We spent this past summer looking at the key beliefs of Christianity, what I called our “Faith Pyramid”. As we were coming to the end of that, I started praying about what to do next. You remember what the pyramid started with? “God is.”

I kept thinking about that and felt led to look deeper into the beginning. So, over the next few Sundays, we’re going to be looking at the book of Genesis. And today, especially, may remind you a little of the first Sunday of our pyramid because …

It all starts with God.

Genesis 1:1
(BBE) At the first God made the heaven and the earth.
(CEV) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
(ESV) In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
(Geneva) In the beginning God created the heauen and the earth.
(GNB) In the beginning, when God created the universe,
(KJV) In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
(MSG) First this: God created the Heavens and Earth--all you see, all you don't see.

“In the beginning, God … “ What do we learn from just those four words?

• “beginning” that signifies time. In other words, God was in existence when time was created. [The fact that I put “when” in there shows that my mind can’t even conceive of anything without a time stamp!]

• Time itself is a creation.

• Whenever we believe that beginning was, we can agree that God was the “beginner”.

How did God do it? When did he do it?

These are important and interesting questions. Another question is to wonder whether we, as created beings, have the capacity to understand the answer. I think we do, but—to borrow a Scripture from elsewhere—we see through a glass darkly.

There is a story that one day Satan challenged God, saying he could make man as well as God did. God took him up on the challenge. So they sat down to have their contest and Satan grabbed a handful of dirt, ready to go to work. But God said, “Hey, get your own ingredients!”

I love to read about science. Some of it I understand, some I don’t. Some of it, I may never understand. Some people believe that science can or will disprove God. The more I see of science, though, the more I am convinced that there is an orderly designer behind it all. Who is that designer?

Credo ut intellegam
“I believe in order to understand.”

Hebrews 11:1
To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see. (GNB)

I think that, to understand this universe, the first step is to believe in the one who created it. Are there gaps in our understanding? Yes, there are. (Like, why haven’t we been able to cure the “common” cold, yet?) I’m all for scientists pushing to understand these things, to find cures and posit ideas about how something works (or why it doesn’t).

I’m confident the answer is out there because I am confident that we live in an ordered universe. I believe that because I believe the universe was created by an ordered, loving God.

The Bible, I believe, accurately points me to that Creator God. Why do I believe that?

Science and Religion

Galileo believed in God. However, he once said (something to the effect) that the Bible is not a science book. It’s not about how things work. It’s about why they work.

The Bible is, first and foremost, the story of one family line and how—through that family line—redemption is offered to all family lines.

The Bible may not have been written as a “science book”, but there are clues planted in it that gave the Jews—and especially Jewish doctors and scientists—a leg up on all of the surrounding “scientists.” When you look at the level of “science” that surrounded the Hebrews at the times these things were written, I believe they could have only come as a result of divine revelation.

Let’s look briefly at some of the science that God revealed to man:

Leviticus 17:11, “The life of every living thing is in the blood, and that is why the LORD has commanded that all blood be poured out on the altar to take away the people's sins. Blood, which is life, takes away sins.”

As Christians, we read this in a spiritual sense. That’s there, of course, but we should also be impressed that God taught Moses the basic rule of biology and hematology. [See also Gen 9:4, “The one thing you must not eat is meat with blood still in it; I forbid this because the life is in the blood.”)

Job 26:7, “God stretched out the northern sky and hung the earth in empty space.”

The pagan cultures around the Hebrews believed the earth was sitting on something else, yet God here—in the time of Abraham—is filling them in on the science of astronomy.

The Psalmist says the heavens declare the glory of God, so part of their purpose is just for us to look at them—and rejoice!! “’Astronomically speaking, man is insignificant.’ To which the pointed reply was made, ‘Yes, but astronomically speaking, man is the astronomer.’” –CC Crawford

Job 36:27-28, “It is God who takes water from the earth and turns it into drops of rain. He lets the rain pour from the clouds in showers for all human beings.” The science of climatology is elevated from praying to some unknown “god of the rain” to knowing where the rain comes from and how it got there!! [Also 1 Kings 8:35a & 2 Chronicles 6:26, “you hold back the rain”)

Psalm 47:2, “The LORD, the Most High, is to be feared; he is a great king, ruling over all the world.” – theology

Psalm 72:4, “May the king judge the poor fairly; may he help the needy and defeat their oppressors.” – social welfare

Psalm 8:3-4, “When I look at the sky, which you have made, at the moon and the stars, which you set in their place—what are human beings, that you think of them; mere mortals, that you care for them?” The physical law assumes that the “laws of nature” are constant. If I drop something, it will fall. It won’t just be arbitrarily sucked into another dimension or across town.

Isaiah 40:22, “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in.” (ESV) Several thousand years before Columbus, God revealed that the earth was a sphere, which is the basis for modern geography. [See also Proverbs 8:27, “When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep.”]

2 Samuel 22:16, “Then the channels of the sea were seen; the foundations of the world were laid bare, at the rebuke of the LORD, at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.” (ESV) We’re still trying to figure out all the ins and outs of the ocean currents—a science we call “oceanography”—but God knew about them all along and revealed them to the Hebrews a long time ago!

Why is all this important? “Dr. A.H. Strong points out that is it ‘a working-principle of all science … that all these things have their uses, that order pervades the universe, and that the methods of nature are rational methods.’” [As quoted by Dr. CC Crawford] Science assumes there isn’t much—if any—randomness in this world. There are causes and there are effects. Causes are caused by something. As Christians, we believe that there was/is an Ultimate Cause.

So, “In the beginning, God” … but we can also say, “In the end, God.”