Genesis: Introduction

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Genesis 1:1–2 ESV

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.

Introduction

Where did everything come from?

What is the meaning and the purpose of life?

These are two of the most profound questions that people ask. Both questions are answered in Genesis. But they are not the primary focus of Genesis.

Why is the world filled with so much evil

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Also, both questions that are answered in Genesis. But they are not the primary focus of Genesis.

How should we order our lives, our communities and society at large?

What is the moral and ethical standard that we should hold to?

What moral lessons should we learn from those who have gone before us?

Again, all of these questions are answered in Genesis, but they are not the primary focus of Genesis or the reason Genesis was written.

You see there is a lot of misunderstanding about Genesis and its purpose and value to us.

Many see Genesis as only a history book that explains the creation of the world and the origin of mankind - that it’s the Christian response to Darwinian evolution or the atheistic “Big Bang” theory.

Or people see it as a book of ethics and a moral guide, where we can study great men of old like Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, and see what kind of men they were and emulate them so that we can live a moral and good lifestyle.

And definitely, Genesis does speak very clearly to those issues, but Genesis is about so much MORE than just that. Its more than just the creation story or moral life lessons.

Most unfortunate of all, there are those that see no purpose or value in Genesis for Christians today. As if it is just a Sunday School level book, that is taught to the children of Christian parents so that they have the basic background, but then once we’ve gone through that basic training of Genesis and some other selected Old Testament stories, then we have graduated from that and then progress to the New Testament.

Then there are those that think we progress from the OT in Sunday school, to the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and then once we have got that, we graduate again from the gospel and progress to the NT letters to learn about moral living again.

So with that frame of mind, people approach the Bible as if its this three-tiered training program of OT moral lessons beginning in Genesis, then the gospel in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and then the final phase more moral lessons again from Acts to Jude until we all get raptured in Revelation.

I actually had a talk with a visiting pastor who came here once to preach at someone’s funeral. He met me afterwards and he came at me pretty hard. He was criticizing the preaching at this church. And it was the best compliment I could have heard - actually his criticism was music to my ears.

He said he had been hearing that the preachers in this church only preach the gospel. He said our church needs to graduate from the gospel and progress now to the more mature teachings of the New Testament so that we can help the people grow.

This is that mindset I am talking about - that mindset that we progress through these imaginary levels of Christianity; from the moral lessons in the OT stories, to the gospel which people somehow think is only found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and then finally to more moral lessons in the NT letters.

I am going to tell you today what I said to that pastor that day - the whole Bible is about the Gospel. If you’re preaching any part of the Bible and it is disconnected from the gospel, then you’re either not preaching the Bible or you’ve missed the point of the text.

The whole Bible is about the gospel. The Gospel is what the Bible is all about.

And it begins… In the beginning.

It doesn’t begin in Matthew chapter 1, but in Genesis 1:1.

Genesis 1:1 ESV

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

In that opening statement of the Bible is not just the beginning of creation and the existence of the heavens and the earth;

It is the beginning of the whole revelation of God to mankind.

It is the unfolding of God’s revelation of who He is, who we are, and what God has done for us.

This revelation begins in Genesis chapter 1:1 where we see that God, the infinite, eternal, sovereign and almighty Creator, created everything that exists and He made it good and perfect in every way.

It reveals that God created man in His image, and graciously placed man in paradise with every good thing that he could desire, including a wife made just for him.

But we see that man was not satisfied to have everything good that God had given him; man also wanted what God had forbidden him to have.

And so after Creation, we see sin and the Fall, bringing on the earth judgement, death, decay, destruction and separation of mankind from God.

But God is not only gracious to man before sin and the Fall, but also after the Fall. And so after the Fall we also see the promise of Redemption and ultimately Restoration, where mankind is ultimately restored to perfect relationship with God.

This is the gospel. Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration. And we are seeing all of this already in the first 3 chapters of Genesis.

In fact, we can point to the first 3 chapters of Genesis and say there is the whole story of mankind and the gospel in summary:

the creation of paradise

the Fall and ruin of paradise

and the promise of redemption and restoration, and a new paradise to come

and then the rest of the Bible progressively unfolds in greater and greater clarity the details of that promise and its fulfillment in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Theologians call this “the scarlet thread”, because woven throughout all the history and the stories and the writings and the letters and the books in the Bible, is the story of Jesus Christ and the cross. Its either pointing forward to the cross, or pointing back to it, revealing with ever more clarity God’s plan of redemption.

We will see it throughout Genesis.

We will see events and people and types pointing forward to Jesus and the redemption that he will achieve on the cross, to save for His Father the people who His Father gave to Him as a gift.

The flood, the covenants, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph… all of these point us ultimately to Christ and reveal more and more of God’s plan of redemption through Him.

