"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
He did not fashion it out of anything that existed before; He summoned it into being out of nothing. Before there was a universe at all, the Bible tells us, there was God. The universe has a beginning, as God does not. The Bible expresses this elsewhere by saying that God is, not 'from beginning to end' but 'from everlasting to everlasting.' God belongs to an order of being wholly different from anything in His creation. The universe and God are quite separate and distinct. God Himself is not to be confused with anything in it. He is majestically different from all things made, from all creatures.
No-one can find Him therefore by looking for Him in the world as though He were part of it ... were some sort of treasure buried in it which can be dug up. We can no more find God by looking for Him in the world than we can find an engineer by looking for him in some bridge he built. We will not find the architect of Canberra's new Parliament House by exploring its rooms and corridors and cupboards. We would have to meet him face to face, a living man, himself quite different from anything he had made. It is the same with ourselves and God. We can never know Him unless we meet Him face to face. This is a quite fundamental affirmation the Bible makes about the way we know God, and it confronts us here in the very first verse.
There are only two other ways we can think about it.
One is the humanist's way, which is to say that the observable universe is all there is, and there is nothing and nobody outside it, and humanity therefore is all on its own, and can choose for itself whatever destiny it pleases.
The other is the pantheist's way, which is to say that God is the same thing as the universe, not separate from it at all, but the sum of all its parts. The clouds in the sky, and creatures that swim or crawl or fly are all bits of Him, and so are we ourselves. So you can find God only by cultivating a sympathy with all living things, or by looking inside yourself. Not surprisingly it becomes very difficult to say what He is really like, or to know when you have actually found Him. And if you happen to believe that the universe is still evolving into something that is not finished yet, then you must believe that God Himself is not finished yet, but is still in the process of becoming. It is a very comfortable belief because it enables you to say that in whatever way you yourself are changing as a person is all part of a vague, unknowable process which is not under anyone's control, so that in the end, therefore, you are not answerable to anything or anybody for what you make of yourself and of your life.
The Bible view makes a simply enormous difference to the way we understand ourselves. It is that difference we should try to understand now.
Because God exists independently of the world and made it out of nothing, two conclusions follow.
i. The world was made to fulfil God's purpose for it
... not ours. It did not happen by accident; and since we are part of it, neither therefore did we. It happened as a direct result of God putting forth His energy with deliberate intent. Whatever purpose life serves, He decided it, not we. Creation exists to fulfil His purpose for it, not ours. No-one may know what that purpose is except they learn it from God.
That means, very simply, that we shall never make sense of our lives in this world, or find any meaning in them, or discover any purpose for them, until we meet and know God, and are willing to be taught by Him.
Life becomes intolerable to us when we can find no meaning in the things that happen to us in it. And therefore the first thing, the most necessary thing for us all is that we find God (or allow ourselves to be found by Him) and like a child with his father, listen to His voice and be taught.
To try and make the world around us serve our own ends is to try and twist it out of shape, to deform it. If we try to make even the little bit of the world we ourselves control serve some purpose of our own which is out of harmony with His, then the bias God built into things will resist us, and the world will take on the appearance of an alien thing which is hostile to us, bent on frustrating all our endeavours. It is as though you are supplied with a splendid new washing machine, and insist on using it as a cement mixer. If you seriously try, you will come to believe before long that the wretched machine has a mind of its own ... is filled with a mysterious and sinister intent to make a monkey of you. And if our experience of life has already led us to some such conviction, the Bible challenges us to ask whether it is not because our aims in life are in conflict with our Maker's. But if we see our place in the world as the Bible writers saw it, and bring our wills into harmony with God's will for our lives, we shall find the world essentially a friendly place. The bias that God has built into things will work for us, for our fulfilment and delight. This is a delighted discovery Christians make - 'coincidences' happen!
The way the world looks to us depends directly on our attitude to God.
So long as I am a stranger to Him, the world will seem to me an alien and unfriendly place, but if I am His trusting and obedient child it will become to me the Father's House.
ii. We have our life direct from the hand of God, and must answer to Him for what we do with it.
This too follows from the fact that God made the world out of nothing.
