WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:10.000 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the earth, the deep. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:13.000 And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:17.000 And God said, let there be light, and there was light. 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:22.000 And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:26.000 God called the light day, and the darkness, he called night. 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:30.000 And there was evening, and there was morning the first day. 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:34.000 And God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:37.000 and let it separate the waters from the waters. 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:41.000 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse, 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:44.000 from the waters that were above the expanse. 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:47.000 And it was so. And God called the expanse heaven, 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:51.000 and there was evening, and there was morning the second day. 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:56.000 And God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:59.000 and let the dry land appear, and it was so. 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:05.000 God called the dry land earth and the waters that were gathered together, he called seas. 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:07.000 And God saw that it was good. 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:12.000 And God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seeds, 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:15.000 and fruit trees bearing fruit, in which is their seed. 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:18.000 Each according to its kind, on the earth. 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:23.000 And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:28.000 according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit, in which is their seed. 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:30.000 Each according to its kind. 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:32.000 And God saw that it was good. 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:36.000 And there was evening, and there was morning the third day. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:39.000 And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:44.000 to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:48.000 and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:50.000 to give light upon the earth. 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:55.000 And it was so. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:59.000 and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars. 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:03.000 And God said them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:08.000 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:13.000 And God saw that it was good, and there was evening, and there was morning the fourth day. 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:18.000 And God said, let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures, 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:22.000 and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens. 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:26.000 So God created the great sea creatures, and every living creature that moves, 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:30.000 with which the water swarm, according to their kinds, 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:33.000 and every winged bird according to its kind. 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:35.000 And God saw that it was good. 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:38.000 And God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply, 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:42.000 and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:46.000 And there was evening, and there was morning the fifth day. 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:51.000 And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:56.000 livestock and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. 00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:01.000 And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:03.000 and the livestock according to their kinds, 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:07.000 and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:12.000 And God saw that it was good. The Word of the Word. 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:16.000 Last week we started a new series on Genesis 1 and 2, 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:20.000 seven weeks looking at the story of creation and all that it means. 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:24.000 And we really focused last week just on verse 1 and half of 2. 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:27.000 In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth. 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:31.000 That is the most published sentence in world history, 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:34.000 the most known sentence, I think, in all of world history. 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:37.000 God created the heavens and the earth. 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:41.000 And it answers the question we focused on this last week. 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:45.000 Why is there something rather than nothing? 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:49.000 One of the perennial questions of human existence, of all of philosophy, 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:52.000 that is very difficult to answer unless you believe in God. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:55.000 Why is there something rather than nothing? 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:58.000 And the answer we saw, the Christian claim, 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:01.000 is that the reason there is something rather than nothing 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:05.000 is because there is a God and God created the world. 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:10.000 And that means that we are unnecessary creatures. 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:14.000 We are relative. We don't need to exist. 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:20.000 That God both existed, created because He has absolute power, 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:25.000 but that creation was no accident, it was purposed. 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:28.000 And that means that this entire world is gratuitous. 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:31.000 It's a gift. Everything we have is a gift. 00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:36.000 And the only really bright response to that is the response of gratitude 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:39.000 on our part to the Creator who's made everything. 