In the Beginning God…
Understanding the One true God of the Bible Series
“Bereshit bara Elohim” the English transliteration of the Hebrew words that begin the Bible.
The Bible is the inspired (written by God – Elohim), inerrant (contains no errors), infallible (can be completely trusted) Word of God—His divine revelation of what He wanted men to know about Him. It goes beyond His revelation in nature (His creation). It is a history book contained within the most amazing and unbelievable love story ever written about and, most importantly, lived out. Your part in that love story is still being played out.
The Protestant Bible is the collection of 66 books written by the Holy Spirit thru 40 or so men over 1500 years. Our Old Testament has 39 books. The Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) has 24 books but the same content – they do not split books and combine others). Our New Testament has 27 books and took a lot longer for agreement on which books were truly Spirit inspired (those that would be in the “canon” of the Holy Bible). I am not going to discuss the canonization process today.
Creation vs Evolution
Confession: I am a conservative Bible believing creationist. That means, in addition to holding to what I said about the Bible above, I believe the Creation story as God gave it to Moses.
- Ex Nihilo (Latin for from nothing – question for the evolutionists—What went bang?
- Six literal days of Creation (evening and morning) I will explain briefly
- You need to know that no Jewish rabbi or leader ever questioned this. The early Church and believers throughout history never questioned this including Luther and Calvin.
- But more than that Jesus never questioned it and spoke often from the OT as the Bible it is all they had then. Here are a few examples: Jesus speaking
The Fundamental Issue with Evolution. It is the wisdom of man challenging the word and wisdom of God. It sounds like science that is over most of our heads. They try to intimidate you with things most people neither understand nor care about so they just say they must be right. If they can lead us to believe that evolution is right and creation is wrong, they can take God out of the equation and say He also is a fabrication.
Except for one thing…What went bang? How did life form? Single cell? Nucleus? If life can form ex nihilo in the evolutionist’s mind yet they rail on Creationists as fools?
If it did how, did one cell with one DNA strand, assuming it formed one out of nothing, mange to mutate into thousands and thousands of species even over millions of year. That cannot happen-has not happened, and they have never proven otherwise.
Kind does not change its kind. God spoke to how His creation led to so many species. Genesis 1: 21-25 “after its kind”
There is proof in the Bible and in nature that dinosaurs lived with men. But we do not have time to drill down on that today. You do not have to trust me when I tell you this. You do have to trust God and take Him at His word. Bereshit bara Elohim.
Let’s move on to WHY God created everything up to that point. We can state two reasons.
(1) For His glory and (2) the last of His creations. Actually those are co-mingled.
CREATION – GOD SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST
Read Genesis 1: 26-27
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them...“
In OUR Image:
- “Our” – the Trinity. All were present at Creation.
- God Elohim Spirit v2 c Jesus
“For by Jesus all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him. Colossians 1: 17
- To help explain IMAGE let’s first look at Chapter 2:7 as it gives more details:
“Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
“God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4: 24
“The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, Romans 8: 16
We are spiritual beings – the only ones of God’s creation. God is Spirit and we have a spirit within us that relates to Him. Our bodies die our spirits are eternal.
Feast on that! You were created in the image of God. He considered us higher than any other created being or thing. He breathed the very life into our lungs and gave us dominion over all of His creation on earth. All the prior work of His creation was for His last and best creation – Adam and Eve. He prepared a perfect place for man to live and work. BTW all were vegetarians at that time even the animals.
I want to leave you today with the third of God’s marvelous intentions in His creation. V28 is a continuation of v 27 and reads HE BLESSED THEM…
We will learn next time about the fall of man and how this blessing turned into a curse that plagues all mankind today. But for now I just want you to know that God your Creator is your Heavenly Father and it was always His intention to bless His children. He does that now thru Jesus Christ our Risen Savior. Amen.
