Thank you.
If you want to take your seats
and turn in your hymnals,
we'll turn to our first song,
127 Tis So Sweet
to Trust in Jesus.
Song 127.
Song 127
Tis So Sweet
to Trust in Jesus.
There on the first,
Tis so sweet
to Trust in Jesus.
Just to take
Him at His word.
Just to
rest upon His
promise.
Just to know
the Savior, Lord.
Jesus, Jesus,
how I trust
Him, how I've
proved Him
o'er and o'er.
Jesus, Jesus,
O Precious Jesus,
O for grace
to trust Him more.
O how sweet
to trust in
Jesus.
Just to trust
His cleansing blood.
Just in
simple faith
to plunge me
beneath the healing
cleansing flood.
Jesus, Jesus,
how I trust
Him, how I've
proved Him o'er and
o'er. Jesus,
Jesus, Precious
Jesus,
O for grace
to trust Him more.
Yes, Tis
sweet to trust
in Jesus.
Just from sin
and self to cease.
Just from
Jesus simply
taking life
and rest and
joy and peace.
Jesus, Jesus,
how I trust
Him, how I've
proved Him o'er
and o'er. Jesus,
Jesus,
Precious Jesus,
O for grace
to trust Him
more. I'm
so glad I
learned to trust
the Precious Jesus
Savior
Friend. And I
know that Thou
art with me,
will be with
me to the end.
Jesus,
Jesus, how I
trust Him, how
I've proved Him
more and more.
Jesus, Jesus,
Precious
Jesus, O for
grace to trust
Him more.
Good singing. Let's start with a word of prayer
this morning. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for
giving us this opportunity to come together
to sing praises under Your name.
I pray that You bless all aspects of our
service, that You be with those that are not
able to come this morning, and that
we would do everything in honor and glory of Your Son.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Go to 166.
166
is for our second song
this morning.
It feels like evening, I guess,
because it's so gloomy out there, huh?
166,
I will
praise Him.
There on the verse,
when I saw the cleansing
fountain,
open wide
for all my sin,
I
obeyed the Spirit's
wooing,
when He said,
Will Thou be clean?
I will
praise Him.
I will praise Him.
Praise the lamp for sinners
slain.
Give Him glory, all ye
people,
for His blood can wash away
each stain.
Though
the way seems straight and narrow,
all
I claim was swept
away.
My ambitions,
plans, and wishes
at my feet
in ashes lay.
I
will praise Him.
I will praise Him.
Praise the lamp
for sinners slain.
Give
Him glory, all ye people,
for His
blood can wash away
each stain.
Then God's
fire upon the altar
of
my art was set aflame.
I
shall never
cease to praise Him.
Glory, glory
to His name.
I
will praise Him.
I will praise Him.
Praise the lamp
for sinners slain.
Give
Him glory, all ye people,
for His
blood can wash away
each stain.
Blessed
be the name of Jesus.
I'm
so glad He took
me in.
He's forgiven
my transgressions.
He has
cleansed my heart from sin.
I
will praise Him.
I will praise
Him. Praise the
lamp for sinners slain.
Give
Him glory, all ye people,
for His
blood can wash away
each stain.
And the last.
Glory, glory to the
Father.
Glory, glory
to the Son.
Glory, glory
to the Spirit.
Glory
to the three and one.
I
will praise Him.
I will praise
Him. Praise the
lamp for sinners slain.
Give
Him glory, all ye
people, for
His blood can wash away
each stain.
Thank you so much for being here.
If you don't already have a bulletin,
one of our ushers can come by and get you a bulletin.
On the front, we have
our Bible memory passage.
We're on John, chapter number one.
He was not that light,
but was sent to bear witness
of that light. And on the
inside, we have our service
and soul-wanting times, as well as
church stats. On the right, we have our list of
expecting ladies. Continue to
pray for all of them. Also,
we have our prayer list,
and we have lots of people
on there that you can be praying for.
Really, just our entire church
family has been very
sick. A lot of people have been sick and
have been staying home and everything like that.
So, please just pray that
people would have health. And apparently, it's not
even just us. It's like everyone.
Even talking to a lot of my pastor
friends and just talking to other people,
it's like everybody's sick in the whole
world, it seems like. So, I guess
when Biden said that it was going to be a
winter of darkness and death
for everybody or whatever, you know, I don't know.
But I'm sure we'll get over
soon. And I appreciate those that are staying
home just to try and stop people,
other people from getting sick. And I
appreciate everyone that's here this morning.
On the back, we have a couple
events.
This upcoming Sunday,
I'm going to be in Oklahoma City, and
we're going to have an ordination service for
Brother Tanner Fur as an evangelist. And so,
I'm really looking forward to this.
This is going to be a great
boost for their church, I believe.
And hopefully the Lord
will just continue to just
give them great strength and do
great works there in Oklahoma City.
They're already getting a lot of people saved up there
and definitely making an
impact. And so, we just want to continue
to be a blessing to that
church and help that church and
enable and empower Brother Fur
to just even do even more for that church.
And he has a great zeal for soul
winning. Some of you have probably
gone soul winning with him. He's a really good soul winner.
He still infects his spirit. And
he does a good job preaching up there for them
a lot of times. And so, we're just hoping
to increase all that and just
help them and be a blessing.
And then, he can be a blessing to that church
and help them, you know, through the
transition to the point that they have, you know,
a pastor locally there
all the time and can be their own
independent Baptist church and everything like that.
That is the goal. That is the vision.
I know most churches today are trying
to set up satellites forever, permanent
satellites over the world, whatever. But we want to
set up independent fundamental Baptist
churches. We want to, you know, eventually
have them be completely
independent, God willing, and
set up new congregations and
appoint new men to
lead churches and everything like that.
And so, that is our goal.
And just getting one step
closer to that. And it's
exciting. January 29th, we have
a baby shower in honor of Tina
Glasso and her baby boy. And
so, that'll be exciting from
1230 to 230.
All ladies are invited to attend.
It is nursing is only preferred. She's
registered on Amazon. And if you'd like
to bring a dish.
It's pretty much all I had for announcements
at this time. So, we'll
go ahead and go to our
third song. Let's go to 262
in your hymnals.
262.
The light of the world is
genius.
The light of the world is Jesus.
They're on the first.
The whole world was lost
in the darkness of sin.
The light of the world
is Jesus.
Like sunshine
at noonday is glory
shown in. The light
of the world is
Jesus.
Come to the light
tis shining for thee.
Sweetly the
light has dawned
upon me.
Once I was blind
but now I can
see.
The light of the world
is Jesus. No darkness
have we who in Jesus
abide. The
light of the world
is Jesus.
We walk in the
light when we follow
our guide. The light
of the world is
Jesus.
Come to the light
tis shining for thee.
Sweetly the
light has dawned
upon me.
Once I was blind
but now I can
see. The light
of the world
is Jesus.
He dwellers in darkness
with sin-blinded
eyes. The light
of the world is
Jesus.
Go watch at his bidding
and light will arise.
The light of the
world is Jesus.
Come to the
light tis shining
for thee. Sweetly
the light has
dawned upon me.
Once I was
blind but now
I can see.
The light of the
world is Jesus.
No need of
the sunlight in
heaven we're told.
The light of the world
is Jesus.
The lamb of the
light in the city
of gold. The light
of the world is
Jesus.
Come to the light
tis shining for thee.
Sweetly the
light has dawned
upon me.
Once I was blind
but now I can
see.
The light of the world
is Jesus.
At this time we turn our Bibles to
Genesis chapter number one. Brother Ben's going to come
read for us and we'll pass
the offering plate. Genesis
chapter number one we'll read the entire chapter
and then we'll
begin the preaching. Genesis chapter number
one.
Genesis chapter one the Bible reads
In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth and the earth
was without form and void and
darkness was upon the face of the deep
and the spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters and God
said let there be light and
there was light and God saw the
light that it was good and God
divided the light from the darkness
and God called the light
day and the darkness he called night
and the evening and the morning were the first
day and God said
let there be a firmament in the midst of
the waters and let it divide the waters from
the waters and God made
the firmament and divided the waters which were
under the firmament from the waters which were
above the firmament and it was so
and God called the firmament heaven
and the evening and the morning were
the second day and God said
let the waters under the
heaven be gathered together unto one place
and let the dry land appear and
it was so and God called
the dry land earth and the gathering
together of the waters called heat seas
and God saw that it was good
and God said
let the earth bring forth grass the
herb yielding seed and the fruit tree
yielding fruit after his kind
who's seed is in itself
upon the earth and it was so
and the earth brought forth grass
and herb yielding seed after his kind
and the tree yielding fruit
who's seed was, in itself, after
his kind and God saw that
it was good and the evening and the
morning were the third day and
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night,
and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
and it was so.
