In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1:1
Plenty of advice, some good and some useless, flows regarding the observance of the new year, everything from making and keeping resolutions to the ways of recovering from New Year’s Eve celebrations. One of the more unusual that I read recently advised that, as the midnight hour approaches on New Year’s Eve, everyone should raise their left leg and hold it up until after midnight. That way, we will start off the new year on the right foot. Silly, I know. But there is nothing silly about making sure that we are on a solid foundation as we begin the new year. And our text today is one of the cornerstones for that foundation.
The first fact that emerges from our text is that God preceded the beginning. One thing that evolutionists with their billions of years and creationists with their thousands of years agree upon is that none of us was there to witness the beginning. No human eye watched nor recorded the first events of time. But God was there. In all of His wisdom, power, and holiness, God ever was, is, and will be. 1 Timothy 1:17 identifies Him as the King eternal. Fools in our world will deny or ignore the existence of God. But that does not negate His existence, or our responsibility to Him, any more than denying the existence of Revenue Canada will enable us to escape the annual tax bill. The first step in knowing God and establishing a relationship with Him is to believe that He is (Hebrews 11:6).
The second fact that emerges from our text is that God created. Willing to allow others to experience and enjoy His wisdom, power, and holiness, God moved in creation to produce a world and a people who would accept Him. The details that follow in the first two chapters of Genesis provide us with the facts that explain our existence and the existence of everything around us. Try as they might, the theories and speculation of the evolutionists cannot refute these details. The deeper we delve into the things that God created, the more pronounced is the proof of creation. Should we examine a blade of grass under a microscope, even to the cellular level, we will find patterns that bear the stamp of a wise Designer. Should we go deeper and explore the elements that make up the very structure of matter, we find in the simplicity of design an incomprehensible power that maintains and regulates it all. If we reverse the microscope into a telescope, we find even greater proofs of the power of creation in the unending stars that make up our universe and whatever lies beyond.
We begin our year with the beginning of wisdom: the acceptance of the God Who is and who created. With joy and with deepest humility we appreciate that such a God would stoop to gather up His tiny creatures to appreciate His Salvation. – Jim MacIntosh