Genesis 1-2

I’m sure you have heard these silly questions and answers: How many blondes does it take to change a lightbulb? Just 1. She stands on the ladder and waits for the world to revolve around her. How many IBM PC owners? 1, but she'll have to go out and buy the light bulb adapter card first. How many Bureaucrats? 2, one to assure the public that everything possible is being done while the other screws the light bulb into the water faucet. How many environmentalists? None. If the light bulb is out, that's the way Nature intended it. Firefighters? 3. 1 to do it and 2 to cut a hole through the roof. How many nursery workers does it take to change a light bulb? According to the Child Protection Policy, nursery workers don't change anything. They wait for the parents to come by after church and change things.

How many pastors does it take to change a light bulb? It depends on the needs of the bulb. Does it need counseling? Or Confrontation? How many church members does it take to change a light bulb? Change? What do you mean change? My grandmother gave the church that light bulb. Change of something as insignificant as a lightbulb could be the first step to neo-orthodoxy, nihilism, post-modern relativism. After you change that lightbulb, the next step will be dancing in the sanctuary!

Light bulb changing is light years away from the kind of change introduced in the book of Genesis. Genesis is a book of CHANGE – massive change, so significant that it has affected everything since. Change in the first two chapters that brought about our world, our universe and all that we see in it, out of nothing. Change in chapter three that interjected sin into our world with all of its pain and problems. It’s the change in chapter six brought about by a worldwide flood, that elevated all these geological issues today, from the glorious Grand Canyon to the earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes. It’s the change brought about by the tower of Babel in chapter 11, where humans misunderstand one another because the power of uninterrupted communication was jammed by the judgment of God on the stupidity of man. It’s the change brought about by the beginning of a line of people who actually believed God, and believed Him enough to sell their real estate holdings, move to a new area and live in tents for 100 years. And it’s the change that brought about a chosen nation which has persisted through wars and dispersions and holocausts until this day.

My plan is to spend eight Sundays introducing this book of change. And I hope as we talk about these eight massive transition points which have affected all of humanity, we will understand in a clearer way what God is doing on earth.

We are in chapters 1-2 today observing the CREATION. And I would like for us to see what God has set up through His creative activity, and why He set it up the way He did. Let me make just three observations.

By the fourth word in Genesis we are introduced to God. In fact, His existence is assumed. He is the Creator: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Think of what this simple statement includes:

It assumes that God was and is eternal because He was there, at creation, to create. Since nothing comes from nothing, He must have always been. It implies His omnipotence. He alone has the ability to create the beautiful earth we live in. Creation is the omnipotent act of giving existence to things which before had no existence. The first great mystery of things is, where did they come from? It implies His absolute freedom, for He begins a new course of action – something that was never present before. It implies His infinite wisdom, for what He created was organized and purposeful – everything is chained together to work as an organized unit (from James G. Murphy, Commentary on the Book of Genesis, 28).

Thus in this one verse, even one clause, we have the denial of Atheism with its doctrine of no God, the denial of Polytheism with its doctrine of many gods, the denial of Fatalism with its doctrine of chance, the denial of Evolution with its doctrine of limitless becomings, the denial of Pantheism with its doctrine that the universe is God, the denial of Materialism with its doctrine that physical matter is the only reality (Epp, 32). All of this in ten words.

The Bible doesn’t "prove" God. It doesn’t argue for His existence. It assumes that people will easily come to understand the presence of God when they observe His work. God’s existence and glory is demonstrated by what He does and says. Who else can do what He does with such ease? Who else can say what He says with such wisdom?

It’s like trying to prove that Billy Graham is a great preacher. How do you "prove" that? You don’t. You just turn Him loose, let him preach and watch people come to trust Christ. God demonstrates His reality in a similar but greater way. People say, "if there is a God, why doesn’t He show Himself?" The point is that He HAS shown Himself. Romans 1 says that His power and divinity are clearly seen. They can’t be missed by the objects He created. How is that?

