Back To The Basics

BACK TO THE BASICS

Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

This is the very basic beginning of our understanding of God. In the beginning there was God. Before there was anything else there was God. Now most of us look at this passage and think that this is only referring to the beginning of the creation of man, but it is not. In the beginning, in the dateless past long before God ever breathed life into a man, there was God. He is the alpha, the beginning, and He is the omega, the end. You are a created species, not an evolved species. Even the constitution that you recite says that you are. One of the primary concepts of being an American is the idea that “all men are created equal.” It is in the consciousness of men that they had a creator. You did not evolve from a monkey nor did you crawl up out of the primordial ooze and develop into what you are right now. God made man in His own image, and we have looked like Him from that time on. Listen to the words of the psalmist David as he speaks of the Lord in Psalm 139.

Psa 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

Psa 139:15 My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Psa 139:16 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

There is something very interesting here. In verse 15, David says to the Lord, “God, my substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret.” The word substance there means his might, his strength, and his body. His completed self. What he would be when he was a grown man. He said to the Lord, when my mother and my father were in their secret place, conceiving me, even then you knew what I was going to grow up to become. You knew me. You knew the man I was to be. You knew what my end was going to be. But then he goes on in verse 16, and it almost sounds like he is being repetitive, but he is not. He says, “your eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect. Here the translators use the same word, substance, but the Hebrew word is different. Here it means the embryo. God you knew me when I was just an embryo. You know my beginning and you know my end. Here is something basic that all Christians should know. God knows you from beginning to end. He is the first and the last. He is the alpha and omega. He knows what you looked like while you were still in your mother’s womb. Long before ultrasound was invented, God could see you, and tell what sex you were going to be, what color your eyes were, and how curly or straight your hair was. Your mother and father wanted to know these things about you, but it was hidden from them until you were born, but God knew it before you were conceived. He knows what you are going to look like when you get old, if you make it to that time of life. He knows what it feels like for you to get feeble, and for the knees to weaken and it gets harder to get up and down. You can’t do the things you used to do anymore. But He still calls and says go. Because He knows. You are capable of whatever he inspires you to do. Here is a basic truth. There is nothing you are going through that God does not already know the outcome of. Trust Him. He is your beginning and your end.

Here is another truth. We won’t read the entire account, but in Genesis chapter three, God has made Adam an help meet. A woman to be an aid to Adam, actually from the root word to surround him, to protect him, to comfort him. But the woman was tricked by the serpent, or the devil, and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and gave Adam some of it to eat also. So they gained the knowledge of good and evil and thereby committed sin, allowing sin to have dominion over them. And from that time on men have been born into sin. It was not something you had to do, it is something you are. According to Leviticus 17, the life of the flesh is in the blood, so sin is passed down from generation to generation through the blood of the fathers. Romans 3:23 says “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”