To Begin in the Beginning

Genesis 1:1-2

We can divide up information into three categories… put them into three boxes, if you will. There are things we know, things we don’t know, and things we don’t know we don’t know. We’re generally comfortable with the things we know, aside from the lyrics to annoying songs like the Macarena. We tend to make peace with the things we don’t know, or search them out so they become things we know. And we’re good with what we don’t even have the questions for.

The challenge is when things shift from one box to the other, discovering questions we never had before, or realizing that we don’t actually understand something we thought we did. The first two chapters of Genesis have a tendency to do this to us, and I’d like to walk through them with you one article at a time. So let’s wade gently into the waters of our Bible’s first verses to see what we know, what we don’t know, and what we don’t know we don’t know about the beginning: when God created the heavens and the earth. The Jewish Mishna, a 3rd century collection of oral tradition, speaks of four things that, if a person meditates on them, “it were better for him if he had not come into the world.” One of those four is the story of creation.

Foundations

As we begin our journey through Genesis, it’s helpful to articulate some things that we often assume. The first of those is the nature of Scripture. Creation and history show us the existence of God, His power, wisdom, and goodness. But God has revealed Himself uniquely and most clearly in the Scriptures He inspired, as we see in 2 Tim 3:16. In the same vein we read 2 Pet 1:21, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” These Scriptures are written by men under God’s sovereignty over thousands of years, and they are infallible because God has preserved them. It is a small thing for the God of heaven and earth to preserve His Word.

I won’t be spending time vindicating and verifying those things—that would be a task for another time. For Christians, there are many evidences for the inspired nature of Scripture, but it always comes back to our faith in the Scriptures that show us our Savior. 1 Pet 1:23, “since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.”

While the Scriptures are infallible, we cannot say the same for ourselves or even the great theologians of history who interpreted God’s Word. This is especially evident as we come to the creation chapters. Wise and godly men have disagreed for thousands of years about what these verses mean, so we do well to approach them with humility and an abundance of prayer. We need God to give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand, and we need to have grace with those who disagree.

To understand what is going on, we’re going to use some basic principles we normally use without thinking about them. Read things in their immediate context and broader context. Wherever possible, use Scripture to interpret Scripture, reading old in light of new and difficult passages in light of clearer ones.

The very name Genesis means beginning, not Phil Collins or Sega. Meredith Kline called it the Kingdom Prologue. It spans a large portion of human history, from creation through the flood until at least 2,000 BC. It has some of the most controversial and iconic stories of the Bible: creation, mark of Cain, flood, near-sacrifice of Isaac. Genesis also has striking parallels to Revelation that we’ll be exploring as we go, bookending the story of humanity and redemption. History ends where it began in more senses than one.

Obviously, the first challenges we’ll be facing are the controversies over the creation narrative, and we’ll be exploring some today and more in articles to come. Luther said, “The commentators, with their sundry, different, and countless questions, have so confused everything in the chapter as to make it clear enough that God has reserved His exalted wisdom and the correct understanding of this chapter for Himself alone, although He has left us with this general knowledge that the world had a beginning and that it was created by God out of nothing.” This is more than just intelligent design versus blind creation or atheistic evolution—these are actually the easiest of them. Our goal, though, is not to get bogged down in men’s opinions. We want to see, first and foremost, what the Bible clearly conveys.

The first step in this is to ask what kind of book Genesis is. We’ve already introduced the idea that this is God’s inspired, holy word, co-authored by God with men. Genesis, along with the next four books, were written by Moses who spoke with God in the wilderness. There may be Jewish oral tradition passed down through the generations, but any flaws would be immediately corrected by the omniscient creator, editor, and author. This also means that we’re not working with mythology and fable—stories written for entertainment and the teaching of morals. Genesis is in stark contrast to the creation myths of the Ancient Near East, like the Enuma Elish, where gods battle each other for control.

Genesis bears the literary markers of historical record, but it’s a theological, redemptive history, where things are included or excluded for the purpose of the grander story of Scripture. That means we’re not reading Moses’ doctoral dissertation on history. This isn’t a science textbook on cosmology, biology, or geology. It doesn’t tell us everything, or even everything we want to know, but it does tell us everything we need to know.

This is the first volume of the story where God displays His glory and attributes. But it’s written in condescension to man, and God knows His people are not always the brightest crayons in the box. When it comes down to surgical precision of language or a simple, clear message, God uses the latter, especially in Genesis.

Greidanus points out that while Genesis 1-2 are describing the creation of a world that is good and without sin before the fall, it was written after the fall to a people living in a broken world for their instruction and comfort.

Conjectures

So let’s zero in on our text: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering or fluttering over the face of the waters.”

The more carefully we read those verses, the more questions we have. Is the first verse just a summary of what follows? An early church theologian from the 4^th century, Augustine famously (or infamously) claimed that God actually created everything in heaven and earth in an instant, not six days. Most likely we’re looking at God’s creation of matter, the spiritual and material building blocks of the cosmos: quarks, neutrons, protons, electrons, atoms, molecules, dark matter. So the author is giving us a brief sketch of the earth suspended in space.

But what are the heavens here? It is not likely just the sky, but this could be the universe in general, even planets and moons without stars. Or this may be heaven as the throne room of God. If that’s the case, is this when angels are created? Ps 33:6, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath (Spirit) of his mouth all their host.” The angels seem to be present as a cheering audience at creation. Job 38:6-7, “On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Given Satan’s appearance as the serpent in Gen 3, he fell sometime before that, so it’s possible that all of that takes place in these two verses. But we don’t want to spend too much time on this, because, as Calvin said, “Is it not evidence of stubbornness rather than of diligence to raise strife over the time and order in which they [i.e., the angels] were created?”