You look at what He has done and what He has said. This fantastic world in which we live, this amazing book that so changes our lives. This group of people that so encourages and strengthens us. Where did all this come from?

You really only have two choices – either God created all that we have, or it is the product of impersonal forces. Those are your two basic choices. And the surprising thing to me is that people can look at what they have around them and say, "this sure looks like the product of impersonal forces at work." For example, Victor F. Weisskoph, the former head of Physics at M.I.T. and president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences:

The evolutionary history of the world, from the "big bang" to the present universe, is a series of gradual steps from the simple to the complicated, from the unordered to the organized, from the formless gas of elementary particles to the morphic atoms and molecules and further to the still more structured liquids and solids, and finally to the sophisticated living organisms ("The Frontiers and Limits of Science," American Scientist 65, July/Aug. 1977: 409)(quoted in The Long War against God, by Henry M. Morris, 21).

No guidance, no direction, no planning, just gradual steps that have moved life from the simple to the complicated. Everything we have and see is the product of natural, accidental, selection.

How do we know that there is a God? Because everything in the world and in nature is exactly the opposite of Victor F. Weisskoph’s statement! The second law of thermodynamics states that life does not move from the simple to the complicated, but in the opposite direction, from the complicated, to the simple. Life, events, organization tends to unravel rather than ravel. It takes a lot of work to organize and structure something we may view as "simple." Let me just point out two simple things here. The purpose of this message today is not to argue against Evolution. But let me just emphasize two simple things for which evolution has no answer.

A. The sheer size, the sheer mass of God’s creation makes a statement that evolution cannot answer. The earth is one huge mass of matter. How would you like to go about creating the earth? Impossible. How would you like to warm the earth? Or cool the earth? Or move the earth? Try to imagine this earth evolving out of nothing. Yet the earth is a grain of sand in comparison to other objects in space. More than a million earths could fit into the sun. That makes the sun quite large. But the sun is a fairly small star. There are stars that would contain a million suns. Some stars are as large as the orbit of the earth around the sun. Can you imagine the amount of mass and energy represented by that one star? Stars are gathered into galaxies. We are in the milky way galaxy, which is composed of 500 plus million stars. And the diameter of our milky way, which is sort of a flat, lens shaped star system is about 100,000 light years across. This means that if you traveled at the speed of light, (186,000 miles per second, 7 ½ times around the earth at the equator every second), it would take you 100,000 years to go from one end of our galaxy to the other. And our milky way, a giant collection of stars, is only one of billions of galaxies in the universe. In fact no one has been able to calculate how many galaxies there are in space, much less how many stars there are. Sir James Jeans, a British astronomer, says in The Mysterious Universe, "the total number of stars in the universe is probably something like the number of grains of sand on all the sea shores of the world" (quoted from Erich Sauer, The King of the Earth, 76). Do you know how many that represents?

The sheer size of everything is absolutely mind boggling. The mass, the amount of material in the universe is beyond comprehension. The energy, the amount of power demonstrated by burning stars and quasars as well as black holes is unimaginable. Where did it all come from? You have two choices: Someone started it. Someone who is incredibly powerful and creative. The other choice is that it just came about. It just developed by itself. It was an accident. There were forces that started multiplying and building and pushing and shoving and got so enormous that they produced what we see today. Tell me which of these choices takes more faith? When you start without God, you have to start with emptiness and ask where it all came from. You can’t start with a big bang, because you have to ask where the forces and mass came from for the big bang. There is something that doesn’t register with the answer that it just sort of "came to be."

It’s like standing in front of the Washington Monument and hearing someone say, "so who built this giant pencil?" And the answer comes, "no one, it just sort of built itself." I mean, people can believe whatever they want, but that kind of faith just doesn’t fit the facts. Someone says, "it is not only raw forces, but principles in our universe, that worked out what we see. The universe runs on mathematical principles." But who did the original math? Mathematical principles suggest that someone set them up. Random accidents are never precise. They never produce any mathematical organization. The predicableness of the orbits of the planets and stars says something. There is ORDER in this universe – amazing order!

