Note: My paper on the theories of origins and the Genesis account of the creation of the universe is found here: Theories of Origins and Genesis 1:1-2:4
Sometimes in shops people advertise things they are selling as ‘hand made’. Do you think ‘hand made’ things are more valuable? Do you ever think of yourself as ‘manufactured’ (from the Latin meaning ‘hand made’? What difference does it make to your thinking that you are ‘hand made’?
Genesis Chapter 1 is a bit like a hymn – it is not quite poetry and it is not quite pose. However, it has an identifiable pattern. God first creates the ‘raw material’ in verse 1, but it is ‘formless and empty’. This raw material God then forms and fills. Days 1 to 3 involve God separating elements to form an environment. Then on Days 4 to 6, God populates to fill the environments he has created. For example, on Day 1, God creates day and night, and on Day 4, God populates day and night with the sun (for the day) and moon and stars (for the night). The following diagram shows this structure.
In Genesis 2:4, there is a phrase ‘This is the account (toledot) of the heavens and the earth when they were created’. This word translated account is repeated 10 times in Genesis, at the beginning of each main section. It seems to serve as a heading. As Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 stands before the first of these headings, it suggests that Genesis 1:1-2:3 lies outside the main historical outline of Genesis and perhaps is not to be interpreted in the same way.
What did God create ‘the heavens and the earth’ out of? (see Hebrews 11:3).
Who was there in the beginning? (compare verse 3 with John 1:1-3)
How did God create? (verses 2-3; compare Colossians 1:15-20)
Does light depend on the sun, moon and stars? (Compare verses 14-19) What does this tell us about God, and about the light he creates (compare Revelation 22:5; 1 John 1:5)?
‘If you name it, you start getting attached to it’! If you’ve seen the movie Monsters Inc, this is what Mike says to Sully, who names the little girl ‘Boo’ who has stumbled into Monstropolis. What do you think is the significance of God naming the things he creates?
Read verses 6 to 8, and draw a diagram of the world God forms.
Note
God separates the waters by making an expanse (NIV, NASB, ESV, most modern versions), translating the Hebrew raqia. The ‘water above’ is then the clouds. If this is correct, the picture is that of space or air as the separating medium between the clouds above and the sea beneath. From a phenomonelogical point of view, this makes sense. We experience that there is ground, clouds, and air or space between the ground and the clouds.
This can be contrasted with other versions (eg AV, RV, LXX, Latin), which translates the original word (raqia) as firmament. A firmament suggests a firm, hard surface. The same word is used of hard surfaces in other places (probably Ezekiel 1:22, 23, 25, 26, where it seems to mean a platform), and the related verb means to ‘beat out, stamp, spread out’ (eg Job 37:18 ‘Can you, with Him, spread out the skies, strong/hard/firm as a molten (ie metal) mirror?’: NASB ). If this is correct, the picture Genesis is painting for us is a bit like the world of the movie, the Truman Show. In this movie, a TV show adopts a baby and televises his life 24/7. They create around him a world, with a domed canopy as the ceiling, so that he cannot get out and unwanted intruders cannot get in. If so, there is ‘water below’ (the sea) and the ‘water above’, which is the water behind the firmament canopy. To adopt a consistent phenomenological reading, one would need to posit that the firmament could be seen through, which is not impossible (Sir 43:1 in the RSV speaks of a ‘clear firmament’). This has some phenomenological power. When you lie on the ground and look up, the sky appears from the ground to be like a hard curved surface. We know scientifically it is not, because we’ve sent space shuttles out beyond the blue sky. However, it does not have as much phenomenological consistency as the idea of an expanse because generally speaking, the clouds appear in front of the blue backdrop, not behind it.
The reading I am adopting is seeking to be phenomenological (that is, the way it looks to us) not scientific (the way it really is). We often speak in this phenomenological way, eg ‘sunrise’. We know the sun doesn’t rise, but that the earth rotates around the sun. But we speak that way anyhow!
In the words of Galileo, ‘The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.’
Sometimes people in our community speak of ‘mother nature’. What is the real source of the fertility of the land? (verse 11)
Do you know of many people who are interested in Astrology, and read their stars in the paper? What do you think of this?
In Ancient Near Eastern cultures, the sun, moon, stars and sea monsters were viewed as powerful deities that could influence people’s lives. What does Genesis teach us that these heavenly bodies actually do?
Astronomers have observed and reasoned that the earth is a small planet revolving around a reasonably insignificant sun, which is one of billions of suns, in a middle sized galaxy in a universe filled with galaxies. Does this make you feel small and unimportant? Even if the Astronomers are right about these facts, what is the Bible’s picture of our importance compared to the stars, sun and moon?
