In this bonus lesson to the Creation Foundation series, Pastor Dave Capoccia answers submitted questions having to do with creation and the first two chapters of Genesis.
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All right. Well, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Sunday school and a special Sunday school lesson we have today. Just completed our sevenweek series on the creation foundation. Those lessons are online. If you missed any of those, so go back and look at that.
We’re looking we’ve been looking at this because it is such a foundational part of the scripture, a foundational part of the faith, and yet one that is questioned that is opposed by the popular thinking of our day. because there are so many implications that come from creation and because it’s something clearly declared in the word of God.
It’s something that we want to stand on.
We want to have answers for. So hopefully this series has been helpful to you. But as I said last time, I haven’t given a lot of time for questions at the end of each lesson. So we’re having a special Q&A today related to the Bible. I said it could be anything in the Bible. Certainly could be about creation. And that’s all the questions that I received. They’re all connected to creation. So, this is specifically a creation Bible Q&A. Thank you for your submissions, by the way, those of you who submitted. I’ve got 10 questions to go through today. We’ll see if we have time for all of them. I think these will be edifying and interesting.
And if you have questions about my answers today, well, hopefully we’ll have time in the lesson to deal with those follow-up questions, but if not, just come talk to me afterwards. But anyways, let’s get into it. But first, let’s pray.
Lord God, your word is true.
You Your word is tested. It has been proven and it will be proven again.
You are a shield to all those who walk uprightly. God, help us to walk uprightly with even greater confidence in your word as we hear some answers to questions today. Help me to be able to explain this well and help us to pay attention so Lord, we might be built up in Jesus name. Amen.
Right, 10 questions. Let’s see how many we can get through.
Number one, why do Genesis 2:7 and Genesis 2:22 say that God created man and woman or man from the ground and woman from man’s rib when Genesis 1:27 already said that God created them male and female? If man and women are already created in Genesis 1, how could they be created again in Genesis 2?
Important question, good question, but there’s a kind of basic answer to it. I tried to emphasize in lesson four of our series and on Adam and Eve specifically that Genesis 2 is an expansion on the Genesis 1 account. This is not a contradictory version of creation that the original Hebrews are like, “Oh, we don’t know which one is true. We’ll just put them both together.” No, it’s not a contradictory version, nor is it a continuation of the narrative, a strict continuation of the narrative of Genesis 1. This is the author doubling back to tell us more details about some of the things he’s already told us in Genesis 1 before he goes on with the narrative in Genesis 3. Now, it’s not wrong for an author to do this. And we see the same thing happen in other parts of the Old Testament and other parts of the Bible.
In fact, even in Genesis, when we get to Genesis 10, we receive a genealogy there about the descendants of um I think it’s Noah’s sons and we hear about how they spread out to various places in the world. But then Genesis 11 doubles back and tells you what was the reason that they started spreading out in various places. And what was the reason? It was the Tower of Babel. It was what happened at the city in the Tower of Babel. So this is again the same thing the author doubling back to say okay I’ I’ve moved along in the narrative a certain point but I got to go back and tell you about something else that happened before we go even further give you another example in 2 Kings chapter 19 and 20 that’s one of the places in the Bible where we hear all about Hezekiah and the siege of the Assyrians of Jerusalem and we hear all about how um Hezekiah impertunes God in prayer and he talks to Isaiah the prophet and God says says, “Don’t worry, they’re not going to fire even an arrow here. I’m going to bring them um I’m going to bring them back the way they came.” And we get to the end of that little piece in the narrative. And it talks about how they did leave and and even how the commander who had been or rather the king who had been leading the assault is eventually killed by his own sons. But then the narrative doubles back a bit to tell you about Hezekiah’s sickness, which if you’re paying close attention to the narrative, must have happened before the siege ended. In fact, maybe in the beginning of the siege, that was one of the reasons why Hezekiah was so distressed to be ill because he’s like, “My people are in the midst of a crisis and I can’t even help or I can’t even do anything because I’m so sick. God, can’t you help?” And and God says, “Yes, I’m going to grant you more life.” And so, again, this idea of the author kind of pausing the narrative to go back, pausing the historical narrative to go back, that’s not wrong.
That’s not some sort of playing fast and loose with history. This is a just a a literary technique that the authors of scripture sometimes use. And so if the chronology gets confusing, just pay attention to the clues in the text because they’ll usually indicate one way or another that the author is going back. So no contradiction between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. It’s not two creations of man and woman. It’s just one that gets expanded on in Genesis 2.
Speaking of that creation, why did God take a rib from Adam to create Eve?
Well, anytime you’re asking, well, why did God do that? It’s a little bit dangerous because sometimes we don’t know. God is allowed to do whatever he pleases. He doesn’t explain why he does some certain things always.
Yet, there are some times in the Bible where God does tell us why he does something or he gives some pretty poignant clues to help us come up with an answer. And in Genesis 2, I think we definitely have that. What is it in Genesis 2? I’ll even ask you guys, what is it that we see later in Genesis 2 that gives a strong reason why God chose to use a rib from Adam to create Eve?
Yeah, sure.
I think that’s the core of it. When we get to the end of Genesis 2, what does Adam say about woman whenever he sees her?
This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, which is literally true.
And that becomes a paradigm for all marriages and just how intimately connected husband and wife are. They are in a way that’s partly literal, but in a way that’s true in its most essential fashion. They are the same bone and flesh.
And so how appropriate is it then that God literally takes the bone and flesh of Adam to create his wife. This is a very proper metaphor for what marriage is. And of course it connects ultimately with what it says about Christ in the church. Remember that’s the great mystery of marriage. As Genesis or as Ephesians 5 says um Paul says, I’m speaking of Christ in the church. I’m thinking about the mystery of marriage, but I’m telling you it’s about Christ in the church.
Not in a way that’s literal with Jesus, but we become one with him in a sense where essentially we are the same bone and flesh. Now, that’s actually true about Jesus because he’s human, but in the way that he’s connected to us, it is so intimate. It’s like marriage spiritually speaking. We are in him and he is in us. It’s that one flesh concept. So it is appropriate that God would create Eve in this way because it was going to say something about human marriage and then ultimately say something about the marriage of Christ in the church.
All right. Number three.
Was there any spiritual aspect to God’s command to Adam to keep the garden?
