In the Beginning
Notes
Transcript
Creation
Creation
Every story has a beginning.
Some stories have amazing openings.
A way to set the stage for all else that is going to take place.
The opening introduces you to the main characters, themes, and anticipation for what lies ahead.
This is something that good story tellers are masters at.
Stories are how we most effectively relate ideas to one another.
Stories are how we most effectively relate truths to one another.
So it is with the bible.
The bible is a bunch of stories that tell one great story.
And the bible has one of the best beginnings ever.
As an aside, Words have meanings and connotations.
And you may be sitting there repulsed at the fact that I use the word story to talk about the bible.
But let me assure you that just b/c I use the word story doesn’t mean that I don’t believe it’s true.
We tell stories all the time when we recount our days to our loved ones.
We tell stories when we are hanging out with friends and recalling all those crazy and dumb things we did together.
Just b/c something is called a story doesn’t mean that it isn’t true.
In fact, telling it in a compelling way can make it feel even more true.
Because it engages our imagination and helps us to relive and engage with the event.
That being said just about every culture has a creation story.
I remember when I was in High School we had to read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.
This was a compact retelling of Greek Mythology.
How the earth was created.
How the god’s got their powers.
Etc.
Just like I know, or more accurately knew, the story that the Greeks believed to be their creation, the Israelites would have known other creation stories.
The most prevalent one would have been the Enuma Elish the story of Babylon's gods and goddess.
We are going to cover them briefly b/c I believe that the comparison and contrast between what God revealed and what the Babylonians believed is astonishing.
The Babylonians were polytheistic meaning that they worshipped many gods.
But their chief god was Marduk.
The creation story depicted in the Enuma Elish is about Marduk creating his dwelling place in and among Babylon.
The world was created after a violent battle with Tiamat, a dragon like serpent.
In which, Marduk tears her in two and the top half of her body becomes the land and the bottom half becomes the sky.
Humanity is then created from the blood of another god to do the menial tasks that the gods don’t want to do anymore.
Such as farming and Providing the gods with food.
I want to bring this up for a couple of reasons.
First, some people argue that the Enuma Elish is the basis from which we get our creation story.
Meaning that they believe the Genesis account is a copy or plagiarism of the Babylonian account.
Second, to demonstrate how drastically different the biblical revelation of creation is from other accounts.
Thirdly, to show you that the Genesis account of creation really does set the stage for the rest of the biblical narrative.
So how is the biblical creation story different than these other ancient stories and how is this going to help us see Jesus in the Old Testament?
Glad you asked.
Let’s pray.
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Creator
I would argue that this is the most important verse in the whole of Scripture.
Because it reveals who God is.
He is the creator of all.
He started creating in the beginning.
He doesn’t have a beginning.
He existed before the beginning.
This argues that he is timeless, spaceless, and immaterial.
There is a popular argument for the existence of a Creator called the Kalam Cosmological argument.
It Follows:
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence.
Genesis 1:1 tells us that God is the cause of creation.
That he is the reason that everything exists.
He is not a part of everything.
He is outside of all of creation.
Not this verse is either true or not true.
Either God created or he didn’t.
If he didn’t, then everything that follows in what he has revealed to us is false and untrustworthy.
But if he did, oh man, he has something absolutely amazing planned.
He creates for his own glory and for the good of his creation.
God deliberately creates everything.
They are not done on accident or as a byproduct of a battle or struggle.
All things submit to the word of the Lord.
He is bringing life to order and to being.
All other creation stories have various gods over various aspects of life.
Marduk was the sun god.
They had gods over the land.
Gods over the sea.
Gods over livestock.
Gods over the crops and harvest.
Here the Creator God reveals himself to be the king over all things.
There are no gods beside him.
He is the starting and stopping place.
He is the one who spoke the world and all things into existence.
Lets look at that together
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.
He is the one that brings chaos into order.
The earth was uninhabitable.
It was a mess.
Not fit for any type of life, so God transforms this inhospitable chaos into a habitation fit for animals.
God does this over 6 balanced and beautiful days of creation.
There is a beautiful symmetry in the retelling of this creation story so let’s look at it.
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.
6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”
7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.
8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.
10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.
12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years,
15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.
16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.
17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,
18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
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.
22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so.
25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
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.
Balanced Beauty
This is a beautiful creation passage that we could probably spend weeks going over, but for sake of time and this series I will be brief-ish.
What we see on days 1-3 are things called into being but at this point in time they are simply resources to be used.
They aren’t yet being used.
For instance:
Day 1 God creates light.
