Sermon Illustrations on CREATION
Background
Ancient Creation Accounts Were Functional, not Material
John Walton argues in The Lost World of Genesis One that rather than concerning material creation, the creation account in Genesis one concerns functional creation, because that is how ancient readers, to whom modern scientific understandings of the world would be entirely alien, would have understood it. He proposes an “expanded interpretive translation” of Genesis 1:1,
In the initial period, God created by assigning functions throughout the heavens and the earth, and this is how he did it.
The rest of Genesis 1 spells out what happened in this early period as happening over seven days. Key to Walton’s understanding is this: a material creation account cannot be read out of Genesis 1. It is simply not what is being offered.
William Rowley (See John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP, 2010).)
The Big Bang and Ex Nihilo (out of nothing)
We have this very solid conclusion that the universe had an origin, the Big Bang. Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point. That implies that before that, there was nothing. I can’t imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself. And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that had to be outside of nature.
Francis Collins, In an interview on Salon.com, https://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/08/07/collins/index2.html.
A Celestial 360
You may feel as if you are sitting still right now, but it’s an illusion of miraculous proportions. Planet Earth is spinning around its axis at a speed of 1,000 miles per hour. Every 24 hours, planet Earth pulls off a celestial 360. We’re also hurtling through space at an average velocity of 67,108 miles per hour. That’s not just faster than a speeding bullet. It’s 87 times faster than the speed of sound. So even on a day when you fee like you didn’t get much done, don’t forget that you did travel 1,599,793 miles through space! To top things off, the Milky Way is spinning like a galactic pinwheel at the dizzying rate of 483,000 mph.
Mark Batterson, The Grave Robber: How Jesus Can Make Your Impossible Possible, Baker Books.
The Central Vision
The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature. In the community of faith in Israel, this vision is expressed in the affirmation that Abraham is father of all Israel and every person is his child (see Genesis 15:5; Isaiah 41:8; 51:2). Israel has a vision of all people drawn into community around the will of its God (Isaiah 2:2-4).
In the New Testament, the church has a parallel vision of all persons being drawn under the lordship and fellowship of Jesus (Matthew 28:16-20; John 12:32) and therefore into a single community (Acts 2:1-11)- As if those visions were not sweeping enough, the most staggering expression of the vision is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of a single destiny, namely, the care and management of all God’s creation.
Taken from “Living Toward a Vision” by Walter Breuggemann, in Christian Peace and Nonviolence, A Documentary History, Ed. Michael G. Long, Orbis Books.
The Creation of Light
In The Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton points out that the creation of light and the division of day and night is profoundly puzzling if we understand light in the modern way, as a material object. After all, it makes no sense that “light” and “darkness” could be mingled in the first place to be separated apart. Instead, it makes sense to think of “light” as a “period of light,” which is subsequently named “day” (and the period of darkness “night.”) Consistent with the rest of Walton’s interpretation of the creation account, the creation is functional rather than material.
William Rowley (see Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP, 2010))
Comparing the Genesis Creation Account with their Neighbors
The Jews were not the only religious people in the ancient world. There were others, such as the Akkadians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, and they had their own creation stories.
When one compares the biblical creation story with these other creation stories, a number of critical differences rise to the surface.
For example, the biblical creation story is the only one that contends that matter — creation, people, the world, everything — is intrinsically good. In other creation stories, the world is essentially bad. Another difference is the role of women in creation.
In an ancient context where men, rulers, and kings alone bore God’s image, the biblical story depicts a world in which men and women are created in God’s image. Among patriarchal societies, no other sacred text held such a high view of women as the Hebrew Bible. Third, consider God’s invitation to rest on the seventh day.
In other ancient Near Eastern creation myths, people were created for the purpose of being worked to the bone to accomplish the fiats of the gods; this was particularly the paradigm of the Egyptians. Unlike those other gods, however, Yahweh commands that humanity is to work hard and rest well.
In no other creation narrative do the gods provide this kind of rest to creation. No other god gave a break. No other god carries the well-being of creation as close to the heart as this One. Again, imagine what first impression that would have given to the Akkadians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians about the God of the Bible and the people who worshiped him.
Consider the Egg
In this short excerpt, the author and priest Robert Farrar Capon describes just how intricate and beautiful one single part of God’s creation is, the chicken egg:
Forget for the moment the fantastic intricacy of the mechanism from which all higher forms of life spring. Disregard, too, the wonder of its parts, its divisions, and its tremendous complications. Omit, finally, all other eggs but one: no frogs’ eggs, ducks’ eggs, robins’ eggs, or goose eggs; no snake eggs, no dinosaur eggs, no platypus eggs, no roe; no ova of any sort or kind but the eggs of the common hen.
