The phrase “in the beginning” is not simply a nice, poetic way to begin a story like “once upon a time.”
The phrase “In the beginning” is taking us to a point in history. The actual point in which the physical world, the physical universe came into existence. This is where the author of Genesis, Moses, begins the very first verse of Genesis and therefore the very first verse of the Bible.
To fully understand our present and our future, we need to understand our past and more precisely we need to understand our beginning. And so verse 1 says: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Verse 1 doesn’t give us any background about who this God is. But when Moses’ audience read these words, they knew Moses was not talking about a generic god. The word for “God” here in Hebrew, the language of the Israelites, is the word Elohim. It is the word that the Hebrews would have known that described the God of Israel, the one true God.
The word Elohim literally means “supreme one”. The word “supreme” means one who is superior to all others. When Moses writes, “In the beginning Elohim…” he is referring to the most supreme God who is above all other gods.
Israel lived in a world where people served many gods. In fact, it was rare to have a nation that believe in one God. In Greek mythology, Phanes is credited with creating the universe. Prometheus, is credited to have created humans. There were many gods who were a part of creation. And they were not even the greatest gods in mythology. Zeus was considered the supreme god.
But when Moses says, “in the beginning Elohim”, he is saying before there was anything, before there was anyone there was the one God. And by using Elohim, he is saying to Israel, yes, it’s your God. The God who took you out of Egypt, he is the one true God. He is one who revealed himself to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to Joseph, to Moses. He is the God of Israel and he is Elohim, the supreme God over all.
And the reason that distinction is important is because of what Moses said Elohim did in verse one: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The word “created” comes from a Hebrew word that describes the “divine activity of fashioning something new” – And so the word here is not talking about any type of creation. It is not describing a human creating something. It is talking a divine creation. The type of creation that only God could initiate. And it is also describing a creation that is new
And so in verse 1, Moses is saying, what we see in this physical world is not the result of human hands, it is not the result of an accident but rather it is the result the divine. It is the result of God, who created something from nothing.
The phrase “heavens and earth” is an all encompassing statement that includes everything within the heavens and the earth, everything within this universe and our planet including the plants, the animals, and humanity.
I believe he first 10 words of Genesis are most important words in the bible.
Now there are more significant words when understanding sin, the fall of humanity and the consequences of sin. There are more significant words when understanding that Jesus came to be our substitute on the cross and pay the penalty for sin. There are more significant words when understanding our response to Jesus and the salvation that is offered by grace and that we receive through faith. But it is these ten words that establishes the foundation that all other theology stands on.
This is why if we are going to understand our life and everything about life, we must understand it through the lens that in the beginning God existed before anything else and that through His will He established everything that has been established.
Too often we try to understand our lives outside of God. Even though we may live with a reality of God, we too often try to find our satisfaction and purpose outside of Him. We try to fix our problems outside of Him. We try to work on our marriages outside of him, we try to think about our finances outside of Him, we try to think our present struggles and future hopes outside of Him. And it only leads to frustration or disappointment and dissatisfaction because true life and the true meaning of life can only be understood through the lens that God is the creator, the author, the architect and the builder of all things.
We cannot understand life outside of the reality that God is the initiator of life.
This opening sentence in verse 1 establishes for us two foundational realities about God. In fact, if we miss or ignore these two realities, we will develop a wrong view of God and a wrong view of ourselves.
1) Since God is Creator, God owns everything.
Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.”
Your life does not belong to you. Some of us need to put that on a sticky note and put it in a place where we will see it every morning reminding us of our position before God.
The reality that our life does not belong to us is not necessarily a popular statement in our culture today. But as people who come under the Word of God, we are told that this earth and all of humanity belongs to God. We do not have ownership of our own lives. And that understanding of God should significantly impact how we view our own lives. We are not owners, we are stewards.
If you have ever rented a house, you know that you live in a rental differently then living in a home you own. You often take care of a rental better because you know you are accountable to someone else. And if you live in a rental house, you can’t do whatever you want with that house. If you want to remodel that house or repaint that house, you need to see if it would be OK with the owner. Because that is not your house. That is not your property.
In the same way, our lives are not our own to do with them whatever we please. We have an owner that we are accountable to. There is a God, Elohim, that we must bring our lives before and say, “what do you want with my life.” Romans 14:12 says, “each of us will give an account of himself to God.”
We must recognize and understand that since God is creator, everything belongs to God. We must live our lives out of that right understand about God.
2) Since God is Creator, He can do whatever he wants with what he has created.
This reality about God can sometimes be very difficult to grasp.
Psalm 115:3 says, “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.” This can feel like a strange and even uncomfortable statement, but as creator and as owner, He can do with this world and with our lives whatever He chooses. That is His right as the creator.
In Romans 9, Paul writes about the full right of God to do as he pleases as our Creator. He says, “Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?”
In other words, doesn’t God have the right to do what God wants to do with what he has created. Sometimes we want God to operate on our scale of fairness. And we find ourselves saying, God, that is not right, that is not fair, you can’t do that. And yet, as creator and as owner he can do with His creation as he pleases.
Sometimes we look at our own life and see things that we don’t have that others do have, we see natural gifts and talents others have been given that we weren’t given and we can become bitter toward God. And we can find ourselves saying, “why did you give me the short end of the stick.”
It requires great humility, but we have to be able to come before God and say “I am the creation, you are the Creator, do with me as you please.”
Nebuchadnezzar, who once saw himself as god, asked people to bow down to him. And he was humbled by the one true God leading Nebuchadnezzar to utter these words: “For God’s dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are counted as nothing, and He does as He pleases with the army of heaven and the peoples of the earth. There is no one who can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’”
Nebuchadnezzar was able to come before God in a place of humble worship and say God you are God and you do as you please.
As we develop a right theology of God, we must recognize that God is creator and he has full freedom to do as he pleases with what He has created.
Now it can feel cold and hard to say: Since God is creator, He owns everything and he can do what he wants. And you are just the creation and that is just the way it is.
But as we move from Genesis 1:1 through the rest of Scripture we learn much about this God who owns everything and does as He pleases.
We learn He is good. We learn He is loving, we learn He is merciful, gracious and faithful. We learn he is a God who is patient and slow to anger. We learn he is personal and intimate. We learn He wants to have a relationship with his creation.
In fact we learn, The One who owns us, wants us to know him as Father.
The One who can do whatever He wants, chose to sacrifice His own son to save us.
When He does whatever he pleases, he does it for His glory—a glory that reflects his perfect and righteous character. A glory that invites us to know his holiness but to also become holy as He is holy leading us to worship our Creator. Leading us to say, “not to us o Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory.”
May we be people who come before a loving God, a holy God, a righteous God and be able to say “God, I am your.”