. I

said, oh, I don't know. For the first several thousand years of

human society, they believe that the universe was eternal, and now we realize

it's expanding, which means it had to have had a beginning. The whole

concept of a bang I think in your system was there was nothing and suddenly

there was something. That's amazing because this book four thousand years ago, or

whenever Moses wrote this four thousand years ago, he claimed that there was nothing

and then there was something. Then science said oh no, no, no,

it was always here. And then even to the time of Einstein,

they were still questioning whether or not the universe was permanent or eternal, or

whether or not there was the beginning. And I said, so, I

mean, Jude, dude, that's only the first verse in the Bible,

so if you want to go on, and he started laughing, well that's

of interest. And then we lean in and it opened up this conversation about

science versus the Bible, all this stuff. Said, dude, that's just

the first verse, and you led it into christ. I did not,

no, no, no, okay, all right. After a while,

he put his headphones on in order to drink. That's it. It's still

a good story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I had a friend

of mine who it was a very good conversation, very friendly conversation. My

good friend used to tell me, whenever you have a story that needs a

good ending, he says, and just simply say, and then I found

five dollars. And then I found five dollars. Can I read real quick

before we move on to the least one of those eight things. There's a

really cool note in the Life Application Study Bible. We recommend it, we

love it, and this is how it reads. It says, the simple

statement God created the heavens and the Earth is one of the most challenging concepts

confronting the modern mind. The vast galaxy we live in is spinning at the

incredible speed of four hundred and ninety thousand miles an hour. But even at

this break next our galaxy still needs two hundred million years to make one rotation,

and there are over one billion other galaxies just like ours in the universe.

Some scientists say that the number of stars in the creation equals the number

of grains on the sand and all the beaches in the world this sea.

Yet, this complex sea of spinning stars functions with the remarkable order of efficiency.

To say that the universe just happened or evolved requires more faith than to

believe that God is behind these amazing statistics. God truly did create a wonderful

universe. Well, that was one of the phrases I mentioned is I said,

to be honest with you, I'm not sure I have enough faith to

actually reject a god. Because he had commented on what it takes a lot

of faith to believe in God, and I said, I think it's the

other way. I think to just believe that it randomly happened, right,

and that you are intelligent enough to just sit here and have a conversation about

it and contemplate our place and our purpose in the universe and the beginning of

it. I said, dude, snails aren't having this conversation as far as

we know. But you and I are the diversity of life on this planet.

The scale of the universe is almost absurd. The fact that we live

on absolutely a mathematical razor's edge in order to have life exist on this planet

is just unbelievable, unfathomable to me. So I said, to be honest

with you, I have a hard time believing that there is no God.

I don't think I have enough faith to reject the idea of a creator in

my mind. It's too precise. And I said, and that doesn't even

deal with my genetics, the fact that I got a billion lines of code

in my DNA describing who I am. I said, there is nothing else

in your life you don't believe. And he had a book on his desk

or on the table in front of him. I said, surely you don't

believe that all those letters just randomly showed up in the book to tell you

the story that you're reading. Yeah. Right, You look at letters and

you see information, and with that information, you automatically, and this doesn't

take a lot of faith believe that there was an intelligent behind those organized letters

that gave you the information that you're taking in through your eyes that are magnificently

created, right, I said, so, dude, I just have enough

faith to believe that there's not a God. Yeah. Well, somebody said,

if you figure out the mathematical odds, it'd be like taking a watch,

like the watch that's on my you know, wrist, and taking it

and putting it in a paper bag and smashing it with a hammer until it's

almost ground to dust, and then shaking the bag and saying, what are

the odds that you'll shake this back into a perfect functioning watch? Right?

Right? And that's and those odds are greater or less then right. There's

a comedian that talked about how he said, well, people believe that God

designed the universe, and then there's a group of people that believe that nothing

designed the universe. And he goes, so, either you believe in a

god something that you can't you know, see smell here or science can't prove,

or you believe in nothing, which is something that you can't see here,

smell or science can't prove. And he goes, he goes, well,

some people, some people say that God doesn't exist. He goes,

you know, it really doesn't exist nothing. Nothing doesn't exist. Nothing doesn't

exist, you know, which is so anyway, So this establishes then for

the Christian, this passage established is the fact that there is a creator.

