In the Beginning: Learning to Read God’s Story
This sermon was first given at Sherwood Community Friends Church on Sunday, February 1 during our GENESIS: The Preface series. Watch it here.
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I’m going to read to you a story found on the Bible’s opening pages.
It’s not one of those once upon a time stories, however this story surely did take place once upon a time.
Today’s story is a story of truth and theology. It’s a story about origins and order. This story, I’m sure you’ve heard before. But as I read it, I want you to erase everything in your mind you know about it or what you think you might know. Listen to it like you’re hearing it for the very first time.
What questions would you ask? What stands out to you? What are you hearing? What are you feeling? What do you see in your mind’s eye? Who is the main character of our story today?
Without further ado, I bring to you…
Genesis 1-2:3 CSB
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” There was an evening, and there was a morning: one day.
Then God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters, separating water from water.” So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse “sky.” Evening came and then morning: the second day.
Then God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land “earth,” and the gathering of the water he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.” And it was so. The earth produced vegetation: seed-bearing plants according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Evening came and then morning: the third day.
Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night. They will serve as signs for seasons and for days and years. They will be lights in the expanse of the sky to provide light on the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule over the day and the lesser light to rule over the night—as well as the stars. God placed them in the expanse of the sky to provide light on the earth, to rule the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. Evening came and then morning: the fourth day.
Then God said, “Let the water swarm with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” So God created the large sea-creatures and every living creature that moves and swarms in the water, according to their kinds. He also created every winged creature according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them: “Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.” Evening came and then morning: the fifth day.
Then God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that crawl, and the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. So God made the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that crawl on the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”
So God created man
in his own image;
he created him in the image of God;
he created them male and female.
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.” God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you, for all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth—everything having the breath of life in it—I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. Evening came and then morning: the sixth day.
So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed. On the seventh day God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation.”
Pause.
Stillness.
The Cultural Moment We’re Standing In
We live in a moment where confidence is prized more than care. Quick takes. Hot opinions. Strong feelings with thin foundations.
And without realizing it, many of us have brought that same posture to the Bible.
We open Scripture assuming that sincerity equals accuracy. That if something feels faithful—or sounds familiar—it must be right. But the Bible wasn’t written in a cultural vacuum, and it wasn’t written with our assumptions in mind.
Genesis, especially, refuses to cooperate with a rushed, modern reading.
Because Genesis comes from a world that thought differently, spoke differently, and even understood reality differently than we do. It was written for people who were not asking, “How old is the universe?” but “Why does the world feel unstable?” and “Who is actually in charge?”
When we flatten that distance, we don’t make Scripture clearer—we make it smaller.
And here’s the tension many of us may feel: If the Bible is God’s Word, shouldn’t I just be able to read it plainly?
That question deserves an honest answer.
Which means we have to talk about authority—not the kind we assume, but the kind Scripture claims.
“For Us, Not To Us”
Dr. John Walton says it simply—and perhaps uncomfortably:
“The Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us.” — Dr. John Walton
That single sentence should reframe everything—how we read Scripture, how we trust it, and how it actually exercises authority in our lives.
The Bible wasn’t dropped out of the sky in modern English. It was spoken, heard, remembered, preserved, edited, compiled, and faithfully passed down in a world very different from ours. To understand what the Bible is communicating, we need to understand how the audience of the Bible thought and how the Bible’s authorship would have been communicating to them.
In our Western brains, we are trained to think in black-and-white categories: facts, data, literal precision, chronological sequence. We assume truth must be communicated that way. But the ancient Eastern mind worked differently. Meaning was often carried through story, imagery, function, and purpose. The message being communicated mattered more than the kind of literal detail we tend to fixate on.
That doesn’t make the Bible less true.
It makes it differently true than we often expect.
So to understand the Bible well—especially Genesis—we must ask better questions.
We must slow down enough to ask:
Who is this being written to?
What did they need to hear?
What problem is the text addressing?
What message is God communicating through it?
This is how the authority of Scripture is unlocked—not by flattening the text into our oversimplified Western categories, but by letting the Bible speak first on its own.
Walton presses this point clearly when he says that “authority is not located in our reaction to the text, but in the author’s intention”. When we skip over context, culture, and audience, we don’t make Scripture clearer—we risk replacing God’s Word with our own assumptions.
And this is where many of us feel the internal resistance.
Why can’t I just read the Bible the way it is?
Why does context matter so much?
What about church tradition?
What about what I was taught in Sunday school?
