Sermon: Sunday AM 2^nd. Nov. 2003-10-30

Genesis 1: 1-2:3

Kingdom Roots: The Covenant Creator

Beginnings No. 1;

The Covenant Creator

Intro;

Knowing where you come from and who your parents are, is, for most of us, a given. We get our sense of identity, in no small measure from it. Because we know where we came from and who our parents are, we know who we are. Our origins and parentage provides for us vital information that makes us feel rooted in a particular time and place. We are able to judge where we belong and what our relationship is to those around us, because of who our family and parents are.

But often we hear the stories of those who, for various reasons, don’t know who their parents are. They are unaware of their origins, and so they set off on a quest to discover where they have come from and who their parents are. They want to meet them, perhaps even to know them. They want to feel, what they hope will be a sense of completeness, a feeling of belonging, in finally being connected to those who brought them into this world.

When the first book of the Bible was written it had as its object something very similar. It wanted to provide for the people of Israel a way to know who their parents were. It is, in part, a record of the lives of the ancient patriarchs of Israel. But it is also far more. It was written to give Israel a clearer knowledge, not only of their ancestry, but of the identity and character of their ultimate parent, Almighty God Himself.

Who is this God who has rescued us from bondage in Egypt? Who is this God who makes a covenant with us at Sinai? Who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Is he perhaps just our own god, like the national gods of the pagan nations around us? Is he tied to the people of Israel ? What is His relationship to the world around us and to the other nations?

These were, no doubt, some of the questions in the minds of the people of Israel as they had been redeemed from Egyptian captivity and made their way through the wilderness towards the land God promised them.

They needed to understand who their GOD was!

Understanding who He is, gives us a sense of who we are in relation to Him. It sets our past and present in clearer focus, and helps us gain a sense of perspective on the world and our place in it. We begin to see what we are for and where we are going when we know who our heavenly Father is.

It is to give the ancient people of Israel, and you and me, a sense of who God is that the Book of Genesis, and especially Genesis chapter one was written.  

Look at verse one with me, “In the beginning God created”. God is the subject of the very first verse of the Bible, and not without reason. He is the subject of the whole of Holy Scripture. He is on the agenda of the Bible all the time. God’s agenda in His Word is the revelation of God.  In fact, the title used for God here is repeated some 27 times between Genesis 1:1 and 2:2. God, and who He is, is at the very centre of the meaning and intention of this passage.

We are meant to read genesis One, you see, and tremble because we see something of the awesome power and dramatic creative ability of our God at work in forming the heavens and the earth. We are to bow down in worship when we see that he sustains a covenantal relationship with the creatures he has called into existence. We are to glimpse in the narrative, the bigness and uniqueness and sovereign dignity of our God, and we are to frame our lives within this context. We are His creatures, the works of His hand, and the fruit of his mere word. We are to get a sense of ourselves and of our purpose from the vision of the Almighty God that this portion of His word provides.

 In other words, Genesis One serves a theological purpose; it is there to talk to us about God; and a doxological purpose; it is there to exalt God, and teach us to worship God alone. 

With that in mind, we need to approach this passage with a great deal of reverence and respect. It is one of the most beautiful and skilfully crafted pieces of literature known to mankind. It is marked by a constant God-ward focus and an intricate structure designed to leave us awed and inspired. And yet, all too often this portion of God’s word has been reduced to a mere battle ground. The age of the earth and the theory of evolution is one of the hot potatoes today for many evangelical Christians, and it may  be something of a disappointment to you to know that I am not going to engage in that debate.

Now, there is a place for such debate, and it is often very necessary. If you are troubled by any of these issues please come and speak to me later and I will be most happy to lay them to rest as best I can. We do need to stand up and articulate biblical Christianity in the face of all its opponents. Darwinian evolution is a deadly and unbiblical faith, masquerading as credible science, and we need, in our proper spheres, to oppose this insidious and God dishonouring theory.

