INTRODUCTION

The beginning point of all this is found in the very first sentence in the Bible. Once we accept this and accept that in the very beginning God was pre-existent and is responsible for all things that exist, we can begin to meaningfully talk about what the creative work of God implies. 

The question of origins has historically been controversial and continues to be so with multiple battle-lines some clearly drawn while others are quite muddled. This is so because the issues of what is called cosmology and the origins of life have been argued over, wrestled over and discussed in every generation and in practically every part of the world.  Everyone who has thought seriously about life or death and other fundamental issues has struggled with the issues raised by the very first sentence in the Bible.  This is not a unique area of discussion for Christians and the market place for the discussion of origins have many and varied participants. 

When we say we accept Genesis 1:1 as truth we are moving well beyond arguments that we have about what kind of songs we sing, how we treat each other, how we pray, what type of church organizations is best, or those kinds of issues.  If that was all that Christians were involved in the world would care little about our doctrines and discussions. 

But because Genesis 1 introduces and make certain clear statements about order and chaos, good and evil, the nature of the body and spirit, the reasons there is gender, what the environment is and our responsibility for it, the origins and nature of marriage, the hope of mankind that there is a power that will make things right eventually, the origin of murder, the beginnings of ethnic and language divisions, in fact all the fundamental issues that confront man and society, its acceptance means we are plunging directly into a battleground.

The arguments and disagreements over these issues are not confined to Christians and the ‘world’.  There are intense debates between all kinds of Christians who claim to accept that the Bible is true and that it very accurate reveals the facts about creation and the nature of the cosmos.  Many of these Christians are so strident in supporting their particular schools of thought that they hurl anathemas at each other, loudly proclaiming that they find it incredible that anyone can disagree with their point of view. This can be seen in a striking way in the arguments between what is called the ‘young earth’ school and the ‘old earth’ school.

THE DIFFERENT AND OPPOSING CAMPS IN CHRISTIANITY

The young earth school holds passionately that once you rightly interpret the Bible, you will come to the truth that creation was recent and any suggestion that the universe is old is ridiculous.  Though there are disagreements among this school, they all generally hold in high regard a writer called Archbishop Usher who wrote in the 17th-century (his notation was placed in the early edition of the King James Bible) that the earth was created in the year 4000 B.C. Some more modern supporters of this school however argue for a creation date between 10,000 and 20,000 B.C. 

They hold strongly that God created the earth and the universe with the appearance of a greater age than they actually are.  In support of their position they argue for example, that when Adam was created he was not a baby, but was created an adult.  If you met him two minutes after God created him you would never know he was only two minutes old.  Similarly, if you came on the scene shortly after the earth’s creation, you would never have been able to guess its infant age. 

But there are other Bible believing Christians who would agree just as passionately with secular scientists that the earth and the universe is about eighteen billion years old and that this ‘old earth’ school of thought fits in perfectly with what the Bible says about the earth. 

People in the different camps argue strongly that the other camp is wrong and their position is dangerous.  The young earth school will tell you that the people who believe in an old age for the earth is undermining anyone who wants to trust the Bible in its accurate portrayal of creation. 

The old earth school argues that the young earth school is being just silly and is trying their best to deny the evidence before their eyes.  After all they say, Adam would need time to investigate the nature of the animals God had created and give all of them names.  Some time would have to elapse before he would feel lonely which would prompt God to create Eve.  So they argue that it is very likely that the days mentioned in chapter 1 were not really literally twenty four hours in length as might appear.  Much longer time had elapsed in the creation process. 

Then of course there are those who hold what is called the “gap theory”, which teach that verse one really speaks to God creating a heaven and earth about the same as it is today, but then Lucifer and his angels rebelled.  Lucifer and his demons lost the fight and were cast out of Heaven.  Billions of years went by during which time there was chaos on earth.  During this war the earth and universe was wrecked. Genesis two then begins to tell us about God re-creating things after the rebellion of the angels. 

