Creation
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm a pastor and training here with Mill City Church. As you can tell, we are in Genesis. We wanted to read Genesis as we worship this morning because the point of Genesis 1 is to turn to praise. It is meant to see the glory of God and how he created everything and lead us to worship.
Genesis literally means beginning. Or if you're a superhero nerd, this is the origin story. This is the origin story of all of our stories. All of our stories go back to this chapter in Genesis 1. The book of Genesis was written by Moses. He's the chief architect of Genesis and the first five books of the Bible.
He had some collaboration in it, but he is the chief architect. And he is telling the story in Genesis of how the earth came to be, how the early history of the world and the first 12 chapters of Genesis. And then from chapter 12 all the way to the end of the book is about the formation of God's people, the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. There's a whole lot that can be said about Genesis. I don't have time for it this morning because we have a whole lot to get into. So I will just say simply this.
Genesis tells the story of how everything started off, of how it all went wrong, and it tells us the story of why we need a Savior. So we're going to be in Genesis 1. It's in page 1 of your Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, there's a blue Bible around you. If you don't have that, if you don't have a Bible at home, please take that. That is our gift for you.
I'm going to pray, and then we're going to dive in. God, thank you so much that you created us, that you created everything that was made. God, I pray that we would see the beauty of that this morning. Amen. All right, so there are two different creation accounts.
There's two different stories in Genesis that tell how the earth came to be. We're going to be in the first one, which is chapter 1 through verse 3 of chapter 2. The people who put the verses and chapters into the Bible did a pretty good Job, and this one, they missed it just a hair. So this goes into verse 3 of chapter 2. The next one starts in verse 4 of chapter 2. Chet is going to cover that creation story.
There are differences, and the differences are highlighting different things, and he'll get into those when he teaches on the second creation story. But this story, Genesis 1, is meant to capture the glory of God. It's meant to capture, there are a lot of ancient Near Eastern creation stories that had all kinds of different ways they were telling about how the earth came to be. This one is meant to stand out above them. This is the true story. This is how it came to be, and it's meant to inspire worship in awe of the glory of our Creator.
And what happens in our current day is that a guy with a Richard Dawkins tattoo and a penchant for going on YouTube videos and commenting, a really just angry atheist, and there's not many of them that are that angry, but there's a few of them, and they're very loud, and they want everyone to know what they have to say. They stand up and say, hold the phone. Can you explain evolution? Because if you can't explain that to me, the book is closed. It's irrelevant. Your religion's irrelevant.
We don't want anything to do with it. Now, that's a loud, small minority, but then everyone else goes reasonably, okay, but what do you do with this? What do you do with Genesis 1? What do you do with how it interacts with what we know and what we hear in science? And when that happens, it sucks the beauty out of what this story was supposed to be. That because of Darwin's origin of species and the rise of evolutionary biology in the past two centuries, we've lost the point of what this story is meant to be.
This story was meant to be a great slice of cake, to be enjoyed, to be looked at in its glory, and we've traded it out for a cookbook, for a set of instructions. It's supposed to be a honeymoon, and we've traded it out for health class. And we have lost the point. Instead of focusing on why God created the earth and the universe and everything that was made, we focused on how. But the reality is, that's where we're at.
That's the context we're in. We've missed the point. So the elephant's already in the room, so today we need to do a little bit in addressing that. So this is what today is going to look like. I'm going to walk through five principles, five truths that help give us a posture for how we are supposed to approach this. And once we kind of have the posture of how we approach this, I'm going to walk through six different theories on how to reconcile what's happening in Genesis 1 with current scientific findings.
And then once we've done that, we're going to trade it out for some cake, and we're going to look at the beauty of what's happening in Genesis 1. So starting out, here are five principles, five truths that need to form the basis, the posture for how we approach this. The first is, the Bible is authoritative and true. That through faith in Jesus, who transforms our hearts, who transforms our minds, we know that God speaks truthfully. And He speaks authoritatively through His Word. And when He speaks truthfully, and when He speaks clearly, and you hear anything the world has to offer, and specifically scientific theories, we need to hold those theories skeptically, because we know the Bible is authoritative and true.
