Scripture Alone: God’s Creative Word

Scripture Alone  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  44:55
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The Eternal God has spoken in His Word, and you were never meant to live without His Word.

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Genesis 1:1–3 ESV
1 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.
John 1:1–3 ESV
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
My aim in this series of sermons is to build what I am calling a Biblical-Theology of the Word of God.
Often we speak of the Word of God from several key passages, and this is good and useful.
We need to see the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation.
Systematic theology focuses on collecting all that the Bible says about a matter and interpreting it in light of the whole.
What I intend to do in these sermons is to build our view of the Word of God from Scripture’s own progressive revelation framework.
I want to trace through the biblical storyline how God has spoken in the past to inform our understanding of how God speaks now.
October is the month we celebrate the reformation because October 31st was the day that Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door at Wittenberg.
Hebrews 13:7 ESV
7 Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
We are commanded in Scripture to remember those of the past.
We are commanded in Scripture to remember those who taught us God’s Word.
The Germans did not have a reliable Bible in their language.
Luther worked on translating the NT into German.

Luther was committed, even in the face of persecution, to seeing the Word of God translated into the vernacular so that the people of God could read it for themselves and see the gospel truths that had so transformed his own life.

Francis Schaeffer once said,
“God is there and He is not silent.”
I want us to see that and believe it from the core of our being that He is there and He has spoken.
He has spoken finally.
He has spoken decisively.
And His Word continues to speak to us.
In order to understand the book of Genesis, we often make a grave mistake by assuming that we know the kind of world as it is.
But when you read the book of Genesis, you shouldn’t read it with the pre-knowledge of what you know from a Christian worldview.
You need to read the book of Genesis like an Israelite would have read the book of Genesis in a pagan land.
Moses wrote the book of Genesis to a people that were deeply in trenched in a pagan land.
“If God had never revealed himself, what would your life look like?
Can you even begin to imagine what your world would be like if you possessed no word from God?
You would have no way to know who he is or what he has done. You would have no way to know who you are and who he wants you to be. As a sinner, you would be spiritually lost, deaf, and blind. Apart from a word from God, you would have no salvation, no hope, and no relationship with your Creator and Redeemer.” —Matthew Barrett, Scripture Alone
Let me give you an example of what I mean.
The plague or the blows that Yahweh put upon Egypt in the book of Exodus attacked and dismantled the “gods“of the day.
These gods would’ve been everything from star worshipers, all the way down to fertility gods, and even have controlled agriculture.
Every time a bad storm came through.
You believed that the gods were angry at you.
If you couldn’t have a baby, it was because the gods were angry at you.
On and on the idolatry would go.
It’s in this context that Moses pens the words of Scripture in the book of Genesis, that is the book of about beginnings.
It’s in this context that reading Genesis for the first time would leave the reader spellbound.
It would leave them awestruck.
It would leave them confounded from verse 1.
Genesis 1:1 ESV
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
We are not given a story of how God is created.
All that existed before existence was God.
He is the self existent one.
Now, if you were a pagan hearing this for the first time, you would be shocked.

The God who dwells in eternity.

And the only thing that would be in your mind is,
“This God is ginormous!”
“There is nothing like this being!”
All the stories from pagan lands and pagan nations, they have creation stories.
They have creation stories that are very detailed.
But there’s a distinctively different quality to the creation stories of these pagan nations.
The Pagan nation of Babylon had a powerful god in their pantheon of gods. Marduk

It all began when Marduk battled the ocean goddess Tiamat:

The Lord spread out his net, encircled her,

The ill wind he had held behind him he released in her face.

Tiamat opened her mouth to swallow,

He thrust in the ill wind so she could not close her lips.

The raging winds bloated her belly,

Her insides were stopped up, she gaped her mouth wide.

He shot off the arrow, it broke open her belly,

It cut to her innards, it pierced the heart.

These gods were NOT self existent.
The pagan “gods” reflected more of what humanity looks like.
These pagan deities reveal more about what’s inside humans then anything.
But the God of Genesis is self existing.
Self-sufficient.
“Myth is unmasked by the Word of God” —Hans Urs von Balthasar
Self sustaining.
He needs nothing from the created world.
He needs absolutely nothing from the cosmos to exist.
Genesis 1:1 (ESV)
1 In the beginning, God created…
This word for “created” or “בָּרָא” is only ever in reference to God’s creative activity.
It’s tough for us to grasp this because our understanding of creation is significantly different than His.
Genesis 1:2 ESV
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.
The phrase in the ESV, “without form and void” represent two Hebrew words that would’ve embodied how many pagans viewed the cosmos.
Unformed.
Confusion.
Emptiness.
This is ironically, how many pagans have viewed the waters or the ocean.
They view it as a symbol of chaos.
How would this GREAT spiritual being do it?
How would the AWESOME spiritual being create?
Genesis 1:3 ESV
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

The Eternal God’s Word is Creative — “Ex Nihilo”

It’s NOT just creative.
It’s NOT like an artist.
An artist has paint brushes.
An artist has paint.
But God creates from NOTHING.
The phrase there “ex nihilo” is a latin word that is used to describe God’s creative activity here as “from nothing.”
It will be through the use of speech that God creates.
This has become “normal“ for us.
But for the pagan world it was absolutely earth shaking.
Many creation accounts have things being brought to being through struggle, randomness, or many other means.
But this magnificent spiritual being it’s so great that his words literally are used to create things.
“God is there and He is not silent.” –Francis Schaeffer
Hebrews 11:3 ESV
3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
This is a major reality for the Christian.
God’s Word Alone—The Authority of Scripture Chapter 4: God’s Word in the Economy of the Gospel: Covenant, Trinity, and the Necessity of a Saving Word

We do not find God. God finds us and makes himself known to us. God is the speaker, we are the listeners. It’s not enough to say the biblical authors wrote about God or even wrote for God. We must say much, much more: God himself speaks! And he speaks for himself.

