Genesis is wonderful book. It is full of gripping stories: Noah’s ark, stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There is the story of Joseph and his colourful life, rising from his nomadic youth to become deputy ruler of Egypt. And of course there is the story of creation with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

But Genesis is also a controversial book. It has been for over 2000 years. Who wrote the book? Who was in a position to know what happened before man was created? How are we expected to believe things can be accurately recorded from the times before the human race learned to read and write?

The Jewish people in ancient times for whom the book was their ancestral heritage struggled with these questions. One solution they came up with was that God actually handed the completed book of Genesis to Moses when Moses met with God on mount Sinai. That would have been a nice tidy solution. But the generally accepted view in early times was that Moses was the author of Genesis. Moses, remember was brought up as an Egyptian prince. He would have had the educational ability to compile the book, depending on the stories that had been told and handed down the generations among the people of Israel.

In modern times, hundreds of scholars have produced acres print on the single question of who wrote the book of Genesis. The problem with the work of many scholars is that they start their work from the proposition that unless we can find evidence to prove that scripture is true, then it must be false. But Jesus calls his followers to be people who believe. God calls us into a relationship with him that is based on faith. Yet God call us to faith that is based on truth. Therefore we should not be afraid to test the scriptures against evidence. If they are true, then we have nothing to fear.

Generally, when you compare the stories of the ancestors in Genesis to other historical evidence of the time, the names of people, the behaviour and customs of the characters are very much in keeping with the ways of that age and in finding this out for us the scholars have served us well. When it comes to the authorship of the book however, the scholars generally speaking have tended to produce arguments and confusion. Ideas have been put forward and contradicted that we have not got time to go into this morning.

There are a few things however that we need to say. Firstly we need to remember that The events in Genesis happened long ago, and that the book does not claim to be a complete, comprehensive history of the universe, mankind and the nation of Israel. We must be careful of being arrogant in the way that we understand and interpret the book. For example it would be foolish to be adamant that Moses is the author of the book of Genesis as we know it. Scholars are right when they remind us that the book has come down to us through the work of others.

For example, in Genesis 36 v 31 it mentions things that happened ‘before any Israelite King reigned’. As Moses died hundred years before Israel had a King, it is clear that others from later years recorded and to some extent revised Genesis in ways that could be more clearly understood. Secondly, It is important to remember who the true author of scripture is. Peter tells us in the New Testament that no prophecy of scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. As Paul writes, all scripture is inspired by God. Ultimately God is the source and inspiration of Genesis 

In large part, Genesis is the story of the birth of the nation of Israel. From chapters 12 to 50, three quarters of the book in fact takes us from God’s call to Abraham to the point where the people were about to become a nation within a nation, living in the land of Egypt. The part of Genesis that we are looking at this morning however is the earliest part of the book. It deals with events that took place before people could read and write. Neither is this part of the book concerned only with Israel’s history. Genesis 1 to 11 deals with the history of all mankind.

This morning we are thinking about chapter 1 of Genesis, the creation. In our modern age, the account of creation has been surrounded by controversy. With the advance of science, evidence of dinosaurs, discovery of fossils hundreds of thousands of years old and many other scientific advances serious questions have been raised about the origins of our world and of the human race.

Tragically, church leaders have often done more harm than good in their attempts to answer the questions raised by the discoveries of the modern world. We in the church have a bad track record for this. When Galileo argued that the earth is in orbit round the sun, the church authorities gave him a sentence of life imprisonment. When Darwin produced his theory of evolution, Bishop Wilberforce on behalf of the church ended his argument against evolution by mocking comments about Darwin’s supporters having monkeys for grandparents.

The Genesis creation story does not give us grounds for a know-all arrogance regarding how the world was made. Calvin, one of the greatest theologians the church has ever had taught that the first chapter of Genesis was not supposed to be a complete history of the universe up to the dawn of the human race. Rather Genesis was given to us teach us our origins in relation to God.

The simple but profound story of Genesis is such that it could speak to man 3000 years ago but is just as relevant and profound for man today. It tells us things that no scientific research can discover. It is the story for men and women of their origin, and their relationship with God.

In the beginning, God created. We hear other theories that claim it all happened by chance. The Genesis story gives us the foundation by which to understand the universe in which we live. It is the creation of the almighty God. In the world around us we see his wisdom; a complex, ordered, systematic society that chance could never produce. In the scope of the universe we see the infinite energy of an almighty being who is beyond our ability to measure.

Verse one speaks initially about a new, empty earth. The earth is formless and lifeless, and God’s Spirit hovering over the waters. But this is the place where God has chosen to express his creative energy. As we go through the story of creation, we find that God gives of himself in creation. The creation reflects the glory of God.

The creation of the world as we know it begins with speech. God speaks, and things are created. In his gospel when John reflects on creation, he says ‘In the beginning was the Word’. We know with hindsight from the teaching of the New Testament that Christ was there at creation. The Father, the Word or Son and the Spirit were active; especially in the creation of human beings, because there in verse 26 God says ‘let us make man in our own image.’

Back in verse 3 as God begins to bring order out of chaos, the first command is ‘let there be light’. In that command God puts something of himself into creation. God is light. He gives light to a newly created world, and God saw that the light was good. As the story goes through the six days of creation, there is a pattern.

In the first three days, God creates environments. The first is light and darkness. The second is the sea and the sky. The third is the land and the vegetation. Then in the next three days he creates the things that inhabit those environments. On the fourth day he creates the sun, moon and stars to inhabit the light and darkness. On the fifth day he creates the fish and the birds to inhabit the sea and sky.

On the sixth day he creates the animals. He speaks and the land produces animals of every kind. They inhabit the land that has been created in preparation for them with the provision of all the vegetation they need for food, and God sees that they are good. But now God comes to the pinnacle of his creation. He says let us make man in our own image. There is a more personal involvement here. God does not say ‘let us make’ of anything else in creation, only when he come to human beings does he speak those words.

And God makes people in his own image, in his own likeness, men and women. God put something of himself into us when he created us. He gives to the human race dominion over all the rest of creation. And then he gives them his blessing. Doesn’t that speak just as profoundly to men and women today as it has done over the past thousands of years?

It tells us who we are, it tells us why we are here. It tells us we have been given a role and purpose in life, to rule and care for the creation of a loving, powerful and wise God. Just as it spoke to a world of people who lived in ignorance and fear dominated by pagan superstition, so it too can speak to our world in the 21st century.

With the vast knowledge of the universe that we have gained in our scientific age, with space travel, satellites and modern telescopes; in spite of all that we know of the vast universe we find nothing approaching intelligent life anywhere else. That’s exactly what Genesis reveals to us. Mankind’s discovery of the universe in the 21st century is still compatible with God’s revelation to his people of old in Genesis.

We are the creation of the almighty Lord of the universe, the one whose Spirit not only hovered over the world in creation, but hovers over our world today, sent from the father to restore us to relationship with him. We know things have spoilt God’s wonderful creation; things like human greed, sin and hatred. But God loved the world so much that he gave his only son to redeem and restore the world.

That same God who was there in the beginning is the faithful one who will also be there at the end. Men and women will only ever find direction and fulfilment in life as the respond to their creator God in love and worship.

Amen.

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