Remember we talked in our lessons about the creation mandate and our responsibility to steward God’s creation. Is there a spiritual aspect to that even in God’s command originally to Adam to cultivate or to keep the garden?
And surely there was because actually in the very context of that statement that God placed the man in the garden to cultivate and to keep it just two verses later rather the two verses that come after Genesis 2:16-1 17 God says to him of all the trees of the garden freely eat except the tree of knowledge which is in the midst of the garden. tree of knowledge of good and evil.
So there’s this spiritual command or this very much spiritually related command right in that statement about Adam cultivating the garden. So from the beginning, Adam’s stewardship, man’s stewardship involves dependence and obedience to God, a core spiritual reality.
And you could say that with this one command to Adam. Adam was charged not to manage the garden, not to cultivate the earth in a way that was sinful because God says there’s certain things that you’re not allowed to do. And surely there is a principle arising from that for all of us.
our stewardship of the earth, our use of the earth, its resources, our management of its creatures.
It is not simply a matter of doing what conserves the most resources or doing what is most green. It’s a matter of obedience to God. It’s a matter of loving God and loving your fellow man in how you do that. Which is why I said in our stewardship lesson that the green way is not necessarily the right way in every situation.
Whatever is called green.
We are called to be holy in the midst of our stewardship of the earth. And not just when it comes to resource stewardship. You can think about all aspects of life. There are certain ways that one might behave socially or politically or um in some other aspect of life, artistically, culturally where you do something that is wise from a certain perspective, but it’s actually sinful.
From a worldly perspective, it’s wise, it’s shrewd, but God says it’s sinful.
Is that ever the right course for a Christian to take? No. In fact, a strong argument could could be made that that’s not really wise at all.
People who act in a wise way that is still sinful, many times the consequences show up in their life. And actually see some biblical examples of this. Remember Balum was hired to curse Israel. He wasn’t able to do it, but he gave some advice to Bailac to cause Israel to stumble. And it was shrewd advice. It really did cause Israel to stumble. Do you remember what his advice was?
Idols.
He got Israel involved with idols. But there was a way that he did that.
That’s right. It was the It was the women. uh they were able to entice Israelite men to marry or to have relations with these Canaanite women and thereby become connected to idolatrous gods. Now, God judged Israel for this. Thousands of people died. If you’re talking about a way to make Israel stumble and you’re you’re an opposing kingdom, that’s that’s a shrewd way to do it. Get them involved with immorality and idolatry.
That was shrewd advice from Balam. But did it work out well for him in the end?
What happened to him?
He was killed by the Israelites because when they eventually attacked uh I think Bailac and the Midionites and and the Moabites were with him, it says that Balam was one of the people killed. So that wisdom really wasn’t wise for him in the end. Or think of another example later in the Old Testament. Remember Ahyhel, he’s was David’s counselor who sides with Abselam against David when Abselam, David’s son, rebelss. And it says that Ahyhel, his advice was like the council of God. Like he was just so smart. He was so shrewd. And he gives a certain piece of counsel to Abselam.
He’s like, you know, some people are kind of not sure whether to join with your rebellion or not. But here’s how you’re going to strengthen your hand, strengthen their hand with you. sleep with your father’s wives, with the concubines that he’s left behind, because that’ll show everybody you’re serious and they’ll get serious about supporting you. And you know what? That was shrewd advice. And Abselam took that advice and it really was part of strengthening his rebellion against David.
But did it work out well for a hyhel in the end? No. Because what happened?
He ends up committing suicide because when he gives further advice, further shrewd, sinful advice about rebelling against David, God causes another counselor to be there who’s actually on David’s side to thwart Ahel’s advice so that Abselam doesn’t listen to it.
So Hyhel knows he’s ruined. He knows Abselon’s rebellion’s ruined. And so he goes and kills himself. So he was acting very shrewdly from a worldly perspective, but in a in a in an ultimate perspective, it wasn’t wise at all.
So I think we could think of many examples like that. People who seem to succeed by evil means, they’re being wise. Maybe it’s their tyrannical rule or maybe it’s their the way that they’re able to seduce people and get what they want. They’re acting wise in a certain way, but in the end, it’s not wisdom because it’s not holy. If you really want to walk in wisdom, it’s always in the fear of God. So that applies to the way we use the earth’s resources. That applies to the way we do all of our lives. And that should be an encouragement to us because we’re never missing out on true wisdom if we stay with God. You know, the world’s going to tell us like, “Oh man, you know, you could really have this if you weren’t so tied to, you know, obeying your God.” Well, we don’t need what they have to offer. I I like that line from Hebrews that says, “We have food from an altar that they’re not even allowed to eat from. We’re not the ones missing out on on wisdom or or joy or or pleasure from the world.” No, they’re the ones who are missing out on what we have, what we have in Christ. So, let’s not be afraid of that. There certainly is a spiritual aspect to stewarding uh stewarding the earth well. And that’s actually the wisest way to steward the earth. You want to be obedient to God.
Okay. Number four.
Does the command from God to the Israelites to rest the land every seven years count as an example of wise stewardship of the earth because this was going to cause the land to produce more?
Interesting question. It’s definitely related to the previous one. We do know today that resting land crop rotation is a wise practice. This wasn’t something understood from the most ancient of times. It did eventually come to be understood. Now today we have so many other technologies and agricultural techniques that I think strict crop rotation isn’t practiced anymore. But for a long time it was because it is useful for lands production. You give it time to rest. You give it time to like regenerate certain things in the soil.
It’ll be more productive when you use it again.
Yet this is not the reason given in the scripture for why God commanded Israel to rest the land every seven years.
Because consider what God actually says in Exodus 23. Exodus 23:es 10-11.
He says to Israel, “You shall sew your land for 6 years and gather in its yield. But on the seventh year, you shall leave it rest, let it rest, and lieow so that the needy of your people may eat. And whatever they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. You are to do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.” So according to that passage, what is the reason for God saying rest the lands every seventh year?
It was for charity. I don’t know about the beast part, but there’s going to be poor people who are going to be looking for food. And when there are certain lands throughout Israel that are resting and are naturally producing their food that you’re not harvesting, the poor can go eat it. This is going to provision for people in the land who don’t have their own land. you’re going to provide from your fields that you’re gonna leave alone for one year. This is about charity, but not just charity. Leviticus 25, Leviticus 25:es 1-22, it also repeats this command and and the and the reason for it to help the poor. But then it adds this Leviticus 25 20-22.
