SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Grace.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we've got our work cut out for us, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to, if you haven't already, to turn in your Bibles or take a Bible from the pew in front of you to Genesis chapter one.
SPEAKER_00: Today we are beginning a series that will take us through the first four chapters of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I've been planning this series for a while.
SPEAKER_00: I was actually talking with Scott Sondrill about it.
SPEAKER_00: And uh Scott has been uh leading a Bible study through the first couple of chapters, and I think you've spent, what, four years on it so far?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: See, I wanted to begin this series about six months ago, but Scott said, no, I've got to get through chapter four before you begin.
SPEAKER_00: So as we start with Genesis chapter one, I'm uh kind of reminded of I'm just old enough to remember uh uh Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
SPEAKER_00: Um you read you begin with A, B, C.
SPEAKER_00: When you sing, you begin with.
SPEAKER_00: All right, and in a similar way, if we want to understand the world around us, if we want to understand anything about us, if we want to be able to find our way through life, we have to begin in the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And in the beginning, God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorely tempted to just say that about twenty times.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God, and then sit down.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we must take away from the very beginning of the story of beginnings.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God.
SPEAKER_00: God created the heavens and the earth.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God.
SPEAKER_00: And there is a sense of anticipation that is created, uh, and especially in the minds of the first readers, uh, with the words that are here, and the spirit hovering, and in the beginning, God, and it was empty, and it was formless, and it was void.
SPEAKER_00: And something dramatic and incredibly important is coming.
SPEAKER_00: But the core for us to see today is very simple.
SPEAKER_00: We begin with God, begin at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
SPEAKER_00: And the only place we can go to understand the world around us is here, who God is and what God has done.
SPEAKER_00: We have very simple words here, a very concise non-technical statement about something that is incredibly complex and profound.
SPEAKER_00: It has been said that the way this begins is simple enough for a child to understand.
SPEAKER_00: And my goodness, if we don't teach the creation story to our children, we're in big trouble.
SPEAKER_00: And they don't have you don't have to be sophisticated, don't have to be intellectual, you don't have to have all of the theories worked out.
SPEAKER_00: You just have to understand in the beginning, God.
SPEAKER_00: God was there.
SPEAKER_00: God created all that is all around us.
SPEAKER_00: Simple enough for a child to understand, profound enough for the philosophers and the scientists of the world to wrestle with, and flexible enough for all science and all true science, all true truth to fit into, we don't have to be afraid of what science says to us relative to this.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to be ashamed of this relative to what science says.
SPEAKER_00: All truth finds its origin of God, and all true science, all true philosophy, all true worldviews correlate completely with what we read here.
SPEAKER_00: And we begin at the very beginning, and in the beginning, God.
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to take the next three months or so and work our way through this.
SPEAKER_00: Um the the the very the very beginning of this, these verses give us, they give us an orientation.
SPEAKER_00: They give us a way of understanding what's going on around us.
SPEAKER_00: How do you make sense out of life?
SPEAKER_00: The only way to make sense out of life is here, in the beginning, God.
SPEAKER_00: Life makes no sense without God.
SPEAKER_00: How do you deal with the beauty of a sunset or the miracle of a new birth?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, an expectant mother?
SPEAKER_00: How uh what parent looks at a newborn child without a sense of awe and wonder?
SPEAKER_00: How do you explain that?
SPEAKER_00: You mean we did that?
SPEAKER_00: No, you didn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God, it all goes back to God.
SPEAKER_00: How do you handle the things of life that are so difficult?
SPEAKER_00: What do you do when the report says cancer?
SPEAKER_00: What do you do when you wrestle with early onset of Alzheimer's?
SPEAKER_00: How do you deal with those kinds of things?
SPEAKER_00: It makes no sense unless you're rightly oriented to reality.
SPEAKER_00: And giving us an orientation to the way things really are is what these opening verses of scripture is all about.
SPEAKER_00: This provides for us a framework for understanding reality.
SPEAKER_00: It is more than just a framework for understanding reality, but it is not less than that.
SPEAKER_00: We find here, the most important thing we find here are not arguments against the theory of evolution.
SPEAKER_00: The most important things we find here are not ways of combating different worldviews.
SPEAKER_00: The most important thing we find here is God, who God is and what God has done.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God.
