And It Was Good

Introduction

April 24th, 1990. That date probably means nothing to anyone in this room, but it was a huge step in man’s exploration of space. That date was the launch date of the famous and powerful Hubble Space Telescope.

This telescope was a huge undertaking and was designed to reach parts of the cosmos that are unbelievably far away - in fact, the furthest image is 13.4 billion light years away. That’s so far our brains can’t even understand it, there’s no point in even converting it to miles.

At any rate, after 12 years of building and over $2 billion, the Hubble was finally ready to launch in April of 1990. There’s an extremely important part of the telescope, which is the primary mirror, that had to be extremely precise. This mirror started as a big disk of glass, and had to be polished down to the correct size, and this took 2 continuous years of manufacturing.

So, all this came together, and they launched this hunk of metal into orbit, and this was the type of picture we got back:

Show picture of blurry nebula

Does that look like a $2 billion photo to you? A little blurry, and underwhelming, right?

Well, it turns out there was a major issue with the mirror. Long story short, the manufacturing company miscalculated a dimension and the curve of the mirror was off by 2 microns, aka 2 thousandths of a millimeter. That’s 1/50th the diameter of human hair. This caused the telescope to focus on the wrong plane, causing blurry photos.

So, NASA ended up fixing this issue, and we got some beautiful photos of outer space with it.

Slide of other photos

As it turned out, NASA was getting extremely distorted views of space. These “experts” could get an idea of what the telescope was pointed at, but the details were lost, and we couldn’t use the photos for any real purpose. The focal point and function of the telescope was vital, and somewhat overlooked.

This is the same way we tend to view creation. We stand in creation, we look out at the world, at our fellow human beings, at the church, without knowing the One who created it.

We’re trying to find answers and gather pictures and data without focusing on the right thing, which is God. Sure, we can get a distorted view of reality through a mis-manufactured, unpolished worldview and get pretty close, we can get a blurry idea of the world. In fact, tons of religions have actually been seeking the right thing and have gotten close.

However, without understanding out origins and our function, we’ll never get the full picture.

This is what JI Packer writes in his book, Knowing God:

So we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.

This is why we’re studying Genesis, and this is why Genesis was written. Not to contend with 21st century science, not to reveal some incredible process that God used to create.

No, Genesis chapter 1 was written to show God’s function, man’s function, and how they fit together here, in the place God created.

So, let’s get into it. I’d like to invite our reader up (Stan 1st, ?? 2nd). Please get your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 1, we’ll be covering all the way to the end of chapter 1 today starting in verse 6. If you are physically able, please stand for the reading of Scripture.

~Scripture reader~

Thank you, please be seated.

Now, before we get started, I request one thing. Please suspend your current notions about the creationism debates, and what our 21st century mind automatically gos to when considering the natural world.

Genesis 1, although it is just as useful now as it was to the ancient Israelites, must be understood in the light of the original audience and author. Removing it from that time and space completley doesn’t give Genesis the ability to speak to what it’s actually trying to say.

Our objective here is not to debunk opponents of a Biblical view of Genesis, or to debunk science. Our objective is to discover truth, and to know our Creator God.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the days of creation, which are extremely important.

Days of Creation

Pastor Brett did an excellent job of capturing the essence of the creation of light last week, so that’s the first day we’ll put up here.

Day 1

So, God created light. And that’s an important note, because the sun won’t be created for a few days here. So that should tell us something, that the source of light can’t be the sun, at least not in the same way we understand it today.

They key here is that God created light, called it “day”, and called the darkness “night”. And not until then did evening and morning come, because God hadn’t created it yet.

So, bear with me here, we can understand this as creating a cycle of time. Essentially, on the first day, God created time as we understand it.

Okay, now follow along, because the next part may seem strange to you. I’m a pretty normal guy, okay? But I do one weird thing, and that’s looking at creation out of order. So, lets skip to the fourth day.

Day 4

Day 4, what does God create? Skipping down to verse 14….

On day 4, God makes the sun, the moon, and the stars. And it’s their job to “govern”, as it says, the days and nights, and “separate” them.

In day 1, God makes the realm of time, and in day 4, God places celestial beings there with specific purpose, all which humanity would already be accustomed with.