But if you say, “What are we going to eat on the seventh year if we do not sew or gather in our crops?” Well, there’s practical concern here.
God says, ‘Then I will so order my blessing for you in the sixth year so that it’ll bring forth the crop for three years. When you are sewing the eighth year, you can still eat old things from the crops, eating the old until the ninth year when his crop comes in.
So that’s a pretty amazing promise from God. He’s like, not only am I going to give you something that covers the year that you’re not cultivating the crops, I’ll give you even more than that. So you got something for that year, the year after that, and even the year after that.
You don’t have to worry about sewing in the seventh year. I’m going to take care of you.
So why else then were or what else was their purpose in God’s telling them to rest at a seventh year? Resting on the seventh year. It was an expression of what?
Sabbath.
Well, a Sabbath principle. We’ll say more about that in just a second, Judy.
Exactly. It’s a it’s a expression of trust.
And this is exactly like the weekly Sabbath. God says you’re there’s going to be one day of the week where you’re not going to work. And you can hear the same kind of concern, which is like, but you know, we’ve got so many things we got to take care of. We don’t work that one day each week. Well, how are we going to survive? How are we going to make enough money to support ourselves?
How are we going to get enough food?
Well, part of the principle of the Sabbath is I need you to trust me. I need you to express that trust by saying I’m going to choose not to work in obedience to God’s command. Honor this Sabbath day that he’s given to show that I know he’s the one who provides and not me. He uses me. He uses my work, but he’s the one that provides.
The same principle in the weekly Sabbath actually applies in the yearly Sabbath.
When they choose not to work for one year in obedience to God’s command, it was an expression of trust. They say, “I know that God is able to provide even when I’m not working. So, I’m going to show him that by following his command to let this line land rest.” So, in the scriptures, the reason for the seventh year resting is not so much because it’s going to make the land more productive, but it’s for charity and it’s expression of trust in God.
Now, did Israel keep these Sabbath commands?
Generally, no. And so, what did God do?
Yeah, he he sent judgment ultimately resulting in their exile. And one of the reasons why he says he’s exiling them is is he says you didn’t let the land rest.
So I’m going to make the land rest now by taking you away from it. All the Sabbath years that you neglected, that’s how many years are going to be. You’re not going to be in the land.
So here again, we see that spiritual aspect of stewardship that I was just talking about. They thought they were being wise. They’re like, you know, God said we got to let this land rest, but we know better. We got to get this food.
We got to get this production. We’re going to work on the Sabbath. It may have seemed wise from a human perspective, but it wasn’t wise ultimately because you go against the command of God, he will chasen you, which is what he did. It was foolish.
This connects with Psalm 127, one of the short Psalms, but memorable psalms where Solomon says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, a watchman keeps watching in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early. It’s vain for you to eat the bread of painful labors. I think I may be mixing up two verses there. But he gives to his own even in their sleep.
So the Sabbath principle is really part of the same thing. It’s an expression of trust that God is able to provide even when I’m not working.
And that’s still true for us, right?
When we think about the way that we arrange our weeks and when we think about the commands and priorities of scripture given to us. The Sabbath is different for us now. We’re not Israel.
The Sabbath has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, which is why Colossians says, “Don’t let anybody judge you.” When it comes to keeping the new moons of the Sabbath, all those Old Testament festivals, you don’t have to do that.
You want to, it’s fine. You don’t have to do that.
Nevertheless, the priority of gathering with your brethren, which we do on Sundays now, or being an evangelist to unbelievers or seeking the Lord through the Bible and prayer. These are to be priorities of believers. And we can’t say to ourselves, but well, if I do that, how am I going to survive? How am I going to make money? How am I going to support my family?
God says, seek me first. Prioritize me and I’ll take care of those other things. It’s just like with the Sabbath.
It’s an expression of trust when you say, “I’m going to obey God and what he told me to prioritize and I’ll trust him to make up for what I can’t do.” Now, it doesn’t mean you should be lazy. That does mean that you do show God your trust by doing what the world says is not wise, but what the Bible says is wise.
I guess to tie up this question though, why was the Israelite land productive, so productive on the seventh years? I mean, God promised it would be. Was this crop rotation at work? Was this some supernatural act of God?
Well, a lot of times it’s hard to tell the difference between or sometimes hard to tell the difference between God’s good providence and God’s supernatural miraculous work. I think it could be either or both.
But certainly and it’s worth noting that some of the other commands that God gave that were unique to Israel, even part of the ceremonial law, they did seem to have practical benefits involved. A lot of people talked about not eating pork and not eating shellfish, which was forbidden in their diet. That was probably a healthy choice for ancient people. But whether God was just giving them practical benefit from something that already existed in his universe or he just supernaturally blessed him, I think it could be either. God is able to do the same for us.
All right, almost halfway through.
Number five.
How should Christians respond to the ruin reconstruction theory of creation?
You say, “What’s that?” H if you don’t know what that is, this is a version of the gap theory in ruin reconstruction.
The interpretation is Genesis 1:1 tells us about how God originally created the earth. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But then there’s a gap between that and the next verse.
Millions of years gap, multiple billions of years gap.
What was happening in in those millions of years? Well, the original creation was um developed. It was flourishing.
Satan himself was given dominion over this creation along with some fellow angels. But then the creation was corrupted. Satan rebelled. Not everybody in this version of the theory says that Satan was involved. But whatever happened with that original creation, it was corrupted over those millions of years. And so God in judgment destroyed it. Whatever the original creation was, he devastated it. And if Satan was involved in the rebellion, he was judged. His dominion was destroyed. And this is the origin of all those fossils and old rocks that we see in the ground that are dated to millions of years. And this is why Genesis 1:2 when it resumes and we hear about the state of the earth that it is formless and desolate.
That is one way you can translate that verb to. It’s a formless and desolate earth.
How could this description be unless the earth had already existed and been devastated? Why would it be devastated?
Well, there must have been some long period of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis one two, maybe even a sat satanic rebellion.