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:43.000 Now, one of the phrases that's really common, I didn't mention last week, 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:47.000 that the Christian thinkers of 2,000 years will often use 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:50.000 all the way back to the time the Old Testament was written 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:53.000 to describe the God of Genesis 1. 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:57.000 You open page one of the Bible, one of the questions you got to ask is, 00:04:57.000 --> 00:04:59.000 who is this God? It's page one. 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:01.000 Who is this God I'm reading about here? 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:06.000 And one of the things we read very quickly, we learn very early, 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:11.000 is this phrase that God is both transcendent and imminent. 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:15.000 And transcendent means that God is so above everything. 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:17.000 He's outside of space and time. 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:21.000 He's the only God that has the power to actually make space and time. 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:22.000 Transcendent. 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:25.000 And at the same time, He's imminent, and that's an older word 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:30.000 that just means so very close, so very intimate with us. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:34.000 He's transcendent, absolute, and yet so very near, imminent, 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:36.000 at the very same time, so very close. 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:39.000 That's the God we read about in Genesis 1. 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:46.000 And so let's expand that a bit today and move from verse 1 to verse 25. 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:52.000 So we took a half hour last week on verse 1, and if you multiply that out by 25, 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:57.000 you could look at these 25 verses that Noah read for us 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:00.000 for hours and hours and hours. 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:06.000 We've got to focus down, and here's the way that we can do that. 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:08.000 There's a repeated refrain. 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:13.000 There are several in this chapter, but one of them is in verse 4, 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:14.000 and it says, 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:18.000 And God saw the light, the light that He had made, 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:20.000 and He saw that it was good. 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:25.000 And then in verse 12, 10, God saw and it was good. 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:29.000 In verse 12, in verse 18, in verse 21, in verse 25, in verse 31, 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:32.000 God saw and it was good. 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:33.000 Very good at the end. 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:35.000 Seven times it's mentioned. 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:39.000 And so let's look at this whole creation story and ask, 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:46.000 Let me show you three ways, three ways that God made a good world. 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:52.000 Three aspects, we might say, of what it means to say that this world is good, 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:54.000 the way that God made it. 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:56.000 Let's focus on that for just a few minutes. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:07:01.000 So first, in verse 4, He had made light. 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:04.000 He had separated day and night, light and darkness, 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:05.000 and then He looked at that. 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:11.000 It says, He saw, and He said that is good. 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:12.000 What does that mean? 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:13.000 What does it mean? 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:17.000 First aspect of goodness, God's goodness. 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:20.000 In the same way that maybe you make something, 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:23.000 you might make a cake and you step back and you say, 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:25.000 That is, that was, I did well. 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:27.000 That was good. 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:28.000 It tastes good. 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:30.000 It looks good, all of it. 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:33.000 There's a sense of what God's doing here that's the exact same, 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:35.000 except at an absolute level. 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:39.000 You can create a, you can make a cake, you cannot create light. 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:46.000 God did, and He stepped back like an artist steps back from a painting 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:49.000 and takes delight in what He made. 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:51.000 So He steps back and He looks at it and He says, 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:53.000 Wow, that is good. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:55.000 It's exactly the way it should be. 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:59.000 So here we've got the Lord of the Universe who made everything, 00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:04.000 stepping back and looking at creation seven times throughout this passage 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:07.000 like an artist looks at a great painting. 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:09.000 And says, I'm pleased with that. 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:11.000 That is very good. 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:12.000 It's beautiful. 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:17.000 In other words, we've got God pronouncing that the world He made is beautiful. 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:21.000 It's the creation, it's not only the pronouncement of beauty. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:25.000 Boy, you know, this is the creation of the reality of beauty. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:29.000 The very fact that beauty exists is in this pronouncement, 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:33.000 that what He made is good, that it is beautiful. 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:38.000 So one of the ways to see this is people, if you've come across this probably, 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:42.000 if you've been around the Bible much throughout your life, 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:47.000 people will ask, is Genesis 1 poetry or is it history? 