Presence, Revelation, Goodness | Genesis 1:1-25 (Copy)
Introduction
As we have been looking at Genesis chapter one and God’s Plan for us living our life here in this “In Between” moment, we have noticed that the beginning is all about God! And specifically, how God is giving himself to us. Genesis 1:1–2 is a great summary of what we have seen so far and where we are going today.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
(Genesis 1:1–2 ESV)
God is where the story starts, he is the main character in this story, and he is wanting us to see and know HIM more. That is all wonderful news for us! We don’t have to wonder how we got here, we don’t have to wonder why we are here, we don’t even have to wonder who created us to be here on this planet. God himself wants us to know all about who he is, what he is doing, and how we are to relate to him and others. We find in the Bible THE answer to life’s greatest question—a question that many people are still hunting for and not finding an answer for anywhere else.
Last week we talked about how God is creating everything out of nothing. God, with unlimited power coupled with a desire to create beauty in love, can do whatever he wants. From planets and stars to blades of grass and atomic forces, God has thought it all and spoke it into being. We call this God’s omnipotence—his all-powerfulness. Our God is not a God who is limited in any way, which means he can do what he wants for his purposes AND he can help us in a myriad of ways that we may never imagine. We see across the pages of Scripture how God defies our ways of thinking and loves us through his ability to create and do however he desires.
God’s omnipotence is an incredible image to behold! We can scarcely imagine what it would be like to be able to do whatever we want. Sometimes we try to act as though we too can do whatever we like…but that rarely ends well. To take a simple example, how many of you have ever tried to act as though you, unlike everyone else, don’t need regular sleep and rest? (Probably every single adult in this room!) That usually doesn’t end well!
When I was in seminary and doing my MDiv degree, I regularly ran into this problem. My program was 120 credit degree, basically another four-year degree to get a masters. We had five kids, I was still running our software company while going to school, and usually I was just trying to make it to the weekend so I could grab a little bit of rest. And by our second year of school Katie had noticed a pattern. As soon as a school break would come like Thanksgiving or Christmas or a semester break or summer, EVERY SINGLE TIME I would end up curled up in bed, sick, as my body finally gave out.
It became a running joke and bet between the two of us if it would happen each break. I would be driving home from school on the last day of a semester and call Katie and say, “Well, I’m done. Let’s see how long it takes.” And sure enough, every time, I would be sick within a couple of days.
I wasn’t unique. I couldn’t keep up my pace any longer than a semester without my body wearing out. And that is just considering sleep! We have a God who never needs to sleep AND who is sustaining the breath and bodies of billions of people every day. A God who hears each and every prayer. A God who knows where the storehouses of snow and rain are kept, and a God who knows where every creature of the deep sleeps. We are so different from our God in this way.
There is a fancy word for this. We call this God’s characteristic of transcendence, meaning he is other than us, above us, different than us. One definition I read recently said this:
Transcendence: God’s transcendence means God is entirely distinct from and far above creation, existing in a way that is incomprehensible to human minds and beyond the limits of space, time, and matter. This attribute signifies God’s sovereignty, holiness, and utter otherness as the glorious Creator, who is separate from and not dependent on anything He made. Understanding God’s transcendence fosters reverence and awe for the Creator, differentiating Him from all other beings and things
I think that is all true. God is a whole different category than us, and I am so thankful that God is this way. But can you imagine if that is all we knew about God? That we knew God was all powerful, could do whatever he wants, that he has made our world and us, but knew nothing else about him? That could be a scary God to know. What if he changes his mind, are we all going to just go “poof” and all of us and our whole world will be gone tomorrow? What if he decides he just doesn’t like me? What might he do to me? I have to assume there might be worse things than just going “poof”!
God without characteristics that were transcendent would not really be God. If you and I think we will ever fully know God, we are trying to be God ourselves. Part of what makes him God are those characteristics that are so different from us, abilities that let God do so much more than we can ever do, things about him we may never totally understand. What drives our worship again and again is knowing that God is able in all these ways that we are not. God is holy, sovereign, glorious, and completely satisfied within himself. He does not need anything or anyone. He can do all things. But without knowing more about him, we would likely live in perpetual fear. Only knowing that someone is all powerful and completely unbound from the rules you and I live under would only leave us outside and away from relationship with God. And that is not much of a relationship.
