God the Creator, Part 1 - Mar. 10th, 2024
Bible Messages for Believers • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 1:11:27
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· 10 viewsA comprehensive exploration of God's creation and His dynamic relationship with the world, as depicted in the Bible.
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Introduction: How can we know God?
Introduction: How can we know God?
Woody Allen, in Love and Death, says at one point: ‘If God would only speak to me—just once. If he would only cough. If I could just see a miracle. If I could see a burning bush or the seas part. Or my Uncle Sasha pick up the check.’
There, I think, you have the mixture of timeless longing and trendy cynicism which characterizes much of the Western mind-set and personality today. Allen wants God—but on his own terms. And God won’t play. Allen wants God the conversationalist: ‘If God would only speak to me—just once.’ God has, in fact, given him a Bible recording 1,400 years of speech, but a cough for Woody outweighs a covenant with Abraham or even a Calvary for Christ.
He wants God the conjuror (‘If I could just see a miracle’) but gives no guarantees he’d do anything about it. He probably wants God the friend and God the therapist too, but all he has is human beings: commonplace, flawed, stubborn, exploitive. Like his Uncle Sasha, who always lets other people pick up the bill.
How then can we know God and how can we know that we know him, if not the Woody Allen way?
1. Points of contact
1. Points of contact
In his fine book on effective Christian apologetics, Bridge-Building, Alister McGrath writes:
The first major insight encountered by the reader of Scripture is that God created the world. Is it therefore surprising that this creation should bear witness to him? Or that the height of his creation, human beings, should carry a recognisable imprint of his nature? And that this imprint might have considerable value as a starting point for apologetics? Paul believed passionately in the theological truth and apologetic importance of this insight (Romans 1–2).
Here is a God-given starting point within the created order itself which can act as a trigger, stimulating people to ask questions about the meaning of life or the reality of God. Through the generosity of God we have been left with a latent memory of him which can discern what Peter Berger famously called ‘signals of transcendence’ within human life.
However, McGrath continues:
Points of contact are not in themselves adequate to bring people into the kingdom of God. They are starting points for that goal. Nor are they adequate in themselves to bring people to a specifically Christian faith … The apologist must show that the Christian gospel is consistent with these points of contact. It is able to explain them—and more than that: it is able to deliver all that they promise, turning hints into reality.
Because of universal sin, the falleness of our race from God and the corruption of the natural order, these things do not give us a sufficient knowledge of God or put us right with God. ‘Fallen human nature is obliged to reflect upon a fallen creation … Like a cracked mirror, or a misty window, it presents us with a distorted image.’ We find within ourselves and our history as a race all sorts of confused and conflicting knowledge and ideas about God. We have a deep dissatisfaction with life without God, and yet are runaways from him. As Augustine famously said, ‘You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’ McGrath comments:
The doctrines of creation and redemption combine to interpret this sense of dissatisfaction and lack of fulfilment as a loss of fellowship with God which can be restored. Augustine captured this idea perfectly when he spoke of a ‘loving memory’ of God. It is a memory of God, in that it is grounded in the doctrines of creation and redemption, which affirm that we have partially lost something through sin—and are somehow made aware of that loss through God’s grace. It is a loving memory, in that it is experienced as a sense of divine nostalgia, of spiritual wistfulness. There is a thirst to have more of that which we already have only in part.
Yet there is not only desire for God but also an antipathy for God in fallen, rebellious, human nature.
Paul says,
7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
There is an ignorance of God which is ‘due to the hardening of their hearts’. Sin has made us allergic to holiness and guilt has made us liable to punishment. Therefore we are in flight from ‘home’ as well as nostalgic for it. Sin has broken the relationship which marked us out as such a special creation. Now, as a race, we stand in proud independence, and in profound ambivalence about the knowledge of God. We want this knowledge—up to a point, and we don’t want it to control our lives. This ambivalence has to be faced and dealt with. God’s grace helps us to do that. This is the grace that is alone sufficient to arrest us in our flight, to bring us to our knees, to begin the conversation with our Maker (and not just conversations with others about him), to make us seek to know God by His own light and not just by our own. Such a dependence on grace is the true starting point in any journey to God.
2. Knowing God
2. Knowing God
[Theologians do] not begin [systematizing] by speaking of the ‘existence’ of God, but [rather] of the ‘knowledge’ of Him. [They don’t] begin by asking ‘Does God exist?’ but ‘How can God be known?’ [Their insistence then becomes] that we know God only because He allows Himself be known and, furthermore, that we know Him properly only from within a relationship of humility, worship and love.
[The] point is twofold. First, God must be known in His nature and character more than in terms of His essence. God’s essence is largely beyond our knowing and it is enough for us to worship Him in His immensity and His spirituality without presuming to go into matters infinitely beyond us. The question is not ‘What is God?’ [“God is Spirit”] but [rather] ‘What am I meant to know of Him which is proper to His glory?’ Secondly, [the Scriptures place an emphasis upon faith as a prerequisite for knowing more about God (Rom. 10:17)]. The knowledge of God must be personal, penitential and devout. In a word, it must be responsive. It cannot be merely acquisitive.
This attitude to knowing God takes us into the area of personal relationships [based on obedience to His revelation] at the start. God is not the static object of our enquiries but the One who takes the initiative in making Himself known [“We love Him, because He first loved us, and gave Himself for us”]. When we apprehend His activity aright, we begin to seek Him in the right way. We then want to see Him by His own light and not just by our own. We begin to make the great discoveries which will revolutionize our thinking. We begin to see Him as He really is in His goodness, purity and righteousness—and to see ourselves as we really are in our sinfulness and need of Him. We are brought to a position where God can lead us on to a true and saving knowledge of Himself in the Son He gave for the salvation of our world.
Our knowledge of God will be responsive: the joyful discovery that He knows us and wants us to know Him; that knowing Him is the greatest thing in life, in this world and the next:
This is what the Lord says:
23 Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: 24 But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.
Apart from such joyful knowledge as this, knowing whether or not there is a God becomes a pointless exercise. Worse, it becomes the impudent affirmation of our priority over Him, the priority of our curiosity about His existence over the character of the God who exists, and whose existence presses in on us on every side, challenging us at every level of our being: physical, personal, mental and moral.
3. The need for special revelation
3. The need for special revelation
While God has left His signature on creation, and while, to use a phrase of Jonathan Edwards, he communicates ‘a sort of shadow … of his excellencies’ in its beauty and intricacy, we can never by this arrive at the proper knowledge of God. There is a gulf between ourselves and God which can be bridged only [through faith in Christ’s finished work on Calvary]. The message of Scripture is that God has crossed that gulf and made Himself known [to us], not vaguely but specifically, not just informatively but savingly, in [the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, through the Words of His choice to a people of His choosing, as to whom He elected to commit His oracles to, so that the whole world, and whosoever will, may come to know Him by grace, through faith].
[One writer] likened God’s use of human speech to the simplicities of baby-talk between a mother and her child—but it is baby-talk which stretches us to the utmost! Human language may not be adequate to say everything about God. It is adequate, however, for the purposes for which it was given, and it is adequate . . . to bring to us the personal self-revelation of the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If God chooses such talk, our philosophy of language and being must not despise it.
