God Our Creator

Theology is nothing but exalted anthropology. There is no God. What we call God is just our favorite, most important ideas. Honestly, there's some truth to this. There's an important recognition that Throughout history, we've all done this. If you look at most religions, it's just grand ideals of what man would be like. The gods of the nations have often been just more powerful humans.

But for us, we're seeking to worship the right God in the right way, to hear a word from God. We have to come and realize we carry into that relationship, we carry into that worship lots of our own ideals, lots of our own opinions, lots of things that are not aligned with who God is. The great calling of the Christian is not to only worship a God who would resonate with what you already believe. The call of a Christian is to hear the word of God, To long to have scales fall off over and over again. Long to have a clearer and more true understanding of God. The beauty of the Christian God is that we get to think God's thoughts after him. Which means we have to stop listening to what we have already assumed and believed about God.

We want to come and hear A word from God this morning, we're going to go back to Genesis one. We'll, we'll return to Matthew shortly. I, I want to be able to, to, to look at all of the, uh, you have heard section of passages from the summer of the Mount together. We're going to get Genesis one, uh, personally, because I had a lot of good conversations after Psalm eight. And I, I said there in Psalm eight, when we're looking at that for Advent, that evangelicals have just stopped talking about God the creator. I fear this is a lost category for Christians.

So we're going to go all the way back and really double down as we begin this new year to think about who God is as our holy creator. The goal is to see how great and good God is. As we pursue God, as we seek to know him as he's revealed himself, you will see him greater and good. The three things we hope to, I hope we see from the text, Genesis 1 through chapter 2, verse 3, the God who creates, the God who speaks, and the God who made us in his image. The God who creates, the God who speaks, and the God who made us in his image.

The God who creates

First, the God who creates. As we look at this text, and if you're new to scripture, there's two numbers we refer to, Genesis 1-1, 2-1. Those were not divinely inspired or given to us.

We already start in the very book of Genesis to see they messed up really poorly at the very beginning because Genesis The the the ending should be chapter 1 through 2 3 that should not be a chapter break We have all seven days together but I wanted to see Genesis 1 through 2 3 that there's a unique style to this text It's not written in classic Hebrew poetry, if you want to know what classic Hebrew poetry looks like, Genesis 127 is classic Hebrew poetry.

It's parallelism. It's saying similar declarations in a format and there's meter to it. It's also not typical Hebrew prose. It's not a historical narrative. There's a unique design and order and repetition to it that has some poetic aspects, but there's also a story to it that has some prose aspects.

It really seems to stand out as a whole unique genre in all of scripture, which I think is fitting because it stands alone at the beginning of the Bible as an introduction to everything we need to know, who God is, who we are, and how we relate to everything that's been created.

It's what I want to call a high hymn of praise to God the Creator. It sets us up for who we are and who God is as we're going to enter into the history. And if you want to know what a typical Hebrew narrative looks like, it's Genesis 2-4. These are the generations, and that's repeated throughout Genesis. These are the generations, these are generations. There's a history of the scripture, but this is a high hymn of exalted praise. It's a prologue. It sets the stage to tell us who God is as the glorious creator, how all things came to be, the sky, the moon, the stars, why there's such an incredible variety of animals, how we relate to them.

There's important union and distinction in this passage. Male and female are both made in the image of God. There's a distinction of male and female, and yet there is an incredible similarity and sameness. distinction is that there is a God and I am not him. That's the most important distinction. I believe this is written for a number of reasons. One, so we know who to worship. The history of man is worshiping everything created except God. And here we're seeing he alone is worthy of worship. It is set up to lead us into worship. It's also an apologetic.

Because when this was written, there were already a number of creation accounts that would have carried along some narrative or some oral tradition of original creation and original flood. It's really apologetic to make it clear those interpretations of what they heard were all wrong because most of those come out of a chaos creation. What stands out of this passage is how good it is, how orderly it is. This creation originally reflected the good and ordered God. The Bible begins with this big view of God, to call us to depend upon him and worship him. Now, notice as we look at the text, and as I hope you heard when Sarah was reading, there's very important, significant repeated declarations. For instance, every day begins and ends in the same way.