That’s why we see the fossil layers, the rock layers. That’s why we have this description. What follows then in the rest of the Genesis 1 narrative is God recreating the earth. Everything else plays out exactly as the the narrative says, literally. God speaks and it comes to be. But there’s just this gap where everything was created, developed, and then was destroyed. It was ruined before the world was recreated.
Oh, yeah. Sure.
Is that gap supposed to be the great flood?
No. Uh we’ll mention the flood in just a second. This is actually way before the flood. This is the gap of millions of years of earth development and uh ruin, etc. Now, this seems like a great way for Christians to have their cake and eat it, too. some Christians. On the one hand, you can affirm modern scientific theories that say the earth is millions of years old. All the fossil layers say this, and on the other hand, it seems like you can affirm that Genesis 1 calls for a literal historical understanding.
You can do both, right?
Wrong. So, major problems with this view. Can you detect any of them?
Yeah, Dwayne.
Yeah, this is a huge problem is that if you’re trying to fit in millions of years, that includes destruction and ruin and also lots of fossils and corruption in the earth. That means that there was death and destruction on the earth before humans sinned. But they say, “Oh, well, Satan sinned. Death and destruction was Satan.” That’s not the way the Bible talks about the way that sin and death came into the world. This is man’s world. Man was the one who was put in charge of it.
Romans says death came into the world by one man’s sin.
The world was subjected to futility. Not willingly, but so that it could be redeemed. How did that come about? It came about by sin. So if you’ve got death before the fall, if you’ve got corruption before the fall, you’ve already got a major problem. You’re contradicting what the scripture says.
But that’s not the only problem with this theory. What else?
Scriptures don’t say that.
Yeah, this is reading a lot into the scripture. Uh certainly in that gap in Genesis 1:12, you’re not getting that from the scripture. You’re you’re supplying that into the scripture. And they might say, “Well, what about the word desolate in in Genesis 1:2? The earth was formless and desolate, right?” And you say, “Well, that’s not the way my Bible translates it.” And that’s a good reason. And there’s a good reason for that because to have to mean desolate.
It can mean wasteland, desolate, but it can also mean empty.
And you don’t have to have a devastated earth to have an empty earth because actually when we walk through the narrative I I told you why it is that the earth was without form and without filling that is empty. That’s because when God created it he didn’t create it in its finished form in Genesis 1:1 where it says God created the heavens and the earth. What proceeds over the next six or yeah over that first day and the next five days of creation is God finishing his creation by finishing its form and by filling it.
So you don’t need some sort of rebellion and destruction in order to have an empty earth that was going to be filled.
So that seeming strong point of the ruin rec ruin reconstruction theory is actually useless. You don’t need a rebellion and destruction for it to have an empty earth. There are other problems.
Um, this messes with some important cross references to the creation account, Exodus 2011, which says, “All creation was wrapped up in six days. For in six days, God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them.
Therefore, you were to work six days and rest on the seventh.” If God actually created the earth over some other long period of time and then recreated the earth later, Exodus 2011 makes no sense.
and Mark 10:6 where Jesus is making a point about divorce and marriage and he says from the beginning of creation God made them male and female suddenly that doesn’t make any sense because the beginning of creation in this theory is actually some other version of earth that maybe Satan was ruling over and then was destroyed and then later we get man and male and female male and female are at the beginning of creation so there’s no room for a previous version of the earth that was ruined And of course, they might say, “Oh, whoa, in Mark 10:6 or in Exodus 2011, it’s just talking about the recreated earth from the beginning of the recreated earth.” That’s not what the text says.
You’re reading meaning into it because you want it to be there. From the beginning of first creation needs to mean from the beginning of creation.
Death and destruction before the fall.
That’s a huge problem. And then, Eno, you mentioned the flood. The flood is a major problem for any theory like the gap theory that infers millions of years to explain the fossil record. Because what would a global tectonic volcanic event like the flood do to the rock and fossil record?
It would totally wipe it away. It would totally move it around, stick it up mountains, do all sorts of weird things to it. that layer, whatever layers were laid down slowly over millions of years would just be totally useless after the flood because the flood would mix it all up.
And this is why people who believe in millions of years in an old earth, they have to say, “Oh, it wasn’t a global flood.” But that’s not what the text says. The text in in multiple ways makes clear this was a global flood. It covered the highest mountains. It covered them by multiple cubits.
So, lots of problems with ruin reconstruction theory and really any gap theory trying to say millions of years.
Really, what we’re seeing with this is just another example of someone not starting with the Bible, not starting with the reliable account of the Bible, but starting with man’s theories and then trying to squeeze it into the Bible, adjust the Bible to fit the theory. And we’ve stressed that a biblical worldview, which is really a wise worldview, a an accurate worldview, starts with the Bible because this is trustworthy. You start with this and then you assess man’s theories and you say, “Oh, that doesn’t really fit. I got to reject that.” Or, “Okay, this could fit, but this theory needs to be adjusted because the Bible, it doesn’t need to be adjusted, but some of man’s ideas need to, but some of man’s ideas can’t be adjusted at all. They just have to be rejected.” Anyways, we start with the Bible. We don’t start with man’s theories. So Christians should not accept ruin reconstruction and we don’t have a need to. We can stick to ordinary six day creation as has been the historical position of the Christian church.
No reason to change that.
Well, speaking of Satan’s potential rule of the earth, when were angels created and when did the satanic rebellion take place?
As mentioned previously in one of our lessons, there are no specific details given in Genesis 1 and two about the creation of angels. Doesn’t means they weren’t created. Just sees just that they’re not mentioned. Satan is clearly there in Genesis 3 speaking through the serpent. He’s evil. He’s trying to corrupt mankind. He’s clearly fallen by that point.
And certainly he as an angel and other angels with him. They would have existed by Genesis 3.
They they certainly exist. They certainly have fallen. But can we say more than that?
Well, there are some other details given in other passages of scripture. I mentioned I think in Sunday school uh Sunday school lesson Job 38. Job 38 4-7.
It clarifies that angels were present during some portion of creation. Job 38 4-7. This is God giving that talking to to Job kind of putting him back in his place. And he says,”Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who said its measurements since you know or who stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Now, sons of God there can’t mean humans. It means angels. So God is saying, “Hey, Job, were you there when I was creating the earth and the angels were praising me for it?” Sons of God.
which means angels were there part of creation.
