"And God said, Behold, I have given you...." ―Genesis
1:29a Suggested Reading: Genesis 1:28-31
The second practical effect Genesis 1
ought to have on us is to cause us to recognize the sufficiency of God for our
every need and the whole of our lives.
Since our
Creator is unchangeably eternal, gracious, wise, good, and powerful, He is solely sufficient for all of our
lives. That is what the saints of God in the Bible learn from this doctrine of
creation. In Isaiah 40, the prophet addresses those who are weary, saying:
"Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD,
the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is
no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them
that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be
weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength" (Isa.
40:28-31a). Isaiah is speaking of the sufficiency of God for all of life.
Similarly,
Jeremiah says, "Ah Lord GOD!
behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and
stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee" (Jer. 32:17). God's
glory revealed in creation is so perfect that Jeremiah comes to God with the
kind of confidence that we greatly need today.
If
our faith and confidence are not in God and His sufficiency, we are not truly spiritually
alive. Our lives are empty if we do not begin with God. Without Him, we miss
the purpose of life, miss our true identity as God's image-bearers, and miss
the only comfort in life and death of belonging to God in Jesus Christ.
The
first four words of Genesis, "In the beginning God," are a stark contrast to
the last four: "a coffin in Egypt." You cannot be prepared for death, dear
friend, until in all of life you rely in confidence on the God of beginnings,
for Christ's sake.