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In the Beginning God

by Michael Pleasant  
5/16/2015 / Worship

In the beginning God. A simple statement. It is the first four words of the Holy Bible. A book written in the ancient times of the past. A simple statement with the most profound truth. It is the foundation on which all else rests, because in the beginning God preceded all else.
In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth. It is a fortunate thing for man that God came first. That a holy, righteous, merciful, benevolent, omnipotent and omnipresent God who knew the end from the beginning came first. Very fortunate indeed. Fortunate that knowing the end from the beginning he had the foreknowledge to make the heavens and the earth. Fortunate that he was merciful enough to make it a place of awesome beauty and wonder instead of a hellish nightmare. Fortunate that he is a benevolent God and does not simply destroy a wicked creature such as man has allowed himself to become. Fortunate that he is omnipotent and omnipresent as well as merciful. That knowing what a wretched creature man would become, knowing from the beginning our darkest secrets, already having seen our darkest deeds, he still loves us and provide us with everything we need to make an abundant life possible. Always giving us a way out when faced with opposition from the Adversary. From the beginning leading us down the paths of righteousness for his name's sake, towards his holy presence as we seek his face.
In the beginning God could have done anything he wanted, but he chose to make the heavens and the earth. He then chose to fill the earth with life, and to place all that life which he just went through all the trouble of creating within the dominion of man whom he had created in his own image. He then gave man a precious gift. A companion. An exquisitely marvelous creation to make man complete. He chose to create a woman. That the two may share in his love together. Two living souls, joined together to become one flesh. God even went a step further for man. He gave man the gift of free will. Being an all knowing God, he was fully aware of just how ungrateful mankind would become as a whole despite all he has done for us. In the United States and much of the world today man continually spits in the face of the Lord God by teaching evolution in our schools. Wretched man, seeing the Creator in the creation continues to deny his existence and actually pays hard earned money to have this blasphemy taught to their children. Teaching our children that there isn't even a creation much less a creator. There is no way to reconcile what we not only allow but pay for our kids to be taught in our schools with what the word of God says. The two are antithetical. Either God is a liar or there is no such thing as evolution period. There is no room to be deceived into thinking evolution was a mechanism which the Lord used to create man, yet this is how Christians today convolutedly attempt to justify their defiance of our Holy Creator. That the trillions upon trillions of miracles that they see everywhere they look but take for granted are but accidents of nature produced as a byproduct of it raining on rocks for millions of years. Despite the beauty and order in everything God has created a wretched creature like man is so wicked that he willingly deceives himself with such an absurd theory. Seriously step back and kick the thought around in your head. You get up and suffer through work all week, dejected and rundown. Most to a job they really do not even like. All this effort and we give the fruits of our labor to people who teach our children that there is no God, that everything came from nothing, and that it rained on the rocks of planet earth for millions of years somehow accidentally coming to life. This is utter ridiculousness. If you had never heard it and someone told you this as a rationally thinking adult for the first time you would laugh at it's absurdity, but being wicked as man is his itching ears get tickled and he chases the prospect that he can do whatever he wants, be held accountable to no one straight to his destruction. Following the adversary straight into the lake of fire we call Hell. A defiant little creature is man. All puffed up with pride. Arrogant enough to believe that he is the pinnacle of everything. Instead of offering the praise and thanks that the Lord deserves for what he has done and continues to do for us God is met with open derision in the public square, mocked and blasphemed. People who claim to love Christ are too afraid to speak up. In Revelation 21:8 God tells us "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolater, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake of fire and brimstone. Jesus Christ stood up in the worst of situations to be held accountable for your sins in the most brutal manner possible and people who claim to love him are too afraid to proclaim him Lord publicly and teach his word faithfully for fear of offending those itching ears. Unbelieving creatures that are fearful that God's power is too small to see them through the slightest bit of uncomfortableness. More worried about the good opinion of a fellow sinner than they are about pleasing our righteous Creator. In this nation men have sought to confine our God to buildings they call churches, forgetting that their temples are their bodies. Limiting the Lord to only a few hours of thought a week. Most of them skipping these few hours for any form of entertainment the Adversary has to offer as an alternative. Men in this country will stand in line overnight for an IPHONE or a football ticket but heaven forbid their pastor ask for help with a mission for the Lord. How dare they be asked to spend some of their free time paying respect to the Lord or helping out his children in their suffering. Man can't even figure out which day to worship the Lord on without fighting when if they would just put their head in the book even a little they will see that in the Gospel of Mark it says that Sabbath was made for man, and the Son of Man which is our Lord and Savior, is Lord even of the Sabbath. It further solidifies the answer to this dispute of men by saying in Colossians 2:16 "16 Let no man therefore judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day". Just proclaim the praises of the Lord God celebrate his presence in your lives daily and give him the thanks he deserves. A church is simply a place for like-minded individuals to accomplish this, it is not the temple of the Lord. A church is a building that people who love the Lord can gather in fellowship, and in his presence to give thanks, a place where people can come to learn about him through his faithful servants who work within its walls. Fortunate indeed is man that in the beginning God had a plan.
In the beginning God. Notice the capital G in God. This is no accident. It is a big G because he is a big God. Nothing is too big for our God. God works on the grandest of grand scales. A grand scale with very minute details though. A big God who is able to weave all those minute details together and use them to accomplish his pleasure on that grand scale. A big God but not so big that he is unable to spend time with each and every one of us. Not so big that he can't hear our prayers. He is a big God indeed and his presence should fill up every aspect of our little human existence. This plain and simple truth that has been written in the hearts of every man woman and child on God's green earth has been continually ignored by man throughout the ages.