Second, the Bible is not a science textbook. It was not written to explain quantum physics, and it wasn't written to explain microevolution. Science by nature is limited to the natural, and it is blind to the supernatural. And our faith rests in the supernatural. I don't know if you know this, there's no scientific theories that show dead people rise from the grave. That's not.
But our whole faith hangs on Jesus conquering death, at the resurrection. Science deals with the natural. God created those natural laws. He operates outside of them. The Bible is not a science textbook. Third, God gives us the common grace of a growing scientific field.
Therefore, science is not evil. It's not. Scientific studies are the reason why we have a fighting chance against cancer now. It's the reason why, in the coming decades, the whole world will be run off solar power and wind power, because of scientific advances. So science is not evil at all.
One of my best friends from growing up, my roommate in college, is now a professor at Presbyterian College, my alma mater. He is a professor of biology. He has a Ph.D. in genetics. And I called him this week, and we talked a little bit, in interacting with science and the Bible. And he said something that I thought was really, really helpful. He said the sciences, broadly all the sciences, are trying to make sense of the natural world in an inductive way.
And when that happens, we get a little more info every day, a small piece with every new study. And with every piece, he says, we realize there is so much we don't know. The more he studies genetics, the more that he does research, the more that all of science starts to do this, they realize there is so much that he doesn't know. There is so much that we don't know. He says that most of scientists, most of people who are doing research, have that posture. Most of them have that approach, that there is so much that we don't know.
He said, you just hear about the ones who are the most vocal. He said, the Neil deGrasse Tysons of the world, the Richard Dawkins of the world. He is like, they are the most vocal. And then he threw in a jab, he said. And they are also laymen. They haven't been practicing science for years.
And the reality is, is that they are the most vocal. But most of science is humble in its approach. So we're not afraid of science. We welcome it. We welcome the quality of life that it brings. And if you want to hear more about that, we did a Home Sweet Home series a while back that talks about the Bible and science.
You can go back and listen to that. But science flows out of a ordered universe that God made. It is a common grace to us. Fourth, when everything is revealed and understood correctly, science and scripture are in perfect harmony. When everything is revealed, when all the cards are on the table, science and scripture are in harmony. Much of science is actually very compatible with the idea that the world and the universe were created.
If you talk to physicists, if you talk to people in biochemistry, they're going to point out that there's a lot that points to an intelligent designer. There's a lot that points to a creator. And out of the whole pie of science, there's one very thin slice of evolutionary biology. And there are quite a few people in there that are going to say no. So in knowing that, we understand what science is.
Science, in and of itself, is not fact. Science is not fact. Somehow down the line, we have come to understand that when someone says, oh, it's science, what they mean is it's fact. And science is not fact. It is a collection of theories that help form facts. And those facts become the basis for more theories.
I mean, bloodletting was the scientific way to treat illnesses for centuries. And so finally someone said, I think we're killing people. We're draining their blood. And they need this to fight things. We see this all the time. Scientific advancements keep coming and coming and coming.
We realize what we used to know isn't correct. That is important for us because you will consistently hear news stories that say, a scientific study says this. And I don't even have time to get into how those are funded and what they're going for and what the headlines they're grabbing for. I don't have time for that. But when you hear a scientific study says this, sometimes it's going to come in contradiction with a biblical worldview.
And when that happens, we don't panic. We read our Bibles. We wait for more research to come out. Lastly, Genesis is incredibly complicated and very hard to understand, especially the first few chapters. There's a church father named Jerome around 4th century. He noted that Jewish rabbis didn't allow anyone under the age of 30 to interpret Genesis, which I find ironic because I turned 30 in a month and other pastors are 30 and under.
