David Macdonald - March 05, 2023

Have you with us? All right. Let's have a word of prayer. Father, thank you this morning for the Lord Jesus our Savior.

Thank you for that battle on the cross where He defeated death. Death was arrested. Never to rise again. And as the believer trusts in the Lord Jesus, we have no fear of death.

We have no fear really of anything because we are His. Lord, I pray this morning you would help us as we endeavor to look into your word that you would guide us and direct us. And Lord, it would be your word that we would hear, not mine. I pray and ask this in the name of the Lord Jesus our Savior.

Amen. A couple of questions, but I'm not as skilled with PowerPoint as any way. So I didn't put the questions up here. Can anybody tell me what I spoke on the last time I spoke?

Ah, see? I could have pulled that out and spoke on it again today. You don't remember. And it was January the sixth, I think, or seventh.

And you don't remember. Three seconds. Two seconds. Okay, all right.

I'm going to head home because we've proven that this time is useless. Yes. Yes. No, that was Christmas Eve.

All right. Awakeup call. Remember that? He might was downstairs.

So he's with, he's with excuse. The rest of you, you are with, oh excuse. Awakeup call to Christians. I have been thinking about this for a long, long time.

In fact, I was going to speak on that back in September and Hurricane interrupted it all and so on and so on. So this has been kind of percolating in my mind for a long time. And one of the reasons I spoke on Awakeup call for Christians is because I think we are in a day where we are acting as if we're sound asleep, not that we are acting, we are sound asleep sometimes. So what's going on?

We haven't got a clue. We send our kids off to school and I'll have to say even day care. And the things that they are being indoctrinated with are extremely wicked. And if we're not dealing with those things, parents, and if we're not equipping our children to face this onslaught, then we are going to leave them in a very, very difficult and hopeless state.

I want to go back and look at some of the foundations of life, some of the foundational truths of the Bible. I want to do a little study Lord willing on Genesis. This is what I want, what the Lord wants might be different. But this is what I'm looking to do, is to do a study in Genesis.

It's going to be, it's difficult to put it together. I had a lot of trouble putting just this introduction together because there is so much and there are so many places I could go. The first verse I want to share with you. And I'm glad that the Sunday school classes are up here.

Because the first verse says, remember now you're creator in the days of your youth. Ecclesiastes chapter 12 verse 1. Remember now you're creator in the days of your youth before the difficult days come and the years drawn near where you say, I have no pleasure in them. And you might be thinking, there's an old guy telling us to remember these things.

But you know what? My uncle and I sat down a few weeks ago. And we were talking. And he's in his 80s now.

He's got some extreme health issues. I've had my own little share of stuff going on. Right now, I'm kind of, this has got to be spooked right now because I've got this blurry, this fog over one eye. Because, and I went to the eye doctor and they said, oh, yeah, you're getting older.

That's why that happens. And I'm thinking, whoa, whoa, whoa. But my uncle and I were talking saying, you know what? In my head, I feel young.

In my head, I feel young. I feel like I could go and run. And I see a cargo by with, what's that 40 something, point something, meaning that they ran into marathon. And I'm thinking, yeah, you know what?

I can put that on my list of something to do. I'm not running any marathon. Am I stupid? Look, there's no way.

I have a heart attack in the first kilometer. And then the rest of it, the rest of my marathon's in a hearse. So, but in my head, I think I can do that kind of thing. So I say this, remember your creator in the days of your youth before the difficult times come.

And the years draw near when you say, I have no pleasure in them. And I'm going to tell you that will come a lot faster than you think, a lot faster than you think. The second thing, I'm going to speak on this this morning, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. So I have a question, question number three, two.

See, the days have come where I have no pleasure in them. I thought I'm on my second question, or third question I'm on the second one. What was the first miracle of Jesus Christ recorded in the Bible? Wes, that's the first one that's recorded in the New Testament, for sure.

Colossians 1, 15 to 18. I believe this was read this morning. He, Jesus Christ, is the image of the invisible gods, the firstborn of all creation, for by him, by him, all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created. Through him and for him, he has before all things, and in him, all things hold together.

And he is also the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself will come to have first place in everything. The first miracle, I believe, of Jesus Christ is the creation of the heavens and the earth. So, Genesis is a foundational book.

So the basis for our study, obviously, is going to be the Bible. Genesis is a foundation. Genesis is a beginning. Genesis speaks of the originator of all things, and that is the Lord God.

