This is Connect with Skip Heitzig. Thanks for joining us today. Here at Connect with Skip, we're passionate about helping you understand God's word and apply it to your everyday life through clear, practical Bible teaching. That's why we invite you to sign up for Pastor Skip's free weekly devotional. You'll receive biblical encouragement, ministry updates, and exclusive ministry content, all delivered right to your inbox.
Signing up is quick, easy, and completely free. Visit. ConnectWithSkip.com today. That's ConnectWithSkip.com.
Now let's dive into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig.
Now the Bible is worth reading slowly, which is what we usually do in our devotional time, even in our normal midweek Bible study or our Sunday morning approach. We go slower, and I've been known to go very slow. In my teaching, I've done a whole sermon on not just a sentence, not just a phrase, but just a single word. One time, I even did one on a comma between two words. And there is value in going slow, but there is also value in an approach like this where you speed it up and you cover vast portions of Scripture.
It gives to us the big picture, and sometimes we can miss the forest. For the trees, we need to see how the plan all fits together, and this unique approach will do just that.
So, we're going to cover a lot of ground. We're going to move quickly. We're not going to be able to read every verse. We're going to be looking at the landmarks, just like a pilot. Will often say to those who are aboard his or her flight, "If you look to your right, you'll see the Grand Canyon.
Later on, if you look to your left, you'll see the St. Louis Arch over the Mississippi." We're going to show you the major landmarks in the Scripture and show how it all fits together.
Now, on a horizontal level, there are two sources of knowledge. Reason and experience—that's how most people get their knowledge. Reason and experience. We experience things, and therefore we draw conclusions, or we reason things out based on others' observations or others' experiences. Those are the two basic sources of knowledge: reason and experience.
However, those two sources are limited sources. There's a lot of things that are left unanswered, like where did I come from, where am I going, what is the purpose and meaning of life, how did I get here. Therefore, you need a third source, not just a horizontal source, reason and experience, but a vertical source, and that is revelation.
Someone from outside the time and space continuum needs to communicate to you and tell you what's up. You'll never answer those questions without it. And so we have revelation, God's revelation, and revelation can even be divided into two groups. There is a natural revelation. There is special revelation, or if you prefer, general revelation, as opposed to special revelation.
What is general revelation? Things like creation, the universe. As you go out and you observe the stars, the sky, the moon, the sun, the intricacies of biology. The Bible says, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament shows His handiwork." But then there's special revelation, and that is the Bible, and that is what we're studying in this. Year study called the Bible from thirty thousand feet.
Now, in this book, this Bible, there are sixty six separate books.
Some long, some very long, some very very short. Sixty six entries altogether, or thirty one thousand one hundred and seventy three verses.
Sounds like a big book. It is. If you were to read it from cover to cover out loud, like if you were to stand in your room and just start reading it aloud, it would take you about seventy hours straight to read from Genesis to Revelation. If you were to break that up, though, you could cover it in twelve minutes a day in a single year.
So it's worth doing. It's worth reading through the Bible, and we're going to be doing that. As I said, not every verse, but we're going to look at the highlights.
Now the Bible does something. It sweeps. Throughout history, and it goes from eternity past to the future, the eternal state. It covers all the way back from primeval early history, all the way to ultimate prophecy in the book of Revelation. But all of the Bible, if you wanted to sum it up, you could say this: all of the Scripture, all sixty-six books, all of special revelation.
Points to one person and two events. One person and two events.
Now you have the Bible in a nutshell. That's the irreducible minimum. You can't get any any tighter or any smaller than that. The one person, the hero of the Bible. You know who that is.
It's Jesus Christ. The two events: his first coming, his second coming. His first coming, he comes to deal with sin. His second coming, he comes to reign with those who have been cleansed from sin. That is the whole Bible.
One person, two events. Genesis is the foundation; it's the ground floor. If we don't understand the book of Genesis, we won't understand what follows the book of Genesis. It is all about origins. That's what Genesis means.
The Hebrew title is Betashit in the beginning. Our title is Genesis. It means the origin, and we get in this book the origin of well everything, the origin of the heaven and the earth. We get the origin of man, the origin of sin, the origin of God's plan to deal with sin, the origin of marriage, the origin of the family, the origin of human government, the origin of Israel, the nation of Israel, everything is covered in terms of its origin in this book.
Now we're going to look at tonight the first eleven chapters, and the next time we're going to finish the book of Genesis and go on in the next week into the book of Exodus. But the first eleven chapters are about events. The second part of the book of Genesis, chapters twelve through fifty, highlights people. We're going to look at events, and the four events that you've seen just in the introduction video are the fall, or excuse me, the formation, followed by the fall, followed by the flood, followed by the fallout. I'll briefly explain it.
Chapters one and two: the formation of the heavens and the earth. The universe is formed by God, and it's explained briefly in two chapters. Then we have in chapters three, four, and five the fall of man, Adam and Eve sin in the garden, and the repercussions that follow. Then we have the flood in chapters six, seven, eight, and nine, a universal judgment where waters covered the earth, followed by the fallout of man's rebellion in chapters ten and eleven.
