For twenty-some years ago we spoke on the book of Genesis. We went through the whole book, took about a year. But recently I've been picking about the three opening chapters, Genesis one, two, and three. Especially because of a considerable amount of commotion going on in the country, even court cases, as likely you are aware, because of those who believe in the... Genesis account of creation and those who do not. Those who believe we came from tadpoles, monkeys and what have you. And so there's been a lot of debate. And I'm going to bring some of those things out this morning. Lord willing, we'll be speaking on the creation of man this morning, the creation of the world this morning, the creation of man next Sunday, and then the lovely Garden of Eden the next. Satan the next, and salvation the next. We'll be cross through the earth each Sunday morning. So we read in Genesis one, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and 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. God said, let there be light, and there was light. God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, and the evening and the morning were the first day. And there are some verses I'd like to just quote to you, over in Psalm You read these words, By the word of the Lord, where the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breadth of his mouth. You notice that little word was in verse two, and the earth was without form and void. And the right rendering of that, it became the same Hebrew word as you have, and Lot's wife became... a pillar of salt. And God did not create the world in the condition it's seen in verse two. He created it not in waste. And now, Jay and Darby, one of the best commentators, one of the best students, in translating the original meaning, he puts it this way, for thus says the Lord that created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth and made it, He hath established it. He created it not in waste. He formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is none else. There are three beginnings in your Bible. There is the original beginning when God broke the silence of eternity, and there is no evidence that there was any matter or tangible substance in the original beginning. In the beginning God, and we can go back to that, our little minds won't grasp it. I think it's one of the first things I want to ask the Lord when I get to heaven, when was the beginning? Our minds can't go back. But in the beginning was God. God created... the heavens and the earth. Then you have a new beginning, a new creation, when God began to reconstruct this earth. In other words, that's where your six days' work came in. He took that mass of what you might chaos and confusion as described in verse two, and then he began a process of creation. And then there's the beginning of Christianity. Now you find that very distinctly over in First John one, and this is what you read, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon in our hands of Hamel, now the word of life. Now there he's talking about the Lord Jesus Christ, and John's Gospel. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. The same was in the beginning with God. Now that's the first, that's the first creation, the initial creation. And then you had the beginning of the reconstruction of a chaotic world, but now you come to the beginning of Christianity. And that Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And Mark goes this way. Father say, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now that's in Mark one and one. So you have these three beginnings and it's a good thing to keep them in line. There is that gate-less pass, the unbeginning beginning, when God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit dwelt together We have no evidence there were any stars or planets or anything of that nature. In the beginning, God, like the carpenter, comes before the house. There cannot be a house unless, first of all, there's a carpenter. And in the beginning, God, and then he began building this house, creation. He called it into existence when his voice broke the silence of eternity and called this world into existence. But that house was wrecked, and we have evidence of that. And now God begins again to rebuild that house that it may be habitable for the human race. No question about it that something unusual happens. and we have scripture, I believe, to prove what happened between the initial creation and the creation he read about here beginning in verse three. I believe it was when Satan rebelled against God, and you have that over in Isaiah fourteen. Here is Satan, the covering cherished. No doubt the fairest and greatest of God-creating being, that he coveted the throne of the eternal. He said, I will enter into the hill of the north. I will become like the most high. And at that minute, because of the pride of Satan's son of the morning, he was far out of heaven. And Jesus Christ said, I saw Satan fall from heaven. And I believe that's when this fearful catastrophe took place, and God's initial arrangement of the earth, and he called into existence, became void. That's what your Bible says in verse one, and the earth was, or became