Gen 1:1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 
	We are still in consideration of these very first words of the Bible because they are the absolute bedrock of our faith and belief in God. It is so crucial and critical that we become absolutely established in this opening declaration of scripture. This is why the battle rages so fiercely around this proclamation of the work of God. If the enemy can plant even a single seed of distrust or doubt at this point, that seed can grow into a choking weed patch to strangle the truth of God in Jesus Christ. That dust mite of uncertainty can well multiply into a colony that will infect the healthy growth of our faith and trust in God. 
	Too often, the young of the Church are taught the falsehoods of this world’s explanation for the existence of life. They are faced with an immense struggle that builds into doubt and denial and betrayal of what they have been taught in scripture. This very matter may well be coursing through even the minds and hearts of those gathered today in this room. 
The world is relentlessly insidious in its every effort to draw our hearts and minds away from the Word of God. It portrays Holy Scripture as merely allegorical accounts of historical events. The Bible is read and taught as simply a piece of collective literature filled with poetic license and myths and traditional stories of a societal structure of long ago. There is every ruthless and subversive effort to discredit and to deny that there is the One Living Supreme God Who created the heavens and the earth. That is why we will continue to study and to cherish everything that the Holy Spirit opens in our study of the fact that In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 
Last week, we dealt with the manner in which this reality is to have a tremendous effect on how we view and celebrate the Lord’s Day. Again, we are not prescribing a dogmatic approach to Sunday. We are simply asking each of us to take the manner in which we deal with His day to the Holy Spirit. We want Him to make us honoring in our weekly observance of the pattern given directly to us by the very action of God in His creation. On the seventh day, He rested. He has given it to us as a day of refreshing in Him, and as such we should respect Him in the manner that our fellowship and that our families join hearts unto Him.
The second effect, that we considered and should find in operation within us, is the manner of our worship. When we recognize Him as the Lord God Creator of the heavens and the earth, we will no longer come before Him in a manner of tradition or ritualistic behavior. We will be cognizant of Who He is and how we are brought into His very presence through the death and resurrection of His Only Begotten Son. Our very manner of worship will be filled with awe and wonder at all that He has done, and is doing, and will continue to do in Jesus Christ.     
	This then brings us ahead to this morning’s reflection on God, the Creator. It is the matter of knowing that God created the physical universe for us and us for the physical world in which we live. Ps 115:15+16, May you be blessed of the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth. The heavens are the heavens of the Lord; But the earth He has given to the sons of men. This may seem to be obvious, but there is very much teaching of this age in which there is put forth every effort to elevate man into a realm in which he has no part. 
	Please pay close attention to this. I am not stating that we cannot or should not explore outer space, as we term it. I am not stating that we must limit our every activity to the fields, and lakes, and valleys, and mountains, and oceans of this earth. What I am referring to is the breach of the metaphysical realm. There is being put forth every effort to bring the human being into a place that was never given to him by God. This is in every effort to make man a supernatural being unto himself, to tap some hidden spiritualistic power that will make even demons subject to the whims and fancies of the human intellect. 
	There is a reason that God created the physical realm for the race of humanity. Prov 3:19, The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; By understanding He established the heavens. Everything has been done in terms of God’s wisdom and understanding of what is good for mankind and what is treacherous and a defilement of His beloved creation. There very truly is a spiritual realm that is in place by the Hand of God. It is the realm of the spiritual entities of the angelic hosts as well as those who chose to follow the defiled leadership of Lucifer, being cast from heaven. 
That is an area that is outside the purview of humanity except in Jesus Christ. It is only in Him, in the Son of God, and under His very precise and specific safety and government that we are now made to be partakers of the spiritual realm. We are guarded and kept through the active and wonderful ministry of the very Holy Spirit of God as we joyously are translated into that spiritual life. 
	That is the only manner in which humankind has any true place outside the physical realm which God made for us. However, mankind, in his loathsome defiance of this divine order of God’s protection and natural boundary of safety, has chosen to dabble in the realm of this spiritualistic toxicity. Over the ages, there have been many attempts at this stretching of the boundaries established by the Hand of God in every effort to make man something that he is not, and was never intended to be. This metaphysical obsession is a deliberate and deluded continuance of the lie of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Gen 3:4+5, And the serpent said to the woman, "You surely shall not die!" For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 
	Man has ever been tempted by the prospect of becoming like God. Even to the foolish point of the utter denial of God’s existence in order to fill the void with the supposed intellectual superiority of reason and human understanding. The conniving, deceitful, impertinent nature of sin has so infested the heart of mankind that he will try every avenue to achieve the superiority and elevation of being that he craves. This is leading exceedingly rapidly to the very destruction of all that man lusts after, even in making appalling and ghastly pacts with demonic forces. This opening unto the influence of the forces of darkness is so evident in the unnatural themes and images that mankind embraces in the media, fashion, educational curriculum, and in the vast idol worship of this present day. Society, as a whole, has wholly embraced the most ludicrous elements and things which were never before openly accepted. These atrocities are now considered as mere normal, developmental behavior within the broadening scope of the human intellectual domain. 