And what have you done? You have renounced a whole world only to gain a dozen in its place.… [I]n our priestly attention to the fruit of the barnyard…we have discovered what no other animal will ever know. What will the egg not do? It will scramble, boil, bake, or fry – or go down raw if you have the stomach for it – and sustain and delight you in the bargain.
And that is only the start of the prologue of the introduction. It will thicken sauces, raise dough, explode into a soufflé, or garnish your soup. It can be taken with sugar and whisky, or with salt and red pepper; and still you have hardly begun. Omelets are more numerous than the generations of the human race.
Robert Farrar Capon, “An Offering of Uncles” in The Romance of the Word [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995], 97)
A Contrast to the Realm of Eternity
The framework of seven days is rich with divine intention. Certainly, in biblical numerology, the number seven symbolizes divine perfection. But perhaps it goes deeper than that. Echoing church father Basil of Caesarea, theologian Colin Gunton argues that the ordering of seven days establishes a distinct relation between the present time and eternity.
That is, the seven – day week was created by God to serve as a contrast to the realm of eternity in which God dwells. Time serves as a contrast to eternity. Have you ever walked into a perfume store at the mall and encountered an array of overwhelming scents simultaneously?
Somewhere, you will also see a small cup of coffee beans sitting nearby. What are the coffee beans for? Coffee beans clear the palate so one can distinguish and fully appreciate the nuanced characteristics of each perfume separately, rather than being bombarded by the many scents at once. In a way, time serves as a cup of coffee beans. Time establishes a contrast to eternity, where God dwells.
Creation Continued
The earth had been completely unformed and empty; in the six-day process of development God had formed it and filled it—but not completely. People must now carry on the work of development: by being fruitful they fill it even more; by subduing it they must form it even more . . . as God’s representatives, [we] carry on where God left off.
But this is now to be a human development of the earth. The human race will fill the earth with its own kind, and it will form the earth for its own kind. From now on the development of the created earth will be societal and cultural in nature.
Albert N. Wolters, Creation Regained: A Transforming View of the World, InterVarsity Press.
Food Didn’t Have to Be This Good!
There is an Indian restaurant in my neighborhood called Bollywood Theatre. I once went to lunch with my friend Todd Miles, a theologian at a local seminary. Taking in our first few bites, he blurted out, almost surprised by his own proclamation, “You know, A.J., when you think about it, food didn’t have to be this good!”
One could argue that this is the thesis statement of Genesis’s first two chapters—a good God makes a good creation. Creation is not bad. Creation is not “just okay.” Creation is good. The words of Martin Luther echo this refrain: “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” Were it not for lack of space, I bet Luther meant to include mangoes and Indian food?
Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology
If we accept Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, then we need to interpret it as ancient cosmology rather than translate it into modern cosmology. If we try to turn it into modern cosmology, we are making the text say something that it never said.
It is not just a case of adding meaning (as more information has become available) it is a case of changing meaning. Since we view the text as authoritative, it is a dangerous thing to change the meaning of the text into something it never intended to say. Another problem with concordism is that it assumes that the text should be understood in reference to current scientific consensus, which would mean that it would neither correspond to last century’s scientific consensus nor to that which may develop in the next century.
If God were intent on making his revelation correspond to science, we have to ask which science. We are well aware that science is dynamic rather than static. By its very nature science is in a constant state of flux. If we were to say that God’s revelation corresponds to “true science” we adopt an idea contrary to the very nature of science. What is accepted as true today, may not be accepted as true tomorrow, because what science provides is the best explanation of the data at the time. This “best explanation” is accepted by consensus, and often with a few detractors. Science moves forward as ideas are tested and new ones replace old ones.
So if God aligned revelation with one particular science, it would have been unintelligible to people who lived prior to the time of that science, and it would be obsolete to those who live after that time… We gain nothing by bringing God’s revelation into accordance with today’s science. In contrast, it makes perfect sense that God communicated his revelation to his immediate audience in terms they understood.
John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP, 2010).
God Makes the First Move
In his classic work, Basic Christianity, John Stott shares this most fundamental truth about God: God always makes the first move. Whether it is the creation or our personal relationship, we are never first to the scene.
‘In the beginning God.’ The first four words of the Bible are more than a way of launching the story of creation or introducing the book of Genesis. They supply the key which opens our understanding to the Bible as a whole. They tell us that the religion of the Bible is a religion in which God takes the initiative.
The point is that we can never take God by surprise. We can never anticipate him. He always makes the first move. He is always there ‘in the beginning’. Before we existed, God took action. Before we decided to look for God, God had already been looking for us. The Bible isn’t about people trying to discover God, but about God reaching out to find us.