Part of our sinful arrogance is to think we can arrive at the knowledge of God without His word. But because of sin, natural theology (‘human reasoning about God, under the conditions of sin, unaided by special revelation’) leaves us, still, with God as an unknown God. We need the special revelation of the Scriptures, the revelation of Himself which God gave to the patriarchs and prophets, which is confirmed by the witness of the Spirit in the hearts of God’s people and which bears within itself its own authentication. Indeed, . . . ’no-one can get even the slightest taste of right and sound doctrine unless he be a pupil of Scripture’ without which we fall into error.
Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognise it to be some sort of writing, yet can scarcely construe two words, but with the aid of spectacles will begin to read distinctly; so Scripture, gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God. This, therefore, is a special gift, where God, to instruct the church, not merely uses mute teachers, but also opens his most hallowed lips.
If we turn aside from this, in favour of our own ideas of what God is or should be, we shall never reach the goal of knowing God. Even Paul called the splendour of the divine countenance that “light which no man can approach unto”,
16 Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.
So that the knowledge of God ‘is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted into it by the thread of the Word; so that it is better to limp along this path than to dash with all speed outside it’.
There is no rivalry here between the word of God as Scripture and the Word made flesh as Jesus Christ. The Word He is and the word He speaks are one Word: the unfolding self-revelation of God, beginning with the creation and reaching its climax in the person and work of Jesus Christ, His incarnation, atoning death and vindicating resurrection and exaltation. We meet the Word in His word—Old Testament and New. Alister McGrath pays due attention to [a necessary] emphasis on Scripture and writes:
Christianity is Christ-centred, not book-centred; if it appears to be book-centred, it is because it is through the words of Scripture that the believer encounters and feeds upon Jesus Christ. Scripture is a means not an end; a channel, rather than what is channelled. [Theologians of days past had a] preoccupation with human language and supremely with the text of Scripture, reflects [a] fundamental conviction that it is here, through reading and meditating upon this Text, that it is possible to encounter and experience the risen Christ. A concentration upon the means reflects the crucial importance which . . . attaches to the end. To suggest that . . . anyone who pays high regard to God’s self-revelation in and through Scripture—is a ‘bibliolater’, one who worships a book, is to betray a culpable lack of insight into [one’s] concerns and methods.
4. The historic Christ
4. The historic Christ
The Christian faith centres on a person who, on any account, remains one of the most powerful influences in world history. The historicity of Jesus of Nazareth is undoubted, except perhaps by a minority. There are near-contemporary references in the writings of the Roman historian, Tacitus, and the Jewish historian, Josephus. We have well over 5,000 ancient manuscripts of parts or the whole of books which now comprise our New Testament which go back to the fifth, fourth, third, and second centuries AD. It is one of the phenomena of history that the ancient world is littered with evidence of Jesus of Nazareth and the communities He founded. The earliest is a part of John’s Gospel which palaeographers confidently date about ad 125, that is within 90 years of the events it records—astonishingly close in historical terms. Yet when this manuscript was copied, there were already Christian churches, communities of the resurrection, in existence. That existence we can trace back further still.
5. The risen Lord
5. The risen Lord
The apostle Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians in about AD 52 or 53, about twenty years after Jesus’ death. His claim in 1 Corinthians 15:1–11 that the various disciples and followers of Jesus had encountered Him after His crucifixion as the risen Lord, could easily have been falsified by those who remembered the time and by the original followers of Jesus themselves. They could have said, ‘It wasn’t like that.’ But they were preaching the same thing!
Moreover, Paul himself had been preaching this for eighteen years before he wrote to the Corinthians. It had been the central message of his long evangelistic and missionary career from the start. That takes us back to his Damascus road encounter with the exalted Christ and his immediate preaching in the local synagogue, that Jesus is the Son of God.
20 And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.
All that was just a year or two after the event and easily falsifiable at that stage. So, by stages, the surprising facticity of the Christian message can be supported. By that I mean its nature as concrete fact in history; not mysticism, not philosophy, not even therapy!
The evidences for the resurrection of Christ are well known and they form a formidable body of proof, especially when the ‘explanations’ are examined and found to be inadequate: the empty tomb and the inability of the authorities to produce the body, the credible witnesses who were not expecting it but spent a lifetime preaching it, the resurrection ‘appearances’ themselves (not shimmering visions but concrete encounters and sustained seminars!), the impossibility of groups of people having the same hallucination, the improbability of a not-quite-dead and severely wounded Jesus convincing his disciples that he was Lord over death (not to mention walking the seven miles to Emmaus on recently crucified ankles and appearing behind locked doors). In such a scenario, if Jesus had not died, His integrity would have done.
6. The claims of Jesus
6. The claims of Jesus
And that brings us to the most stubborn fact of all: a Jesus who says,
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
and who yet says,
58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
Jesus is a prophet who does not point away to God, but who preaches a gospel of ‘I ams’; who claims to be the centre of history and the Judge at its end,
23 That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.
and who sends His disciples out, [saying,]
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Who is this who shares the honours with God, who speaks of a life and a glory with His Father,
5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
and who accepts the worship of the disciples and the confession of Thomas,
28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
Here in space-time history is a fellow human being, of undoubted godliness and integrity, who says
27 All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
It is not convincing to say that all this was put into the mouth of a harmless young rabbi by over-zealous disciples. To say that the Jesus of the New Testament is largely the creation of His admirers is to say that He was ordinary and they were extra-ordinary, He was pedestrian and they were sublime, He was parochial and they were magnificent. It is to have a boring Jesus and an exciting church (my experience has been otherwise!). It is to have the Sermon on the Mount, the parables of the kingdom, and the drama of Calvary and the resurrection created by fishermen turned lay-preachers and first-century schools of thought. Shakespeare by committee is nothing to it! But in fact it is Jesus who towers over them all, who has not been dwarfed by 2,000 years of on-going human history, who has changed the lives of millions, and who has sown the Western world with many of its (better) values.
The fact is that the Jesus the New Testament writers portray is not at all the kind of Jesus they would have invented. He was a different kind of messiah, preaching a different kind of kingdom to a different kind of people than anyone expected. It was He who shaped them, not they who shaped him. They wrote and lived in the impact of His uniqueness. What they would have invented would have been, at best, devoutly commonplace. Their fictional Jesus would never have spoken words which often seemed quite blasphemous to His critics. He would have been the model penitent not the sinless Son, the modest preacher of a message bigger than Himself or the hero of messianic expectations who was tragically lost to Israel and the world.
But in fact He puzzled them, shocked them and far surpassed them with His claims. And when He died they did not understand or expect, or even, at first, believe in His resurrection from the dead. And when they did, they worshipped and served Him with joy and great assurance all their lives.
