Regina Conference: 1999
Table of Contents
Genesis Truth
Address—C. Hendricks
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Turn to Genesis chapter one. First chapter in the Bible, Genesis chapter one. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form and void.
And darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, let there be light, and there was light.
And God saw the light that it was good.
And God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light day.
And the darkness he called night.
In the evening, in the morning were the first day.
And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters.
And let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, And it was so.
And God called the firmament heaven, and the evening and the morning were the second day.
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place.
And let the dry land appear. And it was so.
And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He sees.
And God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass.
The herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind.
Whose seed is in itself upon the earth. And it was so.
And the earth brought forth grass and herb, yielding seed after his kind.
And the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind.
And it and God saw that it was good. And the evening in the morning were the third day.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night.
And let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth.
And it was so.
And God made 2 great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.
He made the stars also.
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.
And to rule over the day and over the night.
And to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
And the evening and the morning were the 4th day.
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind.
And every wing file after his kind. And God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let foul multiply in the earth. In the evening. In the morning were the 5th day.
And God said, let the earth bring forth a living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind, And it was so.
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, And God saw that it was good.
And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.
And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his own image.
In the image of God created he him male and female.
Created he them.
And God bless them.
And God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.
And have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth.
And every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed to you, it shall be for me.
And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat. And it was so.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
And the evening and the morning were the 6th day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And on the 7th day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the 7th day from all his work which he had made.
And God blessed the 7th day and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all his work, which God created.
And made.
Now I want to read a few verses from the 2nd chapter. Just a few verses.
Verse 7.
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And the Lord God formed man.
Of the dust of the ground.
And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became.
A living soul.
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and there.
He put the man whom he had formed.
Verse 15.
And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
The Lord God commanded the man saying, Of Every tree of the garden on me is free to eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.
For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.
And the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone.
I will make him in help meet for him, and out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field.
And every fall of the air, and brought them unto Adam, to see what he would call them.
And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Adam gave names to all cattle, to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam.
There was not found in help meet for him.
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept.
And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof.
And the rid which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and he brought her unto the man.
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be 1 flesh.
They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
Now Matthew 19.
Matthew 19.
Verse 3.
The Pharisees also came unto him, Jesus tempting him.
And saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?
And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning?
Made them male and female.
And said for this, 'cause now he's referring back the Lord Jesus. The truth is referring back to these first two chapters in Genesis.
He authenticates them.
By his word.
Have you not read? He says that he which made them in the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, shall cleave to his wife and the twain.
Shall be 1 flesh.
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. But therefore godeth joined together, let not man.
Put asunder.
And then a verse in First Corinthians 11.
1St Corinthians 11.
The reason I'm reading these New Testament verses.
Is to show that these two chapters which we've read in Genesis, which are the most attacked chapters in the whole Bible, by the higher critics and by those that have no respect for and no belief in the Word of God, the infallible, unerring Word of God.
That to throw those chapters out, which formed the very basis and foundation for New Testament truth, the words of the Lord himself verifying them and the apostle Paul here in the 11TH chapter of 1 Corinthians, I'm just going to he's talking about the relative order in creation.
And he says in verse 3, the head of every man is Christ.
The head of the woman is the man. The head of Christ is God.
That's the order. God, Christ, man, woman.
Verse 7 he says, for man indeed ought not to cover his head, for as much as he is the image and glory of God. Where did he get that? We got it from Genesis 1 and 2.
Verse 8.
For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Where did he get that?
You get that from the 2nd chapter where God builded a woman out of the rib of Adam.
She was taken out of him.
She was not taken from the ground as Adam was and as the animals were, but she was a unique creation she was created from.
So when he saw her, he said, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
How did we get here? The only book in the universe, the only book in this whole world that tells us how it happened is Genesis 1 and 2 is the Bible.
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And it's all authenticated in the New Testament.
So if you touch Genesis.
And you nullify that in Satan, our enemy. He knows this. He knows it very well.
And so he attacks the very foundation.
And in the Psalms it says, if the foundation be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?
So he has attacked.
He's leveled his guns.
At Genesis 111 Chapters, especially the first 3 chapters.
And they tell us how we get here, how we got here.
One Corinthians 11 again, verse 9.
Neither was the man created for the woman.
But the woman for the man, that's the reason she used to have her head covered when she praised her prophecies. It has nothing to do with the condition of things at Corinth. It goes back to the beginning.
It goes back to the original creation, God's order in creation again.
Umm, 2 Corinthians 11.
2nd Corinthians 11.
Verse 3.
But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve. That's the third chapter. I didn't read that this afternoon, but it's referring back there.
Through his subtlety. So your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
How did Paul know that the first woman's name was Eve?
From Genesis, the only way he could know.
Look at First Timothy 2.
I want to just quickly touch on these verses and then go to the exposition of Genesis 1.
In one Timothy 2 where he says, let the woman verse 11 be silent and learn in silence with all subjection, I suffer not a woman to teach in order to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. Why? What is the basis for this teaching for Adam was first formed.
Then Eve again. He names her.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
Again, we have the authentication in the New Testament of these beginning chapters in our Bible. Now turn back to Genesis. Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1.
The only reference in Genesis 1 to the male and the female is in verse 27.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created him, male and female created he them, but he doesn't tell us.
In the 1St chapter how he did it?
He tells us that in the 2nd chapter. How he did it.
How he created the man and the woman.
And the New Testament teaching is based on this.
Now there are those that would teach that do teach.
That day one begins with verse one.
This is clearly, and I will demonstrate it from the scriptures, I hope prove it to everyone of us here this afternoon that that is wrong.
Day one begins with verse 3 wherein God says let there be light, and there was light.
Verses verse one is the original creation of the universe.
In the beginning One of the most profound and sublime verses in all of scripture. In the beginning, God, Elohim, God in Trinity.
The three persons of the Godhead involved in that creation of the universe God created.
The heavens, I think it should be in the plural and the earth. The earth is singled out from all the rest of the heavens. 19th Psalm says the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.
I'll never forget when I was a young man in my 20s and I was in Jamaica, British W Indies, away from the city lights and everything, and I looked up and I saw the Milky Way.
You could not pick out individual stars. It was a band of light across the sky. Most awesome sight I've ever seen.
The heavens declare the glory of God.
I've never seen that in the farther northern part of this hemisphere, but I saw it down there closer to the equator.
The heavens declare the glory of God. That referred. The heavens is all the constellations, all the galaxies, all the stars.
And God created them. We don't know when that was.
We don't know how far back that was, but in the beginning.
In the beginning, there was a beginning.
There was a beginning. The only thing that is remotely correct in the evolutionary hypothesis is The Big Bang theory.
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The Big Bang is nonsense. You don't get an ordered cosmos out of an explosion, but it does say that there was a beginning.
That's the only correct part of it. It does say that this created universe had a beginning. That is, matter is not eternal.
Even the scientists admit that matter is not eternal. But there was a time, if I can use the word time to describe it, because it's really before time, when there was nothing but God.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, God in Trinity.
And that's all that existed.
We're told in the 38th chapter of Job that when the foundations of the earth were laid, the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. So evidently from that I would conclude that before God created the material universe described here in Genesis 1, He created the angelic hosts.
And I don't believe it was.
Long before Satan fell and dragged the rebellious angels with him.
So verse one.
Was the original creation everything perfect, the heavens and then?
The Earth is singled out.
The earth of all the heavens is the scene in which He is going to display His eternal counsels and purposes.