Taken from Basic Christianity The IVP Signature Collection by John Stott. Copyright (c) 2019 by John Stott, p.17. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com.
A Formless, Functionless World
Scholar John Walton points out that when Genesis 1 calls the world before creation tōhû, it is a modern cultural misunderstanding and mistranslation to think that it is describing the world as “formless,” understanding this to mean “empty” or “nonexistent.” Instead, the better translation of tōhû is “unproductive.”
Indeed, this misunderstanding of the passage leads us to gloss over the point that something exists in Genesis 1, namely “the waters of the deep.” (Note that Walton does accept creation ex nihilo, on the basis of New Testamentpassages, but does not believe that Genesis 1 teaches it.)
What is nonexistent in Genesis 1 is purpose:
The earth is described as not yet functioning in an ordered system. (Functional) creation has not yet taken place and there is only (functional) nonexistence… When ancients talk about how something functions in an ordered system, the system in discussion is not a cosmic or ecological system. It is a system inhabited by beings… Consequently, functionality cannot exist without people in the picture. In Genesis people are not put in place until day six, but functionality is established with their needs and situation in mind.
Walton’s understanding of the Genesis narrative has profound implications for how we understand the creation story. The narrative is not in competition with scientific accounts of origins because it is not about scientific accounts of origins.
William Rowley (See John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP, 2010).
Naming and Creation
Names in the ancient world were associated with identity, role and function. Consequently, naming is a typical part of the creation narratives. The Egyptian Memphite Theology identifies the Creator as the one who pronounced the name of everything. Enuma Elish begins with neither the heavens and earth nor the gods having yet been named. In this it is clear that naming is a significant part of something’s existence, and therefore of its creation. In this it is clear that naming is a significant part of something’s existence, and therefore of its creation.
John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP, 2010).
If God Wanted to Remain Silent…
If God wanted to remain silent about His existence, He wouldn’t have bothered creating the stars; He wouldn’t have made the Milky Way, or Betelgeuse. In fact, He wouldn’t have made the majestic Rocky Mountains, the rippling oceans, or the magnificent hummingbird. If His goal was to remain quiet and anonymous, He wouldn’t have created anything at all. Instead, He spoke into existence a smorgasbord for our senses. Wonder for our eyes, beauty for our ears, fragrances for our noses—and rapture for our hearts.
His creation screams about His unseen beauty; it shouts about His unseen qualities and His magnificence. When Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he crafted an outward expression of his inner person. In the same way, God’s creation exhibited through the mountains, stars, and oceans is an expression of the God we can’t see. . . . God didn’t remain anonymous because He didn’t want to. Rather, He wanted to display His glory throughout the universe as His gift to man.
Michael Kendrick, Your Blueprint for Life (Nashville: Nelson, 2012), 18-19.
The More I Delve into Natural Laws…
Medical doctor Paul Brand, who is best known for discovering the cause of leprosy and developing a treatment for it, reflects on the nature and design of the universe.
The more I delve into natural laws—the atom, the universe, the solid elements, molecules, the sun, and even more, the interplay of all the mechanisms required to sustain life—I am astounded. The whole creation could collapse like a deck of cards if just one of those factors were removed.
Some people really believe that all the design and precision in nature came about by chance, that if millions of molecules bombard each other long enough a nerve cell and sensory ending at exactly the right threshold will be bound to turn up. To those people I merely suggest that they try to make one, as I did, and see what chance is up against.
Taken from Philip Yancey, Where Is God When It Hurts? 1990, p.64, Zondervan.
What Does “Create” Mean in Genesis 1?
“Create” may be the English word for bringing something into existence, notes scholar John Walton, but it isn’t in the Hebrew Bible that we consider to be the Word of God. Instead, the word is “bārāʾ.” So, if we are going to take the Bible at face value, the question we have to ask is what does “bārāʾ” mean? The Old Testament is our best indication. It is always a divine activity. Its use in the Old Testament may sometimes be material creation, but it is frequently unambiguously speaking creation in terms of the functions of things. Furthermore, the idea of creation in the other cultures, as far as surviving accounts from these cultures go, are functional in their conceptions of creation. Further evidence is needed to show that Genesis 1 teaches a material creation.
William Rowley (See John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP, 2010).)
Stories
All That Good Stuff
Sometime in the last decade or so I started hearing the phrase “all that good stuff.” I think it happened first when I was ordering dinner at a restaurant. The waitress summarized the menu briefly, ending with “and all that good stuff.” Then I heard a television talk show host use the phrase. Pretty soon, it seemed as if a cultural dam broke and torrents of “all that good stuff” came pouring out. Even my dental hygienist used “and all that good stuff” to describe what she was about to do to my mouth. (For the record, I don’t consider any part of getting my teeth cleaned as “good stuff,” except for the free toothbrush at the end.)
