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The earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. And God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.
And there was evening. And there was morning. One day. And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. And there was evening, and there was morning.
A second. And God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, let the dry land appear. And it was so. God called the dry land earth. And the gathering together of the waters called he sea. And God saw that it was good. And God said, let the earth put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit tree bearing fruit after its kind, wherein is the seed thereof upon the earth.
And it was so. The earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof, after its kind. God saw that it was good. There was evening, there was morning, a third day. And God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth.
And it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth and to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, every winged fowl after its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, let fowl multiply in the earth.
There was evening, and there was morning, a fifth day. And God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after its kind. And it was so. God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the ground after its kind. And God saw that it was good.
God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed. To you it shall be for meat, and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat. And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. There was evening, and there was morning. The sixth day.
The heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God finished his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made. May the Creator himself give us good understanding of his word and works. Tonight we are to study one of the more famous chapters in the Word of God, the first creation story in the book of Genesis.
And in some little sense, it is a pity, perhaps, that we do not come at it tonight for the very first time. Instead of that, we come to a chapter that for many years has been the battleground of a struggle between science and faith, or should we better say between pseudoscience and faith. And because of it, the thought of Genesis one stirs up all sorts of questions in our minds that we have long since many times debated.
There is a tendency for us, when we come to read Genesis one to start asking all sorts of questions from Genesis one that Genesis one was never designed to answer. And not only do we ask questions that the chapter was not designed to answer, but in the process sometimes we forget to listen to what exactly Genesis one m is in fact trying to tell. Therefore, shall we notice right from the very beginning that Genesis one is concerned with two things.
It is concerned to tell us something about God's creation, but also, and in addition, it tells us a great deal about God's organization of the world that he has made. We must try and find place in our thinking for both those elements, creation and organization. Or we could put it this way to ourselves.
The Genesis one will tell us a little bit about the how of God's creation. It will tell us equally as much, if not more, about the why of God's creation. And from one point of view, the why of God's creation is a much more important thing than the how. Let me try and illustrate to you exactly what I mean. If you approached this hall this evening via Bradbury Place and Shaftesbury Square, you may have noticed an extraordinary lamp perched upon a very high post in the middle of the square, shedding its yellow and bright beams all around it far and wide.
Now, if I ask you, how is that light up there on that pole? How is it yellow? I should expect you to give me a scientific explanation in terms of chemistry and electricity and filaments and goodness knows what. The how the thing is yellow. Though that is important and exceedingly interesting to some people, the most of us, of course, very rarely think about how that light is yellow. We are much more concerned with why it is yellow.
And if you ask why that light is yellow, then the answer is not to be given in terms of chemistry and electricity. The answer is that it is yellow because the city fathers thought that yellow light perched on a big pole was a very good thing to have in Bradbury Place, in order to assist the organization of the evening traffic through the city. So that the question how the light is yellow and why the light is yellow are two very different questions, and we should try not to confuse them.
Many people, when they come to Genesis one, expect Genesis one to be talking about the how of God crea- uh, God's creation, and to some extent it answers the question how. We must be aware that Genesis one is equally, if not even more so, concerned to answer certain questions as to the why of God's creation. It is concerned, in a word, not merely with God's creation as a creative act. It is concerned with the way the Creator has organized our world and universe.
But as I say, Genesis one has long since been a battleground. Therefore, permit me to take another minute or two to suggest to you certain preliminary things, certain cautions and precautions that we ought to take as we approach the chapter. We must, if we have any profession of being Christian people, we must believe all that Genesis one says. And I forthwith profess my own personal faith in all that Genesis one says.
But then we must have humility to enough to admit that whereas we believe all it says, we do not necessarily understand all it says. And therefore it will be necessary to ask all sorts of questions for ti- from time to time, not because we do not believe it, but because we do not necessarily understand it all. Moreover, in our attempts to understand it, we should, I suggest, beware of being too quick to identify what Genesis one is saying with current and popular theories in the scientific world.