And plans.
It's the scene where the Son of God, the creator of the universe, came.
Where he suffered, where he died.
So the old timers that said the Earth is the center of the universe, we're not too far off.
Certainly morally, spiritually, it is the center.
Because it's where God has accomplished that wonderful work of redemption.
In the gift of his beloved son.
So the Earth.
Is singled out from all the heavens in verse one.
Verse one is the original creation of everything.
And then the second verse describes only the earth.
Not a word about the heavens. It says the earth was without form and void.
And darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Now, that's not the way the Earth was originally created.
God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
He did not create a waste desolate.
Dark scene covered with water This planet Earth has been covered with water two times in its history that we know of, here in Genesis 1-2 and at the Flood. And we know that when the flood waters covered the Earth, that was a result of judgment.
And by inference, this is a result of judgment.
But I have much stronger evidence from the Bible that than just inference.
From the flood.
To say this was a result of judgment.
There are two Hebrew words that are used in this verse. The earth was without form. That's one word tohu. Mr. Darby renders it. The earth was waste.
And without form and void. And Mr. Darby renders that empty.
Tohu and bohu are the two Hebrew words.
It's about all I know about Hebrew.
So I don't think I know Hebrew.
But I know those words.
Those two words, and they're only found together three times in the Bible, three times here.
And in Isaiah and in Jeremiah. And I believe that.
The way to interpret scripture is by scripture.
Certainly not by pseudo science.
I don't trust science. If it's true science, I trust it. But there's so much that's called science that is not true science, falsely so-called, the apostle tells us to be on our guard against.
In the last century it was mentioned in the readings.
The truth was recovered to the church in a way that it had never been.
A wonderful recovery of truth. The enemy immediately countered with the Jehovah's witness.
The millennial Dawn Russellism.
Doctrine denying the deity of Christ, attacking his person, and then the Mormons.
The Joseph Smith and all the evil that has come out of that system.
But there's something else that he's used that even is even more devastating than those two false religions, and that is evolution.
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Charles Darwin came out with his Origin of Species, and it has a scientific flair to it. And who can challenge science? After all, if it's scientific, that's the God of the 20th century, isn't it? No.
Science, if it's scientific, if it can be proven.
The only thing is that they call that scientific. But evolution cannot be proven, can't be put in a laboratory and tested and repeated and repeated and repeated so that as to find out the results.
If you were in the biology lab, you could take a frog and you could dissect it, and you could learn certain things about the frog, and the next student could do the same, and the next one could do the same, and they could repeat their experiments. But there's no way to repeat history.
There's no way to repeat what happened back when no man existed.
Only God, and he's the only one that knows what he did and how he did it, and he's been pleased to tell us.
In these wonderful verses, you probably noticed as we read Genesis 1, the expression after its kind, after his kind, after his kind, after his kind, repeated over and over again. I said to one of my farmer brethren at home before I left on this trip. I said, What did you sow in your field this spring? And he said corn.
And I said, well, what are you going to harvest? You're going to have to wait till the fall to find out what comes up.
Of course, he said. Of course I know I'm going to get corn. I sowed corn, I'm going to get corn. If I sowed beans, I'm going to get beans after his kind, after his kind.
Wouldn't it be an utter confused mess if you sowed in the spring, something you didn't know what you were going to get until the fall?
Utter nonsense.
Everything comes up after its kind. You made 2 cats and what are you going to get? You're going to get kittens. You're not going to get dogs. You're not going to get cows.
Everyone knows this makes us laugh because it's so utterly ridiculous.
The theory that we evolved out of something altogether different than we were.
There are there are modifications within a species. That's not evolution.
That I'm talking about.
Talking about the changes that came by mere chance.
Think of the miracle that would happen to have two things evolve up out of non organic material and one is male and one is female and they come and they finally reach a state of completeness.
What happened before they reached the state of completeness? They never tell us.
And then they can mate and reproduce the race. What's the probability of that happening by mere chance? It's so low that it's impossible.
And if they were only honest, these men, they would own it.
But in our school systems and over our television broadcasting networks, they're promoting it over and over again. National Geographic, many of you have it. I wouldn't have it in the house because I used to take it. But it just teaches evolution over and over again. Beautiful pictures. The photography is magnificent. But the lie is only enhanced by that.
Lie of the Devil.
I remember when I was a young Christian, I was afraid to look into evolution because it was presented to me as it's presented to all the students here, as an established scientific fact.
It's nothing but a blatant lie of the devil.
And those who really know, they know it's a lie.
You wonder if the teachers in our school system know it's a lie or are they deceived?
They're either deceived or they know it's a lie in promoting what is known as to be a lie.
Well, that was Satan's crowning victory. Because if he can get you, the student, to distrust the Genesis record of creation.
And to look upon it as a fairy tale.
And that's what they've done. That's the way they present it. And if you can't believe Genesis 1, then you can't believe the Lord Jesus.
Because he referred back to Genesis 1 and 2, the male and female, on how they got here. You can't believe the Apostle Paul either.
And you can't believe Peter. And so on.
You've destroyed faith in the Bible.
It's like a child, they build a block house and someone takes the lower block. The very first one pulls it out and the whole thing collapses.
This book is the truth.
How we got here?
And don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
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In the beginning.
God.
Created the heavens and the earth.
It had to have a beginning and it had to be created by.
An infinite God.
Who could speak?
Who could command?
And it happened.
The 33rd Psalm. Let's just look at that very quickly.
I must discipline myself not to.
Spend too long on some of these side points, but they're so important. Verse 6, Psalm 33 by the word of the Lord.
Where the heavens made.
And all the host of them by the breath of his mouth, Hebrews 11 Says.
By faith, we understand that the world's were framed by the word of God.
So that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
The things that we see, this platform, this gym, the chairs.
The persons, the people, everything that we see. You didn't come out of something that is seen or that appears.
God created the world.
Sometimes it's said it's not quite right out of nothing.
There was never nothing.
There was always God.
And so it says, by the word of the Lord, where the heavens made.
Verse 9 for he spake.
And it was done.
He commanded.
And it stood fast.
He said let there be and there was.
Such is our God, the infinite God.
Who brought the universe into existence in a moment. He doesn't need millions of years to do it, by the way. He just does it in a moment.
Time. He's a timeless being.
Dwells in eternity.
Now the second verse and the earth.
Was without form and void, waste and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The whole world was covered with water.
Enveloped in darkness.
And it was a chaotic.
Situation waste and empty without form and void.
And the Spirit of God, it's interesting. Of the three persons in the Trinity, the Spirit of God is the first one singled out in the first part of our Bible. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Now let's turn to quickly Isaiah 34.
Isaiah 34 We want to see how these two Hebrew words waste and empty or without form and void, tohu and bohu, how they are used in scripture.
I'll start with verse 8. This chapter tells about the destruction that comes upon the land of Idumea. That's the end of verse 6. A great slaughter in the land of Idumea. That's that's Edom.
Verse 8 For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance, and the.
The year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion, and the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone.
And the land thereof shall become burning pitch.
It shall not be quenched night nor day. The smoke thereof shall go up forever from generation to generation. It shall lie waste. None shall pass through it forever and ever. Now this is the verse where those two Hebrew words are used together. They're not translated the same way in our King James. That's unfortunate if you have the new translation. He Darby translates it waste and empty, as it is in the Gingenes. But I'll point it out when we come to the words. But the cormorant, verse 11. And the bitterness shall possess.
