Sermons - Cornerstone Christian Fellowship

The Beginning and the End - Part Eleven

Jan 05, 2025 by: John Herbert | Series: The Beginning and the End

Audio Study Notes PDF

Refresh
A Recap from the Sermon

Ge 1:6 Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”

Today we will begin to look at Genesis day Two.

The full text of this message can be found by clicking the PDF button.

Sunday January 5th 2025 
The Beginning and the End
Part Eleven

Ge 1:3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

We have seen many times now that Day 1 in Genesis provides a word picture for what happened to us as we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, with the light shining in the darkness pointing to our spirit man being made alive to the things of God, and the darkness divided from the light picturing our old man and his inseparable link to the god of this world and the darkness associated with his sin.

And through that recorded at the beginning of Genesis, we can understand that the events of that first day were just the beginning of a process of restoration that saw the creation of a Man and a Woman on the Sixth Day, to rule together in the Seventh Day. Consequently, if we follow the type, the restoration of the material creation, to the antitype, the restoration of fallen man, then we can know that our spirit salvation constitutes the beginning of a process of restoration for us, that when completed, will allow us, at the end of six-thousand years of God’s work, to rule in the Seventh Day with the Lord Jesus Christ. And as Day 1 in Genesis, which parallels our spirit salvation, is the starting point, then in the days of work that follow in Genesis we will find spiritual truth concerning our own process beyond our spirit salvation, leading to the salvation of our soul and the redemption of our body – Ro 8:23 Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. 24 For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

The hope that we eagerly wait for with perseverance is the blessed hope of – Tit 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, 12 teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, 13 looking for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God [who is our] [and] Savior Jesus Christ……….

And the appearing of the glory of our great God, who is our Savior Jesus Christ, is a reference to the coming day of His Kingdom [not the resurrection/rapture] the Day of His glory, the Day of His power, the long anticipated Seventh Day. The blessed hope that draws from that recorded in Matthew Chapters 16 - 17 – Mt 16:28 Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” 17:1 Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; 2 and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. 3 And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him.

Moses and Elijah were present at this extraordinary event recorded in Matthew, just as they must be in that future Day when Christ’s glory appears, as together they are representative of the Law and the prophets, representative of all the OT Scriptures that reveal the Christ, and that have told of the coming Day of His glory, the Day of His power, from the first thirty-four verses of Genesis onwards.

And as we have seen, it is only through the new man that spiritual truth, the wisdom brought forth from above out of God, the Word of the Kingdom, can be received and understood - 1 Co 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

And we have seen that it is God alone who is both the source and the embodiment of the Word of Truth who gives light and life. And with this in mind, we can now appreciate what the psalmist wrote in – 
Ps 36:9 For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.

In the Father and in the Christ are hidden all the treasurers of wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom and knowledge brought forth from above declaring the gospel of the glory of Christ, the blessed hope, that if received and believed will provide life for the Age to come. This is the fountain of life that we see in the first half of Psalm 36:9

And that which we see in the second half of Psalm 36:9, ‘In Your light we see light’, is complimentary to that seen in the first half of the verse. To speak of God’s light inevitably takes us to this facet of His person and being – Jn 1:4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Jn 8:12 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

1 Jn 1:5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

God is light, and this will take us back to this same light spoken on Day 1 in Genesis, and to the purpose for that light, the coming Day of His glory. And through seeing and understanding this purpose for the Seventh Day, the appearing of His glory, we will continue to ‘see light’ in His light, we will continue to drink from that which is also the fountain of life for the Age.

And this, essentially, is what Paul is writing about in – 2 Co 4:3 But even if our gospel is veiled [the same gospel seen in v4], it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4 whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them [God is light and His light is His glory]. 5 For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, [Day 1 + our spirit salvation] who has shone in our hearts [a work beyond that pictured through Day 1. Being continually filled with the Spirit. In Your light we see light] to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

We must all begin with the gospel of grace that allows the light to shine in the darkness. And once this has taken place, we are to continue to see light as we receive the good news of why we have been saved, this is the gospel of the glory of Christ, the Word of Christ, the Word of the Kingdom, which is to dwell in us richly in all wisdom, the good news with which we are to be continually filled. To be continually filled with the Spirit then and seeing light in His light parallel one another.

