“In the Beginning, God; pt.1” (Genesis 1:1 - 2:3) | 3/29/20
Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 | 3/29/20 | Will DuVal
As most of you now know, last week Polly and I braved not only a cross-country road trip through the corona-infested heartland of the US, but a seismic earthquake in Utah as well, in order to pick up the newest addition to our West Hills family; here’s a pic of Baby Elijah DuVal, born March 18, and we have so appreciated your prayers for the adoption, for birth mom and baby, for us as we adjust to life as a family of 4, and to not getting sleep, and especially those of you who have braved all this craziness to come bring us a meal. When things get tough the church doesn’t just hunker down and wait it out; we rise up and answer the call. So our family thanks you.
And I also especially want to thank Pastor Thad, who did such an excellent job last week of filling in for me in the pulpit and wrapping up our sermon series “Tough Texts” with the toughest text of all, Romans ch.9, and Paul’s exposition on predestination and the sovereignty of God. If you missed that, or ANY of our “Tough Texts” sermons, the videos are ALL online now on our website.
But this morning, I get to kick off our new sermon series in the book of GENESIS, which I’ve appropriately subtitled “The Beginning”. Genesis is of course the beginning of the BIBLE, the first book in the Hebrew Old Testament, the Hebrew title of this book comes from the opening word - be-re-shit = which translates as “the beginning”; the origins, the GENESIS.
Authorship of the book of Genesis, along with the other 4 opening books of the Bible - Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy - which collectively make up the TORAH, or “Law” - is traditionally ascribed to Moses, God’s chosen prophet who in the 15th c. before Christ helped bring God’s people out of slavery in Egypt, before receiving God’s revelation of the Law and the origins of the universe while leading the Israelites through the wilderness in Sinai. Not surprisingly, in modern times Moses’ authorship of Genesis has been called into question, by historical-critical scholars skeptical of his ability to know with ANY degree of certainty about these events, which occurred thousands, or even BILLIONS of years prior to Moses’s time, depending on your interpretation.
And that really gets us to the heart of the “Creation controversy”, if you will: not only questions surrounding the authorship of Genesis, but more importantly, its GENRE. Are chs.1-11 of Genesis, sometimes deemed “PRE-history”, are they MYTH? Or are they HISTORY? Do they reflect some sort of “legendary pseudo-history” that developed over many generations in Israel, the ancient lore of an uneducated people trying to explain their own origins, or do they record actual historical events? What are modern, Enlightened people such as ourselves supposed to do with talking snakes, primitive wooden boats allegedly capable of housing every animal species on earth, and humans who live to be 969 years old? Should Genesis be understood symbolically, figuratively, allegorically... or literally?
I want to offer us 3 prefatory guardrails, before we even dive into the text, that I hope will help us from running amuck in our study the next few weeks:
#1) We need to recognize that faithful Christians will disagree over some of these details. West Hills does not take an official stance, in our statement of faith, on the age of the earth. I know for a fact we have young earth Creationists who think the world is 6,000 years old and old earth Creationists who think it’s 4.5 billion years old worshipping with us. Heck, we may even have some theistic evolutionists undercover here. While our answers to such questions are no doubt important, most of these issues are NOT gospel issues. They are not of CENTRAL importance. Think back AGAIN to my “levels of importance” chart: the age of the earth is a “CONTESTED” issue. Now, other related doctrines are more central: the fact that we are all descendants of a historical Adam and Eve, from whom we have inherited BOTH the image of God AND original sin; that’s a gospel issue. If this is like theological JENGA and you pull out THAT block, the historical Adam and Eve block, I’m not sure the tower of Christianity can still stand at that point. But we need to be careful when we’re studying Genesis and the Creation account in ch.1 in particular to acknowledge that MANY of these details are NOT so clear cut. That different interpretations are possible here.
