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Theme for 2022 is “Begin Again”
This eight-part series is called “In the Beginning” and will carry us through May, June and into July with some breaks in between.
I thought it would be good for us to reset our thinking by going all the way back to the beginning.
Lets look at how God began everything and how God begins again.
Today we are in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible.
This is not just the story of creation, it’s the beginning of time.
When Albert Einstein posited his theory of relativity at the beginning of the last century it opened the way for a new understanding of the relationship between time and matter.
All matter exists, not only in three dimensions, but also in a forth dimension of time.
The speed of light became the measurement by which we can measure space.
And to travel beyond the speed of light, theoretically, could alter time.
When God created space and time, he didn’t just create matter, he created order.
In creating order, God showed us His glory of goodness, beauty, creativity and design.
Six minute videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVsqCLyoU3o
I can’t say it any better than Louie Giglio.
He says, “I’m not trying to make you feel small, I’m telling you that you are small!”
What he is really saying is that your God is bigger than you thought He was.
I wanted to take you on this little trip into outer space to give you perspective.
Time gives us perspective.
Let’s begin reading Genesis with this sense of perspective in mind.
Perspective changes everything.
Before God, what was the world like?
Empty.
Without form.
Dark.
Chaos.
Without God, everything would be chaos.
According to Tim Mackie of The Bible Project the Hebrew describes a watery desert.
Like the ocean -there is seemingly no end.
Like the desert - there is no life.
It’s empty and nothing makes sense.
Doesn’t that describe our lives without God?
Without God life is empty, chaotic and nothing makes sense.
Have you ever felt like you life lacks meaning or purpose?
My question is : Where is God?
According to Genesis, The Spirit of God is hovering over the dark , deep waters.
Hovering - the Hebrew is literally vibrating.
Do you know what else vibrates?
- Life, sound energy!
Something is stirring in the emptiness.
God is there, in the mist of the chaos!
And now for the Big Bang...
In the dark, empty, chaos suddenly - light!
Energy, time and matter burst forth like a supernova.
What does this tell us about God, creation and the universe?
- more than I can comprehend!
But the simple answer is this:
Without God, we would be in darkness.
Light contrasts with darkness.
We don’t even know what darkness is until we have light.
God says the light is good.
We don’t know what good is apart from God.
We can be living empty lives, wandering around in darkness thinking evil is all there is...
Until God speaks an the light comes on and we begin to recognize what is good and what is not.
It’s like the difference of night and day!
God creates something out of nothing…so to speak.
Actually God put His own essence into creation - His own substance.
God not only spoke, He showed up and time began.
God shows up and suddenly there is space, time and matter.
The existence of time and matter is relative to the speed of light and God is light.
So what does God do next?
God separates, divides, discerns…puts thing in their place.
Without God, we would not know which way is up.
Chaos is another word for confusion.
Confusion is the lack of categories, definition or discernment.
Chaos is when nothing is certain - everything is relative with no fixed reference points - and nothing is really knowable…for sure!
We don’t know which end is up.
That is when God separates water from water.
Have you ever tried separating water?
I dare you to try it sometime.
Pour two different bottles of water together and then try to separate them.
You could boil it or make ice - but that’s the only kind of separation I can think of.
God takes water that is vapor and puts it up in the clouds and says,”you belong up there!”
And he puts the water that is liquid in the ocean and says, “you belong down there.
And when the water in the sky falls into the ocean it rises again.
If we are going to begin again, we need God to come and do some separating.
Separating is the essential act of discernment.
Separating right from wrong, good from evil.
We have a world where everything is relative and people don’t know who they are or what their place is.
We have rejected our family and societal roles as arbitrary… granted they can be too rigid and that’s not good either.
But we can even say for sure what a man or a woman is!
We are fighting over the silliest things!
Meanwhile God is in heaven saying, “Do I need to come down there and do some separating?!”
We measure growth over time.
Have you ever thought about what an amazing miracle is time?
I have been in countries were time is not as important as it is here.
In Haiti, if someone say I will be there in five minutes, that means a half-hour.
Or in Kenya, when you tell the speaker to speak for an hour, that could be two hours.
Time is a measurement.
Without a measurement of time, you don’t know how much of your life has passed between events.
I believe that time is a gift of God so that we can measure growth and progress.
If you ask a child how much they grown today, how will they answer you?
But if you ask how much did you grow this year or this month, they can say that they have changed a whole clothing size.
Even creation is measured in days.
We could argue if a day means one rotation of the earth, but I don’t think any of us know if the earth was even rotating at this point.
The point is that time existed, there was progress and it was measurable.
First God separated the waters and then he gathered them together.
And for the first time in history, we have solid ground on which we can live.
But what I really want to focus on is that “God saw it was good.”
Growth is recognizing what is good.
Dry land is better than living in water.
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