Just bear in mind that before one jumps to the conclusion that some significant knowledge of these disagreements and different theories are unimportant for our biblical witness and testimony, that these are the things that preoccupy the people in the world. We need to be reasonably well acquainted with these ideas, so that we can properly witness to those inside and those outside the church and point them in the right direction. 

It is important however, that even without examining all these arguments among Christians who profess to believe in the Bible, we must come to accept by faith the statement of Genesis 1:1. 

Genesis is an extremely controversial book among Christians, as well as between Christians and people of other faiths and between Christians and secular thinkers.  Chapter one starts the ball rolling. The chapter is about the foundations of our faith and clearly very important and deserving diligent and carefully study.   

Importantly, before we consider Genesis, we should briefly look at the question of the reliability of Scripture, whether or not the documents of the Bible are to be trusted.

ATTACKS ON GENESIS AND SCRIPTURE FROM THE OUTSIDE

Many have undermined the authority of the Bible including the book of Genesis, by saying that it has been cut and pasted together by different editors, who were trying ingeniously to give a particular slant to the history of Israel and in doing so created a book which told about their God.  They consider that Moses was not the writer of the first five books of the Bible. 

Genesis has been divided up and dissected into fragments based on the theory of separate documents. Some note the fact that the first twenty-four verses of Genesis used the word Elohim for God, while subsequent verses used the name Jehovah God.  Obviously to these dissectors, this confirms that there must be different writers.  However, because some verses contain both names for God, those holding these views introduced the idea that there was an editor, otherwise called a “redactor”. These persons or persons had the job of putting things together.  After multiple redactors were introduced, the academics introduced the additional idea that further documents accepted as Scripture were written by some priestly sources, all this happening over a thousand years after Moses. 

So to complicate matters, we have this “Documentary Hypothesis” based on the unrealistic premise and presumption that a single author would not be likely to use more than one name to designate God.  The nature of scholarship is such that though one of the great proponents of that theory admitted that this dissection produced “an agglomeration of the alteration of fragments”, the recognition of the numerous defects in the hypothesis made no difference. 

The interesting thing though is that archaeology and other areas of knowledge have consistently been proving the accuracy of many things in the Scriptures.  So Christians need not worry that these theorists have successfully proved that our Scriptures are inaccurate. 

It should be noted also that many of the ideas used to attack Christianity and which actually damage credibility among many people have been proved to be wrong and are no longer tenable. At the end of the last century and early in this century there was the dominant idea that the universe has always existed as it is today and that the laws of physics had never been different.  It was believed that the scientific discoveries being made proved that Scriptures were not correct. The new knowledge held that mankind could therefore understand the universe and its workings.  But as time went on many physicists and cosmologists have become somewhat less arrogant.  Things are found to be much more complicated. 

Then there was the rather large intellectual problem that had to be faced when one holds that the universe just suddenly burst into being.  One moment it was not there and the next moment it was.  Some scientists pointed out that the data we do have will not allow for that kind of theory.  Nor would it allow for the idea of the universe oscillating between collapsing and exploding. Constantly repeating the theories would not provide a solution for the problem.   

Clearly then many of these old ideas used to attack the Scriptures are losing their clout.   

When we turn to look at the theories of the origin of life and the ridicule put on those who disagreed with any suggestion that life could emerge without any intervention from some intelligent designer, we find that recently many scientists, even those that do not accept the Genesis creation accounts, are increasingly vocal that the Darwinian evolution cannot account for the beginning of life and its complexity.  Many argue that when one looks at “good” science, which includes all observations, it is clear that Darwinism cannot work and is in fact bad science.   

It is also important for Christians to be made aware that there has been much ado about whether or not much of the material in the book of Genesis was lifted from the ancient Babylonian and Mesopotamian epics, instead of regarding the accounts in these pagan sources as being corrupted accounts of commonly preserved knowledge of events that occurred in Earth's pre-Flood history.

