In The Beginning
A Year in Genesis • Sermon • Submitted
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· 15 viewsAn exegetical sermon on Genesis 1's creation account, looking at the purpose of creation, comparative analysis of other ANE creation accounts, and what we should be taking away from Genesis 1.
Notes
Transcript
Overview
Overview
This year we’re going to do something I’ve never really done before. We’re going to spend the whole year studying just one single book of the Bible. This whole year, we’ll be diving deep into the book of Genesis.
I’ve decided to do this for two reasons, really. Firstly, because I’ve done a lot of praying, and I feel that this is where the Holy Spirit is leading me. If that’s not enough, however, I also feel that it is of the utmost importance for us to understand Genesis if we’re going to understand anything else in the Bible. Genesis is the beginning, it is the overture to the rest of scripture. Much like a musical or a play, if you miss out on the overture you won’t understand the major themes and ideas when they come back later. It just so happens that Genesis comes back in almost every chapter of the Bible! We have to get Genesis right if we want to read scripture in all of its fullness.
This might be challenging for us, however. I think many Christians feel that they already know Genesis well. It’s like we’re going through familiar territory: The Creation, The Fall, Noah’s ark, Abraham, Joseph, these are familiar characters in familiar settings. I would like to challenge you, however, to come to these characters and these stories with fresh eyes. Let them speak to you anew all over again. I think if we do that, we’ll come to realize how little we understood Genesis all along. And by coming to Genesis as foreigners, unfamiliar with these people and places, we’ll be able to see things that we never saw before.
Have you ever took someone new to the area on a tour around town? Or even just given someone a tour of your house? I find that when I do that, they tend to point out thinks I had alway just overlooked. When I was in college, I loved to hang out with the foreign students. I loved asking them questions about where they were from, and they loved having someone who could help them understand the strange land that they were in as well. One friend of mine pointed out how clean Americans keep their streets. In Mexico, he said, people just throw trash wherever. A friend from China commented on how clean the air was in America. That same friend also told me people were a lot less involved in each other’s lives here. In China, he told me, people you grow up with and go to high school with remain in your inner circle for the rest of your life. These friends of mine, foreigners that they were, gave me a whole new outlook on the place I thought I was so familiar with. And they often made me realize I didn’t know as much about the place as I thought I did!
So I hope, this year, you’ll become a foreigner with me. That you’ll look with fresh perspectives on the stories you grew up with. I think that if you do that, you’ll be surprised by the rich depths of these stories you’d never noticed before.
Foreigners, people who are unfamiliar to the area, are always more attentive to details. In fact, the things they point out have often changed my perspective entirely of the places I thought I was so familiar with.
Day One (v. 1:1-5)
Day One (v. 1:1-5)
This very first chapter of Genesis is somewhat unique. There is an overarching pattern to the Book of Genesis. It is a series of stories and genealogies, yet this passage stands outside of that pattern. It is like an opening song, or overture, to the rest of the book. It is unique, it is poetic, and it has more to tell us than I think many have realized.
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” This simple line, the very first verse of the Bible, already needs some fresh perspective. We typically think of Genesis as a creatio ex nihilo, that is, a creation from nothing. That’s not actually what we have here, however. In the beginning, God creates out of tohu wabohu, which is translated here as “a formless void”. It’s probably more accurate to say it was a “barren desert”. And more precisely, it’s a “barren oceanic desert.” A vast empty sea, over which the Spirit of God is hovering. By “empty” or “barren” here, the author doesn’t mean “non-existent”. The Hebrew “tohu” really means “unproductive”. Nothing can grow there, it is not suitable for life. Now, don’t take this to mean that God didn’t also create water, or that the matter the universe is made out of is eternal just like God. There are other parts of scripture that affirm the idea of creatio ex nihilo, and that tell us that God created even the waters and atoms the universe is made of. But that’s not at all what this passage is concerned with. No, in this part of the story, God is hovering over the chaotic oceanic desert, ready to bring forth life.
