Published: May 21, 2023 | Speaker: Tim Freitag | Series: God as Creator - Part 2 | Scripture: Genesis 1-2
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out again I'm going to try not to preach to the choir too much a lot of you have homeschooled or were homeschooled or have just dug into this stuff I think a lot of you have thought about literal creation and I would Hazard a guess that many of
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you have at least looked at or familiar with the enuma Elish or the Epic of Gilgamesh right and people look at those and and sort of discuss and again if you want it's all on the website our website
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Chuck's Genesis study does a good job digging into a lot of that stuff and actually going through the comparative Notions of it but just this to say where we look at them in history where we look at the actual timeline of physical history the
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anumalation the Epic of Gilgamesh were both written down before Moses was writing down the pentateuch has of course LED some to say oh Moses was cribbing from these other
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I'm not going down that road I don't think any of us think that Moses was borrowing from his contemporaries or from the stories around him but it is to say we look at these other two texts
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that exist out there they're older than the written Revelation that we have from Moses Genesis 1 and in fact I would say that much of Genesis
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existed in the understanding of Israel as an oral tradition before Moses wrote it down
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okay because taking as an example of the burning bush burning bush what does God say to Moses in the burning bush burning bush he says I am the god of your fathers I am the god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob
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and does Moses say who now there is an understanding in the people that there was some Narrative of their history that has been passed down
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okay so it existed in this oral tradition um you know the The Exodus I'm not going to go into the whole timeline of that we talked about that a little bit in our Exodus study but the
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Exodus was probably happening in the 1440s-ish BC roughly speaking um saw a quote and I want to read it for
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um this is I was listening to something about Cyrus Cyrus the Great who came about a thousand years later he is the Cyrus that we read about in in the scriptures but this was in relation to
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his one of his conquests it says when Cyrus entered Babylon in 539 BC the world was old more significant the world knew its
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antiquity its Scholars had compiled long dynastic lists and simple addition appeared to prove that Kings whose monuments were still visible had ruled more than a four
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Millennium before yet earlier were other monarchs sons of gods and themselves demigods whose Reigns covered several generations of present-day short-lived
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men even these were preceded the Egyptians believed by the gods themselves who had held sway through long eons before the universal flood universal flood the Babylonians placed Ten Kings the
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least of whom had 18 600 years the greatest 43 200 years other peoples knew this flood and told of monarchs nanakists of ionium for example who
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reigned in the pre-diluvian times the sacred history of the Jews extended through four thousand years modest as were their figures when compared with those of Babylon or Egypt
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they recorded that on one pre-diluvian patriarch had almost reached the century mark before his death Greek poets chanted a legendary history which was counted backward from the time
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sorry when the genealogies of the heroes ascended to the gods each people in each Nation boasted of its own creation story in which its own local gods were the
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Creator and so this is not to say that we're going to follow their timelines this is to say that each of these oral Traditions had these markers did they not they went back to the flood as a
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marker they went back to those who ruled before the flood many of you have heard this concept and I tend to think it's valid enough which is you look at the both the longevity
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and the might of the pre-diluvian men that we read of in scripture well it sure makes sense where you get a lot of these weird stories about the quote-unquote demigods coming up in the various ancient
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various ancient mythologies and and narratives of how their own history arose so we can look at these things and say all right where I'm going with this is
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the Revelation to Moses is to the people who are fleeing Egypt Egypt also had an idea of the flood Egypt also had an idea of those who had come before Egypt also had a history and
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a concept of Creator and so inevitably being the slaves of these people for many generations 400 years some of this aspect of these common elements would
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have been in the minds of the people of Israel in fact we see frankly throughout the history of the people of Israel how much they struggle with not having a quote local God not having a physical
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representation to carry around with them and so it is in this we see that the Ancients knew something of their history we recognized the Egyptians in particular both new history and frankly
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the Egyptians are probably the most scientifically Advanced of those that we have a record of in this period we have evidence of probably brain surgeries that were happening at this now how
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successful they were who knows it could have been tapioca pudding afterwards but there is at least evidence that they were scientifically looking into these things they understood things about the working of the human body and had
