The Beginning. It matters. It matters a lot.
Our origins are important. We have to talk about how things started. Where did we come from? How did we get here?
Genesis was a message to the people of Israel communicated through Moses. It was book of stories that showed us how the Lord got things going.
Consider this reality: the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had spent 400 plus years in Egypt. The latter portion of those years were years of slavery — hard labor afflicted upon them by the rule of Pharaoh. He feared this people because their numbers just kept growing. Their population was out of control.
The hard work they were made to do only served to increase their numbers. This terrified Pharaoh even more so he instituted an infanticide policy, every baby boy was to be tossed into the Nile River. Moses escaped this because of his clever-thinking mother and the compassion of one of Pharaoh’s daughters.
Most of us know the story of Moses. He met God and he was raised up by the Lord to speak for the release of the Israelites.
When Pharaoh refused and became stubborn in that refusal, the Lord sent a series of plagues, the last one being the death blow to all of the first born in Egypt.
That knockout plague forced the ruler’s hand. He sent Israel away.
Once through the Red Sea and into the wilderness, I am convinced that the people had questions. And Moses was the one with the answers.
The Lord spoke to him, first at the burning bush in the desert of Midian and later in a variety of ways as the deliverer and leader of the people.
What we have in Genesis is a series of reports that offer explanations for those with curious hearts. It traces the activity of God in Creation as a whole and then His purpose in setting in motion His plan of Redemption.
Definition of the Source
The words at the start of Genesis must be considered in the light of the plagues God leveled upon Egypt. Every plague was directed toward an idol embraced and worshipped amid the culture of that empire.
The group that left Egypt was a “mixed multitude.” Among the throng of the delivered people, were those who still carried an affinity for the gods of the land they just left, a land now in ruins because of the things that God brought against it.
Genesis gives definition. The text tells us that God is the Source of all things. His commandment is to worship Him and Him alone and not the things. By His good pleasure He determined to create all that we know through the expression of His Wisdom.
We find this element to the sequence of Creation in Proverbs 8. There we read that Wisdom was with God and in God before the whole process was set in motion.
And how did He set Creation in motion? With the sound of His Voice. He spoke and there was Light. He proceeded to establish realms of existence —the heavens, the sky, the seas, and the land. He formed the frames of reference and then filled those frames.
Stars and planets and suns filled the heavens. The fowl were sent into the skies. Fish and whales and eels and even something known as Leviathan were introduced to the seas.
Last came the land, which brought forth vegetation in the form of plants and trees and fruit. Also set upon the land were animals and creeping things — insects.
All of these things possessed substance and so we must take substance to be sacred. The material elements of Creation were declared by God to be good and very good, especially when it came to Man.
Like the rest of Creation, Man was made to be filled. Genesis explains that Man was formed from the dust of earth. His existence began materially before it was animated; that is, quickened and made alive.
Once fashioned in the design of the Lord as we read in Psalm 139, God breathed into Man and Man became a living soul. To quote another line from Proverbs, He chose to create and enjoy what He formed to be His dwelling places – “Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men” (Proverbs 8:31). He made Man to contain something of Himself.
This is a truth about every human being if we are to believe the Bible record. Imagine what life in this world would be like if every one of us really accepted and related to each other on the basis of this reality. God is in me and He is also in every one of my neighbors, even the ones who choose to operate as enemies toward me and Him.
Substance and Spirit
We must recognize the importance of the created pattern and order. Man first had substance; he was material before he was spiritual.
This distinction is no small thing. What we are on the outside mattered very much to the Lord.
It mattered so much that God the Son incarnated Himself in the material of humanity. He entered into a life of dust. God took our substance. He lived His life along all of its lines. He did so in every respect. Whenever challenged to operate as more than a man, He rebuked that challenge with Word, with Wisdom, with an understanding of how His sacrifice of Himself had to be one defined by perfect, innocent humanity.
He never ceased being God, but He allowed His deity to face this world and its cosmically charged atmosphere in every detail. He did it without exercising supernatural prerogatives in ways that would aid His humanity. He spoke to the forces that opposed Him. The Word carried the force of nature that was behind it the nature of the Creator. He did touch those in need and brought healing. Again, things of substance often figured in the equations — mud, spit, thread, water.
There’s a reason why substance and materiality are questioned and attacked. It is because Satan possesses neither of these things. There’s nothing solid to him or to the air of which he coordinates and agitates. He is all soul — mind, will, emotions. He fosters idols and figures in deceived imaginations to gain himself a representation. He can stimulate, but he cannot create. He may only use what’s left open to him.
We meet the devil in Genesis 3 as the wily one employing the shape of a subtle snake. He works craftily to create a fog in the mind of the woman. He doesn’t argue, rather he fashions an atmosphere of doubt and distrust.
Other-ness and One-ness
Let us get back to the first words: In the beginning, God. He is, He was, He always will be. From everlasting to everlasting, He is the Lord. Read through these opening chapters of the Bible and see that He saw all that He created as good and very good.
What was not good? The missing complement to Adam. The man needed an Other to relate to. Without this Other, he was deficient in regard the image of God.
“Let us, make man in our image.” This was the Lord’s declaration. The pronouns “us” and “our” reveal the nature of God in His Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Lord is One and His One-ness is expressed in the midst of His Other-ness. Who the Lord is is a mystery far beyond our understanding. In Genesis, we read of the sense of relationship. The Hebrew verbs indicate that the Persons of the Lord have been involved in something of an eternal dance.
Once Man was made, he needed a dance partner. And so the Lord took something from the Man and fashioned Woman. She was his Other. She complemented him – body, soul, and spirit. The two were designed to become one flesh and to be fruitful and multiply.
Man now had a neighbor he could love as he loved himself. More than a neighbor, he had a sister and a spouse.
All was glorious. All was right. All was finished. All was very good.
And so the Lord rested.
This last point is important because the first hearers of these words had never known rest. As slaves, they were worked and worked and worked to death.
These freed people had to learn faith and truth in the work and power of God. They had to choose to believe and rest in the Lord’s loving character.
Herein is the application for us. We were made by God and for God, according to His pleasure. He freely gave us all things and He freely gave us responsibility. We may choose and He expresses His love and care in the hope that we choose Him and His ways and not our own ways.
The Lord put His breath in us and as we breathe we say His Name – YAHWEH. This brings Him glory.
This is what we were made for.