Note
It is possible, though less likely, to read the Hebrew such that the sun, moon and stars were created in Genesis 1:1, but given their function as calendars and clocks on day 4. See Sailhammer, Genesis: EBC (Rev), 64-5. However, a theological point is made by placing them in Day 4. God can provide light without sun, moon, and stars (cf Revelation 21:23, 22:5). Note that the sun and moon are not even named, and the stars are included in the account almost as an afterthought!
In verse 17, God set the lights in raqia. If the raqia is a hard surface, they are set in the canopy, which is phenomenologically how they appear. Then the picture is one of fluorescent stars stuck on a child’s bedroom ceiling. If the raqia is an expanse, then they are seen in the sky, up there, where the clouds and the birds fly. It is not a statement that they are placed in outer space, but where they are observed from a human point of view.
This is the first time that God ‘blesses’ his creation in the account. Why do you think he blesses here? (verse 22)
Note
God’s creation includes the great sea creatures, thought of by other religions of the day as powerful deities.
In what way is man (and woman) different from the rest of creation? (verses 26,27,28)
What does it mean to be in the image of God?
What is humanity’s relationship with the rest of creation? (verses 28-29)
Note
A change of pace occurs around the creation of adam (Hebrew for ‘man’) (v26). God deliberates within himself… Let us create… With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this is a hint of plurality in God, in other words, it is explained by the Trinity (compare 1:1-3, and John 1:1-3). God created the adam (‘man’) out of the adamah (‘ground’).
God made humans in his ‘image’, which means we can have relationship with God and within humanity, and rule the earth. This suggests that two important features of being image bearers are we rule and we have relationships. This gives humanity great dignity and responsibility, especially for our relationship with God, other humans and our environment. However, we are also made in his likeness, which reminds us that we are not God. Jesus unlike us is both the image of God and the exact representation of his being (see Hebrews 1:1-4, Col 1:15-20).
15. Do you have a day off during your week to rest? Why or why not? Should you? (Compare Ex 20:8-11, Romans 14:5-6)
16. Is there an end to the Sabbath day in the account, ie ‘evening and morning, the seventh day’? What does this say about the Sabbath day? (Hebrews 4:3-11; compare Jn 5:17)
Mummy, where did I come from? It is an important question, isn’t it. Origins matter. Where we come from explains where we are. Where we’ve been explains where we’re going.
I remember as a little child. Going for a walk with my dad. And I asked: ‘Dad, were do the clouds come from?’ And Dad said something about water evaporating, and the wind, because I think I asked next. ‘Where does the wind come from? And Dad talked about air currents. I remember that, because I hadn’t heard about air currents before. And so of course I said, ‘Dad, where do the air currents come from’. And I don’t think Dad answered that one. Perhaps he was tired, perhaps he didn’t know the meteorological answer. Anyway, at that point I decided that there was, must have been a God. Even if my Dad knew where air currents come from, ultimately, they must come from God.
At theological college I learnt that way of thinking is called the ‘Cosmological argument’. A big word to explain that simple thought. The idea is that we move from the fact of causation to a first cause. Perhaps this is simply what God says in Romans 1:20:
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
This talk looks at Genesis 1. We meet the God of creation. We meet ourselves as creatures. And we meet our environment. First of all, we meet God.
In the very first verse of the bible, we meet God. Verse 1.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The God outside of time steps into time. This verse narrates how the eternal God begins time and space. We don’t know what existence outside of time and space is like. Just like I imagine a fish doesn’t really know what human life is like. We don’t know what it is to be eternal, and everywhere. But God does.
This verse tells us that God made everything there is. In the beginning there was God. And then he made everything. Even the devil.
The beginning (vv. 1-3, 26)
It is a simple beginning. There is God who creates But as we read, we see that there is more to God than ‘In the beginning God…’ In verse 2 we read:
The Spirit of God was hovering over the Waters.
Here is God’s Spirit active in creation. And then in verse 3 we see God’s active word in creation. Verse 3:
And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.
The ‘Us’ of God
God, God’s Spirit, and God’s word, all busy in the creative process. So, we should not be surprised that verse 26 indicates that God is an ‘us’. God deliberates within himself. Verse 26 says:
Let us made man in our image and in our likeness, and let them rule…
The New Testament makes clear what lies behind these verses. The New Testament fully reveals God to us as Trinity. God is one God who exists in three distinct persons. God did not create because he was lonely or bored. God didn’t make us because he was looking for love, and had no one to relate with. Like the god of Islam, or the Jehovah’s Witness god. He was eternally God, Word and Spirit. Or as he is revealed in the New Testament, Father, Son and Spirit. God is love in himself (1 John 4:16). Father, Son and Spirit; And creation springs from the overflow of his love.
God’s powerful word is the agent of creation. The pattern of the creation days is clear… And God said… and it was so … and it was good. That is the power of God’s word. The command goes forth and is effective. It achieves his purpose.
