The Song of Beginnings - Genesis Chapter 1 - 1st in a 4-part Series on the Gospel According to Genesis
Happy New Year to you. I hope it’s been good so far. New Years, like all beginnings of a type, can have an impact on how our year goes and on shaping where we end up at the end of the following year.
We can’t control the external things that are beyond our control, of course, but we can make some decisions going forward about how we are going to do our best to live in the next 12 months.
How we begin the year matters. Our start matters. Our origins matter. They do not necessarily directly determine the outcome of our lives, but they sugges5t the ‘crib’ we were nurtured in.
Today we begin our first series of the year, a 4-parter that will explore the biggest of beginnings, the creation of the world.
Today we will look at “The Song of Beginnings”, chapter 1 of Genesis. Next week we’ll look at “The History of Beginnings” from chapter 2 of Genesis.
The third week we’ll look at “Paradise Lost”, the Biblical record of the Fall of humankind from relationship with God.
On January 25, Bill Ryan will be here and will be looking at the relationship of Cain and Able, in a final message entitled: “Murder Most Foul”.
I hope you’ll be here for the series, and please do invite your friends to come and join us!
I’m thankful to Pastor Timothy Keller for his insights, which have inspired some of today’s message.
Now, you may have noticed that today’s message on Genesis chapter 1 is called “The Song of Beginnings”, and next week’s message is “The History of Beginnings”, and you might wonder what I mean by that.
Well, a really important thing to be aware of when we are reading God’s Word is that the Bible is written using many different forms of writing.
There is history, like in the Gospels, like in the Book of Acts, like the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert and, really, throughout much of the book of Genesis.
In fact a whole lot of the Bible is history. And it reads like history.
But then you also have books like Proverbs, which is decidedly not written like history, but instead is a series of sayings. There is no historical information per se in the book.
Also, much of the Bible contains God’s promises. But Proverbs isn’t a book of God’s promises. It’s a book of principals, the way of wisdom. It’s the wisdom of Solomon, the son of David.
And then you have the Song of Songs, which is written in a poetic, song-like style.
What happens if you read history the same way you read the lyrics to a song?
Well, you get confused, and you might get a bit annoyed, because, for instance, one of the things about songs and poetry is that there’s a fair bit of repetition. We just sang the worship song: “He is Yahweh”. [Put up sheet music].
There you see a lot of repetition: “Who is...?”. And then the chorus repeats: “He is Yahweh” over and over again, and then the chorus itself is sung repeatedly.
You would never find an encyclopedia written like this, you would never write an essay in this style, because it would not work. Song lyrics, poetry is one thing. History is another.
So when you’re reading the Bible, you need to be aware of what you’re reading, so that you understand it as it’s meant to be understood.
Genesis chapter 1 is a song. Some people look in detail at chapter 1 and then chapter 2 of Genesis and say: Hey, these are 2 different accounts of creation, and they contradict each other.
You can only say that when you don’t understand that Genesis chapter 1 is a song, and that chapter 2 is history.
This happens in many places in Scripture, in the book of Judges chapter 4 and 5 for example.
Chapter 4 is a history of how God enabled delivered Sisera to be defeated by Israel through Deborah. Chapter 5 of the same book is a song, the song of Deborah, about the same event.
As a song it uses repetition and some poetic language to express the high emotions they were feeling after a major battle victory.
Now please note that a song or a poem about an event in the Bible is no less true than a historical writing. All of Scripture is God-breathed and fully authoritative.
Exodus chapter 14 is the historical record of the exodus of God’s people from being under the yoke of slavery in Egypt, including the parting of the Red Sea, the crossing of the Red Sea on dry land by the Israelites, and then the drowning of the Egyptians.
Chapter 15 is titled in the NIV, “The Song of Moses and Miriam”, and its a powerful song about the same exact same historical event, but written as a song, with poetic devices or conventions.
I encourage you to read or reread both chapters to get a sense of what I mean.
And with a song lyric, you don’t examine each phrase under a microscope. Exodus 15:4, the song, for example says: “Pharaoh’s chariots and his army (God) has hurled into the sea”.
Well, technically, the waters that had been miraculously parted for the Israelites, after they passed safely through the Red Sea, actually ceased to be parted and came crashing down on the chariots and soldiers.
One is history, the other is a song. But that’s what you do when you know you’re reading poetry...you GET the style, so you don’t quibble with tiny details. That’s very important to understand about how to read the Scriptures.
And we understand that the truth of God’s Word is that it speaks in its inerrancy when it reads as a historical record, when it reads as a poem, or a prophetic work or any other of its literary forms; law, wisdom, poetry. epistles or letters, prophesy or apocalyptic literature.