Colossians 1:15-16 further says that Christ created everything including the spirit beings known as angels.
Those that would eventually fall and those that wouldn’t because Colossians 1:15 to 16 says of Jesus, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.” And that phrase, those descriptions are used elsewhere in the New Testament for angelic beings, even demons. Think of Ephesians chapter 6 where it talks about we don’t war against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the um the the potentates, the dark spiritual forces in the in the heavenly places.
Same idea. Colossians says Jesus created those beings. All things have been created through him and for him.
Now, if creation really was the beginning, if there’s no beginning before whatever God created, then that means the angels are not eternal. They only began to exist after the beginning when God started to create. Which means if they’re there in creation and yet they were created, they were created at some portion of the creation week.
when during the creation week and we can’t say specifically, but as I think John MacArthur mentioned in one sermon, it does seem to be the pattern that God creates something before soon before it’s about to be needed or about to be useful. So, if angels are there to praise God for his creation and to serve God in his creation, it would make sense that they’re created pretty early. So maybe day one or maybe day three when the dry land appears and vegetation starts to appear in the earth. Just like Job 38 says, this is what God is laying the foundation. He’s putting his he’s finishing forming his earth and the angels are praising him for it. So probably day one or day three. But angels certainly were created some point during the creation week. All the angels, even the ones that fell later.
All right. Now then, when was the fall?
When did Satan rebel? When was the angelic fall?
Well, not during creation week, surely.
Because how could God on day six look at all and say, “This is very good.” Oh, yeah. Except for that part where the angels have rebelled and and I’ve had to judge them. No. If it’s all very good, then there couldn’t have been an angelic rebellion in that time. And it doesn’t make sense for it to be on the seventh day either where God made it holy and he rests on the seventh day from his work of creation. That would seem to be contradicted by a very dark evil corrupt rebellion of angels.
So very likely not at all during the creation week but probably shortly shortly thereafter.
It may be that Satan was provoked insensed by the idea that man would be given such a special place in creation and he wanted a more special place for himself and for his angelic buddies. But it would probably be because we see him already in Genesis 3 fallen and ready to corrupt man.
Probably the angelic rebellion took place shortly after the creation week.
That’s probably when it took place. And that’s related to the next question, which is when did the fallen man take place?
Well, considering what I just said, if the angelic rebellion took place soon after the creation week, Satan probably wasted no time trying to corrupt man on the earth. I mean, what would he be waiting for? Moreover, we learn from Genesis 3 and 4 certain details related to the fall. In Genesis 4:1, Eve conceives for the first time, which means she didn’t before that. Even though God told Adam in the very beginning, be fruitful and multiply.
They were given a sexual relationship.
They were given ability to conceive. She apparently had not conceived by the time the fall had taken place.
And according to Genesis 3:22, neither she nor Adam have yet taken hold of the fruit of the tree of life, which was in the midst of the garden.
It’s not like it was hard to access.
Genesis 3:22, God says, “Then the Lord God said, behold, a man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now he might stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” Now, there’s a lot of mystery surrounding the tree of life. But from that one statement, it sounds like that if somebody ate from it, even just one time, they would live forever. And God says, “Now that they’ve fallen, we can’t let that happen. We can’t let them remain in this corrupted state forever without any ability to be redeemed.
So they have to be banished from the garden. So one would imagine that considering the presumably easy access to this tree of life and the ability to conceive, neither of these have happened before the fall. So that suggests the fall, the human fall took place very soon after the first creation week. There wasn’t enough time for Eve to conceive. there wasn’t enough time for man and woman to eat from the the tree of life. So, we’re talking within a few days, maybe certainly a few weeks.
So, that means that both the satanic rebellion and man’s fall took place soon after creation. And if creation is sometime around 4,000 BC, we talked about how we get to that number in our in our lessons. Then that’s the same thing for man’s fall and for Satan’s rebellion around 4,000 BC, which is kind of sobering, kind of sad that the very good earth that God created enjoyed its innocence very likely for a short time.
It wasn’t so long that man gave up his enjoyment of what God created by his own sin.
Number eight.
What is the difference between the heavens of Genesis 1:1 and the heaven of Genesis 18?
How is it possible that the celestial bodies and the birds of the sky both move in the same heavens? So, Genesis 1:1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 18, God creates the expanse that separates the water from the waters, and he called it heaven.
Wait, I thought he already created heaven in Genesis 1:1. Why is it appearing again in Genesis 18? And then later on when he talks about creating the celestial bodies on day four and then creating the birds of the sky in day five, how is it that they can both be in the same heaven?
It seems like there’s a pretty big distance between where birds fly and where the planets orbit.
How do these things fit together? Okay.
Well, what we see happening with the earth and Genesis 1:1 and the rest of the narrative is similar to what we see happening with the heavens.
And by the way, there’s a somewhat artificial distinction in heavens versus heaven. Because in Hebrew, it’s the same word. Shamayim is a plural word, but it’s a plural of complex complexity or majesty. Hebrew has some of these things. Remember I you might remember I told you about the name Elohim. Elohim is a plural name for gods. But the one God, the one true God is often called Elohim in the Bible. It doesn’t mean that this is an inference of the Trinity, though it is consistent with that. This is just a plural of majesty or a plural of complexity, which Hebrews would sometimes use. They say one singular thing. It’s got all these amazing parts to it or all these moving parts or is just so great. We’ll refer to it in the plural. It’s kind of like the royal we. It’s the same thing with a word for heaven. It’s a plural word even though it’s singular because the Hebrews were looking at the heavens and they’re like it’s got so many parts to it. So they would refer to it as heavens even though it’s a singular entity. So I mean heavens or heaven are both fine translations. They’re not actually different terms in the Hebrew. But anyways, we’re still wondering h how do we get heaven created twice in the narrative? Well, like I was saying, earth was created in Genesis 1:1, but it wasn’t finished. It wasn’t fully formed.
It wasn’t fully filled. that would come in the rest of the narrative. It’s the same thing with the heavens. The cosmos was created in Genesis 1. In Genesis 1:1, the heavens were fundamentally created and yet they’re not finished.
What happens on day two when God creates the expanse? He is finishing forming the heavens.