It is my judgement however, that the people of God need far more of a vision of God himself than they do more of the already ubiquitous creation-evolution debate. All I need say on the subject is that as far as the Bible is concerned the various animal forms did not evolve, and the age of the earth is not a subject upon which we are given sufficient Biblical data to make a definitive statement on. God is just not interested in telling us how old the earth is. He has other things, far more pressing for us to grapple with!  God isn’t interested in our in house debates so much as He is in showing us Himself. The theory of evolution and the age of the earth is just not why Genesis One was inspired. It was inspired to display God, and we get side tracked form the true significance of the text if we allow ourselves to become bogged down in all the controversy.  

So, that said, let’s turn to examine the passage before us.  

And there are two things I want us to notice about this passage: first there is the Consummate Skill of God, and then there is the Sovereign Power of God.

Let’s look first at the Consummate Skill of God

One of the ways people dismiss contemporary art is, after staring at the artwork for a few brief moments, to declare, that’s rubbish! A child could do that! I could do that! A chimpanzee could do that! Where’s the skill? Where’s the craftsmanship?”

Now it scarcely needs saying that the creation of this world is not the product of a thoughtless and perverted candidate for the Turner prize. It is an artwork marked by unspeakable beauty and skill. That skill is reflected in several ways in the passage but perhaps most clearly in the very structure of the chapter itself.

It is full of deliberate repetitions and parallelisms that, to the ancient Hebrews at least, helped convey the meaning. The way those parallels were grouped, and the frequency of the repetitions all served to highlight different points in the narrative and drive them home more forcefully.

You will notice for example that the several days of creation all unfold according to a set formula. They begin with God speaking, “let there be..”. Then they give a summary of God’s response to the creation that resulted from His speech. Then follows God’s naming of the thing made and blessing it, with the concluding formula, ‘and there was evening and there was morning the next day’. But the structure is more intricate even than that. The third day sees the repetition of certain key phrases twice. “God said”, “let there be”, “and it was so”, with a description of God’s response and a declaration that it was “good”. These are all present in the other days but are repeated twice on the third day.  Repetitions like this, that break a pattern was one way the ancient Hebrews had of highlighting something. Our attention is being drawn to this day. We are meant to see it as a kind of mini climax at the end of the first three days, concluding the creation of the environments necessary for life; light (day one), sky and sea (day two), seas and dry land and vegetation, (day three).  There is a kind of progression here, from the more basic elements necessary to support life, (light and an atmosphere on days one and two), to the more complex, (land and sea with vegetable life for basic food on day three). Day three forms a conclusion to what we might call the creation of the realms of existence.

Then, when we read on, we notice the same thing happens again. The same phrases are doubled once again, this time on the sixth day, forming a conclusion to the second set of three days, which witnesses the creation of what we might call ‘rulers’ for the realms of existence God had made on the first three days.

So, day four sees the creation of the Sun, moon and stars to ‘govern’ or rule (vs.16) the night and the day, which was created on day one.  Day five witnesses the creation of living creatures and birds, corresponding to the formation of the sky and the seas, on day two. Then finally the sixth day sees the creation of land animals and human beings, to govern the land corresponding to day three.

What’s interesting about day 6 is that it has the phrase, “and God said” repeated four times. The crescendo to the whole series of creative acts of God comes here with the creation of human beings, so that the movement we noted towards a climax from day one to day three, is carried on, reaching its glorious conclusion with the creation of humanity.

The whole structure gives the impression of harmony and beauty and balance. It is trying to move us and help us taste something of the grandeur of the original unfallen world as God made it. This is a masterful piece of literature. But it is nothing compared to the master work of the original created order.  And, despite the fall, this world of ours still carries the imprint of the divine hand. All around us we see the demonstration of God’s craftsmanship and skill in the things that are made.

 So the first six days are all about the harmony and beauty of creation. Then suddenly at Chapter 2:1&2, on day seven, everything changes. The pattern of repetitions and parallels ceases. The symmetry is broken and this seventh day has a totally different character. The structure of Genesis One itself is forcing us to view this last day, the Sabbath day of God’s rest, in a different light, to see it as receiving a unique attention and focus. This last day is the true climax to the whole drama. Having come to this point in the drama we were being led to expect certain constant themes to reappear, but with all the dramatic flare of a movie director Moses strips our expectations from us and rivets our attention on this final day of the creation week.