So let's begin at the beginning. With the formation of the universe, we're going to look at the first verse of the Bible, and we're going to kind of pick this out singularly, and then move on through the rest. Let me just say, as I've said so often before, if you can accept Genesis one one, everything after that gets really simple. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's a good trick.
That's a lot of power. That's an incredible feat. If that can happen, then every single other miraculous event is now possible.
So, if you can get past that first verse, get through that first verse, understand it in part, and embrace it, you'll be good.
So, look at it. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It's so simple, right?
So straightforward, and it happens to be very precise. Back in 1903, an unbeliever, a scientist by the name of Herbert Spencer, argued that all things in the universe, everything in the universe, can be fit into one of five categories.
Now, listen to what he said. The five categories are time, force, action, space. Matter. Everything can be fit into one of those categories: time, force, action, space, matter. What he did not know is that God beat him to the punch, because when he said that statement, he just said Genesis one one.
Look at it again. In the beginning, that's time. God, that's force. Created, that's action. The heavens, that space, and the earth, that's matter.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth in a precise, succinct statement. The earth, verse two, was without form and void. Darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
So now we understand that God involved His Holy Spirit. In His creation, as we keep reading through the Bible, we're going to understand that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all involved. Not only is the Spirit hovering over the waters, but John chapter one will tell us that Jesus was before all things and that He created all things. It'll also be repeated in Colossians chapter one. He is before all things, and by him all things consist.
John one one in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. All things were made through him, and there was not anything that is made or that was made except by him. Then verse three.
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. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.
So the evening and the morning were the first day.
Now we have in the verses that follow the six days of creation. On day one, the light comes on. On day two, the hydrological cycle begins as waters on the surface pool and waters above the firmament or the expanse of heaven exist. On day four, the celestial bodies are formed. On day five, the animals are formed, and so God basically decorated His creation.
He created it, then He decorated it.
Now He populates it. On day six. He creates us, mankind. Verse twenty-six. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image." Isn't that an interesting way to put it?
God said, "Let us," the Father, the Son, the Spirit, the Triune God, in communication with each other, according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Every day, friends like you help connect people around the world to the life changing truth of God's word through clear verse by verse Bible teaching. Our world constantly tells us we need something more, but the Book of Colossians reminds us that everything we truly need is found in Jesus Christ.
That's the heart of Pastor Skip's resource, Expose Colossians. As he walks verse by verse through this powerful New Testament book, you'll discover why Christ is supreme over all things, how to recognize truth in a world full of competing voices, and what it means to live each day firmly rooted in Him. We'll send Expose Colossians as our thanks when you give $50 or more to support Connect with Skip Heitzig. Call eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight, or visit connectwithSkip dot com slash offer.
Now, let's return to today's teaching.
So, God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him, male and female. He created them. Then, in chapter two, verse one, when God was all done, it has this unusual term. God rested.
God rested. That becomes the very basis for a commandment Israel will follow: the day of rest, the Sabbath. God created the world in six days. On the seventh day, He rested. Why did He rest?
Was He tired? No, He was done. When He rested, it's not like don't picture God. Oh man, that was tough. You know, getting those animals out.
I was just like that, Reina. I was tough. No, he he was done, and so he ended it. He ceased or he rested from it. There is a word.
It's found in verse one. That happens to be a stumbling block for a lot of people. That's why I said if you can get past verse one, you'll be fine. And that is the word created. Boy, when you say God created.
There's an awful lot of people in this world who hate the idea, this naive idea, that there's a super being out there named God, who created things. Because most people believe that in our culture, evolution is a done deal. Nobody believes in creation anymore. The only problem is. It's not a done deal in the scientific community.
There's an awful lot of biologists, biochemists, and others who object to the standard theory of evolution. One molecular biologist by the name of Michael Denton, whom I've greatly admired, his works. Said the evolutionary theory is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis, entirely without direct factual support. Did you know that when Charles Darwin came up with his theory of evolution, he knew that there was one glaring. Lack of evidence in one area, and that was the fossil record.
He couldn't find any evidence in the fossil record of of transitional forms. He could find plenty of transmutational forms, but no transitional forms. It was absent. But he believed that over time he would be vindicated, that enough science would go by that would vindicate his theory of evolution. But what has happened is exactly the opposite.
David Robb, the curator of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, wrote this: "We are now about 120 years after Darwin, and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn't changed much." We have fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time.
So, a growing group of these scientists are looking at evolution, saying, "This is a ridiculous idea to think that no one plus nothing equals everything." That somehow just lacks common sense, right? Because no matter how far back you go, however infinitely you regress, you got to do something about all that gas. Where did it come from? And all that space. Where did it come from?
As you came in the church building tonight, if you came from the east parking lot, you passed our courtyard, and in our courtyard is a baptismal fountain, a water feature as a waterfall. But it's also used as a baptism. We can fill it up, we can warm it up to like ninety, even a hundred degrees, if we wanted to, and make it kind of like a jacuzzi. We fill it up, we baptize people, and then we bring it back down for the rest of the week as a water feature.