Scientific theories are exceedingly important and valuable things. All true science must proceed by first observing the facts and then framing its theories, and finally proceeding to test its theories by experiments to see whether the theories stand up to the experiment or are proved wrong thereby. So that the inventing of scientific theory is an integral and necessary part of scientific understanding. But then it would be bad science, wouldn't it? To confuse the theory with the established fact.
No true scientist does make that confusion. But at last, very often, as science gets published abroad in popular magazines, papers, and school books, the popularizers are not always careful to distinguish between what is theory and what is fact. And sometimes the popular books are guilty of preaching as fact what is no more than theory, as yet unproven, and sometimes theory that by definition is quite unprovable.
We should therefore not be too quick, I suggest, in identifying Genesis one with modern scientific theory. And for this other good reason as well, that scientific theories have a way of changing, even popular theory. We could remember, for instance, that in centuries gone by, there were competitive theories to explain the, explain life and how life develops and is passed on. There was a theory called preformationism. It was at one stage the dominant theory, and everybody more or less accepted it.
But then it fell into disrepute because of certain extreme, and its place was taken by another theory called epigenesis, which then in turn became the reigning theory, so much so that if you had been prepared to question epigenesis, you would have been smiled at benignly as somebody a little bit lacking in the true scientific spirit. But then epigenesis went the way of all flesh and all theories, and a newer theory took its place. One should not be too much impressed by the colossal weight and pressure that sometimes gathers round particularly favored theories.
One should have a certain sense of history and reserve one's opinion until the theory is either proved or else discarded. And then I would suggest... that we must very clearly define to ourselves the basic term that we shall be using when we speak of creation. Genesis one, of course, tells us of a succession of creative acts that the great Creator performed.
I do want us to notice that it is talking of creation strictly so called. Now, elsewhere in scripture, we shall read of another side of God's great activity. As the one who created all things, he continues to be the one who upholds all things. And if you would have a full account of how our world has come to be in its present situation, you would have to give two answers to it.
Our world is in its present situation, one, because of the original acts of creation, and two, because of the million and one acts of maintenance and development that followed after the original creation. For instance, in this chapter we shall read of the creation of man and woman, the first man and woman. They were, in the very strictest sense of the term, created.
No other man or woman has ever since been created. Billions upon billions of human beings have been brought born into this world, but not by special creation. Simply by the normal processes of development. God having created the original pair, he has left them by the normal processes of birth to produce all the multi-million generations that have been since. Moreover, Saint Paul, talking, uh, in one of his, uh, gospel lectures, observed that God has made of one blood all men to dwell on the face of the earth.
God has made them. How has he made them? Because even by Paul's time, mankind came in different kinds of wrapping, so to speak. There were black and yellow and white and red, Mongoloid and Eurasian and European, Dolokefaric and all sorts of other funny things. Tysers, shapes and appearances. Basically human, but with a vast variety. How has God made that vast variety of all men to dwell upon the face of the earth? And the answer is not simply by creation.
Creation produced the first pair. The rest of the multi forms and types were produced by the process of ongoing development, by all the permutations inherent in the creation of the first heaven. I say we should be careful to distinguish that in our thinking, because Genesis one is concerned to tell us of creation, strictly so called. It says very little, if anything, of that other great part of the work, the development over multi-million years, if need be, of what was originally created.
But with those, uh, initial observations, let's come to the chapter itself, for introductions are always boring, and introductions that keep us from the word of God, uh, inclined to be bad. If only we could read this chapter now for the first time. What delightful surprises we should have. And this surely the first of them. This chapter tells us that when God created the heaven and the earth, he did not create them all at once. Now, if we had had no Bible and we had argued merely philosophically, we might well have said to ourselves, well, God is almighty.
God can do anything. Therefore, if he made the heaven and earth, he could make it all at once if he so pleased. And philosophically, that would have been quite true. But that isn't how he did it. Genesis one is at pains to tell us that he did not make it all at once, but made it in stages, made it by a succession of creative acts that had certain intervals between them. Then secondly, we should note that as those creative acts followed each other, what was produced was not merely more in quantity, but more complicated in quality.
