The Purpose of the Genesis Account
The purpose of the Genesis account of creation was not to teach scientific theories, but to give a short simple account of the beginning of things in language that people of any age would understand. Genesis alone describes creation out of nothing, as distinguished from creation out of preexisting materials.
Plan of the Genesis Account
As we might have expected, the Genesis account of creation is from the viewpoint of the ordinary person. The story is recorded as if someone were describing creation, not from somewhere in outer space, but from his dwelling place on earth. The earth is only a very small part of God’s creation, but the creation story in the Bible is concerned mainly with the earth and mentions other features only in relation to the earth.
The Genesis account is concerned with showing that God made everything out of nothing, that he worked from the formless to the formed, from the simple to the complex. It outlines how he brought the universe through various stages till his creative activity reached its climax in Adam and Eve. Its basic design is to divide the creation story into two groups of three days each. The first group shows how God created the basic spheres of operation (light and dark; sea and sky; fertile land), the second how he created the features within each of those spheres (lights of day and night; creatures of sea and sky; creatures of the land).
Genesis alone recognizes the law of progress in creation: first light, then order, then life, vegetable, grass, herb, fruit tree; then animal life.
Again:
(1) the waters
(2) the dry land
(3) the heavenly bodies
Also progressive advance in life:
(1) aquatic animals and fish
(2) fowl
(3) terrestrial animals
(4) man, the apex of creation
The advance is orderly, from the lower to the higher organizations. Genesis is distinguished from the world’s cosmogonies in connecting the Creator with His work in a relation of love; God contemplating “everything that He had made, and behold it was very good” (Gen 1:31). Traditions of widely separated nations over the earth retain fragments of the account of the fall, the tree, the serpent, the first pair, the flood. The Bible version of the story is simplest, purest.
The Creator at work
God is pleased when people study his creation and learn its wonders:
Psalms 111:2 The LORD’s deeds are great, eagerly awaited by all who desire them.
The Bible tells us that God is the Creator, and it reveals something of his purposes in creation.
Psalms 19:1-3
1The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. 2Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. 3There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.
Science may tell us more about God’s creation, but it does so from a viewpoint that is different from that of the Bible. The Bible tells us that God is the one who did these things, and the scientist tells how he might have done them.
We expect God to work through the normal processes of nature in producing the crops from which we get our food by hard work. Yet we still thank God, for we know that he is the provider of all things. Believers and unbelievers might agree on how nature provides humankind with food, but believers add something extra, because they see God working through nature. The ‘laws of nature’ are God’s laws but believers ‘by faith understand that the world was created by the word of God’.
Hebrews 11:3
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.
When the scientist tells us how rains falls or how grass grows, we do not contradict him by saying, ‘But the Bible says God makes the rain fall, God makes the grass grow’ (Matt 5:45; 6:30). We accept both as true.
Matthew 5:45
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.
Matthew 6:30
But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Since God created everything what are we to learn from it?
Practical inferences:
1. If God created all things, then all things are under His government
2. Then the earth may be studied religiously
3. Then it is reasonable that He should take an interest in nature
What we learn here about God
1. His being
2. His eternity
3. His omnipotence
4. His absolute freedom
5. His infinite wisdom
6. His essential goodness
A revelation of God and of nature
I. A REVELATION OF GOD
1. His name: names have meaning
2. His nature: spirituality, personality
3. His mode of existence: manifold unity
II. A REVELATION OF NATURE
1. Matter not eternal
2. The antiquity of the earth
3. The order of creation
Love in the Fact of Creation
I. WHAT IS CREATION?
Creation is a work of free condescension on the part of God. There was a time when it was not, and God willed that it should be. It was by Him called into existence out of nothing. The entire creation depends on its being, and well-being, on the good pleasure of Him, whose Divine love created and upholds it.
Colossians 1:5-17
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
The world is a standing proof of God’s condescension that He lowers Himself to behold the things which are in heaven and in earth. Creation, viewed in its true light, is as really a proof of the self-forgetting, self-humbling love of our God, as redemption; for in it He left His glory which He had, the Father with the Son, and the Holy Spirit with both, before the worlds began, and descended to converse with and move among the works of His own hands; to launch the planets on their courses through space, and uphold in them all things living by His ever-abiding Spirit.
John 1:3-4
3 All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
John 1:14
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Philippians 2:1-8
1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.