God Created the Heavens and the Earth Rev. Dr. Dennis L. Otto

You may be seated hours. Mission baskets today are directed toward the Bethesda Mission. If you watch the news, you'll see them from time to time. They seem to get on that off and they do good with those who are homeless transient and who have great needs in heart of Harrisburg.

If there are young folks would come forward for our young worshippers time. Come come now.

Good morning. I'm glad you came up. I have some work for you to maybe you'd help these two. I'm glad you have your cards with you, but maybe put them down beside you.

And I don't know some of you have made have you made like paper airplanes ever made paper airplanes have an idea what to do. Okay, so that's one. Okay. Well here you go ahead what we're going to do and I think maybe you can help and you can help them. Make one may be okay together. Okay, then just do the best you can they're okay make an airplane. I'm going to make one.

Let me know how you're doing. Okay, I'm kidding. No, no. I'm kidding, but we'll have Well, then I guess I'll have to do it. I thought you would do this with me, but I'll let you do that and then I'll go ahead and make an airplane the best you can.

Do you can take your time you can yeah, she's done this before. Probably in class.

How you doing back there? Cuz we can't keep them too long. Got to go to just make the basic. Yeah, there's the stealth that that and she's making.

It had stealth Wings before we had before we knew there was such a thing. How you doing? You getting something? Yeah, you got something there.

My play how we doing. Okay. Okay. Does it fly? Well, how do you know? Okay, I was pretty good. Okay. What is a flies?

Okay. All very good. I was pretty good. Then I had a real flight. Yeah.

Where are the flu? Okay. What here's the thing? I was not going to give Ben a piece of paper and I was going to say we'll just do the best you can then and I thought you would be like why I don't want you to feel bad. You could all make a plane with some help, but imagine trying to make it without any help your dad can make one of your mood you try to make well maybe later. Maybe during a certain now. I can't do it during the sermon cuz I'm preaching yeah, can you imagine trying to make a plane with nothing? If I didn't get Ben a piece of paper, do you think it would have flown? No paper. Would you know?

Hey in your in your mind. Yeah, but but not for real. Yeah, they were talking about creation. God the Begins the Bible Begins by saying in the beginning

That'd be hard in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. Now the tricky part was guess what God had to start with.

What are you going to have to start with? nothing Nothing at all, like making the paper airplane with no paper. I'll be incredibly difficult like we can make things. I'll put you do some crafts you color you make things but you make things with things but when God created the world he made everything we see from nothing at all. I can't even quite think about that. Do you think about that nothing?

Everything from nothing.

Yeah, it seems like that if you read the story and I should ask you ask your mom and dad to read the story.

Yeah, it says he he said it and it was kind of amazing.

Yeah, I'm guessing if I didn't give you a paper and you'd say airplane. that's what

and you know the amazing thing is

yeah, that's it. Yeah, they'll read you the story every bit of the story. They'll read you at home. It's an amazing story and you can read some of it. I'm sure but but

you playing with your airplane? Yeah. You can't relax fry Lord. We're thankful that you created all things from know things. We we specially are grateful that you created these wonderful kids that they were created in because of your mind. They came into being that they were part of your plan that you had them in mind from the beginning. We thank you for all the wonderful things that they are and bring and give into our world. We pray that you would be with them at all times help them catch glimpses of you this week. Keep them safe or remind them of your 11. Ours. We ask in Jesus name. Amen. Umigo even take your paper airplanes. Did you want your paper airplane?

the scripture lesson today is Genesis chapter 1 verses 1 through 3 6 9 14 through 15 20 through 21 24 26 and then chapter 2 verse 1 in the beginning when God created the heavens and the Earth the Earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep while the wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said let there be light and there was light and God said let there be a dome in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God said let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear and it was so and God said let there be lights in the dome with the sky to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and four seasons and four days in years and let them be lights in the Dome of the sky to give light upon the Earth and it was so and God said let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the Earth across the Dome of the sky. So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves of every kind with which the water's warm and every Wings Bird of every kind and God saw that it was good. And God said let the Earth bring forth living creatures of every kind cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth end of every kind and it was so then God said, let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and overall the wild animals as the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps up on mirrors. Thus the heavens and the Earth were finished and all the multitude the word of God for the people of God.

Would you play with me, please? Gracious and loving God. We thank you for the gift of your word the word made flesh and lived Among Us and these words on the page that become again your Living Word through your Holy Spirit. We asked Lord that they will shape us to be the people you desires to be and help us to know you better.

