Designed for Goodness: Creation
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: God’s design for life (and creation) is good - we see this when we define it as he does.
The Search for the Good Life
The Law of First Mentions
A Good God
The Search for the Good Life
God’s design in creation is good - we see this when we define it as he does.
The problems of the world arise when we attempt to redefine what God has already said is good.
Isaiah 5:20-23 ESV
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!”
People today misappropriate the word good.
“The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
-G.K. Chesterton
We need a new standard for goodness, by what God created and what God said is good.
What equates to a “good life” in God?
With family
With work and career
Experiences
Finances
Suffering
Success
We deviate from what God says is good and suffer accordingly.
Jesus spoke to practical matters of our day and to things that are to come:
Matthew 19:8 ESV
“He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”
Matthew 22:29-32 ESV
“But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”
In the New Testament, we see goodness as a fruit of, or what is produced by the Holy Spirit in a follower of Jesus (Galatians 5:22).
You know what is good by the God intended results that it has produced.
“The astonishing paradox of Christ's teaching and of Christian experience is this: if we lose ourselves in following Christ, we actually find ourselves. True self-denial is self-discovery. To live for ourselves is insanity and suicide; to live for God and for man is wisdom and life indeed. We do not begin to find ourselves until we have become willing to lose ourselves in the service of Christ and of our fellows.”
-John R.W. Stott, Basic Christianity
What was God’s original good design, intent and purpose in a thing?
The Law of First Mentions
In God’s design, he is showing us what is good.
He communicates his intent and design through the law of first mentions in Scripture.
God’s world and everything in it was created for goodness.
Day 1 - Light and Dark
Genesis 1:1-5 ESV
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 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. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And 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. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”
This is a reference to the origin of matter, space and time.
People over the years have stumbled with the creation account because they missed the intent of the narrative.
The purpose of the narrative was to identify Yahweh as the sovereign creator and to explain what God did, not necessarily all of the exhaustive details of how he did it.
In the same way the whole of Scripture is a timeline of God’s specific relationships with specific people at specific times.
It is not meant to communicate the totality of human history.
What you can know through the Scripture is who God is, what he expects and how to relate to him based on his revealed nature as chronicled in the specific declarations and interactions.
And in doing so, he is showing us what is good.
God is able to determine what is good because as omnipotent (Elohim), omniscient, omnipresent creator, God is all-wise in regard to his creation, knowing its design and how it best functions.
Before anything else, there was God.
God is eternal, which means that he is without beginning or end.
In all that we will ever encounter, God is the only uncreated person or thing.
Loss is a part of human experience.
Only in God is there permanence.
In everything else, there is a beginning and an end until we find ourselves reunited with God.
Day 2 - Sea and Sky
Genesis 1:6-8
“And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
On day 3, we have the first mention of God declaring something good.
What God creates is always good.
The form or environment can be neutral (i.e. - music, fashion, language, money), it is how God populates it with content and meaning that determines its goodness, worth and value.
Day 3 - Fertile Earth
Genesis 1:9-13 ESV
“And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.”
God introduces boundaries and it is the first time that God declares that what he is creating is good.
The introduction of vegetation, seeds and fruit that would bear after its own kind is a principle God embeds in creation.
What kind of seed are you sowing in your life?
Day 4 - Lights of Day and Night
On this day, times, seasons, days and years are introduced.
Genesis 1:14-19 ESV
“And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.”
God embeds processes, rhythms and seasons of life into creation and says that they are all good.
It may take sowing seeds, time and process for you to see what God is creating in you and through you, but you will see the good fruit if you keep at it.
Those who despise their seasons of life are both missing what is good and bucking against God’s divine design.
“The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart — an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a spiritual ear; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.
Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. This demand is entirely our workmanship.
This demand is valuable in various ways. In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns. And continued novelty costs money, so that the desire for it spells avarice or unhappiness or both… But the greatest triumph of all is to elevate his horror of the Same Old Thing into a philosophy so that nonsense in the intellect may reinforce corruption in the will… The Enemy loves platitudes. Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking ‘Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?’ they will neglect the relevant questions. And the questions they do ask are, of course, unanswerable; for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which they now invoke the future to help them to make. As a result, while their minds are buzzing in this vacuum, we have the better chance to slip in and bend them to the action we have decided on.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Harpers SanFrancisco, 2001, pp.135-139
Day 5 - Fish and Birds
Genesis 1:20-23 ESV
“And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.”
The law of first mentions means that theologically, we know what God intended to be good, fruitful, beneficial and leading to the flourishing of both creation and humanity by his original design.
We see what is harmful, detrimental and deteriorating when we deviate from the model.
From this original design, creation is guarded, tended to and cultivated to be a sanctuary in which God dwells by his Spirit with his creation.
On day five, we see God’s first mention of the word blessing.
Blessing was directly associated with increase and multiplication.
In God we and creation are intended to live in blessing and flourishing.
Day 6 - Land animals and Mankind
Genesis 1:24-31 ESV
“And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
Both men and women were created in God’s image.
He gave them distinct (defined) gender, identity and purpose saying that it is all good.
God also provided for them in this calling.
When we walk with God, we find the strength, satisfaction and security of walking in the defined image of God.
Blessing is directly attached to God’s commissioning of mankind to steward the earth as vice-regents as he would, representing him in the earth.
What we can see is that God put Adam in the garden because he desired unbroken fellowship, for Adam to have an identity worth preserving, a work worth doing (cultivating the earth as his vice-regent) and a life worth living in a holy community.
This is the essence of worship.
A Good God
Understanding God’s divine order brings us back to God through Jesus and the eternal life that God knows is good.
John 10:7-18 ESV
“So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.””
Whereas walking contrary to God’s commands and ways is ultimately succumbing to the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy our lives, Jesus is the good shepherd who looks to return us to God’s good design and abundant life - life eternal in him.
Though we once were rebels deserving death and hell when living according to the flesh (Galatians 5:16-26), Jesus voluntarily laid down his life for us at the cross in sacrifice so that as we turn from our sin and put our trust in his triumphant resurrection from the dead, we can be forgiven of our past and brought into new life in Christ.
Ultimately, we can all see that God’s design for life is good - we will see this when we define life and creation as he does.
Second City Church