Read Psalm 100:1-3. What is the human response to the God of Creation, and why?

In Genesis chapter 1, the first message of the Creation account is “God.” We already hear it in the translation: “In the beginning God” (Genesis 1:1). In the first line (Genesis 1:1), the word “God” is placed in the middle of the verse and is underlined by the strongest accent in the Hebrew liturgical traditional chanting in order to emphasize the importance of God. The Creation text begins, then, with an emphasis on God, the author of Creation.

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The book of Genesis begins, in fact, with two different presentations of God. The first Creation account (Genesis 1:1-2:4) presents God as infinitely far from humans, the transcendent God, Elohim, whose name speaks about the supremacy of God. The name Elohim denotes preeminence and strength, and the use of the plural form of the word Elohim expresses the idea of majesty and transcendence.

The second Creation account (Genesis 2:4-25) presents God as up close and personal, the immanent God YHWH, whose name many believe denotes closeness and relationship. The Creation text as a whole is, then, an implicit appeal to worship God; first, to be aware of God’s infinite grandeur and power, and at the same time to acknowledge our dependence on Him because He created us “and not we ourselves” (Psalm 100:3). This is why many of the psalms often associate worship with Creation (Psalm 95:1-6; Psalm 139:13-14,  [compare with Revelation 14:7]).

This twofold view of a God who is both majestic and powerful, and who is also close, loving, and in a relationship with us, contains an important point about how we should approach God in worship. Awe and reverence go along with joy and the assurance of God’s proximity, forgiveness, and love (see Psalm 2:11). Even the sequence of the two presentations of God is meaningful: the experience of God’s proximity and the intimacy of His presence follows the experience of God’s distance. Only when we have realized that God is great shall we be able to appreciate His grace and enjoy, in trembling, His wonderful and loving presence in our lives.

<–Sabbath Monday–>

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Sabbath Afternoon

Read for This Week’s Study: Psalm 100:1-3, Genesis 1:1-2:25, Exodus 20:8-11, Exodus 40:33, Matthew 25:14-30, Matthew 19:7-9.

Memory Text: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, NKJV).

The book of Genesis and, hence, the whole Bible begins with God’s acts of Creation. This fact is very important because it means that our creation marks the beginning of human and biblical history. This truth also implies that the Genesis Creation story has the same historical veracity as other events of human and biblical history.

The two Creation texts in Genesis 1:1-2:25 contain lessons about God and humanity. As we study this week, we will understand better the profound meaning of the seventh-day Sabbath. We will ponder God’s act of creating humans in His image, and out of the dust too. We will be intrigued about the purpose of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and about its connection with the tree of life.

The most important lesson of the biblical stories of the beginnings is a lesson on grace. Our existence is purely an act of grace. God created the heavens and the earth while humans were not yet present. Just as our creation was, our redemption is, too, a gift from God. And how profound it is that both concepts, creation and redemption, exist in the seventh-day Sabbath commandment.

Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, April 2.

Sunday–>

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THE BOOK OF THE BEGINNING

Genesis is about Jesus: Jesus our Creator, Jesus our Sustainer, Jesus our Redeemer. Writing millennia after the Genesis text itself had been penned by Moses, and reaching back across those ages to the patriarch’s very words, the apostle John reveals Jesus in the Creation account: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:1-4, NKJV).

What did John write here? “In the beginning” all things that were made, all things that once didn’t exist, came into existence — by Jesus. All creation — from galaxies hurling across the cosmos in staggering pinwheels of fire and light to the meticulous DNA woven miraculously into the cell to quantum waves — Jesus created and sustains it all. And the book of Genesis is the first story in Scripture of both this creation and the redemption of this creation. Here, in this book, is the world’s only “official” account of our origins.

The English word Genesis is derived from the Greek genesis, which means “beginning,” itself derived from the Hebrew bere’shit, “in the beginning” — the first word of the book (hence, the first word of the entire Bible!). Genesis gives us the foundation, the base, upon which all the following Scriptures rest. Because it is first, and so foundational to all that comes after, Genesis is probably the most quoted or referred to book in the rest of the Scriptures.

Genesis is important because it is the book that, more than any other work, anywhere, helps us understand just who we are as human beings, a truth especially important now, in a day when we humans are deemed as nothing but accidents, chance creations of a purely materialistic universe. Or, as one physicist put it, we humans are “organized mud,” (which is to some degree true, though for him the laws of nature alone organized it!). Genesis, however, reveals to us our true origin, that we are beings purposely and perfectly made in the image of God in a perfect world. Genesis also explains the Fall; that is, why our world is no longer perfect and why we as humans aren’t, as well. Genesis, however, also comforts us with God’s promise of salvation in a world that, in and of itself, offers us nothing but suffering and death.

With its dramatic stories of miracles (creation, births, rainbow) and judgments (the Flood, Sodom, and Gomorrah) witnessing to God’s holy presence, Genesis is awe-inspiring. But Genesis is also a book with moving human stories of love (Jacob and Rachel), of hatred (Jacob and Esau), of birth (Isaac, Jacob, Jacob’s sons), of death (Sarah, Rachel, Jacob, Joseph), of murder (Cain, Simeon, and Levi), and forgiveness (Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers). It is also an instruction book with lessons on ethics (Cain, Babel), on faith (Abraham, Jacob), and on the hope and promise of redemption (crushing of the serpent, Promised Land).

During this quarter, we will not only read and study the book of Genesis — we will enjoy its beautiful stories and learn to walk better with the Lord of Creation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Meanwhile, the geographical movements of the book — from Eden to Babel, to the Promised Land, to Egypt, to the prospect of the Promised Land — remind us of our nomadic journeys and nurture our hope for the real Promised Land, the new heaven and the new earth. As we follow the various characters across the pages of Genesis, we will discover that — regardless of how different the time, place, culture, and circumstance — often their stories are, in many ways, ours, as well.

Jacques B. Doukhan, DHL, ThD, is emeritus professor of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis in the SDA Theological Seminary, Andrews University.

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