That assurance we too can have—about God, about forgiveness, and about eternal life—if we listen to Him and believe in Him. No-one meets the deepest needs of our flawed and dying humanity like the Christ who said,
28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: 28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: 18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
There have always been godly men and women who seem in particular ways to reflect God’s character strongly and clearly. But Jesus is not simply one in that category of persons nor did His apostles present Him as such. The New Testament does not say ‘Jesus is like God’, it says [The Father is like Jesus]; it says, [in essence], that to see Jesus is to see God, to come to Jesus is to come to God, to be judged by Jesus will be to be judged by God. In a word, there will be nothing in God, no attribute or quality, no decision or purpose, that is not in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the one [of whom Paul said,]
9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
If we know and are right with the Son, we need not fear to stand before the Father. There will be no hidden menace, no terrible discovery, no final contradiction of our hopes, for, as A. M. Ramsay once put it, recalling [his own spin on] 1 John 1:5, ‘God is Christlike and in Him is no unChristlikeness at all.’29
7. The inspired Scriptures
7. The inspired Scriptures
Yet, notwithstanding all this, Jesus did not come as the first and only witness to the Living God but pointed to a long unfolding revelation by God to Abraham, Moses and the prophets. He Himself fulfilled much of that and in His own person and teaching took it to new heights. He never relegated, however, what we call the ‘Old Testament’ Scriptures to a lower level of inspiration or authority than His own words. On the contrary, he taught its divine authorship and abiding validity.
17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The Son of David. 43 He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, 44 The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? 45 If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?
25 And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. 26 But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. 27 For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth. 28 Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations.
44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
12 I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. 13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. 14 He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.
So did his apostles, the first and foremost teachers of the church, themselves writing inspired Scriptures for that ongoing church.
14 But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; 15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: 20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. 21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
1 This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: 2 That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:
15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; 16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
The apostle Paul, having congratulated Timothy on his early education in the Old Testament, says,
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
Peter also expressly states that the prophets delivered a message that they were given, not a philosophy, or even a theology, that they had invented:
20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. 21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
The prophets themselves continually made just this point and we read phrases like ‘The word of the Lord came’, ‘Thus says the Lord’ and ‘The burden of the Lord’ no fewer than 3,808 times!
It is this objectivity in the Christian faith, the objective revelation of God in Jesus Christ and also in the entire unfolding revelation of God in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, that counters the extreme subjectivism of our age, whether we encounter it in existentialism, New Age mysticism, or the gentle but fatal cynicism of Woody Allen. However, that does not shut us up to a mere scholasticism, or to a purely intellectual recognition of the Scriptures. There has to be a work of God in us as well as beyond us if we are to know God, the God of the Scriptures, the God of the prophets and the apostles, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
8. The need of God’s Spirit
8. The need of God’s Spirit
Corresponding to His work in the [human-writers] of Scripture is the work of the Holy Spirit bearing testimony in the hearts of all God’s people, sophisticated and simple, that this is the word of the Lord. The Scriptures do not derive their authority from the church, notwithstanding its work in recognizing the canon, but the church itself is [as we read in,
19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; 20 And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;
Scripture exhibits evidence of its own truth and ‘the highest proof of Scripture derives in general from the fact that God in person speaks in it. This was an important point echoed in Systematic Theologies such as Rolland McCune’s:
“Only Scripture’s own assertions about its own inspiration are valid and will be considered here. The entire debate—both about inspiration and, even, inerrancy—boils down to whether or not one accepts Scripture’s origin and, subsequently, its claims about itself.”
Furthermore, McCune highlights the proof of Scripture's inspiration and its self-testimony, emphasizing that:
"For inspiration is a fact taught by that very Scripture.”
McCune also addresses the sufficiency of Scripture, noting that it contains all words of God intended for His people at each stage of redemptive history and now all the words needed for salvation, trust in God, and complete obedience to Him.
Lastly, the doctrine of preservation as discussed by McCune underscores the implicit trust in Scripture's authenticity:
"Preservation... ensures that God's Word is sufficiently preserved for governance across generations.”
We thus understand and believe that Scripture testifies to its divine authorship and truthfulness through the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, underscoring its self-authentication, its sufficiency, and the Holy Spirit's role in confirming Scripture's truth to believers. As Jesus told His followers directly,]
11 He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.
9. The people who listen
9. The people who listen
God is a speaking God—and a speaking God calls for a listening people. This [embarkment on a series of Sunday Night Bible Messages for Believers] seeks to listen to God’s voice in Scripture, to explore and apply the revelation of Himself that God has made in Scripture to ourselves and our times. The listening posture is crucial for all knowledge of God from first to last; it is the natural posture of faith. Anselm of Canterbury described theological enquiry as ‘Faith seeking understanding’. Anselm believed that faith was a necessary foundation and support for all further discovery. He wrote, in famous words:
‘I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand: this I also believe, that unless I believe I will not understand.’37
This belief is not an eyes-shut leap in the dark, but a profound Spirit-wrought recognition of and response to the call of God which brings us to our knees in gratitude and adoration.38 Jesus put it most simply and memorably:
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
Helmut Thielicke wrote,
‘What we call our knowledge of Christ is imparted to us only as we achieve a relationship of trust in him.’40
The human desire to understand God in a non-relational way is a profound expression of our fallenness.
‘The first task of theology is to bring us to his feet.’41
It is with such a conviction that this [Macro series (“Bible Messages for Believers”) is begun], with the prayer that it may be used to keep us at the feet of God.
First Mini-Series - “The Living God: God and His World”
Sub-Introduction
This is a [mini-series] about God, but it cannot be about God alone. The Bible is not a book all about God, but rather it is all about God and people, God and us. [Although we like our helpful acronyms such as Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, and the such, the BIBLE is more than a mere] tourist’s guide to God, [or] a walk around His perfections, [and certainly more than] a philosophical investigation. The Bible is God’s saving revelation of Himself in word and deed. It is history and prophecy, wisdom and worship; it is judgment and mercy, passion and redemption. It is redemptive event and world news, the greatest and best news the world could ever have: that God has come to save us from our sin and [shortcoming of glory] and to lift our fallen human lives into an eternal fellowship with His own divine life. The story of God is inextricably bound up [warp and woof] with our story now—and there is a human being at the [center] of the divine life to prove it!
1. God! (Gen. 1:1)
1. God! (Gen. 1:1)
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Here is the revelation of a truth that touches every other truth. Here is the key to creation and the light that falls on every human life. Here we are told that,
“The secret of the universe is not a formula but a person.” ~ Peter Lewis
From this one, first, given truth of the Bible all else will flow, giving new and profoundly important significance to all reality. All Christians have a theology of creation. They may disagree on processes and time-scales, but at the [center] of their understanding of the origin of things and their ongoing existence is the personal Creator and Upholder of all things: the God of wisdom, power and goodness in infinite degree.
Today, we have cause to wonder at creation as much as any of our forebears and to seek to know the Creator. What kind of God is it who made the universe which we are only just beginning to measure and understand? What kind of God is it who made quasars and quarks, galaxies and gluons, pulse stars and peacocks, Betelgeuse and butterflies? The foundational revelation of Genesis 1–2 is that he is the infinite-personal God who is good and who does good. He has made a good creation, and, as the climax of His [handiwork] on this planet, has made human beings in His image, for His glory and for personal fellowship with Himself. Genesis 1 is at least as much about the Creator as it is about the creation: God is mentioned 34 times in 36 verses and the revelation we have of Him there is foundational for the rest of Scripture.
2. The Eternal God
2. The Eternal God
“In the beginning . . .” (Gen. 1:1a)
In the first words of Scripture we are brought to the edge of all we can know and to the brink of all we can never know. We are brought to the beginning and edge of time to look into the abyss of eternity.
