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The Condition of Creation on Day One (Genesis 1:2)

Part of the The Book of Genesis series, preached at a Sunday Morning service

David Torres
David Torres
February 10, 2013

Sermon preached on Sunday, February 10, 2013 at Garden Valley Chapel during our worship morning service based on Genesis 1:2.

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

We come back to our study of Genesis, the book of beginnings, specifically dealing with the topic of creation.

As we come to Genesis chapter one, we realize we live in a day and age where naturalistic evolution is taught not as a theory but as fact; not as a philosophy or even as a presupposition, but as reality.

We are bombarded by the most sophisticated, complex, and highly educated lie that has captivated the whole world it seems.

Even among evangelicals, naturalistic evolution is regarded as a "normal" part of how God involves Himself in the creation process.

Evangelicals today accept long ages, an old earth so as to allow for an evolutionary scheme to "fit" into the Bible.

Even if it means we insert billions of years into the text.

And so the attempt is to harmonize the text of Scripture with the "proofs" of modern science.

But the Scriptures are very clear. The Genesis text itself is not symbolic, not poetical, not allegorical, or mythical.

It is actual, factual history of how God created the heavens and the earth. It speaks with absolute authority.

It is God´s own eyewitness account of what happened in the beginning.

Verse 1 is a general statement, while the rest of Genesis 1 unfolds the sequence of God´s creative work.

God created it all, including time.

Verse 1 begins with "In the beginning."

The beginning of what? Time itself. God exists outside of time. He is timelessness. But creation took place in time - in the beginning of time.

Time emerged from eternity and it was "the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End...who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty" (Rev 1:8) who created time.

Not only that but "in the beginning" God created matter from that which is immaterial - out of nothing.

In an instant, God created the universe, with all its space and matter and He did so by His sovereign, creative, powerful decree.

Yet it took time for that universe to take shape; it took time for God to complete His creation. It took him just six 24-hour solar days to do so. And by the end "God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good" (1:31).

All of this unfolds for us in verse 2 and following of the first chapter of Genesis. As I stated earlier:

Verse 1 is a general statement, while the rest of Genesis 1 unfolds the sequence of God´s creative work.

CONTENT

Now as day one begins, the Spirit of God moves Moses to write and describe the condition of creation on day one.

As day one emerges from eternity, we find the earth in a dark and barren condition. Three phrases are used in verse 2 to describe the original state of the earth.

2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

Those three expressions describe the condition of creation on day one; the condition of the earth at the dawning of day one.

This is its original state and we are given three expressions that we might explain as:

The Barren Planet
The Absolute Darkness
The Hovering Spirit

About David Torres: David Torres was born in San Salvador and moved to the States at the age of 6. He came to Christ at age 15. He is a graduate of The Master’s University (BA ’01) and The Master’s Seminary (MDiv ’06; ThM ‘19). He served as a pastor-teacher in Garden Valley, CA for 8 years. In 2014, he returned to Grace to You as the GAV Radio Producer serving the Spanish speaking world through the teaching ministry of John MacArthur. He serves in the Joint Heirs Fellowship Group at Grace Community Church and on the council for Grace Advance. He also serves as a Section Instructor at TMS. He was married to Angie in 2000, and they have seven children: Isaiah, Emilia, Micah, Eva, Isabella, Elizabeth, and Jeremiah.