God Creates the Universe

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AStudying God’s Word

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Studying God’s Word

Introduction

We are at the beginning of a new unit of study. In the last unit, we started our study through Scripture with some foundational work. Understanding the Bible and the character of God is extremely important as we start to make our way through the Bible. If we don’t know that we can trust the Bible and, consequently, the Creator who reveals himself on its pages, the truths of the Bible may seem fantastical or unscientific.

• Slide #4
  We described a framework to understand biblical history using seven words that began with the letter C. Does anyone remember the Seven C’s of History? Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation.

  We have this timeline poster to help remind us of those points in history and to give us some perspective of the events described in the Bible. We will be referring to this timeline often as we walk through the Bible. Refer to the Seven C’s of History Timeline to frame the biblical perspective of history.

  • Don’t forget! Review the Optional Supplements and determine where you can use them.
  Today, we are going to begin walking through the Bible. We are starting with the first C—Creation. For the next eight lessons we will look at the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth and all of God’s creatures—including us.

God Created the Heaven and the Earth

Today, we are going to start by watching a video that is based on a reading of the first chapter of Genesis. In the video, you will see representations of the things that God created on each day. After we watch the video, we will look more closely at the text.

Show the Six Days (4:46) video. If you don’t have the ability to play the video, read Genesis 1 dramatically.

• What type of literature is Genesis 1? Does it sound like an account, a poem, a letter, or some other type of writing? The text reads very much like an account or narrative of historical events that occurred in a specific series, not a poem or a letter.
• What period of time does this passage describe? The very beginning of time and the universe. Creation in a six-day period.
• Who is doing the creating? God and the Spirit of God are mentioned. By extension, the Word, Jesus, is also involved as we see in John 1, Hebrews 1, and other passages.
• Verse one tells us that God created what? The heavens and the earth.
• How did the various parts of the creation come into existence? God spoke, and they appeared.

  We will do an activity to help describe some of what was created on the various days of creation, and the next two lessons will take us into more detail about the events of creation week.

• Are any phrases or words repeated? Several ideas get repeated: then God said; God called; God made; let there be; and it was so; and God saw that it was good; and there was evening and there was morning, the X day; according to its kind.
• What is the main point of the passage? God created the universe and everything in it out of nothing in six days by simply speaking.
• What does the passage tell us about God? God is the omnipotent Creator of the universe. Refer to the Attributes of God poster.

Discover the Truth

In Genesis 1:1, we need to make sure we understand two phrases. The first phrase, “heavens and earth,” is a merism—a figure of speech that uses two extremes to refer to everything in between. When I tell you that someone was covered from head to toe, you know I am talking about the person’s entire body. We need to recognize (observe) figures of speech in a text we are studying to rightly interpret the meaning so that we can rightly apply them to our lives.

• What other merisms do we use in our speech? Accept various ideas and define them: bow to stern describes an entire ship; top to bottom describes a complete object; high and low might describe where we have searched—everywhere; bumper to bumper to refer to the whole car.

To confirm this interpretation of “heavens and earth,” let’s look at a few passages of Scripture that convey this same idea. Get out your Bibles and let’s look at these cross-references to make sure we are interpreting Scripture with Scripture. The first is Jeremiah 23:24. Call on someone to read Jeremiah 23:24.

• How does Jeremiah 23:24 describe God’s presence? He fills heaven and earth, a merism to indicate that God is omnipresent.

The next is Jeremiah 33:25–26. Call on someone to read Jeremiah 33:25–26.

• This verse speaks of the orderly laws governing the creation. Where do God’s ordinances apply according to this verse? In all of heaven and earth—everywhere in the universe.

Next is Psalm 69:34. Call on someone to read Psalm 69:34.

• How does Psalm 69:34 use the phrase? Everything God has created in the entire universe should offer him praise.

Another passage that helps us understand this idea is Nehemiah 9:6. Call on someone to read Nehemiah 9:6.

• According to this passage, what did God create? Everything in heaven, the heaven of heavens, the earth, the seas, and all that is in them were created by God. This would include the spiritual beings as well as the entire physical universe.

  So, God has created the entire universe according to Genesis 1:1. This is also confirmed in John 1:3 where we read, “All things were made through him [Jesus], and without him was not any thing made that was made,” and Hebrews 1:2 which tells us Jesus created the world. Colossians 1:16–17 also confirms the role of Jesus in creating everything, including spiritual beings.

  There is no doubt that the entirety of the universe has been created by God acting as the three members of the Trinity: God the Father in Genesis 1:2; God the Holy Spirit in Genesis 1:2; God the Son in John 1:3, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1:2.

• This leads to the next important point. In Genesis 1, what is “in the beginning” referring to? It must be referring to the beginning of the universe since the following phrase includes the whole universe.
• If God created the entire universe, what existed before the universe? Nothing except the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

  As we talked about previously, God is eternal—he has no beginning and will have no end. But his creation is not eternal—it had a beginning. Before God created, there was no space, no time, and no matter. It is very difficult for our minds to understand this concept, but it is clear from our examination of Scripture that it is true.

  At this point many Christians would suggest that this is where the scientific model of the big bang helps us to understand how the universe began about 14 billion years ago. This idea is a part of a belief in cosmological evolution. Many might quip, “God said, ‘BANG!’ and it happened.” But is this an idea based on the biblical record or man’s opinion?

• As you read Genesis 1—what we have said is a historical narrative—how many days did God use to create the universe? Six days.
• Does this agree with the big bang model of the formation of the universe? No, the big bang would suggest the universe is about 14 billion years old and the earth about 4.5 billion years old.

  We are going to do an activity to see if we can reconcile the evolutionary models of the origin of the universe with the biblical record.