And so the point and the purpose of Genesis, as I’ve said, is not to merely tell the story of where everything came from, or to show us how to live a morally good life.

Genesis is the beginning of the revelation of God to mankind.

More specifically - and you might want to write this down because this is the theme that is going to be the focus of the whole series as I preach through this book:

Genesis is the beginning of God’s revelation of the glory of Jesus Christ.

Now I want you to think about this:

Here we have the Bible. It is a collection of 66 books, written by 40 different authors over a period of about 2000 years. And yet there is a common thread that binds all of those writings from all those different authors separated by all those hundreds of years together as a unified revelation of God and His redemption of mankind through the death and resurrection of His Son - the beginning of which is right here in Genesis 1:1 and progressively unfolds until the glory of the risen Saviour is revealed and expounded upon.

Such a marvel can only come about through the inspiration of a single all-knowing, all-present, infinitely wise being.

And He is introduced to us in verse 1 of Genesis:

“In the beginning, God… “

And by introducing God this way, Moses, the author of Genesis, is already revealing some of the awesome attributes of God; and I am going to identify three of them as the three main points of this sermon this morning:

He is the Eternal God

He is the Almighty Creator

He is the Gracious Saviour

1. He is the Eternal God

Moses begins his account with “In the beginning...”

This tells us a few things about the universe that we see around us:

1. The universe had a beginning.

That is to say, the universe and everything that makes up the universe - meaning matter itself - is not eternal. It has not existed forever, but had a beginning. Even time had a beginning. There was a time when there was no time.

So there was a point - I can’t say a point in time, because time hadn’t been created yet by God - but there was a moment where there was nothing.

And in the next moment, there was something. The universe had been created. The world and time and begun.

Now everybody, for the most part, agrees on this. Even secular atheistic scientists agree that the universe and matter had a beginning. They believe that it originated with what they call a “Big Bang” explosion, and that everything that exists today, including the galaxies and planets and even life itself, can be traced back to that explosion.

We disagree on that, but on this we agree - the universe has not eternally existed, but it had a beginning.

The next thing we can learn from the first 4 words of Genesis is:

2. There is an Eternal God

Since the universe has a beginning, the only logical next conclusion is that there has to be something - someone - who is responsible for that beginning.

Now as I say, secular scientists argue for a Big Bang theory that says there once was nothing, but then one Tuesday afternoon, for some inexplicable reason, nothing exploded. And then there was a whole bunch of somethings.

Friends, it is not logical, nor reasonable, nor scientific to believe that nothing can suddenly become something, let alone explode. I mean, what exactly exploded? And if there was a something that exploded, where did that something come from?

There has to be causality; something, or Someone, had to be eternally existing and present, in order to create matter and bring the universe into being.

Matter cannot create itself. That is a logical absurdity, because in order for matter to create itself, it would have had to have existed before it existed, and would have to be and not be at the same time.

That’s a ridiculous notion. And it violates the scientific law of non-contradiction.

But Moses says “In the beginning, God...”

The one who brought everything that exists into being, is the eternal God.

He has no beginning, and He has no end.

Psalm 90:2 ESV

2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

Habakkuk 1:12 ESV

12 Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.

So the universe has a beginning, and the reason it could have a beginning to start with, is because there is one who is eternal - He is our God. And God is our Almighty Creator.

2. He is the Almighty Creator

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

The existence of the universe is no accident. There are no accidents when the only being in existence is God.

The universe and everything in it exists by divine design. It has a designer and a creator.

Notice Genesis 1:2 says that after God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and void.

At this point the earth was just an as yet unformed heap of matter, and was void or empty of any features or content.

We are not talking here about an earth that has run into ruin because the previous owner didn’t keep up the maintenance, or a world that already existed but just needed to be pieced together to make it into something good and useful.

No, it was without form and void - and that’s because God created the heavens and the earth “ex nihilo” - out of nothing - and He had not yet formed it and filled it.

Now when a sculptor creates, he takes an existing mass or lump of clay, or wood or some other material, and he shapes it and molds it and chisels it until it looks like what he has in mind.

Or when Sharon draws one of her beautiful paintings, she doesn’t first have to invent paint and something to paint on. Rather, she gathers different colour paints and arranges them in a particular way on a canvas, until what you see is a beautiful picture of a landscape that Sharon was aiming to recreate on that canvas. Now she can combine different colours to make other colours, and she can arrange them in different ways or try different canvasses, but either way both the sculptor and the painter can only make things out of already existing materials.

But God… God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing.

Such is the power of the Almighty God. He speaks, and creation comes into being.

Psalm 89:11 ESV

11 The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.

Isaiah 45:7 ESV

7 I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.

God is eternal, and He is the Creator of the world.

Last point for today, He is also the gracious Saviour of the world.