Day 2

Moving on to day 2 - God created a vault, also known as a firmament, that separated the waters of the earth from the sky. God separated earth from heaven, and created what could be known as moisture and the rains that sustain life.

Day 5

Go to day 5.

God places fish, or sea creatures, in that separated water. And in the sky, God places the birds that we see flying. And God saw that this was good, they had a place and an order.

And again, the birds and sea creatures had a job-to be fruitful and multiply. God even blessed them.

Day 3

Back to day 3, what does God make? He makes land and vegetation. In ancient times, these two things weren’t separated. Where there was land, there was vegetation.

That vegetation produced seeds and fruit. You can look at this as the land/agricultural realm.

Day 6

Now look at day 6. What does God make? Living creatures that live on land.

And finally, at the climax of creation, God creates the prized creation, human beings in His image. And he gives them a job - be fruitful and multiply, rule, subdue.

He also gave humans every seed bearing plant for food. We are to rule over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and the living creatures on the ground. We had a mission, a purpose, a function.

And it was good.

So take a small step back and look at the big picture of Genesis 1. God isn’t concerned with giving the ancient Israelites some kind of special knowledge that makes them superior to their contemporaries.

No, God gives them function. God creates order from chaos. God creates a realm, or an area, subdues that creation, and then places the perfect beings in that creation that fulfill a specific role.

That’s what is good. We’re not talking about a moral goodness, or a good vs evil sort of justice. God created and it had purpose, it had function.

And the interesting thing about all this, is that all the other cultures that shared the ancient near east with the Israelites had essentially the same worldview.

Really, our stories aren’t so different.

Our Stories Aren’t So Different

Have you ever wondered what other cultures and people groups think about creation? We commonly reject the atheistic worldview that there is no God and no purpose, but that’s actually a super recent phenomena. Every other culture had a creation story, and believed in God, or gods.

Take, for example, the classic story found in the Enuma Elish. This is an ancient Babylonian story where the gods Apsu and Tiamat create other gods to control the chaotic primordial state, then get annoyed at those gods, and that’s when the son of a god, Marduk, saves the day and defeats evil, then creates the heavens and the earth in an almost shot-for-shot remake of Genesis. Marduk even holds back the waters of the sky, the firmament we talked about on creation day 2.

Take Greek mythology. Gaia (Earth) is born from chaos and gives brith to the sky, and eventually Cronus, the god representing time. Every god was in charge or represented a specific function of creation, and Zeus established order.

Take Egyptian mythology. Nun, which is darkness and chaos, existed and the sun God, Atum, gave creation, power and life. Atum created gods of air and moisture for agriculture, and eventually separated the sky and earth by creating Geb and Nut, who held the sky up. Later, Ra would take over role as sun god, and would represent day and night as he travelled around earth, the sustainer of life.

All this to say, there are stories that come from the origins of recorded human history that are shockingly similar on the surface. All these cultures were trying to understand the world around them, and may have even been seeking the one true God.

But again, distorted lens. Blurry images. One small mistake can throw off everything, and years of study and time become worthless without attention to truth.

Because the thing about these stories and myths is while they’re remarkably similar, our God is different.

You see…

Our Story Isn’t Unique, Our God Is

I think too often we get so intensely focused on the actual Biblical story that we forget to ask what God is trying to reveal about Himself in those stories.

What we need to remember is the gravity of our God. He is the definition of truth, and without knowing Him, we don’t have the full picture.

In fact, it’s argued that one major reason Genesis 1-11 exists is to directly oppose other religions and gods the Israelites would have faced.

Think about the very first commands given to the Israelites that show this premise:

Exodus 20:3–5 CSB

3 Do not have other gods besides me. 4 Do not make an idol for yourself, whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. 5 Do not bow in worship to them, and do not serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God

There was a reason this topic was such a big deal-because every single other people group the Israelites ran in to would’ve have their own gods, their own stories, and they would have looked a lot like their own. It would have been so easy to just accept those stories as close enough and move on.

This was especially important, considering the time periods where Israel would have most used Genesis 1, the creation story.

