Seeking for the help of the Lord, I direct your prayerful attention to Genesis chapter 1 and the few words in verse 1. In the beginning, God. Notice those words. The whole verse reads, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. I want to convey really right at the start, what is my main thought and main message this morning and it is this that if God is at the beginning of a thing and especially in our call by grace in the work of conversion then it shall be well he will finish that and we can have great comfort when we see God's hand whatever it is in our lives, that he is at the beginning of it. And the word of God here begins with this great statement, this great word, in the beginning, God, and then follows with the account of creation, the beginning of this world and all that is to be done all that was to be done and performed and is yet still being done, until the Lord closes this earthly scene, returns again, and time shall be no more. The Lord, right at the very beginning of this earthly scene, He began it, and all that is going on, all that is happening, is all under his almighty hand. We think of some of those occasions like the children of Israel. And we think how God began with Abraham. He called him out of the Chaldees. He gave him the promises. He brought his seed as he had promised into Egypt. He brought them out again and he brought them into the promised land. None of that came from Abraham or Isaac or Jacob. God began it, and every step of the way, God's hand was in it. It is that that I desire to bring before you this morning, that we might see and watch God's hand and know this great comforting truth, of the beginning with the Lord will end with the Lord. Well, to direct our thoughts this morning, I first want to speak of that which in God has no beginning. Might seem strange to begin with that, but I do want to highlight that which has no beginning. And then that which God is and must be the beginner of. And then thirdly, the comfort that God has been in the beginning of a thing. But firstly, that which in God has no beginning. And we must say that God himself has no beginning. We read in Deuteronomy, the eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. Paul tells the Colossians that he was before all things and by him all things consist. There was never a time when God did not exist. There will never be a time when he will cease to be in existence. Eternity is a mystery to us. God is a mystery to us. If we could understand him, he would be a little God, wouldn't he? If we could grasp those things, everything of God, then he would be a small god. When we think of our children beginning to learn, how little they know about those that are fully learned in a particular aspect of something. How little they would know about a doctor, one that has trained at university after their schooling for six years, and they're a doctor. But that doctor, after he's done all that six-year study and he's beginning to practice as a doctor, he doesn't know anything about engineering. He's not a professional engineer, nor is he a professional farmer or nurseryman or an architectural engineer. And we think of so much in our lives, We specialize. We take all of our lives to learn one aspect. But God knows everything. Eternally He does. He never had to begin to learn. Never had to learn wisdom. He is wisdom. He hasn't had to be given power. He has all power to give. And maybe really think of the greatness of God as really an evidence for God himself. Those who think that they must know everything really want God to be such a one as themselves. Our Lord has said, Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such as thyself. It takes away reverence, takes away greatness. If we were to go into the woods near us and we'd see one of those ant mounds, a foot or two high, teeming with ants, what would those ants know about our lives? What would they know about travelling 12,000 miles to the other side of the world? They could impossibly know anything of that. And yet in God's sight we are like that. like the ants, being like as nothing, knowing nothing, knowing only really what God himself has chosen to reveal and set before us in his holy word. May we really strengthen our belief in a mighty, eternal, ever-living God. In Psalm 90, we have the prayer of Moses, the man of God. And that begins like this. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, wherever thou hast formed the earth and the world, for even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. How great is God as he is set before us in that way. Then we think of how Jeremiah sets before us the love of God. Not only God has been and is eternal, but his love is an everlasting love. He says, yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn Thee, and we love Him because He first loved us. The love of God has, like God Himself, no beginning nor an end. He is love. The eternal covenant of God, that covenant of grace, the covenant in the Lord Jesus Christ, His people are chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, in eternity past. And we have in Hebrews 13 and 20, now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant. May you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. The Lord's covenant was what comforted David. He said, Though my house be not so with God, yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure. though he make it not to grow. He felt his weakness, but there was that which was unchanging in God, that covenant, that agreement between God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, of choosing, electing a people unto himself. to redeem them, to save them. You know, when Paul writes to the Ephesians, one of his main purposes in writing is to tell those believers the blessings that they had and where they went back to, how they began. And he says in Verse 3 to 5, on the first chapter of his epistle to them, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will. A sovereign, eternal God, the Lord saying of his people, Thine they were, and Thou