I Believe in God, Maker of Heaven and Earth

by Dave Wilkinson

Genesis 1:1-5

October 7, 2001

"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth." John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.

"It was the best of times and the worst of times." Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.

There's nothing like a good opening line. But opening sentences are tough for me. I probably spend more time on the opening paragraph then any other single part of a sermon.

God doesn't have that problem. As opening lines go, this one is hard to beat: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

That, of course the opening sentence of the book of Genesis. It is therefore the opening sentence in the Bible and the opening line in the drama of God's relationship with human history.

Here's how The Living Bible paraphrases this opening: "When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was at first a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors. And God said, 'let there be light.'"

Now listen to this description: "When time began, perhaps as long as 20 billion years ago, all mass and energy were compressed almost to infinite density and heated to trillions upon trillions of degrees. A cosmic explosion rent that featureless mass, creating a rapidly expanding fireball. It has been cooling ever since. At first the universe was an impenetrable haze the universe cleared and everywhere blazed with light.

It sounds like a paraphrase of Genesis, doesn't it? But it's not. It comes from National Geographic. (6/83)

We are looking on these Communion Sundays at the Apostle's Creed. In the Creed, the third thing we say we believe about God -- after we have affirmed that he is the Father and that His is almighty -- is that He is the maker of heaven and earth.

But why is this phrase in the creed? Why did the early church put the fact that God is creator front and center? Why doesn't the Creed just read, "I believe in God the Father almighty and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord."?

Well, the Apostle Creed, like all creeds, was written out of a real life situation. Every statement, including "maker of heaven and earth", is there for a reason. The reason in this case is that the early church was faced with the challenge of a popular teaching called Gnosticism. The name comes from the Greed word for knowledge which is gnosis.

The Gnostics claimed to have the inside scoop on what is going on. The big inside secret, according to the Gnostics, is that the earth was born bad.

Gnosticism believed that in the beginning there was matter and spirit. Like everyone else, they looked at the facts of sin, sorrow, and suffering of the world. And the Gnostic answer is that matter is the problem. If there existed nothing but spirit, then everything would be good. The modern version of this is Christian Science.

The problem, according to the Gnostics, is that the world is made out of matter. Since matter it is essentially bad stuff, the Gnostics taught that true God who is altogether pure spirit could not defile and pollute Himself by working with it.

So where did heaven and earth come from? The Gnostics said that in order to achieve creation there came from God a series of emanations called aeons. As each emanation occurred, the resulting aeon was a little more distant from God and less pure than God. It's kind of like what happens when you fax a fax of a fax of a fax of a fax. Each successive copy is slightly worse than the first. If you take it far enough, it bears little resemblance to the original.

Well as the aeons grew more distant from God, they also grew more ignorant of God. As the series went on these aeons became not only ignorant of God, but also hostile to God. Finally, at the tail end of the series there emerged an aeon utterly ignorant of God, utterly hostile to God, so distant from God that it could touch and handle evil matter. The Gnostics said that this aeon called the Demiurge made the world. That's why there is sin and the sorrow and the suffering and the evil of the world. The world is badly made by a defective deity who is far removed from the pure, holy God.

I hope you got all that. It will be on the test.

The reason this is important is that in the New Testament times, Gnosticism was a widespread belief, which left people living in an evil world, shut up in an evil body.

And in sharp contrast, in opposition to this hopelessness, is the answer of Christian faith. The church proclaimed in this creed, is that we aren't a defective creation in a defective home. It proclaimed that creation is the direct work of the one true and only God. And when the Bible connects the Son with the work of creation it means that the fatherly love and care which we see in Jesus Christ, the mind of God displayed in the words and actions of Jesus Christ, is also the power which created this world. It means that the God of creation and the God of redemption are the same God.

In the words of Dorothy Sayers: "The Church, asserts that there is a Mind which made the universe, that He made it because He is the sort of Mind that takes pleasure in creation, and that if we want to know what the Mind of the Creator is, we must look at Christ. In Him, we shall discover a Mind that loved His own creation so completely that He became a part of it, suffered with and for it, and made it a sharer in His own glory and a fellow worker with Himself in the working out of His own design for it."

I couldn't have said it better. That's what we believe. And, if what we believe about creation is also true, it means that we live in what is ultimately and essentially a friendly universe. It means that however hurting life may be and can be, it is not intended to break us but to make us. It means that there is love at the heart of the universe.

I started this sermon talking about opening lines. But books also have ending. Some, are uplifting. Some are depressing. The most depressing ending I know of is the way Thomas Hardy concludes his story of the troubled and tortured life of Tess of the D'Ubervilles. Here is the conclusion to all her pain: "The President of the Immortals had finished his sport with Tess."

Is that what life is?

What kind of world do we believe in -- a world where some half-amused President of the Immortals makes his sport with us, or in a world in which there is neither any place nor any experience which is outside the love of God? Our answer to that question will depend entirely on the concept we have of the creating power which made and sustains this world.

Some people feel frightened and lonely in the world. They are overwhelmed by the thought of the immensity of space. The stars in the night sky seem to emphasize the brevity and unimportance of human life. After all, those stars are billions of miles away and become farther from us with each moment that passes. The light from them now reaching us may have begun its journey centuries ago, long before we were born.

But the doctrine of creation allows us to feel at home in the world. It reminds us that we, like the rest of creation, were fashioned by God. We are here because God wants us to be here. We are not alone but are in the very presence of the God who made and owns everything. We are in the presence of a friend who knows us and cares for us. Behind the apparently faceless universe is a person.

Do we believe in God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth? And do we let that belief move from our heads to our hearts? That will happen as we look at the impact of what we say. Because He is the maker, I trust Him. Because the Creator is my Father, it means that I am at home.

Today is worldwide Communion Sunday. We are joined with the people of God all around this earth as we are joined with the people of God who have gone before us. We are God's people in God's good world. Let us come to the Lord's table as we celebrate the fact that the God who made us also came to live within His creation to show us His hands of love.