Intro
The widely read popular historian Yuval Harari says we live “in an age of bewilderment where the old stories have collapsed and no new stories have emerged so far to replace them.” ( Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (London: Jonathan Cape, 2018), xiii.) I think that’s an accurate diagnosis of our world today. The lens or frame through which people see the world is fractured, fragmented, broken, it’s not enabling people to make sense of what they see and experience. But unlike Harari, I don’t believe the old stories have collapsed, or at least not one in particular. I’m advocating that this one old story, if we read it and understand it rightly, is the frame that best makes sense of our world. This old story has its foundations in the early chapters of the Bible, in Genesis 1-3.
Today we’re starting with the biggest worldview question of all. We’re going to talk about God. This is the fundamental question that humanity has to come to grips with: what, if anything, is the nature of the divine? Everything else that we believe and do can flow out of this. And obviously, there’s a wide range of answers to that question. On one extreme, you’d have the so-called “New Atheists”, who aren’t so new anymore. These are guys like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens. Unlike a previous generation of atheists, who were a bit more cordial, these guys are vehemently, passionately anti-religion. For them, it isn’t just that believing in God is a crutch for the weak, it’s that believing in God is a cancer, a sickness, that needs to be eradicated. Dawkins has said that faith is one of the world’s great evils. On the other hand, you’d have many people, including here on the West Coast, who hold to New Age-inspired ideas of the divine, often bordering on pantheistic. The idea here is that God, or the gods, are to be identified with nature itself. Here’s how pre-eminent theologian and Ace Ventura star Jim Carrey puts it: “every cell in your body is God. Everything is God. Everything is divine.” We could talk about all kinds of other variations of belief or disbelief about God, but here’s one more. When I was in my early 20s, I went through a phase where I read a ton of Douglas Coupland books. Coupland is Vancouver novelist who popularized the term “Generation X”. I read an interview where Coupland said that his greatest fear was that God exists, but that he doesn’t care much about humans. So, in response to all of that, what kind of frame does Genesis 1-2 especially give us with which to view God? Who is God?
1. God is Creator
Let’s start right at the beginning, Genesis 1:1: “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This verse is packed and commentaries spend a ton of time unravelling every word and concept in it. But here’s what we can say pretty straightforwardly: Genesis 1 views God as being the Creator of the universe. Who, ultimately, is responsible for the world we have? God. There’s really no other answer given in Scripture. God is the Creator. The implication of this, of course, is that the world as we know it had a beginning. There was a time when it was not, and God is the one who changed that.
This, in itself, is an important claim. Much of Eastern thought says that the world is eternal, and that the divine is to be identified with this eternal world. Genesis provides a very different picture, a picture of a world that had a beginning, a God who is separate from His creation, and has an identity separate from the created world. This is actually at least partly the idea behind God’s speaking creation into existence. For example, Genesis 1:3 proclaims that “God said, ‘let there be light,’ and there was light”. God is intimately connected to the world, He’s the source of its existence, He makes it happen, but is ultimately differentiated from it. That’s why He can create it.
On this question of whether the world had a beginning or not, modern science has arrived at a clear consensus that is consistent with what I believe Genesis 1 suggests: yes, it did have a beginning. The Big Bang theory says that everything started with something called the singularity and exploded from there. So far, so good. The question is, where did this singularity come from? Where did the first thing come from?
This is the foundation for what is called the cosmological argument for the existence of God, and I want to spend just a minute here. The idea is that everything that begins to exist has a cause. You and I exist because our parents did…something. My function as a pastor exists because the membership of The Bridge Church called me. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe itself began to exist. Again, this is almost unanimously agreed on by those who study this kind of thing. Therefore, the universe had a cause. There must be something or someone outside the universe who caused it to exist. And the argument could be taken further. This something or someone must be pretty powerful to cause something to come out of nothing. This being must be outside of time, must be timeless and eternal, without being caused itself. And this being is probably personal- the act of creating is a decision, this is a volitional being. As you can see, we’re already close to the kind of being we meet in Genesis 1:1.
So what do you do with the emergence of the universe apart from God? There’s a prominent astrophysicist named Alexander Vilenkin whose theory is that, and I quote, “our fantastic, glorious universe spontaneously arose from nothing at all…If the theory holds, we owe our existence to the humblest of origins: nothing itself.” Praise the great and almighty nothing to whom we owe our existence! I don’t know what you do with that, but believing in a personal, powerful, eternal God doesn’t seem any more unreasonable to me than the world spontaneously popping into existence out of nothing on its own.
