I Believe: God Our Creator (Genesis 1:1-2:3)

Hello, listeners.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning into Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

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Today we continue our sermon series in the Christian life with God, our Creator.

Our text today is Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 to chapter 2, verse 3.

Genesis 1:1

Let me highlight two verses for us.

Verse 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

And verse 27.

God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him.

Male and female, he created them.

Lord, may the words of my mouth, the meditation of all of our hearts, be always acceptable, pleasing in your sight.

O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

Amen.

In the beginning, Marduk created the earth.

It's okay.

Hold on.

According to an ancient Babylonian creation account, Marduk created the earth, at least at one point or another.

This was a story floating around when Genesis chapter one was inspired and written.

Marduk, according to this Babylonian creation account, created the earth.

He was the tallest and the mightiest of the gods, and he desired the right to become king of the gods.

To do so, he challenged the watery chaos monster Tiamat and her crew and cronies.

So after an epic and bloody struggle, Marduk emerged victorious, and this is where it gets kind of gross, bisected Tiamat, and used half of what's left of her to create the world that we live in.

And in fulfillment to an earlier promise he made to junior ranking gods, he created human beings from the blood of one of Tiamat's partners, also slain in battle.

Human beings for these junior gods are nothing more than slave labor, who carry out menial tasks that the gods are too good for, like agriculture, and who are purposed to provide the gods with food and wine in their temples, so that the gods can rest and take it easy.

Well, why do I share this story?

I'm willing to bet no one came to church today eager to hear a Babylonian creation account.

I share this not to say that Genesis 1, you know, ranks as one among any number of ancient Near Eastern creation accounts, even a number of creation accounts.

In fact, that's quite the opposite.

I think what we see in Genesis chapter 1 is not one creation account that ranks among many, but one that stands in stark contrast to other creation accounts and the common themes of competition and violence that we see in them.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

No, I share this story to demonstrate something that I think is true.

To understand who we are, we need to understand something of where we come from.

More specifically, we need to understand from whom we come.

So often I hear on the words of scientists there, well, there's study for the origins of creation, the origins of the universe, have to do with understanding our place, our purpose.

I wonder if this is part of Hollywood's obsession with telling origin stories for very familiar characters.

We want to understand who we are and our place in the story, and to do so, we need to understand where it is we come or from whom we come.

John Calvin, one of my heroes of the face, says something that I think is demonstrably true.

He begins his institutes of a Christian religion, his magnum opus, by saying that true and sound wisdom consist of two parts: knowledge of God and of ourselves.

What Calvin is saying here, and what he goes on to develop, is that knowledge of who we are and knowledge of who God is are inseparably intertwined with one another.

If I want to understand who I am, I can't be my only subject of study.

I need to look outwards.

I need to understand God, my creator, to understand myself as a creature.

So, probably no one tuning in today makes a habit of worshiping Marduk.

I think that's fair to say, although from time to time I do meet a very sincere pagan.

But I do suspect that we have all heard different creation accounts that perhaps share similar themes to this very ancient Babylonian one.

How many of us have heard that the universe comes not out of purpose but out of random chance and represents nothing but a brutal struggle for survival?

We live in an uncaring and indifferent universe in which we are fated to be slaves to the powerful forces of nature, and the best that we can hope for is that we do whatever we can to survive, maybe even get ahead, until we kick the bucket.

As the 90s anthem goes, it's a bittersweet symphony this life.

Try to make ends meet.

You're a slave to money, but then you die.

I try and keep my references really up to date.

Is this the best that we can hope for?

Marduk may not be the object of our worship, but with this understanding, the world we occupy is not too dissimilar from the one described by the Babylonians.

Against this struggle and competition for power and for security, Genesis chapter 1 has very good news for God's people, God's people Israel, and for God's people at New Song Church today.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

To uncover this good news, we need to ask two questions.

Who does Genesis say our creator is?

And who then are we?

Remember, true and sound wisdom is twofold, knowledge of God and knowledge of self.

Genesis tells us that our creator is God Almighty, sovereign over all creation, the creation that he delights in.

