Genesis-The Beginning Chapter 1

Submitted by RVH on Wed, 10/07/2020 - 13:12
Creation

Genesis 1     New International Version

The Beginning

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God and is infallible. Having said this, I also believe that God does not tell us everything in His word. Not nearly everything. He tells us the basics, what we need to know. I also believe that God inspired parables or stories that speak his message in stories that we can understand and were spoken through those chosen to write the scriptures.

Some may shake their heads upon reading the last sentence and will not continue to read. Does this mean I don’t believe every word of the inspired Bible? Absolutely not. I believe every word and every message that God is conveying. I believe the message is literal, whether a recounting of actual events or conveyed in a parable or analogy.

Jesus was the son of God; God, manifested in the flesh and he was a master at conveying his messages in parables. Though not a literal recounting of actual events, the parables clearly speak what Jesus wants us to know. I have no reason to believe that God would not have spoken to us in the same manner, prior to the new covenant and the birth of Jesus.

Getting back to creation, God has told us what we need to know. He wants us to accept what he has revealed to us, by and through faith.

We will never fully understand the workings of God. We cannot. It is far beyond our human ability. It is even beyond the ability of science to grasp the power and majesty of God.

We know that many in the world are atheists and agnostics who are unable to accept that the universe was created by a creator. Their explanation of “the beginning” is basically that hundreds of things happened to work in concert, perfectly, and bang our ancestors were walking on earth.

I agree that there was a “bang”, but can never accept that the universe, the world and all of us simply came about by accident.

 Years ago, I read a scientist’s belief on creation and it has stuck with me. In discussing the creation of the world, he said “to believe that everything just miraculously came together to create the universe, earth and human life is to believe in a far greater miracle than simply believing that God created all things.”

In the book “More Than A Carpenter” by Josh McDowell, he asks readers to imagine the following: 

“Imagine that you are trekking through the mountains and come across an abandoned cabin. As you approach the cabin you notice something very strange. Inside, the refrigerator is filled with your favorite food, the temperature is set just as you like it, your favorite song is playing in the background and all your favorite books, magazines and DVDs are sitting on the table. What would you conclude? Since chance would be out of the question, you would likely conclude that someone was expecting your arrival.”

McDowell further states “that in recent decades, scientists have begun to realize that this scenario mirrors the universe as a whole.”

Physicist Freeman J. Dyson states “it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”

Think about this next sentence. Physicists also agree that life is balanced on a razor’s edge.

As an example, McDowell writes “if the law of gravity varied just slightly the universe would not be habitable for life. Gravity must be fine-tuned to one part in 1040. That is one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.”

Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking writes “if the rate of expansion one second after the “Big Bang” had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million-million   the universe would have re-collapsed before it reached the present size.”

Yes, I believe in the “Big Bang” that science has discovered. When God brought the universe into existence, the force required would have created a sound that is unimaginable. The powerful force has reverberated since and will forever. Imagine for a second that God had fingers; when he snapped his fingers to create the universe, the force and chain of events would be deafening, echoing throughout history. Why didn’t God tell us about this “big bang?” I imagine it was one of those things he supposed we didn’t need to know. Maybe he knew we would someday be advanced enough to hear it.

 

Big bang-universe

 

McDowell continues in “More Than A Carpenter” saying “There are actually nineteen such universal constants that must each be perfectly fine-tuned. Clearly the odds against us being here are vanishingly small. In fact, Oxford physicist Roger Penrose concluded that if we jointly considered all the laws of nature that must be fine-tuned, we would be unable to write down such an enormous number since the necessary digits would be greater than the number of elementary particles in the universe.”

Finally, McDowell concludes on this subject with this; “The evidence for design is so compelling that Paul Davies a renowned physicist at Arizona State University has concluded that the bio-friendly nature of our universe looks like a “fix” putting it this way; the cliché’ that life is balanced on a knife’s edge is a staggering understatement in this case; no knife in the universe could have an edge that fine. No scientific explanation for the universe, says Davies, can be complete without accounting for this overwhelming appearance of design.

Why are the laws of the universe so perfectly fine-tuned? Why are the nineteen universal laws of nature that allow for life, so perfectly, precisely balanced on that razor’s edge?

Because God, the designer and creator of all things, made it that way.

Given the above information, that life is balanced on a razor’s edge with at least nineteen universal laws being so fine-tuned, I again state that believing that all this just happened miraculously as happenstance, is to believe in a greater miracle than simply believing in God as the designer and creator of all things.

Don’t worry about what you don’t know. Quit trying to figure out what is not understandable. Simply consider the miracle of life; the miracle of birth; the magnificence of the moon, stars, sun; the majesty of nature and all his creation. Then realize what Paul was saying in Romans 1:20;

Romans 1:20     New International Version

20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

I love to think about the beauty of God’s creation, the sun, moon, stars, galaxies and the universe with no end. When I think of the fact that we are so very small, like ants or grains of sand in this vast universe, it reveals to me the greatness of God.

When I remember that we are positioned on the side of a round-ball (Earth) that is spinning, while hurtling through space at close to the speed of light, I stand in awe and reverence before my God.

The universe

 

If we ever start thinking more highly of ourselves than we should, we should remember this and we will be cut down to size.

All we need to know is what God tells us in Genesis chapter one and what we see around us.

It is right before our eyes.

We have no excuse if we fail to see God’s eternal power and divine nature.

We don’t need to know more and certainly we don’t need to know everything. God has told us in His word and shows us His awesome majesty and power in all that is around us.

He expects us to accept Him as creator through faith, in His word and what our eyes see and our ears hear.

We are without excuse if we don’t.

RVH