Creation Ex Nihilo

Intro:

Well, we are inching our way forward here in Genesis 1-11 and while we could likely still spend more time there in the first half of 1:1 we are going to jump forward now and consider the second half of the verse. As I mentioned in our last time together in Genesis we are going to take up the topic of the trinity in the near future and there are other aspects of theology proper, that is of the doctrine of God that we will yet cover, in fact we are going to take up the nature of God as our creator today and so we aren't moving far but we are moving forward.

Now as we prepare to step off into this second half of verse 1 I want to acknowledge how foundational these things are. We aren't going to be reinventing the wheel here as we study God as Creator but even for those who are well versed in the Word and have a solid and mature grasp of these things it is important to still pause and reflect on them as we work our way through these passages and themes.

That God is the creator is so foundational and we understand that being so foundation there is much in our faith that rests on that foundation. It is my desire then this morning to briefly explore the who and the when of creation and then with the reaming time to explore the how of creation and hopefully see some really encouraging truths that rest on this foundation of God as creator.

Genesis 1:1b

Lets read this first verse again:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2

Now as we have noted out task for today is to consider the second half of the verse and the nature of God as the creator and what that means that He is the creator of all things, how exactly did this happen. However, as we consider the who and the how we also see that this verse addresses the when. We read that “In the beginning.” In the beginning God created.

Several weeks ago now we considered God’s relationship with time, understanding the nature of God as timeless and eternal, that while the universe and all that is in it had a beginning; this we saw when we considered divine simplicity included even the unseen elements in creation such as the laws and such that guide the functions of creation, that all of these things had a beginning because God is the creator of them all, but that God Himself does not and did not have a beginning.

SLIDE

We also saw that it is important to note that this beginning in Genesis concerns the beginning of all things. That we can’t read it in the beginning WHEN God created, this is not simply giving us a time stamp for when God began to act in some sort of preexistent primordial universe to form it into something. We noted that we in fact are driven by the text to understand the entire universe as young, at least in comparison to the current long age geological ideas, because when Jesus Himself references marriage and grounds it in the creation of man and woman that He does so but saying “in the beginning God made them male and female” this is a clear reference to the in the beginning of Genesis 1 and thus it shortened the entire span of available history for all of creation to the time span covered by the genealogical markers throughout scripture as the Bible is internally consistent in saying that man had been around since the beginning of creation. The universe and primordial and even a prehistoric world did not exist for millions and even billions of years before man was created, this is something that the text of scripture wont allow.

All this is to say that when we read in the beginning this is a timestamp for the entirety of creation. The creative acts that we read in the following two chapters of Genesis are inaugurated here in verse 1 and continue immediately upon it.

I love how John Bunyan says this:

An Exposition of the First Ten Chapters of Genesis The Heaven

The first thing that God made was time; I say, it was time: All the plain in which he would build this beautiful world; he made nothing before, but in the beginning: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’ (

Lets read the first 5 verses of Genesis and briefly consider their procession to that first “evening and morning.”

English Standard Version Chapter 1

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. 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.

In the coming weeks we will dive into these more and even consider a few efforts by some to cram millions of years into these verses but just look at them as a whole.

God sets out to create, time obviously comes into being as does the heavens and the earth, the earth is without form and void and we see that God has entered into His creation, His Spirit hovers over the face of the deep, God has never been some distant outside observer like a kid shaking up bugs in a jar, God immediately can be found in His creation making ready to form it.

We then are told that God speaks, again we will consider challenges to this in the near future but there is no, and I mean absolutely no reason, textual, scientific, or other wise to not understand that verse 3 follows immediacy upon the heels of verse 2. God speaks and light is created and it is created with a distinctiveness from night so that there can be day and night and as the earth was in existence we can understand that there was on that first day an evening and a morning and so that first day was literally a day. All of these events follow one upon another.

