In the Beginning, God - Genesis - December 7th, 2025 (Sermon Transcript)

This morning, we are going to be starting our new series through the book of Genesis. I've been pretty excited about this. We're going to be going just through verses 1 through 2 this morning, so kind of a slow start.

But I think it's going to be an amazing series because Genesis is such a unique, foundational, exciting book. One of the most exciting things about it is all the controversy that it generates.

A few weeks ago, we had a guest speaker come and give a talk on creationism. I wasn't here, but I'm sure many of you remember it, and I heard that he did a really good job.

He talked about the biblical teaching on creation and the scientific evidence for what the Bible teaches. Now, he approached the topic from the perspective of young earth creationism, a view called young earth creationism.

It's the view that God created the universe and everything in it, exactly how the Book of Genesis describes it. So, he created everything in six literal 24-hour periods, and he did all of this in the relatively recent past.

So, this view says that God created the world some maybe anywhere from four to ten thousand years ago. So, that's what we mean by young earth creationism, but it's actually a very controversial view.

Most modern scientists would say that the earth is not young at all, and they would also say, of course, that it was not created. Instead, they say the earth is billions of years old, and it came into existence uncaused for no reason out of nothing.

They say that the universe came into being around 20 billion years ago, and it has operated unsupervised ever since.

No creator, no designer, just sort of operates like a machine according to the laws of nature, and at some point, life sprang into existence, and that life by the process of Darwinian evolution has led to us here today.

Eventually, it evolved into human beings. So, that's what many scientists have claimed, and the sad part is that many Christians have then gone and reinterpreted the Bible to fit with these theories of modern science.

So, instead of holding to a straightforward understanding of the book of Genesis, they try to reinterpret the book of Genesis to fit with what the scientists are currently saying.

So, they might identify then as old earth creationists, or some people identify as theistic evolutionists, and there have been many, many heated debates about this, countless books and articles and controversies, and almost everybody laughs and

scoffs at the idea of young earth creationism. But, they can laugh and scoff all that they want. The only thing that matters, the only thing that matters is what God says. When you look at the Bible, does it mean what it says?

And is it true? Well, that's how Jesus read the Bible. That's how Jesus understood the book of Genesis.

That's what he believed. When you look at Jesus and the way that he handles the book of Genesis in the Gospels, in his teaching, he viewed Adam not as some mythological figure meant to teach us a moral lesson. He viewed Adam as a real person.

He viewed the book of Genesis as teaching the literal truth about how the world came into being. And as followers of Jesus, I think we ought to believe what he believed. We ought to read the Bible how he read the Bible.

And therefore, my view is that we should all be young earth creationists. But where does that leave us with regard to modern science? If we're young earth creationists, does that mean we have to be science deniers?

Does that mean we have to be ignorant and backwards and stupid? The reality is that scientists often declare with great authority that they have discovered how the world works and they have proven it. Right?

So when it comes to evolution, when it comes to the origins of the universe, scientists have been saying for decades, even centuries, we've got it figured out. Here's the theory. We've tested it.

We've proven it. We know how the world works. We know how biology works.

We know how physics works. And anybody who disagrees with us is an idiot. But if you question their theories, they just talk louder and they insult you.

And yet the problem is a few years later, they end up with new theories and they change their mind.

And they admit, we had it totally wrong, here's the new theory, but don't worry, we've tested it, we've proven it, and anybody who disagrees with us is an absolute fool. That's how it goes.

The reality is that what scientists said about the origins of the universe, even 20 years ago, the majority of them would completely disagree with that now.

So 20 years ago, scientists were saying they had it all figured out, and of course the Bible's wrong and science is right. We know what's going on. This is how the universe came into being.

This is how evolution works. And yet, if you read those same scientists, not sure what happened there. If you read those same scientists, should I switch to the pulpit mic?

Testing one, two, check, check, check. Okay, we'll switch to this one. If you read those same scientists, their views on how the universe came into being have completely changed even over the past 20 years.