So as you go by, I don't know if you've ever thought this, but I thought this from the beginning. This thing's cool, and it's designed really well. And because it's designed, obviously, there must be behind it a designer. But if I were to say, you know, really how that came about, it was really freaky. But one day it just appeared.
And and and I figured that over millions of years, gases and energy and rocks and steel collided, and eventually it just formed itself in this fashion. You would say you are a nut, and you would be correct. I would be a nut because something that is as intricate as that demands design, like your home. When you go home, you can look at your house, and it shows. A builder did this.
An architect formed plans, and a builder followed those plans. Design shows a designer. That, by the way, is called the teleological argument for the existence of God. That there is a designer behind the intricacies of the designed world. He created them.
It says at the end of verse twenty-seven in Genesis chapter two, verse four. This is the history of the heavens and the earth. Here is this word again: when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. A couple days ago, many of the pastors and myself were camping outside for a couple of days in northern New Mexico by the San Juan River, and at night, far from the city. You can look up and see the panoply of stars, like diamonds spread across black velvet.
They just pop; they're brilliant. The planets, the stars, and when you see the universe, like it says in the Book of Psalms, the heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament shows His handiwork. Day into day they utter their speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. You really get that when you look in that perspective, out in the tulies at the heavens, to say, "Well, it's just a weird accident.
It's a cosmic accident. It just so happens that the sun is 93 million miles away from the Earth and has a surface temperature of 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit." Really, it just so happened. If we were as close, say, as Venus, our surface temperature would be 860 degrees Fahrenheit. You think it was hot here today? Imagine 860 degrees Fahrenheit.
If you moved far back, like to the orbit of Mars, you would have 195 minus 195 degrees Celsius. That's cold. In either extreme, life as we know it could not survive. But we are right here in that spot. Or if you were to say, "Well, it just so happens that the Earth is rotating 365 orbits around the sun.
Why not 30?" What if our days were that long, so it took 30 orbits? Like some of the planets are very slow in their rotation.
Well, the day would be ten times longer, the night would be ten times longer, and there would be alternate events of freezing and heating. Life could not be sustained. If you say, "Well, it just so happened that the Earth is tilted twenty-three and a third degrees on its axis, giving us the beautiful array of four seasons," or it just so happened that the atmosphere is this unusual balance. Of 78 parts nitrogen to 21 parts of oxygen, with one percent of variant gases, it's weird how it just so happened. And it just so happened that the amount of water to land is the ratio that it is, which gives us the rainfall that we have on the Earth.
Did you know that if the oceans were just one quarter larger than they are, we would have a flood on the Earth? It would be eight times the amount of rainfall. Life couldn't be sustained if they were just a little shallower than they are. It would be dry all over the earth, and we know it's dry here. It would be dry everywhere, and life couldn't be sustained.
So it didn't just so happen. It was just so designed by a designer, and the Lord God made the earth and the heaven.
So when you go outside. And maybe you'll see a star or two tonight. We have light pollution around here, and you look up and you see a couple stars or a planet. Think this: if the art hanging in the skies must be that magnificent, how magnificent is the artist behind it? That's the God of the Bible.
In Genesis two, in verse eight, the Lord God. Planted a garden. I love that God was a gardener. Where eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.
Now we don't exactly know where this is. Probably was in the Mesopotamium river valley, the river delta between the Tigris and Euphrates river. Of course, the earth was very different, but that would make it around Iraq somewhere, that that delta. Verse nine: Out of the ground, the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Go down to verse fifteen. Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden, you may freely eat." Please notice that we always notice you can't eat that one tree, and we kind of get bummed out of God for making a rule. You can eat everything in this garden. You may freely eat it, but of the tree.
Of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.
Now we're going to see this in chapter five more than any other chapter in this early part, because it'll be a list of all the people who die. It'll say eight times, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died. In the day that you eat, you will surely die. Go down to verse nineteen. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field, every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them.
And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. Thanks for joining us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Now, here's how to pre-order an exciting resource from Pastor Skip that's coming next month. The Bible is one unified story of God's love and redemption, but sometimes it can be difficult to see how all the pieces fit together. In Soaring Above It All, Pastor Skip Heitzig takes you on a one-year devotional journey through the entire Bible, highlighting the key people, events, themes, and truths of Scripture in a way that's approachable, encouraging, and easy to follow. Pre-order your copy of Soaring Above It All today wherever you buy. Before we go, remember your generosity helps share God's Word with people around the world through clear verse-by-verse Bible teaching.
And this month, when you give fifty dollars or more, we'll send you expound Colossians as our thanks. In this five-message study, Pastor Skip explores one of the Bible's clearest pictures of the supremacy of Jesus Christ, and shows how being rooted in Him changes the way you live every day. Give today at connectwithSkip dot com slash offer, or call eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight. See you next time on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection.
Make a connection at the foot of the cross. Cast your burdens on His worth. Make a connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
