What Creation Reveals About God

Genesis 1:1-3:24

The Beginning 

The Bible makes an astounding statement in its first several words: “In the beginning God . . .”

“The beginning” in this case, takes place before everything else, before the Big Bang, before anything that exists came into being. The Bible says that before all things there was God, and then it says he created everything else.

As soon as you open the Bible it challenges you to believe in God and trust his Word. It’s a book about God, given to the people of Earth, so we would know who he is and who we are. It’s not written from our point of view, it’s all about God’s point of view of his creation and its history. The Bible is the book of God.

What Creation Reveals About God

In many ways, science is only now catching up to how God created the universe. It’s as if God gave a high level outline in Genesis of what happened and in the past 100 years we finally had enough knowledge and tools to fill in the missing parts. Consider these parallels:

The rest of the account centers upon what God does to create and sustain life on earth, and as far as I can see, there is very little to quarrel about between science and the biblical account. The Bible gives the outline, science supplies details.

Moses wrote Genesis almost 4,000 years ago based on oral traditions and insights God gave him. The outline of what happened at Creation gave God’s people as much information as they could handle about how the universe came to be. They were called upon to believe in God and trust his Word, just as we are.

The Image of God

As far as we know, in all of the universe, there is no place like earth, teeming with life, perfectly placed in relationship to the sun, blessed with water and sufficient oxygen to sustain life. And there is no other creature like mankind. 

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule . . .’ ” Genesis 2:26.

People were made like God. He made us with the capacity to be creative, to care for things, to love each other and to rule over all the earth. What a gift and responsibility God gave us! Sadly, we used our power of choice to choose against God and our sin corrupted the way we relate to the earth, each other and God. Since then we have suffered, struggled and continued to make terrible mistakes. 

There is only one human being who never made mistakes or sinned: Jesus, the Savior, whose story we will read later. Jesus was raised on the very Scriptures we are reading right now. He believed every word and lived by every command. He agreed with Psalm 119: 9-11. 

“How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

Do what Jesus did and take God’s word to heart in 2020.

And don’t be afraid to interrogate the Bible as you read it. What’s your biggest question so far?