All right, so I didn't put you an outline up here. I'm just running too late to do it, but we start a new study in the book of Genesis. And I'm assuming this is going to take about five years to finish. Yeah, you laugh, don't you? It will take us a while to get through. It's a lot in the book of Genesis lots of things to cover and talk about This morning. We're simply going to do kind of an introduction to the book of Genesis and what we're gonna be looking at and we're gonna look at probably the first five verses and just kind of talk probably about verse 1 of chapter 1 but the book of Genesis also if you've got a headings in your Bible like mine, it says the first book of Moses and called Genesis, and although the author does not reveal who he is in the book of Genesis, we have numerous passages of scripture throughout the Bible that indicate that the book of Genesis was certainly written by Moses. It's believed that he actually wrote it after the book of Exodus, that Exodus was written first and then Genesis afterwards, but we don't have proof of that, but that's what it's generally believed to be. And throughout this, we're gonna be looking at the different theology of the Bible. And don't let that word scare you. That's simply what the Bible teaches us about God. There are different people that will tell you what theology means. Certainly, I mean, I'm not here to brag. I have a doctorate degree in theology. I have a master's degree in theology. So I know what theology is, but it's simply teaching us what God has said in His Word. Now people will try to complicate it. There's different people that have different terms for it. Like you look at the World Book Dictionary. They say this, they say theology is the study of God and his relations to man. That's a pretty good definition. The American Heritage Dictionary says theology is the study of the nature of God and religious truth. And that's, you know, it's okay. But theology is simply the study of the various doctrines in the Bible to introduce us to God. And ultimately, it's to introduce us to his son, Jesus Christ. The entire Bible, from the beginning to the end, is all about Jesus. There'll be people tell you that it's not about that, but it is. Jesus is in every single book of the Bible, even those where it may not appear that he is, but he certainly is. There's generally four departments and I don't want to bore you with the technical details of theology, but about four different things I've studied during theology. You've got exegesis, you've got the historical study of it, you've got the systematic, and you've got the practical. Those are a lot of theological terms that they throw around in the seminary, but these are simply things that, like I said, the doctrine of the Bible that is pointed out to lead us to Christ. Now, one thing we must remember as Christians There is no question whatsoever that the scripture is inspired, inspired by God. I mean, if you can't believe the scripture is inspired by God, you might as well forget it. Forget even studying the Bible. If you cannot believe that simple truth, which is key truth to believing the Bible, understanding what the Bible is, you must believe that this Bible is inspired by God, written by men's human hands, but these men were inspired by God to write down everything God wanted us to know. Now, if you can't believe that, then you can't believe the Bible, any part of the Bible. You must believe that. And so it's impossible for us to not be influenced. I know about some of the things in the world, they influence our decisions, some of our thoughts and things, but that does not take away the truth from the Bible. The Bible is always going to be the truth. It's the pillar. The church is the pillar and ground of the truth, but all truth is from scripture. Everything that we believe, everything that we practice in our faith, everything that we try to tell other people is all from the Bible. It's not something we've invented and come up with and we think sounds good, but it's what God has said. And so the Bible, and by the way, is without error. It's complete as well. There's people today that try to make you think the Bible is not complete. There's books missing, these so-called lost books of the Bible and all these things like this. Silliness. The Bible is complete. It's all we need. And we use the Bible alone for our faith and practice. Now, you've heard the term the Pentateuch. Of course, the first five books of the Bible. And these are key books in our faith. Now, of course, for the Hebrew, for the Jewish person, these are instrumental in all their beliefs. It's kind of their history. It is their history. It's not kind of their history. It is their history. And this is one way they were able to keep up with their history is through these books, especially Genesis. And Genesis is the beginning of all things. The Septuagint, you may have heard it referred to as, which simply means origins. The Septuagint is origins. And Genesis is called the book of beginnings or the book of first. I'm gonna give you a whole list of first things out of the book of Genesis here in just a minute. There'll