I say all of this simply to make the point that the beginning was the beginning of all things and that this beginning is intelligible from scripture to have been in the region of 6000 or so years ago. This is the when of creation. The beginning.

Who

We also see the Who. That it was God who created is self evident from the text and we have considered God’s timelessness and His simplicity in recent weeks specifically because these are two faucets of God’s being and nature that are particularly relevant to our understanding what happens next when this God creates.

Both God’s timelessness and His simplicity set God apart as a unique one of a kind being. Our faith is not a faith in some sort of plurality of gods that emerged from some sort of universal elements as many of the ancient pagan myths purport.

The Genesis account of creation sets our faith and the faith of the ancient Israelites who first recieved these books from Moses apart from the people’s around them. Their God’s were fickel beings who often themselves had beginnings and while far more powerful than mortal men could not be spoken of as creators in the way that we will see God is spoken of here. The God of Genesis is utterly unique and the Genesis account of His creative work is utterly unique.

Short Aside: Other Myths

This is perhaps a good place to stop for a moment and to help address the commonly asserted jab that the Hebrew scriptures are so similar to these other creation myths that often predate them that it must be that the Hebrew scriptures were derived from these other myths, epics, and even as we will see at some point, flood stories. It is often charged that Moses or whoever wrote these things was just copying other myths of their day and fashioning them to work for their own people.

However, as Christians we must maintain that the accounts we have are the divinely inspired records. Even if some of the creation myths and flood stories we find in antiquity predate the writing of Genesis we maintain that the History of Genesis was divinely preserved through history and then Moses was carried along by the Holy Spirit as He authoritatively recorded these things.

In fact we turn the table back around on those who make those assertions. We say that because the account we find in the Bible is true it makes total sense that those who were not faithful to God in antiquity never the less would have had memories and stories of creation and the flood and their stories are corrupted versions of the one true account. That the Genesis account is true is born out, as is the rest of the authenticity of scripture, by faith and the reliability of the whole but also though the fact that it is, in the end, the Genesis account that can withstand scientific scrutiny as we will endeavor to show throughout our time in these first 1 chapters.

So we see the who and the when, that it is God who created and this creation is in the beginning and that this beginning was, as the Bible itself describes, around 6000ish years ago. Now we must consider the main element that I want us to consider for today and that is the how of creation itself. How is it that God created this world?

Ex Nihilo

Our theological term for this morning is ex nihilo. This phrase means out of nothing. When we say that creation is ex nihilo we mean that God created everything from nothing. There was no preexistent matter or substance that God used to create.

This is quite different from the other creation myths that we find, for example with greek and roman gods. They believed that things like chaos gave rise to elemental beings which gave rise to gods and eventually to people.

The Genesis account starts with an eternally existent, utterly unique God who speaks and creates all there is by the very power of His word out of nothing.

Now there aren't a lot of people who are proposing creation stories like the greeks today and so we need to consider how many today, outside of those who believe in Genesis, believe the world came into being.

There are really only three options, two if you connect the first two. In option one and two you have to admit that there is something or someone who eternally exists. Because something exists rather than nothing then for these options something must have always existed. Either there is an eternally existent being such as God and this God gives rise to everything or perhaps matter itself is eternally existent.

The only other option is that you have to assume spontaneous generation. That at some point there was nothing and then nothing gave rise to everything. Now this sounds odd at first and you are correct, this is truly nonsense and yet you have people like Richard Dawkins a well known member of what is termed the new atheist movement who argue and this seems to be an increasingly chosen argument that nothing doesn't really mean what we think it means. However, you don’t have to really think to hard to see that when you make nothing mean something other than nothing that it in fact does become something and if it means something then you are stepping out of option three and you are right back to option 1 or 2.

Now those who claim these views like to burry their views under mountains of time. This is one of the ways that all of the modern long age geology and evolutionary thought are packaged in a way that people don’t dismiss it out of hand. Though so many coherent and sensible challenges can be raised to each and every point of these theories yet the response is that if you allow enough time that anything is possible. It may even be possible that nothing is really something and that something gives rise to everything.