This is actually not an uncommon theme in Ancient Near Eastern Creation Myths. Other cultures, like Egypt or Babylon, also thought that the world began as a great ocean. You see, in the ANE, water often represented chaos. For ancient people, the oceans and seas were a terrifying place. There was no knowing when a storm may rise up, capsizing ships, or what huge monstrous creatures lurked beneath the depths of the waters. And so ANE creation myths often began with one or more Gods presiding over the chaotic waters, fighting off chaos monsters, and bringing about the creation of the world.
In ancient Babylon, one such creation myth is the Enuma Elish. It tells us the story of the god Marduk fighting off the goddess of the chaotic oceans, Tiamat. In the story, Marduk battles Tiamat over the ocean. Eventually, he overcomes the goddess by sending his wind down her throat, so that she could not close her mouth. Then, he grabbed each jaw and ripped her in two, throwing one half of her corpse upward to create the sky, and one half downward to create the earth.
An ancient reader might make some connections, here then. This may have been a moment of tension. What chaotic monsters would rise up to challenge this God?
But no such thing happens! No monster rises from the deep, there is no one present to challenge this God. He doesn’t have to defeat dragons and monsters to bring about order and life to the desert. No, this God simply says, “Let there be light, and there was light.” This God creates by act of speech alone. This very first verse sets up a kind of loose pattern for the rest of Chapter 1.
God Speaks, “Let there be...”
His Speech comes to Pass, “And it was so.”
God evaluates, “And it was good”
God Names, “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.”
Conclusion, “There was evening and there was morning, the first day.”
This creation by speech alone shows us that God is utterly unique, there is no challenger to this God. He is utterly and completely in control. He speaks, and his will is carried out. His evaluation, “it was good”, lets us know that the creation is precisely as God intended. The word here, “good”, tob, means “beautiful”. It’s not a moral kind of good. It’s aesthetically pleasing, everything is working the way God intended, and it is beautiful. That God names these things he has created, is also important. In the ANE, naming was about identity, role, and function. The point being made in this creation story, then, isn’t just that God “made” something materially. It is that he gave it order, meaning, a function, and a role to play in the larger scheme of things. This is an aspect of creation we typically don’t think about in modern interpretations of Genesis.
Think about someone who makes a chair. The material creation is important, for sure. To have a chair, you’ve got to have wood or metal arranged in a particular atomic structure. But think about the creation of the very first wooden object with four legs and a platform. What if the person who constructed this object never gave it a name or a purpose. What if he just put the wood together this way and said “That’s all folks!”. No one would know to sit on this object, the thing this person constructed would be a useless waste of space. If that were the case, could you really say that this person created something? All he did was shape the material, but it has no purpose, function, role, or even an identity! While we typically think of creation materialistically, Genesis seems much more concerned with function and purpose. There are several days, as we’ll see, where God doesn’t “create” anything materially. He may “separate”, or assign a function, but he doesn’t always make something materially appear. This is considered, however, just as much a creative act as anything. So, for Genesis, the concern isn’t so much that God arranged matter in a particular way as it is about how God ordered the world for specific functions and purposes, so that all things would work together harmoniously and beautifully.
v. 1:6-
Day Two (v. 1:6-8)
Day Two (v. 1:6-8)
This brings us to day two, where God “creates a dome” to “separate the waters from the waters”. This particular verse has totally stumped people for ages. To understand it, we really have to understand the way ancient people in the Near East thought about the cosmos. The ancient idea of the world consisted of a giant flat platform, supported at each corner by a pillar. They thought of the world, essentially, as a giant table. Underneath this table (and occasionally springing up through the table) there was water, and there was also water above the table. To keep the water above from falling down and flooding the earth, the gods had created a giant metal shield in the sky to keep the water at bay. Occasionally, the sky gods would open up little windows in the shield to rain fall down from the waters above.
Genesis, it seems, is speaking to a people who largely understand the world in this way. Remember, however, that the focus of Genesis isn’t really about the material construction of the world so much as it is about the functions God has established for everything. This might initially be troubling for some of us. Why would something so obviously unscientific be in the Bible? The answer is that God isn’t really concerned with communicating science to his people. In scripture, we see God communicating through culture in ways that the people in that time and place can understand. If God had inspired the biblical authors to start writing about modern conceptions of the water cycle, no one would have been able to understand it!