be beliefs and theological concepts that'll be introduced to us in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, that will be used throughout the entire Bible. The teachings, the doctrine, the theology in the first five books is the foundation, the background of every other book in the Bible. The New Testament refers to the book of Genesis over 35 times, different quotes from Genesis and referring to events in Genesis. And so Genesis is important. Moses did not take any time whatsoever to explain to us in any kind of detail who God is. I mean, you won't find in there him describing what God is or who God is because it's just, it's believed that everybody knows who God is. That's the general belief. And so he doesn't spend time doing that. But the first three words there in the book of Genesis, in the beginning. And so you've got to ask yourself, in the beginning of what? In the beginning of what? You see, mankind feels that all the universe revolves around us. And that's because we're prideful, we're arrogant. We think that everything revolves around us, the earth and everything. Listen, we are just a creation of God. The reason God created this earth is because of His love. And that's how He shows forth His love, by creation. and by giving life to us. And he saved the creation of man for the very last thing that he created. In the six days of creation, man was the defining moment of creation and the ultimate creation of God. And so, in the beginning, well, God always has been. As Pastor Sexton often said, he's always previous. And so God has always been, we don't know how long, well, God has always been, so we can't even say terms such as, well, we don't know how long God has been around, because he's always been around. So you can't pinpoint a timeframe or anything like that on when God began, because he's always been. So in the beginning, and that means in the beginning of creation, in the beginning when God started dealing with earth and man, that's the beginning. And like all beginnings, beginnings have an ending. See, God will never have an ending because he's always existing. He's the existing, the self-existing one. He don't have an ending. But other things that have a beginning, the beginning of this earth, we look in the book of Revelation, there's gonna be an ending in this earth. And so everything that has a beginning has an ending. And by the way, speaking of Revelation, the book of Genesis is the most closely book of the Bible that reflects the book of Revelation, because we see in Genesis the beginning that God created all these things. And in the book of Revelation, we see these things kind of restored at the end, back when God, you know, restores things the way that it once was. And so a beautiful picture, if you look at it that way, of all the things God created, He created things perfect, and He created a perfect place for man to live in, in the Garden of Eden. And in the final end of it, when God restores and renews and creates a new heaven and a new earth, we're gonna see all this restored back to the way that it should have been. And so I mentioned that word Pentateuch. That simply means five. Penta, meaning five, and teuch, meaning book. So Pentateuch, and those are the first five books of the Bible. It's broken down into three divisions. Hebrew, and it's called the law or the Torah. And then we see that Moses is the traditional author. There's really nobody questioning that at all. There's so many references to him being the author of the book of Genesis. All these things that occurred in the book of Genesis, Moses was not alive during that time period. And so everything that was written, God revealed to him what to write. God told him and so God inspired him. Now, in these books like it was written, Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, all these books were written originally on scrolls, very large scrolls, not little small tablets. I'm talking large scrolls. And this was very big things. I mean, they would end up being like 30 feet long. Now, if you've ever rolled up a 30 foot long piece of paper, even paper, which they didn't have the paper like we have, they have it on vellum or leaves things that they made these scrolls out of. These things got extremely heavy. I'm talking hundreds of pounds. And so they would, to handle these books, they had to be broken into divisions. So Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, all these books would have been written, would have been on one long scroll. And just imagine it being 30, 40, 50 feet long. And so they break it up into different sections, books. And that would be necessary for them to be able to study these. And so, of course, everybody didn't have this. You didn't have your own Pentateuch. You didn't have your own scrolls, you know. There was only like one set. And everybody would have to come and hear it expanded upon or whatever. And so they would break it up into these divisions so that they would be able to handle it. Now it has various names throughout the Bible. The Pentateuch, it's called the Law, the Book of the Law, the Book of the Law of God, the Law of Moses, the