Here is our Friday Bible study passage. Genesis 1:1-5 is the story of the creation of the light and the darkness out of the formless and empty expanse of the earth.
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
That is a days work! Here are three things in this short passage that should guide our Christian faith.
First, “In the beginning God” is a phrase that is pregnant with meaning for us. The very foundation of our faith is that before everything else came into being our God was there shaping and sorting events. Our world is neither accident nor series of unrelated events. Our world begins with the decision of God. The implication being that all things will exist and all things will come to pass as Gods wills them to be.
Second, out of chaos Gods creates order. It is not God’s intention for the world that is created to be “formless and empty”. Instead, God will shape the world in such a way as to create and order creation. In other words a way things should be.
Third, both evening and morning are “good” - they are perfect and achieve their purpose within the order God has drawn out from the shapeless void of earth’s beginnings.
There are many implications of these three observations for us. Let me give you just a couple. God is not creation and He exists outside of creation. Many modern day people if they are not plain atheists might be drawn towards pantheism - when God becomes one with creation. Or perhaps we worship the created order or endow the “circle of life” with magical redemptive powers. That is definitely not us. For the Christian, God exists outside of creation and therefore has all the more power to call created ones to a better life. Also, from our short few verses in Genesis it is pretty clear that God has a very specific purpose for the world and (we will see) for us. That statement in itself separates our religious experience from every other religion. We believe that there was a beginning, we believe there will be an end, and we believe that God controls and defines both.
May our Lord Jesus bless these words for use in the building of his kingdom.