January 28 Sermon: Creation or Chaos?

Consider these questions as you reflect on Genesis 1:1-2:3:

1. Why is the question "If God made everything, then who made God?" significant, and how does it reflect our human struggle to comprehend an eternal being without a beginning or end?

2. What three fundamental truths about God's nature and creative power are highlighted in the account of the creation week in Genesis 1? How do these truths challenge alternative beliefs about the origin of the universe?

3. How does the concept of God as a God of order contrast with the idea of a universe arising from random chance and chaos? How does this understanding influence our perspective on creation, human life, and the structure of our lives?

Transcript:

Over the years of doing youth ministry, I have had several times where after a lesson I opened up the floor for any question that the students might have about the Bible or God in general. There is one question that has come up more than all of the others. This question is so common and yet I can still see the faces of some of the students over the years who have asked me it. Some of these students are now 30 years old with children and families of their own but I still have a clear image in my mind of them raising their hands and asking me the question. I’m not sure why it is so clear to me and why it has stuck out but this question has been a regular over the last 19 years. You may have already guessed what the question is but here it is for you. If God made everything, then who made God? It is a good question. As created beings it is a question that we are going to want answered. We can’t fathom the idea of something that has the power of being as an inherent part of who they are. We know that there was a day when weren’t around and we also know that there will be a day where our family and friends will grieve our death. In and of ourselves we do not have the power to be. And so we ask this question because we can’t wrap our human minds around a infinite being who is without beginning and without end. We are so bound by time that we can’t comprehend a being who is outside of it.

‌I have answered this important question in many ways over the years. I try to make it thought provoking and fun at the same time but it all comes down to the same basic answer at the end. God by nature is an uncreated being without beginning and without end. As you can imagine, no matter how well I explain it there are still those who struggle with the idea and so I always make sure to make a very important point. No matter how you slice it you have to believe in something that has always just been. Either God is uncreated and has always been or matter is uncreated and has always been. No matter how you slice it you have to have faith that something is without beginning and without end and comes from nothing. Your options are either that that something is God and he loves you and he created all things with order and purpose or that eternal thing you believe in is matter and it has randomly come together to cause you to ask this question today. Now, we struggle with this because modern scientific thought does its best to push this off to where we won’t ask it anymore, right? We put ridiculous amounts of time out there to make us forget that we have to believe in something eternal or we put it out there across giant astronomical distances that we can’t even begin to fathom. The whole idea is even shrunk down so that at this theorized Big Bang event in the way distant past and in distant space we are told all of the matter exploded from an volatile egg of some sort. Regardless, both ideas of where we came from require a belief in something that is eternal.

‌And so, what we are presented with is a choice. Do we believe in creation or do we believe in chaos? This is an important question because it shapes not only what we believe but how we view the world. We are beginning a series on the first 11 chapters of Genesis. We are going to work our way through the book of Genesis over time but we are going to do it in bite size chunks I’m referring to as seasons, you know, like a TV show. Our first block we are going to call foundations because what we see in these first 11 chapters in this first book of the Bible lays our foundation for how we will understand scripture as a whole. It tells us where we come from, it tells us we were created in the image of God. We see God establishing the covenant of marriage as the design for human flourishing in families. In the story of the fall we find out why we die and why there is death, bloodshed, and disease in the world. In the flood we understand not only the judgment of God but why the world around us looks like it does. At the tower of Babel we get an understanding of why there are different languages and people groups. Maybe you’ve never thought about it before but the first eleven chapters of this book are foundational our faith and how we view the world.

‌Today as we begin to think about this foundation we are taking in a substantial chunk of text. All of Genesis 1 is a lot and it took us awhile to read it. We are not going to be digging into every day of creation and looking at nuances. Instead, we are thinking big picture about the creation week. From the text we see that they are ordinary days. There is evening, there is morning, then the day of the creation week expressed. A lot happened when God spoke and he exhibited his power he could have spoken everything into existence at once but he didn’t. He chose to created in six days and rest on the seventh and in this we see that he made things with order and it is an order that impacts our lives.

‌And so as we look at this question I want us to focus on three important truths that come out of this text for us today.

‌The first thing that we see in this passage today is that God is. The very first words of Holy Scripture do not attempt to convince us of the existence and nature of God but instead they state the truth of who he is and what he does.

‌Secondly, we will see that God is powerful. We see that he speaks and he creates from nothing. He speaks and where there was nothing we now have something. Many of us struggle to put together a prefabbed piece of furniture that has clear instructions. Some of us can create a nice piece of woodworking from the stuff we get from the lumberyard. They can envision it in our minds and then build it. None of us can simply speak and have something come from nothing. You can’t even get the voice assistant in your home to make some just by your voice. Maybe you have a setup that lets you say “Alexa, start my coffee” but you still need to load the material into the coffee maker. To have the power to create at the power of your word is something that is reserved for almighty God. Only he can do it.

