In the Beginning, God...

In the Beginning

John 1:1–5 NASB 2020

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.

John 1:9–14 NASB 2020

This was the true Light that, coming into the world, enlightens every person. He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

These are the words that open the Gospel of John. These are the words that tell us what kind of story it is that we are going to hear. These are the words of introduction to the biography of the most important person who ever lived, Jesus Christ.

But notice that I just used the word story. Probably, like me, when you were a child you were told many stories, right? You might have been told about the Little Engine That Could. Our you might have learned about Pooh, Tigger, and Christopher Robin. Maybe you learned even older stories.

But then, if you were raised in church, you also heard other stories too. You might have heard about Daniel and his three friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Or maybe you learned about Jonah and the Whale. Perhaps Noah and the Ark, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, or Jesus and Zaccheus the wee little man?

What Is a Story?

And that brings us into sort of a dilemma doesn’t it? On the one hand, with the first set of stories, stories like Winnie the Pooh and the Little Engine That Could we are firmly in the realm of fiction, aren’t we? These are stories that have been made up of whole cloth. These things never happened. We all know that bears don’t talk and tigers don’t talk. We all know that people can’t have full conversations with lovable little forest creatures. But we persist in telling these stories to children, right?

But on the other hand we have the stories we find in the Bible. Many people who are skeptical of religion will immediately tell you that the stories you find in Scripture are simply of the same type that are to be found in the pages of a fiction novel. That most of these people you read about in the Bible never existed, and if they existed they simply didn’t do the things they are said to have done. People can’t part the water with a raised staff. People can’t make axe heads float or miraculously multiply food and drink. And most certainly, once you’re dead, you’re dead—there is no such thing as resurrection

The Response of Faith

But a person of faith will tell you something different. That the stories we find in the Bible are part of something different. That the Bible tells us what actually happened in a particular time and place. Something that was so important to a particular people at a particular time that it was passed down from generation to generation until it was finally committed to this library we now know as the Bible.

And so, we need to discuss this word “story” that I’ve been using rather loosely. And I want to make one important claim that will set the foundation for all that follows now and for the next several weeks. Friends, we all inhabit a story—we all live into some sort of narrative, a way of telling and making sense of the world.

Sociologists and philosophers call this kind of story a “metanarrative” which literally means “big story.” A metanarrative is the way you and I—and all people—make sense of the world. Another name for this kind of overarching story is “worldview.” A worldview is something like a pair of glasses. Normally, when I wear my glasses I barely even notice them. But they help me see and process all of the visual information that I encounter in daily life. A worldview is similar. We barely notice it—until something comes along to challenge it—to proverbially knock the glasses off of our face. Then we realize that our perspective might not be the only one in which to view the world.

Worldview and Identity

Have you ever wondered why it is that people disagree so much. Have you ever looked at someone from another political persuasion or religion and stared in disbelief at how crazy it is to think like that or believe what we perceive as a bunch of nonsense? If we’re honest, this happens all the time, right?

To someone who was raised on a scientific view of the world in which all things happen simply because of the laws of physics and rationality, most religious claims of a deity working in and through the world seem ludicrous. And on the opposite side, to those raised in a more supernatural worldview, the seemingly cold and calculating world of a strictly materialist worldview is equally problematic. If we’re all here by some cosmic accident of particles striking other particles, then where did the particles come from?

Folks, the way we view the world is largely influenced by how we were raised, how we view ourselves, and what we do. Our worldview is shaped in part by geography, where we were raised, by nurture, by what our parents and other significant adults imparted to us, and also by what we practice. Habits like prayer and scripture reading help build a Christian view of the world. We can become more Christian by doing things that Christians do. Worldview and identity are linked together by the practices that we perform.

God’s Great Drama

So, if we’ve agreed now that we all live in a storied world—we all tell ourselves stories to make sense of the world. And if we have agreed that Christian story is the story that most makes sense of the world to us, then what is that story? What is the story that the Bible is trying to tell us?

Well, here we run into a problem don’t we? The Bible, as many of us, including myself, will readily admit can be something of a perplexing book, can’t it? Just look at it. The first thing to acknowledge is that it isn’t really just one book, right? No, it’s sixty-six individual books written over thousands of years by various authors in various places.

And it is a disparate book. There are all sorts of types of literature in the Bible. There are stories, there are laws, genealogies, poetry, biography, letters, prophecy, and more. How is it possible then that such a diverse book—and a large one, coming in at more than eight hundred thousand words—is going to tell a single story?

Well, that’s the amazing thing about the Bible. Given it’s diversity, there is a surprising uniting quality to the Bible. It is centered on one critical character—namely the God of the Universe—and that God’s interaction with what God created. So in that sense, in the sense of the main character of the Bible then, we can say that the Bible is simply the story of God.

But like a good drama, like any good story, true or fictional, there are other characters, supporting characters, antagonists and protagonists that are part of the story as well.

And like a good play, the story of God can be divided up into several acts. These acts are going to serve as the backbone of this sermon series and can be a useful tool in your own learning and understanding of the Bible and its great story.

