Genesis 1:14–2:3 — The God of Purpose

This sermon is from Genesis 1:14-2:3 and is entitled,

Genesis 1:14–2:3

"The God of Purpose."

It was delivered to Ecclesia churches on Sunday,

May 17,

2026.

So far,

we've been introduced to some of the character of God in the first few verses

of Genesis.

We've seen from the very beginning that He is the God of creation.

He is over and above all creation,

and all that has been created came from Him.

He is not in competition with any other false god or entity or theory.

In fact,

He alone is not created.

This is really important because it separated our God from the false gods of ancient civilizations,

and also this separates Him from the modern-day cults as well,

like Mormonism, for example.

We saw last week that he is the God of order.

He has ordered the universe to display his glory and to be oriented toward his glory.

And he's also put boundaries in place for us to thrive.

And he's made the earth to be fruitful,

producing and thriving for the glory of God

and the good of all the things that he fills the earth with.

So today we move from this forming of the space to a filling of the space.

The space that God has prepared will now be filled with the living creatures that God will create.

The heavens were created, and now God will populate them with stars and the moon and the sun.

The sky and the sea were created, and God will fill it with birds and aquatic life of all different kinds.

And the land was created,

and God will fill it with animals of all kinds of varieties.

And on the last day,

he's going to create man.

But beyond just filling the space with life,

God will give all of life a purpose.

And purpose is the overarching theme of this part of the text.

God created all of this life,

and now he's giving it purpose.

This is one of the most basic questions that all people will ask at some point.

Why am I here?

What is my purpose in life?

Nothing irritates my kids quicker than telling them to go get in the car and not telling them

why or where we're going or what we're doing.

God created all of creation,

but specifically

humanity with a desire to fulfill a purpose.

And this passage starts to answer that.

So from this

point on in Genesis,

we won't probably read the entire passage out loud every week,

but we'll have

it all kind of in front of us as we go.

Let's go ahead and read verses 14 through 19 of chapter one,

which kind of covered day four together because the other two days are going to be similar in form.

So this is Genesis chapter one,

starting with verse 14,

going through verse 19.

And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night

and let them be four signs and four seasons and four days and years,

and let them be lights in

expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.

And it was so.

And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light

to rule the night and the stars.

And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,

to rule over the

day and over the night,

and to separate the light from the darkness.

And God saw that it was good.

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

The first thing that I want us to see is this small change in verse 14.

The format of days one through three has been let there be, and then there was.

And here in verse 14, we have the addition of let them be four.

So God is beginning to move from a space that is built with purpose to creations that have

a given purpose to reflect something about who he is.

So when we see the creation of the stars and the sun and the moon, they are not serving

a purpose that God needed them to do.

So remember,

God doesn't need the stars and the sun and the moon to light creation.

He can already do that and has done that on day one.

He chooses,

though,

to set them in the expanse of the heavens,

to rule the day and the night.

And I know this seems like a subtle point, but I think it's actually important that we

understand this idea of these rulers of the day and night being put in place by God.

Because believe it or not, it will tie directly to our purpose as well.

Think about it like this.

Many of the lights in my home are pretty functional.

And there's kind of a mixture of lamps and some recessed lighting,

but none of the lamps

that I have are really designed to be looked at.

But if you were to visit one of the multi-million dollar mansions in New York, for example,

you would find an entirely different kind of light.

You would find things like blown glass chandeliers that are handcrafted by well-known artists

in that space.

And while they are functional in that they do light the space that they're in,

nobody

would say that that's the real reason that they were created.

the artist has crafted this masterpiece of lighting to show off his artistry and to say

something about himself.

And so while the lights of the heavens are functional for keeping time and

seasons and giving light,

they have a deeper purpose.

The deeper reason that God placed them

there was to declare his glory.

And this is something that's written about in Psalm 19 verses

Psalms 19:1–4

1-4 reads,

The heavens declare the glory of God,

and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech,

and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out throughout all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

So the purpose of all creation,

all of it,

is to declare the glory of our infinitely creative God.

I just want to give you a couple of stats to highlight this.

Genesis is one of those places where you can kind of go crazy and find so many little pieces of information that are just cool and they point to the glory of God.

So I'm just going to give you a few.

If our orbit around the sun was around 1% different in either direction,

being either

closer to the sun or 1% further away,

we would actually be too hot or too cold to sustain

life at all.

The moon is created exactly the right size and it was placed exactly the right distance

to act as a kind of stabilizer for the tilt of the earth.

So without the moon being exactly where it is,

the earth could wobble by up to 80 degrees

either direction,

meaning temperature swings that would make earth uninhabitable.

The moon also causes the perfect tide system in the ocean, enough to circulate nutrients

throughout the ocean and sustain life with currents,

but not so much that the land is

rapidly eroded away and we're left with an all-ocean planet.

