Radio Episode 2: God’s Creative Word

If you can’t see the player, just go to the blog and play it from there or check it out my podbean channel where all past broadcasts are archived. Transcript below for my kids who prefer reading.

Hi! This is Miss Tyler and welcome back to Context for Kids. This week we are going to talk about something very exciting—the authority and power of God. And there’s no better place to start talking about that then Genesis chapter one when He like, literally makes everything!

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ² 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.

³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

People in the ancient world thought about things very differently than we do today, Today, if we can’t see something then we have trouble believing it even exists. Kinda. We have trouble because we separate everything into different categories. Over here we have science and over here we have politics and over here we have religion, and we don’t like for them to mix. Have you ever seen someone who didn’t like anything on their plate to touch? Where they don’t want a pea in their applesauce, or meat? Honestly, meat in applesauce is awesome so I don’t know why anyone would hate that but some people do. When they are eating chicken they want it to taste like chicken, I suppose. But people nowadays like to have these big important issues all separated out from each other—sometimes. When the Bible was written, that wasn’t true at all. Religion was a part of everything because God was seen as behind and a part of absolutely everything on earth that happened. They didn’t think anything happened without Him. They didn’t think the sun rose without Him or that the moon would come out at night without Him. Every time someone had a baby, whether people or animals, they felt it was because of Him. And when crops grew and when the rain fell. Everything was about God. And if the rain didn’t fall and the crops didn’t grow and if someone didn’t have a baby, they saw God in that too. God in the ancient world was seen as what we grownups call a “micromanager.” And so when they saw everything that was going on in the world, that was proof to them that God exists. They didn’t need to see over the top miracles to believe there was a God because just the fact that everything in the world was running smoothly was proof enough. I mean, how did all of this stuff happen without God personally doing it all for them?

Of course, you and I were brought up in an entirely different kind of world. God is still exactly the same but we have changed since the Bible was written. So, things that made perfect sense to them don’t always mean the same thing to us. Sometimes we need to interpret what things meant to them before we can apply it to our own lives. We can add to it and take away from it without even meaning to. They would have thought that a world where politics and medicine and culture can exist without religion would have been silly. How can a person do anything without God or without Him knowing about it or being a part of it? But that’s what our culture does today when it separates God from everyday life, and it has been that way all my life. But when we believe in God, we have to become more like Bible people. That doesn’t mean we have to all go move to Israel and live in tents and herd sheep and goats or anything, that would just be silly and plus, there isn’t enough room there for all of us. And we sure shouldn’t go back to owning slaves or having human kings or doing everything like they did. We still live in our modern world and some of the ways we are different from them are very good. We do a lot of things differently now because Jesus taught us not to hate our enemies and to serve others instead of demanding to be served. I don’t need a slave because I can get off my own lazy butt and do things myself.

But one of the sad things that happened is when science replaced God in a some people’s minds. I am a scientist. I went to college and I studied math, physics and a whole lot of chemistry and got a degree as a chemist and worked in Research and Development when I was much younger. So, I just love science. Science rocks. Science is very cool. But all science does is figure out more and more about the excellent universe that God designed to work very, very well. Scientists—we can’t create anything like God does. We have to work with what He has given us. He gave us minds, and imagination, and intelligence, and curiosity. We can observe how things work. And have even proven through science that just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Think about germs and viruses. Until about four hundred years ago, no one could see germs because it takes a microscope to see them. Until the 1930’s, when the electron microscope was invented, no one could see viruses either. But you know what? People knew they existed because of the effect that they have on people. Germs and bacteria and viruses cause food to become contaminated and people to get sick. Even though they aren’t big enough to see with our eyes, everyone could see what they did. And this world is like that, we see all around us what God has done and what He continues to do. We don’t have to see Him in order to see what He does.

We can invent things too, but invention is different from creation. Only God can create something from nothing and give it meaning. We can also make things. Do you like to cook? I love to cook. Last night I made beef with broccoli, which is a Chinese dish. I took some beef, and some broccoli, brown sugar, soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil, corn starch, and a few other things and I made a yummy dinner. But I had to go to the supermarket to buy all of those things. And the supermarket had to get those things from ranchers and farmers and manufacturing companies. None of us created those things. We all worked with things that God created out of nowhere. And after He made them, He gave them to us for food. Not all those things right away, as we will see as we study the Bible. Beef wasn’t originally on the menu at all!

