Trinity Sunday. June 4th, 2023. Series

Genesis 1:1-31, Genesis 2:1-4, Psalm 8:1-9, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20.

A). THE BEGINNING.

Genesis 1:1-31, Genesis 2:1-4a.

"In the beginning God" implies that God existed before the beginning of time. No mere thing existed before the beginning, but only God. There is no duality, no struggle between equal forces of good and evil: just God.

Yet we see God in community with Himself. When God creates man, He says let "us" make man in "our" image, after "our" likeness.

We see Him as the Creator, making all things of nothing. We see Him as the Spirit moving across the face of the deep. And when He speaks the word which sets Creation in motion, we have a hint of the one whom we see more clearly in the New Testament: Jesus (John 1:1-3).

The rhythm of Creation is nicely balanced in this poem. And whilst Genesis 1 is not a scientific thesis, it would not be true to say that it is unscientific. The order of events is not in dispute.

Light is created in the first day, prior to the luminaries which we see in the sky. It is only in the fourth day that the sun, moon and stars appear.

In the second day the vapour above is separated from the seas beneath. On the fifth day both watery realms are teeming with life.

Dry land appears on the third day, giving our planet its name, Earth. Grass, herbs and trees appear, each bearing their own seed.

On the sixth day animal life is created, each after their kind (i.e. without cross-species evolution.) Finally man is created in the image of God.

We are told in this account that when God made man, "male and female created He them." Our communal existence echoes the community within the Godhead. We have a rational soul, and the in-breathed spirit of God.

Each of the days of Creation is punctuated with "the evening and the morning." Yet when we come to the seventh day, the sanctified day of rest from God's original labours, the formula is absent.

Proverbs 8:22-31 provides a fitting commentary on this chapter from the point of view of God's wisdom.

B). A PRAYER OF PRAISE.

Psalm 8:1-9.

This is the only praise Psalm which is addressed entirely to the LORD. No call to worship like Psalm 95:1, ‘O come let us sing unto the LORD.’ No asides to the congregation like Psalm 107:2, ‘Let the redeemed of the LORD say so’.

Psalm 8:1. The vocative brings us straight into the presence of the LORD (Yahweh): “O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” That presence is maintained throughout the meditation, right down to the repetition of the same line in the final verse (Psalm 8:9). This brackets the whole Psalm with the awareness of the One to whom our address is made. Thus we may ‘boldly approach’ (cf. Hebrews 4:16) the LORD, the Sovereign, the maker of heaven and earth.

Although bold, the very use of the vocative suggests a sense of awe in this approach to the LORD. Yet it is not cold fear, but an approach to One who we can call “our” Adonai, “our” sovereign - ultimately “our” Father! The approach celebrates the excellence, the magnificence of God’s great name “in all the earth!” and reminds us how He has set His “glory”, his ‘weight’, as it were, “above the heavens.”

Psalm 8:2. Jesus quoted “out of the mouth of babes and sucklings” as a challenge to ‘the chief priests and scribes’, who wanted to silence the children from singing ‘Hosanna to the son of David’ (Matthew 21:15-16). The babbling of “babes and sucklings” is better than the bitterness of the unbelief of ‘religious’ people! The “babes and sucklings” represent the ‘babes in Christ’, new disciples (Luke 10:21; Mark 10:15; John 3:3), or maybe even all disciples (1 Corinthians 1:27).

Such babbling “stills the enemy and the avenger.” One faltering lisping prayer from faith-filled trusting lips has more value, more weight before God than all the litanies of unbelief. The Psalm’s “thou hast ordained strength” becomes ‘thou hast ordained praise’ in Matthew 21:16. I would suggest that that is where our ‘strength’ lies - in ‘praise’!

Psalm 8:3. The glory of the LORD has already been recognised as “above the heavens” (Psalm 8:1). Now we turn to the heavens themselves, the visible heavens.

I learned this Psalm by heart, in the Scottish metrical version, under the tutelage of a Free Church Minister, the Chaplain of my High School days. This verse in particular remained with me even in my unbelieving years in my late teens and early twenties. It seemed only apt since the Apollo missions were just getting under way.

“When I look up unto the heavens,