Many people in the world have and still hold this idea.    

Undoubtedly when we go out witnessing we will have to confront these people, so it is a good idea to be acquainted with what they are saying.

 These pagan accounts which seem to resemble Genesis in some side way really tell us about many gods (are polytheistic), with the gods being ethically capricious and very immoral. 

On the other hand the Genesis account stresses one God ( is monotheistic), and stresses that this God, in contrast to the pagan gods, is ethically moral.

WAS GENESIS COPIED FROM THE PAGANS

Let us illustrate by briefly comparing the Genesis account with the Babylonian Creation Tablets and the creation sequence. 

 BIBLE                                           BABYLONIAN CREATION TABLETS

1.Light made by God                 1. The Universe begins with the principal gods who

                                                       represent forces of nature. It tells about the Birth of the

                                                       gods who procreate other gods, their rebellion, and

                                                       threatened destruction.  The procreated gods are

                                                        threatened with destruction because of their loud parties.

2. Atmosphere, water created.  2.  Tiamat, mother of these gods creates monsters to eat

                                                        up these misbehaving gods.  She prepares for battle.

3.  Land, vegetation created.     3.  The gods summoned. Wail bitterly at their

                                                        threatened destruction.

4.  Sun and moon created.           4.   Marduk the strongest of procreated gods promoted to

                                                           rank of “god”.  He receives weapons for fight.  He

                                                           defeats Tiamat, splits her in half like a fish.  Forms

                                                           Heaven and Earth from her two halves.  Mankind is

                                                           created from the blood of Kingu, captured leader of

                                                           rebel group who made Tiamat rebel.  His arteries are

                                                           severed and man created from his blood to work                                                                                                           

                                                           as slaves for the lazy lower gods and feed the

                                                           Babylonian pantheon of 600 gods. Marduk builds

                                                           Babylon where all the gods assemble.

Believe it or not, some Bible scholars believed strongly and some still do, that the Genesis account of creation and the Babylonian are basically the same, with Genesis simply a modification from these tablets. Other Bible scholars have done much work to disprove this nonsensical theory and we should be aware of these discussions.

So when we look at the world and its intellectual positions, we notice that one by one many of these views are crumbling.  People are discovering that the world is infinitely more complicated than they imagined and that their theories are full of holes.  The so-called “assured results of modern scholarship” has steadily been shown to be inadequate and in some cases enormously foolish. The history of scientific discoveries teaches us that we don't know what we will know tomorrow.  Observations made by the scientists will certainly undergo change. This forces many to speak a little bit more softly when rejecting the Genesis account of creation.

So we need not fear when we have to defend Scripture, the Bible has proved itself.  The prophetic word has never been contradicted successfully.  Everything is moving in the way that God has revealed.  So despite the attacks on Genesis and the disagreements among Christians, we can rest assured that Genesis 1 has much to teach us, beginning with the pre-existence of God. 

We will now consider:

-The pre-existence of God

-The loving nature of our Creator

-God's immensely deep concern for us

-How God brought order out of chaos or how He is the God of overcoming chaos

-How God made a place for his children

-How God prepared for his greatest creation

-The testimony of creation

-How we should look at the created things properly and not make wrong choices about them

-What it means for God to be in charge

-How we should live with God's eternal priorities.

-Are we in our Father's house?

THE TEXT

Verse 1. The first thing we know is that God was before the beginning. 

The implication of this is that even though creation is fascinating and very interesting, it is much less fascinating than the Creator.  Most people seem to forget that simple matter. The creation speaks about God.  It is pointing us to God.  It is also telling us certain things about God which we will never come to grasp if we focus on the creature rather than on the Creator. 

So we must begin to think that if in the beginning there was God and that this awesome Being created, this creation must have been something special for it came out of His own mind. 

It is He who spoke into being, the laws of matter, energy, physics and all the other laws which govern the movements of stars, planets, galaxies and nebulae, as well as the operations of all living beings and non- living things. 

