Genesis 1:1-5

Like many of you, I went to visit Rose Barlow this past week. I had planned to read from the book of Ephesians and she said that she would really like that. I confess that I had a hard time starting to read as I started to cry right then. No doubt I was feeling sadness for Rose, but I was also caught up in the emotion of reading such powerful words to a dying woman, especially a dying woman who really wanted to listen. I read a chapter and we made comments back and forth. After a while, we found her reading glasses and she opened her own, well worn Bible because she wanted to be more engaged in the topic at hand. Along the way we got off on a few tangents while she used all of her strength to find certain verses in her concordance. The morphine kept her pain at bay but it obviously dulled her usual sharpness. By the time we finished two chapters of Ephesians and a list of other Scriptures, she stopped for a moment to think and said, “OK, what is the thing we are after here? What pulls this all together? I responded, “Well, I think it’s pretty clear that the main idea through all of this is Jesus.” She nodded her head with a slight smile.

There’s an old joke that says the answer to every question in Sunday School is “Jesus.” If your mind begins to wander in class and the teacher surprises you with a question, if you say “Jesus” you have a greater than 50% chance of being correct. At the risk of sounding too cliché, Jesus really is the answer to most of the questions the Bible asks. Jesus is the grand theme of the entire Bible. The OT looks forward to his coming. The gospels tell of his first coming and the remainder of the NT looks back to his finished work on the cross and to his final return. Rose’s house was busy that afternoon and I am guessing that people in the other room heard us talking and probably figured, “Well, that’s what pastors are supposed to do with dying people; comfort them with some of Jesus’ reassuring words.”

No doubt about it—Jesus is the grand theme of Scripture and of all creation, and dying people need Jesus more than they need their next breath. But do you and I need him any less than Rose? She has the distinct advantage of knowing she needs him while you and I try to live as if eating, drinking, breathing, working and playing are all vastly more important that Christ. Cancer is not only the great equalizer—attacking both the famous and the unknown—but it also contains a hidden gift for those with eyes to see it: a gift of utter dependency on Jesus Christ.

And where do we turn to know this Jesus better? If someone asked you to teach them about Jesus, where would you start? Probably in one of the gospels, right? Let me ask the question another way. What were the first recorded words of Jesus? What did he say? And don’t say, “gaga-googoo.” There is no baby talk recorded in Scripture. He probably said “good doggie” when he saw a scrawny street dog begging for food or “Ouch” when he burned himself on his mother’s cookware, but those things are not listed here either. Some of you are thinking that Jesus’ first recorded words must have been when he was twelve years old and his mother spent three days looking for him at the Temple in Jerusalem. When she found him, he said, “Why are you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” What do you think—are those his first recorded words? If that’s what you were thinking, you’re pretty close. You’re only off by a little more than four thousand years.

The very first recorded words of Jesus were these: “Let there be light.” Let’s look again at this familiar passage.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

³And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

How do I know that these are the first recoded words of Jesus? Let’s lay this first chapter in Genesis alongside the first chapter in John.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. ³Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴In him was life, and that life was the light of men. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

Who was in the beginning? The Word. Who is the Word? The Word is Jesus. What did the Word do? “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” This passage clearly says that Jesus is the Creator, therefore the first recorded words of Jesus were “Let there be light.” Jesus stood on the edge of nothingness and created the heavens and the earth. Jesus stood on the edge of darkness and proclaimed with all authority, “Let there be light.”

Before we go further with this thought, I need to explain two big ideas—the anthropic principle and the Christological principle. The anthropic principle is taken from the Greek word, anthropos, meaning “man” and is defined as follows. "... the Anthropic Principle says that the seemingly arbitrary and unrelated constants in physics have one strange thing in common--these are precisely the values you need if you want to have a universe capable of producing life.” In other words, the entire universe seems to be finely tuned in such a way as to support human life. Please note that the anthropic principle was not devised by young earth creationists or even those who were partial toward divine design. The anthropic principle was formulated by secular scientists and physicists. Here are some of these finely tuned qualities of our world.

· A stronger nuclear strong force (by as little as 2 percent) would have prevented the formation of protons--yielding a universe without atoms. Decreasing it by 5 percent would have given us a universe without stars.

· If the difference in mass between a proton and a neutron were not exactly as it is--roughly twice the mass of an electron--then all neutrons would have become protons or vice versa. Say good-bye to chemistry as we know it--and to life.

