Creation, Part Four.
Last time we were speaking about Creation and we ended with Psalm 19, 104 and the Te Deum Laudamus, a centuries-old hymn of praise. We spoke of the One, the God of Israel, who starts it all. We also noted how starkly and powerfully five words stood up and stood against various worldviews. Those five words are/were In the beginning God created…These are powerful words that confront modern worldviews. Here God is in action, creating.
We are not told how God does this other than by His Sovereign Word.
Augustine calls it the “divine imperative”, the “divine fiat”, the Voice that call things into existence. His word is majestic, sovereign, and authoritative. Genesis does not give us scientific details, but gives us the majesty potency of the Divine Command, Let there be… At such commands, a universe comes to existence.
Genesis 1.1-3. This is indeed the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
In verse two, we get a graphic description of an unstructured and un-ordered universe. . 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. This points to formlessness, emptiness, and darkness. In ancient cultures, this implied a sense of foreboding, chaos, disorder, fear, the unknown and something threatening. It still does imply that.
Formlessness is unimaginable, but the text says the earth was without form. Absolute formlessness is chaos; it is unimaginable.
Emptiness can be one of the worst sensations a human can feel. One thinks of a house after the death of a spouse, a marriage where divorce has occurred, or the loss of other significant others in our lives. I recollect the story of my Grandfather Tonkin following the death of my Grandmother to whom he had been marred sixty-five years. I will never forget hearing and seeing the pain and anguish in a ninety-year old man, a man known for quietness, order, duty and a strong faith. Imagine an empty house, an empty bed, an empty garage, or, for the families of my fellow Veterans, an empty seat at the dinner table. Anguish, aloneness, and disorder were integral to that scene. Project that to the universe as emptiness. Everything was a void…empty, formless, dark.
Genesis 1.3 implies that there was darkness. Yet, in verse three, a new Agent, the Spirit appears. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
The Spirit hovers over the emptiness and the deep. And God speaks, Let there be light: and there was light. Instantly, there was light over the darkness. Light bursts over the darkness. Light instantly appears in the dark caverns and cavities. A structure of light and darkness exists out of which life will go forward. Light for the plants to live…light for the animals, trees and life in world as we know it. The reality of daily life is that life without light is unknown to us. Let there be light: and there was light informs our daily lives. Every day is informed by these words. Let there be light: and there was light. Life is inexplicable apart from the light over the darkness.
Soon God will stoop to the ground and create man of the dust of the ground. Next time we will look at Genesis 1.26-28, the creation of man in God’s image.
Here ends Part Four.
Here begins Part Five.
Man Created in God’s Image.
Dr. R.C. Sproul has entitled his survey course Dust to Glory. We prefer From Glory to Glory.
When we use the preposition in this context, to, we speak of purpose, goal, motion, and/or destination. Even when we travel, we mean that. For example, I am going from Jacksonville, NC to Wilmington, NC. For our series, there is a beginning point in time and space. That began with In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
And this is significant, history is going somewhere and it, itself, that is, history itself, has a starting point and a designated end point. This we call redemptive history. From Glory to Glory, a Glorious Beginning to or towards a Glorious Ending. Our Apostles Creed sums it up this way…from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. Lord willing, we will have more to say on that when we deal with Eschatology and the book of Revelation.
We teach and have taught our children this from our little catechism, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “Q: What is man’s chief end? A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him.” As individuals and as Churches of Christ, this is our purpose, chief end, goal and destination, to glorify God and enjoy Him.
History? Creation? We are using the preposition in no small way. The preposition to implies the purpose, goal, and chief end. Reading the Bible, then, is the unfolding of that purpose, the glory of God. There is the divine purpose for you, me, the church, the nations and the entirety of history.
We turn from this to man, purposefully made, and created in God’s image.
Genesis 1.26-28: “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. The God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
The opening line, Let us, is divine action with a purpose. Much ink has been spent on the “us;” some say it is the plural of majesty; many, including this scribe, holds that it is intra-Trinitarian language expressing purpose and intent. We have seen many church fathers hold the same view.
This is the Divine Being, Actus Purissimmus, acting with power and resolve. There is no vacation in the Trinity.