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pursued science even while having this sort of idolatrous aspect of the Gods moving through these things all of that to say this is the context
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into which Moses is then writing down the definitive Narrative of God as creator okay and so it's in no small part
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because of the theory of evolution in um day and age in the last hundred years or so huge amounts of weight has been put on
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Genesis to take up the battleground of
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sort of that's about as reasonable an answer as you're going to get so Genesis is not written to be a book of science
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Genesis is the opening of The Narrative of the self-revelation of God who created all things including the science in which we exist right we talk about sometimes the laws of the universe those
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laws were put into motion by God those laws are upheld by his command and his order and his direction of these things but Genesis is not written primarily as
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a scientific Treatise it was not written to scientifically debunk what the Egyptians were saying about the origin of the world it was written
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to tell the people of Israel the truth about their origin the truth about the God that they were supposed to serve okay so Genesis is not scientifically
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um I was talking to to one of you I think it was Aaron about this and some people if you look at Genesis 1 in your translations if you have the new King James or the King James version it may
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refer to the heavens actually as the firmament and there was an idea in certain eras of history and some of you that have studied medieval history will know you know we have this this like The Pillars of Creation idea where things
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were actually at holding the heavens up physically structurally this idea of this firm body of Heavens through which the water occasionally came down and we
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know of course we're so much smarter than they were we know it's not firm it's not the firmament it's just you know clouds and stuff up there it sure does seem really firm to the
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Apollo Astronauts when they're coming back at it at several hundred miles an hour and if you hit it wrong you're going to bounce back off into space okay in fact the world is very our world is very strange in the fact that we have a
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firm Shield holding all of our air in when we talk about all of these other worlds and all these other possibilities of Life they're missing something aren't
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they they ain't gotta heavens for the most part or if they do it's all they have right okay so we have a uh again
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as an example one of the writers I was reading said reading said all right if I say to you the sky is blue all the kids in here are nodding at me immediately well yeah sure well
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scientifically it sure ain't it just looks blue because the way it's bouncing at your eyeball and yet it's still true to say the sky is blue isn't it and this is what I'm getting at with
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Genesis is Genesis is it's not scientifically inaccurate it also wasn't written trying to give you a scientific Treatise about how all of the material came into existence the point is that God brought the
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material into existence we are going to go on and talk about it a little bit but as an example this is what I'm getting at that difference between saying okay
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the firmament and understanding what is meant generally versus saying like well this is exactly how the electromagnetism of the earth holds the atmosphere and you're like okay Genesis wasn't for that
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another related concept and this was the thing that that caused a lot of consternation in in the Medieval Era and particularly as you go through the scripture there
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was this aspect that was called and I'm going to have to learn my lesson and not talking right at the same time
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the three-story house as we go through the things that happen with human Souls throughout the record of scripture you end up with this concept of the three-story house you have the heavens
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Earth and you have hell or sheol and we're not going down the etymologies of those today you have a three-story house and you
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have all of this stuff bound up in it and it caused a certain amount of consternation when scientists started to say well maybe hell isn't literally directly under your feet
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and maybe God doesn't literally dwell in the clouds above your head through a bunch of theologians off their game for a little bit I guess they didn't do all that well in
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English class because instead of understanding that the heavens above is to say that it's Transcendent that it is blessed that it is good because up is
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really sort of metaphorically talking about the goodness the benefits the glories of it and the fact that hell is down is to say it's underneath it's been
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subsumed it's Dishonored by being put at that lowest level it doesn't mean that God is literally in the clouds above you and that the Damned are literally under your feet and yet this has caused people
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issues in the history of the church symbolically we can look at these things and understand these things there is actually a different mode of this that we're going to talk
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about when we get to Temple which is probably going to be next week but we can look at this again
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the three stories and that God dwelling in his Temple
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inhabits his creation with its stories so we'll get into that as we go forward next week but again see the symbolism see the way that we're looking at these things again it's not
