Thoughts From Genesis 1 (#2)

Thoughts From Genesis 1 (#2)

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". (Genesis 1:1 ESV) 

This verse sets the stage for everything that follows in the Bible. God made everything. He made our world, the sky above it, space and every living thing. Why is that important? It is because it speaks to God's right to rule the world he made. He made it and it is his. 

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If God did not make the universe, his right to rule it may be questioned. That is why naturalists work so hard to find an alternate theory. If the universe came into being on its own, then no one has a right to govern mankind. We may rule ourselves. For example, Stephen Hawking writes:
With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break those laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started - it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how to start if off. So long as th universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither begging nor end: it would simply be. What place, the for a creator? A Brief History of Time, 1988, p. 140-141. 

Ironically, this thinking has produced a religion rather than atheism. It has created a deity of its own: the Cosmos. Scientists describe it as having no beginning and no end and being worthy of our reverence. It has much in common with pantheism.

The Bible makes clear that it is God who created the universe. The Bible makes clear that God is the master of it. The Old Testament prophets declared this repeatedly. The Book of Revelation resonates with this idea. 

Hezekiah, a king of Israel in the Old Testament, gives us a great example. Surrounded by a superior Assyrian army, he cried out to God. Listen to this prayer: "O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven an earth." Hezekiah went on to ask God, as the maker and ruler of all things, to deliver Israel. God answered that prayer and delivered them "for his own sake", or to show that Hezekiah was right to name his as create and ruler.

Believers look at a troubled world and know that God is the master of it. We pray "your kingdom come" because we anxiously await the day he will manifest his kingdom to all.