The owl also, and the Raven shall dwell in it. You see, this is a desolate scene resulting from the judgment of God upon this land, and he shall stretch out upon it. Here it is the line of confusion. That's Tohu. That's waste.
And the stones of emptiness, that's Bohu, Empty or vain.
As we have it. But here you can see how you can see the force of that Hebrew word. It's translated about form. In one instance it's translated waste that described the earth and then empty, vain.
Without avoid King James.
Now that's the result that state into which this land of Edom will be reduced in a future day.
Is the result of the judgment of God falling upon it?
All right, now let's look at let's look at the other passage in Jeremiah 4.
Jeremiah 4, where we have these two Hebrew words used again and again. It's a result of judgment, this time upon Jerusalem.
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The land of the Jews. What we looked at in Isaiah 34 was upon.
Edom.
I'll start just to save time. I'll start with verse 20 of Jeremiah 4. Destruction upon destruction is cried for. The whole land is spoiled. Suddenly are my tents spoiled and my curtains in a moment referring to the the the temple.
How long shall I see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet? Here's this invading army that is coming against Jerusalem to to raise it, to level it, to destroy it. And the reason is for my people is foolish. They have not known me. They are Satish children and they have none. Understanding. They are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge. Now we have those two Hebrew words.
In verse 23, it sounds just like Genesis 1/2.
I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form. Tohu and Void Bohu.
And the heavens and they had no light. Darkness was on the face of the deep. Now this isn't describing Genesis 1-2. It's describing Jerusalem as a result of the judgment of the armies that God sends against it to punish them for their sins.
I beheld the mountains, and though they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly, I beheld and lo, there was number man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. Obviously I beheld, and lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness. Obviously this is not the earth as it was in Genesis 1-2, but it's a similar.
Desolate condition that's described, and the reason these two passages are cited is because that the only two passages other than Genesis 1/2 That uses those two Hebrew words together.
So that shows very clearly, does it not, that the condition described in Genesis 1/2 as a result of judgment?
That's not the way God created this earth. He didn't create a formless.
Mass in darkness covered with water.
No, he did not.
Created it perfect.
The Cosmos.
An ordered universe and ordered Earth.
And that's the way it was created. There's one more passage which uses one of those two Hebrew words, and it's Isaiah 45.
Isaiah 45 and verse 18.
For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God Himself that formed the earth and made it. He hath established it. He created it not in vain. How the King James translators translate that word to in vain here or as waste. He did not create it without form.
He formed it to be inhabited.
I am the Lord, and there is none else.
So where the 2 words are used together, it's a result of judgment. And here it tells us he didn't create it in the condition described in that second verse of Genesis 1. Now turn to 2nd Corinthians 4.
Here's a proof from the New Testament.
That the Earth was not created that way.
2nd Corinthians, chapter 4.
And verse 6.
For God.
Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness? That's Genesis 1/3 when God said let there be light and there was light. So God commanded the light to shine out of darkness. The physical world was in darkness, was underwater.
It was formless.
It was waste and empty, and God commanded the light to shine out of darkness.
Had shined in our hearts.
To give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. When did he shine into your heart? When did he say, let there be light to your soul?
Was your soul in darkness? It certainly was. Everyone of us was in darkness. Everyone of us was in a ruined state, such as the earth was in verse 2.
Was man created that way? No, he was not.
Man was created perfect.
Man was created sinless, and he was placed in the garden of delights.
There was number fault in man. God pronounced upon that earthly creation. It was very good.
The first man was very good. That was his crowning achievement.
When he created man.
But he fell.
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He fell into sin. That's described in the 3rd chapter of Genesis, the serpent game. Yeah, hath God said, and so on.
And Eve saw that fruit, and she took of it and handed it to her husband Adam, and the the earthly family fell.
And we've inherited that fallen condition, darkness.
Just as the Earth was not created in darkness, neither was man.
It's a result of judgment.
The judgment that fell on the earth, the judgment that fell on man. My firm belief is that this planted earth was Satan's home before he fell.
And as a result of his fall?
The condition described in Genesis 1-2 resulted.
Remember in the book of Job God asked Satan where have you been? And he said from walking up and down to and fro in the earth.
He's very interested in this planet.
Very interested in the earth.
And so right after the earthly parents were placed in the Garden of Delights, he comes Slytherin along. Well, I shouldn't say that I don't think he came Slytherin along. I think he came walking along.
Because he wasn't confined to eat the dust until after he had caused the.
The earthly parents to sin dust shalt thou eat. All the days of my life was the curse placed upon the serpent.
But he tempted them, and they fell. Evidently quite a beautiful creature, as he came from God. And then he fell because he wanted to be like God.
And he attempted our earthly parents with the same temptation. Ye shall be as God.
Knowing good and evil, just eat that fruit. You'll be like God. That's what he wanted to be. And when he saw that, God placed this whole earthly scene under Adam.
He was intensely jealous and says I must destroy that.
And he has done his job well.
But the destruction of.
The first parents has resulted in his fall as well.
Let's go back to Genesis 1 now.
Verse 2 is not the original creation of the earth.
But the result of.
Judgment The earth was.
Without form and void. One more thing I want to point out. Turn to Genesis Chapter 9.
Genesis Chapter 9.
Excuse me 19. Excuse me.
Genesis 19.
Verse 26.
And he and his wife, that is Lot's wife, looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. That Hebrew word translated became is exactly the same Hebrew word that is translated was in Genesis 1/2. The earth was without form and void could have been translated, became without form and void.
And that's exactly what happened. The earth became that way. It was not created that way. Now God is going to reform the earth for man.
Recreate it if I will can use that word for man and that starts in verse 3.
God said, let there be light.
And there was light.
Some have said God created light on the first day. No he didn't. He doesn't say that. It says he said let there be light.
Nowhere does it say light was created in Scripture. It says he forms the light creates darkness in Isaiah 45.
But he does not create light. He is light.
And he said let there be light came from him. I envision in this first day.
That this planet that was surrounded with darkness now is bathed in light.
God said, let there be light, there was light.
And God saw the light that it was good.
And now the second thing he does in that first day, God divided the light from the darkness. So how he did that, I could tell you how I think he did it, but that's not important.
God divided the light from the darkness, so part of the time it was in light, part of the time it was in day.
Today we would interpret it from our knowledge. Today set the world spinning, but.
This doesn't say this, it just says God divided the light from the darkness, and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. The evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. The earth is still completely covered with water, but it's there's light now, and now he makes the atmosphere.
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God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament.
From the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so.
The firmament or the expanse and God called the firmament heaven. Now that's a secondary use of the word heaven in verse one. God created the heaven and the earth that was the whole universe, but here now it's that part that's just between the two waters, the one below and the ones above.
He called the firmament heaven in the evening, in the morning with the second day.
Still no dry land, still covered with water, but now Earth has an atmosphere.
And God said let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place.
And let the dry land appear. And it was so.
And God called the dry land earth. Now that's the second use of the word, a secondary use of the word earth.
The 1St 2 verses speaks of God created the heavens and the earth and then it describes the earth that this whole planet was waste and empty. But here now he calls the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters he calls seas. God saw that it was good.
And then he says, on this third day, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit. And here we have that formula that's repeated so often after his kind.
I want to make this very strong statement. You cannot believe the Bible.
And believe evolution. The 2 are mutually exclusive the one of the other.
You cannot believe that everything comes after its kind, reproduces after its kind, after its kind.
