CREATION: THE BIBLICAL PURPOSE

“I believe in God the Father maker of heaven and earth.”

This statement from The Apostle’s Creed, though not an official confession, begins in the right place and states an absolute necessity.  I believe in the Creator.

For me, the single greatest requirement for understanding the Scriptures is attention to the context.  The context is single.  There is never duplicity in the context.  The second principle for me is the who, when, where.  This simple triad is ignored at the risk of a misguided understanding of both past and whole.  When this is applied to the account, the results are dramatic.

Who: Moses.  Why do I say this?  Because the Scripture says it.  Deut. 4:32, 45. 

³² “For ask now concerning the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether any great thing like this has happened, or anything like it has been heard.

⁴⁵ These are the testimonies, the statutes, and the judgments which Moses spoke to the children of Israel after they came out of Egypt

The when is determined by the author.  If Moses wrote Genesis, it was written somewhere around the 16^th century BC.

The who and when being satisfied, the where is less difficult.  It must have been written somewhere around the time Moses returned to Egypt and Israel’s exodus.  This is not the most important reason for another question has arisen—the why?.”  The ultimate value of the creation account is determined by this question.

There is an absolute certainty.  It was not written to be a scientific primer to determine the age of the earth.  However much this is debated and the dependence of Genesis 1 and 2 for evidence did not enter into the thinking of the author or the readers.  To start and end our arguments on this subject, the age of the earth, is to fail to see the true purpose of this account.  What it told those people then is just as important to us today.

There are three points made by a Modernist author.  They have some necessary information:

1.       “Every culture surrounding Israel had their origin myths, some impressively developed in epic proportions and covering most every aspect of the cosmos in great detail.  Yet they were from the standpoint of (Israel’s monotheism), hopeless polytheistic.

2.      “What very much existed…and what pressed on (Israel’s faith) from all sides and even from within were the problems of idolatry and syncretism.

3.      “For most people in the ancient world all the various regions of nature were divine.  Sun, moons and stars were gods.  There were sky gods and earth gods, gods of light and darkness, rivers and vegetation, animals and fertility…for ancient Israel’s faith a divinized nature posed a fundamental problem.”

The conclusion of this is summarized in the following statement. 

“In the light of this historical context it becomes clearer what Genesis 1 is undertaking and accomplishing:  a radical and sweeping affirmation of monotheism in opposition to polytheism, syncretism, and idolatry.”

“On each day of creation another set of idols is smashed.  These, O Israel are not your gods at all—not even the great superpowers.  They are the creations of that transcendent One who is not to be confused with any piece of furniture in the universe of creaturely habitation.  The creation is good, it is very good, but it is not God.

The Meaning Of Creation, Genesis And Modern Science, Conrad Hyers, John Knox Press, Atlanta, Ga., 1984, pgs 43, 44, 45.

A crucial look at Deut. 4:15-19 finds Moses concerned about the idolatrous opposition Israel was to encounter and their temptation to sympathize with it.

¹⁵ “Take careful heed to yourselves, for you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, ¹⁶ lest you act corruptly and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of any figure: the likeness of male or female, ¹⁷ the likeness of any animal that is on the earth or the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, ¹⁸ the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground or the likeness of any fish that is in the water beneath the earth. ¹⁹ And take heed, lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, you feel driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has given to all the peoples under the whole heaven as a heritage.”

In all the failure of Israel, beginning with the Golden Calf at Horeb and extending to the wickedness of Mannasah, idolatry was always at the root of the evil.  A sin that is so insidious, deceitful, and prevailing is a continuing danger.

In 2007 Darlene and I made a trip to Nagoya, Japan.  In our sight-seeing travel around the city, we were overwhelmed with the idolatry.  The people there worship stones, water, fish, buildings, idols and the unknown god who they had to waken with a gong.

It is just possible that we can begin debating the modern understanding of the ‘days” of Genesis 1 and forget that what they tell us is that all things are creaturely, they are good, even very good, but they are not God.

Paul’s alternative to the idolatry of the Athenians was the Creator God who had sovereign rights in His creation, and who could be known only by faith in the Gospel of the resurrected Lord.  Those final words in Acts 17:30-31 should supply us with the core principle of the everyday Gospel.

³⁰ Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, ³¹ because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

Col. 1:18 So that He Himself might come to have the preeminence in everything.”