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A Linear View of History

I think intuitively many of us have a linear sense of the flow of our lives. We believe things are going somewhere. There are appointed ends. Life isn’t a cyclical process of birth, life, death, and rebirth. Life isn’t a ceaseless, natural cycle. The things unfolding in the cosmos, and in our lives, are according to a plan. We want to believe that history is headed somewhere good.

This linear view of history is rooted in reality, and therefore it’s no surprise that it’s what we find in the Bible. The Bible says that there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end, that things are headed somewhere on purpose. In the Bible, we learn that we aren’t captive to the cyclical, blind, cosmic forces of nature. In the Bible, we meet a God who created history, has a plan for history, and even wants to meet us in our history.

The Beginning of God’s Story

The story of God’s plan for history begins in the first book of the Bible, in the first chapter, and first verse. Genesis 1:1 is the most important verse in the Bible. They’re the most widely read words ever because the Bible is the most widely read book ever.

Genesis 1:1 has been called “the great truth.” It’s a truth that’s “marvelously simple, and understandable to a child, yet inexhaustibly profound.”[1] If we believe this verse, everything else in the Bible follows.

This one verse refutes all other worldviews. It refutes atheism because it says God created the world. It refutes pantheism because it says that God is outside of creation. It refutes polytheism because it says that only one God created all things. It refutes humanism because it says that God, as Creator, is the ultimate reality, not man.

Genesis is History

What kind of book is Genesis? Genesis is both history and theology. I say it’s history because it tells us about things that actually happened. This is not a popular view. The dominant scientific worldview has influenced the way Christians read Genesis, especially chapters 1-11. Many assume that these chapters are legendary. I take the view that they’re history.

One reason we can believe that these chapters are history is based on how the book is outlined. The phrase “these are the generations” (or “this is the account” NIV, toledoth in Hebrew) is used eleven times in Genesis (2:4, 5:1, 6:9, 10:1, 11:10, 11:27, 25:12, 25:19, 36:1, 36:9, 37:2). This repeated phrase is thought to provide the structure for Genesis.

Because the phrase is closely related to genealogies, it’s like saying, “This is the family history of _____.” By using this formula, the author is signaling that what he’s writing, even in 1-11, is history. Genealogies aren’t lists of make-believe people. They’re lists of real people, thus they’re reliable history.

The point is, if the toledoth sections are usually linked to genealogies, and if genealogies are historical records, and since we find six of the eleven toledoth sections in chapters 1-11, it seems reasonable to conclude that these chapters are recounting history, not legend. These narratives should be understood as providing the history of the people of Israel all the way back to Adam and Eve.

Genesis is Theology

Genesis is not just history. It’s also theology. In other words, its history meant to teach us something about God. The author of these chapters is recounting history in order to make a theological point.

What is the theological point? The main point is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the God who met Moses on Mt. Sinai is the God who created the world. The God of Israel is the one, true, and living God, the Creator and Ruler of all things.

Introduction to the Introduction

Chapters 1-11 are the introduction to Genesis and the Pentateuch and the whole Bible. Genesis 1:1 is the introduction to the introduction! Old Testament scholar John Sailhamer says, “These seven words (in Hebrew) are the foundation of all that is to follow in the Bible.”[2] Our outline today will be: Who created the world? What did they create? And where is creation going?

Who Created the World?

Moses is unambiguous about who created the world: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” God is the main character in the creation narrative. His name is used 35 times in the first 35 verses of the Bible. This passage, indeed, this whole book, is about him. As Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner says, “To read it with any other primary interest is to misread it.”[3] Genesis 1 is about God, not creation. The story of the world begins and ends with God, meaning that, whether you realize it or not, the story of your life begins and ends with God.

The word “God” is used today to refer to a number of beings, forces, or ideas. But Moses doesn’t give us more than the generic word “God” (Elohim) here because he’s confident that there will be no mistaking this God with anyone but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who descended on Mt. Sinai.

How do we know this? Because in 2:4, “God” is identified with the Lord (Yahweh), the God who called Abraham (12:1) and the God who met Moses at the burning bush and delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt (Ex. 3:15). The purpose of verse 1 isn’t to give us an exhaustive definition of who this God is who created the universe, but to state emphatically that the origin of the universe is the result of God’s action.

