In the Beginning

In the beginning. The Bible’s first words announce how Israel’s God can be known. God created! He reveals himself in terms of the “when’s” and “where’s” of human life and history. The beginning identifies the moment when God created but its not the beginning of God. God is eternal and eternity has not beginning or end yet he establishes the concept on our worlds beginning.

Conceptually, this is how people orient themselves to their world. We locate ourselves in time in terms of our beginnings and endings. Our personal stories are also contoured by space. Thus as we see and identify ourselves by our finitude, so the Infinite One condescends by announcing his presence in the same terms—time and space.

God is not merely an idea. He is Eternal Being whom we can know and experience personally. At the commencement of Scripture he invites us to learn of him. Yet the full manifestation of the Unknown One awaited the Incarnate Word, who as Son is the “exact representation of his being”. So our story begins here as we awaited for his Son to come.

In the beginning! (beresit) Genesis a In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (1:1)—light and land, sunshine and sea, forests and fish, and human beings. God made it all in six days.

Strassner, K. (2009). Opening up Genesis (p. 20). Leominster: Day One Publications.

On the first day, God created light and separated it from darkness (1:3–5).

• On the second day, he formed the sky—the “expanse,” or “firmament” (1:6–8).

• On the third day, he formed the dry land and all its vegetation (1:9–13).

• On the fourth day, God filled the sky with sun, moon, and stars (1:14–19).

• On the fifth day, he filled the waters with fish and sea creatures, and the sky with birds (1:20–23).

• On the sixth day, he filled the land with mammals, reptiles, and, finally, with man (1:24–31).

This should excited us because on that 6 day after making all of the land mammals, reptiles, He was not done. He saw it was good but he was not finished! He said let us make man in our image. Up til this point it appear God was working alone. Every pronoun was singular. He. Every name was God ( elohiym ). He has a conversation about his final creation. Let us. Obviously what was next to be created was more special or should I say more significant that all else that was formed or filled.

The Psalmist put it this way. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

and crowned him with glory and honor.

6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under his feet, 7 all sheep and oxen,

7 all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

I guess that’s why the psalmist ends like this

9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

4 what is man that you are mindful of him,

As we see and look at creation we turn out to be Gods crowning achievement.

and the son of man that you care for him?

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Look at the conclusion of Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and 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 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

“By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done” (2:2). Observing this pattern, we should find it no surprise that nearly every human civilization from that time until today has ordered its life around a seven-day week—even though most of them have had neither the book of Genesis nor significant contact with one another. This is a testimony, written on the human conscience, of the truthfulness of the biblical creation account.

Note that the evolutionary hypothesis is simply that—a hypothesis, not scientific fact. Because of the time that has elapsed between the beginning of time and today, no hypothesis of the origins of the world can ever be properly tested, much less proven. So, though many around us are enamored of the evolutionary hypothesis, let us not get carried away by accusations claiming the Bible contradicts proven science. For not only can the evolutionary hypothesis not be scientifically tested or proven, it also cannot, by any reasonable means, be partnered with the biblical creation account. Notice three reasons why:

• First, we are given no reason to believe that the six days of creation were not six literal days. Yes, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day” (). But says again and again that on each day “there was evening and there was morning.” That doesn’t describe a millennium, but the normal sequence of one twenty-four-hour day!

• Second, notice that the Bible makes it clear that the plants (1:11–12), the sea creatures (1:21), the birds (1:21), the mammals (1:24), and the reptiles (1:24) were all created “after their kind.” So what we are being told is this: God did not create an amoeba that turned into a fish. Nor did he create a monkey that evolved into a modern man. Each creature was created as a distinct “kind”!

• Third, notice that man was created in the image of God. Anyone, then, who says that we came from the apes must also be prepared to say that God, in whose image we are made, must be like an ape—or, at least, that God must have been ape-like when he created Adam (maybe he’s evolving too?)! Do you see? Evolution is, at best, silliness; and, at worst, blasphemy! From the very beginning we see the first man, Adam, with God-like characteristics such as speech, reason, creativity, and moral consciousness. Man was made, from the beginning, in the image of God!

Opening Up Genesis Evolution and the Bible

Note that the evolutionary hypothesis is simply that—a hypothesis, not scientific fact. Because of the time that has elapsed between the beginning of time and today, no hypothesis of the origins of the world can ever be properly tested, much less proven. So, though many around us are enamored of the evolutionary hypothesis, let us not get carried away by accusations claiming the Bible contradicts proven science. For not only can the evolutionary hypothesis not be scientifically tested or proven, it also cannot, by any reasonable means, be partnered with the biblical creation account. Notice three reasons why:

• First, we are given no reason to believe that the six days of creation were not six literal days. Yes, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day” (2 Peter 3:8). But Genesis 1 says again and again that on each day “there was evening and there was morning.” That doesn’t describe a millennium, but the normal sequence of one twenty-four-hour day!

• Second, notice that the Bible makes it clear that the plants (1:11–12), the sea creatures (1:21), the birds (1:21), the mammals (1:24), and the reptiles (1:24) were all created “after their kind.” So what we are being told is this: God did not create an amoeba that turned into a fish. Nor did he create a monkey that evolved into a modern man. Each creature was created as a distinct “kind”!

• Third, notice that man was created in the image of God. Anyone, then, who says that we came from the apes must also be prepared to say that God, in whose image we are made, must be like an ape—or, at least, that God must have been ape-like when he created Adam (maybe he’s evolving too?)! Do you see? Evolution is, at best, silliness; and, at worst, blasphemy! From the very beginning we see the first man, Adam, with God-like characteristics such as speech, reason, creativity, and moral consciousness. Man was made, from the beginning, in the image of God!

Strassner, K. (2009). Opening up Genesis (pp. 21–23). Leominster: Day One Publications.

Opening Up Genesis Forming and Filling

And “By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done” (2:2). Observing this pattern, we should find it no surprise that nearly every human civilization from that time until today has ordered its life around a seven-day week—even though most of them have had neither the book of Genesis nor significant contact with one another. This is a testimony, written on the human conscience, of the truthfulness of the biblical creation account.

Strassner, K. (2009). Opening up Genesis (p. 21). Leominster: Day One Publications.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

Mathews, K. A. (1996). (Vol. 1A, p. 126). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

In the Beginning

In The Beginning