The Most Important Verse In The Bible Series

On Christmas Eve in 1968, in what was the most watched television broadcast at the time, the crew of Apollo 8 circled the dark side of the moon and headed toward home. As their tiny capsule raced through space, they saw the glistening blue and white hues of earth fill their window. In that majestic moment they were struck with awe and wonder.

They did not quote Einstein, Shakespeare, or Darwin. Taking turns, the three reverently recited Genesis 1:1-10 word for word from a Bible supplied by the Gideon’s. Billions of people around the world heard the Word of God echoing from outer space, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

[Watch this brief clip].

This image was eventually turned into a postage stamp with the words, “In the beginning, God…” at the bottom. The chances of us having a stamp with a Bible verse on it today are about the same as seeing a 6-cent stamp again.

In reporting on this big event, I came across this sentence from an article in National Geographic: “The Apollo 8 mission captured a photograph of earth from space that forever changed the way we saw ourselves.” While that might have been one of the benefits, I submit the wonder of creation should forever change the way we see the Creator. Our text today is Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Here’s what I’m hoping we learn together: Genesis has a big beginning because God is a big God.

Last weekend, we kicked off our series called, “Back to the Beginning” and established this truth: “To move forward in our faith, we must go back to the beginning.” How many of you have been using the Edgewood Bible Reading Plan to read Genesis? Many of us have also been reading the first chapter of Genesis every day. In addition, we’re encouraging everyone to read the entire Book of Genesis in one sitting before Thanksgiving. This week I learned it will take about 3.5 hours to do this so I’m going to amend our assignment by suggesting it would be fine to listen to an audio reading of Genesis.

The first sentence of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible is simple and straightforward, yet complex and compelling. It is easy to understand and yet its meaning is inexhaustible. It is both majestic and mysterious. It is factual, and yet something we believe by faith.

The opening verse of the Bible is controversial in our culture today: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Skeptics, atheists, evolutionists, unbelievers, and doubters of all varieties have taken aim against the opening chapters of Genesis, arguing that it is absurd to believe in the existence of God, a six-day Creation, a literal Adam and Eve, a talking serpent, a Garden of Eden, original sin, Noah and the Ark, a worldwide flood, and the Tower of Babel.

One pastor put it like this:

“Unfortunately, many Christians have bought into these attacks to a significant degree. Because we are intimidated by the cacophony of criticism...it has been easier for us to keep silent so we won’t be mocked or to make a series of compromises so that we can live at peace with the unbelieving majority…there is no need to make compromises with unbelievers. It never works, it never helps, and they won’t be convinced by our compromising anyway.”

Since Genesis 1:1 is true, Ray Pritchard lists seven beliefs which are dismantled by these opening words – atheism, materialism, polytheism, humanism, fatalism, pantheism, and evolution: “Naturalistic evolution as a worldview is diametrically opposed to biblical faith. It is pagan at its root and evil in its fruit.”

We could say it this way. If Genesis is not true, then the whole Bible is suspect. If you can’t trust what is written here, how can you trust the rest of Scripture? A.W. Pink refers to Genesis as the “seed plot of the Bible.” If you discount Adam and Eve, how can you be sure Christ is real?

Genesis either explains it all or it does not explain it at all. You either believe it or you don’t. If you don’t, you can’t believe anything else in the Bible. If you believe it, you can believe everything else the Bible teaches. According to Psalm 14:1, only “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

While I’ve not read it yet, my plan is to read Erwin Lutzer’s new book called, “No Reason to Hide: Standing for Christ in a Collapsing Culture.” Here’s the first sentence from the summary: “In a culture with an ever-narrowing definition of tolerance, Christians can no longer stay silent about the divide between the Bible’s truth and the world’s lies.”