Just to be clear, the phrase “all that good stuff” does not appear in Genesis. Yet, in a way, it could. The writer of Genesis 1 spelled out in detail what God created: heavens, earth, light, seas, etc. A contemporary shorthand of that chapter might read, “God created the heavens, the earth and all that good stuff.”
Historically, Christians have had a tendency to neglect the basic goodness of stuff. We believe that the only thing that really matters is immaterial spirit. Yet if God made physical stuff to be good, even very good, we might do well to rethink our inclination to neglect or denigrate it. After all, at the end of time, we find, not ethereal souls floating around in a non-physical paradise but a new heaven and a new earth filled with all sorts of good stuff, like walls of jasper and a city of pure gold, adorned with jewels (Rev 21:18-19). That’s serious good stuff in my book.
Why does it matter that we acknowledge the created goodness of the stuff of this world? I can think of several reasons. I expect you could add to the list. For one thing, I want to care about what God cares about, to value as good that which God values as good.
I want to admire God’s handiwork, even if it has been tarnished by sin. I want to be a good steward of all that God has entrusted to me, including the stuff of creation. Moreover, if I devalue the stuff of this world, then I tend also to devalue work that deals with physical things.
I might think my work with ideas and words is somehow more important than the work of a carpenter. Of course, since Jesus, as God Incarnate, spent the better part of his life working as a carpenter, it may be wise to rethink the value of stuff.
The Divine Chorale
In The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien imagines the creation of the world as a divine chorale, with creation appearing out of nothingness like a glorious unfurling tapestry as God sings and the heavenly hosts watch in awe and wonder. It’s easy to imagine it this way as you read the opening passages of Genesis. Each day builds momentum as the cast of creation makes its appearance.
First out of nothingness come the heaven and earth, then the explosion of light and the division of day and night. Once upon a time, there was no light. Then suddenly come billions of boiling stars and galaxies. The waters of the seas part and the Creator’s imagination spins out majestic mountains and valleys, volcanos and rivers, deserts and icebergs, each one carved up by light and shadow.
The song continues as life begins to teem and whir, grass takes root, and redwoods stretch heavenward. Kelp forests and grapevines sprawl and spin. Grasslands roll in rhythm with newborn tides. Then come the animals.
The dinosaurs. The dolphins. Lemmings and lightning bugs. Hummingbirds and wildebeests. There are themes like reptiles and bears, and variations upon each theme: polar bears, grizzly bears, black bears, Asiatic bears, panda bears. Creation has an improvisatory flair, bursting with imaginative energy and glory.
Taken from Rhythms of Grace by Mike Cosper, © 2013, p.27. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.
A Doctor, an Engineer, and a Politician
A doctor, an engineer, and a politician were arguing as to which profession was older. “Well,” argued the doctor, “without a physician mankind could not have survived, so I am sure that mine is the oldest profession.” “No,” said the engineer, “before life began there was complete chaos, and it took an engineer to create some semblance of order from this chaos. So engineering is older.” “But,” chirped the triumphant politician, “who created the chaos?”
Source Unknown
The Devil Buried the Bones
And I was reminded of an event from my father’s childhood:
He was in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher expound on Genesis 1 and a young earth, and asked his teacher how to make sense of all those dinosaur bones. “Was there no room for Rex on the ark?” he asked, with guileless sincerity. “The devil buried the bones,” his teacher answered, and proceeded to explain that a literal Genesis 1 and young earth were essential to Christian faith.
My father found himself before a fork in the road. There he was, a young boy who loved Jesus and dinosaurs, and the die had been cast—either the Prince of Darkness had spent the better part of the last millennia burying dinosaur bones or there was no God.
Taken from Faith in the Shadows: Finding Christ in the Midst of Doubt by Austin Fischer. Copyright (c) 2018 by Austin Fischer pp.1-2. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Food Didn’t Have to Be This Good!
There is an Indian restaurant in my neighborhood called Bollywood Theatre. I once went to lunch with my friend Todd Miles, a theologian at a local seminary. Taking in our first few bites, he blurted out, almost surprised by his own proclamation, “You know, A.J., when you think about it, food didn’t have to be this good!”
One could argue that this is the thesis statement of Genesis’s first two chapters—a good God makes a good creation. Creation is not bad. Creation is not “just okay.” Creation is good. The words of Martin Luther echo this refrain: “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” Were it not for lack of space, I bet Luther meant to include mangoes and Indian food?