The order, the design, as well as the enormous mass and energy clearly demonstrate the presence and creativity of God. It’s as if God is saying, "open your eyes and look; how would you have such a world apart from My creation?"

B. The sheer intricacy of life makes a statement evolution cannot answer. I’m talking now about the minute detail of life. How many cells are there in your body? Millions? Billions? Trillions? And every cell has a DNA coil that provides a set of instructions as to how the cell is to behave and what it is to become.

The human genome is no more than a string of four letters -- A, T, C, and G – repeated over and over, more than three billion times. The complete set of instructions is made up of two sets of 3 billion chemical letters, or bases of DNA.

Think of how amazing this design is. How can you say that it is an accident? When you have 6 billion possible bases to combine, how long does it take for you to get the right combination? The very fact that everything works, and we can walk and talk and laugh and cry and hope, makes an amazing statement about a brilliant Designer.

Psalm 19 says, "the heavens declare the glory of God." You look around and everything points to a wise and powerful designer. To claim that it came from a force, something inanimate, that has no thinking, no planning, no personality, is too much for me to swallow. It takes an enormous amount of faith to believe that all this beauty and balance as well as complexity that we don’t even begin to understand – made itself up. How much better to realize that they display the infinite characteristics of a PERSON, Someone who is incredibly powerful, as well as a total Genius, as well as incredibly creative.

Genesis claims that in the beginning, God created it all. It is all the product of His ability and brilliance. Our response? AMAZING!

So what is the benefit of seeing that God created everything? What would be different if one believed in God as the creator instead of evolution as the originator? One of the huge differences would be PURPOSE. If evolution started it all, then we are here for no purpose; we are an accident, we are the "fittest," we are the survivors. We have no responsibility; we have no accountability; we are just here. Why are we here? Who knows. Your guess is as good as mine.

But if an all wise God created us, then there is a good chance that He had a purpose behind it all. And we see this purpose clearly in Genesis 1-2.

II. God created human beings. There were six days of creation, all building up to day six, in which God created human beings. His goal as well as the crown of six days of work was Adam and Eve. Let me make two observations from the text here:

A. They were created in the IMAGE of God. Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness" (1:26). None of the animals were created in the image of God. Only human beings.

What does the "image of God" mean? What was God’s purpose in creating us in His image? I think it was fellowship. We have been given God’s kinds of capabilities – which none of the animals possess. The desire to know and grow in knowledge. How many animals do you see reading books? The desire to fellowship and spend time with one another, to develop friendships, to link ourselves together for life and work. How many animals do you see hanging out drinking coffee? The ability to communicate. God has give us moral character, the ability to understand the difference between right and wrong. Can you teach a lion the difference between right and wrong? There’s the desire for beauty. To create, to see, to be amazed by that which is truly beautiful. Do any animals stare in wonder at that which is beautiful? Not that I have seen.

Adam and Eve were designed for fellowship and communion with God as His representatives on earth. The "image" spoke of their ability to think, to will, to act, to speak, all characteristics which are found only in limited supply among the animals. Perhaps one of the important parts of the image of God is that mankind was given the ability to create. God created creators. They don't "create" with His greatness and glory, but in a tiny way that is parallel to God's way of creation. For example, we create words, and sentences, and ideas that were never here before, or never here in the form we have created. We create wars that were never here before, we create friends by the way we talk and act. We create disruptions to friendship, we create teams, units of people, families, small groups by the way we talk and act.

The delegated "power" we have been given enables us to "create" something good as well as something bad. When Adam and Eve ate the apple they created a new path, a path of sin that affected the lives of all their children. They "created" for others, sin. Adam was the head of the sin curse. Romans five, for example, points all of our sin problems back to "one" man.

Think of the incredible nature of that statement, "created in the image of GOD!" What unbelievable blessings have been given to us. The image of GOD, not some protozoa that happened to survive; not some monkey with a genetic aberration. We have been given a position with accompanying privileges that no animal can match.

