This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Genesis 1-4” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, May 23, 1993.

Listen to the word of God. Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, so that you and your son and your grandson might hear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. O Israel, you should listen. and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you, that you may multiply greatly, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in a lamb flowing with milk and honey. Here, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your sons, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as truffles on your forehead. And you shall rank them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and dunes and cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant.

And you shall eat and be satisfied, then watch yourself, lest you forget the Lord who brought from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. You shall fear only the Lord your God, and you shall worship him and swear by his name. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, for the Lord your God in the midst of you is a jealous God. Otherwise the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you, and he will wipe you off the face of the earth. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at Nassau.

You should diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his testimonies and his statutes which he has commanded you, and you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord that it might be well with you and that you may go in and possess the good land which the Lord swore to give your fathers. by driving out all your enemies from before you as the Lord has spoken.

When your son asks you in time to come, saying, What do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments mean which the Lord commanded you? Then you shall say to your son, We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand. Moreover, the Lord showed great and distressing signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh and all his household, and he brought us out from there in order to bring us in to give us the land which he had sworn to our fathers. So the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always and for our survival as it is today. It will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all this commandment, which the Lord our God and before the Lord our God, just as he commanded us.

And then Genesis chapter one. This is one and two. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God is moving over the surface of the waters.

Remind us, Lord, remind us that we belong to you. that you have claimed us for your own, and that you have in fact given yourself to us. Remind us also, Father, that we belong to one another. And to this end, our God, we ask that we might prove to be a help one to another. Strengthen us in our determination to worship you properly. Even in this time, Lord, may your name be hallowed here. May we give our attention to you. May you be pleased, our God, to receive our worship. Hear us, then, for the sake of Christ our Savior, in whose name we pray.

We are continuing with our summation of the teachings that come to us from Genesis 1 through 4, and tonight we want to conclude Our summation of the first unit that we have marked out, the unit that runs from the first verse of Genesis 1 through the third verse of Genesis 2. Our interest, as I have endeavored to point out, has been chiefly doctrinal, theological, as we have seen that doctrinal concern. itself out in the literary frame set before us in these chapters. We must not, however, as we think of these matters, forget the history of salvation dimension. For example, Do well to remind ourselves that Genesis 1, verse 1 through chapter 2, verse 3, was written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but also from Moses, the servant of God.

And that this portion of scripture is directed, in the first instance, to the children of who have just come out of the land of Egypt. A major matter of importance, then, for that generation is the identity of that God who has delivered them, the identity of the true God, this God who is the God of their salvation. Now that identity, the identity of this God, is spelled out for us as it was for them in what this God has accomplished, what He has done. It is not irrespective of His word which He has spoken to Moses and even in the presence of the children of Israel. But primarily, we are focused upon the explication of that identity as it is spelled out in what this great God has accomplished, what He has done. These great works, then, of God distinguish Him from other so-called gods. as this pertains to the circumstance of the Israelites, particularly the gods of Egypt and the gods of those nations that the Israelites are about to dispossess in Canaan. It is important, therefore, for Israel to understand, and for us also, as we are impressed with this revelation, to see, to understand, that Israel’s God, this God who declares Himself thus, is no provincial deity.

He is, in fact, the only God. He is the maker of heaven and earth. He alone is the eternal God who is before all things, a God who makes Himself known by His awesome works. Consider his works, what these works say about him. So great is he and so great is his power, he is actually capable of creating so that there is something where formerly there was nothing. the works of this great God and what they say about Him. Consider then again His greatness and the greatness of His power. He is so great, He is so powerful, that He is capable of creating so that where there was formerly nothing, now there is something.

He creates out of nothing. He creates into nothing. There was nothing there. He creates into it, and now there is something. And even more, he will, of nothing, out of nothing, create deliberately then a world that knows only an impossibility of progress and development in itself without any inner potential to realize anything of itself.

That is, in fact, what is transpiring in the second verse of Genesis 1, a deliberate act by God so that he creates In the first order, a world that cannot progress, cannot develop, cannot produce life, cannot sustain life, cannot generate anything due to some kind of inner potential that it realizes from within itself. set before us here in that second verse, as we previously attempted to stress, is a formlessness, a void, which only God, in His power, can resolve. He deliberately then creates that which is impossible. when left to itself to resolve its own predicament. I stress this for you, I reiterate it. This is not the common message which you hear coming out of these early verses in Genesis 1, I realize that, but I stress this for you so as to show you root reason as to why the whole notion of evolution as it is conceived by the scientific elite is absolutely ridiculous in the face of the biblical revelation and its doctrinal declaration.

God deliberately creates a world, that world is a formlessness and a void, and the world has nothing within itself to resolve its own formlessness and emptiness. Only God Himself can answer the impossibilities that such a creation, which He deliberately creates, sets before Him. This means, then, that God, in this deliberate mess creating this impossible world, if you will, does so in order to make it plain that He, and only He, is capable of resolving the difficulties and the impossibilities that face us in Genesis 1. Only He now can resolve the formlessness and the emptiness so that life is possible, so that life may be sustained in the creation.

God then proclaims himself to be, at the very beginning of his revelation, the God who performs the impossible. And I might say that faith itself now becomes defined by this very revelation of God as the God who is capable of, and does in fact, perform the impossible.