First, they were exiles in Egypt. So they would have been circulating these oral traditions throughout their Hebrew families under threat of death for going against Pharoah and his deity status.

After Egypt, they escaped and were given a promised land where other nations worshipped all kinds of gods. God knew they would turn away, and this is what he told Moses as the Israelites are about to cross over into their promised land:

Deuteronomy 31:16 CSB

16 The Lord said to Moses, “You are about to rest with your ancestors, and these people will soon prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will abandon me and break the covenant I have made with them.

Eventually the period of the Judges would come, and different enemies of Israel (Amalekites, Philistines, Amorites, Canaanites) would be in and out, bringing their many gods and stories.

After a while, they would be exiled from Israel completely, the big one being to Babylon.

Even in the time of Jesus, there were way more people following Roman and Greek mythology than Judaism.

My point is this-if just had our creation story, and we were up against other religions, quite frankly, we would lose. Our story holds no power.

But our God does.

Forever, there will be a never ending battle of people trying to lead followers of God astray, and it hasn’t changed even to today.

But our God is in control. Our God is different.

So, the big question is, how is our God unique? What do we do in the light of Genesis 1 in our relationship to God?

How is Our God Unique?

Well first, and probably the most obvious, is that our is God is all powerful, almighty, and totally sovereign.

Powerful, Almighty, Sovereign

The gods of other creation stories can’t hold a candle to our God Yahweh.

The book of Job is a wonderful literary work that has a bunch of references to mythology and other cultures, but the culmination of the book is God’s multi-chapter rebuttal to Job who questions God’s ability to subdue chaos. Let me read just a small excerpt from the end of Job:

Job 38:4–11 CSB

4 Where were you when I established the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. 5 Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? 6 What supports its foundations? Or who laid its cornerstone 7 while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? 8 Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst from the womb, 9 when I made the clouds its garment and total darkness its blanket, 10 when I determined its boundaries and put its bars and doors in place, 11 when I declared, “You may come this far, but no farther; your proud waves stop here”?

You see, not only is God powerful, he is the definition of power. Did the other creation stories have a God like the book of Job describes? Can they claim a god as almighty as in Genesis 1?

See, God didn’t need a bunch of other gods to help Him create the universe. God said, and it was. To steal the term from Brett - light be, light was.

Our God didn’t commission a sky god to hold up the cosmos. He didn’t need a sun god to drag the sun around the earth during the day.

God created the realm, and placed a creation there with a function. God declared what it was to do, and the creation did. There was no question, because creation obeys it’s creator. The function of goodness remains.

God also didn’t need to defeat anything. There was no galactic, cosmic struggle for power between the forces of good and evil. God was, and will always be in complete control. There is no competition, there is no struggle.

God didn’t have to come down and control chaos to make order. God spoke, and it ordered. And that’s the beauty of the simplistic nature of Genesis 1.

Of course, we could spend an eternity meditating on the meaning of the Scriptures, but at the core of Genesis 1, it’s extremely simple. I mean, we have only 31 verses dedicated to the creation of everything.

And that’s because God doesn’t have a complex, this god did this, this human did that, dense mythology. God created, and God ordered. That’s the end of it.

So, despite God’s complete power, He still wants us. He’s different because the Genesis story not only considers God, but man.

Love for Mankind

Again, the climax of the Genesis 1 story, and the highest jobs given to any creature, are found in man.

The Genesis 1 story also revolves around what man was already seeing in the natural world and would have understood, man lived in it.

Take another look back at Genesis 1. Does God say how He created the heavens? Does He give an account of how the angles were made, of how Satan came to be, or other spiritual matters/being? No, the entire plot focuses around the human world as the original audience saw it.

See, in other creation stories, humans are more like pests than anything else. They make too much noise, they fail in even the simplest task. The only reason the gods put up with humanity is because humans are a source of food, which they bring to the gods in sacrifice.

Surely, this is the mythology in David’s mind when he contemplates this reality, the insane fact that God would even remember us.

Psalm 8:3–4 CSB

3 When I observe your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you set in place, 4 what is a human being that you remember him, a son of man that you look after him?

But our God not only tolerates us, He loves us unconditionally. Without reason. See, God was just fine alone. He created the universe with everything working just fine. The plants were growing, animals were eating, the sun was burning.

