Genesis 1 - Loop

Welcome

Hey everyone, welcome to Voyage Chicago SWS.

If we haven’t met yet, my name is DP – short for David Park.

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The opening lines of some work of literature are often significant.

Here are a couple of my favorites…

Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Couple more for fun

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It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

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1984 (George Orwell)

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There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

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The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - CS Lewis from the Narnia Chronicles

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The opening lines establish the voice. It introduces main characters. They foreshadow major themes and motifs. It sets up the rest of the story …

Today we’re going to be studying the opening lines of all of Scripture. In fact this Fall, we’ll be studying the entire book of Genesis—the first book of the Bible. It’s a hugely important book—widely considered to contain

And today we’ll be looking at Genesis 1, the opening lines of the entire story of Scripture.

As the opening chapter of the Bible, it contains rich insights and themes that reverberate throughout the rest of Scripture and help us to understand the Bible as a whole.

Poetic Features of Genesis

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But unfortunately, Genesis 1 is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and one of the most mischaracterized passages in the entire Bible.

Think the word “Genesis” elicits thoughts of the debates around science and faith.

Did God create the world in 6 days?

A worldwide flood?

What about evolution … or even better, what about the dinosaurs?

And the net effect is that Bible-believing people are made to feel embarrassed about Genesis. And so all the rich lessons of Genesis are sadly lost on people.

To properly understand anything we read, we must understand the genre and the context.

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For instance, let’s say you read the sentence: “eagles crush bears.”

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If you read that in a science textbook, that would be very surprising information indeed.

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But if you read it on ESPN.com, then the author clearly meant something different.

The Bible is a collection of many different books written in different contexts in different styles and genres: historical narrative, wisdom literature, letters, poems.

And the key to reading well is to understand which genre I’m reading.

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So what about for Genesis? Well to get a feel for the chapter, let’s read the first 13 verses.

TEXT Genesis 1:1-13

GROUP 1 (e.g. Freshmen): “Assessment statements”, IOW all the sentences that say: God saw that ___ was good.

GROUP 2 (e.g. Sophomores and up): Separation and gathering statements: all the sentences that say “God separated ____ from _____”

GROUP 3 (e.g. POST GRADS): Naming statements: God called …

GROUP 4:

EVERYONE Time markers: there was evening and morning …

EVERYONE: “And it was so”

I’ll read everything else

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

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6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

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11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

DISQ: Why don’t you try to find all the repetition, parts that seem to have a rhythm to it

What do you notice about the genre of the text?

There’s a very clear parallel structure.

There’s repetition.

A certain cadence and rhythm that’s very intentional.

And scholars have noted that these very features: parallelism, structure, and patterns are some of the primary features of Hebrew poetry.

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Miller & Soden, Pastor and Theologians say this …

understanding Genesis 1 in its original language and setting leads us to conclude that it is a broadly figurative presentation of literal truths; it is highly stylized and highly selective. It does not report history as a journalist might

Genesis 1 doesn’t try to pass itself off as a lab report; if it did, maybe it would have read something like this T-shirt

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If that’s the case, it would be a mistake to read Genesis 1 as if it were a lab manual.

Genesis 1 isn’t trying to explain HOW the world was created. But is rather concerned with the WHO and the WHY. Who’s God? What is man? Why did God create?

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Or as Galileo said, quoting his good friend who was a Cardinal in the Catholic Church: “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

Practically it means that the first pages of Scripture, so hotly debated, don’t necessarily have to be read in the strictest literal way, even if we think there are literal, hard truths behind it.

Also, this isn’t a modern re-interpretation of the Bible. This is a view that’s recorded as early as the 4th century. Here’s what St. Augustine, one of the great early church Father wrote in his commentary on the book of Genesis

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[The days of creation are] not to be taken in the sense of our day, which we reckon by the course of the sun; but it must have another meaning, applicable to the three days mentioned before the creation of the heavenly bodies

Augustine is saying, we can’t think of the “DAYS” being our “literal days” like the ones we define by the sun … it’s got to have another meaning … and he’s saying it’s gotta be the case, because in the first three days, the SUN wasn’t even created yet. So how can you define days literally? If you were to take this passage literally?