Day 2 God separates the sky from the waters on the earth
Day 3 From the waters of the earth God calls forth dry land and the lowest form of organic life vegetation (plants) are created as a bonus to day 3.
Then there is a shift from creation of the resource to creation of the utilizers of that resource.
Day 4 God creates the sun, moon, and stars to use the light he created on Day one.
Day 5 God creates fish and birds to use the sky and the sea.
Day 6 God creates Land animals to live on the dry land and consume the vegetation.
Much like the bonus act on Day 3 was to create the vegetation, we read that there is a bonus act of creation on day 6.
But instead of being the lowest form of organic life (plants) God creates the highest form of life, when he creates humans.
We will go more into depth next week about the humans created in the image of God.
Notice that it isn’t only balanced in the creation account, but that after every day God calls it good.
But after creation is finished and God has made male and female in his image he calls it very good.
The God of creation takes what is chaotic, uninhabitable, and inhospitable and brings forth order and life.
Not just any life but very good life.
I want to take a moment and talk about some of the interpretations of Genesis 1.
The first thing I want you to know is that Genesis is not meant to be a science book.
It was not written or designed by God to fight against evolution.
It was not written to tell us the age of the earth.
It was not written as simply a story or myth.
I do believe that it is the historical and true account of creation, but we cannot make it say something that it doesn’t say.
We have to be careful when reading, studying, and interpreting the Word of God that we don’t try and distort it to say something that the author never intended to say.
When we do that we are doing a disservice to God.
We are profaning what he has revealed.
We are trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.
It doesn’t work.
And it makes us look foolish.
So why is this important?
Why am I bringing this up?
The reality is that too often we try to tell the Word of God what we want it to say.
And the way that we most often do that is by asking questions of the scripture that it never intended to be asked.
The Point of Genesis 1 and 2 is that God is the good creator who created good things with love and intentionality.
So does Genesis 1 tell us how old the earth is? NO!
Does it tell us how all of this was done scientifically? NO!
We have to be really careful about how we read and interpret the bible.
God has spoken and when we try to interject our ideas or preconceived notions into the text we aren’t glorifying him.
So then what does Genesis tell us?
Why is it included in our scriptures?
It tells us that the creator of the universe is a loving and personal God who is involved with his creation.
That he is mighty, powerful, and in control over all things that have been created.
It tells us that creation has God’s “fingerprints” all over it.
That we can see order.
That we can see beauty.
That we can see glimpses of the divine touch in all of creation.
From the skies above, the fluttering of bird’s wings, the moo of a cow, the laugh of a child.
All are ingrained with his design.
It tells us that the things that God created were good. very good.
That things function and work as they were designed.
From our DNA to our fingers.
Ecosystems.
Part of what God was revealing to the Israelites when he told them about his creation is that he isn’t like the other gods that their neighbors worshipped.
He is the sole creator.
In Power and Glory.
There are many different ways that people can interpret the text.
Listen to what Martin Luther said:
“Who could explain all these momentous things, with sufficient appropriateness and success: For interpreters and commentators have confused and entangled them with such variety, diversity, and infinity of questions, that it is sufficiently plain, that God has reserved the majesty of this wisdom, and the full and sound understanding of this chapter, to himself alone.”
He conclusion was “that the world began, and was made of God, out of nothing.”
There are so many mysteries and questions surrounding Genesis 1 that we would be arrogant to think that we have the perfect solution.
Some mysteries are not going to be discoverable this side of glory.
So we can also conclude that the main idea of Genesis 1 is that God is the main Character in the bible story, God created the world, out of nothing, and that he has a plan and purpose for all that he created.
We should be grateful and awestruck that God would reveal any of this to us.
So now your asking yourself, “How does this all get us to Jesus?”
I promised you that this series was going to be about seeing Jesus in the OT so let see him.
The immediate answer is a parallel that we get in one of the gospel accounts
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.
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Jesus is Creator
It’s no accident that John chooses to start his gospel off this way.
Out of all the ways that he could have began he starts out mirroring Genesis.
We are going to study this verse more in depth when we start our journey through John, but let’s point out a few things.
How did God start to create?
He spoke and things happened.
Jesus is the Word of God.
There is a direct connection between God speaking and Jesus being the Word of God, The word with God, and being God himself.
The bible is clear.
Jesus was in the beginning with God.
The Word was with God and the word was God.
Jesus is God, but he is distinct from the Father.
Jesus made all things through himself.
Everything owes its existence to Jesus.
Since Jesus Created everything and genesis points to God creating everything, ipso facto, Jesus is God.
He is also portrayed by John as life and light.