So what exactly is this passage meant to communicate to us? What is Day two really about if it’s we’re not supposed to think of the world as a table with a shield over it? I think it’s simply telling us that God created and ordered the universe’s systems of weather. This idea of the sky dome is how ancient people explained weather patterns.
Day Three (v. 1:9-13)
Day Three (v. 1:9-13)
Day three is a bit different in that it seems that God “creates” two things. First, he separates the waters from the land. Once the dry land has appeared, God makes plants spring forth. More specifically he makes fruit and seed bearing plants. Why is the biblical author only concerned with these plants? Why not talk about God creating the cactus, or briers, or a Christmas tree even? The answer is, once again, because the author is more concerned with the function of creation rather than the particular material of creation. These are plants that provide food.
Day Four (v. 1:14-19)
Day Four (v. 1:14-19)
On Day four, God creates the sun, moon, and stars. This has thrown many people off, because, as we’ve already seen, God made light on day one! How could God make light before he made the source of light, i.e. the sun and stars? This is a huge problem if we think Genesis is trying to provide a scientific material account of creation. There’s just no getting around it: this doesn’t make sense scientifically!
This begins to make a lot more sense, once again, if we think of God not as making things materially, but as bringing about order and purpose. On Day one, God created light, but he called it “Day”. The author of Genesis isn’t thinking about God creating photons, he’s thinking about God’s creation of a system of time. On Day Four, God is doing something similar: he’s made the lights in the sky not just for providing light, but also in order to be “for signs and for seasons and for days and for years.” These lights were created to help measure time. And not just “summer, winter, spring, and fall.” The word for “seasons” here is more akin to seasons of harvesting food and celebrating holy days. These lights, then, are to help those who inhabit the earth order their lives.
One other thing should be mentioned about the sun, moon, and stars. In the ancient world, many worshipped the Sun and Moon as the highest of deities, with the stars being lesser deities under the Sun and Moon. Interestingly, aside from humans (which we haven’t gotten to yet!), the Sun, Moon, and Stars are the only things God creates that get the right to rule. They are given the authority and power to rule over the heavenly realm where God puts them. This is a hint to us, I think, that the author of Genesis didn’t have giant balls of space gas in mind when he talks about God creating heavenly bodies here. It is very likely that Genesis means to say that God created spiritual beings to rule the sky. In fact, astrologers in the ANE thought that the gods were directly responsible for the movement of the stars, which helped those who paid close enough attention see signs in the sky, and to know when it was time to harvest or to celebrate holy days! What is significant in Genesis, however, is that God does not name the Sun, Moon, or stars. It is also explicit that they, just like everything else, were created by the one singular God. So, unlike the many Sun, Moon, and Star deities of other ANE religions, the heavenly beings were not to be worshipped according to Genesis!
Day Five (v. 1: 20-23)
Day Five (v. 1: 20-23)
On day five, God makes the first creatures to inhabit the earth. When God began to create, the world was a barren desert. Now, however, it is ready to support life. More than that, the creation has been ordered so well that God can issue the blessing, “be fruitful and multiply” to the birds and the fish.
Day Six (v. 1:24-31)
Day Six (v. 1:24-31)
On Day six, God first creates the land animals. Then, God does something utterly unique. We begin to see, perhaps, why God has ordered the world in the way that he has. Weather, time, food, all of this was created in order to support life. Specifically, it was created to support human life. On Day six, the creation comes to a climax as God, shockingly, creates something “in his image”. This phrase “in the image of God”, in the ANE, referred to kings. It was thought that kings were representatives of the gods on earth, sent to rule in their stead. Genesis, shockingly, assigns this royal duty to all humans. This is supported within the text of Genesis as well, as God blesses humanity, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Humans, quite simply, were created to rule creation.
The language in v. 26-27, however, has confused many. Why does Genesis suddenly start using the plural to refer to God? “Let us make humankind in our image; according to our likeness.” There has been a lot of debate over this oddity. Some have suggested that God is speaking here to his royal court (which is mentioned many times throughout the OT in places like Job and the Psalms), perhaps the heavenly beings he created on day four. This doesn’t seem to be the case, however, as the grammar itself doesn’t allow for it. In v. 27 the text clearly goes back to referring to God in the singular: “So God created humankind in his image...” Others have suggested that this is simply a means of “royal speech”. Nowhere else in Genesis one, however, has God spoken in this way.
