Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Let's Start at the Beginning
Here it is Wednesday, and I am missing the Bible study I used to lead. Therefore, I decided to start writing a short (haha) bit from Bible study. But I do not know where to start. I was moving through the New Testament Epistles. However, I think it would be good to kind of start over with a simple understanding of the Bible. This is because I really never have typed something like that on my own before, and because only the people who were there would be able to pick up where we left off.
So, then, let us begin at the beginning. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1 KJV) God introduces the principle character of the Bible in the first sentence: Himself. Before we can understand any part of the Bible, we have to understand the very important principles of this verse. First, there was a beginning. This is in stark contrast to the secular position that everything has always been. Second, this beginning came because God made it happen. God, being the only person in history who has created anything (indeed all things) out of nothing, transcends all of creation. I chose the word transcends carefully. It is used to indicate that He is separate from creation in that He is not created, in that He is sovereign over creation, in that His existence is not defined by creation, in that He was before the creation and therefore is not a part of it, but that He is present in the creation, and that He works in and through it. This is very important. We have to understand God as God. Third, we have to understand that the Hebrew word for God elohim is plural, indicating a plurality of God. I do not want to get too far ahead of the message, but later in the chapter, the text also uses jehovah,which is in singular, and adonai which is also singular. That is because from the beginning of the Bible God is teaching us the complex doctrine of the trinity. All of these things (time beginning, transcendency, and trinity) are very deep concepts about God that the most advanced theologians and Bible scholars have struggled to fully explain.
So, why did God start with these very deep principles in an almost trivial manner? I believe that it is because they are foundational to understanding who God is, which is the essential nature of the Bible. I also believe that God is introducing them, not in a philosophical discussion or laboratory context, but that He is giving us a real, historical context in which we see them demonstrated. Next week we will look into this history and see how that these characteristics are explicated. God is the best teacher. He knows how to reach us where we are. Today, we just looked at the "thesis statement" for the first lesson.
What does this mean for us? It means that God must be who He is. We must recognize that He is our Creator. We must recognize that He is ruler over all of creation. We must recognize that we depend on Him for our existence. We also must recognize that He is quite different from anything else that we know, and therefore we are dependent on His Word to explain just Who He is.
So, then, let us begin at the beginning. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1 KJV) God introduces the principle character of the Bible in the first sentence: Himself. Before we can understand any part of the Bible, we have to understand the very important principles of this verse. First, there was a beginning. This is in stark contrast to the secular position that everything has always been. Second, this beginning came because God made it happen. God, being the only person in history who has created anything (indeed all things) out of nothing, transcends all of creation. I chose the word transcends carefully. It is used to indicate that He is separate from creation in that He is not created, in that He is sovereign over creation, in that His existence is not defined by creation, in that He was before the creation and therefore is not a part of it, but that He is present in the creation, and that He works in and through it. This is very important. We have to understand God as God. Third, we have to understand that the Hebrew word for God elohim is plural, indicating a plurality of God. I do not want to get too far ahead of the message, but later in the chapter, the text also uses jehovah,which is in singular, and adonai which is also singular. That is because from the beginning of the Bible God is teaching us the complex doctrine of the trinity. All of these things (time beginning, transcendency, and trinity) are very deep concepts about God that the most advanced theologians and Bible scholars have struggled to fully explain.
So, why did God start with these very deep principles in an almost trivial manner? I believe that it is because they are foundational to understanding who God is, which is the essential nature of the Bible. I also believe that God is introducing them, not in a philosophical discussion or laboratory context, but that He is giving us a real, historical context in which we see them demonstrated. Next week we will look into this history and see how that these characteristics are explicated. God is the best teacher. He knows how to reach us where we are. Today, we just looked at the "thesis statement" for the first lesson.
What does this mean for us? It means that God must be who He is. We must recognize that He is our Creator. We must recognize that He is ruler over all of creation. We must recognize that we depend on Him for our existence. We also must recognize that He is quite different from anything else that we know, and therefore we are dependent on His Word to explain just Who He is.