That itself totally refutes evolution. You don't have to understand everything about this chapter, but if you believe that one thing that God has repeated repeatedly in this chapter after its kind, that eliminates the nonsense, the lie of evolution.
If evolution were true, this scene would be nothing but utter chaos.
It has to be after its kind.
The fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself. Who put that there?
Evolution by chance. That happened. God put it there.
And it was so.
And the earth brought forth grass and herb, yielding seed after his kind.
And the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind. Apple trees always produce apples, and ever produce oranges or pears, or grapefruit, or anything else. They always produce apples, and so on.
After his kind.
And God saw that it was good.
In the evening and the morning were the third day.
Now we come to a very interesting day, the 4th day.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night.
Who did that for the first three days?
God did.
God did.
It says in verse.
For and God divided the light from the darkness.
God said let the light and then he divides the light from the darkness. He did that. By the way, these are 24 hour days you say? How do you know that? Well, from the 4th day we know that.
Because now in the 4th day, he assigns the function that he had been performing to the sun, the moon and the stars.
He said. I'm going to let you do those things. You're going to divide the day from the night.
And more than that. Now notice in verse 1 he says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. There's a difference between the word created and the word made on the 4th day. The word created doesn't occur, it's only made. This platform was made, this podium was made. This microphone was made out of previously existing material. But man cannot create.
When there's nothing he cannot bring forth into being something. Only God can do that.
In the strict sense of the word. But man can make things, and God too.
And we'll see later, as we come to man, the creation of man, that both words are used. He was made and he was created, and we'll see why.
God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night.
And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years. That is, He assigned specific function to these heavenly bodies.
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And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth. And it was so.
The mistake that we often make with our puny minds and thinking is that the way we see the universe and the way it exists today.
It's always been that way.
That's not true.
That is not true.
There's been big changes right here on planet Earth.
Big changes and big changes in the universe too.
No problem for God.
All he has to do is speak.
Remember in Joshua's day he used a man and he said, son, stand still.
Son stood still.
For almost 24 hours.
While Israel defeated their enemies.
Our knowledge of the how the universe works, what happened?
I'm not even going to try to say.
Hezekiah's day, he said, let the sundial go back 10°.
And it happened.
How did that happen?
You read the prophets, it says in a future day the sun is going to be blackened.
Oh, you can apply that spiritually.
But some of that is literal.
And we're talking about.
Some very.
Profound things here, let them be for lights. Verse 15 in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and it was so, And God made, he made 2 great lights, the sun, the moon, to perform a function which prior to this time He had been performing. Now he assigns that function to these heavenly bodies.
Think that's a problem for God?
That's because you're limiting God by your own thinking.
God knows how he did it, and He knows what he did.
God made 2 great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.
And the stars also.
With respect to Earth.
You see, Earth is really the center of all his dealings, and he set them in place.
In fact, he says that verse 17 God set them.
In the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.
And to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness. Well, that's what God did in verse 4. That's the first day God divided the light from the darkness. Now he assigns that function to the sun and the moon and the stars.
And God saw that it was good.
In the evening. In the morning were the 4th day.
And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly.
After their kind.
And every living wing foul after his kind.
And God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters and the seas, and let foul multiply in the earth. And the evening in the morning where the 5th day.
So you have the sea creatures and the air creatures.
Created on that fifth day.
Now we come to the 6th day.
And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind.
We read in the 2nd chapter that out of the dust of the ground he made the animals.
He made them of previously existing material, whereas the sea creatures were created.
They didn't use the dust of the world to bring them into existence.
God said.
Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind, And it was so, and God made the beast of the earth after his kind.
And cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind. And God saw that it was good.
Now we come to the second part of the 6th day.
His crowning achievement, man.
Man, what a creature he was, how beautiful. He must have been the first man right from the hand of God.
Fully equipped with a language and knowledge such that he could name all the animals.
Very short time.
Immense mental, physical capacity.
The same can be said of the woman. Beautiful.
Before they fell.
And God said, now God has a conference, the persons of the Godhead speak together.
God said let us make man in our image.
After our likeness.
Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
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And when Satan saw that God set that man to have that authority and that power, he was.
Intensely jealous.
Now we have the word created used.
It says in verse 26, Let us make man, because he made man out of the dust of the ground.
But now it says so God created man verse 27 in his own image.
In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. That's the only reference to the distinction of male and female in the 1St chapter. We get the details of Eve's creation beautifully in the 2nd chapter. The most beautiful type of Christ in the church that we have in all of scripture.
And God bless them.
And God said unto them, Be fruitful.
And multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed to you, it shall be for meat.
And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat.
And it was so.
And God saw everything that he had made.
And behold, it was.
Very good.
Not a flaw, not an imperfection.
It was very good.
In the evening. In the morning were the 6th day.
Now you don't get an evening in the morning for the 7th day. I think it speaks of eternity.
The heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts of them.
And on the 7th day, God ended his work which he had made. He rested.
And he rested on the 7th day from all his work which he had made.
And God blessed the 7th day.
And sanctified it because that in it.
He had rested from all his work.
Which God created.
And made both words are used. Those two words created and made, they mean different things.
Only God can create. Only God can create. Man can make.
And he also makes.
The God, he created man. Why does it say created? Well, we read that seventh verse of chapter 2. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground. That's why he it's used. Made is used.
Because he was made out of existing material and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, the spirit of life, and man became a living soul, a never dying soul. The animals have souls.
Every time you read the creature, when it speaks of the animal, bring forth a living creature that's a living soul.
Animals have souls. They are souls.
But they don't have a spirit, and when they're when they die, when their body dies, the soul dies.
When man's body dies, his soul does not die.
It's a living soul.
Sustained of God.
They will not die.
The only part of man that dies is his body.
But he has a spirit.
And a soul, a soul gives him, you say his body gives him world consciousness, his soul gives him self consciousness, and his spirit gives him God consciousness.
The trees have life, the plants have life, but they don't have souls.
The animals have life and they have souls. You can speak to your dog and your cat. You can. You can train them. You can talk to them. Some people talk to their plants. That's worthless. It's useless. They don't have souls.
Just life.
Man has a spirit.
He is the crown of God's creation.
He knows.
There's a God.
An atheist is a contradiction of terms. How can a man who has been created with a spirit who is conscious that there is a God above him, with whom he has to do and to whom he has to answer? How can he?
Say there's no God. He's a fool.
And that's what the word called Sam.
The fool has said in his heart.
There is no God.
The solemn thing.
About this creation of man is when his body dies.
He does not die.
He's going to spend eternity either with the Lord in heaven or.
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In the dungeons of the Damned in Hell.
Where are you going to spend eternity?
You know this God of creation.
Ecclesiastes says remember now thy Creator.
And that's interesting. It's like the word Elohim. In the beginning, God Elohim created the heavens and the earth. That's the word in plural. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Remember now thy Creator. That's the word in plural.
In the days of value, your Creator is who's your Creator. It's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all three persons.
Involved in the creation of man.
Do you remember him?
You acknowledge him.
Do you realize you have to do with him?
He came down the person of the sun.
To die for you and for me. To give his life, that you might know this great God that we've been considering here.
And how he did it. And he's the only one that knows how he did it.
Man has his theories, his nonsense, and it's really ridiculous some of the things he's come up with.
You don't have to be a scientist to see it's ridiculous.
All you have to be is in your sound mind.
To see the ridiculousness of it.
It's Satan's lie.
And he has succeeded in that lie.