SPEAKER_00: And I need to help you understand how I'm approaching this series of messages.
SPEAKER_00: Um I am likely to disappoint you.
SPEAKER_00: Probably already have.
SPEAKER_00: The difficulty is we tend to approach this and we're looking for answers to all of the questions that come to our mind.
SPEAKER_00: The questions about creation, the questions about life, the questions of different conflicting worldviews.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is that what we find here is given to us for a purpose.
SPEAKER_00: And it is not to win arguments or convince people of conflicting ways of life and views of the world.
SPEAKER_00: This is given to us to make sense that we might make sense out of the reality around us.
SPEAKER_00: It's an orientation.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot and will not make sense out of life without beginning with God.
SPEAKER_00: It's really just that simple.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is that virtually every word, every phrase, every truth that is revealed here has become a battlefield for conflicting worldviews and conflicting understandings of reality, conflicting belief systems.
SPEAKER_00: Please hear me.
SPEAKER_00: What I want to emphasize is although you can use this to respond and do apologetics and those kinds of things, that's not what it's given for.
SPEAKER_00: This is not given to answer all of our questions.
SPEAKER_00: This is not given to win arguments.
SPEAKER_00: This is given to understand the most fundamental thing of reality, and that is God.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God, and God created the world.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing that exists comes from any other source than God.
SPEAKER_00: All that exists, all that is not God, God created.
SPEAKER_00: And unless we understand this aspect of reality, uh, we will be likely to misunderstand this section of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: This is not designed as a science textbook whereby you can establish creationism versus uh evolution.
SPEAKER_00: You may you may try to use it for that, and there's some validity in that, but that's not what it's written for.
SPEAKER_00: This is not given to us to put Darwin in his place.
SPEAKER_00: That's just not what it's for.
SPEAKER_00: You see, if we approach it as a means of answering the questions or giving answers, the right answers, to all of the questions around us, while we may find some benefit in that, that's not what it's revealed for.
SPEAKER_00: It's revealed to orient us to the world we live in and to the God who created the world.
SPEAKER_00: And to fail to understand that uh is to run the risk of misusing the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is not given as a science textbook, it is not given as a marriage manual, it is not given as a manual for how to raise children, it is not given as a way of figuring out the age of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is given to us that we might understand who God is and our place in this world that God has created.
SPEAKER_00: And the difficulty is we come to the scriptures and we try to use what God has said for our purposes, and there's some benefit in that, but not if we miss that for which it is given.
SPEAKER_00: What we have here is an orientation to reality.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is God is, has always been, and everything that is not God finds its source in God and is created.
SPEAKER_00: So again, you may want me to do all kinds of things in this series.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, sorry.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm going to do, I'm going to do the best I know how of trying to help us get a sense of what the scriptures are intended for and mean as we go through these passages, which is a battlefield with landmines all around it.
SPEAKER_00: So just try to understand where I'm coming from.
SPEAKER_00: And there's other resources we can point you in the direction of all kinds of things, but we're not going to point you in any direction in these messages other than what it says and what I believe it was intended to say to us.
SPEAKER_00: So, just as a simple example, um, there have been many efforts based upon the Genesis account and other historical accounts in the Old and the New Testament to put together a chronology of history and to go back and try to determine when various things happened.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the most interesting studies has been to try to determine on the basis of scripture when the world was created.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of work has been given to that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, in the 17th century, um gentleman by the name of James Usher spent a lot of time trying to come up with a chronology, and after years of work, he concluded that the first day of creation occurred on October 23rd, 4004 B.C.
SPEAKER_00: There was another scholar, a believing scholar as well, in Oxford, I believe it was at the time, John Lightfoot, who spent a lot of time trying to come up with a chronology, and he said, now wait a minute, Usher, you weren't quite right.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the 23rd of July 4004.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, 23rd of October 4004 BC.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually the 23rd of October 3992 BC.
SPEAKER_00: Now, two problems there.
SPEAKER_00: One, the the basis of establishing those chronologies, with all respect, is relatively a little bit shaky.
SPEAKER_00: But more important than that, is that why God has given us the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Is that why God has revealed Himself, that we can establish the day of creation in history?