Book of the Law of the Lord, the Law of the Lord. So all these names are ascribed to these five books all throughout the Bible. Now there's important things about the, I know I keep talking about the five books, we'll get to Genesis in a minute. But I keep talking about the Pentateuch because it's necessary for us to understand the importance of it. Why these five books are important to us. Now for the Jew, these first five books, they could base everything upon those books right there. And they have the books of the prophets, they have the Psalms and things like that that they do use. But the first five books are instrumental and key in all their beliefs. And so that's their primary go-to books. But it has religious importance. Of course, it has historical importance. And it has, you could call it cosmic importance, because we learn everything that we know about the Earth and the heavens and the solar system. We learn that from the book of Genesis. Now, scientists will try to tell you that, well, we've discovered this, we've discovered that. They didn't discover anything. Listen, God's not lost anything. Sure, there's galaxies and there's stars and there's planets and things that we have no idea about that God has created that's out there that we can't even get to and every time that the scientists create a new telescope or a new satellite or something that can reach up into higher places they say we discovered this planet You didn't discover it. God's already created. He knows all about it. You just happened to stumble upon it because you were able to get that far. But I always find scientists humorous. I'm not one against scientists. I believe that scientists have done a lot of good things in this world that God has allowed them to do. And some of them give credit to God. Many don't. Many believe that they've done it all. But I believe God is the one that has led men to discover certain things to help us. I mean, the discovery of penicillin alone is probably the reason we're all still here. So I believe God led these men to be able to discover such things and to come up with cures and things like that. But anyway, it's very important that we understand these books being key in our faith. Christianity and Judaism both, our entire faith system is based upon these books. If we took these books out, we don't have anything to stand on. All of our belief system, all of our doctrine and practice that we follow would just crumble because we wouldn't have any basis for it. Now, Christ, like I said, is the key figure or the key theme of all the Bible, but certainly the first five books, Christ is being introduced. We're gonna see in those that he is introduced as the Messiah, of course, and that's not talked about much until you get into the prophets, but certainly the picture of him is coming. We see the first priest mentioned in the book of Genesis, Melchizedek, which is a type of Christ, or literally may have been Christ in the form of this priest, but he is the central theme of all of the Bible, and certainly dependent to it. 1 Corinthians 10, 11 says, now all these things happen unto them for in samples, and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. And so we find even in Paul's writing in the New Testament, referring back to the beginnings that we have, and saying that these are the things that we use for in samples, examples that we live our lives by. Now, historically, All the books of the Bible, of course the first five books, are bound up in history. The history of redemption. One of the key books that I used going to Crown College was the Unfolding Drama of Redemption. That book, it's out in my study. It's this thick. I don't remember how many pages. It's over. I mean, I used it for the whole four years I was going through seminary at Crown. It breaks down the Bible in such minute detail. Scroggie is the author of that book. But it tells us the unfolding drama of redemption. The thing that God has put in place that we learn about starting the book of Genesis all the way to the book of Revelation of our ability to be redeemed under God. Because when man fell there in the garden, we call that the fall of man. When Eve partook of the fruit, she was beguiled by the devil. And then she offered it to Adam and he willingly sinned against God, rebelled against God by taking the fruit and eating it, knowing he was doing wrong. That was clear rebellion. So the Bible says that the first sin was created through Adam. It didn't say through Eve, it says through Adam. And so that was the fall of man. We talk about it, we sing about it, but that's when man fell. And from that moment on, the Bible tells us that sin brought forth death. And from that moment on, man had to work And so that's another one of the beginnings. We see the first work took place in the book of Genesis. And so these books prepare us for our blessed redeemer, for Jesus Christ. That's the preparation for it. And it's a history of prophecy. It's also called the philosophy of Israel's history. And it interprets the nation's relationship with Jehovah. Also, we talked about cosmic, you know, the sky, the planets, and all these