God made it. God loves it. God cares for it.
Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century mystic-theologian who maybe understood the belovedness of creation and new creation better than anyone. In the fifth chapter of her book Revelations of Divine Love, she describes a moving vision about the created world:
In this vision he also showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel nut in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind’s eye and thought, “What can this be?” And the answer came to me, “It is all that is made.” I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly have disappeared. And the answer in my mind was, “It lasts and will last forever because God loves it; and everything exists in the same way by the love of God.” In this little thing I saw three properties: the first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God cares for it.
God made it. God loves it. God cares for it. This summarizes well the nature of God’s goodness, and the goodness of what God has made.
Taken from Christmas by Emily Hunter McGowin Copyright (c) 2023, by Emily Hunter McGowin. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
God’s Menagerie of Beautiful Creatures
We were in London watching the musical The Lion King. Surely you’ve seen the movie; the opening number is worth watching again this week to help your imagination seize the new earth with both hands. As the sun rises on the African savannah and flocks of birds soar overhead, God’s menagerie of fantastic creatures assembles to honor their new prince.
The scene is borrowed straight from Genesis, the morning of creation, when all the angels sang for joy. It is a moment when music is required, fitting hand in glove with creation (you’ll remember Aslan sang Narnia into being). The opening song begins, heralding the moment of our birth and how each one of us steps blinking into a dazzling world filled with more than can possibly be seen or done in a lifetime.
In the Beginning God…
On Christmas Day 1968, the three astronauts of Apollo 8 circled the dark side of the moon and headed for home. Suddenly, over the horizon of the moon rose the blue and white Earth garlanded by the glistening light of the sun against the black void of space. Those sophisticated men, trained in science and technology, did not utter Einstein’s name. They did not even go to the poets, the lyricists, or the dramatists.
Only one thing could capture the awe-inspiring thrill of this magnificent observation. Billions heard the voice from outer space as the astronaut read it: “In the beginning God”–the only concept worthy enough to describe that unspeakable awe, unutterable in any other way. “In the beginning God created”–the invasive, the inescapable sense of the infinite and the eternal.
Ravi Zacharias, “If the Foundations Be Destroyed,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 142.
Missing the Trees in the Forest
Years ago, my family and I visited Sequoia National Park in California. The highlight of this trip was seeing the Giant Sequoia redwoods, after which the park is named. These trees are awe-inspiring, both for their beauty and their size. The largest redwood in the national park is the General Sherman tree, which towers above the forest at 275 feet in height. It is also 25 feet in diameter, with an estimated age over 2500 years.
As my family and I ambled among the giant redwoods, drinking in their exceptional elegance, I noticed a teenaged boy walking along with his family. His eyes were transfixed, not by the trees, but rather by his Game Boy device. (Today, it would be his smartphone.) He was engaged in some sort of video game that demanded his full attention.
I was both fascinated and distressed by this boy’s apparent unawareness of the extraordinary beauty all around him, so I continued to look his way every now and then throughout our tour of the big trees. Sure enough, as near as I could tell, he never once lifted his eyes to gaze upon some of the most beautiful and astounding of God’s creations.
As I think about this boy today, I feel sad. My sadness is not just for him, though. I feel sad for so many others who are just like him. I would confess there are times when I am one of these people. I can get so wrapped up in whatever is demanding my attention that I neglect the beauty of God’s creation.
Sometimes I’m caught up in work. Sometimes I’m blinded by worry. Often, what keeps me from delighting in beauty is my ever-present hand-held device. I don’t have a Game Boy, but I do have a smartphone that calls to me its siren’s song.
Norman MacLean’s Father on Creation
In A River Runs Through It, Norman MacLean’s Father, a Presbyterian Minister, is sitting on the bank of the river, reading the Gospel of John while his sons are fishing. When Norman comes over to where he is sitting, the father pensively remarks: “In the part I was reading, it says the Word was in the beginning…I used to think water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water.”
Taken from: Winter’s Promise, Copyright © 2013 by Ken Gire, Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 97408
www.harvesthousepublishers.com, Used by Permission.
Organizing the World Quickly
The Yalta Conference, helmed by Allied leadership (Most notably Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin) came at the conclusion of hostilities in Europe during WWII. It dealt with a variety of major topics, including the fate of Germany, much of Europe and the ongoing war in the Pacific.
In other words, they had a lot of business to conduct and decisions to make. Early in the conference, Roosevelt mentioned to Churchill he hoped the conference wouldn’t last more than five or six days. Churchill, always a quick wit remarked, ““I do not see any way of realizing our hopes about world organization in five or six days. Even the Almighty took seven.”
Stuart Strachan Jr.