So, in Genesis, it's very important because it is a foundational study, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And I want to stick to what the scriptures teach. I don't want to go down this rabbit hole of a debate of creation versus evolution. I am going to be coming from the angle and the assumption that creation is the way God made everything, because the Bible says that.

Now, okay, but what about the stuff I'm learning in school? There are people first, smarter than me, far more eloquent than I am, that have done a lot of research and have done a lot of things. I can give you the resources, and you can study through and look at these things. I have to tell you, I went through university, I studied geology.

There's a bit of evolution in geology. When you have a degree in geology, you've kind of encountered a fair bit of it. I came to Christ at the last semester, the last half of the last year of my geology studies, and now I'm faced with a problem. I'm reading my Bible, in the beginning, God created heaven and the earth.

But wait a second, I just read it was four billion years. I studied, I spent thousands and thousands of dollars to find out that it's been billions of years. What do I do? So I'm at an event, one of my profs, he's there speaking.

Christian event, he's talking about the mission work that he did in East Asia, Southeast Asia. And this is so awesome. He's my, I won't say it because this is not Facebook, and I don't want this to, I don't want to shame the man. He's my brother in Christ.

And if this is so awesome, I can go up and I can ask him about this. So I'm finished and I said, wow, I didn't know that you were a Christian. He said, I didn't know you were a Christian. I said, well, I am a brand new one.

He said, oh, that's so wonderful, that's awesome. I said, I have a question for you. You teach me geology over at the house. He was, yeah, yeah.

And he said, you're a good lackluster student, like some of them. And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. I don't know about Mark's name. Look, how do I deal with what you've been teaching me and the other profs have been teaching me?

And then when I, now I'm a Christian, I'm reading my Bible and I keep coming across that God made the heavens and the earth in six days. And God made it. And it was done in six days and he spoke and it happened. And his answer to me was, yeah.

I kind of don't know what Moses had in mind when he wrote those first 11 books of the Bible. And I thought, oh, you crippled me, man. You just like, you just took a sledge hammer to my kneecaps there, sorry, I mean. But you just like took the legs from under me.

Like, what do I do? So you know, it wasn't long after that. I met a professor at UPI who was teaching creation in his engineering course, creation in university. So I went to see him.

And he had shelves and shelves and shelves. This is my, I'm not even at the introduction yet. Shelves and shelves and shelves of books. And he said, I'm gonna get you started.

And he started pulling books off. He said, take these, take these, read them. Here's some tapes for you. Take this stuff and read it.

Some of his Christian, some of it's not. And that gave me a start. Then I found men like Dr. Henry Morris and Dr.

John Morris and Stephen Austin and these guys that are scientists with PhDs that have studied creation and studied evolution and studied earth sciences like I did. And had crystal clear explanations. And I came to the conclusion from all of those studies and especially through the word of God because they pointed you to places in the word of God. It's not just Genesis 1, 1 that says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

You go to Job 38. Joe, where were you when I laid down the foundations of the earth? Where were you? So you have to answer the question.

Not the question, Joe, where were you? But the question is who laid the foundations of the earth? God Almighty did. And so as you go through the scriptures, you will find these things.

So this is my kind of introduction slide. So we want to not debate creation evolution, but I will delve into some of these things. I will address the gap theory, things like that. Teach foundational truth.

That's what we want to do. And I believe Genesis answers our most perplexing questions in life. I really believe it answers the most perplexing questions that we face in our life. Because Genesis gives foundational doctrines of sin, the fall, redemption, justification.

The promise of the Messiah is in Genesis. The personality of the person of God, the kingdom of God, all of these things are found in Genesis. And it shows us the origins of the universe, of order and complexity, the order of the solar system, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, life, man, marriage, gender, good and evil language, government, culture, nations and religion. All of these things are addressed in the book of Genesis.

The foundations of our various society are all addressed in the book of Genesis. My assumption is going in, first of all, that the Bible is the Word of God. I'm assuming that you believe that the Bible is the Word of God. If not, I have a little thing I'm going to talk to you about.

Secondly, the Bible is an historical document. And it is. I've been proven by history, the records of history, historians like Josephus, archaeological records, all of these things have proven that the Bible is accurate and true. The other assumption we're going to make is that God exists and that there is no other.

