Genesis 1 - God’s Introduction of Himself

Intro

Genesis has two authors: The Holy Spirit, the God who is about to introduce Himself, and a man named Moses.

Before this book was written, God chose one family on earth: Israel, to bring about salvation to the whole earth through the messiah. These people were enslaved, but God had a purpose for them and sent a man named Moses who delivered them

Moses is told by God to write something incredible. He is told to write the beginning of all time and space as we know it.

Deuteronomy 31:9 ESV

Then Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel.

The problem is his audience: a bunch of Israelites raised to think and act Egyptian.’

When you grow up in a place, you learn to talk like that place, to act like that place, to think like that place. And you never question the way you talk, the way you act, the way you think. Because everyone else is doing it, you just assume it must be right.

But have you ever considered that maybe, everyone around you and you were wrong. What if there was something you thought was true of reality, of good and evil, and of God, that you have accepted as true even though it is false. All because you didn’t know any better.

The Israelites grew up Egyptian. They talked Egyptian, they acted Egyptian, they thought Egyptian. And now, God has delivered them, he has drawn them out of Egypt.

The Israelites had a tendency to have a wrong view of God by incorporating things of their own culture into their view of God.

The God Ra was the Sun, so when we look at the Sun that is God. They force their view of the Sun onto God instead of framing a view of God onto the Sun.

There were many God’s in Egyptian religion, all with distinct will’s and purposes. God is one of many gods out there, he just happens to be our god. Feel free to worship any of them you want, there are many ways to heaven and let’s be honest we have no way of knowing ours is the true God.

Consider this: Moses is dealing with an audience that just doesn’t know any better. They are in desperate need of an entire worldview reset. So what does God do through Him? Communicates Himself clearly, and simply.

There are many theories out there that Genesis 1 is poetry, that it has nothing to do with the actual history of how God made the world. It’s just teaching a lesson.

While there are arguments I could share from Hebrew grammar of why I don’t believe that is the case, I have a bigger appeal to you here:

God did not make His word like some code to be cracked. He did not make it unnecessarily mysterious. He certainly knew that those Israelites. He has accommodated His word and made it clear.

Deuteronomy 6:6–7 ESV

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

“Teach these words to your children.” Have you ever served in children’s ministry? You cannot talk to a child with all the depth of knowledge you possess. It will be too much for them to comprehend.

Does that mean God holds back the full force of his truth? Yes, he gives us a small sliver. But here is what you need to believe: that small sliver is literal, it is trustworthy, and it is meant to be understood.

Deuteronomy 29:29 ESV

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

God does teach us lessons about Himself through Bible stories by the way, I just believe that a God who makes the universe is also powerful enough to write history like a story and have those stories also teach about himself.

The point is this: what God is going to tell here to the Israelites is a literal and trustworthy account of how creation was made because he knew they needed it accommodated.

So would you consider this: let’s come to this text humbly and prepare to meet God, willing to let go what the culture says about who He is.

God wants you to be sure about who He is. Come and meet Him.

Outline - The First Characteristics God Wants You to Know About Him

1. He is the creator of all things (vv. 1-2)

If you believe verse 1, you should have no problem believing the whole rest of the Bible.

Verse 1

The first thing that God wants you to know is that he is the one who created all things.

He doesn’t choose to share he is love first, that he is holy, that he is full of wrath. He begins by saying he is creator.

Heavens and the Earth = Physical and the spiritual (Col 1)

He created everything you can see and everything you can’t.

Why is this important: because God is telling Israel how to start viewing the world.

Because God is eternal and everything was made from Him, everything is defined by how it relates to God. The world preaches a message about you decide what your life means, you decide who you are. But this is painting a fundamentally different worldview. One that says that what something is is decided by it’s creator.

The purpose of the sun is defined by it’s relationship to it’s creator because God made it and decided it’s purpose.

The purpose of the ocean is defined by it’s relationship to it’s creator because God made it and decided it’s purpose.

The purpose of the seagull is defined by it’s relationship to it’s creator because God made it and decided it’s purpose.

The purpose of you is defined by your relationship to your creator because God made you and decided your purpose.