And we are created in his image, sharing relationship, dignity, and partnership with God and with one another.

This is good news.

It's good news for those exhausted by slavish toil and need rest.

Genesis is good news who long for greater purpose than to merely make ends meet and survive.

That being said, I'm convinced that Genesis 1 is not so much a how account of creation, but a who account of creation.

By that I mean that the conversation between Genesis 1's account and science and scientific methodologies that help us understand our origins as best as they're able as an important dialogue to have.

But I'm not so much convinced that that's the priority of Genesis 1 so much as the priority is to communicate truth of who God is.

And by knowing who God is, we understand who we are in this story.

So I want to speak to the who.

Who does Genesis say our creator is?

And then who are we?

Let's take the first question.

Who does Genesis say our creator is?

Our creator is God Almighty, all-powerful, omnipotent.

And here's two things I want to highlight in the Genesis account.

This means that God is transcendent over creation and he's sovereign.

He's transcendent, he's above, beyond, and distinct from the creation that he speaks into being.

Let's look at Genesis 1, verse 1.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning, the very first event to take place, the first event in which there's something in distinction from God Himself, we read that God created the heavens and the earth.

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.

This word for created is the Hebrew word bara, which is just a great word to say.

It speaks uniquely of God's creative activity.

It's never used with reference to human beings making something or fashioning something, and it occurs five times here in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

It also makes a prominent appearance throughout the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah 45:18

Chapter 45, verse 18, for example.

Isaiah writes this: Thus says the Lord who created Barad the heavens.

He is God, Isaiah exclaims, who formed the earth and made it.

He established it.

He did not create it empty.

He formed it to be inhabited.

And then the Lord makes this powerful declaration.

I am the Lord, and there is no other.

Barrah is an activity.

It's a creative activity.

It's a creative action that belongs to this unique, unlimited God alone.

It speaks of his unlimited being and capability.

He alone speaks things into being.

Not just a thing, not just something, but all things.

Notice that Genesis 1.1 says that God created the heavens and the earth.

Not just one domain, certainly not just one thing within that domain, as if he's the God who, you know, created waters, so he sort of supervises the oceans, the God who created trees or agriculture.

He's the God who created all things in heaven and on earth.

All things physical and all things spiritual.

The Nician Creed, which is the fourth-century expansion of our apostles' creed, which we're studying, says that God is the creator of all that is, visible and invisible.

That's exhaustive.

That's comprehensive.

That's all things.

Our God is just as much the author of the glory of heaven and the fearsome power of the angels as he is the stunning beauty of a sunrise, or the buzz and drone of cicadas, or the cool, refreshing splash of a pool.

God is transcendent.

He's above it all.

And God said, He's speaking creation into being by the power of his word.

God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.

God called the light day and the darkness he called night.

And there was evening and there was morning the first day.

And here we see a pattern that develops over the verses that follow, verses 6 to 25.

God speaks into being, he baras, he separates, and then he fills.

What we're seeing here is the action of creation's great monarch.

Monarchs, kings, are those who speak, and it is so.

And he is creation's absolute monarch, creation's sovereign.

There is no struggle for this God, no bloody conflict to see his will come to pass.

This God speaks and it is so.

It is simply the creative power of his word and the sustaining and shaping presence of his Holy Spirit by which the earth and all things are called into being.

Mufasa famously said to his son Simba, Everything the light touches is our kingdom.

In a similar way, Genesis is showing us that everything God has spoken into being, everything his hands have formed and touched, everything his word has brought into being and his spirit has shaped belongs to God's domain and is subject to his rule.

Therefore, there is nothing outside of God's control.

For us who know this God and trust to this creator God, this is a source of great assurance for us.

It's an assurance that there is no force of chaos, no matter how galactically big or how quantum partically small, can overwhelm God.

All things are subject to his kingship.

All things belong to his domain and his sovereignty.

That includes, friends, a global pandemic.

We may struggle, and I think we have permission to struggle, with what the particular parts of his permissive will allow, but we cannot go so far as to say, well, that is out of bounds of God's control.

