Genesis 1:1–2 — The God of Creation

Speaker 1: Today, we start a brand new series as a church in a foundational book that starts at the

Speaker 1: very beginning.

Speaker 1: This sermon is from Genesis 1:1-2 and is entitled, "The God of Creation."

Genesis 1:1–2

Speaker 1: It was delivered to Ekklesia churches on Sunday, May 3, 2026.

Speaker 1: When we begin to study a new book of the Bible, there are always a few questions that we want

Speaker 1: to answer before we start so that we can understand what we're reading. And the first question is,

Speaker 1: what type of literature is this? Because that helps us to understand just what it is that

Speaker 1: we're reading. I'm going to try and not get too scholarly on you here, but you need to understand

Speaker 1: that while the 66 books of the Bible are all the inspired Word of God, and they all tell about Him

Speaker 1: in some specific way, they are not all the same. They are all inspired by the same Spirit,

Speaker 1: but they were written in the language with the tone and personality of many different people.

Speaker 1: And they're all equally useful for teaching and rebuking and correcting and training us in

Speaker 1: righteousness, but they are also different genres or types of literature. So we have narrative

Speaker 1: history like Genesis and Exodus, and then you have the law like Leviticus. You have books of poetry

Speaker 1: and wisdom like Psalms and Proverbs, and you have books of prophecy like Isaiah and Revelation in

Speaker 1: the New Testament. And then you have the Gospels, which are a kind of narrative story, but one that

Speaker 1: is built on a singular purpose of knowing Jesus and his salvation. And then you also have these

Speaker 1: letters that we call the Epistles, like Galatians and Philippians, these letters of instruction.

Speaker 1: And while they are all equally true, the way that they proclaim truth is different, and

Speaker 1: you can't read them all the same way.

Speaker 1: For example, poetry uses metaphors and similes to describe a God who is indescribably wonderful.

Speaker 1: Narrative tells us what happened and what was happening behind the scenes.

Speaker 1: But if you tried to read narrative like poetry, you think that everything is a metaphor and

Speaker 1: you miss the truth.

Speaker 1: Lots of people do this with Genesis.

Speaker 1: If you try to read poetry like narrative, though, you miss the beautiful metaphor and you come away

Speaker 1: with fiction instead of truth that the poet was trying to share with you. And so it's important

Speaker 1: for us to know that Genesis is narrative history. It is not a parable or a mythology or a metaphor.

Speaker 1: When it says that God did this with this person at this time, that is what it means.

Speaker 1: The second question that we want to ask, while recognizing that all of this is inspired and

Speaker 1: preserved by God, is who was the human author? We found out in Galatians and Ephesians,

Speaker 1: and even with Mark, that knowing some things about who wrote it and to whom it was written

Speaker 1: really helped us to make sense out of the content quite often. So Genesis was written primarily

Speaker 1: by Moses. It is technically an anonymous book because Moses never names himself in the book,

Speaker 1: but other places in the Old Testament, like 2 Chronicles 25.4 and also Jesus himself in Luke 24.27

Speaker 1: support this as fact. Moses actually wrote the first five books of the Bible that are known as

Speaker 1: the Pentateuch, though it was edited likely by some other similarly inspired men throughout

Speaker 1: Israel's history as a nation. These edits were not to change the substance of it, but to add

Speaker 1: details about things like, for example, the death of Moses, and also things that God promised that

Speaker 1: were fulfilled after Moses. Obviously, Moses could not write about his own death. But the majority of

Speaker 1: Genesis was written by Moses to the people of Israel, and it was written shortly after they left

Speaker 1: Egypt. So that answers our third and fourth question, who it was written to and when.

Speaker 1: So what was happening in the world that God at this time inspired Moses to write about the

Speaker 1: beginning of the earth and covering the 2,500 years that followed it up until this point?

Speaker 1: Where had Israel been for the last three to 400 years? They had been in Egypt, a land of pagans

Speaker 1: who followed many false gods and had many idols and had a very complex mythology around both

Speaker 1: the beginning of the heavens and the earth. And these people needed to know the truth.

Speaker 1: And so God clearly revealed it to them and revealed it to us through Moses.

