In the beginning. The first thing Genesis teaches us is that there was a beginning. The universe is not eternal. The very fact that there is a beginning is something we should not take for granted. Many cultures throughout history have thought matter is eternal. Many believe time is cyclical and endless, not something that occurs in a straight line with a beginning point. Only those cultures that directly or indirectly base their views on Genesis, have this linear view of time and history. So even the very first thing the bible says marks it out as different from other explanations of the origin and nature of the world.

In the Beginning, God… Please note. The bible writers never argue for God’s existence. The fundamental question Genesis sets out to answer is not “Does God Exist?” but rather: “Who is God?” It is almost never fruitful to get into debates with atheists starting from the assumption that God might not exist. That assumption is never allowed by the Bible. “In the beginning, God…” But what kind of God? That is what Genesis is trying to establish.

God, unlike Creation, was always there. He is the eternal one. In the beginning, God created. He is distinct from, and independent of his creation. He is not like the gods of Hinduism or the Force in the Star Wars movies. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. That means, the whole of reality, both physical and spiritual. All spiritual forces in the heavenly realm, all creatures on earth, all things within space and time, are God’s creation.

When it says that the earth was formless and empty, it points to chaos and meaninglessness. At the beginning of God’s creation, he turned what was without form and without meaning into something with both order and purpose. It is the exact opposite of the process by which children take the order of a tidy lounge room and in six seconds turn it into complete chaos! The six days of creation describe how God took the chaotic emptiness and formed it into something that reflected his great power and love. There is a distinct pattern to the six days. Days one, two and three provide the form or environment for days four five and six, which fill it out.

On day one God creates Light and Dark. On Day four, he creates the agents of light for the earth, namely sun, moon, and stars.

On day two, God creates the sky and the sea. On day five, he creates things that live in the sky and the sea.

On day three, he creates the land and its vegetation. On day six he creates the creatures that populate the fertile land. Everything in this passage speaks of an orderly and purposeful creation by a sovereign God. We learn that God created the universe and everything in it, simply by telling it to happen. Unlike the gods in other creation stories, God’s power was so great that all he did was command it to happen, and it did. The New Testament tells us that God did this through Jesus. It calls Jesus the Word of God, partly because he is the one through whom God the Father spoke the universe into being.

And, creation was good in God’s sight. Not all religions believe that. Many see the most holy people as those who withdraw from the world, treat their bodies harshly, and deny themselves the normal pleasures of life. Genesis, by contrast, teaches that the created world is good and pleasing to God. Living as miserably as possible won’t get you any closer to God. He made us to enjoy his world.

The pinnacle of God’s creation comes in verse 26. ‘Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.’

As the image of God, human life is sacred. That is why for the Christian, abortion on demand and euthanasia are abhorrent. All human life, from womb to grave, is sanctified by this truth, that humans are created in the image of God. Human life belongs to him and has the purpose of glorifying him.

This sanctity of human life is also the basis for our belief that all humans are equal in the sight of God. There is no room within Christian faith for any kind of racism. As the book of Acts states so clearly, we are all one blood, all descended from the first man Adam.

Genesis also teaches the equality of the sexes before God. Both are called ‘man’ and together reflect the image of God. God is Father, Son and Spirit, and the relationship between man and woman reflects the unity in diversity of the nature of God himself. This is very different from the way Muslim or Hindu men view women.

From Genesis One and Two we learn that God, who is a personal God, made human beings to enjoy a special relationship with him. Humans are qualitatively different from animals. No animal is created in the image and likeness of God. Humanity is unique.

Many people today no longer believe this. The religious philosophy behind the Green movement denies the uniqueness of humanity. It is nature worship. People speak of the spirit of Gaia, which emanates from every living thing. Human beings are essentially the same as dolphins or trees. This philosophy even appears in children’s cartoons on TV.