However as RC Sproul says in his talk on Creation Ex Nihilo, if nothing is really something then this violates the law of non contradiction because something can not ,not be, and be at the same time and in the same relation. There is either nothing or something and as soon as nothing becomes something it can no longer be nothing.

It really is an absurd premis and yet those who argue for it will often look down their noses at those who question it. Interacting with these things was really one of the first places that the words of Romans truly became real for me, that claiming to be wise they became fools and their foolish hearts were darkened. They suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. This I believe is why you see so much anger and vitriol from the atheist camp against Christians, they are straining with these absurd arguments to suppress the truth they know is true, that God exists.

Now then this brings us back to options 1 and 2.

Of course materialists assert that what has eternally existed is matter. However, they don’t assert that the matter we see around us has always existed. The matter we see and interact with is constantly changing and is subject to the laws of physics which mean that order is moving toward disorder. Rather, they believe that somewhere in the universe exists, as RC Sproul puts it, a pulsating core of matter, changeless transcendent matter and that it is this that gives rise to everything. Now again we run into problems with how such matter could then give rise to all that we see if it is changless and transcendant. Some posited pulsating core of existance.

Time again, they burry it under loads and loads of time to seek to obscure the absurdity of the premis.

Finally though, we come to option 1. That what has eternally existed and is changeless is God. This is why we spent two messages making these very points about God. If the essential elements of that which can give rise to everything is that it must be eternal and changeless then the source of everything is the God that is revealed to us in the pages of scripture!

As we have already then learned there is only one source that has the explanatory power for the origin of the universe and all that is in it, its not something plus time, it is God and God alone.

Now there are some things that we need to consider about God and creation ex nihilo, out of nothing.

You might assume that for God to create out of nothing would still violate the law of non contradiction because it is still something from nothing but we are not saying that it is something from nothing in that sense when we say ex nihilo. We are saying that it is something from God but that God did not have to use something to create everything.

In other words, God did not pinch off a piece of himself to create the world. I think this is actually a really important point because there are many in our day who are returning back to a spiritual/mystical materialism that sees matter itself and the universe as divine and if we are not careful we could inadvertently talk like God took a part of himself and used that to form the world. This though would imply change in God that God was suddenly less than He was before because He used part of Himself to create, this just wont do, it violates the nature of God revealed to us in scripture.

Rather, we understand that God created the world by his word, He spoke and because of the authoritative nature of God’s words the things that He spoke came into being.

Now Genesis 1:1 doesn't tell us this much. In fact the entire Genesis narrative while we could derive creation ex nihilo from the account doesn't explicitly state this. However, the Bible doesn’t leave us alone to simply derive this from the space between the words. No the writer to the Hebrews tells us:

Hebrews 11:3 ESV

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.

We read from Paul in Colossians last time:

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.

and John 1:1-3

John 1:1–3 ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

The things, all the stuff, wether visible or invisible were made through Him. By the word of His power. They were spoken into existence.

There is a unique facit of the word used here in Genesis 1:1 for create that speaks to this. The word here for created is the Hebrew “bara.” The interesting thing about this word is that it is only used for God. The kind of creating that takes place here is the kind that only God has the power to do. It is not always used of the creation of physical things, God for example in Isaiah 57 is spoken of as creating praise on the lips of those who mourn. Never the less, though its not just making physical things it is always a special creative act of the will and power of God.

As we think of creation ex nihilo I think that it is important to again realize that like with the doctrine of divine simplicity it keeps us from the error of worshipping something besides God.

This is the first of a couple of application points I would like to make this morning.

If you remember I said a few weeks ago that one of the errors that has crept into the apostate churches in our world is the worshipping, not of God, but of things like and particularly of love. There is this idea that love is something that is more basic than even God. That love exists outside of God and thus we are capable in our day of connecting to and understanding love in a better way that the writers of the Bible.