And the God has spoken to mankind. And God has done so through his Word. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, or breathed by God, and is profitable. So those are the things we're going to assume.

I'm not going to debate those things. I'm going to assume them to be real, because they are proven truths. They have been proven by history. They've been proven by prophecy.

They've been proven by archaeology amongst other things. Dr. Henry Morris, a brilliant scientist, a hydrologist, like Dr. David Hanson, he says, and nobody, believe me, I don't think anybody has studied Genesis more than Dr.

Henry Morris. If I could have a Bible study hero, it's Dr. Henry Morris. I don't know if anybody who has done more study of the scriptures and written more concise commentaries of the scriptures than Dr.

Henry Morris. I know there are others that other people have as their heroes. He is mine. If you could have an earthly hero.

Jesus Christ is my hero. But as far as men who have studied the scriptures, Henry Morris, is at the top of my list. He says, the only improper way to interpret Genesis 1 is not to interpret it at all. That is, we accept the fact that it was meant to say exactly what it says.

I like that quote. I thought that was pretty concise. OK, so let's start with the Bible. Can I trust the Bible?

First of all, the Bible has been and will be the number one selling book of all time. That doesn't necessarily make it correct, because Harry Potter is number three. But the Bible has sold over 4 billion copies in just the past 50 years. Nothing even comes close.

In fact, that's the scale. This right here is the scale. That's 4 billion. The next one that comes close is quotations from Chairman Mal.

Only because you have so many people in the country that you require them to read it would that be there. So I kind of take that out. So books that are bought willingly, Bible at 4 billion, Harry Potter at 4 billion and 400 million. And now she's in trouble.

People are going to be burning Harry Potter books. So plus billions on iPads, smartphones, computers, e-book readers that have all been for free. This is just the number of books that have been sold. The currency has been exchanged for those books.

The Bible is not a book. The Bible is a library. It's a library of 66 volumes, 40 authors on three continents writing in three languages over the span of roughly 15 to 1800 years. The interesting thing about the Bible is you will not walk into any library.

I don't know if you'll find any more than maybe a couple of authors that will fully agree on one particular topic. All 40 authors of the Bible agree on one theme, Jesus Christ. The whole Bible, Genesis to Revelation, is about Jesus Christ from beginning to end. All of them point to Him.

The Bible is the revelation of God to mankind. See, there's two ways we get revelation. First of all, general revelation. When I go out at night and I look up at the sky and I see the stars, and I think, wow, it's neat.

I think I'll take a picture and post it on Instagram. I recognize it revealed to me that God has created this. God has made this. If I pull a leaf off the tree and I look at all the little veins in the back of it and I see how the fluid goes.

And I put it under maybe a microscope and see those little cells that open and close and allow area and all of that stuff. That's general revelation. Then there's special revelation. That's where God speaks through His Word, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

So what we hold here is an inspired, God-breathed special revelation from God to man. That is what points us to Jesus the Messiah. The theme of the Bible is Jesus Christ the Messiah. All scripture points to Him, to His first coming, as the Savior of mankind, the Son of man, and then it points to His second coming, as the King of King and Lord of Lords.

It's all about Him. It's all about Him coming to save you and me. And then it's all about the consummation that's coming when He comes as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The Bible is divided into two.

I'm only saying this. Most people here know this, but if you don't. First of all, there's the Old Testament, and that's prior to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to this earth. The New Testament is all of that time following Him.

There are five parts to the Bible. I kind of like this little thing that somebody made up. Preparation, the Old Testament, manifestation, the Gospels, propagation, the spreading of the word, in Acts, information, building of the church, the epistles, and then finally the consummation of all things, which is in Revelation. I could have stolen from Ken Ham, the seven seas, but I thought five because my time is gonna run up.

There are three parts. In Genesis, this is G. Campbell Morgan wrote these, generations. So generation, the beginning, the beginning of mankind, the birth of mankind, all of the genealogies and so on.

But the generation is the beginning of mankind, Genesis one and two. Then you see after Genesis chapter three, when mankind fell when they sinned. Now we see the degeneration from there until 11, Noah's flood, the Tower of Babel, all the things that went south for mankind. From 12 forward with the story of Abraham and the promise in you and your seed will all the earth be blessed, is the beginning of what we would call regeneration for mankind, the promise that this curse will be reversed and how it will happen.