Now, the fact that Genesis 1 is a poem that we don’t read literally… doesn’t mean that there are NO truths that the passage communicates.

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e.g. Take “O Captain, My Captain”– famous poem by Walt Whitman after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The literal words are about a sea captain. Falling dead on the deck of a ship.

And yet there are many truths, historical truths, relational truths, contained in that poem, about Lincoln’s leadership, about the grief of losing their leader who had led them to the end of successful voyage.

So a non-literal reading of a text doesn’t mean a non-truthful reading of a text.

So while understanding that the genre of Genesis 1 means that the author is speaking of this primordial history in a nonliteral and if I can use this word “imprecise” fashion … there is still many truths about God, about the who and the why of Creation.

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Let’s start with the very first verse.

Genesis 1:1 ESV

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Only God has ever truly created

IN THE BEGINNING, GOD… in the first four words we are introduced to the main character of the story.

And from its very opening line, the Bible is unapologetic in asserting that history, that life itself, begins with God.

That God is the main character, the protagonist, and the central focus of history.

And what did this protagonist do? He created the heavens and the earth

“Heavens and the earth” – it’s a Hebrew idiom that means EVERYTHING.

At one point nothing existed. Space, time, history. Nonexistent. Absolute nothing.

Then in a moment, everything came into existence.

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What theologians have called creatio ex nihilo. Creation out of nothing.

Think about it. God is the only one who has ever TRULY CREATED anything.

I heard a story once:

God was approached by a scientist who said, “Listen God, we’ve decided we don’t need you anymore. These days we can clone people, transplant organs and do all sorts of things that used to be considered miraculous.”

God replied, “Don’t need me? How about we put your theory to the test. Why don’t we have a competition to see who can make a male human being the fastest.”

The scientist agrees, so God says that they should do it like He did in the good old days when he created Adam out of the dust of the earth.

Scientist says “fine” as he bends down to scoop up a handful of dirt.

But God stops him. “Whoa whoa whoa. Not so fast. Go get your own dirt.”

Or as Carl Sagan once said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

Yes, mankind engages in “creative” endeavors. Engineers design buildings. Artists bring forth paintings. Authors put words on paper. But in any human creative endeavor, we take something that already exists and transform it into something else.

But God is the only one who has ever TRULY created.

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Most of us grew up under the Big Bang consensus in science. Before that, generations of scientists believed the universe was all that there ever was, that it existed eternally in the past.

And in fact, the label “creationism” was first applied to the Big Bang theory when it came on the scene in the 1920s, and the name Big Bang itself was a derogatory label … like “HAHA you think all matter and energy and space just popped out of a Big Bang?”

… until several scientists discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation and won the Nobel Prize for it.

So the universe came from the Big Bang. 

But something must have caused the Big Bang, because we all recognize that things don’t just pop into existence without a cause. And, whatever made the universe must have been outside of space and time itself, because space and time originated along with the rest of the physical universe. 

So it turns out that what science can tell us about the universe coheres with what Genesis declares:

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1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Whatever caused the Big Bang had to be non-physical, infinitely powerful and, I would suggest, personal. And that's what we get in Genesis. We have a personal God, who speaks creation into being, who calls things into being and names them.

I like what Werner Heisenberg (of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) says.

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“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” Werner Heisenberg

So what else can we learn from this text?

Desacralization of Creation

Let’s read another chunk of the text. So we’re in day 4 now.

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Genesis 1:14–19 ESV

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

St. Augustine pointed this out earlier in his quote, but there's no sun or moon until the 4th day. So how could we possibly define “days” as the days we know today before the Sun was created.

What’s being communicated here is a theological truth.

In addition to telling us who God IS, it's telling us who God ISN’T.

Who is God? The one who created.

Who is NOT God? The sun and the moon.

Why is this relevant? Because for most of human history, the #1 god was the sun and the #2 god was the moon.

It was all about the harvest, and since all the energy comes from the sun, it was deified, and people worshiped the sun and the moon.

