Where do we begin – Genesis Ch1v1to2

Sermons Archive - Greenview Church

(0:00 – 0:59)

It would be good if you could find a Bible and open it to Genesis 1. There are Bibles in the seats if you want to read along, and we’re starting at the start of the Bible.
Genesis 1, and just the first two verses this morning. Genesis 1, verse 1.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Now, the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

This is the Word of God.

Now, human beings are drawn to what is original.

(1:00 – 1:17)

Let me just give you an example of that. We were recently in the country of Greece, near the ancient site of Olympia. And from where we were, there were busloads, literally busloads of people that were heading for the day to this site of Olympia.

(1:18 – 4:14)

Now, why were people going there? They were going there because Olympia is the original site of the Olympics, 2,000 years before Paris, two millennia before even the modern Olympic Games. Olympia is the place where it all began. And there’s something very attractive, even though today it’s actually just ruins and rubble.

People want to see the original. And you have that thing, don’t you, where people also contest what is original. They debate what’s original.

Was it Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone? He’s the guy on the left. These are actually different people. Was it Bell who must have been the original inventor because he was Scottish? Or was it, in fact, Antonio Meucci, an Italian inventor who claimed to pip him to the post? You see, not only do originals intrigue us, they’re also significant.

They’re important. And it’s for that very reason that this book we’re starting today, Genesis, is so unique and so remarkable. The word Genesis itself means origins or beginnings.

And that’s what Genesis contains. This book is full of originals and firsts. It records the first human beings.

It documents the first family in history. It describes the original sin. Genesis narrates the first death and contains the first promise ever of human redemption.

The book is bursting with firsts, and they are all uncontested. The first of the firsts, the original originals. And yet, the remarkable thing when you read this book is that while it is so original, it still feels so relevant.

Many scholars believe that Genesis was originally authored by Moses, and that Moses wrote Genesis for the Israelites while they were wandering around the wilderness. So a long stretch of time after the events of Genesis, Moses believed that his generation would be helped by knowing the events of Genesis. I think most of us grasp this instinctively, that knowing history is important to our present.

(4:15 – 7:34)

If you don’t know where you’ve come from, then you can’t know who you are. And if you don’t know who you are, then you can’t know where you’re going in life. And yet, the question you might be asking, and lots of people ask it, is whether Genesis is in fact reliable history.

You may have read critics of the Bible who say that particularly the early part of Genesis is unhistorical and unscientific, that it can’t stand up to scrutiny or be something we can trust. I remember one time visiting a historic European city, and in the centre of this city, there was an old bridge. This bridge was in fact 600 years old.

And when we got to this 600-year-old bridge, it was swarming with people that you couldn’t see the gangway across the bridge. And when I discovered it was 600 years old, and I saw all the people, I did have the temporary thought that this might not be the safest thing to walk across. But when I walked across it, I discovered that it was secure.

And later, I learned from one of the locals that decades before, the council of that city had actually lowered the foundations beyond the sediment where it used to be rooted, deep into the rock far beneath. What appeared old and fragile was actually rock solid. And that’s been my experience.

It’s been the experience of millions of Christians when they’ve actually walked across the book of Genesis. And I hope that’s what you’re going to find when we take a slow walk across the bridge of Genesis 1 to 12. I hope you’re going to see that actually, this book can hold the weight of your life and the weight of your questions and the weight of your faith.

Now, not only does this book withstand some tough questions, but as I say, it helps explain us and who we are in a way that nothing else can. And it all starts here in Genesis 1, verse 1, a verse where we not only encounter the beginning, but where we encounter a God at the beginning. Moses confronts us with three truths about God and about who he is.

Something we ought to grasp about Genesis, incidentally, is that God is the hero of this origin storey. God is the hero. God is the first character that we meet in the Bible.

And Moses tells us three things about him. The first important truth is that God is the starting point. God is the starting point.

Here’s how Genesis could have opened. In the beginning, matter. In the beginning, a dense singularity of energy.

(7:36 – 8:19)

But the Bible starts somewhere else. Not even strictly speaking with creation, but with the God who preceded it and generated it. Colin Smith, an American pastor, says that Genesis is the book of every beginning except the beginning of God himself.

That is a mind-boggling mystery, of course, to say that God is eternal. And yet it is no more mind-boggling than to claim the alternative. The alternative to God being eternal is that the universe must be eternal.

(8:19 – 10:17)

And if the universe is eternal, then matter must always have existed. And that, in my view, is even more miraculous than the claim that God came before the beginning. Even a child knows that everything comes from something.

You know, when the child asks that awkward question in the backseat of the car, where did I come from? If they’re old enough to get the biological answer, the child may then keep asking, and so where did you come from? And where did my grandparents come from? And where did their parents come from? And eventually, when they go all the way back down the line, they may come to the question, so how did everything start? Where did everything come from? What is the starting point? Do you see that it is either mindless matter or an eternal, everlasting God? What you decide about the starting point decides so much of your worldview, and it really is the great division. I’m sure you will be aware that there’s a fairly energetic debate about Genesis 1 revolving around whether God used the processes of evolution to create the world or whether God created in six literal days. And there’s, you know, all these debates.