But Genesis says, no, God is distinct from creation, and humankind is special. Man is blessed by God and given the command to fill the earth, to subdue it, and to rule over the animal kingdom. But what does this mean? Does it mean use up the earth’s resources any way we want? It doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say despoil the earth. We are to rule as the image of God. As God’s Governor General if you like. We must rule as he would rule. That means not with cruelty, selfishness, and wanton destruction, but with wisdom and kindness. God created order out of chaos. He made good environments for animals and birds and fish to live in. We do not have the right to turn those ordered ecosystems into chaos again just to make a quick buck. Human beings ought to treat the world with the same respect with which God created it. Is God pleased with battery hens or randomly turning forests into wasteland? Surely not. Revelation eighteen eleven says that Jesus is returning to “destroy those who destroy the earth.”

Genesis gives us reasons for disagreeing with the Greenie philosophy that makes the earth divine and God no more than an impersonal force emanating from every living thing. But Genesis also gives us reasons for not siding with those who would pillage the earth either. Human beings do not own the planet, but are given it to look after. It is not more Christian to side with those who want to destroy the trees than with those who want to worship them. Christianity is radically different from greenie philosophy. But it is also radically different from red necked capitalism with a chainsaw.

Now, there is one more day, the seventh day, and on the seventh day, God rested. That is, he stopped creating, and he just sat back and enjoyed it. And the Old Testament bases the idea of the Sabbath day on this. I don’t have time to talk further about this, but it deserves a sermon in itself.

Well, that’s what happened in Genesis One. But I want to ask two questions. Is it true? And does it work? Or, to put it another way, is it believable? And is it livable?

First, if it is true and believable, in what way? Is it literally true, or figuratively true? Is it history, poetry, allegory or myth?

What about the theory of evolution? I’m not going to dodge the issue, but nor am I going to spend a lot of time presenting scientific evidence for Creation versus Evolution. What I want to say about modern theories of origins is that they are theories, not fact. They are, by their very nature, unproven and, barring the invention of a time machine, unprovable.

Evolutionary scientists can sound oh so certain. Last week’s newspaper had this article about the 50^th anniversary of the discovery of DNA by Crick and Watson. Dr Watson makes this extraordinary claim: “By finding out his own chemical recipe for existence, Man at last destroyed the age-old suggestion that life came from some magical spirit or divine clockwork. The double helix answered that question with a definitive ‘No’,” says Dr Watson. “Man was able to trace his hominid history and then glimpse even farther into the evolutionary past, peeking into the protozoan soup whose inhabitants developed into all life on Earth today.”

Now of course his argument against the existence of a Creator God is full of huge leaps of logic. But he sounds so authoritative doesn’t he? It’s very intimidating. And so some Christians feel compelled to change the bible to fit the science. The Jesuit priest and scientist Teilhard de Chardin described evolution as something to which:

    “ ... all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow, and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.” And so he turns to theories of Theistic evolution. Make Genesis fit with evolutionary theory. Call it poetry or myth. But this doesn’t take Genesis seriously on its own terms. The early chapters of Genesis are not poetry. There are poetical accounts of creation, in Job and in the Psalms, and they are very different from Genesis One. No, Genesis intends us to believe that this is actually what happened when God created the heavens and the earth. It is not poetical fiction.

But nor is it entirely literal. Other Christians, in reaction to those who want to make Genesis poetic fiction, have resorted to very literalistic interpretations of the early chapters of Genesis which insist for example that a day must be a twenty four hour period of time, and come up with detailed scientific theories to explain it. This also fails to take Genesis on its own terms. Genesis is more sophisticated than being merely an early scientific textbook, the Creationists’ version of Darwin’s Origin of Species.

Genesis is not myth or poetry. Nor is it a scientific thesis. Science is a human, not a divine, activity. It is human beings finding out about and describing the world we live in. Genesis is not science, it is revelation. It is the Creator God telling us what he did when he made everything. I don't think the days of Genesis one are meant to be seen as a scientific account of six literal consecutive twenty four hour periods. And I think that, not because of any modern theory of evolution – I don’t believe in evolution - but because of the text itself.