So, all that to say that Genesis chapter 1 is a song. A beautiful song about the creation of the world by God.
And our song of beginnings starts with 4 powerful words. “In the beginning God...”
In talking about Beginnnings, it’s important to realize that everything has an origin. Everything has a start. Everything has a cause that brought it into being.
Everything comes from somewhere else. Except God. God has no beginning, no dawn, no inception, no starting point. God, who created time itself, is entirely above time.
Time is a limitation, when you think of it. Don’t believe me? Ever sit in class at school waiting for the clock to turn so the class would end.
So the God who exists outside of time creates a beginning...a beginning to matter. Science calls this The Big Bang.
Lots of Christian scientists recognize that there’s no tension between what the Bible says, which is WHAT God did and what science says is the start of all things.
But how did the beginning happen? How did what we know as reality spring into being? What caused matter to exist? To come into being out of nothing, ex nihilo? What was the method or the agent of creation?
When we look at chapter 1 of Genesis, the Song of Creation, the Song of Beginnings, we see God creating the heavens and the earth.
But there is no form to our planet, nothing here, except perhaps water. And there was just darkness.
And then we see that the Spirit of God is hovering over the waters. The word “hovering” here is not, if you think about it, the action of an impersonal force.
We refer to the Holy Spirit with the first person pronoun, ‘he’ because the Holy Spirit is a person.
And as a person, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit here ‘hovers’. That word, ‘hover’ is only ever used in Scripture of a mother bird hovering, brooding or lighting over her young.[3 Pics] Caring for her young; providing, nurturing, protecting, dwelling over her offspring.
And then we see a number of “God said” statements. Now when I want to turn on a light, my word has little power.
Saying: “Light, turn on” achieves nothing. Maybe I can ask someone to turn on the light, maybe I can go and flick it on myself, but my command, my “saying” ‘let there be light’ has no power to it.
In Genesis chapter 1, when God says: “Let there be light”, there is light. It happens. Likewise with all the other things that God speaks - they come to be. God’s Word creates. God’s Word makes it be so.
We’ll turn briefly to John chapter 1. Here we see an parallel in language, and we’re given a clue about the ‘how’ of God’s creating power
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made...14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
If I ask James to turn up the lights, he is the ‘how’ of how the lights get turned up. He’s the agent, the one who acts, getting it done.
Here the Scripture reveals HOW God created everything. Jesus is the HOW, He is the agent of creation. Jesus is the Word, the living, active Word of God.
So we see in the first couple of verses of Genesis, the Song of Beginnings, that Jesus is present as the agent of creation.
So Jesus, the logos or the Word of God, the “do-er” of creation is present. God The Father is present as the one Who speaks creation into being. The Holy Spirit is present as the one who broods, who hovers over the waters.
And we see that God liked what He had made, what He had spoken into being through Jesus Christ. You know how you feel after a good meal. That was good!
Or, if you’re like me and you cook the meal and you watch others enjoying it, you think, ‘that was good’. That sense of satisfaction we feel after a job well done, after a great conversation or a meal. We think or we say: ‘It was good!”.
After God makes something in this Song of Creation, He says that its good. 7 times God says ‘good’. And at the end God looks at everything He has made and He says it is very good.. It is very good.
There is this incredible sense of satisfaction and joy that God has over His creation. His creation brings Him joy and blessing.
We need to spend time considering this Song of Creation in Genesis chapter 1, without being too impatient to move on.
More is coming, a lot more. But we need to dwell here for a while. Consider God’s joy at His creation. His pleasure at all that He has made.
You know, when we think about sharing our faith, and when we talk about a thing like evangelism, we often start not at the beginning - either chapter 1, the Song of Beginnings, or chapter 2, the history of Beginnings.
We skip over that in our thinking and in our sharing.
We skip this joy that God feels at His creation, this enjoyment God experiences after having made all things.
We skip it and then we START with chapter 3 of Genesis, which is about paradise lost, about human rebellion and sin. I get why we do that, but I wonder where we think we get the authority to skip over the beginning?
[Pause] Why does that matter? Would it change anything? Well, it’s the difference between starting off with thinking of people and saying to people:
“You’re a sinner!”; it’s the difference between doing that and starting off with thinking and feeling and then saying: “You are a part of God’s beautiful creation. you were made by God!”.
Sometimes when I’m waiting in line at No Frills or Shoppers, or maybe on the streetcar, I’ll look at folks and just think: ‘Wow. You were made by God. Do you know that?
“Do you know that you’re here because God wants you here, that He crafted you together in your mom’s womb? I hope you know that.