And not only that there is a creator, but he made the heavens of

the earth. And then the rest of this chapter is he's specifically in order.

He creates an atmosphere in a planet, and then he separates water from

the land, and then he raises up stars and the sun, moon and

stars in the universe so that you know, for a time and day and

all that kind of stuff. And then he creates food on the planet.

He on the dry land, he creates fish in the sea, and then

finally humanity. And this passage, the first chapter in the most important book

in history, articulates the fact that this is a creator that didn't just spin

things off and ignore us, but he's been active, active in his creation

from the very beginning with a so plan, right, and so one of

the greatest exercises you could go through, and maybe this is the journey of

your entire life, is to discover what is your purpose? Because He made

you on purpose, and he made everything around you on purpose, and so

to discover your purpose and then fulfill it is the greatest discovery that I think

you can have, apart from how to have a relationship with him. Yeah,

that's great. You want to work through that list, because when you

read it earlier it was pretty phenomenal. Oh yeah. So all I said

was that this little list I have is God is the Creator. It also

identifies the Trinity. In the first chapter, it mentions that in the beginning

God created in the earth. Bible says that over the waters there the Holy

Spirit hovered, and then it was the word of God who spoke everything in

existence. John one one tells us Jesus is the word. Yeah, right,

and I think somewhere in there it says we too. Yeah. And

then it said let us make man, let us make that's right. And

then there's the divine plan. He very clearly there's an organized we call it

the solar system. You and I have have a circular system and a respiratory

system. God was very, very systematic in his plan, and it's not

just for that but for time as well. It also established his sovereignty and

his authority. If you make it, it's yours. I don't know if

you do, you have that sense true? Right? Yeah, so sign

it at the bottom after I paint it. Yeah, you write your name

on it. This is my I did this, right, So God is

the authority. It highlights the power of God's word. Just the fact that

he used Jesus to speak into existence everything that exists God's word. When God

says something, it's going to happen. And then the order of creation,

which by the way, follows exactly if you believe in evolution, it still

follows the exact same path. Right that there was nothing then there was something,

and then you know, you had to have food before you had people,

and you know, all those kinds of things, and it works out

that way. Then human stewardship, the fact that he gives us a job.

He said, now I want you to take care of this planet.

And then ultimately, since he's the source, he's also the one we're dependent

on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So somebody once told me that we

were created for relationship, and you know we number one. You know what

does God tell us? We were created? Uh, to be in relationship

with God. That's why he created us, and then number two to be

in relationship with each other. So God brought Eve on the scene, and

then you know, told us to be fruit from multiply. And then,

interestingly enough, he said, we also he also created humankind to be in

relationship with the planet. And he said, and then he just dissected it

and said, think about the fact that we breathe in oxygen and we breathe

out carbon dioxide, and then the trees and the plants of the world quite

literally breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. And he's like, hello,

it's incredible. Just it's incredible. And then and then he and just

the just the fact that there was a few other things I think mentioned and

that's why when when at the end of this chapter it says when God was

done making everything, he said, it was very good. What God made

was perfect right. We'll find in the next couple of days it all broke.

But what God's original plan was is it was perfect right, and it

was perfectly symbiotic. Every thing related to everything else didn't break. Sin Sin

Sin broke, Yes, Sin broke everything that exists. Yeah, and not

just us, but also even the effects of the planet. Yep. And

we'll uncover that in the next couple of days. Yeah, well that looks

like about our time. Good job, Chris. Hey, how about us

talking about one verse? Yeah? And I honestly, I think we could

have done a whole series of Absolutely, And for those of you that don't

sit in our office every day, Chris and I could do this over less

than that. We could talk for thirty minutes. Give us a word,

just any word, we'll talk about it. Okay, Hopefully we will see

you next time on the Bible. Guys,