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to say that this is scientifically where all of these pieces have to line up it is to say it isn't designed or written to be inaccurate in fact it's
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fairly popular among those who like to go on these apologetic excursions that none of the history of the Bible has ever actually been proved wrong there's the famous story about the the Hittites
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famously not existing even though we see them in the scriptures right up until somebody found basically the whole Kingdom underneath a hill oh whoops there they are okay so
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let's work with the symbolism here job understood the symbolism job in chapter 26 as he is answering back he says
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speaking to God how you have helped the powerless and saved the arm that is feeble how you have counseled the unwise and provided and provided fully sound insight
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to whom have you uttered these words and whose Spirit spoke through you the dead tremble those beneath the waters and those who dwell in them sheol
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is naked before God and Abaddon has no covering he stretches out the north over empty space he hangs the Earth on nothing he wraps up the waters in his clouds and
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yet the clouds do not burst under their own weight this one frankly is really hard I have tried to explain to my children a number of times we've gone through all of the science about how it
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is that the water gets up there and doesn't just come dropping right back on your head and it's still really weird to look look up at a cloud and say that's several tons of water floating by up
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there job got it God has wrapped up the waters in his clouds and yet they don't burst under their own weight he covers the face of the full moon spreading over
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at his Cloud he has inscribed a horizon on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness what are we going to read in Genesis 1.
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Genesis 1. that he separated the light from the darkness the foundations of Heaven Quake astounded at his rebuke by his power he stirred the Sea by his understanding he
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shattered rahav shattered rahav by his breath the skies were cleared his hand pierced the fleeing serpent indeed these are but the fringes of his ways how faint is the whisper we hear of him
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who then can understand the Thunder of his power his power did everybody track with me on this one right we're sort of talking about this aspect of
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aspect of I will talk about the literal creation and it is useful to understand because we do live in a world in which evolution is taken for granted it does impinge on our theology we
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talked about this very briefly in our introduction but the Theology of federal headship the Theology of just man as being an image of God all of that gets obliterated if we
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accept that God was not literally the creator of the world we read the scripture in the spirit we read the scripture the revelation of
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God in the spirit in which it was given right we seek when we read these books to understand to whom they were given and why as we sit and we hear
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who was it and what was it that God was trying to say um understanding it in the spirit in which it was given is frankly I think the exegetical hermeneutic of all of our
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investigations of scripture it's been our policy I don't think I'm saying anything new to you guys per se
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a few weeks back we had a somewhat Lively discussion on one of these Wednesday evenings about the approaches to scripture that sometimes you go through things and you're doing all of this very detailed work and and reading and and where is Jesus in all of this
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this can go two directions I love Spurgeon I think Spurgeon was excellent and far more brilliant than I but every now and then you read one of his sermons you go hmm he had a saying somewhere where he said
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um you know it's my job basically to beat a path from wherever I am in the passage back to the cross find the PATH if there isn't one we're going to cut through the Hedgerow and make one make one that's not quite where I'm going with
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this I don't really agree with that particular aspect of it and I related this story I don't know how many of you've read the old book by Bob
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thumbberg why geese fly farther than Eagles he tells a story in there at one point where he was teaching Sunday school to a class of Elementary school-aged children and they weren't really following the
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analogies that he was building with his stories of how people had done this and that and the other thing but they sure did understand as good Sunday school children that if you didn't know the answer to a question
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what's the right answer to the question Jesus we just throw it right up there you can't tell me that that's wrong okay there's a book that was written in the
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last couple of years called Jesus on every page I talked about this a little bit when we talked about job in which I frankly did argue that job is understandable as a type of Christ
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there are certainly pitfalls and Hazards to this right everybody's sort of smiling at me on the other hand there are also pitfalls to what I think we have seen a lot historically in Reformation theology which is
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we have also left the road through the Hedge Road Hedge Road we are way out in the weeds and you can't even see the cross from here okay we have gone so far into the
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details in the context and the egyptology of it all that where is Jesus
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we do have sight lines back to our Savior from here don't we we can see Christ in Genesis I mean um John did
