|
Text Comment
Genesis 1 is written in prose, not in poetry as are the other ANE
creation stories. But it is prose in an exalted style, nearer to poetry than most prose
is. And, of course, the subject is worth the exalted style.
v. 1 A majestic beginning, worthy of the entire Bible! All begins
with God. Before him and apart from him there is nothing. The natural reading of Gen. 1
has been the basis of the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo, creation out of
nothing. It has long been pointed out that nothing is said about what God created out of.
Aristotle defined nothing as that which rocks dream about! We rest content with this: that
God and only God is the conceivable explanation of the universe and all that it contains.
The word "create" used here, by the way, is only used of God in the Hebrew
Bible.
"Heaven and earth" in the sense, "In the
beginning, God created everything!" Now you are perhaps aware that 1:1 has been read
differently by both commentators and ordinary Christians and not just since there came to
be folk trying to reconcile God with evolution. In one form or another it is read to
suggest that when God began to create chaos and matter already existed. God's
creation was the bringing of order and purpose to this material chaos. The arguments are
too technical to be useful to mention here. Suffice it to say that the translation you
have in the NIV and in most all English Bible's is the natural and obvious one, the one
that best conforms to the rules of Hebrew grammar, that best suits the context, and the
rest of the teaching of the Bible. VV. 2-3 then describe subsequent phases of the
creation.
v. 2 That is, the creation came before the chaos. And from the
creation of matter itself (what theologians call the creatio prima) God continued with the
creatio secunda, the combination of elements and the organization of them into things.
God's normal way of working, the whole rest of the Bible will teach us, is to move from
the formless to the formed (so with us in the new creation!)
"The Spirit of God" was hovering... No Olympian
detachment here, but active engagement.
v. 3 "And God said..." This simple phrase leaves no
room for a self-existent universe, or a random universe, or a universe that is some
natural emanation from God (pantheism). And the lack of mention of any intermediary, draws
our attention to the thought: all that is was first a thought of God -- from the least
thing to the greatest -- and then was called into being by him and by an almighty power
that required no more than the speaking of a word. Luther reminds us "...the words of
God's mouth are not so many merely grammatical vocables. The words of the mouth of God are
true, and actual, and essential things. The sun and the moon; the heavens and the
earth; Peter and Paul; you and I, are all so many words of God."
It is only natural that light should mark the first step from
chaos to order. Light is the manifestation of God's presence in a world that, without it,
would be chaos and darkness. It here precedes the creation of the sun, just as it outlasts
the sun, according to Rev. 22:5.
v. 4 In the order God created this darkness is also good.
It is good to have both. God has given us both.
v. 5 "The first day." Most of you are well aware of the
controversy raging in the evangelical world today over the proper way to take the Hebrew
word for "day" as it is used in Genesis 1. Many Christians think that to give
any other meaning to this word than that of our own 24 hour days, making of the time of
creation six 24 hour days, is a capitulation to unbelieving science and a failure to be
loyal to the Word of God. Others argue that the word is capable of other interpretations,
natural and contextual interpretations, and it is a mistake to insist on the 24 hour day
interpretation of "day" in Gen. 1 as a test of one's fidelity to the Bible. I
haven't the time this morning to consider this debate -- we will touch on it again in a
subsequent sermon -- but I may say now at least this: the gulf that separates men is not
that between old-earth Christians and young-earth Christians, but rather is between those
who believe, really believe, that God created the world and all that is in it by his own
omnipotent word, as Gen. 1 teaches, and those who, in one way or another, are unwilling to
accept that the world came into being as the direct command of God.
v. 6 Day 2: the sea and sky.
v. 9 Day 3: a fertile earth.
v.12 The notion of reproduction after a plant or animal's kind
will be a prominent point. It reminds us that what God placed in the world was not every
conceivable living thing, plant or animal, but the potential in these living things to
produce the vast array of life we have in the world today and that has existed in the past
and no longer exists today. It is, of course, one of the elementary principles of biology
and genetics that like produces like and that variation is strictly limited within the
various kinds or orders of life. Dogs can interbreed with other dogs, but not with birds
or horses. It is not a scientific statement that is being made here, but rather a simple
statement of the fact that God provided with the first things he made the prospect of both
continuing life and a rich diversity and multiformity of life.