And he even officially gives it its name once it’s been fully formed. I’ve created this expanse. I’m now calling it heavens. So it’s not that God created two different heavens, but he was finishing the form of creation of the heavens on day two, which he had begun on day one.
And as for the birds and the planets both being in the same expanse, let me pull back that explanation I gave to you about phenomenal phenomenological language in the Bible. I know that’s a big word. It just means how things look, how things appear, the phenomenon as it presents itself.
to the Hebrews. They did not see a great difference between the heaven of the earth’s atmosphere and the heaven of the celestial bodies.
They saw it as all together.
It was all one heaven in their view. And from a certain point of view, that’s not wrong. I mean, if you’re looking on Earth and you look at the sky and you see the stars moving around, you see the sun and the moon moving around, and you see the birds moving around, all in the same kind of expanse that’s above you, you say, “It’s just one heaven.” To them, everything that appeared above them seemed to be the same space.
space. In fact, they conceptually likened the sky to a great plate, even a dome stretched out above the earth.
And the various creatures, the various celestial objects that moved in the sky, they were really moving across the face of this plate.
And by the way, the word expanse or firmament, it comes from a Hebrew word that has the idea of plate.
Now, scientifically speaking, this is not accurate as we know. So, flatearthers cannot jump for joy here.
Bible doesn’t teach a flat earth. But phenomenologically speaking, even though scientifically this is not accurate from a from a just the perspective of how things appear, the phenomena as we look at it, this is accurate. That is the way it appears. That’s just kind of like all one and everything is moving across it.
Again, think about the way that we do this even in our language today when we talk about sunrise and sunset. Does the sun actually rise? No. It’s just the rotation of the earth. It looks like it’s rising. Does the sun actually set?
No. Does the sun move across the sky?
No. It’s our planet moving. It looks like it is though. And it’s not wrong for us to use that kind of language to describe it.
Same idea here with the heavens.
The heavens look like they are all together. And that’s the way the Hebrews described it. And that’s the way the text describes it. The birds are not literally bobbing and weaving through the planets, but phenomenologically speaking, it looks like they’re operating in the same space as the stars and everything else. And by the way, I think this explains why the text talks about the waters above being separated from the waters below. I don’t think this refers to some uh barrier of water at the edge of the universe, at the edge of our cosmos, though God could certainly do that. I think this just refers to clouds, which the Hebrews saw as being part of that same one heaven where everything else operated. And when it says the waters above, I think we can actually translate that because the Hebrew preposition has this flexibility, not waters above, but waters on. Because it kind of looks like the clouds are sitting on the plate that is the expanse. they’re kind of sitting on the in inner side of it. So the waters below are separated from the waters above.
Those clouds that sometimes come down as a form of rain. It’s kind of like the clouds are hovering just on the inner side of the the plate of the expanse.
Now again, this is phenomenological language. This is not scientific language, but it’s not inaccurate. It’s not inaccurate to describe the earth this way. Yeah, Mark. So part of it face that oh um I think that’s consistent with it.
Yeah. So Mark pointing out the description of the term or description face go across the face of the heavens. Uh yeah that’s consistent with the idea of how it looked to the Hebrews and and how they thought of it. Yeah. So, it’s almost like the waters are on the inner surface on the face of the heavens. And by the way, this is not the only way that the Bible describes the heavens.
This is just one way of looking at it.
When we get to the New Testament, Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 2:12 of being caught up to the third heaven.
This evidently assumes at least three heavens. And the one where God is is the third. So, we could probably infer the other ones. The first heaven would be Earth’s atmosphere. The second heaven would be the cosmos where the stars and planets are and the third heaven would be where God dwells. Does that contradict what the Hebrews believed in Genesis 1? No. It’s just two different ways of looking at the same reality.
It’s not contradictory. So anyways, that’s why we see the word heaven being used the way it is in Genesis 1.
Okay.
Number nine. This is a biggie. This might be the only last one we can get to.
If there are truly no gaps in the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies, in memory, I argue that there are no gaps and that’s how we can use those chronologies to establish the age of the earth. If there are truly no gaps, doesn’t the error of an extra Canaan listed in Luke 3:36, just compare it to Genesis 11:12-15, doesn’t that compromise the inherency of the Bible?
Now to clarify this here, you can look at this yourself. Look at Genesis 11:12-15.
So this is part of that chronogeneal I was talking to you about previously.
Listen to the order of names. Genesis 11:12-15.
Our Paxshed lived 35 years and he became the father of Sheila. Apache lived 403 years after he became the father of Sheila and he had other sons and daughters. Sheila lived 30 years and he became the father of Eber and Sheila lived 403 years after he became the father of Eber and he had other sons and daughters. Did you hear that order? Our Pakshad, Sheila, Eber.
Okay, now let’s go to Luke. Luke 3:35 and 36.
So this is the genealogy of Jesus. It works backwards, but it goes all the way back to Adam.
Luke 3:35-36.
The son of Sug, the son of Rayu, the son of Pelleg, the son of Heber, the son of Sheila, the son of Canaan, the son of Arpakshhat, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech.
You notice we have Canaan on the Luke list but not on the Genesis 11 list.
What gives?
Well, first it’s clarifying. It’s worth clarifying what inherence actually what inherency actually means. We do believe that the Bible is inherent. The Bible is inherent. But what does that mean? It does not mean that the copies and translations of the Bible are all without error. whatever copies and translations those might be. But that the original autographs, the original texts as written by God’s spirit through the apostles and prophets, those are without error. Those are perfect. And that’s an important distinction because any error in the originals would mean that God made a mistake and therefore God is not God and the Bible’s not trustworthy.
But an error in a passed down copy does not so violate God’s own perfection.
Now, do we have the original autographs of the Bible? Do we have the very documents written by Moses, David, Paul, Peter, etc.?
No, we don’t. Not any of them.
But we do have hundreds of copies of these original documents in part or in full written across the classical and medieval periods. Some of them quite close to the date of the original composition as best we can tell, like for the New Testament books.
Now, do these different copies of the Old Testament and New Testament books contain errors?