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth… For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm (Psalm 33:6,9).
Before the word, the universe did not exist. After the word, the universe came to be out of nothing. As the writer to the Hebrews says:
By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrews 11:3 NIV)
Real power is seen in effortless obedience to the command. Tidy your room… and it was so … and it was good. Do the job I’m paying you for… and it was so … and it was good. That’s what makes God’s word different to mine and yours. God doesn’t rant and rave or manipulate or get angry or dock pocket money or computer privileges or threaten to sack. He majestically speaks. And God’s word achieves his purpose.
God relates with Us
I’ve already said God didn’t need to create to have relationship. He was already completely fulfilled in his relationships within himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (verses 1-3, 26). But God does indeed have relationship with his creation. In fact, that is what creation is. God’s gracious invitation to his creatures to enter into relationship with him. So we see God relating to humanity. Verse 28, God blessed the man and the woman. God enables them to fill the earth. By God’s word, they can reproduce. Verse 28, he invites humanity to share in his rule over the world. Verse 29, he provides for humanity. He gives food for humanity. Not only does he create, but sustains and establishes humanity in his relationship with him.
In Genesis 1 we also meet our environment. The heavens and the earth. Our universe. And it is important that we have the right understanding about our environment. That it is not God. But that it is good.
Not God … but Good
Firstly, we need to see that the creation is not God. It is not eternal as the Greeks thought.
Nor must we think the universe as a whole is God. That is ‘Star Wars’ Theology. That says there is a force generated by the living things. That is pantheism. Everything is God. But the God of the bible is separate from creation.
Nor must we think any component of our universe is God. The sun, the moon, the stars. All of these things people then and now viewed as gods. That’s why we have astrologers telling people’s future by the stars. In 1990, 80% of Australians read their star column and 28% professed to believe what it said[1]. But in Scripture, we learn that the sun, moon and stars are just lamps and clocks and calendars. They tell us the time, and give light, and help us navigate. Nothing more, nor less. In fact, God does not even need them to give light. God created light on day 1, in all likelihood before he created the sun and moon and stars on day 4. God himself is light. And in heaven, the book of Revelation tells us there is no need for sun and moon, for the glory of God is it’s light and the lamp is its lamp (Revelation 21:23).
Chaos to order
But we also see the orderliness of God’s creative acts. The pattern is that God brings into being, and then brings order. Verse 1, God creates the raw material by his word, the heavens and the earth. But it is formless and empty. So then, over the first three creation days, he shapes it by his word. A wood-turner at his lathe, who calls cedar into being, and then sets about shaping it with the sharp edge of his word.
He forms it, by separating element from element[2]. Light separated from darkness. And the waters are separated from the waters. Sea separated from sky. Land separated from sea. That’s days 1 to 3.
And so God has formed the environments. Night and Day. Sky and sea. Land
Then he fills it by populating the environments. Lights in the Night and Day. Birds and fish in the sky and sea. And animals on the land. That’s days three to six.
An orderly creation. A place for everything, and everything in it’s place. Like in a workshop or a garage of a home handyman, where on the wall is a board to hang all the tools, and each tool has an outline of its shape, so you know where it goes. That’s the way God shaped his universe.
And the high point of that creation is … humanity. Us. The man and the woman. In the account, we are the last to be formed. But we are the first in importance. God has saved the best till last. The crowning glory of all creation. The cherry on top.
We are part of creation, but we are the climax of creation. Created yes, but created in the image of God. As God is to the universe, so we are to the earth. God rules the universe, and he gives us the take of ruling the world. When God looks at us, he sees a mini-Me. We are his reflection of himself back to him. That’s one reason why we don’t need to make images of God, statues and pictures. We ARE the images of God, made by God himself.
Not God… but image and good … very good!
That doesn’t mean we are God. But we are not just good, either. With the creation of humanity, the universe is very good. For only with the creation of humanity does the good become very good.
When we were living in Sydney our family went to the Sydney observatory. The kids did a great job staying up, because you have to go at night, of course. And there was a 3D video presentation. And we went through the solar system. That the earth is this tiny marble compared to the earthball of the sun. But that our solar system is also this tiny, relatively insignificant solar system, one of a million million solar systems in the boon docks of the Milky Way. Which is just one of countless other galaxies in the universe. And we are talking about sizes and scales that are inconceivable. And the presenter’s refrain was ‘Are you feeling small yet’. Are you feeling insignificant.
