Gen 1:1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 
	We now return to our consideration of the first words in the Book of Genesis. I realize that we have been spending a great number of weeks focused on this very first verse of the Bible. Lord willing, it has been time well spent in the foundational truth of the utmost importance of believing what God tells us in His Word. 
If we waver in our heart and mind right here at the very beginning, we have nothing to anchor us to the rest of His Word. We will merely float along through the scriptures, picking and choosing what to believe and what to discard in the utterly abhorrent pride of self. What we like, we keep as merely good principles or advice or pleasant sounding slogans with which to decorate our refrigerators or cubicles. What we don’t like, we simply ignore or discount as merely outdated and useless bits of only historical or allegorical value. We arrogantly exalt ourselves into the haughty and self-absorbed position of making God’s Word fit into our framework of thought, morality, acceptable behavior, and psychological understanding. Rather, we need to submit ourselves to Him and humbly seek Him to bring us into complete submission and alignment with His perfect and Holy principles of life.  
One of the greatest realities of accepting God at His Word, that In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… is that all His promises are true, especially the promises concerning His help in our lives. When we believe His every Word, we know that He will be our complete source of salvation and help and ability to overcome all that this world throws at us. We have solid and true hope and assurance, which those of this realm can never know or find apart from Jesus Christ. Since God created everything out of nothing, He can do anything and everything necessary to bring us into line with His will and His purpose, no matter how impossible it may seem.
The Psalmist understood this solid assurance of deliverance based on the fact that God was the pronounced and declared Creator, as we read in Ps 121:2. My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth. There is a direct connection for us with God, The Creator. He, Who made the heavens and the earth, is our help in time of need and trouble and distress. His creation of the cosmos is a clear and faithful declaration that He can do all that is necessary in our lives to bring us into complete line with the reality of being part of His very family in Jesus Christ. If He can make the earth and the heavens, He can certainly deal with our times of trial and distress.
In this truth, we not only find our strength and our salvation, but the blessing of God’s faithfulness as He rescues us in our time of need. Ps 146:5+6, How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, Whose hope is in the Lord his God; Who made heaven and earth, The sea and all that is in them; Who keeps faith forever… We do not need to worry or to stress about the things that are going on around us. We are in His hands of protection and divine Omnipotence. He faithfully holds the world in its proper order. He works in that same, unrelenting, and untiring faithfulness to accomplish everything necessary in our lives to fulfill His plan and His purpose. He loves us so much, that by the very virtue of His creative hand, He completes even the smallest detail of our salvation and protects us from every threat and situation and circumstance.
This divine endless energy for salvation is reinforced by the Prophet Isaiah in Isa 40:26-31, Lift up your eyes on high And see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power Not one of them is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and assert, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord, And the justice due me escapes the notice of my God"? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth Does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. He gives strength to the weary, And to him who lacks might He increases power. Though youths grow weary and tired, And vigorous young men stumble badly, Yet those who wait for the Lord Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary. 
Not only is the Creator our Helper and our Savior, He is our every power and strength to endure to the utmost. He is the source of our endless energy to overcome all the obstacles and hazards of this life. He makes us the living and vital testimony of Him to all who are watching our trek on this earth. This does not mean that we will do everything that we want to do with vibrancy and vitality. Hardly! We will find that we are often tired and that we are utterly exhausted. But, by the powerful might of the Lord God, we will have the energy and the strength and the all-sufficiency of His will to make it through each day in a manner that absolutely honors Him. We will more and more find ourselves in the place of acknowledging that if it weren’t for His Grace and His Mercy and His Strength and His Wisdom, we would wholly perish. But He always, always, always proves Himself mighty to save!
As the Prophet Jeremiah attests, Jer 32:17+18, 'Ah Lord God! Behold, Thou hast made the heavens and the earth by Thy great power and by Thine outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for Thee, who showest lovingkindness to thousands, but repayest the iniquity of fathers into the bosom of their children after them, O great and mighty God. The Lord of hosts is His name… 
Because He is the Lord God Creator, nothing is too difficult for Him. We often find ourselves lost in despair as the situations and the trials encircle and entrap us in their deceitful lies and ugly whispers of doubt. We struggle to maintain an appearance of faith, while inside we are absolutely aghast with the horror of disbelief, misgivings, and even the suspicion of God’s Word. 
It is in the midst of this awful, twisting, shredding of human understanding and thought that God shows forth the majesty and the splendor of His creative hand in operation. He reaches into our very soul and creates light and beauty and life out of the darkness and the decay and the death. “Nothing is too difficult for Him” becomes the established anthem that we begin to declare within the very recesses of our hearts. Just as In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, so does He create life from the bitterness of the death of self that we must suffer in this realm. 