Their views on evolution have completely changed even over the past 20 years. And so why should we reinterpret the Bible to fit with science that is always changing? Science is always changing, but the word of God never changes.

So as we begin our series through the Book of Genesis, that will be our focus. What does God have to say? What does God have to say about creation?

What does God have to say about humanity? And most importantly, what does God have to say about himself? Please stand for the reading of God's word.

I'll read the text for us. Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 through 2. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated and please join me as I pray for us.

Father, I pray that you would be with us as we study your word this morning. We pray God for your help in guiding us to the truth.

We pray God for humble hearts to receive with faith what your word says, to believe the truth, to embrace the truth and to live in accordance with the truth. God, set our eyes on you.

God, help us to see you and to understand you and to follow you, to love you, to honor you. Pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

8:07

God The Creator

So Genesis 1.1 marks the beginning of everything. It's the beginning of creation, the beginning of God's revelation of himself, the beginning of the Bible.

So I think it's important for us to take a minute here and get some background on the Book of Genesis. It was written by Moses around 1400 BC.

It serves as the introduction to the Pentateuch, that is the first five books of the Bible that were all written by Moses. And it's a book of all kinds of beginnings and origins.

So when we think about Genesis, we think it talks about creation, it talks about the Garden of Eden, the beginning of humanity, but it's also the beginning of a lot of other stuff too. It's the beginning of sin.

We get our first glimpses at redemption. We see the first covenants between God and man. We see Satan and his angels, the kingdoms of men, the kingdom of God, the nation of Israel.

We get our first looks at judgment from God and blessing from God. So, through Genesis, we are introduced to all these things. And in this way, it provides a sort of foundation for the rest of the Bible.

It sets the view of the world that remains consistent throughout the scriptures. And so, it's alluded to, this is not true of every book in the Bible.

The book of Genesis, though, is alluded to hundreds of times throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament.

And it's quoted directly 35 times in the New Testament, which gives you some sense of its importance, its significance throughout the scriptures. And it all begins, the Book of Origins, the Bible itself, reality itself, it all begins with God.

Verse 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. When it says there, heavens and the earth, we might think of the skies and the planet Earth, but it's meant to include the whole universe, all of reality.

The only thing that that phrase does not include is God, because God has no beginning. God has always existed. In the beginning, God created everything that is created, but he himself is uncreated.

Philosophers have talked about this for centuries, even millennia, how God himself is uncreated. God himself is uncaused, because eventually you have to have something that does not need to be created itself.

Eventually, you have to have something that does not need a cause. So you might think about it like this. Everything that we see around us, ourselves, chairs, Christmas trees, car accidents, wars, everything that begins to exist has a cause, right?

But if that chain goes all the way back forever, nothing could ever get started, right? There's an ancient view of the world that says that the earth rests on the back of a turtle. Sounds kind of silly to our modern ears, right?

But you can imagine ancient people looking at the world around them and thinking, thinking about it in those terms like, well, I'm, I'm standing on something, some solid ground that's holding me up.

And this tree rests on this and this rock rests on this. So everything has to have something below it to hold it up, right? But what about the whole world?

What holds up the whole world? Well, one ancient culture speculated the whole world is held up by a turtle. And then somebody wisely asked, well, what's holding up the turtle?

Well, there must be another turtle below that one. Well, what's holding up the second turtle? Well, there's got to be a third turtle that holds up the second one and so on.

Well, it can't be turtles all the way down. You can't have an infinite stack of turtles because there has to be a foundation that ends somewhere. God is the foundation of all things.

It can't be turtles all the way down. The regress has to stop somewhere. So when you look at things in existence that are caused, well God is the uncaused cause.

When you look at things in existence that are in motion, God is the unmoved mover. He is the uncreated creator who has always existed and everything in existence ultimately comes from him and his creative power.

Moses, you may have noticed, does not explain God or provide evidence for God. He simply begins with God because I think it's obvious. God is obvious.