things. This is where God's revealing himself to man. We will talk about that more here in just a little bit. But Revelation alone can sense why there's a creation. The Bible alone reveals why God created the universe. You know, men can write books about it, but men have no idea, because men were not there. When God created things in the beginning, there was no man. There was only God. And of course, we know God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all three were there. But there was no man there to say, this is what happened. And so, God and God alone knows exactly everything that took place. But there is a redemptive purpose in God's creation. All through, from the beginning of time, from the foundations of the world, God had all this planned out and understood what was gonna happen. It's said that the Pentateuch is superior to all other writings that's ever been in history, and I believe that to be true. So, Genesis, beginning with the book of Genesis. We've covered some key details so far. I should've gave you a notebook or something for this, but Moses, the author, the human penman. I always use that term, the human penman. It's not the author, God's the author. Moses, the human penman. It was written to the people of Israel, to the Hebrews. That's what they were known as at the time, the Hebrews. The date was between 1450 and 1410 B.C., approximate date. We don't know, can't place an exact date on when it was written. The key people in the book of Genesis is gonna be, of course, Adam and Eve. Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Joseph. Now, those last few names we read off there, we know those would be the founding fathers of the Jewish race. That's their fathers they go back to. They're the key people that's in the Jewish history, beginning with Abraham, of course. But these are the key people. And of course, we can't forget God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost being key features in the book of Genesis. Some of the major theological themes we're going to be looking at in this study will be, of course, the beginnings, the beginnings of earth, the universe, the people, beginning of sin, beginning of punishment, beginning of covenants, all these things. We'll be looking at God's salvation. We'll be looking at the key importance of obedience. We'll see people that are disobedient. We're gonna see the promises that God has made, the covenants he's kept. We're gonna see that first rainbow that comes in the sky. We'll be seeing the prosperity that takes place through all this. And so a lot of key theological things. Now I'm gonna give you this long list of these things that are first. And I went through and looked at all the first that's in through there, and I might have missed some, I don't know. But I'll give you these quickly and give you the reference. But, and you're gonna find in the book of Genesis, like I said, it's the beginnings, or the book of first, you can call it that. You're gonna see the first blessing. You're gonna see the first marriage. You'll see the first lie. You'll see the first, I didn't give you the reference today, Genesis 1, 28's first blessing. Marriage, Genesis 2, 21 through 24. First lies, Genesis 3 and 4. First sins, Genesis 3, 6. Look at that, in the first three chapters there in the book of Genesis, you've already got major things that's already happened in this world. The first divine curse, Genesis 3, 14 through 19. The first messianic prophecy, Genesis 3, 15. The first pains of childbirth, Genesis 3.16. The first labor, Genesis 3.17. God told Adam that the ground was cursed and there'd be thistles and he'd have to work and be able to have anything to eat. Whereas he once had it made. He once had everything at his disposal. He could have just reached up and grabbed fruit off the trees and ate it and been content. But because of sin, and labor is involved. That Adam, I tell you what, if it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have to go to work. He'd just have it great. And we see the first thistles, like I just mentioned. That's Genesis 3 and 18. The first sweat of a man's brow. Did you know that Adam didn't even sweat until all this took place? Can you imagine that? I can just go walk down the hallway, and I'll be broke out in a sweat, and it's cause of him. It's his fault. The first clothes. Men and women didn't have to have clothes back then. There was no need for them. There was no shame. There was no dishonor. There was no sin. There was no need for clothes. But the first clothes that were invented got the first baby born, Genesis 4.1. Adam and Eve weren't babies when they were created. They were human beings. They were grownups. And so the first baby was born in Genesis 4.1. The first religious offering that we read about, Genesis 4.3-4. The first animal sacrifice, Genesis 4.4. The first murder, Genesis 4.8. Another story of Cain and Abel. The first death, again, Cain and Abel, Genesis 4.8. The first farm, Genesis 4 and 2. Maybe everything wasn't so bad, I like farms. Genesis 4.2 is the first farm. The first shepherd mentioned, Genesis 4 and 2. The first city, Genesis 4.17. First