It'll happen through the seed of Abraham. The Bible is the essential and the eternal word of God. John chapter one, verse one, is the other in the beginning that you find in the scriptures. In Genesis one, verse one, we read, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

John chapter one, verse one, in the beginning, was the word, capital W word. And the word was with God and the word was God. And then the next word is what? He, he was with God from the beginning.

The word is Jesus Christ. The word of God points to Jesus Christ. Jesus himself spoke of the eternality of the word of God. He said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away.

You know, three of the gospel writers recorded that. Matthew in chapter 24, verse 35, Mark in chapter 13, verse 31, and Luke in 21, 33. The Psalms declare this. This is how much stock God puts in his word.

In Psalm 138, verses one and two, it says, I will praise you with my whole heart before the gods. I will sing praises to you. I will worship you toward your holy temple and praise your name for your loving kindness and your truth. For you have magnified your word above all your name.

God himself puts so much stock in his word that he magnifies it even above his name. In other words, if the word of God fails, good, I see the students are opening their Bibles. If the word of God fails, then God's name is gone. God is no longer God if his word fails.

His word has never failed. His word has never fallen short. It's foundational truth that the Bible is true. It is the holy word of God.

The second thing, foundations are essential. The book of Genesis is considered a foundational book for the rest of the Bible, right from the first verse. It contains essential truth upon which the rest of the Bible is built. So if I were to build a house, the very first thing I do is go to the bank.

The very next thing I do is I hire somebody to come in and put in the foundation. They put a concrete and rebar foundation in, it better have rebar in it because it doesn't have rebar and I'm in trouble. Enough engineers in the building to tell me that if it's not reinforced concrete, it will crumble and I will end up at the house like that one with a stilts up against it to try to hold it up. As a kid, we learned the wise man built his house upon the white, on the rock.

The foolish man built his house upon the, and why is that foolish? No foundation. And it fell over. And the house on the rock stood.

And the house on the rock fell, clap with me. And the house on the rock fell flat, right? Sunday School, basic Sunday School 101. I said, how's on the sand?

Sorry, how's on the sand fell flat? Yes, I made a mistake. Sorry for everybody watching on Facebook that just turned it off. So the foundation is essential.

It determines whether it will stand or fall or whether the house is livable or not. I had a house in bed for my first house, starter home. Handy man special. The reason was the Handy man special is because the foundation was bad.

We couldn't keep pencils on the table for homeschool. We were trying to school the kids and the pencils kept rolling off the table because the house was like this. Because the foundation was bad. I got a guy in and said, can I put some jack post in and straighten this up?

He goes, no, no, you can't fix it. What do you mean I can't fix it? The only way is to build a new foundation. He said, that's like, you must have a tear down, bud.

Okay. So that's how important the foundation is. The foundation works this way. You put the foundation down and then you put your first floor on top of the foundation.

And then you build your second floor on top of the first floor. The first floor supports the second floor, which is supported by the foundation. You can build 10 more floors if you want, but they're all ultimately supported by that foundation. So the foundation is the most important part.

Genesis chapter one, verse one is foundational to the first chapter of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. It's foundational to the first 11 chapters. The first 11 chapters of Genesis are foundational to the rest of the book of Genesis.

And Genesis is foundational to the rest of the Bible. So you kind of get the picture. Genesis one, one is the foundation. The first floor, Genesis one to 11, is built on top of Genesis one.

The rest of the book of Genesis, the third floor is built on top of Genesis one to 11. The whole Bible is built on top of the foundation of the whole book of entire book of Genesis. But ultimately it all rests on that first foundational verse. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

You pull out a foundational block and the whole structure will collapse. The leaning tower of peace. I actually got to go to the leaning tower of peace because I always see pictures of it. But when you're standing there, it's worse than it looks.

There really is, you're looking at it and you can go up and take tours of it. And I'm thinking, I'll fall over. I'll be the guy. I'm too heavy to go up there.

If I go to the wrong side of it, the whole thing's gonna collapse. I just know it. It just looks really, really bad. Really bad.

They sure me it's good for another hundred years. It's been there for, I don't know how many hundreds. But again, the whole reason behind it, why it tilts like it is, is they put it on this glacial tail that they built underneath no foundation. They built it and within months, it started to tilt.

And in fact, when you go up the thing you look at, it's actually shaped like a banana. Because when they got part way up, it started to tilt and they thought, oh, so then they started building at the other direction. It's really humorous when you stand a certain angle. Look at it.

