Enjoying the Journey

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Your New Start Jan 03, 2024

Show notes

(Genesis 1:4-5) Do you ever feel overlooked by the world? The Creator of the universe sees you. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by darkness? The Light of the world can divide the darkness from your life. Allow God to apply the first day of creation to your life through today's study! (083240103)

Join Scott Pauley's study through Scripture this year. Find resources for every book of the Bible by Dr. Pauley and Enjoying the Journey at enjoyingthejourney.org/journey-through-scripture/.
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Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

The First Day Jan 02, 2024

Show notes

(Genesis 1:2-3) Imagine witnessing the first day of creation! In the emptiness and darkness, God moved and spoke. If you want a new beginning, or if you want order in the midst of chaos, yield to the work of the Spirit and get into the Word of God. (082240102)

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Automated Transcript:

Many years ago, someone gave me a book called All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
And basically, it was a list of the first principles that we learn when we're very young that provide a foundation for all of life.
And it's just the idea of returning in simplicity to the basics.
That is exactly what we are doing.
We're going back, might I say, to the kindergarten of our understanding of spiritual truth.
We're going to the book of Genesis, to the book of beginnings, where it all started.
In fact, everything started in Genesis except for God because God had no beginning.
And when we come to Genesis chapter number one, we've started our study by looking at some beginning truths that God is, that God is the one who creates everything out of nothing and that God is revealing himself through his creation.
In the words of Moses writing Genesis 1 verse 1, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
And then in a handful of verses that follow, we have a description of the first day.
Now imagine being there witnessing the first day of the creative process.
Man doesn't show up to day six because in God's perfect wisdom, he couldn't have lived until day six.
Everything man needed to exist and to enjoy this planet was created on the days previous.
But if you could have just observed the process, this is what we're reading in Genesis chapter one, beginning in verse two down to verse number five, on the first day.
The Bible says, And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light.
And there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness, and God called the light day, and the darkness He called night, and the evening and the morning were the first day.
There's the phrase, the first day.
Somebody said that today is the first day of the rest of your life.
That's profound, isn't it?
But it is true.
You had a first day, the day that you were born.
You had a first day with the Lord.
That was the day of your new birth.
But remember, we're talking about God being the God of new beginnings.
You never get born into this world again.
And once you're born again, you don't need that process again because the Lord gives eternal life.
But I want to tell you, from personal experience, there have been many times in my walk with Jesus where I needed a new beginning.
And friend, God is the God of every day.
He's the God that someday we're going to live with in the eternal day.
And today, He wants to give you a new beginning.
Let this be a new first for you.
You see, Genesis 1 is not just about the world.
That's what everybody thinks.
It's about the world that was created.
No, no.
It's about the work of God.
The revelation here is not about things.
It's about the person of the Lord Himself.
And these first principles are important for us as New Testament Christians.
It might interest you to know, the book of Genesis is quoted more than 200 times in the New Testament.
So when people say to me, are you one of those Old Testament people, or are you a New Testament person?
The answer is yes, because all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.
So the Old Testament and the New Testament are not competitors.
They're completers.
They work together.
In fact, Jesus even said in John chapter 5 to the religious leaders of the day, He said, if you won't believe what Moses wrote, you won't believe what I'm saying.
So if you don't believe Genesis, then you don't believe Jesus.
They go together.
You cannot separate God's truth.
It is one truth.
So what do we learn that we can apply to our lives from the first day?
What do we learn about God?
Well, let me give you four things God did on the first day.
Number one, God moved.
The Bible says that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
May I just tell you, God's still moving.
He's on the move.
Would you pray today, Oh, Lord, move on my life.
Move in my family, move in this world.
Notice where he's moving.
The Bible says, here's the description, that the earth was without form, it was void, and it was dark.
Boy, that sounds depressing, doesn't it?
Can you imagine anything that sounds less hopeful than without form, void, and dark?
What does that mean?
It means there's chaos, there's emptiness, and there is darkness.
Doesn't that sound like the world we're living in?
People say, so much chaos, so much emptiness, so much darkness.
Oh, here's the good news.
That's the kind of context where God does his best work, because in the chaos, the emptiness, and the darkness, God can do what nobody else can do.
Only God can bring order out of chaos and fullness out of emptiness and light out of darkness, and when he does it, only God gets the glory for it.
So when the world is in bad shape, we must look to the Lord and find our hope in the God who is still on the move.
And notice how he moved.
The Bible says the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Here's the person of the Holy Spirit.
You remember I said to you the other day that God, in verse number one of Genesis chapter one, is this Hebrew unipleural noun, three or more, wrapped up in one.
Well, that's who our God is.
One God expressed in three persons.
So we know the Father was there speaking.
We know that the Lord Jesus was there because John one says that the Word, who was made flesh, was with the Father in the beginning.
And now we see that the Holy Spirit is there.
It's beautiful, isn't it?
The Holy Spirit didn't begin on the day of Pentecost.
We're first introduced to the Holy Spirit in Genesis one, verse number two.
So how did God move?
He moved in the person of the Holy Spirit.
And the word here, to move upon, literally means he brooded.
He brooded over.
Praise God.
What tender care, what careful attention being given to what's going on.
That's our God, and our God moves.
And then on the first day, not only did God move, but God speaks.
Because the Bible says in verse three, and God said.
This would be a good prayer for us.
Lord, speak to us.
Speak to us.
Notice the power of God's word.
He just said, let there be light, and there was light.
His word is light.
It pierces the darkness.
His word is revelation.
The Bible says, let there be.
It already existed.
God is light, but now God is revealing that light.
God is making that light that is his very essence, known in this world.
His word is powerful.
There was light.
This is the power of the word of God.
You know, we preachers get pretty artistic sometimes, don't we?
And we talk about God flinging the stars in space and carving out the rivers with his pinky, and no, that's not what he did.
Read it for yourself.
God just spoke it into existence.
By the way, if you go to the other end of the Bible, go to the revelation, guess how it's all going to end?
Somebody said, oh, with a great battle, and we're all going to be fighting?
No, that's not right.
There will be a great battle, but God will destroy the enemy with the word of his mouth, the sword coming out of his mouth.
He will speak a word, and it will be over.
Friend, God started it with the word.
God sustains it with the word, and God will bring it all to the great climax with the word.
This is the power of the word of God.
So do you want a new beginning?
Would you like today to be a first, a new start?
Then we'll tell you what you need.
You need the Lord's moving, his Spirit working in your life, and you need the word of God.
Oh, I love this.
The Spirit and the Scriptures always inextricably linked.
You can't separate the Holy Word and the Holy Ghost.
What is the Bible?
It's the sword of the Spirit that is the word of God.
Who is the Holy Spirit?
He's the Spirit of truth.
So if you want a new beginning today, I'm going to tell you what you need.
You need to yield yourself to the work of the Holy Spirit of God on your heart.
He's moving on your heart today.
He's brooding over you.
He loves you.
He can do what only God can do.
And you need to get in the Word of God.
Let the Word of God get into you and let the Word speak to you.
And friend, if you'll yield to the Holy Spirit and live in the Holy Scriptures, you will find your new beginning.

Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

Beginning Truth Jan 01, 2024

Show notes

(Genesis 1:1) Someone has rightly said, "The Christian life is a series of new beginnings." Sin will always bring you to a dead end. God brings you to open doors. As we begin a new series from the first eleven chapters of Genesis, take advantage of the new beginning God is offering you today! (081240101)

Automated Transcript:

Someone has rightly said that life is a series of new beginnings.
I love that because I can testify and tell you that life is a series of transitions.
Maybe you're living through one of those transitions right now.
The reality is, in the transitions of life, when things are changing, one of two things is going to happen.
Either it's going to just be the end of something, or it's going to be a new beginning.
I'm glad to tell you today, on the authority of the Word of God, that our God is the God of new beginnings.
Sin will always bring you to a dead end.
The devil closes in on you, and brings you to nothing.
But the Lord never brings you to a dead end.
The Lord brings you to another open door.
You don't hit a wall with the Lord.
Instead, a door opens, and God says, alright, here is the way to begin again.
And so, I want to take you to the opening pages of Scripture, to the book of Genesis.
Now, the opening chapters of Genesis, not just Genesis chapter one, but the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis are in many ways the beginnings of everything.
Someone said and observed that Genesis 1 through 11 is a seedbed of doctrine, that every major doctrine found in the rest of Scripture is introduced, at least in seed form, in the opening pages of the Word of God.
Isn't that just like the Lord?
God's Word, a progressive revelation, moving from the known to the unknown, starting with the most simple thing and then progressively showing us more and more until it's fully developed and we finally understand what it is God wants us to understand.
And so, in this emphasis on new beginnings, I want to go back to the Book of Beginnings, to the Book of Genesis, and study with you the first eleven chapters.
Let's get some foundational truth, some beginning truth that will help us to begin again.
Today, we start in the most obvious place, you have to begin, where God begins in Genesis chapter one and verse number one, you know it by heart.
Say it with me, would you please?
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
And so, in the very first verse of holy scripture, we have introduced to us not only God, but God's great desire and design for all of us.
These are the basics, the building blocks, the beginning principles.
What are they?
Well, first of all, we learn that God is, because the Bible simply states, in the beginning, God.
Don't begin with the reality around you, begin with the reality before you and above you.
Begin with God.
Everything begins with God.
Scripture does not seek to prove to us the existence of God.
It simply states it.
And you will have to either accept it or reject it.
You'll either have to believe what the Bible says, or say, no, I don't believe that at all.
But if you're going to take God at His word, and I recommend that you do, then you must begin with this.
God is, He is the eternally existent one.
You see, this world has a beginning, but God has no beginning because He's the everlasting one.
The oldest Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 90, written by Moses, says, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
Literally, the word everlasting means vanishing point.
So from one vanishing point to the other vanishing point, God is God.
Go back before all of the world was created, before time existed, and God is.
Go all the way to the end.
Fast forward to the end of the story, when the world burns up and everything disappears, that is familiar to us, and God will still be.
He is the eternal God.
The parallel to this, of course, in the New Testament, is John.
John chapter 1, verse number 1, says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, did not begin at Bethlehem, but he was there before the creation of the world in the beginning.
And so we start here.
We start with the very presence of God, that he existed, eternally existed, before this world was created.
One little interesting thing is that the noun that is used here in the language of the day, the Hebrew language, was a unipleural noun, literally meaning three in one.
So think about this, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, our God, Elohim, co-equal, co-existent, co-eternal, the great three in one introduced to us in the very first verse of the Bible.
God is.
And then a second thing we must observe is that God made everything out of nothing.
Because the Bible says God created.
The word that is used here literally means to create something out of nothing.
It's not to make, taking something that exists and making something.
No, it's totally different than that.
It is the creation of everything.
He created the heaven and the earth out of nothing.
And, of course, we're going to learn as we progress in our study.
He did all of that with the power of his word.
Only God could do that.
God is.
And then God made everything out of nothing.
And then, this is very important, not only is it true that God is and God made everything out of nothing, but God made everything in order for us to know him.
