God the Creator

[0:00] Good job. Thank you, brother. Thank you for leading us to memorize God's word.! Please turn your Bible to Genesis chapter 1.

[0:12] ! Genesis 1, verse 1.

[0:34] But in addition to Genesis 1 and verse 1, I want to read two other passages of Scripture that I will refer to in this sermon as well.

[0:46] So if you're using a church Bible, Genesis 1, 1 is on page 1. I think if you're using another Bible, it's on page 1 as well. Please follow along as I read.

[1:05] In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And then if you would continue to John chapter 1, the Gospel of John chapter 1, or read verses 1 through 18.

[1:23] That's on page 886 if you're using a church Bible. John chapter 1, beginning in verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

[1:45] He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

[2:00] In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

[2:18] He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through Him. He was not the light, but He came to bear witness about the light.

[2:33] The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him.

[2:45] Yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

[3:12] And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

[3:28] John bore witness about Him and cried out, No one has ever seen God.

[3:59] The only God who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known. And then finally, Acts chapter 17, verses 22 to 34.

[4:14] And you'll find that on page 926 if you're using a church Bible. And this is the Apostle Paul. He's addressing a group of Athenians at the Areopagus.

[4:31] And this is what he says to them, beginning in verse 22. This is Luke's introduction to it, and then we'll read what Paul says. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious, for I passed along and observed the objects of your worship.

[4:58] I found also an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God.

[5:11] What therefore you worship is unknown. This I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.

[5:28] Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

[5:42] And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.

[5:55] that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet, he is actually not far from each one of us.

[6:10] For in him we live and move and have our being. As even some of your own poets have said, For we are indeed his offspring.

[6:22] Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art or imagination of man.

[6:35] The times of ignorance God overlooked. But now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

[6:52] And of this he has given an assurance to all by raising him from the dead. Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.

[7:06] But others said, We will hear you again about this. So Paul went out from their midst. But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman named Amaris, and others with them.

[7:33] Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word this morning. We thank you, Lord, that you have preserved your word over the ages.

[7:45] And you have promised that your word will accomplish whatever you have ordained it to do. And so, Lord, I pray that your word will accomplish its purpose in our hearts and lives in this moment of the proclamation of it.

[8:06] Lord, you know each of us who's present, each of us who's watching or who will watch in the future. And Lord, you are able to speak to us.

[8:19] Not just as a group, but also individually. Would you locate us wherever we are concerning the truths that we will cover this morning. And Lord, may your word penetrate our hearts and convict our souls about the things that we will contemplate this morning.

[8:38] I pray for your help, Lord, once again. And I ask, O Lord, would you glorify yourself in the preaching of your word and will you build up this local church for the glory of your name.

[8:52] In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen. I want to begin this morning by saying that I'm indebted to Pastor Vaughn Roberts from St. Ebb's Anglican Church in Oxford, England for the help I received from a sermon that he preached on this particular text that has guided my own understanding of how best to approach it.

[9:19] And certainly, any deficiency in the sermon this morning is my own. I think one of the experiences of parents of young children is that from time to time you get to answer the many questions that children tend to come up with.

[9:43] And that's because as children mature and as they observe the world around them and as they listen to conversations being had around them, they have questions and they ask those questions sincerely expecting an answer.

[9:58] I don't know who the first person was in my family who asked where babies come from but I remember in my family when we were young we were told that babies come from Miami.

[10:09] and I reflected on this and I really can't remember my mother being pregnant.

[10:20] I can't remember seeing her pregnant but I could remember times my father would just take her and we would say and they would tell us she's going to Miami to get the baby and if anyone asked us where she was we would say she went to Miami to get the baby and so we thought babies came from Miami.

[10:38] Now I'm not I have siblings here this morning and they know that's the truth. That's the truth right? Babies came from Miami. Right? Rose is saying she doesn't know. I guess she didn't ask the question but I certainly remember growing up believing that babies came from Miami.

[10:58] You probably asked the question where babies came from and you may have gotten a different answer or if you didn't ask that question you no doubt asked questions.

[11:09] You asked questions about things you observed things you heard and things you did not understand. And the reality is is that when we are observing and we're asking questions and as we grow older we get answers to these questions these this accumulation of the data that we're getting of the answers to the questions that we're getting we are building a worldview.

[11:37] We're building a way that we see the world how the world is actually shaped. And obviously there are multiple answers to these questions that we have.

[11:55] And every one of us this morning every one of us as I look around the room every one of us has a worldview. we have a worldview that helps us to be able to understand how the world came into being how it is supposed to work what is the purpose of it if it has any purpose at all.