We have discovered,

along the lines of the variety of life,

1.2 million species of plant and animal on Earth.

And we estimate,

at the rate that we continue to find new ones,

that we're about 20% of the way finished.

We haven't even discovered 80% of what's out there to find.

Of the 350,000 species of plants alone on earth,

90% of them depend on some other animal or plant

or pollinator to be fruitful.

It's like this web of interconnected life that could never exist

without a master creator who formed them to rely on one another.

One more story I want to share

with you before we kind of move on to the creation of humanity was one I came across involving Sir

Isaac Newton,

who is credited with writing the scientific law of gravity,

but he was also a big

space nerd.

So he once built a huge working model of the known solar system in his house,

using complex math and equations with gears and motion,

and it showed the elliptical orbits of

the planets around the earth.

And a friend of his,

who was actually a professing atheist,

came over and asked him, hey,

wow, this is incredible. Who made this?

And Newton responded

reportedly with a smile on his face, nobody.

It just showed up here like this, which is funny.

The heavens and the earth and everything on it,

in its complexity and diversity,

declare the glory of the creative God who spoke it into being.

So now let's talk about the creation that was specifically made in his image.

Let's keep reading with chapter 1, verse 26,

and let's go 26 through 28.

Then God said,

Let us make man in our image after our likeness,

And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over

the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him male and female.

He created them and God blessed them.

And God said to them,

be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.

And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over

every living thing that moves on the earth.

After creating all of this space and these plants and all of these animals of every kind,

God turns to make one more creation, and that is mankind.

And everything about this final creation speaks to how the creation of man is a kind of capstone

or high point in creation.

He begins this creation differently.

They are given a different identity.

They are blessed with a really specific role.

And let's look at each one of those.

So,

the first thing is that we recognize is that God begins the creation of mankind in verse 26 with

this address to himself that says,

let us make man in our image.

And we'll get to this definition

of image in a moment.

But first,

this plural is not a mistake.

And it is not in this case,

an attempt to describe our perspective of God's glory by using this plural indicating that he is

all, he is everything, he is great.

Because this is not us talking about God, this is God referring

himself.

And it is our first real clue towards the Trinitarian or the three-in-one nature of God.

Earlier, we got this picture of the Spirit of God hovering, but here we have God himself speaking

in the plural to what we know is God the Son and God the Spirit.

We get this little glimpse of the

communal nature within God himself that will be further fleshed out literally by Jesus.

Now,

what about this image of God that we're created in?

This sets us apart from everything

that has come before us.

And it's actually challenging to know how deep to go here. So,

I'll try to go deep enough for us to get the main idea without going too deep that we're actually

distracted.

All of creation was made for God's glory,

to reflect his creativity and his goodness.

But we were made to reflect him in a really specific way from all the rest of creation,

and that is to reflect his character.

We are designed,

male and female,

to resemble who God

is by giving us the ability to reason and have a moral conscience.

This word that means God's

image is zelem, and it means taken from or resemblance made in the form of like a living

portrait that is put on display before creation to say these beings are fashioned after the character

of our creator.

They are like him.

And the word for likeness means very much the same. And the

result is this likeness, this image is that we are to reflect the heart of God for his creation.

So what does that mean?

Practically,

it results in this charge to have dominion or to rule over

the rest of creation. And this is not in a negative sense of dominion. This is the kind of dominion

that God commands,

the good God who created all things.

In this temple that God has created that

consists of all creation,

we have this specific purpose to serve God by ruling over it with care.

In the same way that he made the sun to give light, not because he needed it for light,

but because he was glorified to give it a place to rule and to give light.

In that same way,

men and women are created not because God can't rule without us,

but because it gives him glory to have image bearers dwelling in and reigning with him.

There are some really important takeaways from this section.

Things that are helpful truths to ground ourselves in because they are based on

eternal truths that never change.

And they're about our purpose,

this question that we keep

coming back to.

First,

every single human being,

from the moment we are conceived in the womb

to the last moment of life that God grants us,

have dignity and value as persons bearing the

image of God.

That image may have been marred by sin, but our value as people is not based on our

performance but in our God-given identity.

This is pretty important for us to understand as

Christians living in a day and a place where human dignity is often questioned.

Just because you are

small and speechless or old and frail does not mean your life is worth less in any way.

Second,

and we'll get more into the male and female design in a week or so,

but we have even

reiterated in this kind of poetic verse 27 that men and women are distinct by design,

but they are equally image bearers.

Finally,

notice the change in verse 28 that God blessed

them and said to them,

it says,

everything else that God commanded and it was so, right? That's

it's worked up until this point, but mankind is different in that God speaks and relates to them.

All of creation gets this general revelation of how great and awesome God is, but

we get the specific revelation of a God who relates directly to us.

We get this specific

role of reigning as the representatives to all creation of the God whose character we reflect.

and who relates to us personally.

