Trinity Sunday
Preaching
Preaching and Reading the Old Testament Lessons
With an Eye to the New
Object:
This priestly account of God's creation of the world has been called the most theological chapter in the whole Bible. Written down in the sixth century B.C., its every word is carefully thought through. But it is not intended to be a scientific account of how God made the cosmos. The endless creationist attempts to make it into science and to foist it on our schools are invalid.
Rather, this passage is intended as a confession of faith. Some of its language is borrowed from other ancient Near Eastern religions. But the borrowed words and phrases of the time are only utilized to set forth a soaring faith that arises out of Israel's historical experience with her God. Because God has had the power to roll back the waters of the Reed Sea and to set his people free from slavery; because he has had the might to kill and to make alive, to overcome the mightiest empires, and to make for himself a chosen people, Israel has confessed that the Lord has sovereignty over all things and persons as their Creator and Sustainer. We must not ignore the faith exhibited in this passage in favor of some sort of ignorant "science."
God's creative act in this text consists in bringing order into the darkness, evil, and death of chaos, symbolized here in the form of the watery deep. In the beginning, says our text, there was only tohu wabbohu, formlessness and void -- the all-engulfing powers of nothingness. And God's act of creation consisted in putting bounds on chaos and holding it in check, so that the life and light, order and goodness of creation become possible for humans and all things (cf. Psalm 104:5-9; Job 38:8-11; Isaiah 45:18-19). Thus, God creates light to hold back the darkness, and separates the chaotic waters by dividing them with the solid arc of the firmament. He puts bounds on the chaos to let the dry land appear, and captures the chaos below the solid earth. Then there is room for God to bring forth by his word plants and trees, sun and moon and stars, animals of every kind, and finally human beings.
In short, the confession of faith here is that God is not only the Creator of all, but that he also sustains the life and order of everything. The chaos can return (cf. Genesis 7:11; Job 3:8; Jeremiah 4:23-26), and it is only because God holds it in check by his faithfulness that it does not engulf the creation. We are dependent on the Lord for the very structure and sustenance of our universe.
There therefore is no deism here. God does not just wind up the world like a watchmaker and then let it run by itself according to what we call natural laws. No. It is by the Word of God that plants and trees, animals and human beings can bring forth fruit according to their kind and propagate the earth. Nature's processes continue because God speaks their continuance, and then adds his special blessing to allow their ongoing existence (vv. 22, 28; cf. Genesis 8:22).
Two kinds of light are created according to our text. There is the light of verse 3, that is given by the Word of God. And then there is the light shed by the sun and moon and stars (vv. 16-18). Throughout the Bible, the light furnished by the Word of God is given only to the faithful (cf. Exodus 10:21-23; Job 29:2-3; Psalm 36:9; Isaiah 2:5; Matthew 5:14; Romans 13:12; etc.), and finally finds its incarnation in Jesus Christ, who is the light and life of human beings (John 1:4, 9). The other kind of light, furnished by the heavenly bodies is given to all persons (cf. Matthew 5:45). And in a little phrase, the text makes fun of those who follow astrology and worship the stars. "He made the stars also," says verse 16 -- just a little afterthought on God's part, who rules over all the heavenly bodies.
The high point of creation, according to our text, is the creation of human beings, both male and female. And they are distinguished from all other creatures by the fact that they are made in the image of God (vv. 26-27). In the Old Testament, only the priestly primeval history asserts that fact (cf. Genesis 5:1; 9:6). And in the Old Testament as contrasted with the New, the image does not signify moral perfection. In the New Testament, only Christ bears the uncorrupted image (cf. Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 3:18), but in the Old Testament, all human beings bear it, even after the fall (cf. Genesis 9:6).
Once again we have a confession of faith. Our text is saying that we all stand inextricably related to God and are responsible to him. We cannot fully be understood, except there is included that relationship to our Creator and Lord. Therefore, in everything that we do and say and think, we are doing and saying and thinking it in relationship to the Lord who made us. There is no way we can stand outside of the relationship or escape from it, try as we may in our sinful attempts to run our own lives.
We are given the image of God in order that we may have dominion over the earth (v. 26). The dominion is the result of the image, not the content of it. But contrary to some criticisms that have been leveled by ecologists against this verse, our dominion or rule is always secondary to God's. Human beings never own the earth. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 24:1), and we are but God's stewards of his creation, his "passing guests," as Psalm 39:12 so beautifully puts it. In our care of the earth, we are responsible to God, and our existence is to point to God's supreme rule. As Gerhard von Rad has put it, we are like those statues of themselves that Roman emperors used to spread around their empires in order to show that the territory belonged to them. So, analogously, God has placed us, his little images across the face of the earth to point to the fact that the earth is his. Indeed, even when we go to the moon, we are not claiming it as our territory. We are taking God's image to the moon to show it belongs to him.
It is a strange note in this text that God at first gives only plants for human food (v. 30). However, in Genesis 9:2-3, meat is added, as a fuller gift of God, and Paul, in Romans 14:1-3 describes the vegetarian as one of weaker faith.
God completes his initial creation on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2), and then he rests, thus setting aside the seventh day as one devoted to rest -- a sanctified period that will then be encoded in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15). We should note carefully that the seventh day is set aside, not as a day of worship -- there are many other passages that call us to worship -- but rather the seventh day is a time of rest from labor, not only for us, but for animals and servants and even land that is to lie fallow in the seventh year. Thus, one day of rest in a week is intended as a gift of God's merciful grace. He gives us our labor. But he also gives us our rest.
