00:00  Another week has come and gone, and this is the Bible Classroom, and I'm your host, Reid Ashbaucher.
00:27  Thank you for joining us.
00:28  Well, we're going to get into a new format a little bit.
00:32  We're going to start getting into some scripture so that we can know what truth looks like as the Word of God reveals it to us.
00:41  We're going to start with, from the very beginning, in the book of Genesis.
00:44  How do we know what we're told in the book of Genesis is true?
00:49  Well, let's start there.
00:51  In Numbers chapter 12, starting with verse 1, we read the following.
00:57  Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.
01:07  And they said, Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us as well? And the Lord heard it. And the man, Moses, was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.
01:23  And suddenly the Lord said to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, You three come out of the tent of meeting.
01:29  So the three came out.
01:31  Then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood in the doorway of the tent.
01:35  And he called Aaron and Miriam.
01:38  When they had both come forward, when they had both come forward, he said, Hear now my words.
01:43  If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, shall make myself known to him in a vision.
01:51  I shall speak with him in a dream.
01:54  Not so with my servant Moses.
01:56  He is faithful in all my household.
01:59  With him, speak mouth to mouth, even openly, not in dark sayings.
02:06  And he beholds the form of the Lord.
02:09  Why then are you not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?
02:15  So the Lord anger burned against them, and he departed.
02:19  But when the cloud was withdrawn from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow.
02:28  As Aaron turned toward Miriam, behold, she was leprous.
02:33  Then Aaron said to Moses, O my Lord, I beg you, do not account this sin against us,
02:40  in which we have acted foolishly, in which we have sinned.
02:44  O, do not let her be like one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when it comes forth with mother's womb.
02:53  And Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, O God, here, heal her, I pray.
02:59  But the Lord said to Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days?
03:09  Let her be shut up for seven days outside the camp, and after that she may be received.
03:15  Kind of interesting story.
03:17  Here we have God standing up for Moses, saying, Moses was the most humblest man on all the earth.
03:24  And here, his brother and sister were speaking against him, Oh, we are great prophets, too.
03:30  We can speak for the Lord.
03:31  And God came and said, and defended Moses, and said, Why are you not afraid?
03:38  I speak to Moses mouth to mouth.
03:40  I don't show him dreams.
03:42  I don't speak to him in visions.
03:44  I speak to him directly.
03:46  He has direct line of contact and voice-to-voice, person-to-person with the God Almighty.
03:52  And you're not afraid of Moses?
03:54  How foolish men are that don't understand the power of God.
03:58  And here, God was angry, and he left instantly.
04:02  Miriam's skin was leprous and was white as snow.
04:06  And yet, Moses pleaded for her to be healed.
04:11  And God said, Let her be this way for seven days is her punishment, and then she'll be healed.
04:17  And it was so.
04:18  And so, we see in this scenario, what I want you to get in all of this story is that Moses is speaking directly with God.
04:28  And so, that takes us back to where we're going to begin, Genesis.
04:32  Moses wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
04:38  He wrote the first five books of the Bible, which is considered the Pentateuch, and or in the Jewish eyes, it's the books of the law.
04:48  And so, how does Moses know all these things that we're going to talk about today?
04:53  He knew it because God directly revealed it to him.
04:57  It's a revelation presented to Moses mouth-to-mouth.
05:01  And so, that takes us to Genesis 1-1, and we're going to start.
05:05  And we're going to read through this chapter.
05:07  We're probably going a little long today.
05:08  Normally, I try to stay within 20 minutes.
05:10  We'll probably end up doing this for 30 minutes.
05:12  Hopefully, we won't get too bored.
05:14  And let's move forward.
05:16  Genesis 1-1 says, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
05:22  And the earth was formless and void.
05:25  And the darkness was over the surface of the deep.
05:29  And the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water.
05:34  Then God said, Let there be light. And there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning, one day.
05:54  Then God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters. So, God is moving across the waters, whatever this water is around the earth, apparently. And he is separating water.
06:13  And God made an expanse, and separated waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening, and there was morning, a second day.
06:32  You get the picture of this? God takes water. Apparently, the earth is formed. There's land, apparently. It's a mass. It's just a round bulb globe with water, apparently.
06:48  And God separates this water. And he puts one part of the water he calls into heaven, and another one on earth.
06:56  So, we have an earth that has water on the earth, but not only do we have water on the earth, we have water surrounding like a giant bubble all the way around the earth, like a clear crystal.
07:10  So, you can look like looking through water to the sun. It's not clouds. He's not creating clouds. He's creating an expanse of water.
07:19  And this water envelope is covering the entire earth. And I believe that's probably why the earth in those days of early creation was probably tropical.
07:29  The sun shined through that water and created a tropical-type environment. And so, it goes on. This is day two.
07:39  Then God said, Let the water below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so.
07:48  And God called the dry land earth, and gathered the waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good.
07:56  Then God said, Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yield seed, and fruit trees, bearing fruit after their kind, with seeds in them on the earth.
08:09  Then God said, Let there be light in the expanse of the heavens, and separate the day from the night.
