As we come to the Word of God this morning, as we encounter people in this world, our friends, our family, strangers, work colleagues, you will discover, and perhaps you are here this morning and you are discovering for yourself that you have many questions about life. Why am I here? Or how did I get here? Or, why do I have to experience the things that I am experiencing? Or, what does the future hold for me? You may be thinking about the world, and you may be thinking, well, why is there suffering? Why is there conflict? Why is there sickness? Why is there tragedies that occur? Why are all these problems in the world roundabout? For some people, these things can weigh very heavy upon their minds and upon their hearts, and it brings them very low. For others, they may consider them for a bit, and then they brush them off, and then they get on with living, and it's only at certain times that those kind of deep questions may surface and may be pertinent to them. But asking these questions really gets to the whole nub of who we are and what the purpose of life is all about. Well, I'm not proposing to give you a three-point bullet answer for each of those questions, but rather to begin to unravel some of those questions by going back to the beginning. Now, I'm sure most of us, if not all of us, have watched the film or watched the musical, The Sound of Music, and in one of those songs, Maria is teaching the children the song, Do, Re, Mi, and it begins with those lyrics, let's start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start. And in that song you have a very sensible piece of advice for us all. If we want to know about something, then we are to look at its beginning. If you want to know where the river begins, then you need to look at its source. You might be thinking about a piece of literature, a book that you have read. If you want to know what's going to happen, you read it from the beginning through to the end, because if you start in the middle, you won't have a clue what's gone before, and it won't make much sense what's going to happen afterwards. Well, this morning, we're going to go back to the beginning. And we're turning to the first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1, verse 1. And by the end of the service, I am sure that each of us will be able to memorize and be able to recite this verse. We read in God's Word, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. This is how God has chosen that his word should begin. And he does this by beginning with the world itself. This is the starting point for everything. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. As we think about our world, there is a start point to its history. It has a definite beginning. As we look at other ideas that people have of how this world came to be what it is today, then there is a problem because it doesn't really have a definite start or a definite beginning. If you look in many scientific textbooks, you have the idea of evolution being put forward. And what they do is you say, well, how did we get here? Well, we came from a kind of primitive species, like an ape kind of creature. And then they go, well, where did that come from? Well, it then comes from something else. And where did that come from? Well, it came from some kind of fish species. And where did that come from? Well, it came from some kind of primeval sludge. And where did that come from? and all you're doing is going back and back and back and back, and then they say, well, it happened with an explosion. Well, why did that explode? And you were left with an answer, well, it doesn't really have a beginning. But when we think about our world, we have in God's scriptures, the word of truth, a very definite beginning for this world. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And as we think about that, this is very important for us to discover and to understand that there is a beginning to this world and therefore there is a beginning to our experience and to our existence. And as you go through the Bible and you get through to chapters two and three, you discover that the world is not as God had created it, but it's now been tainted and ruined by sin. And then as you go through the rest of the Bible, you are discovering how God is going to remedy and put right all that has gone wrong in the Garden of Eden. So this world has a beginning. But the next thing that we notice is this, God. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. So the second thing that we see from this opening verse is that the commencement of our history at the start of our beginnings, God was already there. God was present. To put it this way, the great architect of the heaven and the earth was already existing. And as this world springs into life, God is here. We read about God being there before all things. In Colossians 1, verse 17, it speaks about Jesus Christ, the second person of the Godhead, being there before all things. God is the author of life. He is the author of your life. We are perhaps delving into realms that our finite minds cannot adequately comprehend or even adequately express. Before the earth, in its present condition, before the heavens were brought forth, God is there and God alone. There was nothing outside of the Godhead. Everything that is there other than the Godhead is created at some point, whether that is angels or human beings, whether that is the earth or the planets, whether that is the sun, the moon or the stars. All of them have their origin in God, in that God is the one that orchestrated their beginning and their creation. God is. He has no beginning and he has no end. And that reminds us of one of his attributes, that God is eternal. He has no beginning and he has no ending. There's not a time, if you go back in history, that you could find the start of God because he has always been. And likewise, we can never get to a point where we get to the end in the other direction and say, well, God is not here because God is no longer, because God is from everlasting to everlasting. He has no beginning. God has no birth. God has no commencement to his existence. Just as he has been, he always will be there. He is always there. If we think about our own lives, we had a beginning. when we were born. Prior to that, our conception. But we had a beginning. And humanly speaking, physically speaking, there'll be a time when we'll be no more. Our bodies will be laid into the grave. And everything we see around us, there was a time when it wasn't and now is, and there's a time when it will not be any longer. Yet with God, he has no beginning and he has no end. God is eternal. But God is also described as being Jehovah or Yahweh. He is the one who is self-sufficient and self-existent. When Moses is going to speak to Pharaoh, he says, well, who shall I say sent me? And God says, say, the I am that I am has sent me. And so what that reminds us is that when we think about Jehovah, when we think about God, is that he is self-existent. He is entirely independent. He does not require, he does not need the help of any other thing. God is the originator and he is the ultimate source of all life. As we think about ourselves, somebody once said, I remember my tutor at school saying, put a