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How does the Bible begin? “In the beginning.” What kind of books start like that? Stories, narrative. And sure enough, there are a lot of stories in Genesis. And if you’ve been in church any length of time, especially as a child, I guarantee you’ve heard many of them. We have a tendency to pick and choose what stories appeal to us and then try to come up with some moral about what the story must be about, like they're a divine version of Aesop’s Fables. You ever read those as a kid or to a kid? Essentially, each story takes up one page and ends with some moral lesson you’re supposed to take away.
We do that with the Bible all the time. Just think about Genesis here. Adam and Eve—don’t disobey God. Cain and Abel— don’t be angry or get revenge. Noah—you’re gonna die if you don’t follow God. Abraham and Isaac— have faith even if God’s way seems ridiculous because you’re gonna get a ram in your thicket to meet your need. Or the classic, Joseph— be pure.
Now, I’m not saying we can’t draw morals from the Bible, especially when teaching children, but the Bible is not simply a book of principles. To treat It as such is to severely limit Its impact. It’s not that clean cut. It’s so much more than that. And it’s not that simple. Sometimes we say the Bible is simple. No it is not. The gospel is simple. Anyone can understand salvation. But the Bible is so much more than just about salvation. If salvation was the end goal, God would zap us up to heaven after we’re saved. That doesn’t happen. Why? Because there’s more to the story. Salvation is the first step on a staircase that is the Christian life. It’s the most important step because without it, you wouldn’t be on the staircase, but it is still only the first step.
I will give the disclaimer up front that as with anything else, I do not claim originality for my ideas. I write my own sermons, but they are the result of many hours of studying the work of other scholars and preachers. So, if something really makes sense to you or makes you think in a different way than usual, you can thank God for the generations of preachers who have come before me and invested in me. I will readily admit that I borrow ideas or illustrations in the process of making this study.
Genesis is not just a random collection of stories. It is one big story that is divided into two parts—chapters 1-11 and chapter 12-50. Now, when I say that, remember that the chapter divisions are not original to the text. They’re there to help us find our places, but they are not divinely inspired. In fact, sometimes the original Hebrew or Greek verse numbers don’t exactly line up with our English verse numbers. Genesis, like around 99% of the Old Testament, was written in Hebrew. If you tend to confuse what is Hebrew and what is Greek, just remember that the Old Testament is more about the Jewish people who speak Hebrew, whereas the New Testament took place in a Greek culture. So, Hebrew in the Old Testament, Greek in the New.
And this particular book in Hebrew is called בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית (bereshit). And that literally means “in the beginning.” Most Hebrew names for the books of the Old Testament are actually just the first couple words of the books. בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית is both the title of Genesis and the first word of Genesis in Hebrew. So, let’s look at the narrative now.
Genesis 1:1 KJV 1900
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
There is already so much we could talk about, but we’ll just hit a few highlights.
Let me ask, what do you picture in your mind when you read this verse? Probably something like the blue and green globe floating in space. Why? Because we live in the 21st century. We’ve gone to space. We’ve studied our globe so much and in so many different ways. But was the Bible written in the 21st century? No. Ancient Jews explained the world as having water below, land resting on top, an invisible dome above (the firmament), and then waters above. That’s definitely not how we would describe our globe today. God knows all things, but He used humans who do not know all things to write the Bible. He did not allow them to add error in, but He did allow them to write within their culture contexts.
One of the best examples of this is the concept of the heart being the seat of your emotions. In modern western culture, if I said someone broke my heart, would any of you think that another human being somehow damaged the physical beating organ on the left side of my chest? No, because we understand the heart to be a metaphorical seat of emotions. It’s how we describe what we can feel but not see. The Biblical authors did that too. Except they didn’t use the word “heart.” To them, the seat of human emotion was the kidneys. If you read something about “reins” in the Old Testament, like God trieth the reins or something about my reins—that’s the word for kidneys in Hebrew. That does not mean that the Bible is wrong any more than we are wrong when we say that someone broke my heart. We’re not trying to make a statement about a literal heart there. We’re expressing emotion. And when you think about it, a lot of emotion affects you in the physical area around your kidneys. If you’re nervous, you feel a fluttering there you call butterflies in the stomach. If you feel worried or scared, you get a knot in your stomach… So, putting scientific studies aside, the language the Biblical authors used is actually really intuitive.
It’s the same idea with the way they described creation. When you read “heaven” in the Bible, I want you to get out of your mind the concept of a non-physical place where God lives and we go when we die. English and a lot of other languages have singular and plural words, right? We can have one dog or we can have dogs. It might be two dogs; it might be ten dogs. Either way, we just say dogs. But some languages, including Hebrew, have singular, dual, and plural. Dual is where certain words can be described in terms of two. Those words in Hebrew end in the suffix -ayim. The word for heaven is one of those words. It’s never just “heaven” like we think of it. It’s always heavens. The word is הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם (shamayim). It’s always described as two.
