The God Who Creates

If I preach God is righteous and holy, that doesn’t offer much hope for the person who is grieving. If I preach God is lover and healer, that does little for the person who has just been mistreated. We need to pull together the varied perspectives of Scripture in order to form a cohesive, robust understanding of our God.

Pearls on a string, Peaks of a Mountain chain, Facets of a Diamond, Sounds of a Symphony, Petals of a flower, Pollen of many blossoms contributing to Honey. The combined beauty is more than the sum of the individual parts.

I Love listening to Ravi Zacharias or Oz Guinness talk Apologetics or Christian Philosophy, but after about 20 minutes my brain starts to hurt. My goal is to provide you with answers to some of the tough questions that unbelievers ask, but to take these truths out of the dusty stacks of the library and put them in the magazine rack at the checkout stand that we all can reach. More than stimulating lectures, I hope to provide you with snapshots of our God that when put together form an awe-inspiring form of the living God who loves us and is worthy of our devotion.

Today many people have an image of God in their mind, but rarely does this God resemble the God of the Bible. Even Christians have a tough time reconciling the God who opens the earth to swallow unbelievers in Exodus who is also described as a Shepherd, Healer, or Comforter.

I am committed to sharing with you what the Bible says about God more than what philosophers and theologians have said about God, so my promise to you is that each message in this series will be rooted in a passage of the Bible.

Because of time I will be skipping some verses but try to read enough so that you will see I am not taking pieces out of the flow of the whole. I strongly encourage you in your time in the Word this week to go back and read these 2 chapters in 1 sitting without interruption.

Some Comments about the Source Document & Science

Genesis 1:1–5 ESV:2016

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.

Each subsequent day the items created by God are listed then a “refrain” is made…

Genesis 1:10 ESV:2016

10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

Eventually we get to day 5…

Genesis 1:20–21 ESV:2016

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.

And then the 6th day…

Genesis 1:26–2:3 ESV:2016

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 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.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 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.

And the rest of chapter 2 is an expansion of the creation of mankind.

Explanation

1. There is more ambiguity in Scripture than some admit.

o Separate essentials from non-essentials.

· Did Dinosaurs disappear between verses 1 and 2? Did Dinosaurs co-habit with man until the Flood? Is the earth 6-10,000 years old as calculated by genealogies, or was there a gap between 1:1 and 1:2?

2. There is more ambiguity in science than some admit (The new Atheism).

The New Atheism is working from a philosophical position that believes all that exists is time, matter & energy. But many science teachers and professors believe that there is something that exists in addition to Physics.

There are complications in Scientific data that cannot be reasonably explained by time, matter & energy.

3. Some form of Intelligent Design is, in my opinion, inescapable.

· Irreducible complexity – some materialists attempt to explain all the data that they can from the scientific method, until they get to something inexplainable (like the complexity of the eyeball or the hummingbird’s feathers) that they attribute to the “god of the gaps”. But as science makes more discoveries, this god becomes smaller.

· Instead of starting with materialism and leaving God to the leftovers, the Bible starts with God and moves to that which is observable.

· I’m not saying that these issues are unimportant, I’m saying that we don’t have to answer all these questions for the rest of the Bible story to be logical and make sense.

When a child asks “Why is the Sky Blue?” He doesn’t need a treatise on ozone, evaporation and light refraction, to appreciate that it is the way God made it and it is beautiful to look at.

Transition: Genesis was never intended to be a science textbook, although all that it says is absolutely true. As God gave these words to Moses some 2,000 years after they happened the question was not “how life began” but “Who brought about Life.” These 2 chapters tell us at least 6 truths about God…

Six Observations About God

Explanation

1. God is (Gen 1:1)

a. God is not the creation of man, He existed before man.

b. Throughout the Renaissance most people believed that God existed and had all knowledge and our knowledge was a subset of God’s knowledge.

c. Beginning with Descarte in the 1600’s a new framework emerged – I think, therefore I am. We moved from because God knows I am, to I think, therefore I am.

2. God made EVERYthing (Gen 1:2)

o God existed before anything material and everything material exists because of God’s initiative.

3. There is only ONE God (Gen 1:2b)

o Simple, yet complex. (in 1:27 God is plural, but his/he are singular)

o Plural of existence or plural of majesty

o This one God reproduces his image in humans.

