Pastor's Sunday School Blog
Sunday School Lesson
“God’s Good World”
September 2, 2018
Genesis 1:1-13; Colossians 1:15-18
Pastor’s Notes (Some additional thoughts for your Sunday school lesson):
If you don’t get “creation” right … everything else is wrong.
Evolution strips God of His authority and removes all responsibility from man; man becomes a god unto himself.
God created everything (Genesis 1:1-2).
“beginning” only in the sense of a point of time. Time charts movement, from one point to another; however, God is timeless, eternal. He is not bound by time, and exists yesterday, today and forever all at the same time.
To say “in the beginning, God” is to acknowledge God’s eternal existence; He existed before all things.
“created” comes from the Hebrew, ex-nihilo, which means to create out of nothing. God, apart from any existing material, created all that is; from nothing God made something.
Divine creation crowns God as God, and demands for Him our praise.
Three primary views of creation:
1. Evolution … “The Big-Bang Theory” (No God).
2. Deistic Creation/Evolution … God simply initiated the spark, which overtime, an evolutionary process, resulted in the universe, our world, and all life forms (an impersonal God Who is no longer involved)
3. Creation … God, from nothing, created all things.
Some have pointed to verse two as Divine Judgment upon a previous creation of God; God remaking, replenishing what He had destroyed in judgment. Those who hold such a view believe the world was previously inhabited by angelic race which, under the leadership of Lucifer, rebelled against God. God responded to their rebellion by destroying the planet and sentencing the rebellious to His wrath.
Best to take verse two as a description of the creative process of God; again God taking nothing and making something.
NOTE: the involvement of the Third Member of the Trinity involvement in the original creation.
God created everything good (Genesis 1:3-13)
“Good” – the declaration of “good” by God is to say it was perfect. God can doing nothing less than perfect.
Planet earth is no longer “good” because it has been tainted by man’s sin.
QUESTION – Is “day… night” a 24 hour period, or a designation for geological period of time. Many have argued for a geological period which, they say, would explain fossilized remains, the depth of the earth’s crust, and various geological formations.
It appears by other references of creation by the writers of Scripture that the Bible takes the position of a literal 24 hour period of time.
By the way – The Noah Flood explains the existence of fossils which were created by the pressure exerted by the waters that covered the earth, and could explain the various formations such as the Grand Canyon.
God created everything for His Son (Colossians 1:15-18).
Tying Christ to creation refutes the ideal that Jesus was less than divine, less than eternal, having a beginning. This ideal is held by Mormonism and the Jehovah Witness who hold that Jesus was a created being Who achieve Divine status.
Compare to John1:1-3.
“Image” is not physical, but what makes Him Who He is. Jesus is the exact representation of God. Jesus is co-eternal, co-existent and co-equal with God.
Jesus’ humanity was the result of His setting aside the prerogatives of His deity, in order to accomplish man’s redemption (See: Philippians 2:6-8).
“firstborn” simply means He preceded all things, not that He was the first of God’s creation.
Jesus was involved with the creative process, from beginning to end. Not only did He create, He continues to oversee creation.
God’s ultimate purpose of creation is His glory.
Transition – Jesus was not only the Creator, He is the Head of the Church (which is the product of His redemptive work).
Theological Theme: God created all things from nothing.
Christological/Christ Connection: Everything was created by the Son, through the Son, for the Son.
Missional Application: As the redeemed by Christ, we seek to honor Him in our stewardship of His creation, helping others to discover their purpose in Him.