Gen 1:1, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 
Last week, we began our reading and consideration of the Book of Genesis. To be very candid, we will be dealing with this first passage of the Bible for a number of weeks before we proceed because we need to lay a foundation upon which to build a fuller and more complete understanding of all that God has done in His creation. Everything is centered in Jesus Christ, and to just skip past the fact that In the beginning God created… is to place a very sedimentary underpinning and valuation of what is truth and reality. We cannot just accept the general statement that God could have done this. It needs to be the bedrock upon which our entire salvation is set and anchored. In the beginning God created. If this is not our reality, then we truly do not have any reality in Christ Jesus. 
1 John 1:1-3, What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life —  and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us —  what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. This is where our very eternal life is set and published. Our every hope and belief rests on the Word of God, from beginning to end. We cannot just pick and choose what to believe and what to discount as merely plausible. God either did it or He didn’t. His Word is either life, or it is a mere whim leading to eternal nothingness, which is the lie of this age. 
The Psalmist had to deal with this seeming dilemma and he saw the truth established in the belief of God’s great contemplation of men. Ps 8:3+4, When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; What is man, that Thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man, that Thou dost care for him? 
In the grandeur and the majesty of all of God’s creation, we see the very God of life, the Creator. He has thought upon His creation from before time began and has made mankind in His own image and proclaimed it to be very good. Gen 1:26-31, Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food "; and it was so. And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. 
The Creation was not an arbitrary thing that just popped into the mind of God. It was not just a chance for God to create order out of chaos. This universe is governed by the very laws of God’s nature keeping order and demonstrating the very design and purpose of God’s handiwork from beginning to end. 
This age declares that there is no purpose in life and that we are merely the happenstance of a billion tiny processes that somehow came together over the course of ions of time. It holds its theories in impossible and arbitrary circumstances that all yielded an unlikely set of unexplainable mutations and evolutionary developments. Whereas, true science sees the patterns and the workings of a design from the smallest element of life to the cosmic depths of the universe.
We find this complete revelation of God’s work recorded for us from before the eternal ages of the ages in the very wisdom of God. Prov 8:22-31, The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. "From everlasting I was established, From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.” When there were no depths I was brought forth, When there were no springs abounding with water. "Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills I was brought forth; While He had not yet made the earth and the fields, Nor the first dust of the world. "When He established the heavens, I was there, When He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, When He made firm the skies above, When the springs of the deep became fixed, When He set for the sea its boundary, So that the water should not transgress His command, When He marked out the foundations of the earth; Then I was beside Him, as a master workman; And I was daily His delight, Rejoicing always before Him, Rejoicing in the world, His earth, And having my delight in the sons of men. 
God’s wisdom saw the establishment of His plan and purpose in the creation of all that we know in our human mind’s eye. The universe that we see and with which we interact was made in the outworking of the very wisdom of God. 
The fact of the matter is that Jesus Christ, the very Word of God, is the wisdom by Whom all things have come into existence. The very salvation of mankind was at the heart of the creation by virtue of the wisdom of God incarnate. As we read last week in 1 Cor 1:18-31, For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And the cleverness of the clever I will set aside." Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord." 
	This is our answer to the wisdom of this age which emphatically declares that life is random and without purpose. The wisdom of this earth revels and delights in proclaiming that anyone who believes that there is a supreme being who created anything is a fool with no grasp of reality. Yet, the reality of the ages is that … But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord." We do not boast in anything of our mind’s thoughts or conceptions or ideology. Everything is centered simply and wholly in Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the source and essence of life everlasting.
	He is our wisdom just as He is the wisdom by Whom the entire universe came into being. As the Apostle Paul reiterates in Eph 3:8-12, To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things; in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. In preaching Christ, we proclaim …that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. 
We have a responsibility, as Christians, to honor the eternal purpose of God in declaring the truth of what He has done in and by His Son. We do not try to convince others through argument and through debate. We do not try to play the part of God’s defense attorney. We show forth the truth and the reality of God and His creative hand in operation through the testimony of lives lived unto Him. It is through the living demonstration and witness that we bear in our day to day walk in the Lord which shows forth the reality of Jesus Christ. 
We live our lives in the boldness of the confidence that we have in Christ, through the power and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit as He guides us. We declare Christ as the Wisdom of God in our constant and fervent obedience to Him. When we are called upon to give verbal account of the hope within us, we do so counting on the Holy Spirit to give us the words and the wisdom of knowledge. When we face the trials and the tests of our witness, we count on the Lord to be our power and the strength and the ability to endure all to His glory. We do not fear the world with all its cunning and entrapments, but rather see it in the terms as being in the utmost need of the truth and the active wisdom of the Lord God Almighty.
	Considered by many as the oldest Book of the Bible, Job also deals with the declared wisdom of God in the light of this world’s renunciation of the creative hand of God. Job 38:4-11, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, Who set 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? "Or who enclosed the sea with doors, When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; When I made a cloud its garment, And thick darkness its swaddling band, And I placed boundaries on it, And I set a bolt and doors, And I said, 'Thus far you shall come, but no farther; And here shall your proud waves stop'? 
	This is the measure of the foolishness of mankind to say that there is no Creator, no God by Whom all was created. The absolute proof of the Hand of God in operation is evidenced in the very boundaries that He set forth within the universe. Everything and everyone is held in place and committed to the path that He has ordained. Both the sun and the moon only do that which is in God’s heart. So also is the case with every man, woman, and child. There is the divine protection and order and witness as to the every movement within creation.
	As we read in Prov 16:3+4, Commit your works to the Lord, And your plans will be established. The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, Even the wicked for the day of evil. Even the wicked are under the mighty hand of God to only go so far and no farther in their every endeavor to exert a supposed superiority over the realm that they occupy. Their every action and motive and careless thought of self-aggrandizement fails as God says …'Thus far you shall come, but no farther; And here shall your proud waves stop'…
	Our Lord Jesus Christ dealt with the boundaries He created and controls as He states the following in Mark 13:19+20; "For those days will be a time of tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of the creation which God created, until now, and never shall. "And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened the days. Everything in all of creation is under the mighty hand of God for His sake and to accomplish His purposes in Jesus Christ. 
	He has ever had mankind in His heart in order that the glory of God might be fulfilled in the salvation and the redemption of mankind unto Himself in the giving of His Only Begotten Son. There is no trial and no tribulation that is beyond the scope of His might and power. Every circumstance and dilemma will only show forth more and more of the wisdom of the creation that He has put into place. This is no arbitrary or random action of some unknown powers of nature. It is the witness of the divine plan and purpose of God by Whom life came into being and will be forever in place by the power and the wisdom of Himself. So be it!
	In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is Neh 9:5+6. "Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever! O may Thy glorious name be blessed And exalted above all blessing and praise! "Thou alone art the Lord. Thou hast made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it, The seas and all that is in them. Thou dost give life to all of them And the heavenly host bows down before Thee. Amen.