The verse tells us that all of this, including man, is God's handiwork. We should be able to deduce from this that God, this awesome Being, created us with special care.  So when Jesus says God knows the number of hairs on our heads he's quite right. 

It should come as no surprise to us that the Scriptures teach us that the God who created us, makes us his constant and unwavering concern.  He loves his creation and He is fascinated with us and pays us full attention day after day, missing out not even one day. There is no man on earth, or animal on earth that can hide from His constant gaze. 

In addition, this verse points out that we must choose to live with the priorities and the values that God had brought out of eternity and into our world. Clearly then the things of creation are not the things we must die for. The created world will end some day. All this is temporary and our fascination with it must be limited. Our interest should be directed to the ‘new heaven’ and the ‘new earth’ and as we prove ourselves worthy to be taken into that new creation. 

Understand that nothing existed and then God created the heavens and earth from nothing, ex nihilo.  This is what the Hebrew word “bara” means specifically. All this amazing intricacy and extraordinary diversity and beauty were brought into existence suddenly. 

So we understand that man cannot create in the sense of Genesis 1: 1, but he can ‘fashion’ or ‘form’ things out of existing material. 

Note that the phrase “in the beginning” refers to the creation of our world, not to the beginning of all things.  The angels are created beings and their creation took place before the creation of the cosmos. But there was no pre-existent matter before God brought matter into existence. 

So we learn that God the Almighty is the Maker of Heaven and Earth and we must believe in Him and bow our knee to Him.   

Note carefully that this verse introduces a commentary that is extremely critical and totally rejects the views then held in the ancient world about both the natural and the supernatural world. We have listed some prominent ones below, so that we can easily understand what foolish doctrines Moses had to take out of the mind of the Israelites just coming out of slavery. It attacked the commonly believed ideas about the gods and about man.

Genesis contradicts six popular philosophies. We list them as follows:

So please focus at all times on the Creator alone. 

The Hebrew word translated God is Elohim, a plural noun denoting Majesty.  The term “heavens and earth” refers to everything that is in the skies and in the earth and is a figure of speech (called merism) for totality.  So this statement is that God created everything. 

Moses is insisting that God owned all lands including the Promised Land and could do with any part of his creation as he wished. He could make a valid promise to give the land of Canaan to his chosen people. 

God's universe is amazingly great.  One writer states:

“A typical galaxy contains billions of individual stars; our galaxy alone (the Milky Way) contains two hundred billion stars.  Our galaxy is shaped like a giant spiral, rotating in space, with arms reaching out like a pinwheel, and our sun is one star on one arm of the pinwheel.  It would take 250 million years for the pinwheel to make one full rotation.  But this is only our galaxy; there are many other galaxies with many other shapes, including spirals, spherical clusters, and flat pancakes.  The average distance between one galaxy and another is about 20 million trillion miles.  Our closest galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy, about 12 million trillion miles away.

For every patch of sky the size of the moon, if you could look very deep, you would see about a million galaxies. ” 

God did all of this himself.  Isaiah 40:12 states, God is bigger and greater than all his creation.

Verse 2.  Here we learn the condition of earth before God prepared it for human beings. 

We are told that the earth was “without form and void”.  The plain grammatical sense of the ancient Hebrew text is certainly not that the earth “became” without form and void.  There is therefore no textual support for a “Gap Theory” which puts forward the idea that there was a long and indefinite gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. 

In any case we know that Scripture tells us that death came by Adam and since fossils of animals are the result of death, we know that they could not have died before Adam's time.

The word used to describe the “deep” refers to the ocean which was symbolic of chaos.  Moses used this term in Deuteronomy 32:10 to describe the desert wasteland where Israel wandered for forty years. We are told that the waters, the ‘deep’ covered the earth, so that it was unproductive, uninhabitable, unorganized, not yet ready for human habitation, without ornaments, with no true beauty, as one writer says “no satisfying fullness to be enjoyed”.  It was ‘formless and empty’. 