First, in verse two, the Spirit is moving over the surface of the deep, that is, over the surface of the ocean. Yet the ocean is not created until day two. So the language of verse two is certainly not literal. It is using the imagery of the chaotic sea to communicate what it was like at the beginning of creation. Then there is the obvious problem that the things which God gives to man to mark time, the sun, the moon and the stars, are not created until day four, and man himself, who is the timekeeper, does not appear until the sixth day. A day takes its definition from the sun, and an hour from human beings who decide its length. What meaning can a literal day of 24 hours have before there is any sun or any timekeeping?

Then there is the fact that each day ends with “there was evening and there was morning, the nth day.” But the seventh day does not end. What is implied is that the end of the seventh day is still to come, and the New Testament confirms that interpretation. The seventh day is clearly not a literal day.

Then, finally, in chapter two verse four, we read, “this is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” Why the NIV translates it like that I don’t know, because what it literally says is, “this is the account of the heavens and the earth in THE DAY that they were created.” So Genesis one tells us that God created it all in six days, and Genesis two uses the same Hebrew word, yom, to sum up the whole process as one day.

That’s why I don’t think these six days are six normal 24 hour periods. The language is not meant to be taken literally – it’s not a scientific description. But nor do I believe that they are six long ages of time either. That’s not the point. What is the meaning of time anyway, before the timekeeper is created? What it does teach is that God created in an orderly way, according to a definite plan and pattern.

Now, did God create all things from nothing? No, look carefully at the text. Some things appear by process. It says the land produced vegetation, for example. But some things do come from nowhere. The birds in the sky just appear there, fully formed, at God’s divine command. And this is indeed what the so-called fossil record shows too. There are many questions which evolutionary theory cannot answer. One is ‘what good is half a wing?’ Which is more reasonable to assume? That by a process of random mutations over hundreds of thousands of years, some reptile-like creatures slowly changed their forelegs into wings and then learnt how to fly with them? That the same one in a billion random process just happened to occur again in mammals to produce bats and flying foxes? Or Genesis one twenty: ‘God said, “Let...birds fly across the expanse of the sky.”’

Genesis is not scientific writing, but it is true. Now, I wouldn’t say that Christians who believe in theistic evolution are not real Christians. But what I am saying is this - don’t feel that you have to believe in evolution. It is not undeniable or proven.

Let me put it this way. If you are a materialist like Dr Watson, you have to believe in the theory of evolution. If you deny God, you have no choice. But if you believe in the first verse of the bible, you do not need to believe in evolution. Don’t feel threatened by wise fools like Dr Watson who confidently declare that Evolution is fact. It isn’t, and you don’t have to commit intellectual suicide to believe in Creation. It is a credible alternative. It is believable. But increasingly, what people in our society want to know is not “is it reasonable so that I can believe it?” but rather, “does it work so that I can live it?”

This is my second question. Does it work? Is it liveable? The answer we must show to our post-modern world is, yes it does. Belief in Creation works because it provides a basis for living that honours the uniqueness of every living thing, and especially of human beings. It works because it places God, humanity and creation in the right relationships. Evolutionary theory; new age magic or eastern religion, cheapen and devalue human life by bringing God and Man down and elevating nature. If the evolutionary theory of Dr Watson is true, we live in a world without absolute truth, and without any meaning or morality apart from the subjective ideas of each individual. There is no right or wrong. If we really are just a collection of atoms randomly thrown together for a few years before we dissolve again, and humanity is no more than a statistical aberration in a blind uncaring universe: How can you build a functioning society on that? The Russians tried it for seventy years. Didn’t work. New Age beliefs just take evolution and add a dash of spirituality. They are totally self-centred and individualistic. Is it any wonder that relationships in our society are deteriorating at the rate they are?

But Christians live with the Maker’s instruction manual on how to have good relationships, with Him, with each other, and with creation. The Christian worldview leads to a society which values each human life, which says that there are absolutes of right and wrong, and that there is order and purpose and meaning to be found in life.

Jesus is the real key to understanding Genesis. He is the true image of God, and it is his image that is being restored in us. He is the one who rules over us, and rules for us, for he is both God and Man. So don’t worship the trees, or the chainsaws. Worship him, and you will find the true meaning and purpose that God intended for his Creation.