Preached at Boronia Baptist Church (Victoria, Australia),
by Rev. David Morland, Sunday 30 July 1995. Reading: Genesis 1:1

The importance of Genesis. The book of Genesis is
the first and the foundational book of the bible. The rest of
the bible is quite incomprehensible without a working knowledge
of Genesis. Genesis gives us the origin of all things and therefore
the meaning of all things. The end, Paradise, is the beginning
reestablished. Only by knowing where we have come from can we
know the goal and purpose of life.

It should not surprise us that no other book in the
bible is referred to as frequently by the other books of the bible
as is Genesis. It is quoted or referred to in the NT 165 times.
Every NT author refers to the first 11 chapters of Genesis. On
6 occasions Jesus quotes or refers to the first 11 chapters of
Genesis.

Genesis 1-11 Imprecise language. Nobody was at the
beginning to tell us what it was all like and how it all happened.
Nobody has been into the future to tell us just how it will all
be at the end. But we do have the book of Revelation. The language
of the book is not precise. But for those who will believe, the
message is quite plain; God will restore all things. So too at
the beginning, the language is not as precise as perhaps we would
like, but for those who will believe the message is quite plain:
God created all things.

Only nothing can come from nothing. V1 "In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth".

If we have something, and we do, a universe, then
it must logically follow that there never was when there was nothing.
The fact that we have something means that we could never have
had nothing. Nothing is nothing and nothing can only ever be nothing,
for ever and ever and ever. Or to put it another way. Nothing
can create nothing. So no object could ever have created itself.
Because, before it was created it was nothing.

So matter, the matter out of which this universe
is created could not have created itself. So something or someone
has always existed. Always, as in for ever and ever and ever.

Now every effect must have a cause but everything
need not have a cause. So if something exists, and it does! then
somehow, somewhere, something has the power of being, intrinsically.
It is not an effect. So we either have a self existing God or
a self existing universe. So the big question is what has always
existed?

If matter has always existed, then we have to ask
the question what happened 20 billion years ago when the big bang
went off. Until that moment a highly condensed piece of matter
and energy had been sitting in the middle of space for all eternity.
But what caused it to explode 20 billion years ago? How could
it have defied the laws of inertia? If matter has always existed
then what caused the first effect which then went on to be another
cause for another effect and so on? What caused the big bang?

The big bang theory says (roughly!) that about 20
billion years ago a gigantic explosion sent the stars and planets
tumbling outward from the centre into the form that we now observe
them, and they are still moving out. In fact at the rate of millions
of miles an hour. It was in 1919 that Edwin Hubble drew up the
formula for the expanding universe which allows us to move backward
to the point where the expansion began – that is the big bang.

The big bang flung all that now makes up our universe
into action, the enormity of which stretches our imagination.
Our sun is just one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. It revolves
once around the galaxy each 225 million years. Our galaxy, the
Milky Way, is 100,000 light years across. This galaxy of ours
forms a giant spiral rotating majestically in space. We know at
this stage that there are at least 100 billion galaxies. All the
stars are clustered together in galaxies. Our closest neighbour
is the Andromeda galaxy which is 2 million light years away. Moreover
the galaxies are not fixed in space but rather are moving away
from each other at tremendous speeds. The most distant galaxies
are retreating from us at the rate of 100 million miles an hour.
Everything is retreating from everything, nothing is coming toward
us nor is anything coming toward any other galaxy.

We do not know how big the universe is but our best
equipment at this stage can go as far was perceiving galaxies
a 1000 million light years away.

Chance and cause and effect. It has been argued that
the big bang just went off by chance and that everything that
has happened since is nothing but chance. But chance is only the
word that we use to describe what we do not know. ie. When you
toss a coin what part does chance play in whether it lands heads
or tails? None! Because chance is not an entity. It is a nothing.
If you knew every detail of the situation, the weight of the coin
the density of the air, the amount of pressure exerted by your
thumb and so on, you could calculate exactly which way up the
coin would land.

So when you study a cause and know all about it then
you can know what the effect will be.

There can be no more in the effect than there is
in the cause. There can be less but not more. Therefore whatever
the effect contains the cause must have contained more.

Therefore whatever the universe contains – including
the IQ of all the human beings who have ever lived – the cause
must contain more. If there is nothing more than an explosion
behind the universe then we have no explanation for the order
and design in the universe.