thought for the day every morning. One of the thoughts for the day is this, no man is an island. And perhaps in this individualistic age in which we live, we perhaps think that we can do things ourselves. We're independent. We can do what we want to do. We can say what we want to say. But that's quite foolish in human levels because we're not independent. We can't drive as we want down the road. We will be hindered by the laws of the land. We will be hindered by what other people are doing on the roads. We'll be hindered by the weather conditions. We'll be hindered by the car that we drive. We aren't independent to do what we want and how we want it. In our families and in our societies, we are dependent upon other people for everything that we do. And as we think about the ultimate dependency that we have, it is upon God himself. God is the one that brings all these things to be. And God, unlike us, does not need anything or anyone to do his will or to help him in his work. And that is quite a staggering and a humbling realization Because so often we feel in our relationship toward God that we are somehow indispensable, we somehow have great worth and value. Well, we are, because God has chosen it that way. We are because God has set his love upon us. But God could fulfil his purposes and plans without our aid. One of the pictures that God uses in his word of his relationship with this world is of a potter with the things that he makes. If you do any pottery, you get a lump of clay, you mould it, you fashion it, you decide what you're going to do, and then you go and put it in the oven to make sure it gets hot. But if you make a mistake, what does the potter do? He either starts all over again or he squashes it up and discards it and begins something different. Perhaps you're doing some work at school, whether it's art or whether it's some kind of written work, and you're doing it and you think, oh, this is made a mistake. So what do you do? You get your piece of paper, you scrunch it up and you throw it in the bin and you start again. You have the prerogative to do that. God as our creator could have done that with us. He doesn't need us, and he could have started all over again. And if we think that we have some kind of indispensability toward God, then we are mistaken. God is self-sufficient and self-existent. Whereas we, on the other hand, we couldn't live a second without God. Whether that's the food and the drink that we have, whether that's the air that we breathe, or whether it's life itself, we wouldn't be able to do it had God not determined and not God allowed it. So God is eternal, God is self-sufficient, but we also see in this verse how that creation was brought about by a plurality In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And it's interesting when you see this word God, and in the Hebrew, the Elohim, it is often a singular word, but it can be used in the plural. We don't read how that many gods created the world, but rather in the beginning, God, singular, created the heaven and the earth. But then if you note down to verse two, you see something different. 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. The Spirit of God is at work. And as we've been thinking over the last few weeks regarding the incarnation, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ into this world, we discover that when you look at John's Gospel and the way in which he introduces that wonderful book, he describes how Jesus was there at the beginning creating all things. In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God and the word was God, the same was in the beginning with God, all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men. So you have there the way in which there is one God, and yet there are three persons. Come to 1 John chapter five and verse seven, the same writer that we've just looked at, he would say regarding God in verse seven, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. So we have this Introduction. It's not a full revelation yet, but it's certainly an introduction of one God, and yet more than one at work. And as you come through the rest of the scriptures, you see the triune God being revealed, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so, when you look at God's plan for salvation, when you look at God's work in this world, God is at work in the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit. And when you see God's plan and being worked out in salvation, you see God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit at work. In the beginning, God. How does that make us feel? How do we react and respond to this? Well, it should leave us thinking of how big God is and how small we are. How great on one hand God is and how inferior we are on the other hand. We see this great God bringing this world into being. We see on day one, light is created. We see on day two, this great expanse being created above the earth and below the earth. And so there is this heaven and this earth being formed. You see the waters being brought into one place and you see land coming and everything that we can eat and all the vegetation being brought forth. And then on the fourth day those lights are designated as being the sun and the moon and the stars. You then find on day five that sea creatures and you find the birds of the air being created. Then day six you have the land-based animals and then human beings being created. God does this by just the word of his mouth, by just the declaration of what is to happen. God says and it is done. God therefore to be worshipped and to be reverenced. And if God has brought all of this into being, if God has spoken and everything has come to pass, it has implications for us. This is the God with whom we have to do. This is the God who is to be worshipped. And if God is the one who's created all things, it stands to reason that God is the one who dictates how this world is to be run and how our lives are to be organized and managed. We are subject, therefore, to him. It has implications for us. If we try and ignore God and live this world without reference to him, then we're going to get ourselves very confused and very misguided. The Bible speaks about those who deny the existence of God. In Psalm 14, verse 1, it says there, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. And there are many, many people today who would arrogantly and confidently say, oh, I don't believe there's a God. Well, how did this world come to be? How is it that we are here? Why are we here? What are we to do whilst we're here? God is the one that's brought all these things into being. God is the one that was there. God has no beginning, but he also has no end either. If God is eternal going back that way, it stands to reason that God will be eternal going as far as we can in the other direction. And God, as you look at what he has done, the power, the design, the intelligence, you see the wisdom, you see the might, you see the organization, you see everything that occurs in Genesis chapter 1, we must fall down and say, this is God and he alone is to be worshipped. But coming on to another word that we have in this opening verse, this word created. Moses is the author of these words, but God is the one