Yeah, there we go. So, it's incredibly complicated. And if your approach has been, it's absolutely clear, we know it, I would have you pause for a moment and say, it may not be as clear as you think it is. It is very complicated. So, with those worldviews, with those truths in mind to help set up the worldviews we're going to look at, that needs to be our posture. Now, we're going to walk through six of the leading positions, six leading theories that help reconcile science and what evolutionary biology and some of the evidence that we're seeing and the findings we're seeing and the Bible.
Now, I just want to say on the front end, this is an open-handed issue. This is very open-handed. There's some things that come out of it that we can talk about later that are important, but it's open-handed as we walk through this. And the first one that we will cover is six literal day creationism. Some of my closest friends of the years, guys that are really smart, people I love, people that know the Bible so well, this is where they land. This is a view that says that if you look at it, they're going to argue, a straightforward reading of the text is going to argue for six consecutive sequential days.
And they're going to look at verse 5 when it says, God called the light day and the darkness He called night. And they're going to point this out every time. And there was evening and there was morning the first day. And they're going to say, that's sequence. That's chronology. Evening, morning, evening, morning.
That is six days in a row that God made the whole universe and everything in it. So that worldview places the entire universe at around 10,000 to 20,000 years old. And they get that through looking at some of the genealogies from the Old and the New Testament and piecing it together. The reason there's a big gap between 10,000 and 20,000 years is because genealogies and the way they were written weren't meant to record every single person in the line. They were just recording major figures. And they're going to argue that this was the consensus until Darwin came.
And they're going to say, when Darwin came, everyone started to read their Bible differently. And what happens when people do that, they're going to say, is you've elevated science to a place of authority and you've cheapened the Bible. That is going to be some of their arguments. And when pressed on the evidence, particularly the scientific evidence, people that hold this worldview are going to have two main critiques, particularly on carbon dating, which is how we know how old things are. Carbon dating is the measuring of carbon ratios. Obviously, I know so much about it.
But it's how they measure how old things are, how old fossils are. And they're going to look at some of that and say it isn't always accurate. It's not always true. One of the biggest theories they have is called flood theory. It's the theory that when the whole earth flooded at the time of Noah, which we'll get to in about a month, that when that happened, a global flood changed everything and it made everything look so much older than it actually is. That the flood aged the entire earth.
And these guys have gone to flood sites that have happened in the last century. And they've gone and they've looked at some of the artifacts that are just about 50 to 100 years old and they've carbon dated them. And the carbon dating came back as way older than a century. And they're going to say, see, water damage causes this kind of aging. Therefore, this is the leading theory. It's what they're going to say.
The flood killed off the dinosaurs. It killed off different species. And this is the way the world looks now. So that's six-day creationism. I want to walk through some critiques, a scientific one and textual critiques on this position. There is mounting evidence outside of geology and archaeology that show the universe is much older than 10 to 20,000 years old.
Astrologists are going to point out that there are meteors that come into the earth's atmosphere all the time. And we date those and they were never affected by the flood and they are much older than 10 to 20,000 years old. Physicists are going to point out that the universe is expanding and they're measuring wavelengths of light. And they're saying it's way older than 10 to 20,000 years old. And there's all kinds of other different scientists that are studying the earth and they're pointing out different arguments. And they just say, even if you conceded some of the fossils or some of the dating, there's so much more evidence that shows the earth is much older than 10 to 20,000 years old.
Now textual critiques in the Bible, what six day creations have argued for is that the Hebrew word for day, which is yom in the Hebrew, they're going to say that means 24 hours. It is literally a day. And we'll get to that word in a little bit. But there's plenty of Hebrew scholars that say that's not exactly correct. And the other critique that says that while we're just accommodating for what Darwin found, a lot of historical theologians are going to say, no, you can look at Augustine. Augustine in the 5th century, he said this.
He said, what kind of days these words are extremely difficult or impossible to determine? So the African theologian, Augustine, back in the 5th century, was having questions about this. Some of the reformers, like John Calvin, were having questions about Genesis. Some of the medieval theologians were having questions about Genesis. So it has not always been understood this way.
