Heaven and Earth
GENESIS 1
Back to the Basics
So is My Word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire and
achieve the
purpose for which I sent it
Isaiah 55:11
First this:
God created
the
Heavens and Earth-
all you see, all you don’t see.
Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness.
God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above
the watery abyss
God spoke: “Light!”And light appeared.
God saw that light
was good
and separated light from dark
God named the light Day,
he named the dark Night.
It was evening, it was morning
Day One.
God spoke:
“Earth, green up!
Grow all varieties of seed-bearing plants,
Every sort of fruit-bearing tree
And there it was.
Earth produced green seed-bearing plants,
all varieties,
And fruit-bearing trees of all sorts
God saw that it was good.
It was evening, it was morning
God spoke:
"Earth, generate life! Every sort and kind:
cattle and reptiles and wild animals--
all kinds.”
And there it was:
wild animals of every kind,
Cattle of all kinds, every sort of reptile and bug
God saw that it was good.
God spoke:
“Let us make human beings in our image, make them
reflecting our nature
So they can be responsible
for the fish in the sea,
the birds in the air,
the cattle,
And, yes, Earth itself,
and every animal that moves on the face of Earth
God created human beings;
he created them godlike,
Reflecting God’s nature
He created them male and female
Then God said, “I’ve given you
every sort of seed-bearing plant on Earth
And every kind of fruit-bearing tree,
given them to you for food.
To all animals and all birds,
everything that moves and breathes,
I give whatever grows out of the ground for food.”
And there it was.
God looked over everything he had made;
it was so good, so very good!
It was evening, it was morning
By the seventh day
God had finished 'his work'
On the seventh day he rested from all
"His work"
God blessed the seventh day.
He made it a Holy Day
Because on that day he rested from his work,
And all the
'Creating' God "had Done'
Here is where resting on the 7th day becomes all important,
the Sabbath
is time for reflection, prayer,
fasting,
restored perspective and clarity
Anew commandment I give you:
Love one another.
As I have loved you, so you also must love one another.
By this everyone
will know that you are My disciples,
if you love one another.”
“Lord, where are You going?” Simon Peter asked. Jesus answered,
“Where I am going,
you cannot follow Me now, but you will follow later.”…
Jesus was a Carpenter,
And Since ancient times, builders have used cornerstones
in their
construction projects
A cornerstone was the principal stone,
usually placed at the corner of an edifice,
to guide the workers in their course.
The cornerstone was usually one of the largest, the most solid,
and the most carefully constructed of any in the edifice
The Bible describes Jesus as the cornerstone that
His church
would be built upon
He is foundational
Once the cornerstone was set,
it became
the basis for determining
every measurement in the remaining construction;
everything was aligned to it.
As the cornerstone of the building of the church,
Jesus is our standard of measure and alignment.
The book of Isaiah has many references to the
Messiah to come.
In several places the Messiah is referred to as “the cornerstone,”
such as in this prophecy:
“So this is what the sovereign Lord says:
‘See,
I lay a stone in Zion,
a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation;
the one who trusts will never be dismayed
I will make justice the measuring line
and righteousness the plumb line
Isaiah 28:16–17
In the New Testament,
the cornerstone metaphor is continued
The apostle Paul desires for the Ephesian Christians to know Christ better:
“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens,
but fellow citizens with God’s people
and members of God’s household, built on the foundation
of the apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
In him
the whole building is joined together
and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord
(Ephesians 2:19– 21)
Furthermore,
in 1 Peter 2:6, what Isaiah said centuries before is affirmed in
exactly the same words
Just as the people building the tower of Babel rebelled against God
and pursued their own project,
those who reject Christ disregard God’s plan in favor of their own
Lamentations 3:22–23
says,
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are anew every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
God’s mercy and compassion are anew every morning
yet another reason to praise Him.