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:51.000 And the right answer to that, when you look at it carefully, I think is yes. 00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:54.000 It is highly structured. 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:55.000 It's extremely structured. 00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:57.000 It's got poetic elements. 00:08:57.000 --> 00:08:59.000 So He saw and it was good seven times. 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:02.000 It says that it was morning and evening. 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:04.000 We go through that seven times. 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:07.000 And He spoke and He spoke and He spoke. 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:12.000 There are real poetic literary elements through the movement of these six days. 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:17.000 And at the same time, when you read it, it also comes out clearly as a statement about history. 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:22.000 It's not being offered here as anything less than history, but it's highly structured history. 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:28.000 One of the ways to think about it is in the book of Exodus, 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:34.000 where God brings Israel across the Red Sea, and then there's a story, the history of that. 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:40.000 And then in Exodus 15, Moses sings about what happened. 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:43.000 He sings the song of crossing the Red Sea. 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:48.000 And when you see the lyrics of the song, it recounts the history in full, but it's a song. 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:50.000 And that's exactly Genesis 1. 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:53.000 It's a symphony and it's history simultaneously. 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:54.000 It's sung. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:10:01.000 And you can see in that the very simple point that even in the way God gave us this passage, 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:03.000 it was written by an artist. 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:05.000 It's got artistry all through it. 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:10.000 Let me give you a couple more details on that quickly. 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:14.000 The text behind this English text is Hebrew originally. 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:18.000 And in the first sentence, there are seven words. 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:24.000 And in the second sentence, the Hebrew sentence here in Genesis 1, there are 14 words. 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:29.000 And the multiples of seven all throughout go on and on and on. 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:32.000 Way too long for us to recount right now. 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:35.000 We don't have time, but I'll give you just a couple more. 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:37.000 Seven times the word good is mentioned. 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:40.000 Seven times there's morning and evening. 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:43.000 The whole entire structure is in multiples of seven. 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:44.000 The earth is mentioned. 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:47.000 The land is mentioned 21 times. 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:49.000 And that's a multiple of seven. 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:51.000 Seven times three. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:58.000 And even the entire word count from Genesis 1, 1 to 2, 3, which is one introductory section, 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:00.000 is a multiple of seven. 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:02.000 I think if I remember right, it's 469. 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:05.000 Hopefully that's a multiple of seven, but I do know it is a multiple of seven. 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:07.000 Whatever the word count is. 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:14.000 The word that comes up most, the noun in Genesis 1, 1 to 2, 3, is the word God. 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:18.000 God's name, 35 times a multiple of seven that shows up. 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:21.000 The entire thing is a literary masterpiece. 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:23.000 And we could go on and on and on. 00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:27.000 And the whole thing is framed in a six day structure. 00:11:27.000 --> 00:11:29.000 God created in the space of six days. 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:33.000 And the headline article of that is in verse two, where it says in the beginning, 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:36.000 the world was formless and void. 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:38.000 Formless and void. 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:43.000 So formless, it was there, but it didn't have the fullness of shape. 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:45.000 It didn't have land. 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:48.000 It didn't have the sky. 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:51.000 It didn't have all the things we know about planet earth and the universe. 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:52.000 And then it was void. 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:54.000 It was empty. 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:55.000 So it wasn't filled with life. 00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:00.000 It didn't have us and vegetation and plants and creepy things and all sorts of stuff. 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:01.000 It didn't have it. 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:05.000 It was without structure and it was empty at the very beginning. 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:06.000 He made it. 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:09.000 There was matter, but it was without structure and empty. 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:14.000 And then if you look, you can see in day one, he creates day and night, light and darkness. 00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:19.000 And in day two, he creates the water and the sky, the seas, the sky. 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:22.000 On day three, he creates the dry land. 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:28.000 Now, if you look really closely, what you see is there's a really obvious pattern. 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:33.000 In the beginning, it was formless without structure and unfilled, empty. 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:37.000 Days one to three, God gives it structure. 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:40.000 Days four to six, he fills it up with stuff. 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:42.000 So let me just show this to you. 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:46.000 And day one, he creates light and darkness. 