Genesis: 1:1 - The Creator God

Giving Campaign Update

Happy new year, its hard to believe it is the year 2025.

We are beginning this new year by starting a new teaching series.

But before we do that, I just want to quickly update you on our two Christmas giving campaigns.

1. You’ll remember that over the Christmas season we were collecting money for The Fellowship’s “stand by me” campaign,

to support churches in Poland and Ukraine who are ministering holistically to the needs of displaced Ukrainians.

For that campaign we were able to raise $12,275.

That money will go to Distribution of food and essentials to displaced Ukrainians, Family retreats for those experiencing trauma and loss,

Children’s camps and orphan care, and strengthening the local church through counselling, training, and encouragement of their leaders.

2. Our second Christmas giving campaign was our family sponsorship initiative to provide gifts and food to local families who are in need.

through that program we were able to provide Christmas presents and a meal to 45 families in our community.

This was a great way to bless some families with the love of God, but it also was an opportunity for us to give out the message of the gospel through books and tracts as well as invite these families to our services.

Before we get into the message this morning, lets pray that God would bear much fruit through these giving campaigns.

Prayer

Intro

The week before Christmas 2001, my life changed forever.

I was 14 years old, and over a period of three hours I experienced something that I have thought about absolutely every day since.

That was the movie The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

It sounds silly, but these movies struck a chord with me.

Some of you probably had a similar experience to seeing Starwars for the first time, or hearing the Beatles for the first time.

They are formative experiences.

I remember going to see the movie with my dad, who was a bit shocked with the special effects.

After the movie I turned to him and said, “That was the best thing I have ever seen!”

And dad, sounding a little stunned only said, “that looked really real.”

Something unique about that movie, that I absolutely loved,

is how the film makers spent the first 7 minutes of the film introducing the world of middle earth.

In that 7 minutes, you don’t get every detail, but you get the important parts about the setting of the story,

who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, and what is at stake.

That 7 minutes sets you up to understand and enjoy the rest of the movie and the films that came after it.

I appreciated those 7 minutes, because I was going in cold.

I hadn’t yet read the books, I didn’t know at all what to expect.

Those 7 minutes helped prepare me for the rest of the movie, and then the movies that came after it.

Similarly, the first few chapters of Genesis do a lot to set us up to understand the rest of the scriptures,

even though they are brief.

You don’t get every detail, there’s so much more I wish we could have been given.

But what God does give us are the parts that are necessary

so we can understand the story of redemption that God gives us in rest of his word.

But these chapters of Genesis not only serve as the opening section of the Bible,

they describe for us the opening chapters of history itself.

The world the Bible describes is not a fantasy world.

The book of Genesis teaches us about the very world we live in,

and the God who created it.

In this new series we are going to explore chapters 1–11 of Genesis,

discovering what God reveals about Himself,

his creation,

and the foundational events that begin the story of salvation.

My hope is to work through a section of the book of Genesis at a time,

and do some other series in between the sections,

but ultimately explore the whole book.

God willing, this section (Genesis 1-11) will take us right up to Palm Sunday.

This series is called, “In The Beginning”.

Which is exactly how our passage this morning begins.

So would you turn with me to Genesis 1.

This morning we are going to be looking at v. 1.

I think you’ll see that there is a lot packed into this very short passage.

Our Focus

Now famously there are a lot of different opinions on how to interpret the early chapters of Genesis.

Even among conservative, bible believing Christians, there are debates about the age of the earth, what is meant by the word “day”,

and how the biblical account of creation does or doesn’t work with the claims of modern science.

Now in our time together some of these debates will come up, just by nature of the passage.

But I’ll tell you up front that my focus in this series is not examining evidence for one position or another in these debates.

I do have opinions, I won’t be shy in sharing those opinions.

But my focus will not be so much on proving what the scriptures say, or some interpretation of what they say.

My focus is not on apologetics.

That is not to say that showing evidence for the truth and historicity of the scriptures isn’t important,

but there are many other great teachers and organizations that do that.

My focus in the short time that we have together is going to be on something

that I think often gets missed when we read the early chapters of Genesis.

And that is how do we apply them to our lives?

My focus will be pastoral.

The book of Genesis was written in order to shape our worldview as God’s people,

and so what it teaches can and should be applied to our lives.

Even in our very short passage this morning,

we see a statement that fundamentally shapes how we see and experience the world.

Agreement with, or rejection of this passage is at the heart of every religion and worldview.

So lets take a look at Genesis 1:1.

Genesis 1:1

Genesis 1:1 ESV

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

Context

Now I think we can all recognize that within our own society, this is a controversial statement.