SPEAKER_00: And I want to submit to you, no, that's that's not what this is all about, or efforts to do things like that.
SPEAKER_00: So let me suggest to you that the Bible is given to us to orient ourselves relative to God and to reality.
SPEAKER_00: Um this is the way I'd like to encourage you to think about it.
SPEAKER_00: I believe that we have, particularly in the early chapters of Genesis, what I would call a compass and a topographical map.
SPEAKER_00: Uh bear with me on this.
SPEAKER_00: Years ago, I was a young associate pastor in a church in northern Indiana working mostly with the youth.
SPEAKER_00: I realize many of you will find that hard to believe.
SPEAKER_00: But uh there was a couple in the church, some of the parents, who were into wilderness backpacking.
SPEAKER_00: And boy, we had a wonderful time.
SPEAKER_00: We took these kids in the high school youth group on a three-day wilderness trek through rugged, hilly, wooded terrain where there were no trails.
SPEAKER_00: Zero, no trails.
SPEAKER_00: And what I discovered is that if you have a compass, and if you've got a good topographical map that gives the lay of the land, you can get home.
SPEAKER_00: What God is giving us in this portion of Scriptures, I believe, is a compass that points to North, and the true North is our God, and then the lay of the land, an understanding of how creation, how things came about, and how God is working with us today.
SPEAKER_00: So the approach I'm going to be taking is focusing more on the compass and the topographical map.
SPEAKER_00: The fact of the matter is that today the focus is on the compass, the true north.
SPEAKER_00: That's what verses one and two are all about.
SPEAKER_00: And then three in the rest of the passage all the way through, will help us understand the contours of this, that which God has created.
SPEAKER_00: So let's just focus a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis is the book of origins, the book of beginnings.
SPEAKER_00: The word Genesis itself, our English word of Genesis, is taken from what we kind of view as a title of this book.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually the first words.
SPEAKER_00: It's Genesis is a transliteration, letter for letter, of the Latin and the Greek translations of the Hebrew here.
SPEAKER_00: That's all it is.
SPEAKER_00: And it means origins or beginnings.
SPEAKER_00: When you think of Genesis, it's an explanation of where this came from.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are in college.
SPEAKER_00: You might be studying a college text on uh, let's say, the history of American democracy.
SPEAKER_00: And you might find a statement that the genesis of democracy in North America is found in the Enlightenment.
SPEAKER_00: Whether that explanation enlightens you very much is another issue.
SPEAKER_00: Or if you're not into college textbooks but you're into the Game of Thrones, you might ask yourself, what's the genesis of the Game of Thrones?
SPEAKER_00: And if you get behind a little bit, you'll find that almost certainly that is a fantasy built around European, particularly British history in the Middle Ages and the War of Roses, and the bloody conflict between the House of York and the House of Lanchester.
SPEAKER_00: That's the genesis of it.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: The question is: what's the genesis of this?
SPEAKER_00: What's the origin?
SPEAKER_00: What gave rise to it?
SPEAKER_00: We find here an explanation of origins of the universe, of mankind, of marriage, of sin, of alienation, of murder, of forgiveness, of salvation, and of God's chosen people.
SPEAKER_00: Those are some of the main themes that we'll find in the next couple of chapters.
SPEAKER_00: The origins.
SPEAKER_00: How did this come about?
SPEAKER_00: You look around in the world and you see the disaster that is there.
SPEAKER_00: You see the conflict.
SPEAKER_00: Where did this kind of thing come from?
SPEAKER_00: The problems within our own human hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Where does that come from?
SPEAKER_00: How did that how do we understand that?
SPEAKER_00: And the origins of all of that are found in Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: But what chapter 1, verses 1 and 2 are saying is there is a genesis of everything, but there is no genesis of God.
SPEAKER_00: God has always been.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God was.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing before the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Begin at the very beginning, you begin with God.
SPEAKER_00: There is no genesis of God, no creation of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's a spurious, false question to ask, well, where did God come from?
SPEAKER_00: God is, and he always has been.
SPEAKER_00: He was, he is, and he ever shall be.
SPEAKER_00: And everything else is created, but not God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Without that understanding and that underpinning and that framework and that orientation, we wander and stumble and get lost.