What gives you meaning and purpose is not the decisions you make with your life, but the decisions God makes about you.

Israel viewed that there are several God’s and each had control over one thing in creation. Ra had the sun, Set had chaos, Neper is the God of grain. Our God does not just have control over those things, those things were made by Him with purpose.

God is not understood by looking at the things around God. The other things are understood by looking at God first and interpreting creation in light of the creator.

So many doubt God and doubt the Bible because they reverse these two things. They hold science (the observations of creation, us, about creation) above the creator. Observe and submit to the creator and his word and then go and observe and study his creation in light of that.

Verse 2

“The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.”

Literally in Hebrew is a barren emptiness. That means there is no earth. Some people think God found a bunch of chaotic space and reorganized it into creation like greek mythology kinda tells, but that’s not true. There is simply nothing. God made creation by his word.

However, there is something interesting: waters, oceans, the deep.

Why and how does this exist? We are not sure, but we know that only God is the only one who existed eternally so at somepoint the waters were created by Him. But water is an unstable chaotic. uncontrolled substance.

The sea is often used as an illustration of chaos that cannot be tamed. We need water to survive yet the great bodies of water overwhelm and can kill us.

The spirit of God hovers over these waters. They bow and bend to His control. Even chaos, the things that seem to be out of our control, are within God’s control.

2. He is a creator of order (vv. 3-25)

One at a time Moses recounts the Days of creation.

However, things take a strange order to the manner in which he does it. God could have said one word, and all creation could have formed in a single moment. Ready to go, functioning, and done.

But he CHOSE not to do that.

Instead, he built his creation in an order of sequence. Like when you create a lego set, you slowly add piece by piece until the picture is complete.

A couple of things to notice:

Each day shows God does this by his word.

Each day shows that God named the things of creation.

Each day God calls his creation good.

Each day passes with morning and evening, showing sequence and time.

The days of creation at first appear strange, unrelated, and difficult to believe.

How can there be morning and evening if there is no sun yet on day one?

How can land and vegetation exist without the planetary bodies sustaining earth’s atmosphere?

This is the moment people struggle to believe how this could be a true narrative and begin to look for other explanations, other options outside the Bible to solve the issue of creation.

But I want you to notice something: this is done this way very much on purpose. It is done to teach something about God.

The first three days parallel the next three.

Day 1 and 4 deal with light and darkness.

Days 2 and 5 deal with the wind and water

Day 3 and 6 deal with the land and life.

The first three days God forms his creation, the next three days God fills his creation.

He is a God that does everything with incredible wisdom. With beautiful knowledge and endless understanding.

How did creation hold together in days 1-3 before the planets were there?

That’s not hard for me to believe. Scientists don’t know how the space between atoms hold together today. God sustains the universe by his hand today, he certainly was doing the same back then.

God exercised wisdom in his creation of the world. Perfect and flawless decision making executed with divine precision eternal foreknowledge of the past, present, and future of this creation.

Proverbs 8:22–34 ESV

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. “And now, O sons, listen to me: blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.

What’s the point of this?

Israel believed that creation kinda ran in a chaotic out of control manner. The role of Pharaoh or the Egyptian gods was to try and tame the crazy creation and bring a peace (or ma’at) to it . Those gods were equal with creation, they were even composed of creation.

Notice in verse 14 - God says let there be “lights.” There are words for the sun and moon in hebrew (shemesh, and yareah), but instead this uses the word “light” or literally “luminary” (maor).

The Israelites though that the sun and the moon were gods. God uses this word to help them unlearn something wrong, and relearn it right. God is not his creation, his creation is not something he struggled to tame. That sun and moon have a purpose and they were put there at the perfect time and place in the perfect plan of God as just some lights. Some balls of gas in space.

Moses is helping the Israelites take their eyes off of the confusing creation and placing them on the God of order.

But God is telling us that the universe wasn’t made to be chaotic. Rather it’s a perfectly built masterpiece. Yes, it has fallen into sin. It is imperfect, it has evil and lawlessness now, but that is not of God even if it used by God.

The way God does everything is an outflow of His character. God made the creation in six days because that’s who he is, a God who plans and organizes and maintains.

