Themes From Genesis with R. C. Sproul, “Creation Or Chaos,” 1

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:04

We're studying themes from the book of Genesis, from the first book of the

00:10

Bible. But we're doing this not because we're interested simply in looking back at ancient history, but we want to understand these basic themes of Genesis because we know that the entire rest of sacred

00:26

Scripture flows out of what happens in Genesis. Genesis is the foundation upon all of these things of the

00:34

Christian faith rests. And so it's important for us to go back to our roots, to our origins, to our

00:44

Genesis. The very word Genesis tells us something about what we will be examining.

00:51

That word in itself is not a Hebrew word. It comes from the Greek, and the

00:56

Greek word there is genou or genomai, which means simply to be, to become, or to happen.

01:06

And that's what the author of Genesis is trying to teach us, where our being comes from, how the world became a world, how it happened originally and ultimately.

01:25

Now we're not concerned here with matters of mythology or fairy tales.

01:31

The Bible doesn't talk the way we talk in our traditional fairy tale motifs where we say to our children, once upon a time.

01:40

Have you ever thought of that formula, once upon a time? It's kind of an awkward form of speech, isn't it, that we don't say once at a certain time or once in the midst of time, but once upon a time?

01:57

That's the temporal location. It's awkward. It's disjointed. It doesn't fit.

02:03

It takes us into the land of never -never land, but that's not how the

02:08

Bible speaks. The Bible begins at the beginning, establishing its content in history.

02:20

Let's look at the text. In the opening words of Genesis, we read, in the beginning

02:27

God created the heavens and the earth. Almost everybody in America has heard and perhaps even memorized that opening line of sacred

02:39

Scripture, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. We often overlook the fact that in that statement, the gauntlet is thrown down, the challenge is made to all theories of secular philosophy, and at this moment from the very first line of Scripture, the

03:00

Judeo -Christian faith is set on a collision course with secular views of nature and of the cosmos.

03:10

In the beginning God, the very association of beginning with God may be confusing at the outset because we know that God has no beginning.

03:23

God transcends the temporal movements of history. God is eternal, but yet the

03:33

Bible says, in the beginning God. In the beginning refers to the advent of cosmic history.

03:46

Now at that point, we already have conflict with various forms of secular philosophy.

03:55

I think even in the ancient world of the Greeks who understood that the world had no beginning.

04:03

They operated on a different, indeed a radically different understanding of time.

04:11

For the Greek, history moved as a cycle, and we call that a cyclical view of time.

04:21

As opposed to the Greek view, the Hebrew understanding of history was linear.

04:29

Now what's the significance of that? But very quickly and very briefly, for some of the ancient Greeks, not all, but most of the ancient

04:35

Greeks, the pattern of history was this cycle of endless repetition where the world goes round and round and round and round.

04:46

It has no definite point of beginning and no ultimate point of destiny, but it's an endless, monotonous repetition of the same things over and over again.

05:04

The entire world is going around in circles, going nowhere, but that as I say is on a collision course with the

05:16

Hebrew concept of history where we say there is a point of beginning, and that that movement of history is moving inexorably toward a determinant goal, towards the consummation of the kingdom of God, towards a destiny that our

05:37

Creator has established from the foundation of this world, and that along this line of history there are moments that are pregnant in meaning where redemption is unfolding and taking place.

05:51

But the first intersection of time and eternity takes place here at the beginning when the eternal

06:05

God creates the heavens and the earth.

06:11

Well, let's look at that part of the text. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

06:19

Some would look at that and say, well, this is simply a brief portrait of just a small segment or aspect of the created order whereby

06:30

God through His creative activity shapes the planet earth with the sky above us.

06:38

But it says nothing of all of the rest of the planets and galaxies in the entire universe, but that's not the thrust of the text.

06:51

What the Hebrew is saying with the expression and with the phrase the heavens and the earth is that he is saying that God has created out of nothing the entire substance of what is.

07:12

I mentioned that we have conflict, that we have collisions between Christianity and secular worldviews in our day, and one of the great issues of our day is the issue of whether or not the universe has come to pass through the creative and intelligent work of an eternal

07:35

God or whether it just popped into existence out of nothing.

07:41

One of the axioms of philosophy is the phrase ex nihilo nihil fit, out of nothing, nothing comes.

07:51

But because there is a God who creates, we have substance rather than nothing.

08:05

There is a world rather than a vacuum.

08:10

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

08:19

Now that's a very positive statement, and it's an exciting statement. It's electric as it compresses into one statement that extraordinary and perhaps the extraordinary act that defines human history, the act of creation.

08:36

But it's also an introductory statement as the rest of the opening chapters of Genesis begin to unfold and fill in the structure and the skeletal outline that is offered for us in the thematic statement in verse 1.

