What was there before is now gone. See how everything has become brand new. And then if you had your Bibles with you tonight, which I know none of you do because we all use electronic Bibles.

I would ask you to turn to page number 1 in your Bible. And we're going to read from page number 1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth became an empty formless waste.

And darkness covered the surface of the depths. And the Spirit of God brooded over the waters. And God said, let there be light.

And there was light. And if we had time I'd read the whole of the chapter. And some of the next chapter.

But I don't like to read tons of scripture. I'm going to be reading, skimming, reading abbreviated versions of the rest of the chapter as we go. But we're going to cover the whole of Genesis chapter 1 tonight.

We're going to cover an incident that took place. The beginning of time. And we're going to take that and we're going to allegorize it.

And learn some spiritual truths from it. So I'm not going to be preaching on evolution or on the creation. But I'm going to be preaching on the new creation in Christ.

And I'm going to be using the original creation as a skeleton foundation on which to build that teaching. So now you know where I'm going. The Bible is often interpreted best when it's allegorized.

When you take something that's literal and give it an allegorical or spiritual meaning. And the story of creation is actually both a natural and a spiritual account. Each stage of the natural creation is something similar to what takes place in the spiritual creation.

Each of the seven days of creation is a picture of the spiritual life. And I'd like to lay that out for you tonight. And show you from Genesis 1 how we can understand a few things in the spiritual life.

Firstly as we look at the start of the scriptures we see there was a need for a re-creation. You say, but hang on, I thought you said that Genesis 1, page 1, that's when God created, that was the beginning, right? That was the first creation. Well, yes and no.

You see, if you watch the way we've translated it, it goes like this. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Yes, that's the first creation.

Something happened between verse 1 and verse 2. And therefore verse 2 I have translated, I believe accurately. It's a metaphor. And the earth became formless waste, an empty formless waste.

And darkness covered the surface of the depths and the spirit of God brooded over the waters. What I'm trying to teach is known commonly as the gap theory. Which says that there was a gap between Genesis 1, verse 1 and Genesis 1, verse 2. That God did not originally create the earth in the condition in which it existed at that time.

Okay? I'm not going to go into all the theological discussion, but the Hebrew term that is used there, which is tohu and bohu, find another scripture in Isaiah which says that God did not create the earth tohu and bohu. He did not create it empty and void. That's not how He created it.

But here in Genesis chapter 2, that's what it looks like. So therefore, somewhere between Genesis 1, verse 1 and Genesis 1, verse 2, something happened that the earth which was created correctly became without form and void and became covered with water. Now I'm not going to go into that because I'm not teaching science tonight.

But we could go into a big discussion on the science. And science actually proves some of this. And those of you who've got scientific minds, go and look up the gap theory. Got into all the theological arguments about it.

It's not what I'm trying to do tonight. But the reason I've stuck to the gap theory, what I'm going to share with you tonight, is that the natural creation is also a picture of the spiritual creation.

God did not create man in a condition of depravity, of darkness, of sinfulness, of waste. And that's what this is a picture of. It's a picture of a person outside of Christ.

They're empty inside. They're void. They're like a waste blob.

There's not worth anything to man or beast. Certainly not to God. God did not create man to be that way.

Man became that way as a result of sin, which we read later on in the book of Genesis. But I'd like to take it even further than that. And I'd like to suggest that from the day we are born, we are not born entirely in a condition like that.

Yes, we're born with a sinful nature, which we inherited from our original ancestor Adam. We are born with a tendency towards sin. And it doesn't take long for a child to grow up and begin to manifest that sin.

But a child is born in innocence and even with an awareness of God. A child is born with an awareness of God. We all start out in life knowing that God exists and being aware of it.

But somewhere along the line, we give that up. We allow sin to bear fruit in our life. And destruction comes into our life and we become totally separated from God.

And we find ourselves in this condition of darkness. Now in case you disagree with what I'm saying, I'm going to be a little theological and give you some scriptural proof. Paul speaks in the book of Romans, chapter 1, about how God created man with an awareness of Him.

And that the creation and everything around about it is enough proof to man that there is a God. He says from verse 19, Because what is known of God is plainly evident to them, since God has made it visible to them. For the invisible things of Him are clearly seen from the creation of the world.