Genesis is telling us: the sun and the moon are just lamps. God said, let's hang up some lamps for them. Here's a big lamp for the day, so you can see, and here's your nightlight.

Genesis 1 desacralized physical creation.

Creation isn't a she, isn't Gaia, Mother Earth. Creation isn’t someone to be worshiped. No, Creation is an object, it’s just stuff. It’s GOOD. But it’s not GOD.

This is radically different from other creation myths, where the physical universe is always assumed already, and then some gods fight, one of them cuts off the arm of the other and the blood and guts turn into mountains or islands, almost always very violent. 

But Genesis says, “Uh, no. GOD created.”

It’s a stark difference and there's a theological message there against worshiping any part of creation.

And it’s not just a message for ancients. Modern people don’t worship the sun and moon any more. But they do worship created things. People all around sacrificing the best they have in pursuit of money, career, literal stuff, the latest gadgets, latest clothing, houses … allowing the need to acquire these things dictate their lives …

God says that’s all stuff. It’s good but it’s not God. There is only one who ought to be worshiped. Only one who deserves our utmost devotion. And that’s the one who created …

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Genesis 1:20–25 (ESV)

20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

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24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Creation is good

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One pattern we see throughout Genesis 1 is the repeated mention that “God saw that it was good.”

See it first in verse 3, but then it repeats throughout the chapter. Six times God speaks something into existence, and then he saw that it was good.

So what, exactly, does God declare “good”?

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Well it’s all the stuff (very technical term) that God created.

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Well, one of the interesting words in the creation is the word “SWARM” in v. 20. And then fill, be fruitful. Fill the earth, multiply. These words occur about two to three times each.

So what does this mean? Separated and swarm. In the NIV, the same word is translated: teeming.

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ILLUST: Do you know how many different species of beetles are in one tree in a typical Amazon forest? I have no idea either. But according to Google at least once they 700 species of beetles, on a single tree!

ILLUST: Biomass of earthworms in world is 440,924,524,369 (440 billion lbs), which is 3.3x the biomass of all the humans on earth

How many of you like swarming, teeming creation? How many of you find that gross? Let's say, you pick up your shoe and it's crawling, it's swarming with something. Like you would drop it. You wouldn't go: Oh, wow! It's so nice. So much creation here. I see that it is good. Multiply.

God finds it good. God finds variety awesome.

Swarming creation. God likes multitude. God likes variety. God likes plenty.

Turns out God’s creative activity encompasses not only the vastness and magnitude of the cosmos, but also the incredible detail and diversity of all the life he placed into it.

God could have created the world in monochrome and filled it with a bunch of cacti. But instead, he made THIS world.

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He created turtles, pandas, beluga whales, eagles, and axolotl’s. Full of colors, vibrancy, and diversity.

(Random but doesn’t Audrey look like an axolotl)

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But it’s not just the animals. He created physics and math; language and linguistics. Beauty and creativity. He created eating and he made it taste good. He created play and he made it fun. He created sex and he made it feel good! All of it — HIS idea.

And he called it good.

And if you think about it, this description of God challenges a common misconception about God. Because sometimes we think of God as anti-fun and anti-life.

That God is simply interested in us depriving ourselves of good thing, which is where asceticism comes from, or that God is into things that make us miserable.

But that’s not the God of Genesis. The God of Genesis created all things. And he declares it good.

And if creation tells us something about the creator, then we begin to see that the God of Genesis is not a dull, boring God. He’s one who delights in creativity, enjoyment, and beauty.

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He’s the kind of God who would make something like koalas … just cause it’s hilarious.

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Could it be that our picture of God is all wrong? That yes, he is the Creator, he is the cosmic authority over the universe, but that doesn’t mean that he’s a killjoy.

And I think it’s these deeply rooted misconceptions of God that make it difficult for us to trust him. That make us want nothing to do with him. Cause yeah, if God is this grumpy cop floating in the clouds who’s just yelling at anyone who wants to have a good time, then I’m not sure I could trust Him.

But what if we understood God as Genesis 1 portrays him. As someone who is FOR LIFE and FOR FLOURISHING. Then maybe it wouldn’t be such a scary thing when God asks us to trust him in various areas of our life. Maybe we’d even be interested in what God had to say about how to flourish.