without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Now, as for God, his way is perfect. You can't conceive of God creating a world in the chaotic condition is found in verse two. As for God, his way is perfect. You can't conceive for a moment that a perfect God would create an imperfect object. And certainly there's imperfection in verse two. And as for God, his way is perfect, and God is not the author of confusion. You had confusion in verse two. There's no question about that. A lot of confusion. And that's, I believe, the answer to this. And a lot of people think that this whole world was created six thousand years ago. No, it was. As far as we know, the human race began in the garden. six thousand years ago, approximately, they can trace that back. But what about the cost of the earth and the formation of strata as geologists prayed and all the fossils? No doubt they can trace them back millions of years. Far beyond six thousand years ago, approximately, when Adam and Eve were in the garden. They have their argument there. But They don't go back far enough. They go back to that period of time there could have been a million or two years when you see the earth will outform and void and darkness will come upon the face of the deep. But we go back beyond that. The original creation, when God created the heavens and the earth, it was an object of perfection. A beautiful place. as he hailed the planets, the stars, the constellations from his fingerprints, and placed them in their sockets of blue, and there they were, until Satan rebelled. And when Satan rebelled, undoubtedly, there was a characteristic experience, and the earth became, without warm and void, and darkness was upon the face of the earth. Now you read it over in Hebrews, by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. That word framed has meaning. There's architecture there. It was framed. It had order. Seminary. That's not bound in verse two. But the original creation. was perfect, absolutely perfect. And the divine judgment fell upon Satan that through this world, through this world into the condition and shape that we have in verse two. In fact, there's no shape. Without form, void, darkness on the face of the beast. Possibly these are expressions that some of you don't understand, such as cosmic cosmos and if you understand chaos but cosmos means this a system of order and harmony now that's what it was when God broke the silence of eternity and created the heavens and the earth it was a system of order beautiful harmony but you know what chaos is that's what you have in verse two a universe of confusion, complete disorder. And if you get these three things in mind, in these verses you have the universe created. Firstly, then the earth ruined in verse two. Then you have the earth restored at the end of verse two and on to verse twenty five. I trust that may have helped you. There's been a lot of eigen about this, and there's no evidence that there's an eternity of matter, that there was matter and material in eternity past, not until God created the heavens and the earth. We go back beyond material. We go back to when the triune God brought together in the chambers of eternity. And our little minds can't take that in. When you stop there, you think of the law of cause and effect. The cause. There must be a cause and an effect. Well, God is the cause of the world coming into existence. But there's also a cause that brought about the effect. In verse two, the earth was without form. and it was empty, and it was in darkness. You can't conceive of such a world being created by a perfect God. It's absolutely impossible. You know, it's very ordinary when you look at this chapter. A man by the name of Stoner, he's quite a mathematician, and he puts points this out that in these verses that we've read from verse two on, He throws a verse through on verse three. He points out thirteen distinct acts of creation. That is, you have the first original creation. Then the second one, he created light. Third, darkness dispelled. Fourth, the atmosphere established. The fifth, he appointed the boundaries of the seas. Six, the continents appeared in verse ten. And then in the seventh one, plant life. That is, you have the grass and the herbs and the fruit trees and so on. Then the eighth thing, the sun, the moon, the stars were appointed their functions. Then you have marine life in verse twenty. You have the powders created. And the sea monsters in verse twenty one. He created great waves. Then you have the land. That's the club. And then you have that. And it's all so beautifully in order in the passage. Not the confusion that you have in verse two. Everything is in order laid up. How did Moses write this because he wrote the Pentateuch? And here Moses is talking about something that went back at least. two thousand four or five hundred years before even Moses came on the scene. How did Moses get all this information about the past? By inspiration. The Spirit of God led Moses to write about creation, and it cannot be disputed. Moses was in the hand of God. Just like God led some of his prophets to prophesy what's coming. And all those prophecies were fulfilled when Jesus Christ came. Moses was inspired of God to write the story about