The Big Story of the Bible, Part 2 - Chapter 1: Creation

September 8, 2022 | by: Dale Thiele | 0 Comments

Posted in: Pastoral Encouragement

We started last week looking at the Big Story of the Bible by considering what I called “The Prequel.” Before creation, the persons of the Trinity made a covenant and plan for redemption. Everything flows out of that plan. The rest of the Big Story of the Bible will be covered in twelve chapters. Each chapter progresses the storyline of the covenant of redemption. Chapter 1, of course, is creation. 

In creation, God sets the stage for his grand plan of redemption. Remember, the Father planned redemption with the Son before creating the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1:1. “For that reason we must look upon Christ as the very purpose of God’s creation… His redemptive work from the Incarnation to the Resurrection was no accident, nor was it suddenly necessary in order to correct the course of an unforeseeably fallen creation, but it was fully in view when God created the world. Creation is, therefore, the beginning, or the preamble, of the history of redemption” (Willem VanGemeren, The Progress of Redemption, page 64). Therefore, in the act of creation God sets the stage for the blessings of redemption to be worked out, culminating in the New Creation (which happens to be chapter 12, or the final chapter, of our Big Story of the Bible). 

Let’s look at three key moments in the creation account of Genesis 1 & 2 through the lens of redemption: 

  1. Man Created in God’s Image. Genesis 1:27 states, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Christ will redeem humans (Rev. 5:9); therefore, God made humans with greater dignity than any other part of creation. To be made in the image of God has nothing to do with physical likeness (God has no physical body). We are like God in our ability to create, to have dominion, and to live in relationship with others. Under the Lordship of God, we create to his glory, we submit to Him as we rule creation, and find our greatest blessing in relationship with him. We’ll see next week in Chapter 2, how the Fall corrupts the image of God in us. 
  1. God’s Covenant with Adam. In Genesis 2:15-17, God makes an agreement, a covenant, with Adam, culminating with the warning, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in that day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” In order to maintain a relationship with the holy, sovereign God, we must be perfect in our obedience to him. This covenant with Adam sets the stage for the Fall and our need for redemption. People, on their own, cannot maintain their relationship with God. 
  1. God Consecrates the First Marriage. God foreshadows the blessing of redemption in the marriage union. Genesis 2:24 is the key text that spells out God’s blueprint for marriage, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” In explaining this text, Paul says in Ephesians 5:32, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” When God creates woman as a complement for man and brings them together in the one flesh union, he was creating a living example of the future union between the Redeemer and the redeemed. Therefore, we look forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19:6-9. Also, this is why sexual sin is so heinous in the sight of God. He created the sexual union of marriage as a foreshadow of the glorious union of Christ and his people in New Creation, a union of pure joy and delight. Any distortion of God’s design for sexual union not only distorts God’s intention for human flourishing, but also desecrates the foreshadow of the glorious aim of redemption. 

We already see in Creation the foundations being laid for God’s plan of redemption. This is the thread that ties together the Big Story of the Bible.

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