That's beyond him.

There is nothing that's beyond this creator God.

Who does Genesis say our creator is?

God is Almighty.

And our Almighty God reigns and rules over this creation.

But we mustn't miss how this God regards his creation.

Not as a conqueror, not as an overlord.

He delights in this creation.

God saw that it was good.

That becomes a pattern each day of creation.

Verse 4 and 10, 12, and 18, 21 and 25, it's as though God is an artist who joyfully, ecstatically spends his day laboring upon his canvas, and then at the end of the day steps back and goes, Wow, that is good.

I'm not very creative myself.

There's only one time I wrote a breakup song when I was 16, and I thought, wow, that's really good.

The truth is, I mostly stole Bonnie Vare lyrics.

But imagine, maybe we've had that experience.

We know what it's like to shape something with our hands or to exercise our creative energy to step back and go, wow, that's really something.

Imagine the resonance that God's own word has throughout creation as he looks at it and speaks this word over it.

Oh, this is good.

But something takes creation from good to very good.

And that's the creation of human beings.

If God is a delighted monarch, a delighted sovereign over all creation, who then are we?

That becomes our second question.

We are those created in God's image.

Let's pick it up at verse 26.

Then God said, Let us make man a dom that's inclusive, all humanity, after our, in our image, after our likeness.

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 every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God he created him, singular.

Male and female he created them, plural.

And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

This phrase, the image of God, would have been a familiar phrase to Genesis's first readers.

They would have understood that those who are in positions of power exercised a capacity to be the image of God.

Pharaoh, for example, was understood to be the image of God to the Egyptians.

He stood in for God's power, the supreme God's rule and order for the creation around it.

He was to these mere slavish humans the image of God amongst them.

And yet God in Genesis 1 says something truly remarkable about all human beings, male and female, they are all created in the image of God.

A God like Marduk might be interested in power, and so the powerful might represent this God.

But no, this God is different.

This God creates all persons in his image.

And why is that?

Well, there's many different ways we could go about understanding what it means to bear God's image, and many different suggestions have been made over the centuries.

It's our maybe it's our capacity to rule, our capacity to reason, maybe it's our own self-awareness, and maybe all of these things taken together can be true, but I want us to notice the context of our creation right here in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

It is a relational context.

We are created to be those who relate to our creator God and have a unique capacity to do so.

God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness.

We are meant to share a communicable similarity to this God who has created us, a unique capacity to know him personally and to form a relationship with him.

And we are those created to have relationships with one another.

God says, well, God creates man in his own image, male and female, he created them.

We are meant to share relationship within the context of a common humanity and with distinction, male and female.

And this marriage covenant that comes out of Genesis 2 bears witness to the fact that God delights in unity and plurality.

We might even take a step back and think, it seems that God, that's who God is Himself.

A triune community of love, unity and plurality.

We're meant to share in this loving relationship.

This relational quality of sharing in God's image, of uniquely relating to our Creator God, means that human beings have an indelible dignity as image bearers at every single stage of life.

This is a gift given to us by our Creator.

It's not something we earn, it's not something that we prove.

It doesn't bear itself out in our usefulness.

No, God is simply delighted to give this to us as a gift.

So we as Christians ought to be those who celebrate human life, who protect it, who advocate for it.

We as Christians ought to be those who grieve and weep when the bodies of 215 image bearers are found in the backyard of a residential school.

Each and every human being is precious and dignified.

Each and every human being bears the image of their creator and is created to share relationship with him and with one another.

And that means we are indelibly dignified and precious.

God did not create us to be slaves so that he can kick back and relax.

No, God created the first human beings as partners.

He gives them a commission in verse 28.

God blesses them and God says to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens.

In other words, God is giving a commission to cultivate creation, to partner with him in this creative activity, to be a part.

Of this creation going from good to very good, God is excited by creation, and he is excited to see creation create.

See, God doesn't just create trees, does he?

He creates seed-bearing trees that go and create.

God wants to invite us into this adventure, this adventure of participating and realizing God's purposes in creation.