And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light
to rule the night.
He made the stars also.
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule
over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.
And God saw that it was good.
And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that had life, and fowl
that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought
forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind.
And God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters and the
seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping
thing, and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so.
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and
everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind.
And God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over
all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female
created he them.
And God blessed them.
And God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living
thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of
all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed.
To you it shall be for meat, and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the
air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given
every green herb for meat, and it was so.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."
Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.
Lord Heavenly Father, we thank you for our church, and I just pray now for those who
couldn't make it this morning, maybe they're sick under the weather, I pray that you would
intervene in those situations and heal them, Lord, so they can come back, and I also pray
that you would fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit and enable him to thunder forth his
message for us this morning, give a clarity of mind and give us ears to hear and soften
hearts in the room so we can apply the message to our Christian lives, and in Jesus' name
I pray, amen.
Amen.
The title of my sermon this morning is Day One of Creation, Day One of Creation, and
I want to do a seven-day series where I basically go through each day of creation and I kind
of talk about the seven days of creation in Genesis chapter number one and kind of into
chapter two a little bit, but we learn a lot of really foundational and important doctrines
when it comes to just the very beginning of creation, and we can kind of extrapolate and
learn from other scriptures how these things kind of fit together.
Right here at the very beginning of the Bible, it's a very unique beginning because no other
book really starts like the Bible, never have any kind of other religion giving us such
great detail as far as exactly how everything came together, and what's also fascinating
is how Genesis chapter one also fits perfectly with all reality, all science, everything
that we observe today, it's exactly the same, nothing describes it better, and these
words are written of antiquity, you know, before we had great advances in technology
and science and satellites and, you know, there's been a lot of foolish ideas of what
the universe looks like, what the earth has looked like, and varying understandings of
science and all these different things throughout history, whereas the Bible has said the same
thing since the beginning of creation, and it's always described everything that we see
and observe today exactly as we see it, as exactly as we understand it.
Science is always catching up with the Bible, and we don't have to constantly reinterpret
the Bible in light of science, science has to constantly reinterpret itself in light
of the Bible, because there's a lot of science false and so called, or there's a lot of guesswork
or there's a lot of just man's ideas and man's wisdom that never really is true science
and has to constantly update, whereas the word of God always stands the test of time.
The reason why it's going to stand the test of time is because right here in the opening
verse it describes the fact that time is a literal creation of God. Notice it says in
the beginning, God, so what does that tell us? What does that four word phrase tell us?
It tells us before there was a beginning, there was God, because it's saying in the
beginning, God, why? Because God already existed outside of time. God is not bound by past,
present, and future. God exists outside of time, and in fact, God created time. Now,
how do you know he created time? Well, in order for there to be a beginning, there has
to be someone that created that beginning. That's the whole essence of the fact that
there is a beginning. And it makes sense because the atheists and the evolutionists today,
they essentially worship time as God. Everything that they believe, they always just excuse
it away to time. And if you think about it, we have our God, and what is God for most
religions? It's something you believe by faith. We can't necessarily see God with our eyes
today. We can't look at him. He's not something that's in the visible spectrum. He's not where
we could look up and notice him and things like that. There's certain elements of faith
that our religion is based on. In fact, that's the cornerstone of our religion is faith.
The evolutionary scientists, the atheists even, they have their faith. And anytime there's
an explanation upon which they cannot deliver, they simply just throw time at the equation.
They say, where did man come from? Oh, from a really long process, from time. How did
animals transform from one animal to another? How did we get a Tyrannosaurus Rex into a
chicken? Time. How did you get all of the living creatures in this world from a rock?
Time. How did you get all the matter in the universe? Time. Basically, they just attribute
time as their God. And if you give enough time, eventually everything that you want
can happen, apparently. And also, things of the future. If you think about what does a
Christian desire look for, they look for what? Eternal life. Immortality. They look to achieve
basically living in heaven. Well, you ask the atheist evolutionary scientists, they
say give us enough time and we'll fix aging. We'll change the fact that we age and we'll
create robot parts and we can live on forever and everything like that. So they believe
in time to fix all their problems in the future. They believe time is what created everything
that exists. And basically, they worship time as it were. Whereas we don't worship time,
we worship God, who is actually outside of and greater than time itself. And from a perspective
of worshiping time, you cannot have this phrase in the beginning. That's why throughout history,
evolutionary scientists and a lot of these people, they always believed the universe
was eternal, essentially. Because if you don't have God creating everything, if you don't
have a beginning, then that's what you would inevitably logically have. You would have
a universe that's always existed and it's just been kind of a self-existent universe.
And that presents a lot of problems for atheism and evolutionary science today because they
believe in what's called the big bang. But here's the thing. If there is no God, and
I'm just, obviously there is, if we just take their folly that there is no God, it does
not matter how far back you go to any kind of initial event that formulated or basically
established our universe because there would always be a point in time where those elements
of matter and mass existed before that. If they collided or they exploded or whatever,
what were they doing before they exploded and how long did they exist? And essentially,
you can't even attribute, you can't say the universe is XY number of years old because
you could always go five minutes before that and before that and before that. It actually
makes it to where there is no age associated with the universe. And that's why you see
in modern science today, they constantly are pushing out the date of the creation of the
universe. You ever notice throughout history, it's like, oh, the universe is a million
years old. That's what they used to say. And then they would say it's 10 million years
old. And then they would say it's a billion. And then they'd say it's four. And then
they'd say it's 15. And here's why they keep increasing that number. They keep thinking
of new evolutionary processes that push that timeline out further. So they're like, well,
it has to be at least this much older than or this much older, this much older. But here's
the problem. They need to just, they'll have to eventually go all the way back to where
it's just eternal. Or you have to believe in a creation event. But here's the thing.
With the creation event comes a creator. And why is it they don't want to believe in a
creation event? Because then they have to pick a creator that fits that model. And there's
only one that fits that model's God. Okay. Now, again, I'm not saying that the things
that every everything that evolution teaches or believes is true and happen and God did
that. No, what actually happened is described here in Genesis chapter number one. Okay.
And sometimes they get mad and they'll say like, how could you believe that, you know,
there wasn't this big bang, million, many billion of years ago. But the problem is that
the Bible actually gives us a timeline and you can basically realize that we have a seven
day week and then we have Adam and Eve created. Okay. Well, in Luke chapter number three,
you have a genealogy from Jesus Christ all the way back to Adam. Okay. That means it's
not billions of years old. You know, I want to explain to somebody that I don't believe
the universe is billions of years old. It takes about two minutes. Okay. It's like in
the beginning God. Okay. And then you have seven days of creation. On the sixth day you
got man. All right. And then you can go in Luke chapter number three and you can see
there's Adam and it goes all the way to Jesus. And these people, while they lived long lives
at the beginning, you know, maybe almost a millennia, almost a thousand years. It's not
billions of years old. It's literally impossible. Okay. Now the exact age, I believe it's around
6,306 years. Okay. But does that really matter? No, but it does matter to say it's not billions
of years old. Okay. And it matters to basically squash all those stupid ideas. But right here
in the very beginning we realize time, space, and matter basically all came into existence
in this first verse. It says, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. So we
have time being mentioned, beginning. Okay. We also have matter and space because we have
a heaven and an earth. Well, they also have to have a place where they exist. Okay. So
there's all three elements that we have of the space-time continuum that we understand
all coming simultaneously into existence with God. Now all three of those elements are necessary
for the other two. You know, you can't have two without the third or you can't just have
one of these things or whatever. Because it makes sense. If you have time and space but
you have no matter, it's like does anything even exist? You know. If you have space and
you have matter but there's no time, did it ever exist? You know. It's like what existed
if there's no matter? When did it exist if there was no time? And if there's no space,
where did it exist? Okay. So you kind of have to have all three in order to have a physical
reality. Okay. You have to have something that exists and a place where that thing exists
and a time at which that existed. Okay. So we have all three simultaneously coming into
existence from the only creator, God. Okay. Now as we study the Bible, we realize who
that person is. Go to Revelation chapter number one for a moment. Go to Revelation chapter
number one for a moment. Here's another really important doctrine that can be established
here is the fact that Jesus Christ is that creator. Okay. Now we realize that God spoke
all these things into existence as we read Genesis chapter number one. So we would say
that the word of God created everything and the Bible tells us the word of God created
everything. Well, that's actually another name for Jesus Christ in the Bible. That's
why in Revelation when he's talking about himself, look how he describes himself in
verse eight. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and
which was and which is to come, the Almighty. So notice how Jesus describes himself. He
says, I am the beginning. Why? Because in the beginning, God. So you know what he could
also say in the beginning? Jesus. Okay. Because Jesus has always existed. In fact, Jesus exists
outside of time itself. Okay. And he's describing the fact that he is currently, he was meaning
infinite past and he is to come. He's going to be in the future. There's never going to
be a time when Jesus Christ doesn't exist. Okay. And the Bible even says Jesus Christ
the same yesterday, today and forever. I mean, the Bible just makes it clear he's always
going to exist. Verse 11 saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. So notice
again, he says, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. So Jesus describes everything
for us. He tells us the beginning from the end. Go to verse 17. And when I saw him, I
fell at his feet, his dad, and he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not.