If you set up 12 tennis balls at the top of some
steps and supposing they had enough energy to bounce for a year.
And then you pushed them down the steps and they all started bouncing,
would you expect that by the end of the year they would have started
to bounce in some sort of pattern or would you expect to still
see them bouncing around randomly? Randomly, obviously, for the
cause was nothing more than a random push, and the effect therefore
must also be random.

There is no reason at all why a self-existent being
called God could not be the first cause. This would then explain
the order and design that we see in the universe. If we reject
the notion of God then we have to conclude that the matter of
the universe itself contained the intelligence necessary for the
effect that we see all around us.

If we assume that God is the creator, then God is
all powerful. The beginning of the creation is the beginning of
all that there is. Here is the absolute beginning. Nowhere in
the bible do we read of humans ‘creating’. God and God alone creates.
Whenever the bible speaks of God creating it never mentions material.
Human beings do not create – they form or make but not create.
That God created out of nothing is not a contradiction; it is
a mystery. As of yet we do not have the information as to how
God created out of nothing. But that he could is not a logical
impossibility. He did not create out of a part of himself. The
universe is not an emanation from God. God willed the existence
of what formerly had no existence. We cannot will into existence
matter therefore we cannot create. His Word is all powerful. Whatever
he says, happens! He is not one who forms or fashions existing
materials. If he were, he would be like us only stronger. He and
he alone can bring things into being that were not there before.
Hence the future is filled with unlimited possibilities with unlimited
new beginnings because he can create again and again things that
our minds have not even dreamt of.

God is self-existent. That God existed in the beginning
means that he is self-sufficient. Self-existence means that God
has no origins. Self sufficiency means that God has no needs and
therefore depends on no-one. This is the exact opposite of us;
we are utterly dependent. Remove oxygen for the space of even
a few minutes and we are dead. We depend on light and heat and
gravity and food and water and on it goes. None of this is true
of God: he existed before all these things did and was fully content.
This teaches us also that humans make up absolutely no lack at
all in God. God did not need us. God does not need our love, our
worship, our adoration or anything else that we think we supply
him. He was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to
create. That he chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on his
part caused by nothing outside himself, determined by nothing
but his own mere good pleasure.

God is the only truly sufficient one and therefore
the only one worthy of our confidence. If we do not put confidence
in God, we will inevitably – for we have to trust something –
put our confidence in someone or something else. But whatever
else or whoever else it is, we are in trouble for they are not
self-sufficient and will one day fail. Gen 1:1 does not start
off by saying that in the beginning there was God! That there
is God is not even questioned. We are not being told to put God
in our lives, it is telling us that God is in our lives and we
had better take account of it.

God is eternal. God is eternal which means God is
unchangeable in his attributes so we need not fear that though
he has shown his love towards us once in Christ he may nevertheless
somehow change his mind and cease to love us in the future. No,
God is always love. Nothing we will ever do will ever change him.
No action of ours can ever change the love of God into hate by
God.

Meaning and purpose. Understanding where we come
from has an enormous impact on our emotional well-being and our
sense of future. In 1977 Alex Haley’s book Roots was televised.
There were seven episodes and it became the most-watched television
program ever in the history of television to that point in time
– 130 million people across the USA watched it each night. After
the broadcast the National Archives in Washington found itself
flooded with requests for ancestral information. As Alex Haley’s
family found dignity and meaning by discovering their roots so
also many others discovered a hunger for the same experience.

We live in an age that puts so much emphasis on the
now that this generation is devoid of any real history. Our dignity
comes from our history. If you have a history that tells you that
you have emerged from slime, that you are only grown-up germs
then what dignity can you have? Without the book of Genesis and
its message, life is literally meaningless.

When the little child asks "Where did I come
from?" what do we say? From Mummy, from Grandma, from Great
Grandma? No, the only answer of substance is the one that Genesis
gives. Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th century philosopher, did
not always dress particularly well. One day he was dressed like
a bum and sat in a park in Berlin. A policeman came along and
asked him who he thought he was. He answered, "I would to
God I knew!" He was an atheist and like all atheists that’s
about the best answer he could ever come up with.

Further reading: Genesis An Expositional Commentary
Vol 1. by James Montgomery Boice. (Zondervan Publishing House
1982). Not A Chance, by R.C. Sproul (Baker Books 1995)