Genesis 1:26 (NASB)

²⁶Then 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.” 

John 1:1 – 3 (NASB) ¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 

Colossians 1:16-18 (NASB)

¹⁶ For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 

¹⁷ He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 

¹⁸ He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. 

 Hebrews 1:1-3 (NASB)

¹ God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 

² in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. 

³ And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 

“Before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58).

Transcript (may contain transcription errors)

Book of the Bible, Genesis chapter one.

So you should have two sheets of paper in front of you.

Hopefully, everyone has one of you.

Don’t we have some extras to that?

Does everyone have a copy of the notes?

It’s two sheets.

One is essentially a syllabus on the first 11 chapters of Genesis.

And the second one is notes that I want to talk about a little bit this morning.

So while you’re opening your Bible to Genesis one and making sure you have the notes,

let me just give you a quick synopsis of how we’re going to do this.

Here’s how we’re going to do this.

Genesis is divided into essentially two parts.

At least we’re going to divide it into two parts.

Part one is going to be the first 11 chapters of Genesis.

Part two is going to be the remaining 39 chapters of Genesis.

And what I like to do is go through Genesis like this.

Rather than going verse by verse, line by line, chapter by chapter,

we’re going to approach Genesis from, I’ll call it, 3000 feet.

We’re going to look at some major

individuals, major sets of people, major groups of people.

And here’s how we’re going to do that.

The first group will be Adam and Eve.

We’re going to spend a couple of weeks on Adam and Eve.

Then we’re going to talk about Cain and Abel.

And then we’re going to talk about Noah

and Nimrod, Noah’s in chapter six,

Nimrod’s in chapter 11.

Those are first 11 chapters.

We’ll do that in the month of March.

Then we’re going to get into the family of Abraham, Abraham and Sarah,

Isaac and Rebecca.

Jacob and Rachel and Leah.

And then we’re going to talk about their kids.

Like there’s this guy named Joseph.

Jamie may know something about Joseph.

We’re going to talk about Joseph and that will take us to chapter 50.

So we’re going to cover those seven groups and we’re going to focus on

where we find Jesus and Genesis.

That’s right.

You didn’t think he was there, right?

The name Jesus, he may not be there by specific name, the way we enunciated.

But he’s there in the divine names.

He’s there in Elohim.

He’s there in El Shaddai.

He’s there in Adonai.

He’s there in Jehovah.

He’s there in Yeshua.

Jesus is there as part of the divine Trinity

that is responsible for the creation of all things.

Amen.

Exciting, I’m looking forward to Genesis.

We’ve taught it before back in the early 2000s.

We’re going to do it again in a different approach with Jesus being the primary focus.

Let’s pray.

Lord, we just thank you for this time together.

We thank you for your word.

Please teach us to grow, teach us to learn, and then teach us to share.

May you be glorified today in our service.

And may your people be edified in Jesus name.

Amen.

Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 reads as follows.

Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our lightness 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 upon the earth.

May the Lord add a blessing to the reading of his word.

In that one verse, just just kicking Genesis off and the one verse.

We see three references to a plural pronoun, three references.

What are they, Pastor Will?

They are let us.

There’s the first plural pronoun.

Here’s the second one.

According to our, that’s the second plural pronoun and the third one.

Let them and our image and the third one is according to our lightness.

Who is the hour?

The hour is God the Father.

God, the Son and God, the Holy Spirit.

There at the very beginning before all things.

And the Bible lets us know in Hebrews, chapter 11, by faith,

chapter 11, verse three, we understand that the universe was formed

at God’s command and that we now see that we did not come.

Now, see that we did not come from anything that can be seen.

God made us in what’s called fiat creation.

That is something out of nothing instantaneously.

He made us, he created all living things.

He created us by himself.

He did not require evolution.

He did not require 17 billion years.

He did not require masses of amount of time and chance.

And of happenstance for creation to come into being.

God did it in a matter of instant creation.

At least in six days, six solar 24-hour days.

Genesis lets us know that we were created.

Let me read one other verse in Mark, chapter 13, verse 19 that talks about

the creation that God used as a means of creating and providing all things.

It says in Mark 13, 19, turn, if you will, for in those days shall be affliction,

such as was not from the beginning of the creation,

which God created until this time, neither shall be.

What Jesus is saying there in Mark is that he’s letting us know that revelation,

the book of Revelation, we studied revelation, not revelations, not plural,

but singular, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

It harkens back, ladies and gentlemen, to Genesis.