An old illustration of eternity in terms of time is still impressive even if it falls far short of the reality. Imagine a rock a hundred miles long, a hundred miles wide, and a hundred miles high. Once every thousand years a bird comes and sharpens its beak on the rock. Only when that rock has thus been worn away will one brief moment of eternity have passed! Even such a salutary analogy can be misleading, however, since eternity is, properly speaking, timelessness.
Yet, as we shiver on the brink of creation and look out on eternity, we find not emptiness but fullness: ‘In the beginning God’! These opening words of Genesis tell us of the eternity of God; not of God ‘in’ eternity (as though somehow eternity was bigger than God) but of eternity in God. We learn that before there was anything else there was God. Before there was matter, time and space there was God: God who has no succession of moments in His own Being, God who alone is infinite and eternal, the uncreated Creator, unique in his eternity and all-sufficient in the infinite resources of His Being, the fullness of light, love, joy and meaning:
2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
So the Bible puts us in our place at the start, and it is a very little place. In other respects it is a very special place too (as this same chapter in Genesis will show), but before we can overestimate ourselves it dwarfs us with infinities and immensities. It humbles our pride, it stills our chatter and it tells us to listen, like the children of the universe we are, to the self-revealing God. And as we stand on the brink of time and try to grasp the eternity of God we learn the first lesson even while we fail the first test:
4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
It is often and rightly said that the Bible nowhere tries to prove the existence of God.
“In Scripture God is not a deduction but a given.” ~ Peter Lewis
His existence is not ‘proved’ but presupposed. It is the first of truths. This does not mean that we cannot argue the case for God’s existence and activity, that there are not confirmations and signposts in creation around us and in our own constitution as human beings. There are. But it does mean that we cannot, in fact, occupy ‘neutral’ ground which decides the issue irrespective of God’s gracious self-disclosure, or which leaves God ‘on one side’ while we prove Him—or not—and which necessarily denies Him in order possibly to affirm Him. He is not waiting at the end of our argumentation but is the One with whom the biblical revelation begins. In short, God is too all-encompassing to be at the end of anything, including an argument! So we find Him at the beginning and at the end of the Bible, the beginning and the end of all wisdom—the alpha and the omega, the first and the last.
3. The Creator God
3. The Creator God
"… God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1b)
Our minds stagger at the immensity of a finite universe, but beyond it all is the infinitude of God. Only now are we beginning to measure the universe, one part of which our forebears mapped and wondered at before us. Today we should wonder more than ever at the greatness of the God who ‘created the heaven’.
Only the Maker and Sustainer of all this is greater than it all and He puts it into another perspective by His own infinite existence and by his Personhood and love. The universe is vast and dwarfs us. God is infinite and values us. The planets are old and human history becomes a blip on the screen. God is eternal and lifts human beings into an everlasting relationship with Himself. The purpose of [Moses, the human writer] of Genesis is to show that the God of the galaxies is the God of Abraham, [Isaac] and Israel; that the people of God will never be lost among the gods of the peoples; that this God is the true God and His purposes will stand.
And so in one opening statement the author of Genesis 1 declares war on every contradictory or qualifying statement and challenges every other religious loyalty. God, this God, the one and only true God, created everything; He and no other, He, without help, created all things in heaven and on earth, stars and spirits, animals, plants and people. He created everything that is not God.
Today we know a great deal more about the physical world than our ancestors, but it should not make us less [devoted]. We are only beginning to know mysteries and forces that have been there from the beginning of creation. No doubt there remains very much more to be known. But what we do discover will still be God’s truth; it will not make God redundant because its whole existence testifies to Him. He is not just the ‘God of the gaps’ in our knowledge but the God of the knower and the known, the God of every explicable process and unifying theory. At every point the universe is open to the God who created it but who also transcends it, and who can act as He pleases within it, to continue or suspend or redeem its natural laws [like He did by making the sun stand still for Joshua, or the sundial run back fifteen degrees for Hezekiah]. We may have ‘come of age’ in some respects but too often we are like cocky teenagers, [enamored] with our own discoveries but still having a great deal to learn—and to re-learn.
Some argue strongly for a more or less literal understanding of these early chapters of Genesis [see the survey of beliefs and arguments in, Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An introduction to biblical doctrine (Zondervan/IVP, 1994), ch. 15]; others believe a conservative evangelical view of the Bible does not necessitate such an approach [Henry, vol. 6, chs. 5–9]. David Atkinson points out:
[Moses does] not attempt, or [even] want, to explain creation. With reverence, he wants to catch us up into its wonder. He is not concerned with the question ‘How did God do it?’ He would not, I think, have been terribly interested in our debates about the time-scale of evolution, or the physics of the First Three Minutes. These are not the questions he is asking. And when we bring such questions to the [Sacred Text], we are disappointed … [Moses simply] does not say … he is concerned with something else. He is safeguarding and proclaiming something of the unsearchable mystery of God. ~ David Atkinson
Certainly the chapter is concerned with the theology rather than the science of creation, and its concern is to say who God is and what is his relation to the world we live in; but, as G. J. Wenham notes, it is
“. . . more than a statement of theology, it is a hymn of praise to the Creator through whom and for whom all things exist.” ~ G. J. Wenham
4. The God Who Is Present (Gen. 1:2)
4. The God Who Is Present (Gen. 1:2)
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.
Here we have a stage of creation where all seems dark, disordered and frightening. But God is there, all-powerful, purposeful and active: ‘and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’. The Hebrew word here for ‘spirit’ is rûaḥ and it can mean spirit or wind, and commentators differ on which of these is meant here. Victor Hamilton argues convincingly for the translation ‘spirit’, but even if we translate the Hebrew as ‘the wind of God’ it will be, as Gordon Wenham agrees,
“. . . a concrete and vivid image of the Spirit of God.” ~ G. J. Wenham
Everywhere else in the Old Testament the phrase used here indicates the Spirit of God (or a spirit from God) [Bloecher, p. 68]. Derek Kidner [1957, p. 45] writes,
“In the Old Testament, the Spirit is a term for God’s outgoing energy, creative and sustaining.” ~ Derek Kidner, TOTC
The rare Old Testament word for ‘hover’ occurs also in Deuteronomy 32:11 where a mother eagle hovers protectively over her young.
11 As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings:
There it illustrates Yahweh’s protection, care and guidance of Israel in the nation’s earliest days. Here it may suggest the Spirit ‘waiting’ to implement the creative word as soon as it is spoken [Alec Motyer in correspondence with Peter Lewis].
[The Holy Spirit's role in creation and the sustenance of all things is profoundly articulated in Rolland McCune’s Baptist Systematic Theology:
"By His exhaustless power, God can do all things consistent with His character and will. He can accomplish effortlessly all things that are objects of power without diminishing His energy in the least. The Holy Spirit is all-powerful in that sense because He is God. Psalm 104 is a great testimony to the preservation of the universe by the power of God. What God has created by His omnipotence He preserves by the same power, a power which the Psalmist attributes to the Holy Spirit:
30 Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.
‘Create’ (bara) and ‘renew’ are parallel, suggesting preservation rather than creation ex nihilo.”