God was certainly obvious to Moses because Moses had had many personal encounters with God. God was obvious to the people of Israel, which is the audience for which Moses originally wrote the book of Genesis.

And the people of Israel, they all knew that God existed. Moses didn't have to give them arguments or evidence or reason. He didn't have to remind them because they all had seen very explicit manifestations of God.

13:43

Evidence For God

But some modern people, people in our day and age, have suppressed and denied the existence of God.

For Moses and the Israelites, questioning the existence of God would have seemed silly, but many of our friends and family and neighbors think the opposite. They think that believing in God is silly. So let me say a few things about that.

The first one is that we need to realize that atheism and agnosticism, a lack of belief in God or an outright denial of God, is a very unique, modern, western phenomenon. A very unique, modern, western phenomenon.

In other words, the idea that there is no God would be considered laughable to the vast majority of humans who have ever existed. Even today, over 90% of the world believes in some kind of God, and there's good reason for it.

The reason that so many people believe in God is because it makes sense. It can't be turtles all the way down. There has to be an uncaused cause, an uncreated creator, in order for the world to come into existence at all.

The reason it makes so much sense to believe in God, there are many reasons, many good arguments, and many great philosophers and theologians have put these arguments on paper for us, but one of them is to simply look around you.

Look at the mountains, look at the oceans, look at the stars. Where did all this come from? Did it just pop into existence out of nothing?

Like magic? No, we don't believe in magic. As Christians, we believe in logic.

We believe in observable evidence, and the evidence tells us that things don't pop into existence out of nothing. The evidence tells us that if something has come into existence, it must have some kind of cause.

There must be something or someone who caused that thing to come into existence.

So when we look at the heavens and the earth, when we look at the universe around us, we naturally, as humans, we are wired to naturally and rightly conclude that some incredibly powerful being exists beyond the universe. And that being is God.

Creation itself is just one of many reasons to believe in God.

Even the finest details of creation testify to the existence of God, like the force of gravity or the massive protons when they're at rest, or the density of energy throughout space in the universe.

As modern physics advances, we keep getting more and more reasons to believe in God. Starting about 70 years ago, modern physics started to discover all of these fundamental constants of the universe.

They were sort of fundamental, fixed physical facts about the universe. Things that were steady and constant, and they discovered that they were all precisely tuned perfectly to allow for the existence of intelligent life in the universe.

And they keep discovering more of them. The force of gravity and the mass of protons at rest, and the density of energy throughout space, those are just three of them, but there are over 30 that they have discovered now.

And every single one of these parameters has to be exactly right, absolutely perfect. Otherwise, it would be impossible to have any kind of intelligent life anywhere in the universe.

Otherwise, it would be impossible to have any kind of intelligent life anywhere in the universe. So do you think the universe just got that way by chance? Perfectly suited to allow for intelligent life?

Do you know what the probability of that is, that happening by chance? It would be like going into a casino to play cards, and you win a thousand hands in a row. Imagine that.

You go to Vegas, you walk into the Bellagio, and you sit down at the poker table, and you win the first hand, and then you win the second hand, and then the third hand, and you win a thousand hands in a row.

Would it be rational to believe that that happened by chance? No, of course not. They'd say, you're cheating.

Get out of here. Nobody would believe that was just luck. If somebody wins a thousand hands in a row, it doesn't happen by chance.

It happens by design. And so it is with the world around us. It did not happen by chance.

It happened by design. So who designed it? That's what the Book of Genesis is about.

That's what the Bible is about. It's about the God who made us, the God who made the mountains, the stars, the animals, and everything we see in the universe around us.

More and more, scientists have come to realize the sheer improbability of there being life in the universe. And they're starting to recognize there's no way that this could happen by chance.

But instead of turning to God, instead of admitting the existence of God, they're inventing the idea of a multiverse. And so we're not going to go down this rabbit trail very far, but I just want to acknowledge this.

And maybe it's something that you've seen in our culture, more and more people talking about a multiverse. Why is that? Well, because scientists realize they can't believe in a singular universe.

