Let's begin in the beginning.
The first book of the Bible, Genesis, records the birth and origin story of Earth.
God is the first character that we read of. The second verse of the Bible records that "the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters".
The first thing I want us to see here is that something – Someone – preceded us. Later in the Bible when God reveals himself to a man named Moses (Exodus 3), God tells him that his name is Yahweh. He says, "This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations."
'Yahweh', the personal name of God, means 'He is'. God is the one who was, and is, and always will be. His name reveals his eternal nature.
Your pencil cannot make another pencil, and Earth cannot make another Earth. Temporary things have permanent origins. Similarly, the origin of our temporary planet is the eternal God.
In the first chapter of Genesis, the original Hebrew refers to God as 'Elohim' (אֱלֹהִים). The title Elohim, in this verse, refers to the 'Supreme One' or 'Mighty One'.
This title can actually be used to refer to human rulers and even spiritual beings, but it is used here to display God's authority, power and might because right after we read of the Spirit of God, we see him create everything.
"Let there be light," he said. And there was light. Now that's power.
God creates the sky, land, plants and trees, the sun and stars, fish and other sea creatures, and all land animals.
Every time God creates these things, he says that they are "good". He blesses them all in telling them to be "fruitful and multiply".
Then he creates a different kind of creature; a man. And then a woman.
They're different from the other creatures because they are made in God's image. This distinction is so significant that God gives them authority to reign over every other creature that he has made (verse 26).
Like the other animals, they're called to be fruitful and multiply but they have the special command of governing over everything else that God has created in their world, and teach their sons and daughters to do the same thing. This special and greater command from God has to do with what verse 27 announces; that man was made in God's own image. The simple fact of being made in the likeness of God awards them the great privilege of ruling over his good world.
Did you catch that? Humanity has worth because the God who made them has worth.
When God looks over all he has made, he says that it is "very good!".
Look around you. Things have not been good for a long long time. They will be soon – but that's a story for another chapter.
The world looks the way it does because of the next thing that happens.
A strange creature, a serpent, speaks to the woman and convinces her that if she eats of a beautiful fruit, she will become like God himself. So she eats it, and the man eats it too.
So what's the big deal? It's just a fruit, right? Not right.
The big deal is that God told them not to eat the fruit (Genesis 2 verse 16 & 17), and they ate it anyway. The big deal is that they disobeyed God. They didn't believe him. They treated Elohim like a liar.
One of the most bitter parts of this interaction is the fact that they were already made to be like God himself. God himself had already called them to create life, to speak life, to govern and rule. But their pride wanted to reach a little further than that. They didn't just want to be like God, they wanted to become him.
There are big repercussions for disobeying God, simply because of who he is. What were the repercussions for Adam and Eve?
"they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness."
We already have a hint that something's gone terribly wrong. These two beings were made for one another: Adam spoke the first love poem when he called Eve "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!" after she was created, and now they can't even be naked in front of one another.
But things are even worse than they seem.
God calls out "Where are you?" The Garden where God had placed the man and woman was a place where God and his people could hang out, live in intimate relation, and now they are hiding from their creator, the one who made them in his perfect image, and called them "very good".
God banishes them from the Garden of Eden and things seem to be increasingly worse thereafter. Over hundreds of years, humanity is multiplying but they're not spreading God's goodness over the face of the earth. They're spreading human wickedness.
Things get so bad that Genesis 6:5-6 records that "The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on earth. It broke his heart."
But there is hope.
Before God cursed the man and woman and banished them from Eden, he addressed the source of their disobedience by speaking to the deceptive serpent: "And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel."
It isn't immediately clear to us what God means by this, but the serpent knows what God has proclaimed: a war.
The next chapter will reveal how the serpent responded to God's declaration, and what exactly God's declaration meant.
• • •
Look at nature and you will see the obvious hand of God.
But there's a story in the Bible that you can't read in nature. There is something in it that God is showing us. All human beings are lost because of the downfall of the man and woman you read of above. What they did rewrote our very nature.
But God has made a way to correct their wrong, and to restore us to himself. That is what the story of the Gospel is; God's rescue mission for his wayward children.
In Exodus 3, when God reveals himself to Moses, he actually says his name is I AM. He modifies it into HE IS for Moses so that when the man is speaking to the other Israelites, there aren't any linguistic problems; wouldn't it be a little confusing if someone showed up and started shouting "I am has sent me!"
God addresses this problem by making clear that it is not Moses who has sent himself, but God who has sent Moses to speak to the nation of Israel.
What does it mean that God's personal name is I AM?
Infinitely more than I could know, hope or understand, but I am going to grab onto one characteristic of our Creator, and hope and pray that he will reveal more of himself to me in the future.
God was God before he made us. God was God before he made anything.
I AM doesn't rely on anything; He is self-existent. He is truly Elohim of Elohim (Ruler over rulers). There are spiritual beings that aren't God, but none of those beings can exist apart from God. He is the one source of all life.
And now to his creation, he is HE IS; Yahweh.
Speaking God's name is a proclamation of praise in itself. Nothing can speak the name of God without praising him! All of creation cries out 'Eternal One!', even if it opposes him.
You can bow to God's love with all joy, all bliss. Or you can bow to God as the demons do, opposing, hating, and being envious of his power and authority. The choice is yours, and the consequences are yours too.
Either way, God will be glorified.
References
Please read the comment titled AUTHOR'S NOTE to directly access the links listed below.
https://youtu.be/U5iyUik97Lg - The Bible Project, 'Elohim'.
https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/elohim-supreme-one-mighty-one.html
Genesis 1-3.
Genesis 6.
Exodus 3.
Eager learners, be sure to check out the references above! They could help you better understand some areas where I might have fallen short in explaining.
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