It wasn't merely as a child builds a house out of bricks. All the bricks are exactly the same, apart from the coloring, and it just piles one brick on the top of another brick. There is more, but not more complication. We look at the various creative acts of God, we shall find that they bring into s- existence successively more complicated things. Till you come to what is the most complicated of all, the first human pair. It is evident, therefore, that Genesis one tells us of a process, an ongoing process, that was designed from the very start to lead to a glorious climax and goal, to lead to the very pinnacle of the works of God.
And it is a gloriously exciting thing when we find Genesis one telling us what is that pinnacle, what goal it was that God had in mind when he began and continued these creative acts, becoming ever more complicated and colorful. The goal he had in mind was man. And we should observe, and we who believe God's holy word should lift up our heads as we observe it. What a dignified and glorious concept the Bible has of humankind.
He was made in the image of God, made to have dominion over the creation. It is not too much to say that centuries of men and women have lived in indescribable slavery and fear for not believing and letting go this glorious truth. That man owes his position in the world to an almighty creator who made man as the pinnacle of his creation.
Made him to be viceroy of it, made him to control it, to be lord of it. Generations of men that slipped into idolatry and superstition, not willing to retain God in their knowledge, thinking by banning the knowledge of God in their minds, they would strike a blow for freedom. Generations of men have descended into being slaves within the world for this simple reason. If you look around your world, it will not take you five minutes to observe that there are all around you colossal, almost immeasurable elemental and physical powers.
Powers that we have not a hope of ever controlling in our own strength. We sooner or later must ask ourselves, what is our relation to those great powers? If there is no God, if our world is merely the result of chance, working on blind matter without forethought or plan, then are we slaves indeed? We are beings with intelligence who can think and reflect, and we find ourselves in a universe surrounded by colossal powers that we cannot control.
And they don't all come in big sizes. There's a tiny little virus that one day, perhaps, will somehow get into your body and in the end tear it bit from bit. And not all the medical science in the world can stop it. What is our relation to this world? Generations that have lost faith in a living God as creator have turned to the most dribbling and abject idolatry.
Worshiping these great forces of nature. Universe surrounded by colossal powers that we cannot control. And they don't all come in big sizes. There's a tiny little virus that one day perhaps will somehow get into your body and in the end tear it bit from bit. And not all the medical science in the world can stop it. What is our relation to this world?
Generations that have lost faith in a living God as creator have turned to the most dribbling and abject idolatry. Worshiping these great forces of nature. The God of the storm, or rather the storm itself. Worshiping electricity with its, uh, mysteries. Worshiping the psychological urges that we find within our own person. The sex urge. The urge of aggressiveness. Exalting them to be gods and goddesses, until man became a slave of his very body, of his own urges.
We in our modern day would escape a similar, though more sophisticated, slavery to the mere material elements of the universe. We must adhere to what Genesis here proclaims as the basis of man's very existence and status in the universe. He comes from the powerful hand of Almighty God, who created the vast universe, and because he has power to control it, had power to put man in it and make man under God, God's viceroy over the universe. Oh yes, we do not now see all things put under him.
For sin has done its deadly work. Man has rebelled against God and sought a false independence. God is in process of having to teach man a lesson as to where independence of God will lead him. But God has not given up his intention. And the glorious adventure of having a thing called man, a creature in the image of God that can have fellowship with God and can do the kind of things on a smaller scale that God does, and rule God's universe for him. God still adheres to the, to the program, and the glorious adventure is going on until one day it is finally realized in full.
I cannot resist reminding you how far on the road of progress that design is. While we see not yet all things put under him since man fell, we do see a man. One who was made lower than the angels, and therefore, by definition, a man. We see him crowned already with glory and honor, having done a work that lays the foundation for the reconciliation of all things, destined soon to bring redeemed humanity to that glorious goal that God first conceived of.
He invented the world and determined to put man in charge. We notice then that these days reach a climax of activity, and the pinnacle and goal is man, and that man was made, as I say, to have dominion. Let us consider that term just for a moment. The Hebrew word means not to have dominion so much in the sense of being a king politically. It means to have dominion in the sense of the being the one to organize, administer, run the place, and develop it.