So they're without excuse. Reason being, however, when they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, nor were they grateful, but they became foolish in their arguments, and their foolish heart was darkened. Ending up in the condition that we see in Genesis, chapter 1, verse 2. That is the condition of us outside of Christ.

We have nothing of form, of value. We're just like an empty waste. We're like a great big deep in the middle of the ocean in the darkness.

So the first thing that God had to do was to get rid of the darkness. And so the first day of creation says, And God said, Let there be light. God saw the light, that it was good.

And God divided the light from the darkness. And He called the light day, and the darkness He called night. Evening and morning were the first day.

What is the first thing that an unbeliever needs? A full theological explanation of the atonement? Definitely not. They need light, because they are in darkness. When somebody's in the dark, they cannot see.

You can't hold up something and say, See this, isn't it beautiful? And say, I can't see a thing. What are you talking about? Why can't you see it's lovely? Can't see it. You can't explain it until you shine the light.

So they can see it. So before a person can even begin to see the need for salvation, or to reach out and receive what God is offering them, their eyes have to be open. They've got to see the light.

We even use that in our English language as an expression. You say, I really was confused on this subject, and then one day I saw the light. I saw the light.

The penny dropped. I finally got it. I saw it.

You know, was I blind before? No, my physical eyes were seeing fine, but I didn't understand. I didn't comprehend. People are alive physically, but spiritually they are blind.

They're in darkness. The spiritual life starts with the light. It starts with a revelation.

How does that light come? How does that revelation come to a soul that's outside of Christ, who's in a condition just like the earth was? How did it come to the earth? And God said, Let there be light. Words rang out into the earth. Words were spoken upon that creation.

And as those words were spoken by the power of God, light came. The only way an unbeliever is going to see the light is when somebody speaks the word under the anointing power of God. Paul says, How shall they hear without a preacher? The word must be preached.

And when the word is preached, the power of God is released into the earth through those words to a person who is not saved. I've really been praying for my lost loved ones, for my brothers and sisters and relatives who don't know the Lord. I'm praying that God will save them.

It doesn't take prayer. It takes speaking of the word. That's what brings the light.

You need to understand that before a person can even start the spiritual life, they have to hear the word of God spoken. And it must be spoken with authority, and it must be spoken as a creative force. Not a hope, not a wish, but a command.

Let there be. Eyes be open. That's the power that we have when we preach the gospel.

We speak the word of God, the truth. Eyes are open. Light begins to shine.

When the light begins to shine, then God finally has got into the person's life. The spiritual eyes have been opened. Well, they're not perfect yet.

They have not arrived yet. This is only the first stage. The stage of revelation where they see the light, and their eyes are opened to the truth of the gospel.

And as their eyes are opened and they receive, it starts to come a separation. Firstly, God separated the light from the darkness. Darkness was still there, but it was separated from the light.

So we had the daytime when it was light, and nighttime when it was darkness. When a person has received that revelation of the light, darkness is still there. It hasn't gone.

They're not instantly perfect. But they have the light shining. And that light that is shining within them has the power to overcome the darkness.

But it must be separated from the darkness that what is in the light can be seen as light, and darkness can be seen as darkness. And then God continues with the exact same process in the second day of creation. God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse. Can you see a separation is taking place? And God called the expanse heaven, literally the heavens or the atmosphere. There's an allegorical meaning there.

Allegorical meaning. The first thing God did was first separate light from darkness. Now he starts to separate what is from below from what is from above.

He's starting to address immediately in the person what comes from their lowest sinful nature and what comes from God. The first thing that takes place in a person who's born again is they start to become aware of their sin. They never realized it before.

They sinned without even thinking about it. And yet they knew it was wrong, but they weren't conscious of it, they didn't care about it. But now a separation is beginning to take place between what is heavenly and what is worldly.

What is of God and what is not of God. What in your life has been contaminated and influenced and affected by this world and what has been influenced from the heavenly realm in which God lives. This is what the Bible calls the process of sanctification.