And God said, and there was evening and morning that day. And God said, and there was evening and morning that day. And God said, and God said, and there was morning and evening that day.

There are other really important words and phrases sprinkled throughout.

And God said, and it was so. God saw, and it was good.

Incredible how we see God so active here. We see the creative power of God. God made, God created, God set. God is sovereign over all that is happening in this grand hymn of praise. Genesis 1, 1 through 2, 3 is the grand high praise hymn of all of creation, of all scripture. I want to go ahead and look at chapter one, verses one and two. Well, that's an introduction within the introduction.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

This, this section is extremely important to make sure we understand there is God and there is nothing else that is eternal. Everything else that exists that is good was created by God, and he brought it about in his own way. The spirit hovering is mysterious, but it shows there's some clear present and active action of God.

Now, verses 3 through 31 show the ordering of creation. There is a creation of some sort in chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. He created the heavens, the earth, and then we see those six days are bringing a unique and powerful, important order to it. There's six days of creation activity. And there's a wonderful order even within them.

The first three days correspond with what happens on the next three days. Days one, two, and three separate different aspects of what God is going to then fill or complete. So day one, there's a separation of day and night, as he creates light to go along with darkness. There's a separation of day and night, and that's day one. Well, day four corresponds with it, because day four is where he's going to create the sun and the moon, who are going to rule over the day and the night.

Day two corresponds with day five. Day two is where he separates the sky and the sea, and day five is where he fills the sky and the sea with the fish. and the birds. Day three is where he separates the land and the sea. And day six is where he fills the land with beast and man made in his own image. Day seven is different.

Chapter two, verse one,

thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them In the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it, God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

I believe Moses is writing this after the Exodus, probably after he's received the law of God and heard that the Sabbath day is holy of God. Here we see the creation pattern is already set aside a holy day of rest, not because God was tired, I believe this is showing us the ultimate end of creation, that we would find a rest in God. What stands out about the last day, the seventh day, there is no declaration of an ending. There is no morning and evening.

It is holy for us to enter into. In the beginning, What a fantastic introduction. We all love an origin story. In the beginning, God created all we know that exist. We know God exists forever from much of scripture, but here God creates all that we know, the heavens, the earth. In the beginning, this is the beginning of what we know in our own existence. It's important that God is independent. He does not depend upon his creation. Everything he creates depends upon him. And everything he created has a mark of his. He's put his fingerprint on this. It's good. It's orderly. It helps us see the way things were meant to be. Because it's important we understand this is not the way things are now, fully.

If we're just to go out into the, there's two books of revelation, there's two books of God, there's special revelation, scripture, there's creation. If we were to go out into creation, we should be amazed by how much goodness and order there is still here because God is good to sustain it. It's not complete chaos all the time everywhere, but we do have to ask, why is it not as good as it was? Well, it's because God gave us a special role as humans maintain it, and we'll get to that as the last point, but we've corrupted this earth. We were given a special role and status and position and job on this planet, on God's earth, to bring about his goodness, to spread his glory. We've corrupted it. So at some level, this hymn of praise shows us what it was, what it ought to be, And it helps us grieve what we now experience.

God is not dependent upon this creation. Helps us know he doesn't change like things in this creation. This creation is not exactly like God in every way. God doesn't change with the seasons. He doesn't change with the days. But most importantly, God is not corruptible. God is not corruptible.

He is good and holy and is bringing about a good and holy salvation for this creation that even the things he created outside of humanity are longing for. We now live in a glorious ruin. We should be able to see how amazing this creation is and glory in God for what he has created, but we also must grieve the ruin. As Christians, we must understand we worship the one God who's created everything. And the most significant way we relate to him in worship from Genesis 1 is depending upon him as our creator. He is the source of all that exists that is good.

It is in God alone that we live and move and have our being. This flies in the face of our own self-reliance and individualism. Those are the waters we just swim in as American citizens, as Westerners. That's wrong. We must always look up to God and know we are fully dependent upon him for everything.