Oh, I think God has a lovely mind, don't you? I do admire if it is an impertinence in me to say so, I do admire the genius of his inventions. And all the glorious fun he proposed. When he invented a universe and then made a man in his image to whom he could talk, a man who could respond to God and feel how God feels and think how God thinks and take part with God in developing the thing. I want you, says God, to to have dominion, to fill the earth and to subdue it.
For God didn't make it in its final form, did he? There is still a lot to be done when the seventh day said, now from here on, end of creatorial activity. The world still had to be developed, and God, we subsequently read, planted a garden and said, there you are, Adam, that will show you how to begin. Go on now and do what you can. Develop the earth. I think that's lovely in God. That he didn't put man in a world that was finished to the last crossing of the T and dotting of the I, but left something for man to do and to develop. I don't know what your father was like when he gave you presents, a bicycle maybe, or a toy train, but I can distinctly remember some older persons.
They hadn't a lot of sense in their heads, or perhaps they hadn't grown up too far. I don't know why it was, but they would give you a train and you would say, yes, oh, marvelous. Now let me get my hands on that, and let me pull the points, and let me hitch the thing up. But no, the adult wanted to show you how it should be done. So he hitched the engine up, and you said, well, come on then, let me get at it. No, he put the carriage on. Uh, he wanted to show you how the signals went, and all the evening went by, and you hadn't been allowed to do anything. The adult had done it all. Well, I'm glad God isn't like that. Invented a big world for man and put him on it and said, come on now, Adam, now you develop it. Oh, the fun of the discovery.
There's Eve and Adam. Oh, what's that? Oh, that's a lion. I don't know what he's for. And what's this sparkly stuff here in the ground? Looks nice, diamond or two. Wonder what we could do with them. Wonder what lies beyond the garden. God had packed his world with all sorts of surprises to keep man interested and entertained, and thereby to make a physical basis, that in doing things with God, man might grow up and get to know God as a child gets, grows up and gets to know its father.
And so advance into those deeper spiritual lessons to know God on that highest of Of all level. men. It has its implication for us still. Work nowadays isn't what work was originally designed to be. It was originally designed to be a gentleman's occupation. Not one long struggle to make ends meet with boring, backbreaking labor, but sheer joy and gladness.
As we enjoyed using our gifts and powers of mind and body. Now work has in some sense been spoiled. Because of sin, there has had to be added this hard discipline of labor and difficulty and pain and sorrow. Taken rightly, that labor itself shall train us the better to enjoy working with God in days yet to be. Before the moment shall we, shall we observe that this is still God's word?
And this remains, at the basic level, God's intention for us. He's right that the farmer exploits his farm, learns how to make bigger and better carrots. Just exactly what God intended, that some should study needlework and develop the arts, and make this world beautiful, as God himself has done. It is exactly what God intended, that some should be physicists and study God's work in their laboratories. We should not allow ourselves to be misled into a false dichotomy, separating life in two separate parts.
Sometimes that happens, doesn't it? Yes, now, in addition to God's work in creation and maintenance, there is God's great and more important activity in redemption. And if we would get our priorities right, then must we always attach more importance now to God's activity of redemption. But that doesn't make God's activity in the running of the world somehow sinful, nor our cooperation with him in the running of that world somehow less dignified or less worthy. Both must proceed together.
And if God calls you to spend most of your life working with God at the level of his creation and the maintenance of it, that is just as honorable a calling as it would be if God called you to be an Apostle Paul and serve him at the highest levels of redemptive activity. Let there be no clash of conscience. All life should be lived with God. Yes, we must be careful, lest being fascinated by life at the level of creation and maintenance, we turn a deaf ear should God call us to serve him in the higher realms of redemption.
At the other extreme, we should not allow... what we imagine to be a call to serve God at the levels of redemption to make us lazy and escapist in the realm of creation, should we? I may speak to my younger Christian brethren and sisters that are still at school. You'll do your sums, won't you? And you'll do your physics. And you'll keep at your languages. That is working together with God, as God intended you should work. None of this skimping of lessons because we supposedly are so holy that we shouldn't really be interested in physics and think it's a waste of time.