gavest them me. That which was done, that which was settled before the world, in our God. And then our God begins this world. He brings the world into existence. And all that is done in this world, He is the author and beginner of that which is done. And I want to then look secondly at those things of which God is and must be the beginner of. And I want to begin with the creation here, the giver of life. We take this away, we take away really the whole meaning of the word, we take away the whole meaning of this world, we rob God of His honour and glory, it is vital that we begin reading the Word of God and believing the Word of God with this very first verse, this very first statement, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. A Christian's worldview starts with that statement and everything else what man has devised, has thought, has schemed, has written, all must be brought to the bar of God's Word. Where was man in eternity? Where was man when God created the heaven and the earth? What is man? Formed out of the dust of the earth. Fallen man that will lift up his fists against God, that will reply against him and say, God didn't make the heaven and the earth, it just happened. It was just an explosion. And out of confusion came this wonderful creation. God tells us in Romans 1 that man shall be without excuse because of himself, because of himself as the pinnacle of creation. I came across a book the other day, daughters when she was studying things to do with anatomy, with nursing, great big thick book and just thumbing through it and seeing the human body and seeing all the parts of it, vascular system, the nervous system, all the workings of the body, how complex, how wonderful. Sometimes we do not really consider it. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. You read Psalm 139, when David the psalmist, he speaks of this. Curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth, formed in the womb, and how wonderfully he sees God there. Most solemn thing that any, with any profession of religion, let alone those who have none at all, should ever deny. a creating God. It strips away everything. Here is the beginning. In the beginning, God created. And always through His creation, we see it here, such a wonderful order. The first three days of creation, the Lord made places. He made the heavens. He made the sky and the sea and He made the dry land. That's the first three days. And then the next three days He populates them. And He puts the sun and the moon and the stars in the heavens. And then He puts the fish in the sea and the birds in the air. And then He puts the beasts on the ground that's already prepared and already burdened and then he creates man and puts him in the garden. If you were having a pet, if you were making an enclosure for an animal, you'd make the enclosure, you'd put everything in it that it needed, and then you'd put the animal in. You wouldn't get the animal and put it in a... a bare enclosure and then start working around it to make it good for them. And we see God preparing and then putting into that prepared place what he has prepared for it. And so we have the Garden of Eden, man put into that. We have Canaan and the Israelites put into that. We have heaven I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive you unto myself. And he prepares that for a prepared people. God is a preparing God and a God of great order. We see it at the beginning of the Bible, the beginning of the Old Testament in Genesis. And when we come to the beginning of the New Testament in Matthew, we have the generation of our Lord Jesus Christ. traced from Adam to David, and from David to the carrying away into Babylon, and from the carrying away into Babylon and to Christ. Fourteen generations of beautiful order that's set forth. And so God has the days of creation set forth, and it struck me that when he comes to the seventh day, that is the day That is the day that is blessed and sanctified. None of the other days were. All his works were pronounced good. But this is the day the Lord hath made. You might say, but do not we, we gather on the first day of the week? The Old Testament, there is God's work, seven days, and then he rested. But when the Lord rose from the dead, he rose on the first day of the week. The principle is still the same. One day in seven is given wholly to the Lord. And it was that first day that the Lord appeared to His people and in the churches. That is the Lord's day. John says in Revelation, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. And He is the Lord of the Sabbath. And there's a spiritual meaning, too, for that order. Because with the people of God in the Old Testament, you might say under a covenant of works, they were to work six days. They're the sacrifices, the ceremonial law. It was hard. And then they could rest. In the New Testament, our Lord Jesus on the cross declared, it is finished. He finished the work. So we, on the first day of the week, we rest. We remember the Lord's finished work. The same as here. There was on this sanctified day a remembering the finished work of all the days of creation. But we remember the finished work of our Lord on Calvary. And then the remainder of the week, we work out. that which God has brought in. Our works we do not do to merit salvation. Christ has done that at Calvary. What we do is to show forth the praises of him who hath called us out of nature's darkness and into his marvelous light. So it is the Lord that begins in creation. It is a good thing if we were to, and I'm not going to as it were, go through it fully this morning, there's not time to, but if you took the first three or so chapters in Genesis, which is a book of beginnings, and we find the creation, we find the one day in seven principle, we have marriage, the Lord began marriage, it's not an institution of man, it is God that has instituted marriage, He gave the law, the law of God. There's the beginning of the law. Thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Sin is the transgression of the law of God. I always remember that. And so sin is set forth here in these chapters. And then the fall of man, we have That here, a beginning, the very beginning of the Word of God, the secret, why there's the curse, why there is death, why there's sorrow, all of that is set forth here in God's book of beginnings. But then we have the beginning of the promises, the seed of the woman that should bruise the serpent's head. And right through the Old Testament, we have promise after promise. You and I cannot rely on a promise if God has not given it, if he has not been the beginner of that. And the same with hope. How can we hope if we do not have a basis for that hope? Hope thou in God, says the psalmist when he is cast down. