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Call to worship: John 1:1-5

Text: Genesis 1:1-25

Summary:

Out of His love and the counsel of His own will, the everlasting God created the heavens and earth. To the standard of His own benevolent goodness, He created the cosmos out of nothing but the Word of His power. The Creator is the Lord of all. His Word makes all good in His eyes, and He names it all, as a display of His preeminence and authority. And it all bears the stamp of His order and purpose, design agreeable to His infinite desire: to be glorified as God in the good and eventual praise of all creation. The world particularly, created days 1-5, is a habitat becoming of a sanctuary of eternal fellowship between God and humanity. These first verses of the Bible teach us that creation is a revelation of God, in which we're pointed to a revelation of God fuller still in the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word and Son of God.

Sermon Outline:

1. Before the beginning, God forever is. (1:1, various)
2. In the beginning, God created. (1:1-25)
3. Toward an end, God is moving us. (1:1-25)

Prepare

Discussion Questions:

1. Read Genesis 1:1-25.
2. What passages in the Bible speak of God as everlasting, and why is that important to assert? In other words, why is important to separate God from the creation as an uncreated Being, besides the fact that the Bible says this is so? What passages in the Bible can you find descriptive of things that happened 'before the foundation of the world'?
3. If God was under no compulsion from outside Himself, or due to some lack in Himself, to create, why did He? Why do we have an 'in the beginning, God created'? What role might the passages referring to things 'before the foundation of the world' have to do with the foundation of the world? How is creation a revelation of God?
4. As to creation, what do you discern as the order of things in the text? What of its focus? Is there any narrowing of that focus? What, if any, patterns of creation do you detect? By what does God create? What's the nature of what God creates? Do you spy in purposes in the several things created?
5. Knowing that God has created the universe, and this world in particular, and that the creation of humanity is just around the bend, what did God make when He made this world? Leaning on other biblical passages, how do themes such as order, purpose, sovereignty, separation, as in light from dark, and/or the creative power of God's Word and Spirit lead us nearer the end for which God created the world? How do they direct us to the supremest revelation of God? See John 1:1-18. What should be our heart's response to the God we here find?