The Gospel: Chapter 1 -- Creation

Homesick for a Lost World

“I just can’t understand why life is so hard.”

“Why can’t life just be easy?”

“It shouldn’t be this way.”

“It isn’t supposed to be this way.”

We’ve all said things like this at one point or another, maybe even earlier today. Statements like these betray the fact that most of us live with a pervasive feeling that our experiences of hardship, brokenness in relationships, suffering, “bad luck,” or encounters with evil in the world are simply interruptions in what should be an otherwise peaceful and predictable world full of goodness and joy. We tend to expect a certain level of harmony and ease in our daily lives, so when we’re met instead with disharmony and difficulty, we’re left with that unmet longing, that ache in the core of our being – the longing for a world that’s different from the one we live in.

But where does this innate sense that “things are not as they should be” come from? If it is true, as many in our secular Western culture believe, that the world is simply a product of billions of years of random, heartless, and therefore amoral evolutionary processes of change and natural selection, then why is it a near universal mark of the human experience that we long for a world of purpose, love, and justice? If the story that secularists tell about the world is true, why don’t we simply receive the world as it is in all its imperfections, without a sense that things could or should be better?

Is it possible that there’s a better explanation for how the world came into existence?

Is it possible that our longing for a world of purpose, love, and justice could be better viewed not as the product of meaningless social evolution, but as homesickness for a world that once was?

Creation: The Beginning of the Gospel Story

The Gospel story begins in the opening pages of the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, in the book of Genesis. There, in the first two chapters of Scripture, God provides a clear and definitive answer to the questions we raised above. In Genesis 1 and 2, we learn about the origins of the universe, including our world and the life existing therein – including mankind: you and me. What we read paints a picture of the way things were – the way things were intended to be – a picture that gives light to the dissonance and longing we feel in our daily lives.

In any good story, the author begins with what is commonly referred to as the exposition, which includes an introduction to the main characters and setting. The Biblical story is no different.

First, we meet the main character of the story:

Genesis 1:1 (ESV)

1 In the beginning, God…

Before there were people, before there were animals, before there were planets and stars and molecules and matter, there was God.

God is the main character in the story of the Bible — a point that we will come back to shortly.

Second, we learn about story’s setting, which we find is the creative work of the main character, God:

Genesis 1:1–5 (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.

Day by day for six days straight, God takes what was once formless and empty, and transforms it into the world we know. Atmosphere and oceans. Land and sea. Sun, moon, and stars. Plants and animals.

The picture is holistic: whatever exists, exists because God created it. In these opening lines of the Bible, God’s power is demonstrated not only in the fact that he created, but also in the way that he created: simply by speaking.

Third, on the sixth and final day of creation, God adds a supporting cast to His story:

Genesis 1:26–27 (ESV)

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.

The narrative in Genesis 2 adds some detail:

Genesis 2:7–8 (ESV)

7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Previous to the creation of humans, God’s method of creating was speaking. In this final act of creation, God does more than just speak — he gets his hands dirty. With both the man and the woman, we see a level of care and intimacy that was not present with God’s other works of creation. Making mankind in his image required God to be close in a new way, to know and be known with people in a way that is completely unlike God’s relationship with the rest of creation.

God’s evaluation of these six days of creation was that it was very good (Gen. 1:31). In the original language, this phrase literally means “an abundance of goodness” or “pleasantness.”

Not only was it good, but it was complete.

Genesis 2:1–3 (ESV)

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.

In the newly created world, there was goodness and rest. There was harmony between God and man. There was harmony between man and man. And there was harmony between man and creation.

There was no sin. No brokenness. No disharmony. No unmet expectations — other than Adam finding that an animal was no match for a woman’s companionship!

There was, simply put, peace.

Is this not a picture of everything our hearts long for?