He's the God of life. He's the God who is good. He's the God of order. We depend upon him to live. In him, we live and move and have our being. We depend on him for any goodness. Every good gift that is ours has come down from him. We depend upon him for order. If we do what is right in our own eyes, our lives lead to disorder. We look up to God and see how he ordered this good creation. We see how he seeks to order our lives according to his instruction. We're blessed.

The scripture calls wisdom. Before we move on from the creator, I want us to see a gospel connection. We've been in the gospel of Matthew. Do you remember how Matthew opens?

This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

That's referring back to Genesis. As God began this world, as God created humans, as God made a great, glorious, good beginning, well, Matthew opens with a declaration, there's a new beginning. God the creator came down to renew what we've corrupted. God did not give up on his creation. God himself, Jesus Christ, came to redeem it. That's how Matthew's gospel opens, but Matthew's gospel closes with an even greater divine claim.

All authority in heaven and earth are mine

, Jesus says.

Be baptized in the one name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I am with you always.

Church, we're part of the new creation process. We're supposed to be seeking to know how to live within the goodness and order of God that's lost, that we get to be restored in His image? We get to be a restored people as a church? It means we must learn how to be committed to a goodness and order. It means we have to learn how to have a proper prioritization and order our own loves and our own time and our own priorities. To know who God is and to make Him known.

The God who speaks

The first thing we see from Genesis 1, God, creates. He is the God who creates. The second thing is that he is the God who speaks. He is the God who speaks. Again, how God creates here is, and God said. You see that in verse 3, verse 6, verse 9, 11, 14. Over and over again, and God said. We also see words, chapter 5, chapter 1, verse 5.

God called. So he speaks things into his existence, and then he calls things by name. He has an authority. God's speaking is an incredible power. Let's just look at the first three days and consider what God is doing. God said, let there be light, and then he called it day and night. God said, let's separate the heavens, the expanse of the waters, and we'll call it heaven. God said that the waters gather and therefore there was dry land and he called it earth on day three. He saw it and it was good.

As we look at this, we see just an incredible power. We believe in creation ex nihilo, that's out of nothing. He's not a mechanic, he doesn't take what was already there and just make it better. No, he created it and then he orders it. God's ability to speak with absolute power is at the heart of the gospel, because he changes who we are with his very voice.

We look here and we say, God said, let there be light, and just consider the power, just speaking something in existence. Have you ever tried that? You wanna just give it a shot, let there be, and see what happens? Let there be, you don't have that power. We're mere mechanics. We're incredibly capable mechanics.

We can take what God has given us and we can be creative, but the power to create out of nothing, something as great as stars and the moon, to form something and give it dignity and honor the way God does, is incredible power we trust because he's also the God who says, I'll forgive you. I love you, I'll always be with you.

Another aspect, I believe, of what we see in the way God speaks is he's not distant. The very fact that he chose to speak and not just snap his fingers or have a thought, to speak is personal. He's speaking this creation into existence with his own personal word, it's intentional. It shows there's an interest, there's an involvement, there's a clear pattern, not just for our well-being to see what he created and how and why, but he's invested. He's fully independent. He does not depend upon us for his goodness.

But he's a God who's committed to this world with a care and intentionality. Let's look at the next four days where he fills what he then had already separated. Day four, he says there's two great lights. There's the sun and the moon and they're going to govern the day and the night. He's establishing good rule in his creation.

Now, there's some questions I did ask folks, what are your main questions out of Genesis? How is it there's light without the sun and the moon? I think we have to remember this is written by Moses and God is giving an apologetic. The sun and the moon are meant to teach us we're small. The sun and the moon, they're not under our rule. They rule us. They're not gonna be worshipped either.

By God creating light before the sun and the moon, he's showing how great and awesome he is and that the sun has a very dependent place and a very secondary place. The sun is meant to rule the day and the night so that we know There's something greater than us, but it is not just the sun and the moon. It is God who created. In day two, he formed the sea and the sky, and day five, he fills it with the birds and the air, and here he says and speaks in a different way that is remarkable. Verse 22.