SPEAKER_00: And life makes little sense.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 1 and 2 point us to true north.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 3 through the end of chapter 3, really the end of chapter 4, maybe really chapter 11, but we're certainly not going to get that far, is giving us the topography that we need to find our way home.
SPEAKER_00: Without it, we are lost.
SPEAKER_00: Without it, we wander and we stumble, and ultimately we die.
SPEAKER_00: So let's just quickly look at some of this from the first couple of verses.
SPEAKER_00: He, in the beginning, God, he is the central reality behind all that is.
SPEAKER_00: This is a self-revelation of God.
SPEAKER_00: We would have not known any of this had not He explained it to us.
SPEAKER_00: Had He not chosen to reveal Himself.
SPEAKER_00: What we can search out about God on the basis of our own human thinking is incredibly limited.
SPEAKER_00: What we have here is someone who is uncreated, essentially other, who has chosen to reveal Himself to us.
SPEAKER_00: And that self-revelation is the most important thing we can ever get our minds around to the extent than we can get our minds around it.
SPEAKER_00: He is who he is.
SPEAKER_00: Thirty-five times in this chapter, the name of God is used.
SPEAKER_00: God in the beginning, God, God created, God did this, God said that.
SPEAKER_00: The chapter that Was read before you.
SPEAKER_00: Thirty-five times God is the subject of all of the verbs that are there.
SPEAKER_00: Thirty-five times in this chapter alone.
SPEAKER_00: God dominates this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: God controls this chapter.
SPEAKER_00: It all flows from who He is.
SPEAKER_00: If we miss God, the rest of the scriptures make no sense.
SPEAKER_00: Our lives make no sense.
SPEAKER_00: Our futures make no sense.
SPEAKER_00: This is foundational central reality behind all that there is.
SPEAKER_00: And to miss this, I've already said it, is to miss what's most important.
SPEAKER_00: If we miss this, we will travel through life without him as our north, as a fixed point of reference of truth, and we will wander and we will stumble and we will get lost, and ultimately we die.
SPEAKER_00: This is at the core of what we must know about truth.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's given to us.
SPEAKER_00: So he is the central reality behind all that is.
SPEAKER_00: And he is revealed in this passage as the triune one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what we find here are some preliminary hints about this.
SPEAKER_00: Some preliminary hints that as we read the rest of the scripture, as we look back to these early verses, we can say, oh, that's what he meant.
SPEAKER_00: For example, the name of God is a plural.
SPEAKER_00: In the Hebrew language, the im, the I-N-M ending, is the way you make a noun plural.
SPEAKER_00: We make a noun plural by adding s.
SPEAKER_00: In the Hebrew it's em.
SPEAKER_00: And you would translate this gods, but God is one.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a complexity to the oneness of God.
SPEAKER_00: God is one, but he is not solitary.
SPEAKER_00: He is not just unitary.
SPEAKER_00: There is a complexity about this of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: There's a hint of this.
SPEAKER_00: Some have explained the plural of the name of God as the plural of majesty.
SPEAKER_00: And what that means is this.
SPEAKER_00: In our language, we don't use it anymore because we don't do much with kings and queens.
SPEAKER_00: But in the in the history of the British monarchy, I think it was Queen Victoria, who spoke of herself in the plural.
SPEAKER_00: For example, we are not amused.
SPEAKER_00: We, and she meant I am not.
SPEAKER_00: There's this majestic, glorious sense of high and lifted up ones that expresses itself sometimes in the plural.
SPEAKER_00: But what we find here is not just a figure of speech, a way of speaking.
SPEAKER_00: We find there is a reality to God that has a plurality in it.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 2, we read of the spirit of God working in creation.
SPEAKER_00: The word for spirit in the Old Testament is ruach, in the New Testament it's plima, which means at one level just breeze or wind.
SPEAKER_00: But there is more to it than that is also the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if we just read the verse 2 in isolation, we probably wouldn't come to see it as an expression of the third person of the Trinity.
SPEAKER_00: But as we see, this what is in now in preliminary seed form blossoms, and we see that there is a Spirit of God, there is the Father, there is the Son, there is the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And this in a very preliminary way, we're seeing something about God that will be developed throughout Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: We read that Jesus is intimately involved in creation.
