Friend, let us begin at the beginning. What better place in the whole collection of God-breathed words to encounter our first conflict between God and the world than Genesis 1:1. I tell you the truth: these ten words are pivotal to your journey through the remainder of your coming to know God. The foundation of Christianity is laid in our relation to God as our Creator. If you do not believe Genesis 1:1 without any qualification or rationalization, if you cannot take the verse on its face and believe that God is the origin, the author, of all things, that he needed no help to turn nothing into something, and not just any something but something as grand and splendorous as the star-filled galaxy and the vestibular system within your inner ears that keeps you upright in that galaxy as the world spins on its axis at more than 1000 miles per hour, you will gain little if anything from my letters.
God–the name of the Supreme Being. One of the main themes of Genesis is to establish the sovereignty of God. The sovereignty, the full right and power to govern oneself without any interference from outside sources, of God. There is absolutely nothing that happens in the universe that is outside of God’s influence and authority. As King of kings and Lord of lords, God has no limitations. The sovereignty of God is not merely that God has the power and right to govern all things but that He does govern all things, always and without exception. God is not simply sovereign in principle but sovereign in practice.
Genesis 1:1 affirms God alone is eternal and that all else owes its origin and existence to him. No doubt, the very first verse of the Bible is a major stumbling block for those who place their faith in science. Your first surrender during this journey is to accept what you may not understand as truth and to believe in God and what he says. If you fail to do that, you hold science in higher esteem than God. You must not attempt to reduce the nonreducible; you cannot comprehend the ways of God. You must worship him by faith rather than evidence. As a wise man once said, “If you understand, it is not God.” (St. Augustine)
The real danger of dismissing the miracle of creation is that such thoughts introduce doubt about the truth of the whole Bible. Doubt is insidious and pervasive, a great arrow in the enemy’s sheath. Doubt about the truth of Genesis 1:1 will lead you to doubt that Adam was formed from dirt and Eve from his rib. When you dismiss these and all other miracles, you put aside the very evidence given to you that should leave you with your mouth dropped in awe of God.
But you are tempted to understand the miracles of the Bible with the aid of science, aren’t you? Be warned: do not burden your mind with efforts to fuse science and the word of God; such is to attempt a peace accord between God’s truth and man’s knowledge. Such is to believe the knowledge of man is equal to the wisdom of God. It is not necessary here to discredit science but to put it in its proper place, and that place is not just after God but also beneath God.
An abundance of scientific evidence suggests the universe had a beginning. If there was a beginning, there was a cause for that beginning. Since the beginning, we have had a very complex universe, an intricate system of cause-and-effect forces that work together for the mutual benefit of the whole. The Earth is not breaking down before our eyes and devolving into random chaos, but it is stable, sustained, and predictable; the Earth and its living creatures are an amalgam of particularities that work together according to a design—a masterful design—not by chance.
There was a cause that brought about a beginning that resulted in something that is the product of a masterful design. What was that cause? We cannot say it was something else without falling into the trap of explaining one beginning with an endless regression of causes that begot other beginnings, predating the beginning that resulted in us. According to God, he created the heavens and the earth; they were not formed from any pre-existing materials but made from nothing. Again, be in awe!
Only something that had no beginning but rather always was and is and will be could be the agent that caused the beginning, and that would be God. God is the uncaused cause of all finite things. When Moses asked God for his name, his response was ” “I Am Who I Am”. It is clear God determines God; no one or anything else does. God is omnipotent (can do anything), omnipresent (is everywhere), and omniscient (knows everything), and on that divine authority, in the beginning, he created the heavens and the earth.
In the beginning of time, this world was created by a Being of infinite wisdom and power, who was himself before all time and all worlds. This first verse declares the great and important truth that all things had a beginning, that nothing throughout the vast extent of nature existed from eternity, originated by chance, or from the skill of any inferior agent, but that God’s creative power produced the whole universe. God made heaven and earth out of nothing. The world was not eternal but had a beginning, and its creation was caused only by the power and wisdom of God, the first cause and sole author of all things.
Lay everything else aside, take a step in faith, and embrace Genesis 1:1, the first documented miracle, given to you so that you may know your Father’s awe-inspiring power and unfathomable brilliance. It is your first step in surrendering to God.