He's spoken things of existence, and now he speaks to the birds and the fishes, and he says,

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters and the seas and let birds multiply on the earth.

He speaks to his creation. Again, an emphasis on how personal God is with what he's created. He's speaking to it, giving it instruction. And then day six, the last day, he creates the beast of the earth. And there's a new way he speaks in verse 26. God says to himself,

let us make man in our own image.

He gives another instruction. God says,

behold, I've given him every plant.

He then declares this very good. We see here there's a royal we in that we will make him in our image. There's a way in which God is speaking about and to, and even putting his own image in creation, he shows there's a personal connection. He's not dependent upon, but he's personally invested. As we look at God speaking, we must see how powerful he is, but we cannot believe the lie that he's somehow distant and disinterested. It's very important we see he has promised himself to this creation, and so he is bound to this creation, but only by his own word. The powerful thing here is, and the good news for us, God speaks.

If that isn't good news for you, you haven't really thought about how dangerous worship is apart from a God who speaks. There's epitaphs to the God who is there under the stars or in the sky or in the caves or in the depths. Whoever he or she or they might be, whatever you might want me to do to run across the nations, to cut down the trees, whatever it may be. When you don't know who God is, what he expects, and you truly understand there's a God, you're left in chaos, and you'll cause more destruction.

The God who speaks with power and what I wanna call love here, he can be trusted. Our first act of worship is fully depending and trusting God. You can depend upon him, you can depend upon his word, and the first act of worshiping is to listen to God. We too often want to speak before listening. The first act here is the God who has spoken to us. He said such great things about us and to us. We depend upon him by listening, praying he will change our minds and hearts as we listen.

As we consider this passage, I wanna consider the God who speaks and I wanna go to their gospel connection. John's gospel begins this way.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and all things were made through Him, and nothing was made without Him. And that Word became flesh.

God the Father, all things are created from Him, and God the Son, the Word, all things are created through Him. The Son, who is on this side of creator, He has come down to participate in creation.

John 1.1 is clearly echoing Genesis 1.1 to remind us there is a new beginning and God has not stopped speaking. What he does is not just speak words of how he created and what he created. He speaks new life into all who would hear. He speaks new life into those of who were dead in our sin. He speaks wisdom against our foolishness.

Christian, are you trusting God fully to truly rule your life with His good work? If you're not a Christian this morning, there's one thing to do. Hear that call of God and believe. There's not work to do to clean yourself up. There's nothing to do except to Believe that which you are hearing, and I pray you're hearing a call of God to believe in Jesus Christ, who was the word of God, who brought the order into this creation, who came down to die for our sins, to reorder our lives under God, to renew us as image bearers, to know him and to worship him. Believe in Jesus. Believe in the God who created you and has come to bring about a new creation in you.

God made us in his image

What God said about us is what we should want to hear most clearly. We see who God is. We see he is the God who creates. We see the God who speaks. But we're all selfish. We want to know what God says about us. The God who made us in his image. Now the challenging part of really coming to scripture is we are reading it and we want to know what God says about us. It is a book first and foremost about him. And the more we seek to know him, the more we're really going to know who we are. Well, just focus in here in verses 26 to 31.

Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. 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. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

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 earth. And God said, behold, I've given you every plant yielding seed that is in the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit You shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and everything that creeps from the earth and everything that has breath of life. I've given every green plant for food.

And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.

True wisdom is knowing God and ourselves. And here we have a wonderful, clear declaration about God and ourselves. God says something about us, he says something to us the way he creates us. The creation of man stands out in this passage of all creations. There's eight ways in which man stands out in this creation.

First, verse 26, God speaks to himself about creation, about creating man. God's spoken before. He's even given personal instruction to the fish and the birds. But here, you're supposed to take a pause because he's saying, let us do this.