The beginning of faith, as we are told in Hebrews, is to understand that "the world was created by the Word of God, so that what is seen was made from what does not appear." (Heb. 11:3) One word from God, and what was not came to be. And since we are part of that creation, we have our life direct from the hand of God.
In the Hebrew text of chapter 1, a word (bara) is used three times to describe an act of creation by God which is not used in the Bible to describe the way a human being makes an artefact. We shall have more to say about this, but here we draw just one simple conclusion from it.
The three occasions
when the word is used are -
i. v. 1, where it is said that God 'created' the heavens and the
earth - that refers to the creation of matter.
ii. v. 21, where living creatures first appear in the narrative; this
refers to the creation of life.
iii. v. 27, where it is said that God created man.
In each case the word is used to indicate the introduction of something which cannot be accounted for by anything that has gone before. Elsewhere, the other word used (asah) means simply ‘to make' or 'to fashion’, as a craftsman does by reassembling into new shapes material which already lies to hand. The sun, moon and stars, sky and sea and dry land and vegetation are all said to have been 'made', not 'created' by God; they were fashioned as a man fashions an artefact out of already existing materials. The earth "brought them forth" under God's shaping hand. But God 'created' matter, life and man.
By this use of language the Bible affirms our fundamental distinction from the world of nature. We have links with it, but our real nature is not explained by them. When God created man He did a new thing, as He had done a new thing when He created matter, and as He had done when He created animal life. Our real nature is to be found in the fact that what distinguishes us from the rest of creation, our specifically human consciousness, is given to us direct from God.
We are 'flesh' - part of our being is tied to nature; we are also 'spirit' - part of our being has ties with God. In ch. 2:7 this is expressed in the words, "The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground (that affirms our link with nature), and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (that affirms our link with God), and the man became a living being (a nephesh, a soul)."
"The dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it." (Eccl. 12:7)
We owe what we essentially are to God, not to nature.
If that is true, if my inner being owes nothing to the world around me but comes to me direct from the hand of God, then He can demand me back again just as I was when I left His hands. He has lent my 'self' to me, so to speak - entrusted life and inner being to me, including all that goes with that in the way of gifts and abilities and intelligence - and one day He will call them back. He will summon me into His presence and say to me, "Now show me what you have done with the self I gave you." Then I shall have to give back my self, just as I must return a car, say, that I have borrowed, and show its owner that I have cared for it properly and used it only for the purpose for which he lent it to me. If I have ruined it he will hold me responsible.
Soon in this narrative, we shall hear God saying to Eve, "What is this that you have done?" (3:13) and to Cain, "What have you done?" (4:10) It is established early in the piece that we are answerable to God who made us.
We must all come to judgment.
What shall we be able to say to God when that day comes, and we have to answer for what we have done with our 'selves' - when it is seen that we have misused and abused them - but what the prodigal said, "Father I have sinned ... against heaven and before You; I am no longer worthy to be called your son." I cannot give my self back to Him as I received my self from Him; I have spoiled it, and by my own fault.
The simple affirmation that God created us makes us responsible to Him.
That, in the Bible, is a fundamental reality of life. We are responsible to God. There is no escape from that, for any. We will have to answer for our life, and we will have to answer for it to Him.
A word of final doom over all our lives, with no hope or promise anywhere, however, is not the last word.
It is true (as I heard the humanist Marghanita Laski say once in a BBC TV interview) that "we are all of us lonely, guilty folk who know that we must die"; but the God Who is our Creator, to Whom we must give account of ourselves, is also our Father Who loves us and yearns over us and seeks us. And the subsequent history of the Bible is the history of God pleading with men and women to return to Him, and making, at immense cost to Himself, a highway by which they may do so. He is waiting for us to yield up our spoiled and misshapen lives into His hands so that He may make us again what He created us to be.