It's the leaning banana of pizza is what it is. It's weird. But it's because of the foundation, it's not there. In some one, oh yes, it's not getting distracted here.

So Genesis is quoted, including many quotes by Jesus Christ, over 60 times in the New Testament. Over 60 times, some say 200 times, it's referred to, but it's quoted over 60 times in the New Testament. And Jesus Christ is one of those who has quoted from Genesis. Psalm 11 verse three says, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

So in other words, if we take out the foundation of our belief, what can we do? We have nothing. If we take the scriptures away, if we take in the beginning God away, you have nothing. It'll all collapse.

You need that foundation. All right. Verse one tells us there is a God. But it also tells us that there's a Creator God, the one true God.

The next thing, next point, is the universe had a beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The universe was brought into existence and created by God. Before there was no universe, there was no earth, there was no time, there was space.

Now I can't even imagine, no space. Not even empty black space. There was not even nothing. Ken Ham says, the way he puts it, and only in Australia could do this, sorry for any Australians that might be here.

There was not even nothing but God. Not even nothing. There was no time, there was no space, there was no material, there was nothing. No atoms, no molecules, nothing.

And it's all been created by God. God, all powerful. So what's the universe, what's it made from? Well, the word to create, Vara, and I put the Hebrew word up there for you, means brought into existence materials that had no previous existence to make everything that now exists, pretty much, is what it implies.

So the very materials that make what everything is had to be created by God because they didn't previously exist. You see, the thing is, you'll go to school or you'll turn on Discovery Channel or Cottage Country. And it's gonna tell you that, yeah, there was a big explosion of all this matter. And kaboom, here we are, and look at your eyes, isn't it amazing?

You know, it kind of doesn't work that way. Because where did the material come from that exploded and turned into these? Like where did that happen? Where did the material come from?

Well, it was always there. What do you mean always there? How could something always be there? Oh, wait a minute now.

There's only one thing that could always be there. That's God. He's eternal. He declares himself as eternal.

And there's none other like him. So the materials that make up everything around us had to have a beginning. It had to have an intelligent design to it. It had to be put together.

The atom, let's take the most simple atom that there is. Hydrogen, one electron, one proton. Proton spins, no proton spins in the middle. Electron spins around the proton.

Oh, man. I'm really gonna get thrown out the door in a second. The simplest. That had to be made.

That couldn't just happen. Because what would it happen from? More hydrogen? Oh, wait a second.

Now that's cheating. That's what he made by someone. By something. By some design had to be put into that.

I put to you that it was the God of heaven who took things that had no previous existence and made everything that we now know that exists from that. He made the universe from not even nothing. Hebrews, chapter 11, verse three. I read this in every version I have.

By faith we understood that the universe was created by the Word of God so that what is not seen was made, so what is seen rather, what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. That's ESV. And then I went to the, to lose gold standards. The NLT.

By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God's command. That what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen. In other words, made out of not even nothing. Psalm 33, verse nine.

Again from the NLT. I'm not sure what that's evened, special edition maybe. For when he spoke the world began. It appeared at his command.

God commanded things to happen and it happens. He spoke the universe into existence. You know, 10 times we read and God said, and God said, and God said. So I guess you're getting two series on the 10 commandments.

You got the one from David Hanson, then you're getting this one. 10 commands, let there be light and there was light. Let there be fish in creatures of the sea and there was fish in creatures of the sea. 10 commands.

And like that, they happen. I can't snap my fingers. In, there's a story in Mark. Very, very interesting.

The disciples are with Jesus. They're in the boat and a storm came up. And they found themselves in jeopardy. And they look and where's Jesus?

Like we're going down with this thing. Where is he? There he is, he's asleep. God, what are you doing?

Sleeping in, he gets up and goes, oh, the storm. Stop it. And it did. And they said, whoa, what kind of person is this who can speak to the elements?

And they change. That's my paraphrase. You did not read of a miracle ever done by another human being in all the scripture that affected the weather. Only the creator can do that.

The God of heaven was in that boat. And when he spoke to the waves, they stopped. He is the creator God. If all things were made by him, here's the other thing.

You were made by him. He made you. He made everything about you. He made our first parents.