And then, just briefly, there’s the fine-tuning argument that I think is also quite compelling. This comes from the insight that there are a whole number of factors that make this universe, and life in this universe, possible. It points out that if any of these dials were adjusted even by a tiny fraction, none of it would work. For example, if the strength of gravity was adjusted by a fraction of a percentage, so that your weight was one billionth of a gram lighter or heavier, there could not have been such a thing as planets and stars. Apparently, when you put all of these various factors together, the chance of our universe coming into existence is one in 10 to the 138th power. That is a massive number. It is said that there are 10 to the 70th power number of atoms in the universe. This is one in 10 to the 138th. I dare you to buy a lottery ticket at those odds. Again, to me, that’s pretty good confirmation of what we read in Genesis 1:1: that there is a God, and that the world came into being because He created it.
2. God is God Alone
Here’s something else that comes across clearly in Genesis 1: God is God alone. It won’t surprise you that in the ancient world, polytheism ruled the day. There were lots of gods, and they weren’t terribly impressive. They fought with each other, had intercourse, there was all kinds of competition. It was just one big hot mess. Genesis 1 tells a very different story, a much calmer story: there is one God, one Creator.
Now, this doesn’t mean that God was alone. The Old Testament talks about something called a divine council or heavenly assembly. This shows up in a number of places, and Satan himself shows up in the Old Testament as part of this assembly. These are supernatural beings who God appears to invite to participate in His rule over the cosmos. However, they are created by Him, and the only authority they have is given by Him. They show up here in Genesis 1 as well, which is why I’m talking about it. On the sixth day of the creation narrative, God creates humans, and He says, “let us make mankind in our image” (1:26). The plural “our” has sometimes been interpreted as the Trinity- Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Many evangelical scholars now believe that if we understand the text as the author wrote it, the reference here is to this divine council (see especially Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm). God is inviting them to take a look at the climax of His creation. He alone can create, but they are invited into this. It’s a bit like if my wife is somewhere for dinner and I have the kids, and we all know that if I cook the kitchen will likely burst into flames, so I say “let’s go get sushi”. The kids love this idea- because unlike me as a child, they’re cultured West Coast children who like raw fish- and come along. But I initiated the idea, and I’m going to have to pay for it, because there’s no way they’re making this happen on their own. That’s the idea here. Only God can create in this way, only He can make things happen, but He invites these heavenly creatures to check out what He’s doing, to participate in His action. God isn’t alone, but He alone is God and has the power to create.
Let’s look at this “God is God alone” thing a bit more. In the ancient world, the sun and the moon were often deified, seen as being gods. Not in Genesis 1. Listen to the language of Day 4: “let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night…God made two great lights- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night” (1:14, 16). Clearly, we’re talking about the sun and the moon here. But because these things were often deified, Genesis refuses to even give them those names. They’re just “lights”. They’re created things. Or the “watery deep and the darkness” of verse 2: the waters and darkness were often personified and deified in ancient creation myths as powerful forces of chaos that needed to be restrained. Not in Genesis. There’s nothing sinister about the waters or the dark, it’s just an indication that God hasn’t finished His work yet.
Another aspect of this is that creation itself doesn’t emerge from competition. I mentioned how the gods fought and had relations and such. In the Babylonian creation story, there’s this incessant conflict between the gods until Marduk, who’s been created from other gods, goes to war against Tiamat, one of the primal gods, and destroys her. Now listen to this stirring poetry: “then the lord Marduk paused to view her dead body (Tiamat) that he might divide the monster and do artful works. He split her like a shellfish into two parts; half of her he set up and ceiled it as sky, pulled down the bar and posted guards.” Beautiful, right? Split her like a shellfish. Those Babylonians just had a way with words. In contrast, in Genesis 1, God doesn’t need to kill any gods or create stuff out of their entrails. He just speaks and stuff happens. This God is supremely powerful, He doesn’t need to struggle to create. There is no hint of an equal.
How does this reframe our view of God? On the one hand, for people who believe in the concept of God in our culture, most people probably believe that there is one God. If you were to ask people on the street in North Vancouver, I don’t think polytheism is going to be a popular option. But whatever people might believe, the way most of us live suggests that God legitimately has competition. The Israelites of the ancient world struggled with idolatry. For the most part, we no longer worship gods that are represented by statues. However, our culture is rife with idolatry too. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve been told there’s a drama called American Gods, which imagines a battle between the “Old gods” like Odin and the “New gods”, the American ones, who have names like Media, Technology, and Globalization. I think that’s accurate. These kinds of things, even if we don’t call them gods, take on that status when we think that we need them for meaning and purpose to exist in our lives. We can do this to romantic love and prosperity and family and so on. Here’s a test question: if you had to go one whole day without your phone or without spending time in God’s presence, what are you choosing? Which one sounds more difficult? See, when we load those things with the weight of expectation that they will give us life and meaning, they become idols. And so, whatever we believe about God cognitively, our hearts are saying that God has competition, that there are other entities worthy of consideration for the throne of our lives. Genesis 1 says that just doesn’t line up with reality. There is only one God, He alone is capable of giving true life. Created things are good but if we try to elevate them to the position of creator of life, they will fail us and even destroy us (for more on this, read Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods).