Notice that the Bible doesn’t begin with arguments for the existence of God. It presupposes his existence. In the author’s mind, God’s existence doesn’t need to be proven. Scripture says that everyone knows he exists because we can see his power and glory in creation (Ps. 19, Rom. 1). The first verse of the Bible takes the fact of God’s existence for granted. It’s as if it’s so obvious that he exists that only a fool would say “there is no God” (Ps. 14:1).

A Defense of Israel’s God

We have to remember that Moses is writing Genesis for the people of Israel, a people who’ve just spent 400 years enslaved in Egypt, a people heading into the land of Canaan where they’ll be surrounded by nations who have very different conceptions of God. So one of the things Moses is doing in Genesis is writing a polemical defense of Israel’s God against the polytheistic and pagan cultures around them.

In other cultures around Israel in the ancient Near East, there were gods who had titanic battles with other gods and the result was the creation of the world. The Babylonian god Marduk, for example, and the Canaanite god Baal battled the god of the sea for control. Contra these myths, Israel’s God didn’t struggle with the forces of chaos for supremacy. As the Creator, by definition, Israel’s God enjoyed a privileged status as the supreme and only true God.

Moses is saying that only Israel’s God created the heavens and the earth, that the gods of the nations aren’t real. Israel’s prophets and poets agree. Jeremiah: “The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens” (10:11). And Psalm 96:5, “For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.”

The reason Israel knew their God was the real God is because he created the universe. Moses is saying if your God didn’t create the universe by himself, you don’t get to call them God.

Creation Out of Nothing

The word “create” is only used to refer to the work of God. It means “to call into existence that which has no existence.” Only God can do this. We “make” or “form” things, but in the strict sense of the word we don’t create things.

I love talking with my kids about how God created everything. They’ll ask, “Did God make pizza? Or cars? Or houses?” And I’ll tell them that people made those things, but they made them out of ingredients that God created.

We fashion and design and build and make things in creative ways, but we can’t bring something out of nothing. Only God can speak into existence something whose materials had no previous existence.

The New Testament teaches this as well. Paul says in Romans 4:17 that God “calls into existence the things that do not exist.” And Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”

God created all that is out of nothing. There was no pre-existent matter. Those who reject this notion of an eternal God creating out of nothing are relegated to believe that matter itself is eternal. The only options are: eternal God or eternal matter. We can’t empirically prove the existence of an eternal God. Hebrews 11:3 says that we understand these things “by faith.” So we have to decide whether we believe that an eternal, self-existing God created everything, or whether the universe is an eternal, self-existing phenomenon. But can matter create itself? Can something come from nothing?

God Can Create and Re-Create Anything

God’s ability to create out of nothing is an extremely practical doctrine. How? It gives us reason to hope in him to do the impossible. Ray Ortlund said on Twitter this week, “God doesn’t enhance our abilities; He gives life to our deadness. He doesn’t make-do with what is; He re-creates what we have squandered.”

If God can create the universe out of nothing, he can bring life to the dead parts of our lives, fix what we’ve broken, wash what we’ve dirtied, create beauty out of misery, bring order to chaos. He’s not limited to what is. He’s the God of infinite possibility. Where do you need God to come in and create and re-create in your life?

What Did God Create?

The “what” of God’s creation was “the heavens and the earth.” And he did this creative work “in the beginning.” At the moment of creation, the God who existed without any need for time, space, or matter created all three.

“In the beginning” means “in the beginning of time.” God called into existence the reality of time. Can you imagine living outside of time? God literally has all the time in the world on his hands. This is why he’s never in a hurry. He’s not rushed or impatient. He takes the long view.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t have time to give to the God who made time. Because God exists outside of time, when we meet with him, in a sense, we push beyond the boundaries of this universe. Perhaps that why there’s so much power in prayer.

God created time, but he also created “the heavens and the earth,” or the totality of the universe, all of reality. The Hebrew word for “heavens” corresponds to our modern word “space,” as in “outer space.” The word for “earth” can mean “land,” as in “the land of Canaan,” or the material of the earth in general, as in “Let the earth sprout vegetation” (1:11). So the creation of the “earth” may refer more broadly to all matter.

Some commentators see in this one verse the creation of the space-matter-time universe. God created the “heavens,” or space, the “earth,” or the basic elements of matter, and he did all this “in the beginning,” that is, at the beginning of time. This verse could thus be translated, “God called into existence the space-matter-time universe.”

Nihilism or Meaning?

