1.God Created: Essential Realities

So many glorious and weighty truths emerge from the very first verse of the Bible. If recognized, these truths will change our lives. Yet our eyes are so often glazed over, causing us to miss the great truths that the text proclaims and that we need to hear. Genesis 1:1 must not be neglected or rejected by man. The truth it teaches is foundational for everything. This includes all human understanding and the foundational understanding of all creation. To begin rightly understanding Genesis 1:1, we must look at two statements: "in the beginning, God", and "God created." These statements hold the key to understanding how we should approach our world and our lives.

In the Beginning, God

The first statement we must examine is "In the beginning, God." This simple phrase reveals profound truths. God was there at the beginning of creation, and not just at the beginning of creation but before creation was made. God has always existed and will always exist. God is an eternal God. Moses' prayer mentioned in Psalm 90 speaks to God's eternality.

God has been everlasting and eternal, and will be the everlasting and eternal God for all time. God had no beginning. He was not created. He has always existed and will always exist.

The Psalmist reminds us that God remains the same. God's character and His work are the same throughout all of Scripture. His character is immutable and does not change from page to page, or year to year. God, in all of His attributes, is the same in the past, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

God Created

The second statement we must now consider is that "God created the heavens and the earth." God created. He designed, planned, and created everything according to His great blueprint for His glory, from the galaxies to each grain of sand. We are all creatures in the world that He brilliantly created, and we get to experience His creativity every day we live on this earth. All of His creation was created perfectly according to His good pleasure and will, and to bring Him glory.

The Trinity in Creation

When God created the heavens and earth, the full Triune God was present in creation. In verse 2, we are told that the Spirit was hovering over the waters, and later in verse 26, God said, "Let Us make man" which shows that more than one person of the Godhead was present in creation. In Colossians 1:16, we receive more details about Christ's work in creation.

All things were created through Christ, by Christ, and for Christ. These verses speak to the presence and work of the Triune God, who was fully active in creation, designing and creating everything for a purpose and a reason. All of God's creation is for Him, to glorify Him, and to show His handwork, power, wisdom, and splendor. God's creation is not purposeless and useless. It is good and glorious.

Cognitively, we know that God created but the reality of that truth does not affect us as it should. This is God's world. He designed and purposed it according to His good pleasure and will. We are not the Creator, but the created. He created us in His image to glorify Him. So we must remember that He is the Creator and His design and purpose of His creation are significantly better than our own ideas. So let's stop pretending to be the Creator, and remember He is the Creator and that His design and commands for everything in the cosmos are good.

The Creator is Not Wearing Out

One of the things we must now consider about His creation is its corruption through the presence of sin. Sin greatly tarnished and distorted God's good creation. Earlier, we looked at Psalm 102:27 and discussed the truth that God is the same. Now let's explore the two verses that preceded it and look at the current situation of creation.

Creation has changed and will wear out like clothing. God will oversee the changing of creation and will change creation to how He sees fit. But God, unlike the earth, will not wear out, and His years will not come to an end like the earth.

May we remember He is the Creator, and He is the same forever. May we take heart by remembering and reminding ourselves that He is the Creator God, and will always be the Creator God. His creative and powerful hand is still at work today and we are privileged with His mercy to open our eyes to it every day the Lord grants us.

The Comfort of God being our Creator

Fears and doubts are stopped and silenced when we rest and trust in God as our Creator. Though the earth looks different every day, and things are rapidly changing before our eyes God is unchanging and He will be that way for all eternity. May we, by His grace, stop living in a state of perpetual fear and stop worrying about so many things in our world. Remember that He is God, the Creator God, and man's attempts to destroy and recreate creation according to man's ideas will not succeed. God is God, and His creation will always be His creation. Do not fear man's attempts to play god by redefining creation, but recognize its folly.

Rebellion against Creation

We are living in a time that God's good creation and the commands He lovingly gave us are being discarded and discredited from in and outside of the church. We are witnessing a tsunami of rebellion against God's good creation everywhere from the street corners, to local businesses, to television ads, to sports fields, and even in places you didn't expect to hear and see about it. It is an active storm that we are experiencing. Men and women have rejected God as the Creator. They have sought instead to create themselves as a god that is capable of redefining and remaking all of creation according to man's reasoning and wisdom. This includes redefining common terms to trying to remake gender in man's image and ideas. It is utter folly and the greatest act of perversion, by taking God's unique creation of man and woman, and "remaking" it according to man. We are seeing and experiencing rebellion against God's creation of male and female every day, and are living in a generation I now call the generation of transgenderism.