This vividly describes for us the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit in not only initiating creation but also in sustaining and renewing the universe. The Spirit has an essential role in the ongoing act of creation and preservation.]
Here too the ideas of watchfulness and purpose may be present as the Spirit ‘moved upon the face of the waters’ over the creative process. God does not create from a distance but as one intimately concerned and involved. Derek Kidner comments,
“An impression of Olympian detachment, which the rest of the chapter might have conveyed, is forestalled by the simile of the mother-bird hovering or fluttering over her brood.” ~ Derek Kidner
While the references to God speaking creation into existence and order in the rest of the chapter serve to preserve the proper distance that exists between God and His creation, this reference to the Spirit of God serves to remind us of His close, personal involvement with all His work.
This closeness of God to His creation, his Presence over it and in it at every level, must surely inspire us with the right kind of creation-spirituality. It inspires neither the worship of nature, nor a forgetfulness of its woundedness due to the fall, but a respect for its value, a delight in its beauty and complexity, and a desire to recognize God in His works.
The one eternal God, infinite in power and unchanging in goodness, still holds in being all that He called into existence and their processes: every blade of grass, each leaf on a tree, the gnat and the great whale, mountains and solar systems, and our own selves fearfully and wonderfully made. He is the God who is ‘in touch’ with His creation at every level: subatomic, macrocosmic, and every level between. When the insect lands on our hand, or the stars shine above our heads, we can worship the God of wisdom, power and unchanging faithfulness, [as Paul reminded the Athenians on Areopagus,]
27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: 28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
5. The God of Order
5. The God of Order
What we have in the processes described in Genesis 1 is God ordering the earth. The phrase translated without form and void (the attractive-sounding Hebrew terms are tohû vaḇohû) refers not to a ‘chaos’ in the Greek sense (involving a spirit of disorder) but to the creation of a disordered state as the first stage in a process. God is the God of process as well as fiat . . . The thought of Genesis 1 moves not only between nothing and creation but also between disorder and order. Henri Blocher remarks:
“Now the emphasis on the order of creation is the one most loudly heard in the opening of Genesis. It is not for nothing that the throng of the creatures is there called literally an [“host,” or] army (Gen. 2:1), and that army … does not fight, it parades.” ~ Henry Blocher
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
We can also see that a pattern of movement emerges in the rest of the chapter, after Gen. 1:2, from [general to particular] [cf., Victor Hamilton]. Notice the ways in which days one, two and three parallel days four, five and six, moving in each case from form to fullness, from preparation to accomplishment. So, for instance, the light and dark of day one prepare for the lights of day and night in day four; the creation of sea and sky on day two prepare for the creatures of water and air in day five, and the fertile earth of day three prepares for the creatures of the land in day six. The first triad points to acts of forming, the second to acts of filling. God’s personal involvement is specified at every point as the chapter moves through the creative process from disorder to order. In this a process of separation takes place between light and darkness, clouds and oceans, sea and land, and a process of population and classification begins among plants and trees, birds and fish, animals and human beings.
The most important thing we are told about this process is that it is God’s way of proceeding. It is not automatic or self-enclosed, or the result of random chance, but the result at every point of His creative and directive Word. Eight times we read ‘And God said’ and each time the result of His commanding will is the fulfilment of what He purposed: ‘And it was so.’
The author, [Moses, by the moving of the Holy Spirit, writing] Genesis 1 is concerned with order, pattern and categories which he sees in the creation around him. David Atkinson comments:
“Here is a mind that is not far from the interests of science. Indeed, the whole enterprise of science rests precisely on the assumption of an ordered world in which pattern can be discovered and categories established. The ordered rationality of the created world, deriving from the transcendent rationality of the creative Word, is a basic assumption—not usually expressed in those terms—of natural science. There would be no science at all without an ordered world.” ~ David Atkinson
However, the natural order of the world is not a logically necessary order. It could have been otherwise. And this, the dependent, derived and contingent order of the world is a fact that provokes endless research and investigation. Stephen Hawking in one place asks the question:
“What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to the bother of existing?” ~ Stephen Hawking
Genesis (and the entire Bible) answers his question not with a ‘What’ but a ‘Who’!
[Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Bantam Press, 1988), p. 184, quoted in Ramachandra (Gods), p. 58.]
6. The God of Purpose (Gen. 1:3–25)
6. The God of Purpose (Gen. 1:3–25)
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his 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 fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
[In Genesis 1,] every stage of creation is attributed to the one and only Creator who proceeds systematically to order His world. In the familiar refrain ‘And God said’, the picture [is of God speaking, in a majestic, powerful voice to demonstrate His] personal and purposeful creative activity and [eliminates] random chance as being the key to creation or the cause of what exists. At each stage of the creation ‘Let there be’ precedes ‘and there was’. In this way [Moses] rests all creation on the intelligence, will and purpose of its Creator.
Looking at the repeated wording of Genesis 1 and its message for its own day and ours, Derek Kidner observes that the simple phrase ‘And God said’ refutes a range of errors, ancient and modern, about God and our world:
“These eight specific commands, calling all things into being, leave no room for notions of a universe that is self-existent, or struggled for, or random, or a divine emanation.” ~ Derek Kidner
Here God’s distance from, as well as His closeness to, creation is again preserved; creation is not God or any part of Him but is called into being by Him, with full intent that it should reveal His wisdom in its design and His purpose in its complexity.
Roy Peacock, a professor in aerospace sciences and an authority on thermodynamics, writes of his own research and his growing awareness that ‘What we are viewing is design, contrivance—not accident, chance.’ He continues:
“The more I explore this subject, the greater is the conviction that, setting all else aside and from the scientific viewpoint alone, I see a [Designer] who has contrived the most amazing cosmos whose characteristics are balanced on a knife-edge of improbability, ready to topple off should there not be the corrective ‘hand on the windlass’. But it is a cosmos so fashioned that it would be the residence of man whom [He] would create. Stephen Hawking, examining the uniformity of the initial state of the universe, concluded that, so carefully were things chosen that ‘it would be very difficult to explain why the Universe should have begun this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us’. That is a good, considered view, speaking of an intelligent [Creator]. The how begins to direct us towards the why.” ~ Roy Peacock (Response to Hawking)
[Roy Peacock, A Brief History of Eternity: A Considered Response to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (Monarch, 1989), p. 132.]
David Wilkinson, formerly a theoretical astrophysicist, now a Christian minister and author, makes the same point:
“Why is the universe so ordered that science itself is possible? Science assumes that such an order underlies its laws, but it cannot explain why. And why can we understand the order? Einstein said, ‘The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.’ The Christian says that the laws of physics are a reflection of the faithfulness of God the [Lawgiver], and we can understand them because that same God underlies the rationality of our minds. Why does the universe seem so well set up for life? Life in the universe is only possible because of a number of very sensitive balances in the laws of physics. Over the last 30 years, scientists have often been moved to ask the ‘why’ question, as we have discovered more. For example, if the energy levels in carbon and oxygen were only a fraction of a per cent different to what they are, there would be no carbon in the universe and therefore no you and me. Sir Fred Hoyle, who pioneered work in this area, stated that nothing had shaken his atheism as much as this discovery.” ~ David Wilkinson
[David Wilkinson, ‘The Truth about Science’, Idea, Sept.–Oct. 1996]
Notice, too, that the world, though contingent (dependent) in its existence, is also given a semi-autonomy, a kind of independence. It rests for its existence every moment on the goodness and power of God, but on that basis and within that divine gift it has within itself the means of self-propagation and self-determination. Thus we read of plants and trees:
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
and of animals:
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
The laws of nature, the explanations of physics, the mechanisms of life, even ‘a unified theory of everything’ in the physical world should not suggest to us a denial of God but rather the perfection of a created order which is given semi-autonomy, the means under God to develop and perpetuate its own existence.