And I wanted to scream out No! We matter. Being manufactured makes us meaningful. For suppose all this is true. Suppose the universe is a million times bigger and more vast than we think it is now. Then nothing that the bible tells us is changed. For David said three millenia ago:
'When I consider 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, the son of man that you care for him. You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour. You made him ruler over the work of your hands; you put everything under his feet.’ (Psalm 8:3-6 NIV)
David says, I look at the sky, and the stars and I am spun out. Because you made us more valuable than any of the galaxies and stars and planets up there. The smallest of us are worth more than a moon and a sun. We will last into eternity, they stars and the sun will not. Atheism says the suns and the stars last longer then we do. Christianity says the sun and the stars are just God’s light globes. One day God will toss them out. But we are image bearers. And our lives our eternally significant in a way the sun and moon and stars are not. For will live forever, whether with God forever in glory, or apart from him forever with eternal regret. No galaxy was made in the image of God, no matter how vast. But you and I are. No star bears the name, ‘Image bearer’. But the most insignificant person in humanity carries that name ‘image bearer’.
Sometimes people say that the creation is perfect only without humans. We often say that, ‘this area is unspoilt’. If humans inhabit an area, the implication is that it becomes spoilt. But in the bible understanding, perfection or completion has to do with the final state of something. God made the earth to be inhabited. God said ‘fill the earth’. And so the earth isn’t perfected or completed until that happens.
One form of environmentalism always wants to get back to life before human habitation. Humans are an alien life form imposed on creation. So they are always talking about zero population growth. But the end point of the creation story is not, ‘So put my world in a museum’. It is go forth, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it. And while there might be good reasons to have national parks, God made the world for us to live in and to multiply in. And we’ve been pretty successful. I understand that there are now more humans on earth than rats. We add a billion new humans every 12 years or so. And that is good, despite what the zero population growth people think. Because God blesses humans, they successfully fill the earth and subdue it. And that is good.
Man’s powerful word
And because we are made in the image of God, we have a powerful word, just as God does.
We see that God names the things he made. Night, day, sky, land and sea, and man And God graciously invites the man to name all the animals (Genesis 2:19-20). And the man even names his wife.
This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’, for she was taken out of man. (Genesis 2:23).
Our family loves to watch Monsters Inc. It is a story about a little girl, perhaps 3 years old, who stumbles into the Monster world. And she meets two monsters, James P Sullivan (a big hairy blue and purple monster) and Mike Wizowski, a little green one eyed whimpy monster. And of course, Monsters are scared of human kids, just like human kids are scared of monsters. But they are trying to send her back to the human world. But Sully says no, because it is not safe. Sully has become fond of the little girl, and even gives her the name ‘Boo’. To which Mike, in horror says. “You can’t name it. Once you name it, you start getting attached to it. ” How true. What’s in a name. Plenty. Once you name it, you start getting attached to it. That’s why you give people you love nick names. And so it is with the man, who names his wife ‘woman’ (2:23) and ‘Eve’ (3:20).
And humanity, like God, relates within itself. Humanity is ‘diversity in unity’. For God made them ‘male and female’ (Genesis 1:28). The woman is taken from the man as a suitable helper (Genesis 2:20-23). The man and his wife are united. The two become one flesh (Genesis 2:24) In reflection of the God whose image they bear. Just as God is Father and Son, who are in perfect relationship and unity, so humanity is male and female, in perfect unity. Two but one. And just as from the Father and Son proceeds the Holy Spirit, of the same essence as the Father and Son, so that they are three persons but on God. So from the man and the women will proceed in the fullness of time, a child, of the same nature as the mother and father, and sharing their likeness, so that they will become not just two persons in on unified humanity, but three persons in one human family. And then more, of course, but always in this triadic pattern, of a child proceeding from a husband and his wife, sharing their image and likeness. The offer of rest But while humanity is the climax of creation, we are not the goal. We might be the high point, but not the end point. For the climax is rest. God is a working God. For six days God worked. But the objective of work was to rest. So we read in chapter 2 verses 1 to 3:
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day, God had finished the work that he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. (Genesis 2:1-3 NIV)
It is interesting that of the seventh day, we do not read ‘and there was evening and there was morning – the seventh day.’ The seventh day is open-ended. In fact, we are in it. We are in God’s rest, we are in God’s sabbath now. The day when God invites his creation to join him in rest. That is the now time.
And the author to the Hebrews picks this up.
And yet his [God’s] work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “And on the seventh day God rested from all his work.”… It still remains that some will enter that rest … There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest. (Hebrews 4:3-4,6,9-11 NIV).
We can enter into God’s rest, God’s sabbath. That is, we can have peace with God and each other. That is what Jesus offered us.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28 NIV).
Our souls are restless until they find rest in God. Jesus is Lord of the rest (Matthew 12:8). He is the one through whom we can have rest with our creator, with ourselves, and with our world. So friend, come to Jesus. And you will find rest for your souls. Rest on Jesus Christ. For in him, the rest of God is found.
Let’s pray.
[1] P D Jensen & T Payne, Beyond Eden: Genesis 1-11, 15
[2] But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water (2 Peter 3:5).
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