They do. They do. Some of these errors are very obvious. Others a little bit harder to discern. And you actually can see this even in the Bibles that you have now, or probably can see this. You might sometimes you’re working your way through the Bible, even the few Bibles that we have here, and you see a little note, little footnote. You go to the bottom of the page and it says something like, “Some early manuscripts say this.” And then it gives you a different reading of the verse, some note like that. What that note is telling you is that there is a difference in the surviving manuscripts, the surviving copies we have for that book of the Bible. Some copies of the Bible read one way and other copies of the Bible read another way.
To that, you might say, “Well, how can we trust the Bibles that we have today?” I mean, is it really true what the skeptics and cult leaders sometimes say that, “Oh, the Bible has become hopelessly corrupted over time. I’m going to tell you what the Bible really says, or you can’t trust the Bible at all. It’s hopelessly corrupt.” Is that true?
No, it’s not true.
Bible is trustworthy. And I say that not as somebody who’s just desperately trying to cling to the Bible even though it can’t be trusted. You know, you’re a pastor, of course you have to say that.
No, I am fully confident that the Bibles we have, yes, are even English translations of copies of the Bibles that survived. This is the word of God.
This is trustworthy. This is reliable.
You can stake your eternal soul on what’s written in these translated copies of the Bible.
Now, why can I have that confidence? Why should I be so confident? A number of reasons, but one of them is something called textual criticism. You may have heard me use that term before, textual criticism. What is that? Textual criticism is a scientific discipline in which people use copies of a now non-existent text, non-existent original document to reconstruct what that original document must have said. In textual criticism, scholars compare the surviving copies to see where all the copies are the same and where all the copies differ, where they’re all the same. We know that’s the original text.
Where they’re all where they might differ, there’s like a little scientific investigation to explain why they might differ. And could one difference be explained as an error or um uh a correction of something else that was actually original? It’s a little bit like CSI. It’s a little bit like crime scene investigation. You’re trying to figure out what what could have happened. Is there any evidence to explain how one variant might have emerged and which one is original? Now, how do they actually go through that process? How do they answer that questions? How do they answer those questions? That’s too from too much for me to be able to explain right now.
There’s a lot that goes into the science of textual criticism. But the upshot is since textual criticism began to be practiced in earnest since which was basically the Renaissance period, Bible scholars have been able to use the surviving copies of the Bibles that we have to reconstruct with 99.99% certainty what the original autograph said as written by the apostles and prophets.
And in many cases, this wasn’t very hard to do because what error type accounts for the extreme vast majority of errors in the copies of the Bible we have?
Not translation.
Spelling errors.
Now, if you read something written in English that has a whole bunch of spelling errors in it, you know what?
You can probably understand almost everything the person originally said.
you say, “Well, that’s not how you spell house or that’s not how you spell uh reading.” But you can still figure out what the word is because the letters are all there or because they might be mixed up a little bit, but you can still recognize the word. So it is when you’re looking at these original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic Bible copies. You say, “Oh, we can figure out that word.” Spelling errors are no big deal. And a lot of the other errors that have emerged in the copies are totally inconsequential.
We can figure this out. That’s no problem. In very few cases is there a variant of the text where it’s difficult to determine what the original was. And in that very very small minority in that 01% of the texts of the Bible and the copies that we have, none of those verses substantively affect any Christian doctrine. To give you a case in point, do you remember what I was telling you about John 134? We get to the end of John the Baptist’s testimony about Jesus. And he says, “I I have seen and I testify that Jesus is the son of God.” Well, when I preached that passage, I presented a case to you that though Jesus is the son of God is not theologically inaccurate, that’s probably not original to the text. It’s probably Jesus is the chosen one of God.
And I explained why I think one variant is to be preferred over the other.
Now, if you want to hear that argument, you just have to go back to the sermon.
But the point is, whether it’s son of God or chosen one of God, theologically, it’s not going to affect you that much differently one way or the other because the Bible affirms elsewhere that both of those things are true. So you can’t say like, “Oh, my faith rests on whether it means one thing or the other in this one verse.” No.
No. And that’s the way it is for all the things that we’re still uncertain of when it comes to the Bible in terms of the surviving copies we have. They they don’t affect in a substantive way any doctrine. Your soul’s not at stake. Your Christian walk is not at stake. And usually these are marked in the Bible as like the meaning of this is uncertain.
Sometimes you get to the Old Testament poetry. There’s like a weird there’s like a weird metaphor used and it’s like the meaning of this is uncertain. It’s partly related to some of these remaining textual critical questions.
Now, all this to say, far from undermining the Bible, you would think that applying scientific rigor in this way to the Bible, it could be like, “Oh, no, Pandora’s box. Are we going to show that the Bible’s been corrupted?” Absolutely the opposite. Textual criticism has actually shown how reliably the Bible has been preserved across the centuries. And the another case in point even of that is the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dead Sea Scrolls, which were a collection of Old Testament text discovered in the 1940s and 50s in a in a desert cave near the community of Kuman in Israel. This was an extremely significant discovery because up to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Old Testament copies of the Bible we had were from the Middle Ages, approximately a thousand AD. Considering that the books of Moses are probably written around 1450 BC, that means the oldest surviving copy we have of the Old Testament is more than 20 2400 years later.
And you can just hear all the skeptics, all the Bible non-believers saying, “Come on, that’s a long time. You’re telling me that hasn’t been corrupted?
How can you trust those Old Testament texts are really what they what they actually said?” And Christians are like, “This is supernatural word. We’ve seen it preserved again and again. It holds together. It’s true. But the skeptics are like, “How do you know?” Well, with the Dead Sea Scrolls, they discovered some copies of the Old Testament Bible that were written from around 200 BC.
So, 1,200 years earlier than anything we had before that. And they compared the 200 BC versions to the medieval versions that we had. And you know what they found?
Basically the same.
Just very minor variations between the two.
which proves two things. one that actually I guess I’ll just say it this way that proves first of all that between 200 BC and 1,000 AD that there was hardly any change but that also is evidence that even if we go back further you say well 200 BC is not 1450 BC even if we go back further we don’t have to say that anything would have to be different if it could be preserved from 200 BC to a th000 AD would basically no change then who’s to say it couldn’t have been preserved from 1450 BC to to 200.
The process of the meticulous copying and preservation of the scriptures was demonstrated the reliable nature of that copying was demonstrated by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And this is true not just for the Old Testament books for the New Testament books. We don’t have to be scared and say, “Oh, it’s been corrupted and we don’t really know.” Now, all the evidence that we’ve uncovered for the surviving manuscript shows that essentially these copies have not changed.