And we're not just accommodating for what Darwin found. All right. So that's literal 6th day. That is in the young earth, young race. Young earth being young universe. Young race meaning human race.
All 10 to 20,000 years old. There is another theory that's in that same category that runs alongside of that. And that theory is called mature earth. Here's what mature earth theory says. When God created Adam as an adult male, was he 30? Because he looked 30.
Or was he a day old? They're going to say, when God made trees, big trees with fruit on them for them to eat, were those trees with 50 rings on the inside, were they 50 years old? Or were they one day old? They're going to say, yes. And that's the point. That God made everything mature.
That everything looks the age that it does because God created a mature universe. And they're going to say that you can hold a 6th day view from Genesis because everything looks older than it actually is. Now some of the critiques that come with this deal with what about the fossils? What about what we find in the earth? So as I heard one atheist comedian say, do you think God put dinosaur bones in the ground just to mess with us?
And what they're getting at and what people in the Bible also are interacting with or getting at is that this kind of makes God look a little bit deceptive. So that's the strengths and the weaknesses of mature earth. The next few theories I'm going to walk through deal with an old earth view, meaning it's much older and some of these allow for a young race, a young human race in the 10,000 to 20,000 year range. And the first one is called day-age theory. Day-age theory looks at the text and when it says day, when it says yom in the Hebrew, they're going to say it does not mean 24 hours. It means in the day of.
In the same way that when your grandpa says back in my day, he did not literally mean a day. He meant in that day, in that era. And this view is going to say there are six consecutive eras. They could be a thousand years each. They could be a million years each. We don't know.
And they're going to argue that that is why the earth looks so much older. And much of this view is going to hang on in the translation of that word in the Hebrew. So does it mean a day, a literal day, or does it mean in the day of? So if you just put Genesis 1 away for a second and try to understand how this word's being used, you've got to look at the next usage that comes out. And the very first usage that comes out is the next creation story. And this is how it is used there.
It says, These are the generations of the heavens and the earth and when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. So the first instance that it's used outside of the first creation account shows this is a flexible term. It's being used this is not 24 hours, this is in the day. These are the generations in the day when it is being used. So there's flexibility from the text that we can see in this word.
And it's been understood for centuries. We just mentioned how Augustine earlier had noted that. The most influential theologian of the past 20th century was Carl F.H. Henry. He influenced everyone from Billy Graham to John Piper and everyone that we look up to. And he says this, he says, Faith in an inerrant Bible does not rest on the recency or antiquity of the earth.
The Bible does not require a belief in six literal 24 hour creation days on the basis of Genesis 1 and 2. It is gratuitous to insist that the 24 hour days are involved or intended. So what day age theorists are going to say is that this is flexible. This is six periods of time. So that's the argument.
Here are some of the critiques for that. Science, this view allows for some flexibility. It allows for some time. But people in evolutionary biology are going to point out, wait a second, that even if this is millions of years, the order in which it comes about is not what we see in our current scientific findings. that it doesn't match up. And you actually can just look in the text and you can ask the question, how were, if there are thousands of years between these days, how on day three when plants were created, how did they survive without insects on day five? That's how they pollinate.
Like how did they make it? The same argument is made of birds. Birds were created on day four. How did they survive without insects on day five? So if this is the view that you're going to hold, you've got to have some answers to that.
You've got to figure out how that pieces together. But then you have to answer the question when six day literal creations are going to say the text says it was evening and it was morning. And say, how are you going to answer that? It seems back to back to back. And that is what the next view answers pretty directly. The next view is called literary framework view.
This is a view that doesn't attempt to really deal with the science at all. It looks at the text from a completely different perspective. Here's what it says. That because Genesis 1 is poetic prose, it is poetry. The way the Hebrew is read is it's poetic and it's prose. It's common language telling a story.
