Beginnings

“First this, God. . .” That’s how Peterson’s The Message states the beginning of the Bible.


First, God. That’s the premise. “He is before all things and in him all things hold together,” is how Colossians puts it (1.17)

Hebrews chapter 11, that great statement on faith says:

“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things are not visible.” Hebrews 11.3


We are going to be studying the Gospel of John for the next month. John’s Gospel begins with an intentional echoing of Genesis 1:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1.1

This is a difficult statement to understand because it comes from a way of thinking that we are not used to. It comes from the ancient Greeks and a word for “word” called logos. Logos had a couple of meanings or emphases. Logos was the spoken word, the word going out from someone or written to communicate. No problem there – we get that. But there was another sense in which the Greeks understood logos – the word that was not spoken or written or uttered in any way. And yet it was there.

“It was the word that remained in the mind.”

It was something like our reason, signifying that which is rational and intelligent. You could almost say, the word that was present, or a presence. This presence is in all things and behind all things. The soul of the universe. Just as the Spirit of God was a brooding presence over the dark waters at the beginning was Creation, so the Word is present in all things, unspoken, except by the nature of things.

Norman Maclean, in his beautiful book, A River Runs Through It, touches on the mysterious relationship between the creation and words and the Word.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.


That is from the soul of an artist. From the mind of science we find this expression of Logos in DNA and the sheer amount of information that sustains the natural world, the human body being a prime example. There seems to be unspoken, unseen words behind all that is visible in the world. What I am trying to say is that there seems to be a plan. Just like you don’t build a house without a plan, so there seemed to be a plan when this world came into being.

Not long ago I heard a junior high age girl remark, “That’s so random!” I like the expression. Kids use it. “That’s so random” means it’s unexpected. It’s odd. But in a good way. Different is good. Random is good. Like a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, levels and angles that stretch the normal rules of design. It seems almost random. But it’s not. In fact, there is more design and plan involved.

When random comes along in our lives, it’s mostly good because there was an order to begin with. If everything was random then we would have serious problems.

My sister Kristin and her eleven year old daughter took a trip to China this summer with a group from their church. They went there to do mission work among the poor. When she got back I phoned her and asked how the trip went. She said it was good and how her daughter didn’t want to leave when the two weeks were up. But the one real disconcerting thing was when they arrived there and met their host, they expected to be given an itinerary of how they would be spending their time and what work they would be doing. What they got instead was their host smiling and saying, “So, what do you want to do?”

My sister thought, we traveled thousands of miles to get here and when we do, there is no plan? That was frustrating to her. Things were too unstructured, too random. I just read in Newsweek that it costs like $286,000 to raise a child to adulthood. I’m not daunted by that figure. But the money is only the half of it. How do you bring a baby into the world and see them grow safely and successfully into what they are supposed to be? What’s the plan for that? It can’t be accidental. It can’t be random. If everything were random there would be no story, no music, no building, no growing, no beauty, no truth. We would be lost. Because total randomness is Chaos. That’s what Genesis chapter one says the universe was like when God started to create.

“The Word was with God. And the Word was God.” John 1.1

The unspoken Word started to speak and there was light and order and definition. Waters were separated from land, sky from earth, light from dark. And God said this is good. This is very good.

Now the Jews had a different understanding of “the Word, than the Greeks. They identified Word with “Wisdom.” The Word was the Wisdom of God and wisdom is talked about in the scriptures like a person. Proverbs 8 is an example:

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. . .Before the hills, I was given birth, before he made the earth or its fields or any of the dust of the world. I was there when he set the heavens in place. . .I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.” Proverbs 8.22-31


What’s God trying to tell us. There is a plan. Not just for the Universe but specifically for you and me and us. God’s not just telling us – He is fairly shouting it at us. In fact, in Proverbs Wisdom personified “Shouts out in the streets to get people’s attention.”

We are the Lord’s special delight. We are the apple of His eye. Move over sun, moon, stars, hills and rivers – God has even better plans for us.

“I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29.11


There a lot of people out there living lives of quiet desperation, thinking that everything is random. Thinking there is no plan. If you are in that place in your life right now the Lord wants you know that there are good things coming. There is a future. There is hope. This is God’s Word to you:

“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. . .But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”
John 1.10-13


If we believe we receive adoption as God’s own children. If we believe we receive power. The same Word that hung the stars and caused the rivers to flow comes to us and changes us. That’s the beginning of eternity for us, when we believe. Or, first, God.