“I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” —Apostles Creed

The Eternal God’s Word is Powerful.

Form Fullness
Day 1 — Light & Darkness | Day 4 — Lights of day and Night
Day 2 — Sea & Sky | Day 5 — Creatures of water and air
Day 3 — Fertile Earth | Day 6 — Creatures of land
—Derek Kidner, Commentary on Genesis

Creating the form of creation.

On days one through three, God fills the Earth with his creative speech.
Day 1 — Light & Darkness
Genesis 1:5 ESV
5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
Day 2 — Sea & Sky
Genesis 1:8 ESV
8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
Day 3 — Fertile Earth
Genesis 1:10 ESV
10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

Forming the fullness of the form.

Base four or six, then correspond to one through three and bring fullness and form to the created order.
Day 4 — Lights of day and Night
Genesis 1:17–18 ESV
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.
Day 5 — Creatures of water and air
Genesis 1:20–21 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.
Day 6 — Creatures of land
Genesis 1:24 (ESV)
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.”
So if you came from a pagan land, and let’s say you had the river Nile that passed through your backyard.
You would’ve believed that deities preside over the waters.
God is the creator of all Waters.
Jeremiah 10:11–13 ESV
11 Thus shall you say to them: “The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.” 12 It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. 13 When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses.
Let’s not miss Jeremiah’s point here against idolatry…
Jeremiah 10:14 ESV
14 Every man is stupid and without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, for his images are false, and there is no breath in them.
This kind of creation pattern continues from God‘s speech.
It culminates with the creation of mankind.
Think about what this does to the world view of the people.
If you realized that you don’t exist unto yourself this changes the way you relate to other people.
It changes the way you view yourself.
It changes the way you view the world.
In many pagan cultures, fear and superstition abound because the gods made in the likeness of mankind are very very tiny.
They can be manipulated.
They can be used as a weapon.
Their power can be harnessed.
But this is so unlike the God of the Bible.
Psalm 96:4–5 ESV
4 For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. 5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.

The Eternal God’s Word Reveals His Nature

Genesis 1:31–2:3 ESV
31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. 1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
God speaks and life is brought forth out of nothing.
His speech reveals his character.
His speech reveals his nature.
When God speaks, he acts.
His action is interrelated with his speech.
They are so closely related, but for the Bible to present God as speaking, presents him as acting.
God reveals Himself.
Genesis 2:16–17 ESV
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

The Eternal God’s Word is Covenantal to Make Promises

Genesis 2:16–17 ESV
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
But He does so with a covenant.
Now a covenant is the theological term for promise and fulfillment.
God is the promise making God.
The promise to Adam was life for absolute obedience.
It should be mentioned at this point and observed that mankind was never meant to live apart from the word of God.

Humans were never meant to live apart from the Word’s of God.

Adam was meant to rule on behalf of God over the garden paradise.
He was meant to rule according to the Word of God.
Before we get to the fall into corruption of Genesis, 3, we see that mankind was meant to live by the word of God.
We were meant to live in covenant relationship to our creator.
meaning that God made promises that were meant to be upheld by faith.
So take the simple illustration of Adam.
God says do whatever you want in the garden except you of this tree and you will live.
What would it look like for Adam to believe God in that situation?
It would mean that Adam would live in step with what God had revealed.
So before sin entered the world, the need to know the will of God has always existed for humanity.
Let me give you what this looks like real, practically in your life.
Christians or sometimes say,
“I’ve been a Christian for a long time, I already know what the word of God says for my life.”
The arrogance of that statement is so diabolically profound that it should make us sick.
To think that you or I with full confidence know exactly what God wants of us in every single moment is arrogance.
To admit as humans that we are desperately in need of God to speak to understand our world rightly to understand ourselves.
Rightly understand how to navigate complicated situations is the first humble step of faith.
Genesis 3:8 ESV
8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
This wasn’t abnormal for them.
God walked with His people in this garden paradise.
But on this particular day something was different.
Genesis 3:9 ESV
9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
Mankind doesn’t stay in the paradise garden.
He is removed because of the faithful covenant keeping God keeps his promises.
Mankind was offered life, for obedience.
But mankind was also offered death for disobedience.
Fractured relationship.
Fractured fellowship from the CREATOR GOD.
Fractured fellowship from the God who speaks.
Fractured fellowship from the WORDs of life.

The Eternal God’s Word recreates sinners.

John 1:1 ESV
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John opens His gospel by linking it to the beginning of creation (Genesis 1:1).
But more importantly connecting the Lord Jesus to the beginning of creation.
John 1:2 ESV
2 He was in the beginning with God.
John 1:3 ESV
3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
God’s Word Alone—The Authority of Scripture Chapter 4: God’s Word in the Economy of the Gospel: Covenant, Trinity, and the Necessity of a Saving Word

His best word has come to us in his own Son, the Word. In Jesus, God has a message for the world, a word that is meant for all people in all places. As the recipients, we are summoned to listen and embrace the good news of the Word with faith and repentance.

Romans 10:17 ESV
17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.
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