And we've descended from them. Psalm 139, verses 13 and 14 say, you formed my inward parts. You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Marvelous are your works. And that my soul knows very well. I did a little series on Psalm 139. If you want to listen to that, it gives you a background of the character of God.

The all-powerful God knows you and he knows you well. How great is our God? I almost want to sing that right now, but we won't. What did God create?

First of all, he created time in the beginning. He created space, the heavens. And he created matter, the earth. The third point from this verse that we get to understand is that God had no beginning.

God himself had no beginning. Only of God had no beginning. Space, time, matter, all had a beginning. But God was just there.

He was just there. If God made time, he had to exist before time. If God made space, he had to exist outside of space. You know, we're also well aware of time.

We have watches or Fitbits or whatever, Apple watches on our arms. We count the minutes, the hours. We count birthdays. We go, where are you?

Happy birthday yesterday. God made time, but he exists outside of time. He does not age. When Moses first met up with God, Moses was up in the wilderness, and he came across this bush that was on fire.

But the first thing you notice is the bush is burning, but it's not burning up. It's just burning. And he comes up and he has a conversation with this bush. And it was God in the burning bush.

If you read over next to 32 and 33, you'll understand why he came in a burning bush and not came and appeared before him as Almighty God. And he came and he spoke to him. And this conversation goes on and he says, you are to go and deliver my people from the hand of Pharaoh. He says, OK, but I'll go, but who are you?

Like, who do I tell them is sending me? And he says this in verse 14 of Exodus 13, a three. God said, I am who I am. And he said, thus, you shall say to the children of Israel, I am, has sent me to you.

And the children of Israel know exactly who that is when he said, oh, by the way, the person sent me was I am. God Almighty, Jehovah, the Almighty God. So who made God? You know, I was asked this by a young boy recently.

He came up to me and he said, you're talking about God and all this, but who made God? You know, I'm a teller. Everything we know was made by somebody more intelligent than the item. If you have a watch, I mean an old school watch.

Never mind these things. But if you had an old school watch with all that stuff that moves inside, they're really, really fascinating. They're the coolest things. I don't know why people don't wear them.

I don't know why I don't wear one. But they're so cool. It's got all these little springs and it's got stuff moving back and forth. And you open up, I have my great grandfather's old pocket watch, he was a trained engineer.

And I have the pocket watch on a chain. You can open up the back and look at all the gears. There's a million little gears in there. And there's like crystals and all of this stuff.

And it's old school. Like you have to wind it. The whole works. And you look at it, I think this is amazing.

But you know what was more amazing than that? Is the watchmaker who designed that? The watchmaker who built that. And then before the watchmaker built it, there was somebody who designed it.

Maybe an engineer. I don't know if they could build watches. They could build trains. Can they put watches?

Engineers? Yeah, probably not. But somebody had to design the thing. And I'll find the parrots.

So my whole point is that when we see something, there is a more intelligent thing behind it, or more intelligent person behind it. Just like the watch is brilliant. But the watchmaker who made it is more brilliant. So when we look at God, and we think, OK, who made God?

Well, I would have to be a super God. Well, who made that super God? That would be a super super God. Well, who made the super super God?

Well, super super super God. And that would never end. And it would get stupid. And it would get really, really lame and very, very, very tired.

That's impossible. There is one God. He has always existed. He has no beginning.

He has almighty. He has everything that he says he is. And he has proven it many, many times over. That he is exactly who he says he is.

He had no beginning. He's infinite. The creator God of the Bible has existed in eternity. Three attributes.

I'm nepotent. He's all powerful. And again, I've used this illustration before. I might say that I am powerful.

I'm not really. I've lost so much body strength because I get older. That I can lift less than I used to. But then you can come along and say, yeah, well, I am more powerful, right?

And somebody comes along more powerful than you. God is all powerful. OK, the second thing. I'm thisant.

All knowing. I always tell people, especially my kids. I don't know everything but I know an awful lot about everything. It's supposed to be funny.

But I laugh on cue, everyone. We should be like the prices, right? And have a sign up here. Laugh.

Applause. Amen. So you can have a person who knows a lot. But you can have somebody who knows more.

But here's one attribute of God. I dare you to find somebody who can be in two places at once. Not only two places at once, but be everywhere at once. In their full lessons of their whole being.

You see, this is the God that created the heavens and the earth. This God who created all things is able to be everywhere all the time in all the essences of his being. That's why when you are going through a difficult time, you can reach out and cry out to God because he is there. Excuse me if you're a believer.

