TEXT: Genesis 1

SUBJECT: The Message of Genesis 1

For the past 150 years, no part of the Bible has been read with more care—or less profit—than Genesis 1. We read it with great care to answer the claims of Evolution. We read it without much profit because we read it to answer the claims of Evolution. Does Genesis 1 deny all the major points of Darwinism? Yes it does. But that’s not why it was written.

Genesis 1 is far more practical than this, and of a much wider application. Relatively speaking, very few people in the history of the world have been affected by the Theory of Evolution. And most of the ones who have been are not Christians. But Genesis 1 has a message for all believers in every age. If it first relieved the worries of God’s People in their wilderness, it does the same for us in ours. If the world should stand another million years, and the name Charles Darwin be forgotten, Genesis 1 will convey the same comfort and confidence it always has.

Just when the story of our chapter was first told we do not know. Perhaps Adam told it to his wife; or maybe they told it to their children. But if we don’t know who first told it, we know very well who first published the story. That would be Moses, the man of God, who wrote it for the Israelites when he—and they—were in the wilderness.

The importance of remembering this cannot be overstated. If an astrophysicist had written the chapter for a scientific journal, he would have explored the things the scientific community cares about. But Israel was not a community of scholars with their specialized interests; they were the people of God with the same concerns you and I have!

What were their concerns in the wilderness? I thought of five worries, all of which are relieved in Genesis 1. I’ll list them as a series of questions, and then go back and show you how the chapter answers them.

1. Can the Lord provide for us?
2. Can He protect us from our enemies?
3. Why should we obey His Word?
4. Will things get better?
5. Does the Lord love us?

More than a million people crossed the Red Sea into the wilderness without food, water, or a change of clothes. At first they didn’t notice how needy they were, but three days into the trip, it hit them like a punch in the mouth!

God provided for them that day by turning the bitter waters of Marah sweet. Twenty-seven days later, it occurred to them that their pants were looser than they used to be because they had no food!

That night the Lord sent quail and the next morning manna began falling, and it fell six days a week, every week, for forty years.

The story is long and dreary. Over and over the people scoffed at the Lord’s power to set a table in the wilderness. But through all their bellyaching and blasphemy, God proved them wrong. He could not only provide for them in the desert, but in the most godforsaken spot on earth, Men ate angels’ food and He sent them meat to the full.

Genesis 1 emphasizes the Lord’s power to provide for all our needs.

Before making your belly, the Lord made things to fill it up—grains, fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, and even spices to make them taste good (if you’re not British!).

In the beginning God made our food. But not only did He ‘make it’, but He controls it. He didn’t plant seeds and hope they would grow (as we do). He commanded grasses and trees and other plants to spring up from the earth—and they did. Because the Creator of our food is also the Controller of our food.

And this means…what? It means The Lord can provide for us. Not only the food and water, but everything we need. For forty years the Lord fed a people where there was no food and gave them and their livestock drink where there was no water.

The prophet picks up on this theme in Psalm 33, near the end,

Paul agrees, reminding us that generosity will not put a Christian in the poorhouse, because, Philippians 4:19,

In the wilderness, Israel’s first concern was ‘Can the Lord provide for us?’ Time and again, He proved He could. The second concern is nearly the same thing, but not quite: Can the Lord protect us from our enemies?

Just a few weeks out of Egypt, the People were attacked by the Amalakites. All wars are dangerous, of course, but Israel’s first fight was more than most others. For one thing, it was a sneak attack; for another, the soldiers ambushed the women, children, and old people; they struck when the People were tired; and they fought without honor. You can read all of this in near the end of Deuteronomy 25. To make things worse: Israel had no army. Other than Moses, it’s possible not a single man there had any military training. They were slaves, working in kilns, farming, fishing, keeping livestock, and so on. The Amalakites, therefore, posed a real danger. Had they been successful, the People might have been brought into slavery a second time—and never gotten out!

But they were not successful, for the Lord fought for Israel. Joshua was given command of the troops, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur took it all in from a mountain top. The older men, however, were not up there to stay out of harm’s way, but were, in fact, the most important men in the war. Moses lifted his rod up to the Lord and as long as it stayed up, Israel prevailed. But it’s hard holding up a stick for hours and as his hands drooped so did the fortunes of his people. Seeing the problem, the other men found a flat rock for him to sit on, and they propped up his arms till the Amalakites were routed.

The fact that a rod—and not a sword, bow, or spear—won the battle means God gave the victory, and it wasn’t by chance or human courage.

Human enemies were a perennial problem for Israel and for God’s People in every age and place. Some of them seduce, others persecute. But whatever they do: they’re against us and if we are left to ourselves, we cannot overcome them. Paul was not dreaming or speculating when he told us what we’re up against,

When he says, ‘not against flesh and blood’, I don’t think he means men are not against us—for they are. He means ‘not only men’, but the demonic powers at work in them.

Can the Lord protect us from our enemies—human and super-human? Genesis 1 says He can and will. As far as we know, there were no ‘bad things’ on earth or anywhere else at the close of Genesis 1. How then can I say man had enemies back then?

Here, I use the word, ‘enemy’ in a somewhat different way. While Adam and Eve had no persecutors to fend off at the time, they were in a world full of potential dangers. They could not live in the water and so God separated the water from the land. They could not outrun lions or fight off bears and so the Lord gave them dominion over the animals and made the beasts fear them.