When we ask why we are to focus on the Sabbath, we begin to get a sense of the whole point behind the intricacy and beauty of this unique chapter of Holy Scripture. Having worked through the six days of creation, the seventh day puts everything into a context. The setting apart of one day in seven, as you know, becomes a pattern human beings are to observe throughout history. It is appointed as a day of rest and of worship.

 On this day creation looks heavenward. On this day men and women are to cease their normal lawful activities and look to God alone. God consecrated this day and in doing so God is hinting at a purpose for His creation. He is giving a God-ward orientation to all that he has made.  And when we gather together on the Sabbath, Sunday after Sunday we do so not because the worship of God is confined to this day alone, but because by observing the Sabbath we are recognising that God has placed a heavenward orientation on all things and on all of life.

God is in effect saying, “now that I have done all this, and my creation stands complete and all very good, I want to establish the direction in which it should face! It will face towards me! I want to establish the overriding goal of creation, it will magnify me! I designate this seventh day a sacred day of rest and worship, to imprint upon creation its heavenward orientation.”

  Simply put, that means that we exist for God. You are his creature and your purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. For of Him and through him and to him are all things! “You have made us for yourself”, prayed St. Augustine, “and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you”. God made you for Himself. You will always be spiritually homeless till you come back to the God who gives your life purpose….you are to exalt Him.

The guaranteeing of the supremacy of God in the affections of His creatures is the reason behind the Sabbath day, and it is the reason behind the intricacy of the whole chapter itself. We are to sense the beauty and harmony and balance of the literature we are studying, and marvel as we realise that it is but a dim reflection of the beauty of the world around us, which in turn is but the barest shadow of the magnificence of the mind of the Triune God who made it!

 The seventh day is made for worship. That is why we’re made to focus on it with such skill.

And the message of the seventh day is that, creation, in all its beauty, was made for worship too. God is worshipped and glorified with every sunrise and every mountaintop view. God is glorified by stars whose light has taken so long to reach the earth that God has been delighting in them for thousands upon thousands of years before we ever even knew of their existence. There are stars in our night sky whose light is only now reaching the earth because of the vast distances involved that ceased to exist long ago!  That is amazing and God who made it is being magnified in it all!

Why is God an artist?

Why did he not make a bald utilitarian universe with no grandeur and no beauty?

The answer of course is that God himself is breathtaking in his beauty and glory and worth, and he wants to show us Himself in the things he has made. He wants us to be awed by the stars, and the vastness of the universe, and then to say, How BIG is GOD! How glorious is the one who did this! Now that’s Skill! No-One else could do that!

The Consummate Skill of God displayed in creation has one great object in view; your worship.  God wants your worship, and he has designed this amazing world to elicit it from you and is a mark of our spiritual blindness that we do not see it.

Creation is designed to praise Him. The heavens declare the glory of God, day after day they pour forth speech, there is no language in which their voice is not heard. Open your eyes and see the worthiness of the creator from the things he has made, and then bow down in adoration,  you creatures of his making! That is the message of Genesis One.

 So we see first of all the Consummate Skill of God at work in Genesis One.  But secondly, we also see the Sovereign Power of God.

Look again at verse one for a moment.

  It is so stark and matter of fact, but it is a declaration of an amazing reality.  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Contrary to current scientific thought, there was a beginning. Matter and energy are not eternal. Before that beginning there was only God. God gave all things their beginning. He created the heavens and the earth. Out of nothing and in nothing.

What we have recorded in the first verse of the bible is the absolute beginning.  There was nothing, and by the power of God the heavens and the earth came to be.

Now, we know virtually nothing of how God performed this initial act of creation. He simply made the heavens and the earth. Then God turned to act upon the earth he had made. We are told in verse 2 that the earth was ‘formless and empty’. It was desolate and chaotic. Darkness covered the surface of the deep.

Here is an uninhabitable and menacing environment. And over this environment the Spirit of God is hovering. The word for the Spirit’s hovering is used only here, and in Deuteronomy 32: 1, where God is depicted like a mother eagle brooding over her chicks to nurture and foster new life. The Spirit of God is brooding (it’s the same word) over creation here, poised, ready to act upon the creative decree of God. 

And don’t you get a sense of the tenderness and protective intentions of God for His world here?