A further affirmation made in this first chapter is that the framing of the world happened by the creative Word of God. "God said, 'Let there be ... and there was ...'" He did it simply by the utterance of His word. "He spake, and it came to be. He commanded, and it stood forth." (Ps. 33:9) That God may create by a mere utterance is not the strange or unfamiliar concept it is sometimes held to be. By means of words we express our intentions. Our words are us - expressing ourselves. In everything we do we exert energy to a purpose, and it is not different when the thing we do is speak. By our speech we hope to make things happen ... from "Pass the butter, please" to "Give me your daughter in marriage"! But our words are only as strong as we are in ourselves. Our words cannot accomplish more than the force that our personality, which stands behind them, can give to them. If we have little power or influence, our words will be weak; if we have great power and influence, our words will be powerful.
What power and influence is there in God then, to give force to His words? Some indication of the answer to that question is: the whole vast created universe! God is the immense source of all purposeful energy.
And the Bible here tells us that He exerted that energy with us in mind. As He told Isaiah (45:18), He "did not create it a chaos, He formed it to be inhabited." The first chapter of Genesis unfolds an orderly process by which God fashions out of inchoate matter a 'place', an environment, a safety zone in fact, amid the mindless immensities of space, where he may establish amid beauty and abundance the creature He has conceived in His imagination. In the truest sense, the work of creation is a work of grace. God is presented, not simply as a splendid architect and builder, but as a generous benefactor who prepares a magnificent endowment.
What then are the requirements for life as God framed it for our habitation? Genesis defines them as three separations.
1. Light from Darkness
The first is the separation of light from darkness.
The first in the series of God's creative acts is to create light and cause it to stream into the chaos. Light is the first and finest element needed for the establishment of life, the first step that must be taken to turn chaos into cosmos. Without light there is no beginning of a place for us. Without it there can be no order, for only as there is light do we see things in their true colours and in their true relations to each other, and only in the light do we see our way among them. God is the only final source of light; only "in His light do we see light" (Ps. 36:9); only as God "who commanded light to shine out of darkness, shines in our hearts to light us with the knowledge of His glory" do we see our way. (II Cor. 4:6)
But notice that light, even in creation as God first fashioned it, does not wholly prevail. Darkness is not eliminated by it, only held back. God divided the light from the darkness; He did not banish the darkness. Unless we remain with God in the place where He causes light to shine, the darkness will overtake us. It waits, so to speak, behind the curtain of light God makes; it threatens still.
The coming of night is a constant reminder to us of it. It is not without reason that mankind has from time immemorial been afraid of the dark, for it represents the nothingness and the meaninglessness into which our lives sink back when we move away from the place God gives us in the scheme of things. Every night, when the created world of forms flows together into formlessness, chaos regains a certain power over what has been created. That we may walk in the light depends altogether upon the action of God, for unless He separates the one from the other, the darkness will prevail, and our life depends upon His gracious maintenance of that separation. There is evening and there is morning, still. Not until the new heavens and the new earth are fashioned will it be said, "There is no night there." Here at the very beginning of the narrative, there is a hint that this world is not our final home - that it is but a staging place on a journey that must some day take us beyond it. Every morning, with the light which gathers the grim shadows and causes them to flee away, a faint echo of God's creation is repeated.
Even so, the night is not wholly dark. God creates the moon and the stars to rule the night. The darkness is a governed darkness, so that as we dwell in the 'sphere of grace' where God's continual action gives us our place we are safe in it.
There is a further subtle hint in our author's repeated use of the phrase, "There was evening and there was morning, one day." (See note 1 below) It is not the intuitive way to say it. It is surely more natural to say it the other way round, putting morning first: "There was morning and there was evening, one day." One expects to read, "There was evening and there was morning, one night." (See note 2 below) Why is it said this way? By the way the phrase is repeated with each succeeding stage of God's creation work, is the writer suggesting that all God's works of creation were done under cover of darkness? There is in the putting forth of God's creative energy a mystery which the eyes of man cannot and may not penetrate.
This idea that God does works in secret, in the dark, recurs in the Scriptures. The psalmist will later reflect that his own personal fashioning was a hidden creative work of God: "My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the hidden depths of nature, Your eyes beheld my unformed body." He means "It was for Your eyes only." No man saw or could see the process of creation going on. (In the same vein, the creation of Eve happens under cover of a deep sleep.) It led the psalmist to say, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful; that I know." (Ps. 139:15)
The Bible not only says that God dwells in the uncreated, eternal light; from our perspective in the created realm, He is said also to 'dwell in darkness.'