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John did we read John 1 a little bit last week but is of course classic John 1 1 in the beginning was the word the word was with God and the Word was God he was in the
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beginning with God and all things came into being through him apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being in him was life and the life was the
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light of men the light shines in the darkness and the Darkness did not comprehend it comprehend it Jesus that word incarnate was the agent
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and again not in a Mormon way but was the instrument of God's creation we read that right there in John
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nothing was created but through him so we keep front and center our our Adoration of God as Creator we keep it front and center our Adoration of Jesus as this agent
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immortal uh unending Eternal part of the godhead so we look for him we understand him in this and we also can see him probably more towards the end of our study as he
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came to the Earth he still was the creator of these things wasn't he I mean what did he say to the the Pharisees when they said we have Moses for our father the Creator looked around at his matter and said
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I raise up children of Abraham out of these stones these stones it's not hard but the Creator had compassion the Creator was here to save
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so we keep front and center Our Savior our Adoration of God as Creator and we also bear in mind ourselves images of him intended to magnify his glory intended to lift him up and to
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understand him better and to help one another understand better it took me longer than I thought it was going to do I'm going to read out of Genesis 1 just since we're exegeting this let's
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read the first couple of verses here Genesis chapter 1 beginning in verse 1 I read the new American Standards so there will be no firmament in mind
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in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth now the Earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep the spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters and God said let there be light and there was light
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and God saw the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness and think of job's aspect there he scribed the boundary between them
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God called the light day in the darkness he called night and there was evening and there was morning the first day the second day God said let there be an expanse between the waters to separate
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the waters from the waters so God made the expanse and separated the waters beneath it from the waters above and so it was so God called the expanse sky and there was
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evening and there was morning the second day the third day God said let the waters and the sky be gathered into one place so that the dry land may appear and it
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was so God called the dry land Earth and the Gathering of the waters he called seas and God saw that it was good while this has given us our first not this one I'm gonna erase this one now
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although if you if you've watched some of those deep sea documentaries
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first three days now we have our three fold we have our three stories of our house but what's the other thing that comes up here again and again and I think most of you have you have seen this what is God consistently
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reflect on when he makes his world it was good the incredible goodness of his creation
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that there's goodness in every act this tremendous goodness of God we talked about this sorry to keep referring back to my job study but
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there's a Theology of the humiliation of Christ right that the Creator humbled himself to take on flesh to enter into his creation that way to be subject to all of the forces that we're subject to
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write and it's true Doctrine it's it's good to know and to understand and I think you see a lot of it actually in job modeling that humiliation of Christ taken from an exalted position placed as a man
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we also look at the foreknowledge of God in those things right that Christ knew all of that before he came before he was incarnate we see that tremendously In The Garden of Gethsemane as he's preparing frankly
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I think as he is becoming sin on our behalf that he's dealing with all of that in his foreknowledge of it do we think about the foreknowledge of God when we talk about creation
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what's at the beginning what was there to foreknow to foreknow do you think about the fact that God built all of this he looked at his creation over and over again and said it is good
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is good but what was coming sin would come into the world and what was good would now become corrupted that what was beautiful would now become
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dimmed though still beautiful knew what his world would undergo and he
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still chose to make it beautiful he still chose to make it good he still chose to reach out his hand and place all of these things knowing what it
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would be subject to I mean some of you are School teachers some of you you know have children every now and then there's things where you think like well that's as good as that's going to
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get because the kids are going to tear it apart it apart some of you have had problems recently mentally or emotionally or spiritually going about the day-to-day aspects of
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life looking at the futility of it I mean we have a whole book of Ecclesiastes with the futility of all of this stuff this stuff God looked out at his world as he's building it knowing
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that this stain would suffuse it permeate all the way through the goodness of his creation and yet he committed himself to make it not okay
