Tag Archives: Old Testament

Session 3 – The God Who Creates out of Nothing

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It’s good to be back in Genesis. We’ve had a couple interruptions the last few weeks — holidays, a baptism for one grandson, then another baptized on Easter — but now we’re settling back into our study.

My goal as we move through Genesis is to go slowly. Not tediously slow, I hope, but slow enough to see what’s really there. We’ll keep making connections to the New Testament and to truths that help us see the greatness of God more clearly.

Today, I want to begin in the New Testament before returning to Genesis.

“What Is Seen Was Not Made Out of Things Which Are Visible”

Turn to Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 11 is the faith chapter. Let me read the opening verses:

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” (Hebrews 11:1–3)

That last line is what we’re focusing on: “what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”

As someone who taught chemistry and physics for 25 years, that verse always meant a lot to me. The more you dig into almost any subject, the more it ends up glorifying God. If you grow flowers, you plant a seed in the same dirt as everything else — potatoes, corn, tomatoes — and yet each plant comes up tasting like what it’s supposed to taste like. That alone is amazing.

But let’s talk about something even smaller.

A Little Science — and a Big God

Everything in the material world is made of atoms. Atoms are too small to see. There are over a hundred elements — iron, copper, zinc, oxygen, hydrogen — but most of what we deal with every day is made from maybe ten or twelve of them.

Every atom has three parts: protons, neutrons, and electrons. The sacks in the picture represent the idea that God made everything from those three components. (In actuality, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but I think it gives you a mental picture.)

  • Protons carry a positive charge.
  • Neutrons have no charge.
  • Electrons carry a negative charge and move around the outside of the atom.

Protons and neutrons are packed tightly together in the nucleus. Electrons move around that nucleus. Opposites attract — positive and negative — so the electrons are attracted to the nucleus.

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

Take carbon. Carbon has six protons and six neutrons in its nucleus, and six electrons outside. That’s what carbon is. Graphite in your pencil is carbon. A diamond is carbon.

Add one proton, one neutron, and one electron, and now you have nitrogen — an odorless gas that makes up a large part of our air. And if you were to add three hydrogen atoms, also an orderless gas, to one nitrogen, you have ammonia, which is anything but odorless.

Add another proton, neutron, and electron to nitrogen, you have oxygen — the air we breathe.

It’s the number of protons that makes an element what it is. God, in creating, used these basic building blocks — protons, neutrons, electrons — and from them came everything.

Let’s talk about iron.

Iron has 26 protons and 30 neutrons in its nucleus, with 26 electrons outside. That’s iron.

If you hold a common nail in your hand — mostly iron — that nail contains 26 billion billion atoms.

Now stretch your mind a little.

If we could expand one iron atom so that its nucleus was the size of a ping pong ball, the nearest electrons would be about 26 feet away. The outermost electrons would be about a third of a mile away.

And between the nucleus and those electrons?

Nothing.

Empty space. Not air, because air is made of atoms and there are no atoms within other atoms.

That means an atom of iron — something that seems solid and hard — is mostly nothing. The next atom would be another third of a mile beyond that.

So this nail, which holds buildings together and will hurt if you drive it into your finger, is mostly empty space. It’s made of things you cannot see — and most of it is nothing.

When you hit a nail with a hammer, the atoms of the hammer never actually touch the atoms of the nail. The electrons around each atom repel one another. It’s like magnets pushing away from each other. Forces are involved, but nothing truly “touches.”

And God did that.

The God you worship designed matter that way. The God who made you made a world where solid iron is mostly empty space held together by forces we cannot see.

That’s what Hebrews 11:3 means in part: “what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”

Now go back to Genesis 1.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
“The earth was without form and void… and darkness was over the surface of the deep… and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

Before God spoke, there was no light.

He commanded something that did not exist to exist.

That’s not magic. That’s authority. He spoke to what did not exist and said, “Light, exist.” And light obeyed.

Paul picks this up in 2 Corinthians 4:6:

“For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

The saving work of Christ is like creation. God says, “Let there be light,” and light shines in a dark heart. He creates spiritual life just as He created physical light.

Romans 4:17 says He is the One who “calls into being that which does not exist.”

That’s what God does.

Separations, Naming, and Order

As we move through Genesis 1, notice what God does.

After creating the heavens and the earth and bringing light into existence, much of what follows is separation and ordering.

  • He separates light from darkness.
  • He names the light “day” and the darkness “night.”
  • There was evening and there was morning, day one.

On the second day, He creates the expanse — the firmament — to separate waters from waters. He calls the expanse “heaven.”

The Hebrew word for that expanse, raqia, comes from a word meaning to beat out metal into a thin sheet. Ancient people looked up and saw what appeared to be a solid dome. That’s the language being used.

God separates waters above from waters below. Then He gathers the waters below so dry land appears.

Up to this point, after the initial creation and the creation of light, He hasn’t created new materials. He has been separating and ordering what He already brought into existence.

Light and darkness. Waters above and below. Sea and dry land.

He is dividing, naming, structuring.

The Sovereign God Who Does It All

Let me close with Isaiah 45.