#2) We need to be wary of OVER-estimating the explanatory power of science. For three reasons. #1 - Science can explain HOW things happened, but not WHY they happened. Scientists can show us evidence that there was a Big Bang 13 billion years ago; but they can’t explain who pulled the trigger and WHY. So we need to recognize the limitations of science, as a discipline. Second reason to be leery is that Science changes every DAY! Science’s explanation for the origins of the universe is VERY different today than it was a hundred, or even 10 or 20 years ago; it wasn’t until 1929 that Edwin Hubble confirmed what the Bible has always affirmed; that the universe has NOT in fact existed forever as scientists previously postulated, but rather came into being at a distinct time in the past. So when it comes to other theories that appear to be at odds with what we find in Scripture, God’s inerrant word, we might do well to quit fighting so much and simply wait for the science to catch up to the Bible. As God says in 1 Cor 1: ““I will destroy the wisdom of the wise...Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (vv19-20). Which brings us to the third and biggest reason to be skeptical of science: for MOST of the last 2,000 years, the leading scientists of the day conceived of their work as GOD’s work; think of Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo. In fact, the birth of what we now know as modern science was actually sponsored by the CHURCH. Because Psalm 19:1 reveals, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork”. So we should expect to find God’s fingerprints EVERYWHERE in Creation, and discovering those prints is an act of WORSHIP. But with the dawn of the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, the entire philosophical approach of science began to shift, such that instead of assuming God’s existence and setting out to prove how He works, science now demands that we assume God DOESN’T exist, that any possibility of supernatural agency is OFF the table, and we must explain how things work without resorting to such primitive, childish notions as a cosmic Creator. So we Christians need to be careful about how much we want to stretch our biblical worldview to accommodate for the best theories of a discipline whose very starting point nowadays, is the a priori assumption that there is no God - it is inherently at odds with our own worldview.
Now, that said, our third prefatory guardrail is that we also don’t want to UNDER- estimate the value of the scientific evidence either. Because Creation IS God’s handiwork, so whether atheist scientists realize it or not - and not all scientists are atheists by the way; we’ve got many covert, secret agent Christian scientists right here at West Hills - but even the atheists don’t realize they’re ACTUALLY just discovering God’s fingerprints. All truth is God’s truth. It’s not the Bible OR science. It’s the Bible AND Creation. God reveals himself to us in His word AND in the world. We call this special revelation - Scripture - AND general revelation - nature. And it is because of this general revelation that the apostle Paul can claim in Romans 1 “What can be known about God is plain to [all], because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” (vv19-20)
And God’s invisible attributes are a GREAT segue way, because before I spend ANY longer in this sermon expositing the relationship between the Bible and science, let me tell you the questions I WON’T be answering in this message: can Christians believe in evolution; SHOULD we? Where did the light come from on Day 2 if there were no stars yet? How did PLANTS grow on Day 3 before the sun was created? Why is the moon called a “light” on Day 4 when we know it actually just REFLECTS light? Were the “great sea creatures” on Day 5 actually the dinosaurs?! These are all FASCINATING questions with even MORE fascinating answers, depending on your interpretation of both the science and Scripture. But NONE of those are the focus of today’s sermon. Now, I AM planning to do a mid-week teaching in our “Ask the Pastor” podcast this week, where I’ll address the question of whether Christians should believe in evolution. But not here in the sermon. Why?
Because the aim of PREACHING, is to explain and apply the word of God for the people of God. So if I understood Genesis to be written as primarily a science textbook, primarily a history textbook, then I’d do a lot of academic TEACHING today. But I don’t think that’s the primary purpose of Genesis 1. I think Genesis 1 serves PRIMARILY as a preface to an autobiography. And as such, its purpose is to introduce us to the main character and protagonist of this story that is going to unfold over the next 66 books, the next 2,334 pages. In short, Genesis 1 is ALL about GOD. That’s your big takeaway this morning.
So instead, I want to outline for you 20 - yes, 5 today, and 15 more next Sunday - 20! attributes of God that we find in this opening chapter of Genesis alone, and then END by considering 3 quick application points for us. How do we APPLY a text like this, that is in reality, intentionally focused NOT on us, but on God?
So wherever you are presumably sitting there at home, at your kitchen counter, on your couch, laying in BED; let’s restore some NORMALCY to our Sunday morning routine right now, and would you stand with me as you are able, out of respect for the reading of God’s word, from GENESIS 1:1 - 2:3
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray…
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#1 - The first attribute of God we find in Genesis ch.1, right in VERSE 1, is that God is PREEMINENT. Pre-eminent.
