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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/leslie-craig/1st-narrative-of-creation-life-for-the-glory-of-god/
Now, shall we read first, please, in the Psalms, Psalm 19 briefly? I did express gratitude yesterday for the kind invitation, but most of you were not here. Many of you do not know the strange creature that is standing before you, but he has been, by the grace of God, saved.
And it is wonderful to come here and to share in the fellowship of dear believers, and you will make up your own mind, but as we have been hearing, my greatest identity is that I am in Christ, and I am his and he is mine.
And what a joy it has been to consider the headship of Christ that we have been beginning our session with. Our brother Matt has brought that to us. It is so challenging to be brought to the point where we willingly submit.
I could not help but think of that that is mentioned. I do not want to steal Matt's thunder, but he was stealing some of mine, as you shall see in a moment or two. But in Psalm 110, when Christ comes in his messianic glory, the people that come to him then, they come with willing submission, the total surrender of loving hearts to the King of kings and Lord of lords.
And we have been thinking of that in the second session as well, that our only sane response to the grace wherewith we have been graced is to yield ourselves, our beings, our entirety as living sacrifices on the altar for God and for his glory.
And so that is something that has thrilled our hearts as we have considered it today. We're changing tack a little, but not so much as we come to the sessions that are my responsibility. I want to take some lessons from the narratives of creation that we find in the book of Genesis, of which there are three.
It is not my design or desire and the time is not available to go through them in any great detail. And my points of reference will touch upon some of the reasons why they're given in the first place.
But what I want to draw from them are some of the principles and lessons that are taught to us in the New Testament, looking back upon those narratives of creation. And for the benefit of younger believers, it is useful to identify those narratives as to what they are and the purpose that the Spirit of God has given them to us for.
And so you will find as you open the book of Genesis, it falls into around about seven different parts. They're not of equal length, but it's useful just to hold them in your mind. There are three creation narratives that point out different and distinct patterns and principles, but they're each of them complementary.
Just as we have four gospels that tell of the glories of Christ, we have three narratives of creation. You will read of it at the beginning of Genesis 1 and 1, God creating. You will read again in Genesis 2 and 4, God creating.
You will read in Genesis 5, and one of God creating. And each of those begin the record of a new creation narrative, and every one of them has something distinct to say. So what we want to do is to take from each of those in my three sessions some of the main principles, how they govern my life today, reaching back in the furthest extent of divine revelation to how it affects me today in 2024.
Then we have in the middle of the book of Genesis two chapters that set the pace for the rest of the book and the rest of human history. They are the sorry tale of Genesis chapters 10 and 11, where we have the rebellion of the nations, and they're scattering to the different corners of the world.
There are 70 nations that are named, and each of them scatter, and they go into darkness. And the next time we get a resume of what happened, it's Romans chapter one, how they go down and down and down the spiral three times.
God gives them over, God gives them over, God gives them over, until at last God gives them the gospel, and the light of the gospel bursts upon the pagan world as the apostles and as Paul in particular take the lamp of the gospel to those nations that had sunk in darkness, and they begin to turn the world upside down.
Yea, rather they turn it back the way it should have been. Now that's something to grasp as we understand the purpose of God. So that's the middle of the book of Genesis. Then we have to end the book three more stories, the stories of the patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and you will find if you look at Jacob, he answers to the first creation narrative.
If you look at Isaac, he answers to the second, and if you look at Abraham, he answers to the third, and that's a wonderful study as well, because the Bible is not just merely revelation, it is that, primarily that, but it is literature.
And you that love literature get into the Bible more than Shakespeare. Shakespeare's good, you know that. And all of these that were gifted in language, that can give us poems and prose that is remarkable, and it's wonderful to take all of the tools of genre and interpretive skills and just to see how they have communicated to us.
But the master communicator is the Holy Spirit. And this is literature that we're reading. Never lose that. I had to come to learn because I trained a little bit in engineering, and I had all the wrong tools to study the Bible.
If you're an engineer, you need to retrain to study this book. This is not science. This is literature. And so, it is useful to understand how the Spirit of God has communicated to us and the manners in which He chooses to do that.