Framework View

So how do we flourish? How do we go from verse 2

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Genesis 1:2 (ESV)

2 The earth was without form and void

To verse 28? To a world that’s teeming, swarming with Creation. To God blessing us with a fruitful life.

I’ve broken out what God does on each day of the week here. And if you look at it this way, then you’ll notice that there’s a clear pattern to how the 6 days are organized.

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In the first three days, God separates. He separates the light and darkness. Separates waters from the sky, and the land from the water. And by separating, he creates several spaces that are distinct from one another.

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And then on the fourth, fifth, and sixth days, he fills those spaces he created.

He places the sun in the light. The moon in the darkness.

Sea creatures for the waters. Birds for the sky.

Then land creatures and eventually man, for the land.

Another way to put this is that God establishes boundaries. And within God’s boundaries, life has a chance to flourish.

Boundaries Create Richness

But boundaries: We don't like boundaries. It’s what we do to children. We put them in a fenced compound and call it school. And you're not free to leave. It’s terrible -- they train you to respond to bells.

Then you’re in college, and finally no more boundaries! No more bedtime, no more fenced compound, no more bells. I'm free!

And in our society, it’s cool to cross boundaries. To reject boundaries.

The basic message and ethos of our society is to TRANSGRESS.

Cross as many boundaries as you want to and live free.

You look at celebrities and they have all the money, they can do whatever they want. Nobody tells me what to do. But this is the biggest lie that leads not to life and flourishing but chaos and void.

And when we erase and ignore boundaries, the richness and variety and abundance collapse back into chaos.

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ILLUST: Take a simple example. Chess.

In chess there are a lot of boundaries. There’s a lot you can’t do. Bishops can ONLY go diagonally. Rooks can ONLY go columns and rows. Nobody can jump over anyone, unless you’re a knight.

The king is useless and can only move one square at a time while the queen zips around doing everything. Profound.

Watching two 4 year old boys play chess … it’s not chess. It’s king kong vs. godzilla. And it is definitely NOT more rich than watching two grandmasters play.

No, chess has very clear and unyielding boundaries.

And when you accept the boundaries, it creates a game so rich and complex that that there’s something like 10^40 possible game scenarios.

It’s boundaries that create richness.

And this is true in other areas as well. Take relationships.

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E.g. What makes a marriage special?

Even if you feel jaded about the institution of marriage, still, when you sit at a wedding and you see two joyful young people look each other in the eye and promise before all the witnesses, that they are going to be with one another, that they’re going to be LOYAL and FAITFHUL, ‘til death do they part, man, there’s still something about that that MOVES us…

But why?

If you think about it, marriage is one HUGE BOUNDARY. Marriage is saying: I am not going to date or be romantically involved with any other of the 6 BILLION people on this planet, EVER, ‘til one of us DIES.

What kind of idiot would make that kind of promise? (POINT AT MY OWN RING)

But when they’re about to say “I do” nobody shrieks in horror: “NOOO!!! DON’T GIVE UP YOUR FREEDOM!” No, we say “awwww.”

And I think that gives us a clue, right? We know that in boundedness there is richness.

I think one of the greatest lies hoisted upon us by our world is that the transgressive life is the good life.

And I think that's why we have kind of a complicated relationship with God, right?

A lot of us don't want to get too close to God because we know yeah he mayb be a God of abundance.

But he’s also a God of boundaries.

OK so there ARE boundaries that are unreasonable. Simply oppressive.

e.g. A harried school teacher placing unreasonably strict rules on her 4th grade classroom so that she can control the rowdy boys or something.

But God’s boundaries are not like that. Because God is the CREATOR. And he knows us. And so he knows how we are to thrive.

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And so could it be that how God designed us is to operate within certain boundaries?

That we’re not meant to transgress. But that we’re meant to stay within the boundaries that God set for us. Some of these are written explicitly in God’s Word.

But a lot of is given intuitively to you by your conscience—that sense that you have in you that you probably SHOULDN’T do that thing. That you ought NOT do that thing.