08:14  And let the earth, and seed after the earth, and seed after the earth, and seed after their kind.
08:21  And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the third day.
08:29  verse 14. Then God said, Let there be light in the expanse of the heavens, and separate the day from the night.
08:38  And let there be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years. Let them be for the lights in the expanse of the heavens, to give light on the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great lights. The great light is governed the day, and the lesser light of the day.
08:56  And the lesser light governed the night. And the lesser light governed the night. He made the stars also. And God placed them in an expanse of the heaven, to give light to the earth. And to govern the day and the night. And to separate the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the fourth day.
09:21  You get the language here. God is telling us that there is a morning and there is an evening every day that he creates something. So we're not talking thousands of years.
09:32  It took a thousand years. It took a thousand years or two thousand years to create all this for everything he did. And over time, God created all this. No. God created this according to the language of the scripture. If you take it in a grammatical, historical method of interpretation, we're not allegorizing.
09:49  We're not spiritualizing the scripture. We're reading it for what it says.
09:54  And God is saying that he does all of this so that there are days and months and years.
10:00  And each day that he worked, there was a morning and there was an evening. There was a 24-hour period.
10:07  Now, if things happened over a thousand-year period and God just gradually created things and it took all this length of time, they call this the gap theory.
10:19  There was a gap between Genesis 1-1 and 1-2 and there was all this time that went on for this creation. No, that's not what the scripture says.
10:28  It says God spoke everything into existence and he did that in six days. We're only in the fourth day.
10:38  He's got two more days to create. And then on the seventh day, he rested. And then, of course, there are seven days in our week.
10:47  If thousands of years had to pass for these things to take place, where did our days come from?
10:53  Who started the 24-hour timeframe? Where did that come from?
10:57  Did the sun all of a sudden take a thousand years to circle the earth or spin on his axis? Did all that somehow time change in its dynamics and its science? No.
11:11  It's always been what it's always been. From the very first day of its creation, it has functioned exactly the way it functions today.
11:20  It's a 24-hour period of time. And we say, well, there's carbon dating. And carbon dating says everything is thousands and millions of years old.
11:31  What the scientists don't want to tell you is that water, rainwater can contaminate the surface of anything and then skew the results of carbon dating.
11:45  And since we had a flood that covered the entire earth and say, well, how did that happen?
11:50  Well, we just read it. God separated the waters. There was a water envelope all the way around the earth. So when the floods came under Noah,
12:00  That's where all the water came from. It was from in the heavens. They just took 40 days and 40 nights to drain all that water out of that water envelope that God had established around the earth. And all that water and all that upheaval pretty much probably upset the carbon dating process. So I'm not sure carbon dating really is what it's all cracked up to be. So let's follow the science. Let's follow the revelation that's given to us because we wouldn't know any of this unless...
12:30  the scriptures tell us, unless God told Moses what to write down. Well, there's all kinds of arguments about creationism. I'm just giving you my perspective. You can believe what you want. It's just so much easier to believe that God created things in six days. And the science tends to bear that out if you want to believe the science. But if you want to make up your own science, that's fine. You can believe whatever you want to believe. That's the freedom of being human.
12:59  So let's move on to verse 20.
13:29  And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters and the seas, and the birds multiplied on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning, the fifth day. So there's another morning, another evening, and a fifth day is pronounced. Not a thousand years, not ten thousand years. It all happened in 24 hours.
13:53  Because there was a morning, because there was a morning, because there was a morning and an evening. The sun is now spinning around the earth.
13:57  That sun and the earth's access and the time that it takes to spin, none of that has changed since its creation.
14:05  Because if it did, if any of that time, or any of the distance of the sun, or anything has changed, we'd be cooked. We would not be living here on earth. Man would be dead.
14:15  Everything was set in motion. Everything was set in place for the benefit of what's coming next on the sixth day.
14:23  And then we read, and then we read, okay, verse 24.
14:26  And it was so, and God made the beasts and the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind.
14:48  And God saw that it was good.
14:50  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 of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
15:11  In verse 27, and God created man in his own image, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish in the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
15:36  And God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which fruit bears seed, it shall be food for you, and every beast on the earth, and every bird in the sky, and everything that moves on the earth which has light, has given even green plants for food, and it was so.
16:06  And God saw that he had made, behold, it was very good, and there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.
16:16  So, we have another morning, we have another evening for the sixth day.
16:22  Okay, well, let's go back to verse 24.
16:28  Then God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures, and so forth, and God made the beasts.
16:34  If you notice the language in this section on day six, it was stated before.
16:39  Everything was made after its own kind.
16:44  What does that mean?
16:45  It means that a tree could never be a bird, and a bird could never be a fish, and a fish could never be man.
16:56  Everything was created with its own nature, its own body, its own very nature, and therefore, if it had wings, it always had wings.
17:07  It didn't evolve.
17:08  We didn't evolve from monkeys.
17:10  We didn't evolve from another species.
17:12  We didn't evolve from animals.
17:13  Everything was created from its own kind, and it stays in its own kingdom as it develops over time.