‌Lastly, we see from the events of the creation week that God is a God of order. He did not leave his creation without form and void. He spoke into his creation and he created order. He created the sun, moon, and stars. He created plants, fish, birds, and land animals. He created humans in his own image as the crowning achievement of creation. The world we live in is designed and ordered. It is not chaos and disorder.

‌And so, we jump into the first two voices of the creation account.

‌‌We see here that God is. Like I said, he alone in and of himself has the power to be. He doesn’t need to be argued for or explained here in Genesis 1:1. Instead, it lets us know that he is there and was there. To be God by definition he would have to be an uncreated being without beginning and without end and the Bible tells us here that’s what he is. We see also this truth reflected in other parts of the Bible. Specifically I think of Romans 1 that tells us that we know God just by looking at creation. We know that God is. When we deny it we are actually suppressing the truth.

‌‌We see that the nature of God tells us that he is necessary. His invisible attributes are clear to us and easy for us to perceive. Even though the idea of there being order is our third point I want to allude to it here. The idea of design in the universe is something that we can’t miss. We see order, not chaos. Things work in extraordinary ways. We digest food and our bodies use what it can and eliminate the waste. A giraffe just happens to have a sponge like mechanism in its brain so that it doesn’t faint or even die when all that blood rushes to its head when it bends down to get a drink of water at a stream. We can probably all think of something in creation that just amazes us and there is not way that comes from random chance and chaos. It is by design.

‌It isn’t just us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ who acknowledge this. Not too long ago there was a scientific panel and they discussed whether or not the world that we experience is just a simulation. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who isn’t known for scientific research or being published in peer reviewed journals but instead as a personality on Twitter speaking out against Christianity and creation, is the one who hosted the discussion. His input was that he thinks the likelihood of the universe being a simulation is very high, he said that if we were to find out if that were true, he would be one of the only people in the room that wasn’t surprised. He thinks that our lives may be nothing more than for the entertainment of some more intelligent or powerful entity.

‌Now, I hope you are as baffled by this as much as I am. He refuses to believe in creation by God, a being that has the power to be within himself, but yet he is willing to entertain that the entire cosmos is a simulation by a higher species that is bored and needed something to do. He knows God exists but suppresses this truth and is willing to go to absurdity instead of trusting in the God who is.

‌He’s not the only one. Many scientists look at the world and see order and can’t believe it came about by chance. So, what do they do, repent and believe? Nope. They subscribe to a theory called panspermia. This suggests that the necessary complexity of life was delivered by aliens to our planet. Yep, that’s right. Instead of believing in creation by a divine being they send the problem they struggle with out into the distant past and into the distant reaches of space and hope that E.T. can solve their problem. Again, they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

‌God is and we either believe in this one who is or we can be reduced to absurdity.

‌And we see this because of the design and evidence of creation. We know he is necessary and we have seen that God is and now we see that he not only has the intelligence necessary he has the power needed to created from nothing by the power of his word.

‌‌We see the power of God right here. There was no light and he created it. So far we have seen that he created the heavens and the earth. He has now created light. It is all by the power of his Word. As I have already alluded to this is real power. You and I can’t make a simple cup of coffee from nothing. We need material but God, the eternal Lord of Heaven and earth, by his word created all that is seen and unseen by his word.

‌It is important that we think about how this story is being told. This is the true story of the universe and it is how God created but imagine being an ancient pagan with your understanding of multiple gods competing and them coming about from the material around them. While the idea of evolution is credited to Darwin in the 19th century the basic idea behind it has always been floating around in ancient paganism. As we saw when we read our way through the book of Ecclesiastes for our public reading of scripture while we were in Colossians and Titus there is nothing new under the sun. They thought that life sprung up from the stuff around them. Not nearly as refined or scientific as Darwin’s theory but the same general idea. What does the creation story here in Genesis one have instead of that view? There is a God so powerful that he creates from nothing. Even the material that they believe has the stuff they see around them coming forth from it wasn’t there but this God, the one who has being in and of himself, speaks and it is there. This truth would have been a shock to their culture just as it is a shock in our culture now. His power is unbelievable. It is unfathomable. Think of the power of our sun. Then think that God spoke it into being. Then think of the rest of the stars and the planets. Then think that while we struggle to fathom the power of the large and distant we need to remember we struggle to fathom the creative power of God in the things that are near to us. Just think of the complexity of cells. Scientists stick their eyes up to the lenses of a microscope and can tell us about a complexity that is amazing. Then we get down to the atomic level and there is even more complexity. We think about the power of God on the massive scale but his power is on display even in the microscopic. This is just what we see in the first day of creation but right there with only one day we see that the creation of the world creates order and stands in the face of the chaos that the ancient and modern pagan see as the way in which the world came about. Like I said, our third and final point for today is that God is a God of order.