"The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was." (Ex. 20:21)
"He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under his feet ... He made darkness his covering (His secret place), his canopy around him ... clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne." (Ps. 18:9, 11)
In its use of language like this, the Bible is not saying that God is like those who "love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil" (John 3:19), but simply that there are depths of mystery in His Being which remain impenetrable to our eyes. Our proper response to this language is the psalmist's own: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." (Ps. 139:6)
There are things we may not know at all except as God reveals them. Cyrus the Persian king learned that: "I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name." (Isa. 45:1)
That is not to say that we may not seek knowledge of the secret things. Solomon observed that whilst "it is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search it out is the glory of kings." (Prov. 25:2) Paul rejoiced in the insight God had given him into the mystery of Christ "which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets." (Eph. 3:5) There are mysteries God does, even yet, reveal to the seeking mind. "The secret things belong to the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law." (Deut. 29:29)
But it is to say that we may know them only as He reveals them. The light that shines out of darkness is always His light. (See Note 3 below)
2. Waters below from Waters Above
The second separation is of the waters under the firmament from the waters above the firmament, i.e. seas, rivers and lakes from the clouds.
Water is vital for the replenishment of life - vegetable, animal and human life alike - and the cycle of water raised from surface of the earth by evaporation and later precipitated from the clouds is seen as the gracious provision by the Creator God for the continual renewal of the life He has created. Without this provision, all life would perish in conditions of drought. The cycle of evaporation and precipitation was fully appreciated: "Behold, God is great ... he draws up the drops of water, he distils his mist in rain which the skies pour down, and drop upon man abundantly." (Job 36:26-29)
Throughout the Bible the provision of rain is viewed as a blessing from God and its withholding as a curse.
As a blessing: "The Lord will open to you his good treasury the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands; and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow." (Deut. 28:12. See also Lev. 26:3-4)
As a curse: "Take heed lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, and the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and he shut up the heavens, so that there be no rain, and the land yield no fruit, and you perish quickly off the good land which the Lord gives you." (Deut. 11:16-17)
Again, just as light does not wholly prevail but darkness is only held back by it, so the waters above do not wholly prevail. Their falling or their withholding are in the hands of God to serve His purposes either of mercy or of judgment.
It is interesting that when Jesus spoke of the grace of God toward all mankind He chose the two separations of light from darkness and 'sky water' from 'earth water' to illustrate it: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matt. 5:45) Behind His choice of those two provisions there is a dimension of meaning far greater than a mere random choice of universal blessings. (See Note 4 below)
Unless the separation is maintained (by God), the threatening chaos will rush back to overtake the world - which is precisely what happens when the judgment of the flood falls.
3. Earth from Sea
The third separation is of earth from sea. The earth, the home of man, is separated from the threatening chaos, for the sea is a symbol of chaos. (See Note 5 below) Man needs firm ground under his feet for life to be sustainable.
Ps. 104:5-9, "Thou
didst set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be
shaken. Thou didst cover it with the deep as with a garment; the
waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the
sound of thy thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the
valleys sank down to the place which thou didst appoint for them.
Thou didst set a bound which they should not pass, so that they might
not again cover the earth."
Ps. 11:3, "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous
do?"
Job 38:4-11 expounds this base provision by God of a stable living
space for man: "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the
earth? ... On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,
or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth from the womb;
when I made clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling
band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said,
'Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud
waves be stayed'?"
(See Note 6 below)
There is a clearly discernible pattern in the sequence of the six days: they are in two paired groups of three, so:
Day 1 Light and Dark Day 4 Lights of Day and Night Day 2 Sea and Sky Day 5 Creatures of Water and Air Day 3 Fertile Earth Day 6 Creatures of Land ... and man FORM and FULNESS
Form and fulness is the sequence. Three times over God fashions a framework, and then installs an order of created things in it. The sun and the moon do not make the light, they rule it. The creatures of water and air do not make the sea and the sky, they fill them. The animals do not fashion the fertile earth, they fill it. And on the same day the animals fill the earth, man is created to rule.