Note that the Spirit of God was the first mover, entering this unorganized mass to transform it into beauty. Remember that it is the same Spirit that will take our evil minds and vile bodies out of the darkness of sin and corruption, the destructive land without beauty and without order and will transform our minds and bodies and made them glorious. 

The verse tells us that God did not have a kind of remote detachment from the creation.  Moses used this simile of a mother bird “hovering” or fluttering over her young, to describe the work of the Spirit moving upon the face of the waters.

Verse 3.  On the first day of creation God brought the first great beauty and blessing into the universe.  The Father of Light who lives in inaccessible light brought this thing of purity and power, brightness and blessing into the created world. 

God did not have to fashion it with His hands but simply spoke and there was light.  Light begun to flood and things were changed forever, for it was not chaotic and dark anymore. 

Note that light is not simply a physical substance; it has a supernatural aspect.  It flows from God himself who is Light.  We remember that Exodus 10:21 tells us that when God sent darkness on the Egyptians they could feel it, for this punishment had a supernatural element.  So we know that darkness can involve a tangible element of evil.

Verse 4.  God willed the light and when it was brought into being He saw that it was good, exactly as He wanted, it was fit for its intended purpose. 

Some believe that God created light which was not sunlight. Others believe the Sun, Moon, and stars were created on the first day and it became visible only on the fourth day.  Others believe that this “light” came from the Shekinah, the light that manifests God's glory. 

We know however the earth was now rotating on its axis on the first day and there was a division with night and day in constant and regular succession.  God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness ‘night’. 

The darkness preceded the light and so in this first day of work the evening with the darkness preceded the morning with the light and together they were called one day.  The Hebrews thus counted time in that way.  It is a pagan modification which begins the “Day” in any other way. 

This verse raises an argument as to whether this was a literal day, lasting twenty four of our hours, or whether it was a geological age.  There are some that believe God created the world in six literal days, but there are others, some of them professing Christians, who believe that God created the world in six long geological ages, even though the plain and simple meaning of the text is that God created in six days, days being defined in a normal way.  The proper use of language and a check on Hebrew dictionary definitions refute the idea that the Hebrew word “YOM” used in this verse means a long period of time.

Verse 6-7.   On the second day of creation God created a firmament, a space, or an expanse which separated the waters on the land from the other waters which existed, evidently water vapours in the sky.   

Evidently this water vapour blanket would maintain a uniform temperature all over the world and the water-rain cycle would not form, and so there would be no rain as we know it today.  Some point out that this would lead to a universal tropical like vegetation fed by rich evaporation.  The vapour blanket would stop ultraviolet radiation, cosmic rays and other forces which would cause mutations and decrease human longevity.  In addition, this would be the source of water necessary for a potentially devastating worldwide flood.

Verse 8.   The general term used to describe everything above the earth is Heaven.  This was the space above the earth in which the heavenly bodies and stars were fixed.  The birds that were created later could fly in this expanse.  It was not so much a wall but an area that could be traversed.  It can probably be said rightly that this firmament separates us from the Heaven where God dwells. 

Note that Psalm 8:3 insists that this firmament was the work of the fingers of God.  It is not only vast but it is something that is very important since it contains the work of the artistry of God. It was specially created.  This implies that the there is more to outer space than we normally think and that though it looks like there is nothing there apart from the stars and asteroids, it is not empty. 

Verse 9.   On the third day of creation God divided the land from the sea. The waters under the firmament were gathered together in one place. Obviously the earth was previously covered with water. Now there was dry land and there was an interconnected body of water. 

This division was created simply through the command of God.  This was a step necessary to make the earth ready for habitation.