In the beginning God understood the enormous personal cost that he would incur through his act of creating man. Despite that foreknowledge God "so loved the earth, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life". This verse, John 3:16 is probably the most quoted verse of the entire Bible today. It is such a popular verse among Christians in America today that nearly everyone in the nation has at least heard it once in their lives no matter what their faith is, or how much time they spend with their Bibles open in study. People today quote this verse often but put very little thought into what it actually tells them about their Lord, God. To anyone who has a child this verse will give them an idea of what the cost to a living loving God was but even then unless they have lost a child they cannot come close to comprehending the unimaginable pain and hurt that God was forced to endure to redeem us of our sins. Can you fathom how hard it would be to even have a child knowing what incredible suffering he would be forced to endure unjustly at the hands of a creation of your own making? Fortunate for man that God loved us enough to send his only begotten Son to redeem us on the cross. Being hung from a tree was a death that to a Jew was considered extremely shameful. This is not your cleaned up Hollywood depictions or the Jesus you commonly see hanging in Catholic churches. This was a man, he was God, but he was in the flesh and felt everything just like any of us would. All the hurt, all the pain, and yes even all the humiliation. It was a very bloody and beaten Jesus hanging there with a crown of 1 inch long thorns jammed so far down on his head that they touched his skull. Face distorted looking and bleeding from being beaten repeatedly by burly soldiers. Barely able to see, having to speak through a swollen and probably broken jaw. All the flesh ripped off his back from a cat of nine tails. Naked in front of the crowd. Scared and dying slowly in agonizing pain, nailed to a cross. Knowing that at any moment he could he come down off of that cross. That he could step right down and make himself whole again. That he could have made the very ground they were standing on swallow them all up whole. But out of love for us and faith in the Father, Jesus stayed on that cross. Such an enormous sacrifice made on our behalf by the Son of our living God. That we may be made righteous. That now through faith and the Grace of the Living God Almighty we may one day be given white robes and be found worthy to stand in his presence with his Son Jesus seated at his right hand and sing their praises day in and day out throughout eternity. Every man woman and child on earth should get down on their knees every day and thank God that he loves us so. That is the very least we should do.
In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth. Our omnipotent, omnipresent God is a timeless God. A God who dwells outside of the dimension we know as time which binds us humans together in a directional progression down through the ages. God not being so bound is able to know the end from the beginning. Not even the adversary himself is capable of this. Only our Sovereign Lord who is the one and only master of everything. He has from the beginning known that man would be in dire need of redemption. He also knew that man by himself was not able to obtain that redemption and therefore had no hope whatsoever of obtaining salvation. He at the moment he thought of creation already had the whole plan of its salvation and redemption through the grace of God Almighty and the Faith in Jesus Christ and his blood willingly shed on that fateful day just outside of Jerusalem's walls. A plan that since man's inception has been unfailingly progressing exactly as God laid it out on Day 1. Try to wrap your mind around this statement in its totality. There are right now on earth approximately 7 billion people. Each and every one of them live their lives day in and day out exercising their free will to make all the choices they each face. Some naturally choose good, some naturally chose bad. Only about a third of them believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation in the first place. Most of the third that say they do it is in name only. Most of them never even bother to take the time to read and thoroughly understand the instruction manual for life that God gave them in the form of the Holy Bible. All the problems we face in life could either be avoided all together or solved if we would all just take the time to read God's word and live by its righteous instructions. Instead most of us are guided by what we happen to be feeling that particular moment, or the latest version of what we have been told by another miserable sinner. The pastor or preacher of your particular church is there to help you with your education in the word of God. It is not his job to force feed it to you. He is there to lead in worship. It is incumbent upon each and every one of us to study the word for ourselves. That we may be lucky enough to not to be one of those that God causes to believe The Lie. 2 Thessalonians 10 12 says "10And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved 11And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Hallelujah, Hallelujah praise the Lord indeed that from the beginning he knew the end, that he knew you from the beginning. Had already numbered the hairs on your head. He knew every single little mistake you would ever make. All the detestable sins which are an abomination to a Holy God that you will ever commit. Yet still our God, our living, loving, and merciful God loved you enough to create you anyway. To take the time to guide you along that path toward him. To reward your faithfulness. To chastise and teach you when you stray onto the path of unrighteousness. Our God is Holy, our God is big, he is a magnificent and forgiving God, almighty, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal and everlasting God. We can go on for eternity listing all the glorious majesty that is the Lord but there are no words sufficient for the task. After Holy, the one word to best describe the Lord is love because he is a living, loving God.
So as the Apostle Paul so eloquently put it in Philippians 4:4 "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice. " Rejoice because the God of all the universe knows you and loves you. Rejoice because the Lord has a plan for your redemption and salvation. Rejoice because he has shared that plan with you. Most of all rejoice simply because "In the beginning God". It is by far the most profound statement you will ever hear.
This was written by a sinner who has been humbled many times by the Lord In order that I may learn to love. To love life, to love others and most of all to love my God. You may use this work in whole or in part as you see fit with the following caveats: 1.That you do not attempt to make money from its content. 2. That it only be used to positively present the Lord or to teach and inspire mankind. May the Lord bless you always in all that you do. If you would like to contact the author you may do so by email at [email protected]

I am a former US Army Special Forces Medical Sergeant who has come to find the Lord and wants to help others do the same. I love the Lord with all my heart and am hoping to distribute my writings to all that wish to read them.

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