Genesis to Esther Series
As taught by Rev. Lorne Pritchard – Jubilee Bible School
All Scripture is quoted from the King James Bible
LESSON 1
1. The Bible Begins WithThe Fact Of God
Genesis 1:1
(1) In the beginning God…..
Genesis 2:7
(7) And the Lord God formed man
Notice the
order – God then man.
Some people think that man has invented God. Man has not invented God. Man has not
discovered God, but God has revealed Himself. Without His Revelation of Himself,
man would not know that
God exists.
We have five
things listed.
2. The Bible States That God Has
Revealed Himself:
1. by Creation
2. by a nation – Israel
3. by a Person – Christ
4. by an institution – the Church
5. by the Bible
All of those
things are inter-locked together. One cannot give a reasonable account for the existence of any of these five – apart
from the fact of God.
1. God Has Revealed Himself By
Creation
Genesis 1:1 The first thing we are told
(1) In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth.
It is so important
to accept that fact. There is so much silly talk
regarding evolution of things. If you accept Genesis 1: 1, you won’t be
bothered with that.
Now let’s turn
to
Psalms 19: 1-3
The Psalmist
challenges us by what he states.
(1) The heavens declare….
It is not past tense – “declared.”
The Psalmist says: the
heavens “declare” right now at this very
moment! It has never changed from generation to generation.
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his
handiwork.
“Showeth” – Notice the “eth” in
that word. It is not past tense “showed” and not “will show,” but “showeth”
right now at this very moment. That word “firmament” means that vast expanse out there. The more you think about it, and read
about it, and study about it, the more you realize that there is great space in that vast expanse.
(2) Day unto day uttereth speech,
and night unto night showeth knowledge.
There it is
again – the present tense
– “uttereth” speech,
and “showeth”
knowledge.
There is no speech nor language where their voice is not
heard.
What voice is it talking about? It is talking about
the Voice of God
in Creation? All about us speaks of God – the
heavens declare the glory of God.
I suppose
Isaiah 40 is one of the most outstanding passages that you can find regarding
God’s Revelation of Himself in Creation.
Isaiah 40: 18-26
(18) To whom then will ye liken God?
Genesis begins
with the statement “in the
beginning God.”
And now Isaiah says “To whom
then will ye liken God? Or what likeness will ye
compare unto him?”
(19) The workman melteth a graven image. And the goldsmith
spreadeth it over with gold, and casteth silver chains.
Notice – He is
telling us what men do.
(20) He that is so impoverished that he hath no oblation
chooseth a tree that will not rot; he seeketh unto him a cunning workman to
prepare a graven image, that shall not be moved.
(21) Have ye not known? Have ye not heard? Hath it not been
told you from the beginning? Have ye not understood from the
foundations of the earth?
Where is the beginning? – The beginning is in Genesis 1:1. And what does it
state? – in the beginning God
created.
(22) It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and
the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as
a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
(23) That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the
judges of the earth as vanity.
(24) Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be
sown; yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow
upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as
stubble.
(25) To whom then will ye liken me, or
shall I be equal? Saith the Holy One.
Read this next
verse very carefully
(26) Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created
these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth
them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is
strong in power; not one faileth.
The prophet
Isaiah says: If you don’t believe in God –
take a look at God’s Creation. Just lift up your eyes and see what is out there.
The scientists tell us that in space there are galaxies of stars that are in the form of flat wheels. These
wheels are actually egg-shaped. And all of these galaxies are moving in the same
direction. There are billions of galaxies and they cannot be counted
by men.
Now that fits with the Bible!
One day God
took Abraham for a walk to show him something.
Genesis 15 5
And he brought him forth abroad and said, Look now toward
heaven, and count the stars, if thou be able to number them: and
he said unto him, So shall thy seed
be.
The next verse
says that Abraham believed God. What a wonderful act of faith! The
inference in the verse is that Abraham couldn’t
count what is out there. And you can’t count what is out there. It is beyond your imagination what
is out there in space. There are billions!
There is great space between the galaxies. It is so vast that our puny minds cannot lay hold of it.