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not good enough good in fact we're going to read when he makes man what is it very good
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so when you find yourself in those moments of like um this is as good as it's going to get I think this is part of what you can you can understand when you read in you know do all things as unto the Lord will as a
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reflection of the Creator did the creator phone it in did the creator make it good enough to serve us well the Creator made it good
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it good he put his energy into it to make it good even though as far as we can read I mean we're actually not told the distance between the end of creation and
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the the sin with the tree it could have been much longer but most people look at it as it probably happened pretty quick The Narrative at least takes us from one to the other like it was like the next
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um so his creation did not last eternally good eternally good it was corrupted by sin very early on
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and yet in all of that knowledge and all of the foreknowledge of God he still he committed himself to to goodness to make it good to make it beautiful to make it that even
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that even however many centuries later that job was standing upon the Earth looking at it looking at the horrors out of the Seas that God has chained up looking at all of these things he can recognize
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all of those aspects of God out of it he can recognize the goodness of God he can recognize the glory of that dimmed creation he can recognize the power that upholds all of it again back to
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Abigail's point from last week as we move through talking about God as creator I don't understand how anybody read the Bible and and holds the sort of
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clockmaker view of creation that God put it into motion and then just kicked it off into the universe or maybe as job would say hung the world on nothing he's upholding all of this stuff by the
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word of his power is he not and so not only did he commit to making it good in the knowledge that it would be corrupted he
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committed to sticking with it to sustaining it to you know what are we called as Salt and Light to do with this Fallen World Fallen World we're called to slow the Decay aren't we
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to preserve to push back against the effects of sin in the world aren't we
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we what is salt I mean what is the purpose of salt when Jesus uses this analogy what does salt do in cooking in the ancient world it's tasty great it's a preservative and what is light
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supposed to do it's supposed to push back the darkness isn't it so we are called to preserve Beauty goodness Mercy to reflect our creator in
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our part in upholding this world that he created and made good any questions or comments as we wrap up this morning
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still good you know if he said it's good forever it's kind of interesting for me to understand what God says that's a valid point
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think about what does the psalmist say when he reflects on creation the heavens are telling of the glory of God what does it consist and we're going to get there hopefully I'm trying to follow
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the timeline a little bit but again and again and again in the Psalms the various psalmists hold up God's Mighty Acts
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some of those are in the political history of Israel defeating this or that King the vast majority of them are creator establisher of the mountains of the Seas
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of the foundations of the Earth we look out at this world and say boy that's good right I mean I just saw something a few
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weeks back weeks back some of you guys are mechanically inclined mechanical engineers the cogs on machines those gearing where the teeth fit together turns out there are
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grasshoppers out there that literally the same way the teeth of the cogs fit the legs to make that spring that like the joints of their chitin are made just like gear teeth we found it in the last
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like four or five years God thought of it way before we did right tozer's aspect you know thinking God's thoughts after him there is so much of
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Creation in fact there's a whole series out there about um the way animals inspired various kinds of engineering like woodpeckers improved the way that we make motorcycle helmets and so on because of the shock
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absorption in there God designed all that stuff it's still good it's still beautiful and yet we know it's not the same as it was at Eden
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we read that this the whole world groans waiting for that consummation right the entirety of God's creation is anxious to
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be remade again perfect
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there's some comparative going on there in the narrative there's an intensifier at the creation of man is it meets its purpose beautiful it's
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beautiful it's but it's not very good yeah so that I think that's an intentional and we'll talk about this as we go forward but but what is it that's so particular about man
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he Bears the image of God we are frankly the only truly sentient creatures aren't we I mean octopuses are really smart really smart some of you that are School teachers might prefer octopodes I don't know
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um Aaron
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stands directly opposed to the mindset of the people from whom they were coming that's a good point and I don't know how much we'll touch on that going forward but there is that that aspect one they had those graven