Kids, if you’re still following along, I know I’ve probably used a LOT of big words already that mom and dad have hopefully paused to define for you, but I’ll take this one for them: to say that God is preeminent is to affirm that He is “prominent or distinguished above or before others; superior; surpassing” (dictionary.com)
We read: “In the beginning, God...” The Bible is not first and foremost a story about US. Creation, human history, your life - your tiny place IN history, IN the world - is not ultimately about YOU. It is ALL about God. ALL of this is FROM Him, and ALL of it is FOR Him.
1 Cor 8:6 “there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.”
Colossians 1:16 - “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through him and for him.”
God is both the AUTHOR and the AIM of the entire universe!
And he is UNDISPUTEDLY the aim of this first chapter of Genesis: God’s name - Elohim - is used 35x in these first 34 verses alone. This chapter is ALL about GOD!
God is not only preeminent, He is also PRE-EXISTENT. Science now admits that the universe wasn’t infinite, eternal. It began to exist 13 billion years ago. Christians know HOW. God SPOKE it into existence.
The scientist will ask, “Well then who created GOD?” If everything has a cause, Where did GOD come from? The Bible gives us the answer right here in verse 1: “In the beginning, God”. He already EXISTED. Before time and space, God simply WAS. And IS. And is to COME - Revelation 1:8, he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Ps 90:2 “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” It’s inherent in his PERSONAL name, Yahweh, which we won’t be introduced to until Genesis ch.2, but Yahweh simply means “I am”. God is the source of all being. He is the reason there’s something rather than nothing. He’s the reason for EVERYTHING. God is preeminent.
Eph 4:6 - “There is… one God and Father of all, who is over all”
#2 - God is CREATOR.
“In the beginning, God created...”
The Hebrew verb for create here - bara - is found over 50 times in the OT and EVERY SINGLE time, God is the subject. Only GOD can bara. He is uniquely creator in a way that you and I ARE not and CANNOT be. It is part of what sets God apart FROM us as Holy, and worthy of our worship and affection and devotion:
Nehemiah 9:6 ““You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you. ”
Isa 40:26 “Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number… Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one of them is missing.”
Rev 4:11 “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”
God is CREATOR, and He is worthy to be praised AS Creator.
#3 - God is POWERFUL.
Still in v1: “In the beginning, God created [what?] the heavens and the earth.”
The Hebrew phrase “the heavens and the earth” is an idiom that simply means EVERYTHING. It’s another way of saying God created EVERYTHING. Seen and unseen. Visible and invisible. Scientists estimate we have only discovered ~4% of our universe. And the irony is that the more we discover, the more we come to realize we HAVE YET to discover. Like, as soon as we get a tiny glimpse of yet another distant galaxy, we realize that even more lies within it and BEYOND it that we didn’t even know was there and can’t even see yet. In ten years, the estimate will probably go DOWN; we’ll realize we’ve discovered less than 1% of the universe, just a fraction.
Why would God create stuff we can’t even SEE!? To remind us of just how small we are. And just how big and awesome and powerful HE is.
Jer 32:17 “‘Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power… Nothing is too hard for you.”
Gen 18:14 “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
Ps 8:3-9 “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him… O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Our God holds ALL power. Take comfort in THAT truth this morning, friends.
#4 - God is DYNAMIC.
Dynamic means “pertaining to or characterized by energy or effective action, esp as it affects development” (dictionary.com); the idea here is one of God’s “PROGRESSIVE action”; He is advancing the development of the Created order.
We hear in v2: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
Some Christians picture every creative act of God in Genesis 1 as a creatio ex nihilo, a “creation out of nothing”. Yet, commentator Allen Ross notes: “Verse 2 describes a chaos: there was waste and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. The clauses in verse 2 are apparently circumstantial to verse 3, telling the world’s condition when God began to renovate it. It was a chaos of wasteness, emptiness, and darkness. Such conditions would not result from God’s creative work; rather, in the Bible they are symptomatic of sin” (Ross, “Genesis”, The Bible Knowledge Commentary: OT, 28). Therefore, Ross explains: “[We must read] a ‘gap’ between the first two verses, allowing for the fall of Satan (that we know of from Isaiah 14 and other passages) and the entrance of sin into the world (even BEFORE Adam and Eve) that caused the chaos.” (28). So understood rightly, verse 1 serves as an introduction, an abstract, to orient us to the rest of chapter 1. Moses employs this same narrative structure with his genealogies in later chapters of Genesis (5:1; 6:9; 10:1; and 11:10).