[12:18] There are secular worldviews and secular worldviews are worldviews that do not factor in any God much less the true and living God as the shaper of worldviews.

[12:34] And the leading secular worldview is evolution that we evolved this world evolved from a big bang. And there are obviously religious worldviews and there are many of them.

[12:51] Some of them believe in the existence of some gods and obviously the one true worldview believes in the existence of the true and the living God.

[13:04] Now we know that all these worldviews can't be right. They can all be wrong but they can't all be right. Genesis 1-1 begins with this statement that forms the foundation for the biblical worldview.

[13:21] worldview. A worldview that is based on the Bible and we read it a short while ago and it is this in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

[13:37] And so Genesis 1-1 makes very clear this explicit claim that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth.

[13:49] That is the explicit claim that we find in this opening verse of Genesis but also the opening verse of the Bible. The opening verse of Genesis is also the opening verse of all of God's word.

[14:05] It is really the foundation upon which Genesis stands. It is the foundation upon which all of God's word stands. This explicit claim God is the creator of the heavens and the earth.

[14:22] But to put it another way, God is the creator of the entire universe. Next we're going to look at the details of this. We will look at the details of how God created the heavens and the earth.

[14:38] But this morning our focus is on this single verse. God is the creator of the heavens and the earth.

[14:50] But Genesis 1-1 not only makes an explicit claim, it makes an implicit claim. And the implicit claim that it makes is that God is uncreated.

[15:05] He has always existed. Now the eternality of God is repeated again and again throughout scripture.

[15:16] For example, in Isaiah 40 verse 28, Isaiah refers to God as the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.

[15:30] But both the explicit claim that God is the creator and the implicit claim that God is uncreated are essential for the foundation of a biblical worldview.

[15:48] Both of them are essential. God is the creator. God is uncreated. And so this morning, I want us to consider these two claims, the explicit claim that God is the creator and the implicit claim that God is uncreated.

[16:07] But before we do that, I want us to consider a bit of background that I believe will help us as we embark on this study in Genesis. As is obvious, Genesis is the first book of the Bible.

[16:22] But we shouldn't take that lightly. We should take that very seriously because it forms a foundation for the rest of Scripture. In Jewish tradition, the book of Genesis gets its name from this opening phrase, in the beginning.

[16:47] And that's what Genesis means. It means the origins or the beginning. Our English word Genesis, it gets its meaning from that Hebrew term in the beginning or the book of origins.

[17:04] Now, we're not explicitly told who the author of Genesis is, but early Jewish and Christian tradition is almost unanimous that Moses wrote the book of Genesis as well as the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

[17:25] In the book of Genesis, the first 11 chapters cover a very, very long period of time. The first 11 chapters cover the history of the whole world from creation up until the flood.

[17:43] Well, up until Babel, sorry, up until the Tower of Babel and then the call of Abraham in chapter 12. But those first 11 chapters cover that entire history of the world.

[17:55] And then what happens is it slows down a bit and it begins to focus on one man and one people and then that thread works its way out through the rest of Scripture.

[18:08] So that's a helpful way for us to think about the book of Genesis. The first 11 chapters, the history of the whole world, and then the focus of God goes to this man, Abraham, and an offspring from him, and we see that working of that throughout the rest of Scripture.

[18:33] Moses would have written Genesis somewhere around 1400 B.C. And I think one of the first things that comes up when we approach the book of Genesis, one of the questions that comes up is whether it can really be trusted.

[18:51] Can the book of Genesis be trusted? And the simple answer is yes, it can be fully trusted. And the reason it can be fully trusted is it is God's Word.

[19:04] And it is from the God who cannot lie. It is his inspired Word. It is reliable. It is trustworthy. And we can trust it the way we trust the rest of his Word.

[19:19] Jesus accepted the authenticity and the reliability of Genesis as God's Word. He referenced it and quoted it often.

[19:32] For example, in Mark 13, verse 19, Jesus references God creating the world. And that's a reference to Genesis 1. In Matthew 19, 4-5, he quotes from Genesis 2 when he talks about the institution of marriage.

[19:48] He actually quotes a particular part of it. And then in John 8-44, Jesus refers to the devil as a liar and a murderer from the beginning, placing the devil back at the beginning of time and creation, and referencing the temptation of Adam and Eve and the fall in Genesis chapter 3.

[20:19] And then in Matthew chapter 23, verse 35, Jesus refers to Abel as the first of all the martyrs. And here he's referring to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis chapter 4.

