In The Beginning…

A while back I wrote this devotional for our Bible study group.  Going back through my files, I came across it and thought I would share it for the 5 or 6 people who may ever stumble across this blog.

Enjoy,
Michael

To even begin to understand God we must start at the very beginning.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The very first verse of the Bible sets the standard. God owns everything, and God is sovereign over everything. Everything we see, touch, smell, taste, and hear was all created by God. If we can get past this first verse, the rest of the Bible is a cakewalk.

For instance, later on in Genesis, God creates man and when they disobey Him, He kicks them out of paradise. Not only that, but that sets in motion the fact that all of humanity is now scared by sin because of this one man, Adam. Romans 5:12 tells us that through one man, sin entered the world, and through sin came death. It’s easy for us to say, “That’s not fair”, but go back to Genesis 1:1 and see who makes the rules.

Later in the Bible in the books like Exodus, Joshua, Judges, and the period of the kings, we read sections where God condones and even orders the destruction of entire races of people. By human standards this is considered an atrocity, but again, go back to Genesis 1:1. Does not the Creator of a thing also have the right to destroy that thing when He deems it wicked?

We see in the Bible where God picks one people group and sets them above all other people groups in the world as his favorites (Israel). Surely you can’t believe that this is fair. But by whose standard are you judging this? According to Genesis 1:1, without God, we wouldn’t even be here at all so who are we to complain about Him having a favorite nation?

And how fair is it when He then punishes this chosen people when they turn their back on him by handing them over to evil people who do all sorts of unspeakable things to them that makes the supposed tortures in our day look like a picnic? Again, Genesis 1:1 said that He makes the rules and He has the right to perform whatever corrective action that He determines needs to take place.

Then, there are the miracles in the Bible. We have things like a sea being parted and people walking through on dry land. We have a story about the sun standing still in the sky while a battle continues. We even have a story in Kings where the sun went backwards for a period. And let us not forget the story of a man being swallowed by a big fish and living to tell the tale. But if Genesis 1:1 is true and He created this world, then shouldn’t these be a simple things for Him to do?

People sit around and try to rationalize the 6 days of creation and how this was really billions of years to try and mesh their humanistic views of creation with the Biblical record. But if this God of the Bible is powerful enough to actually create everything that we know from nothing, why do we have a hard time believing that He did it in 6 literal days? And it if was billions of years, then we have other problems. As we read in Romans, death didn’t enter the world until after sin, and sin didn’t enter the world until after Adam. If that is true, then nothing died for all those billions of years. That contradicts what the scientists tell us about things evolving and species dying off in history. No, if Genesis 1:1 is true, then it is easy to believe that God created the world and everything in it

One more point on creation and the billions of years theory. Even on day one, before the Bible says that the sun and moon were hung in the sky, verse 5 says that it was evening and morning, the first day. How can you measure a day without light? So where did the light come from? The same place that it will come from at the end of time. Revelation 21:23 tells us that in paradise restored, there will be no need for a sun or moon because the glory of God will be the light. If Genesis 1:1 is correct, we have no need to try and rationalize our theology to try and match earthly wisdom.

You might find it interesting that the Bible hardly addresses the fact of God’s existence at all. The Bible is written from a presupposition that this is true. In fact, you’ll find verses in Romans 1:20 and a couple of other places that says that all people know this in their soul, even through some will try to deny it publicly. It says that because of this everyone will be without excuse on the Day of Judgment. The Bible says that man is made foolish by his own wisdom. It also says that the beginning of real wisdom is the fear of God. Genesis 1:1 declares that before anything else existed, God was.

When we move into the New Testament, we come up with a whole new set of problems. The first thing we have to face is a young virgin giving birth to the son of God. How can this be? Genesis 1:1. He created everything means that He sets the rules.

That is just the tip of the iceberg. This Jesus then grows up and goes around performing all sorts of miracles, from feeding thousands of people when there was only food enough for a young boy, to making new eye balls for people out of mud, curing life long diseases, and even raising people from the dead and walking on water. How can this be? We are told that Jesus was in fact God in the flesh, and if He was God, then once again we only need to turn to Genesis 1:1. He created everything and He has the power to perform miracles.