The prophet Jeremiah
wrote Lamentations in a time of grief and national mourning,
after the once great city of Jerusalem fell to Babylon,
circa 586 BC.
The book describes great anguish—and great hope—in poetic form.
The main theme of the book is God’s judgment on Judah’s sin
as well as
His compassion for His people
Lamentations contains “laments” or “loud cries” for Jerusalem
and many expressions of anguish and pain, but in chapter 3,
right in the middle of the book,
there is a beautiful passage of confidence and hope
Jeremiah’s tone changes from despair to hope in Lamentations 3:21:
Yet this I call to mind / and therefore I have hope
From this and ensuing verses,
we know that, even in the darkest times,
God is faithful
and will not cast off His people forever
Every day, every morning, God shows His mercy and compassion
Taking a closer look at Lamentations 3:22–23,
we notice a couple important themes.
First, the Lord’s “great love”
(“steadfast love” in some translations) abides even in times
of trouble and divine judgment.
God never stopped loving Israel, despite His discipline of them.
The Hebrew word translated “great love” is used about
250 times in the Old Testament;
it refers to love, of course, but it also encompasses elements of ,
grace, mercy, goodness, forgiveness,
compassion, and faithfulness.
It is God’s “great love” for His people that
spared them from being utterly wiped out by Babylon.
As we know from history,
God later restored His people to their land
and blessed them again.
A second theme
is God’s unfailing compassion or mercy.
Mercy in the Bible is God’s withholding of a just punishment.
The particular
Hebrew word
used in Lamentations 3:22
has to do with tender love, great and tender mercy, The same
word is used in Isaiah 63:7 and translated “compassion”:
“I will
tell of the kindnesses of the LORD,
the deeds for which
He is to be praised,
according to
all the LORD has done for us--
yes, the many good things he
has done for Israel,
according to his compassion and many kindnesses
The Lord has pity on His suffering children; in fact,
His mercies are anew every morning.
Jeremiah’s statement that God’s mercies are
Anew every morning”
is related to the statement that follows:
“Great is your faithfulness”
(Lamentations 3:23).
God is unchanging,
and His mercies toward Israel were unfaltering.
His covenant with Abraham’s descendants would be kept
(see Jeremiah 31:35–37).
This was the
bright ray of hope that shone through
the smoke of Jerusalem’s ruins.
The dawning of every new day
could be
seen as a symbol of God’s light
breaking through the darkness
and His mercy overcoming our troubles.
Every morning demonstrates
God’s grace,
a new beginning in which gloom must flee
We need look no further than the breath in our lungs,
the sun that shines upon us,
or the rain that falls to nourish the soil
The mercies of God continue to come to us via a
multitude of manifestations
There is no expiration date on God’s mercy toward us!
They are perpetual and always available to those in need
We have our ups and downs,
and “even youths grow tired and weary”
(Isaiah 40:30),
but God is faithful through it all
With the dawn of each day comes a
new batch
of compassion made freshly available to us.
God’s compassion is poured out from an infinite store;
His mercies will never run out.
Some mornings we get up
on the wrong side of the bed,
but even there we find God’s mercies awaiting us
Believers still sin and grieve the Holy Spirit,
but forgiveness is always available
(1 John 1:8–9).
God’s mercy is ready to forgive our sins,
as they are atoned for by the shed blood
of
Jesus Christ on the cross
We serve a great, loving, and merciful God.
Our God is for us, not against us.
In Jesus Christ
we have the fullest expression of
God’s mercy and compassion
Matthew 14:14
Then shall we know,
if we follow on to know the Lord;
His going forth is prepared as the morning;
and He shall come unto us as the rain,
as the latter and former rain
unto the earth.
He is
"the same yesterday and today and forever”
Hebrews 13:8
The Great Commandment
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.
And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
'Teacher, which is the
great commandment in the Law?
And he said to him,
"You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the great and first commandment.
And a second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.
On these two commandments depend
all the
Law and the Prophets
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