MORNING MESSAGE: John Cline
Text: Genesis 1:1-2:3; Colossians 1:13-15
Reader: Karen Cline
“Bereshith”, the Hebrew word for the English “Genesis”, literally means “in the beginning.” The Book of Genesis is about the beginning of recorded time, of history, the universe, our planet, all creatures, and of humans. Starting in chapter 12, Genesis also explains the beginning of the Israelite people from Abraham on. But, for us to understand all those beginnings we need to comprehend that God was actually before anything began. If ever there was a case for a verse zero in the Bible, it would be at the start of the Book of Genesis, for God was at verse 0, before the beginning of everything and then, in verse 1, God began creating. The “Big Bang” theory postulates the universe started by accident, without God, with no designer or creative mind behind it but any detailed observation of our universe, our bodies, of creation points to a cosmic designer, a creative mind behind it all.
The famous 17th century physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton, the man who discovered white light which led to an understanding of the colours in physical optics, the discovery of infinitesimal calculus, the three laws of perpetual motion, and the laws of gravity which happened after sitting under an apple tree and having an apple fell on his head, was a devout Christian who believed the necessity of a creative mind, a cosmic designer, in other words, God, being behind all things. Newton had a perfectly scaled down replica of the then-known solar system built, with a large golden ball representing the sun at the center, and the known planets revolving around it through a series of cogs, belts, and rods. One day while Newton was studying his model, an agnostic friend stopped by. The man marveled at the machinery and asked, “Who made this exquisite thing?” Knowing that his friend mocked his belief in the designer God of creation, and without looking up, Newton replied, “Nobody.” “Nobody?” his friend asked. “That’s right,” said Newton, “all of these balls and cogs and belts and gears just happened to come together, and by chance they began revolving in their set orbits with perfect timing.” The man stopped talking. Newton made his point that day, but the battle still rages in our modern day and age, particularly after the popularization of the hypothesis of the “Big Bang” theory. In my seminary days, a student at our college wrote a song he entitled, “Who Banged the Big Bang, Baby?”, in which he questions if the “Big Bang” mustn’t there have been a creative mind, a cosmic designer, in other words, God, behind all things. So, we read in Genesis 1,
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)
This truth is repeated throughout scripture, such as in this Psalm:
In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. (Psalm 102:26)
Ok, before we get to reading all of Genesis 1, there are four aspects concerning creation that we need to consider. First, concerning God,
The word for God in Genesis 1 is “Elohim”, a plural word.
That name for God, Elohim, is used 2,500 times in the Old Testament. But how can God, the one and only God, be plural? Yet, we later read,
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” (Gen. 1:26)
Who is the “us” and the “our” God was referring to? In Genesis 3:22, after God has created humans, we read, “And the LORD God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us.’” Jewish theologians struggle to explain this but they try mightily, for example, by suggesting that the plurality of Elohim God is referring to the “heavenly court” which includes God and His angels, yet angels are created beings whose purposes are to be “ministering spirits” to humans, to worship God in heaven, and to do His bidding in this world. Thus, angels cannot be considered as part of Elohim.
Christian theologians explain, by contrast, that in the Genesis passages, God the Father is having a conversation with God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and that the plural name Elohim thus refers to the Godhead, the Three-in-One, the Trinity. There are many truths that Christian theologians contend were concealed in the Old Covenant/Testament but then later revealed in the New Covenant/Testament. Concerning the act of Creation, let’s look at what the Bible says Jesus’ involvement. The apostle John writes,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:1-3)
The apostle Paul elaborates on this understanding of Jesus by writing,
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:15,16)
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews adds this summary statement:
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So, he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. (Heb 1:1-4)
We know that during his three years of ministering on earth, Jesus amazed his disciples by having control over nature, whether it be the wind and the waves on the Sea of Galilee, or in his power to heal the sick, or give sight to the blind, or make a lame person walk. So, Jesus is pretty straight-forward as to his role in creation. As for the Holy Spirit, the 3rd person of the Trinity, we read this at creation,
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Genesis 1:2)
What the word “hovering” means is not described but the Hebrew word for “spirit”, “ruach” also means “breath”, thus, we can understand:
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. (Psalm 33:6)
Moving on now to a second aspect of creation that I want to consider before we read through all of Genesis 1, let’s look at the question of evolution. I remember when scientist and university lecturer Don Bierle was the guest speaker for our church’s 50th Anniversary weekend, that he explained his scientific journey going from believing in evolution to rejecting it. As for me, not for one minute do I believe that the schoolteachers who taught about evolution were intentionally misleading me and my fellow students. Those teachers were passing on what they had been taught and following a provincially mandated curriculum.
However, I come to the point in my life where I do not believe in the theory of macro-evolution for it’s “survival of the fittest” hypothesis goes against the observable scientific laws of gradual decay and disorder in our world. As well, the macro-evolutionary claim that human life came from single-celled amoebas which then split and formed two-celled creatures, out of which multi-celled beings evolved which led to fish developing legs and coming up out of the sea onto the dry land and evolving into two-legged apes which then evolved into humans, well, when I realized that none of those links or steps of macro-evolution has ever been observed or duplicated, breaking a basic rule of science, that is when I started to not believe in the theory of macro-evolution.
