The Beginning Point
Genesis 1
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
Introduction: Great books always have great beginnings. Good writers know the opening lines can hook or lose the reader. The first words provide the first impression and often set the tone for everything that follows. Charles Dickens began his classic “A Tale of Two Cities” with “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Shakespeare started “Romeo and Juliet,” his unforgettable story of tragic love, with “Two households, both alike in dignity.”
Rick Warren begins his bestseller “The Purpose Driven Life” with these lines. “It’s not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment…” Opening lines tell us something important about a book.
That’s equally true of the Bible. The first line of the first chapter of the world’s most important book starts with, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Every word in the Book flows from that first verse.
Years ago, the great Princeton Bible scholar, Dr. B. B. Warfield offered this illustration. (Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol. I, edited by John E. Meeker (Nutley, N.J. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1970), p. 108.) He asks us to imagine that we are standing in front of a huge plate glass window. Imagine it’s a picture window in a lodge perched high on a mountainside. Outside a majestic scenic vista spreads from horizon to horizon. The scene catches your eye. You walk to the huge window. Two things can happen. You can see from two different perspectives, but probably not both at the same time.
You could look at the window. Your gaze can focus on the glass itself. You might look at the smudges. Window cleaners missed a spot there. You see a child’s handprint over there or a dog’s nose print down there. If you are scientifically minded, you might look for defects in the glass. Maybe a slight bubble here or distortion there. You might wonder about its composition or manufacturing process. You could speculate about its cost or quality. If you are a carpenter, your eyes might drift toward the installation. You might inspect the quality of the glazing or the tightness of the trim. You could stand there and look at the window. That’s one perspective.
On the other hand, you could look straight through the glass to the panoramic scene of mountains and valleys spread out below. You could see the sun glistening off a snow peak. An eagle soars in the morning sky. You can barely make out a logging truck in the distance. You stand in awe of the beauty. You know the glass is there. But you hardly notice. The window wasn’t placed there for people to look at. It is there for people to look beyond—to see through it to what it reveals. So with Genesis 1!
Some people only see the window when they read Genesis 1. They read it like a science book. They take it for the creator’s laboratory journal. It tracks his step-by-step procedures in fashioning the universe. Such people look for evidence of this or that process. Others read it as a science book and find it wanting. They cast it on the scrap heap of pre-scientific speculations along with flat earth theories and other ancient myths and legends.
Genesis is not a science book. It wasn’t intended to be. That, however, doesn’t mean that it’s not true or that it is filled with fanciful myths. Those who read such things into it miss the whole point. Consider the amazing piece of literature that we read a few minutes ago. Genesis does not claim to be an eyewitness account. It is God’s revelation through Moses about the beginnings of human history. The book was most likely written over 3500 years, well after the creation events themselves. It is amazing how different Genesis 1 is from other ancient writings.
We know what ancient peoples in Egypt, Greece and the Orient believed about the universe. Stories and legends abound. The moon god and the sun god fought. Their blood filled the oceans. Their footsteps formed valleys and mountains. Some ancients believed the earth was a plate that sat on the back of a turtle that stood on the back of a crocodile that rested on the back of an elephant—and other such nonsense. Folk in even less ancient times speculated that the earth was flat or that the sun revolved around the earth. The world in which Genesis 1 was written was filled with such thinking. But this book never commits itself to any such ideas.
Instead it presents a straightforward simple, common sense account of the beginnings in the only way that could speak to people who lived 3500 years ago and still make sense in the 21st Century. That’s amazing! Imagine that you were assigned the task of explaining to a five-year-old how an airplane flies or a huge metal battleship stays afloat. The principles of physics and aerodynamics wouldn’t help. You could spin some tall tale that might satisfy for the moment but would quickly fail as the child learned and grew. That was the challenge of Genesis.
Genesis is not a science book, but it stands the test of science. More and more the scientific world is coming to grips with the truth revealed in Genesis. Lee Strobel, a former writer for the Chicago Tribune and an atheist who came to faith in Christ, recently authored a book entitled The Case for the Creator. Strobel uses his skills as an investigative journalist to interview experts from various scientific fields. Time after time, the various scientists point to findings that confirm rather than deny the credibility of Genesis. He includes this quote from Arno Penzias, a Nobel-winning physicist. “The best data we have (concerning the origin of the universe) are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Bible as a whole.”
Strobel also cites Harvard-educated, Georgetown professor Patrick Glynn. Glynn, also a former atheist, says in his book God: The Evidence: “Today, the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis...Those who wish to oppose it have no testable theory to marshal, only speculations about unseen universes spun from fertile imaginations...Ironically, the picture of the universe given to us by the most advanced 20th century science is closer in spirit to the vision presented in the Book of Genesis than anything offered by science since Copernicus.”