creation. He wasn't there. He didn't know a thing about how the world came into existence and about the six days' work and the one-day rest, the creation of all the animals. Here is God. using a human being, Moses. That's why he's such a great man. And the Jews, Jacobin was the greatest. Because God used him as the vehicle, the instrument, that he used to give us the story of creation. And the creation when he created these things, as I mentioned in verses two at the end, on to verse twenty five. This is an amazing thing. You know, when you stop to think of this, and first of all, when you read the first chapter of Genesis, God is mentioned thirty-two times in that one chapter. When you open your Bible, you're faced with a very God. That's why in our colleges and universities, and those who believe in evolution, they pay down Genesis one. They'd love to have a disposal. They can't get around the truth there. Because when you open your Bible, you're face to face with God. Thirty-two times, you're faced with the Almighty. He did it. No man could have done it. God called him into existence. That's something to remember. And you have also seven things concerning God, his expression. For instance, you read about God said, God saw, God made, God called, God set, God divided, and God blessed. Here are seven things said about God in Genesis chapter one. But here's the main thing. I hope you've grasped what I mentioned. It's difficult to try and simplify. But I want you to get this. The Scriptures are not given to tell us how about the heavens, to tell us how the heavens go. The Scriptures are given us to tell us how to go to heaven. Just leave the past alone. You know you're here. And you know the Son of God came into this world. He died, he rose again. He lives at God's right hand and he's given us his word. And so you, if you want to, forget how the heavens go. And think about how to go to heaven. That is God's presence. And when a Christian knows the Creator, He'll have no problem with creation. I have no problem at all about creation. If God said it, I'm satisfied. Whether I can grasp it is beside the point. If God said it, I believe. And that's where your faith today. By faith, we understand that the earth was formed by the word. of God. How wonderful do you rest in God's precious word? And what I want to get across is what happened to man that is almost a duplicate of what happened to the original universe. First of all, you have that mass of confusion and waste, lifeless mass in verse two. When God created Adam, he was perfect, like the original creation. But because of sin, you find Adam now a sinner, and he's in the state of verse two, without form, void, emptiness, and in darkness. His mind becomes confused. And if ever there is anything that describes the mind of men today, some great intellectuals, intellectuals, with penetrating powers of perception, these professors, what you have, who are debating this subject in the court, to mean friends, their minds are confused. They're, through will, they're complex. The natural man understands not the things of the Spirit of God. Neither can they know them. They're spiritually discerned. And you can't understand the Bible unless you're born again. Man today, he's at the point that the more these arguments go on about the Bible, the more the confusion, the more the distraction. And people today are like, oh, who do they? The devil has succeeded in muddying the waters. Only increasing man's condition as seen in verse two. Without form, void and darkness. Death is confused. But then, void, what does that mean? That speaks of emptiness. Man today is not only confused. He hardly knows who and what to believe. The best thing is lay aside what men believe and write and teach and get back to this blessed book and see what God says. The devil would try and tear out Genesis one and the whole fabric of Christianity would crumble. No, then, just take God's word. And then it was void, empty. Yes? Man's heart today is empty of joy and peace. No true pleasure. Strange in this. The emptiness in the heart of man. There's an amazing text over in Ecclesiastes, C and E. Leven. God has put the world, and the word world there in the Hebrew is ages. God has put the ages in man's heart. Man's been made for the future. There is a locality in the human hearts, a little spot down there that nothing in this life can fill or satisfy. That God has prepared the human heart to have himself. And the reason so many people are void of empty is because they're void of God. If they let God into your heart, their heart, and your heart, he'd fill that little vacancy. And there wouldn't be anything. He would replace that voidness. And you'd have no difficulty understanding the value. All the time you don't allow God into your heart. There is that sense of eternity, that consciousness, that awareness, that death does not end all. That I'm going to go on and on and on. and you are. The only thing that can satisfy your heart, the load of people that are questing, seeking after, searching, to fill that little thing, the only God can see. God has put the ages in their hearts. Void and darkness. You have confusion. You have emptiness. You have darkness. Men and women