Reading Your Bible Better (1) - Creation (8/11)

The Need to Understand the Bible
Sproul first talks about 3 issues that he hopes to address within this series of podcast:

1) Neglect of content of scripture
2) Giving up of bible reading because of the difficulty involved in understanding
3) Major themes of the bible as hooks for understand of the bible as a whole

I agree with all his three points, I do think it occurs in the order of 2, 3 and then 1. I believe many new christians started to read the bible with fire and zeal but after hitting some difficult parts of the bible, they slowly give up reading because they feel that reading them does no good.

At least that's how I felt initially, this series thus is to help Christians to read their bible better, by exploring such hooks as guidelines to help them understand the major themes of (hopefully) each book of the bible.

Creation
Gen 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Three things that ought to be noted here.
 
1) Beginning
This is the starting point of time and history and everything has to trace back to this. Christians do not believe myth of eternal recurrence/karma. But that it had a definite beginning.

Sproul then highlights that even science whilst not wanting to hold to the position of God being the Creator, has to acknowledge this point that this world had a beginning.

So how did it get started? There had to be an outside source, that scientist are bluffered, but christian are not, it's clearly stated, God started the act of creation.


 
2) God – Precede creation and beginning. Therefore He is not created, but creator. He is the one who owns all of creation and all life comes from him.

3) Created – This is God's supernatural action.


Sproul then moves on towards the idea of human creativity and God’s creativity. Something that I have not heard others talked about before, first man's creation is mediated creation, since he creates with something that had already existed. But God's creativity is different, since His is a immediate (without medium) creation (ex nihilo/something out of nothing).

Lastly, how did he created everything? With His very words, as if it was a command heralding out, and out of obedience, creation beginning to exist.


Gen 1:2
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Here, 3 negatives are mentioned:
1) without form – chaos
2) void – total emptiness
3) darkness – absence of light

And out of all these, 
God put order into the chaos, 
God put into form what is formless, 
God filled what was empty and 
God shone into where there was no light.
 
What a wonderful act of creation by a even more wonderful God!