Point of Origin
Genesis 1
by Dr. Phillip Reynolds, Pastor
Today marks the
beginning of a sermon series which is going to run for about two months called
“Preaching the Great Chapters of the Bible,” and we simply must start with
Genesis 1. We will do four Old Testament chapters: Genesis 1, about the
creation, and then Genesis 12, how God reached into that creation and called
one individual, the man Abraham, to be faithful to him and through whom God
could work out his promises to all humankind.
Following that
we will focus on Psalm 51, a psalm about man’s remorse at his own sinfulness.
That Sunday we will talk about what we do when God’s wonderful creation has
been violated and the covenants have been broken by humankind. What will we do
then? The final Sunday of the Old Testament series will focus on Isaiah 53,
where God makes provision for our brokenness and the
violations by sending His Suffering Servant to take away the sin of the world.
So
creation, promise, violation, and restoration as we go through the Old
Testament. Great,
great chapters of the Bible. It was a real challenge to narrow this to
four. You ought to try it sometime—pick out the four greatest chapters in the
Old Testament. There are so many others that could have been included.
The most
important part of this sermon, I hesitate to say, has
already occurred and will occur when we do our parting words—the final three
verses of Genesis, chapter 1. The creation story has been read. That is
important. The children have been reminded in the children’s story that Genesis
1 tells us above all who created the world. This has been stressed.
I grew up
reciting the Apostle’s Creed. Do you remember how the Apostle’s Creed begins?
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” The doctrine
of creation is about God. It’s not about creationism versus the evolutionary
theories. Both of them are wrong, I think. The evolutionists may think that the
world is vast and complex and is a result of some sort of accident other than the
working of an omnipotent and personal God. The creationists who fail to see
evidence that God created over a long period of time, laboring over His
creation, lovingly working with it over the eons to bring it into being, also
miss the point.1
If we’re going
to be honest with ourselves as we read the Bible, we have to admit that the
writers of the Genesis story aren’t interested in how, hardly at all, but are greatly interested in who created the world. The writer of
Genesis doesn’t seem to be any more interested in how than the writers of the gospel stories seem to be interested in
how Jesus was born of a virgin. We
don’t get the physiology of that. We are not told how that happened. And when
Jesus arrives and does signs and wonders and miracles among us, we’re not told
how they happened. We’re not given the science of how water turns into wine. Or how medically a leper is cleansed. Or
how a grown man walks on the surface of a lake. Or how
a dead little girl is raised to new life again.
None of the how is explained. The who is stressed.
And the question is asked, “Do you believe?” “Do you believe in the one who did
this?” That’s the stress of Genesis, chapter 1. We want to get back to who. Who is important.
Who God is, who you are, who I am, is important. Reading Genesis 1 is a journey
to uncover our roots.
A few weeks ago
I had a relative die back in
The Bible does
the same thing, traces back. The first
nine chapters of Chronicles are genealogies. (I’m trying this year to read the
Bible through. Read nine chapters of genealogy after you’ve already survived
Leviticus and Numbers, try that.) But the Bible is saying, “This is important.
Who we are, where we come from, is important. Follow us back.” And back it goes
in Chronicles to Adam. Matthew’s record goes back to Abraham as he traces the
genealogy of Jesus. But that’s no far enough. Luke, chapter 3, is the only one
that I think goes all the way back to where it needs to go and ends up not with
Abraham, not even with Adam, but the genealogy of Jesus ends with God. Now,
there is the end of the matter. Or should we say, more properly, the beginning
of the matter. When we search our roots back that far in every family tree,
every genealogy of everyone in this room, that’s all where we’re going to end
up—with God. “In the
beginning, God created . . .” everything that we are. God created it
all. The heavens and the earth and everything that we have
come to be. Perhaps nothing is more sad or more
pathetic than not knowing that or forgetting that.
Some time ago I
had to bury a 51-year-old lady who died from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. I
asked her husband, “At the end, did she know you?” He said, “No, no, she didn’t
know me. She hadn’t known who she was for years.”
There was a
story in Reader’s Digest some years ago about a man who endured a long
separation from his family. He was simply on a trip and slipped and fell on the
ice and lost his memory and got back on the bus and got off who-knows-where and
was separated for years before he was reunited with his family and his memory
started to come back.
Those are
tragic, poignant, sad stories, aren’t they? It’s awful if we don’t know who we
are, where we come from. Genesis 1 teaches us who we are and where we come
from. “In the beginning, God created . .
. .” We have been made. The human race is not here because we willed it to
be. You’re not here because you willed it to be. You are made in the same
manner Jesus was made. “Born not of blood, nor of the will of
the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:13) “In the beginning, God created . . . .”
Created everything, created you and created me.
Have you ever
heard a child ask a parent, “Was I an accident or did you want me?” Now that
question has meaning for me because I have a brother who is not a year older
than I am. And I wonder, I really wonder. You know, families tell stories about
what happened when the child took the first step. “Oh, we were at the beach and
he took his first step.” Or “We came home that night and he was excited to see
us and took his first step.” My brothers tell me that when I took my first
step, my mother said, “Who’s that?” So all children want to
know, “Am I here on purpose? Did you want me?” What we’re really asking
is, “In some sort of biological accident, did one cell become two, become four,
and on and on until a child was somehow physically created and here I am?”
Are we just
accidents? Or . . . or are we creatures created willfully, purposely by our
heavenly father? The teaching of the scripture in Genesis 1 is straightforward.
It tells us who we are. “In the
beginning, God created . . .” us.
Not as an accident, not as an afterthought, but on purpose, for us to dwell in
this beautiful world that he also created.
Why after all
these years do we still struggle with this? Why after all the science are we
still concerned with how we came into being and what it all means? Why do we
keep returning over and over again to this first chapter of the Bible? Maybe
we’re trying to get back home. Maybe there’s some strong spiritual, cosmic pull
back home.
If you are a waterfowl
hunter, you know that ducks and geese will return to the wetlands in which they
were hatched. They will somehow know to go back to that particular wetland area
in