Genesis 1 part 1: What Is Our God Like?

Genesis opens the Bible with some of its most profound and enriching pages. It tackles some of the most fundamental questions there are: How did the world come into being? What is God like? What does it mean to be human? What’s gone wrong with our world? Why is our culture in such a mess?

It’s a tragedy that we sometimes get deprived of all this by the intimidating battles fought over these chapters about science and faith. Of course these are important issues, and we’ve a separate blog post about them. But there’s far, far more going on in Genesis. Chapter 1, for example, is a great section to read with the question, ‘What is our God like?’

WHAT IS OUR GOD LIKE?

There can be no more profound sentence than the opening declaration of Genesis, `In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…’ It helps us grasp that……

• God is before and beyond everything else. This is good news! It means the universe we live in isn’t ultimately an empty or hostile place, where random or horrible things may prevail. Ultimately, our Father made it; so in a very real sense we’re always at home in His creation, never lost… If you’re His child, look up at night… right to the farthest stars this cosmos belongs to your Father, who is here with you and loves you unreservedly; and – absorb this – you cannot get away from His care!

• God isn’t the same as the universe, with all its good and evil. This fact is in contradiction to much of new age and eastern-originated religion, where God is the universe – so good is God but evil is also God. (In vital ways, all religions are not the same!) In Genesis God reveals Himself as a God of goodness who is far greater than this mixed universe; a God who is always, and undilutedly, good…!

• God is beyond the universe. He alone was there when nothing else existed, and as its Creator He reigns eternally over it all. So unlike in Greek religion, there is no danger of any alternative power emerging; `From everlasting to everlasting, You are God!’ (Psalm 90:2); He alone!

• As the eternal and infinite Creator, He can have no rivals. Satan isn’t even remotely a credible rival; light and darkness are not equals; God created the light and He created the darkness, to give us rest (v2); and over it all He is supreme as Creator and Lord!

• So if such a God is our Father, we can know we are truly safe in His hands. It is a good thing to be the beloved children of the Father of eternity!

These five things alone are incredible, profound facts, sufficient to fuel our heartfelt worship; meditate on them and they will bring you into deep seated peace and trust! But let’s go on to suppose Genesis 1 was all the Bible we had; what else could we learn here about God?

• The God who is ultimate reality is personal. The universe is not just ruled by blind forces. He enjoys things that are good (v4), He names things (v5), He blesses them (v28); and also he speaks (v3). (And amazingly, we can know what He speaks!) God is not impersonal and unknowable; He shows Himself from the very beginning as a God who loves to communicate, to reveal Himself, to express Himself verbally. `In the beginning was the Word!`

• God is plural (v2, also `let us’ in v26) – the first hints that the God who is out there is a Trinity who has been engaged in enormous, mutual love for all eternity. This is why it makes sense that God is love. In Islam He can’t be, because Islam teaches that God was only one, alone from all eternity; so the only love He could have is self love, which is not love. But the true God is a Trinity; throughout eternity there were relationships already; there was vast mutual love already!

• Love is always outward-going, not self-oriented; so God reveals Himself as an outward-going God (v3). He doesn’t just sit there in glory alone – as the Trinity His whole existence is unimaginable glory and unimaginable love, yet He wants more, diverse beings to share all this lovingly with. So He creates humans, two sexes, different races, different mentalities, different personality types, and together with them shapes the Church He will love forever. He’s a God of love and love is always outward-going, not self-centred; it’s basic to His nature to be reaching out continually into the darkness, bringing light and goodness (look how Paul applies this in 2 Cor 4:6). If the church is like God we will always reflect this!

• God is a God of order; look at how He sorts and names things in vv4-7. Modern science arose only after the Bible was rediscovered in the Reformation, even though the Chinese and Greeks had the ideas first; because it was this understanding of the Biblical God as a God of order and revelation that made people think there might be organized physical laws that might be discoverable!

• God is good, a God of goodness and enjoyment, who makes things that are good (vv9-10). The world is fallen now and so does have poison in it; but ultimately it’s a series of His good gifts, and it’s good!

• God is a God of creativity, detail, even humour – think of him as God the Artist who enjoyed making the giraffe, the rhino, the duck-billed platypus (vv20-25). Artists have phases: Picasso had his blue phase and his cubist phase; and geology shows us how God as an artist had his squelchy-things-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea phase, another time he had his dinosaur phase, another time he thought of the hippo, the giraffe… He’s also a God of humour – think of him as the God who enjoyed making the tapir, the duck-billed platypus, and then saying to the angels, Alright!, look at this! and everybody having a good laugh!

(Do you think we’ve lost our sense of wonder? We live in cities dominated by cubic skyscrapers where they used to be dominated by spires pointing to heaven; the big banking skyscrapers point to nothing but themselves, to our own works. That’s impoverishment. Let’s rejoice in the whale, the oak tree, the woodpecker, the lion, the stallion; it’s not `nature` that thought of all these (like the BBC nature programmes slip into saying), it’s our creative God!  He made all these things, He enjoyed them and enjoys them still. This is our God, our Father!)

• And God is a God of rest, relaxation, variety and joy (Dallas Willard calls Him `undoubtedly the most joyous being in the universe’!) (2:2). So as Hebrews says we are called to enter into His rest, and Sabbath rest isn’t about exhaustion but about variety and joy! God is not a harsh taskmaster; rest, variety and joy are basic to what He’s like!

There’s treasure in this chapter! As we understand our Father who made us – made us in detail – made us good – that gives us value, self worth, certainty of purpose. He made each of us well, and He rejoices over us and loves us!

And most important: we can turn each of these now into fuel for worship?!

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