If there's just one universe with life in it, intelligent life in it, the probability of that happening by chance is it's so improbable. It's beyond 10 to the 70th power improbable, such that mathematicians have deemed it impossible.

It's impossible for us to have gotten here by chance. And so, again, instead of acknowledging God, scientists say, well, there must be other universes out there.

There's a whole infinite array of universes, and there's a universe generator out there somewhere that spits out universes of infinite different possibilities, and we just happen to be in the one that allows for intelligent life.

The reality is that there is zero scientific evidence for a multiverse. It's scientifically impossible to have scientific evidence for a multiverse.

It's just another theory intended to evade the logical, undeniable conclusion that there is a God, a God who made us, a God that deserves our worship and our gratitude, and a God that we should give our lives to.

20:54

Godʼs Grandeur and Intimacy

The purpose of the creation account in Genesis is to highlight that God for us, to turn our attention to God and his majesty and his glory. And the more that we learn about the universe, the more we can see just how great God is.

Just think about the size of the earth alone. I saw a video recently about a guy who set out about 25 years ago to walk around the whole earth. He left England about 25 years ago, and he's been walking ever since.

At various points, he's had to swim as well to get where he needs to go to circumnavigate the globe, but he hasn't used any motors or assistance or anything like that. And I guess he's projected to arrive back home in England sometime next year.

Just think about that. It's taken him roughly 25 years walking almost every single day to walk once around the earth. Just think about the size of the oceans.

Think about the size of Mount Everest. And yet, as big as our world is, you could fit 1.3 million Earths inside the sun. Did you know that?

You could fit 1.3 million Mount Everest inside of the sun. And yet, there are stars that are so massive, that you could fit 10 billion suns inside of them. One single star that is so massive, that it could contain 10 billion suns.

And how many stars are there? There are literally trillions upon trillions of stars, stars that make up galaxies. There's one cluster of galaxies that is 1.4 billion light years across.

There are billions of galaxies, and yet one cluster of galaxies, that is 1.4 billion light years across. And there is one being that made all of it. In the beginning, God created all of that.

He simply spoke it into existence in a moment. This God really exists, and He knows your name, and He knows you personally. Verse 2 reminds us that this God is not a distant or detached God.

When it says, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters, it means that God is intimately involved in and present with His creation.

There are a whole bunch of mythologies and ancient mythologies out there that describe creation such that there's a being or a deity that creates the world, but from a distance or sets it in motion and lets it go.

But according to the Bible, God is not like that. The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters from the very beginning. God has been involved with and connected to His creation.

The Bible goes on to tell us that God knows the number of hairs on our heads, that God keeps all our tears in a bottle, that God knows everything about us. Before we were even born, He knit us together in our mother's wombs.

He knew every single day of our lives, and He has been directing our steps ever since. That's who God is.

Majestic, and great, and glorious, and unimaginably powerful, and yet kind, and caring, and intimately involved with us in every aspect of our lives. Verse two also reminds us that God is not a simple, singular person.

There is one God, but there are three persons. There is God, and there is the Spirit of God, as it says in verse two. Timothy Keller points out that this allows for the existence of love from even before the creation of the worlds.

Because God, because God exists in Trinity, God exists permanently forever in relationship. Because God is perfectly good, he exists permanently forever in loving relationship. So love was in existence even before God created the world.

Love is at the foundation of the world. So we have God the Father speaking the world into existence, the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters, and the rest of the Bible teaches us about how Jesus was involved in creation.

John chapter 1 verses 1 through 4 says that in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. This is speaking of Jesus, of course.

It says that all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Although he's not mentioned here in verses 1 through 2 of Genesis, Jesus was there with God when all things were made. All things were made through him. Colossians 1 verses 16 through 17 says that all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3 says that Jesus, Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of the divine nature, and that he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

I love that picture. I love that verse, everything that it says, and especially that picture of Jesus upholding the universe by the word of his power.

