The Beginning of Everything

Intro

The beginning of the book of Genesis is one of the most familiar sections of the entire Bible, and especially of the Old Testament. This is because the subject matter its dealing with is of interest to everyone. Some books of the Bible, like Leviticus, seem to feel locked to a specific people at a specific time, making them hard for the modern reader to understand or appreciate. Perhaps the average person doesn’t care all that much about what the cleanliness laws were in the nation of Israel 5,000 years ago, and they struggle to see how those could impact an American living in 2026. But who isn’t interested in the beginning of everything? Who doesn’t care about how everything came to exist in the first place?

In Genesis 1 we are seeing the Christian answer to one of the world’s biggest questions: Where did all of this come from?

The world has come up with so many answers to the question of its own origin. Theories abound. But Christians believe that God has answered the question for us in the text of Genesis 1, and so this is what Christians are required by God to believe.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism does a wonderful job of highlighting the necessary components of what this text teaches:

The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition The Shorter Catechism

Q. 9. What is the work of creation?

A. The work of creation is, God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good.

This sermon will consider really four main aspects of creation:

First, That God made everything out of nothing

Second, That God made everything by the Word of his Power

Third, That God made everything in the space of six days

Fourth, That God made everything good

God is the Creator of All Things

Ex Nihilo

Genesis 1:1–2 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 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 first very important thing we encounter is that God created all things out of nothing. This is an important and amazing point to consider.

The text says, “In the beginning.” signifying a starting point. But what is it a starting point for? Certainly not God, for then how would God have come to be? By his very nature, God is eternal and not created. So when we read, “in the beginning,” we have to understand that we aren’t talking about the beginning of God, because he doesn’t have a beginning.

So then what is this the beginning of? The created order — time, space, matter, and every other dependent creature. Before this point, there was only the triune God. After this point, all created things have come to exist.

There are some who have tried to argue that the Earth was made by God out of eternal, pre-existing material. They read the words, “the Earth was without form and void,” and they seem to think that there was this primordial soup of material that has always existed, and God merely formed all of that to create our universe.

But this is not a reasonable reading of the text. For the text clearly says that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. The text then goes on to say what the heavens and the Earth were like immediately upon their creation — “without form and void.” That is to say, God did not have a finished work from the very beginning. He would continue to work and improve his creation in the coming days.

But what is important for us to understand is that God created all things out of nothing.

This is hard for us to conceptualize because we are not able to do anything like this. We even have recognized a scientific law that matter is neither created nor destroyed, only changed. And in our human experience, this is certainly true. No matter how hard we try, we will never be able to create even a single thing out of nothing.

Illustration: Even if we think about some amazing natural processes, like how a massive oak tree can come from a little acorn, we see that it doesn’t come anywhere close to creation ex nihilo. For in the case of the oak tree, the pre-existing acorn was necessary. And even when the acorn is planted, it could never grow into an oak tree without absorbing considerable amount of nutrients and water from the soil it was planted in, or abundant energy from the sun to power its growth.

To confess that God created ex nihilo is to confess that God has done something completely unique, and it cannot be replicated by man.

This is the first thing we understand about God’s creating all things: that he did it with no pre-existing materials, it was ex nihilo.

Next, we also see how God created all things, and this is an incredibly interesting question. We just confessed that God has done something that is impossible under any other circumstances. Scientists would kill to understand how God managed to pull this off. In the text, God reveals how he did it — by his Word.

By His Word

We see God’s method for creation repeated ten times throughout the verses of chapter 1 “And God said...”

This makes the creation ex nihilo somehow even more amazing to consider. God created the heavens and Earth in such a way where he simply needed to speak and his will was accomplished. When the Word of God goes forth, there is no denying his will. What he wills, he accomplishes.

Think about this for a moment — it isn’t even just that creation itself obeys God’s will, but also non-creation. When there was nothing except for God, God spoke, and the nothing obeyed him and became something. In human terms this sounds nonsensical because we can’t conceptualize this very well — but behold our God, the one who speaks all things into existence.

And this Word by which God created all things will continue to be a very important theme throughout the rest of the Scriptures. The Word by which God made the universe, is the same Word by which God will powerfully relate to his universe.

As we continue to read the story of redemption, God’s Word continues to prove to be more than simple speech. God’s Word shows up as an entity, a power that acts. For example,

Isaiah 55:10–11 ““For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

This Word comes to Earth through the voice of the prophets. But when the Apostle John wants to write his account of the gospel of Jesus Christ, this is how he begins it:

John 1:1–3 “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.”

John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

This confirms to us that Jesus Christ is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity. Jesus is not a created being, but is in fact the being who created all things. Jesus is not creation; he is Creator.

And isn’t it amazing that God the Son, the Word of Power which created all things, would subject himself to creation? Isn’t it amazing that the Eternal and uncreated one would condescend to become like us, with a human nature and a fleshly body?

In this we see the love of God, and this is why Jesus’ name would be called “Immanuel: God with us.” For God so loves his Creation that he would stop at nothing to be with us, even if that means writing himself into creation as Jesus Christ.

This only becomes more amazing when you consider God’s purpose in becoming man. For God did not only come to us so that he could live lavishly and be served by us, but so that he could serve us and suffer for us. He came not to taste of Earthly pleasure, but to drink of Heavenly wrath against our sin. The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, not to condemn us, but so that he could love us to the end.

And so as we read the creation narrative we must recognize our Lord Jesus Christ as the Word who creates, and the Word who saves.

There is one final thing that we should take note of considering God’s creation: and that is that he created it all in the space of six days.

In Six Days

I am only going to speak on this briefly, because I believe that Pastor Jerry is going to be able to build this out much more for us next week as he preaches. For now, we should note that it is important that the text describes God as having created in six days.

Many Christians have argued for different possible meanings of the word “day” in this creation account. There are even many good, faithful, conservative Scholars who have come to different conclusions about what exactly is meant by God creating in the space of six days. I don’t plan on using this sermon to dig through every theory, although that is a conversation that is worth having.

Here is what we can know for sure:

God didn’t create everything all at once. It wasn’t an instantaneous event, but a process over a period of time. That is important for at least one very important reason: God paced the timing of his creation in order to give us an example to live by. As I mentioned, I’m going to leave the bulk of this point to next weeks sermon, but it should at least be noted here that God had a purpose for deciding to create everything in six days. He didn’t need that long, and he could have taken longer, but he chose this timeframe on purpose.

And so God is the one who created everything out of nothing in the space of six days. One more thing to consider: what was his creation like? The answer: It was all good.

Everything God Creates is Good

“It was good… It was very good.”

This is a point that might get mixed reactions. Some of you will immediately affirm this point. You look around you and you see so much beauty and good in the world. You see God’s glory displayed in the night sky, you hear beauty in a child’s laughter, you praise him when you eat a particular tasty meal. To you, the goodness of creation is obvious.

But there are others who might not get this right away. You look around and you see just how broken everything is. You’re heart ha sbeen broken by the loss of a loved one. You know how painful disease can be, both personally and in the ones you love.

That’s a topic we can dive more into in chapter 3. But for now, we acknowledge that all of the pain we now experience was not a part of Gods original design. And more than that, we acknowledge that he isn’t content to leave our world in its broken state.

He will re-create everything even better

Revelation 21:1–7 “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”

REMEMBER we will focus more heavily on the creation of mankind in a couple weeks.