We know that much of the modern world does not recognize a creator God.

But what we often forget is that this statement was just as counter cultural when it was written,

maybe even more so than it is today.

See, the world in which the book of Genesis was written was, at its core, a pagan world.

Not just most, but every culture worshipped a multitude of gods.

Absolutely none of them recognized a single, all powerful creator.

What is written in the very first verse of the first book of the Bible,

was from the beginning absolutely counter cultural to what was commonly believed.

This is why it was written in the scriptures.

And this is something to keep in mind throughout our time exploring Genesis.

Exposition

There are two common ways that Genesis 1:1 is understood.

sometimes it is thought of as a summary, an introduction to the whole creation story,

and sometimes it is considered the first action in the first day of the creation.

I believe both are true,

so we will be treating Genesis 1:1 as a summary statement this morning,

but we will also include it as we look at days 1-3 of the creation narrative next week.

The Beginning

Genesis 1:1 begins with what is called a time indicator,

thats a statement describing when something takes place.

And the time that is indicated is “in the beginning.”

If you were to look at a timeline of every event that has ever taken place,

the point that is indicated here is the very beginning of that timeline.

This is the beginning of all things.

All things that is, except for God.

The Creator

At the point of the beginning of creation, God is already in existence.

This is something that is very hard for many to grasp.

I’m sure all of us at some point has asked the question, “If God created everything, then who created God?”

It’s a question I got a lot in youth ministry.

But the answer is actually in the question.

“God created everything,” and if that is true, then God is not created.

He is the only being who exists, but who has never been created.

This is actually an essential part of what makes him God.

If he had been created he would not be God.

No Beginning, No End

What we see in the scriptures is that, rather than having a beginning like all things in creation,

God has no beginning.

As you’ll often hear from theologians, God has always existed from “eternity past”.

Psalm 90 tells it like this,

Psalm 90:2 (ESV)

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

Throughout the scriptures he is called the “everlasting God.”

And we ought not to think of the word everlasting as merely something that just lasts a long time.

Willy Wonka in the book and movies made a candy called the everlasting gobstopper,

this was a candy that no matter how many times you licked it, it didn’t get any smaller.

But even if that candy never ran out, it still had a beginning, it was created.

God is everlasting in both directions, into the future, and into the past.

From everlasting to everlasting.

A Watch in the Night

But God does not exist bound within time as we creatures do either.

He exists outside of time, able to see it all at once.

When we look again to Psalm 90 this aspect of God is described for us,

In Psalm 90:4 we read this,

Psalm 90:4 (ESV)

For a thousand years in your sight

are but as yesterday when it is past,

or as a watch in the night.

Now this is not saying that a 24 hour day for the Lord is a literal thousand years for us,

this is saying something much more sophisticated than that.

When you think of “Yesterday when it is past” How much of yesterday can you see?

What did you do yesterday? Well you know the answer because you experienced it.

You can’t say the same for tomorrow, you have not experienced it yet.

You and I can describe yesterday.

All of time is like that for God.

He sees a thousand years, as you and I see yesterday when it has passed.

It is the same for the following statement in Psalm 90:4.

A watch in the night is around 4 hours.

But what do you do if you are on watch in a military camp?

You would give a report on what you saw after your watch was over.

God can report on all of time.

He sees it all.

He not only sees it all, As Ephesians 1:11 tells us, “[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will.”

God ordains that all things work together in order to accomplish his purposes.

God as he is described for us in the scriptures is not the merely the biggest being in the cosmos,

he is beyond time and space entirely.

Transcendence

God by his very nature, as the creator God, exists separately - apart from his creation.

The word that theologians use to describe this aspect of God is “Transcendence”.

If theres one thing I want you to take away from this sermon, it is that word: Transcendence.

The clearest definition I could find for Transcendence is…

“Transcendence describes the aspect of God’s nature that is wholly independent of and beyond the physical universe, emphasizing divine otherness.”

God is transcendent, he is beyond the physical universe.

He exists separately from the created order.

One example that I have found helpful, though it is not a perfect example by any means,

is that of an author writing a story in a book.

The author creates the setting, the characters, and he writes the story that takes place in the world he has created.

The author is outside of his creation, he is on a much higher plane of existence from his creation.

This is why he can create worlds and characters and storylines,

because he is outside of it.

The problem with this example is that God is much more transcendent to his creation than an author is to the elements of a story.

But this helps us get a small grasp on the nature of transcendence.

The author is outside and above the story he has written, he transcends it.

God, the author of life, transcends his creation.