time we see an instance of polygamy, Genesis 4.19. The first cattle herd, Genesis 4.20. John Wayne, be happy about that. The first music we hear about, Genesis 4.21. The first metal works, Genesis 4.22. The first boat, Genesis 6.14. It was a big one. The first rain, mentioned Genesis 7 and 12. The first altar built, Genesis 8.20. The first time man ate meat, Genesis 9 and 3. The first capital punishment, Genesis 9 and 6. The first covenant God made with man, Genesis 9 and 9. And of course, that was the rainbow. Which, by the way, is the first rainbow, Genesis 9, 12 through 17. The first case of somebody being drunk, Genesis 9, 21. Old Noah. The first world universal rebellion is where we see this universalism that's going on today. It began all the way back in the book of Genesis, Genesis 10, 10. Man got together, they think that they could rise above God, be their own gods, build a big tower, and that's when the first foreign languages began. Now everybody spoke the same language up to that point, and so God, the Baptists confounded their language and scattered them, and they scattered, they couldn't understand each other, so they ran away, started their own little groups, and that's where all these new languages started beginning. And that was in Genesis 11, six through nine. The first kings that are mentioned is in Genesis 14, 1. We see those that come along and start coming against the people of God. And the first war breaks out, Genesis 14, 1 through 2, with those kings in charge. One of them, I believe, his name is Cheddar Lomar. Cheddar Lomar, or something like that. Interesting names. The first priest, Melchizedek, mentioned Genesis 14 and 18. The first time we see tithing mentioned, Genesis 14, 20. The first time we see justification by faith, Genesis 15 and six. The first strife between Arabs and Jews, Genesis 16. Boy, that war has been going on a long time, hasn't it? It's going on today, big time. The first meeting between angels and men, Genesis 18, one through three. The first intercessory prayer, Genesis 18, 23 through 32. And the first case of homosexuality, Genesis 19, four through five. It's nothing new, friends. The first case of incest, Genesis 19, 30 through 38. You know it, Locke and his daughters there. The first answered prayer, Genesis 20 and 17. The first twins that are born, Genesis 25 and 24. The first dream that we hear about, Genesis 28 and 12, Joseph. First prison, Genesis 39 and 20. First famine, Genesis 41 and 27. And finally, the last coffin, or the first coffin. Have I been saying last? The first, the first coffin, Genesis 50 and 26. And so there we find, I mean, that's a whole slew of first things in the Bible, and I probably missed some. Does anybody think of anything that maybe we missed throughout that big list? There's a lot of firsts there. We can say the first mountains and the first oceans and all these things like that too, but all these things are the beginnings and so God started the nation of Israel to have a dedicated people that were only to him. He said he would be their God and they would be his people. And you've probably heard throughout history some of the Jews saying in defiance to God and shaking their fists and saying, why did you ever choose us? Just un-choose us. Because they have had a hard life. The Jews had a hard life. But God chose them to be His people, separated from the rest of the world. That's what they were. They were a separated people. He could have chose anybody to be his people. He could have chose, I don't know, the Egyptians. He could have chose anybody of his choosing. He chose these Hebrews, the Israelites, we refer to them. But he prepared them for a few things here. The reason was, of course, to proclaim to the world who God is, and by living a life of separation, they certainly declared that. And these people are different. The world could look at Pharaoh and his people could look at the Israelites, the Hebrews and say, well, these people are not like we are. And this God that they worship is not like all these gods we worship. And there were a lot of gods. Listen, these Israelites or these Hebrews at that time, when God chose them, they were just like the rest of the world. They were worshiping false gods too. They were worshiping suns and moons and stars. Cats and whatever else was around at the time, they worshipped those. Snakes and crawling things, creeping things, just like the Egyptians. And so God brought them out of that. That is one reason you find the children of Israel throughout all of the history of the Bible going back to worshipping false gods. It's in their DNA. They began by worshipping false gods. God separated them, said you come out from among them and be separate. Unto me, I'm your God, and I'm your God alone. You'll serve no other gods. There's no other gods before me. And they would keep rebelling. They'd keep going back to there. When Moses was gone too long, and they started going crazy, what? Build us a calf, and we'd worship it, and claim that this is what got us out of Egypt's bondage. And so it was always there in the back of their minds about these other gods. But God prepared them