A point often missed is made by Walter Brueggemann, who observes that Gen. 1:3–25 stand as a protest against an exclusively human-centred view of the world:
“The [Creator] God is not totally preoccupied with human creatures. God has [His] own relation with the rest of creation. The others are [His] faithful, valued and obedient creatures (cf. Mt. 6:26–29; 8:20; 10:29–31) . . . [the first blessing of the Bible] is not for humankind but for the other creatures who have their own relation to God.” ~ Walter Brueggemann
An awareness of this should make us kinder to animals, more concerned to preserve vanishing species, and even better gardeners! More widely, it should encourage us to continue the ‘creation project’ of developing the earth’s good potential, especially in less favoured parts where human beings suffer under harsh conditions and which cry out for recognition, protection and development.
7. A “Very Good” Creation (Gen. 1:31)
7. A “Very Good” Creation (Gen. 1:31)
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Seven times the refrain ‘and it was good’ acts as an approval-formula in Genesis 1 showing the pleasure and satisfaction of God at each stage of his creation and ordering of the world (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). To Walter Brueggemann the text proclaims that ‘creation is a source of rejoicing and delight for creator and creature … All of creation is characterized by God’s delight.’ He then goes on to quote from Proverbs 8:30–31:
30 Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; 31 Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.
The Creator sees reflected in his creation something of His own goodness. It fits His purpose, but it also mirrors its Maker. In it both God and man can see something of [what Paul references in,]
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
We can see from this that the proper understanding of creation has a spiritual and moral dimension as well as a scientific and intellectual one. There is a quality as well as a quantity involved. God has made everything good in its time and place, [as the “Preacher” reminds us,]
11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
. . . because He is good and does good. Our own love of discovery, design and classification may be part of God’s image in us, increasing the tragedy that we should lose sight of the Creator in the creation.
In some of the psalms which celebrate the goodness of creation in the light of the goodness of the Creator we have a two-way movement, as it were, of God saying ‘It is good’ and creation saying ‘God is good’. Walter Brueggemann again makes this point when he writes of psalms which celebrate God’s generosity and the world’s grateful response:
“Thus the morning and evening shout for joy (Ps. 65:8). God waters, enriches, blesses and crowns (vv. 9–11); and as a result the hills are wrapped in joy (v. 12) and sing and shout for joy (v. 13). God’s movement toward creation is unceasing generosity. The response of creation is extended doxology (Job 38:7; Ps. 19:1).” ~ Walter Brueggemann
The place of human beings is to be the chief singers and conductors in the grand chorale of creation. In us it should find voice and expression in unique ways. We ourselves should never cease to marvel at ourselves and our world, [(cf., Psalm 8)]. We should never lose the wonder, the ‘Wow!’ factor, the admiring echo of God’s first judgment:
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
We see, then, that biblical [Christianity] is world-affirming in very important respects and not simply world-denying. It is simply not true that ‘all is illusion’. Creation is real, matter matters, and if God rejoices in what is material as well as in what is spiritual, then so [should] we. There is a flight from the physical which is not a necessary part of true spirituality and which can wrongly refuse to enjoy the pleasures of the senses, the sights and sensations of embodied life, the joys of creativity, sexuality, athletics and hard work. Here too we find the mirror and justification of all our art, science and technology, our excitement at discovering and our satisfaction in achieving. Even in the world of the fall the validity of the [“very goodness” of creation] as well as its [boundaries] can be recognized.
11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. 12 I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. 13 And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God. 14 I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.
18 Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion. 19 Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God. 20 For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart.
7 Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. 8 Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. 9 Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. 10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
8. “Good”— Not “God!” (Gen. 1:14–16)
8. “Good”— Not “God!” (Gen. 1:14–16)
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
The goodness of creation, however, can never rival the goodness of the God of creation. All worship is due to Him alone. His creation itself is brought into contempt when it is elevated above its place in the created order. At such times it has to be shown to be ‘only’ the creation. We can see an example of this in the way [Moses] records the creation of the sun, moon and stars.
Vinoth Ramachandra asks:
“Why does the writer put the creation of the sun and the moon on the fourth day, after the creation of light, when it would have been obvious to everyone that they were the sources of light for the earth?” ~ Vinoth Ramachandra
He replies to his own question:
“The reason becomes obvious when we recall that the worship of the sun and moon was very common in the writer’s world (e.g. the great Chaldean city of Ur where Abraham came from was a famous centre of moon-worship). Also then, as now, many believed that human life was controlled by the motion of the planets … The Genesis narrative ‘de-bunks’ this superstition. The heavenly bodies are simply creatures of God, lamps hung in the sky, with no divine power of their own. They are neither to be feared not worshipped. Nature is but a fellow-creature with human beings: both are dependent on and nourished by the Creator alone.” ~ Vinoth Ramachandra
Similarly, Victor Hamilton writes:
“Few commentators deny that this whole chapter has a strongly anti-mythical thrust. Perhaps in no other section—except the sixth day—does this polemic appear so bluntly as it does here.” ~ Victor Hamilton
Hamilton explains the terms used to denominate the sun and the moon, ‘the greater light to govern the day’ and ‘the lesser light to govern the night’:
“[Moses’] polemical concerns continue in these verses as indicated, first of all, by his choice of terminology. He uses the unusual expression ‘the greater luminary’ instead of the normal word for sun, šemeš, of which he was undoubtedly aware. In the same way he opts for the term ‘the lesser luminary’ instead of the familiar word for moon, yārēaḥ. The choice of these terms may be due to the fact that these names for the sun and moon—which are very similar in other Semitic languages—are the names of divinities! Thus this text is a deliberate attempt to reject out of hand any apotheothising [making a god] of the luminaries, by ignoring the concrete terms and using a word that speaks of their function.” ~ Victor Hamilton
So, to their superstitious devotees they are ‘gods’ but to the biblical writer they are no more than [oversized] lamps! Similarly all the stars together, in their countless masses, are but, [“He made the stars also” as part of His work for the day]!
Even today huge numbers of educated, sophisticated adults look for their ‘star signs’ and consult astrologers, believing that the positions of the stars have some power over human destiny. Others see them as but the debris of a ‘big bang’ which was somehow ‘meant’ to make this world—and us—possible (the weak-anthropic principle). Biblically minded believers, however, see that their lives and the destiny of the creation lie, not in the outworking of impersonal forces, real or imagined, but in the hand of a Personal Creator, Sustainer and Guide, the only true God. He alone must have the glory and honour of these things.