I’m not saying your faithful Sunday school teachers were wrong. Maybe they were, but what’s really being said is they were often working with less information than we have access to now. Archaeology, ancient Near Eastern studies, and a better understanding of oral cultures have helped us hear Scripture more accurately to become even more faithful to the Biblical text.
That God Created & Authority of Scripture
As we go through our Genesis teaching series, we will be sharing and introducing some different ways of thinking about creation, humanity, what God might be communicating, and some pretty surprising or outright shocking things that you may not have ever heard before because prior Western culture has interpreted the Bible with an agenda, fluffed it up, filtered it through the Puritan era, and it now holds a softer tone. What we are going to do is present the Biblical text authentically.
We will share meanings of Biblical words, phrases, and idioms that are locked within the original Hebrew as this portion of the Bible was written. Some of what we share will give you things to think about and ponder. That is our great hope as you sit with a cup of coffee or tea or a bubbly glass of San Pellegrino and contemplate on God’s Word.
An example of this is regarding how many days God created the world. What we need to do is understand what the Bible is communicating. It doesn’t matter if God created the world in 7 literal days, 7 million years, 700 billion years or 7 nanoseconds. How long it took God to create is irrelevant. That God created is what matters. That is the message of Scripture being communicated.
Think about it, the time frame by which God created doesn’t change the truth or message of the Bible, does it?
But if God creating is not true, then the rest of the Bible is not true. Timing doesn’t matter. God being Creator and Sovereign is what matters.
Reading through the Bible is intended to be a lifelong journey of discovery, as you engage the text on its level. As you unpack it, its truth, what God is actually saying, we discover the true power and authority it holds.
AUTHORITY
According to Bible scholar, Dr. John Walton, who we will be referencing many times during our teaching series, said: “The power or authority was not so much found in the writing, but in the reading.”
Authority is not found in written text. Authority was in the oral. You needed to hear it. All scripture was first oral or a product of dictation.
Writing freezes an oral tradition and is static, not dynamic and therefore dead. A written text is dead. A spoken text is alive as it continues being shared and breathes more life.
The original authors understood the authority and power in what was heard.
Authority is something you submit to. We recognize it as a status and we submit to it.
The authority of scripture is that it gives us God’s Word.
The truth of God’s Word is the authentic interpretative understanding of what the author’s intent is and mining through the Text to ensure accurate hermeneutics of it.
Hermeneutics simply means how we understand and interpret what the Bible is actually saying.
“For us, but not to us”
For every book of the Bible, there is an original author and an original audience.
The authority is when we understand what was written to them. That authority is also truth. It’s the best truth.
The Bible’s message transcends culture, but it’s form is culture-bound.
Culture, grammar, and the meanings of words, are silent members of every Biblical conversation.
Properly interpreting Scripture gives us access to its authority.
The strongest interpretation is the one with the strongest evidence. That’s where the authority is. This is why we are spending so much time talking about that.
There’s no authority in the reading of the Bible through our own culture and modern worldview. We have access to the Bible’s authority when we read it through the lens of the intended author and audience’s culture and their worldview. We must understand and interpret what the author’s original intent was and what God is communicating from the Biblical text in order to get its authority.
That’s why the most important question we could ask—especially when reading the Old Testament—is not “What exactly happened in scientific or literal terms?” but:
What message is the text communicating about God, humanity, and our relationship to him?
When we read the Bible this way, it doesn’t lose power. It gains it.
And that brings us back to Genesis 1:1, where the Bible announces the kind of story it’s about to tell—not with mechanics, but with meaning.
A Header, Not a Scientific Claim
Genesis 1:1 CSB
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Most of us were taught—explicitly or implicitly—to read this as a technical statement about material origins.
But in the ancient world, opening lines functioned differently.
Genesis 1:1 is a title, a header, a summary statement. A theological declaration that tells us what kind of story this is, not how the events unfolded mechanically.
Walton explains that in the ancient world:
“To create something does not mean bringing it into material existence; it means bringing it into existence by ordering it.” — Dr. John Walton
In other words, existence is defined by function, not material composition.
Verse 2 doesn’t describe “nothing.”
It describes non-order.
Genesis 1:2 CSB
“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
There was something there for the Spirit of God to hover over.
Darkness.
Waters.
Formlessness.
That’s not nothing. That’s not evil. It’s something. Unfinished. Unassigned. Not yet functioning.
Genesis announces that God is the one who speaks order into that kind of world.
Not as a craftsman assembling parts.