I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive
forevermore. Also talking about his earthly ministry, he was alive, he came to this earth,
he died literally, and then he rose again three days later. And so Jesus Christ has
also lived a physical life, but before his physical life, he was still the first and
the last. He was the root and offspring of David, as the Bible describes him. Now, what
does that mean, root and offspring? Well, the root is basically the beginning of a plant,
and it's where the plant gets its start, it gets its beginning. And then the offspring
of a plant would be like the fruit or the byproduct of that particular plant. So he's
like, I'm the beginning of the plant, and I'm the fruit of that same plant. Why? He
caused David to be born. He generated man in the sense that he created and formed man,
and then as man ended up having children and having children and having children, he eventually
entered into that lineage of David and was literally born of Mary, who was a descendant
of David. And it wasn't like she was just a warming oven, no, it was literally his biological
mother, because he's both the root and the offspring of David. He's the seed of the woman,
is what the Bible says. Now, that's kind of mind-boggling to some degree, but again, we're
talking about the creator of the universe who exists outside of time, always going to
be a little bit above our pay grade. Now, go to the end of Revelation, or no, look at
chapter 2, verse 8, we'll see this verse. And then the angel of the church in Smyrna
tonight, these things say the first and the last, which was dead and is alive. Go to chapter
22 now, though, go all the way back to the end. So, we start at the beginning. It isn't
interesting that we start at the beginning of the book, the Bible, and it says in the
beginning, and then we're getting to the end of it, and it's saying like, I'm the beginning
and the end, and I'm the alpha and the omega, right? And then it gets even stronger. Look
what he says in Revelation 22, verse 13, I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the
end, the first and the last. Now, what book starts, what religious text literally starts
with the beginning and then ends with the ending? The Bible. That's the only text that's
like that, okay? And every single story, every single chapter, all fit together in a perfect
narrative that all drive to the exact same points. They fit together like hand and glove.
Why? Because the Bible literally is God, okay? The Bible teaches in John chapter number one,
in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. So, this
literally is the beginning and the end. Jesus Christ, okay? And he's literally been there
and it literally created everything. This created you and me, the word of God, okay?
Every single thing. Some people think like, oh man, you worship a book, you worship the
Bible, and it's like, yes. You want to know who Jesus is, he's right here in your hand.
You want to know who your creator is. Think about a little baby, and a lot of people can
think about that in this church. But if you think about a little baby, you know what it
is? It just loves its mother, and it loves its father, and it loves to just be caressed
by them, and to learn from them, and to be comforted by them. And it's like this is our
literal creator right here. You know, we should draw close to the word of God, and we should
let it comfort us, and instruct us, and teach us, and basically nourish us, and teach us.
And a lot of people, they just don't have that, you know? And really children that are
raised without parents just really live pretty rough lives. It's a really kind of a devastating
thing, and it's like Christians who don't really, you know, spend time with their parents,
quote, unquote, spend time with their spiritual father in heaven, you know, they're basically
going to go live a hard life. They're going to have a bad childhood, quote, unquote, living
in this world. You know, we have to realize that Jesus Christ has always existed. He created
us, and not only that, he gave us the word so that we could know everything we need to
know about him. Go over to Colossians chapter number one. Colossians chapter number one.
In the beginning, God. And you cannot, I don't care who you are or how smart you think you
are, you can't disprove or dispel anything that the Bible teaches about science, about
the creation. Everything that the Bible teaches is seen and observed in this physical reality
we have today, and a beginning is the only thing that actually makes sense. A beginning
is the only thing that actually fits well together with the creation model. And I'm
going to get into a lot of these things as we go and develop our creation week here,
but you have to understand that there's so many things that exist in the universe that
have a symbiotic relationship, meaning that they cannot exist one without another, okay,
meaning that you can't have a long period of time where all these different processes
are slowly developing. Imagine your body, just your body alone. You can't have some
of your body parts developing at randomly different times. It all has to be at the exact
same time and at the exact same proportions. It's not like, you know what, I'm going to
be born without a heart for a while. My heart's not going to develop for the first six years
of my life or whatever. No, no, no, you just die, okay? You can't have part of your arm
and your head and your mind. We have so many parts of our body that all have to be functioning
together and working together and they have to be at the same level of development and
they have to be at the same timing and all these different pieces. And that's microscopic
in comparison to the universe itself. When we talk about the fact of how close we are
to the sun or how close we are to other planets and the moon and just how gravity works, how
grass and trees and oxygen levels and just everything that exists on this earth, it's
like it all has to be perfectly dialed in for even just us to exist. And if you just
tinker with any of it, just even a hair or just a little bit, all of it ceases to exist.
All of it would be destroyed. And so you're like, how did we get to this perfect timing?
Someone had to put it all together in a perfect timing, okay? Just like a vehicle, just like
a car. There wasn't an explosion in an automobile factory and a truck came out. No, it took
a bunch of engineers and scientists to very specifically place every single component,
every single part just so everly perfectly together. And even just a little bit off,
they won't work. If your truck has a little bit of a wiring problem, it won't work. One
wire gets snipped in the right place, the entire machine doesn't work, right? I mean,
you have to have it all perfectly dialed in and tuned up and agrees together. You can't
just, you know, hope these things are going to work together. And the same is with our
universe and the same is with creation. You cannot have all of the simultaneous relationships,
symbiotic relationships when we talk about things that are alive and things that have,
you know, actual living breathing. They cannot exist without the perfect symmetry and the
perfect creation and placing that God did for us, okay? Now, in Colossians chapter number
1, look at verse number 12, giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to
be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power
of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son. And then we have
redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible
God, the firstborn of every creature, for by him were all things created that are in
heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions
or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him and he is before
all things and by him all things consist. So, notice when we talk about Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, you know, while he is the Son, while the Bible talks about him being
created in a sense, we have to also understand that Jesus Christ is before all things and
he created all things. When it talks about him being the firstborn of every creature,
what does that mean? It's talking about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's talking
about the fact that he was the firstborn, risen from the dead, he was the first resurrected,
and so he gets all the preeminence, meaning what? He not only created us, he was one of
us. Not only is he one of us, he died for all of us. Not only did he die for all of
us, he rose again for all of us and he was the first to rise again and he's the first
born. So, just like he's the first to basically kick off man, he's going to be the first to
model for us the new man. And so, we get everything is about Jesus. And you say, well, why do
you say that? That's what the Bible literally says, okay? I mean, it makes it clear in verse
16, all things are created by him and notice this, and for him. So, why did Jesus create
everything? It's for him. Now, what do you mean by that? Well, literally, Jesus Christ
is going to rule and reign the entire heaven and earth and it's all going to be under his
authority and it's for him to rule, it's for him to reign, and we are to be for his pleasure.