God speaks to Cyrus, a pagan king. Cyrus did not know Him. Yet God says:

“I am the one who forms light and creates darkness, producing peace and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7)

There is no other.

He forms light. He creates darkness. He produces peace. He creates calamity. He raises up kings. He brings down kings.

This is the God who created iron atoms that are mostly empty space. This is the God who spoke light into existence. This is the God who shines light into human hearts.

And this same God gave us a Savior.

He could have judged us all. We have all rebelled against Him. But He desired to save. He desired to glorify Himself in mercy. So He sent Christ. The God who calls things into existence that do not exist called us into spiritual life.

That’s the God we’re studying in Genesis. And that’s the God we worship.

Our Idols are Lying to Us

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Isaiah 44:9-20

In this passage, the prophet Isaiah rails against idolatry and the foolishness of it. He first declares, “All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit.” Unlike virtually every nation at that time, Israel believed in one God who had created heaven and earth. They also believed that idolatry was vain, empty, and frankly, stupid.

Sometimes we modern folk think that the people of ancient times were superstitious and irrational in their thinking. And there was a lot of that. But the message which God proclaimed was one of reason. Yes, God emphasizes faith, but not at the expense of reason.

The gist of this passage in Isaiah is that the idols are the creation of a man. The ironsmith creates his image and wears himself out and becomes hungry in the process. The idol does not relieve his hunger. The woodworker expends his energy cutting down a tree, sharpens his tools, makes an idol for himself.

Here is the interesting thing about this latter scenario. The woodworker cuts the log in half. He splits one half and cuts it into smaller pieces so that he can make a fire with which to warm himself. It’s the other half that he uses to create his idol.

Isaiah writes it this way:  “Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, ‘Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!’ And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, ‘Deliver me, for you are my god!’”

I don’t know if you can hear it, but there is mockery in the prophet’s voice. It is shear stupidity to think that you can burn part of a log for heat, and then claim that the other half is a god who can supply needs, protect, and deliver! It is totally irrational, and the Bible, in the words of Isaiah, points this out. There is no power to save in a piece of wood that a man has the power to burn. No one thinks to say, as verse 19 says, “Shall I fall down [in worship] before a block of wood?”

Verse 20 says, “He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?’. “But” you say, “we don’t do this. So, what’s the point?”

The point is that we do do this – just not with physical idols. We create idols in our hearts out of things that our “deluded heart” lusts for. We’re generally not satisfied with God and the things He so graciously provides for us to meet our needs. We want more. As John writes in his first epistle, it is the “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life,” which, he says, do not come from the father but are from the world – these are the things that we want.

Our natural self longs for the affirmation of others. We want to be seen as beautiful, strong, sexy, self-confident, popular, rich, and/or … the list could go on. Our lusts tell us that if we had just a few more likes on Facebook, or one more look at a pornographic site, or a faster, sportier car, or if we were stronger and more athletic,  then we would surely be happier and more content. Look at commercials. Isn’t that the message? Whether people are drinking the best coffee, driving a car over desert sand dunes, or vacationing with their spouse in the Caribbean, they are all smiling and having loads of fun. But you – you live just a mundane life in your average home, driving a used grocery-getter car with two of the back seats taken up with approved baby-carrying booster seats. Our lusts cry out, “Give us our idols! I want what those people have!”

We are being lied to. Our idols are promising the world, but giving us nothing but sorrow, emptiness, and regret. Look at what Eve was promised in the garden. She looked at the fruit and when she “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate,” and the human race was plunged into all of the devastating consequences that resulted from our first parents’ disobedience.

Let’s be like the Thessalonian Christians who “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). And let’s obey the admonition of the apostle John who said, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). Let’s not just keep ourselves from idols, let’s follow Paul’s admonition to “flee from idolatry” (1 Corinthians 10:14).

“When you follow the trail of your time, energy, affection, and money, you find a throne. And whatever or whomever is on that throne is the object of your worship.” ~Louie Giglio

Let’s make sure God is the one on that throne. Don’t believe the lies!

Faithful Leadership

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A passage in Isaiah stuck out to me because of the implications it has for us as men, especially in our leadership role. Isaiah 9:16 says, “For the leaders of this people cause them to err, and those who are led by them are destroyed.” The next verse speaks of God’s judgment on young men, orphans and widows alike because of the failure of the leadership.

It doesn’t seem to matter that perhaps the leaders were sincere — they were wrong and caused the people to err. Perhaps they were weak or uncertain in their leadership. Even so, they caused the people to err. The result was that not only did judgment come to the leader, it came upon those who followed as well. Leadership is a powerful thing as I’m sure you have seen in the events of the Old Testament kings. The fate of the whole nation depended upon the quality and direction of the leadership.
How does that relate to us? We’re not kings, presidents or corporate managers. We are just simple men — husbands, fathers, church workers. Isn’t it true, however, that in our positions we are leaders, even if there are only a few who look to us? Doesn’t that mean it is crucial for us to be careful not to cause other to err because in so doing we bring judgment not only on ourselves, but on them as well? Let’s be faithful men in our leadership roles no matter how many or how few people it impacts.