4. God is not SILENT (Gen 1:3)

o God communicates in ways that humans can understand

5. God is Good—VERY Good (Gen 1:4)

o A theme that is repeated after each day of creation and will recur throughout the Bible is that God does not act maliciously or selfishly, but that He acts out of goodness.

6. God Rested (Gen 2:2)

o He did not rest because He was tired or exhausted. He rested to take pleasure in His work as an example and a gift to our work.

Transition: God reveals these 6 truths about Himself, and also teaches 2 truths about mankind that sets boundaries on how we relate with Him.

Three Truths About Mankind

Explanation

1. We bear God’s IMAGE (Gen 1:27)

a. We are created, and as creatures, there are characteristics of materialism that we share with other creatures.

b. As Image-bearers there are ways that we reflect God that will play out in later chapters. We communicate; we design and demonstrate mastery over things we make; as we work, we reflect the image of God.

Whether your work is educating children, caring for the infirmed, leading people or breeding cattle, God gives us the ability to do so with excellence as displayed in THIS VIDEO

c. There are some differences between God who is Creator and we who are creatures. Later in the Bible we read “As I have loved you, so you ought to love one another” or “If your heavenly father gives good gifts, so also should you”; but He never says “you know everything as I am omniscient”.

d. God has placed us over the creation, not to exploit it, nor to serve it, but to steward it well as those who bear the image of our Creator.

2. We were made as MALE and FEMALE (Genesis 2:19-24)

Genesis 2:19–24 ESV:2016

19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

a. God created only 2 genders and they are intended to work in union to reflect the imago Dei.

b. Notice God’s description is binary. There is not one gender, nor are there 3 or more.

c. These 2 genders were intended to work together as a unit that complemented each other.

d. As humanity reproduced and multiplied man distances himself from the role as son and woman distances herself from the role as daughter and they form a new unity as husband and wife (2:24).

e. This description of the plan of God is the basis for our doctrinal statement on human sexuality. It does not spring from hatred or discomfort with those who claim to have different affections. It rests solidly upon how God said things were to be.

3. Mankind was made INNOCENT (Gen 2:25)

Genesis 2:25 ESV:2016

25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

· These two had nothing to hide, and nothing to be ashamed of. This was true intimacy in every form.

Most of us learned very early in life how to keep secrets. As young children we tell our parents that we brushed our teeth or washed our hands when we actually just rubbed a towel or swished some water around our mouths. This same secretive deceit follows into our adolescence and adulthood as our thoughts, feelings and behaviors emerge at characteristics that we feel we need to hide. Because we sense that we would be rejected if that other person knew the truth.

Transition: Quickly let me share how this good creation with innocent human beings connects to the brokenness and pain that shapes our existence apart from Christ.

How Genesis 1-2 Fits into the Big Story

Explanation

1. These FOUNDATIONAL chapters frame the Scope of the Human story.

· Next week we will look at Genesis chapter 3 which is often called “the Fall”. We have to understand what beauty looks like before we can recognize how destructive evil truly is.

2. Creation sets the stage for RE-CREATION.

a. In Corinthians and Revelation we will find an act of new creation.

b. We need to know what creation is before we can understand new creation.

c. In Romans Jesus is called the second Adam which makes no sense if we don’t understand the first Adam.

3. God’s Intent shapes the Christian WORLDVIEW.

a. Polytheism – each god only ruled in 1 domain, but Monotheism finds life as integral/connected

b. Hedonism – is pleasure found in God or apart from God?

c. Pantheism – all is spiritual. But a biblical worldview separates creature from Creator.

4. Creation established RESPONSIBILITY

a. Since HE is the one who designed me and made me, I owe Him everything.

b. It is to our good that we acknowledge our proper relationship to the God who made us. We do not bargain with Him as equals, we submit to Him as our Sovereign.

Conclusion:

It is beyond time that we unlearn the modern perspective of Descartes. For Scripture says we are but dust; our earthly lives are but a vapor that appears for a while then disappears.

My friend, you are not the center of any Universe. Each of us is but one piece of a puzzle that God intended from before the beginning of time, it is time that we bow to His sovereign plan.

Song of Response #58..... This Is My Father’s World

Benediction: Numbers 6:24–26 (ESV) — The Lord bless you and keep you; 25the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. This is a sample sermon

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