And if we share in the purposes of creation, so too do we share in God's rest.

We share in the Sabbath, which is a very unique command that God gives to his people Israel, and he takes it very seriously throughout the Old Testament.

We are not just human doings who earn our dignity or earn our worth by slavish toil.

We are dignified image-bearers, and God is delighted to share all of himself and his good gifts with us.

We share in the adventure of cultivating creation, we share in the rest.

All this means that God doesn't need human beings.

He's not up in heaven, feeling lonely for himself.

God actually invites, joyfully invites us into the adventure of cultivating creation.

And so Christians ought to cherish and celebrate creation around us.

We ought to celebrate art and creative arts.

We ought to be those who see God's wonder and beauty in the heavens and in the earth around us.

We ought to be those who, hmm, give thanks not only for our food at dinner, but give thanks before we walk into a forest, give thanks before we walk into an art gallery.

Because we're starting to see God's wonderful creative adventure be put on display.

And we get to be a part of that.

So we see the purpose of creation on display in Genesis chapter one.

Our creator is God Almighty, sovereign over all creation that he delights in, and we are created in his image, sharing relationship with him and with one another, dignity and partnership with God and with one another as well.

We're starting to see what the Westminster Catechism says is the chief end of human beings to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2 bear witness to creation as it was meant to be: partnership and purpose, dignity and delight.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention Genesis 2 · chapter mention

But Genesis chapter 3 bears witness to what happens when creation rebels against its purpose, when it falls into sin and alienation, and into the great struggle for power and sovereignty apart from God's reign and rule.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

So the story of Scripture from then on becomes a rescue story.

It's a rescue story from corruption and into restoration.

This is where Psalm 14 comes into view.

The fool says in his heart, the fool of Psalm 14 says, there is no God.

That's less a sort of atheistic commitment and more implies a sort of, well, I refuse to recognize God's authority.

I refuse to recognize his sovereignty.

I'm sovereign over my own life, and I'm going to make the decisions that I see fit.

Wasn't that the decision our very first parents made in Genesis chapter 3?

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Psalm 14 concludes that they are corrupt.

They have become abominable in their doings, and there is none that does good, no, not one.

This is a comprehensive fallen human condition.

Not that the goodness we were created with has been destroyed, but that has fallen into corruption, and it needs to be renewed and restored.

Rather than entering into God's rest by peace and peace by faith, humanity has entered into the endless struggle of sin.

And so Romans chapter 1 bears witness that God has handed humanity over to their own self-selected foolishness.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

Our image has become corrupt, but it is not destroyed, yet we are powerless to restore it ourselves.

As we continue our exploration of the creed next week, we're going to look at the incarnation of God in Christ, where this rescue project, this rescue story, comes to its peak.

But for now, let's consider our need.

Here we are, a corrupted creation, created good, but run astray.

God is still delighted over this creation, and he loves us enough to restore us.

He is willing to enter into our corruption and into our curse and restore us from within.

That's why when Paul looks at Jesus in Colossians chapter 1, he says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

In a way that we failed to bear God's image and fell into sin, Jesus has restored our humanity, the dignity and the image that we were always meant to bear.

Paul goes on to say, For in him, in Christ, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

The cross becomes the occasion, it becomes the site of a new creation breaking into a corrupted one, of being restored, of being renewed.

It's the hope, the first fruit of restored creation, renewed by the grace of God in Christ.

And so we can say for those of us who are in Christ by faith, we participate in this new creation.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old, what's been corrupted, is passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

And it will come fully with the kingdom.

So, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

If we are going to understand who we are in this story, we must first understand who God is.

And it makes all the difference.

Who is our creator?

Our creator is not a power-hungry dictator.

Our creator is God Almighty, sovereign over the creation that he delights in.

Who then are we?

We are created in his image, sharing relationship, dignity, and partnership with God and with one another.

Though corrupted by sin, God's image is being restored in Christ.

In Christ, our slavish toil for survival finds rest.

And for those who long for greater purpose than to survive, we can encounter the word, the word which renews us and restores us and calls us to new life.

I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

Amen.