The implication is also clear though unstated: what God has
created to be distinct, man ought not to confuse. Order, not chaos, is the characteristic
of God's creative will. (You find this principle later in the law: Lev. 19:19)
v.14 Day 4: Lights of Day and Night. The perspective is clearly
geocentric, as things appear on earth and for the sake of the earth. Here is the end to
all astrology. These lights are God's gifts and our servants. They speak for God, not for
fate and are only light bearers, not powers.
v.20 Day 5: Creatures of the water and the air.
v.21 In ANE religion the great monsters of the seas were gods as
well or stood for the powers of chaos. Here it is clear that they are but God's creatures
too, enjoying his blessing. God may later have rebels in his kingdom, but he has no
rivals. The ancient religions never could guarantee peace with God because there were
always unknown quantities in the background. Not so. God has made everything and
everything is therefore his creature and subject to him.
v.24 Day 6: Creatures of the land.
I had a number of ideas myself as to where we ought to go next in
Holy Scripture on Sabbath mornings and some of you made your suggestions as well, which I
am always glad to hear and to consider. But, it seemed to me right that we should now turn
to the great chapters at the beginning of the Bible to consider the fundamental questions
that are answered there. It is here that the basis of a Christian philosophy of life, of
nature, of humanity, of sin and of salvation is to be found. It is here that the most
fundamental perspectives necessary for a godly life, for a truly authentic human life are
to be found.
But, what is more, it is likewise here, concerning the matters
treated in the early chapters of Genesis, that the battle is now raging in our culture
and, increasingly, in the Christian church. Our culture has been at war with Genesis
chapters 1-11 for many years now, but only in the last some years has it become so clear
that the original departures of the past would have such far-reaching and devastating
consequences and that the church would be so easily beguiled into the same doubts about
these chapters that unbelievers had long nourished. So Christians who believe the Bible
and know it to be the very Word of God and infallible in all that it teaches need to be
much in these chapters these days because they so clearly, so powerfully, and so helpfully
define the nature of our faith and of that contrary faith that now rules in our culture.
You must understand this. You must see how comprehensively, how
profoundly, how systematically the Christian faith diverges forever from the thinking of
the world and, especially of our contemporary world, precisely because it embraces the
teaching of these chapters of the first book of the Bible. And, I want you to see
how right it is for us to embrace this truth, how perfectly it conforms to human
experience, how wonderfully it illuminates the life and condition of men and women and of
the world, how simply and beautifully it explains all that must be explained if human
beings are to understand themselves in both the wonder of their life and its tragedy, the
longings of their souls and their perpetual dissatisfaction.
These are, I say, wonderful chapters of the Bible, glorious in
their sweep and their subject, shedding such bright and beautiful light on all that truly
matters.
These chapters provide the essential background for the rest of
the Bible's story. They put the story of the history of our salvation in a cosmic,
universal perspective. They relate us who believe in Jesus Christ to the rest of mankind.
The God who called Abraham to himself and then redeemed you and me in the death of Jesus
Christ, is not some local deity, but the creator of the whole universe. The succession of
catastrophes that befell the world after its creation provide the background and the
explanation for the history of redemption that is to follow.
It is interesting and very important that thoughtful unbelievers
well understand this. They know how much is at stake in the cosmology, the view of the
universe that is taught in the early chapters of Genesis. That is why evolution, our
culture's alternative creation story is so carefully protected by them, why they so
violently resist all efforts to inform public school students, for example, of the
problems the evidence poses for evolutionary theory that even evolutionists themselves
will sometimes privately admit.
Philip Johnson, in his new book Reason in the Balance
recounts the massive campaign mounted in California to discredit a local school board
whose new policy had mandated the "exploration and dialogue" of "scientific
evidence that challenges any theory in science" and which stated that "no
student shall be compelled to believe or accept any theory presented in the
curriculum." The firestorm of criticism that followed was fueled by the charge that
the school board was sympathetic to biblical creationism and that the new policy was a
veiled attempt to get that teaching introduced through the back door.
The LA Times editorialized against the school board and criticism
came from as far away as London. Johnson quotes historian Ronald Numbers as saying, in his
book The Creationists, that they attitude of the educational elites toward
creationism can be summed up as "We've got to stop these bastards!" [Johnson, p.
44]
Johnson goes on to conclude: "The elite attitude examined by
Numbers is clear sign that modernist culture finds creationism -- as distinguished from,
say, the New Age mysticism of a Shirley MacLaine -- genuinely threatening. The problem
is...with [the broader] doctrine that, one way or another, God brought about our existence
for a purpose and cares about what we do. The vast majority of Americans at least say that
they believe in such a God, and if that belief were to emerge as a serious contender at
the intellectual level, there could be important consequences. If God is more than a myth
or a figure of speech, then modernist culture is ignoring something really important, and
its ruling philosophy may be in serious trouble." [pp. 44-45]
What we can add, of course, is that even among many who would say
they still believe in a Creator, his being and presence has become so vague, so distant,
that the fact that we are his creatures no longer means what it once did and certainly
should.