We pray Lord that this morning your word would be heard through or in spite of this servant of yours. I ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

What we believe about the beginning. has a great deal to do with

We can believe about the end and everything that comes in between.

I am I was reading some years ago something called the humanist Manifesto. I asked I was doing that because I really believe that many including many in the church. Unfortunately function more from a humanist worldview than from a faith worldview.

humanist Manifesto begins with this religious humanist. I don't know what that is, but I think that's what I was talking about religious humanists. Regard the universe as self-existing not created. We begin with humans. Not with God. That's a small G. We can discover no Divine Purpose or Providence for human beings. We must save ourselves.

While I don't agree with it was a primary premise. I do agree with the conclusion that is of god is not there in the beginning then in the end. Your only salvation is whatever you can eat out.

I'm taking some time now to do a series called Beginnings. We're looking at some of the early chapters of Genesis my senses we did argue a great deal about the howls of them how S Howell of those chapters and what we've lost as we've lost their importance as a foundation for our faith. I believe that this first verse is part of our confession of Faith did that it's incredibly important to begin here as we move into face. It starts in the beginning. You have trouble coming up with the beginnings of things. you know when you watch the football games and somebody gets flag for pushing somebody or hitting somebody it's almost always because somebody else pushed them first, right? It's not the beginning that that you see or make note of that the beginnings further back when if he has kids they'll say where he started it and it back another step or two. That's the kind of thing. I'm talking about this last week. I got this wonderful gift from ancestry.com. This is not a paid advertisement. I'm know I'm not subscribing right now, but every once in a while, they send a great tease and this movie is really good that they sent me a biography that must have been in the Carlisle newspaper about my great-great-grandfather and they had stuff about him and also his father. My great-great-grandfather was born in 1822 doesn't that sound it makes me sound old my great-great-grandfather and he gave his occupation. I never knew he was a blacksmith and it was just incredibly fun to read that he served in the War of 1812 is I didn't know about but then I begin to I want to know because there was a Missing Link in this chain. I want to know about his father like four times great-grandfather. I want I want to know I want to go back closer the beginning if you've done any genealogy you get caught in that you want to go back almost any story. We look at has more sideways and more back. Maybe that's just a story to me, but it but it's there. but this This is about. The beginning this is about the point where there's when you go before this point, there's nothing. chaotic nothingness You heard the words. Now the Earth was formless and empty Darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The waters are figurative. There. There's there's nothing this is the this is the moment before which there's no story.

I can't even quite. Get that but that's that's where we are in the beginning God. And so when there's nothing else there's God. And then that's significant because in a strict evolutionary understanding and isn't there. I was was walking through this with somebody that I knew fairly well who had that perspective and they said well and they walk me back through some things that probably work above my ability to understand scientifically about how this kind of moved into that and how that could have transformed into this and they made the case, but I was pushing the other way and going backwards and say what was before that and they finally got to the point of saying well there it was just some pre-existing stuff.

Me at some point. That's where you end up. I mean stuff doesn't come out of nothing. You don't build paper airplanes out of nothing to be stuff. so either there's pre-existence stuff.

or in the beginning God

I think that's where the 1st affirmation of faith comes for those of us who are people of Faith who are theists not atheist what we say in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth and that's the way I think of capturing the big in the small. I love the way Anne Graham Lotz, you'll recognize her middle name did this in a book some years back. She said there are four billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Our son is 1 of 150 is is 150 trillion miles from the center of our galaxy are galaxies. Just one of a cluster of 30 galaxies and the closest galaxy to ours the large. Magellanic cloud is 978 trillion miles away. Astronomers estimate that there are more than a hundred billion galaxies and each galaxy has a hundred billion stars, each of those hundreds of billions of stars with personally hung in Space by our creator. Who not only number them? But knows each of them by name. The very first words in Genesis tell us in the beginning God created the heavens that is everything everything in the most macroview you can imagine God created. What that means is that creation is what's in the box.

and God isn't God's outside of that box created everything in it if you will but is not himself part of what was created.

God created the heavens. And the Earth and I think the Earth then gets us down with all those billions gets us down into a particularity. That's amazing and Graham Lotz also writes the Earth implies chemicals and elements and macromolecules and Adams. It includes all the things that we cannot see with the naked eye. In fact, the square foot of soil can contain 1 billion organisms 1 billion living things. God created them snowflakes. No two of which are alike be created us the sponge like pad between the head of the Woodpecker and it's Bill to absorb the shock. So that is a bird strikes a tree. It's not damaged. He created that small barbs along the feathers of each of along the feathers of each bird as many as 1 million Barb's / feather that acts like zippers so that the feathers clothes not only waterproofing the bird but also enabling at the catch Wing at wind under its wings so that it can fly. He created 75000 miles of blood vessels in the human body that that carry blood over 60.