today are in the dark. And that's dangerous. Your room could be pitch dark at night, and the man could be standing beside your bed with a pistol pointed at your temple. And you don't think about it because it's dark. Danger can be awfully close in the dark. And for you to be in spiritual darkness is dangerous. death can be just around the corner. Man is in the dark as to God. He's in the dark. He's ignorant and darkness speaks of ignorance. Man is ignorance of sin. He's ignorance of Jesus Christ. In ignorance of Jesus Christ. He's ignorant of God. He's ignorant of judgment. Man is in the dark. as with God's salvation. He just doesn't have it. He doesn't understand it. That's man's condition. Without form, void, and in the dark. The next remarkable thing is the spirit moved or brooded over the face of the deep. Isn't that amazing? You see the spirit of God brooding over that chaotic situation. There's the third person of the Trinity. And he's brooding over that world, as you see in verse two. God is interested in that whole planet, the way it was. He's brooding over the face of the beast. That same Holy Spirit is brooding over this world today in its chaotic condition, morally and spiritually. And he's brooding over your chaotic heart. He's brooding over your empty heart. He's brooding over your darkened heart. He's brooding over your confused heart. He wants to bring about all that, and light, and joy, the Spirit brooding all the face of the beast. Why was God interested in this planet at that time there were millions of They're like they are. They haven't found them all by their powerful telescope. Why was God interested in this one? I don't know. Why was he interested in me? And you'd better ask the same question. Why is God interested in me? So much so that he gave his son the die upon the cross that you might be saying. God was interested in this planet, and God is interested in you. You know, the earth couldn't bring about any change in itself. There was a mass of waste, lifeless, dark, submerged beneath water. The earth had no power within itself to bring about a change. Neither have you. This earth was changed by a power outside itself, and your salvation rests in a power outside yourself. No emotion or commotion within you will bring about a change. You don't have the mentality to bring about a change. God has got to do that. The Holy Spirit can bring about a change. a remarkable change. It's the power outside you that can bring about a change in your heart. You have the world a remarkable change that took place in those six days' work. You know, salvation like creation, it's a work of God. God created the heavens and the earth. And God creates us into new creatures in Christ Jesus. The same power that God used to create the world is the same power he uses to save a soul. Just like creation, salvation is the work of God. Salvation is on the Lord. Right and amazing what you see in this passage. And then the next thing. Let there be light, and there was light. God speaks. There's a lovely order here. You have, first of all, God, and then you have man's fearful need in verse two. The Spirit brooding, and God speaking. God says, let there be light. They're the first spoken words of God. conversion that left the light. And there was light. And God divided the light from the darkness. There's a division between those who walk in the light and those who walk in the darkness. Years ago I read a story once in Christ during my life it floated back And I couldn't recall that a piece of it together. From all things, this week I ran across it. The Lord must have helped me to find it. It's in this connection. Over in India, when England, or whether India was under British rule, and they had garrisons or British soldiers there, there was a missionary by the name of Samuel Keating, a missionary. And this day this officer was in his room, loafing around, when he heard footsteps that came near, near, near, he couldn't see the identifiable thudding footsteps, until a tall man stood in his door with a long black coat. He said, good luck, good, good. And he came in. He said, get the book. Get the book. Open the book. Read the book. He did not say, this is what? He ain't a better soldier, haven't he brought up in England. England was a God-fearing nation then. He knew what the book was. He heard it. He had one, but he never used it. And so he took the book down, and he began reading But the old man told him to read, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. He said, That's enough. Close the book. He said, Let us pray. And the old fellow prayed, and he shoved himself in there. The next day, the same footprints. The old man appeared. Get the book. Read the book. She said, She said, chapter one. And she started reading. And he read the book. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void and the darkness was upon the face of the deep. But he was on a little more than a second day before the old man stopped him. