The Bible opens with an incredible statement of truth, “In the beginning, Elohim (God) created the heavens and the earth.” The eternal God of Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit) effortlessly creates the entire material cosmos, EVERYTHING, simply by willing it into existence.
The one and only true God, “Elohim,” aka “Yahweh Elohim,” or simply “Yahweh” (see Exodus 3:14-15), was around before the beginning: eternal, infinite, perfect, absolute, holy, and sovereign. Why, then, create everything? Why did God -will- a material cosmos into existence?
The answer is simple, yet exceedingly profound: FOR US!
Despite God’s full awareness that humanity would willfully rebel, reject, warp, twist, insist, strive, strain, stain, destroy, defame, pervert, and persist… our Creator, Yahweh, saw the immeasurable divine value endowed within.
In Genesis 3, the crafty and spitefully jealous serpent’s underhanded scheme unfurls. What began as a seemingly innocuous discussion was, at its heart, a scandalous plot to ravage and mutilate humanity’s unique relationship with God beyond recognition or repair; turning the primary objects of God’s love and devotion, humanity, into recipients of eternal disgust, disdain, and wrath.
Yet Yahweh was fully aware, unfazed, and undaunted. God’s plan, from before “the beginning,” was to redeem humanity from the crafty serpent’s grasp of hopeless depravity. “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the cosmos” (Revelation 13:8).
Therefore, in a display of extravagant and unmerited grace, mercy, and love, Yahweh upends the insidious scheme with a monumentous promise of the serpent’s inevitable defeat and humanity’s imminent redemption! A future descendant of the woman will crush the serpent (along with his rebellion and its rebels) at the cost of His own life (Genesis 3:15).
God’s promise became tangible when Immanuel, Messiah, the Christ, the Lamb of God, the Eternal Son, Yahweh stepped down from His heavenly throne and clothed Himself in humanity as Jesus of Nazareth (Philippians 2:5-11).
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Yahweh knows EVERYTHING...
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Yahweh created EVERYTHING...
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Yahweh rules over EVERYTHING...
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Yahweh gave EVERYTHING...
Therefore, in light of the Cross, where The King of Eternity died to pay our immeasurable sin-debt, and in light of the empty tomb, demonstrating His power and sovereignty over EVERYTHING… what is the only appropriate response?
Is it a life filled with selfish pursuits of fame, fortune, safety, and security? Is it an obligatory hour on Sundays whenever we’re not too tired, too busy, too worried, too overwhelmed, too preoccupied, or too apathetic? Is it a casual reading and a cursory understanding of His love story, the Bible?
Is it flippant prayers seeking extraction from self-inflicted choices and circumstances resulting from ultimately rebellious lives unconcerned with God, His will, His plan, His mission, or His sacrifice? Is it superficial religious ceremony amounting to nothing more than human traditions and pious hypocrisy (Isaiah 29:13)?
Then Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” He said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. For they have all given of their leftovers, but she -out of her poverty- has put in everything.” -Luke 21:1-4
Might the only appropriate response to the God Who knows everything, Who created everything, Who rules over everything, and Who gave EVERYTHING… be our everything?
Respond with your life as your AMEN! if King Jesus has your everything!
Blessings!
Kevin M. Kelley
Pastor, PBC
https://www.unstoppablekidsbook.com/
