This week’s walk in a nearby wildlife sanctuary stirs in me a deep marvel at creation. I sometimes look at NASA’s photos of the universe taken through massive telescopes or watch nature shows about tiny creatures and enjoy the same excitement — I know the One who designed this incredible world!
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” uses a verb with God exclusively as its subject. CREATE is something that God alone does. It implies that all things belong to Him. This is not limited to the universe, fish, bugs and rivers; God also created human beings for His glory:
Isaiah 43:1. “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.’ ”
His creative activity did not end at the beginning. Another creation will happen as Isaiah 65:17 announces: “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.”
This is affirmed in the NT. For example: 2 Peter 3:13 points to it as our hope: “But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
Scripture describes God and His Son Jesus Christ as the Alpha and Omega and those designations certainly apply to the start of and last of His creative history. But what about the in-between?
The OT accounts of God’s handiwork includes creating the earth and seas and all that is in them, a covenant and its related laws, a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to guide His people out of Egypt. He created weather and earthquakes, even “hidden things not known” and creatures in the spiritual realm, including Satan who started out “blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you.”
The NT speaks of God creating the ideal marriage relationship and other blessings, but most of all, creating a way for sinful humans to be restored to a relationship with Him. Ephesians 2:4–10 speaks of that former state then says:
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
He calls me to “put on this new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” and I am amazed that He gives me new life and allows me to choose whether or not I will walk in it.
He also says that some will “forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” adding in regard to food that “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:3–4).
GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. The choices He gives are in a world where evil exists and troubles will occur. Yet even as those face me, I have confidence in God’s sovereignty. These verses from the OT point out that even the worst of events are under the power of my God. I can, “Be glad and rejoice forever” in that which He created because He “created Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness.” I can be assured of His goodness when trouble comes also because He affirms:
“I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things” and “Behold, I have created the smith who blows the fire of coals and produces a weapon for its purpose. I have also created the ravager to destroy” (Isaiah 45:7 and 54:16).
No matter what the calamity or the ravager tries to do, I know that the Lord will enable me to declare from my heart: “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”
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