We kind of have a little of that still in English. Right now, I am wearing pants. It's only one article of clothing, but I would never say I’m wearing pant. It’s always pants. Some of you tonight are wearing glasses. You only have one item on your face, but we’d never say you’re wearing glass. We never just have a scissor. It’s always scissors. It’s kind of the same idea with הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם. It’s never just heaven, like we’d normally think of God’s non-physical abode. It’s always the dual, heavens.
Why? Because the point is not to teach us about what a non-physical abode of God is like. Those verses are talking about the heavens above us, the skies, the part of creation that we can’t walk on top of. Especially in the ancient world before planes and helicopters and drones existed, it would make sense to see the skies above as something worthy of awe, something unattainable.
Believe it or not, the Bible does not speak about some disembodied state we go to when we die in the way we usually think of heaven. If you read the end of Revelation, the picture is of a very grounded reality of a very real, very physical new creation we will live and work in. So, the word heaven in Scripture usually just means the skies. Likewise, earth in this verse does not mean the globe like we think of it today. Rather, it just means land. The point of Genesis 1:1 is not to say that God made heaven and earth, the supernatural and the natural, his abode and our abode. It’s a story about the creation of all things both above our heads and below our feet—the heavens and the earth, the skies and the land.
I realize that is a really uncomfortable concept for some of us, especially when we have used particular verses to prove a position on something before. But it does make sense once we let the Bible speak for Itself. We have to remember that the Bible does not exist as a cheat sheet for proving our beliefs. It serves Its own purposes whether those purposes line up with ours or not.
And along with that, notice what this verse does not do. It doesn’t try to answer all our questions. When we come to Genesis 1 a lot of times, it’s to fight over creation versus evolution or the length of the days of creation or exactly how God created or some other debate. But the Bible doesn’t stop to answer those questions. And it’s not because they’re unimportant. They’re fun to muse over. But they do not feed into what the story is getting at.
Here’s what I mean, let’s say I was talking with some of you guys after the service about how Janna and I got together. I could tell you so many stories and so many details, but you know what I wouldn’t tell you about? The night a local preacher bought pizza for my whole dorm during midterms week. Or the day I met a gay Catholic who helped to make a documentary about the relationship gay Catholics have with God. Or the time a buddy and I ended up in a stranger’s house debating the meaning of Greek words with two Jehovah’s Witnesses. All of those stories and so many more happened while I was at college. They’re true and they’re fun and they’re interesting, but they don’t help you to understand how Janna and I got together. It’s not that those stories are unimportant. It’s just that they don’t get you to the point of what we’re talking about.
And that’s the way the Bible works. It has a story to tell. And if you have questions that it doesn’t address or doesn’t give a clear answer to, that’s ok. We can still talk about them and work through them, but it is not fair to the Bible to force verses talking about something else into talking about our question. I think we’re actually meant to reevaluate our questions in light of the ones the Bible asks.
How we doing so far? That’s a lot, right? And that’s just verse one. We haven’t even gotten to the first day of creation yet. That in and of itself is an idea I’ll pitch to you also. I don’t believe that chapter 1 verse 1 is the start of day 1 in the story. I think verses 1 and 2 are almost more like a title or an introduction, describing for you what is about to come in the next verses. Here’s a couple reasons why. We just learned that heaven, actually heavens, means the skies, and earth means land. Dry land was not created on Day 1. That didn’t come about until Day 3. So then, the first two verses can’t be a part of Day 1 since they’re talking about the land being created.
Here’s another reason. There’s a really fancy literary term called an inclusio. Essentially it refers to when the beginning and ending of a story or poem are mirror images of each other. It happens a lot in the psalms like how Psalm 118 begins and ends with the exact same verse.
Psalm 118:1 KJV 1900
1 O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: Because his mercy endureth for ever.
It’s when a verse stands apart from the rest at both the start and end of a passage in order to draw your attention to the main theme of the passage. And that happens in Gen 1:1 and 2:1. Let’s look at those two together.
Genesis 1:1 KJV 1900
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Genesis 2:1 KJV 1900
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
So, I personally believe that Gen 1:1-2 is like the cliff notes of what is about to happen in the rest of the chapter. It hasn’t started Day 1 yet. That happens in verse 3. It’s just setting the stage for what is about to happen. Then chapter 2 verse 1 lets you know that all that has been completed.
Now let’s look at verse 2.
Genesis 1:2 KJV 1900
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Ok, you’re about to learn some Hebrew you never knew you needed to know, but it’s super fun to say-- תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ (tohu vavohu). They’re the words translated “without form, and void.” They mean wild and waste or unordered and uninhabited. Today we’d describe that as nothingness, but the ancient Jews didn’t really have a word for that. A state of nonexistence to them meant no order and no purpose.