SPEAKER_00: We already saw, Scott helpfully turn to John chapter 1, that all things were made through him, the Word, through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
SPEAKER_00: All of creation, there is the agency of Jesus, the Christ, the second person of the Trinity, that is revealed in the Scriptures as the creator.
SPEAKER_00: Colossians 1.16, speaking specifically, explicitly about Christ, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, all things were created through him and for him.
SPEAKER_00: The second person of the Godhead.
SPEAKER_00: Now what we see is a triune, glorious God that is the genesis of all that is.
SPEAKER_00: We see him here as the eternal and self-existent source of all that is.
SPEAKER_00: The technical term for this is creatio ex nihilo.
SPEAKER_00: If your Latin is better than mine, you would understand that, or you might be able to pronounce it better than I do.
SPEAKER_00: Creation out of nothing.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's pictured here.
SPEAKER_00: God was, always had been, and then God spoke, and all that is came into being, created it out of nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 11:3 says, by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible.
SPEAKER_00: The created world we see around us came from somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: It was created.
SPEAKER_00: And the source of that is God.
SPEAKER_00: He created out of nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation 4.11 affirms the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the the fact of the matter is that we can get creative, but we don't get creative the way God is.
SPEAKER_00: God created out of nothing.
SPEAKER_00: When we create, we are actually rearranging what God has already created.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's manufacturing something or whether it's developing thoughts and ideas, we don't have anything that hasn't been given to us.
SPEAKER_00: It all finds its source in God.
SPEAKER_00: And God's creativity is fundamentally different from the creative processes that we know today.
SPEAKER_00: There was a time when everything else besides God was not.
SPEAKER_00: And there was never a time that God was not.
SPEAKER_00: And this puts a whole different picture of reality that is not pantheistic.
SPEAKER_00: God existed and then he created matter.
SPEAKER_00: There is a huge distinction between that which is material and God who spoke and brought it into being.
SPEAKER_00: Polytheism, multiple gods.
SPEAKER_00: There is no other God.
SPEAKER_00: Every so-called God is not a God.
SPEAKER_00: Paul talks about that in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: There is only one true God.
SPEAKER_00: And with that there was the ability to withstand and understand the errors of polytheism.
SPEAKER_00: In our day, relativism, that there's no such thing as absolute truth.
SPEAKER_00: God spoke absolutely and brought everything into being that is in being.
SPEAKER_00: And in its core form, relativism is insufficient if we understand that God is the source of all things and the author and the one who, when he speaks, what he says is true.
SPEAKER_00: Materialism, all that matters is matter.
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, not all that matters is matter.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the things that matter most have nothing to do with matter.
SPEAKER_00: If we just live a materialistic existence, we miss the whole point and we wander and stray and get lost.
SPEAKER_00: Secularism, that basically we can understand all of reality without bringing God into focus.
SPEAKER_00: David Hawking, David Hawking, I think, don't need God to explain the universe.
SPEAKER_00: That's such a baloney.
SPEAKER_00: An incredibly intelligent man.
SPEAKER_00: But what he says leaves out the very fundamental core of reality.
SPEAKER_00: What we have here is a reminder of what our true North is and the contours of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: Just to quickly wrap this up, I'm going to skip over verse 2 for this week and touch on that next week.
SPEAKER_00: The world was empty and void because what we see God doing is filling and fulfilling that which is empty and void through the creative process.
SPEAKER_00: How that relates to the first couple of verses, is there a big gap between verse 2 and verse 3?
SPEAKER_00: We'll touch on some of that next week.
SPEAKER_00: I want to focus on something that we quickly quickly skip over.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we're so quick to get on to debate different worlds.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is a phrase that is just filled with anticipation.
SPEAKER_00: Emptiness, void, and God.
SPEAKER_00: God is moving, God is doing something.
SPEAKER_00: And God is tenderly hovering over this His creation and us His creatures.
SPEAKER_00: He is involved.
SPEAKER_00: There is a beautiful picture here.
SPEAKER_00: The only other time this word for hovering is used in the same grammatical form is in Deuteronomy 32, 11, and it's comparing God.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to the comparison.
SPEAKER_00: He is like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters or hovers over its young, spreads out its wings, catches them, bearing them on his pinions or the wingtips.