	While we are alarmed at the rapidity and the forcefulness with which mankind is endeavoring to sell his soul, we are not lost in some abandonment of hope and trust in God. We hold ever more firmly and faithfully to the promise of our Creator. Isa 44:24+25, Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, "I, the Lord, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself, And spreading out the earth all alone, Causing the omens of boasters to fail, Making fools out of diviners, Causing wise men to draw back, And turning their knowledge into foolishness… This is the course under which we direct our hearts and prayers. We count on God, The Creator, to set those boundaries in our hearts and lives, and in the hearts and minds and lives of our children against all the horrors that this age has loosed. …Causing the omens of boasters to fail, Making fools out of diviners, Causing wise men to draw back, And turning their knowledge into foolishness…
	He is faithful and just in all His dealings with us and with all who call upon the name of Jesus Christ for salvation. He sets the bounds of how far man can go and no farther. In Him, all the wisdom and the supposed intelligence and scientific study of mankind becomes mere foolishness and folly. 
True science, the true study of the universe that God has created for mankind will always show His handiwork in its every facet. Science is a wonderful exploration of the natural realm of which we were created to explore and to understand to the best of our limited human abilities. We are learning ever more and more about the world in which we live, and that is its limit, the physical world which God created for our habitation. Anything beyond that is beyond the scope and purpose of our understanding apart from Jesus Christ. That protective boundary has ever been set in the mind of God and in His plan and purpose. 
	The Apostle Paul reminds us very forcefully of this in Col 1:13-20. For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born 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 — all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fulness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. 
	There must be no cross over in the mind of the redeemed of the Lord as to that which we have in Him. Yes, we are now spiritually alive unto God forever and forever, but that spiritual life is only in Jesus Christ. We cannot find it outside the Son of God. This is as God created it. Isa 37:16, "O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, who art enthroned above the cherubim, Thou art the God, Thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. Thou hast made heaven and earth. 
	The Prophet Isaiah goes on to encourage us in the mighty working of God’s provision of creation as we read in Isa 42:5-8. Thus says God the Lord, Who created the heavens and stretched them out, Who spread out the earth and its offspring, Who gives breath to the people on it, And spirit to those who walk in it, "I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you, And I will appoint you as a covenant to the people, As a light to the nations, To open blind eyes, To bring out prisoners from the dungeon, And those who dwell in darkness from the prison. "I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images. 
	The idol that mankind tries to erect in the elevation of himself over all that God has created will never stand against the righteous and upright force of God’s breath. He will blow it down in the declaration of the judgment meted out against those who have turned their backs on His freely offered salvation in Jesus Christ. There will be no glory except the glory of the Lamb of God on this earth. Everything else will be caught up and destroyed by the holiness of the divine presence of the Creator of the heavens and the earth.
	Again, as we read in Isaiah 45:18-24, For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, But formed it to be inhabited), "I am the Lord, and there is none else.” I have not spoken in secret, In some dark land; I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, 'Seek Me in a waste place'; I, the Lord, speak righteousness Declaring things that are upright. "Gather yourselves and come; Draw near together, you fugitives of the nations; They have no knowledge, Who carry about their wooden idol, And pray to a god who cannot save." Declare and set forth your case; Indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this from of old? Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides Me, A righteous God and a Savior; There is none except Me. "Turn to Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other." I have sworn by Myself, The word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness And will not turn back, That to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance. "They will say of Me, 'Only in the Lord are righteousness and strength.' Men will come to Him, And all who were angry at Him shall be put to shame. 
	Man’s every effort at disposing of the God, by Whom humanity was created, will simply be seen as the foolish ranting and raving of delusion and despair. All that man creates, with all the best tools of human wisdom and intelligence will crumble in the light of the face of Jesus Christ’s glory and preeminence. The wisest and the dullest of mankind will both be brought to the place where they have to admit and declare that …'Only in the Lord are righteousness and strength.' 
The universal proclamation of the Lordship of Jesus Christ will echo from every lip and tongue. Jesus, the Son of God Whom mankind has so feverishly tried to eliminate in order to lift up himself, will become the honored and glorified One in all of creation. His glory will be fully revealed in both this realm and in the spiritual realm. It will be at that time that those in Christ will be released from the bonds of this earth and will fully partake of His spiritual life forever and forever. So be it!
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Amen. 

	

This morning’s benediction is Ps 103:19-22. The Lord has established His throne in the heavens; And His sovereignty rules over all. Bless the Lord, you His angels, Mighty in strength, who perform His word, Obeying the voice of His word! Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, You who serve Him, doing His will. Bless the Lord, all you works of His, In all places of His dominion; Bless the Lord, O my soul! Amen.