Speaker 1: And so the final thing that we need to know about Genesis is the why behind it. What is the purpose

Speaker 1: behind God giving Israel and us Genesis.

Speaker 1: It is a narrative.

Speaker 1: It's a foundational story about where we came from

Speaker 1: and what happened in those early years of human history.

Speaker 1: It is full of characters and people who did good

Speaker 1: and people who did bad and even gross things,

Speaker 1: but it is not primarily about the characters.

Speaker 1: We actually aren't supposed to come away

Speaker 1: from the story of Abraham thinking,

Speaker 1: I should be more like Abraham. That's actually not the purpose. It is also full of cultural issues.

Speaker 1: This book is going to hit on some level on almost every hot button issue that you can think of.

Speaker 1: Origins, gender, sex, murder, capital punishment. But none of those issues is the primary focus of

Speaker 1: Genesis. We will certainly be informed by God's word on those things, but there's an even bigger

Speaker 1: story going on here. And to understand that story completely, we have to look from the perspective

Speaker 1: of the New Testament. There's a story in Acts chapter 8 when Philip, a disciple of Jesus,

Acts 8 · chapter mention

Speaker 1: runs into a man from Ethiopia who is reading Isaiah. And Philip asked the man, do you understand

Speaker 1: what you're reading? And the man responds, how can I unless someone explains it to me? And so

Speaker 1: Philip begins to explain the full meaning of Isaiah and of all of scripture, but by showing

Speaker 1: this Ethiopian man how it all connects to Jesus. So the New Testament view is essential for

Speaker 1: Christians to understand Old Testament books like Genesis. Because the purpose of Genesis

Speaker 1: is to know God and know his plan of redemption. The original reader was being shown how good

Speaker 1: their God is and how broken humanity was and showing us this over and over. But there's also

Speaker 1: this sense of expectation, this forward pointing arrow that points to the completion of this

Speaker 1: redemption plan that has been set into motion. And it's an arrow that points straight to Jesus.

Speaker 1: So as disciples of Jesus, that is our perspective that we see Genesis from. It is God's perspective

Speaker 1: on who he is and who we are, and ultimately how we will be saved from a broken kingdom

Speaker 1: into the kingdom of Christ. So without further delay, let's go ahead and get into the first two

Speaker 1: verses of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without

Speaker 1: form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over

Speaker 1: face of the waters. The opening few words of a story are important, and from them you can tell

Speaker 1: pretty quickly the tone and the direction of where it's headed. Let me read you just a few.

Speaker 1: This book is largely concerned with hobbits, that is, the introduction to the Fellowship of the

Speaker 1: Ring. Here's another. Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund,

Speaker 1: and Lucy. That's the beginning of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And then one that almost

Speaker 1: needs no introduction in a galaxy far, far away is how every Star Wars movie really begins.

Speaker 1: The opening is important. It tells us what the book is going to center around or where it's

Speaker 1: going to take place. But the opening words of Genesis are far more than that. They are a statement,

Speaker 1: a proclamation, if you will, to the reader establishing who God is and what he has done.

Speaker 1: The name Genesis comes from these opening words. Actually, it comes from the Greek word for

Speaker 1: origin, but the Hebrew title is Bereshit, which means in the beginning. The opening word of the

Speaker 1: book and the words that follow that are in Hebrew, Bereshit Bada Elohim, means in the beginning,

Speaker 1: God created. Now, we won't look at each individual word like this through all 50 chapters of Genesis,

Speaker 1: but these first few words are particularly important because of what they say about God.

Speaker 1: Our trip through Genesis is going to take us from today, which is the 3rd of May, through December,

Speaker 1: And we'll slowly speed up from words to verses, and eventually we'll be looking at several

Speaker 1: chapters at a time by the time we reach the end.

Speaker 1: But this morning, I want to start out with just these few words.

Speaker 1: The first important thing that we take away from this is that in the beginning, this Bereshith,

Speaker 1: God already was.

Speaker 1: It says, in the beginning, God created, not in the beginning, God was created.

Speaker 1: Because God, our God, is not a created God.

Speaker 1: He is the eternally existing God before time began and will continue after it ends.