Our one galaxy is called “The Milky Way.” And if the scientists are
correct, it takes 200 million years for our galaxy to make one turn. That is
how slowly it is turning. Light travels at a speed of
186 thousand miles per second – and it takes 100 thousand years for light to go
from one side of our galaxy to the other side. You try and think of that a
little bit. We are just trying to use some figures
to show how vast God’s Creation is. And the more we use these figures, the more complicated they become. Do you dare
believe it?
He challenges
us: Lift up your eyes and look on what
is out there. and believe that I am. I created
what you can see and what you can’t see.
There are so
many suns in our
galaxy that they cannot be numbered either. Now, put
together what we have said. In our one
galaxy there are:
so
many suns they can’t
be numbered,
and
so much space between each galaxy that you can’t imagine it,
and
so many galaxies that they can’t
be counted.
The more you
study space, the smaller you feel you are. Thank God that creation
reveals that God is.
I remember
hearing a missionary say that when he was talking to a man in the heart of
Africa – he told him “Back in Canada there are people who don’t believe in
God.” The man was amazed. He said “there is not one man in the bush who doesn’t believe in God, for he knows by the things that are
made that there must be a God.”
And that is what the Bible
tells us. The Bible says in the beginning God created. And so by Creation, God has revealed Himself.
2. God Has Revealed Himself By A Nation – Israel
I find it
amazing that not one week goes by without hearing something in the news about
the nation of Israel. In God’s creation, God has placed a nation. There is not one individual who can deny the fact of
the prior existence and the present existence of the nation of Israel. That nation
has been placed in Creation because God
has Spoken in creation by this nation.
Take your Bible
and turn to Hebrews. I am emphasizing the first verse of Genesis “in the beginning God ” -- and God has revealed
Himself. In Hebrews you are up against
the same thing as you are when you open your Bible
in Genesis. Hebrews doesn’t even have any words of introduction. It simple says
“God.” You have to believe in God
to accept your Bible.
Hebrews 1:1
(1) God who at sundry times and in divers
manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets.
God has
revealed Himself. What has He done? – He has spoken. How has He spoken? – in time
past unto the fathers.
And then the last three words by the prophets.
God spake by
the prophets. God placed a nation in Creation, and God spake to the fathers. (That is Israel --
by the prophets.)
Now if you will
turn to the book of Daniel, we will learn a little lesson, in passing, about
the spirit of these Old Testament writers.
Daniel 9:8-10 Daniel says:
(8) O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings,
to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee.
(9) To the Lord our God belongeth mercies and forgivenesses,
though we have rebelled against him;
Now notice very carefully
(10) Neither have we obeyed the voice of the
Lord our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.
Now analyze
what we have read. What is Daniel telling us? – When you read the prophets, you are hearing the Voice
of God.
Did you get that? – the Voice of God.
We haven’t obeyed thy voice by the prophets.
Illustration
I don’t know if
this illustration illustrates to the entirety
that I would like it to.
I don’t think
any of you could ever write a letter to me and sign my wife’s name and fool
me by it. I have read so many letters that she
has written, that when I am reading her
letters, I am hearing her voice. Do you know anything about that? Have you had enough
letters from people you know well?
If it is really from your wife, or somebody you know well – if they have really
written it, it sounds like their voice.
Daniel says:
the Bible is the Voice
of God
and I accept that. God has Spoken by the prophets
to us, and God has revealed Himself.
So God has revealed Himself by Creation.
And God has revealed Himself by placing a nation in Creation.
3. God Has Revealed Himself By A Person – Christ
God has
revealed Himself by a Person. And that Person is Jesus Christ who came of
the Jewish nation.
Now back to
Hebrews 1: 1-2
(1) God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto
the fathers by the prophets.
(2) hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom
he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.
I want you to notice the statement “that God
who spoke by the prophets of Israel, has now spoken through
the person of Jesus Christ.”
Matthew 1: 1
(1) The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of
David, the son of Abraham.
The Bible tells us clearly that Christ
came from the nation of Israel. This links Christ of the New
Testament with the Old Testament.
There are some
people who try to down-grade this next statement. But when Jesus went to
Samaria and sat on the well and talked to the woman, the woman said:
John 4:9
(9) Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that
thou being a Jew…..
“Thou being a Jew.” I don’t have to read any more than that.
