God’s Word for You

Genesis 1:1a The beginning

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, July 21, 2026

GENESIS

For those who have never read all the way through Genesis, or if it has been a while, there are many wonderful things to watch for. Don’t let the length of the book concern you. For although it is fifty chapters long, and one of the longest books in the Bible (Jeremiah is a little longer, counting by words), it is far shorter than The Hobbit (by two-thirds) and many other modern classics.

The ancient Hebrew Scribes divided the book into ten uneven sections or “Accounts.” We would probably divide it differently, into about five parts: Adam to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, with the Abraham and Joseph parts being a little longer than the others.

Moses wrote this book and all the first five books of the Bible, as well as Psalm 90. Christ our Lord and the Apostles as well as the Prophets and God the Father himself testify about Moses as the author. “Be careful to obey the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go” (Joshua 1:7).

It is a mistake to think that reading Genesis will give us all the answers we might have about creation and the ancient world. The book is true, not a myth, but it was not written with our modern idea of a complete history. The book was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and was written for specific reasons that do not always match up with our questions. But we can be certain of this: God wants us to know the things he has recorded here for us. This is what he wants us to pay attention to. It is the beginning of the story of his love.

Luther wrote: “There are some who have little regard for the Old Testament. They think of it as a book that was given to the Jewish people only and is now out of date, containing only stories of past time. They think they have enough in the New Testament and assert that only a spiritual sense is to be sought in the Old Testament. But Christ says in John 5:39, ‘Search the Scriptures, for it is they that bear witness to me’” (LW 35:235-236).

Some things to keep in mind:

First: Genesis was written so that from the description of these things in the past that Moses could not have known except by divine revelation, he proves his authority for his teaching, even about the future.

Second: Genesis was written so that there would be a definite foundation of faith among the people of the church against the opinions of the heathen and of unbelievers about the origin of the world.

Third: Genesis was written to teach God’s people about the majesty of the Creator and urge them (us) to obey his will.

Fourth: Genesis was written to set before the Israelites the true accounts of their ancestors as examples of the rewards for godliness and the punishments for wickedness.

Fifth: Genesis was written to teach everyone that one must seek or invoke no other God apart from the Creator of the world and who with a sure, certain, and true word has revealed himself to mankind right from the beginning of the world.

Sixth: Genesis was written especially to teach how everything was created, and most especially where sin and death came from (namely, by Adam’s fall through the devil’s wickedness). Then Moses teaches where our help comes from for driving out sin and death: not by the law or our works, but by “the seed of the woman,” Christ our Lord, who was promised to Adam and Abraham, so that from the very beginning faith would be praised above all works and laws and merits.

Seventh: Genesis is made up almost entirely out of illustrations of faith and unbelief, and the fruits or punishments that faith and unbelief bear.

A Simple Outline of Genesis:

I, The creation of the world and of mankind, the coming of sin and death, and the promise of the Savior. (Genesis 1-5).

II, Sin is punished by the flood; Noah is saved by God through faith. (Genesis 6-9).

III, The nations spread out, and Abraham is called to carry the promise of the Savior. (Genesis 10-17).

IV, Sin is punished in Sodom and Gomorrah; Lot is saved by God through faith. (Genesis 18-19).

V, Abraham and the son of the promise: Isaac. (Genesis 20-24).

VI, The promise passes to Jacob (Genesis 25-36).

VII, God saves his people from famine through Joseph (Genesis 37-50).

So much for a brief introduction.

GENESIS 1:1a

1:1 In the beginning,

Genesis is the book of beginnings. Moses begins with the very beginning. The grammar of the phrase is this: Reshith is a noun, here in the absolute state, and so it is not the beginning “of” anything in the sentence, but the very beginning of all things. It is a temporal phrase without any antecedent, and therefore we are obliged to take it at face value. It is not “When (God) began…,” but “In the beginning.” There are many attempts to explain the “how” of the world’s beginning. Even Aristotle made an attempt, but his is wrong. Many modern philosophers and scientists make their attempts, but they are misled. The devil makes the account of Moses “unreasonable” to people, and to do this he makes any other account “reasonable.” So whether we are tempted to listen to Aristotle or Augustine or Stephen Hawking but do so by setting aside Moses, we will always be in error. If anyone dares to say, “There is no God,” the Scripture calls him a fool (Psalm 14:1). If anyone dares to say, “God’s record is in error,” he himself is in error. “God is not a man, that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19), and Jesus says, “The Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35).

This is the true account of the beginning. The Holy Spirit declares: “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment” (Psalm 102:25-26).

So we learn here many things, but among them are these:

1, Before the creation, this creation at the beginning of all things, God already was. The Son of God rejoices to say about his Father, “You loved me before the creation of the world” (John 17:24).

2, This chapter proves that God is, that he exists, and that God is an intelligent essence, since he spoke and it was done. “The ability to speak is a quality of an intelligent essence, not of a brute. The creation of man testifies that God is of good essence, pure, righteous, and of a completely free will. It also bears witness to the nature of the eternal essence and its omnipotence, concerning which the Word of God says, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1).

3, God was not lonely or missing anything. That is not why the world and the universe were made. God is perfect (Matthew 5:48) and has no need of anything from us (Acts 17:25).

4, In eternity, before he created anything, God existed, alone, Triune, and perfect.

5, In eternity, before he created anything, God was planning and thinking about you, about each and every believer. “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will” (Ephesians 1:4-5). This means that you were and are more important to God than any other creature, and more than any moment or event in the history of the world. Those things exist and are used by God to bring about your life and your opportunity to come to faith and to become his dear child.

6, In eternity, before he created anything, God was also planning our salvation. For Jesus proclaims: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).

7, By telling us what happened “in the beginning,” Moses teaches us that the world is not permanent and eternal. Just as it had a beginning, so also it will have an end. Only God and whatever he created to be immortal will last beyond the destruction of the world. “The whole world will be consumed, for he will make a sudden end of all who live in the earth” (Zephaniah 1:18), but “the dead will be raised imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:52).

This phrase, “In the beginning,” is not a complete verse, nor even a complete sentence. It is hardly a phrase, yet it proclaims the law to mankind. For any other theories about the beginning of the universe, our world, and our human race, are contrary to the word of God and therefore at best errors, and at worst lies and the spewed vomit of the devil. Whoever does not believe this rejects God, and whoever rejects God is eternally damned (Mark 16:16).

But there is gospel here as well, for we know that God loved us even before this beginning, and that by beginning the world, he brought about what was necessary for us to have life in this world, so that we would learn about him, come to faith in him, and be taken from this created world into his eternal heaven when he calls us home. Trust in him, and do not be afraid.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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