That because it's poetic prose, there is creative license in how this story was told. And because ancient Near Easterners told stories differently than the way that modern Westerners tell stories, that we shouldn't read it as chronological. We should see it as a framework of days of forming, days one through three, and days of filling, which I'll get to in a moment. And they're going to say that because this is a framework and a creative story that's being told, that this is how you can interpret it. So let me show you the chart.
Literary framework is going to say this, that there are three, the first three days are days of forming. Light and darkness, sea and sky, land and plants. And the literary framework shows that on days four through six, the sun and moon feel it was formed on day one. The fish and the birds feel it was formed on day two and that land, animals and humans feel it was formed on day three. So the whole point of this is a poetic retelling.
It's not meant to convey chronology at all. It's just a poetic retelling of the story and that seems foreign to us. It does. I mean, we're Westerners in the post-modern age. That seems really foreign to us in the same way that if I had a foreigner over who knew English fairly well but didn't know all of the English language and I was telling him a story about, you know, my wife and I, we played cards last night and I killed her. And I'm smiling and he sees that and he's like, whoa, this guy killed his wife and he's really happy about it.
He's going to try to get away. He doesn't know all the euphemisms of our storytelling. It's a euphemism for, I beat her, which is another euphemism for, I won the card match, which does not happen very often when I play cards with my wife. It's a foreign way of storytelling but here's what, it shows up all over the place. It even shows up in the Gospels. Take the Gospels and try to put them in sequential order of events and you're going to have a tough time because even the Gospel writers aren't telling the Gospel stories chronologically.
They're telling them thematically and theologically. It is a different way of storytelling. So because of that, chronology is not important and therefore you don't have to reconcile science with this view. Now here are some of the critiques of this view. One of the basic ones is, well, well, well, that seems really convenient. You found a cute little framework, I like your chart, forming and filling.
That seems, it seems like you're just not trying to deal with the science at all. And that's kind of the gist of a lot of it is it just seems a little too convenient, it seems a little too pieced together well. The other one, and it just comes, and this is going to be where it's just, the two sides are going to agree to disagree. The sixth day is going to say, it says morning and evening, morning and evening, it applies sequence and the literary framework is going to say, that's not how ancient Near Easter is told stories. And that's kind of how this view is and some of the critiques of this view.
I got two more. The next one is historic creationism. This looks at the word beginning in verses 1 and 2. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and that word for beginning is the Hebrew word, Rashid. And they're going to say that that word has a flexible meaning which can mean an unspecific, undefined beginning. So what this view is going to argue is that verse 1 and 2 could be a long period of time that we don't know that God forms the universe.
And what the focus of the six days is the preparation of earth, the preparation of the land. So they're going to say that there's a long, undefined period of time on the front end, and then the earth is made in six days after that. There's another theory called gap theory which I can't get into that looks at that very similarly. It looks at verses 1 and 2 and it says, this is when probably the fall of Satan happened and the whole earth had to be recreated because of that and he used what was old to make what we now have. So it is looking at verses 1 and 2, looking at a big period of time and then what follows afterwards is six literal days.
So here's the critique on this theory. This theory is going to argue for a sequential pattern of days, of days 1 through 6, but they're going to separate it from the first two verses. And people who look at the text are going to go, if you're arguing for a sequential order, chronological order, why do you just separate it from 1 and 2? That seems a little too convenient. Others who are Hebrew scholars are going to look at how beginning is used in this view and they're going to say, well, that's actually debatable and there's going to be a debate over how you can translate that word. And then scientifically, you're still going to have to answer some of the challenges that come up in the fossil record, which brings us to our final one.
Our final view is theistic evolution. I don't want to spend a lot of time explaining this. This is what theistic evolution is. Evolutionary findings are true. The Bible is true. Yep.
They're placed on top of one another. The Bible is telling it poetically and what we know in science is true. And therefore, they're both compatible. Let's move on. So I want to point out two questions that this view is going to have to wrestle with.
And it's honestly two questions that each view is going to have to wrestle with. And the first one is, when did death occur? And the second one is, were Adam and Eve real? Were they real people? So that first question matters.