So, we understand that God created everything but how does He do it? The Bible says that He just speaks and whatever He wants just happens. I bet your parents wish that they could do that and you would just do whatever they ask whenever they speak. I bet they wish that they could speak and BOOM dinner was on the table and BOOM the dishes are done afterward and BOOM the laundry is all washed and neatly folded in the drawers whenever they said the word. But when we make something, we have to work. When we want something done, it takes the use of our own hands and feet and whatever other part of our body is required. God is so far above us that He spoke and the entire universe came to be. We can’t even tie our own shoes without bending over to do it ourselves, plus, we had to learn how to do it and that wasn’t easy either.

All around us are amazing inventions but they aren’t creations. There is this Hebrew word in Genesis, because the entire front of the Bible was written in Hebrew and Aramaic so that was a silly thing to say—so one of the Hebrew words in what we read today is bara and it is one of the most special words in the entire Bible. It is a word that is only ever used to describe what God is doing. No one else bara’s—not Adam or Noah or Abraham or Isaac or Jacob and not even King David. No one can bara except for God and in the very first sentence in the Bible is says that God did this thing, bara. Let’s read it:

In the beginning, God created (bara) the heavens and the earth. 

You know what the crazy thing is? It doesn’t say how it happened. It doesn’t say what He used to make the heavens and the earth. It doesn’t talk about anything science-y, no matter how hard we look at it and try. Believe me, I am a scientist and I have looked really hard. I can make a lot of assumptions and assume that something is there but if I do it’s just because I want it to be there. The people who originally heard this and read this didn’t care about how it happened. All they cared about was that God created a place for them to live and grow and eat and have their children and survive and be happy. But there was something very weird about this verse. God didn’t have any helpers! Well, that’s just bizarre! Everyone in the ancient world just knew that there were a kabillion different gods and goddesses and that not one of them was powerful enough to create the entire heavens and earth. Who is this one God who claims to do everything all by Himself? This book is already very controversial to ancient people, and by controversial, I mean something that people would have argued about and would have made them very angry.

All the other religions had gods for this and gods for that and gods for everything and none of the gods could do anyone else’s jobs for them because they only knew how to do their own job. In fact, they were so lazy that many of their mythologies said that they created humans because they got tired of growing and preparing their own food. They created plants and animals for food and they created humans to take care of their food for them. They were just powerful enough to do one job but not powerful enough to rustle up their own grub. They were really quite pathetic. Not like the God described in Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning, God created (bara) the heavens and the earth.” BOOM, no big group of helper gods required. And we might think this sounds normal today because just over half of the world is monotheistic now. That means that we believe in only one God who created everything. But when the Bible was first written, almost everyone believed that there were a great many gods. But we’ll talk about that more in other weeks. Right now, I want to show you how cool God is.

I want you to choose one thing to do. You can blink your eyes or point your finger or wiggle your toes. Okay, go ahead and do it. Was it difficult? Did you have to give yourself directions? Like. “Okay eyelids, I want you to start moving down lower on the count of three. One, two, three…go! Okay, lower, lower, you got this, you can do it…yes! Fully closed! You are so awesome but we’re only halfway there. Okay, again, on the count of three, start raising them up again. I know they are heavy but you can do this! One, two, three…HEAVE…keep lifting. I know it’s difficult…Yes, we did it. Good job everyone.

No, of course you didn’t have to do any of that and the truth is that you blink and point and wiggle your toes all day every day without even thinking about how to do it. It was absolutely effortless and took no effort at all. Now think about making lasagna, or a model car, or a painting. Those are things you have to put a lot of effort into.

When God created (bara) the heavens and the earth, all He did was speak. That means that He put in no more effort to create everything than it took you and I to blink, point and wiggle. The Bible doesn’t do a thing to tell us what it was all made of or exactly how it came together or anything because it isn’t important. The Bible wasn’t written to teach us about science. The Bible was written to teach us about God and about God’s relationship with us, His people. We may want it to be a science book but I don’t know why on earth God would waste space talking about that when the really important things in life are about God and His salvation and how He wants us to live. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in wanting to prove the Bible is right that we don’t remember that the Bible was written for people who are already believers. We already know it is right. If someone isn’t a believer, they aren’t going to think the Bible is right anyway. So, when we read it, we should always say, “What is this teaching me about God and about what God wants for me and what God wants from me?” Genesis 1 teaches us so much about the kind of God He is, totally different than all the fake gods worshipped all over the world. But it also tells us about how God feels about us, how amazing and trustworthy and powerful He is and how much we can trust Him with everything in our lives.