And as we keep all of this under consideration, we will go back once again to the first Chapter of Genesis to progress beyond Day 1 – 
Ge 1:6 Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 7 Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.

Following the introduction of light and the division between the light and the darkness on Day 1, the waters that covered the earth, still raging at the time prior to the introduction of light, remained in place, covering the earth. And we can read about these raging waters that covered the earth after Satan’s rebellion, prior to the restoration, in - 2 Pe 3:5 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, 6 by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

However, on Day 2, following the introduction of light on Day 1, God divided these waters that covered the earth. There were the waters that He placed above the firmament and the waters below the firmament. There was no visible land on Day 2, just the division of the waters, above and below.

And as the division of the waters is the second action that God took within His process of restoring the material creation in anticipation of the Seventh Day, it must be seen as a continuation of that which was introduced on Day 1, the light shining from above into the darkness below, making a division between the two.

We have already established that Day 1 pictures for us our initial salvation, the salvation of our spirit. And that as a result of this salvation we have a spirit man who is alive to the things of God, who can see light in His light, being continually filled with the Spirit, drinking from the fountain of life, and an old man, the man of the flesh who has access to none of these things, who remains inseparably connected to the god of this age and its present darkness. And it is within this overall spiritual context of the division between the old man and the new, the light and the darkness, that we should place our understanding of the division of the waters on Day 2 as we look beyond the letter to that which the Spirit teaches through it.

And to begin to look at what the Spirit is teaching through the division of the waters, we can go back into Exodus, to look at an event involving the first generation of Israel to come out of Egypt - Ex 17:5 And the LORD said to Moses, “Go on before the people, and take with you some of the elders of Israel. Also take in your hand your rod with which you struck the river, and go. 6 Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.”

And as we compare Scripture with Scripture, we find commentary on these verses from Exodus in - 1 Co 10:4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.

That which the first generation of Israel to come out of Egypt drank in the wilderness was the water that came from the ‘Rock’, and they had access to this water, and had need of this water, only after they had been delivered from Egypt. And the provision of the water from the ‘Rock’, was to sustain them on their journey to the land of promise. And from 1 Corinthians 10 we can see that the literal water from Exodus is used symbolically to represent that which is Spirit, seen to come from Christ the ‘spiritual Rock’, the fountain of life that provides life for the Age - Heb 4:2 For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them;[this is not the gospel of grace but the good news that is to be proclaimed of the gospel of the glory of Christ] but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.

And as the ‘Rock’ is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh, so, we find the connection between the water and the Word, that which is Spirit, that which will be a fountain of living water, springing up into life for the age – Jn 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.

Clearly this ‘fountain of life’ had been provided to that first generation, and the efficacy of that water is without doubt as it is the Christ, but it did not produce in them the life that could have been theirs with respect to the Seventh Day because of unbelief, it was not mixed with faith in those who heard it – Heb 3:16 For who, having heard [the gospel that was preached to them, the water from the ‘Rock’], rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? 17 Now with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? [an evil heart of unbelief] 19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

In this then we can see that the water, used as a metaphor for the Word of Truth, gives life, both the written form which is alive and that made flesh in Christ who is living; life coming through the Spirit, life beyond eternal redemption, life in relation to the purpose for that redemption for those who will have faith to the saving of the soul. The life that can only come from being continually filled with the Spirit, from seeing light in His light, drawing from the fountain of life that we saw in Psalms 36:9. A fountain that rebellious Israel rejected because of unbelief – Jer 2:13 “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, And hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.

And from this verse we can clearly see that God Himself is the fountain of living waters, the One from whom the wisdom brought forth from above flows – Jas 1:5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

God is the Light who provides the light that we are to see. The Lamp to our feet and the light to our path, leading us towards the heavenly land that we have been promised as the spiritual seed of Abraham in Christ – Heb 4:4 For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; 5 and again in this place: “They shall not enter My rest.” 6 Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, 7 again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said: “Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts.” 8 For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. 9 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. 11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.

And to this we can add some more detail from - Jn 4:13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into life for the age.”