Verse 10.   God named the dry land ‘earth’, and the gathering of the waters God called Seas (Hebrew yammim). This word “seas” is a broad word referring to all bodies of water, not just ‘oceans’. God declared the division “good” which means the division demonstrates beauty as well as purpose and order. 

It is important to recognize here that God’s love and hope for human beings is clearly shown. He loves his creation and so is step by step providing a nursery for his people, his ultimate creation. 

Clearly now the waters were an obstacle to his ultimate aim of man enjoying the earth. God then removed the obstacle posed by the waters covering the earth.

Verse 11-12.   God now created plant life, so that there would be trees bearing fruit that is good for people.  The grass would provide food for the life that would be created.  Light had been created and the firmament had been structured in such a way that the cycle of life would proceed perfectly.  The statement that God created plants with seeds in them implies that they were created with the appearance of age. These were full-grown plants, mature.

So we know that the chicken really did come before the egg.   

All kinds of vegetables and plants having its seed in itself so that there would be continual reproduction now appeared.  Moses focuses on those plants which were of direct benefit to men, but it is clearly understood that many other kinds of plant life were created.  The word “kind” is a general term indicating God created different families of plants.  There is no suggestion that all plants evolved from one single plant. 

Verse 14-15.   God now created lights in the firmament, so that day and night would be separated.  Remember that animals or human life were not yet present and so the distinctions in the days would not be relevant for them.   

Some however believe that there is a problem here since division into days are mentioned already. They believe that this problem can be solved by saying that the heavenly bodies were created on the first day but somehow were not specifically visible or completely formed until the fourth day.  Not all agree with this position however. 

This of course was completely different from the superstition in every pagan religion that the course and movement of the stars affect the destiny of the earth.   

One should never pay attention to the horoscopes, for that is based on paganism. In every culture we see the same figures of the constellations even though the names differ among different peoples.  The corruption from Babel has certainly continued in the pagan world. 

The heavenly bodies are signs and exist to remind us of the power and majesty of God.

They tell us that there is a God of the Covenant, and as Psalm 19:1 states, they declare the glory of God. They are placed at exactly the right length from the earth so that life can exist comfortably.   

The movement of the heavenly bodies are designed to sing the glory of God and to remind us of his grace and mercy in creating us and placing us in a perfectly constructed world.  Astrology is a corruption of this purpose and should be shunned.  (See Isaiah's advice in chapter 47:12-15).    Christians should never be talking about birth signs. The heavenly bodies do not control our personality or who we are.  That kind of thing is gross pagan superstition. 

Interestingly this time God did not declare the bodies to be good.  It might be that this was done deliberately to avoid naming the ‘sun’ and the ‘moon’ in a way to suggest that they have any resemblance to deity.  They were simply referred to as servants with a technical function and then that function was declared to be good. We are however told that evening and morning were the fourth day.

Verse 20-23.  On the fifth day of creation God created marine animals and birds. Great sea monsters or large fish and all large aquatic creatures now appeared. 

It is important to note that the pagans worshiped these animals. Moses’ emphasis that God created them would have been a slap at these pagan ideas. 

The claim by evolutionists that birds evolved from reptiles over millions of years is of course denied by this passage. 

We are told that the great variety of birds and marine life was created at the same time and did not evolve over millions of years.  Though there was a great diversity among animals they all have relatively similar structures and this argues for a common Designer.  The similarities do not mean that animals came from one original cell but that they came from the same Designer. 

We are also told again that all animal life was created according to its kind.  Obviously God created a great deal of variation within a kind.   

Note however that one kind does not become another kind.  There is great diversity among cats but they are all cats.  They never become mice.  There might be small or micro changes in a “kind”, but that does not prove that there is macro evolution.  There is absolutely no evidence of that macro evolution, whether over millions of years or in some ‘quick leap’ determined by chance.

Verse 24-25.  On this fifth day of creation God made the various land animals. Each was made according to its ‘kind’.  God saw that this great multiplicity was good. 