Sherlock Holmes and Watson Go Camping
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are going camping. They pitch their tent under the stars and go to sleep. In the middle of the night Holmes wakes Watson up: “Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you deduce.”
Watson: “I see millions of stars and even if a few of those have planets, it’s quite likely there are some planets like Earth, and if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life.”
Holmes: “Watson, you idiot, somebody’s stolen our tent!”
A Smart-Aleck Question and Answer
They say that in Martin Luther’s class on Genesis, a smart aleck student asked, “Dr. Luther, since you know so much about the book of Genesis, tell us: what was God doing all that time before God created the world?”
Luther, not one to be one-upped by a smart-mouthed seminarian, replied, “What was God doing before God created the world? God was gathering sticks to make a switch to beat the hell out of people like you who ask such dumb questions!”
William H. Willimon, Undone by Easter: Keeping Preaching Fresh, Abingdon, 2009.
Three Men Argue About the Oldest Profession in the World
A physician, a civil engineer, and a politician were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, “Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam.
This clearly required surgery, and so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world.” The civil engineer interrupted, and said, “But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos.
This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world.” The politician leaned back in his chair, smiled, and then said confidently, “Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?”
Source Unknown
Studies
The Big Bang and Ex Nihilo (out of nothing)
We have this very solid conclusion that the universe had an origin, the Big Bang. Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point. That implies that before that, there was nothing. I can’t imagine how nature, in this case the universe, could have created itself. And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that had to be outside of nature.
Francis Collins, In an interview on Salon.com, https://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/08/07/collins/index2.html.
A Powerful New Lens
In 1997, the Hubble telescope took flight to give us a look through its powerful lens into places we had never known or seen before. Through this mammoth telescope, we discovered a staggering number of other galaxies out there beyond our own. Our tiny earth is just in one tiny galaxy. And our Milky Way galaxy is just a little disk-shaped spiral when compared with the expanse of other galaxies. Sure, we have our sun and moon—our little spot along with the planets that surround us. Yet the Hubble telescope revealed that we are just one of many. In other words, we aren’t quite the center of the universe we once thought we were.
In fact, scientists reported that each of the 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies they believe they have discovered has up to 100 billion stars in it. And if 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies each containing up to 100 billion stars is too large for you to grasp, just consider the galaxy Andromeda. Andromeda is roughly 2.5 million light-years away from us. (Light travels at about 186,282 miles per second.)
So if you had friends living in Andromeda and you sent them a message at the speed of a radio wave (which travels at the speed of light), you could receive their reply in about 5 million years. You can’t send a text message to Andromeda regardless of how intelligent your smart phone might be.
Tony Evans, The Power of God’s Names, Harvest House Publishers.
Analogies
All That Good Stuff
Sometime in the last decade or so I started hearing the phrase “all that good stuff.” I think it happened first when I was ordering dinner at a restaurant. The waitress summarized the menu briefly, ending with “and all that good stuff.” Then I heard a television talk show host use the phrase. Pretty soon, it seemed as if a cultural dam broke and torrents of “all that good stuff” came pouring out. Even my dental hygienist used “and all that good stuff” to describe what she was about to do to my mouth. (For the record, I don’t consider any part of getting my teeth cleaned as “good stuff,” except for the free toothbrush at the end.)
Just to be clear, the phrase “all that good stuff” does not appear in Genesis. Yet, in a way, it could. The writer of Genesis 1 spelled out in detail what God created: heavens, earth, light, seas, etc. A contemporary shorthand of that chapter might read, “God created the heavens, the earth and all that good stuff.”
Historically, Christians have had a tendency to neglect the basic goodness of stuff. We believe that the only thing that really matters is immaterial spirit. Yet if God made physical stuff to be good, even very good, we might do well to rethink our inclination to neglect or denigrate it. After all, at the end of time, we find, not ethereal souls floating around in a non-physical paradise but a new heaven and a new earth filled with all sorts of good stuff, like walls of jasper and a city of pure gold, adorned with jewels (Rev 21:18-19). That’s serious good stuff in my book.
Why does it matter that we acknowledge the created goodness of the stuff of this world? I can think of several reasons. I expect you could add to the list. For one thing, I want to care about what God cares about, to value as good that which God values as good.
I want to admire God’s handiwork, even if it has been tarnished by sin. I want to be a good steward of all that God has entrusted to me, including the stuff of creation. Moreover, if I devalue the stuff of this world, then I tend also to devalue work that deals with physical things.
I might think my work with ideas and words is somehow more important than the work of a carpenter. Of course, since Jesus, as God Incarnate, spent the better part of his life working as a carpenter, it may be wise to rethink the value of stuff.