‌​He creates day and night. There is a passing of time. This isn’t random chaos. There is order.

‌‌He separates the water above from the water below. There is order. There is more passing of a defined amount of time. This is not chaos. This isn’t assorted pagan gods doing things because they are angry. This is a God of order. Putting his stamp on creation.

‌‌And on the third day we have dry land and seas and God says that it is good. Again, this isn’t random chaos. This is order and he designs it a particular way and it is good.

‌I’m not going to run through every creation day because you are already latching on to my bigger point. This is an orderly work of God and it stands in contrast to the idea of random chance and time being able to explain how the world and creatures came to be. This is not chaos, this is a loving God putting a stamp on what he is making. We see this most visibly on the sixth day when he does something else.

‌‌He makes humanity in his own image. There is something unique about them. They are inherently different than the rest of the creation. They bear the image of their maker. There has been debate over the years about what exactly being made in God’s image means. Often we get hung up in the details and we don’t have time to explain them all today but I think that is actually a really good thing for us as we look at the big picture of this passage. There is something different about us. We are bearers of the image of God. We need to value human life in a unique way. We protect it. We care for it. We use the intellect that God has given us over the animals for his glory and we are not to abuse it.

‌And we see in here something else about the order that God created. They are vegetarian. Now, some of you probably just got really worried because you have yourself a nice hunk of meat sitting in the crock pot and you’re worried that the Bible might say you have to abandon your consumption of meat. Don’t worry, don’t worry. Later on we receive all the permission we need to consume tasty animals. In fact, you should probably have an extra helping of meat today to celebrate that glorious truth, but why would God have humans and animals limited to vegetation? The answer is that there was no death. In order to eat meat you had to kill an animal and we see that this creation is described as very good. There is no death. There is no bloodshed. There is no disease. There is no survival of the fittest. The creation is ordered in such a way that it is very good.

‌‌And we see that the order of this all includes the order we have for our week. On the seventh day God rests and as his image bearers we are also called to rest from our labor. Even the order of how we structure our lives and set aside time to worship God is established in Genesis 1. It is foundational to how we understand the world.

‌And we have seen these truths. God is and he has power beyond description. He uses that power to create order. You and I are not the results of random chance processes coming about in a pool of chemicals and chaos. We are created in the image of God and because of that we worship almighty God.

‌We take these three truths and I believe there are two primary ways in which we can apply this as we step out of this place and live in this beautiful world of order that God has created.

‌The first challenge for us is to relish in who God is. We don’t need to see a mountain or a sunset over the ocean to appreciate the creative goodness of God. We see his power and majesty and order in everything around us. We don’t even need to leave this room to appreciate what God has created. Look around you. We see not only the wonderful smiles of each other but the fact that a loving God has placed us not only in our biological families but in our church family is a good and beautiful gift. It can be so easy to see our lives as chaotic and random but that is not the truth. A God of order has placed you where he has for his glory. Live into his goodness shown to you in the created order. Take note of the blessings that God has put in front of you each day.

‌The second thing is to remember the order that God has placed in your life. As I just said, life is not random. God has used his creative power for your good. It is visible not only in the things I just mentioned. It is visible to us in what he has done for u sin the person and work of Jesus Christ. We just saw at the end of Genesis 1 that there was no death, there was no disease or bloodshed. But that is not the world we live in now. God said that the creation was very good but much of what happens in our world can’t be categorized as very good because there is suffering. This is because it wasn’t God who introduced chaos into his good order of creation. It was us. When our first parents, Adam and Eve fell into sin disorder became a reality but God did not leave us without an answer. He brought order to us through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus for us. Our lives find meaning and order in the salvation that has been given to us in Jesus. And God used his creative power to bring that into being. Even though our sin and rebellion brought death into the world God reversed this curse in us through faith. He created it in us not by anything that we did but by the power of his word. That is why we focus on the word of God and it’s power in worship because we understand that it is through the word of God and by the power of the Spirit that he creates. Not just in the beginning but as we hear the word and we are brought from death to life through faith in Jesus Christ.

‌As we live into this created order that God has given us in our life we see that call for evangelism. The belief that chaos rules the cosmos is probably greater than it has ever been. Instead of faith in an eternal, loving God there are those who claim to have no faith but actually have a deep and devoted faith to an eternal cosmos. They may not even realize it. We are called not to convince them or twist their arms into faith. Instead we proclaim the word and trust that God can do what he has always done. By the creative power of his Word with the Spirit he can create order where chaos reigns. And so, I challenge you to be on the lookout. This topic may be one of the best methods we have to speak the truth of Christ to those who have hard hearts towards God. You don’t have to win a debate. You don’t have to convince. Instead, speak the truth of the God who is. The God who is eternal. The God who not only brought into being a universe of order but who brought you to life through his Word. Speak the Word into the chaos and trust that God will create new life, just as he always has. Amen.