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:51.000 But on day four, he creates the sun, moon and stars that give the light. 00:12:51.000 --> 00:12:55.000 He created the structure and then he filled it day one, day four. 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:58.000 And that means day two and five and day three and six correspond. 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:00.000 And in day two, what did he do? 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:03.000 He created the water, the sea and the sky. 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:08.000 And in day five, what did he create? The sea creatures and the birds. 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:11.000 Day three, what did he do? He raised up the dry land. 00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:15.000 Day six, what did he put? Animals and humans on the dry land. 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:19.000 You see, he formed it day one to three. He filled it day four to six. 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:24.000 It's got this artistic structure about it throughout the space of six days. 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:28.000 And you could ask, you know, a question like, what did God make? 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:30.000 And we could go through this list. 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:34.000 I did this once in class at the seminary and we listed over 70 things, 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:37.000 potential things here that are listed that God made. 00:13:37.000 --> 00:13:39.000 But we don't even think about the obvious, you know. 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:43.000 We think about plants and humans and the world and the sky and birds 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:46.000 and the universe and stars and all sorts of things. 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:52.000 But what about space and time and number and concepts and consciousness 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:56.000 and reason and emotions and self-awareness and names 00:13:56.000 --> 00:14:00.000 and personalities and love and family bonds and friendship 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:04.000 and work and music and vocal chords that can speak languages 00:14:04.000 --> 00:14:09.000 and imagination and the possibility of new life, 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:14.000 not just the beginning that he made, but production, multiplication, 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:19.000 and babies and fun and joy and peace and kindness and parties 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:24.000 and development and art and painting and cultivation and sculpting and building things. 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:26.000 And we could go on forever. 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:31.000 All of it creature, all of it made by God, the great artist. 00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:36.000 Calvin said that the natural world that God made is the theater of God's glory. 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:41.000 It's beautiful and it is the theater of the display of his glory in this world. 00:14:43.000 --> 00:14:50.000 The multiplicity of ecosystems, the multiplicity of things that exist and do not have to. 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:56.000 God didn't just make a plant, he made plants that we still haven't discovered yet. 00:14:56.000 --> 00:15:00.000 Flora and Fauna that I don't know how to name. 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:05.000 I don't know if you've ever been to Costco here in Edinburgh. 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:07.000 It's pretty great. 00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:10.000 I say that as an American, I know. 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:16.000 When you go into Costco, the first thing that you see in Costco 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:21.000 is the myriad of unbelievable televisions that are on offer at the moment. 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:26.000 And you have to be pulled away from this. 00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:32.000 But OLED TV, I don't know if you know much about OLED TV, 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:37.000 it stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode Television, 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:40.000 which is the current kind of top tier TVs you can buy. 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:44.000 The human eye, God created color. 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:49.000 Human eye can see 7 to 10 million colors on average, a good working human eye. 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:53.000 The OLED TV emits over 1 billion different colors. 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:55.000 You can't even see them all. 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:59.000 God made a world where there's color and it didn't have to be that way. 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:06.000 But not just six or seven, there are billions of colors and you can't even see them all. 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:08.000 And the beauty is beyond imagination. 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:10.000 We don't have just one senses, we have five senses. 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:13.000 We don't just have food. 00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:15.000 We have food that tastes good. 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:20.000 And we have food that comes to us in such multiplicity and variety of taste profiles 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.000 that it's unimaginable. 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:28.000 The goodness of beauty, the maker of beauty. 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:31.000 Let me move on with this and this is our longest point by far. 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:37.000 But if you believe today that the world came about by mere chance, 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:41.000 this world is a mere product of natural selection, 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:46.000 I just want to ask what do you do with the gratuitous joy in this life? 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:49.000 The gratuitous beauty. 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:56.000 Does it make any sense in a world that came about by chance by mere natural selection? 00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:59.000 If the world is by chance and merely natural selection, 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:05.000 then that means that what you should be and who you are is a person who exists to survive. 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:10.000 And what good does the gratuitous amount of beauty in this world do 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:12.000 for a person that's just trying to survive? 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:15.000 I'll tell you what it does to you, it leaves you very distracted. 