[20:35] And then in Matthew 24, 37-39, Jesus refers to one of the events that so many people are skeptical about, and that's the flood. And he said that in the time of his coming, it will be just as it was during the days of Noah when the flood came.

[20:57] Brothers and sisters, we can take the book of Genesis as trustworthy as Jesus took it to be trustworthy because it is trustworthy.

[21:11] And while Genesis is a historical account of creation and the world and the nation of Israel, it is more than just a historical account. Genesis is ultimately God's story.

[21:26] Genesis is ultimately about God. It is God revealing himself in these opening verses. God is revealing himself.

[21:37] This is a self-revelation. And this works its way out through the rest of scripture, finally concluding in the book of Revelation.

[21:48] But all of scripture is about God and his creative and redemptive purposes. verses. And that is very clear from these opening verses.

[22:02] These opening verses are introducing us to a big story that is found in the Bible. Moses is the human author, but there is a divine author above Moses who is giving us this story, this self-revelation of himself.

[22:22] God is telling us through Moses how he created the universe and everything in it and everyone in it. And we'll see as we work our way through how this creation fell.

[22:39] How it fell into sin through the disobedience of one man who God appointed as the head of the human race. And then we'll see how God initiated a plan of redemption that works its way through the pages of Scripture.

[22:59] And brothers and sisters, before we in earnest get into this study in the book of Genesis, this must be the posture of our hearts that this is trustworthy, that this is God's Word.

[23:14] And I believe this needs to be our posture when we come to any part of God's Word, but this needs to be our posture, especially in this part, of God's Word. Because, friends, if this is not trustworthy, we can dump the whole thing.

[23:32] I read a lot of things on a daily basis, and so I try to manage how I read things and what I will read fully and how I would read it. And sometimes I'm reading something, and the minute I see something that is just wrong or makes no sense, I just drop it.

[23:47] I go into something else. And as we approach this study this morning, if we come to these ten words, these opening ten words, and we are not able to trust them, brothers and sisters, how can we trust any of the rest of God's Word?

[24:10] Any fault or flaw in God's Word puts into question the rest of God's Word. And so our heart's posture this morning is that we need to humble ourselves, embrace God's Word, embrace it as trustworthy.

[24:29] And I think it's especially important today because there are many people, even some going by the label Christian, who don't believe and undermine what we are considering this morning and what we will be considering over the next several months.

[24:47] One more thing before we look at the two claims of Genesis 1 verse 1. Why did God inspire Moses to write Genesis?

[25:00] What is the purpose of Genesis in our Bibles? The book of Genesis is the foundational argument for God's people, Israel, people, and by extension, all people, which includes you and me, to serve God in his world.

[25:26] The book of Genesis makes the argument as to why those whom God has created should serve God in the world that he has created.

[25:39] Moses wrote it at first to give this argument to the nation of Israel, to help them to see that it was logical, that it made sense for them to serve this God who is creator, this God who placed them in his world, and this God who gets to set the rules, and who calls them to love him, and to obey him, and to worship him alone.

[26:06] And it's especially true for the nation of Israel because this same God delivered them out of bondage. He redeemed them out of slavery.

[26:19] And this is the foundation of the case that Moses makes in the books that he writes to them, that details God's love and care for his people.

[26:32] And the argument is this creator who created the world and who created us. He gets to set the rules, and he calls us to live by those rules, and to serve him all of our days.

[26:48] And it is an argument, and it is a logical argument. We do God no favors by serving him. We do what is just, and what is right.

[27:00] And Moses sought to make that argument first to the nation of Israel, and then he makes that argument to all those who would be the people of God. And that brings me to the first claim in Genesis 1, verse 1, which is God is the creator.

[27:20] That's the explicit claim that Genesis 1, 1 makes. God created the heavens and the earth. The earth and the heavens in all of their vastness, God created them.

[27:33] when we talk about the heavens, it is the vast universe. The heavens that we're told have some two trillion galaxies.

[27:52] And don't be impressed by that. I have to look that up. I don't know it. I'm like a fish out of water.

[28:03] I fish out of water when I get into this area because I don't know these things, but I marvel at them. Astronomers tell us that we are part of this Milky Way, our Milky Way, and they say that it is one of two trillion galaxies, and it isn't one of the bigger ones, and in this Milky Way, the galaxy that we on Earth are in contains about a hundred billion planets, about a hundred billion planets, and about four billion stars.