When did death occur? We know from Genesis 3 that God warns them not to eat of the tree of the fruit and knowledge of good and evil lest you die. They eat of it. We'll get to this in a couple weeks. They spiritually die and then one day they physically return to dust. They die.
So we can tell from the text humans were not supposed to die before the fall. But what about plants? What about animals? And this is going to matter for the fossil record. What do you do with that? Well, plants, obviously, something had to die.
Something had to get eaten. So fruits and vegetables, plants died. But then what about animals which make up a ton of the fossil record that we have? What about them? Did they die before the fall? I mean, there are a lot of people that are going to have current stances on food based on did animals die before the fall?
Like I went to a Brazilian steakhouse yesterday, saved up all day some stomach room and all I ate was meat and cheese and it was glorious. But there's some people that say, no, you don't do that. You have to go back to the picture before the fall that animals didn't kill one another. And some are going to argue, wait a second, what about lions? They have large teeth and claws. You mean to tell me that God designed them to eat grass?
That doesn't make any sense. And the other side is going to fire back. No, look at Isaiah 65. Isaiah 65 is a picture, it's a prophecy of the new heavens and the new earth at the end of time and it says this, the wolf and the lamb shall graze together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox. They're going to say, if this is a picture of the new heavens and the new earth, the new heavens and the new earth is a retelling of what happened in Eden.
It looks like they didn't eat each other. The other side is going to say, no, no, no, it's just metaphorical language for peace and they're going to go back and forth. Here's why that matters. You've got to have that wrapped around your brain. You've got to have that figured out because that's how you're going to have to explain some of the fossil record, some of the things that is being found. So when to death occur is a big one, but here's the biggest question that comes out of this entire debate.
Were Adam and Eve real people? I don't have time to get into that question fully. Chet's going to cover that in the next creation story more directly. But your, hear this, your view of this is going to be very telling of your understanding of the truthfulness of the Bible. I'll just give you a spoiler. The New Testament assumes that Adam and Eve were real people.
So your view on this is going to matter and it's also going to matter because there are scientific findings that are going to come out and they're going to say there's no way the age of man is 10 to 20,000 years old. They're going to say absolutely it's got to be over 100,000 years old. And there's also over the last decade has been a debate on was there an actually original Adam and Eve? Was there an original genetic pair? And there's been paper published, paper published going back and forth on that. So your view of this is going to be very telling.
But for all of these you've got to sort these out in your brain a little bit. And the reason why you should and the reason why you should read up on this and you should invest in this and we're going to talk about this in community groups this week is because there are people that have used this as a reason for unbelief. And you were called as a Christian to have an answer for that. You were called to be able to defend your faith in some form or fashion to be able to explain this a little bit. Now, pause. Some of you were like, yes.
Give me more. I want more fears. Some of you, very few of you probably, are like, I want to spend all day in this. And then others of you are like, I just died inside because we just spent 20 minutes. I just want the answers. Like, I want the cliff notes.
That was the cliff notes. They could go much longer. Can you just tell me what it is? What does the Bible teach? This should be clear. And I cannot ease that tension for you.
The answer is, I don't know. After all that, we don't know. I don't know. I cannot solve this for you. I honestly don't know. What's the position of our church?
We don't have one. We're open-handed on this. I mean, you talk to different pastors and we're going to say different things on this. I think that literary framework has some textual basis, but I'm not completely sure. I think mature earth theory has some textual basis. I'm not completely sure.
Genesis is really complicated. And you have to have that posture as you walk through it. Now, let's get to the cake. Let's try out the cookbook. Let's try out health class.
Let's get to the honeymoon. Let's get to the cake. And let's actually look at this text and see why Genesis 1 is beautiful and glorious. It starts out, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Francis Schaeffer says, this is one of the most pregnant with meaning literary statements in all of literature. There is so much packed into, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
What we see out the gate here is that God is the main subject of Genesis 1. He's the main subject of the Bible. It's no accident that He's the subject of the first sentence and that His name shows up 35 times in the first chapter. And here's what that means. The story's not about you. And it's not about me.
