Sunday Devotional: Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The very first verse of the Bible is another one of those well-known Bible verses that we don’t often stop to reflect upon, and yet, as with the rest of Scripture, it deserves our attention.

First, its position as the opening verse of the Bible is significant. It introduces us to the following discussion of creation. But more than that, it places God as the subject of the Bible. The Old and New Testaments are a record of God’s work. They’re not about us, though we often like to think we are the center of the universe. Rather, it was God who created all things and He is, therefore, their point of origin.

“The heavens and the earth” is an all-encompassing phrase meant to signify the totality of creation. “The heavens” refer to everything above us. The sky, the universe, even the far reaches of space that would have been unknown to Adam, Isaac, Jacob, Abraham, and Moses, and that we are only just beginning to explore today. God created every star and planet. Every particle of gas, every black hole, and every piece of dust is the work of His hand, created for a purpose and for His glory.

Of course, “the earth” refers to this planet, the ground beneath our feet, the soil, rocks, plates, and lava under our feet, and all the grass, flowers, trees, vines, fields, mountains, hills, valleys, and deserts across the entire globe. They are all the creation of God, made for a purpose and for His glory.

Genesis 1 goes on to describe how all these things came into being, starting with an empty planet (that God created), and God speaking light into existence.

The important point to see here is that God is the origin of all things. All things depend upon Him and exist for Him. The Bible is all about God because the entirety of creation is all about God. If we read the Bible without seeing God at the center of it, we are missing the point. If we live our lives and enjoy creation without seeing God at the center of it, we are missing the point.

I pray we would take time out every day, even if just for a minute, to stop and contemplate the fact that this world, this universe, is God’s creation, and to give Him thanks for allowing us the privilege of enjoying it for as long as He permits.

[SIDEBAR: For many years there has been debate in scholarly circles as to whether this verse should be temporally related to verse 2: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was void and formless.” The debate seems to focus on the absence of the definite article on the first Hebrew word so it literally says “In beginning,” which can be taken as being temporally dependent on the following clause. However, there are no grammatical reasons that necessitate this understanding. Indeed, there are sufficient examples of article-less temporal nouns in the Hebrew Bible used in a definite sense to warrant the traditional translation. This definite sense is also the way the Greek and Latin translations, as well as countless translations over the past 2,000 years, render it.]