The discussion about who created the universe is not just an esoteric conversation. It touches the very center of our existence. This conversation confronts us with two options: If God created the universe, then there’s intrinsic, inescapable meaning to the universe. If the universe is the result of pre-existent matter, or if the universe created itself, then there’s no intrinsic meaning.

I suspect that few of us are ready to accept that there’s no intrinsic meaning in the world. In our gut, we know that’s not true. If God created the universe, then everything in this world, and in your life, has a point and purpose. It means nothing is wasted. There’s no garbage dump planet like Sakaar in Thor: Ragnarok. Every molecule has a purpose. Nothing is thrown away.

Proverbs 8 personifies wisdom and says that it was with God when he created the world. “When he established the heavens, I was there…when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was his daily delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man” (vv. 27, 29-31).

The God who exists outside of the universe, filled the universe with his wisdom, even delighted in the wisdom of what he’d made. This means that wisdom rather than foolishness stands behind everything in the universe. The universe is full of reason not confusion, design not disorder. You may see why modern science grew out of the Christian worldview.

Weakness is Part of the Plan

God is doing specific things in the universe, not random things. And in your life. This means we can stop hiding all the stuff that isn’t pretty. What if your weaknesses and pain and griefs and even your sins are part of a wise plan?

Remember what Jesus says to Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). There’s something of Jesus that won’t be seen in our strengths, but only in our weaknesses, so stop pretending you’re strong. Weakness is the only way to true strength. Paul says, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (v. 10).

As Dan Allender says, “Weakness is the big idea of the gospel.”[4] In the gospel, we learn that God took on weakness, that the only people eligible to live with him are the poor in spirit, that God raises up the lowly and brings down the proud, that only those who come to the end of themselves receive a new beginning.

God’s people are called to brokenness, not success, to grace, not performance. Maybe you’re so exhausted and stressed because you’re a slave to maintaining an image of yourself that you don’t even really like? Weakness is the way to strength. Nothing is wasted. God’s design is to use your weakness to create in you a true strength, a strength in and from him.

Where is Creation Going?

The last thing we need to see in Genesis 1:1 we can only see through the lens of the whole Bible. The first words of the Bible, “In the beginning,” actually hint at where creation is going. If there’s a beginning to creation, there’s also an end. A beginning implies an end. One commentator says, “The beginning is pregnant with the end.”[5]

What is this end? Interestingly, the end is going to look a lot like the beginning. The prophet Isaiah said that in the future God would “create new heavens and a new earth” (65:17). When God showed the apostle John what the end would look like, he said, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Rev. 21:1).

Creation is headed for a new creation, where sin and death and evil will be no more, where God will wipe away our tears and take away our pain, where “the former things have passed away” (v. 4). In the end, just as at the beginning, God will make “all things new” (v. 5).

The Creator Steps into the Story

At the beginning things were new and at the end they’ll be new again. But this is only possible because the Creator stepped into the middle of the story. Using the exact wording of Genesis 1:1, John begins his Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word” (v. 1). Then he tells us that this “Word…became flesh and dwelt among us…and from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (vv. 14, 16).

In Jesus Christ, our Creator came to us, lived a life we’ll never come close to, submitted to a terrible end – death on a cross, and rose from the dead so that everyone who trusts in him can have a new beginning now and life forever in a new world soon. The God who created the beginning stepped into the middle to bring us to a glorious end.

You have to come to him on his terms, but for all who come to him, he unleashes his creative power in their lives, creating life where there’s death, joy where there’s sorrow, healing where there’s pain, comfort where there’s loss, faith where there’s fear, hope where there’s confusion, forgiveness where there’s guilt, and righteousness where there’s shame.

The God who created the heavens and the earth created you and he wants to re-create you into something you can’t quite see yet. Will you trust him enough to allow him to begin his work in your life?

Maybe you’ve made a beginning with God. He’s not done with his work in you. You may pridefully think that you’re where you should be. Or you may regretfully think that you can never be where you should be. Either way, God created you and he aims to re-create you until you see his face, when we’ll become like him because we’ll see him as he is (1 Jn. 3:2).

In Christ, all of creation, and your life, is moving from creation to re-creation. In Christ, we have so much to look forward to.

[1]Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1976), 38.

[2]John H. Sailhamer, “Genesis,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 19-20

[3]Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, vol. 1 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1967), 43.

[4]Dan B. Allender, Leading with a Limp: Take Full Advantage of Your Most Powerful Weakness (New York: Waterbrook Press, 2006), 54.

[5]Kidner, 43.