[28:45] It's just one, one of the smaller ones. Now, Genesis 1, 1 doesn't go into all of that. When Moses wrote, he didn't know that, and when the children of Israel were receiving this, they did not know all of that, and they didn't need to know all of that.

[29:03] And nor do we need to know all that to accept the plain claim of Genesis 1, 1. It makes a simple claim that God created the heavens and the earth.

[29:17] The point was that Israel's God, Yahweh, was the true God, the God who revealed himself as their powerful redeemer out of Egypt, that he is the God who also created the heavens and the earth.

[29:37] And it was a call to them to reject the false views of the Egyptians and other pagan nations regarding creation. And the Egyptians had their worldviews.

[29:49] The Egyptians had their views about how the world came into being. And other nations had their views about how the world came into being. And even today, there are many multiple views of how the world came into being.

[30:02] And it's easy to see how this would be a need that Israel had to understand how the world came into being because they lived in Egypt for some 430 years.

[30:15] And they would have been exposed and they would have been influenced, I believe, by pagan ideas and pagan views the world. And so it's no wonder when God gives them the commandment, the first commandment he gives them is, you shall have no other gods before me.

[30:34] Because they came out of a context where there were multiple gods. Brothers and sisters, the same is true for us today. we don't need to know all the complexities of astronomy and the vastness of the heavens and the earth and the seas and what would be in them.

[31:00] We need to accept the plain words of scripture that God created the heavens and the earth. And we need to accept that view above all the other views around believing there is one true God and he is the only and the true creator of all things.

[31:26] I admire people who study astronomy and who get into geology and all that stuff. Wonderful and they can make great arguments if they're believers. But brothers and sisters, we don't need to know all that to believe these words, these opening words, these ten words that tell us that God created the heavens and the earth.

[31:51] And in the midst of all the debates that are going on, there's one question. It's the question of trustworthiness and it is who are we going to trust? Are we going to believe the biblical revelation of the infinite God who cannot lie that he created the heavens and the earth and everything in them in six literal days?

[32:16] Or are we going to believe the theories of finite fallen sinners who tell us that based on their dating methods, they can measure fossils and rocks and all kinds of things and that the earth really is billions of years old and it evolved into what it now is?

[32:40] Who are we going to believe? Are we going to believe the unlying God who is infinite in every way? Or are we going to believe finite fallen sinners who have come up with methods by which they say they can measure existence?

[33:03] Christians, brothers and sisters, this is an issue of trustworthiness. Do we believe these ten opening words of Genesis, that God created the heavens and the earth, or do we believe some other view about how the world came into being?

[33:25] I want to say to you, it matters. it matters because it's an issue of reliability and the trustworthiness of God.

[33:43] Again, any part of Scripture that is untrustworthy puts into doubt the rest of Scripture.

[33:53] Scripture. Now, this morning, again, we are focusing on Genesis 1, 1 alone, but we know that Genesis 1, 1 is connected to the rest of the creation story, which we will look at next Sunday, the Lord willing.

[34:12] But the rest of the creation story, to jump ahead a little bit, is that God created mankind and placed them in this world that he had created. And the point that we should see immediately from this claim in Genesis 1, 1 is that God has the right to do in his world what he chooses and with his creatures.

[34:40] One of the things that was happening as Moses was writing to the children of Israel, God was bringing them out of the land of Egypt and he was taking them into a land that he was going to evict people out of and he was going to put them in.

[34:53] Why could he do that? Because he is God, because he is the creator, because it's his land and he owns everything in it and he also created all the people in it.

[35:04] And so he has the sovereign right to evict some people out of the land and put another people into the land.

[35:15] He is free and sovereign to act as he chooses. others. In Acts 17, the passage we read earlier, as Paul is preaching to the men of Athens, he's standing on the claim of God as creator, who created mankind to worship him.

[35:39] And Paul tells them that he wants to explain to them or proclaim to them this God who they made an altar to, this unknown God. he says, I want to explain, I want to proclaim that unknown God to you.

[35:56] And the way he approaches them, the way he speaks them is he says, the God who made the world and everything in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn't dwell in temples made of human hands, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives all mankind life and breath and everything.

[36:19] he goes on to tell them how God from one man made every man, every nation to live on the face of the earth. And he determined their allotted times and the boundaries of where they should live with the hope that they would seek and worship God.

[36:40] And so on that basis that Paul concludes and he says to them, this same creator God, this same God who created everything and who created you commands everyone everywhere to repent because he has fixed the day which he will judge the world by Jesus Christ, whom he raised from the dead.