B. They were given a responsibility by God. Adam and Eve were to take care of the Garden, develop it, and take over the earth as it expanded. Genesis 1:26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

Notice in verse 26, "have dominion" and "over all the earth." God’s goal for His final creation was dominion – rulership. God placed humans on earth to rule the earth. Verse 28 tells us what that rule entails. God said, "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion." The dominion God is talking about is connected with "filling" the earth, probably with children and descendants that have the same rulership ability that Adam and Eve had. The word, "subdue" is an interesting word. It means to "bring under control" something is out of control or hard to control, or that can’t control itself. Adam and Eve were to help control those kinds of beings, or beasts. The suggestion is that part of the earth was wild, or out of control. We actually get this suggestion just from the name, Garden of Eden. When you have a garden, what does that suggest? That the rest of the area outside of the garden is not a garden. God had planted a garden in the middle of His earth, and placed Adam and Eve there not only to enjoy the garden, but little by little to expand the garden, and by expansion, to subdue the rest of the world.

Adam and Eve were called to rulership over God’s work. They were in charge and were directed to expand their authority. We see God’s decision in 1:26: Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

The garden of Eden was the beginning. There was much work to do. Adam began to "subdue" the earth by giving names to all the living creatures (2:19-20). Ultimately Adam and Eve were to become gardeners; they were to become scientists, and botanists, and zoologists and biologists, learning how all these plants and animals and living things functioned, so that they could help them, organize them, and direct them into more productive ways. They were also to "fill" the earth (with children I assume) and "have dominion" over all the fish, animals, and birds. Are you starting to see how enormous the project was? Creation didn’t leave two people sitting around in a garden strumming guitars and picking grass out of their toes. They were commissioned with a responsibility of representing God on earth by fulfilling His plan for the earth.

And what we have seen accomplished by humans was part of God’s original plan. We have learned to shape and control matter and have created great structures like the pyramids and the giant temples of Luxor and Karnak in Egypt, the Parthenon in Athens, and the Colosseum in Rome. Sculptures, paintings, music, electricity, radio, TV, computers, atomic energy, airplanes and rockets that have mastered space. It is impossible to list all the ways that humanity has ruled taking over and using for good what God created.

Your desire to help your children make wise choices is part of your task of ruling. You want to get your office staff organized so that they work better together. That’s this task of ruling. You want to get your house fixed up, and your garden planted and growing, and your basement fixed. I think those are all examples of the motivation God placed originally in Adam and Eve.

At the same time there is abundant evidence that man has mis-used his rule and invented weapons of destruction, even mass destruction. Instead of working together to master nature, mankind has turned his attention to devising ways to master his neighbor, and take control over his fellow creatures. We see the possibility now of some rogue gang building an atomic device, putting it on the back of a truck and holding an entire city like Washington DC hostage. Laser beams, which have been so beneficial in surgery have been turned into weapons that can instantly melt a target.

This antagonism between the use of God’s creative gifts for good or for evil is going to escalate in days to come, to the place where ultimate control over the earth is wielded by one man. The tragedy will be that this one man will have the name, AntiChrist.

People today is simply working on the project that God originally tasked us to do, rule the earth. Sometimes we do it better, and other times we do it worse, and sometimes the work is horrible and deadly, but humans are doing what they were designed to do – take over what God created. That was the original purpose for creation.

So we are here for a reason. We are not accidents; God has a plan for your life as well as for mine. And His plan is GOOD. He has an incredible purpose in all we are and are doing. He wants to use us to spread the rule of His kingdom. Have you ever thought about WHY you are here? And whether you are fulfilling God’s purpose for you on earth?

III. God created the basic unit of society, the family (2:15-25). 2:18 And the LORD God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him." . . . 21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. 23 And Adam said: "This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man." 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

"It is not good for man to be alone." That was God’s judgment of the situation. "Don’t leave that guy down there by himself. He won’t make it alone."