But that is not ALL that we see here in Genesis chapter one. From the very beginning God is revealing that he is both very different from us and much more than we could ever imagine or ever be like, but he is also showing that he wants to be close to us. He wants to have a relationship with us.
That idea right there—that there are some people unlike you, some people you don’t really know versus people who are close to you, people you know even if they are very different from you—is a great definition for a relationship, a friendship. All of us want good friends and close relationships. There is not a person who doesn’t want to feel close to others even if some of us seem to have the appetite for 1000 connections and some only have the appetite and ability for 2 or 3 connections. We all still want connections. We all want friendship.
So, what do we do in our culture? We create Facebook friends and follow people on Instagram. We snoop on what people do and say online. And because those posts are incredibly curated and usually only show all of us at our best moments and after fourteen pictures covered with filters with the perfect pose and smile, the people on the screen seem very different from us. Very other. As though they live lives we could never live and are able to do things we could never do. We create our own little world of make-believe transcendence. Where we try to be better and different than everyone else. But that isn’t what we really need. What we really need are friends close to us. People we can really know and who know us. People who want the best for us.
That idea of friendship doesn’t come from just anywhere. As we look at Genesis chapter one we see another picture of God starting even here, right at the very beginning. God is not just different, not just “transcendent,” but he is also wanting to be close to us. He wants us to truly know him. He wants us to know not just his otherness, but how he is for us, how he is with us, and how he wants our good. God truly wants to have a relationship with us. There is another big word for this idea of God’s closeness—it is called God’s “immanence.”
Immanence: God's immanence is the concept of God's active presence and intimate connection within creation, rather than being distant or separate from it. It means that God is ever-present, close to humanity and the universe, and involved in all things, though still distinct from the material world.
Said in an oversimplified way, God chooses to be our friend. Some people cringe at the idea of God as our friend because it has been misused. Some people use it to make God accessible and ignore many of the other things Scripture says about him. God reveals many ways he relates to us throughout Scripture, and we don’t want to miss any of those—God our king, God our Lord, God our Father, God our Provider, God our Savior. Our relationship with God is more than friendship, but it isn’t less than friendship. God chooses to truly let us know him, to relate intimately with us, and to care for us in good ways. In fact, what we see as we continue to look at this same section of Genesis chapter one today is that not only is God omnipotent and transcendent, but he wants to make sure we see and know that:
God is Present with Us
God Reveals Himself to Us
God is for Our Good
God is close to us. He chooses a relationship with us. He is our friend.
The Presence of God
Look again at Genesis 1:1–2. Right there, at the beginning of creation, God was intimately involved:
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
(Genesis 1:1–2 ESV)
The very Spirit of God is there, hovering over the waters. God is intimately involved in every creative act. God does not send out legions of angels to build everything however they want. He does not assign project managers or make a committee to debate the best way to construct a mountain. (Can you imagine who odd this world would be if it was setup over a zoom meeting or a board?!) No, God is here, over this world and universe, personally creating. And we see that at each step along the way. Every section of Genesis one starts not with a statement about the day, not about what was going to be created, but each one begins with:
“And God…” (Genesis 1:1, 6, 9, 11, 14, 16, 20, 24)
God does not want us to miss that HE is there at every step along the way. He is present and he is active.
This is the very beginning of a theme that runs throughout all of Scripture—the theme that God directly wants to engage with is people and his creation. God comes close to us. And he comes close to us even physically.
The first images that might pop into your head when you think about God manifesting himself physically may be the images we have of God when we go to Exodus. Images of Moses before the burning bush. Images of God leading Israel out of Egypt like in Exodus 13:21:
“And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.”
(Exodus 13:21 ESV)
Or even the images of God manifesting himself on Mount Sinai:
“On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the LORD had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.”