· The very nature of water--so vital to life--is something of a mystery Unique amongst the molecules, water is lighter in its solid than liquid form: Ice floats. If it did not, the oceans would freeze from the bottom up and earth would now be covered with solid ice. This property in turn is traceable to the unique properties of the hydrogen atom.[i]

This secular anthropic principle, which most secular scientists hold to in one form or another, states that the entire universe appears to be finely tuned in order to support human life. These same scientists would never say that the universe was designed and created this way, but they admit that it has these unique qualities.

There is another type of anthropic principle in Scripture. We see this in the first chapter of Genesis. As you read the chapter and watch Jesus create the universe piece by piece through his spoken word, you can see that the whole process is driving at a conclusion. By the end of the chapter we find that the creation of man—male and female—is the highest part of God’s creation. The Biblical anthropic principle states that man is the pinnacle of God’s creation. But just because we are the highest of God’s creation, you cannot read this and mistakenly conclude that we are higher than God. The correct hierarchy is:

However, the secular anthropic principle which admits a type of design without actually admitting the existence of a designer, has no room whatsoever for God. If God is in the picture at all, the hierarchy looks like this:

It is like the verse from Isaiah I quoted last week. “You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘He did not make me’? Can the pot say of the potter, ‘He knows nothing’?” (Isaiah 29:16) Romans one says the same thing in a slightly different way. “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator…” As I said, if God is even in the picture, he is placed on the bottom rung with no hope of advancement. You cans see that it would not take long for God to be unnecessary and irrelevant and simply cease to exist. Eventually, God become snot merely unnecessary, but a definite hindrance that must be eliminated at all costs.

And why should he exist when they have their theory of evolution? Did you see the big news story this week of the monkey fossil that was found and announced to be the missing link? They named the fossil “Ida” the monkey. This was an enormous news even in the world of secular scientists. Premier evolutionist Sir David Attenborough said, “This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of the mammals. This is the one that connects us directly with them.”[ii] Do you see what they are claiming? They are claiming that “I da monkey” and “you da monkey.” The man who discovered the fossil, which had been hidden away in a private collection for twenty five years, proclaimed it was the "most beautiful fossil worldwide" and he was so excited that he could not sleep for two days. When was the last time we received a truth from God that kept us awake for two solid days?

But here’s the crazy part of the story. On Tuesday, Ida was hailed around the world as the missing link, seemingly the single greatest fossil discovery ever. But by the end f the week, scientists were saying, “Oh, guess what? We were wrong.” A prominent paleontologist said, "It's not a missing link, it's not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans, which is the point they're trying to make."[iii] Very often the evolutionists with their upside down worlds get more excited about a lie than we do about the truth. Their passion puts us to shame.

We will revisit the Biblical anthropic principle again at the end of chapter one when we talk about what it means for man to be created in God’s image. Now I want to describe the Christological principle. The Christological principle is what we have been saying from the start—Jesus is the grand theme of the Bible. If the OT looks forward to his coming, then it follows that Jesus can be found throughout the OT. But don’t take my word for it. Jesus himself described the Christological principle. Jesus met two men walking on the road to Emmaus following his resurrection and Luke recorded this part of the conversation. “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” We have from Jesus’ own words that he is the grand theme of the whole Bible. If that is true, then we must look for him throughout the Bible and never pull the Scriptures out of the context of Christ.

We don’t even realize how often we remove Jesus from our Bible study. For example, take the principle from Proverbs 11:1 “The Lord abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight.” This one verse has a lot of power, and pun intended, weight to it. We could apply it to hundreds of situations. Be honest. Don’t cheat others. Promote genuine economic justice. Don’t steal. Tell the truth even in the small things. On and on we could go, but what we do so often in our teaching, preaching and personal study is to strip Christ out of the principle. If our big conclusion from this verse is simply, “Don’t cheat others,” have we truly understood this verse and honored God by it? The principle of “don’t cheat,” while true, could be taught by any religion or any person for that matter.