We're to be his brethren and his sisters and to help serve him and worship God together
for all of eternity. Now, in his creation and formation process, he gets to model for
us all of his attributes, okay? And, you know, it's interesting when we think about
why God did all the things he did. Go to Hebrews chapter number 1. Here's just some of my beliefs
about why God did some of the things he did, but God doesn't really want robots to serve
him. You know, you can see this throughout the scriptures that he wants people to choose
him. That's why he says in the Old Testament, you know, he sets before them life and death
and then he tells them to choose life, meaning that God wants to give us a choice. God wants
to create men and women, you know, men specifically in his image, and he doesn't want them to
be forced to serve him. He wants them to choose to serve him, which suggests love, okay? Suggests,
you know, reciprocating a relationship. And God the Father, just like we don't want to
just marry a slave, we want a reciprocating relationship. God wants a reciprocating relationship,
but we choose him and we love him back and we appreciate him. Also, God gets to illustrate
for us every single one of his attributes. We get to learn everything about God through
the creation of the world. So if you didn't have things like hell, you didn't have things
like sin, you didn't have things like rebellion, okay, we wouldn't understand a lot of attributes
of God, okay? How would you understand that God is a judgmental God if nobody ever sinned?
You wouldn't know that, right? Here's another thing. How would you know how holy God is
without sin, right? I mean, how do we know that Jesus and God are set apart from all
humanity? Why are they the holy ones? Why do we look to Jesus and God and say holy,
holy, you know, or say that for thou art alone holy, right? Or why would we basically sanctify
the Lord and all these things? It's because he's truly the only holy one. He's the only
one that's righteous, he's the only one that's sinless, he's the only one that's perfect,
and God gave us all an opportunity and it's not like theoretically we couldn't be, you
know, perfect, it's just that for all of sin it comes short of the glory of God. You know,
God didn't force any of us to sin. God didn't just say, you know what, I want you to sin.
In fact, he did the exact opposite. He told us never to sin. He gives us an opportunity.
The problem is just no one is God except for God himself. And so we have modeled for us
for all of eternity how he's special, he's unique, and we give him the reverence and
the honor and the glory. Not only that, we get to see his love. What's a better picture
than love than John 3.16? For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,
right? Well, why would Jesus have to die if there was no sin in the world? He wouldn't
have to have redeemed us. He wouldn't have had to rescue us. He wouldn't have had to
have all these things. So when we have God creating the world and creating the universe,
you know, we get to see everything. We also get to see the creative mind of the Lord.
And we get to look at the world. We look at all the plants and all the animals and we
see the seed and we see the fruit. And we get to enjoy these things. We see the birds.
We get to see fish. We get to see animals. We get to have steak. I mean, come on. You
know, bacon. I mean, when we look at the universe that we see in this world, and not only that,
every single thing illustrates pictures and truths of the gospel and of Jesus Christ and
of the word of God. And it models for us how we're supposed to live and how everything
is supposed to be in perfect harmony. You know, we learn all these carnal truths that
illustrate spiritual truths in this world today. So God obviously has a lot of reasons
for creating the world the way He did and giving man free will and allowing all these
events to take place and allowing Jesus Christ to be our Creator and our Redeemer. And ultimately
choosing that all of it would be done by faith because couldn't God have just always showed
Himself unto us and always just stood right there and just commanded, you know, just been
like, believe in me, you know, it's like you just see him. But that's not really faith.
And how could you really test someone's faith when they're just standing right in front
of you and just forced? I mean, imagine, you know, it's kind of like, how do you know that
you win the election when half the votes just get switched to you? You know, you don't really
know if anybody likes you. You know, when you rig all the polls and you rig all the
ballots and you have a rigged media, how do you know if anybody even likes you? You don't.
You actually start believing your own lie and you actually think like people like you
and that you have a fan base. And then you hold a rally and you realize there's crickets.
It's like, okay, well, you know, where did everybody go? You know, where's everybody
at? And it's like, nobody likes you. Okay. And so at the end of the day, you know, God
is not going to be Joe Biden or the President of the United States, or one of these like
Muslim dictators or whatever, where everybody just has to vote for them. You know, you go
to the ballot box and you just there's one person on the ballot, and you just God, you
just select it and you just sit it in or whatever. No, no, no, no. God wants to give us all opportunity
and free will and a choice. And He created the entire world to worship Him, yes, but
ultimately have the choice to worship Him. We even see this model through His angels
in the fall of the devil. Now you say, when was the fall of the devil? I don't know exactly.
You could postulate a lot of different ideas. But I would say it's before He tempted Adam
and Eve in the garden. But we don't really know exactly when He fell. But I would say
it's probably not in the first six days of creation, because everything that God created
in the first six days of creation were very good, is what the Bible says. And in fact,
the devil himself was created to be a beautiful, you know, worship leader, essentially, he's
like the anointed cherub that cover it, he's got literal instruments built into his body
pipes and everything like that. It's no shock that music is so satanic these days, because
the devil's literally an instrument himself. But everything was created to glorify God
and was created perfect, knowing that it was going to fail though, knowing though that
it was never going to achieve that high level of success, because God Himself is the only
thing that's truly perfect, truly holy, truly righteous. And we understand that when it
says God created everything, that that's actually through the work of Jesus Christ.
God the Father created everything through His Son, Jesus Christ. Look at verse 8, Hebrews
1 verse 8. But unto the Son He saith, this is God the Father talking, Thy throne, O God,
is forever and ever, a scepter of righteousness is a scepter of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved
righteousness and hated iniquity. Therefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed thee with
the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. And Thou, Lord, in the beginning, hast laid the
foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thine hands. They shall perish
with Thou our mainest, and they all shall wax old as the other garments. So the Bible
tells us that it's literally God's handiwork, and it's specifically Jesus Christ's handiwork.
Now when it comes to how this worked exactly, I don't know, but I do believe, and the Bible
I believe teaches very clearly, that God the Father literally spoke everything into
existence and Jesus Christ created it, literally. So you have a tandem here, working in perfect
unison, and really Jesus Christ is called the Word of God, which kind of makes sense
because if you think about it, if the Father is saying something and then the Son does
exactly whatever the Father says, isn't there a really strong parallel to the words that
He's saying and then Jesus himself? Because just whatever God the Father speaks, the Son
does. And so it's like we see this unity, we see the basic reality of how when God says
something the Son does it, and it's like He's the Word of God because, you know, whenever
the Father says something, it happens, you know? Let there be light, Jesus creates it,
and so we kind of see that relationship. Exactly how that works, I don't know, but the Bible
literally is saying here that the heavens are the works of the hands of Jesus. Now some
people attack the Trinity, but think about this, okay? If Jesus has hands before the
creation, okay, sounds like He's a person, right? I mean, it doesn't sound like this
is just this nebulous thing that's floating, you know, before the creation. You know, some
people would postulate, there's words, you know, or basically there was just a guy with
a book sitting next to him or something like that. No, no, no, no, there was hands next
to God the Father, and you know whose hands those were? Jesus Christ's hands. And literally
the heavens were a creation of His hands, of Jesus Christ's hands at the beginning.
Why? Because you have the hands of the Father, and you have the hands of the Son, and then
you have the Holy Ghost. You have three persons and one God that have always existed even
before creation. Look at verse 1. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake
in time passed on the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken to us by His
Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the world. Also notice
this, when it says that God created everything, it says He created by Jesus Christ, but notice
how it words in verse 2. By whom? That's a person. You know the word whom? That's like
someone you're identifying as a person. Who are we identifying the Son? So also, who is
it that created everything? The Son. So you say, what was Jesus before the creation? He
was the Son before the creation even. Because notice what He's saying, created everything.
The Son created everything. It doesn't say the words, or just some nebulous creature,
or you know, it's not some blasphemous term that you want to assign to Jesus Christ. No,
it's the Son. And so you say, when was Jesus Christ the Son of God? Always. In fact, He's
the Son of Man, He's the Son of God, He's the Word of God, He's the Alpha and the Omega.
He was the Alpha and the Omega before the creation. He's the beginning and the end,
He's the first and the last. Think about this. He said, like, that doesn't make sense that
He could be something before it happened. Well, in Revelation, didn't we read that He's
the Omega? Didn't we read that He's the last? Didn't we read that He's the end? Has any
of the end happened? Has any of the last happened? How can He stand up and say, I'm the end,
and the end hasn't even happened yet? Because He exists outside of time. That's why. And
because the Word of God already told us the end, it already declared us the end from the
beginning, and the Word of God has always existed. It's outside of time. So don't get
tripped up on this idea of, like, well, He could only be the Son after He's been born
of Mary or something like that. No, no, no, no. He was the Son before that. He was the
Son before the world began. He's always been the Son, and literally the Son is by whom,
though this is what the Bible says, also He made the world. So when it says, in the beginning,
God created the heaven and the earth, what are we saying? We're saying the Father created
the world through Jesus Christ. That's what we're saying. And He literally is, He formed
the heavens with His own hands. And isn't it beautiful? I mean, talk about some of the
most beautiful things you could ever imagine. It's what God created. You know, when you
look up in the sky, you look up in the heavens, you look at the sunset. This is what people
love to look at. People love to look up in the sky. They love to see the view of a sunset.