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:18.000 You know, you're out there trying to survive survival of the fittest 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:23.000 in a world of mere natural chance, natural selection through chance. 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:27.000 And the beauty, the joy, the parties, the great good things, 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:29.000 this is what's getting in the way. 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:31.000 It's distracting you. 00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:36.000 You know, how can you make sense of life without God if you go to the museum and cry? 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:40.000 If you go find yourself weeping at the end of a great film. 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:47.000 You see, without belief in God, you don't have any reason to suggest that there is real meaning in life or beauty. 00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:50.000 Beauty is not just a concept. 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:51.000 Beauty is not just an idea. 00:17:51.000 --> 00:17:53.000 Beauty exists. It's real. 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:57.000 And I don't know if you've been to any modern museums of art. 00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:03.000 I feel like it's probably safe to say that overwhelmingly 99% of us, at least in this world, 00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:08.000 who go to a modern museum of art, find ourselves at least at time looking around thinking, 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:13.000 how did this make it into an art museum? 00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:17.000 And the reason you say that, the reason we all say that and you should, 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:23.000 is because 20th and 21st century art follows a culture that no longer believes in the objectivity of beauty. 00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:24.000 You can't. 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:27.000 If you deny the existence of God, beauty is nothing but what? 00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:29.000 Your opinion. 00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:34.000 And so modern museums are trying to reflect the chaos of a life apart from God. 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:36.000 They're doing a good job quite often. 00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:38.000 Now beauty is real. 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:39.000 God made it. 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:44.000 And it's the creator of heaven and earth that makes it possible. 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:46.000 I got to move on. 00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:48.000 This world has a lot of nasty in it. 00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:51.000 A lot of evil, a lot of ugliness. 00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:58.000 But let me just say that the ugliness in this world is parasitic on the concept of the beautiful. 00:18:58.000 --> 00:19:04.000 You know, you can't have ugly without beauty, but you can have beauty without ugly. 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:06.000 Beauty is the beginning. 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:11.000 Ugly is the parasite that has turned this world upside down. 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:12.000 We'll come back to that in a minute. 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:19.000 Secondly, and briefly, verse 10, verse 12, verse 18, verse 21, verse 25, verse 31. 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:24.000 Seven different times God looks out at what he made and saw that it was good. 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:30.000 And this is just beyond the reading we gave, but verse 31 says it was very good. 00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:44.000 Another way that people have taken this concept of God seeing the world he made and then saying it's good is it's this public recognition in the beginning that not only is it beautiful, is it a delight, but it also works. 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:45.000 It's harmonious. 00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:48.000 There's a utility about this world that God made. 00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:50.000 It really works. 00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:51.000 There's an order to it. 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:53.000 It's functional. 00:19:53.000 --> 00:19:57.000 There's things that you can wake up every day and expect about this world. 00:19:57.000 --> 00:19:59.000 And it's because of the way God made it. 00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:07.000 And so in verse 5, 8, and 13, just examples of the many moments where it says there was evening and there was morning. 00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:13.000 There's this consistency from the beginning of day and night, of days, of darkness and light coming. 00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:22.000 In verse 22, there's this pronouncement of be fruitful and multiply to all the creatures, meaning there's the possibility from the beginning of production, of multiplication. 00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:29.000 Of more things coming into this world, the miracle of life that happens over and over again right here from the beginning. 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:34.000 Verse 25, there are kinds, each according to its kind. 00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:45.000 There's a reason why we as humans can still and continuously recognize a tree as a tree, a dog as a dog, a cat as a cat, a human as a human. 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:51.000 And it's because from the beginning God created things as they are according to their kinds. 00:20:51.000 --> 00:21:01.000 This is dangerous for me, I just thought, this is not my notes, this is when I get, it gets dangerous for me to say this because I could go off on a tangent here. 00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:11.000 But let me just mention, if you go outside in Edinburgh today and just try to find two trees that are identical, and you won't be able to do it yet, 00:21:11.000 --> 00:21:19.000 the tiniest little child in our city knows that's a tree and that's a tree and that's a tree and that's a tree, but none of them are the same. 00:21:19.000 --> 00:21:31.000 God made us as human beings to understand that this world has kinds, unity and diversity, different things yet all unified together on the same concepts, the kinds that are mentioned here. 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:45.000 Now, all of this together comes together to say that not only does God's creation, does creation make sense of the beauty, the gratuitous joy in our world, but it also makes science possible. 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:54.000 This creation account gives a better justification for why science is actually possible in the modern world. 00:21:54.000 --> 00:22:03.000 What do we have here? We have order, utility, and the possibility of science through the lens of verification, the possibility of verification. 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:07.000 What do you need to be able to verify something in a scientific experiment? 