But what did God do? God created man in His image. And then He gave us function. He didn’t want a creature to play with, or to move around like a chess piece. God didn’t create robots.

He created us. He created us, like Him. It wasn’t enough that humanity existed, God wanted to be with us. And that’s why, spoiler alert, God rested with us on the Sabbath He created. That’s why God was walking around the garden when Adam and Even sinned.

God created us, because he wanted us. And ultimately, He would give His life for us on the cross. He created us, despite knowing He would have to send His only begotten son to hang on a cross. Despite knowing that He would have to take the punishment for our contamination of His perfect world.

The is no being in creation that would do that for you.

So, what do we do with Genesis 1 today, as individuals, as the church? Do we continue fighting with evolutionists? Do we stake out the claim that the earth must be 6,000 years old, and that the strata in the earth are from the flood?

I think if we do that, we’re taking a position that the text simply does not take or care about. And the implications of Genesis 1 are so much more powerful that that, because it reveals to us creator Yahweh who put a hook in the mouth of the Leviathan and calms the Sea of Galilee with a word.

I think what we should do is:

Focus our Lens on the Creator

How do we do that? Great question, this will take a lifetime for each of us. But first is to

Admit to the Power of God, and Submit

There is nothing like living a life against God. I’m sure many of you have felt it-you spend potentially years fighting against God’s will, even though you know what He wants.

The thing is, everyone in this room can see the Biblical view of God’s almighty status. That’s extremely difficult to miss, and even more difficult to straight up ignore. Every book of the Bible speaks of God’s powerful nature.

The problem with humans is that we know God’s power, but we ignore it. That’s why there are so many religions out there. They know in their innate being that there is an all-powerful God. But we choose to look the other way.

My question this morning is simple: Are you buying into these other creation stories? And I don’t mean are you following up on the tablets about the Egyptian creation myth.

What I’m asking is why do we assume it’s our power and might that accomplish anything? What lesser god are you delegating authority to? Money? Sex? Yourself?

Submit that power back to God, and orient your life to serving the one true God and nothing else.

Second is

Stop trying to fit God into a mold

Quit squeezing God into your comfort zone. Take God for everything He is, not what your tradition says. Because the mold you’re trying to fit God into isn’t the right size, I guarantee it.

And this looks a lot of different ways. It means standing up vehemently for something God or the Bible doesn’t speak about of care about. It looks like telling people about hell without heaven. It takes the form of focusing on the loving parts of God without being confronted by your own sin, because he’s waved His magic wand and your sins are forgiven.

Those aren’t the full story, stop leaving out the parts that make you uncomfortable. God doesn’t need defended, and you don’t need to feel bad about God’s created universe. Speak truth, live in the light, and your reward will come. Just be a faithful servant and take God for exactly who He is, even when we can never understand fully.

This is the reason Paul writes:

Romans 11:33–36 CSB

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways! 34 For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? 35 And who has ever given to God, that he should be repaid? 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.

Finally, we need to:

Find Your Function

We need to live within the bounds of creation and find our human purpose and function.

Remember the command in Genesis 1: fill the earth, multiply, subdue it, rule. Bring order.

Even though we as humans brought evil and chaos into a world that was perfect, our function remains good. Our purpose in life is still good.

And this purpose stems from our desire to again be with God, which should prompt our worship and prayer.

Listen, we have a whole world out there that wants you to believe their creation story. There’s an entire culture that will so easily ensnare you and capture your devotion, if you let it.

We should be living on mission, and fulfilling this command given by Jesus:

Matthew 28:18–20 CSB

18 Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

In our Christian age, this is best parallel to Genesis 1. Jesus is given the authority, and the disciples are sent out to rule, to order chaos, to make disciples. To change to world and make the earth God’s temple once again.

So, this morning, I urge you to find your place in that purpose. Find out, through careful prayer, and seek God in revealing your next steps. Because our purpose is revealed. You don’t need to go searching for your function.

We need to reorient toward this function, and have a correct view of God that is focused, and not blurry.

What we need to do, is get to work, and it’s good.

Let’s pray.

Response Time