The Song Beneath the Stories Part Two: Creation
Our Fall Learning Cohort is a six-week exploration of the overarching theme of all of Scripture: The Gospel of Jesus Christ!
We’re offering the cohort in two ways:
In-Person, Sundays at 9am
Online via Facebook Live, Wednesdays at 7pm. These will be taught live, but will remain available for streaming afterward.
We’ll be posting the hand-outs for the sessions here on the blog. This week’s is The Song Beneath the Stories Part Two: Creation.
For a downloadable PDF version, click here!
Creation
In our first session, we looked at how Scripture is like an orchestra, with each book having its own part to play in one grand symphony: The Gospel of Jesus Christ. This symphony runs like a thread throughout the whole Bible, tying all the individual stories of Scripture into one grant story of God’s redemption
In this session, we’ll be looking at Act One of the symphony: Creation.
The symphony begins with God. Out of the fullness and perfection of who he is, he freely gave life to all things and made all things “very good” (Genesis 1.31).
In Scripture we have a number of complementary depictions of God’s work of creation, all pointing to God creating our world as a theatre for his glory and a place for him to dwell with his creation in joy. In Genesis 1, God is shown as an Architect/King who bring order and fullness by speaking the world into existence. In Genesis 2, God is shown as a life-giving Artist, who forms man out of the dust of the ground, giving him a commission care for world He has made. In passages like Proverbs 8, God is pictured like a master Carpenter, marking out and establishing the skies, the seas, and the earth in wisdom.
The first thing that God tells us about human beings is that all of us are created in the image of God. (Genesis 1.27) “Image of God” was a common term in the ancient world. But it was only applied to kings. Genesis was written to former slaves, leaving generations of slavery and oppression. Think of the significance for them…and for us. Who we are and what we do matter!
No person is ignorable, no person is a mistake. The little boy with special needs, the elderly woman with dementia, or the CEO of the multi-billion dollar company are equal in dignity and value because who we are is not primarily defined by our achievements, skills, or resources. It’s defined by God.
Yet this creation in God’s image isn’t simply a possession that humans have that gives us dignity, it’s also a calling to reflect him in our lives. We were made to flourish in our relationship with him, with one another, with creation, and with ourselves. Human beings were called to extend Eden, the place of God’s blessing and abundance, to the whole earth. In this way, we were made to continue what God had begun in creation—bringing order to chaos and fullness to emptiness. In other words, we were made to extend the kingdom of God from the small location of Eden to the ends of the earth.
The biblical symphony begins with this first movement, Creation. This movement tells us what we were made for—the delight of God. Yet, we know from every angle that this original creation purpose has not been met. We’ll turn to this in our second movement of the biblical symphony: Fall.
Questions for Reflection
How is this different from other ways of seeing the world around us?
How does this impact the way you see yourself?
How does this impact the way you see others?