Stop And See God’s Handiwork

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

The Bible never attempts to prove God’s existence. It begins assuming that He is there, that He has revealed Himself to humankind, and that you can know Him.

In Moses day, educated Egyptians held to the myth that the world had been generated from an egg, a symbol that you find on ancient Egyptian ossuaries or caskets. But having had a personal encounter with the Almighty on Mt. Sinai, Moses came down the mountain with shining face, and wrote, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

He had encountered God.  Moses begins by saying, “Here’s God,” and He brings us into confrontation with four powerful forces of life—time, matter, space, and activity!  “Time—that’s the phrase “in the beginning,” but literally the Hebrew which Moses wrote says, “In beginning…”  It’s a kind of loose reference to the fact that the Creator was there before He began the creative process that resulted in the creation of the Earth and our first parents.

Moses then dealt with matter when he wrote, “God created.”  He didn’t stop and give us a footnote, something like, “Now I need to explain who I am talking about.”  He just presumes that those who read know He’s there—something that has been lost on a lot of us in the modern world, something which Paul explained in Romans 1.

Educated in the palace of the Pharaoh, Moses used an interesting word when he says God created. He uses a word that means to create from no previously existing material. Then Moses describes the vastness of the universe and space in a phrase– “the heavens and the earth.”

Wow! What a challenge.  OK, you say, “I believe that; but the issue is how do I know He’s still there?” As Rick Cornish points out in a book for inquiring minds called 5 Minute Apologist, ‘“Does God exist?’ is the ultimate question. But ‘Does God exist?’ is a different question from ‘Can we prove that God exists?’ Nothing,” says Dr. Cornish, “including God, can be proven or disproved in a final, absolute sense.”

Anselm, Bishop of Canterbury, (1033-1109) was the outstanding Christian philosopher and theologian of the eleventh century. He gave the world the argument that we exist, and therefore, God exists. You don’t find a watch and not assume that it had an inventor or watchmaker, nor do you look at the vastness of heavens and not see a creator. You don’t analyze the complexity of DNA and assume that a chance happening produced a baby, or an explosion in a print shop resulted in the first dictionary, or a first edition of the Gutenberg Bible.
Want to see God’s handiwork?  Look at the vastness of space, look at the purity of a baby, look at the empty manger where Christ was born, and the old rugged cross where He laid down His life, look at the empty tomb where God’s son pushed aside the grave clothes and rose again.

Read the record, the one begun by Moses, who introduced God’s creative power and culminated with His giving the law and the 10 Commandments to govern and guide our lives.  Read the Gospels, especially the Gospel of John, which outlines the beautiful story of God’s sending His son to show us the way back to heaven.  You will see evidence of His compassionate heart, and His loving, caring hand; but don’t wait to embrace Him until somebody proves He’s there, any more than you would wait to breathe until someone proved the air will sustain you.

He’s there. Moses was right.

Resource reading:  Genesis 1