So, having said that then, that's just a little background to where we're going, and we'll launch into it as quickly as we can. I want to trace a couple of principles in the Psalms and then go to the first of the creation narratives and to pick it out with you there as well.
So, Psalm 19 and verse 1, the heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament, the expanse, showeth His handiwork. Now, most of your beautiful state is flat, not quite as flat as Manitoba, with its wide arch of the heavens, a wide sky.
And what does it say to us? It shows the handiwork of God. The heavens declare His glory. Why did God create this universe in the first place? He created it to declare His glory. Let's go back to Psalm 8, and Matthew has already brought us to that in his studies.
And here we're asking a more focused question, not, why did God create the heavens, but why did God create humans? Verse number 3, When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou wert mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?
And if we would stop there, we would get the wrong idea entirely. Yes, David is looking up, and he's looking in awe and wonder at the vastness, the sheer scope of creation. It is mind-boggling. And you that think that somehow or other, looking into the stars is something for those that have nothing to do, God commands you to do it, dear believer.
Have you forgotten what He told Israel in Isaiah 40? Look up, He says. Behold it and see. God demands that we look at the wonder of the universe that He has created. He wants us to see the soaring angels, the soaring eagles.
He wants us to look at the beauty of the flowers. He wants us to see the stars in their innumerable numbers, to get a grip and a grasp of how small we are. And yet, God is mindful of man. That's the point.
And God has visited man. You are of more significance than the whole of the Milky Way galaxy to God. Dear young believer, older saint, who may say, as the nation said in Isaiah 40, but my way is hid from the Lord.
My judgment has been passed over. Somehow or other, God has forgotten about me and my problems. How could He possibly know of me here in this state, and in my little town, and in my circumstances? And God says, no, I have not lost you, and I have not forgotten about your complaint.
I know every star. I keep a rule book, and there's not one missing. Whenever I went to school at the start, they used to begin the day by calling out your name. And of course, you never answered absent.
You would get into trouble if you did that because you were being a bit of a smart aleck. So you always answered present. God calls the rule book of the stars every day, and He knows where they are. And He knows your need.
He knows your name. He knows your heart. God is mindful of us. God has visited us. Let's look what it says, and for thou hast made him a little lower than the angels. For a period, for a time, God has put humanity beneath angels to, in His will, in Christ, bring us above the angels.
What for? Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou hast made him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. This is what God has done with humanity. God has created a universe to display in that universe His glory, and God has made you and I for the very same reason, that we should be to the glory of our God.
Genesis chapter 1 then, please. Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night.
And the evening and the morning were the first day. Let's look down to verse number 26. Partway through, day number six of God's creative activity, and God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Now, I do notice Matthew pointed this out to us, that the image of God is upon them, not just upon the male. And so God created man in His image. In the image of God created Him male and female, created He them.
And God blessed them. And God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb burning seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of the tree yielding seed. To you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat.
And it was so. And God saw everything that He had meant. And behold, it was very good. We'll conclude our reading there, but if you wish to keep it open, I may refer back as we have time to some of the detail that we have not had time to read.
If it is that we come to understand from the Psalms, looking back on creation as they do in 19 and in number 8, looking upon the whole of creation as the glory of God, and looking upon humanity as those that bear His glory as well, here we come to understand a very closely related truth, and it's this, that what God made, what God created, it was good.
And eventually, God says, it was very good. And so the two principles that I want to bring to you today as we think about us in our lives, and particularly as we function within a New Testament church, that God has pleased us there for good and for glory.
It is, to put a title upon it, the glory of good that God can accomplish in our lives through His grace. So these are the two things that I want to consider with you as we go down through these very familiar verses that we have in the opening chapter of our Bible.
The glory of good. It is something that we are taught so very clearly with regards our activities, our testimony within the communities that God has placed us in, in our day and generation. We have good news to tell.
We shorten it to the word gospel. But sometimes I think we miss out a little in that, because somehow or another, it seems to be a label for that meeting when we get up and we read and we are particularly speaking to those who are lost.
