What are the three most important
questions that any human being needs to answer? What are the three most
important questions that we need to answer as we live life here on earth? Here
is my answer to this question: I believe that the three most important questions
that every human being asks and answers are these three questions: Who am I? Do
I matter? And why am I here? The answers to these questions profoundly shape
how we view ourselves and those around us. The answers to these questions
profoundly shape what we value and what we leverage our lives into.
And directly related to these
three questions is a fourth question. And that fourth question is this “How did
I get here?” And the answer to this question is not simply an answer from
biology. You see, even though we know the biological answer to how we got here,
that answer does not satisfy the deeper question of “where did we come from?”
in terms of humanity as a whole. Where did human life begin? How did human life
begin? Where did the universe come from?
Human beings throughout history
have sought answers to these questions. And human beings have come up with a
wide range of potential answers to these questions. But this morning, how do we
know which answer is the right answer? And is there more than one answer? Does
the answer that science gives regarding where life begins compete and
contradict the answer that religion gives to this question? In other words, do
you have to turn your brain off when you read the Bible? Do you have to
compartmentalize your religious views from science into two separate ways to
look at life? Or does faith and science complement one another and provide a
cohesive answer when it comes to this question?
To find the answers to these
questions, I would like for us to spend the next three looking at the opening
chapters of the very first letter that is recorded for us in the Bible, called
the book of Genesis. And as we look at the opening chapters of the book of
Genesis, we are going to discover where the universe and humanity came from. We
are going to discover that science and the Bible are not at odds, but actually
provide a cohesive answer to the question “where did we come from?”
In the opening chapters of the book of
Genesis, we will discover the answers to the three most important questions
that every human being asks and answers in their lives. And as we go through
this series, our hope and prayer is that God would move by the power of the
Holy Spirit in our heads, hearts and hands so that we would not only discover
the answer to these questions, but that we would live our day to day lives in
light of the answers to these questions.
So let’s begin where the Bible
begins, which is in Genesis chapter one. Now the book Genesis is actually the
first of five letters that were written by Moses and were referred to as the
Pentateuch. These five letters serve as the opening chapters of God’s story to
humanity. Now a natural question that arises here is “well Dave, how could
Moses write all of the first five letters that are recorded for us in the
Bible? I mean, Moses was not alive during the times that are recorded for us in
the book of Genesis?”
If that question is running through your mind,
I just want to let you know that you are asking a great question. And
fortunately, the Bible itself provides us the answer to that question. First, the first five letters that make up
the Pentateuch claim that Moses wrote the book of Genesis. In addition, other
letters in the Old Testament affirm that Moses wrote the book of Genesis. And finally, Jesus also affirms that Moses
wrote the book of Genesis.
Even though Moses was not alive
during the time of the book of Genesis, Moses had both oral and written records
of early history, which he used under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to write
the book of Genesis, which records events that occurred before his life. So
let’s look together as Moses begins to share the story that helps answer the
question “where did we come from?”, beginning in Genesis 1:1:
In the
beginning God
Let’s
just take a minute and stop right there. You see, I believe that these four
words set the tone not only for the book of Genesis, but for the entire Bible.
“In the beginning God”. In other words,
before there was a beginning, there was God. Before there was space and time,
there was God. Before anything existed, nothing existed except God. This
morning, just take a minute and let that sink in. “In the beginning God”.
There
is only one being that has existed from eternity past and that being is God.
You see, we think of eternity as eternity in the future. However, eternity
exists also as eternity past. The bottom line is this, God has always existed.
God is outside of space and time and is thus not constrained by space and time.
God looks at space and time like I would look at a music stand.
You
see, unlike Eastern religions; unlike the New Age Movement; unlike monism and
pantheism, God and creation are not one essence that are intertwined with one
another. The Bible teaches us that there is a Creator and there is a creation
and that the Creator is distinct and separate from the creation. There is only
one God and you and I or any other created thing is not God. “In the beginning
God”. With that in mind, let’s look at all of Genesis 1:1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth.
Now
that leads us to a first and obvious question that has been asked by all of
humanity throughout history. And that question is this: How? How did God create
the Heavens and earth?
Tomorrow,
we will begin to find answers to that question…
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