Rebellion against Commands

We are seeing a rejection and discrediting of God's good commands. God's commands are quickly being whittled down right before our eyes. We've made our feelings, emotions, and false pursuits of love the supreme preferences that dictate our lives. Those preferences have become like a knife that is being used to gradually reduce and eliminate what God says in His Word. Those outside the church reject God's commands, and Christians seem to whittle down the commands under the guise of love, compassion, and bad Scriptural exegesis, among the other preferences I mentioned earlier. This may happen quickly under naivety but I believe it also occurs greatly through the teaching of popular people who profess the name of Christ. We must stop cheapening the Word and interpreting it based on what we want or how we feel. We must believe in God's commands fully to the glory of God with no exception and compromise of the Word.

Responding to Rebellion

Although the world is in rebellion, we will not be. We have great cause to rejoice, have hope, and rest in God because of Genesis 1:1. We must rejoice that He is our Creator. The world did not just come about through particles and happenstance, it came about through God being our Creator. Rejoice that God is the eternal God who does not end or change, but is the same forever. We must have unshakable hope in God. God rules over all creation and cares for creation. Remember that he takes care of the birds ( Matthew 6:26), so why are we fearing that God won't take care of us? Remember that He is the Creator and man's effort to distort and rebel against God's creation will lead to judgment.

Lastly, we are to rest and worship our Creator God. Remembering Him as our Creator leads us to rest because we know He has everything under control. He controls storms, bodies of water, the sun, and everything. So take heart, friend: God is the Creator and sustainer of all things. He knows everything about this world and controls it all perfectly, according to His good will, to the glory and praise of Himself.

God Created: Exploring Biblical Masculinity and Femininity

With all of the rebellion and chaos we see in our world, we must address it head-on. We will not toss God's design of male and female and the commands He gives into the trash heap. Instead, we will rejoice and faithfully proclaim that we have a Creator whose name is God and we will obey His good commands that He has given us.

With that, I want to welcome you to our biggest project yet at Everlasting Rock.

Welcome to our series "God Created: An Exploration of Biblical Masculinity and Femininity." This is one of thirty blog posts that will explore God's creation and His purpose and design for image bearers.

Masculinity and Femininity

Through this series, we will be looking at God's creation in light of male and female. We will examine how men and women are to express and show the natures God has given them. Masculinity and femininity in a very simple understanding are just the outward fruit and traits that result from being created male and female. Males and females were created by God to be distinctly different for glorious purposes.

We are Uniquely Different

While we understand the indescribable and equal value and worth of men and women before God, and that both are made in God's image, they are not the same. Males and females are uniquely different in so many ways and it doesn't take a degree in biology to say that. That was God's design from the beginning and it's foolish to act as if they have the same nature. When you treat them the same, you have a good chance of entering the path that leads to the rejection of God's commands. How? By justifying disobedience to God's commands for men and women in the name of being gifted, skilled, or led by the Spirit. All are a departure from the truth and disobedience to God's commands. Stop rebelling against God's commands and submit. That is the place where rest is found.

So we, by the grace of God, will dive into Scripture to explore what it means to be a Christian man or woman and how we are to live as God's special creations to His glory. As we discuss this topic, we recognize the diversity of opinions, as they relate to Romans 14. In Romans 14, Paul reminded the believers to not let personal preferences cause a fellow believer to stumble who may be weaker in some issues. One of the issues Paul discussed was eating meat. Some ate meat while others didn't partake likely because it was sacrificed to false gods, or they were following religious rules. He commanded the believers to love each other and build them up instead of causing them to stumble by what they do. While we may not all fully agree, our hope is that we will adopt a more Biblical understanding of creation and fully submit to His Word. We seek to provide practical takeaways so you can better live to the glory of God and understand God's commands and design of you as His image bearer.

Grab your Bible and tune in weekly for the next 21 weeks as we receive Biblical encouragement and exhortation from incredibly gifted writers and thinkers as we explore God's good creation of male and female.

Welcome to "God Created: An Exploration of Masculinity and Femininity."

To hear more about the series watch our announcement video below.

Works Cited

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com.