Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Who Has Authority Over Your Life? | Torah | Genesis 1:1-25

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here to grow in your faith in the new year. Who are you accountable to? Whose authority are you under? Your own or God's? Keith kicks off a new series through the Old Testament books that make up the Torah. Tune in as Keith discusses God's power and authority in the creation of the world in Genesis 1:1-25. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast Passages: Genesis 1:1-25 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Minna Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. I'm Jensen Holmick-Mare. And I'm Patrick Miller. We're digging into the stories found in the first books of the Bible. They're not just some of the best stories in the Bible. They're some of the best stories in all of human history.

Right now, we're in the book of Genesis. Are you as much of a sucker for a good email newsletter as I am? I have to admit I love them because they keep me informed. Unfortunately, they don't really help me grow in my faith. What if you gave Jesus access to your inbox? 10-minute Bible Talks is starting a weekly email newsletter. It will have a variety of things inside of it. Each week will be different.

Sometimes it'll have cultural background about the topics that we're talking about. Sometimes it will have insights into what it means to practice the spiritual disciplines. I think you're going to like the variety. All you have to do is go to the show notes and hit the link there. and you can sign up for the new 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. When you open to the Bible to page one, it doesn't start with in the beginning man or a woman or a family. It doesn't start in the beginning nature or culture or civilization. It doesn't start in the beginning was an idea or a philosophy or a moral code.

At the very beginning, you find God. The significance of this is easy to overlook, but that would be a huge mistake. Genesis 1-1 signals to us the very important truth that everything is about God, not us. He's central. We're not. From the very beginning, we're told that everything that exists, including our lives, our families, our jobs, school, sports, leisure, everything finds its origins and meaning and purpose in God.

You see, in the very first book, of the very first chapter, of the very first book of the Bible, we read this. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's Genesis 1-1. It can be a little frustrating to us that the Bible just starts with God. I think that's at least in part because it kind of puts us in our place. It means that we are not preeminent. God is. It means that we don't get to define our own identity or our own morality or our own purpose. God does. Imagine how much more attractive it would be. to us if instead of starting with God, Genesis started with something like five proofs that God is real. I think we'd prefer that because it would put us in the position of primary importance.

It would put us in charge because then we could sit back and evaluate the arguments and decide if we think that those arguments are strong enough to get us to believe in God or not. But the Bible will have none of that. God refuses to submit to our judgments. The Bible very intentionally puts us in our place when it starts in the beginning God. God is. Now, deal with it. We don't evaluate him. He evaluates us. He's not accountable to us. We are accountable to him. So the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 14. So then each of us will give an account of ourselves to God. Or Jesus says in Matthew 12, I tell you that on the day of judgment, people will have to give an account. for every careless word they speak.

We are accountable to God for every word we speak. We're accountable to God for everything we've been given, for every truth we know, for every minute of our life. We're accountable to God for every dollar we spend, every relationship we have. And the fact that we're accountable to God makes us uncomfortable because we don't want to have to answer to someone else. We want to live for ourselves.

We want to answer to no one but us. There's an atheist named Thomas Nagel, smart guy, professor, written several books. He's also extremely honest. Listen to what he wrote here. He said, I want atheism to be true. And I'm made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and naturally hope I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God.

I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that. See what I mean by his honesty? He's just saying he doesn't want there to be a God because he doesn't want to be accountable to God. He doesn't want to have to live by God's commands. He wants to live for himself. Aldous Huxley was also an atheist. He wrote a book called The Brave New World.

It was a very influential book in his day. And he was an influential thinker in his day. He died in 1963. Anyway, he says something similar to Thomas Nagel. He said, I have motives for not wanting the world to have meaning. And therefore, he goes on to say he just assumed it didn't have meaning. And in order for the world to not have any meaning or any purpose, he just dismissed God. He wrote God out of the picture because he didn't want there to be a God.

He didn't want there to be a God because he didn't want there to be a morality that interfered with his sexual freedom. So what he did is denied that there was a God so that he wouldn't be accountable to God so that he could do what he pleased instead of what God pleased. C.S. Lewis wrote a little essay called God in the Doc. And that essay explains how there has been a shift between the way ancient people and modern people think about God. Lewis says that ancient people used to understand that God was the judge and that human beings were in the dock. That's where the essay gets its name, God in the dock. That human beings were in the dock.

In other words, that is the place in the British court system where the accused sat. So human beings sat under the authority of God the judge. But he says that modern people have switched roles with God, that we have put God in the dock, and we have made him answer to us. And so we have questions for God. God, why did you allow this to happen? God, why haven't you changed this situation in my life? God, why is there evil in the world?

God, when are you going to make my life better? When are you going to answer my prayers? When are you going to get about the things that I think you should be about? Now, Lewis says that what happens is that we ask these questions and then if God gives us answers that we like, we say, okay, God, great, I can live with that. And if he gives us answers we don't like, we might write him off like Aldous Huxley or Thomas Nagel or any of the other ways that we can write God out of our lives. Lewis says the fundamentally important thing is not whether we think God has good answers to our questions. The fundamentally important thing is that we

have switched places with God. And we now believe that God owes us answers and that we will evaluate those answers and tell God whether his answers measure up or not. See, we have put God in the dock. We have come to believe that he is accountable to us. He must answer to us. He must please us. And yet, that's exact opposite of what Genesis 1-1 teaches. Picture that you're holding a Bible in your hands. Now, you can put that Bible on the ground and step on it and say, I have authority over this Bible. I stand on top of God and His Word. Or you can take that Bible and put it over your head and say, I am under the authority of God. I am under the authority of His Word. And although I don't understand everything that God is up to, I trust him. He's the one that calls a shot. I answer to him,

not the other way around. Genesis 1-1 says, in the beginning, God. In other words, God is above us, not below us. We don't stand on him. He stands an authority over us. Genesis 1-1 is full of important truths. This is just one that we are accountable to God, but we could also say there is a God that is separate from nature.

There is a God that has created everything, and I owe him my allegiance. Genesis 1 teaches us that our meaning and our purpose are found in God. He created everything for his purpose. It teaches us that the natural world is good, because after God created, he pronounced that it is good. In fact, when he created the first people in his image, he declared that they were very good.

So God created a world, for his purpose, a world that was free from sin, a world that pleased him. But I want to leave you with this. It's Proverbs 16.4. The Lord has made everything for his own purposes. That means the Lord has made you for his purpose. Do you want God's purpose in your life? Will you submit to His Word? Will you live today and every day? But today, will you live it in light of the fact that you will give an account of your life before God, and make decisions today that you will be pleased with when you stand before God and see him face to face.

It starts with this. God, you're the authority in my life. I submit to you. I surrender my life to you. Amen. Hey, before you forget, make sure you sign up for the new 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. Just hit the link in the show notes.