Telling it as Adolf Hitler said, tell a lie over and over and over again and it will soon be believed.
And that's the way they operate.
So when you go to school.
Test everything they tell you by this book.
This book is the standard of truth.
That they speak not according to this word is because there's no light in them.
Children of Darkness.
We were once darkness.
Now we're light in the Lord. God has said to your soul and mind, let there be light. He said that to planet earth. He said that to us.
And there's light.
I wonder to be brought out of the darkness in which we were as a result of the fall.
The earth was brought out of a darkness in which it once was as a result of a fall.
And then God reformed it for man.
Good to know the God that made us.
And that has redeemed us.
Contrast of Judaism and Christianity
Address—C. Hendricks
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Start by reading a verse in John 7. John Chapter 7.
Verse 37 In the last day, that great day of the feast.
Jesus stood and cried, saying.
If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.
He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow.
Rivers of living water.
But this fakie of the Spirit.
Which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given.
Because that Jesus was not yet glorified. And then a verse in Hebrews 13, Hebrews 13, and verse 13. Let us go forth therefore unto him.
Without the camp.
Bearing his reproach this exhortation in Hebrews.
We've often read it had it before us.
And I've often thought, how can we know what it means?
What is the camp that he's talking about?
At the end of this epistle, where he set forth the.
Greater things, the superior things of Christianity in contrast with Judaism.
At the end of the very end chapter he says, Let us go forth therefore unto him. We had before us in the readings, that Christianity is a person, and the blessed Lord Himself, and here we're told to go forth to him.
Without or outside the camp.
Bearing his reproach.
Well, in the setting in which it's found, here in Hebrews, the camp is Judaism.
That's what it was at the time that Paul wrote this.
Judaism and he's writing to Jews.
Who had outwardly embraced Christ as the Messiah, and there was always a danger that.
Some of them might not continue.
But might go back to Judaism.
And.
And apostatize from the Christian faith.
And you get a lot of warnings in this epistle with that in mind. But to those who are.
In this profession of faith in Jesus.
The final exhortation is to go forth unto him without the camp.
To abandon the camp of Judaism in favor of the blessedness of Christianity. That's basically what he's saying. Well, what does that mean to us today? Is there any application that we can make today for ourselves? We don't go to the synagogue. No, Christians go to the synagogue. They don't worship in the in the Jewish temple. If there was 1.
In the 1St century, there still was.
Until 70 AD, when it was destroyed by the Romans. The early Christians used to.
Used to go to the temple.
Look at Acts chapter.
Chapter 2. Book of Acts.
Chapter 2 and verse 46.
And they, well, I'm going to read from verse 42, so you'll get the setting. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles, and all that believed were together and had all things common.
And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
And they continually continuing daily with 1 accord in the temple.
And breaking bread from house to house did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.
Praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to the church daily, such as should be saved. Now chapter 3. Now when Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer being the 9th hour, and so on.
In those early days.
You have the church.
Was composed of Jewish believers.
But they had not separated from Judaism.
They still went to the temple.
And there were other Jews in the Temple going on with the Jewish order of things, but the time had not yet come for a clear break.
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Between Judaism and the church, Oregon the Christians, the only difference. He had two kinds of Jews. You had Jews that did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, and you had Jews that did.
It seems inconsistent. We even have difficulty thinking of how how that actually happened. But the early Christians who believed in the Lord Jesus.
They went into the temple. There was not a break yet with Judaism.
That's why the Epistle to the Hebrews was written in that last chapter. He says to the Jews now that had embraced Jesus as the Messiah. Now let us go forth unto him outside the camp, outside the system of Judaism to which they had been attached and into which they had been born as Jews, and to make a clean break with Judaism.
God bore with this for quite a while, and it took a good deal of time.
Before they made that separation in the 5th chapter.
Or is it the 6th chapter?
In the 6th chapter of Acts verse 7 And the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.
In the.
In the 15th chapter.
Of the Book of Acts.
Verse one.
And certain men which came down from Judea taught the brethren, and said.
That they had come down from Judea to Antioch, which was a Gentile assembly.
And here these Jews had come now from Jerusalem.
And they said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, she cannot be saved.
When, therefore, Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.
Verse 4 says, When they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them. And there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees, which believed, saying that it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.
And the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter.
So there was still that situation in Jerusalem where?
There was a great company of the priests that believed, and now there's certain ones of the Pharisees that believed and they were trying to put the Gentiles under law. And the decision was made there at Jerusalem that the Gentiles were not to be put under law, but they were to abide by 4 things.
Verse 28.
It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.
That she abstained from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication, From which, if you keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well. So when they were dismissed, they came to Antioch. And when they had gathered the multitude together, they read the epistle. They delivered the epistle, which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation.
Now if you turn to the 21St chapter, when Paul goes to Jerusalem.
Paul goes to Jerusalem and it says verse 17, when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.
Now he's talking when he says the brethren there, he's talking about those that were Jews at Jerusalem that had embraced.
Christ as the Messiah. And the day following Paul went in with us unto James. Now this James was the brother, the half brother of the Lord.
Who, When the Lord was here on earth, His brethren didn't believe in Him. We get that in John 7.
But they had come to faith after the resurrection. And James his brother was the Lord's brother, was a prominent leader. He was not an apostle, but he was a prominent leader, chief men among the brethren there at Jerusalem. And so as Paul went in with us unto James, he's by the way, the author of the epistle of James and his his other brother Jude authored the epistle of Jude. We have two epistles authored by.
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The Lord's brothers.
All right, it says, Paul went in with us unto James, and all the elders were present, and when he had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry. Now they had decided in the 15th of Acts that the Gentiles were not to be put under law. So we have an anomalous situation.
We have part of the church. The Jewish part was under law.
And the Gentile part was not. Now God bore with that for some time, but it had to be rectified. And that's why the Epistle to the Hebrews was written. And that's why he tells these Hebrew believers, go forth unto him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. But notice verse the end of verse 19. He declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles.
By his ministry and when?
They heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they're all zealous of the law.
So they weren't delivered from the law. The decision in Acts 15 was that the Gentiles were not to be put under it, but no change was made. As to the Jewish believers, you have to remember that God gave them the law of Moses, and it was not, it was not like a Pagan religion. It was a religion that was established by God in the beginning, and He gave them that law.
And they had the visible sign of the Lord's presence in their midst.
The pillar of cloud by day, the pillar of fire by night. And they had the the ritual that had been established in the law. They had the priesthood, they had the sacrifices, they had the Tabernacle in the wilderness, the temple in the land, and this was owned of God.
For many, many years.
Now for the Jew to quit that.
In favor of something new, altogether new, altogether different. The Jewish religion was an earthly religion. They had an earthly Tabernacle and temple and an earthly priesthood and and their their worship was all done after an earthly manner.
And now they are being introduced to A to a Christ. And it was very difficult for the Jew to.
Accept Christianity because they were looking for a deliverer. They were looking for a Messiah that would come in power and glory and destroy their enemies and establish his Kingdom here. And Israel would be the head and the Gentiles would be the tail. And even to his own disciples when he was crucified, they could not.
Understand it even John the Baptist, who had said, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
Everything went contrary to his beliefs and his expectations. Here he was the forerunner, the heralder of the Messiah, and he's put in prison.
And the Lord is rejected.
And he sent a message, Art thou he that should come, or look we for another? And the Lord sends a beautiful sweet answer, rebuking him slightly, but not hard. And he said, The blind sea, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed. And blessed is he whosoever is not not offended in me.