Scientifically speaking, scientists will often refer to the various forces that hold the universe together, but there's no explanation for those forces, like the strong nuclear force, or the weak nuclear force that holds fundamental particles

together, that make up our physical reality. No explanation for those, scientifically speaking, but spiritually speaking, we can say that Jesus is the one holding reality together.

So the creation of the universe involved God the Father, but also God the Spirit and God the Son. We also learn later in Genesis that the creation of the universe was good. God says that it was good, and even that it was very good.

But we even get, we get hints of it starting here in verse 2. How God creates beauty and order in the universe. Aside from God's creative work, it says in verse 2, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

This is meant to convey emptiness and chaos and futility, because that's what you get without God. Verse 2 is a perfect description of the world without God, of life without God. Some of you in this room have experienced that.

You know what life is like without God. The truth is, if there is no God, then life is empty, chaotic, and futile. If there's no God, then we are just biological machines in a universe that popped into existence out of nothing.

And there's no purpose or meaning, there's no value. If there's no God, then you could make all the money in the world and have all the success in the world, and it wouldn't matter.

You could even have the most beautiful children and the most beautiful grandchildren, and you could do the greatest amount of good in the world, but it wouldn't matter.

Because soon, you would be dead and gone and forgotten, and everybody you helped will be dead and gone and forgotten. That's futility. That's futility.

If there's no God, eventually the universe will burn out, and there will be nobody to remember anything. That's emptiness. That's life without God.

But the good news is that God does exist. He created you and everything around you. He knows you and He can be known by you.

The purpose of your life is to know God and glorify God and enjoy God. So set your mind on God.

30:06

Life With God

So many times, we go to the Bible thinking it's about us and what we're supposed to do. But these first two verses show us that it's actually about God and what He has done.

From the beginning to the end, to the very heart of the whole Bible, that's the message. It's about God and what He has done. We see this most clearly in Jesus and what He did on the cross.

Many theologians have said that the whole Bible points to Jesus. Really, on almost every page, it's foreshadowing Jesus or anticipating Jesus or prophesying about Jesus.

After His resurrection, Jesus got together with His disciples, and He showed them all the places in the Old Testament that were talking about Him.

Then as you read the New Testament, you see all these quotes and illusions, and they're constantly drawing from the Old Testament and showing how it was pointing to Jesus all along.

Well, I think, in a sense, we can see that even in the first two verses, foreshadowing, alluding to Jesus, it's not about us. It's about God and what He has done. And again, we see that most clearly in Jesus and what He did on the cross.

When humans invent a religion, it's always about us and what we're supposed to do. It's about our self-improvement. It's about our self-realization.

It's about our spiritual growth. It's follow these rules or do these rituals so that you can get what you want, or you can earn God's favor so you can go to heaven when you die, or you can become the person that you know you can be.

But Genesis is different. The gospel is different. In the ancient world, when the book of Genesis was written, nobody believed anything like this.

Every other religion, every other culture had radically different views of the world. Genesis was utterly different and unique. Genesis is different.

The gospel is different. And the message is, look at God and look at his son Jesus and what he accomplished on the cross. It's not about you and what you do.

It's about God and what he has already done. Ephesians 1-7 says that in Jesus, we have redemption through his blood and the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace.

So as we begin our journey through Genesis, I want to encourage you to set your mind on God, on his grace, on his goodness, on all that he has to say to us through his word. Let's pray. God, I pray that we would truly set our minds on you.

Help us, Father, to be enamored by you, to be interested in you. We know that the first and most important commandment according to Jesus is to love you with our whole hearts, all of our minds, all of our souls, and all of our strength.

We are called to love you. And you can't love somebody that you're not interested in. You can't love somebody that you don't want to know things about, that you don't want to spend time with.

And so God, I pray that you would cultivate in us a fascination with you, that we could just get a vision of your greatness and your goodness, and that we would be enamored with you, that we would love you how we ought to.

Thank you for loving us even when we don't love you back, even when we fail you. Thank you for loving us. We thank you most of all for sending your son Jesus to save us.

We pray in his name. Amen.