I don't care what self-help book you picked up in Books A Million that says you are the hero of your story. It's not true. God is the hero of this story. He is the point of creation. And we get to be made in His image as a specific part of creation. We'll get to that next week.
But we're not the point. And I feel like what happens when we have these debates over how the earth came to be, how the universe came to be. I know my posture in the past has been, God, could you have given us like a different, like an extra chapter of Genesis? Could you have explained this in a better way? Because there's a ton of people that are looking at this and saying, see, we shouldn't believe this. I've got to have an answer for them.
And I feel like God in that moment, it's just my feeling, is saying, are you serious? You have trouble installing ceiling fans. And you want me to explain how I made everything out of nothing. No. Read your Bible, look at an epic sunset, and be thankful. This should turn you to worship, not focusing on how.
Because God is the main subject. He's the point of creation. The next thing we see is in the beginning. And in that statement in this story, God pre-exists creation. Which means He eternally has been, always will be. People will say, well, what happened before God?
There was no before. God has eternally existed. He is the eternally uncaused cause. He caused everything into being. And it also means that He created time. And if time is like a linear object, God created time, and this is time, this is the beginning, this is the end, and that God eternally exists before time.
He eternally exists also within time. He also eternally exists outside of time at the end. Which is mind-blowing. And it hurts our brain. But that's how big our God is, and that's even a poor way of explaining the glory of what's actually happening.
God pre-exists time. He's infinite, and He's without need. Which also means He doesn't need us. He didn't need, He didn't make creation the universe. He didn't make humanity because He was lonely. He eternally existed in perfect harmony with Himself.
Which begs the question, why did He create us in the first place? And the Bible gives us two answers. One, because He desires us. He doesn't need you, but He desires you. He desires all of humanity generally, and He desires His church specifically. He desires us.
And the second reason is He did it for His glory. For the glory of God is why He made everything that was made. And we see that packed in the first statement. As you walk through the rest of Genesis, you see something else. You see that the Trinity is creating together here. That Genesis 1 gives us our first picture of God the Trinity forming things together.
In Genesis 1, 26, it says, Let us make man in our own image. And that is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit in communion with Himself saying, Let us make man in our own image, in our own likeness. You see God the Father forming, shaping, creating. In verse 2, it says, And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. You see the Holy Spirit involved in making the universe. And then in verse 3, it says, And God said, Let there be light.
And there was light. And John in his gospel picks up on this. In the very first verse of John 1, it says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And that is talking about Jesus. Jesus, the Word, the creative Word who brought everything into existence. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit together creating.
That's the first picture of the training that we get in the Bible. It shows up in Genesis 1. What we also see in Genesis 1 is that God speaks the world into existence. Think about this. He literally speaks things exist. He forms everything that was made by the power of His creative Word.
That when He says in verse 3, and God said, let there be light. In verse 6, and God said, let there be an expanse amidst the waters. Every time He creates, He speaks by the power of His creative Word. And the power of His creative Word, the power that that Word gives life, that theme is strung throughout the whole Bible. And it first shows up right here. That throughout the Old Testament, prophets speak, and it gives life that when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the Word came to life, and then He dies, the death on the cross, He conquers death at the resurrection, and then He leaves us with what?
He leaves us with a message. And we get to share that message with those who are spiritually dead to watch the Holy Spirit work through it and make those alive in Christ. God speaks into existence, and that theme is carried and it starts here in Genesis. What we also see is that God creates everything out of nothing. He creates everything, the Latin is ex nihilo, out of nothing, out of thin air, air. Not out of, air is a substance and thinness is a quality.
It's literally out of nothing that He creates everything. He didn't need substance to make anything, which also means is He didn't need inspiration. God is the one who inspires. And let me play that out for you on a practical level why that's good.