that put them into his mind and heart to write. When you read that word created in verse one, it means Out of nothing, or ex nihilo. Out of nothing, this world was brought to pass. This isn't just an interchangeable term that you can use with the word made, it's very different. If you look later on in Genesis chapter one, you see there where God creates man. But it's in verse 26, you see these words being used, let us make man in our image. And then you see what God does. He takes the dust of the ground that was there and he makes a human body and then he breathes into Adam and he becomes a living soul. And the way in which Eve is made is that a rib is taken out of the side of Adam and then she is made from that. But God brings all things to power and all things into being by his word. There weren't building blocks there at the beginning with which God decided he's going to do this and do that. It's not like a massive Lego set that God says, well, I've got it all now and now I'm going to make what I want to make. Out of nothing we read these opening verses, God brought forth light, and God created this world, and God brought forth grass, and God brought forth the animals. God makes and creates. Everything in this world has been created or made by God. The writer to the Hebrews, he sums it up very well. He says, it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. If God could do this, then he is the God that is to be feared and worshipped. The power that he has, and therefore the justice that he can administer, is quite remarkable. As we live in this world, we see that there is antagonism toward the things of God. And that has occurred right back in the beginning. In the Garden of Eden, you see Satan there in disguise of the serpent. He has done everything he can from the beginning all the way to the present time of trying to diminish God. Reduce God down. And at the same time, trying to elevate himself or those he's trying to beguile and trying to influence over. And so there is this great thing that's occurring. God is brought down and men and this world are elevated. And we can see what happens with that. We don't see God as we should. We don't recognize that we're coming before the God of glory, and we don't recognize that we're coming before the God who, in a moment and with an utterance of his voice, could condemn us and confine us to neverlasting destruction. But even for us as believers, it has an implication. We have to think about who we're coming before. We've gathered to worship God today. We come week by week to praise him. Do we really recognize this? Do we sing like that? Do we read God's word like that? Do we pray? Do we recognize that we're coming before the God who is so awesome and powerful? We can very easily fall into the trap of looking at other professing believers and say, well, they don't do it right. They're not doing it appropriately. Well, when we think about ourselves, we have to ensure that we recognize and we are coming with that true fear of God before our eyes. We find here in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The final part of this verse is the things that God would create. Some people have concluded that verse one is just a prelude to what is going to happen in the rest of the chapter, it's sort of a summary, God created the heaven and the earth, and then in verses two and following we have a more detailed aspect of what is going to occur. Well, I would suggest that what happens in verses 1 through to 4, or 1 through to 5 rather, is all that happens on the first day. There was nothing and then God created a formless earth and created the heaven. In other words, the kind of building blocks were being set forth for the world in which God is making. Now, the Bible does speak about various heavens, and we shouldn't get confused about that. Well, we have in Genesis 1 and verse 8, we have the first heaven, and that's really the atmosphere. It's the air that we breathe, it's the space that we have between this earth and the universe. The second heaven is really the whole universe or the whole expanse of space. Job 9 verse 8 describes how the Lord stretches out the heavens and in Psalm 102 verse 25 how that the heavens are made by him. Well, this is the place in which the sun and the moon, the stars, would be placed into that heaven. But then if you read in 2 Corinthians 12, verses 1 and 2, you have there Paul describing the third heaven, and that is the abode of God, the dwelling place of God. So when we talk about believers, they've gone to heaven, we're thinking about them going to that spiritual heaven to be with God. As we think about this verse, so much has already begun and so much has already taken place. But God here is building this wonderful world in which we're going to live. And he's creating the heaven as the expanse of universe or space with our earth in it. And then later on, he'll build the atmosphere in which we breathe. when you look at that sky at night on a clear night. There's been some really clear nights recently, and you've seen the moon and the crescent shape and Venus just above it, and it's been spectacular. But if you try and count those stars, it is something that blows our minds and takes away our thoughts as to how wonderful it is. And yet God has brought all these things into being by his word. A hymn writer wrote these words. O Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the works thy hand hath made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe displayed. And then the chorus goes, then sings my soul, my saviour God to thee, How great thou art. How great thou art. As we conclude, as we look at Genesis 1, verse 1, we are beginning to see, I trust, that God is the one with whom we have to do. He is the one that has made me. He has made the world in which I live. And so there must be some recognition of Him and worship of Him. And if God has made me, then the next question comes, well, how can I know Him? How can I know more about Him? How can I discover more of Him? Well, as we read from Psalm 19, we have the creation saying some things, but then we have the Word of God that reveals God in His fullness. And if God has made me, I'm therefore accountable to him for everything that I do and everything that I say and everything that I think. Psalm 19, mentioned it earlier, but it also refers to being forgiven of our secret sins. Those sins that we perhaps do that nobody else knows about, or nobody else has seen, or nobody else has thought that we could even think about. God is there and he sees everything about us, including those secret sins. And if God is so great and God is so powerful and God is so holy and God is so just, how can I come to him, knowing how sinful I am? Well, as you go through the scriptures, you discover the reason why the world's in a mess it is because of sin. and you then discover what God has done, his son has come, bearing our sin, taking our place, enduring our punishment, so that we can have a restored relationship with our creator. God has made me, then I am accountable to him for all that I think and say and do. And we know him through his words, through his Son Jesus Christ who is the express image of his glory. Well may the Lord help us and may we indeed