Coffee Beans & A Contrast to the Realm of Eternity
The framework of seven days is rich with divine intention. Certainly, in biblical numerology, the number seven symbolizes divine perfection. But perhaps it goes deeper than that. Echoing church father Basil of Caesarea, theologian Colin Gunton argues that the ordering of seven days establishes a distinct relation between the present time and eternity.
That is, the seven – day week was created by God to serve as a contrast to the realm of eternity in which God dwells. Time serves as a contrast to eternity. Have you ever walked into a perfume store at the mall and encountered an array of overwhelming scents simultaneously?
Somewhere, you will also see a small cup of coffee beans sitting nearby. What are the coffee beans for? Coffee beans clear the palate so one can distinguish and fully appreciate the nuanced characteristics of each perfume separately, rather than being bombarded by the many scents at once. In a way, time serves as a cup of coffee beans. Time establishes a contrast to eternity, where God dwells.
“Do it Again”
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.
But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane Co., 1909), 109.
The Fundamental Very-Goodness of Creation
After finishing a major project, have you ever stood back, taken in what you have accomplished, and said to yourself, “That’s pretty good”? I’ll admit that I have on numerous occasions, especially after mowing the lawn.
When we lived in Texas, our house was surrounded by more than two acres of turf. (Land is gloriously inexpensive in Texas because they have so much of it there!) Several times during the spring and summer, I’d get on my riding mower and spend a couple of hours cutting the grass, not to mention plenty of weeds, wildflowers, fallen branches, and pesky rocks. After I finished, I’d gaze upon what I had done and feel a peculiar sense of accomplishment.
My formerly shaggy lawn looked like a well-trimmed carpet. Plus, the smell of freshly cut grass reminded me of summer afternoons in days gone by, when my dad and I would work in the back yard together. Seeing what I had accomplished, my heart exulted, “That’s pretty good!”
When creating the universe, God did something like that. In Genesis 1:3, God created light. In verse 4, God “saw that the light was good.” Several times throughout Genesis 1 God saw the goodness of his creation. The earth and seas were good (1:10). The vegetation was good (1:12). The celestial bodies were good (1:18). The creatures of the sea and air were good (1:21). The land animals were good (1:25). Finally, after creating human beings, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (1:30).
Notice, according to God, everything was not just “pretty good,” but “very good.” The fundamental very-goodness of creation is a reality that must not be ignored. It provides a sure foundation for fruitful living, not to mention an essential basis for a right understanding of life and its meaning. Affirming the basic goodness of creation does not deny the brokenness that comes from sin. We’ll get to this in Genesis 3. But, all too often, Christians think and act as if Genesis 3 reveals the fundamental nature of all things, thus neglecting the goodness of God’s original production. Whatever else is true of the world, God made it good, good, good, good, good, good, and, indeed, very good.
If God Wanted to Remain Silent…
If God wanted to remain silent about His existence, He wouldn’t have bothered creating the stars; He wouldn’t have made the Milky Way, or Betelgeuse. In fact, He wouldn’t have made the majestic Rocky Mountains, the rippling oceans, or the magnificent hummingbird. If His goal was to remain quiet and anonymous, He wouldn’t have created anything at all. Instead, He spoke into existence a smorgasbord for our senses. Wonder for our eyes, beauty for our ears, fragrances for our noses—and rapture for our hearts.
His creation screams about His unseen beauty; it shouts about His unseen qualities and His magnificence. When Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he crafted an outward expression of his inner person. In the same way, God’s creation exhibited through the mountains, stars, and oceans is an expression of the God we can’t see. . . . God didn’t remain anonymous because He didn’t want to. Rather, He wanted to display His glory throughout the universe as His gift to man.
Michael Kendrick, Your Blueprint for Life (Nashville: Nelson, 2012), 18-19.
Mangoes
Once, when sharing my faith with an agnostic friend, I was asked to make my greatest argument for God’s existence. I uttered one word: mangoes. I was not talking about just any mangoes. I was talking about fresh, ripe, just-off-the-tree mangoes, about have-to- change-your-shirt-afterward mangoes.
Mangoes, I explained, were my greatest argument for God’s existence. To this day, I cannot eat a mango and say with a straight face that this is a world that has been invented by a jerk. Or that something so delicious could come from nowhere. Creation is good. Why? Because God is good. And his goodness is reflected in what he makes. A mango, as part of creation, is God’s love letter to humanity.
On Creation by Frederick Beuchner
To make suggests making something out of something else the way a carpenter makes wooden boxes out of wood. To create suggests making something out of nothing the way an artist makes paintings or poems. It is true that artists, like carpenters, have to use something else–paint, words–but the beauty or meaning they make is different from the material they make it out of. To create is to make something essentially new.