And that was a word for John. His faith failed.
As sometimes when things turn out just the opposite.
To what we expect, you can put yourself in those in the shoes of the Jews. And this was the this was the hardest thing for Jews to accept is that Jesus, a crucified Messiah, a crucified Messiah.
Some of the we were talking about this in the reading some of the Christian apologists in dealing with the Jews. They would go to their Old Testament scriptures and show them from their own scriptures that the Messiah would be rejected.
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He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace.
Was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. A suffering Messiah They did not. In fact, they even had come up with the theory that there were two Messiahs. There was a suffering Messiah, but the one they were looking for was a reigning Messiah.
They didn't. They wouldn't even put the two into one person.
And that's how difficult it was for the Jewish mindset to accept this. And so it was no easy thing for a Jew to abandon, to abandon Judaism and to cling to the Messiah, especially since the Messiah they were clinging to had been crucified.
He had been rejected.
That was a stumbling block to the Jew.
Foolishness to the Greek.
Foolishness to the Greek mind that God's salvation can come through a man crucified on a cross.
Ridiculous. Absurd. That would be their response.
But to the Jew, it was a stumbling block. They were looking for a king reigning in righteousness.
And they didn't know the difference between his first coming and his second coming, when he will come in power and glory, the same one. Now let's turn to the Gospel of John. We're going to just step our way through it. Don't know how far we'll get, but John, John's Gospel is unique from the three synoptic gospels in that it gives us truth and ministry.
Which was for that new order of things.
Which would be introduced founded upon the Lord's death.
And resurrection and more. His ascension to heaven.
His ascension to heaven. Now most Christians, I would say all Christendom knows about his death, His birth, of course they celebrate that more than anything. But his death.
And his resurrection.
And his ascension.
But they seem to stop there if they get that far.
Yemen of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? They were on the Mount of Olives, and here the Lord ascends.
Acts 1. He ascends. Why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus shall so come in like manners. Ye have seen him go, But what his present function is, what his present work is in heaven, they know little about almost nothing.
That verse we read in John 7. The Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. That means that.
The Spirit hadn't been given when the Lord was here on earth.
You read in the caption in your King James Bible put in there by the translators who did not understand the truth that I'm bringing out right now and that we understand. So when the church was born was on the day of Pentecost, Acts chapter 2, they didn't understand that. And they will head up certain chapters that have to do with Israel and the prophets and so on, and they'll say the church does this and the church does that. You see that as the heading of some of the Psalms and some of the prophecies.
They did not understand that the church did not exist in the Old Testament.
You can ask a Baptist and say when did your church begin? And many of them, if they're really strict Baptists, they will say with John the Baptist, well, that's a mistake because the church didn't exist when John the Baptist was here. When the Lord was here didn't exist after he rose from the dead. He was 40 days a risen man on earth. The church did not exist yet.
And then he ascended.
Then he ascended.
Sat down in the right hand of the majesty on high, and then.
He sent.
The Holy Spirit.
A divine person.
Sent down, and he formed by his baptism on the day of Pentecost.
One body.
And he formed the House of God.
Where he dwells.
In these last 2000 years, it's a parenthesis. It's a parenthesis in which we've been living from.
When the Lord was here on earth, he preached the gospel of the Kingdom. After we're gone, his disciples at that coming day and the messengers will preach the same thing. They'll take up where he left off. But we're living in this parenthesis. We don't preach the gospel of the Kingdom. We preach the gospel of the grace of God.
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Salvation by grace, salvation of the soul, the gospel of the Kingdom is there is a king coming?
And he's going to establish his rights in this world. That's what was preached by the Lord John the Baptist when he was here the first time. That was interrupted by his death.
The resurrection and you'll notice in the first chapters of Acts Peter says in the 3rd chapter we didn't look at it but he says to them if they would repent he would return and set up.
The Kingdom, they did not repent.
He has not returned.
Instead, the Spirit of God has been given.
And a new order of things altogether has been formed.
We were singing. We're not of this world now. A Jew couldn't sing this. A Jew had a religion that was of this world.
Suited to this world. A religion suited to man after the flesh.
That's what Judaism was, and it was given of God.
And a perfect law, if they had kept it, they would have lived forever in this Kingdom on earth. Would have been a wonderful time.
But they didn't keep it.
And they ended up.
Crucifying their Messiah.
Crucifying the Lord of glory.
Their own scriptures testified to all this. 22nd Psalm many passages.
They shall look on me, it says in Zachariah, whom they have pierced.
And then they shall mourn for him as they realize.
What they have done?
To their Messiah.
When Adolf Hitler slaughtered the Jews, put them in gas chambers.
Some of them said what have we done?
To deserve this.
What have we done?
They crucified their Messiah.
Serious indeed.
What we sow, we reap.
Well, in John's Gospel, turn back to the first chapter.
This gospel is unique.
In that it gives us truth.
All the way through.
The contrast.
The comparison, but mostly its contrast between Christianity and Judaism. Now, when this was written, Christianity had not yet been established, but all the ministry in John's Gospel is looking forward to its establishment, founded upon his death and resurrection.
Chapter one in John's Gospel and verse 17.
For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth.
Came by Jesus Christ. Here you have two comparisons. 2 Contrasts. You have the law contrasted with grace and truth. You have Moses contrasted with the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lawgivers, Moses, grace and truth.
By Jesus Christ, the truth of God acting in grace.
Not law, not the law principle anymore, but that God is the God of all grace. Wonderful, tremendous, majestic truth that God is dealing with us today.
In sovereign grace, bringing us into blessing and taking the vilest.
The most undeserving, the most unworthy.
Of mankind and bringing them into blessing, grace and truth.
Came by Jesus Christ and altogether new manner of dealing.
No longer God requiring obedience from His servants.
And blessing based upon obedience, but God blessing man out of the fullness of his own heart of love.
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Now back up to the 10th verse. He was in the world.
And the world was made by him. Young people, don't ever forget this.
He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
The world did not know him then. The world does not know him now.
It has not changed.
Yet it may be more educated and more enlightened in all this, but the world does not know him.
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By the world, I'm talking about those who are not the Lords, those who are just part of this world. But he says of us.
We sang, we're not of the world which passeth away. We're not of that company, that class of people that do not know him. We do know him. Tremendous, tremendous blessing. No matter what you know and how little you know as far as man's learning is concerned, if you know him, if you know him, you know one who world system.
They don't know him.
And don't expect truth.
Truth, morally and spiritually to come from such a source. It will not come from such a source.
The world knew him not.
He came unto his own. Now here is a special selection, his own, his own people, his own nation, Israel and his own received him not. It's not, doesn't say they didn't know him. In the 12TH of Mark he says I have. Having therefore one son, my beloved, I will send him also. He had sent his other servants. They had mistreated them, they injured them.
And put some to death, he said. I will send my son. They will respect. They will have reverence.
For my son and when they saw him.
They said this is the air.
They knew who he was.
As he says in John 7, ye both know me, and ye know whence I am.
He says, let us kill him and seize on the inheritance. And they did so. He came unto his own. His own received him not so you have the world that doesn't know him. You have those that were Jews that recognized him, but wouldn't have him, but as many as received him.
That's you and me. That's us in this crowd. I trust it's true of everyone here.