There’s a young earth and an old earth debate, and Christians have a range of opinions about these things. I’m sure you know that. Next week, morning and particularly at night, I’m going to talk a little more about that debate, but let me say even now something that I think is important.

(10:17 – 11:49)

In my opinion, the great division is not between those who believe in an old earth and a young earth. It’s not the difference between whether you believe in a God-guided evolution or six literal days. No, the great division is between those whose starting point is God and those whose starting point is something else.

The rest is a difference of opinion about process. But here is a fundamental division, a chasm of difference in terms of worldview. Do you start with God or do you start with matter? And the thing we need to ask ourselves, if we do want to be scientific and logical, is, is it logically and scientifically probable that the beauty and complexity, the morality and vitality of the universe can really have started with mindless energy, unaided by an unintelligent or by an intelligent God? Now, Anthony Flew, some of you might know that name.

He was a philosopher in the 20th century who was a well-known atheist. He spent much of his life attacking religion. But in 2007, he shocked particularly the atheist community by announcing he had become a believer in God.

(11:50 – 13:36)

Now, what was it that had finally convinced him to jump the chasm? This is what he said. How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self-replication capabilities, and coded chemistry? For Flew, the sometimes unselfish goals of human beings, the astonishing capacity we have to reproduce life, and the fact that we literally have language code written into our DNA were facts he couldn’t explain on the basis of his own starting point. So, let me ask you this morning, what is your starting point? Where do you begin? Is it God? And if not, is the alternative credible? But if God is your starting point, what then? What’s the next step after accepting God may exist? Well, that brings us to the second point this morning, that God is personal.

God is personal. Genesis starts, as we’ve seen, with a personal being, in the beginning, God. And as we go through this chapter, we’ll discover that God acts in personal ways.

God says things. He uses language. He speaks.

(13:37 – 13:52)

God may be a far greater person than we are, but He speaks as persons do. And He evaluates things. We will see God assessing what He has made and calling it good.

(13:54 – 17:17)

And if we fast forward through the Bible even further, this personal aspect of God becomes a major theme. Indeed, when you look back at Genesis retrospectively, if you can have put on your New Testament glasses, the New Testament, by the way, if you don’t know, is the second act of the Bible. Well, if you look back at Genesis with your New Testament specs on, the personhood of God is unmissable in Genesis 1. If you’re familiar with Christianity, you may know that Christians believe in the Trinity.

Christians believe that one God exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This again is admittedly mind-blowing, but when you pause to ponder it, it’s actually a beautiful and very significant thing, because here’s what the Trinity means. It means that from eternity, God was already a community of love.

God has always been personal, Father, Son, and Spirit. And this is strongly hinted at in Genesis 1. Look again at verse 2 in the text. The Spirit of God, the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Now, that word Spirit there can simply mean breath, like the breath that comes out your mouth. But with our New Testament specs on, we see here the Holy Spirit. And the picture, the image he uses is of a mother bird hovering over the nest of its young.

That’s the word Moses uses here. It’s a picture of the Spirit in His love and in His care being poised and ready for action, ready for the moment of creation. So the Spirit is here.

But you might ask, well, what about the Son? We’ve got the Father in God, we’ve got the Spirit of God, but is Jesus, the Son of God, is He present in the first chapter? Not in a way that shoehorns Jesus in. We mustn’t ever do that. But we’re following the lead of the Bible itself.

Well, turn with me for a moment to John chapter 1. John’s gospel chapter 1. John, incidentally, is a great place to start if you want to investigate the claims of Jesus more fully. Read through John. But check out the way that John echoes the language of Genesis 1, I think consciously.

John 1 verse 1, in the beginning. Do you see he’s mimicking Genesis here? In the beginning was the Word. An echo of Genesis, except John switches out the word God.

(17:18 – 20:20)

And he inserts the word, the Word. The Word is John’s shorthand for Jesus. In the beginning was Jesus.

That’s what John is telling us. And John doubles down on this. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John is unmistakably saying that when you read of God the Creator in Genesis 1, included in that God is the Word of God, is Jesus. And actually, going back to Genesis 1, we also see in the rest of the chapter another hint of Jesus. Because notice, from verse 3 onwards, how God creates.

How does God create the universe? And God said, God creates the universe by His Word, by Jesus. So, the Son was there in the beginning. The Spirit was there in the beginning.

The Trinity was there in the beginning. And that means that God is wonderfully personal. Now, why does that matter? Is that just a bit of, you know, biblical doctrine? No, it makes an enormous difference.

What’s the difference? In his best-selling book, Sapiens, a book that has sold over 45 million copies worldwide, Yuval Noah Harari writes a chapter about man. And the title of the chapter is, it’s the first chapter of the book, Man, an Animal of No Significance. Man, an Animal of No Significance.

Now, if you don’t believe in God, or if you don’t believe in a personal God, then that is the conclusion you are left with, that humans are mere animals with no real significance. We may choose to put a value on ourselves, but really, we’re only evolved matter in animal form. And the universe doesn’t care that we exist.