3. He is the Gracious Saviour

Notice Nehemiah 9:6 and Revelation 4:11

Nehemiah 9:6 ESV

6 “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.

Revelation 4:11 ESV

11 “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

The right response to this eternal God who by His Awesome power spoke, and all creation came to be, is to glorify Him and honour Him and to worship Him.

Psalm 111:10 ESV

10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever!

But Solomon also writes in:

The wise acknowledge God in all His eternal glory and Almighty power and they fear Him, and worship Him and glorify Him.

The foolish deny God and reject wisdom, and choose instead a life of sin and rebellion which ends in death and judgement.

In Romans 1, Paul traces sin back to a denial of God:

Romans 1:18–20 ESV

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 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.

The ungodly and the unrighteous deny God. Paul says they suppress the truth by their unrighteousness - meaning they know the truth there is a God; their conscience bears witness that there is an eternal God of eternal power and divine nature, who created everything that they can see in nature and they are without excuse.

But, because of their unrighteousness, they suppress that truth. It is far more convenient for them to deny that truth.

Well why do they suppress the truth of the eternal God? Why is it inconvenient for them?

Because if we acknowledge that there is a God who has existed in all eternity, who has no beginning and no end, and in His almighty strength speaks and the elements and planets and galaxies spring into being, then we must acknowledge His supreme and sovereign authority over His creation, which includes us.

And if we acknowledge His sovereign authority over all things, then we must submit to Him, and to His rule and His authority.

And that, my friends, is too inconvenient a thing for the unrighteous sinner who does not want to be ruled, but rather wants to rule himself.

The sinner does not want a God; the sinner wants to be his own god.

And so they suppress the truth. They would rather cling to any secular attempt to explain away the existence of this complex universe, even if it means saying with a straight face that one cold afternoon in July absolutely nothing exploded and hey presto here we are. But even they know that is super far fetched, so they add millions and billions of years to the story in an attempt to somehow make that sound less absurd.

But friends, its not only atheistic evolutionists and atheists who suppress the truth about God. Every single one of us do it. Because in every moment in time in which we make an unrighteous decision to sin against God, we are denying His authority over us and we are denying His very being.

Thankfully, this awesome, eternal Creator is also a gracious Saviour, and in eternity He not only determined to create the world and us, but also to redeem us.

Ephesians 1:3–4 ESV

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love

Listen to the Genesis, the opening words of the gospel of John:

John 1:1–3 ESV

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Sounds a lot like the beginning of Genesis, doesn’t it?

Who is this that John is speaking about? Who was in the beginning, and was with God, and who is God, and through whom all things were made?

John 1:14 ESV

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.

He is our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Further we read of Jesus in Colossians:

Colossians 1:16–18 ESV

16 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. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

Where is Jesus when the world was being created? He was there.

People don’t realise this but Genesis is quoted over 200 times in the New Testament.

Furthermore, every major doctrine can be traced back to Genesis.

The doctrine of God

The doctrine of man

Sin and the Fall

Justification by faith

The shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sin

The Covenants

The Church

Redemption and Salvation

Even the doctrine of the Trinity

… which is implied in Genesis chapter 1 where we see God in the beginning creating the universe, and the Spirit of God hovering above the waters, and now we see also that Jesus also is there… He is the beginning, the Alpha, by Him all things were created, and all things were created by Him and through Him and for Him.

He is God.

1 Timothy 3:16 ESV

16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

Wrap Up

What an awesome God He is. He is eternal, glorious, almighty, all powerful.

He speaks, and all creation comes into being.

But there is something even more powerful, more astonishing, more glorious even than this magnificent display of God’s power when He created the entire universe...

and it is this…

That this God, who in everything is preeminent and glorious and before whom all creation and all the angels bow down and worship...

became flesh… became a man..

and dwelt among us… lived as one of us…

and died for us…

And His death was vindicated… He rose from the dead… and He was taken up in glory… And He reigns supreme

And His name has been proclaimed among the nations from that day forward…

And will continue to be proclaimed until that final day.... when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that JESUS IS LORD.

It is astonishing. That this God would die for us.

For sinners.

For rebels.

For haters.

God creates.

Man rebels.

God redeems.

God restores.

If we truly, really comprehend this, then we should be worshiping Him with every ounce of strength and every breath that He gives us.

Of course, we don’t. Because we are tainted by sin and tempted away from God by the allures and the distractions of the world. Even in the best of days we only see dimly.

But the angels and heavenly beings, they see, and they worship Him day and night.

That’s why it says:

Revelation 4:8–11 ESV

8 And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” 9 And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 11 “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

Great is our God. And Great is His Salvation.

Let us also cast our crowns at His feet.

Let us join with that angelic host and say:

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,”