And God declared at this point that creation was finished and it was

very good,

which brings us to the final two verses in which God rests.

And this rest has a whole lot

more to do with his identity and with ours than you may have actually thought before.

This is

Genesis 2, verses 2 and 3.

Genesis 2:2

You've probably heard the same jokes that I have, especially if you have a good or a decent

work ethic that are some version of, hey, even God took a day off, you know.

And if you asked most

people why God rested,

I wouldn't be surprised if a large number responded because he was tired.

And this is a good example of us applying human limitations to a limitless God. We are so

limited by our human experience and our experience is so impacted by sin that we make these

assumptions wrongly about God.

But the truth is God does not need to rest because he is tired

or his power has been expended or he's out of energy.

But I do,

right?

I do need to lie down

and sleep and let my muscles be restored from hard labor. I do need to rest and recognize that

someone greater than me keeps the world spinning.

And as it turns out, these two verses actually

have a lot more to say about that.

So,

in the ancient Near East,

which is the time and place

that Israel was in when God delivered this to them, we kind of have to get our heads into theirs to

understand how they would have heard this because it changes how we understand the passage.

The ancient Near East idea of a deity resting really had more to do with that deity coming

to rest,

and specifically coming to rest or dwell in the temple.

Now,

all of the accounts of these

false gods,

these myths,

required people to build the temple,

people to furnish it,

and needed people to serve in it. And then, and only if the deity was pleased with it,

the false god might come to dwell or come to rest in the temple.

But God, our God,

has set the record straight here.

And here's how Moses'

audience would have heard this account up

until this point.

Our God needed no temple built by the hands of man because our God set the

foundations of the earth and the lofty heavens above in place.

Our God did not need man to

furnish a temple for him because he furnished every inch of creation with this tapestry of

creativity,

and he filled it to the brim with life.

And our God did not create mankind as a

dispensable kind of servant,

but as reflections of his character,

who he takes joy in having

relationship with.

So what these two final verses are really saying is that this creative

masterpiece of God was finished and God had come to rest over it.

In this seventh day that God sets

apart, the heavens and the earth are complete and God is on his throne presiding over all of its form

and function.

Isaiah chapter 66 verses one and two says this,

Isaiah 66 · chapter mention

thus says the Lord,

heaven is my throne

and the earth is my footstool.

What is the house that you would build for me? And what is the place

of my rest?

All these things my hand has made. And so all these things came to be,

declares the Lord.

That is who our God is.

So as we conclude this portion of the account of creation,

we have to recognize that this

isn't exactly the world that we are experiencing today in a lot of ways.

Specifically,

the world today is different because it includes the experience of sin

and brokenness and so many things not looking like they once did.

If we're being honest, there's a good-sized part of us that longs for the world that was

just described.

And that's part of the point.

Because part of the fall and the result of the curse of sin is that instead of having

a secure identity as an image bearer of God, we live in a kind of constant identity crisis.

We try to define ourselves as we see fit.

We seek our own pleasure instead of the pleasure of God.

And we don't even find that in the end.

We fail to recognize the value of ourselves and of others as fellow image bearers,

and

we cause pain and destruction instead.

Beyond people even, there is a brokenness that kind of extends to the rest of creation.

To grow food, we have to fight hard for it against weeds, and we build houses that are

knocked down by storms,

and we get sick, and we get tired, and we feel out of control.

But the worst part of all is that our sin separates us from this God whose image we bear

and who made us for relationship with himself.

Which is what makes the good news of the gospel so good.

Because the same God who came to rest over all of creation also had a plan to deal with

this coming separation.

Even after his image bearers rejected him, he still loved us and sent his son to bear the full cost of that downfall.

Jesus is the solution to every broken thing that I just described.

He is both the perfect image of God and shows us what it means to be human as well.

Through him, we have this restored relationship with God and the hope of a restored creation completely when he returns.

And even in the meantime,

while we live in an imperfect reality and are in that process

that every Christian gladly submits to, but it is a struggle of being formed into the

image of Jesus.

And Jesus offers us the rest that we're looking for.

In Matthew chapter 11,

Matthew 11:28

verses 28 and 29,

Jesus says,

to me,

all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and

learn from me,

for I am gentle and lowly in heart,

and you will find rest for your souls.

Jesus offers a different kind of rest that comes by making peace between God and us through his own

sacrifice.

It's the kind of rest that comes from submitting to the God of creation

and allowing ourselves to become temples of his Holy Spirit.

It's the kind of rest

that we can only experience by laying down our burdens and bowing at the feet of Jesus.

Ekklesia is a church of house churches gathering weekly in Council Bluffs, Iowa,

and in homes throughout the week.

We are a Bible-centered church focused on preaching from Scripture

and making disciples of Jesus.

You can learn more about what we believe

and contact a pastor at ecclesiachurches.org.