They love to see the works of God's hands because there's nothing closer. I mean, when
you think about drawings and paintings, what are people constantly drawing and painting?
The heavens and stars and skies and landscapes and all the stuff that God literally created
because there's nothing, you know, that you could really dream up that's better than what
God dreamed up. Any of these alien movies, it's all ugly what they dream up, okay? Now,
go back, if you would, to Genesis chapter 1. We took a little while to kind of lay down
that foundation, but, you know, you really can't lay down a strong enough foundation
with just even verse 1. I mean, just think about it. Verse 1, and just think about how
much we really could delve into and study. The Bible's not even saying, you know, just
creation. It's saying heaven and the earth. Now, I believe what that means, literally,
is the heaven where God resides and the earth. Now, the earth is different in this stage
of creation, but I believe it's the earth that we're on and the general shape and size
that it is, okay? But it does look different, and let's keep reading. It says, and the earth
was without form and void, and darkness is upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit
of God moved upon the face of the water. So, we have, basically, a water earth is what
it's being described as. Notice it says, and darkness is on the face of the deep, and it
says, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. So, it's talking about
the, you know, the face of something is kind of the outward, it's kind of what you're looking
at. So, when you looked at the earth, it's just kind of like all water. So, imagine just
the entire earth submerged in water, okay? And, you know, what's interesting is there's
a lot of symbolism that we can look at here, but if you kind of think about it, our first
birth is a water birth, right? And we kind of come out of the water, and really the earth
is kind of getting the same birth, where it's kind of like a covered in water, and then
it's going to basically have a birth out of the water. It's going to kind of come out
of the water, right? And then the earth is going to kind of get born again, in a sense,
like through the fire or whatever, and then we're too going to basically get born again
through the fire, in a sense, and, you know, we're baptized in fire and stuff like that.
So, there's a lot of parallel, like, symbolism of, like, spiritual things and kind of pictures
here, but I want to kind of describe some of these words. It says without form. What
does that mean? Well, keep your finger here and go to Isaiah 53 for a moment. Go to Isaiah
53. I want to show you another verse with the word form in it, but form can mean, like,
defined shape, okay? If you said something is without form, it's basically without defined
shape. So, if you think about, like, raw material, okay, a lot of people would say that it's
without form. Like, if you go to a factory and they make chairs, they may have in the
back a lot of just lumber that's still in 2x4s or in spindles or whatever. It's kind
of in the raw material form. They would say it's without form, meaning that it's not shaped
into a chair now. It's just raw material, like, you know, pieces of wood and whatever
shape they kind of came or were manufactured in. And even us, we could be described as
being without form. Now, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It doesn't even mean
that it doesn't have a shape. It's just basically kind of, though, like a blah shape. You know,
it's basically just a real simple shape that doesn't have a defined form to it, okay? Now,
look at Isaiah 53 and let's look at verse number 2. For he shall grow up before him
as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground. He hath no form nor comeliness, and
when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire. Now, this is a prophecy
of Jesus Christ, okay? And what you have to understand is this is in a very specific context.
This is Jesus on the cross. And it's saying at the moment that Jesus is on the cross,
he's going to be changed. He's going to be different than when he was on the earth just
walking around talking with his disciples. What's one of those changes? His face is literally
going to have no form nor comeliness. Now, some people have mistakenly not understood
what this meant and they said that Jesus is just ugly. That's definitely not true, okay?
Because, first of all, his whole lineage is like attractive people, okay? I mean, we're
talking like Sarah. Sarah is attractive at age 90, okay? That's an exception, right? I mean,
we got like the most attractive woman ever. We got David. David is considered, you know,
a beautiful countenance is what the Bible describes him as. Countenance meaning face, okay?
So, we're talking about just a pure lineage of just attractive people all the way through. It's
not like then they just randomly had this ugly duckling, okay? And it's Jesus Christ. There's
other ways to prove that he wasn't ugly because, specifically, whenever you had a priest come,
in the Levitical priesthood. I know he's not in the Levitical priesthood, but he is the
picture of that high priest. The priest could not be ugly. The priest could not have anything
superfluous on his face. He couldn't have like any kind of bad symmetry. He couldn't have a crook
no like crook back or like a weird nose or like anything going on with him. He had to be perfect.
He had to be without blemish. And here's just some facts about beauty. Beauty is measured in
symmetry. I mean, if you really want to understand beauty from a scientific perspective, it comes
from symmetry. So, the reason why someone looks weird is because of symmetry issues, right? Like,
kind of higher than their other eye or it's bigger or, you know, their nose has some kind
of shape that's a little bit different or whatever. So, if you understand the fact that Jesus
couldn't have all these issues with his face, he had to be attractive, okay? He's coming from
an attractive life. But when he's on the cross, something's happened. What happened? He got
punched in the face repeatedly, right? I mean, whenever he was thin and testify with the chief
priest, they're just beating him and they're hitting him with a rod on the top of the head
and they were whipping him and they're doing all this stuff. Now, if you've ever seen someone
that's been severely beaten, what happens to their face? Well, it starts to swell, you know,
and fill with water or just kind of it starts changing and then like you don't even notice
all their features anymore. Like, you can't notice their cheekbones and their nose structure,
whatever. It just kind of turns into a blob, okay? And basically, what it's saying is that
or if you've ever seen someone deceased, you know, if you've ever seen someone deceased,
their face structure changes incredibly because they don't have all that fat tissue,
they don't have all this stuff. So, it just kind of starts, it kind of becomes blah looking or
whatever. That's what it's saying with Jesus. It's saying that basically, his face lost all
of its form. So, you wouldn't really recognize, he wouldn't look the same and it wasn't beautiful
anymore because it's all beaten and bruised and, you know, it's lost its form. So, it doesn't even
look like him really anymore and it's just basically like when you look at Jesus on the
cross, there was nothing beautiful about it. You say, why? Because he's supposed to picture taking
our sin and you know what? There's nothing beautiful about our sin. There was nothing
attractive about our sin. It was a horrifying picture. It was a horrifying thing to look at,
but God the Father didn't even look at it. He didn't even look at it. It was just so horrible,
it's so awful and it's a picture of, you know, the serpent on the stake, it's a picture of Jesus.
So, when it says no form, what does that mean? It basically means that it kind of lost its,
you know, luster. It lost its shape, its defined shape. So, when we think about Genesis chapter 1,
when it says that the earth is without form, what does that mean? It basically just means that the
earth doesn't have any defined shape. Now, imagine a perfect cylinder that's just covered in water.
Not really much of a form there, is it? You know, there's not really anything going on.
It's just kind of like, it's just void. And what does void mean? Void just means that essentially
there's nothing going on. I think it's like a cue ball and pool, okay? There's not really
anything going on. It's not really decorated. There's no color. There's no extra shape. I mean,
it's just basically the most raw form. It's just this white perfect circle. And in fact, you know,
what's interesting about a cue ball, if you blew up a cue ball to the size of the earth,
it would be more rough-edged than the earth itself. The earth is so smooth. And then basically
that if you were to magnify even a cue ball as smooth and as fine as a cue ball feels,
the earth is actually smoother than a cue ball today, let alone at the beginning when there's
no rough edges. There's nothing, you know, protruding. It's just basically just a perfect
circular wet ball, okay? And it is a ball, okay? There you go. But that's what we have in the very
beginning. So I imagine, you know, when it says no form, think of like a stick figure face,
right? Stick figure face doesn't really have much form to it, does it? You know, an NPC,
it's not really known for its physical features. It's just kind of bare bones or whatever. That's
basically what the Bible is describing as an earth that's bare bones. There's not really anything
going on. Just water. It's just starting out. It's just at the very beginning stages. And we have
some interesting things here. The Bible says the Spirit of God moved upon the face of water. So now
knowing that we have God and that was Jesus and the Father and we have the Spirit of God,
there's the Trinity already. But even if you didn't know that yet, look at verse three,
and God said, there's the Word of God. So there you for sure have the Trinity. You got God,
you got the Word of God, and you got the Spirit of God. You got all three right here,
right at the beginning, you got the Trinity, and there's even greater Trinity doctrine,
you know, in the rest of this chapter. But we have all three. God's Spirit is kind of moving
on the waters. And what I kind of think about this, you know, and we'll kind of come back
and forth a little bit, the Spirit of God is like everywhere on the earth. Okay. But that doesn't
mean that everything's going to respond to it. That kind of makes me think of just the Gospel.