Think of this.
The visible was created so we could come to know the invisible God.
What we see was created to reveal the plan and purpose and power of Almighty God.
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
You see, all of earth and all of the heavens declare the glory of God.
Everything around us testifies to the existence of the Creator God.
Now, we know that Christ is the final, full revelation of the Creator.
He literally brings heaven to earth in order to bring earth to heaven.
But in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
Do you see God's presence?
God is.
Do you see God's power?
God made everything out of nothing.
He's the beginning of every good thing.
James said in James 1, 17, that every good and perfect gift comes down from above from the father of lights in whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning.
And then do you see God's purpose?
God made everything with this objective that we would come to know him and love him and worship him.
May I just tell you, only God can create something beautiful out of nothing.
The first characteristic of God revealed here is his power.
I don't know what you're dealing with today, what your nothing is, but I just want to remind you that nothing is too hard for the Lord, that all things are possible with God.
Dear listener, those of us who are living right now, it seems on the edge of eternity, on the verge of the book of Revelation, need to start paying more attention to Genesis because the only way to go forward is to go back.
And the only way to really understand what's going on in this world right now, near the end of the story, is to go back to the very beginning.
The old Bible teacher, A.T. Pearson, used to talk about the law of first mention.
Well, Genesis 1 is a chapter about life, and it's a chapter about the God of life for those who want life again.
If you need a new beginning, what you need is not more effort, more energy, better intentions, better circumstances, or help from someone else.
What you need is a fresh experience with the God who is the creator of it all.
And the God of beginnings and the God of new beginnings, because the same God who spoke the world into existence and made every beautiful thing out of nothing is able to come to us in the midst of our difficulty and make something beautiful out of nothing again.
Only God can do that, and God only does it when we turn to Him.
Would you look to the God of new beginnings today?

Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

The Weekend Pulpit: The Fellowship of Stewardship Dec 30, 2023

Show notes

(2 Corinthians 8:1-7) What is your relationship to Christ’s church? Being members of the same heavenly family, Christians should not wait until they get to heaven to fellowship with one another! Listen to this message from the Weekend Pulpit to hear about your individual responsibility in God’s family.

Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

The Final Redemption Dec 29, 2023

Show notes

(Luke 21:28) The moment you trust Jesus, your spirit is saved. Progressively throughout life, your soul is being delivered from the power of sin. Eventually, your body will be redeemed from the very presence of sin. Tune into our last episode of "God's Redemption Timeline." (07311231229)

Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

Eternity’s Hymn Dec 28, 2023

Show notes

(Revelation 5:9-14) Would you like to know what we will sing someday at the worship meeting around the throne? Heaven's song is a song of redemption. Jump into the book of Revelation and begin rehearsing eternity's hymn. (07310231228)

Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

Nothing But the Blood of Jesus Dec 27, 2023

Show notes

(1 Peter 1:18-19) What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus! Apart from the bloodshed of Christ, we could never be redeemed. Learn from today's episode about the essential nature of the blood. (07309231227)

Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

Why Christ Redeemed You Dec 26, 2023

Show notes

(Titus 2:11-14) Jesus Christ does not come into your life to leave you like you are! We are redeemed to enter into all that God has for us. Study the book of Titus and allow this theory to become a reality. (07308231226)

Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

Divine Visitation and Redemption Dec 25, 2023

Show notes

(Luke 1:68-75; 2:38) Christ's short visit made an eternal impact. It was during His time on earth that Jesus redeemed His people. Learn from today's episode how your eternal redemption can cause a daily change in your life! (07307231225)

Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

The Weekend Pulpit: The Rest of the Story Dec 23, 2023

Show notes

(John 12:1-11) Did Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead to stop Mary and Martha from crying? Did He do it to stop people from mocking Him? He raised Lazarus for the same reason He gives believers new life, to point others to Him! Join us as we dive into "The Rest of the Story." (07306231223)

Enjoying the Journey provides every resource for free worldwide. If you would like to help extend this Bible teaching, you may give at enjoyingthejourney.org/donations/

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