1 Corinthians 14:33 ESV

For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints,

3. He is a creator of purpose (vv. 26-30)

God did not just make his creation “because.”

The most common answer I hear kids tell me when I ask why they do something is “I don’t know.”

God knew exactly why he made creation and here that purpose becomes more clear.

God makes something he calls an “image bearer.” Something that will rule and take care of this creation under his behalf. A knight of the king who stewards the land on his behalf. An ambassador to the company.

We learn God has a plural nature here. Your first glimpse into the trinity is given, that God is one person yet also somehow three. And and these three persons have existed in eternal companionship and unity with one another.

So he designs these image bearers with a similar companionship: male and female. Both necessary and important to this mission that God has for his creation.

He gives them a command: Take care of the world on my behalf and I will take care of you in that world.

What do we learn?

God wants the animals, the ends of creation, and ultimately the image bearers and their children to delight in Him and glorify Him.

I mentioned God is three persons? Well these three persons made creation out of an act of love for one another. Let’s make some image bearers who will love you and we will love them and that love will grow to the ends of the earth.

It was a creation with a mission, a goal it is spiraling towards.

Yes, it is a mission that we learn we put in danger, but that mission is the same and God will bring himself glory by completing that mission for us.

You do not exist as an accident, an afterthought, a spontaneous generation, and life that means nothing. You are one of these image bearers with an invitation to be loved by God and to serve him across his creation.

He is a creator of purpose. He created you. You have purpose.

4. He is a creator of good (v. 31)

Knowing that God creates everything and control’s everything is a terrifying truth. Until you realize that he is also good.

When God first made creation, his intention was good. It came from God as a reflection from God and because God is good his creation is good.

But why was this final time it called “very good”?

People always pointed that out to me but I wish people explained it more because the truth is beautiful

Why was it good? Because God began a process. That process took time, it looked messy, it seemed to not make sense, but now it is complete.

Day 1 was great, God made light. But the end of Day 6 is more beautiful because you can see how that light fits as a piece into his creation.

Me and my wife have a couple of brickheads in our house. My Lord of the Rings Aragorn set is my favorite. When building a lego set, sometimes you see steps that don’t make sense. You put a few pieces together but the steps don’t seem to make sense until the end. When you make Aragorn’s arms, that’s cool. Look an arm! But it isn’t as cool until it all fits together.

This is VERY good because it glorifies God in a satisfying catharsis of his plan. Like an epic payoff in a story, the final puzzle peace was placed on his creation and the beauty of this complete peace brought glory to God.

Understand that life works the same way. God’s choices for how creation is going might not make sense to you. God’s choices for how your life is going might not seem to make sense to you.

But who are you to say you know better than God?

He is choices are good, and his results are VERY good.

Conclusion

There are so many things God “could have done.”

God could have stopped Jesus from dying on the cross.

God could have come down already and reclaimed creation.

God could have sent the messiah as soon as Adam and Eve sinned.

God could have planned for the fall to never happen.

God could have made the whole universe in one big bang.

God could have not used the waters to make creation in six days.

Instead, God made a creation that was mature and moving towards something.

The entire book of Genesis exists to show that everything is part of God’s plan. Light and darkness seperated doesn’t seem to make much sense until day 4. Empty waters don’t make sense until they are filled in Day 5. Empty land doesn’t make sense until day 6. Jospeh’s slavery doesn’t make sense until his brothers arrive in Egypt. David’s time on the run from Saul doesn’t make sense until you realize when he is king that it prepared him. The fall of humanity doesn’t make sense until the savior arrives. My family’s move to Wales didn’t make sense to me until my heart turned at 18. The evil and chaos God allows in your life won’t make sense until afterwards.

Application: Submit to God, Trusting his character and his purpose for His own creation.

This is why God asks you to fully surrender, to fully cast yourself into his arms, to obey and trust Him because he is the only being in this universe that knows the story of the universe and how your story fits into it.

Trust in the character of God who went to the cross and died with a purpose for you, his own creation.

This is what those Israelites needed to know as they wandered the wilderness wondering why God let this happen: because it will be used.