Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 0-216 (Sermon)

HANDMADE BY GOD (Genesis 1:1-27)

by Rod Benson

——————–

When did you last pause to consider the awesome nature of the world around you?

When NASA released some amazing images taken by the Hubble space telescope, they showed enormous columns of frozen hydrogen gas and dust – 9.6 trillion kilometres long, and 7000 light years away – the hauntingly beautiful tips of which are larger than our solar system, and seem to be the birthplace of stars.

The mass of these huge clouds causes the gas to collapse under its own gravity, and a star is born. Radiation emitted by the new star hollows out a cavity, and, after millions of years, it reaches a point of nuclear fission. This creates solar winds and blows other material away, and the star becomes independent of its gaseous parent.

Cast your thoughts now from the wonders of deep space to the wonders of human anatomy. Tucked beneath each of our skulls is a 1500 gram jelly-like mound containing between 10 and 100 billion neurons, each as complex as a home computer, each with a long tail of several thousand dendrites, linked with other neurons in synapses.

Scientists estimate that there are as many as one quadrillion synapses in every human brain! And although we lose about 100,000 non-replaceable brain cells every day, there are so many left that we are fully capable of normal thinking well into old age. The universe that we inhabit, and of which we form a part, is truly a remarkable, awesome place.

On February 15, 1971, Apollo 14 commander Edgar Mitchell deposited a microfilm package on the moon containing a complete Bible and one verse of the Bible in 16 languages. That verse was the first verse of the first chapter of the first book in the Bible – Genesis 1:1. It reads, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). Next time you look up in the clear night sky and see the moon, remember the verse Mitchell left there for those who follow.

THE CREED ON CREATION

The Apostles’ Creed is a statement of Christian faith dating back to at least AD 250. It begins with the same affirmation of our belief in God as creator of the universe: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” This is more than an expression of a general religious conviction that the existence of the universe implies the existence of a Creator: it reflects a truth we learn through the Creator’s self-revelation in the Bible and in Christ.

Ultimately I don’t believe we can’t rationally or empirically prove the existence of God. But we can observe and accept his creative stamp on the world in which we find ourselves, and we can take the risk of faith, and dare to believe that God is there, and that he loves us. We have an almighty, all-powerful, father-like God who reveals himself to us, and who is active. And what has he done? He has created heaven and earth! That’s a lot of work – no wonder he took a rest!

I believe that God created this universe. I believe in creation as revealed to us in scripture, but I am not a disciple of that prominent and influential organisation, the Creation Science Foundation, which has such a strong and growing following among many conservative Christians today. The Creation Science Foundation has been described as a lucrative and secretive business; it is concerned with power and influence, and its dogmatic stance rejects all alternative views; it is tarnished by what seems to me to be illogical reasoning and shoddy argument.

Certainly there have been allegations of scientific fraud against certain of its key leaders. In fact, Professor Ian Plimer, in his controversial book, Telling Lies for God, notes that creation ‘science’ fulfils all 15 commonly recognised criteria of a pseudo-science such as alchemy or astrology!

Genesis 1 looks beyond the latest allegedly scientific theories of the origins of life and the universe, and beyond the dogmatic assertions of earnest but misguided fundamentalists, and declares the simple but profound truth that God created the heavens and the earth.

I believe Genesis is not concerned to describe the precise geo-physical process by which creation occurred, or what the exact timeframe was. It simply declares the vital fact that God has created our world and gives it power and order (which, incidentally, justifies a scientific approach to understanding its complexities). I like the way Albert Einstein put it: “That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”

At the same time, by affirming humanity as the peak or climax of God’s creatorial work, and by giving human persons a unique status in his creative plan, Genesis 1 invests humanity with a hope that atheistic philosophies and non-theistic worldviews can never legitimately deliver.

Verse 1 is a summary statement of what the chapter describes: time began when God started creating! God already was there; he created the universe out of nothing, not from eternally existing matter, and he created everything that exists beside himself, from subatomic particles to black holes. That means God created things we don’t like, and things that harm and kill us! In a parody of the traditional hymn “All things bright and beautiful,” Phillip Adams shows what I mean:

All things crook and ghastly, all diseases that appal, All things weak and woeful, The Lord God made them all. He made the cheery vulture, the hyena and the shark, He made the red-back spider that bites us in the dark. He made the cell malignant, to grow in bowel or brain, He made the deadly virus so we might die in pain.

Commenting on his distasteful artstic creation, Adams adds, “Why should God take the credit for all the good things, and escape responsibility for the awful?”

Adams goes too far, but he has a point: while we are the end product of creation, there is much more to the world than human comfort. Belief in God does not mean that we can explain away all the problems of life, but it connects us to our maker, and that makes all the difference in the world to our problems!

Looking at the whole of Genesis 1, we can identify unity and process: on days one to three, God gives form to the material universe; on days four to six, he fills the universe with his creatures; and on day seven he rests.

OK, SO WHAT?

To affirm the first clause of the Apostles’ Creed has at least three implications. First, it implies that not only the universe around us, but we ourselves, are handmade by God! Our roots are not in our own potential, or even in the quality of our genetic heritage, but in God. We don’t exist for ourselves, we’re not the measure of all things: we are God’s creatures. Our roots are not in some primeval sludge or stellar explosion, but in the eternal God.

Second, it implies that our world has worth and dignity of its own, and as stewards of what God has created, we have a responsibility to respect our environment, and to treat it as something made by God and precious to him; note refs to “and it was good.” It is as though there is a huge sticker on the earth’s underside, “Handle with care.”

Third, to affirm the first clause of the Apostles’ Creed implies a relationship between the Creator and his creation, and a special relationship between God and human people.

Consider that relationship between God and yourself. Is it strong? Is it vital? Does it mean anything to you? How well do you know the God who made you, who loves you, who cares for you so deeply? The church of Jesus Christ has affirmed for 2000 years that an Almighty, Father-like God created all things. But unless you know him personally, that belief is merely intellectual.

Certainly, God wants you to exercise your mind and grasp some intellectual understanding of his presence and power. But God also wants to get to know you in the way of a friend or lover. He’s there, he’s personal, and he wants to be an integral part of your existence.

——————–

E003 Copyright (c) 1995-2000 Rod Benson. All rights reserved.

You can contact Rev Rod Benson by e-mail at or by ordinary mail at P.O. Box 104, BLAKEHURST 2221, AUSTRALIA