As many as received him to them gave he power of the right to the authority to become the sons of God or literally the children of God. John always talks about the children of God. It's unfortunate it's been rendered sons here. It's a little different thought. Children of God, those who have been born of God gives gives them the right the power to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name. Now how do you get into this? You see a Jew in order to become an Israelite and a member.
The people of God in the Old Testament, all he had to do was to be born into it naturally. If you were a Jew and a Jewish and you had a child, your child would be an Israelite. They were born into it naturally. Not so in the Christian order of things, this new order of things it says, which were born not of blood. Young people, you're not in this blessing because your parents are saved.
It's not of blood.
Nor of the will of the flesh. You can't will it for yourself, this new birth that he's talking about here.
Nor of the will of man. Someone else can't will it for you. I can't will it for you. I can present to you the gospel. I can present to you the Word, and so can others. But we can't effect the new birth, but born of God. Born of God. That's a sovereign act of God as he communicates divine life to the soul. And if a person doesn't have that new life, if he hasn't been born of God, he does not know God.
He might be brought up in a Christian family even, but if he hasn't been born of God. I'm talking about those that have reached the age of accountability.
They are.
In darkness.
Now he's going to talk more about that in the 3rd chapter. Let's turn to that right now in chapter 3. So in order to be in the family of God today, one has to be born again. He has to be born of God. He has to have a new life.
Chapter 3. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher, come from God.
For no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. That professor in the university that you might be attending, if he hasn't been born again, he's absolutely blind to the things of the Kingdom of God.
He cannot see them.
He does not have, he does not have spiritual eyes to see those things.
Except a man be born again.
You cannot see the Kingdom of God. You see, this is an altogether new concept that was not presented to the Jews in the Old Testament. They were. There were those that were born again, but it wasn't explained. It wasn't a requirement. You didn't have to be born again to be an Israelite.
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You just had to be born naturally into the Israelites family and you were an Israelite.
Well, we were talking about the camp and that's one of the characteristic features of the camp.
First one is law principle of law.
And there are those that are under the ******* of law.
In Christendom today, the whole epistle to the Galatians was written to.
Deliver Christians from the law principle, but there are many that are under law. That's what characterizes the camp. Grace and truth characterizes Christianity.
And new birth is a requirement to be in God's family today. It wasn't so in the Old Testament. So you're not.
Part of God's family just because you were born into a Christian family and go to meaning every week.
No, there has to be a new birth take place, a communication of new life to your soul. So that's another distinction. If you have, and there are many of them of this kind, you have a church in Christendom that has members of the church.
I know membership of a local church is not scriptural, but this is the language of the camp, the language of Christendom around us. So I'm adopting it. Membership in the church. And if you're not, there's some that are born again that are members, others that are not born again and yet they're members. And as far as membership in the church and the say in the in the in the church, they have just as much say as those who haven't been born again. What is that?
Well, it's not the camp as such which was Judaism, but it's a model patterned after the camp.
It's an imitation of the camp, and as you look around this, as we look around this in Christendom, we see this imitation in the Christian circles. And what we see that we call Christian is really a mixture of Christianity and Judaism and some paganism mixed in with it.
That's confusion, but if we're going to go forth unto him outside the camp, then these features that characterize true Christianity, grace and truth, not the law and the new birth is absolutely necessary in order to even see the Kingdom of God and to enter it. Notice he goes on to say Nicodemus can't understand his words, though he was a a teacher, a master in Israel. Verse 4 Nicodemus.
Unto him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born He he didn't have the foggiest idea of what the Lord was talking about.
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, He expands this expression. Born again, now born of water and the Spirit, now the water has no reference whatsoever to baptism, not a bit of it. Water baptism, Christian baptism, didn't even exist at the time when the Lord Jesus spoke these words.
Christianity didn't exist yet.
Didn't exist until after his death, resurrection and ascension to heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 2. But here we have truth that would apply after the church was established and formed. So what does it mean to be born of water? Well, Peter tells us, being born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. The water is symbolical of the word of God, which the Spirit of God uses.
To affect the new birth word of God is presented to a soul. The Spirit of God uses that.
The soul believes that, and he's born again, born of water and of the spirit. The water is the means used. The spirit is the agent, the power. It says except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. Doesn't matter what your education is, it doesn't matter how many letters you have after your name. They won't get you in. You need the new birth.
You need in order to enter this spiritual Kingdom.
Nicodemus didn't understand. He was talking about a different kind of Kingdom, not an earthly Kingdom. Here though, new birth is necessary to enter the earthly Kingdom as well as the heavenly Kingdom cannot see the Kingdom of God without this new life, and you can't enter it either.
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Then verse 6 he says that which is born of the flesh is flesh. You can train it, you can educate it, you can give it every possible advantage such as the Jews had in the Old Testament.
But did that convert them? No.
They crucified their Messiah when he came.
Persecuted him.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, partaking of the nature of the Source. Flesh is still flesh no matter what you do to it, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
Powerful not that I said unto thee.
Now he switches from the V which is singular, to the ye which is plural. Ye must be born again. What is he saying to Nicodemus?
He's not just saying that thou, Nicodemus must be born again, which is true. He says you Jews, all of you need a new birth. They were used to saying we have Abraham for our father.
And he's saying that won't do.
You need to be born afresh, anew, a new source.
Born of the Spirit of God by the Word of God. And then you will see, and then you will enter.
The Kingdom of God.
He unfolds, he says a little, he says in.
Verse 9 Nicodemus saith unto answered, and said to him, How can these things be?
Here he was a teacher of Israel. He didn't understand. Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou master of Israel, and knoweth not these things?
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, we speak, that we do know.
And testify that we have seen and you receive, not our witness. I'm just going to pause. I don't want dwell on this verse, but it's the most profound verse in all of John's gospel. Notice the change from the singular to the plural.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee.
And then he changes to we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen.
And you receive not our witness. And then he switches back to the singular. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall you believe? If I tell you of heavenly things, the necessity of the new birth even to enter the earthly Kingdom was an earthly thing.
And now he says, if I unfold to you heavenly things, how are you going to grasp that if you can't grasp the simplest of the earthly things? Well, who is the we in verse 11?
It's the Godhead.
It's the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the Lord is speaking here as a divine person.
We speak that we do know. We cannot say we know like God can.
We learn, we think.
But to say we know absolutely, only God can say that, and so He speaks as one of the persons of the Godhead, we.
The Father, the Son, Holy Spirit, we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen.
And you receive not our witness. And when you realize who the we and the our is.
In this verse it is most solemn. The way it ends. Ye receive not our witness.
They didn't just refuse his witness.
They refused, in doing so the witness of the Godhead.
And that leaves one outside of all blessing, doesn't it? Solemn thing.
Verse 13 No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven. Even the son of man which is in heaven now he's giving them some heavenly truth.
This one that came down from heaven and ascended up and will ascend up to heaven.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. That's the cross.
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. We spoke a little of that this morning. Eternal life.
For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son.
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life, everlasting or eternal life.
Well.
These are things that apply today. These are things that are characteristic truths of Christianity. It was not even required. The new birth was not even required of an Israelite for him to be a member of the Israelite ish community.
But to be really a part of this church that Christ is building.
Where the Spirit of God dwells, one must be born again.
Now in the 4th chapter.
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The Lord meets a woman of Samaria.
And he says in verse 7 to her, give me to drink.
The woman says to him, How is it that thou being a Jew, ask us drink of Maine, which am a woman of Samaria?
The Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.
Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou newest the gift of God.
If you only knew God as a giver, not one who was demanding obedience to a perfect law.