Over the decades of my life, the evolutionary predecessors of humans I was taught about while in school, such as Lucy in Kenya, Piltdown Man in England, and many others, have either been determined to have been fully apes or were outright hoaxes. Genetics has established that Neanderthals were fully human and not a link on any evolutionary line and has explained that any physical differences from us were variations that have occurred within humans in what is called “micro-evolution”. The Bible does not teach macro-evolution, that’s for sure, e.g. that humans came out of apes, but it does teach micro-evolution, natural adaptations within species, according to their “kind”.
Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:11,12)
This micro-evolution, the changing of one thing into another according to the kind, is seen everywhere in nature, both naturally and by human inventiveness. For example, Macintosh apple trees originated in 1811 when a small branch from one type of apple tree was cut off and grafted onto another apple tree of a different type, but the key is that it was grafted onto a larger branch of an entirely different apple tree which then produced a new type of apple called the “Macintosh”, a which the process the Bible knows as something new happening if it according to its “kind”. Fruit such as apples and pears, which come from seeds, can be grafted onto trees that grow fruit with other seeds. But a branch of a fruit tree that has stone pits, such as peaches, can only be grafted onto another stone pit fruit tree. Apples cannot be grafted onto peach trees or vice versa. Micro-evolution within species of their own kind happens, as does natural adaptation within species.
And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So, God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. (Genesis 1:20,21)
Within species of birds, dogs, cats, humans, etc., micro-evolution or natural adaptation, thus occurs when those creatures adapt to their environment. So, the battle between evolution and creation does not include micro-evolution but only macro-evolution. At its heart, though, creation scientists point out, macro-evolution is really a battle about God. If macro-evolution can be proved, then God can be dismissed.
Moving on, the third aspect of creation I want to consider before we read through Genesis 1 concerns the length of time it took for God to create the universe and everything within it. In the Hebrew language,
The word “yom” refers to either a 24-hour day or a period of time.
In Genesis 1, the word “yom” refers to a 24-hour day in that the normal pattern of a day having an evening and morning are used. The problem is that a 24-hour day requires the presence of the sun and moon, and the sun and moon don’t appear until the fourth day of creation. About that 4th day, we read that Genesis 1 says,
God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day. (Genesis 1:16-19)
So, the word “yom” is used in a 24-hour day sense in Genesis 1 but it is also used in a non-specific period of time is seen in that it is used in referring to the time or “day” of individuals such as Noah, much like in English we refer to the 60-year-plus reign of Queen Victoria as being in the “day of Queen Victoria”. We know that the Bible teaches in 2 Peter 3:8, “But forget not this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” I want to state that no one is saved or lost according to their understanding of how long a “yom” was, whether or not it is a 24-hour day or a period of time. Certainly, no one can honestly say that the 4th century Christian leader and thinker Augustine was not saved because of his non-belief in six 24-hour days of creation but, rather, that God created instantaneously, but with the capacity to develop, much like a seed has the capacity to develop into a mature tree. In Augustine’s view creation was portrayed in Genesis 1 as happening over a week’s time to accommodate human understanding. Personally, I lean towards believing in six 24-hour days for creation because God is God and has the power and ability to do such a thing. As well, the carbon dating that scientists use to establish the age of thing as being millions or billions of years old is known to be faulty when applied to anything older than 3,500 years of age. Besides which, I was lied to about macro-evolution so “once burned, twice shy” so I don’t believe that it would have taken God billions of years to create the universe.
By the way, concerning how there could be light on days 1,2, and 3 if the sun and moon and stars did not appear until Day 4, we read in Revelation 21:22,23 about the future New Jerusalem that God will create, ‘I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.’ So, if in the future, God Himself will be light sufficient for all, then perhaps the same was true in the beginning. Besides which, as the 16th century Italian bishop named Bonaventure stated: “God did not create to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it to those whom he loves.”
Ok, let’s move on to the fourth aspect that I want to consider before we read all of Genesis 1:
Who wrote Genesis? Tradition has always ascribed it to Moses. Liberal theologians attempted to discredit this by attributing it to the J-E-P-D hypothesis (Jahwist, Elohist, Priestly, Deuteronomic)
That hypothesis might look plausible when looking only at Genesis 1 and 2, where the word Elohim is exclusively used in Genesis 1 when referring to God while the word YHWH is used in Genesis 2, but what about those hundreds of verses where both names are used, “YHWH Elohim”, or “Lord God”? There are even passages where all four “original documents” appear. I have seen “bibles” in which all four sources are colour-coded and it is simply a laughable mess. It is simply not realistic to believe that some later editor took all four of those supposed “original documents” and then picked them apart and squished them back together into one united document. And, of course, there is no historical support or evidence of such a thing. The entire J-E-P-D hypothesis arose at the same time as the theory of macro-evolution and seems to be just another attempt to discredit the Bible and thus get rid of God.
Jewish tradition states that Moses – with some helpers – wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, including Genesis. That Moses knew what to write came through divine revelation from God as well as by him using other ancient, non-canonical, written works, a common practice that we have come to see was used throughout the Old Testament. Also, the ancient peoples were not illiterate as 18th-century liberal skeptics claimed. Archaeologists have dug up documents thousands of years old that have advanced written languages on them. “Cavemen” were not primitive stone-age, lumbering brutes who grunted their way toward language. The archaeological evidence says the opposite—early humans were intelligent and incredibly creative, as their ancient building structures such as the pyramids all around the world reveal!
So, now, let’s read from Genesis 1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he 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 God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So, God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So, God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 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 there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So, God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Thus, the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so, on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. (Genesis 1:1-2:3)