What the Creation Accounts Show Us

Even so, few of us are experts in biblical studies, and even fewer in the details of Ancient Near Eastern literature, so we may well walk away from these stories thinking, “Wow, that sounds nice, but what does it mean, and what does it matter?”

Old Testament scholars help us make sense of this opening of the Bible’s grand story by showing us what God and the human authors were up to. We see essentially two things.

First, we see that creation reveals the one true God, who is supremely sovereign over all things in existence.

In the time of Genesis’s writing in the Ancient Near East, there were multiple widely known creation myths from other cultures involving their gods and idols. All of these alternative stories — some older than the Genesis account — essentially involve a source of good fighting against an adversary who represented evil or chaos and who was equal in power. They fight it out, and out of the fight comes the creation of the world. The world we experience, then, was described as being the result of a cosmic conflict. Not only that, but a conflict that was in question from the start — there was no guarantee that good was going to overcome evil, and it did so only by chance.

The Genesis account takes these stories and turns them on their head. Instead of two equal but opposite cosmic forces duking it out for the creation of the world, we see one divine being creating by His own initiative. The God of Genesis is revealed to be a Triune God bursting forth with generative love. The true creation account in Genesis is therefore not the result of chance of conflict, but of intentional love.

Second, the creation account reveals God’s mission in creating the world and mankind.

Scholars compare the language of Genesis 1 and 2 to other writings of the time period and find that the biblical creation story is structured very similarly to other religious writings detailing the construction and dedication of temples. In Ancient Near Eastern religion, instructions would be given for building a temple to a certain god or idol — each step representing something true about that god — with the final step being to place a carved resemblance of that god in the middle of the temple. This “image” of the god would represent the nature of the god to worshipers who entered the temple, and would also in some sense receive and redirect the worship of the people back to the actual god in the heavens.

Genesis meets the cultural norm where it was, but once again, turns it on its head.

Like these other ancient cultures, Genesis represents the building of a temple, but this time, the temple is not a structure: it is Earth. The world is fashioned piece by piece in the creation narrative, each step communicating something true about the God to be worshiped in that temple. Then, in the final step of creation, an image of the Triune God is placed in the center of the temple, the Garden of Eden.

Man’s purpose in being created in the image of God was to represent the character and nature of God to the surrounding creation, to reflect creation’s praises back to God, and also to extend God’s temple out from the Garden to the ends of the earth. That’s what was meant when the Scripture says that “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Outside of the Garden of Eden was wilderness — uncultivated land that represented chaos, but also opportunity. God’s intention was that mankind would work and keep the garden, extending its territory throughout the entire world. In order to do this, the man and women would need to multiply to further spread the generative love and care of the Creator, which is why he commands them to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and [to] 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” (Genesis 1:28 ESV).

Here the mission of God in creation becomes clear: God created the world in order to fill it with worshipers.

Temples are created for one purpose: worship.

God, by His own initiative, set forth a plan to spread His love, beauty, and joy by creating the world as His temple, filled with His image-bearers who would carry His kingdom reign throughout the created world, worshiping Him and reflecting the praises of creation back to Him.

This is the reason why you exist and why I exist — it is to bear God’s image by worshiping Him and becoming like Him.

Wrapping Up

If you ever wonder why you are here, what your purpose in life is, why God created you, it is this — “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

Which leads to this freeing truth: We are not the stars of the story.

There is a main character found throughout the story of the Bible, on nearly every page. It is not you, and it is not me. It is God!

Yet, while we are not the stars, God in His grace created us to play an integral part in his unfolding drama in the world.

The next time you feel like life is harder than it should be, or you find yourself longing for a place of goodness, peace, and rest, think about Genesis 1 and 2. Remind yourself that the world really isn’t supposed to be this way. At one point it really was good, and there really was harmony.

When you feel discouraged by the way things are, know that you’re not crazy — you’re just homesick.

Of course, the recognition that the world is no longer like the home we were made for leads us to ask: What went wrong?!

That is the topic of our next session.