3. God is a God who Blesses
Here’s another aspect of who God is: He is a God who blesses His creation. He is a God of blessing. This was generally not how people saw the gods in the ancient world. The gods were mainly self-interested, creating for their own selfish purposes. That’s not Genesis 1. Instead, in verse 22, after creating the fish and the birds, we read, “God blessed them and said, ‘be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.’” And then again, in verse 28 after God has created humans, we read that “God blessed them and said to them, ‘be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (1:28). What does it mean, fundamentally, for God to bless? According to Hebrew scholars, in this context, it means to give the potential for life, for flourishing, for growth. That’s what you see here. The animals and the humans are blessed by God to reproduce and fill the earth, to increase life and flourishing on earth.
That’s related to another concept that runs throughout Genesis 1, which is goodness. God creates and constantly calls what He creates “good”. On Day 1, He creates light and sees that it is good. On Day 3, He creates vegetation and sees that it is good. And so on. The only day that doesn’t get this description is in Day 2, where God separates the waters. In the Hebrew mindset, the second day of the week is Monday, which has led one OT scholar to say that perhaps even God doesn’t like Mondays! Another more serious possibility is that the waters, while not personified or deified, were still connected with chaos, associated with the antithesis of life and human flourishing. The waters aren’t called “good”, perhaps, because in Hebrew thinking they are not ordered or structured in a way to bring about that flourishing of life. Which is actually what this word “good” means: it means that which is ordered, where functions have been rightly established.
See, that’s different from what we think of, isn’t it? We hear the word “good” in Genesis and we think it means “perfect”. As in, everything is just right, and any change will make it imperfect, it will erase the original goodness. It’s like when you walk into someone’s house and everything is put away, the floors are spotless, it’s just pristine, and you’re like “man, my house is not like this, it is a pigsty.” And then you tell your kids “don’t touch anything. Don’t play with anything. In fact, just go wait in the car until we’re done here because you are just going to ruin this.” But that’s not what the Hebrew word “tob” means. If it did, then why are the humans told to rule and subdue (1:28)? What are they subduing if everything is pristine and perfect? It’s because while the world God created is good, it’s also wild. It needs to be filled and shaped. It’s made for that, the systems are working to support life, God has made the world with that intention. It’s like the fine-tuning argument, God has made the world precisely to support and foster growth and flourishing. He provides everything necessary for that to happen. That’s the point of the word “good”, it’s the point of God’s blessing. And all of this is absolutely central to why God creates, His desire to bless and bring about life.
Think about how this reframes the way people see the world today. When people experience this kind of flourishing, when they receive and experience goodness, they often believe it’s because of something they’ve done. It’s because of their hard work- which it partly is. It’s because of their gifts, or intellect- which it partly is. Or it’s just because of luck- which I suppose, in a sense, might be true. But Genesis 1 paints a picture that says that the goodness we experience in the world is not, in the end, because of any of these things. It’s because it’s how God made the world. It’s because He is a God of blessing who set things up in a certain way to encourage life. This frame, this lens, moves us from a self-sufficient pride to a humble gratitude for all that we have.
And it sharpens how we view the God of the Bible. A lot of people believe that the God of the Bible is fundamentally a God of judgment and wrath, especially in the Old Testament. Maybe that’s why they left faith, or maybe they still have faith but if they were honest, they’re a little uncomfortable with who God is. Now, God does exhibit wrath and does enact judgment, but it’s exactly because He is a God of blessing. It’s when we act in ways that undermine life, that destroy it, that counteract His blessing, that God judges, because He’s passionate about life. But His primary disposition, as seen right here in Genesis 1, is blessing. That’s His desire and intent, which is different from what a lot of people think about the Bible’s portrayal of Him.
4. God is a God who Works
Let’s do two more and these will be a lot quicker. The picture of Genesis 1 clearly portrays God as a God who works, and enjoys working. We’ll get more into this later in the series. But for now, I’ll say that this is again quite different from the gods of the ancient world. In at least one of those ancient creation stories, the gods create humans primarily to do the work that they don’t want to do. Humans are essentially slave labor for them so they can take it easy. They don’t like work. But God does. He’s pretty involved, making a universe is something I haven’t done but I would imagine involves a bit of complexity. The most impressive thing I’ve ever made was a lopsided CD rack in Grade 7 woodworking class. God made a world. And He enjoyed it. Remember, every step of the way, He’s going, “it’s good. It’s good.” And the rest of the Bible makes it clear that He continues to work, that He continues to uphold all of creation through His power. We’ll talk about rest later in this series, but whatever God’s rest means, it doesn’t mean He stopped working. The Bible is clear on that.