Darkness being upon the face of the deep is essentially a more poetic description of this non-reality that preceded creation. That word deep is a very dark and discouraging word, emphasizing the scary parts of the sea. “Waters” at the end of the verse is a much calmer and more useful word. That’s what the Spirit of God does when He is present. He calms the chaos of the sea. Can you think of any other story in the Bible where that happens? How about Matthew 8:23-27 where Jesus calms the stormy sea? That wasn’t just a random story in the Gospels. That story is very purposefully meant to link this carpenter turned homeless itinerant preacher with the all-powerful Creator of Genesis 1 in your mind. Matthew is very creatively telling you without directly saying it that Jesus is God. In fact, how does that little story end? The disciples all look at each other and ask, “What kind of man is this, that even the winds and the waves obey Him?” That’s awesome, right?
Ok, now back to Genesis 1:2. In Bible times, the sea or ocean was a symbol of chaos. [Note: In the message, I said that water symbolized chaos. It's more accurate to say the sea.] It was something that could not be controlled or bent to man’s will. It’s like it had a mind of it’s own. How many of you have ever been on a boat? How many of you have ever been on a boat in the ocean? That ever make you feel small or insignificant or maybe even worried? You know, there’s a lot that human beings can tame and control, but the ocean isn’t really one of them. We can harness it’s power sometimes, but we’re not in control of the ocean. You get dropped in the middle of the ocean, and in the contest of ocean versus human, the ocean is going to win every time. It’s powerful. It’s beautiful. It’s dangerous. It can be deadly. If you go to swim in the ocean, you have to have a healthy respect of it. It has taken down massive ships made of iron and wood filled with hundreds of people. You’re one person. Now that doesn’t mean we can’t go to the beach and have fun. It just means we have to acknowledge our weakness compared to the ocean’s strength.
Cultures all around ancient Israel had their own versions of creation myths, ways that they explained the origins of life. And they’re fascinatingly similar to the Biblical account and even more fascinatingly different. For example, water was also the starting point for creation in the Egyptian myths, but in their story, the god Atum is birthed from the waters and then creates other gods. The water is seen as life-giving because of its central place in Egyptian life. Makes sense since they lived off the Nile.
The Babylonian story also begins with water, but it is a much more violent story of the deep water god and the above water god creating other gods. Marduk tries to build a kingdom on land while the sea god tries to stop him, and Marduk rips the sea god open to create a firmament of waters above.
What’s consistent across many of those stories is chaos. There is some struggle amongst the gods over creation. Perhaps two gods are in the sky fighting over how to create the world. Or there is a sea god and a land god and they’re fighting, and out of their fighting, the world is formed. But what’s so unique about the Biblical account is that there is no fight. There is only one God. He isn’t even given a name yet. He’s just called God, the Hebrew word אֱלֹהִ֑ים (elohim). Later on, He is called Yahweh or sometimes Adonai, but right now, He’s just God. And He has so much power over the chaos that He is able to speak the waters into obedience on Day 3.
That is incredible. That sets the tone up for the rest of Scripture and human history. You’re able to see that this God does not need to fight with anyone else to get what He wants. What He makes is good and useful. He never makes anything that lends toward chaos. Everything in His creation has a purpose and brings order. So then when humans come into the picture and choose the way of chaos over the way of order in chapter 3 , God promises a Redeemer who can crush the head of the chaos monster once and for all and bring lasting order and peace, a restored Eden.
And here’s what blows my mind. Turn all the way to the end of your Bibles in Revelation 21:1.
Revelation 21:1 KJV 1900
1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
I never understood the significance of that little tidbit until another preacher taught me that ancient cultures saw water as a symbol of chaos. Now, Revelation 21:1 is one of the greatest promises in the whole Bible in my mind. There is coming a day when there will be no more chaos. No more war. No more violence. No more murder. No more rape. No more abuse. No more miscarriages. No more fires in California. No more any of the bad stuff that is out of our control. The re-creation of the new heavens, the new skies, and the new earth, the new land, that is coming in the future will right the wrong of Adam and Eve and restore Eden once and for all.
The main thrust of Genesis 1 is that wherever Yahweh is, He brings order into the natural state of chaos. Chaos, pain, death, disease, sin—none of that has any power when He decides to speak. So then the question for us is “Which purpose have you furthered this week?” Have you sought to bring order, peace, grace, and beauty to the craziness of the world around you, or have you allowed chaos to work through you by lashing out at the people around you, being impatient with your kids, gossiping about someone else you know, posting something inflammatory on Facebook....? Here’s an even better question--Which purpose will you choose to further for the rest of the week? Every decision you make will either bring a little bit more chaos or a little bit more order into the world. By sharing the love of Jesus in our actions, we can further our Creator’s purpose of bringing order to this fallen world.