Until the Enlightenment, scientists pretty much agreed God created everything.

After that, there was a steady rise in atheistic approaches to our origin.  Today, science assumes there is no God, and everything we see is by random chance.  And when something can’t be explained, God isn’t the answer.  It’s dark matter, some other unprovable source, or a billion more years are added to the equations.

Before the Enlightenment, the approach of science was the attempt to figure out how God did it.  It was an act of worship and adoration of the Creator.

In our study of the book of Genesis, we’ll see that what we believe about Genesis affects virtually all of our approach to humanity.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock

The Old Testament book of Genesis is a book of beginnings.  Called Bereshith in Hebrew, it is named after the first three words, “in the beginning.”

We get our English Bible’s name (“Genesis”) because in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (called the Septuagint) made sometime around the 3rd or 2nd century B.C. in Alexandria, Egypt, it is called Genéseos which means “origin, source, generation, or beginning.”

Genesis is a wonderful book to read.  It is truly a literary masterpiece.  

Genesis also covers more time than any other Bible book.  Genesis covers more time than all the other Bible books put together!  It covers thousands of years!  Yet it does so through an incredibly simple organization.

Genesis provides its own outline.  There are twelve sections of the book.  After the first section, the rest are set apart by the Hebrew word toledoth which means “generations” or “birth”.  The NIV translates this word as “the account of…”

Today, we start a journey through the book of beginnings, Genesis.  We start in Genesis 1:1-2:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 

Genesis 1:1-2
New International Version

The Bible is, first and foremost, a book about God.  Whatever it covers in terms of science, philosophy, humanity, or anything else, those are secondary issues.  Like the entire Bible, Genesis is a book about Him.  It is God’s plan.  From the very beginning, we see it was about Him!

Indeed, at the very beginning of the book, we find God was already there.  In the first four words, we come face-to-face with God’s self-revelation.  He is revealed in these first words as our pre-existing Creator. 

There was nothing before Him.  And before He created, there was no universe.  He started the entire thing.  He was the conductor lifting His baton over nothing and by His own will caused the orchestra of the universe to come into existence to play His music.

In these first few words, we also find an Ancient Near Eastern concept of kingship.  When a king created a nation, he became their ruler.  Likewise, using these words, Moses (our human author) is telling us God is King over the universe He created.

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock

Verse 2 begins the account of what happened as we zoom in on the Earth.  Remember what I already wrote: the Bible is about God.  And it focuses on His actions towards humans.  It doesn’t tell us everything that happened everywhere in the universe.  It’s focused, specific, and selective.

Our faith is encouraged right from the beginning of the book of beginnings.  This is our God: the One who stood on nothing and with nothing caused everything to explode into existence.  

I hope you’ll enjoy this journey through the book of Genesis.  This is the beginning of our story with Him, but it’s far from the beginning of His story.