17:23  And if you notice, man was not made from animals. Man was made from the earth, the dust of the ground. Adam was made from the dust. And later on, we're going to learn that Eve was made from the rib of Adam.
17:39  And so, if you remember what we were talking about with the mystics, where they believe the spiritual came before the physical. Well, that's not what's being said here in Genesis. God made the physical. First, God took Adam from the dust of the ground.
17:53  That's why when we die, our bodies turn back to dust. Because we came from the dust, and then we go back to becoming dust. And so, we are created in God's image, in God's likeness.
18:06  And we can get in and talk about what that really means. But in essence, we are not animals. We did not come from the animal kingdom that we've been taught in our grade school years, in our science classes for these many decades.
18:19  We are not in the animal kingdom. We are in the human kingdom. We are human beings, male and female, just as there are animals in the male and female.
18:32  Because you have to have a reproduction system. So, we don't have a he, she, it, maybe I'm this, or maybe I'm that. No, you're either male or you're female. That's what the scriptures says.
18:43  You're not anything in between. God never intended for you to be anything in between.
18:49  If you believe you're something in between, that's because sin has entered into the world, and someone has talked you into believing something that isn't true.
19:00  And so, you need to realize that and come back to the scriptures and recognize that God created us in his image and in his likeness.
19:13  And as sin came into the world, we lost his image. His image is his righteousness. His image is his moral attributes.
19:22  Sin has come in and destroyed the moral attributes in our lives. We can't reflect or be in God's image at this point.
19:30  But we can be in his likeness. And what is God's likeness?
19:34  God's likeness is his intellect, emotion, and will. God has intellect, emotion, and will.
19:40  And he created us with intellect, emotion, and will. And sin never took that away from us.
19:46  We have always had intellect, emotion, and will as God created us in his likeness.
19:51  But we lost his image, his image bearing. Can that be restored? Absolutely.
19:58  Can God's image be restored into our lives? Yes.
20:01  And I talk about that in my book, Made in the Image of God.
20:05  And if you want to pick up a copy of that, you're more than welcome to.
20:08  It explains the Trinity, and it explains man, and explains our metaphysical makeup, both physical and spiritual,
20:16  and how we relate to God and how we are made in his likeness and in his image.
20:20  So that's a tall subject, and we could talk for hours on that.
20:25  That's why I wrote a separate book to cover the subject, because it's a deep subject, and there's all kinds of debate.
20:31  And so there's a lot to be discussed in trying to work through all those issues.
20:36  Well, I think we've gone on long enough.
20:39  We can go into Chapter 2, but I wanted to at least cover Chapter 1,
20:45  because there's just so much debate about creationism and where man came from,
20:54  and now the debate on whether there's more than one sex.
20:58  I mean, Satan has really gotten into the world and into the minds of men and women
21:04  and have convinced us that what God has done and created is null and void and doesn't count.
21:11  What God says doesn't matter.
21:14  The only thing that matters is what I say, what man says, what we think,
21:19  the lies of people who want to use and twist science and psychology.
21:25  I think if everyone was just honest, I think deep inside, we all know that there's only men and women.
21:33  We didn't come from animals.
21:35  We came from God, and we were created physically first, and then we came spiritual,
21:42  because it said, and then in Chapter 2, if we kept reading, it would say,
21:46  And God created man out of the dust of the ground, and after he made the body,
21:52  he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and then he became a living soul.
21:59  So the spiritual came, and life came after the physical body was made.
22:05  And then Adam was put to sleep, a rib was taken, and God formed a woman out of Adam.
22:11  And so that's made both male and female.
22:16  There aren't six sexes, and no, God's not a female.
22:20  God speaks about himself in a masculine form, in masculine names.
22:27  And so I'm sorry to disappoint some of you out there, but that's just theology 101.
22:33  So where do we go from here?
22:36  Well, next week we'll just keep moving through the Scripture and talk about key concepts in the Bible
22:43  so that you can understand correct interpretations and the truth.
22:49  Remember, creation happened in six days, not over millions of years.
22:55  And then some say, well, why does carbon dating say that there's millions of years?
23:01  And my answer to that is, number one, Adam was created with time built into him.
23:09  He didn't have a childhood.
23:10  He was created, let's say, he was 30 years old as a man.
23:14  He lived to be 930 years old.
23:17  He didn't have a childhood.
23:19  He was never a baby.
23:20  He was never a teenager.
23:21  He was created as a young adult.
23:26  And Eve was the same way.
23:27  And if God can create man, the first man and woman with time built in, then he can create the universe with time built in.
23:38  He can make the earth appear millions of years old if that's what he wants to do.
23:42  Well, my friends, that's about all the time we have for today.
23:46  We're in the process of moving our podcast over to another stream and taking time for that to happen.
23:53  So hopefully you're getting the newer podcasts and not just stuck with.
24:00  But over time, probably another 30 days, hopefully this process will be over, and everyone that was getting this podcast will then receive all of it quickly again. It will all catch up eventually.
24:14  And so, let your friends and relatives know that we're out here doing our thing. Till the next time, now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved.
24:30  Complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5.23
24:38  And the music you hear at the beginning of this podcast is through FreshPiano.com