David Wells has made this point in a telling way in his important
book God in the Wasteland [p. 38]:
"...the biblical understanding of creation, and of a
biblical engagement with it, has fallen on extremely hard times in recent years. Not only
has it been attacked by the Barthians and dismissed as irrelevant by the pietists, but it
has been rendered unbelievable to many people by modernity. Secularism has marginalized
God, removing him from effective engagement with society, and modern life has churned up
so much chaos and pain that it has rendered the doctrine of providence, of God's sovereign
control over all of life, unbelievable. At a single stroke, the creation in its origin,
its present life, and its destiny are wrenched apart from its Creator by unbelief and sent
to seek its own life and explanation within itself. The disappearance of these themes from
the center of Christian reflection and their absence from the contemporary pulpit is
neither a small nor an innocent matter."
And, brothers and sisters, doesn't it strike you as deeply ironic
and highly important that at this very moment, when evolutionary theory is in the
ascendant in our culture and is advocated by such powerful minds, it should be such an
easy thing for educated, thoughtful, well-read Christians to disbelieve it. The world, and
the LA Times, of course, want you to believe that only Appalachian snake-handling
rednecks, or folk of like mental sophistication, would not believe in evolution. But I
find it an extraordinary thing that though the educated elite of our culture, and
especially the scientific establishment, has so little doubt about the origins of life on
earth, finds evolution so satisfying a theory of origins, that I am so little tempted to
believe it and can remain so confident in my disbelief. I find it extraordinary that I
have never felt that I must, as a faithful Christian, simply believe the Bible, however at
odds it seems to be with the facts, in hope that some day, some how the Bible would be
vindicated. Instead, I can read a Christian like Philip Johnson or non-Christians like
Michael Denton or Norman MacBeth, and know with a calm certainty that evolution is
hopeless as an explanation for reality. I can read the evolutionists themselves wrangling
among themselves over what they imagine are intramural debates, while even I can see that
they are, in fact, seeking to find a way to get round the fact that evolution is
embarrassed by the facts.
What does all of this indicate but that the question of the
cosmos, its origin and meaning are profoundly religious questions; they strike deep to the
heart and the answer one gives to them profoundly determines -- in ways perfectly obvious
to thinking people -- what one is going to think about God, about human life, about the
independence or the dependence of man, about right and wrong, and about the future. And
they are answered, these basic questions, by religious man -- either as part of his
worship of God or as part of his rebellion against him. The so-called scientific facts
have little to do with these convictions. How wise it was of George Bernard Shaw to have
said about the reception of Darwin's The Origin of the Species, "the world
leaped at Darwin." And how revealing that after all these years, and the mounting
evidence, and the growing number of insurmountable problems with the theory, so many are
so deeply committed to it, love it and need it so desperately, that when someone (such as
Dean Kenyon at SF State University) has the temerity to attack the theory in some
important way, to suggest that it may not be the certain explanation it has been claimed
to be, their reaction continues to be, "We've got to stop these bastards!"
Just as at the end of the Ptolemaic consensus, in astronomy,
before Copernicus, when one clever astronomer after another spun out still another
evermore complicated theory of epicyles to save the theory of a geocentric system in which
the sun rotated around the earth, so today, very clever people continue to be deeply
intent on saving this theory -- for this single reason: it is the chief alternative, the
only serious alternative, to Genesis. But we warn them, in the memorable words of the
Lutheran theologian C.F.W. Walther, "the dabblers in natural science may acquire
lice, but make them they cannot!"
It is a wonderful thing, brethren, for which we all ought to be
so grateful, that in a day such as ours, with evolution so powerfully entrenched in the
mind of the ruling culture, we can still so happily and confidently return to Genesis to
find the truth about God and ourselves, about the world in which we live and the way in
which we are to live in it, about the purpose of life and about its end. Had God allowed
no one to raise a witness to the truth of his creation in these years, had he allowed no
books to be written such as Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crisis pointing
out how utterly and comprehensively evolution fails to account for the nature and
complexity of life and that it is, in fact, nothing but what Denton calls "the great
cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century," I say had God not given us all this
encouragement to believe, we still would have had reason enough to place our full
confidence in the opening chapters of the Bible. But it is so like him, knowing our frame
as he does, and loving us as he does, not to have left his truth without many witnesses.
And so we begin here, with the truth that God made the world and
everything in it, and made it by merely speaking words. We begin here with the truth that
we ourselves are God's creatures, that he made us and not we ourselves, that we owe our
lives to him, and that we live in a world that he has given us and made for us. We begin
here with the fact that we live and move and have our being in God, the self-existent,
Almighty Creator.
And we happily accept that believing that changes everything --
that our lives must, because they are from God, be also to God and for God. This is where
it all begins, the starting point of our faith and of any happy human life.
We believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth...
|