Genesis 1:28-31

Good Friday morning, all!

This week has flown by! Today we look at the verses describing the crowning glory of God's Creation: man! Psalm 8 is a song of praise in awe of God's Creation, and verses 4-6 focus on the uniqueness of mankind: What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the work of your hands; you put everything under his feet.

God did not scratch His head after the creation of the world and the plants and animals and say, "Hmmm... I wonder what's missing..." The Bible tells us that even before the foundation of the world - before He made one little thing - He had us in His mind. Ephesians 1:4-6 tells us, For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will - to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. Now that is one of the best run-on sentences ever written! God always had US in mind when He was creating this wonderful world! He desired to have a relationship with us and He created us with that in mind. Read that first chapter of Ephesians today just to see how very blessed you are!

So, when God created man and woman, He "blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.' " We certainly have been busy filling it! I heard on the news the other day that we are either at or very near 7 billion now! However, I also heard in that same story that the entire world's population could fit into the state of Texas standing side by side! :)

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning - the sixth day. (verse 31)

When He was finished with Creation, God saw that it wasn't just good, but VERY good! Of course!

Now, the one thing we haven't talked about here this week is how long it took God to do this. Does it matter? Well, what you believe about God affects the way you live. If you believe that God spoke and it was so, if you believe in a God who is all-powerful enough to create the world from NOTHING, then you will have no trouble believing that this same God could create the world in six actual days - as measured by evening and morning, just as this account tells us. And you will certainly have no trouble trusting this same God with the details of your own life. If we grasp that He did all this while thinking of US, then we also can understand that this same God wants to have a personal relationship with each of us. So, when we believe God's Word about WHO God is and what He can do, we'll have no trouble believing what He says is true about us. Our pastor has been doing a series called "Transformed," in which he has been going through the New Testament verses that talk about who we are in Christ. He says, "The truest thing about you is what God says is true about you in His Word." And it all starts with the acknowledgement that the Bible is, indeed, the Word of God - the God-breathed writings of men that are the TRUTH. Do I think that God wasn't quite sure what He wanted, so he experimented and started with just a cell and watched it all unfold through natural selection? Absolutely not!

The Bible makes it clear that our God is a planner - a Creator with a purpose. We'll see in the next chapter how this plan is immediately clear. The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation is the story of His plan. He wanted us to know it - and He wanted us to live it out. That's why He gave us this book and the Living Word, Jesus.