We think about that the Spirit of God is kind of everywhere in the world. That doesn't mean
everyone's going to get saved. That doesn't mean everybody's going to respond to it. And so God
wants to make a distinction. And how does he make that distinction? Well, verse three says,
let there be light, and there was light. So we have a start of the earth in darkness,
the Spirit of God's there, and then light enters into the world. So much symbolism.
We could think about just salvation from a historical perspective, right? How does the
world start? The world starts kind of in darkness, yet the Spirit of God's there on the earth.
But until Jesus enters into the world, there is no light in the world. You know,
he is the light. He's the coming light. And then when he comes, he's the light of the world,
and he lights the entire world up. So we have this picture of light entering into this phase
of creation as a picture of the Gospel. And it even fits the timeline, because if you think
about it, it's first dark, and then light enters in, right? It doesn't start with the light,
and then we have the darkness. It starts dark, and then we have the light. So we have a start
of the world that's in sin and dark and turned away from God. And really, at the moment that
Jesus enters into the world, it's a pretty dark time. Everyone that's not of the children of
Israel, they want nothing to do with God. They all have false religion. They have idols. They worship
Baal, the work of their hands or whatever. The children of Israel are pretty much wholeheartedly
turned away from God. You know, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they're not worshiping the true
God. They're a bunch of fakes and impostors. I mean, it's basically, it's just the whole world's
in complete darkness. There's nothing. And without Jesus coming in to basically kickstart
Christianity, it was just, humanity's just doomed, in a sense, okay? And so we have this same
illustration, even in creation, where we have this darkness, and then the light comes in. How does
God describe the light? Verse four. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the
light from the darkness. Here's another thing that's good about God, is he divides things,
right? He doesn't let the darkness and the light dwell together. In fact, it's impossible.
You can't have both. You can only have one or the other, okay? You basically have the light shining
and the darkness runs away, or you have an absence of light, and that's basically what you have is
darkness, okay? And really, you could run with this in a lot of ways. Light is also a picture
of truth. So when there's truth, the lie ceases to exist. And with the absence of truth, what do
you have? A lie now, okay? And so you can't, they can't both exist at the same time. Truth can never
be a lie. A lie can never be the truth. Light cannot be darkness. Darkness can't be light.
God divides these things. These things are separate. The Bible talks about God being light,
and then there's no darkness at all. So, you know, and when we talk about the devil,
the devil is just full of darkness. There is no light in the devil. There's no truth in the devil.
We kind of have those two opposite good and evil type spectrums.
Let's keep our finger here and go to John 1 for a moment. Let's go to John chapter 1.
So he divides these things, and essentially the divisions also described in John chapter 1. Now,
what's good about John when it comes to creation is it kind of starts with creation, too. You have
some other books in the Bible that kind of start from creation but give you a little bit different
perspective or speed up or look at it from a different angle. John chapter 1, and even,
in fact, 1 John and Revelation, all written by John, and they all kind of have a lot of,
like, parallels with the beginning and the ending and kind of talking about those things. But in
verse 1, the Bible says, in the beginning, there's that same start, right? Was the Word.
So here's another thing you could do. If it says, in the beginning, God, and then here it says,
in the beginning, was the Word, what can we devise from that? That the Word is God, right? We could
learn that just from this part, but then we keep reading. It says, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. You know, the Jehovah's false witness, their new world translation,
which is really just a wicked corruption, not a real Bible. It won't say that the Word was God.
It'll say, like, the Word was a God or something like that. You know, they try to twist this. But
with even out that phrase, we already know, if it says, in the beginning, God, and then it says,
in the beginning, was the Word, we know that the Word's God. Done deal. Now, the Bible also tells
in verse 2, the same, meaning the Word, was in the beginning with God. So he really emphasizes
this. He's like, hey, it wasn't just God by himself. The Word's with God, okay? Who's that
Word? Well, the Word is made flesh and dwelled among us and will be held as glory. Who's that?
Jesus Christ, right? All things are made by him, and without him was not anything made that was
made. Now, doesn't that just continue to confirm our doctrine that we've already established?
Everything's made by Jesus. Verse 4, in him was life, and the life was the light of men,
and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. So notice, like I
said, how we have the world in darkness, and then physical light, you know, being created,
or the reality of light, is the same as Jesus entering into the world, and he's that light,
right? There's this parallel. Now, some people get confused about what light is.
Now, who's heard of Roy G. Biv? Anybody? Some people. What is Roy G. Biv?
Yeah, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Now, what is that? That's the visible
spectrum of light, essentially, okay? And the visible spectrum of light. And why do we have
those colors defined for us when we're talking about light? Well, essentially, if you shine
light through a prism, that prism will reflect the light in a different sized wavelength,
and those different sized wavelengths are going to show themselves to us in different colors,
okay? And basically, light, though, goes beyond our visible spectrum, okay? If you were to just
say, what is light, you know, it's really hard to define. Scientists, you know, struggle with
exactly how to define light. They talk about it being a wavelength, a photon, radioactive energy,
radioactive energy, things like this. But ultimately, they can't fully decide how to
describe light because it's kind of a unique phenomena of this world that we live in,
light itself. Now, they measure light or they define light based on its wavelengths,
and the wavelengths of energy, it's all measured in nanometers. And when it comes to the visible
spectrum, it's kind of in the middle, okay? And then you have it going in the both directions
where the nanometers are going to be much smaller and much greater. Now, on the far left side of,
like, if you're looking at a chart, which would be kind of the shortest wavelengths,
you have gamma rays. You have gamma rays, then you have X-rays, then you have ultraviolet rays,
okay? What do you think would be, and then you go into the visible spectrum, what do you think
would be the first color after the ultraviolet in ROYGBIV? Violet, okay? It's really, it makes
it pretty easy, right? Makes kind of sense that you're rolling in. So if you're going from left
to right, it kind of, ROYGBIV is backwards for you, okay? Then you're going to go V-I-V-Y-O-R,
okay? Or I skipped the G, but you have G-Y-O-R, okay? So basically, you have those wavelengths
going, and then what would be the last color on the right? What's going to have the largest
wavelengths? Red, okay? So then when you get to the next layer, which is not visible, it's called
infrared rays, okay? So that's kind of easy to remember. You got the ultraviolet, and then that's
where the violet spectrum side is, and then you kind of have the infrared, which is kind of where
the red is. And then when you get beyond that, you have radar, FM, TV, shortwave, and then AM.
AM's kind of got the largest wavelengths when it comes to light. This is what we basically believe
is light, okay? As our modern science is trying to keep up with the Bible. But some things are
invisible, and didn't that already tell us, didn't it just say that Jesus created the things that
were visible and invisible, okay? All things were created by him. So when the Bible says,
let there be light, what happened? I believe what it's describing is all the things I just
mentioned came into existence. We got the infrared lights, you know, waves, and we got the radar
capability, and all the things, all the properties and the functions of light came into existence.
Some people would think like, oh, the Bible doesn't make any sense because it says there's
light before the sun. And it's like, look, the sun is a light source. Light is something different,
okay? Light can exist without the sun. I don't know if you realize this. You say, how do you know
that Pastor Shelley? Well, at night when there's no sun out, go into your house and flip on a switch,
you know, and there's going to be this thing that comes out of the ceiling. It's called light.
And you're like, where did that come from? It's because light exists without the sun.
You know, the sun is just a simple light source, right? We have to differentiate the two different
things here. Now, if the sun is a light source and then we have the actual existence of light,
which one needs to exist first for them to both work? You have to first create light.
Explain to me how a light source would work without light even existing.
That can't even make any sense. So, in fact, you actually have to have light exist before you can
end up having the light source be created, okay? That's why God creates everything in the way that
he does, because he's basically setting up the stage or the foundation for the next layer,
just like he's not going to create man on day one, because here's a question, where are you
going to exist? Good luck just floating around in the nebulous space or whatever. You won't even be
able to exist a second, because what are you going to breathe? What are you going to eat?
Where are you going to go? Like, you know, none of that stuff's going to work, right? So God has
to basically create the environment upon which these things can come into existence and, of
course, all the symbiotic relationships that are so important, he's going to create those last.
I'm going to create those first, because these other things can exist without other creations.