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance. and my God, because there was a beginning in God to hope upon. And so in the word of God, in the beginnings, we have God beginning. We mentioned Abraham. And of course, in Genesis, it sets forth the beginning of Israel, the nation of Israel. It begins with the calling of Abraham, the promises to him, the promises of Christ through him, and then the forming of the nation in Egypt, and then bringing out of Egypt. In the beginning God, Genesis. May we look upon the book of Genesis in a very different way when we have this very first verse impressed upon us. Here is a book of God beginning things. God bringing things to pass. God establishing the world as he would have it to be. And then when we think, going further on, of the church of God. Paul, when he writes to Timothy, he speaks of the church of God as being the pillar and ground of the truth. When our Lord spoke, and taking from Peter's name a cephas, a stone, he says, upon this rock, not meaning Peter, but meaning himself, upon this rock, I will build his church, my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And Paul, he writes and he says, that other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. And it is that foundation is the foundation of the church, which is the church of the living God. And it is God that is set forth in the church, he's set forth the apostles and teachers and pastors and elders. They're not man's device at all. The government of the church, the order of the church of God, is ordered by God. Yes, God has not set forth, well, we've got to have three hymns or three psalms or a reading of a particular length or an order, but the emphasis is in the word of God. Preaching is the way that God has said it will please God through the preaching, to save them that believe. Go ye into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be damned. God has begun that. He has begun the preaching. Go ye into all the world. It is with his command and his commission. And so with the church of God, It is the Lord that has purchased it, not a building, but a people, known, loved eternally, and gathered ones, gathered to each other and gathered unto Christ, gathered as a body, a gathering on earth through all the scenes of time, but a gathering in heaven, an innumerable multitude. May we join with the hymn writer and desire that we might be with them now and through eternity. It's a great blessing to be able to view what God has begun and to see God's plan and to see his hand ordering it. And in our services, the word of God as well, to be prominent, and the singing of worthy praise, and the offering up of prayer, and I believe we have got the balances right. Some churches feel they've got it wrong. They have perhaps 90% of singing, very little of the reading of the Word of God, very little preaching. But the balance must be those not prescribed in the Word of God, based upon the emphasis that God places upon the Word and upon the preaching and upon praise and prayer. But it is the Lord's Church, and He has begun it, may we never despise what God has begun and ordered, or perhaps rearrange it and say, well, we don't like God's order, we're going to change it and make it look something very different. There's the great, great danger since COVID that that is what is happening in many, many situations. Many contend with online church or not gathering together at all and choosing that way when they could gather together as God has commanded. It has been, of course, a great blessing to those that cannot gather and those that are afflicted, or those that must stay home with the children, or those where we can minister where they have not got a pastor and at a great distance are great blessings, but how we need to be careful. It's such a new thing, very mindful of that in the last four years since COVID, four years since we first had it, and the many changes, especially amongst our churches and we need to stand back and think, is this according to God? Has he begun it? Has he ordered it? Is he using it? Or are we misusing the blessings that we've been given and not walking in what God has ordained in his word? God must be the beginner of the church of God. Then we think of the new birth. We sung of that in our middle hymn. And really it's in that sense that I was drawn to the subject this morning. How vital that we be born of God, born of the Spirit. This is the work of God, that ye believe in him whom God has sent. The hymn writer says, "'Tis Christ makes a believer and gives him his crown." And it's vital to believe that God is the beginner. He is the one that passes by. I pass by thee when thou wast in thy blood, and when thou wast in thy blood, I bid thee live. Now, when we read this account in Genesis, And it struck me, and I've often marveled at this, the first day, the Lord said, let there be light, there was light. There was no sun, there was no moon. The Lord is the source of light. But he didn't just leave it like that. On the fourth day, He put lights in heaven, the sun and the moon. He put the memes there. He gave those things that we might say, many might say, that's nature. And don't look past it to God putting it there. But we could make the other error and say, because God has put it there, or because it is not God, then we will despise