Finally, and importantly, Genesis 1:31 states that "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." No evil was laid on the world by God, and if there is wrong in the world, it did not come from the Creator. God did not create the disruptions and distortions of his good creation of which we read in the morning headlines. God created his world good. It is only in the following chapters of Genesis that we read that we human beings introduced evil into our world.
Rather, this passage is intended as a confession of faith. Some of its language is borrowed from other ancient Near Eastern religions. But the borrowed words and phrases of the time are only utilized to set forth a soaring faith that arises out of Israel's historical experience with her God. Because God has had the power to roll back the waters of the Reed Sea and to set his people free from slavery; because he has had the might to kill and to make alive, to overcome the mightiest empires, and to make for himself a chosen people, Israel has confessed that the Lord has sovereignty over all things and persons as their Creator and Sustainer. We must not ignore the faith exhibited in this passage in favor of some sort of ignorant "science."
God's creative act in this text consists in bringing order into the darkness, evil, and death of chaos, symbolized here in the form of the watery deep. In the beginning, says our text, there was only tohu wabbohu, formlessness and void -- the all-engulfing powers of nothingness. And God's act of creation consisted in putting bounds on chaos and holding it in check, so that the life and light, order and goodness of creation become possible for humans and all things (cf. Psalm 104:5-9; Job 38:8-11; Isaiah 45:18-19). Thus, God creates light to hold back the darkness, and separates the chaotic waters by dividing them with the solid arc of the firmament. He puts bounds on the chaos to let the dry land appear, and captures the chaos below the solid earth. Then there is room for God to bring forth by his word plants and trees, sun and moon and stars, animals of every kind, and finally human beings.
In short, the confession of faith here is that God is not only the Creator of all, but that he also sustains the life and order of everything. The chaos can return (cf. Genesis 7:11; Job 3:8; Jeremiah 4:23-26), and it is only because God holds it in check by his faithfulness that it does not engulf the creation. We are dependent on the Lord for the very structure and sustenance of our universe.
There therefore is no deism here. God does not just wind up the world like a watchmaker and then let it run by itself according to what we call natural laws. No. It is by the Word of God that plants and trees, animals and human beings can bring forth fruit according to their kind and propagate the earth. Nature's processes continue because God speaks their continuance, and then adds his special blessing to allow their ongoing existence (vv. 22, 28; cf. Genesis 8:22).
Two kinds of light are created according to our text. There is the light of verse 3, that is given by the Word of God. And then there is the light shed by the sun and moon and stars (vv. 16-18). Throughout the Bible, the light furnished by the Word of God is given only to the faithful (cf. Exodus 10:21-23; Job 29:2-3; Psalm 36:9; Isaiah 2:5; Matthew 5:14; Romans 13:12; etc.), and finally finds its incarnation in Jesus Christ, who is the light and life of human beings (John 1:4, 9). The other kind of light, furnished by the heavenly bodies is given to all persons (cf. Matthew 5:45). And in a little phrase, the text makes fun of those who follow astrology and worship the stars. "He made the stars also," says verse 16 -- just a little afterthought on God's part, who rules over all the heavenly bodies.
The high point of creation, according to our text, is the creation of human beings, both male and female. And they are distinguished from all other creatures by the fact that they are made in the image of God (vv. 26-27). In the Old Testament, only the priestly primeval history asserts that fact (cf. Genesis 5:1; 9:6). And in the Old Testament as contrasted with the New, the image does not signify moral perfection. In the New Testament, only Christ bears the uncorrupted image (cf. Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 3:18), but in the Old Testament, all human beings bear it, even after the fall (cf. Genesis 9:6).
Once again we have a confession of faith. Our text is saying that we all stand inextricably related to God and are responsible to him. We cannot fully be understood, except there is included that relationship to our Creator and Lord. Therefore, in everything that we do and say and think, we are doing and saying and thinking it in relationship to the Lord who made us. There is no way we can stand outside of the relationship or escape from it, try as we may in our sinful attempts to run our own lives.
We are given the image of God in order that we may have dominion over the earth (v. 26). The dominion is the result of the image, not the content of it. But contrary to some criticisms that have been leveled by ecologists against this verse, our dominion or rule is always secondary to God's. Human beings never own the earth. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 24:1), and we are but God's stewards of his creation, his "passing guests," as Psalm 39:12 so beautifully puts it. In our care of the earth, we are responsible to God, and our existence is to point to God's supreme rule. As Gerhard von Rad has put it, we are like those statues of themselves that Roman emperors used to spread around their empires in order to show that the territory belonged to them. So, analogously, God has placed us, his little images across the face of the earth to point to the fact that the earth is his. Indeed, even when we go to the moon, we are not claiming it as our territory. We are taking God's image to the moon to show it belongs to him.
It is a strange note in this text that God at first gives only plants for human food (v. 30). However, in Genesis 9:2-3, meat is added, as a fuller gift of God, and Paul, in Romans 14:1-3 describes the vegetarian as one of weaker faith.
God completes his initial creation on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2), and then he rests, thus setting aside the seventh day as one devoted to rest -- a sanctified period that will then be encoded in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15). We should note carefully that the seventh day is set aside, not as a day of worship -- there are many other passages that call us to worship -- but rather the seventh day is a time of rest from labor, not only for us, but for animals and servants and even land that is to lie fallow in the seventh year. Thus, one day of rest in a week is intended as a gift of God's merciful grace. He gives us our labor. But he also gives us our rest.
Finally, and importantly, Genesis 1:31 states that "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." No evil was laid on the world by God, and if there is wrong in the world, it did not come from the Creator. God did not create the disruptions and distortions of his good creation of which we read in the morning headlines. God created his world good. It is only in the following chapters of Genesis that we read that we human beings introduced evil into our world.