One of the most difficult things that we face on this earth is fear. When we do not trust fully in the Word of God, we are afraid of how everything or everyone will affect us. We can even become paralyzed in the dread of self-preservation. Our entire focal point becomes frozen on me and my place in this world. We become afraid of losing our comfortable situation, afraid of what people might say or do to us, afraid of rumors and innuendos, afraid of what could or might happen, afraid of death. 
The Lord deals with all these fears in Isa 51:12-16, "I, even I, am He who comforts you. Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, And of the son of man who is made like grass; That you have forgotten the Lord your Maker, Who stretched out the heavens, And laid the foundations of the earth; That you fear continually all day long because of the fury of the oppressor, As he makes ready to destroy? But where is the fury of the oppressor? "The exile will soon be set free, and will not die in the dungeon, nor will his bread be lacking. "For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea and its waves roar (the Lord of hosts is His name). "And I have put My words in your mouth, and have covered you with the shadow of My hand, to establish the heavens, to found the earth, and to say to Zion, 'You are My people.'" 
To know the Creator is to know the One in Whom fear does not exist. There is no doubt about His sustaining power and keeping faithfulness. As He made the heavens and the earth and the sea, He will protect us, no matter what. Yes, we will face all that this world contains, including poverty, strife, peril, sickness, and death, but we do so without the fear. We know the One Who holds us in His hands and we trust Him to bring us through everything unto His Glory and in His power.
	To know the Creator is to know rejoicing and gladness in the life that we are given in Christ Jesus. This world has no concept of what it means to be found in Jesus Christ. As we are saved by Him, we are made an absolutely new creation, resurrected in Him into spiritual life. We begin to view everything from the perspective of His Handiwork in action. As such, we fully rejoice and celebrate His awesome goodness and grace and mercy. Isa 65:17-19, "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. "But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; For behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing, And her people for gladness. "I will also rejoice in Jerusalem, and be glad in My people; And there will no longer be heard in her The voice of weeping and the sound of crying. 
This is the tremendous aspect in which our fear and our mourning and our sadness are done away with, and we are truly partakers of the very life of Jesus Christ living forth from us. Our eyes begin to see more clearly that we are not to be the object of our desires and the concern of our hearts. Rather, the new heart of Christ, beating within us, dispels the worries and the frustrations and the fears and the self-protective motivation. This is for the sake of expressing only that which pleases God to the utmost in these lives that we live on this earth. We become enthralled with the every working of God’s plan and purpose as we begin to get those glimpses into what He has been creating from eternity.
We join ourselves with the voice of the Prophet recorded in Jer 10:10-13, But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, And the nations cannot endure His indignation. Thus you shall say to them, "The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens." It is He who made the earth by His power, Who established the world by His wisdom; And by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens. When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain, And brings out the wind from His storehouses. 
We see His power and His wisdom and His understanding holding the entire universe in its place. The physical realm urgently responds to the voice of its Creator. So should all mankind who hear His voice. This is the testimony that becomes inherent in the new life that we receive in Christ Jesus. When we view the earth and the heavens, we see God at work. He is the Master Craftsman by Whom all things have come into existence. We see beyond the temporal, to the eternal work that is now in place in the majestic labor of the Son. We are no longer blind to the every detail as God does that which will satisfy His heart of Love in all those who call upon the name of His Son, Jesus, for salvation. 
Our view of what transpires on this earth becomes ever more centrally and fully set in the glory of God. By the power and the might of God, through His Holy Spirit, we are enabled to get a deepening understanding that the events of man’s history are just as under His control as are the waves and the winds and the other natural forces of nature. 
The early church was enabled to testify to this as we read in Acts 4:24-28. And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, "O Lord, it is Thou who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Thy servant, didst say, 'Why did the Gentiles rage, And the peoples devise futile THINGS? 'The kings of the earth took their stand, And the rulers were gathered together Against the Lord, and against His Christ.'  "For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur. 
While this world power sought to eliminate God’s Son, gathering all its power together to accomplish such a wicked and vile deed, it only served to fulfill the heart of God’s love for this world. They conspired in their hearts to overthrow the only true hope of salvation by the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. In that malignant malice and iniquity, they only proved to be serving God, the Creator and the Savior. Rather than working to eradicate the Christ, He was exalted through their actions as they fulfilled the very plan that God had always intended. 
This is a key truth that needs to be in place in the heart of God’s chosen people as we progress through this earthly walk. We will never be able to thwart or nullify the mighty Providence of God’s intent. What He predestines to happen will always take place. What has always been His eternal plan will be completed in glorious splendor beyond any reckoning! When we can learn to choose His way over our way, we will always find that we are blessed beyond any measure, because we will be doing only that which pleases Him. It is the certainty of creation always serving and honoring the Lord God Creator. So be it!
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is 2 Chron 6:40+41. "Now, O my God, I pray Thee, let Thine eyes be open, and Thine ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place. Now therefore arise, O Lord God, to Thy resting place, Thou and the ark of Thy might; let Thy priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and let Thy godly ones rejoice in what is good. Amen.