Knowledge Beyond the Darkness

This morning I was reading through Genesis 1 while on a Youth Ministry trip. The familiar words I have read over and over resound again in my mind, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” I’ve memorized these first few verses of Genesis with as many times as I have read them over the years, but this morning another thought occurred to me - God knew what was going happen in the garden he was about to create. When Moses interprets the Holy Spirit and writes, “the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” there must be an understanding that God was already aware of every event in time that was about to unfold. He knew that the creation that he was about to speak into existence would have everything offered and available to them - everything that they could ever need, yet, humanity would be disobedient and turn to the darkness that once covered the face of the earth.

This is our nature, darkness. The initial form of our spirits is void of God, we are born into the darkness. We are disordered, confused, and empty - and even in our confusion there is a presence of God residing over us. “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” - the Lord, even in the midst of the darkness, is present and watching. He hovers over the surface of the deep and then He speaks. At the command of God darkness gives way to light. Even at the beginning of time there is an archetype of our fallen condition, a foreshadowing of what was to follow. God’s creation is corrupted by sin, yet redeemed by His word.

Not so coincidentally, there is only one other Biblical account that shares the same introduction. John 1:1 - “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The ‘Word’ John refers to is none other than Jesus of Nazareth. Though God knew humanity would fall into disobedience, He created us anyway. Furthermore, God showed His abundant grace in the Garden in allowing Adam and Eve to continue with the life He had given them - even protecting them by banishing them from Eden, keeping them from being able to take and eat from the Tree of Life and living forever in a fallen state.

In the beginning God had it all in mind. He knew humanity to fall, he knew we would struggle, but he also loved us and saw the value in creating us and redeeming us. Just as when God spoke to the darkness in the beginning and sent it away with a simple command, so too, God’s Word made flesh speaks to the darkness of our depraved hearts and sends it away with complete authority.