  Everything was dark and cold and lifeless.  Were we there to see it, we’d not be impressed. It was so ugly and so uninviting. But God the Lord knows what he is about. He sees the end from the beginning. He can see the whole of his plan for this world and all its creatures as He broods over this chaotic earth. Hovering over the deep, full of anticipation, contemplating the glorious realities of revelation and redemption still to come, He has a total grasp of His purposes for your life and mine. And so, where we might shrink back in distaste, He broods over his creation with all the tenderness of a mother, to nurture and tend and care for it.

And then comes the moment of fresh action. God takes up this lifeless creation He has made, and renders it a wonderful habitation for life and an amazing monument to his own glory.

And notice how he does it. Vs. 3, ‘And God said, “let there be light” and there was light’

Vs. 6, “And God said….”, vs. 9, “And God said….” Vs. 11, “then God said…” and again in vs. 14, and vs 20, 24, 26, 29

“God made all things of nothing by the word of His power in the space of six days and all very good”, declares the Shorter Catechism.

God spoke creation into being. God talked life into existence. There is no hint of the Lord being stretched or taxed by His efforts. It is with complete freedom and facility that he causes things to be.

Now it is important at this point for us to notice that when the New Testament looks back on the whole history of God’s dealings with humankind it views it all through the interpretive lens of Christ’s appearing.  In particular, Jesus’ coming brought the Triune nature of God into sharper focus, so that when the New Testament reflects on the creation narrative in the light of Christ, it recognises a deeply Trinitarian structure to it all.

 “In the beginning”, wrote John in a deliberate echo of Genesis 1:1, “was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God….all things were made through him  and without him nothing was made that has been made.” This Word, we know, became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ. 

When God spoke all things into existence, the vehicle of his communication was His Word, God the Son, who became incarnate in the Lord Jesus. The Spirit who broods over the deep leaps into action as God the Father utters His creative fiats through the Son.  Creation in other words is the act of the Triune God.

Think of it!  The Father, having planned and covenanted with the Son in eternity to save sinners by His life and death and resurrection, and  in time to draw those sinners to Himself by His Holy Spirit, stood together with the Son and the Spirit to create the earth  as a theatre for the drama of your redemption. When the Father called the heavens and the earth into being, he had already planned the moment when he’d call new life to spring up in your heart!  When the Sprit was brooding over the deep with creative concern and nurture for creation, He was eying the day when you would be made new creations in Christ! When God was saying, “let there be light”, he was contemplating your salvation through the Living Word by whom the stars were made, and whom John calls the true light that give light to every man!

Now, what should our reaction be to the sovereign power and perfect saving purpose of God already at work in genesis 1:1?

 Well, the only fitting response we can offer is to stand in awe.  When we see the Sovereign power of God in this first creation, we are to know that this same power is at work in us in New Creation. Because the Triune God is the Lord of Creation, we gain confidence that He is the almighty Lord of Salvation also. The Lord Jesus is indeed, “able to save to the uttermost all those who come to God through him.” Because he hung the stars in their places, he can save the most wretched of lost men and women like you and me.

There are times, aren’t there, when you feel as though God were impotent? That in your life and experience at this point God simply cannot act. You are out of His reach. You have sunk too low, or wandered too far. You have gotten yourself into some awful predicament and you feel that you are too rebellious and sinful for Him ever to look with favour and love in your direction.

Read Genesis one, and see there that God is omnipotent. He speaks life into being. Is his arm now so shortened that it cannot reach to save you? Is there anything that he cannot perform? Is there sin and darkness over the deep of your soul above which God’s Spirit will not brood with tenderness and loving intent, and into which God cannot speak new life in Jesus Christ?

It is one of the fears of those who have never known their parents, that upon hearing of their whereabouts, their parents will not want know them or that they will be unable to care for them. Now, having been confronted in Genesis One with your Creator, know that if you will come in faith to Jesus Christ, you will not find a Father who cannot accept you, sinful though you are. You will not find one who cannot care for you. Believe today in Jesus, and you will find a heavenly Father who, when he first made this world, always planned to bring you into His loving and saving embrace. He knew how far you could fall. He saw the depths of your sin and rebellion, and He caused Genesis one to be written to demonstrate to you that, whatever your condition, he has perfect power to reach even you.  He need only speak cleansing and new life into your heart, and you will be clean and made new.