(Exodus 19:16–18 ESV)
We have similar images as the presence of God rests on the tabernacle and the temple, and the very presence of God is said to fill the Holy of Holies. But these images are meant to help us think of the grandeur of God and his otherness. His transcendence. He is not very approachable in these pictures. No one was allowed to go up on the mountain with Moses on threat of death (Ex 19:10-12). If you were unholy and still entered the Holy of Holies, you died (Ex 28:35). These images are all reminding us of the God who is different from us. Set apart. Other. Transcendent.
Yet there is another way that we see God reveal himself to us. He reveals himself many different times throughout Scripture, even in the Old Testament, as a God who comes intimately to his people and cares for them. Even here in the beginning of Scripture in Genesis chapter one we see God’s general closeness to his creation AND our God who comes and is with his people.
In Genesis chapters two and three we see God talk to the man and share with him. He brings the animals before him so he can name them and look for a partner. Importantly, we see God is very close to his people, man and woman—he walks with them!
“And they (the man and woman) heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,”
(Genesis 3:8 ESV)
This is a very personal God! So personal, that he takes on form that can walk with them and comes to visit them in the garden. None of us would think twice if we saw this in the New Testament because we would believe it was Jesus. Yet even here, most scholars would say when we see God coming in these ways—close and very present with his people, so much so that they see him and perceive him as a man—that these are moments where Christ, prior to his incarnation, has chosen to come to his people and care for them. These are called “Christophanies,” or appearances of Christ. These are beautiful images where we not only see this very “other” God, but we also see his tenderness, his closeness, his friendship.
This is our God who shows up personally and speaks tenderly to Hagar as she has been sent out by Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 16). This is our God who physically shows up and talks with Abraham as he is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and brings Abraham into his thoughts and listens to Abraham’s pleas (Genesis 18). This is the “Angel of Lord” who shows up on Moriah and stops Abraham from sacrificing Isaac (Genesis 22). This is our God who wrestles with Jacob (Genesis 32). We have the “commander of the Lord’s Army” who comes to Joshua at Jericho in Joshua 5:13-15. We have the fourth man dancing with Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:24–25).
God has always been present with his people in this way, and that is exactly what we see when Jesus comes to us:
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
(Philippians 2:5–8 ESV)
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
(John 1:14 ESV)
Our God has come in the flesh for all people to see, that all might know him and believe in him. That is incredible! The same God who said to Moses and Israel in Exodus 33:
“My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.””
(Exodus 33:14 ESV)
Is the same God who says to his disciples:
And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.””
(Matthew 28:20 ESV)
God is Present with Us
And all of this wasn’t just true for the Israelites and God’s people in the Old Testament. It wasn’t only true for his disciples who walked with him or the early church recorded in the New Testament. This is true today for me and you. God is with us. He is present with us. Through faith and through his Holy Spirit, you and I have the very personal God in us and in relationship with us even today! When we gather, God’s very Spirit is with us and he is moving amongst us—even now! When we pray we are able to talk to a friend!
God is the best friend who wants to be with you all the time. He went to great lengths—death on the cross—that you and I might be back in relationship with him. Walking with him again as Adam and Eve walked with him in the garden. God is with us.
The Revelation of God
But there is even more! Like a good friend, God is not just showing us he is with us, but he is also revealing himself to us. God brings us into his thought all along the way. We only know everything shared with us in Scripture because God has done something else amazing on top of simple being with us: God reveals himself to us and reveals to us what he is doing.
“And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”
(Genesis 1:3–5 ESV)
At every point in the creation account God chooses to tell us what he is doing. God wants to make stars, and he tells us about it. God wants to make creatures in the sea, and he tells us about it. And God tells us how he feels about it once he has created it. We get to see God’s very words, his thoughts, and his evaluation about his creation. That is incredible! God has rolled back the curtain and is letting us get to know him! He wants to reveal himself to us!