These main acts are as follows: Creation, Fall, Israel, Jesus and the Church, and Consummation. Let me say that again: Creation, Fall, Israel, Jesus and the Church, and Consummation. Over the next five weeks, including today we’re going to take snapshots of each of these main acts of the story of God and God’s people and see if we can place ourselves in the story.

In the Beginning, God...

Every story has to start somewhere right? If you look at some of the greatest stories in the world, things like the Iliad and the Odyssey or Virgil’s Aeneid, you’ll often find that they don’t quite start at the very beginning of things but rather somewhere in the middle. The action is already going for a bit and there is some backstory to be found out later.

Many people think that the Bible is not like this. After all, doesn’t the Bible say, “In the beginning, God?...” Yes, it does—at least in English. In Hebrew, the Bible opens like this, “Bereshit bara Elohim hashamayim va haaretz.” And there is some difficulty in translating that.

The most literal translation is this, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth.” So, in other words, the Bible doesn’t give us a time frame whether thousands of years or billions of years, but rather tells us that when God began to create that God did this and that.

And what did God create—well, God created the physical universe that we see. Trillions of stars, billions of Galaxies, countless planets. The creation is a truly cosmic event. The Bible tells us that at the Big Bang, the Banger was God. Science can tell us how the world came to be but it can’t tell us who made it come to be or why, those questions fall into the realm of philosophy and theology.

But notice what happens almost immediately. The story goes from heavens and earth to just the earth. The story instantly jumps from the grand creation of all that exists to just this one planet. From macro to micro in just a millisecond.

So, many people are curious about when the angels were made. What are the origins of Satan and demons. When did they fall and rebel. It seems, at least from what meagre glimpses we get in the Bible, that all of this happened before the creation itself. To me, at least, that tells me that there is far more to the universe than just the physical world that we can describe, other dimensions, other planes of existence in which spiritual realities are not only real but can impact this one, as we’ll find out next week.

So, the Bible is a very this-worldly book. It tells of the creation of this world, this universe, and all that is in it. And the key point of this act of the story, the Creation, is that God is the Creator. The Bible is at great pains to communicate to Israel and then to us that what we see all around us is not the product of random chance or some capricious deity but rather the loving and caring work of a God who brings order out of chaos.

Chaos and Order

Notice the words of the opening of Genesis 1. When God began to create the world was formless and void. This little detail is very important. When God began to create, the raw materials that God put into the world were all in a state of chaos. But then, over the next six days, God takes that chaotic mess of water and swirling matter and places it neatly into ordered wonder.

Why is this so important? Well, to answer that we need to know a little about Israel’s neighbors, right? All stories have an intended audience. And the Bible, at least the Old Testament was for Israel. And Israel’s neighbors had their own version of creation stories in which their gods featured prominently. Most of these creation stories viewed the creation of human beings as being solely to serve as slaves to the gods, to cook their meals, harvest their grain and to give them worship. And almost all of the ancient near eastern creation stories have some sort of cosmic battle between gods and goddesses in which some sort of cosmic chaos monster is slain.Well, in God’s universe, God has no rivals and the chaos is simply disorder. This told Israel that there was one God, the Creator, and that God alone was worthy of worship.

Steward, not Slave

And notice also the position of human beings in the creation story. In the Babylonian myths and in Gilgamesh, some of other ancient creation stories from cultures around Israel, the creation of human beings was simply a means by which the gods were served. These gods were needy and couldn’t provide for themselves, so they took clay and made some slaves.

But our God took clay and made something different. God instead made stewards. That’s what it means to be created in God’s image. To be in the image of God is not so much a state of being as a state of doing. Notice that God gave us a mandate as humans: be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and have dominion over it.

God gave us humans not to be slaves but to be kings and queens of the earth. We are to rule the earth and all that is in it. But, and this is an important caveat. We are not absolute rulers, we rule the world ON BEHALF of God. Like a king who in turn serves and emperor, we are kings and queens that serve the Great Emperor of all that exists.

What we’ve done with Rule

But humans have a hard time obeying limits and boundaries, as we’ll see next week. So instead of exercising a kind and loving dominion of the world we have instead exercised a tyrannical domination of the natural environment. Instead of caring for animals in a loving way we have turned them in to things to be hunted simply to mount on our walls—I’m not talking about hunting for food but for trophy hunting.

And instead of taking care of the environment and living sustainably we exploit the environment leaving the next generation to clean up what we’ve messed up.

And then we need to talk about how we live with others. We are to live as equals on earth. We are all co-rulers of this wonderful world and yet we have divided this world along lines of race, and class, and gender, and political persuasion, and any other thing we can use to make ourselves stand apart from our fellow image bearers.

The End of the Story

But at the end of the story, to give you a sneak preview of where we are going, it all gets set back to the way it is supposed to be. No longer will humans dominate the planet but inhabit it alongside their fellow image bearers in peace and harmony. Nature will be relieved of its exploitation and restored to its natural beauty. And all vestiges of sin will be wiped away in an instant.

But until then fellow image bearers, we have a job to do. A job that the Bible clearly paints for us in its grand story. I invite you over the next few weeks to take notes, pay attention, and by the end I hope you will find your own place in God’s Great Story and how God wants you to play your part. It takes all of us. Amen.