All of this means: the power of our enemies to harm us are under the Lordship of God. He prevents them from touching us (if He wants to) or He restrains them from going as far as they would otherwise (if He so chooses) or He uses their evil to do us good. The Roman soldier who cut off Paul’s head did nothing but send him to heaven.

Like the Psalmist, we can mock at our enemies, Psalm 118:6,

Like Paul, we can taunt the scariest enemy of them all, I Corinthians 15:55,

The Lord can protect us from our enemies. Hezekiah the King of Judah found his manhood in Genesis 1. Surrounded by a huge Assyrian army that had never tasted defeat, taunted by their commanding officer, with the courage of his own people hanging by a thread, the king turned to God for help, II Kings 19,

If God made men, He controls men. Adam and Eve were given dominion over every created thing. But God is not a created thing! Our enemies, therefore, cannot do a thing to us unless the Lord permits them to, and if He permits them to, it must be for His glory and our good.

A third thing Israel wondered about was God’s Word. Though they had their consciences and traditions, at Mount Sinai they received a long list of new and complicated laws, some of which must have left them puzzled, and maybe worse than puzzled.

Any good man can see why he shouldn’t murder or steal or commit adultery, but why couldn’t the Lord leave it there? Why should we study His Word and obey it?

Practical problems cropped up right away. For example, a man picked up sticks on the Sabbath; people tried to keep manna overnight; maybe someone wanted a pork chop now and then or wanted to shave his sideburns! But no, the Word comes in and says Don’t do it!

In many places the law seems petty, arbitrary, and given for no better reason than to wear the people out trying to keep it or stamp out any fun they might have. This was a practical problem, and Genesis 1, while not giving the full solution to it, goes a long way toward it.

What does the chapter tell us about God’s Word? It says the Word is both powerful and good. The Lord did not make the heavens and the earth with His hands or with tools or with a work crew; He made them all by the sheer power of His Word. Let there be light—and there was light. Let the dry land appear—and it was so.

If the Word of God is this powerful, it demands obedience and not discussion or consensus. While the Lord often explains Himself, He doesn’t have to! Because I said so is good enough.

This is not all Genesis 1 says about the Word of God, that it is powerful. It says it is good. The Lord created everything by His Word and everything He created is good. His Word, therefore, not only commands our obedience, but also our admiration gratitude. Genesis 1 makes you want to say with the Psalmist,

The future was another concern Israel had. Though the Lord was good to them in the wilderness, it was still the wilderness, and this means: life was hard!

God had promised them a land flowing with milk and honey, but all He had given them was a desert. Would they become a nation of shepherds, scattered over a wide country eking out a miserable living? Would their children be doomed to this kind of life? And their children?

Was the Promised Land only that—a Promise? Or would things get better? Things would get better, though not a soon as they might have. Genesis 1 tells the same story.

The heavens and earth are created in v.1, but they’re also an awful mess. Scientist sometimes describe the early Earth as a Primordial Soup, and that’s more or less what v.2 calls it:

Everything is here, but nothing is in its right place. Let’s think Mexican food: Take a basket of chips, a bowl of salsa, refried beans, rice, a chicken burrito, a pan dulce for desert, and why not? A margarita! Put them in a blender and hit, puree! The earth was something like this in the beginning.

But God didn’t leave it that way. Over the next six days, He put everything in its right place. Sun, moon and stars up into space; clouds in the sky; waters in the ocean beds; land rising out the beds; grass on the land; fish in the sea; birds in the air, cattle on the grass, man in a garden, and there you have it—

The Lord could have made everything instantly and in order. But He didn’t do that, because He wanted us to look forward to the future, and in the meantime, to be patient. Israel needed that lesson as they stumbled around in the wilderness.

And so do we! Christians are both already saved and not yet saved. God’s Redeeming Work for and in us has begun, but it is not finished, and that’s why we still sin and suffer. We wish we could be done with the struggle right now, but this is not the Lord’s way. He wants you to look forward to the Resurrection, and until it comes, to be content with what you have.

The last question is also the most important. In a way I’ve already answered it (and more than once), but it bears repeating: Does the Lord love us?

An Almighty Creator who does not love us is no comfort to anyone, and to sinners, He is a Holy Terror!

Israel often doubted His love, charging Him with bringing them into the wilderness to kill them with hunger, thirst, snakes, and a vegetarian diet! But they were as wrong as they could be!

God loves them—and us—with an everlasting love. While they saw that time in the wilderness as a cruelty, God thought of it as a honeymoon, a time when He and His bride could be alone and get to know each other (cf. Jeremiah 2:2).

If Genesis 1 teaches anything at all, it teaches God loves His People. Adam and Eve could have been created at any time, but had they been created on Days 1-5, they would have perished. They needed light and before God made them, He made the light. They needed dry land and before God made them, He made the land. They needed something to eat and before God made them, He made them something to eat. They needed something to do and before God made them He made something for them to do.

How would you describe a man who spares no effort or expense to make things just right for his wife? I’d say he loves his wife. And that’s what God did!

No effort is too great for Man. When he falls into sin, God will show that He was not exaggerating: no effort is too great for man. God Himself will become a Man, die for Man, and redeem Man from sin and death!

All because He loves us.

Whatever Genesis 1 says to scientists, its message is for all of the Lord’s People. The Almighty and All Loving God invites you to trust Him with the promise that when you do, you will not be disappointed.