A. God created woman. God’s plan was to create duets. The social structure of society was to begin with two – one man, one woman. What God created for Adam was COMMUNITY, a certain kind of fellowship – with someone wholly other! Loving relationships are more than simply good, they are absolutely essential. They not only support a person and encourage a person, but they define a person. Who are you? You answer that question in terms that other people have given you; they help you understand your identity; they help you understand your value, your worth, your accomplishments. Every person needs community. This doesn’t mean that every person has to get married. But it means that the laboratory where these kinds of loving, supportive relationships are worked out and displayed is in the marriage.

The desire today to grant marriage "rights" to homosexual couples is dangerous. To me, if what they intend to do is keep homosexual couples from being discriminated against, that’s one thing. But to pronounce upon them that they are "married" in the sense of "marriage," is a totally different thing and extremely dangerous. You cannot build a family on a homosexual duet. You can’t even have a family. You cannot build a society on homosexual combinations. The basic unit of society is a marriage between a man and woman. Once you eliminate that clear definition, as we are doing today, you open the door for everything to come in ("marriage" between anything and anything) and you blur the absolute essential of society – that it begins with a marriage. It’s one thing to give homosexual couples basic human rights; it’s another thing completely to give them a name that doesn’t belong to them, a name that defines what society needs.

Notice it doesn’t say in verse 18, "I will make for him a lover." It says, "I will make for him a helper." Marriage is intended to be extremely PRACTICAL. One human alone is help-less, but "two are better than one, says Ecclesiastes, "because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift the other." Marriage makes the job of living much more possible as well as profitable. The spouse is a "helper." Both spouses are "helpers." This means that the marriage ceremony is not the end, but only the beginning. We have not completed the job in getting hitched, we have simply established the terms by which we are now going to go to work. The goal is to learn to "help" one another, so that, ideally, we will grow more and more to be one. We’re not one because a preacher said we were married. We become one as we grow and our goals become the same, and we work together toward those goals, helping one another (ideas from As for Me and my house, by Walter Wangerin, 60).

That’s the plan. Society is composed of these duets who are working together to become one and develop unity. Each of you single young people ought to plan to get married. And you ought to marry someone of the other gender. And you ought to pray that God will prepare you for your mate, and prepare that mate for you. One of the ways God uses you in society is as you learn to live in harmony with a significant other.

B. God intended for each family to be a separate entity. The married couple is to leave their parents and establish their own family. God is not setting up communes, or tribes, or polygamy. He is setting up a family with a husband and wife in charge.

They become one as they work together. They are not one because someone says they are one. Instead it is their commitment to one another and to no one else. It‘s the realization that they have to do it together. It’s that open, face to face communication for the purpose of helping, that creates the oneness. Thus when you have a husband let’s say, who is looking at another woman, he is destroying the possibility of establishing unity with his wife. You husbands will never achieve the oneness God desires or the oneness you will so totally enjoy if you are looking at anyone else than your beautiful wife.

The marriage ceremony is so enjoyable. But after it is finished, the work begins. Each partner has to learn to concentrate on the other EXCLUSIVELY. One hundred percent. Anything less than that, limits the unity you can develop. You wives. Do you reverence your husband? Reverence as in respect, as in high respect? As in realizing and treating him as the most important, special person in your life?

If you are trying to fix him, and bring him up to your minimum standards, you are limiting the oneness that God wants you to develop. He wants you to concentrate 100% on loving your husband.

Here’s the plan. It was all started by God. He designed and built a gorgeous world and then, on the last day, created caretakers for His world. He put human beings in charge, to develop His world under His guidance. He created the family unit by forming Eve out of Adam and giving her to him. Then He turned them loose. And what did they do? We will see next week how they chose their own way (Isaiah 53:6) and went astray. In spite of what humans have done to interrupt and alter God’s plan, it is clear that the plan was and is brilliant.

God intends each one of us to rule. We were created to rule, not to be ruled. When people say to you, "I just couldn’t help it," you know that they are lying, because they were created to rule. They could help it. They could control it. They should control it. Actually God’s rule begins with ruling ourselves. If we cannot direct and control our own impulses and desires, we will not be able to direct and control other things well.

05/16/04, BBC am