Second, God gives man a unique status. He doesn't just call him by name. He's giving him a unique status. And third, that unique status is that we're made in his image. Nothing else is described this way. And nothing else is this way, only humans.

Number four, the high prose hymn breaks into poetry, verse 27. Highlights it. There's a way if you're reading scripture, whenever there's a different genre introduced, especially if you're reading something and it breaks into a poem or poetry, There's a highlighting of it. The whole thing is a unique genre, but here we go to this three stanza parallelism.

God created man in his own image, and in the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them.

There's a way in which the language highlights man. Number five, it's the first time male and female are introduced in any way, of all creation, with a specific reason. Number six, the end stress. The fact that man is pushed to the very end shows how important man is as the ending of creation, to highlight the climactic ending.

Seven, man is given dominion over everything else on earth. He clearly has a higher order and a higher position than everything else on earth because he is to have dominion over every other created thing on earth. Not the sun or the moon, but every other living creature and plant on earth.

And then verse eight, and he saw that it was good. It was very good. The emphasis on the greatness of how good it is. Folks, you should think you're important because God clearly made you important. Humans are extremely important based upon this passage. There's a high elevation of man. God has made us with incredible significance and importance. The high praise hymn of God the creator has made us with a unique and incredible greatness.

Our position, our purpose, and our power

Let's think about it. There's three Ps when it comes to the image of God. our position, our purpose, and our power. The position is forever, for every human being. Every human being has the same unique dignity and honor forever. Every human being has this position. No matter how horrible of a criminal someone might be, no matter how wrong their view of God might be, every human being forever is made in the image of God. From Cain to Herod, every human being has this dignity and goodness and value given to them by God.

Every human being also has an incredible purpose, to exercise dominion, to steward what God has given, a job, to spread His goodness and His glory throughout all of earth. The job of every human is to worship. We are hardwired for worship. And three, we have an incredible power. In order to fulfill this purpose, we have an incredible power to rule over all the other creatures. One of those incredible powers is the capacity of communication with each other, but most of all with God. Now, sadly, we don't lose that position, but we have decided we were going to find some other purpose. We use the power God gave us for a purpose that is beneath us, to worship anything and everything but God with the power God has given us.

When we desire a greater greatness than what God gives us, we lose everything. This is the definition of sin that we could take from the passage. even though sin is not yet introduced. Sin is when we want more than or beyond what God has given. That's what happened in the garden. They wanted more than what God had already given. They did not trust God to stay within the great lane that he had given them. It's a refusing to honor God with what he's given. It's a refusing to thank God for what he's given.

Verse 27 is such a grand declaration about us that's worthy of your full meditation. We're made in His image to reflect Him. We're made in His image because we can know Him and we can make Him known. We're made in His image with an incredible dignity and with a great power and a purpose. There's a pattern that God gives when He says something about us and then He says something to us.

Notice verse 8. That's the job description, the creation mandate. It comes after he's told us who we are, now he tells us what to do, and notice the commandment is a blessing. Oh, let that just fester for a second. Let that sink in for a moment. He blessed them with a commandment, fill the earth, subdue it, extend my will. Is God's instruction a blessing?

True greatness

God made us in his image. This is important for our own self-understanding, self-evaluation, relationships with each other, and worship of God. Christian humility starts right here in Genesis 1, 26. A sane and right understanding of who you are. There's two forms of pride, one that boasts too much of yourself, and the other is self-pity degrading yourself. And we're all guilty of both. But we all have a tendency towards one. Humility is just thinking yourself rightly. Humility is sanity. Humility is properly putting ourselves under God, knowing that he has given us the greatest greatness we could ever long for or wish for.

There's no greater status or existence than what God has given us. If you want true greatness, if you want the true exalted place for humanity, it's found only under God. The pride of boasting or the pride of self-pity is torn apart. Do we trust him to truly give us the greatness that only he can give?

Healthy relationships with each other

Secondly, healthy relationships with each other start here. This passage is the basis for love your neighbor as yourself, because we're all made in the same image with the same dignity and honor. Important here, we'll focus in on how we love one another as male and female. Both are equal, but both are one humanity. It's significant that he does open Genesis one with God created man in this unique status, his own image. As an image bearer, he created man. And to make sure we don't misunderstand it, male and female, he created them in his image.