It's God's world, and we are to serve him, if thus he has called us to physics. To serve him with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength. And as we indicate to God at those basic levels, our willingness to serve him thoroughly and faithfully, God will be watching us to see what kind of people he could trust with higher responsibilities to serve him equally faithfully in the realm of redemption. But redemption was never meant to be an escape from the world of creation, nor will it ever be.
For I remind you that the last vision of that New Jerusalem that is the great city and administrative center of the redeemed for all eternity. The last vision we have of it is not going up from earth, glad to get away from earth forever, but coming down from heaven to earth to carry on those glorious further projects that an almightily wise God has designed to fill eternity. But now we should turn to notice something of the how of creation.
Should not have time to investigate every verse. Therefore, let us notice what was the basic principle of the how. It is to be found in that little phrase so frequently repeated, and God said. And God said. Almost monotonously repeated, and God said. It is vital that we get hold of it and understand what it means. That this lies at the heart of the matter, you may judge from what the New Testament says.
The Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter eleven, tells us that by faith we understand that the worlds were made by the word of God. That is what Genesis one says, and God said. They were made by the word of God. The Gospel of John in chapter one tells us that in the beginning the word already was, and was God. All things were made by him, that is, by the word.
Every creative act was performed by a word of God. That guarantees it meaning, doesn't it? This whole universe has meaning precisely because it was made by the word of God. It is not a chance happening. It was initiated by a word of God.
All intelligent, all reasonable, all rational, purposeful, meaningful. This is where creation gets its meaning from. From him who was ever the word, and has imprinted his code in material, and given to the universe meaning. Oh, what a desolate man is the atheist. He finds himself with a brain and with intelligence.
But he holds that the universe is the result not of any word, but blind force working on blind, mindless matter. Alas, very often he hasn't the sense, enough perhaps, to see where that, uh, logically leads him, but it logically leads him, whether he's prepared to admit it or not, to the fact that he himself is ultimately meaningless, as his world is ultimately meaningless, and the very thing he is pleased to call his intelligence and reason is ultimately irrational. For there is no meaning to be had anywhere in anything ultimately, not even in man's reason, nor yet in his emotion, nor yet in the season, nor yet in anything, unless this vast universe goes back to the Word.
I therefore ask you to notice very carefully how frequently this phrase comes in these days of creation. Once in day one, Once in day two, But twice in day three, Once again in day 4. And once in day five, But twice in day six. And you say, why the difference?
Why did God just speak once on one day, but twice on two days? Well, if you will look at the days where God has to speak twice, you will see that on those two days there was created two groups of things that were totally different. For on day three, the first and God said has to do still with inorganic matter, lifeless matter, as the preceding days have done.
But the second and God said is concerned with organic matter, vegetable life. And very clearly, God has indicated to us that between inorganic matter and organic matter, there stands an and God said. As I said earlier, God has done many things simply by the principle of development. He started something going, and then he has let it develop and develop and develop and develop.
All the many races and colors and kinds of mankind have come by way of development. But, uh, organic life did not come out of inorganic simply by development. Life was introduced by its own particular and specific, and God said. And would you notice again in day six, the first and God said is concerned with the making of animals.
And then in that day as well, man is made. Ah, yes. But made not by development out of the animal. God may have started just with one pair of dogs, for all I know, and thereby developed all the multitudinous kinds of dogs that could possibly grace a dog show, and done it simply by development from the first pair. But God didn't make man by development out of the animal. Explicitly and exceedingly carefully, when it comes to making man, God interposes one more, and God said.
And that, my dear brothers and sisters, if we are Christians, we are called upon to believe. My time is gone, more than gone. But wouldn't I disappoint you if I didn't tell you about those days? Some of you would think you had wasted your time coming if the preacher didn't tell you what he thought about the days. And there are so many more important things that we can't have time for, but there I better yield to your desires and tell you what I think about the days. Were the days literal days, or were they ages?