And God said, things are going to be different,

but they’re going to follow a pattern that was established in the book of Genesis.

And the book of Genesis, God destroyed the world by water.

After people resisted the preaching of Noah for 120 years, God destroyed the world by water.

He made a promise evidenced by a rainbow that he would not do it again by water,

that the next time the earth was destroyed, the next time the world rather was destroyed,

it would be by fire.

It would be the destruction that Peter talks about.

And second Peter, I believe, it would also be something that God gives us plenty

of warning about the way he did for the people that lived in the days of Noah,

who had tons and tons of time to get right.

And they chose not to get right.

Like we have today, we have tons and tons of time to get right with God.

And people still resist the call of the Lord.

They still resist the call of repentance.

And spite of the fact that God gives us chance after chance after chance.

Amen.

A couple of verses that kind of reiterates that as we close.

I love this one in the New Testament.

I love it when the New Testament confirms and verifies and even expounds or extends

information that we get in the Old Testament and Colossians chapter one,

verse 16, it says this, listen, for by him, all things were created.

This is this is references to Jesus because we’re learning Genesis, Jesus and Genesis.

Paul in his letter to the church at Colossae says, for by him, all things were

created and heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

I love that part, whether or thrown, whether thrown through

minions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

Who is the him that’s referring to here?

It was created by the Lord, Jesus, for the Lord, Jesus, through the power of the Lord,

Jesus, as well as for his glory.

It goes on to say in Revelation chapter four, verse 11, worthy are you, O Lord and God,

to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will,

by God’s will, by the Lord’s will, they existed and were created.

That’s good news.

Nehemiah chapter nine, verse six says, you are the Lord, you alone.

You made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their hosts and the earth and all

that is on it, the season, all that is in them.

And you preserve them all and the host of heaven worships you.

That’s Nehemiah, Nehemiah chapter nine, verse six.

I love this word, he says, you made the heavens and the heaven of heavens.

That means God made the earth.

He made all the atmosphere above the earth and he made all of the atmospheres,

stratospheres, I own his fears above our earthly orbit.

So there is basically not basically, there is no room for Darwin’s theory of

evolution. There is no room for the origin of species.

There is no room for the Big Bang theory.

There is no room for the religion of atheism or evolution because God created

everything for him, by him, through him.

And he holds it together to this day.

Isn’t that great to know?

I’m just so thrilled about Genesis because I think

it sets a foundation for understanding the rest of Scripture.

It’s this it’s it’s appalling and disturbing

that so many churches and Christians dismiss Genesis as allegory or parable or

fable or make believe that Genesis is given this kind of like abstract non

physical status and it’s not treated as though it is absolutely concrete and true.

It’s treated kind of like as a fable or an example or some theory.

Genesis is not a theory.

And we listen, if we check out on Genesis and say that’s really not true,

at least the first two chapters, then where do we check in at?

And how who gives us the academic or the authority to tell God and and suggest

that Scripture is only accurate in some places or it’s it’s only literal in some

places that that Genesis is figurative, that Genesis is optional.

Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that God’s work can be set aside as a

private interpretation.

It’s all his word.

It’s all true.

And we are to accept it and believe it.

All of it, the entire as Ezekiel says, the entire council of God.

Amen.

And I think the point in at the point in my emphasizing is that

Genesis absolutely gives us a purpose for understanding the rest of Scripture

because if we don’t believe, listen, if we don’t believe Genesis one,

twenty six, that we are created in his image and his likeness, then it cheapens

life all the way down the line.

It makes it possible for abortion.

It makes it possible for you, the nature.

It makes it possible for genocide.

It makes it possible for a dislike or or or a disregard for human life.

It makes it possible for anarchy and chaos because you don’t believe in law

or morality or order or structure or divine consequences.

If you throw out the biblical record of creation,

it allows all kinds of other stuff to take its place.

And don’t believe for a second that atheism and evolution and all the other

scientific alternate explanations of the beginning of life are anti-bible.

And anti-God, it’s a war against God.

Any belief that flies in the face of Genesis is an alternative belief system

that is basically a religion.

It’s basically a way of saying God’s way didn’t work.

Here’s what really happened.

There was this massive explosion.

And I know on and on in that order and sophistication came out of chaos.

Give me a break.

Not no way.