to tell the world about him and to tell the world about Christ. And this is where they missed the whole mark. I mean, these were people prepared for the preparation of the Messiah to come and redeem sinful man. And yet they did not do their job. But we see out through here an outline of Genesis, who are God's people. And like I said, Israel was during the time of false God worship. different gods, but they needed to know who the one true God was. We had a Bible school here one time, the one true God. I still remember the music from it. But one true God, and God is a spiritual being. You see, the gods that they worshiped before were physical gods. So you could look at a sun and say that's, we're gonna worship the sun, that's our God. You could look at a moon and say that's our God, the moon god. Or that's a star, and they'll worship the star. Or there's a fish, and they'll worship the fish. And so all these other gods, they had some kind of physical nature to them. You could see them, you could touch them, you could read about the things that they did, and all this. But this god, Elohim, this one's different. This one is... He's a spiritual being. You can't see him. You can't touch him. You can't do any of that. And so this is a very different God that these Hebrews are worshiping. No wonder the rest of the world thought they were crazy. They're worshiping an invisible God. And so they couldn't go back and say, well, our God is, you know, we can see him in that rock or something like that. They couldn't do that. And that is one reason why the times of the Jews and even early Christianity, when Christianity was around, they were considered atheists because they believed in an invisible God. And so they didn't believe in something physical that you could actually say that's a God. And so the God of the book of Genesis could not have been any more different than the ancient gods, than the other people worshiping. I mean, he was so much different than the rest of these other gods. And God expected his people to be different and live different lives, expected them to live a moral and holy life. He still expects that from his people. And I believe we lose sight of that. God says that I am holy, therefore ye be holy. Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. He expects us to live a holy and righteous life. And we seem to think that because of grace that we can live any way that we want to. And I've heard people, I live under grace. I can drink, I can do all these things because I live under grace, and it doesn't matter. Well, they've got a very distorted view of grace. God expects us to be different, and holy, and righteous, and moral. Genesis was written to show how different that the true God really is. He's not like your Egyptian sun god. He's not like the cat that they worship, or the owls, or whatever. They have all kinds of gods they worship. Our trouble, of course, results from the human rebellion, the first sin. Sin is person-centered. Everything about sin is arrogance. It's pride. Our sin originates from pride, thinking we can rise above God. That's what Eve thought. Satan had convinced her of. And so they believed, he said that God will, you know, you'll be just like God. You'll have the kind of mind of God is. And he knows that you'll, your eyes will be open if you partake of this fruit. And so our trouble began with the original sin. And our sin faces God's punishment. But our hope lies in God's redemption. Our hope is in Christ and Christ alone. Now, God chose Abraham and his family to make the blessings of redemption possible for everyone. And so it all rests on God's love and not on our human efforts. The plan of redemption is not based upon your human efforts, not based upon your works, even in the Old Testament when these works were involved. This was not for the plan of redemption that the works were involved. This was certainly just a shadow of what was to come through Christ. And so everything that, the plan of redemption is only made possible through God, but he chose Abraham and his family to begin it with. And only God makes and fulfills promises made to his people. Other gods cannot and do not. You may remember when Elijah was up out there on the mountain and they were trying to call down fire from God and they were calling on their bell you know, their gods to rain down fire and he wasn't listening and they all started cutting themselves and screaming and everything else. Well, their gods cannot fulfill any promises because he is not real. But only the God of heaven is able to fulfill promises that he has made to his people and he's always done it. If God promises something, he's gonna go through with it. Some of God's promises are relying upon what man does. God may say, you know, this is gonna happen if you will do this. Now in those cases, if man does not do what God says, God will not allow that promise. But that was already been foretold by God at the beginning. If you do this, then I will do this. And so God's rewards and blesses, he rewards and blesses those who are obedient to him. Abraham had to be obedient to God. He chose him first. He brought him out