Speaker 1: And I know that's a hard thing to grasp, but that is the truth about God.

Speaker 1: Sometimes one of my kids will ask where they were in really early pictures, like photos

Speaker 1: of my wife and I, and we'll answer, oh, this is before you were born.

Speaker 1: And that is hard for them to wrap their head around.

Speaker 1: Like, what do you mean there was existence before I existed?

Speaker 1: But in the beginning, God.

Speaker 1: Psalm 90 verse 2 says,

Psalms 90:2

Speaker 1: Before the mountains were brought forth,

Speaker 1: or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

Speaker 1: from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

Speaker 1: God is eternal.

Speaker 1: The next word, bara, B-A-R-A, is the Hebrew word that actually means created.

Speaker 1: And just like with many other languages, the verb comes first here.

Speaker 1: So bara is a singular verb that is only used to describe the activity of one person in all of Scripture.

Speaker 1: And that is the creative activity of God.

Speaker 1: Why is that?

Speaker 1: Because something is unique about the way God creates.

Speaker 1: You and I might create with our hands, with notes.

Speaker 1: We might create something from something else.

Speaker 1: We might put words together.

Speaker 1: But God creates from nothing with only a word.

Speaker 1: Only God can create from nothing, requiring nothing.

Speaker 1: And that is exactly what he did.

Speaker 1: The last word is Elohim, which is one of the titles that is used for God in Scripture,

Speaker 1: particularly when we're talking about the all-powerful nature of God.

Speaker 1: And one thing that's interesting is that Elohim is a plural form here,

Speaker 1: yet the verb bara is singular.

Speaker 1: The plural is used here not to show that there's more than one God,

Speaker 1: but to show the majesty of God.

Speaker 1: It's saying that this God is everything, that he deserves it all,

Speaker 1: He is over all and that He is before everything in importance and glory.

Speaker 1: One God, therefore one singular verb, but plural meaning He is all that is.

Speaker 1: Revelation chapter 4 verse 11 says,

Revelation 4:11

Speaker 1: Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power.

Speaker 1: for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.

Speaker 1: So that's a lot of meaning for just three opening words. But remember, God is clarifying for his

Speaker 1: people what is true through these words that are given to Moses. Because everything about God

Speaker 1: contrasts with the Egyptian counterfeits that these people have been surrounded by for centuries.

Speaker 1: Egyptian priests believed that their gods rose up out of the chaos of the deep or the chaos that preexisted them.

Speaker 1: They also taught that there were many gods who raised up themselves and one another and vied for authority and power and influence.

Speaker 1: But here, God sets the record straight.

Speaker 1: There is one God, not many, and he did not rise up from the deep.

Speaker 1: He presided and ruled over it before time began.

Speaker 1: And it was our God who created the heavens and the earth.

Speaker 1: The heavens and the earth is meant to include everything that is.

Speaker 1: It's kind of a comprehensive term that's meaning all of our physical reality, the physical

Speaker 1: universe, all of matter, but also all of spiritual reality, the heavens, as it were, the angels,

Speaker 1: the heavenly realms.

Speaker 1: And here we kind of have to make our peace with the fact that Genesis is not going to

Speaker 1: answer all of the questions that we want it to. It doesn't give us details on the creation of the

Speaker 1: angels or what the invisible heavens consist of. It doesn't tell us how in all the ways that we

Speaker 1: want it to, though it will reveal quite a bit actually for the scientifically curious. But we

Speaker 1: need to remember that first and foremost, Genesis is not a revelation about the how of creation. It is

Speaker 1: not a science textbook. It is about the who of creation. And it was God who brought order

Speaker 1: from the chaos. The description for the universe before God brought order to it is formless and

Speaker 1: void. It is a Hebrew expression that is a ton of fun to say. It's the last Hebrew word we'll use

Speaker 1: today, it's tohuwabohu, which means formless and void. It means like a disordered space,

Speaker 1: uninhabited, uninhabitable, not a space that's fit for life and certainly not for mankind.

Speaker 1: And we also have this statement that darkness was over the face of the deep.