It's the second stage of salvation whereby we are now starting to learn how to overcome the power of sin in our lives. To separate what is good and what is bad. To separate what is of God and what is not of God.

As soon as a person is born again, the first thing they realize is I can't live the kind of life I was living before. It's not right anymore. It's not right for me to behave in the way I did before.

I have to change. Things have to be different. I can't live in sin anymore.

This is the second day of creation. It's the second stage of the spiritual life. If that stage does not occur, then I don't believe that the light of revelation came in the beginning.

If a person truly is born again, they immediately become aware of the darkness within them. They immediately become aware of what is of God and what is not. Nobody needs to even tell them how that they begin to separate and learn to walk more with God and in the old way of sin.

Day chapter 3, And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit of its kind, whose seed is in itself and upon the earth. We see now the creation of the earth with all the living vegetation that grows on the earth, all of the plants.

The next thing that takes place in the life of this person is what we call spiritual growth, fruitfulness. Before, their lives were useless and worthless and no use to God. Now they're starting to become of use to God.

Now growth begins to take place within them, typified by these plants. How does growth come? Through feeding. Through feeding.

The plants pull their nutrients out of the soil and they begin to grow. And so this new creation in Christ now has to start feeding. Feeding themselves in this new creation.

Not feeding the old creation anymore, but feeding the new creation until they begin to bear forth fruit. And what is the purpose for fruit? Yeah, we love to just see the beauty of fruit on the trees and grab it and eat it. There's a reason that fruit exists, because fruit contains seeds.

And when we eat that fruit we actually distribute the seeds so the plant can grow. And so God said that all of these plants are going to bear forth seed that will reproduce. The first activity that should be taking place in the life of a new believer is spiritual reproduction.

The first activity every young believer should be encouraged to get involved in is to share their experience with somebody else. They begin to share their newfound faith, their new experience in God, the light that they've seen, the excitement of the spiritual life. It's automatic.

You want to share it with others. It's the first activity that should take place in the spiritual life of a new believer. Your very first ministry should have been soul winning.

Very first ministry. It's one ministry that doesn't require any knowledge more than what you've experienced. All you need to do is to share with somebody what you've experienced.

Nothing more. Since this happened to me, I've got such peace, I've got such joy, I've got such... And they begin to express. You can't help but tell somebody else the good news of what's happened.

Well, you know, if none of these things are being manifested I'm beginning to question why anything happened. Whether it was just turning over a new leaf. Just trying to pretend to be a new creation.

It's the nature of the new creation, the recreation in Christ. It is in its nature to reproduce. Automatically.

Without even trying. That's the next stage of our spiritual life. Day chapter four.

God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. And God made two great lights. The greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.

He made the stars also. Looking at the heavenly realm here. First one was on the earth.

That's where we live. That was taking place within the new person. But now something begins to take place within the heavenly realm that brings an influence upon this creation.

God puts this huge big ball of fire during the day called the sun. And another big ball of light at night which he called the moon. Then the many stars at night also to bring additional light.

The next stage of the spiritual life is we have to begin to reach out and touch the heavenly realm. We need to start experiencing the powers of God's realm and the power that God has available to us. We cannot live our lives on our own.

We've been born again. We've seen the light. We've started to experience some of the changes in our lives.

But now we need to come into a closer relationship with our heavenly father. And the most powerful is the sun of his presence. Of his glory.

The fullness of the power of his Holy Spirit. The first thing that a new believer should be brought to experience is the fullness of the power of God. Usually in an experience we call the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

When they come into a fullness, an understanding of the glory and the power of God, they become bathed in that glory and have it saturate them and soak them. But then we don't have daytime all the time. And the spiritual life, and the life in which we live, is not a constant high.

We can't live on that high. We can't live in that glory of his presence. There will come times of darkness in our life.

We will go through phases where the light is gone and it's dark outside. But God did not leave us hopeless. He gave us another light.

And actually it gets its light from the first one. The moon gets its light from the sun. Well if the sun is the fullness of the spirit of God and his power, what's the moon? I believe it's the word of God.

The word of God which was inspired and created by the Holy Ghost. He was the author who wrote it. It's full of his glory, full of his power, enough to shine and light our way when we're going through darkness.

