TEXT: Genesis 1:1-8
MESSAGE: “God is Creator”
“I had an enormous feeling that there had to be a power greater than any of us – that there was a God, that there was indeed a beginning.”
— Frank Borman
“I’m pretty certain after many years of thinking about this that Genesis 1 is not designed to answer the question of how; it’s designed to talk about why. It’s designed to talk about what creation means and its significance and so on. What it does mean is you have to be relatively careful not to push the details, because it’s not there to give you details…What we really need to know about this world is … Why did God make it? What is it for?…How do we live in it? Rather than … How long did he take to do it, and exactly how did it happen?” — Keller, T. J.
As we read the story of Creation, it causes us to ask three questions…
1. Who is this about? (v. 1-2)
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
2. How did this happen? (v. 1b; 3-5)
“God created the heavens and the earth….And God said, Let there be light…”
“The world, when you look at it, it just can’t be random. I mean, it’s so different than the vast emptiness that is everything else, and even all the other planets we’ve seen, at least in our solar system, none of them even remotely resemble the precious life-giving nature of our own planet.”
— Chris Hadfield (Astronaut)
3. Why does this matter?
v. 8; v. 31 — “And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.”; 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
TAKEAWAYS: What can we learn from God being Creator? To…
*Start with God
*See His Uniqueness
“Other ancient Near Eastern creation stories (from Egypt and Mesopotamia, for example) assume that their gods worked with material that already existed. However, biblical testimony here and elsewhere insists that at the point of the beginning there was nothing apart from God, and what exists apart from God was brought into being by Him.” – Derek Thomas
*Surrender to Him
“When the surrender of ourselves seems too much to ask, it is first of all because our thoughts about God Himself are paltry. We have not really seen Him, we have hardly tested Him at all and learned how good He is. In our blindness we approach Him with suspicious reserve. We ask how much of our fun He intends to spoil, how much He will demand from us, how high is the price we must pay before He is placated. If we had the least notion of His loving-kindness and tender mercy, His fatherly care for His poor children, His generosity, His beautiful plans for us; if we knew how patiently He waits for our turning to Him, how gently He means to lead us to green pastures and still waters, how carefully He is preparing a place for us, how ceaselessly He is ordering and ordaining and engineering His Master Plan for our good-if we had any inkling of all this, could we be reluctant to let go of our smashed dandelions or whatever we clutch so fiercely in our sweaty little hands?” – Elisabeth Elliot
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” – John 1:14;16