08:51

But as soon as we move to verse 2, there is an obvious change, a sudden shift in the tone of the text.

09:01

Note how positive and triumphant verse 1 is, in the beginning

09:07

God created the heavens and the earth. When we read verse 2, we step into another realm.

09:13

Listen to the text, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

09:30

Let's look at that clause, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

09:41

Some of you may be aware, of course, that the book of Genesis is not the only document from antiquity that gives us an account of creations.

09:53

We think of the Babylonian creation epic and others in which we see a clear view of mythology in which creation takes place out of an internal struggle of the eternal dualism between the forces of darkness and the forces of light, equal beings of good and evil that are involved in an endless power struggle.

10:21

And in some of those myths of creation, we see the battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, between the force of order and the force of chaos, between the deity and the sea monster who lurks in the darkness of the waters.

10:46

And for that reason, some have said, well here we have the same thing here in Genesis.

10:52

We have just another mythological account of a struggle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light.

10:59

But those who have examined the text carefully argue that the book of Genesis is already a demythologized document, that it has a curious difference from the characteristics that are found in pagan myths of creation.

11:17

Yes, there are references here to darkness. There are references here to the deep, to the waters.

11:24

There is reference here to the void, to the emptiness, but there's not even a hint of some kind of co -eternal power between the forces of chaos and the forces of order.

11:41

The God who creates has sovereign power over what

11:47

He creates. And so we say, what is the point of verse 2?

11:54

Is it to show us that God somehow prevailed over a primordial struggle with the forces of chaos?

12:03

Or do we have here rather a description of the stages of creation, whereas one theologian has pointed that perhaps what the author of Genesis is showing us is the triumph of God over any possibility of ultimate chaos.

12:25

Yes, as soon as God begins His work of creation, before it is finished, He sets the raw material, the substance of the universe before Him.

12:34

There is an earth, but it is yet not shaped, that it's not formed. It hasn't been finalized in the creative plan of divine architecture.

12:44

And in the initial stages, God looks at what that first step of the universe is, and there is still yet formlessness as we see the clay of the sculptor as he begins his work.

13:02

But before the sculptor can produce a statue, he has to first find clay so that God's first act of creation is the substance out of which

13:12

He will form and shape and mold the universe according to His divine plan.

13:18

But if all we had was substance with no order, we would still be left with nothing more than the conditions of chaos, a world without form, without shape, a world of emptiness, a world of darkness.

13:45

It's ironic, nay, it's tragic that in our own century, with the rise, for example, of existential philosophy, we have heard the voices over and over again in our culture who say that creation really never got beyond that stage.

14:06

There are people who are still telling us that ultimately life is chaotic, that there is no purpose, there is no meaning to human existence.

14:17

I think of Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher of the nineteenth century, the one who is identified with the statement that God is dead.

14:27

Nietzsche looked at the civilization of his day and the decadence of modern man, and he was driven to a point of despair, saying that life is ultimately meaningless, that chaos is supreme.

14:50

And so he became the father of what is called modern nihilism.

14:57

Nihilism simply means nothingness -ism. Nietzsche said the final verdict of the significance of mankind is das

15:11

Nichtige, the nothing. That's why since Nietzsche and since apostles of despair have peddled their wares in our day that some scholars have been quick to point out here that in the second verse of Genesis the possibility of ongoing emptiness exists for a moment, at least theoretically, that it is this as yet unfinished, unordered, unstructured symphony that God conducts.

15:48

There is the threat of chaos. The world is formless and void, and darkness hangs over the deep.

16:12

But as I read my text of Genesis, it does not say the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep, period.

16:21

It says the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, semicolon.

16:30

There is another clause to be added, and it is the adding of that clause that differentiates the

16:37

Christian from the existentialist, the Jew from the nihilist, the believer from the secularist, and the

16:48

Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

16:59

You may have a different translation in your Bible between, apart from moving,

17:06

I've seen translations that say, and the Spirit of God was brooding over the deep or over the waters.

17:16

Another very popular translation is that the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, and another one suggests that the

17:26

Spirit of God was sweeping across the water. Now there's a reason for those different interpretations or different translations, because the word that is used here in the text is one that is very infrequent in the

17:43

Bible, but it is found later on in the prophets, and it's used on one occasion to describe the activity of eagles as they care for their young.

17:52

And you see the image of the mother eagle hovering over the nest, hovering there to protect, to feed, to nurture, and to nourish her young as a hen broods over her chicks.