The word is there to show us the way, to teach us. Even when we can't see clearly, even when God feels like he's not there anymore, the word is our stay. That's the moon.

Sometimes we need a little bit more than the moon. Sometimes we need the stars just to give us a bit of extra light. What are the stars a picture of? I believe they're speaking firstly of spiritual revelation.

They're speaking of prophetic revelation and prophetic words and words from the pulpit that a preacher will stand up and speak, that another person will speak into our lives. But you know, we can't rely on the stars to light our way. They're just extra little lights.

And if you look in times past, the stars were often used by men to guide them. They were used as points of reference which defined their way at night. You can't see.

We should never build our lives on spiritual revelations, personal revelations or prophetic words. We thank God for them and they should be there and they're part of what God's given us. But let's learn.

Let's learn to walk in the glory of the sun. Let's learn to understand the light that comes from the word. And let's take those extra things that God gives us through the stars and let's just hold on to them and add them.

Not build our life on them, but add them to our spiritual experience. Day chapter 5. God said, Let the waters bring forth moving, abundantly moving creatures that have life. And how it may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Well, we saw that the heavenly realm speaks of the specific realm that God lives and what comes from the heavenly realm is coming to us specifically, directly from God. But what do the waters speak about? I believe the waters speak about the spiritual realm. In a sense, the two are together.

The spiritual realm, though it is the place that God lives, the spiritual realm means when we move out of our natural way of living into the realm of the spirit. And when we do that, we're going to be seeing different things will begin to manifest. I believe that the fishes speak of first signs of basic body ministries that begin to take place.

Some of our first real spiritual activities leading on from our original start of just sharing the Lord and being soul winners. The birds, I believe, speak about what? Well, think about a bird. Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack.

Noise. The whole air is filled with noise. Well, maybe you don't hear it, there's noise.

The birds sing. So beautiful. Isn't it? Picture of prayer, praise, and worship.

These are the things that we should start moving into now. Now that we've got the fullness of the spirit, we've become grounded in the word, we've been given everything we need to move on for God. Now let's start finding some of the basic activities that God would have us to get involved in as we become a partaker of the group of people that make up all of those who have had a similar experience to us, which the Bible calls the church.

Church is simply a gathering of people who have seen the light, who have been recreated in Christ, are coming together now to fellowship and interact with one another. Now birds can also speak of demonic powers. I believe at the time of creation that picture wasn't there.

Only after the creation was corrupted that birds became a picture of demonic powers. You'll find that every nation, most nations have a bird as their national symbol. There's a very good reason for that because that bird is a picture of the demonic prince that rules that country.

And the Bible speaks about the birds of the air coming and nesting in the branches. And that's likened to demonic powers, spiritual powers. So birds can be a picture of the powers of the air, which are the powers of darkness, Satan's realm.

So just keep that in mind. It's just an alternative thought that in this picture, this positive picture of the birds and the fish, there are also some negatives. And then day number six was the crowning creation.

And this one God seemed to do the most, actually. God made the beast of the earth after its kind and the cattle after their kind and everything that creeps upon the earth after its kind. And God saw that it was good.

And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female.

He created them. What are these animals a picture of? I believe they're moving into higher level ministries and activities. The animals were there with them in their daily lives.

They were part of what they did. At that time animals were not a threat. They were not a danger.

So the animals from a positive viewpoint I believe become a picture of higher level ministries. As we've now progressed spiritually now we start moving to a higher level beyond the little fish and the birds. We're going now into something more concrete and so many different kinds of animal species.

God has many different ministries for us as believers and each of us tend to find our place in a different kind of activity. But some of these creatures also are negative. The creeping things especially.

All the ho-hos as we call them in South Africa. They're a picture of demonic things. Of negative things.

But God said, I've given man authority over these things. Well, what is man? What is this picture of this man that God finally created? I believe it's a picture of full spiritual maturity. The scripture says that we've been called to be conformed to the image of Christ.

The ultimate picture of what God looks like. Because Christ was the image of the invisible God. Jesus came to show us what God looks like and he came to offer us the opportunity to rise up and take that same image to become just like him.