I’m not an anthropologist or a scientist or a biologist or any of those things.

But I can tell you this.

I can tell you this, the Boeing 740 plane, the Boeing 747.

This I know because, well, I read it.

So I’m assuming it’s true.

But the Boeing 747 has has been alleged to be made up of over six million

parts components to build this plane.

Imagine a Boeing 747 being constructed out of junk and scrap

that you would find at a junkyard and somehow over time,

assembling itself together into this massive machine that you could fly from

here to China and it would support define the laws of gravity.

It would be aeronomically aerodynamically accurate and support life and allow you

to make that flight who would get on a plane that came together by chance.

Even if it was by chance over 17 or 16 or 18 billion years, probably not.

But in spite of this, I was reading this the other day and spite of the sophistication

of Boeing 747 or a handmade Swiss watch or any other very sophisticated device.

Just one cell in the human body is more complex than that, one cell.

And we have we have trillions of cells in the body, one cell, one little cell.

I was reading about DNA and how the science of DNA is still evolving because

there’s so much that we don’t know about DNA.

As a matter of fact, it’s why some cases get thrown out of court and trials and

verdicts are reversed because sometimes DNA evidence is inaccurate because we’re

still trying to wrap our minds around it.

We’re still trying to understand amino acids.

We’re still trying to understand that nanoscience that is called DNA and all

of the little things that goes into a single cell, a single human cell.

God is so brilliant.

God is so intelligent that he creates our lives where it replenishes, it regenerates,

it revives, it repairs itself.

This is all a part of an intelligent God, not just an intelligent being,

but an intelligent God, the God of the universe who created heaven and earth.

And according to Colossians, still to this day, this November, February 18th,

2024, upholds all things by the power of his word.

Not gravity, not science, not physics, not astronomy, but the power of God’s word.

Here’s where he says, stay in order and things stay in order.

He says, planets don’t collide and planets don’t collide.

He says, stars don’t blow up and the stars don’t explode.

He says to the sea, don’t come any further.

And the sea stops at the line where land is.

That’s God.

You say, well, what about tsunamis and hurricanes and earthquakes and all of those

things, that’s still God saying, OK, you can go further now.

But even a lot of the what we call natural disasters like earthquakes

and tsunamis and hurricanes and tornadoes and brush fires and forest fires, even

that is under God’s instructions and domain and has good results.

Ultimately, has good results for life on earth.

I won’t go into all how the tectonic plates below the earth move and that allows

minerals and nutrients to come to the surface and sustains life and reproduces

life and provides a sustenance of life that wouldn’t happen otherwise.

But be it known that God is always in control.

Amen.

God is always in control.

And I think if there’s nothing else that you can take away from this message,

this lesson, and that is the God that’s the God of Genesis, the God of Abraham,

Jacob, Isaac and Joseph, the God who started it all in Genesis one one is still

God that’s on the throne today and he’s still in us today.

That God as a believer, you have that power.

We have that dunamis is the Greek word in us, alive in us.

According to Ephesians 3 20, he is able to do

exceeding abundantly above all we ask our thing.

And here’s the key phrase.

This last prepositional phrase that sort of qualifies that whole verse in Ephesians

3 20, according to the power, according to the power of God that works in us.

That’s how we’re able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think.

Be encouraged.

Genesis is a great place to start your journey.

If you’re still working on your New Year’s resolution, no, we’re really six weeks in.

You can still make it.

Start in Genesis.

Start at the beginning, start where God started, start where it all started.

In the book that starts the beginnings, the book of beginnings, the book that lays

the foundation for all the other 65 books that lays the foundation for God’s

message of redemption to the world, paradise restored, getting us back to where

God wanted us, getting us back to our place, the place that God intended for man

to be and fellowship with him in harmony, amen, amen.

Let’s pray.

Lord, we just thank you for your word and we thank you for this message.

We ask that you would just help us, Lord,

to be faithful to you and faithful to your word.

Help us to understand what you’ve written in your word that relates to us becoming

like Jesus, being made in his lightness, growing in his image, growing in his

continents, thinking like Christ, acting like Christ, talking like Christ, living

like him, Lord, help us to be living, walking, breathing, thinking ambassadors

of you that we might represent you and show the world what you look like.

Lord, may you witness through us.

May we be good representatives for you in Jesus name.

We pray.

Amen.

Amen.

God bless you.