God is not anti-life. He is FOR us. He is FOR thriving. He wants to bless your life.

When it comes to decisions like what you do to your body. What kind of substances you take in. What to do WITH your body. There’s culture that says, do what you want.

There’s God that says, I’ve put boundaries in place for you … so you can experience RICHNESS within those boundaries.

I’d ask you to consider — what would it look like if you actually honored those boundaries. What would it look like for you to observe God’s boundaries … and to experience GREATER flourishing.

You really want to think twice before you go crossing boundaries that you kind of know you shouldn’t. There’s a lot you can’t take back. And I’ve been in college ministry for too long and seen too many students do things in the heat of a moment, do things out of a desire to fit in, do things because they buy into the cultural lie that transgressing is cool, that it’s the thing to do … only to live with regret afterward.

This is not to guilt trip anybody. This is not cause God just like saying no.

It’s because God wants the best for you.

So, what are the boundaries that you need to heed? What are some boundaries that God is putting on your heart right now that you need to pay attention to again.

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One way to think about this is in terms of “non-negotiables.”

What are the non-negotiables for your life? Things that you’re absolutely NOT going to do.

There’s something about just committing to that. Saying no I’m not going to do that, which frees you up to thrive.

Or perhaps things that you are ABSOLUTELY going to do.

Boundaries can be positive. I remember in college, making the commitment to ALWAYS attend church service, no matter what, no matter how busy, how stressed, no matter if there’s a commitment for some club, I’ll tell them yo I have a religious thing I need to go to.

Don’t be afraid of boundaries. Don’t have an immature and childish view toward boundaries. God created boundaries for our thriving.

Conclusion: What is our view of God?

[[ SLIDE ]] Reality is that every single one of us has a particular view of God.

Whether you grew up all your life in church or you’re an atheist … there’s some version of God, some picture of God you have in your mind.

But God tells us who he is. We’re not allowed to make up our own version of God.

e.g. If I want to know who you are, I can’t tell you, hey you’re Bob, when you’re name is Tofunmi. I have to ask what’s your name. Tell me about yourself.

From page 1, we get a picture of God. That he’s a God who’s into life. That he takes things that are formless and void … and by separating and placing boundaries, he gives them new names, new identities.

And from page 1, the Bible challenges all the standard views of God that we hold onto. It tells us that that God is not exacting. That in fact, he is unilaterally good towards man. That He created us, not for suffering and pain, but for life and flourishing. And that the highest good he desires for each of us is to be in a relationship of love and trust with the Creator of the universe.

Now obviously, that’s not the whole story. Because the world as we see it today is not the perfect paradise at the end of Genesis 1, and it seems like the benevolent and loving God seems curiously absent from our lives and in world affairs. And next week, we’ll delve into what happened.

But before we end, think Genesis 1 asks us to consider: what is MY view of God. How does my standard view of God compare with the with who Genesis 1 says he is.

Discussion Questions

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How does seeing Genesis 1 as Hebrew poetry change your view of the creation account? What new insights did it offer?

How does God's delight in the diversity and beauty of creation deepen your understanding of His character?

How have boundaries in your life led to greater freedom or flourishing? Are there any boundaries you've crossed that led to chaos or regret?

Prayer Prompts

As we wrap up, I just want to invite us to take a moment to pray and to respond to God.

God is a God who speaks. It's part of the text today that God speaks. And I think he, yeah, I want to venture to propose that he might be speaking to us today.

How might God be speaking to you? Maybe it's on the issue of boundaries. How are you doing on that? The boundaries that God gives in our lives so that we can thrive.

Maybe you need to express trust in your good, good Father. God knows what's best, and to transgress God's boundaries is not richness, but rather to fall into pre-creational chaos and emptiness and voidness.

And maybe you need to recommit to embracing God's boundaries and to following him. Maybe you need to commit to giving your life to explore and really get back into knowing God's word and following him and experiencing him.

Maybe your commitment has to do with really firming up your understanding of who God is and exploring what the Bible actually says. Committing to continue to seek truth.

So I'd just like to invite you to respond, however God's speaking to you. So yeah, why don't we pray along those lines? Let's pray together.