The infinite variety in the animal kingdom shows God's infinite creative power.  God made some animals strong and powerful, while He made some attractive and weak.  We can find every kind of permutation in the animal world. 

It is important to note that God blessed all these living creatures that He made and instructed them to be fruitful and multiply.  God therefore is very interested in the animal world and we should be careful how we exercise our stewardship over them.  In all this we see the amazing wisdom of God. 

So now we are at the stage where the final preparations of the earth have been completed, so that the children that God wanted to bring into existence would appear in the Father’s House.  The gracious and greatest creation now stands before us.  This greatest creation was of course made to live with God's eternal priorities.  

So let us always keep before us what verse 26 says about our origin; where we started from, what we were like at the beginning and points us to what we should most hunger for.

CONCLUSION

We first note that the Genesis account records a sharp distinction between one sovereign, wise, self existent, merciful God and the many limited, often immoral, capricious, illogical, ungracious and downright evil gods worshiped by the pagans. 

All of the things created up to this stage were different from the creation that would now take place in Verse 26 for that creation had a qualitative difference of sharing a “likeness with God”. 

But that does not indicate that God does not care for all the things created up to this stage.  In fact, God blessed the life he had created. 

It is clear that Moses was drawing a firm line connecting the God of Israel, the God of the Covenant, and the God who created the world.  This was the same God, the true God.  He was absolute unlike all the pagan gods that surrounded them. 

Note also that there was no elaborate argument to prove the existence of God.  It simply tells us that God existed before the beginning.  It was He who made the beginning. 

Note carefully that it was God that created and brought order out of chaos.  The Spirit of God hovered over the waters that were out of control.  God is not afraid of chaos or when things are out of control or when there is darkness, sin or shame. 

He has the power to speak the word of love and hope and bring light and redemption. 

So it is this God that can make sense of all the things that are not pleasant, whether they be darkness, chaos in life, multiple temptations, fear, depression, guilt, failure or shame. 

The Spirit of God could ‘hover’ over the wild chaotic waters over the earth when God was creating them and He can also ‘hover’ over our chaotic life, change it and make it whole. Brokenness and the wreckage can easily be changed by the Spirit. 

Remember that Jesus is before all things.  He made them and he sustains them by his powerful word.  He is still present and in control. 

Be mindful also that the heavens are declaring the glory of God.  There are many things that are certainly broken and chaotic at times, but they are not destroyed.  The Creator is Lord of what He made and He still intends to show us His glory and power.  Creation is shouting this testimony to us, and the Scriptures are confirming that message. 

We should always be in awe, thanking God for what He has done.  We should constantly look around us and remind ourselves that every thing testifies to our Maker.

The Creation around us actually testifies to us that we need a Shepherd who can care for us and give us peace and safety. 

Note that evil is not eternal.  It did not exist in the beginning.  Death, destruction, rebellion, decay, and sin did not exist in the beginning along with righteousness, beauty, godliness, and hope.  One writer reminds us:

“Evil had its beginning and it will have an end.  It is an invader; it does not belong.  We can derive hope from the fact that the best things that are true of us are the eternal ones, and the worse things are only temporary, by the grace of God”. 

So we note that we are not warring with the flesh, with created things.  We are really warring with the evil, the non-material spirit evil that is behind the destructive things. 

So let us make the choices of faith instead of the opposite choices of trusting in the material world.

Don't trust in the sea monsters, the sun, the moon, the heavenly bodies, the human beings that we elevate as gods, the carved images that human beings have made. That will lead to awful consequences for you 

Genesis One tells us that God is in charge.  He created all things and everything is under His control.  Every person, language, culture, must bow before Him.  If we do not worship Him in spirit and truth we will become irrelevant. 

He has made a beautiful world for man, and even though sin has marred it He is still in control.  So just remember the words of Jesus:

“I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? 

And why do you worry about clothes?  See how the lilies of the field grow.  They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?’  or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’

For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Matthew 6: 25-33.