Contrast this with the way of thinking known as deism. Deism says that God is like a watchmaker who creates the watch, gets it going, and then is done with it. That’s it, hands off. It’s a thinking that says that yes, God is Creator, but He’s not very interested in what happens next, He’s not going to get involved. And this is a popular way of looking at things. It was an option in Greek philosophy way back in the day and it’s a popular option today. Over a decade ago, a couple of sociologists did a groundbreaking survey to figure out what American teenagers’ beliefs were about God. These would be people now in their 20s and 30s. What the sociologists discovered was a worldview they called “moral therapeutic deism” (Christian Smith, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers). It’s the idea that God made us and wants us to be happy but really doesn’t care much about how that happens, and isn’t going to get very involved. Unless we’re in some crisis and desperately need Him, then He might step in. But that’s it. Just when I need Him. He’s off on the sidelines until I call Him in for one play, then He can go back. Genesis 1 says God is always at work, sustaining and upholding His creation, actively working for the blessing He intends to give, and enjoying this work.
5. God is Present
And that’s closely connected with one final piece. God is present. That’s a huge part of the frame that is given in Genesis 1. He is separate from His creation, but He is present within it.
Under the surface of Genesis 1, as well as Genesis 2, is the idea that the world is a temple for God’s presence. There are a bunch of parallels that suggest this. For example, the word for “light” that we looked at for the sun and the moon is a rare word that is mainly used elsewhere in the Old Testament to refer to the “lights” of the sanctuary in the tabernacle. The tabernacle, and later the temple, are viewed as microcosms of the sacred space that the universe was created to be. Maybe even more significantly, in the ancient world, temple inauguration rituals often lasted for seven days, and culminated in the installation of the statue, or image, of the god, which was believed to have the breath of the god in it. The end result was that the god was taking up residence in this temple- the god was resting in this place that was built to house its presence. In Genesis 1, it’s not a building that is the temple, and it’s not a wooden statue that is the image of the god. It’s creation as a whole that God makes as His home, and it’s humans that He places there as His images, filled with His very breath. Again, God does not set things in motion and then leave the world alone. And He is also not to be identified with creation itself. Instead, He has made it as a receptacle for His presence.
The upshot? God is present in this world, and intends for you to be filled with His presence, so you can bear His image in this world.
Conclusion
Let’s sum up what we’ve had so far. Genesis 1 says that God exists, and that He is the Creator of this world- as I said, I think that’s a thoroughly reasonable assertion in a number of ways. Genesis 1 says that God, while not being alone, is God alone- He is uniquely capable of creating, infinitely greater than any other created being, spiritual or earthly. He has no rivals, no competition, regardless of what our lives say. He is a God of blessing, who has made this world ideal for life and flourishing. He is a God who is actively involved in creation, He’s a God who loves work. And He’s a God who is present, who has designed the world to be receptacle for His presence. At every point, Genesis 1 makes big claims about God, claims that challenge and reframe how the ancient world saw the divine, and how our world today does as well.
But I want to tell you about one more claim, a claim not made by Genesis, but by the New Testament. The claim is that this same God that we find in Genesis 1 became present in a way that nobody quite anticipated: He became flesh and made His dwelling with us in the person of Jesus.
Jesus Himself said that anyone who has seen Him has also seen the Father. You see Jesus, you’re seeing the God of Genesis 1. And think about some of the stories in the Gospels. Once, Jesus was in a boat with his disciples and a massive storm struck and threatened to overturn them. Jesus stood up, spoke a word, and the storm instantly died down. He spoke, and creation responded. Have you seen that before? Think about His healings. Remember the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and no doctor could help her, who was unclean and an outcast. She touched Jesus and was healed. This kind of blessing and flourishing of life: have you seen that before? Or Lazarus, who had died and was in the tomb for four days until Jesus showed up, spoke the word, and summoned him out of the grave: where have you seen that power to create life before? Think about how Jesus was always present to those around Him, always working for their benefit. There’s nobody quite like him, never has been, never will be. At least, no human like him.
This morning, I encourage you to allow Genesis to reframe your view of God. Put on this lens, see what a difference it makes to see God this way. And perhaps it will also enable you to understand who Jesus is. As we’ll see later in the series, things have happened to deprive us of God’s created intent. Jesus has come to restore us. So I encourage you as well to give your life to the One who made all things, who took on flesh and entered our world, in order to fulfill His desire to bless you and give you life.
*Biblical insights mainly gleaned from three commentaries: Bruce Waltke (Genesis, 2001), John Walton (NIV Application Commentary, 2001), and Victor Hamilton (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 1990), as well as Iain Provan (Seriously Dangerous Religion, 2014)