2 over 60 trillion cells more than 1 million of those cells are white antibodies each one created to fight one kind of germ or virus. He created nerve cells that connect the human body to the brain like tiny telephone wires that move messages at 3300 miles an hour.

So what's too small for God a tear? small hurt feeling small kindness a small insult small sin and small lie.

in the beginning God created the heavens. That's the macro and the Earth. Down to the smallest thing, but below what we have discovered. That's it. That's an affirmation of faith. And I think it's at an affirmation where we begin. I cited the Sunday school class having read some astrophysicist was writing a news wake up a couple of decades ago, and he said the big question is why is there something not nothing? Why is there something not nothing and we don't get there with science? What would we get there? We get there through faith. And so I believe that this this first verse of scripture in many ways is an affirmation for us that we believe in God that we believe that God is the one who created everything we see. Everything we are and everything we could hope for everything that we could sense and much that we can't. I think the story tells us at least three things about creation that are important not to MIT missed. The first thing is that creation is intentional.

the spirit of God moves across the chaotic nothingness And God speaks and and things come into being you know. what John says at the beginning of his gospel any of you watching the sum of your the Jeopardy thing one of the questions that I was watching football and then I went to do something else when we can back football wasn't on but Jeopardy was but but there was one question that I jumped out of me is the first words of the Gospel of John where the Jeopardy question you know, what they are in the beginning was the word the word. That's that's what God what speaking what do you speak? Words God speaks and things come into being that's why in Colossians. It says that that Jesus was in the beginning with God and through him all things came into being

The Eternal Sun was there at the beginning and there's an intentionality a design that's incredible from the from the very beginning. Don't don't lose the fact that that creationism not only is creation intentional but it is remarkably ordered not now, you know that and in this is that the scripture lesson that went from jump jump jump all the way through Exodus, but here it is. It says let there be light and there's light and then God said let there be an expansion to separate the waters and and and the waters are separated let there be dry ground and there's going to let there be produce and there's grass and produce and so things that the vegetation comes for Let There Be birds and fish and their birds in it all happens in a very orderly way. Do you see that? If it's not random it's not accidentally. It happens in an orderly way. There's an order to Creation. Actually, we live in a time when it's hard to catch that because in this 24 hour news cycle, what gets reported is the chaotic the exceptional but if we had to rely on our own observation, we would see the orderliness of creation. I know it's 50 or 60 degrees out there and it's wonderful. I mean it's so much nicer than shoveling. It's happened before it will happen again, but it's not going to be 95 with humidity next week. I guarantee it. There's a predictability about things. I played football as a kid in my short sleeve shirt at Christmas. Happen again, I don't know whether there's an overall change or not. If it is maybe we won't have to go south to play golf. But but overall the world is predictable. We don't have 48-hour nights and then to our nights there about the same and they changed it through the year and then they change back the other way and they did that year after year after year. Gravity is incredibly predictable does matter how many days you go out to walk. You're never going to go out someday and step in a particular area and begin floating up before you come back down because gravity's week right there at that particular time. There's nothing irregular about the world. It's a very orderly if it weren't orderly science wouldn't exist.

It would just be random.

Science exists because there's a predictability in orderliness about our creation.

When you look at the order of creation, I don't want you to miss that the human creature is at the Pinnacle of creation.

All created things are not equal God creates the life and says, it's good that you're a God separates water and has dry ground and sees that it's good. He creates meditate vegetation Seasons good birds and fish and the Seas that they're good all kinds of animals and sees that they're good. But then in 26, let us make humans in our image in our likeness let us and let them rule over the fish of the Sea and the birds of the air to her livestock over all things. So he is placing by decree the human creature above all things and God create humans In His Image in the image of God. He creates them male and female he created them and then he looks at them and when he looks at the human creature he says, It's very good. It's the only day on which that happens the day on which the human creatures created. We've lost it a good awareness of the the value of of humans. I was watching I think I was watching news actually on TV and I heard the story about it a man who was sentenced to prison because he was drunk and driving without a license and he hit a kid in a motorcycle and killed him you got six years. And then there were two boys now. I know that he didn't intend to do that when he got in the car. You just make really stupid terrible decisions and it happened but it did happen as a result of his actions and then two boys, I'm head shot a deer don't know where they shot it legally or not, but they were torturing it because it wasn't dead and they said their maximum sentence might be eight years. It's not all on 6 years for the 17 year old. 8 years for the deer understand but if we don't have this all of the human creature Bye-bye. This creation story human beings are at the top of the Pinnacle at the Pinnacle of creation top of creation. We are immensely more value. Then dogs or cats. I love my golden retrievers wonderful dog my Border Collies over the years and cats but they're not people they're animals and they're good, but the human creature is very good and not only is the human creature very good. The human creature is in the likeness of God. There's something about us that reflects the being of God himself in a way that the rest of creation doesn't creation is intentional. It's ordered and creation is good. You say wow, you watch the news and you still think it's good. Yeah, I do. I believe it was God created was good. And as a as a Wesleyan, I believe that they're still goodness in people. And in creation, that's it. That's kind of a unique Wesley and understanding that I'll talk about and you say so what happened like if that's the case why do teenage boys torture deer in in why do grown men get in cars and drive drunk and kill teenagers? That's not good. No, it's not. But the answer to that in Chapter 3 of Genesis and then without chapter 3, you can't understand faith and you can understand the world the way it is, but we'll get to that on the 26th of this month.