I Am

This transcendent aspect of God is even demonstrated in the name he chooses to call himself.

When Moses asked for God’s name in Exodus 3:14,

Exodus 3:14 (ESV)

“God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’

Then he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”

In Hebrew the name he gives is YHWH - “I Am”.

This name implies complete and utter independence on anything.

God is.

He has no beginning, no end, he is not bound by time or space.

God is transcendent.

Holy

Anther way we see God’s transcendence is how he is described in the scriptures.

The word probably used the most in the bible to describe God is the word, “Holy”.

We often associate God’s holiness with his perfect goodness, his perfect righteousness, and that is true,

but his Holiness is not limited to that.

To be Holy means to be set apart, completely other.

The Hebrew word we get our word Holy from is “qodesh” meaning: apartness, separateness.

The Greek word for Holy used in the new testament is much the same: “hagios,” meaning: set apart.

God is absolutely unique, absolutely distinct, absolutely other.

As one theologian said, “God is totally other, separate, sacred, transcendent, reverend, and set apart from every created thing.”

I say all this to point out that when we read the word “God” in Genesis 1:1,

this is who we are talking about.

A transcendent God,

one who is self existing,

Who exists outside and above the created order,

having no beginning and no end.

And this is the God who is the creator of everything.

The Creation

Which is what the second part of our passage tells us,

“God created the heavens and the earth.”

Now there are two ways to understand this statement, and both are appropriate and true.

Heavens and Earth

The first way to understand this statement is that it is speaking specifically to two different aspects of creation.

The heavens, and the earth.

The word earth is easy, this is the earth and everything that dwells on it.

And this is the part of the created order that gets the most attention in the rest of the creation narrative of Genesis 1 and 2.

But the heavens is a bit more difficult.

When we think of the word “heavens” as it applies to the physical creation, it would be describing the sky and what we call outer space.

This is the sense of the word heavens that we get in Psalm 19:1,

Psalm 19:1 (ESV)

The heavens declare the glory of God,

and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

But the heavens can also describe those parts of the created order that are not physical but spiritual.

Heaven is the spiritual realm where God dwells.

The Apostle Paul calls it the third heaven in 2 Corinthians 12.

And throughout the scriptures we see it called the heaven of heavens. Like in Nehemiah 9:6 where it says,

Nehemiah 9:6 ESV

“You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.

But God transcends even the heavenly places.

King Solomon recognized this when he dedicated the temple, the house of the Lord, in 2 Chronicles 6:18, where he says,

2 Chronicles 6:18 ESV

“But will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built!

God transcends even the heavenly places, as they too are created.

Seen and Unseen

These spiritual parts of the created order are also described as unseen.

An example of this is what we read in Colossians 1:16,

Colossians 1:16 ESV

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

Much of the created order is unseen,

of course this includes heavenly places, and the spiritual beings like angels and demons.

But every day you and I interact with much more of the unseen aspects of creation than we realize;

things like truth, language, music, morality, value, authority, consciousness and love, are all unseen, they are not physical.

There is much more to the created order than just stuff.

There is much more than merely the physical.

And God is creator of it all, seen and unseen.

The Whole Enchilada

And this is the second sense in which this statement that, “God created the heavens and the earth,” can be understood.

We can understand this statement in general sense;

often when we see the words heaven and earth together in the scriptures,

it is another way of saying “absolutely everything.”

God created absolutely everything that exists.

I love how John 1:3 puts it;

John 1:3 ESV

All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

there is nothing in existence in heaven or earth that doesn’t have its source in this transcendent God.

Because, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

He created absolutely everything.

Application

And this statement is absolutely fundamental to everything.

Because, as I said at the beginning of this message,

agreement with, or rejection of this statement is at the heart of every religion and worldview.

When it comes to understanding the nature of reality, you ultimately have two options to choose from:

You have a transcendent God who created everything - A creator and his creation.

Or you just have everything - the creation.

The theologian Dr. Peter Jones has pointed out that these are two fundamental worldviews: To make it simple he has called them one-ism and two-ism

Two-ists believe that what exists is the creator and the creation - This is at the heart of a biblical worldview.

While one-ists believe that the only thing that exists is the creation.

And this one-ist belief is at the heart of every non biblical world view.

Atheism

We see it in atheism, with the belief that all that exists is the material cosmos.

This was most famously expressed in Carl Sagan’s intro to his PBS television show “Cosmos”, where he said,

“The Cosmos is all that is, or was, or ever will be.”

That is one-ism.

Eastern Religions

We see it in eastern religions like hinduism, it’s offshoot buddhism, and the western new age movement that they inspired.

