Take your Bible if you will and open it to the book of Genesis 1, Genesis chapter one.

Today marks our 5th message into this marvelous book of beginnings. As you recall we began our journey of studying the book of Genesis with a very familiar verse to us in v. 1 -

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

And with that sentence the question of origins is answered.

Martin Luther said it best -

"The very simple meaning of what Moses says, therefore, is this: Everything that is, was created by God."1

In fact that is the very nature of the Biblical account of creation; it is simple and straightforward, written in plain language.

God created "the heavens and the earth," which was a Hebrew phrase for the universe. Thus you can translate it, "In the beginning God created the universe/everything."

Therefore Genesis provides the only and accurate, first-hand, eye-witness account of Creation of origins by the Creator Himself.

From Genesis 1:1-2:3 you have what you might call, a prose narrative,2 a straightforward discourse, but it is unusual narrative because God is the only character/chief character.

It is God who creates, says, sees, separates, names, makes appoints, blesses, finishes, makes holy, and rests. God.

In fact God is the subject of virtually every action verb, except for Genesis 1:12, where the earth brings forth vegetation - but even that is in response to God´s command.

The unbelieving world has a problem with Genesis 1 because it likes to believe that nature is all there is.

Naturalism, has become the prominent religion in the Western world, that views every law and every force operating in the universe as natural rather than moral, spiritual, or supernatural.

It denies the very concept of a personal God.

People who hold to such a view pretend to be scientific and intellectual; they oppose all faith-based world-views, but in the end, naturalism, requires a giant leap of faith because it requires that you reject everything supernatural.

The religion of naturalism inevitably leads to a sense of utter insignificance and despair, while the religion of the One True God, the religion of Jesus, leads to purpose and hope.

"In the beginning, God" - that is where we begin and that is where all of life hinges upon, upon the basis that God created everything and has done so with a purpose in mind.

By His own will, for His own good pleasure and glory. And we become a part of that great master plan and we are brought into the very saga of redemption by His own will, for His own good pleasure and glory as we shall see in the months and years ahead.

Now as we come to the first three days of creation, we see God preparing earth for habitation. We see Him making the chaos into a cosmos; taking this formless and void earth and making it into something habitable.