The phrases in Our image and to Our likeness expresses the divine intent and achievement of created man. He and she are made in God’s image. God was acting with a purpose to create a creature of purpose.
This in our Image and to our Likeness defines human beings.
We might be inclined to read past or over this. We might fail to see the profound significance here. There is a crisis in intellectual history and modern worldviews with a reduction of man’s purposes to godlessness and chance with all its consequences, practically speaking, with an advance of hedonism, consumerism, relativism and narcissism.
Without the doctrine of creation, there is no purpose.
Given the rejection of the doctrine of Creation along with the assertion that we are all the products of change has invaded the public spaces, schools, academia, media, advertising, economics, and politics, for starters. Even much church architecture, if it can be called that, reflects this.
Man in God’s image is twisted, but we’ll say more about that later. Man has denied being made in God’s image and for God’s purposes.
The Book of Ecclesiastes gives us the sense of it. There is a wonderful chart found in The New Geneva Study Bible that sums it up.[1] Without God’s existence and without purposeful reverence for His Majesty, these are the results.
Godless learning results in cynicism (Ecclesiastes 1.7, 8)
Godless greatness results in sorrow (Ecclesiastes 1.16-18). We are reminded of Xerxes on campaign into Greece while stationed near Macedonia. With thousands and thousands of Persian soldiers and fleets of ships gathered, he sat down one day and, in all his glory, began to weep. An attendant asked him why he was crying. Xerxes allegedly said, “And this is all there is?”
Godless pleasure results in disappointment (Ecclesiastes 2.1-2). Addictions give us this instruction, to wit, a “little more” is needed to move past the elemental boredom of the last hit.
Godless labor results in hatred of life (Ecclesiastes 2.17)
Godless philosophy results in emptiness (Ecclesiastes 3.1-9)
Godless eternity results in unfulfillment (Ecclesiastes (3.11)
Godless life results in depression (Ecclesiastes 4.2-3)
Godless religion results in dread (Ecclesiastes 5.4-7)
Godless wealth results in trouble (Ecclesiastes 5.12)
Godless existences results in frustration (Ecclesiastes 6.12)
Godless wisdom results in despair (Ecclesiastes 11.1-8)
The beginning of wisdom is the fear and reverence of God and a “deeply serious attitude towards the commands of God. Godly fear results in fulfillment.” (Ecclesiastes 12.13-14) Without God, all is vanity.
Darwinism has taught us that we are the product of blind forces of chance coming from the primordial ooze and slime. We are cosmic accidents without a purpose.
We are reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s statement about meaning. Also, Plato’s Phaedo.
In thinking of Darwinism and its impact, we are reminded of Oliver Hardy, the movie star of the 1920’s and 30’s, who said to Ollie, “What a fine mess you’ve gotten us into this time, Ollie.”
Albert Camus said there was one serious question for philosophy to address: “suicide.” The sense was, if my life, history and the universe has no meaning, so what? Life means nothing. Suicide, itself, means nothing. “To be or not to be,” that is the question. If we do any thinking at all, we must ask this question of “What is man and what is his purpose?”
Ludwig Wittgenstein concluded that speaking and teaching had no purpose. Ergo, and with consistency, he stopped speaking altogether.
Allan Bloom concluded that without moral absolutes, e.g. truths established and grounded in creation, relativism and indifference to truth disappeared.
Without divine purpose, why stand up for any truths? Why suffer the slings and arrows of pain? We’re but accidents.
This is the prevailing viewpoint in modern centres of influence and culture. We came from nothing and we are headed towards an outrageous nothing, the grave.
Educators don’t press this question. The advertising world knows nothing of it. The feminists have no worldview here. Secular family counselors offer no answers.
Is it noble to submit to or oppose purposelessness? Why not just drop some sleeping pills and go off to sleep? And not wake up?
However, and here is where we are going, what if there is Someone out there? What if there is some purpose? What if that is a divine purpose?
The answer will be found when we take up Part Six and address directly Genesis 1.26-28.
Here ends Part Five.
[1] The New Geneva Study Bible (Nashville, Atlanta, London, Vancouver: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995), 1001.
No comments:
Post a Comment