There have been some errors that have accumulated, mostly spelling errors or other things that are totally inconsequential and things that we can easily figure out. And then the small variant that’s left doesn’t affect any Christian doctrine in a substantive way.
That should be encouraging. But okay, now how does that apply in this this instance of Luke 3 versus Genesis 11?
Okay, there is an apparent contradiction between these two texts.
We should not simply dismiss this as a copying error and move on. I mean, because if we did that for any part of the Bible that seemed to be like a contradiction, we’d soon be dismissing everything as a copying error. Oh, you know, this gospel didn’t agree with that gospel. It must be a copying error.
No, we can’t infer that there was an error unless we have some evidence.
Unless we have some good evidence. And I would submit there is some good evidence that there was an error that took place between Genesis 11 and Luke 3.
Because if we go back to Genesis 5, there is another name given in the Genesis account that’s very much like the name Canaan. I won’t make you turn there, but Genesis 5:12-14 talks about a Kenan. Kenan lived 70 years, became the father Mahalo, and it goes on. If we look at the Luke genealogy in Luke 3, we see that the name Kenan is translated in another part of the list as Canaan, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahaliel, the son of Canaan, Luke says. Okay. So, we see an actual Canaan from the Genesis 5 narrative or from the Genesis 5 account put into the Luke genealogy that’s accurate. It is possible that an early copist of Luke was copying his manuscript or listening to it being read and trying to write it down and he accidentally put the name Canaan twice because there is a Canaan but he doesn’t belong there.
And there’s more besides that. Canaan is the only name in the Luke genealogy that differs from the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. That extra Canaan.
So when you put this all together, we have a clear contradiction between Genesis 11 and Luke 3 with a name in one list and a name not in the other list.
Oh, and I didn’t I didn’t mention this.
The vast majority of the Luke manuscripts do list both Canaan. So that’s strong evidence to suggest that Canaan the two canons is original. But there are there is at least one surviving copy of Luke that doesn’t list two canons, an early copy. It only lists one canaan.
So if we note that there’s at least one variant that doesn’t have the two canons, we know that there is a clear biblical contradiction between these two passages, we do see a possible explanation as to how the name Canaan could appear twice because there was a canon in the list. It’s accurate. Could have accidentally been copied twice. And then we add in the fact that this is the only name that differs between the Genesis 5 and 11 lists and the Luke 3 list. We have a strong case therefore that this was indeed a copiest error for Luke. Luke didn’t make an error, but some early copist did. It disseminated in most of the manuscripts that we have today. There wasn’t two canons originally. There was an extra Canaan added labor later. Therefore, Luke 3, the genealogy of Luke 3 cannot be used or should not be used as proof that there are gaps in the genealogies.
So, that was kind of a really long explanation of the original question, but there we have not compromised the inherency of the Bible by comparing Genesis 5 and 11 to Luke 3. There is an explanation for why there are two Canaan. probably was a copiest error and there are reasons for that. But Luke 3 should not be used to say there are gaps in the genealogies. Therefore, we can’t know the age of the earth from these genealogies.
That was long. If you want more on that, Answers in Genesis has a bunch of articles. Coming to grips with Genesis are the one book I plugged previously has a whole thing on the genealogies.
You can find out more there.
Okay, that’s pretty much taken us the time. We had other two questions which we can’t get to. All right, I’ll just go through them real quick. We know what behemoth was probably a sorpaw dinosaur.
Do we know what Leviathan was? I mean, a marine animal that breathes fire. That’s pretty extraordinary. Basically, the answer to this is we don’t have a great idea, though. It’s interesting. In Isaiah 27:1, it does compare Leviathan with a serpent and a dragon. So, I’m imagining a sea dragon type snake creature, thinking kind of like an a Chinese dragon or Japanese dragon. You know, they’re kind of like snake like I’m imagining something like that that can move fast through the water, that could be fierce, that could even breathe fire. By the way, there is another creature today that exists that has a fire capability. Does anybody know what it is?
A living creature still around today that can produce fire? Bombader beetle.
Look it up sometime. It has a defense mechanism where it shoots out this hot gas. It has this like little pop, this little explosion. And apparently these can be found all over the world. So God is certainly capable of creating a creature that can use a fire fire mechanism in its body.
And then finally, bonus question.
Based on what the Bible says about creation, how should we as Christians respond to the idea of aliens and or life on other planets?
Ah, there’s too much to say in that one.
H the short version is the Bible does not lead us to expect that there’s life for sensient beings on other planets because God very clearly in the Bible says or indicates that the earth and man and God’s dealings with man, that’s the focus of the universe. But you know what? The Bible actually indicates that aliens exist. We just don’t call them aliens. I mean, think about what angels and demons and God are. If you just put them in terms that science fiction usually uses, they’re aliens. I mean, they don’t exist in our dimension, but they’ve been around for thousands of years. They can come to Earth. They can take on human form. They can interact with humans. They can even go inside a human’s body. They can kill, but they can also help. I mean, it sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. It’s reality. It’s the Bible.
You know, it kind of amazes me that one of the competing theories, one of the popular competing theories today with evolution that is a secular theory as to how life derived on Earth is that aliens put us here. And you know what?
Biblically speaking, that’s not far from the truth. I mean, it’s not the way that most people think about it. It’s not like some alien race and they put spores here and eventually that evolved into all life. No, it was an eternal spirit being, God, who created the first fully formed life forms of each kind that then multiplied on the earth. Anyways, kind of interesting.
More on that if you want to know, just come talk to me later. All right, that does it for today. Thank you for joining me for this Q&A. Next time we have our brother Mark Twamley who’s going to lead us in Sunday school lesson on Psalm 119.
Is that right, Mark? Right. So, looking forward to that. Two weeks with that.
So, please be coming back for that. And uh yeah, if you have any other questions about our creation lessons or just understanding creation from the Bible, you can email me or you can come talk to me. Let me just briefly pray. Lord, thank you for this time. Thank you for your word. It’s trustworthy. We love it.
God is a sweet word and you are a great God. Pray it bless the rest of this service today. Amen.
Yeah. Yeah, you’re welcome.