131
March 1932
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
COMMENTARY Children’s Division In Holy Places B y H elen G ailey B y H erbert H. T ay
LESSON Golden Text Illustrations B y A lan S. P earce
Outline and Exposition B y B. B. S utcliffe
Blackboard Outlines B y B essie B. B urch
APRIL 3, 1932 GOD IN CREATION G enesis i :i t o 2 :/
unintelligible; accept it, and all that fol lows becomes the message of the living God to humankind. When science faces mysteries which it cannot explain, the Bible comes with the clear declaration of the creative act of God. There are three beginnings for which sci ence has no explanation. First, how did matter come to be? Because science can not explain, it says that matter always was. But the Bible declares that God cre ated it. Second, how did life come upon this planet? Kant says, “Give me matter, and I can explain the formation of the universe. But give me matter alone., and I cannot explain the formation of a caterpil lar.” In effect, this was also the testi mony of Pasteur, Huxley, Carpenter, and others. But the Bible explains by saying, “God created.” Finally, how did man come to be upon earth? Evolution at tempts an explanation but, by the testi mony of the foremost evolutionists, it is merely an hypothesis and not an estab lished fact. Here again the Bible says, “God created.” We must learn to prove our science by our Bible, and not attempt the opposite, which is the way of the nat ural man. Reason understands that the world was made; faith understands that the world was created (cf. Heb. 3:4). Three words are used in Isaiah 43:7, which may help with this lesson: “create,” or bara, to make something out of nothing; “make,” or hsah, to fashion from existing material; and “make,” or yahtsar, to mold for a special purpose. It is the first of these, “create,” or bara, which is used in Genesis l :l. II. T he R uined E arth (2). ■The New Bible, recently published by the Chicago University, makes the Bible’s opening statement to read, “When God began to create the heaven and earth, the earth was without form.” This is confus ing. The original declaration presents two distinct pictures, the earth in its created state (v. I), and the earth in its sub sequent ruined state (v. 2). The explana tion is found in Isaiah 45 :18. God did not create the world in the state in which it appears in verse 2. Hence something must have occurred between verses l and 2, which brought about the change. We are not told what the catastrophe was, or when it took place, but all the ages de manded by geology may be placed between these two verses. III. T he R enovation of the R uined E arth (3-5). Genesis l :3 to 2 :3 does not relate to the original creation, but to the renovation of the ruined earth. In verses 3 to 12, we are told of the inorganic portion, and in verses 13 to 31, of the organic portion of the work of renovation. This is the work of the six days, commonly, but erroneously, called the six days’ work of creation. On the first day, light appeared. This
Lesson T e x t : Gen. 1:l-5, 26-31. Golden T e x t : “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1 : 1 ). The Creation e a r l y e v e r y primitive race has its account of the creation of the uni verse, and the beginning of life. These accounts have been handed down by word of mouth. The father told the
the beginning of our Lord’s earthly minis try. It is the beginning of the material creation. No date is given, hence, the time is a mystery not to be solved by scientific investigation. Dates have to do with man and his history, not with creation and its history. When was the earth formed? No one knows. At a meeting of the American Philosophical Society held in Philadelphia recently, Professor T. C. Chamberlain of the University of Chicago thought the earth was between 70,000,000 and 150,000,000 years of age, arriving at this conclusion by the methods of the geologist. At the same meeting, Professor William Duane of the Harvard Medical School, basing his calcu lations on radio activity, thought it was between 8,000,000 and 1,700,000,000 years of age. These are necessarily mere guesses, and the date of the creation of the earth still remains an impenetrable mystery. “In the beginning God." This word in Hebrew is Elohim, a threefold word indi cating that here the Trinity was at work. This is the name of God in relation to all creation, as Governor of it all, with man included as a part of the creation. There is no proof offered of the existence of God. The Bible merely declares God, and then leaves it to man’s instinct (as a part of creation) to trust Him as a Helper, to man’s conscience to acknowledge His au thority as Judge and Ruler, and to man’s reason to recognize Him in his work as Creator (cf. Psa. 19:1; Rom. 1:20). The work of creation reveals God’s own glory, handiwork, power, and deity; we must go to the cross of Calvary to discover His nature, which is love, and His character, which is grace. “In the beginning God created.” This is a word which means to make something out of nothing. The universe was not cre ated from existing material, but was made from nothing by the sovereign word of God. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This is necessarily a direct appeal to faith and not to reason. Until this opening statement of the Word of God is accepted, it will be useless to go further into the study of the Book. Re ject this premise, and all that follows is IN TWE BEGINNING J 3 0 D — CREATED HEAVEN AND EAR.TH-MN.ia KÜ W M Ê 1wo lidR ts a.niHtve stars^aljo Gen.LLL BLACKBOARD LESSON
son what his father had told him. The son in turn told his son. Thus an endless chain of story-telling was carried on. It is obvious that, w h e n such a method of re cording history is em ployed, the original facts are soon lost.
The stories gather details from the imagi nations of their tellers, which are drawn from the experiences of countless genera tions. About the year 1870, several clay tablets were found near Babylon. Six of these recorded the story of the creation. While they bore a faint resemblance to the Bibli cal record, yet they mirrored the traditions of man-made religious beliefs of the Baby lonians. The stories were doubtless writ ten before Moses wrote the Bible account. No doubt they were based upon traditional accounts handed down from the time of our first parents. Yet the vast differences between them and the creation account of Genesis furnish abundant proof of the God-inspired character of the Bible, and the degeneracy of man’s account. According to the Babylonian account, the creation was a result of the conflict be tween Marduk, the god of the Babylo nians, and Tiamat, the goddess of the abyss. It is warlike and bloodthirsty throughout. The ancient Egyptian account contains a similar record of conflicts. The Chinese story tells of the creation of the universe by the struggles of a great super man or god. What a contrast to the sim ple, consistent, quiet narrative of fact in Genesis! T he C reation of the M aterial U niverse (1). The statement of this verse is the most stupendous, ever made in any language, to any people, or in any age. If we believe this, we shall have no difficulty with any other statement in the whole Bible. “In the beginning.” This is not the be ginning spoken of in John-1:1, which goes back into the past eternity, nor is it the be ginning spoken of in 1 John 1 :1, Which is Outline and Exposition
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