[37:03] He said, and the proof that he is going to do it is that he raised him from the dead. And so the explicit claim that we find in Genesis 1, 1 is that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth.

[37:23] But again, Genesis 1, 1 also makes an implicit claim. And that brings you to my second and final point. God is uncreated.

[37:35] The way Genesis 1, 1 makes this implicit claim that God is uncreated is in the way in which it begins. it begins with three words, in the beginning.

[37:50] In the beginning is not a reference to God. In the beginning is a reference to God's creation, that he created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1, 1 does not seek to explain or defend God's existence because God always was.

[38:08] God is and again, in other parts of scripture, we see this very, very clearly, that he is the eternal, everlasting God. He is the ancient of days.

[38:23] Genesis 1, 1 makes this claim implicitly. And what we see in Genesis chapter 1 is Genesis chapter 1, and again, this is the book of origins.

[38:35] This is the seed of the Bible. This is the seedbed of truths and doctrines that work their way out through the pages of scripture.

[38:50] And in this opening chapter of Genesis, we get seeds of our doctrine of God that flourish and grow and expand throughout the pages of scripture.

[39:04] It is here that we understand that our God is triune in the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The seeds of it, we begin to see it, even here.

[39:20] Next week, we will look at Genesis 1, not next week, but the following week, two weeks from now. We look at Genesis 1, 26, where God says, let us make man in our image and likeness.

[39:31] He doesn't say, let me make man. He says, let us make man in our image and likeness. We see in verse 2 of Genesis 1, it tells us that the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

[39:53] And then we read in John chapter 1 earlier, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

[40:05] He was in the beginning with God. And all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. And John goes on to tell us that this Word, that was with God from the beginning, became flesh and dwelt among us.

[40:24] God from the second person of the Godhead is not mentioned here in Genesis chapter 1, we know that the fullness of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was involved in the creation from the very beginning.

[40:47] God and so we're able to lay a hold up, we're able to grasp this and accept this important truth of God in the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and again, although this idea that God is uncreated, is implicit, it is important.

[41:13] There are people who would say, well, okay, if God created everything, who created God, where did God come from? Now, what we're called to do, we're not called to understand the eternality of God.

[41:37] We finite creatures are not called to understand and to give an argument for the fact that God is everlasting and God is infinite. There's nowhere in Scripture that we are called to understand that or to explain that.

[41:53] But we are called to believe it. We are called to accept it. Now, I know that there are people who have been able to simply say, well, if everything needs to be created, so if you say, well, God just can't come into existence, God needs to be created as well, well, then you just have a spiraling back, finding original source of creation that never ends if you insist that there is no fixed starting point.

[42:28] But we believe that God is eternally existent, God is everlasting, and he is the one who initiated creation.

[42:39] Creation had started with him. He himself is uncreated. We're not called to defend that. Scripture doesn't defend that.

[42:51] We're called to accept it. We're called to proclaim it. And the power of God's word is not in our explanation. The power of God's word is not in our understanding.

[43:02] The power of God's word is in the proclamation of God's word. That we humble ourselves under God's mighty hand, and we simply proclaim his word.

[43:15] And it matters not what people think about it. It matters not what people think about us. We trust God to watch over his own word, and to perform his purposes through his word.

[43:27] We do what the apostle Paul did. He stood on the infallible word, and he proclaimed it. He proclaimed it to those who were gathered at the Areopagus, who were into every new truth that came around.

[43:46] And he was called a fool. He was mocked. When he talked about the resurrection, they laughed. And it wasn't Paul's job to convince them, nor is it our job to convince anyone about the eternal personality of God, the self existence of God, and his power to create this world as he did, by speaking, and speaking in six literal days and doing it and getting it done.

[44:25] We do that, and we trust God with the results. And towards the end of Acts 17, Paul had finished his address, Luke tells us that some mocked, some laughed, and they dismissed him.

[44:42] Others were not so sure, they say, we need to hear you again. But Luke tells us that some believed. He named two.

[44:52] Dionysius believed, and Damaris believed, and there were others with them. And brothers and sisters, this is the picture. This is a helpful picture for us.

[45:06] To stand on the word of God, that God is the uncreated, eternal God who created this world and created everyone and everything in it, and that he calls all people everywhere to repent and to live in his world the way he has called them to live in his world, by his rules, by his standards, and let them do with it what they may.

[45:31] But we trust God that as we stand on his word, and as we proclaim his word, there will be those like Dionysius, like Damaris, and others who will come to believe.