When creation happened, life and light had to be created too.
Meaning that life and light came from Jesus.
Life doesn’t just exist it has to come from somewhere, unless that life comes from God.
Jesus comes as the light to pierce the darkness.
To create order out of chaos.
This reminds us of the darkness that was over the face of the water in Gen 1:2.
The light, the glory of God, came into the darkness of earth to shine brightly.
And to draw people to himself.
The light is bringing a spiritual awakening that is going to give life to those who don’t run from it, but run to it.
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.
This is just further evidence that Jesus is who he said he is.
Paul takes it a step further than John and tells us that Jesus created all things, visible and invisible.
Structures and order, Kings and rulers.
Angels and Demons
Nothing is outside of his scope of creation.
But not only that, b/c he is the creator all of these things are subject to his authority.
There is nothing that exists, happens, or escapes the authority of Jesus.
Remember what he said in Matthew 28:18 “18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
Not only did he create all things, he also sustains all things.
He holds all things together.
I want to read just a few more verses.
I’m not gonna comment on them, but I want you to see, that this isn’t a one off teaching.
Jesus is the creator that we see in Genesis.
Creating alongside both God the Father and The HS.
1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,
2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
So What?
What does this have to do with us?
We can recognize that Jesus is linked to the creation of the world, but why does that matter?
I think the first thing that we have to see is that God in the creation of the world ordered things in such a way that they would operate well and with purpose.
So God is the great architect that designed life to be lived by a certain set of rules and principles.
Meaning that if he reveals to us the reality that he created us then we should hold fast to his design.
When we don’t, that is when we are living in sin.
That’s when we are in a broken relationship with God.
A mark that we bear b/c of our first mother and father, Adam and Eve.
So the world we live in is broken, but Jesus the creator and sustainer of the world came to set things right.
To point us in the direction that we need to Go.
To come and restore creation back from its brokenness.
To restore humanity to its rightful design.
To restore us back into relationship with himself.
So when we read and learn about how Jesus lived his life, we should carefully observe him and imitate him.
Since he is the creator and designer he knows how this is supposed to work.
Here recently I have been meeting with some guys and doing a bible study on Saturday Mornings.
One Saturday I was sitting next to this man who I didn’t recognize.
We spoke after the meeting and he was awestruck by Jesus.
He had recently started reading his bible and he started in the book of John.
He kept saying over and over again that this book holds the answers.
The Word of God so resonated with him that he couldn’t help not see how important it was to life.
Here’s the deal:
Sometimes we are overwhelmed with life.
We are overwhelmed with circumstances.
We are overwhelmed with a feeling of hopelessness and abandonment.
We are seeking out how to live our life, how to fix our problems, how to save or create relationships.
How to heal broken hearts.
How to find our place in the world.
We look to our friends, social media, self-help gurus, Dr. Phil, Oprah, or even look to ourselves for answers.
But here’s the reality.
The answer is found in Jesus.
And he has given to us his word so that we might know him.
So that we might love him.
So that we might chase after him.
So that we may find out how to become fully human.
Don’t turn towards creation to find value, worth, or answers.
Turn toward the creator.
Turn toward the God of the Universe.
Turn toward the God that put on flesh and came to live, suffer, and die so that you may know what life is truly about.
But Jesus didn’t stay dead.
He rose again.
And he promises us that we will be resurrected with him if we trust him, follow him, and love him with all that we have.
2 Cor 5:17 “17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
Jesus calls us to be a new creation, b/c the old one is spoiled.
The old one is rebellious.
He calls us to be new so that we can walk in freedom.
So that we can come out of the darkness into his light.
If you are committed to Jesus know that you are that new creation and your calling is to tell others about the life that they can have.
Tell them that you know the creator and you walk in his light.
But if you haven’t placed trust in Jesus, He wants you to know that he isn’t waiting for some future version of you.
He wants you right here, right now.
No matter how messed up.
No matter how deep in it you are.
He wants to pick you up and make you new.
He’s calling out to you.
Will you answer him?
We are about to enter into a time of reflection and take the Lord’s supper.
If you are a follower of Jesus.
If you are committed to living your life following after him.
I want to invite you to take part.
But if you aren’t committed to following Jesus.
You have never had a time when you said that you wanted to give your life over to him I want to ask you to let the elements pass by.
Because we want to hold something greater out to you.
Something greater than the juice and greater than the cracker.
I want you to give you life to Jesus.
Submit to him.
Follow after him.
Give your life to him.
Regardless the cost.
He is your creator and he wants a relationship with you.
Lord’s Supper
23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,
24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.