of that awful pagan land there, the Ur of the Chaldees, where they worshipped many gods. They worshipped mainly the sun. And he brought Abraham out of that. His name was Abram before it was Abraham. Abraham, when God changed his name to Abraham, he's the father of many, the father of many nations. So, how does the book of Genesis apply this day? I know we've not got to scripture yet, and we've only got 10 minutes. Introduction, friends, introduction. This is what we do. And so, Genesis calls God's people today to accept responsibility to God's purposes. Now, God has many purposes today. Our purpose is, of course, to propagate the gospel. That is our main purpose for God today, is God's people. to propagate the gospel, to live holy and pure and righteous lives, lives that are pleasing to Him, so that we can reveal to the rest of the world God through us. You see, Jesus has already came here and revealed Himself to man, and man rejected Him. And so we, as God's people, God's sons and daughters, We are to reveal God through our lives. We're that city on a hill, light on a hill there that's supposed to reveal the light of God. And so he does it through us. And so we see in the book of Genesis and when he chose Abraham to reveal to the world God, now we are God's people that are revealing God to the world. We need to place our complete trust in the sovereignty of God. I believe in the sovereignty of God. Now, anytime you mention the word sovereign or sovereignty, people get worried and confused and thinking, oh no, he's a Calvinist. Because Calvinists use that term a whole lot. Every message you've ever heard a Calvinist preach, he mentions the sovereignty of God. But I believe in the sovereignty of God. I believe everything is known to God. I believe everything goes through him. And I'm not saying that God makes everything happen, but he certainly allows things to happen. People say, well, if God's so powerful, why doesn't he destroy the devil? Well, he is going to destroy the devil. But God is allowing these things to happen right now. Sin, man is the one who sinned. Man rebelled against God. And so it's only by God's grace that we are even allowed to breathe another breath of life. And so God certainly allows these things to happen because man brought it upon himself. We're paying for the sins of man. Jesus paid that on the cross, but we place our complete trust in the sovereignty of God, and not in our intelligence, not in our abilities, because we don't have any outside of God. Now, we know that God makes us different from those around us, and those that don't know him, they're not the same as we are. They're different people. Everybody was created in God's image. We know that. The Bible tells us this. but and we should not do anything to hinder our relationship with God. We should not do anything to alter our image of God as well. So God comes to us, he reaches out to us and he speaks to us all through the power of the Holy Spirit through his written word, through our relationship with him in prayer. And quickly let me give you a timeline here for the book of Genesis. Of course, creation's undated. We don't know of the date of creation at all. Now, we can go back and say, well, it was 6,000 years ago, or it was 10,000 years ago. I'm a young Earth believer. I don't believe in this millions of years Earth. All that's concocted by scientists who are basing everything upon their abilities, but not what God has done. You see, God, they can go back and they'll dig up something and they'll say, oh, look here, look at the rings on this and look at the different formations and all this. Oh yeah, that means that's 16 million years old. Where are they getting that from? You know, when God created those things, he created them with that. So they have nothing to base any of this on. So we don't have a time date for the day of creation. The days of Noah, we don't really have a set time date that we can say. The birth of Abraham, we can kind of pin down. We've got some dates that we can kind of say, or circa dates. That means approximate. So, 2166 BC, about the time of the birth of Abraham. And then 2091 BC, Abraham enters into Canaan. He's called out of the Herd of Chaldees and entered into Canaan. 2066 BC is the birth of his son Isaac. And in 2006 B.C., Jacob and Esau. And in 1929 B.C., now remember, we're going were BC dates, so we're before Christ, so we're looking up to the time of Christ. So these dates are gonna get, instead of getting bigger, they're getting smaller because it's going toward zero. 1898 BC, Joseph is sold into slavery. Well, 1915, Joseph's born. 1898, Joseph's sold into slavery. 1885, Joseph rules in Egypt. And 1805 is the death of Joseph. And these are circuit dates. But that's where we kind of pinpoint back to. 3,000 years ago, we can go back to that area. Anyway, let's look quickly here at the book of Genesis, chapter one, verse one. Of course, it says, 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 water. 