[45:45] Brothers and sisters, these opening ten words seem very simple, and we can pass them over so easily, me, but they are the foundation upon which all of this hinges, and what God calls us to do, is to accept it, and to proclaim it, and to trust him to work in it.

[46:16] I pray this morning that our hearts are postured to take Genesis as God's holy word, as God's infallible word, as God's trustworthy word, and let the scoffers scoff, and let the mockers mock, and let's trust God to do his work, because the claim of Genesis, again, is that it is logical for the creator of the world to call his creatures in his world, to love him, and to serve him, and to obey him, and to worship him the way he determines.

[47:02] And so I pray that you are looking forward to our study in Genesis. I pray that we will benefit in our conviction about these things.

[47:13] Next week we'll talk more about the creation that God did, and again, my goal is not to, this week, I will not be studying a lot of astronomy and all kinds of other things.

[47:27] I will, by the grace of God, study this text, and I will show up next week to proclaim what this word says, and I will trust God to use it to transform our lives and to convince us that it is logical to serve God in God's world.

[47:48] Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word this morning. Lord, I pray that you would use this first sermon as a foundation upon which we can build over the next several months.

[48:11] And Lord, would you help us to strengthen and even establish a biblical worldview coming out of the pages of the book of Genesis.

[48:26] Would you do it for the glory of your great name? In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Let's stand for a closing song. God, you do it.

[48:41] sing along with me, ancient of days. Yes. So I will not fear For this truth remains That my God is the Ancient of Days None above Him, none before Him All of time in His hand For His throne it shall remain

[49:44] And ever stand In all the power, all the glory I will trust in His name For my God is the Ancient of Days Though the dread of night overwhelms my soul He is here with me I am not alone Oh, His love is sure And He knows my name For my God is the Ancient of Days None before Him, none before Him

[50:50] All of time in His hand For His throne it shall remain And ever stand And ever stand In all the power, all the glory I will trust in His name For my God is the Ancient of Days Though I may not see What the future brings I will watch and wait For the Savior King

[51:51] Then my joy complete Then my joy complete Standing face to face In the presence of the Ancient of Days In the presence of the Ancient of Days And none above Him And none above Him And none before Him All of time in His hands For His throne it shall remain And ever stand And all the power, all the glory I will trust in His name For my God is the Ancient of Days For my God is the Ancient of Days

[52:58] Father, you are the Ancient of Days.

[53:09] You are the one who in your sovereignty Created the heavens and the earth At the beginning of time.

[53:26] Yet you yourself were out of time. You are the uncreated God, the Ancient of Days.

[53:39] God, we have rebelled. We have turned our backs to you in your world.

[53:55] And in your mercy You set to redeem a people to yourself To show your mercy and your grace.

[54:06] And you sent your Son. You sent your Son, the one you promised Would crush the head of the serpent. And he has redeemed a people And continues to redeem a people unto you.

[54:25] And Lord, may we live in your world faithfully. May we proclaim the truth of Genesis 1-1 That you are the creator of everything and everyone But you yourself are uncreated.

[54:49] I pray for us this morning. Lord, may this be the conviction of all of our hearts As we hear these things this morning. And God, where we may wrestle our struggle Would you work in our hearts as only you can Would you point us to the reliability And the trustworthiness of your word Because you are its author And you are perfect in all of your ways.

[55:15] You are the unlying God Who cannot lie. And I do pray, Lord, that as we Go about our daily lives That we would stand on the settled truth Of Genesis 1-1 And may we Proclaim it And may we call all of Your creatures To repent Reminding them that you have set a day That you will judge the world In righteousness by Jesus Christ And you have given us all evidence of that By raising him from the dead God, as we proclaim the word I pray That you would grant it That we would be able to see Some like Dionysius and Damaris Who will believe

[56:16] Even while others scoff and mock Or do your work In our hearts and lives we pray And Father, I do pray Even for some who may be gathered this morning Or watching my live stream Who do not know the Savior Oh God May they heed The command to repent Remembering that there is a day of judgment coming By the Lord Jesus Christ And now as you leave today And throughout this week May the God who said Let light shine out of darkness Continue to make his light shine in your hearts To give you the light of the knowledge Of God's glory displayed in the face of Jesus Christ And may you live for him

[57:16] And may you seek to please him Remembering that he is your creator And your father Through Jesus Christ our Lord Amen Amen God bless you You're dismissed If you need prayer As the others leave Please come And we have joy to pray with you Hang around Enjoy the refreshments Save none You showed your love Defeated our sin Pour out your blood So we praise you Love that was slain We offer you