The Order Matters Activity

Pass out the The Order Matters worksheets and have students break into small groups to complete the following activity. Discuss the answers after they finish.

On this worksheet, you will find three columns. In the first column are statements from the evolutionary view of the universe and the life we have on this Earth. In the second column, you are going to provide a short statement of the biblical view of the relationship in the first column. Then, in the last column put the biblical reference that confirms your statement. All of the answers will be found in Genesis 1, so open your Bibles there.

Walk through an example for the students using the first row. In the first row we see that the sun forms before the Earth in the evolutionary view, about 5 billion years ago according to secular scientists. Looking at Genesis 1:2, we see that the Earth was present on the first day. Then, in 1:16 we see the sun was created on the fourth day. So, you can write those two references, Genesis 1:2, 1:16, in the last column and something like, “The Earth was created before the sun” in the middle column.

Work in small groups to complete the rest of the table, and answer the questions at the bottom. We will discuss them in a few minutes.

The text uses general phrases like beast and cattle to refer to larger animals and creeping things would likely be reptiles and such. Point this out if the students have trouble connecting these terms to mammals, reptiles, and birds as used on the worksheet.

Connect to the Truth

• Refer to the answer key to help students as needed and to discuss the conclusions.
• Are there any points in which the order of the different views agrees? No, all of the events occur ina different order in the evolutionary view.
• What would we have to do to get the evolutionary view to fit into the biblical explanation? You would have to drastically rearrange the order of events. Some people suggest that the days are vast periods that overlap to allow for the billions of years to fit into Scripture. Regardless, the Bible would have to be changed to accommodate the evolutionary view.
• How do we know which view is true? The biblical view must be true because it is found in God’s perfect Word.

  This is another example of using biblical glasses to look at the world we live in. If we begin from man’s reasoning alone, we might be convinced that scientists have demonstrated that the universe evolved from the big bang (cosmological evolution) and that living things have evolved from lifeless chemicals (biological evolution). Over the next several lessons, we will continue to look at this issue since it is at the center of many important doctrines.

Application

We have gone over the first chapter of Genesis today, but we have taken a very brief look at it. We will try to understand much more detail over the next several lessons. We will look at each of the days of the creation week and examine them more closely.

When we read Genesis 1 as a historical account of how the universe was created, it answers a multitude of questions about how we got here. Unless we rearrange the order of Genesis 1 or claim that it is some type of allegory or myth, there is no way to reconcile the evolutionary origin of the universe and life on Earth.

God’s omnipotence—his absolute power over absolutely everything—is put on display in the description of the creation week. By simply speaking, God created the stars, the planets, the sun, the Earth, the fish, the birds, the insects—everything. It is all a demonstration of his power and creativity.

This concept of a six-day creation and how it relates to the big bang and evolution may be a challenge to your thinking. Many Christians have never thought through all of the issues surrounding the tension between the different origins accounts. Some believe that the secular scientific explanations are so overwhelmingly persuasive that to reject them is to be anti-science. Consider that some of the students in your classroom may hold these various views on the origins issue. Do not be harsh or abrasive when talking about this topic, but approach it with grace, hoping that the truth of Scripture will change hearts to the biblical position.

• Many people claim that the Bible doesn’t tell us how God created; it just tells us that he did create. Is this an accurate statement based on the text of Genesis 1? The text says many times that God spoke the creation into existence—it is not silent on the method of creation. Passages like Hebrews 11:3 and Psalm 33:6 confirm this idea. However, some have tried to say that Genesis 1 and 2 are poetic passages and that we should not take them at face value. Since the rest of Scripture confirms the literal understanding of a six-day creation, there is no reason to reject the plain reading other than to impose our own ideas from outside of the Bible.

  This issue—the origin of the universe—is something that sincere Christians disagree over. There are a multitude of different positions: some believe the days of creation are long ages (day-age theories); some believe there is a gap in Genesis 1 that allows for long ages (gap theories); some teach that God progressively created animals, wiped out life on Earth, and then created again (progressive creation theories); some believe that God allowed life to evolve and then gave the first human a spirit (theistic evolution). We will be discussing these various views in the next several lessons.

• As we approach this topic in conversations with fellow believers, what should be our attitude? We are called to approach discussions of doctrine humbly, pointing to Scripture, not science, to make arguments. The doctrine of creation is not a scientific argument—it is a biblical argument. Hebrews 11:3 calls belief in God as Creator a matter of faith. We must take the argument to the Bible since the creation was a supernatural event.
• Should our approach to supporting the biblical view of the creation week look different when discussing it with those who are not Christians? Not necessarily—we should not use a pile of evidence from science to convince anyone of a supernatural work by an omnipotent Creator. There are surely aspects of the creation that point to God as Creator (Psalm 19 and Romans 1), but the act of creation was supernatural and is received by faith in what God has revealed in the Bible.
• If we suggest that the account of creation in Genesis is a myth or an allegory, what other doctrines would become mythical or allegorical—what doctrines find their basis in the first few chapters of Genesis? Marriage, man created in God’s image, the entrance of sin into the world, the need for a Savior, and others. For example, if Adam is a mythical figure, then the argument of Romans 5:12–17 leads to the conclusion that Jesus is a mythical Savior.
• How can understanding that God created the entire universe in six days by simply speaking it into existence help you to trust him? Knowing that he is all-powerful should give every believer great assurance in what God is capable of doing in the future. He can accomplish all of the things that he promises us he will do.

Group Prayer

Be sure to pray with your class and take requests if time allows.

• Praise God for his absolute power and control over his entire creation.
• Thank God for giving us a clear account of how he created our world.
• Ask God to help each person to look to the Bible as the absolute authority in their life.