I hope someone lets you in on that amazing truth.”
I think if we start where God starts, with God’s joy at His creation, that doing that will have an impact on those we share with.
And when we then come around to talking about the rift that exists between us an God because of our rebellion, because of our sin. Just some food for thought.
There is so much to talk about with chapter 1 of Genesis, so much that we can’t possibly get to it all. If anything I hope this message motivates you to look deeper into our origins...
Now, for just a moment I’d like us to consider something that is, if we understand it and I can some how communicate it, really quite completely mind-boggling.
Before I start just take a quick look at the people sitting beside you.
I want to talk to you for a moment about you, particularly you if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, if you’ve been born again into the family of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
I want to talk about how you, yes you...are actually in Genesis chapter 1. If you don’t know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, I pray that you will turn in faith to Him today.
Let’s look at Ephesians chapter 1, just after the Apostle Paul’s greeting to the church at Ephesus. It says this:
4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace,which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
So... what was before creation? What was before the creation of the world, the cosmos? Not nothing. In one sense, everything.
Before the creation of the cosmos, which is what the Greek for ‘world’ means there, there was God. And as we’ve explored, there was God the Father, God the Son (Jesus the Christ), and the Holy Spirit. Before time.
Before the creation of the cosmos God was, God dwelt, as the perfect, divine community. Perfect love. Utter sharing and deep mutual praise between the community of the Trinity.
One God in 3 persons. Before water became a reality, before time was born, before matter of any description came into being, there is God.
And out of only pure self-giving love (not out of need, or out of loneliness, as we’ve seen), God imagined your being. You existed in God’s mind, in His intentions, in His plans, in His heart, in a very real sense.
And from that place of God’s foreknowledge of you, He chose you. He selected you. He set you apart as dear unto Himself, so dear that He planned to adopt you through Jesus Christ to be, along with the whole family of God, citizens in the Messianic kingdom. And...and here’s the kicker.
Although it was you personally that God chose, you that God wanted...it wasn’t on account of you, or any of us being any great shakes. It wasn’t on account of us being better than, or more spiritual than anyone else. It was on account of Jesus.
The ground of the choice that God made to bring you into His Kingdom lies in the Christ and in His merits only. He chose us to belong to Him, To be holy, set apart for Him; blameless, through the blood of Jesus Christ, in His sight. Cool, eh?
Now here’s the problem with what I just said. Now, it’s not really that it’s too utterly incomprehensible. It’s not that it’s too good. It’s not that it seems a little too “out there”.
It’s this: there are facts that are hard to get into your head. As I was preparing for this message I just asked myself: Hang on. Do I believe this? Do I actually believe in my heart and in my head what this passage says. Do I believe this?
You know, sometimes it’s hard to get things into your head. Very bad things are hard to get into your head. The death of a loved one is really difficult to accept, to let in, to become accustomed to, and then to live with.
Although it’s old news now, 9/11 was hard for most people to wrap their minds around. 8 hours from here in a brazen act of war, jets flew into huge buildings, causing massive loss of life. Very bad things are hard to get into your head.
You know what’s weird? Very good things are also hard to get into your head...good things like the fact that you are loved so much, you are so precious to Him, that your own existence matters so much that it was in God's mind before he made anything.
And perhaps that is the good news in the book of Genesis, the book of Beginnings. Understood in the light of the Scriptures we’ve explored today, the gospel according to Genesis is that God planned to create and ultimately to redeem the humanity that was in His heart to redeem.
Jesus, the agent of creation, the Son, who as Hebrews 1 says “is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word”; Jesus, is present in Genesis 1 as the agent of creation.
The Holy Spirit, present in this first chapter of the Bible, shown hovering over the waters-like a mother bird over her young.
So, will you let the Song of Beginnings, the Poem of Creation, this incredible insight in your origins and the origins of the entire human race, into your world, into your heart?
Are we, like all creation, poised to praise our great and mighty Creator God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
Will you embrace the truth that since before even what is recorded happened in Genesis, you were in God’s heart.
You were part of God’s plan, your life, the PURPOSE of your life, is intimately and perfectly connected to God’s highest purpose, to redeem for Himself a people that would be for the praise of His glorious grace.
So…how will you live this week in the light of the Song of Beginnings, this story of the origins of everything? Will you dwell on God’s blessing of His creation with the words: “It is very good”? Will you hear that about yourself?
Will you look with wonder at yourself and others, strangers, even, as marvellously made by God? Will you live knowing that they need to know that their lives and your life truly, objectively, matters, because you, we, they, matter to God?
May we live like this, and so be better prepared to share with people how God wants them to come to Him through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen? Amen!
