THE START OF IT ALL
For the next couple of months, with a few interruptions, I intend to preach through the book of Genesis. Genesis is a great book, in the greatest and best-selling book ever written. In Genesis you are first introduced to God. In Genesis you have the beginning of creation. In Genesis you have the first life. You have the first job, the first sin, the first forgiveness, the first marriage, the first children, the first sibling rivalry, and the first murder. In Genesis God judges the world for the first time. In Genesis, different languages are first created. In Genesis you have God selecting a people for Himself.
Allen Rex Sandage, the greatest observational cosmologist in the world-who has deciphered the secrets of the stars, plumbed the mysteries of quasars, revealed the age of globular clusters, pinpointed the distances of remote galaxies, and quantified the universe’s expansion through his work at the Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories-prepared to step onto the platform at a conference in Dallas.
Few scientists are as widely respected as this one-time protégé to legendary astronomer Edwin Hubble. Sandage has been showered with prestigious honors from the American Astronomical Society, the Swiss Physical Society, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Swedish Academy of Sciences, receiving astronomy’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The New York Times dubbed him the “Grand Old Man of Cosmology.”
As he approached the stage at this 1985 conference on science and religion, there seemed to be little doubt where he would sit. The discussion would be about the origin of the universe, and the panel would be divided among those scientists who believed in God and those who didn’t, with each viewpoint having it’s own side of the stage.
Many of the attendees probably knew that the ethnically Jewish Sandage had been a virtual theist even as a child. Many others undoubtedly believed that a scientist of his stature must surely be skeptical about God. As Newsweek put it, “The more deeply scientists see into the secrets of the universe, you’d expect, the more God would fade away from their hearts and minds.” So Sandage’s seat among the doubters was a given.
Then the unexpected happened. Sandage set the room abuzz by turnig and taking a chair among the theists. Even more shocking, during his talk he revealed that he had become a Christian at age 50.
He would later tell a reporter, “It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It was only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.” (Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004)
Funny, that’s what the Bible told us all along.
- Genesis 1:1-8, 14-19
Did you notice verse 1? In the beginning, God created. The word translated here as “God”, is the name Elohim.
I go by, or am known by a number of names. Since I was born my mother has called me Eugene. Many of her friends know me as Eugene, because that’s what she calls me. When I started school, I started going by Gene. Drew knows me as Daddy. Some of you call be Bother Gene, or Pastor, or whatever. I won’t mention some of the names you & others have called me. Names are important.
Here, God is first introduced in the Bible as Elohim. It means, “Almighty” and it means “Creator”. God the Almighty Creator. This name for God, Elohim, the Almighty, Creator-God, is used more than 2,500 times in the Bible, and it is important that you and I understand that God is the Creator, He is the Almighty.
I want you to understand that God is the Almighty Creator. He’s not some little ol wimpy god, dreamt up in the imaginations of men. He is Elohim, the Almighty Creator. He made all things and He created all things out of nothing. He created the heavens and the earth out of nothing. He created light where there was only darkness. He created life. He created you and me. He is the great I AM. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the Beginning and the End. Before Him, there was nothing. After Him there will be nothing. He is high and lifted up. He is the same, yesterday, today and forever.
He is God. Elohim. He is the Almighty, Creator. On that hangs much of our theology and understanding of the rest of the Bible.
It is not a coincidence, a fluke, or an accident that one of the first things God tells us about Himself is that He is the Creator. It’s important to our understanding of Him and to our understanding of our relationship to Him.
Some people want to throw out Genesis and the account of creation and just hang on to the rest of the Bible. My friend, if you are intellectually honest, that is an impossibility.
> Psalm 95:6 Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
> Psalm 121:2 My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.
> Ecclesiastes 12:1 So remember your Creator in the days of your youth: Before the days of adversity come, and the years approach when you will say, “I have no delight in them”;
> Isaiah 45:9 Woe to the one who argues with his Maker— …
> Acts 17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it—He is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in shrines made by hands.
> Revelation 4:11 Our Lord and God, You are worthy to receive glory and honor and power, because You have created all things, and because of Your will they exist and were created.
My friends, the Bible testifies to the existence of Elohim, our Creator God.
> Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims the work of His hands.
Birds, Water cycle, Seasons, Air oxygen use/reintroduction
Patrick Glynn, a former arms-control negotiator for the Regan Administration began his journey to atheism in grade school when he encountered evolution and became a confirmed atheist by the time he received his doctorate from Harvard University in the 1970’s.
After marrying a Christian and finding himself in frequent debates with her over spiritual matters, Glynn said his mind “became sufficiently open” so that he was willing to check out whether there was any ration evidence for the existence of God.
After a great deal of study, he changed his position and determined that “there is no good reason for an intelligent person to embrace the illusion of atheism or agnosticism.” He said there was simply too much scientific evidence to support intelligent design.
* Story of scientists making something. God saying, “Those are Mine. You have to start with nothing.”
*In the beginning there was nothing, except God.
God built the sky above us from nothing, and hung it on nothing.
> Job 26:7 He stretches the northern [skies] over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.
God built this earth from nothing and hung it on nothing.
God took nothing and made light. He took nothing, made water and with it created a rainbow.
God build everything you and I see out of nothing.
> John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created through Him, and apart from Him not one thing was created that has been created.
God took nothing and with only His Word, made everything.
> Luke 1:37 For nothing will be impossible with God.
When we see nothing, then we see no potential at all.
But God can take that nothing …
You may look at your situation today and see no hope, nothing.
But with God …
*Say that with me – “With God, all things are possible.
You may look at your life and see nothing to work with.
But with God, all things are possible.
Your family may tell you that you have nothing to offer anyone.
But with God …
When the doctor says there’s nothing he can do …
When your spouse tells you there’s no love left, there’s nothing, …
> Matthew 6:33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.
God can take your nothing, and give you hope. God can take your nothing, and give you help. …