Whenever we want the perfect picture of what God looks like, we need to look to our example in Jesus. Can you tell me the only miracle that is recorded in all four Gospels? It’s the feeding of the five thousand! Jesus took five small loaves of barley bread and two tiny fish and fed five thousand men and who even knows how many women and kids. He took the bread and fish that His disciple Andrew had gotten from a child and he spoke a blessing over the bread and then the bread just began multiplying until everyone who had come to hear him teach got to eat enough to fill their bellies plus there were twelve baskets of leftovers later! That’s amazing! How did He do it? The Bible doesn’t say how He did it. All we know is that he prayed as He broke the bread, and probably His prayer was, “Blessed are you Oh Lord our God who brings forth bread from the earth,” because we know that prayer from other Jewish writings. And Jesus was Jewish, of course, so that’s the prayer that His mom and dad would have taught Him to honor God whenever they broke bread in their home when He was growing up.  Maybe He didn’t have to do anything at all except break the bread in order to hand it to His disciples to give to the crowd. But why on earth would that work? I can’t do that. Can you do that? If you were to go get a piece of bread later and say that prayer and break the bread and I am willing to bet that you will just have a piece of bread that is torn in half. Why can’t we do that?

The Gospel of John, in the very first chapter, gives us the amazing answer to that.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Wow, it starts off saying, “in the beginning” just like the first chapter of Genesis and our lesson today. So John is pointing us back to the very beginning of the Bible when God created the heavens and the earth and when He spoke the words to make the light appear. John tells us that God was not alone, that His Word was with Him and was part of Him. That’s an amazingly powerful Word, that it gets spoken about like it is more than just words. My words are not like that at all and I bet yours aren’t either. My words don’t have any power at all to do things like make light and animals and the sun, moon and stars. Best my words can do is order an extra-cheesy stuffed crust pizza. And it shows up. And it is good. But someone else has to take my order and another person has to make it. And then a third person delivers it to my house. What I would really like is if I could pray over the pizza and break it and have pizza forever. But my word, what comes out of my mouth, is totally different from God’s Word. God’s Word is so powerful and alive and life-giving and good that it has a life of its own and that life came to earth to live as Jesus. God’s words aren’t just words, like yours and mine, they are the Word. After all, how can His words be anything like our words? Right? That’s why, whatever Jesus wanted to do, He was able to do. Whatever He said would happen, happened. Whatever He asked for, He got. When He blessed someone, they were blessed and when He cursed that fig tree, it died. He made new eyes for the blind man and cured the leper. He made dead people come to life quite a few times. Even one who had been dead for four days! Because His words weren’t just His words–they were God’s own Word because that’s who He is. So, He could just speak a blessing, and when he spoke a blessing, all of God’s power just poured out into that bread and it multiplied because those five barley loaves and those two fish were two small to hold the power of His blessing! The bread and fish probably would have exploded into a million pieces if they had been forced to hold all that blessing inside.

God’s Word is very powerful. God gave us His words to us in our Bibles, but people were still sinning and doing terrible things and were worshiping false gods even. Many people were faithful to what the Bible was telling them but many were not. And even more people didn’t know about the Bible at all because they were from nations who did not know God and had no idea how different He was from the false, cruel, demanding gods that they worshiped. The prophet Isaiah said that one day a Servant would come who would help God’s people again, the Jews, but that that wasn’t nearly enough, that He would help all the pagan nations too. All the people who didn’t know God and didn’t know His commandments and were doing terrible things that God hates because they hurt people. Their false gods did all sorts of terrible things and so the people on earth, all the people on earth, needed an example of what God looks like up close. And so God sent His powerful Word, and the wonderful things He said and did are written in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and as we go through Genesis, we will also be talking about what the love of God looks like in the flesh so we can all know God better through the Word, through His Son Jesus.