He's there with you. That's why you can praise him. That we can come on Sunday morning and praise the Lord together. And you know what?

At the same time, across the ocean, somebody may be doing it in an evening service. Because he is there with them. He is here with us. He can be everywhere at once in all of his being.

So I'm actually going to finish on time. Romans chapter 10 has a very interesting verse. There's a lot of people today that proclaim that it is not scientific and it's not logical to believe in God. I would have to put it to you and say that it takes much more faith and very blind faith to believe that matter existed on its own.

That takes much more faith to say that I believe in matter that existed on its own and was not created. That there was nothing behind all of what we see. Romans chapter 1, verse 20 says, and this is from the NLT. From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made.

They can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God. God has put into the very snowflakes that fell this week his intricate design to the point that one falls on your jacket and you look at it and you have to say, well, God is amazing because he made that. The chair that you're sitting on is made out of different atoms and molecules.

The fluids in your body, you're probably 97% water, but every fluid in your body does exactly what it's supposed to do, but it's all been designed by God to do exactly what it's supposed to do. It takes a lot more faith to believe it was an accident, to think that a bunch of materials blew up somewhere and formed some kind of a rubber polymer that, well, and then enough of it got together and it formed a tire. Cool. And then somehow made four more and all the rest of the parts.

One faith, man, say that happens. You can stretch it out as many billion years as you want. In the beginning, God, the one who had no beginning, created, made out of nothing, less than nothing, the heavens and the earth. Hebrews, chapter 11, verses 1 to 3 and verse 6.

Now faith, we are here because we have faith, right? We are here because we have faith. I look forward to the day when my faith is fulfilled and I'm in the presence of Jesus Christ, all hopes fulfilled, all faith fulfilled, but I have put my trust fully in him. Why?

Is it a blind faith thing? No, absolutely not. I examined the evidence before I made that decision. I look to see is this real?

Is it based on what? So Hebrews 1. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for. It doesn't say faith is just kind of like just do it.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Your faith, if you have faith in Jesus Christ, it is based on two things. It is based on substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen. You did not blindly go into this.

By faith, we understand that the world's were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. And then in verse 6, the first step of faith, but with faith that is impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. You see, this God, this incredible, amazing God who made everything out of nothing is worthy of putting your faith in your trust. What does this mean to you and I?

If God made me, as I said earlier, then I have a responsibility. You see, the reason that atheists exist is not because they're smarter and they figured it all out, but try to boil down what they actually believe. And you can't. The reason an atheist exists, usually, is because they're mad at God.

They're so mad at God that I'm just going to block him out of my life and I'm going to make sure everybody else does too. I have a responsibility. As soon as you say, I accept in the beginning God. You don't even have to get to the creative that happens in the earth, but in the beginning God, I am now responsible.

I have to believe in him. I have to worship him as the infinite God. I have to accept him for who he is. And he is good and holy and the basis for all moral law and all of the things that I have violated in my life, all the transgressions, they're on me because I have fallen short of who he is.

But we don't despair in that. The one who made you loves you. The Lord Jesus Christ. He came from heaven to this earth to die for you.

John chapter 3, verse 16. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the next verse we could read is, for God so loved the world. That he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

The God who gives physical life can give you eternal life, if you trust in him. God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God. Those are strong, strong words.

Some of the strongest words in the scripture. But some of the most comforting words, the fact is that you can have eternal life through Jesus Christ. I pray this morning as we look at some of these foundational things that you do understand, that there is a God, that there is a Creator God. He made you, he made me, and he made everything around us, and that we are responsible to him.

May you trust him with your whole life. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. The moment you were born, you became an eternal being. The moment you drew your first breath, you became an eternal being.

You will either live forever with eternal life, or as it says here, you will die condemned and not see life. May that not be the case of you. Father, thank you this morning. We come before you as creatures that you have created.

It's amazing. It's amazing what you have done, and it's amazing who you are. I pray, Lord, that you would help us. Father, this morning to just somehow grasp who you are.

I pray that you would impress upon our hearts the significance of the God of heaven. We would be humbled before you. I pray for anybody who's here this morning, who has been created but has not been recreated through Jesus Christ and faith in him. May they examine the evidence.

May they look at the substance and put their faith in him and him alone. We ask these things in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. If you're OK to sing a song.