To be mature in the Lord. To be mature spiritually. To stand up and to rule and to reign in this life.

What is the most important in all of the creation? Has to be man, doesn't it? What is the most important quality? What is the most important thing that God wants to accomplish in your life? What is it that reigns and rules over everything else? Over all of these things that we've covered in the days of creation. It is spiritual maturity. Your spiritual maturity is more important than your activities.

It's more important than your knowledge. It's more important than your ministry. It's more important than anything you do or are in this world.

Our ultimate goal is to become like him. And that's the main thing we should be aiming for. But in this world we aim for things that will make us look good.

For opportunities and activities that may lift us up to give us a sense of achievement and accomplishment and satisfaction in this life. And there's nothing wrong with it. God created all of them.

But the ultimate creation is to stand in the fullness. The fullness of the holiness, the righteousness, and the image of the one who created us. And made in the image of God, we in turn to be made back into the image of God which was given to us in Christ.

This is the goal. This is the purpose. This is what we should be aiming for in this spiritual life.

If we fail to attain that, all the work that we did, all the ministries that we carried out, all the activities that we did are worth nothing. Nothing. The seventh day of creation was the most important one of all.

As the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them, and on the seventh day God ended his work that he had made. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, set it apart, because that in it he had rested from all his work that God created and had made.

So therefore the most important thing was the Sabbath, right? The way people interpret this. The seventh day was the day of rest. That's the Sabbath.

And that's the most important thing God has set aside, the Sabbath. People are getting revelation today that the Sabbath still applies. And believers should be still keeping the Sabbath because that's the most important thing.

It's such a revelation from God. I missed the point of what the seventh day is about. You see, God created his highest creation man on the sixth day.

Tell me what Adam did on his first day. You see, the seventh day of God's creation was Adam's first day in this world. Adam started out working really hard.

He started out doing nothing. He started out resting in what God had done. He started out moving into all this wonderful creation that God had made for him.

He didn't have to do a thing except enjoy it and take care of it. See, God is the author of creation. We cannot add one thing to it.

When you start your spiritual life you don't start trying to go through and say, OK Lord, this animal here with this weird horn, I think you could have done that better. This scorpion thing with his tail. Let's change that.

God only allowed Adam to name them. He didn't allow them to change them. We cannot add to God's creation.

I don't think you can start your spiritual life by saying, OK, God got me here from now on I'm going to improve on it. I'm going to add to what God did. It's a finished work.

You start your spiritual life resting in the finished work that was already done on Calvary by the Lord Jesus. You don't need to help him. You don't need to fix anything.

Jesus did a perfect work to enter into the fullness of it. That's why God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it and set it apart and said, this is the most important day of your life. Why? So that we could not go to work? You make these rules about how far you can walk on the Sabbath day and that's a sin if you walk too far.

Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man. Not man for the Sabbath. God made the Sabbath as a blessing to us.

And since we're allegorizing, Sabbath is an allegory too. It's a spiritual experience that we need to learn to enter into. And you're not going to enter into that until you've reached that maturity.

That's why maturity is so important. When you've come to the place where you know that you can't do anything. Where you know what is accomplished.

Where you stand in that finished work in full assurance and you become just like him. You stand in that rest. You walk in that rest.

You start your spiritual life. Every believer is a new creation in Christ. What stage of creation are you at? What should you be aiming for next? Well, you have lots of choices there.

But the ultimate goal is to become like Jesus. There's no other way we can please him. To become like him.

The way to do that is to stop trying to do it ourselves. Just acknowledge him as the author of creation. He spoke into our darkness.

Produced the light. He brought about all those separations. He created all of these things for us in our spiritual life.

And he alone can bring us to that place of maturity until we look like Jesus. It started with him. It ends with him.

Only part we have to play is to walk in the work that he's already done. These are the marvels of a new creation. Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you for your word, Lord. I ask that we will find a resting place. That we will challenge, convict, motivate, instruct, teach.

Whatever you want to do with it, it's in your hands because you're the creator. And I've given it forth and I offer it to you now, Holy Spirit. I ask you to take it and apply it to the earth.

Your word and let it bring forth freedom, I ask. In Jesus' name.

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