Multiply Week 10: Creation

Who Is God?

The story begins with familiar words: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” With these words we are introduced to the most important character in the story. It’s interesting that although these are the first words in the entire Bible, the author doesn’t pause to tell us theologically or philosophically who God is. There are many questions that we could ask at this point: Where did God come from? What was He doing before He created? Why is He creating in the first place?

But Genesis proceeds in a different manner. The author teaches us about God by simply telling us what He did: He created. We’re going to find out so much more about God as the story unfolds, and at points we will get specific theological answers to some of the questions we may have. But it’s important to let the story drive our understanding of who God is.

This Is God’s World

Perhaps the most obvious thing that we see in this passage is God’s absolute power and unrivaled glory. The story starts with Him alone. There is great significance to the fact that God is the only character in Genesis 1. He is the only eternal person or thing in the universe. This means that nothing else can be equated or even compared with Him.

Allow yourself to feel the weight of this for a minute. There was a time when our universe did not exist. Immediately before our world began, God existed—and that’s it! Then God began creating our world out of nothing simply by speaking. He told land to form and it obeyed. He called light into being and it happened. Every single thing in our universe came into existence in obedience to God’s command.

Try to get a feel for the absolute difference between this all-powerful God who has always existed and the creation that He called forth through the repeated refrain: “Let there be _________.” There is no person, force, or thing that can compete with God or claim any importance in comparison with Him. It is this absolute distinction between God and everything else that leads the angels in heaven to cry out, “Holy! Holy! Holy!”