Genesis 1 is not a science book. But neither does it fail the tests of science despite what a lot of uninformed people claim. This opening chapter of the Bible is one of the most amazing pieces of literature ever written. It is not a science book. It doesn’t tell us everything about what God did and how he did it. Lots of details that we would love to know about are missing. The chapter leaves lots of room for speculation and differences of opinion. To get caught up in those things is like standing at the window and staring glass.
You can read Genesis 1 that way. Or you can look through the glass and see what it is designed to reveal. Genesis 1 is not so much an explanation of creation as it is a revelation of the creator. It is what we see when we look through this chapter that matters most. What do we see through the window?
We see the power of God. Genesis 1 tells us that God is eternal. Nothing else is. Three men were sitting in the coffee shop arguing about whose profession was the oldest. The doctor says, "Well, the Bible says that God took a rib out of Adam to make woman. Since that clearly required surgery, then the oldest profession is medicine.” The engineer looks at the doctor and says, "No, the Bible also says that God created the whole world out of void and chaos. To do that, God must surely have been an engineer. So engineering is the oldest profession.” The lawyer smiles and leans forward and says, "Ah, but who do you think created the Chaos?"
The eternal God we worship and who has revealed himself in Genesis and in the person of Jesus Christ our savior called this world into being. He and he alone gives it purpose and meaning. He is the beginning point. He created it all from nothing. Only the eternal God could do such a thing. He called it all into existence. He said, “Let there be light and there was.”
I can’t let this pass without making another observation. If God is God, then we’re not. We didn’t make the world. We don’t own it. None of us are truly self-made men or women. What ever we have, who ever we are has come from the hand of God. That’s something worth remembering.
When we look through the window of Genesis 1 we see the God who works with a plan. God is the designer of this world. This universe is not an accident. He designed it with purpose and structure. Genesis 1 organizes the account of creation around the activity of God on six successive days. On each day, he calls into being another part of creation. As one day flows into another, the simple gives way to the more complex. It all fits together in a way that chance can never explain. What is most striking is his assessment at the end of each days work. “It is good.” That’s an important insight into the mind of our God.
If the designer of the universe made this world and everything on purpose and with a purpose, what makes you think you’re an accident? You’re not. His purpose and plan goes all way to the heart and soul of your life. That’s the God Genesis 1 reveals.
Most of all through Genesis 1, we also see our purpose. Genesis 1 tells us that we humans were made by God and for God. We are made of the same stuff (physically) as everything else. But we are more than the physical. Genesis tells us that we were made for fellowship with God. We were made in his image. Nothing else in creation is. We fulfill our intended purpose when and only when we function within that purpose.
Conclusion: Let me change metaphors as I draw this to a close. A few months ago when we started the work on Fellowship Park across the street, the contractor needed to know where to put the concrete. No small matter. Tony Teague suggested my front yard would be a good place for it. We knew approximately what size the picnic shelter should be. We had preliminary plans for the dimensions of the basketball court. The question was where! We knew the city required any structure to be set back at least twenty-five feet from the front, fifteen feet on the rear and ten feet on the side. No problem!
Since nobody else was around, Jeff and I decided to get a tape measure and set the stakes. If that sounds like a recipe for confusion, you’re probably right! We had our tape and we sort of knew how to read it. We had the dimensions of our project. We remembered some but not all of our math skills. Just in case, we had a calculator. No problem! One problem! We didn’t know where to start. Where do we measure from? Twenty-five feet from where? The center of the street? The edge of the street? The inside outside of the sidewalk?
All the expertise in the world, which we certainly lacked, would have been no help without knowing the starting point. After a couple of phone calls to city hall, we finally got the info we needed. Once we had our starting point, we could be the measuring.
(In case you are wondering: the set back in Vandalia is from the property line and property lines are measured from the inside of the sidewalk. The rear set back is measured from the center of the alley. You can arrive at the side property line by measuring sixty feet from the inside corner of the sidewalk on the other side of the adjoining property. If you are lucky, there should be a surveyor’s pin somewhere near that corner. Most of the time there isn’t!)
What is true of property lines is also true of life. Everything depends on the starting point. I don’t care how much you know, how much you have, or where you think you’re headed, if you don’t know the starting point, you don’t have anything!
Genesis 1 is more than a preface to a book. The opening chapters of Genesis provide more than the beginning to the Bible. They provide the reference point of the universe.
If life is a journey, the Bible is a map. But a new map to uncharted territories isn’t much help until you get oriented. You need to figure out north from south and east from west on the map. You need something to help you make sense of all those little details on the map. If life is a journey and the Bible is a map, then Genesis 1 is that little legend up in the corner of the map that explains which way’s up, where to start, and what it all means along the way.
I invite you to join me on a journey. First, we will get ourselves oriented. Then we’ll follow the map. It will lead us on a journey of a lifetime, all the way to the cross, and on into eternity. Anyone want to go along?
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College of the Bible, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