SPEAKER_00: It's a picture of God who is there, he is involved, and as it says here, he stirs up his nest, he flutters over his young, he spreads out his wing, he catches them, he catches us, he bears us on the tips of his wings.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a picture of a God who is self-existent and self-sufficient, but our God is not self-absorbed.
SPEAKER_00: At its very core, that's what I get out of that picture of God.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we who are not self-existent and are not self-sufficient become self-absorbed.
SPEAKER_00: That's just the way we function.
SPEAKER_00: But God, who is self-existent and self-sufficient, is not self-absorbed.
SPEAKER_00: He is involved, he cares, he was even before the universe took shape when it was still formless and void.
SPEAKER_00: He was there, he was involved, this wonderful, tender picture of our God.
SPEAKER_00: Just quickly, let me uh say this is the God who is.
SPEAKER_00: There is no other God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the eternally existent one.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way he reveals himself in just a few words.
SPEAKER_00: The central reality, the triune one, the eternal and self-existent source, the one who cares and is involved with us.
SPEAKER_00: The God that we meet at the beginning is the God that each of us will meet at the end.
SPEAKER_00: It's just that simple.
SPEAKER_00: God is unchanged.
SPEAKER_00: I came across a good preacher story that I want to share with you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure it really happened.
SPEAKER_00: But it goes like this: there was a man who was climbing a mountain.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he was reaching the summit of the mountain, his foot slipped, and he started to slide down the side of the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a branch.
SPEAKER_00: He reached out and he grabbed the branch for all it's worth, and he said to himself, Oh, I've been able to save myself.
SPEAKER_00: Until he realized that he's only going to be able to hang on for a very limited period of time.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this man was not particularly religious, but he figured if there was ever a time to be religious, this is the time to be religious.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, your feet are dangling over the precipice, you're going to splat at the bottom of the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: And so he looks up and he calls out and he says, Is anyone there who can help me?
SPEAKER_00: And he didn't really expect to hear anything, but at least in the story, God responded, and he was greatly surprised with it, with a deep voice saying, Yes, I am here and I will help you, but you must first let go and trust me.
SPEAKER_00: There was a long, pregnant silence.
SPEAKER_00: Is there anyone else up there?
SPEAKER_00: You see, that's we want God on our terms.
SPEAKER_00: We want the God who we want, who do things the way we want.
SPEAKER_00: Parenthetically, after the first service, someone came up and reminded me that may not just have been a preacher's story.
SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar with the movie Goodwill Hunting, the bar scene, uh, the leading uh woman in that tells that story, um, probably also apocryphal.
SPEAKER_00: But you see, we want to approach God in our terms.
SPEAKER_00: And God is not approached in a way that is anything other than who he is.
SPEAKER_00: God does not exist to answer our questions.
SPEAKER_00: God does not exist for us to have a happy marriage, God does not exist to be able to win all of the arguments.
SPEAKER_00: God is, and we exist because he is, and our lives are in function of who he is.
SPEAKER_00: He is not in function of us, we are in function of him.
SPEAKER_00: We hang on, and we only encounter and relate to him as he is.
SPEAKER_00: And right from the very first couple of sentences in the Bible, we are confronted with a God who is different from the God we might want.
SPEAKER_00: But this is the God who is.
SPEAKER_00: And as we meet him in the first couple of verses of the Bible, we shall meet him at the end of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: It's that simple.
SPEAKER_00: And so I would encourage you to approach God as he is, the God who is, not the God that you want him to be.
SPEAKER_00: This is our God, the central reality, the triune one, the eternal and self-existent source, the one who hovers and tenderly cares as an and is involved with us.
SPEAKER_00: This is our true North.
SPEAKER_00: And without that, if we miss that, we miss the foundation for everything.
SPEAKER_00: So all I'm wanting to say this morning, with all of these multiple words, is in the beginning, God.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the most important phrase in all of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Everything flows from that.
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you to stand for the benediction and we'll wrap it up here.
SPEAKER_00: Now, my friends, go into the world in peace, have courage, hold on to that which is good, honor all men, strengthen the faint-hearted, support the weak, help the suffering, restore the wandering, comfort the grieving, and share the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And oh my friends, may the grace and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all this week and forevermore.
SPEAKER_00: God bless and amen.