In Beginning 01: The Beginning

Bill Serjak

This is a message from pastor and teacher Bill Serjak from the Genesis series “In Beginning”

The Beginning
Genesis 1:1-5

When we studied the Bible in seminary, we began with the twelfth chapter of Genesis with God’s calling of Abraham to become a great nation. We studied how the Jews came together as a nation and then later how the Christian Church was formed. Unfortunately, there are eleven chapters that come earlier in Genesis and I think they lay important groundwork for understanding the rest of the book.
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In Beginning 02: Sky, Water, and Earth

Bill Serjak

This is a message from pastor and teacher Bill Serjak from the Genesis series “In Beginning”

Sky, Water, and Earth
Genesis 1:7-13

The Book of Genesis begins, “In the beginning,” but as I mentioned last week, there is no direct article in the original Hebrew, so literally it could be translated, In beginning. That difference might be significant if we think of this not as creating a time line, but as meaning that God is currently at the core or at beginning of all the universe and that our world is still being held together by God. That is not the way we are taught to think in our modern educational system: we are taught to think of the universe as eternal and infinite and not being held together by anything outside itself. It changes our conception of our world, our default thought mode of thinking, if we start to think, as the Bible says in Colos-sians, that the molecules of our world are constantly being held together by God. The world doesn’t exist on its own and would cease to exist, would melt down, if God didn’t keep holding it together. That new default mode of thinking means that God is eternal and He is all that exists eternally. Genesis tells us that God took chaos and brought order to the universe. He is now still bringing order to the universe and keeping it together. Without God, the universe would go back to its natural state of chaos. Everything in the world goes to chaos unless someone, something, or some group holds it together.
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