18:12

The idea here is that as God forms their shapes and calls into existence the substance of the universe, but before that substance passes from formlessness into structure and to order, into harmony and into beauty, the

18:31

Spirit of God descends upon this threat of chaos, on the emptiness, and the

18:43

Spirit of God fills the emptiness. The Spirit of God forms the formless, and the

18:53

Spirit of God banishes the darkness. He hovers intimately over the waters.

19:09

Then God said, let there be light, and there was light.

19:21

Now, notice that the Bible doesn't give us a mechanical description of exactly how

19:30

God brought the universe into being. The means by which

19:35

He performed this supernatural act of creation we can only describe in theological terms by calling to the text what we say is the divine fiat.

19:52

I'm not talking here about an automobile, but we're talking about a command.

20:00

The word fiat means the divine imperative. How does

20:06

God create? He commands the universe to come into existence. He says, let there be, and there is.

20:14

Do you see why throughout the rest of Scripture again and again and again the call of God, the voice of God, the

20:22

Word of God is seen to be such a powerful force, not only that it can create and form, but it can transform, that it can bring something out of nothing and life out of death?

20:37

How does Jesus bring Lazarus from the tomb?

20:44

He doesn't use mouth -to -mouth resuscitation. What does

20:50

He do? He walks up to that tomb where the body of Lazarus is contained, where the body is rotting, where it stinks according to Scripture, and Jesus cries in a loud voice,

21:02

Lazarus, come forth, and this corpse stands up and bursts the bonds of His grave clothes and walks out alive, life out of death.

21:16

How? By command. Christ says to the turbulent waters that threatened to capsize the boat in which

21:27

He and His disciples were traveling, He says, peace, be still.

21:34

And the disciples say, what manner of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey

21:43

Him? He has the power of the

21:48

Creator to command, and by the sheer authority of His sovereign voice, things happen.

21:59

And so the author of Genesis is calling to our attention not only the generating power of God, but the authority of God.

22:13

Note the word authority. It's built upon the root, author.

22:27

You see, God has authority over that which He authors.

22:33

He brings the substance of the universe out of nothing by virtue of the divine fiat, the divine imperative.

22:42

Let there be light, and there was light.

22:50

Now, in classical Christian theology, we look at creation, and we say that creation takes place ex nihilo, ex nihilo, which means literally out of nothing, out of nothing.

23:16

But you say, wait a minute, just a minute ago, you chided the secularists for advocating a doctrine of the universe by which

23:25

He says that the universe comes into being out of nothing, and you said that that concept violates one of the most fundamental of all philosophical, not to mention scientific principles, ex nihilo, nihilfit, out of nothing, nothing come.

23:46

Sophisticated scientists in the eighteenth century said the universe came into being through spontaneous generation.

23:54

Even more sophisticated scientists today in many circles are suggesting that we can no longer hold to an idea of spontaneous generation, that the universe has come into being by chance, by chance.

24:08

And I asked them, what are the chances out of a universe coming into being by chance?

24:17

And the answer, of course, is not a chance. Chance cannot create anything.

24:26

In fact, not only can chance not create anything, chance cannot do anything.

24:31

Why not? Why can't chance do anything? Because it has no power.

24:38

It has no power because it has no being. Chance is nothing.

24:48

It's only a word that we use to describe mathematical possibilities, but it's not a being.

24:53

It's not a thing that has a capacity for action or power or for thought or anything else. It's nothing.

24:59

It is no thing. And yet, people today will say the whole universe has come into being out of nothing in the sense that the power for its existence comes from nowhere.

25:13

It's like the rabbit out of the hat except for one problem. There's not even a magician present to bring the rabbit out of the hat.

25:23

You see, the problem that modern man faces is a problem of causality. It's a problem of causality.

25:33

And the issue today is whether or not the universe caused itself from nothing without the presence of any sufficient or inefficient causal power or agency to bring it about, or whether or not there is an eternal, transcendent, self -existent, sufficient, and efficient power to do the job.

26:06

What the Bible says is this. Yes, there was a time when no material universe exists, but there was never a time that…

26:17

Well, let me put it this way. There was a time when nothing existed, but never a time when no one existed. God is not a thing, but He is a being, and God is eternal.

26:29

And when the Bible says or when the theology teaches that creation is ex nihilo, that means that God did not use some preexistent matter or substance out of which to bring the universe, but even that substance, that core, that matter, that energy, whatever it was, was dependent for its being upon the eternal being of God, and that God brought that substance out of nothing.

26:58

He is not nothing, but the universe did not exist until He created it.

27:08

The modern version says, out of nothing and from nothing and by nothing came everything.

27:17

No wonder, without an intelligent, eternal, rational

27:26

God, the destiny that modern man looks for without God is chaos, where the end of this planet will be like the beginning, wasting waste and void, emptiness and darkness on the face of…

27:56

But God said, let there be light, and the lights came on.