There are many other Scriptures, but this
is sufficient for my point. God placed a nation
in Creation, -- through which he would Speak
to creation. And then out from that nation He produced a Person
who’s name is Jesus Christ.
And God has Spoken now in Jesus Christ.
4. God Has Revealed Himself By An Institution –The Church
Matthew 16: 18 Jesus
is talking to Peter
(18) And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church.
I want you to notice what I am trying to join together
here for you. How do we know that God exists? – because of Creation.
And what is in Creation? – a nation.
What has come of that nation? – a Person.
What has that Person produced? – a Church.
Now back
through it, and look at it. Do you have reason to believe in the existence of God? You may not like what goes on in Church, and you may have a
lot of things that you can say against the
church -- but whether you accept it or
reject it – the Church certainly exists
today doesn’t it. The Church is here.
Now, how come
there is a Church? – because in history there is a Person—and
that Person is Jesus Christ.
And apart from Jesus Christ, there never would have been., and there never could have been a Church. The very existence of your church building is proof that on the scene of history 2000 years ago Christ came.
Where did he
come from? – He came from a nation. What nation? – the nation of Israel. Are they still
here? – they certainly
are. And why
are they in Creation? – because God is the Creator. And so God created the nation, and out from the nation – a Person. And out from the Person he created an institution which we know as the Church.
Now to get a
little closer to our subject.
5. God Has Revealed Himself By - The Bible
God has created
not only a Church and a Person
and a nation – but God has created a nation that
produced a Book about a Person
– and then an institution which has preserved
the Book. You see, they are all linked
and locked
together. We have a Bible because of the nation of Israel. We have a Bible
because of Christ. And we have a Bible in our language because of the Church that is
existing.
Now there is a
statement that I want to apply – and without any question, it has to do with
the Bible.
1 John 5: 10
(10) He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in
himself: he that believeth not God
hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son.
I do not know a
better description for the Bible than those words.
What is the Bible?-- The Bible is the record that God has given. And if you believe
the records that men give -- are you not challenged to believe the record that God
has given?
In our study we
are going to come across stories that, to unbelief,
are impossible to accept. I think it is so important, that, before I try and teach Genesis to Esther, we come to the
place where we accept what the Bible says.
First, we need to accept what the Bible
says about itself before we can accept what the Bible says. How did it come into existence?
2 Timothy 3: 16
(16) All scripture –(not part
of it – but all of it) is given by Inspiration of God.
All Scripture. Where does that begin? – in
Genesis. Genesis is given how? – by Inspiration
of God.
And what does that mean? – it is God-breathed. What is its source?
– God!
Scripture
is from God
Scripture
is of God
Scripture
is by God.
If I do not accept what the Bible
says about Itself – and I quote again, all
scripture is given by inspiration of God – how can I believe the Bible?
I have to accept that
in order to accept the Bible. Once I get that settled and believe that all Scripture is given by Inspiration of God, then I praise God, I have no difficultly when I
start reading and studying and believing what is in the Book.
God says it is
given by Inspiration of God. That statement is either totally true, or it is totally
false. It’s not partly true and partly
false. You either accept it, or reject
it. And if you reject it, you close the Book. But if you accept it – then your heart opens
to the Book. I praise God for this wonderful Book, that reveals God to me in a
way that no other book or writing could do.
One cannot give a reasonable
account for the existence of any of these five facts apart from the fact of God.
What am I talking about? –creation. There is no answer to creation apart from God.
There is no answer to the history of the Jewish
nation apart from God.
As I have said
earlier -- Isn’t it tremendous the way the Jewish nation keeps popping up in
front of us on our television news! God will allow a man like Mr. James
Keegstra in Alberta to make some statements about the Jews. It leads to a big
court case – and it is all over the news.
Somebody else
in Toronto will make some statements about the Jews, and the news coverage is
all about the Jewish people.
Or somebody
will get into a car in Lebanon and kill a few Jewish soldiers, so it hits the
newspapers.
The nation of Israel is always in front of us, because God is reminding us that He is not only the God of Creation, but he is the God
of that nation. And out of that nation came Christ. And out
from Christ came the Church.
And out from all three came this wonderful Book.
So God has seen fit to reveal Himself through all
these things.