or not look to that means. And maybe with the sun and the moon, that's not so evident. But when we think of preaching, when we think of the word of God, if one was to say, well, We want God's word to, we want God to be in the beginning so that we are born of God, that he begins with us. But overlook the means and the way that the Lord will begin. He's chosen to use his word. Remember the parable of the rich man and Lazarus? The rich man in hell, he thought, that if Lazarus was to come from the dead and to appear to his brethren, then they would listen to him. They would be born again. But Lord said, no, they have Moses and the prophets. If they hear not them, neither will they be converted, even if one did rise from the dead. And we should then remember that it is the Word that quickens. This is what God has ordained, that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. The keeping of God's people as well. They are kept by the power of God, but it doesn't stop there, through faith. Through faith. So God's people are kept. It is God that keeps them. It is the power of God that keeps them. But he uses the Word, the Word that is preached and the Word that they read when temptations are set before them, a standard is lifted up. The Word of God is lifted up as a bar to all that is wrong, as an anxious light to all that is right. And the Lord gave the Word. That's vital for us as well when we're thinking of the new birth to remember that the Lord gave the word. He was the beginner. He is the author of the word of God. It is inspired, it is infallible, but he uses men. He used Moses, he used Paul, he used James, Matthew, 40 writers, penmen of the word of God. But God is the author. Every word of God is pure. And the Lord said, Though heaven and earth pass away, they will pass away, yet my word shall not pass away. Forever, O God, thy word is settled in heaven. And so one of these things that is vital that we believe and know that God is the beginner of, and must be, is the word of God, is the church of God, is the new birth. a sinner that is brought to spiritual life in the Lord Jesus Christ, one that feels that they are guilty, they have transgressed God's law, they have broken God's law, they have rebelled against Him, they are worthy of death, they are worthy of condemnation, is those that are under that sentence and made alive to it, aware of it, They're then led to look to the Lord Jesus Christ, that they might have life through his name, through what he has done at Calvary, to put away their sin, to suffer in their place and to give unto them eternal life. Remember, that's another beginning of the Lord. I give unto them eternal life. They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. He is the beginner. And may we truly look that the Lord would work that in us and never despise where we are able to see that the Lord has. But there's other things as well. There's tribulation and it struck me in reading the account with Job and all the tribulations that Job had, that Job went through. How did it begin? How did it begin? And if we turn to that in the very first chapter in the book of Job, we read, a day came, verse 6, And the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. Now here's the beginning. The Lord begins by saying unto Satan, Whence cometh thou? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro in the earth, from walking up and down in it. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job? There is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil, hateth evil. And it's from there God began it. God began by bringing to Satan's attention Job. And Satan then just accuses Job that he really only fears God because he is blessed all that he has. God's put a hedge around about him and he thought, and it is true, it would be the case with many on this world, that all the Lord had to do was to touch what he'd given him and he'd turn around and curse God to his face. God gave Satan permission then to touch what Job had, including later on his own health. And Job did not curse God. Job went through that trial, the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. But the beginning of this book of great tribulation, great sorrow, that Job went through, the Lord began it. Not Satan, not Job, not chance. It was ordered by the Lord. And we think later on with our Lord, when he was baptised, what began? His temptations in the wilderness, He was driven out, not by Satan. The Holy Spirit brought Him into the wilderness to be tempted, to be tried in the desert, to be proved He truly was the Son of God. So tribulation, the greatest instance of it, great trouble in the Word of God, and we see God is the beginning. And then we have providence. God's ordering of things in the earth, in Lamentations, of course this is written by Jeremiah after the destruction of Jerusalem. Who is he that saith, and it come at the pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? The Lord is in control, not chance, not the devil, not man. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Our text, is the beginning of the world. Our Lord has said that he'll return again with great power and that shall bring in the end of the world. And in all that then is instituted and begun and carried on through the world is by God, in the beginning God. Paul says to those at Athens who were idolaters, In Him we live and move and have our being. Not only does God begin, but He maintains His creation. And though He has given the sun, the moon and stars, ordered all of these things, yet He is the sustainer of them all. May we be able to see this in the beginning, God, that he be a very real reality to us, that it be a very firm belief to us that nothing can be done but that God permits and orders it. We'll want to look then, lastly, at the comfort that God has been in the beginning Perhaps to begin with what first was a comfort to me, thinking of the new birth, the calling, the time that I went from hating the things of God to loving the things of God. The time when I had no desire, no concern