This kind of teaching is what some call “therapeutic, moralistic deism.” It is therapeutic in the sense that the end goal is to make you feel better. “If you cheat and lie, you’re not going to feel good about yourself, so don’t do it.” It is moralistic in the sense of promoting right and wrong. “You know that cheating is wrong, so don’t do it.” It is a form of deism in the sense that no specific god is mentioned or promoted. “God doesn’t like it when you cheat, so don’t do it.” Therapeutic moralistic deism happens when we strip Christ from the Bible, when we fail to see the Christological principle—that Jesus is the grand theme of the Bible. If you didn’t know me and you heard me teach this principle—“God doesn’t like it when we cheat, so don’t do it,”—can you tell if I am Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness or New Age? You cannot tell what or who I am, because at that moment, I am promoting a generic kind of deism, a generic god with a moralistic, therapeutic principle.

If we are not careful, we could march right through Genesis teaching a therapeutic, moralistic deism. We could pull principles of right and wrong out of the text and go home as happy campers. If Jesus is the grand theme of the Bible and we don’t demonstrate this throughout the Scriptures, then in what sense are we Christians. I would go so far as to say that the vast majority of sermons preached in the U.S. would be well received in any synagogue or mosque. If my sermons would not get me kicked out of a synagogue or mosque or Mormon assembly, then I don’t deserve the right to preach anywhere.

I had a little taste of this in regard to my most recent article in the Kickapoo Free Press. A thoroughly New Age person who has an office in this building commented to me that she really liked my article. Can you see why I would struggle with this? If she believes that all religions lead to the same place AND she really liked my article, what does that say? If you read it, I think the article elevated Christ and mentioned the gospel, and just because an unsaved person likes something I say or write doesn’t mean I have failed in my task. But if unbelievers always like what I say or teach, then I know I have definitely succumbed to therapeutic, moralistic deism. I have failed to be a herald of the gospel of Christ. 2 Tim. 2 says that “if we deny him, he will deny us.” If we ignore Christ, isn’t this very close to denying him?

In seminary, one of my O.T. professors shared a story about a man who criticized him on the Christological principle. He said to the professor, “When you see Jesus in the O.T., you don’t use exegesis, you use ‘extra Jesus.’” We must be careful that we are not reading Jesus back into the O.T. text, but neither should we leave him out. If the N.T. writers tell us things about the O.T., this is perfectly valid for us to go back and understand the OT in light of the NT. This is proper exegesis and is not “extra Jesus”.

Let me make an important distinction. When Moses wrote this chapter, did he know that the first recorded words of Jesus were “Let there be light”? By Jesus’ own admission, Moses wrote about him all over the place, but we could not say that Moses had anything close to a full understanding of Christ because he was limited by the amount of revelation available to him. But we do not have these limitations. We have the full revelation from God. We possess the full counsel of God, and if the N.T. clearly tells us that Jesus created everything, then we can say with full confidence that the first recorded words of Jesus were “Let there be light.”

I introduced the Christological principle last week when we concluded that Jesus made us prior to and for the express purpose of redeeming us. Although Genesis 1:1 eliminates the possibility of naturalism and polytheism, all by itself, it leaves us in a state of generic monotheism. But when we include relevant N.T. Scriptures, we begin to see how Genesis begins with evangelism and missions.

By the omnipotent power of his spoken word, light shined into the darkness. But a common question is how could there be light when the sun was not created until day four? The best answer to that question is found in Rev. 22:5. “There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.” Throughout all eternity the Lord God will be the only source of light for the news heavens and the new earth. If God can provide his own light for eternity, is it too much to believe that he provided light for the first three days of creation? Moreover, when you place Genesis 1, John 1 and Rev. 22:5 side by side, you see that light forms a type of book end to creation. Light came into existence in Genesis, in John, the Light of the world became flesh and in Revelation, God is the eternal light. Jesus created light and is light.

Jesus is the Light of the world and Jesus will be our source of light for all eternity. Jesus is the grand theme of the Bible and the supreme one over creation. Shouldn’t these truths keep us awake sometimes? Shouldn’t our passion over Christ outshine the passion of evolutionists clinging to a series of lies?

We would never purposefully place ourselves above God. However, we all have areas of our life where we have effectively removed them out of submission to God. What is that area or areas of your life?

[i] Taken from God the Evidence by Patrick Glynn

[ii] http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Missing-Link-Scientists-In-New-York-Unveil-Fossil-Of-Lemur-Monkey-Hailed-As-Mans-Earliest-Ancestor/Article/200905315284582?lpos=World_News_Carousel_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15284582_Missing_Link%3A_Scientists_In_New_York_Unveil_Fossil_Of_Lemur_Monkey_Hailed_As_Mans_Earliest_Ancestor

[iii] (said Chris Beard, a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.)