Does the earth really need man to exist? No. Does light need the sun to exist? No. But we need light
before we can get to the sun, okay? So we have light itself. Now, what's also interesting about
light is light is considered a constant as far as the speed of light, and it's the fastest thing
that we can observe in the universe. Nothing travels faster than light. In fact, it travels
at 186 at 282 miles per second is what's been measured in a vacuum. Now, light can travel at
a different speed depending on which medium it's traveling through, okay? So, like, if you're
traveling, if water's, I'm sorry, if light's traveling through water or some kind of a denser
subject, then it's sometimes measured at a slower rate than it's traveling. But essentially,
supposedly, through many experimentations in science, they've measured that light travels
about 186,000 miles per second. That's fast, right? I mean, that's so quick. And think about
it. If light didn't travel that quick, we couldn't have all the technology that we have today.
How could you have TV and phone? I mean, how could you have it, the one person on the other
side of the world can literally call and talk to, you know, another person through a video,
and you can see it. Now, obviously, there's also properties like sound that we're talking about
here. But, you know, how can I see somebody, you know, literally across the world, you know,
almost the exact time that they're there? Obviously, we realize there's a little delay,
and most of the delay is not actually light itself, it's, you know, the technology that's
slowing it down. Because the light would travel so fast, it's basically instantaneous.
If they measure, so the sun is approximately 93 million miles from the earth, okay?
So how long would it take for the light that's traveling from the sun to reach earth?
8.3 minutes. Takes about 499 seconds for that light. For light to travel the diameter of the
earth, though, it would take 0.04 seconds. 0.04. We're not even saying a tenth of a second,
we're saying 0.04. I mean, you can't even, I mean, that's the fast, that's just so fast,
you can't even comprehend how fast that truly is. Traveling the entire earth makes sense that
God would create all these wonderful things so that we could have this kind of technology and
have these, you know, interesting revelations. And now, there's a lot more we can talk about
light. I mean, there's, you know, people like Einstein have come up with theories like the
special relativity, or the general theory of relativity and things like that,
where he literally believes and basically teaches that time is relative, and that light is a
constant. Meaning that if you were to travel fast enough, time itself would alter for you.
And, you know, I believe it's true because satellites literally have to alter their clocks
every single day in order to make up for the difference of the speed at which they're traveling.
Now, it's only measured in like nanoseconds. They're basically altering their clocks 38
nanoseconds every single day. But because we use them for GPS satellite coordination,
they said if you were not updating it like that, then essentially, every two minutes,
their satellites would be off by 10 meters. Every two minutes, and I mean, we're talking
about like some important technology that's being used with global position satellites. So,
you know, that's even really mind-bending. When you think about the fact that time is theoretically
could shift based on speed. Think about it this way, and this is really mind-tripping. I'll just
give you one example, okay? Imagine, you know, the sun, right? It has light that's that's racing
towards you, and it's going to take eight minutes to get to you. We can kind of visualize the idea
of what you observe the sun doing. You're not going to see for eight minutes, okay? Well,
obviously, we can never really experience that, you know, on an earthly stage because light's
traveling so fast, you know, something from across the room traveling to you, it's going to feel
instantaneous. But if you are traveling in the direction away from, let's say the clock, let's
say I'm looking at the clock, and I'm seeing, you know, it tick every single second, right? It's
just ticking. The light is racing towards me at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, right?
But what if I'm going this direction, 186 miles per second? The light that's going to show me how
that tick won't ever reach me because I'm going in this direction. So, it'll basically just look,
pause, move as I race in this direction, okay? Now, at the moment that I stop,
what happens if I then race back towards that clock, okay? Well, then I'm going to observe
that ticking even faster, right? Because it's racing towards me, and I'm racing back towards it,
so I'm going to go through this time loop. So, you know, and this is a lot of science fiction,
but it's based on real science. It's like theoretically if you could travel at the speed
of light in a direction far away and then travel back, you would experience no time difference
because essentially, you know, you can't, you wouldn't experience it, but the distance that
you traveled would change in time incredibly, right? Because you just go instantly this way
for five minutes and come back, it could be like 50 years to everybody that's on the earth or
something like that. That's why they create like time travel movies and all this kind of stuff or
whatever, but it is based on the idea of, you know, the light is a constant and that time is
actually kind of relative. Here's the thing, time has to be somewhat relative because here's the
reality. God created time. Time is not constrained to God, okay? All right, he's constrained to God.
God's not constrained to time, right? He can go outside of time, and think about it. If you can
travel at the speed of light, theoretically, time ceases to exist for you. So, if God literally is
light, okay, that means that he can travel wherever he wants, whenever he wants, and time is not,
you know, going to be limited to him. It means nothing to him. In fact, wouldn't that make some
verses like even make more sense how a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a
day? I mean, when you just outside of time, it's just kind of a weird, it's weird and mind trippy
to us, but at some point, we'll even, you know, exist outside of time and live in eternity. Now,
when it comes to time, we measure time by the heavens. How do you measure time? When the sun
comes up, when the sun goes down, the moon, I mean, all of our time is coming from day four.
We don't really understand, you know, time from a human element without these types of things,
but the Bible tells us that time existed before the heaven and the stars because in the next
verse, go back to Genesis chapter one, it says in verse five, and God called the light day and the
darkness he called night and the evening and the morning were the first day. So, we get an
illustration of what a day looks like, okay? We have a period where there's darkness, we have a
period where there's light, and that's the day, okay? That's a day, and it's the first day,
meaning that there was no days before that, right? Now, what does a day mean? It's a 24-hour period
in the context of first, but what does day mean in the first part? Like a 12-hour period, right?
But it's a little bit driven by context. The word day can be driven by context. When you have
an evening and a morning and you have the first day, it's getting pretty clear. It's like, oh,
okay, what are you talking about? Approximate 24-hour period of time. Now, let me prove that
even further. Go to Exodus chapter 20. Go to Exodus chapter number 20,
and I'll try to wrap up here, but when we talk about the first day of creation,
we're learning a lot of really important doctrines, and when we think about light,
Jesus is that light. You know, he entered in the world and light is coming to the world,
and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil, right?
And when we talk about the light, it's the gospel of Jesus Christ that basically saves people and
pulls them out of the fire and rescues them just because when you're in darkness, you can't see
anything, and so Jesus Christ is that light. He rescues us. He saves us. He's good. Notice
the light's good. Jesus is good, okay? He divides himself from the darkness. He wants nothing to do
with the darkness, and really when you get saved, it's supposed to be like coming from darkness
into light. Now you're not supposed to live in darkness anymore. You're not supposed to
abide in darkness. You're supposed to abide in the light, okay, until the end.
Now, Exodus chapter 20, look at verse 11. For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore, the Lord blessed
the Sabbath day, and hallowed it. Notice the creation week is a six-day week with a seventh
day of rest, and that's how the children of Israel are supposed to observe the week is they were
supposed to have six days of working and one day of rest. Now, if he's saying this is a picture of
the creation, what does that tell me about the creation? It must have been six 24-hour periods
of time with a one-day rest period. Otherwise, the Sabbath wouldn't even work. So, every single
thing we have this time is based on the creation week. We have the day, which was evening and
morning. We have the week, which we have the six days of creation with the seventh. We have a month,
which is the rotation of the moon, and the Jewish calendar used the moon as their month,
how they calculated months, and then we have the year, which is the earth revolving around
the sun, okay, and we have all the different seasons, and so without the sun, moon,
you know, we would have no idea how to measure time. How would you measure time? How would you
know what was a day? This helps me also understand eternity, though, if you think about it, because
when we get to eternity, the Bible says that we have no need of the what? The sun, because Jesus
is the light, right? Imagine if going outside, there was no change in the weather. Zero change.
It's the exact same temperature. There's no wind, okay? When you think about the different part of
the day, what is it based on? Where the sun is in relation to the sky, right? But you can't even see
the sun, because it's just the glory of the Jesus Christ is just everywhere, okay? Then time kind
of just ceases to really even be a thing, doesn't it? If you're not aging, if you're stuck in the
exact same moment, you're not tired, you're not sleepy, okay, what would time, time just ceases
to even be a thing at that point in time, and so you basically just have fun, and really for kids,
they would love for this to happen right now, because every kid I've ever met, they never want
to go to bed, you know? They're just going to stay up all day, just keep playing, keep playing, and
you know, why do adults, why do we change? It's because we got old and we got tired, right? I mean,
when you're a kid, going to bed is like the worst thing ever. When you're an adult, it's like the
greatest thing ever. You're just like, I can't wait to go to bed, you know? Now, if you can't sleep,
it's kind of frustrating, but if you know you could go to sleep, I mean, you're ready. You're
just like, I want to get in there, and I'm ready to go to bed, and it sounds great, and it sounds
wonderful or whatever, but here's the thing, if you were never tired, and the weather's perfect
outside, and it's not going to change, you're like, what's the forecast? Perfect, okay, when is
it changing? Never. What's the 10-day forecast? Perfect, you know, it's just like, there's no
change in weather, you're never going to see, like, what time is it? How would you even know?