Speaker 1: And we're going to get into let there be light next week. So we'll put a pin in that and the rest

Speaker 1: of creation as much as we're able to, but we need to recognize that without God giving life and order,

Speaker 1: there is nothing but darkness. The absence of the ordering work of God looks like an empty darkness

Speaker 1: in which there is no life. In fact, a thousand years, a few thousand years later, when God

Speaker 1: looked at the way his people were rejecting him, he said to the prophet Jeremiah,

Speaker 1: In Jeremiah 4.23, I looked on the earth and behold, it was without form and void into the heavens and they had no light.

Speaker 1: Describing the state of people who have rejected God.

Speaker 1: It's not a surprise then that the gospel of John introduces Jesus as the one in whom was life and that life was the light of men.

Speaker 1: That's John 1.4.

Speaker 1: The final part of this passage says the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Speaker 1: And here's where we come back to this sense of anticipation that runs all the way through

Speaker 1: Genesis from beginning to end.

Speaker 1: And if you miss it, you actually miss the point of Genesis from God's perspective.

Speaker 1: This hovering over the waters hangs with this sense of awaiting something to come, waiting

Speaker 1: for light to burst forth, for a kingdom to come and to take root and to bear fruit for

Speaker 1: the glory of God.

Speaker 1: This moment where the breath of God hangs above the waters and prepares to breathe new life

Speaker 1: into the darkness.

Speaker 1: There is another place that we see this idea of the hovering Spirit of God in Scripture,

Speaker 1: but it doesn't happen in Genesis.

Speaker 1: And actually, it doesn't happen in the rest of the Old Testament.

Speaker 1: You have to go to Luke 1, verse 35.

Luke 1:35

Speaker 1: When an angel tells a young girl named Mary that the Holy Spirit will come upon you and

Speaker 1: the power of the Most High will overshadow or hover over you. The anticipation of Genesis

Speaker 1: and the whole of human history finds its fulfillment in the Son of God, the light of the world,

Speaker 1: the living Word of God, Jesus. Not only is our God before and after and above all that is or ever

Speaker 1: will be. His plan for us is flawless. He knew in the beginning what it would mean to make mankind

Speaker 1: in his image, to give us free will. He knew that we would eventually reject him and need a redemption

Speaker 1: that only he could pay for. This God who created the heavens and the earth is the same father

Speaker 1: to whom we pray when we say, our Father, holy is your name. The Son of God is the very same who

Speaker 1: Paul writes to the Colossians about in Colossians chapter 1 verses 16 and 17 saying, for by him all

Colossians 1:16

Speaker 1: things were created in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or

Speaker 1: rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all

Speaker 1: things and in him, all things hold together. And he is the same one who incredibly died

Speaker 1: on a Roman cross to pay for our redemption from the sin that we chose.

Speaker 1: And here's where I want to land for now. There's so much packed into these few first verses,

Speaker 1: And I hope that you're starting to learn more about who God is.

Speaker 1: And maybe you're able to stand amazed at his master plan throughout all of history.

Speaker 1: But if there's one thing to take away from this, it's this.

Speaker 1: The same spirit that hovered in anticipation of a new creation and hovered over Mary in

Speaker 1: anticipation of the birth of Jesus, that same spirit desires to do a new work in you.

Speaker 1: the same Spirit of God is able to bring the hearts of dead men and women to eternal life

Speaker 1: in the name of Jesus. And to those who are found in Christ, that same Spirit of God does a work of

Speaker 1: new creation that makes even the creation of the brightest galaxy pale in comparison. Because even

Speaker 1: the angels of heaven who see the splendor of God in ways that we can't even fathom with earthly eyes,

Speaker 1: they rejoice to see this new creation happening in the hearts of people who Paul says are a new

Speaker 1: creation in whom the old has passed away. Behold, look, the new has come. So let me just leave you

Speaker 1: with one question from this. What new creation does the Holy Spirit of God long to do in you?

Speaker 1: Ekklesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in Council Bluffs, Iowa and in homes

Speaker 1: throughout the week.

Speaker 1: We are a Bible-centered church focused on preaching from Scripture and making disciples

Speaker 2: of Jesus.

Speaker 2: You can learn more about what we believe and contact a pastor at ekklesiachurches.org.

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