Terence Fretheim provides additional evidence for this interpretation, that God is not just CREATING but actually DEVELOPING His creation over time, by pointing us ahead to God’s command in v28 that man “subdue” the earth. Fretheim notes “This implies that ‘good’ does not mean ‘PERFECT’ or ‘static’ or in no need of development” (“The Book of Genesis”, TNIB: Vol 1, p343). God can deem creation “good”, even while it’s still a work in progress. Consider v31, when God for the first time calls creation “very good.” That suggests development (from good → very good).
Some Christians get real antsy about any possible HINT of evolution in God’s design for Creation because it implies God didn’t create everything PERFECT in the first place. It raises an interesting theological question: which is better - a God so perfect He won’t even allow for ANY darkness, chaos, sin - He only oversees and orchestrates perfection? OR a God so REDEMPTIVE that He can and does allow for evil and brokenness, in order to prove his ultimate power OVER it by bringing forth light from darkness, beauty from ashes, wholeness from brokenness, good from evil, redemption from even the worst that we see all around us in the world. Even OUR worst. A God who can take MY worst sin, and transform it, and even use it to accomplish His own Higher, better purposes.
Biblically speaking, there’s no use even DEBATING which God is better, because Scripture is clear which one Yahweh IS, and it’s the picture we get here in Genesis 1: God is redemptive. And praise God He IS, because otherwise He never would have created free creatures capable of sin like us in the first place!
And finally for this morning, #5 - God is INVOLVED
We read in v2: “ the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
And God is going to get even MORE involved in ch.2, where we’ll get the details on HOW God created man: “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” (v7) The Bible leaves NO room for the god of DEISM. An utterly transcendent God who was curious enough to create the universe as some kind of divine experiment, but who quickly lost interest and certainly cannot be bothered with any of our concerns today. No, the God of the Bible is ACTIVE, CARING, intimately involved with His creation, He lovingly ENGAGES with us.
He cared enough to NOT ONLY be actively involved in Creation in the beginning, He was also personally involved in His work of Salvation, God got SO involved that He took on human flesh as the person of Jesus, to die as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of fallen man. And as if THAT weren’t enough, God is STILL presently involved through the enduring work of His Holy Spirit, convicting us OF our sin and need for a Savior, opening our eyes to see the truth about ourselves and about Jesus, and then actually calling us to Himself and performing our supernatural, spiritual rebirth - in ALL of those ways, at EVERY turn, God is and MUST be involved. Friends, our God CARES. He cares enough to number the hairs on your head - Luke 12:7 - to feed the birds - Matt 6 - so you can rest ASSURED that He is still involved, and He cares for you today. No matter WHAT the news cycle may bring.
So how do we APPLY all this, in our day-to-day lives? I’ll leave you with 3 quick take-home, or KEEP at home, points, as it were ;-)
#1) - We should… Worship God!
*Many of you will be familiar with the A.C.T.S. model of prayer. It’d be really easy to let our prayer lives be DOMINATED by “supplication” these days? Asking God for things. “God, cure Covid-19.” Yes, by all means, pray that prayer. But let me remind you not to ignore ADORATION. Spending time simply worshipping God, in prayer, for who He is. For His preeminence. For his Creation. For His POWER. For being actively, dynamically involved, and for caring about us. Praise GOD for ALL His perfections!
#2) Let your worship of HIM, cause you to Become more aware of your OWN sin . The more we behold God for ALL that He is, in His word, the more we ought to become acutely convicted of just how SHORT WE fall! I am NOT preeminent. God is Alpha and Omega; Will DuVal is VERY finite. I will have a tombstone, and it will have dates on it. I am not the Creator; HE is. If we’ve learned ANYTHING these past few weeks, it should be just how LITTLE power and control we actually have; yet God has ULTIMATE power; ALL power. He is dynamic, involved, caring in ways that I should be but fail to.
And yet, Third and finally, our awareness of our own sin ought to drive us to Appreciate even more deeply Christ’s sacrifice for us. The bigger the gap gets between a Holy, Almighty, Powerful, Awesome, Creator God, and a tiny, pitiful, pathetic, sinful, broken me, the bigger my need is for a Savior to FILL that gap. Praise GOD that He has provided One, and that the cross is sufficient for YOU, even for me. Let’s pray.