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images in front of them all the time in Egypt and in his narrative man Bears the image of God but also it's not all that long before we can get the Ten Commandments and we're told what
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not to make graven images not to make anything supplant that image of God the invisible God who's supposed to be before them who's supposed to go with them like the idea of bearing an image
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is actually deeply important to the ancient world worlds and cultures we talked a little bit last week about how often when one country conquered another you take their Graven image I'm going to
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yoink your God and I'm gonna go put him in my museum of gods that I've conquered so you know the the idea of bearing image I think sometimes maybe we get a little
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um metaphysical with it than we ought to when we think about ourselves as bearing the image of God both of those things are true we do have the metaphysical truth of
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truth of the form the shape I mean Christ came in the form of a man he was incarnated as a man it was not incarc incarnated as any other form of created being
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and so yes very good when he makes man so the answer to your question and maybe we'll pick it up a little bit next week because we're running out of time but he made it good
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he made it very good when he made man both of those things remain true the creation is both good and Fallen
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that man is both very good in the in the bearing image of God and yet and is also very Wicked in his Fallen State and that
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frankly carries us all the way through the narrative doesn't it that carries us all the way from the beginning to the
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God's intent to reclaim His Image in man we're talking about the aspect of Temple as we follow this narrative through where God will make his name to dwell folks we live in the church age where did God make his name dwell today
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in believers in believers inside of us as the image of God okay so we're going to look at the the tremendous length that he goes through
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to make the Tabernacle the incredible effort that's made to make the temple the incredible difficulty that they have making a second temple those are all gone those were all
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prototypes types I should say God is not going to build another temple in Jerusalem
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this is the day Numa a little bit and we're over time but when you get to revelation there's description of Temple I'm gonna try to get there as we go
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through Genesis through Genesis it's a reflection of creation there's a reflection of the ordered Universe in that Temple
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don't go out and try to build a model of ezekiel's Temple ezekiel's Temple it's not the point okay we're not going to do qubit conversion in this class the point is that God dwelt in his
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creation knowing that it was about to be subject to sin to sin and we're going all the way through the narrative as he prepares a place for his name to dwell and when we come to that new creation and we
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stand in his presence we are still the body we are still the United image of God the image of Christ who is
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our head our head even in that new creation so that's where we're we're headed with all of this is to talk about how this reflects and I guess I need to hurry up
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hurry up as we go through the study here um but to see again I think sometimes people look at the timeline and go okay creation here Revelation there there's not much in the middle I think there's
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an awful lot of filling in this sandwich do you look at the way that job and the psalmists and the prophets view God as
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I'll speak for myself I'm not always that great about walking around the world and going I have used this and I probably shouldn't use this phrase God's green earth sometimes I use it a little bit
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sarcastically what is God's green earth it is his creation Jenny and I watched a movie some weeks back in a Japanese movie where the like they're literally
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the plot is invoking the Kami the spirits of the earth of the river of the Sea of the mountain of the water and it's like it's like you're so close
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and so far um do you walk around do you look at these things when you go hiking do you see like God built all of this for his glory for
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us to Marvel in it for us to Magnify Him to us to look at that and go wow that's good even as tainted as it is it's still good
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let's close in a word of prayer as we go to Magnify Him together our heavenly father we are grateful doesn't seem large enough a
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word but we are filled with gratitude to be among your people we are filled with gratitude to be among your people today gathered together as the body of Christ
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where your name is made to dwell we ask because we know that you are the only one who can do it that you will use us to magnify your
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name today name today that you would stir up that spirit that you have put within us to truly praise you as you ought to be praised that you would anoint the sacrifice to make it acceptable in your sight
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the two would find yourself glorified here today and frankly father in all churches that pick up your word to deliver it that you would overwhelm
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preachers with the power of your word and by the power of your spirit that it would be delivered mightily to those who need to hear and
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to receive it that we ourselves would receive it in kind and that the
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massive magnanimity of your glory would cover the whole Earth today we ask all of these things in Jesus name