But as a King establishing a realm.
Which helps us see why so many of our modern questions simply miss what Genesis is actually saying.
Okay, how are you all doing so far?
House Stories, Home Stories, and Better Questions
Science is brilliant at telling house stories—what things are made of and how they’re assembled.
Genesis tells a home story—how the world becomes a place that works, functions, and sustains life under God’s rule.
Walton puts it this way:
“Genesis 1 is not about building a house. It’s about making the house a home.” — Dr. John Walton
The Israelites weren’t asking about quarks or cosmic expansion.
They were asking functional questions:
Where does time come from?
Why do seasons matter?
Why does food grow?
Who set this world in motion—and who keeps it running?
Genesis answers those questions.
And when we force it to answer ours instead, we don’t get better theology—we get confusion, anxiety, and unnecessary conflict between faith and science.
Remember: Properly interpreting Scripture gives us access to its authority.
What message is the text communicating about God, humanity, and our relationship to him?
The problem isn’t that science asks bad questions.
It’s that Genesis isn’t answering them.
Which means the real issue underneath all of this isn’t science—it’s trust.
Why This Matters
Let’s name what’s really at stake.
Many of us think:
“I’ve read Genesis and the Bible my whole life.”
“I know the Adam and Eve origin story.”
“English translations get it right, right?”
“Why would God allow confusion?”
“Are you saying I can’t trust what I was taught?”
“I’m new to the Bible so should I just not read it so I don’t misinterpret it.”
Short answer on that last one, absolutely not. Yes read it. Remember, this is a journey of discovery over our lifetime. All the things I'm teaching to you now I didn't know when I first started reading the Bible. How much more do I—do we— still not know?
Here’s the gentle but honest truth:
You can trust Scripture more, not less, when you read it responsibly.
Reading the Bible in an English translation doesn’t make you unfaithful. But assuming translation removes cultural distance is simply untrue.
I wonder, would we prefer a Bible that answers our questions as quickly as Googling the answer OR would we prefer a Bible that reshapes how we see reality by unlocking its power and truth over time spent with God in it?
And that properly sets the stage for what we’ll begin walking through next week—slowly, carefully, and with reverent awe.
Close
Genesis opens with chaos—and a God who calmly, deliberately, and lovingly brings order.
Not through force or panic.
But through speech, rhythm, function, and purpose.
Next week, we’re going to slow way down and walk carefully through Genesis 1:1–2:3, and I want to be clear about what we’re doing—and what we’re not doing.
We’re not going to spend our time debating about how God created as if Genesis were trying to give us a scientific explanation, but I am going to provide you with a few fun options to ponder over a cup of coffee or tea or bubbly glass of San Pellegrino.
What we are going to do is focus on the far more foundational confession the text is making: Not necessarily how God created, but that God created— that he ordered the cosmos in a particular way with a particular purpose.
Origins or Identity?
We’re going to let Genesis speak on its own terms—how God intended.
What we’ll see is a symphonic rhythm in the creation account—how each of the seven days flows harmonically from one to the next. Day one corresponds with day four. Day two with day five. Day three with day six. It’s structured. Ordered. Intentional. Beautiful. Because again, Genesis is communicating a message—not a list of literal facts.
And as we do this, we may even find that science and theology are not opposed to one another the way we’ve been led to believe. There may very well have been a Big Bang—but if there was, I personally think God was the Big Banger. Genesis isn’t competing with science; it’s answering a different question altogether.
We’re also going to talk about humanity.
We’re going to look closely at the Hebrew and see that God’s first human wasn’t necessarily male—not in the way we often assume. This is not about gender fluidity or modern debates. It’s about reading the Biblical text carefully and letting the Hebrew communicate what God actually did in the beginning.
Here’s the tension I want to leave you with this week:
If God is a God of order, purpose, and rhythm, why does our world still feel so fractured? And if Genesis is less about how the house was built and more about how God made the world his home, what does that mean for how we live in it now?
Genesis doesn’t answer all of that at once.
It unfolds slowly, faithfully, across God’s story.
And as we read God’s story together, this becomes a journey of discovery over our lifetime—one that reshapes how we see God, ourselves, and the world we live in.
This, is just the beginning.
Pray with me.
I encourage you to spend time this week going back to the beginning and reading Genesis chapter 1 through chapter 2 verse three. Meditate on it. Walk with it. Sit with it. Drink a cup of coffee or tea or a bubbly glass of San Pellegrino and have a conversation with God contemplating it together.
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