That is not how many other religions understand their god. In many other stories, like the Greek and Roman stories of the gods of Mount Olympus, the gods are aloof, far away. People can only dream of what it would be like to ascend the holy hill and get to see and know the gods in any real way. In Hinduism a Brahman has to go through mediation that seeks spiritual insights. Similarly, in Buddhism it was the Buddha who meditated enough to reach enlightenment and find the secrets to the universe. It is not so in Christianity. We do not need to go on a spiritual quest nor do we need to meditate and hope that we, in our own power, can discover the secrets of this universe or find God. Rather, we find from the very beginning of Scripture that God has given himself to us!
For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
(Deuteronomy 30:11–14 ESV)
God gives us himself and his very desires from the first pages of Scripture. And he chooses to give us the clearest revelation of himself by being the God-Man, God forever enjoined to humanity. He comes to us through a virgin birth, in Nazareth, as a carpenter’s son. God reveals himself to us most clearly in Jesus!
“He [Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”
(Hebrews 1:3 ESV)
“Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.”
(John 14:9–11 ESV)
Stop and think for a moment about what that means for us in this in-between moment. From the very beginning God wants us to know he is there and he is with us. And from the very beginning, God wants us to know ABOUT himself—his desires, his actions, and his goals. Our God is not far from you and I but intimately involved not only in this world but also in our lives, no less than he was in every moment of creation.
What starts in Genesis 1 begins to lay the foundation for all of Scripture where our God has chosen to speak his words to us that we might know him and know his plans. That is why, when Jesus comes in the flesh, he is called THE Word of God in John 1:1 because he is the embodiment of our knowing God and God’s revealing of himself to us. We see God and his desires most clearly as Jesus steps down from heaven, enjoins himself to humanity, and lives and dies for us. Scripture is so precious not because it is an instruction manual, but because it is GOD revealing himself to us.
God is For Our Good
And then, as a third point, we notice that God is not only revealing himself to us, but he is also telling us the quality of what he is doing. We see that God is making good things. It isn’t just about what he makes, but their quality: they are good! We talked about this previously. In Genesis 1:1–25, repeatedly we read:
And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:10b, 12b, 18b, 21b, 25b)
Unlike many other religion creation stories, our God was not battling with other gods to make everything we see and know. Creation isn’t being done to thwart others or hurt them. God simply wants to make something good, and he does. He makes it and then declares it is good. And with us, people, we see that God is ultimately for our good. He makes us—men and women—and declares that VERY GOOD!
Friends, the pain, the hurt, the suffering, the difficulties we see in the world are not from God. God only made things good and only desires good for us. As James says:
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”
(James 1:17–18 ESV)
In fact, God is graciously working with us, in us, and through us that he might demonstrate that he is only good and only wants good for us. As Paul says in Romans 8:28:
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
(Romans 8:28 ESV)
Application
God is Present with Us
God Reveals Himself to Us
God is for Our Good
There is much more to say about each of these since this is only the introduction to these themes. We see in Genesis chapter one that God is both very different from us and far from us, but also very close to us and creating relationship with us. God is transcendent: different, above, more than, completely other. AND he is immanent: close, intimate, desiring relationship, our friend.
From the very beginning God is doing everything he can to help us see that the Bible, his very words to us, are not meant to be an instruction manual. They are a love letter. Our Bible is God pouring out his heart and desires to us—his very self—through the pages of time an history. Through many different men and women we get to see how close our God is, how we CAN know about this extremely ‘other’ God, and we see again and again that our God is good and FOR our good! That is amazing!
For some of us this morning our main application might be to repent of trying to see and relate to God like a genie in a bottle that will give us our wishes if we just ask rightly. Or seeing his word as simply an instruction book. Instead, we should want see him as a beloved friend who wants us to know him and see his great love for us. I don’t know about you, but I often need to remember that I don’t come to Scripture to find a solution, but to fall in love and see the love that my God has for me.