Then there is this whole thing about the resurrection of Jesus. First of all, it makes no sense that man could kill God, but if you read closely, Jesus said in John 10 that no man could take His life from Him, but that He would lay it down and raise it up again. This is exactly what He did. How? Genesis 1:1

That then begs the question of “why?” Why would the God of the universe, the creator of all things make this grand gesture? Again we go back to Romans. In Romans we are told that sin entered the world through Adam and that the wages of sin is death. That means that we are all under a death sentence because of the acts of Adam. Is this fair? By whose standard are you judging this? By yours? A created being? Or by the standard of the Creator of Genesis 1:1? Fair is decided by the One that makes the rules. But that brings us back to “why?” Just as sin entered through one man Adam, forgiveness of sin came through the second Adam, who was Jesus, God in the flesh, who wrote the rules of fairness that even though we didn’t deserve it, He came to pay the fine for our sinfulness on His own. Now, how fair is that?

So, who gets to benefit from this act of loving kindness? Again, the great rule maker from Genesis 1:1 says this. “…for there is no other name under Heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” That name is Jesus. Jesus Himself said in John 14:6 that “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.” At this point a lot of people once again begin to yell foul. How can this be fair? What about all the people to follow other gods that are just as “good people” as Christians are? You must remember this. In the eyes of God, there is no one that is “good”. The psalmist in chapter 14 tells us that there is none who do good in the eyes of God. We find it easy to compare ourselves with other people, but next time try comparing yourself to the perfectly holy and righteous God. Compared to Him, we have all become unprofitable according to Romans 3:12. Now before you say that doesn’t sound too bad, the Greek word for unprofitable used here is more along the lines of spoiled meat or old, soured, lumpy milk. That is how we are seen before a perfect God.

So, if all this is true and God created us just so we could become so fallen and filthy, again we ask “why?” Good question. Think about this though. God, as a single triune being (trinity) as we understand Him, has many attributes. We are told that He is Love, and that attribute could easily be demonstrated within the Trinity. We are told that He craves fellowship. Well, the Trinity can fellowship together easily enough.  But one thing that God cannot demonstrate within the Trinity is forgiveness. In order for Him to exercise this attribute, there needed to be an object of that forgiveness. Folded in with that attribute are things like mercy, grace, and loving kindness. In order for God to be able to share these things, we were created to fall so He could then shower His elect with love, mercy, grace, and all these other great things. Once again we may find ourselves saying that makes no sense. But once again I would point out Genesis 1:1. From the very beginning, He had a plan.

Which brings us to the final question. All this is based on things written down in the Bible. How can we even believe anything in the Bible? After all, it was written over a period of a few thousand years and by many different people. How do we know each of them didn’t add a little here and take out a little there? There is plenty of evidence that proves the Bible we have today has been preserved throughout history, but one last time let’s go back to Genesis 1:1. If God is powerful enough to have created everything, and he had a purpose in mind when He made us, and He wanted us to know everything we need to know about Him, don’t you think it would be well within His power to make sure we had a reliable record of His word? And this is why we gather together as a group; to study His reliable record in order to know him more and more every single day.

Like I said at the beginning, if you can buy into the very first sentence of the Bible, the rest is a piece of cake. I would encourage you that whenever you come across a passage in the Bible you don’t understand, or go through some hard time in your life and you starting thinking to yourself that God isn’t being fair, just remember back to Genesis 1:1 and it will all be made clear.

New Photo Albums

For a while now I have been using the JAlbum program for quickly generating on-line photo albums for our motorcycle group, but now I figured that now it was time to do some cleanup of my grand-kid’s pages.  Since Kolby is 11 now and most of the pictures on his page were from when he was a baby…

With JAlbum I was able to quickly create a nested album for Kolby, Alyssa, and Cathyrn so that each of them has their own album, but they were contained in a “family” album.  Works out pretty well, and will allow me to update their albums more easily as time proceeds.  As a matter of fact, I’ll be seeing them in a couple of weeks so it will be the perfect opportunity to see how easy it will be to update them now that they are already in place.  🙂

Here are the links to each of their albums…

Kolbys Album       Alyssas Album       Cathyrns Album

Enjoy my wonderful grand-children!

Regrets

The song says,
   “Regrets, I’ve had a few,
    but then again, too few to mention”

But what if we took the time to sit down and think about our regrets.  This question was posed to a group of people, and in the video below you can see many of their responses.  Several of them hit pretty close to home.  For instance…
   “I regret consistently missing time with God, yet somehow
    never missing my show on television.”

While we should never let our regrets hold us in bondage, I think it is possible that our regrets can be God’s way to motivate us down the path of sanctification, helping us become more like Christ each day… if only we will learn from them.

Take a couple of minutes and check out this video and see if maybe there are some regrets in your life as well that could help you grow.