Sermon preached on Sunday, February 3, 2013 at Garden Valley Chapel during our worship morning service based on Genesis 1:1b.

Take your Bible if you will and open it to the book of Genesis 1, Genesis chapter one.

The Bible presents us with a definite, concrete, comprehensive worldview that is absolutely different from anything you can find anywhere else.

It begins with God; it starts with God; it tells us that He has created everything.

Now there are other ideas and ideas have consequences.

For example, there are those that do not believe in God; they do not believe in a Creator. To which we say, if there is no Creator; there is no design or purpose. No God. No hope.

On the face of this earth you have atheistic and pantheistic astronomers and cosmologists for example, who look at the cosmos without a Creator.

Take the renowned Madalyn Murray O´Hair, founder of American Athesists, who expresses the essence of modern atheism -

"This is your life: What you see is what you get. If you are going to make your life better for yourself - the task is yours. If you want to make the world better for all its inhabitants - all animals, all life forms, all vegetation - you need to work on it...No god ever gave any man anything, nor answered any prayer, nor ever will...

Religion has caused more misery to all of humankind in every age of history than any other single idea. You need to free of irrational ideas. You need to repudiate those who would attempt to return you to medievalism. You need to look forward, not backward; you need to strive for intellectual freedom, not mental bondage;
you need to seek joy, not sorrow; love, not fear; and you can do that only when you realize who and what your oppressor was - and is."1

Yet we know from Scripture in Ps 14:1 -

1 The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." ...

This sort of godless living is naturalism. and the most basic dogma of naturalism is that everything happens by natural processes; nothing is supernatural; and therefore there can be no personal Creator.

That means there can be no design and nor purpose for anything.

Why talk of reaching utopia and working to make your life better for the all of the world´s inhabitants if there is no design or purpose for anything.

As believers we know, that our purpose is to glorify God; to please Him in all respects, including honoring Him as Creator.

That is why it is so important to understand Genesis, moreover understand creation, that we might ascribe greater glory and honor to our God, declaring like Paul in Rom 11:36 -

36 For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.

CONTENT

With the hope of having a better understanding of Creation, I want to draw out four aspects of creation -

The Method of Creation
The Period of Creation
The Date of Creation
The Purpose of Creation