On each of the first three days a framework is fashioned; on each of the succeeding three days, entities are created to occupy and rule them. And these entities, whether they be inanimate like the sun, moon and stars, or animate like fish and bird, animal and man, enjoy their place in safety, beauty and abundance only as God maintains the framework. If He should withdraw His hand, ceasing to maintain the framework, they would each collapse back into the formless chaos out of which each framework was fashioned. Darkness would overcome the light, the waters overwhelm the land and the earth under the foot of beast and man be shaken. (See Note 7 below)
These themes are sustained clear through Scripture from beginning to end. Darkness almost at once overtakes the minds and hearts of men; soon the waters of the flood overwhelm the creatures of earth and sea and sky; and at the end of the age, we are warned by the Son of God, without Whom none of these things were fashioned, that the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and men's hearts will fail them with fear and foreboding of what is coming on the world.
We have life only as the sustaining grace of God maintains the fabric of it. Our lives are altogether in His hand; and if He should withdraw His hand, our life cannot be sustained.
The last word of Scripture we should hear on the theme is Heb. 12:25-29:
"See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape who refused him who warned them on earth, how much less shall we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven?
"At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has warned, 'Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.' The words 'once more' indicate the removing of what can be shaken - that is, created things - so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."
Note 1 on the Hebrew
Word "Yom" = day:
Generally a literal 24-hour day. It may refer to a longer period
(Isa. 4:2). But the phrase "and there was evening and there was
morning" rules out the 'epoch' understanding of 'yom' here. A seven
day week is all the chapter can be made to yield. Whether it is to be
understood literally or metaphorically is another question. The
Hebrew writer had none of the scientific presuppositions we bring to
the reading of the passage - his mind-set on the use of patterns and
frameworks was literary, not scientific; he was writing theology, not
science. Of primary concern to him was so to affirm the creation of
all things by the will and act of the one God as to deny the
contemporary creation myths that had proliferated in surrounding
cultures with their deification of elements of the created world, and
the presupposition of a demi-urge in conflict from the beginning with
the creator. Those stories of turgid and prolonged struggles did
little to suggest that creation was an orderly, master-minded
process. The seven day framework is surely a literary convention, not
a statement of literal fact. Truth - especially truth at the level
these chapters affirm - is too big a thing to be conveyed in merely
pheonomenological terms.
Those who insist that these chapters be accepted as literal statement
of fact, or the truth and inspiration of Scripture is impugned, tell
us more about their own lack of literary appreciation than they do
about the doctrine of inspiration. Language, by its very nature, has
to use concrete terms to convey abstract concepts. When, for example,
we say, "I see the point" we do not mean that we literally see the
tip of a pin, or a dot on a page; we mean that we have a clear
perception of the argument. We do not make language any clearer by
eliminating metaphor, only duller. Scripture itself uses many
literary forms to convey truth, and the decision whether any given
passage is to be understood literally or metaphorically is almost
always a literary judgment rather than a theological one.
Note 2 on "Evening
and morning, one day."
Whether the Jewish way of reckoning the day from sunset to sunset
rather than sunrise to sunrise rested on the language here in Gen 1,
or the language of Gen. 1 reflects an already established convention
is probably unanswerable.
Note 3:
"The secret things belong to the Lord our God; but the things that
are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may
do all the words of this law." Deut. 29:29
Note 4:
I used to feel that our Lord's argument here was weak: sun and rain,
by their very nature, can hardly be selective! But the fact that they
cannot be selective is the whole point: they are an indiscriminate
provision of grace for all mankind.
Note 5:
The statement in Rev. 21:1 that "There will be no more sea" means
that there will be no threat of chaos, nor any separation.
Note 6:
The separations that make the world habitable are in view in the
utterance of the 'wisdom' by which God fashioned the world, Prov.
8:23-31.
Note 7:
It is clearly part of the author's intention thereby to deny deity to
the celestial spheres, to the forces of nature, and to creatures. His
thesis is in deliberate defiance of the polytheism of surrounding
cultures.
This material is
copyright; it may not be quoted, published or reproduced without the
author's permission, nor preached without acknowledgment!