And that's all good and proper, but isn't it something we need to thrill our hearts with that we have for this world good news? Is there any good news in this world today? Praise God, there is. There still is, for we have it.
We have the good news of Jesus Christ. We are called to good works. Indeed, this is something that in Ephesians chapter 2, we are taught so very clearly. Good works cannot bring us to justification. They cannot save us.
But having been saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, we are then by God's power created anew to good works. Good works cannot bring us to Christ, but coming to Christ will bring in us good works for his glory.
We have good news. We ought to do good works. We in society, in Romans chapter 13, are called to lives of good conduct. I know it's hard to keep the speed limits. I'll hold my hand up to that one. But we are called to lives of good conduct, to be citizens within a community and country that are commendable, honest, kind, the sort of neighbor that people would turn to, the sort of business person that people expect to get a straight and honest answer to, the kind of lady that those that are in distress are likely to call upon.
If someone is in an emergency, are you the sort by your good conduct that people turn to? We are those who possess good hope, as Paul writes to those in the city of Thessalonica and speaks of the horrendous days that are before this world when it shall fall into the dark and fell power of Satan and his man Antichrist.
We have good hope. We shall be gone, for we are in Christ. We are those that can, like Timothy, have a good conscience. We can live in this world, yes, realizing that we shall never attain complete sanctification down here, but we can always have a clear conscience before God, because we know this, all of our sin has been dealt with in Christ.
There is one full and final sacrifice, and the one who offered that one sacrifice has once for all sat down for us. And each and every day we come to the Father, as we have been hearing, that close and intimate relationship that we have with the Father, and we can daily and hourly, as we become aware of things that are spoiling that communion, we can confess it, and we can have again a clear conscience, a good conscience before God.
We are those that are called to a good warfare, to fight a good fight of faith in this world. We are those that have been granted good gifts. As James would tell us in his first chapter, every good gift and every good giving is from God that comes down from the Father of lights.
And God not only gives good gifts, but He gives them with good motives and with good intentions. That's the idea in that. Sometimes children, they keep pestering their parents for this or that or the other, and eventually the parents yield, but they give them something that's not for their benefit.
I know of those who yielded and gave their children something that led to disaster, and so regret the rest of their lives. But God not only gives good gifts, but He gives them with good motives and for good purpose, and that is our God.
That is the one who withholds us the things that we crave for, knowing that if He gave it to us, it would spoil us. And maybe that's the problem that some of you have, for I have had it, crying out to God, I think I need this.
Open this door, Lord. Make this happen for me, Lord. And the Lord says no, for He knows I couldn't handle it. He knows it would destroy me. And so He gives good gifts in a good way. That's our God. That's what we've been called to, a life of goodness.
And over it all, I want to bring in this second layer, for it's all for the glory of God. Paul says as he addresses the problem of what you eat and what you don't eat and what you drink and what you don't, he says, do it all for the glory of God.
So when we preach the good news, we should do it for the glory of God. When we do our good works, not in the sense of, there it is, I've done three good works today, and I can check that out. No, it's not about that, as we have been hearing.
This is a life completely yielded to God. So what will flow from a life that is completely yielded to God in Christ is a life that is continually doing good works, for that's what God does. And we do them if they're truly for Him, for His glory.
Our lives of good conduct in the state and in the country in which we live, for the glory of God. The good hope that we have as we look for our Lord, as we hold tenaciously to the faith that has been given to us, is for the glory of God.
The good warfare, the fight that we're called to fight in this day and generation of identity crisis, of the pushing of the boundaries of what all of the things that society was built upon are now being torn away, we have a fight to fight.
We're engaged in a spiritual warfare to the glory of God. The good gifts that God has given to us, we use them for the benefit of others, for His glory as well. This is the burden of my heart. Let us briefly then consider some of the principles that will help us see how God brings us to pass, first of all, in creation and then within our lives.