Though the Hindus are known for worshipping many gods; those gods, their worshippers, and everything else, are all a part of one “god” Brahman.

The created order has no separate existence apart from Brahman.

Brahman and the creation are one.

Hinduism is both polytheistic (the belief in many gods), and pantheistic (the belief that all is god).

It is one-ism.

Even the word they use to describe this one-ism is “advaita” means “non secondness,” or “not two.”

And at the heart of buddhism is the idea of non-duality,

that everything; you, me, the world, and everything else is of one-essence.

Everything is one.

An Australian reporter once told a joke to the Tibetan buddhist leader the Dali Lama when he got to interview him on tv:

The joke goes like this, “The Dali Lama walks into a pizza shop and asks, ‘can you make me one with everything?’”

You may have gotten it, the Dali Lama didn’t.

But this is a fundamental belief to Buddhism, the oneness of everything.

This again is one-ism.

Paganism

Even the pagan culture that dominated the ancient world was ultimately one-ist.

The pagan gods of the time were tied to those aspects of the created order that they had control of.

The god of thunder, the goddess of love, the god of the sea, the goddess of fertility,

they are as much a part of the created order as the things they control.

The Uniqueness of Theism

Now this is some deep and difficult stuff,

but I included it to show you that the Biblical claim of twoness:

a transcendent creator, and his creation - is absolutely unique.

This is why, when it boils down to it, your options are:

either a transcendent God created the cosmos,

or the cosmos created itself.

Theologian Colin Gunton put it this way,

“There are probably ultimately only two possible answers to the question of origins, and they recur at different places in different ages. Either the universe is the result of creation by a free personal agency - God. Or in some way or other it creates itself. The two answers are not compatible and require a choice, either between them or an attitude of agnostic refusal to decide.”

The Christian Worldview

So why does all this matter?

It matters because this is the starting point for the Christian worldview.

At the base of all things we have a binary.

Creator and creation.

God is transcendent;

completely other, completely Holy, set apart.

He is the creator and he created everything in heaven and earth.

But if he is the creator, that means he also has an absolute claim on his creation.

We are subject to him.

As his creatures we have a responsibility to recognize him as our creator and God.

And its the refusal to do this that is at the heart of idolatry and sin.

This is what the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 1:18-23

Romans 1:18–23 (ESV)

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”

It is this refusal to recognize our transcendent, holy creator which is at the heart of idolatry and sin.

And ultimately this is why Jesus came.

To restore the relationship between the creator, and his creatures who have rebelled against him.

He did this through paying for sin by dying on the cross,

removing the power of sin,

which severed the relationship God intended to have with us as his creatures.

And we receive this reconciliation between creature and creator, by faith.

Turning from our sin that separates us from him,

and trusting in Jesus, God in the flesh, for our salvation.

Conclusion

Without the beginning, we cannot understand the story.

And without the beginning, we cannot play our part in the story as those who are reconciled to this Creator God.

Genesis 1:1 ESV

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

The transcendent, holy God, brought into being everything else.

And recognizing this is the starting point

to creatures like you and me having a relationship with the almighty God who created us.

Communion

We are now going to celebrate the Lord’s supper, so let’s take a moment in silence to ready our hearts to approach the table. [Silent Prayer - End with Prayer]

[Invite ushers forward]

When we come to the communion table we celebrate the fact that the transcendent God who created everything,

entered his creation.

The author of life, entered his story.

But he entered it for a purpose.

The purpose being to die for our sins,

allowing his body to be broken,

and his blood to be shed,

so that we might be reconciled to our creator.

The Lord’s Supper is for those who have come to repentance and faith in Christ,

for believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to remember what he did on the Cross of Calvary.

If you have not yet put your faith in Jesus Christ for your salvation, I would ask that you just let the bread and the cup to pass by,

and observe how we remember and proclaim our Lord’s broken body and shed blood.

as 1 Corinthians 11:26 tells us,

1 Corinthians 11:26 ESV

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

The Bread

1 Corinthians 11:23-24 Tells us

1 Corinthians 11:23–24 (ESV)

The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Lets Give thanks for the broken body of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[Pray over bread]

[Bread distributed]

Take and eat, in remembrance of Christ broken body

The Cup

[Invite ushers forward]

1 Corinthians 11:25 continues,

1 Corinthians 11:25 ESV

In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Lets Give thanks for the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[Pray over cup]

[Cup distributed]

Take and drink, in remembrance of Christ shed Blood.

Please stand with me as we are dismissed with prayer.

[Closing prayer]