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 morning were the first day. So there we have the beginning of creation, in the beginning. So the Bible declares that God is, God's the self-existing one, the creator of the universe, always previous. And there's no argument from the scriptures to try to prove God's existence. Moses doesn't say, well, the reason that God was able to do this, because you know, You've got people like who's the Mormons that believe that God was created by another God Yeah, so Christianity we declare what the Bible says and the Bible just says in the beginning God. He's always been And he created the heavens and the earth Now, your kids in school today are not gonna hear that read in the classroom. I did when I was in the classroom. That's what we heard. We heard that. And then they also gave us the alternate theory of evolution, which, by the way, is still a theory. It's a theory. It's a man-made up. Theory means something that somebody believes or assumes or a possibility. And so, in my eyes, it's no theory at all. There's no possibility. The only possibility is what God has said, and the Bible says, in the beginning, God created. That's all I need to know. And they say, oh, it was a big boom. Well, if God wanted to make it in a big boom when he created it, that's up to him. But I don't believe that either. I don't believe there's any kind of big boom. I think God just spoke the world's existence. I believe God said mountain. I believe he said ocean. I believe he just said, you know, happen, and it happened. He said, hey, let's have some daylight in here. And there was daylight. He didn't have to have any big boom. But creation declares God's existence. And the world reveals Him to be the all-powerful and righteous God that He is. Now, there's several groups of people that are in denial, of course, of creation, of God's existence. You'll have the secular humanist. I don't know if you've ever heard that term. But their beliefs is that it's a worldview. It's not a God view, it's a worldview. Secular humanists, they look to a human agency. They look to science for some kind of knowledge. They don't look through religion for the knowledge of creation, but they look through science. Everything has to be scientifically proven. And so that's why it's known as secular humanism. They look to a human to give them the answers for creation. Then you have people called agnostics. I can't not stand that word. And these are usually the most conceited people you've ever been around in your life. Well, I'm an agnostic. Well, good for you. These are people that it's made no decision regarding God. You know, they're above that. I, you know, I'm not going to say, um, you know, God's existent or anything like that, but I'm non-religious. I'm agnostic, you know, They're not really considered atheists. Atheists deny any existence of God. Agnostics may, in the future, believe in a God. They cannot know for sure if God exists or not, and they're open to the possibility of it, but they're always, just can't hardly be around these people. And then you have the atheists. These people, they reject the belief of any God. And they say, eh, there's no God. No God exists. And they have already come to that conclusion. I don't believe in God. There's no God. I don't believe. The thing that I can't understand is why they're so upset that we believe in God. Why do they care? If they honestly don't believe in God, why do they care if we do? And they spend all their time trying to get God out of the world. I'll tell you why it is, because they do believe in God. And they hate Him. And they want to get any, thing that even mentions God out of this world, because they hate God. They're God-haters. There's no such thing as atheists. And then there's deists. These are people who believe in God, but not really in religion. They believe that God created everything and left everything alone, and he got no other hand in it. It's all up to us now. And most people believe that our forefathers of the United States were all deists. No, they wasn't. They were Christians. They might have been some deists, but they were mainly Christians. And so the claim for God's existence is a dilemma for anybody that denies his existence. They don't know what to do about it. And of course, we that believe in God, we believe it fully and wholly, and we can just tell people as a matter of fact, God, God created it. That's all we have to believe and understand. We don't have to try to prove it. God's already proved it through his word. And so there's the bell. We'll quit with that, and that's a good place to stop. And we'll get back in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 next week, Lord willing. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, God, thank you so much, Lord, for this study today. God, I pray that you help us in it. Lord, that you'll direct us through the books of the Bible, through Genesis, God, and give us an understanding of it the way we need it. God, give us the ability to be able to stand and declare the world who God is and who Jesus is. And God, may your word just do a work within our hearts. Help us upstairs, and may we worship you in spirit and in truth and give you the glory for everything. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.