9. “Man” (i.e., humankind): the Masterpiece of God (Gen. 1:26–28)
9. “Man” (i.e., humankind): the Masterpiece of God (Gen. 1:26–28)
26 And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
With verse 26 the creation narrative reaches its climax. The first thing that we notice here is a change in the creation formula. It is no longer ‘Let there be’ but ‘Let us make’. At once the reader is prepared for something particularly important and significant.
[While not explicit, the plurality of the Hebrew ending “him” in “Elohim,” does nonetheless leave plenty of implicit room for the later development of the New Testament doctrine of the “Triune Godhead.”] Some commentators see it as a human way of expressing God’s deliberation, rather as we might say to ourselves . . . ‘Let’s do [this’. It is more than probable] that this is God addressing His Spirit, mentioned in verse two, which would give us ‘the first glimmering of a Trinitarian revelation.’
[cf., D. J. A. Clines, ‘The Image of God in Man’, TynB 19 (1968), pp. 66f., quoted in Blocher, p. 84]
Many writers old and new, including early Jewish commentators, have thought it most likely that God is addressing the heavenly court, the angels who are elsewhere mentioned as being present at the making of the world.
4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Only God, of course, creates us, as the singular of the verb ‘create’ in verse 27 shows, but in this case we would have,
“A divine announcement to the heavenly host, drawing the angelic host’s attention to the masterstroke of creation, man.” ~ G. J. Wenham
[Wenham (1987), p. 28]
From Genesis 1 then, we learn not only what God is but who we are. Too often science leaves us dwarfed by huge time-scales that seem to say the whole history of humankind is just a blip on the screen. So we need this affirmation of our worth and place in the creation which is to be found neither in the measurement of time nor the investigations of science, but in the decision and purpose of God. It is from Him in whose image we have been made that we get our true self-estimate and full value.
a. “In Our Image”
a. “In Our Image”
No term or phrase is more important in regard to the creation of humankind than the recurring phrase ‘in our image’. Entire books have been written in answer to the question ‘In what does the image of God consist?’ The answers have included human reason, conscience, original righteousness, our relationship with God, our relationship with others, and our rule over the natural world. In the last analysis the image of God probably does not lie in any one thing but in a uniquely human complex of qualities and relationships. It is our humanity in its fullness, not some detached part of it, which makes us ‘like God’. As Wayne Grudem points out, there are moral, spiritual, mental, relational and even physical aspects of our humanity which show us to be more like God than the rest of creation. In fact, however, no list could do justice to the image of God in humankind, for as he says:
“A full understanding of man’s likeness to God would require a full understanding of who God is in [His] being and actions and a full understanding of who man is and what he does.” ~ Wayne Grudem
An Old Testament scholar remarks similarly:
“In the twentieth century a consensus has emerged concerning the image among O.T. scholars … The image is properly understood as referring to the entire human, not a part or property.” ~ NIDOTTE, “Form, Image”
[R. C. van Leeuwen, ‘Form, Image’, NIDOTTE, vol. 4, p. 644]
Humankind is seen as God’s representative on earth, given the task of dominion over the non-human creation and even, some would say, God’s counterpart. [ibid]
The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck has written:
“The entire world is a revelation of God, a mirror of [His] virtues and perfections; every creature is in its own way and according to [His] own measure an embodiment of a divine thought. But among all creatures only man is the image of God, the highest and richest revelation of God and therefore the head and crown of the entire creation.” ~ Herman Bavinck
Here, too, at the beginning of the Bible, we find the ground for a Christian ecology, a recognition of the value of creation and a response to the Creator of gratitude and responsibility. We are not only lords of creation but trusted stewards and managers of it, appointed to bring it to perfection, exploring its secrets, harnessing its powers and fulfilling its potential (Gen. 1:26–30). As we recognize the power and wisdom of the Creator we shall be the more likely to value the creation and care for the environment. Here, doxology and ecology go together. Those who have heard God say of the earth ‘It is good’ should be the first to manage it well.
It is made clear later that it was not only the first, unfallen human beings who are in the image of God. The image is not lost through sin:
"Gen. 9:6 indicates that humans, as made in God’s image, have an intrinsic worth that is related to God’s own glory. Thus to harm or kill humans is to injure the majesty of God (cf. Prov. 14:31; James 2:9).” ~ NIDOTTE
6 Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
31 He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker: but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the poor.
9 But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.
It makes clear too, in an ancient world where only kings and their like were thought to be in the image of the gods, that all men and women were made in the image of their Creator and have a unique identity and value in the world.
However, while this ‘natural’ likeness remains, with its great importance for our understanding of the unique nature and value of the human being, the biblical doctrine of sin and the New Testament theme of [new birth, or being “born again” through the] “redemption in Christ, show us that the ‘moral’ image of God ‘in true holiness and righteousness’ has been seriously defaced and largely lost. Only in Christ and in His final glory will the full image of God be restored in us.
29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
b. Made to know God
b. Made to know God
[In Gen. 1:28,] we see human beings as uniquely addressable by God: God blesses and speaks to them as He does not speak to the animals. He addresses them as a person to persons. Because He is personal they can be persons too, interacting as such with Him and others. Walter Brueggemann writes:
“It is important that of all the creatures of God’s eight creative acts, God speaks directly only to human creatures. The others have no speech directed toward them at all. By contrast, in 1:28, God speaks to the human creatures, and in verse 29, [He] twice addresses them directly, ‘you’. This creature has a different, intimate relation with the [Creator]. This is the speech-creature par excellence. This is the one to whom God has made a particularly intense commitment (by speaking) and to whom marvellous freedom has been granted (in responding).” ~ Walter Brueggemann
c. Male and Female in His Image
c. Male and Female in His Image
In speaking of the creation of humanity, Genesis 2 adds the statement,
7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Genesis 2 also tells us of the woman’s creation out of Adam’s side (Gen. 2:21).
21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
He is ’îš (Man), she is ’iššâ (female Man); the exact and equal counterpart and fulfilment of ’îš. She is later given the name ‘Eve’. We should [also] notice that,
“It is not Eve herself but simply the raw material that is taken from the man.” ~ Victor Hamilton
Woman as such is made a special creation by God out of Adam as he made Adam a special creation out of the dust of the ground. The point, I believe, is to show that men and women are fundamentally equal; they are of one species. They are also distinct in their gender, with a distinction that is part of their identity and not a mere accident of their humanity. Gender distinctions are God-given and reflect him in equal and overlapping ways. It is not that either is less than the image of God but that both, and indeed the wider human society, in their complementarity and diversity, reflect more adequately the glories of that image and the glory of God who is in all and above all. Woman is not, as many of the ancients believed, an inferior form of man but an equal being, bearing the image of God as much as he. She is his counterpart and equal, his helper and his completion. Over this and all of His creation stands the verdict of the Creator:
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
10. The God of “Rest” (Gen. 2:2–3)
10. The God of “Rest” (Gen. 2:2–3)
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
God’s ‘rest’ is, of course, a relative not an absolute rest since God never ceases to work.