Well, this can also happen if we believe that God used something to make the world. We would be tempted to plug into that elemental thing, to enjoin our own thoughts of love and holiness and righteousness with that base elemental component and justify all sorts of evil thoughts and behaviors.

Again, its this thinking that there is something more base, more elemental to the world and then using that to justify all sorts of unbiblical behavior.

Creator Prerogative

The next point that I want us to see this morning is that this creation ex nihilo gives God complete and sovereign prerogative as the creator. This is somewhat connected to the previous point but I want us to see it as explicit.

God’s right to rule and reign in the universe is directly connected to His position as creator. He is the one who makes the rules, He is the one who gets to say what is permissible and what is not.

As we learned in our time together in the 10 Commandments with Jake, God has worked His law into the very fabric of creation. All men are beholden to His command to have only one God, to serve Him, to honor life and marriage and to not steal, lie and covet. God is the one who defines what are acceptable marriage partners and who are not, God is the one who defines what a male is and what a female is, God answers the question “What is a woman” definitively in His word when He created Eve from Adams side as a helper suitable for Him.

Mankind is bound to the rule of God because God created the world Ex nihilo, God is the sovereign!

In fact we read in Genesis 1 immediately after creating them God as their creator gave the following command to Adam and Eve:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Again, God has the prerogative and more than that not just the prerogative but simply as the creator ex nihilo God has to set the rules for creation even as He brings it into existence.

There is another related point though.

When we create something we naturally create it out of existing stuff that comes with its own limitations and proper uses that are built into the nature of what that stuff is. When I create I have to consider the nature of the materials and choose the right stuff for the job. I have heard Enoch talking about learning to weld from Roger and how important it is to choose the right welding rods. I am assuming that the wrong choice of rod will result in a weak or a totally unworkable weld. When we create we are limited by the nature of the stuff we create with.

For God this was not the case. God was not somehow limited in what He could make. Creation ex nihilo means that God was totally free in creation.

This means that the world we live in is not the best that God could come up with given the available resources but that this is the exact world that God intended to create period. There was no limit in resources that resulted in the world we live in.

John Piper in the past has half jokingly talked about being a 7 point calvinist with the 7th point being that this is the best of all possible worlds and that from this world God will receive the maximum amount of glory possible out of all the possible worlds that He could have created. This is in the realm of what I am talking about here and it is just as comforting as the promise of Romans 8:28

Romans 8:28 ESV

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

In fact that promise is built out of creation ex nihilo and God’s total sovereignty over His world.

Take great comfort in the fact that we live in precisely the world that God meant for us to live in and that there is no deficiency of some sort of source material that makes this world less than it could have been. The world we live in is precisely the world that God has ordained to bring Him the greatest amount of glory and to also carry the greatest possible good to His children. This ofourse is assessed in eternal standards not just on how today went for us.

Powerful Word

Lastly today i want us to consider the power of the word that can bring something into existence out of nothing.

Consider Psalm 33:6

Psalm 33:6 ESV

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

If God can speak and worlds pop into existence and billions upon billions of stars fill the sky then just imagine what hapens when God speaks promises into the lives of His people!

Romans 8:28 ESV

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Isaiah 41:10 ESV

fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand

Philippians 4:19 ESV

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 1:6 ESV

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Romans 8:31–32 ESV

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

There are so many precious and very great promises as 2nd Peter tells us in the word of God and the reason that we can stake our lives on each and every one of them is that they are from the mouth of the One who spoke the universe and all there is into being.

Jeremiah 32:27 ESV

“Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?

The answer is no and that answer is built on the bedrock truth of our God as the Creator ex nihilo of all that ever has been and ever will be! This is the God we serve, this is the God who has saved us, this is the God we worship, and this is the God who will ensure that all of His promises to us are brought to completion in that great and final glorious day when we see Him face to face. What a glorious day that will be!