Here it seems to me there is room for difference of opinion, and I respect those with whom I do not happen to agree. But for my part, I understand these days to have been literal days of twenty four hours or thereabouts. I gather that from the fact that every time it is told us, except for the last day, there was more, uh, evening and there was morning. That is telling you what kind of a day it was, evening and morning. But you say, what about the vast ages that geology has proved to have been? Well, yes, what about them? We weren't talking about them here.
We're talking about six days, not of God's maintenance and development. That may have taken vast geological ages, for all I know, but we're not talking about development. We are talking precisely and explicitly about creation, not development. We are talking about creative acts that preceded us, and God said. I ask you to, to time it, if you like. How long do you think it took the creator to say, let there be light? We are talking about precise act of creation, which by definition is done in a split second.
Oh yes, following acts of creation, there doubtless were long periods of development, but that's not what the days of Genesis are tell- talking about. And therefore, we ought to look very hard at our chapter, because people have have it got it, have got it into their heads, have they not, that the seven days of Genesis one were the days of one week. And they inclined to think they started on a Sunday and ended up on a Saturday. Well, there's nothing in Genesis one that says that. There was one day, there was a second day, and there was a third day.
There's nothing to say that they were six days of one week. And we should be careful not to read into the text what the text doesn't say. Day seven had no end, did it? Day seven still lasts. Oh yes, since then God has gone on maintaining things and developing them over years and years and years and years. But Day seven likewise tells you that now creative acts are at an end. The development will go on, yes.
And it seems to me quite conceivable that God, having said, uh, let light be, and light was, and said it within a day of twenty four hours, of course, how not, might then have left the old universe to go on its way for thousands and millions of years, if he cared, before he came to a second day or twenty four hours, upon which he proceeded to another great act of creation. You say, do you adhere to the catastrophe theory, Mr. Preacher? We like to get our geological ages into, uh, Genesis one by presuming that between verse one and verse two there was a great catastrophe, and the earth became void, chaotic.
Well, you may be right. Depends what you think of chaos, whether you think chaos is a good thing or a bad thing. You say, but isn't it by definition bad? Not really, no. It depends which way the chaos is going, whether it's good or bad. Isn't it? My good sir, if you ever penetrate to the kitchen in your house, certain times of the year, you will see your wife standing in front of a nice bag of sugar, a nice bag of orange peel, a bag of currants and a bag of sultanas, some rather larger bags of flour, and here's some sugar, and there's some milk, and it's all in nice, neat parcels.
And you'll watch your wife proceed to make chaos of that stuff, pouring the milk in the sultanas and the flour and the goodness knows what else, until instead of being nice little neat packets out of chaos. You don't say what a disaster. You say, more power to her elbow. If I know anything, this is going to come out as a Christmas cake. Ha. It's a lovely kind of chaos when you see it begin, isn't it? Of course, you don't want it to, to remain chaos. You want it to proceed to the final product, but because the chaos is going that way, the chaos is to be welcomed and is a jolly good thing. But suppose, my good sir, when the cake has been, uh, made and it's standing there and it's been iced and says a happy Xmas on in pink writing and all the filigree icing, you come into the kitchen, clumsy type, and knock it onto the floor and it's all smashed up and mixed up with the china of the plate, and oh dear me, that's chaos too, isn't it?
But that's chaos going the wrong direction. A very bad chaos. What kind of chaos was it when God created the heaven and earth, and earth was without form and void? Well, you may be right if you hold it was bad chaos, and I wouldn't dispute it with you. It seems to me quite probable that it was not a good chaos because it was going, the first stage, in the right direction. You say that if God were to make anything, he would always make it perfect. My dear good fellow, read Genesis one. It tells you that that's precisely what he didn't do. Didn't make it all at once. He made it in stages.
Now the clock says we must finish. But tonight we have been considering Genesis one and some of the principles of the how of creation. As I stop, I should like to remind you that we've only begun to look at Genesis one. We shall have to spend another evening study on it to consider the how and then the why. And of the two, I fancy the why will be the more important. God stimulate within each one of us his image.
For if you are being conformed to his image, then you will be interested in the things that God has made and done.