This is part of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. And we will remember that Jesus had spent two days in Samaria after leaving Judea - Jn 4:3 He left Judea and departed again to Galilee. 4 But He needed to go through Samaria. 5 So He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

The Lord’s two days in Samaria after He left Judea but before His return to Galilee, and the time when he sat by the well, being ‘about the sixth hour’, the sixth hour before the seventh hour, provide an insight into the Lord’s dealings with those other than Israel during the time covered by the two days of this dispensation, those who would make up His Church. And in the Lord’s encounter with the Samaritan woman, we can see a parallel with Abraham’s oldest servant waiting by the well of water for Rebekah – Ge 24:11 And he made his camels kneel down outside the city by a well of water at evening time, the time when women go out to draw water. 12 Then he said, “O LORD God of my master Abraham, please give me success this day, and show kindness to my master Abraham. 13 Behold, here I stand by the well of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water.

And a parallel with Moses following his rejection by his brothers – 
Ex 2:14 Then he said, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” So Moses feared and said, “Surely this thing is known!” 15 When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian; and he sat down by a well.

And it is within this word picture presented in John in conjunction with the foundational type, set in Genesis Chapter 24, with further detail from Exodus Chapter 2, that we see the Lord offering water that will become a fountain of water springing up into life for the Age.

And as we consider this fountain of life-giving water that the Lord offers to those who would come to ‘Jacob’s well’, we will look at some other verses in John that have more to say about the living water – 
Jn 7:37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” 39 But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

This last great day of the feast refers to the final day of the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles – Jn 7:1 After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not want to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him. 2 Now the Jews’ Feast of Tabernacles was at hand.

The Feast of Tabernacles we will remember is the seventh of the seven-feasts given to the nation of Israel, the feast that both points to, and will be fulfilled in, the Millennial Kingdom, the Seventh Day.

And on the final ‘great day’ of the Feast of Tabernacles, it had become a tradition by the time of the Lord’s first Advent, that the priests would come from the Temple, down to the pool of Siloam, the scene we will remember of the sixth sign recorded in John’s Gospel, a sign concerning the healing of a blind man whose sight was restored through washing with the water from this pool. And making the connection between this pool of water and its association with the feast of Tabernacles may well add another layer of understanding to this sixth sign.

Anyway, on this last ‘great day’ of the feast, the priests would go to the pool of Siloam to collect a golden pitcher of water to take back with much rejoicing to the Temple. And it was as the priests were carrying this golden pitcher of water that Jesus cried out, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. And remembering that this is the Feast of Tabernacles, pointing to the Seventh Day, and the Deity of the One making this proclamation is symbolically represented by gold, the irony of this scene will not escape us. And the words that the Lord spoke in this context we should also see in conjunction with – 
Isa 12:1 And in that day [the Seventh Day] you will say: “O LORD, I will praise You; Though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me. 2 Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; ‘For YAH, the LORD, is my strength and song; He also has become my salvation.’ ” 3 Therefore with joy you will draw water From the wells of salvation.

And also, with – Isa 55:1 “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk Without money and without price.

The pouring out of the water onto the altar in the Temple marked a time of fervent prayer by the nation asking for God’s provision of the rain that would give them an abundant harvest. And as the nation began to pray for natural rain, so the One who is a fountain of living water was offering the ‘rain’ of the Spirit, But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive, that would have provided an abundant harvest of spiritual fruit for the nation. And here we can make another connection with - Isa 55:10 “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater, 11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

Zec 13:1 “In that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness.

And within an entirely Christian context, in anticipation of the Lord’s return, look at what is recorded towards the end of the Book of the Revelation – Re 21:6 And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. 7 He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.

Re 22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life [for the Age] freely.

And within this same Christian context, we will remember the rain that often comes upon the earth from – Heb 6:7 For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; 8 but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned. 9 But, beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner.

And in these verses from Hebrews Chapter 6, we can find a parallel with the water from the Rock in Exodus Chapter 17, as the gospel of the glory of Christ has been preached to us as well as them. And just as it was in the wilderness, the efficacy of ‘the rain’ that comes from the fountain of living water is of no doubt whatsoever. However, it is how we respond to it that will determine whether it will become in us a fountain of water springing up into life for the Age, or whether we will be a broken cistern that can hold no water.

We will continue with this next time if we remain and the Lord is willing, and we have prayed.

The Beginning and the End - Part Eleven

Refresh A Recap from the Sermon

The Beginning and the End - Part Eleven

Jan 05, 2025

Speaker: John Herbert

Series: The Beginning and the End

Category: Sunday Morning

Refresh
A Recap from the Sermon