There's nothing wrong with the law, it's wholly just and good. But man is not that way, and so he cannot obey it. But here, now she, he says to her, If you only knew God as a giver.
Not a requirer.
But if thou knewest the gift of God, the free giving of God.
And who it is that saith to thee? Give me to drink.
You only knew who you were talking to.
Which devasted him.
And he would have given the living water.
Now the water in John 3 speaks of the water of the Word by which we're born. Again, here we have living water. It's a different figure. It's a type of the Holy Spirit.
Living water, free flowing water. We saw in that 7th chapter when he spoke about rivers of living water flowing out of one's inmost being. That was a type of the Holy Spirit, and here it is too. But here it's water within the soul.
Not flowing out to others, but notice what it says. He would have given the living water, the woman saith to him. Sir.
Thou hast nothing to draw with. The well is deep. From whence then hast thou that living water?
Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank there of himself and his children and his cattle?
Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. Very strong negative shall never, never, never thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well or a fountain of water.
Springing up into everlasting life, notice again the everlasting life, eternal life, choose all through John's Gospel. And that speaks of of the new order, the new character of blessing that will be the part of those who believe in this present day, this present day. The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water. Then I thirst not, neither come hit her to draw.
Jesus saith unto her, Go call thy husband.
And come hit her.
He had awakened her desire for this living water.
That was, that which would refresh her be an internal eternal source of refreshment Spirit of God.
Figured under this figure.
But he had to reach her conscience.
So he says, go call thy husband.
The woman answering said I have no husband.
Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou hast is not thy husband, and that sets thou truly.
He knew her through and through.
He knew all about her.
139th Psalm says, Lord, thou hast searched me and known me.
Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising. They understandest my thoughts afar off. The nothing hid from him.
And she says, Sir, I perceive thou art a prophet.
Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Now here we're going to have a change of worship.
He doesn't own the worship of Samaria, never did.
Never owned it.
And Jerusalem worship is going to be set aside in favor of.
Christian worship, he says in verse 22 to this woman, Ye worship, ye know not what.
We know what we worship speaks as a Jew here, where salvation is of the Jews.
But immediately goes on, passes that over and he says but the hour cometh.
And now he is. That's the hour we're living in.
When the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
Now, in Judaism they had.
A choir. They had musical instruments. They had a priesthood. They had animal sacrifices. They had a ritual. They had a beautiful temple.
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All of these wonderful.
Things that they could show it you could, could, could bring a Gentile to Jerusalem and say I will show you.
My religion, and they could show it to a stranger. This is our religion. And it was mentioned this morning when the Queen of Sheba came up, and she saw the the wonder and the grandeur of Solomon's temple, and, and the dress of his servants and all that. There was no more breath left in her.
You can't do that.
You can't show anyone your religion.
Can't be seen with these eyes. He's in our midst, but you can't see him. You've never seen him.
I've never seen him.
Christianity is a faith system.
We walk by faith, not by sight.
Paul says when faith came.
Something changed.
The object of faith has come.
He says in John 14, You believe in God, whom you have never seen. Believe also in me. We have never seen him either.
Peter says, Whom having not seen ye love.
In whom, though now ye see him not yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
The Lord said to Thomas, he said, Except I see him put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe. And the next week there was the Lord appearing again, and Thomas this time was with them. And he said, Come here, Thomas, reach, hit her thy finger. Behold my side and my hands.
And Thomas, a type of Israel who will come to faith when they see him.
And they look upon him whom they have pierced. And the Lord says to us, to us, he says to Thomas, He says, Because you have seen me, ye have believed. Blessed are those that have not seen.
And yet have believed that's us.
That's you and me. We've never seen him.
Christianity is all faith. You lay hold of it, Paul says in Hebrews 2. We see Jesus. How do we see him?
By faith crowned with glory and honor.
Without faith.
It is impossible to please God, for he that cometh to God must believe that He is.
And that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Paul says to the Thessalonians, all men.
Have not faith. Aren't you glad you have faith? Aren't you glad that you can lay hold upon these precious things that you cannot touch? You cannot sense with your senses, you cannot see them, you cannot hear them, you cannot smell them. All this was true of Judaism. It's faith. We walk by faith.
Not by sight. That made it difficult for the Jew to abandon Judaism, which he could see and touch and perceive with his senses.
To abandon that for what?
For something he could not, that was not tangible.
Was only laid hold of.
Faith.
That's Christianity. The hour cometh, and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit.
And in truth, you go to a church today, sign says come and worship with us.
You go inside.
You sit down.
You hear a sermon.
Hymns are sung.
There's an orchestra or an organ or a piano or a choir. Not everyone in the choir is necessarily born again.
Certain the piano isn't born again.
The organ isn't born again. It has no spirit. The musical instruments cannot worship.
That's Judaism.
In principle, that's the camp.
In principle, that's not Christian worship.
Christian worship is in spirit.
And in truth, it flows from hearts that are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, from souls that have been born again.
That have eternal life.
And the Spirit of God is in them as a fountain of water, springing up into everlasting life.
And he produces worship. Philippians 33 says we are the circumcision.
Which worship by the Spirit of God and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh.
You see, the camp is a system of things suited to the natural man.
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A religion for man after the flesh for the natural man.
Christianity is just the opposite.
This idea of the judeo-christian tradition that you hear so much of.
In Christendom.
It gives the wrong impression that Christianity is just an extension of Judaism.
Entirely different.
Entirely new order of things. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. There is a new creation.
Old things are passed away. If I was a Jew, I can say that's all passed.
The Messianic Jew movement, composed of many true Christians.
They believe Jesus is the Messiah.
But the sad thing about that movement is they have brought Christianity.
Down from a heavenly vantage point and made it an earthly thing.
Completely miss the truth of the assembly, the truth of the heavenly.
Truth of Christianity.
They've made it just a.
Sanctified Judaism, so to speak.
That's not true worship.
The hour cometh, and now is that's the hour in which we're living, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
For the Father seeketh such.
To worship them. Now I want to address this to my brethren.
When we come together on Lord's Day morning.
Do you remember the Lord in his death?
The father is seeking.
True worshippers.
I'm addressing my brethren. The sisters are not allowed to pray audibly. They can pray privately, quietly.
Do you ever? Have you ever?
Gotten up.
In that meeting.
And worshipped him have has he ever heard your voice?
I'm talking to the brethren.
Has he ever heard your voice?
You have the inestimable privilege.
In this day of grace of being a true worshipper.
Worshipping in spirit and in truth.
Have you ever done it? That's an exercise not of gift, but of our priesthood.
And we're all priests.
We are all priests, from the youngest to the oldest.
Have you ever?
Worshipped him.
Collectively.
I don't just mean saying Amen to the hymns.
To what? Another Thanksgiving that is given by another brother? But have you ever personally done it? He wants to hear your voice. He wants to exercise us that we exercise our priesthood. You don't have to be eloquent, Jesus.
I thank thee for dying for me.
If that's all you can say, say it. Thank him. He wants to hear your voice. I cannot understand. I cannot understand. We ought to come on Lord's Day morning with our baskets full to give him the praise.
And week after week after week.
We can go on for just one or two or three maybe.
Will be the only ones that ever opened their mouth and praise.
To the Lord Jesus on Lord's Day morning.
2 Timothy 1
God's Light
Walking as a Christian
Open Mtg.
Open Mtg.
Gos.
Gos.
2 Timothy 2:1-14
Rdg. 3
2 Timothy 3-4
Gos.