In the first creation narrative, we're brought instantly to understand that what we see around us is the product of divine design. The evidence of it is everywhere. And those that have denied, and thankfully their voices are on the wane, they've had to acknowledge that there is the appearance of design in everything that we look, in everything that we stutter, whether it is the vastness of the universe, or whether it's looking down into the tiniest molecule or human cell or any other living cell.
All the way up and all the way down, the evidence is there that we are design, and that's because we are. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And as you bring that with you into your experience, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and as one, I hope, who has been therefore baptized, if you're not baptized, it's time to put that right and obey the Lord, for you're in Him.
And the least you can do is to get into the water, to declare to the world that you have died and have been buried and have been raised in close association with Him, that your life now is His life, and His life is your life.
Get baptized, young believer, if you've never been baptized. Don't disobey Him anymore. And seeking in fellowship, because God never intends you to be alone, you need to be joined to those that love the Lord and those that will guide you and feed you and protect you, and where you can serve Him.
And as you do that, to remember this, that this is something that God has designed. It has all the marks of design about it. It belongs to Him. It's not my church. It's not my assembly. And although I do realize that sometimes we speak about it in those terms, we're really using and borrowing the kind of expression that Paul used when he said, it's my gospel.
The gospel was so much part of Paul. He says, it's mine. Oh, it's just mine. Not that Paul says it belongs to me, but really, I belong to it. And we ought to be like that with regards to the place where God has put us and the fellowship into which we have now been brought as members.
It should be my life, but it belongs to Him. It's not mine, no matter that I might be the oldest member. I might be the most influential. You may be the most gifted teacher or preacher. It's not yours.
It belongs to Him. It is by divine design. It is His. And therefore, as we come to the next point, not only divine design, but divine decree, we come to these words, and God said, and with repeated monotony down through the chapter, and God said, and God said, this should be the watchword of all our hearts.
What says the Scriptures? This is something by divine design. It is something that is by divine decree. What took place in those early moments and the work of creation was uttered from the voice of God.
It was by the Word of God that the universe and the worlds were established. Divine distinction. God made light, and there was darkness, and God called. He called the light day. He called the darkness night.
This is what our generation has forgotten. You can redefine all you like, the words marriage, love, and whatever else, gender, male, female. It alters nothing. Those words only have meaning from the lips of the Creator.
It is God that called these things, and that's what counts. And then we come very quickly to this, why God created humans in the first place. Not only His glory in the universe, and all that God has done through His creative power, His spoken Word, His distinguishing and dividing and all of that, but then to come to this point where God gives dominion to humanity so that humanity is called to be the image bearers of God with that dignity that He has given to them and with the third related responsibility to develop this world.
Now, God has given to you good men who are farmers the task to subjugate and to develop that bit of land that you have. I know that you've got vast acres compared to our little farms back in Ireland. You would just smile at the things that we have.
But if God has given you a garden, it's a good place to start. You young men that have a bedroom, that's a place to start as well. That's the bit you can control. To bring it under control, to subjugate it.
You know how everything gets into disarray? That's our lives. God has called us to bring these things under control, and you can start at an early age, whether it's in a garden getting rid of the weeds and growing a few things to the glory of God, or whether it's in a business, developing that business, or whether it's a mother with children, developing those young minds, bringing under subjugation those sinful traits that we all have, and developing the skills and the gifts that the Creator has endowed your children with.
That's the picture here. And all of that feeds into the spiritual work of a New Testament church, that we are called, as those that bear the image of God, to subjugate that which is of the flesh and of the world and of Satan, and to cultivate the things that are of the Spirit of God, that nine-fold fruit of the Spirit that we are given, that we are to cultivate.
Now, time is done. And so, I haven't reached as far as I thought I would, but in the second session, we'll just begin right here, and then move on to the second creation narrative, and think of some of the principles that are there brought to our attention.
But I just hope and trust that we might get, as we come to the conclusion of this session, something of the deep burden of my heart, that we are called, called to do good for the glory of God. This is God's design in the first place, and this is God's purpose for us now, that as we have been brought into Christ, to submit willingly to His headship, to understand the closeness that we have with the Father, that our lives should be lived to the good and to the glory of our God.
May God bless His Word to our hearts.