When God created the creation, God made something where before there had been nothing, and as the author of the book of Job puts it, “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (38:7) at the sheer and shimmering novelty of the thing. “New every morning is the love / Our wakening and uprising prove” says the hymn.
Using the same old materials of earth, air, fire, and water, every twenty-four hours God creates something new out of them. If you think you’re seeing the same show all over again seven times a week, you’re crazy. Every morning you wake up to something that in all eternity never was before and never will be again. And the you that wakes up was never the same before and will never be the same again either.
A Powerful New Lens
In 1997, the Hubble telescope took flight to give us a look through its powerful lens into places we had never known or seen before. Through this mammoth telescope, we discovered a staggering number of other galaxies out there beyond our own. Our tiny earth is just in one tiny galaxy. And our Milky Way galaxy is just a little disk-shaped spiral when compared with the expanse of other galaxies. Sure, we have our sun and moon—our little spot along with the planets that surround us. Yet the Hubble telescope revealed that we are just one of many. In other words, we aren’t quite the center of the universe we once thought we were.
In fact, scientists reported that each of the 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies they believe they have discovered has up to 100 billion stars in it. And if 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies each containing up to 100 billion stars is too large for you to grasp, just consider the galaxy Andromeda. Andromeda is roughly 2.5 million light-years away from us. (Light travels at about 186,282 miles per second.)
So if you had friends living in Andromeda and you sent them a message at the speed of a radio wave (which travels at the speed of light), you could receive their reply in about 5 million years. You can’t send a text message to Andromeda regardless of how intelligent your smart phone might be.
Tony Evans, The Power of God’s Names, Harvest House Publishers.
Humor
A Doctor, an Engineer, and a Politician
A doctor, an engineer, and a politician were arguing as to which profession was older. “Well,” argued the doctor, “without a physician mankind could not have survived, so I am sure that mine is the oldest profession.” “No,” said the engineer, “before life began there was complete chaos, and it took an engineer to create some semblance of order from this chaos. So engineering is older.” “But,” chirped the triumphant politician, “who created the chaos?”
Source Unknown
The Devil Buried the Bones
And I was reminded of an event from my father’s childhood:
He was in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher expound on Genesis 1 and a young earth, and asked his teacher how to make sense of all those dinosaur bones. “Was there no room for Rex on the ark?” he asked, with guileless sincerity. “The devil buried the bones,” his teacher answered, and proceeded to explain that a literal Genesis 1 and young earth were essential to Christian faith.
My father found himself before a fork in the road. There he was, a young boy who loved Jesus and dinosaurs, and the die had been cast—either the Prince of Darkness had spent the better part of the last millennia burying dinosaur bones or there was no God.
Taken from Faith in the Shadows: Finding Christ in the Midst of Doubt by Austin Fischer. Copyright (c) 2018 by Austin Fischer pp.1-2. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Organizing the World Quickly
The Yalta Conference, helmed by Allied leadership (Most notably Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin) came at the conclusion of hostilities in Europe during WWII. It dealt with a variety of major topics, including the fate of Germany, much of Europe and the ongoing war in the Pacific.
In other words, they had a lot of business to conduct and decisions to make. Early in the conference, Roosevelt mentioned to Churchill he hoped the conference wouldn’t last more than five or six days. Churchill, always a quick wit remarked, ““I do not see any way of realizing our hopes about world organization in five or six days. Even the Almighty took seven.”
Stuart Strachan Jr.
Sherlock Holmes and Watson Go Camping
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are going camping. They pitch their tent under the stars and go to sleep. In the middle of the night Holmes wakes Watson up: “Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you deduce.”
Watson: “I see millions of stars and even if a few of those have planets, it’s quite likely there are some planets like Earth, and if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life.”
Holmes: “Watson, you idiot, somebody’s stolen our tent!”
A Smart-Aleck Question and Answer
They say that in Martin Luther’s class on Genesis, a smart aleck student asked, “Dr. Luther, since you know so much about the book of Genesis, tell us: what was God doing all that time before God created the world?”
Luther, not one to be one-upped by a smart-mouthed seminarian, replied, “What was God doing before God created the world? God was gathering sticks to make a switch to beat the hell out of people like you who ask such dumb questions!”
William H. Willimon, Undone by Easter: Keeping Preaching Fresh, Abingdon, 2009.
Three Men Argue About the Oldest Profession in the World
A physician, a civil engineer, and a politician were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, “Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam.
This clearly required surgery, and so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world.” The civil engineer interrupted, and said, “But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos.
This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world.” The politician leaned back in his chair, smiled, and then said confidently, “Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?”
Source Unknown
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