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. That's enough. Search the book. Let us pray. The old fellow got down his knees and he prayed. The soldier said, I never heard a prayer like that in my life. This man's talking to somebody he very intimately knows. And he prayed to God to open the eyes of this young man that he might find out he's lost and needs the same. The next day came and the footsteps came. The old man stood in the doorway, good thing. This day the Bible was not on the shirt, it was on the table, it was open. This officer had never read it before, until the old man asked him to read it. Then the hebeke stepped in. He was greeted by the soot. Oh, he said, Mr. Hedek, it's all plain. There we are. What do I do? And Mr. Hedek looked at the officer, and he said very warmly, God said, let there be light and there was light. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Let us pray. We both got on the knees and the officers told the Lord he had seen the light and he was now saved on the way to heaven. Do you know who that missionary was? He was the grandfather of the general that made such a name for himself, William Doe, Lieutenant General. William Dovey, who was a valiant defender of Malta in the Second World War. There's the story. That young man, the word of God, he saw it. God's Holy Spirit convinced them of this as an eternal God. He convinced that young soldier that he was in the condition of the earth, the state of darkness, chaos, and emptiness. He was convicted that the Spirit of God was working in his heart. And when he admitted that condition and accepted the word of God, he got the light. Let there be light. And God, through to his word, there was light. And the officer was saved. He turned out to be a preacher and his brother turned out to be a missionary. What a wonderful summary of what we've been reading. And last night I thought of these seven points with which I close. These verses bring before us a living, powerful, almighty God. They bring before us a lost, ruined soul. They bring for us the Spirit brooding, moving all that soul. looking for an open, looking for a softening, looking for a readiness to be saved. Then God speaks, and according, let there be light. Then light dawns. I'm saved. I'm on the way to heaven. Then God divided the light from the day. And when you get saved, there's a division between you, and your companions it may be, between you and the unconverted. For there are only two classes in this world, save the law. There are only two ways, the broad and the narrow. There are only two destinies, heaven and heaven. God makes a division between the light and the day. Are you in the light? Jesus Christ is the light of the world. In fact, those two expressions, God is love and God is light. You need light, wonderful light. And the last thing, God satisfies. You look upon it, it's good. God is satisfied when a soul is saved and you'll be satisfied to it. These are the seven days. What a day it was that first day of Genesis chapter one. If you accept Christ the more this morning, the rest of your life you reflect upon the day saying, what a day. The day when I heard God's word, I realized my lost condition. The spirit of God convicted me of that. I heard God's word. that I give the Savior and the Savior was presented and ready. I let him in. There was love. I satisfied. And also I am with those who are walking in the light all the way to heaven. I have left behind those in the dark who are going to heaven. And God be happy. be happy, be really happy too, if you come to the light, be shining for me, come to the light that will dawn upon you. Why don't you open your heart and let Jesus Christ be the one who created the world and reconstructed it and the one who will create you anew. We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Good works after you are saved, not before. And you can become a new creature. In Christ Jesus. God help you to make your decision. Like that soldier. I see him. Another prayer. Our Father in heaven. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. He does come into thy holy, holy presence. And thank thee for thy holy holy word. He asked me, Father, to bless what we have said about thy marvelous creation. Above all, you rejoice in thy marvelous salvation. Poor sinners, saved by sovereign grace, brought from darkness into the light, to travel on the way to heaven with those like-minded, walking in the light, that here in the light, parasit, one with another, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, blend with us in all sin. Bless thy word, in salvation of the Son's soul, we pray, in our Savior's name. Amen. And now we sing, closing, our familiar hymn three, seven, six. out of my bondage, sorrow and night, to see you in the night. Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come, into thy freedom, gladness, and light. Jesus, I come. You do come from darkness into light. You stand and sing this hymn, if you have come at us. Amen. Just sing verse two. I'd like to think I could challenge some of you men and women. You think you're strong. You're brave. You're courage. I challenge you. We check Jesus Christ this morning. And have an impersonal fortitude to say, I'll accept Christ. I'll accept him this morning. I live in the dark, tree long. I want to be in the light. He will tell me the same verse for you. May the sky come, may the sky come, may the sky come This meeting is over from back to back. I guess it's over. Thank you.