00:22:07.000 --> 00:22:14.000 You need repeatability and expectation that the same thing will happen the next time. 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:24.000 One of our friends out here on the royal mile, David Hume, he usually has the colon on top of his head if you go out here to the mile, great statue. 00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:28.000 He's one of the great philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:35.000 He brought this into question, so one writer puts it like this, for verification you need repeatability. 00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:44.000 The sun rose yesterday, the sun rose all the days before that, and so we say the sun shall rise tomorrow. 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:48.000 But David Hume came along and said, you don't know that. 00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:57.000 How can you say that? You predict it, you have lots of good reasons to suggest that the sun will rise tomorrow, but you can't possibly say that you actually know it will, right? 00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:04.000 And so one writer puts it like this, the assumption is that this world exists under law-like regularity. 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:16.000 That there is an order, an order that exists beyond the present order, and the God who makes days, morning and evening, light, sun, the kinds continues to give these gifts to us over and over again. 00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:24.000 And so the physicist Paul Davies, he put it like this, this is the professor of mathematical physics at the University of Adelaide. 00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:32.000 Even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd. 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:42.000 There's a rational basis to the physical existence manifested as a law-like order in nature, and so that's what makes it comprehensible to us. 00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:55.000 Science can proceed, he writes, only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview, that there is a God-given law-like regularity from the beginning. 00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:57.000 That's what makes science possible. 00:23:57.000 --> 00:24:06.000 Einstein was not a Christian, but toward the end of his life he said that the more he studied the sciences, the more he believed in God. 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:10.000 He just was unwilling to say which God that was that he was believing in. 00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:24.000 But here in Edinburgh, the city of Edinburgh, many of you will be aware of James Clerk Maxwell, who was announced in the 21st century as the third-greatest physicist of all of history after Newton, who was a Christian, 00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:28.000 and Einstein, who was a deist, who believed in God as well. 00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:35.000 James Clerk Maxwell was born in Newtown, studied at the University of Edinburgh, and he wrote this later in his life. 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:42.000 He said, you may fly to the end of the world in a search for the truth, for the science, the truth from science. 00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:47.000 He says, you will find no answer but the God of Scripture. 00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:53.000 Science versus religion, it's a superficial debate, and instead what we can see, according to creation, 00:24:53.000 --> 00:25:02.000 is that the more that we grow in our knowledge of the sciences, ultimately the New Testament says, is growth in the knowledge of God himself. 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:12.000 The knowledge of Jesus, in fact, of Colossians 2-3, in the Son of God are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:19.000 The more we get to know the world that God made, the more we actually know about Him, about the Son of God himself. 00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:24.000 And so let me move to our close, but I want to say this. 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:30.000 You might come today and say, where is God, this God of creation? 00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.000 I want in my life God to just show up. 00:25:34.000 --> 00:25:42.000 If God were to come to me like He came to Moses in a burning bush, if He were to come to me like Jesus came to so many people through miraculous deeds, 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:48.000 then I could say, irrefutable proof, God is near, God is present, God is in my life. 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:53.000 And in the coming days we're going to address that more and more, and I can't do that fully right now, but let me just say this. 00:25:53.000 --> 00:25:58.000 Acts 17, God is not far from every one of you. 00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:03.000 In Him you live and you move and you have your being. 00:26:03.000 --> 00:26:11.000 The very fact of your existence, Genesis 1, Acts 17 says, means that God is near you. 00:26:11.000 --> 00:26:13.000 God is close to you. 00:26:13.000 --> 00:26:20.000 And we open with the words of Jeremiah, seek Him and you will find Him. 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:28.000 Seek Him with an open heart, look for the Lord, the God of creation, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart. 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:30.000 And so that leads lastly. 00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:36.000 God says seven times He made the world, He saw it, and it was very good. 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:46.000 And the most consistent way finally of reading this historically has typically been to say, not only does God see his artistic work and delight in it like the artist, 00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:55.000 not only does God look out at the ordered world that works, the functionality, its utility, and take delight in it and say, that is good. 00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:02.000 But also the most consistent way that the theologians have read this throughout the centuries is to say, when he sees it as good, 00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:14.000 he's declaring that it has moral goodness, that it's full of value, that this is a world where should really does exist, where moral values are real. 00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:26.000 Just as much as there's law like regularity to the sciences, the natural laws, so there is law like regularity to the moral order that God made from the very beginning of history. 00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:31.000 Psalm 34.8, O taste and see that the Lord is good. 00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:34.000 Let me bring this home. 00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:46.000 Science, the possibility of science, ordered universe, the possibility of gratuitous joy in this life, the beauty that we all experience, the God who is beauty in himself that made this world. 00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:56.000 Science even needs to be able to confess that the world is full of objective moral value. 