Most of human history has sought to make females, women, a second status lower than man. The other options say they're exactly the same and there's no distinction whatsoever. Genesis 2 is a different sermon where we see headship and helper introduced. But here we must understand there's a declaration regarding the power and purpose and position, male and female are equal. Male and female are both made in the image of God with the same purpose that they can know God and make Him known.

The highest and greatest purpose of any human is to know God, to be obedient and dependent, and to make Him known by exercising the dominion He gives us. the tension of saying what is exactly the same about male and female and what the different roles are. Christian, we must hold that line. It's a hard one to hold. It's too often a confused one. Let's just make it clear we can think of other passages of scripture where we are to outdo one another in honor, where to love one another as ourselves.

Husbands, honor your wives

, is a command from Peter.

As I think about what this means in our relationship to each other, I want to make clear a concern I have in that whatever wave of feminism we're in, that wave seems to hate women and so I hate it. The wave of feminism that says women, you're only powerful if you sexualize yourselves, that's a lie. The wave of feminism that says you're only good if you can be just like a man and be able to do everything like a man, to sleep around like a man. First of all, men, stop sleeping around.

If you think you can only be good and valuable because you can live like what horrible men do, you're missing the glory of what God's given. The wave of feminism also seems to want you to hate babies. the woman who has this special unique role in the procreation of forming image bearers that will glorify God.

We must hold up the value of every human being and declare what's truly good about each male and female in the way God has designed us. We must hold true to that which is honorable to God in the way he has designed us. The starting place is to see every human is made with incredible dignity, honor, and a capacity for worship, and draw us to trust him. The third thing here is related to worship.

Leading worship throughout all creation

Normally when we hear image in scripture, we hear of don't have images in worship. That's because God's already made his image. We are supposed to be the images of God in worship. We are supposed to be reflecting God. When we seek to worship other images, when we seek to worship things God created, we're actually lowering ourselves below what God has made us. We're supposed to be leading worship throughout all creation. If you consider this, there's two ways in which we spread the glory of God. Here we see the creation mandate.

Husbands and wives having babies, raising them to know God. With as many pregnancies and births we've had, good job. Keep it up. There's a beauty in a way we want to celebrate. And let me address something that's not in my notes. We'll see how well this goes. When we have showers for marriages and new babies, If you don't know the person, go anyway. The goal is that we're all, you're encouraging each other to value the blessing of being a wife and a mother. The goal is that everyone's coming together to rejoice in all of this common creation blessing that isn't common at all.

It's a great opportunity to encourage each other in the ways God has designed. The second way to spread the glory of God is the Great Commission. proselytization, by making disciples of all nations, all of us are called to the Great Commission. Because the Great Commission is going out and proclaiming the word that renews an image bearer, that restores an image bearer.

If we consider our role here, we're all meant to be worship leaders of all creation. We're meant to receive what God has said, to trust him, to want to be under him, Let's just end with a question. How much of our lives are seeking to know and reflect the goodness and order of God? That's the calling. To be restored as an image bearer so that our lives reflect in our practices what God has said is good. That we have an orderliness about us as humans in our marriages, in our families, in our church.

Are we seeking to be holy because God is holy? And this is why you seek to be holy. God has purchased you with the precious blood of Christ. The burden of the self-pity, the burden of the pride, oh, Christ has purchased you with his own blood so that we can grow in holiness. We can grow to be, once again, his faithful image bearers.

Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you, Lord, for your kindness. We thank you, Lord, that you did not leave us alone to wonder who we are, how we relate to you, how we relate to each other, this world. Lord, we can see all the different destructive chaos throughout history, even throughout the present times in this world of those who have not ordered themselves under you. Lord, may we as your new people long for your new creation. May we as your new people seek to be practicing the goodness and order that you have saved us for, designed us for, and commanded of us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.