Another suggestion, and one that I personally find the most convincing, comes from the bible scholar Phyllis Tribble. She suggests that the text itself (surprise!) tells us why God begins to use the plural here. It is because being made in the image of God means to be made “male and female”. That to be like God is to be both male and female. This is not to say that God is gender-fluid or androgynous, but to say that God is complex. The biblical authors, and theologians throughout the centuries, have always known that God isn’t really male or female, God is not gendered, as gender is creaturely trait. Within God, however, we find both motherly and fatherly characteristics. Throughout scripture, God is referred to in both masculine and feminine terms. More than this, however, God is spoken of as complex. There is one God, yet the biblical authors speak of the Word of God, the Angel of the Lord, the Spirit of God, and the Wisdom of God as if they were their own persons. Even in the Old Testament, thousands of years before anything like the Trinity was thought of, the biblical authors understood God as both singular and plural.
This is why we read, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Humanity stands before God as singular, yet we are comprised of the duality and plurality of both male and female. To be “Made in God’s image” is necessarily to be made male and female. To be two, yet one. It might be anachronistic for us to say that the author of Genesis intended to refer to the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit here. The trinity simply wasn’t a concept available to the author at this time. But I don’t think that’s too far off. The author of Genesis understood that God was one, yet also somehow complex. And to be made in his image is to be the same: one humanity, yet also both male and female.
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
Day Seven (v. 2:1-3)
Day Seven (v. 2:1-3)
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
As the creation comes to a close with humanity, we read that God rests on the seventh day. All is done, God’s work is complete, the cosmos is ordered and functioning beautifully. This isn’t God taking a nap, however. Two ancient images could be intended here, or perhaps, as I think, both.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). (). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
The idea of “rest” in the ancient world was sometimes associated with conquering kings. After battle, they would have “rest” in their victory. That can certainly be said of God here. The chaotic lifelessness of tohu wabohu has been conquered, God is victorious.
Perhaps more importantly, however, was the idea in the ANE that Gods “rest” in their temple. And this is precisely the language used in . God is “resting” in his creation, which is portrayed as a cosmic temple! Here in Genesis, the whole world, not just one building, tabernacle, or holy site, is shown to be God’s dwelling place. This is why we read in Isaiah 66:
“Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?”
There’s something else important to understand about this kind of “resting” as well. When a god “rested” in their temple, it wasn’t to kick off their shoes and relax. It was to begin the work of ruling their people. What we have in is not a portrait of a God who makes a clockwork universe to run by itself. It is a God who creates a beautiful universe with which he desires to be intimately involved in. It should also be noted that God isn’t “ruling” in the sense that he becomes a cosmic micromanager. God has delegated authority to humans and even to other divine beings in Genesis. Nevertheless, the Bible leaves no room for deism, that is, a God who made the universe and then left it alone.
Conclusion
Conclusion
It is unfortunate that has been co-opted into a discussion about scientific origins. There’s so much more that Genesis wants to tell us. Genesis is about a majestic and powerful God who has no equal. It is about a God who created and ordered the universe with the wellbeing of his creatures in mind. Weather, time, and food were all created in order to support the life of the creatures this God loves. We see a God who knows what is good for his creation, and desires to bring about the good for his creatures. We see a God who made all humans with dignity. Have you ever stopped to think that every person you meet was made with love by the creator of the universe? And more than that, that they were created to be royalty, to rule the creation? Genesis gives dignity and value to all people, from the rich to the poor, to our friends as well as our enemies, male and female. All are made in the glorious image of God.
And Genesis depicts a God still involved in the world. A God who “rests” in his creation. A God who didn’t just make us and then leave, but who desires to be intimately involved in the world he has made. A God who’s temple is all of creation.
It is unfortunate that, for many, Genesis tells a story about an ugly and sinful world. That’s part of the story, but it’s not all of it. God created the world, and he called it beautiful. I hope that, as you go back out into the world God has made, you’ll remember that. And that you’ll look for the beauty and goodness still in the creation, even amidst the brokenness and sinfulness.
