A Very Good Place to Start
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness,
thereof, the world, and they that dwell therein.
Psalm 24:1
So where does one begin a blog that centers upon our God and King? Let us begin as songwriters Oscar and Hammerstein did in their song D0-Re-Mi - "Let's start at the very beginning A very good place to start". "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1). Thus begins the revelation of God’s grand purpose in summary form. His will and self-revelation commence, that is, it is revealed. For His will, His purposes existed before time; prior to the beginning of time. Why? The only satisfactory answer: it was His will, choice, purpose; “there is no searching of his understanding” (Isaiah 40:28). Everything that happens from this point remains rooted in this pattern of His sovereign royal decisions and not upon what makes sense to man. “Learn then this basic truth, that the Creator is absolute Sovereign, executing His own will, performing His own pleasure, and considering nought but His own glory.”[i]
Since nothing or no one existed in this “beginning” before this point, creation has nothing to do with what we wanted, did, or influenced. Creation was an entirely independent Sovereign act that called all into being. “For he commanded, and they were created” (Psalm 148:5), “In the great expanse of eternity which stretches behind Gen 1:1 the universe was unborn, and creation existed only in the mind of the great Creator. In His sovereign majesty God dwelt all alone”.[ii] The lesson here is clear from the onset; God calls all into being, so be it. To man (one of His choices), it all seems to have come out of nowhere when reading of this Creation point. There was not; then there was. Regardless; He chose to reveal Himself, when to reveal Himself and how to reveal Himself. It is all to His glory. “All creation is for the glory of God-even you and me. We have a great need to know and glorify this God to fulfill our purpose for being.”[iii] God: what did He do? He created the heaven and the earth. When did He do it? He did it in the beginning.
Everything begins with God. “Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10). In taking God out of the equation, we would read, “In the beginning the heaven and the earth.” There is no beginning and no heaven or earth without God. To assert such dethrones our Sovereign Creator God and places a pre-existing creation before or in place of God; a landscape for Him to come along and populate. False presuppositions are made of a pre-beginning world referred to as gap theories. However, the text does not at all imply such. He is the King of all. He was king before in the beginning and will remain, King, henceforth forever. As we see throughout Genesis, our God, our Sovereign King, is the creator of all that is seen and unseen. He rules in His Sovereignty and judges in Sovereignty according to His grand purpose.
Here in its revealing “beginning” of the earth and the heaven, His eternal purposes and will begin ex nihilo, out of nothing. “The cosmos did not arise from a chaos, but from Nothing…. Nothing, however, cannot come from nothing, unless there was a miracle, and it is this miracle of creation which is set forth here.”[iv]“By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses” (Psalm 33:6,7). There remain very few glimpses into the landscape of the Throne Room prior to the “in the beginning”. That is, the movements/actions of our God. We know that He had a plan and a purpose-made clear throughout Holy Writ. This plan, this purpose will be seen clearly throughout the fifty chapters of this book of beginnings.
There is but one author of the Scripture, God Himself (All Scripture is given by inspiration of God (2 Tim 3:16). There are writers He employs, Moses here, and the apostle of renown, Paul, among others elsewhere. This is not mere epic nor poetry. This lesson will be seen throughout Holy Writ, not merely in Authoring and Writing but in all revealed. “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6). God uses the natural to fulfill His purposes. God was silent, then chose to speak. Here we are not told why? Through the Apostle Paul, He goes beyond time, beyond “in the beginning,” to reveal His purpose. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (Ephesians 1:3,4).
To be continued...
"...oh, to have Christ in the Heart, the Holy Ghost in the soul and glory in prospect..." (C.H.S)
[i] A.W. Pink, Studies in the Scriptures; Volume Two (Lafayette, Indiana: Sovereign Grace Publishers, Inc, 2004), 255
[ii] A,W, Pink, Studies in the Scriptures; Volume Two (Lafayette, Indiana: Sovereign Grace Publishers, Inc, 2004), 256
[iii] Steven J. Lawson, Show Me Your Glory: Understanding the Majestic Splendor of God (Sanford, Fl: Ligonier Ministries, 2020) 20
[iv] Edward J. Young, Studies in Genesis One (Quoting Rabast from Die Genesis, 1951, pp. 15-290) (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: P&R Publishing), 16