God’s intention in inspiring Genesis Chapter one is, in part at least, to move us to surrender our rebellion against our Almighty Maker, and bow down before Him as the One who, in Christ, is our only possible Redeemer.

You will notice in this connection that God, in recording the creation story in Genesis one is engaged in Polemic. God through Moses seeks to silence all the rival religious alternatives on offer.

He seeks to demonstrate that, not only is the Triune God of the Bible Almighty, but He is the only true and living God.

And he does that in two ways,

He does it first, by showing the ease with which God made all things, (by a mere word of command!). Moses contrasts the creative work of True God of Israel with the pagan creation theories current at the time. These ancient Sumerian and Acadian myths held that the world came into being out of a cosmic struggle with the Chaos monster called Tiamat.  The goddess, Marduk, the story went, slays Tiamat, and from the body of Tiamat the world is formed.

Now the word Moses uses for the deep in vs2 is ‘tehom’ which comes from the same root as the word for the Chaos monster “Tiamat”. His point is there is no cosmic battle here. God is not the Hebrew equivalent of Marduk, locked in a deadly struggle with the Chaos monster of the deep. The deep in vs.1 is chaotic and formless, true enough, but it is also totally passive. The Spirit hovers, broods over it with a loving intent to shape it and form it according to the master plan of God. This is not a struggle. God creates with total ease and is in full command of all the materials he uses.

Then secondly, Moses dismisses the false gods of the day by pointing out with brilliant understatement that the objects of pagan worship cannot be gods at all because they are themselves the creations of God. They must take their place along with all other mere creatures of this world. For example, when God created the lights in the sky to govern the day and the night, on day 4, at vs. 14-19,  Moses is carefully undermining one of the most basic motifs of paganism; the worship of the heavenly bodies, sun moon and stars. They are not mighty deities. God made them. You will have noticed the superb way Moses dismisses the possibility of astrology and the worship of the stars with the throw away line, almost an after thought, “oh, and he made the stars also!” (vs. 16)

Thousands bow down to all kinds of gods, and the word of the only true and living God is declaring that these so called gods are nothing but the mere creations of His mighty command.

How foolish astrology, the worship of idols, the Sun and Moon, are revealed to be. And yet today there are millions of people utterly serious and committed to their own forms of Paganism. We need only notice the avid readership of the astrology pages in our newspapers to note that paganism is alive and thriving in our post-modern world.

People are disillusioned today with materialism and scientific progress. The can see through it all. They have seen the awful destructive tendency of human society projected into their living room and sanitised for them through their TV screens, and they no longer have confidence in the limitless progress of the human spirit towards a better day. And so many thousand of souls are turning aside to the New Age movement and to alternative Spiritualities. There is a large scale return to a kind of civilised and sanitised paganism.

But Genesis One utterly kills the possibility of an alternative spirituality dead! There are no other gods! There is no point star gazing! Why worship and idol or the sun and moon or long dead ancestors? They are nothing but mere creatures with all the limitation imposed on them by the only living and true God. Why bother when you can have the real thing? There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we can be saved than the name of Jesus Christ, God the Son.

If today you are seeking for answers and long for a sense of the transcendent and the spiritual in your life, forget about all other paths, and turn back to the only God who can meet you in your lostness and need. Come and worship the Maker of Heaven and earth with us. Come and meet your creator and only redeemer. He is accessible to you toady in Jesus Christ.

So, let’s ponder the consummate skill and sovereign power of God, and get a sense of your own smallness before Him.  We are not the centres of God’s universe! He is!!

Consider his might and his wisdom in the things he has made and know that you will one day have to give an account to this God. Have you followed His example and put his glory first in all things that you have done?

Recognise that this world was formed to be the theatre for the drama of salvation. In building the world the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, was already at work to bring this moment to pass, that sitting here, you might hear the good news… in Jesus Christ, God who wielded omnipotent might in Creation, is present with us wielding that same might today for your salvation.

One of the great objects the Triune God had in view when He made this world, was calling you to bend the knee today to Jesus Christ, in repentance and faith, and to worship Him for His worthiness and splendour revealed in creation and in redemption.

May he give us all grace to honour him as he his due.

Amen