Arthur W Pink claimed that there was a large span of time that elapsed between 1:1 and 1:2. He sees a beautiful creation, even if incomplete in verse 1, but then assumes a terrible catastrophe between the verses, likely including the rebellion of Satan and the other angels, making it formless and void.

And speaking of which, what is formless and void? Shaw writes, “The consensus concerning the meaning of the terms is that they convey the idea of being empty and uninhabitable.” We actually find the same pair of words in two other passages where God’s wrath lays waste. Isa 34:11, “But the hawk and the porcupine shall possess it, the owl and the raven shall dwell in it. He shall stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness.” Jer 4:23, “I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light.”

And why is the Holy Spirit hovering or fluttering over the waters of creation? Calvin says, “We have already heard that before God had perfected the world it was an indigested mass; he now teaches that the power of the Spirit was necessary in order to sustain it.” So Calvin basically sees this amorphous glob of primordial stuff held in suspended existence by the hand of the Holy Spirit.

But we do see this same verb connected to God in Deut 32:10-11, “(God) found (Jacob) in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions.”

And we see the Holy Spirit regularly depicted as the giver of life, the animator. Job 33:4, “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” Ps 104:30, “When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.” So it is likely this is depicting for us the 3^rd person of the Trinity not only sustaining matter, but poised to create life.

I hope that wasn’t too much at once. That’s not even all the rabbit holes we could fall down in these verses. But it’s good to at least introduce these ideas, some of which we’ll be interacting with as we move through the rest of Gen 1-2.

Certainties

Now let us set these questions aside in our “don’t know” box and ask what God is clearly teaching and revealing for us. Let’s see what we can put in the “know” box.

The first is that God is the creator. He is the first, foremost subject of the Bible. Genesis to Revelation is the story of God. Man, angels, animals, stars… these are the supporting cast, occasional audience, occasional chorus of God’s self-revelation. We are not the center of the universe. God is. He is the first and unmoved mover. In the beginning, God created. Before the beginning, there is only God.

And this is God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have the explicit mention of the Spirit in v.2 here, but even in v.1 we have a hint at the Trinity. The word for God, Elohim, is plural, while the verb create is singular. He’s three and one at once. And the Son, Jesus before incarnate flesh, is there too.

John 1:1-3, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

John 17:5, Jesus said, “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

Col 1:16-17, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Heb 1:2-3, “but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”

Heb 1:10-12, quotes Ps 102 as a description of Christ, “And, ‘You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.’”

Augustine made an interesting argument for this: “God made heaven and earth in the beginning, not in the beginning of time, but in Christ. For he was the Word with the Father, through whom and in whom all things were made. For, when the Jews asked him who he was, our Lord Jesus Christ answered, ‘The beginning; that is why I am speaking to you.’ John 8:25.” But we need to take that one with a grain of salt.

These verses also show us that everything falls into two categories. There is the triune, uncreated, creator God… and then there is creation. Whether it’s a speck of dust, a worm, a king, or the angel Gabriel, these are creations. Isa 40:28, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.” Isa 45:18, “For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): “I am the Lord, and there is no other.” Isa 48:12-13, “Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last. My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together.”

Even time and history are creations of God. Isa 46:9-10, “…remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,” On this, Augustine writes, “God also made time, and thus there was no time before he made time. Hence, we cannot say that there was a time when God had not yet made anything.”

Even though we are missing the repeating formula we know well from the following verses, “God said, ‘Let there be…’”, this first creative act was at God’s word. Heb 11:3, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”

Genesis 1 as a whole is teaching us about the effortless, sovereign, authority of God. We can make stuff out of stuff. That’s not nothing, but we can’t do anything with nothing. Only God can make something out of nothing, and it’s shown as effortless. God doesn’t lift an anthropomorphic finger.

If I walk into my house and declare in my most authoritative voice to my children, “Let this house now be clean,” it will be carried out with limited effect. If Kim Jung-Un says that as he walks into his palace in North Korea, people will carry it out to much greater effect. But when God speaks, what He says is because He said it. That’s the creator in contrast to the creature.

God is also showing us that He brings order out of formlessness. As history moves forward, man will sin and bring decay and destruction. He will invoke God’s judgment, but before any of that happens, we’re shown that God can not only create, but fix and form. It prepares us to understand that when sin brings chaos, God can bring peace; it prepares us for the story of redemption. As Godfrey put it, “God shows us that his purpose in creation is not some kind of static, unchanging reality. Just as time is built into creation from the beginning, so is development. God in his creation is already pointing us to a fulfillment or consummation of that creation… God builds eschatology into creation at the beginning.”

Furthermore, we are meant to read the rest of our Bibles with this in the background and see that God had chosen to love us and redeem us before Gen 1:1.

Eph 1:3-7, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,”

Rom 8:29-30, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

Even though Satan would rebel, even though Adam and Eve would eat that fruit and break God’s law and bring death and sorrow into this world, God would make a way to save sinners and make all things new. Jesus knew before Gen 1, before the beginning, that He would die to save us. We are all born as sinners in rebellion against our creator, and He would be just condemn all of humanity. Yet He chose to take on flesh and accomplish our salvation. If we run to Him in prayer, in repentance and faith, we will be saved unto that renewed creation to come. We can find rest in the arms of the one who, in the beginning, created the heavens and the earth, because He loved us enough to take our sins to the cross.