00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:05.000 So we all naturally, we know the connection might not be as immediately intuitive, but we know that science has its limits. 00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:07.000 Let me give you one example. 00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:24.000 During the Holocaust, Joseph Mengele was Adolf Hitler's chief physician at Auschwitz, and Mengele experimented on Jews and Roma peoples. 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:31.000 He did things that were so horrific in his experimentation that I won't dare to mention them from the pulpit here. 00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:40.000 And let me just ask, how can we look out at the practices of science and say, no, there's a limit? 00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:41.000 There's a limit. 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:51.000 You see, God brings the possibility of science, but how is it that we all by natural instinct look out and say, there's got to be a limit to what we can do? 00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:56.000 There are shoulds and cants and must nots in this world that we all recognize. 00:28:56.000 --> 00:29:02.000 And that's because God from the very beginning looked out and said, no, it is good. 00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:07.000 There's a moral order that reflects the very character of his existence. 00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:09.000 God is so absolute that he creates beauty. 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:14.000 God is so absolute that he can create the order that we call mathematics and number. 00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:22.000 God is so absolute that he gives us his moral character into the heart of this world, and it is good. 00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:25.000 There is a should to this life. 00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:38.000 You may come today this morning, you may come this morning and think, but my life is unraveling a bit right now by so much that is not good. 00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:42.000 You know, this threefold pronouncement of goodness at the beginning. 00:29:42.000 --> 00:29:48.000 But my life is full of things that are not good, full of pains. 00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:51.000 Is your family unraveling? 00:29:51.000 --> 00:29:57.000 Is your life destroyed by sinful habits that you cannot shake? 00:29:57.000 --> 00:30:07.000 Is your workplace destroyed by such difficult abrasive relationships where there is no kindness, peace or joy underneath? 00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:12.000 You might come today and say, this threefold goodness of creation yet life doesn't feel that way at all. 00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:23.000 And in Luke chapter 18 verse 19, Jesus was called by the crowd, good. 00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:33.000 This word that's used here in Genesis 1, and he said to the crowd, you call me good, but let me say that no one is good except God alone. 00:30:33.000 --> 00:30:44.000 And he was doing something very subtle when he said that. He said, don't you know no one is good except the one who made the good and pronounced it from Genesis chapter one. 00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:58.000 And Jesus was trying to subtly allow them to see that he is that very God who made the world good, who is, he is absolute beauty in himself. 00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:11.000 And when you come to the Gospels, you realize in the mystery of the incarnation that the absolute beautiful one who made everything gratuitous joy he's given us, he became a baby. 00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:18.000 He was wrapped in clothes. He had to go to his mother's breast. 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:23.000 He, the God who is absolutely independent became totally dependent. 00:31:23.000 --> 00:31:34.000 And in the mystery of the cross, Jesus Christ, the Son of God who came to rescue us from all that is ugly, all that is broken, all that is unraveling our lives, including our own hearts. 00:31:34.000 --> 00:31:43.000 He was decreated. He underwent chaos. He, the cross, the ugliest moment in human history. 00:31:43.000 --> 00:31:53.000 Isaiah 53 says at the cross, he went like a sheep to the slaughter. And from that moment, we had to turn our faces away. 00:31:53.000 --> 00:32:01.000 It was hideous. It was ugly. It was everything that should never be. It was utter chaos. It was the opposite of creation. It was truly decreation. 00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:16.000 And when he rose from the dead, the mystery of the resurrection, that was the moment God pronounced. He is going to take everything that makes this world ugly, broken, and sinful, and turn it and make it new again. 00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:20.000 Jesus Christ in the act of resurrection said, I am making all things new. 00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:26.000 First John 2.8, the darkness is passing away. The true light is already shining in this life. 00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:34.000 Jesus allowed himself to be decreated at the cross so that you today could be recreated in him. 00:32:34.000 --> 00:32:41.000 So that you would have the hope, the possibility of a world once again that is truly good. 00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:51.000 And I just want to invite you to see that every single moment in your life where you experience just bits of gratuitous joy. 00:32:51.000 --> 00:32:59.000 If you buy an OLED TV and you know that there were one billion colors coming out of that thing that you can't even see, 00:32:59.000 --> 00:33:08.000 will you see that he's continuing to give you hints and shadows that he is making all things good again? 00:33:08.000 --> 00:33:17.000 That the darkness really is passing away. The shadows will be one day no more. That resurrection is the first fruit of the goodness that is to come into this world. 00:33:17.000 --> 00:33:23.000 God has come to recreate creation in Jesus Christ. 00:33:23.000 --> 00:33:28.000 And if you will turn, friends, if you will turn to Jesus Christ today, he will make you new. 00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:34.000 Let us pray. Father, we thank you for this gospel. 00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:42.000 And we pray that in the midst of a world that is so ugly at times and so broken, that is not good. 00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:53.000 That is evil. We would remember that the only possibility for us to even say that is if evil, the ugliest parasitic on the good and the beautiful. 00:33:53.000 --> 00:33:57.000 And so in the light of that, give us fresh belief in the living God today. 00:33:57.000 --> 00:34:04.000 Bring somebody here, oh Lord, to faith in Christ to see for the first time the beauty of the Lord who has come for them. 00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:08.000 To make them new, to rescue them, to bring them up out of the depths. 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:18.000 We pray, Father, that you would take the doctrine of recreation through Jesus and apply it to each of our lives in a way that we might not have expected when we came here today. 00:34:18.000 --> 00:34:42.000 And so we ask for that now in Jesus' name. Amen.