Because there's no reference, you're not going to be looking up, and it's like, well, the sun,
it's high noon, right? Or whatever, the sun's about to set, or, you know, that's how we think
of as time is based on these concepts, but if Jesus is just lighting up the whole world, and
you can't even see the sun for the glory and the brightness of Jesus Christ, I mean, time just
basically becomes irrelevant at that point, and you're just doing whatever you want, and there's
going to, you know, I've talked with other people about this, you know, eternity is kind of an
interesting concept, but some people are like, I think I would get bored. It's kind of a normal
carnal thing that you might think, but isn't there activities that you like to do, and you've done
them a million times before, but you still like doing them anyways, whether that be like, you
know, playing a sport, or playing a game, or, you know, reading something, or whatever, you know,
some people just love doing the exact same thing over and over. Some people listen to the exact
same song over and over. I mean, think about that. I mean, they just can't get tired of the stuff
that they love and they enjoy, and we do all the same things, and we still love them. I mean,
I had Christmas this year, but you know what? I know all my kids are excited about Christmas next
year, and you know what? They're going to be excited about Christmas after that, and you know
what? When they're going to not want to have Christmas, never, right? Aren't they going to love?
I mean, we go to church on Sunday, but you know what? I get excited about church next Sunday.
I get excited about church next Sunday, right? So, when you live in eternity, how is that any
different? We're going to have our feast. We're going to have our parties. We're going to have
our events. We're going to have, you know, the Red Hot Preaching Conference, you know,
whatever that is in heaven. I mean, it's going to be epic, right? I mean, we're just going to have
all these different events. We're going to have all these different things that we're doing.
We're going to have all these activities that we love that are way better. We're going to have a
meal. I mean, you know, I eat steak, but I'm always ready for the next one. You know what
I mean? Like, I don't, I wasn't like, okay, that was my last steak. You know, that was my last
burger ever. That was my last shaker. It's like, I'm ready for the next one. You know what I mean?
And so, when we talk about heaven, it's just a perpetual state of just constantly getting to
enjoy all the things you love and worshiping God and get to seeing Jesus and getting to talk to
Jesus. You know, if there's a person in your life that you really like, you could just talk to them
forever, can't you? I mean, the people that you really enjoy, sometimes you feel like you can't
get enough. You just want to keep hanging out. You want to keep talking. You love seeing them.
You love being around them. I mean, in heaven, we're going to be around so many people you like
and enjoy and some people you tolerate. And then Jesus, you know, it's like God. So, it's just
going to be like this perfect state of bliss. And we kind of enter back into a blissful state.
Now, go over to Psalms 119. That's the last verse I want you to turn to real quick. Psalms 119.
When we think about day one of creation, you know, it really emphasizes light.
And if we want to apply this sermon to our personal lives in a little bit more practical way,
we have to think about the fact that now that we have the light, we don't want to run away from
the light. We don't want to go where the darkness is. We want to stay in that light. And that light
has already been illustrated for us as being Jesus, as being the Word of God.
And how are you supposed to live your life? You know, we live our lives in light
from a physical reality. You know, I don't do things in the dark. The only things I do in dark
are like trip over stuff at night or something, you know. We don't, even at night, though,
people that, you know, say like, well, I work at night. Yeah, but I guarantee wherever you go work,
you turn on lights. You know, you're not working in a dark shed somewhere or something like that.
You're turning on lights. We all work by the light. Light is necessary to do work, okay. No
one does work without any lights unless you're just blind. I mean, we're all using light here,
okay. And here's the reality. In the Christian life, the only way to do work for God is in the
light. You turn the light on, okay. We have to use the light and that light is the Word of God,
okay. It tells us what to do. It tells us where to go. It tells us how to operate. It helps us
understand what we're doing and how to be efficient and effective in that. Psalms 119,
verse 105, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. So every decision I'm going
to make in my entire life, you know what I need to do? I need to look at what does the Bible say?
How does the Bible direct me? Where am I going to go? Where am I going to live? What am I going
to eat? Who am I going to marry? What job should I have? You know, what does a successful Christian
life look like? What kind of knowledge should I learn? What kind of people should I hang out with?
You know, every single thing that I'm going to decide in my life has to be interpreted through
the light of the Word of God. That's why it's so important to read the Word of God. That's why it's
so important to go to church and hear the Word of God being preached. That's why it's so important
to be around like-minded people that also have the light. Because, you know, what's nice is when
you're working that everybody else that's working next to you also has light. You know, I don't want
to be working and have light and everybody else is in darkness. That sounds scary, right? You know,
I want to be working shoulder to shoulder with everybody that's got a lamp on, that's got a
headlight on, that's turned the switch on, you know, that's not having their eyes closed or
whatever. And so it's important to be around like-minded people that have the light. You're
going to church. You're hearing people instruct you in the light. You yourself are reading the
Bible and you're getting the light. We need to be children of the light. We're children of the day.
We're children of the light. We're not of the night, okay? We don't want to be of the night.
We want to have fellowship with the night, with the darkness. We have to constantly go back to
the Word of God. And so you can't really overemphasize the importance of the Bible.
And when you see Christians start making really bad decisions, it's a light problem. You know,
they hate their brother because they're walking in darkness. You know, they don't have the light. We
need to constantly be reminded of what the Bible says so we know how to live our lives.
Now, just as much as you will never leave this church and ever live your life without light
physically, you need to decide, I'm not going to live my life without the spiritual light,
because this is going to tell me how to live my life. We don't want to walk in darkness,
as the Bible says. We want to walk in the light. You know, and without this, you can't have any.
And we want to help bring people into the light, right? By going out and preaching the gospel of
Jesus Christ and letting the light shine in the darkness. The darkness doesn't comprehend the
light. We have to help the people in the darkness bring them into the light and show them the light
and then encourage those that are in the light to stay in the light. Obviously, you can't lose
your salvation. What you can do is you can decide to start walking in darkness again and destroy
the life that you have on this earth. So let us be reminded of the first day of creation,
the importance of light, the division of light, that the light is good, and that we want to
always live our lives in the light which God has given us, which is Jesus Christ. Let's close in
prayer. Thank you Heavenly Father for this chapter. Thank you so much for the creation week.
Thank you for giving us light. Thank you for giving us the word of God. Thank you for giving
us the Bible. I pray that we would never underestimate the value of God's word, of the
light that you've given us, of how to walk, and how we appreciate light every day, from the sun,
from light bulbs, from fire, from all different kinds of inventions. We use light
to know where to go and how to behave ourselves and the work that we do. I pray that we would
see that there's even a more important light, which is the word of God, which is the Bible,
and that we would use that in our everyday life to know where to go and how to behave ourselves.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Our last song for this morning, 374.
374.
Send the light.
On the first, there's a call comes ringing or the restless wave. Send the light.
Send the light. There are souls to rescue. There are souls to save. Send the light. Send the light.
Send the light, the blessed gospel light. Let it shine from shore to shore. Send the light,
the blessed gospel light. Let it shine forevermore.
We have heard the Macedonian call today. Send the light. Send the light.
And a golden offering at the cross we lay. Send the light. Send the light. Send the light,
the blessed gospel light. Let it shine from shore to shore. Send the light, the blessed gospel light.
Let it shine forevermore. Let us pray that grace may everywhere abound. Send the light. Send the
light. And a Christ-like spirit everywhere be found. Send the light. Send the light. Send the light,
the blessed gospel light. Let it shine from shore to shore. Send the light, the blessed gospel light.
Let it shine forevermore. Let us not grow weary in the work of love. Send the light. Send the light.
Let us gather jewels for a crown above. Send the light. Send the light. Send the light,
the blessed gospel light. Let it shine from shore to shore. Send the light, the blessed gospel light.
Let it shine forevermore. Good singing. You are dismissed.