But if you believe in a personal God who is not only powerful but relational, the whole game changes. Love becomes a principle at the heart of the universe, and love becomes the impulse that can save a broken world. In that same chapter, John 1, John goes on to say, the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.

(20:21 – 21:05)

The eternal God steps into time. A spiritual God is born in a human body. He lives a perfectly moral life.

Do you know that Jesus was the first and only human to live a morally pure life from birth to death? He is the original sinless human. And His death was the greatest announcement of God’s personal love for imperfect, unworthy people. Paul the Apostle writes in Romans that God demonstrates His love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

(21:06 – 21:27)

On the cross, my guilt was laid on Jesus so that His goodness could be laid on me. Why would God do such a thing? The only explanation is because He’s personal. He created a world out of burning love, and He saves the world for the same reason.

(21:29 – 22:32)

So, God is the starting point. God, secondly, is personal. But there’s one more thing that we need to see this morning.

Here’s the third thing, final thing. God is ruling over everything. God is ruling over everything.

Now, on the surface of things, it might simply seem that Moses is telling us that God just created stuff. And He is telling us that, absolutely. But I think in chapter 1, He’s actually got a bigger goal in mind.

Moses is showing us that as the Creator, God rules over everything. See, later in this chapter, God is going to delegate some of His authority to human beings. But for God to delegate authority, He Himself must have authority.

He must rule over all things. And He does. God is unrivalled.

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He created the heavens and the earth. Now, if we could just get nerdy for a moment or two, the word used here for create, it’s the Hebrew word bara. And this word is used exclusively of God in the Bible.

So, human beings create things, but this particular word is not used to talk about humans creating things. The Bible uses a different word for that. This word is only used for God.

Because when you think about it, the way that we create is different from the way that God creates. When we create something, really what we are, in fact, doing is we are recreating something. We take from what is already there, and we put it together in a new way, and we say we have invented something.

But we’re always using the stuff, the material of our world to do it. But God, on the other hand, creates the stuff. He creates the very material from which He then builds.

And look at the scale of the material. He created the heavens and the earth. The totality of all that exists was created by this eternal personal God.

And if God made it, then God owns it. Now, contrast that to human rulers for a second. Think about, for instance, a Scottish king back in Scottish history in the 1300s or something.

Why does that king of Scotland rule over Scotland? Well, he rules over Scotland because his dad did, or because he murdered somebody. And still today, people come into government, they come to rule because of really three things, ancestry, democracy, or bloodshed. But the lands and peoples over which they rule were there long before them, and will be there long after they’re in the grave.

(25:00 – 26:11)

But with God, it’s different. God made the lands, He made the people, He made everything. With unimaginable power and skill, God made the world and then shaped it to His liking, turning darkness into light and chaos into order.

The very thing He can also do in your life and turn it from darkness to light, chaos to order. But let me finish with this question. If God has such matchless authority, then what is He doing with it? What is God doing with all of this ruling authority right now? See, often when humans have authority, often we use it selfishly and oppressively.

And if you think about it, God could be the ultimate abuser. God could use His unlimited power to do whatever He wants. But what is God, in fact, doing today? Listen to Jesus’ words in Matthew chapter 28.

(26:12 – 29:54)

And notice, again, the echo of Genesis 1 language. Jesus says, “‘All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.'” So again, we see the Trinity. We see that Jesus has been given all authority.

And what’s He doing with it? He is commanding His church to go into His world and make disciples. What are disciples? Disciples are people who follow Jesus and who learn from Him as lords. So we, if we’re the church this morning, we are being sent into the world not to cause trouble, not for violence, not for some political revolution, but He’s sending us out to make a quiet and glorious revolution in people’s hearts as people come to believe in Jesus and follow Him as their Lord.

Now, we don’t do that by coercion. We do that by communication. And the Spirit of God does the rest, bringing people to a place where they seek God’s mercy and believe in Jesus.

Relevant to today, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Sarah today is showing in her own life that Jesus is on the throne of her life. Becoming a Christian is not just a vague belief in God.

It’s a personal relationship with God through Jesus that leads to a lifetime of following Him. It’s making Jesus your starting point, your ending point, and everything in between. And so if you’re here today and you would like to make that true for yourself, then you absolutely can.

You can come today to Jesus and you can come to faith today. If you’d like to do that but you’re just not sure how, there’s a book called Is God Real? Is God Real? It’s got some really helpful answers to some of the questions you might well be asking. And then there’s an app called the Word One-to-One.

It takes you through the gospel of John, very simply, and introduces you to Jesus. You can either read through the gospel and the app alone, or even better, you can do it with a friend who you know is a Christian, and they can read it through with you. Let me pray.

Eternal Creator God, Father, Son, and Spirit, we praise you today that you are our Maker, and we thank you that you are our Saviour and such a gracious ruler. Would you draw our hearts and lives to Jesus today, and show us the solidity of what the Bible reveals to us? And it’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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