17 But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.
But it is a serious statement about a finished work and a settled, created order. We have now, in the creation, a reliable physics, a dependable system, a designed harmony in which, more and more, we can see how things work. The ‘laws of nature’, far from rendering God an unnecessary hypothesis, reflect His purpose and the perfection of His work. The built-in order of the universe makes all scientific knowledge and medical progress possible and the ‘rest’ of God in the first chapter of Genesis proclaims that finishedness which ensures the stability of natural law. God did not immediately set about making new, different or contrary laws in an unfinished creation, an alternative physics making a nonsense on Wednesdays of what was assured on Tuesdays. The integrity of the first creation was, and is still, preserved. We do well to remember this amidst the present hunger for the miraculous which threatens to lose the wonder of the everyday and the security of an established order. The life of the kingdom does not set aside the life of creation.
a. A Faithful Creator
a. A Faithful Creator
It is, of course, true that something has entered to disturb and disrupt the creation: it is both settled and unsettled. It no longer proceeds in all the ways God intended. Even the good laws and regularities of nature can now work against us and wreak havoc in the order of creation and in human life. The cancer grows as well as the child. [Or, as Jesus so masterfully taught, the Tare grows alongside the Wheat.] It is no longer a case that ‘God’s in His heaven, all’s well with the world.’ It was [for the very reason that, because all was not well with the world, God left His heaven.] The Babe of Bethlehem became the Man of [Golgatha].
Yet, in the grace of God, even this fallen creation retains much of its integrity, for He does not cease to work. God’s act of creation was no experiment; it was an act of commitment. The same divine Mind that rejoiced in the first creation rests also in full assurance about the restored creation and keeps faith with man and beast:
15 The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. 16 Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.
[This] ‘rest’ of God signified His contentment with what He had done. He had begun to share for ever His life with others, His existence with the existence of a marvellous creation and a race of beings ‘in his image’. He would not go back on His intentions. From now on the eternal God would exist for ever in relation to time and space and a creation outside of Himself. The day would come when He would take to himself a human body and a human nature. Nothing would ever be the same for God again—and He was well content.
b. The Life of God Shared with Creation
b. The Life of God Shared with Creation
[This] ‘rest’ of God on the seventh day leads to His blessing it as a sacred period for all time. It is not the later Jewish Sabbath as such that is for all time blessed. Rather, what is blessed is what it and this act of blessing [indicates], that is, the life of God shared with creation which finds in Him and His rest its true destiny.
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. 20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. 23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. 24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? 25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
Walter Brueggemann writes on the later institution of the Sabbath in Israel:
“The celebration of a day of rest was … the announcement of a trust in this God who is confident enough to rest. It was then and is now an assertion that life does not depend upon our feverish activity of self-securing, but that there can be a pause in which life is given to us simply as a gift.” ~ Walter Brueggemann
Our part is to meet God’s creation faithfulness with thanksgiving, a doxology renewed with every ‘sabbath’ and even in the little sabbaths of table-graces when we know that ‘we live by gift’ and are ‘strangely sustained, nurtured and nourished’. These are the visible links in our lives between ‘the overpowering miracle of creation and the daily reality of food’. So we are to respond to the revelation of blessing in the text of Genesis 1. ‘We must listen to the text, but it does not stay in our ears. It leaps to our lips. The proclamation becomes a doxology.’ [Brueggemann]
Conclusion: A Tract for Our Time?
Conclusion: A Tract for Our Time?
The biblical account of creation was not written in a vacuum. It was written amidst the swirl of different and differing religions with their highly coloured myths, their many gods and their tribal and civilizational sense of identity and destiny. The early chapters of Genesis present an alternative world-view, indeed one hostile to those in wide circulation in the ancient Near East. Gordon Wenham describes Genesis 1–11 as ‘a tract for the times’, challenging ancient assumptions about the nature of God, the world and mankind.
We realize just how different the biblical account of creation is when we read, for example, the Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, the most important cosmological text of the ancient Mesopotamian world. It was compiled from earlier sources during the second half of the second millennium BC, that is around the time of Abraham. It was written as propaganda to demonstrate the supremacy of the Babylonian god Marduk over all the other gods. In payment for settling the long-standing conflict between the older, more static gods and the younger and more dynamic gods (is anything new?), Marduk was granted supreme authority. He made heaven and earth from the two halves, respectively, of the older god he had defeated (Tiamat, consort of the already slain Apsu). Then he made humankind (from the blood of another slain god, Kingu), ‘for the service of the gods that they might be at ease’ from having to irrigate and cultivate the land in order to grow food for themselves. Now human beings could do the work necessary and provide food for the gods by their sacrifices and devotions.
[See M. J. A. Horsnell, ‘Religions: Assyria and Babylonia’, ISBE, vol. 4, pp. 84–95.]
Similarly, in the Myth of Atra-hasis, another ancient Mesopotamian account of the origins of mankind, the lesser gods complained of the work they had to do. They asked the mother-goddess Mami (or Nintu) to create mankind to bear their toil. The god Enki advised killing one of the gods ‘that god and man may be thoroughly mixed in the clay’. Consequently, the mother goddess Nintu pinched off fourteen pieces of this clay mixture and fourteen birth-goddesses gestated them, producing seven male and seven female human beings.
[Ibid., p. 94; cf. Wenham (1987), p. 52]
So now you know!
From such examples we can appreciate Henri Blocher’s comment that the first verse of Genesis dramatically and uncompromisingly ‘breaks with all the mythologies of the ancient East’. He quotes the vivid sentence of another French scholar, Claude Tresmontant: ‘Just as Abraham left his family and the land of his ancestors, so with its very first step, the metaphysics of the Bible leaves behind the metaphysics of the ancient world’ [Blocher, 61]. In a classic work on the subject, Alexander Heidel, comparing the Babylonian myth of origins with the Genesis account, concluded that ‘In the light of the differences, the resemblances fade away almost like the stars before the sun’ [as quoted by Blocher].
In these opening verses, and in the verses that follow, the uncompromising statement is made that this God and this God alone created all that is not God. This first clear note is sounded throughout the rest of the Scriptures without compromise.
6 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.
9 For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.
24 And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is:
15 And saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein:
24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
He is the God who says,
18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
All things exist by His will and for His glory.
11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
Yet, as Wenham insists,
"Genesis 1 is more than a repudiation of contemporary oriental creation myths; it is a triumphant invocation of the God who has created all men and an invocation to all humanity to adore him who has made them in his own image.” ~ G. J. Wenham
Genesis 1 speaks today as it has spoken to men and women for millennia and we are made wiser and stronger for life as we listen to it. Its message is as relevant as ever, but we must be careful to understand what its message really is. Gordon Wenham writes:
“The Bible-versus-science debate has, most regrettably, sidetracked readers of Gen. 1. Instead of reading the chapter as a triumphant affirmation of the power and wisdom of God and the wonder of His creation, we have been too often bogged down in attempting to squeeze Scripture into the mould of the latest scientific hypothesis or distorting scientific facts to fit a particular interpretation. When allowed to speak for itself, Gen. 1 looks far beyond such minutiae. Its proclamation of the God of grace and power who undergirds the world and gives it purpose, justifies the scientific approach to nature. Gen. 1, by further affirming the unique status of man, and his place in the divine program, and God’s care for him, gives a hope to mankind that atheistic philosophies can never legitimately supply.” ~ G. J. Wenham