If you do not believe that, you have no part in it. Now, this pattern which we observe with regard to the original creation, evidenced for us here in Genesis 1-2, does in fact repeat itself. It repeats itself in God’s saving work, a saving work which may be described as a new creation. so with the new order. You think of it as it is patterned for us in God’s saving work with respect to Israel. The God whom Israel serves is the God who, in saving Israel, has performed a work as impossible as the resolution of the formlessness and the emptiness of the original world. The God whom Israel serves is the God who, in saving Israel, has performed a work as impossible as the resolution of the formlessness and the emptiness of the original creation. This pattern which we see here in the Old Testament saving work of God is no less imprinted upon us and impressed upon us, we who are blessed by the saving work of Jesus Christ.

We are not, therefore, dealing with our inner potential when it comes to the matter of salvation. Israel was not dealing with its inner potentiality when it came to the matter of its salvation. We are not dealing with some kind of inner strength or inner capability when it comes to the matter of our salvation, any more than we are dealing with some kind of inner strength inherent to the creation when the world was first formed. Was it clear to you then, as you move from the creation story to the story of the deliverance of Israel to your own redemption, that the insistence of Calvinism with respect to the absolute sovereignty of God is undoubtedly correct? In fact, far from being a subordinate issue, far from being a peripheral matter, this issue of God’s absolute sovereignty is at the heart of biblical revelation. through redemption in Egypt for the sake of the Israelites to our own salvation. Now, we are not dealing then with our own inner potential, our capability.

We are face-to-face with an impossibility. And that impossibility can only be resolved by the God who does the impossible, in creating and in saving. the manner in which God performs the impetus. This may not be altogether clear to us. Again, we are taking a somewhat different line than has ordinarily been taken when we come to those opening verses in Genesis 1. But please observe the manner in which God then performs the impossible. The world itself is described as formless and void, the impossibility of the world situation clearly set before us in that declaration. Now that verse continues, and we have set before us the manner in which God will resolve the circumstance.

He will perform the impossible. He will resolve the formlessness and void of the creation by doing something that is still more incredible still. He himself, as you read that second verse, enters the formlessness and the void. He enters it. He subjects himself to it. He condescends to the level of the creation itself. and its impossible circumstances. In so doing, he takes to himself a visibility in the Spirit of God, which is described here as hovering dove-like above the abyss. Nothing less is in view here than a theophany, that is, an appearance of God.

And it is by root of this appearance of his person that he does the impossible, he accomplishes the impossible, and affects form where previously there was formlessness, and bestows fullness where previously There was emptiness. The form and fullness is what follows in the description of the six recorded days of creation. The first three days set before us the forms, and the second three days set before us the filling of those forms. in the creation of man, the image of God, to whom is given the responsibility of ruling the world. As it was with creation, and the pattern that we observed there, so also in the process of salvation.” When salvation, God, as we affirm and declare, performs the impossible, He resolves the formlessness and the void now that has come upon the creation due to sin and the entrance of death. And He does this by entering into that world Himself and taking to Himself sinful flesh. as one who is himself overshadowed by the hopeless condition of the creation and humanity. Through the appearance of himself in Jesus Christ, he performs the impossible and overcomes the vast forces arrayed against us, and that for the establishment of those eternal forms and for the filling of them. unto the renewal of man in the image of God.

This renewal that takes place with respect to us as creatures is all of grace, because God has taken to himself our humanity in Christ Jesus, and our renewal in the image of God is found only in and through him. It has been often pointed out that man was created last in order to emphasize his uniqueness and greatness in the creation order. Indeed, the last is first, and there is much to be said in pointing those things out again. But this order which we see, the reserving of the creation of man till the end, also emphasizes God’s grace in love, in that man’s appearance follows God’s appearance, and man’s work follows God’s work. When man finally appears, everything has been prepared for him by God himself.

Note the parallel in the situation with respect to the children of Israel. As we read from Deuteronomy 6 this evening, They are brought into a land that is virtually given to them, and handed to them are cities that they did not build, wells they didn’t dig, fields they didn’t plant. All of this is given to them. But beyond the peril that we see in the case of the Israelites, We acknowledge it for ourselves. Everything is prepared, as we ourselves are prepared to appear in glory.

Here, then, is our great God, the only God, the true and mighty God, the One who created the heavens and the earth. The God who alone does the impossible, even creating the impossible, so that he himself might resolve it. That God who despises not his creation, but even enters it in order to provide life. thus magnifying His power and His grace, this One who in the fullness of His revelation comes to be known to us as the God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, or even God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. By this one we are renewed in the image of God for blessing. It carries us into a Sabbath, a Sabbath which shall be never-ending for us as it is for God.

We, too, have an ceased from all of our labors and having come to rest with you. Our Father, set again before us the uncommon things that rise before us from your revelation, that we with fresh eyes and with renewed hearts might through to all that our God is and all that he has done. May we not be content simply with the tried and true, if in fact such contentment would deprive us of the richness and the wealth of your word. So, Father, let us press on that we might see more perfectly, that we might see better Yes, for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others as well. Those wonderful, wonderful truths that are here for us. And may we be taught to live in light of what we have seen, that we would not depart from you or transgress your commandments as they are seen in your Son and in his keeping of your word.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.