Transcription
Everyone and welcome back to To Be Like Christ for a brand new series.
As I've been studying through the New Testament, I've been realizing that, man, I really need to understand the Old Testament, or at least have some grasp of it, to understand the New Testament well. And I wasn't ready to plunge into a verse-by-verse study of the Old Testament, not yet. So, but I thought we could apply the five-minute study method that we've been using in the New Testament, specifically in the book of Acts right now, and take it back into the Old Testament and start in Genesis and, uh, go from there. So that's what we're going to do starting today. And these will just be kind of side studies away from our main study that we're doing in the book of Acts right now. But if you're interested in the Old Testament, you want to know more about that, these will be here.
As always, we've got handouts for these. They're free to download or to print off on our website, and there's a link down in the description below. And you'll see those notes up here on the, the screen if you're on YouTube. If you're on the podcast, well, you'll have to go to the website and download them. So, as always, we're going to try to answer the who, what, when, where, why, and, and the application questions as we go through each of these chapters.
So let's start off with when. When did the events of Genesis chapter 1 happen? Well, Genesis chapter 1 contains the story of the beginning of the universe as we know it, and so this happened at the beginning of time.
Now let's talk about our main characters. The first character, and the first character to ever exist in any story, is God. And He's present in Genesis chapter 1. God is the creator of the universe. He is all-powerful, holy, eternal, and full of love. And three beings share the nature of God. We commonly refer to them as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And these three are sometimes called the Trinity, if you've ever heard that term before. And each was present at the creation. And then our next main character is man. So, the first male human being. And then we have female, or sorry, woman, the first female human being. They're created by God towards the end of this chapter.
And then our question, where? Where did the events of this chapter take place? Well, this is definitely a unique chapter because the events here took place literally everywhere. This chapter describes how God made our entire universe, everything that we can see and perceive, and even things that we can't see up to this point in history. And it gives particular attention to the creation of our world, the Earth.
And so now, as we always do, let's go over an outline of the chapter and break it down into sections. The first section, verses 1 through 2, is really just an introduction. Genesis chapter 1 explains how God made our world in six days. And verses 1 and 2 describe the world before God had created anything. Everything was darkness and void, and it said that God's spirit was, quote, hovering over the face of the waters.
Verses 6 through 8 describe the second day of creation. God created an expanse to separate the waters, and He called this expanse Heaven.
Verses 9-13 describe day three. God created the dry land and He called it Earth, and He separated it from the waters, which He called the Seas. Next, He created the vegetation, plants, and trees that grow on the Earth.
Next up, day 5, verses 20 through 23. God created sea life and birds, and He blessed them, saying, quote, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the Earth."
And then finally, day six, the last day of creation, verses 24-31. This takes us to the end of the chapter. On the sixth day, God created all of the animals that live on the dry land. Then God created man, or human beings, specifically a male human being first, and He made that male human being in His image. And He appointed humans to have dominion over all of the other beings that He had created. And finally, after looking over all of His creation and all of His work over the past six days, God declared and concluded that it was all, quote, "very good."
So that is Genesis chapter 1, the very beginning of the Bible. If you're, this is your first time reading the Bible, it's pretty exciting, and that's how it all starts off. Now, in chapter 2, we'll get some more details about God's creative work, and we'll just move on from here.
But let's talk about an application from chapter 1 before we conclude. Could a world like ours really be the result of just six days of work? A world as complex and as beautiful as ours is undoubtedly a feat of incredible, incredible creative power, and it could not have been accomplished by anybody but an incredible designer. If you doubt that this world, as great and beautiful as it is, could be built in six days, well, then you need a greater conception of God. And let the world around you and the beauty in it grow your admiration for God as you observe it more and more and take in its magnificent complexity. God is not a small God who's capable of a few wonders. He is an unimaginably powerful God who is the origin of all creativity and beauty.