You Can't Reach Home Until You Leave First Base

You Can’t Reach Home Until You Leave First Base

By Pastor Jim May

Genesis 1:1 tells us that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. For 5 literal days He undertook the creation of something out of nothing, turning darkness into light, separating land from the water of the seas, hanging the stars in the vast expanse of empty darkness, giving pinpoints of light and placing them in a very specific order so that they would accomplish two great missions in His intricate plan for his greatest creation yet to come.

First, they were to divide darkness from light and bring into existence a little thing called time. At that moment, out of the infinity of eternity, God carved out a little space and called it time, giving it a set beginning and a pre-determined end, when time would be no more and would be swallowed up into eternity once again.

Secondly, those little pinpoints of light, so many millions and billions of miles out in space are placed at precisely the right spot in relation to the other stars and planets around them, so that when they would be seen from the surface of the earth, they would be a never-ending witness of God’s grace and mercy.

Just a little side note here: Science has proven through many years of research that the sun is the center of our universe and that there are untold numbers of universes, just like ours and even bigger, that are out there in space. We are told that the earth is just one very tiny planet among innumerable giants throughout the Milky Way alone. But I want you to understand based upon God’s creation of the universe, that the earth may not be the center of the physical universe, but it is the very center of God’s creation. Isn’t it a wondrous thing to think of all of the planets in all of the universes that God spoke into existence and remember that they are all moving but still staying in the same relationship to the earth so that God’s story has been, and always will be seen in the stars until the end of time.

In Genesis, we see the King of the Universe, the Omnipotent Creator, and the Almighty Eternal God as he steps foot onto the earth that He has created, bends down to the ground that He caused to be separate from the waters of the sea, scooped up a handful of dust that He had just spoken into existence, and from that handful of dust begins to lovingly create a being that would reflect God’s own image and character. Everything else of creation was created simply by speaking forth command that brought it into existence, but this creation was different.

God just didn’t speak man into existence like everything else, He formed man with His own hand. This creature called ‘man’, was to be the crowning touch of God’s creation, because man was to have a very special purpose in God’s plan. He already had servants, called angels. He already had a throne and a glorious land called Heaven. What more could He want?

God wanted a creature that would not just honor Him as God, or serve Him as their King, because that was what they were created to do. He wanted a creature that would have the power to choose to serve Him, choose to honor Him and most of all, have the ability and the will to choose to serve and honor God simply because they loved Him.

And so we read beginning in verse 26 how God brought man into existence.

Genesis 1:26-31, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."