for my soul, no realisation of any need at all. and the Lord changing that, to have a great concern and a great need. Much ignorance, great ignorance, a great feeling of ignorance, but now a hearing ear, an appetite for the Word, and a need of salvation for my own soul. That is a time to be always remembered, where God begins, where God has begun, And the comfort is in Paul writing to the Philippians, he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ. If God's work is not in the beginning, and you might say, well, doesn't God begin everything? He is the order of all things. But you know, Devil is the great imitator, and he imitates God's work. And men think that they can do God's work and that they can just, at their own command, raise themselves from the dead. No, this is the work of God that ye believe in him whom God has sent. Paul, we said, to the Ephesians, told them what blessings they had. And he likened the power that makes a believer, that brings him from darkness to light, the spiritual death, the spiritual life, to be the same power that raised up Christ from the dead. And it is the same power. Every believer, everyone that is a truly a changed character, that are brought out of this world and to whom this world then becomes a barren place, a wilderness, and that makes them pilgrims and sojourners that are looking for a heavenly country Those that have undergone that change, God has done that, he has wrought that in their hearts. And he will always have a respect to the work of his own hands. He has formed his people for himself. This people have I formed for myself, they shall show forth my praise. So where we are able to discern that beginning, however small it might be, but the reality is that the Lord began, and where the Lord begins, then he will continue on, and there'll be signs, and there'll be evidences of that teaching. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go, I will guide thee with mine eye. In Hebrews, we read of the summary of those that have faith. It was they saw the promises afar off, those promises given by God. They embraced those promises about being taught by God, about Christ coming, putting away sin. All the promises of God are yea and amen in Christ. They embraced them and they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims in the earth. Our Lord said, they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. It's the most solemn thing to have those who profess Christians, and yet looking at their lives, they live very worldly, carnal lives. And in their conversation, their likes and dislikes, their clothing, their whole attitude is no different than the world. God's people are a called out people When God began with his people in Egypt, then he made it very clear they were different than them. They couldn't sacrifice in the midst of Egypt. They had to be called out. Come ye out from among them. Touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you. You shall be my sons and my daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. And so that is the command of God. God does it, God brings out, God brings the separation, gracious separation, come ye out. He doesn't say go out, he says come out, come out to me, like Noah. The Lord was in the ark, come thou, and all that thou hast into the ark. The Lord bids his people come unto me, all ye that labour are not heavy laden, I'll give you rest. It's the Lord that speaks these promises, that speaks these words, that begins this with His people to raise up hope as He speaks to them. Now when we believe that God begun with the creation, that God is in control, what a comfort that that is. In this world with all its tribulations and all its troubles, when we believe the tribulations of Job, The Lord ordered them, appointed them for good. The Lord has said, in me you shall have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. That is, the Lord has control in those great troubles. He hasn't ordained that they be taken away. I pray not that those take them out of the world. but that thou wouldst keep them from the evil. This is the Lord's doing, this is the Lord's way. And so may we in our providences, sometimes we can get into places that are so low, so hard, so many afflictions, but go back to the beginning. What brought us here? What brought us into this particular affliction? What brought us to this home? or to this place or under this ministry, who is the one that ordered that? May this morning there be a going back, a looking to the beginning, looking to the source, looking to where the Lord began with us. Maybe the Lord used some very strange means. Maybe He even used people that were not the Lord's people. Maybe even use those that said they were Christians, but they weren't really Christians, but he used them. And then he brought us from error, and he brought us to the truth, and he made us to be able to say with the Apostle Paul, what I am, I am by the grace of God. So the Apostle's going right back to the Lord. He was called by God's grace, free and merited favour of God, and that's why I am what I am. God began with me, and so there is a comfort in that, a real comfort in that. Though he might be in perplexity and trial and difficulty, the Lord knoweth. He knoweth the way that I take. When he hath tried me, he shall bring forth me as gold. The Lord orders all things after the counsel of his own will. And it's a blessed thing to be able to look back and see the Lord as a God of beginnings. In the beginning, God. And may we be able to add that which the Lord has done for us and how he has begun with us. Begun by grace and begun in providence. And that be a resting place, a help and a plea. Lord, as thou hast begun, do carry on. Lead me not, lead me not. Be thou my guide, my teacher, my refuge, my help, my all. Bring me at last to be with thee in heaven. And then when thy creation that thou hast made is all rolled up, is all finished, that thou be to me my eternal home, eternal refuge in the beginning God. May the Lord bless this word to us each this morning. Amen.