Creation is intentional. It's ordered and it's good. I also want to suggest that not only just the story tell us some things about creation that the big. But it tells us some things about God and you the first one is this you you are not an accident. You are not an accident. You are not a pile of mutated Monkey jeans, and I'm not trying what I'm saying is this is not an action that you got here yet. It didn't happen because something went wrong and then and then you happened. I mean like how much savings the human creature I'm saying that from the very beginning this

creature species in this person that person You're part of God's Design This is not an accident or something that took a left turn when it might have taken her, right?

You're here by Design and you're here for a purpose. The second thing is I think it is important that God has a plan for you personally individually, you are part of God's plan if it's not like all this is is randomly moving on its own. We we are not while I said, we're theists. We're not DS DS were those at Thomas Jefferson. Probably the most famous one who kind of thought there was a God and God created and then said, well, it's good to see y'all later and walked away from it. God got involved.

And God God knows not only the vastness of the universe, but God knows you. inside mount loves you as distinctly as any father. That's why that language is so common in the New Testament. Jesus said when you when you pray to God and this is what he said, Begin by saying.

Daddy

it's not our father. It's not the the formal Aramaic where he uses it. It's the it's the word that little children use for their father. God God knows you and loves you has a plan for your life and will lead you in it. You're not an accident. God has a plan for you. And the other thing is God can make you good. The part of my Wesleyan theology. I think it's Christian. Theology says that they were not good. You don't need to look far. I mean you can look at other people that's the easy place to start and see all their flaws. But if you're honest and and faithful and have the courage you can look at yourself and say yeah, I'm still sinful to I don't get this right. Maybe I'll get it right a day or two, but I don't get it right in the long run. But God can get you there. And when God gets done not only will you be perfect but all creation will be revived and recreated made new revelation. If you want to read the end of the story, go ahead and let's get through Genesis for now.

All creation will be new and perfect. Just the way God always intended it. Nothing is too big for God. Nothing is too small for God. And God is still working and still creating. He didn't stop after those six days. He stopped and rested on the seventh but began and continues creating always. You're part of it. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray. Gracious and everlasting God we give you thanks and praise because we believe that you've created us out of the Dust of the earth, which you created you created Josh and all that we see and our ability to see and smell and taste and touch here. You've created us in such a way that we can enjoy your creation. We can feel the warmth of the Sun that the breeze around us. We can feel the temperatures of hot and cold and smell the sense of spring and see the flowers that will come. We thank you Lord that you've created us. We thank you for the people that you've created to give our life. Meaning. We know that each of them was in your design. Help us to treat each that we see as your special creation.

We come today with concerns of each of us with concerns out of our own setting. We lift up. the folks who enjoy the storms in the southern part of our country those who can George fires in the on the continent of Australia We lift up but Ray and Dana Ernie has they await tests? Now we name each in our own heart those that we carry to you today.

Lord help us to offer those. We love to you. In your care, we entrust them as we entrust ourselves to your care knowing that you love them and us more than we could love each other. We thank you for your great. Love. That created and that sustains us day by day and that will at the right time renew your creation making a new creation new Heaven and new earth perfect in every way. Thank you Lord. We pray in the way the Jesus taught us Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. But Deliver Us from Evil the die is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Always be joyful in your union with the Lord and I say it again Rejoice show a gentle attitude toward everyone the Lord is at hand and don't worry about anything. But in all your prayers ask God for what you need always asking the Lord with a thankful heart and God's peace Which is far beyond human understanding will keep your hearts and Minds safe in Union with Christ Jesus.

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