God and his presence, his revelation of himself, and his goodness for us—his relationship with us—is everywhere in the Bible. Accounts about God’s many commandments? A chance to see what a holy God would do in our shoes and how he would want us to love one another and love him, even today. Accounts about people wandering in the desert? A chance to see the patience of God and his steadfast love that he has even for you as you wander in your struggles. Genealogies—son of so and so begat son of so and so who begat the son of so and so? A chance to see how across time and people who often didn’t love God back, God still moved history forward and enacted his plan that you and I might find repentance, faith, and true LIFE in Jesus! That we might truly see and know our God!
“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”
(Psalm 34:8 ESV)
For some of us this morning, it is hard to believe that this is who our God really is. God may seem very other to you and very far away. God is not daunted by that feeling! Come, read his word, pray to him, find in faith through the Holy Spirit that God is close to you. Read how again and again he is doing good to his people and he truly only wants good for you. Come and know God and his very good love.
And there is often another level of application for us. When we look at who our God is and learn to Love God, it often is meant to change us and help us to Love Others as well. We are given each other that we might image God to one another as we will see in some of our next sermons. So here is the question: If this is how God wants us to see and know him more even from the beginning of Genesis, that:
God is Present with Us
God Reveals Himself to Us
God is for Our Good
could it also be that this is how we are to relate with one another as well?
Be Present with One Another
Reveal Yourself to Each Other
Be for Each Other’s Good
I think many of us walk through this life feeling very alone. We already skipped ahead to Genesis 2 and talked about how God does not want us to be alone. Yet that is often how we feel. Even here in church, in our community—Main Street Church—people can feel as though they don’t know one another. Could it be that we have missed that exactly how God brings himself into relationship us is exactly how we are to bring ourselves into relationship with one another?
Are you choosing to be present with one another? We have many amazing ways to connect with each other, starting right here on Sunday mornings but going on throughout the week in Gospel Communities, small groups, men’s and women’s groups, classes, and many moments where people simply go on a walk together and sit down for coffee. Are you finding ways to be present with others? Are you choosing to reveal yourself to each other in those moments? Do you ever choose to share your real assessment of your life and your very real needs, how you feel today, and how you feel many other days?
I think what we would find if we really tried to be in relationship with one another this way is that we really are for one another’s good! I really want all of us to find close relationship with God and others, and I believe everyone in this room wants that as well.
Response
I think one of the best ways we could honor our God who reveals himself to us in a response today is not only to pray, ponder, and engage where we may struggle to believe that this is God’s true character and disposition towards us, but to do it together. To take that next step, where knowing and loving our God more should lead us to knowing and loving each other better.
Last week we prayed “corporately,” meaning we prayed out loud so everyone around us could hear our individual prayers to God that they may be edified by them. This week, I’m going to ask us to do something that may be even more scary for some of you. I am going to ask you to turn and find others to pray with together this morning. Families with singles, couples with children not your children, I am asking us this morning to make sure that no one in here is sitting alone but rather we circle up for the next five minutes or so and pray for one another. Be present with each other. Reveal yourself to one another—whatever God is putting on your heart this morning.
Perhaps your prayers will be about how you struggle to believe God is close to you, that God is revealing himself to you, or that God is good. Or perhaps you are rejoicing in seeing how God is this way and want rejoice with each other. Be for one another this morning. Share in this moment where you may need help believing that, where that is difficult. Maybe even just pray for each other in general so that we would see this aspect of God more clearly. In this way we can remember that this is who our God is for us: that he is present with us, he is revealing himself to us, and he is for our good. We get to help image this to one another.
I’m going to ask the worship team to come up I will pray with you. And after we finish, we will start playing quietly as a sign to begin to wrap up your prayers and then we will sing a song of response together.
If you are here this morning and you are not sure where you are at in your relationship with God, this may sound like the oddest thing ever. That is okay. What if you chose to share something about your life—even the fact that you aren’t sure where you stand with God—and find that someone else may truly want to know you? They would want to hear you and your life? And you might see that they want good for you. Would that be so bad?
Let’s take a moment to pray about this God who close to us and practice our closeness with one another as well.
Prayer
Communion
Benediction
“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him!”
(Psalm 34:8 ESV)
