Riverside Community Church

God - Creator 

Eli Heinrichs - June 22.25

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Heard that one before? I would argue it’s the second-most read part of the Bible behind the Lord’s Prayer. Because we’ve all been there. “I’m going to read the whole Bible this year”. Then you hit halfway through Genesis with all the genealogies and stop and do the jumping around the Bible thing you used to do. If you’re really committed, you make it to Leviticus. And we can tend to forget the creating part as we carry on with the Bible. God created, he said “Let there be light”, Norm flipped the switch, and now we’re kind of done with that. He is “The Creator” because he created, he’s not currently creating, except for like babies and stuff. Yet looking at God as the creator, he’s so much more than just the one that created; he is constantly creating and sustains everything. 

I must confess that seeing the concept of “God the creator” as the topic for this morning’s message to be a rather daunting topic. This is a huge topic, because he kind of created everything. There’s a story that my grandpa told me of a scientist who goes to God and says “We can create everything you can, we have no reason for you anymore. We have become gods.” And God responds, “Okay then, create something nobody has ever seen before.” And the scientist scoops up some dirt and God goes “No, you have to use your own materials.” And that’s how vast the scope of this is. From the dirt, and stuff smaller than dirt, to the entire universe. How do I do that justice on a Sunday morning? And I had a moment of clarity where God sort of nudged me. “You’re getting in your own head about trying to make something better than what I’ve written. Maybe just stick to the script.” So we’re going to look at Colossians 1:16 to start today.

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” A lot to unpack in this single verse. By him (Jesus) all things were created. The

earth, the angels, the flowers, the animals. Everything. The things we can’t see, the things we can. The idea that Jesus was the first person created is actually just heresy. When Paul says, one verse earlier, that

Jesus is the “firstborn of all creation”, he’s not saying Jesus is born first of the created universe. He’s saying that Jesus has authority over all creation. The firstborn, in Jewish tradition, receives the inheritance. Esau, the firstborn, traded his inheritance for some soup to his brother Jacob, and Jacob became one of the forefathers of the nation of Israel. So what Paul is saying is that “Jesus has authority over creation, all of creation exists because of him, and all creation exists for him.” Which helps with the understanding of why we’re created, but we’ll get to that later.

In the same vein, Revelation 4:11 says “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” The Lord, the Trinity, the Godhead 3-in-1 created the earth: everything exists because of the actions of God the Father, Jesus God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Hebrews 11:3 says that “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” That little story about the scientist scooping up the dirt comes back around here. The universe was created by the word of God, it was not made out of anything pre-existing, he didn’t scoop up dirt to create the earth. Greek philosophy at the time of the writing of Hebrews was that the universe had simply always existed, or that it had been made out of pre-existing matter. The current narrative for creation is that two particles that existed already for some reason collided and boom! universe. Yet the writer of Hebrews argues for yesh me-ayin, creatio ex nihilo, from nothing; something.

This creation argues for an insanely powerful God. We cannot grasp the fullness of his power. Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 32:17 says “Ah,

Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.” Nothing is too hard; if all he needed to do to create everything was speak, what challenge is there for him? And yet, we can get so caught up in the power of creation, that we ignore the tenderness of God’s creation. David, in Psalm 139, talks about the tenderness of God’s creation, when he says “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” How many of you here have ever knitted? I will readily admit that I have never. Because it looks awful. It’s a tedious, slow, time-consuming process to make what? A hat? Mittens? If you’re really invested, you could make a blanket. And yet, people continue to do this painstaking process that takes forever. Because they love it. They love the process, they love the outcome, they love how their knitting affects other people. And that’s how God sees our creation. He has infinite power, he could do anything, and he chooses to use it for such an intimate process, a labour of love, that results in a person that he loves, and in one who can spread joy and love to those around them. Compare: “That hat is so cute, who made it?” “My grandma!” and “Wow you just spread kindness, who made you that way?” “My saviour!”

We’re going to come back to the tenderness of God’s creation of humans in a moment, but first I need to address another aspect of creation: the weirdness of it. I don’t know about you, but if somebody told me to create an animal without ever having seen one, I would be able to come up with nothing. God spoke, and he somehow came up with the platypus, a duck-billed, beaver-tailed, semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal, with a venomous ankle-barb that glows teal under UV light? None of those things existed before God spoke them into being, yet he decided to combine all of them into this one weird little creature? God

created sodium, a highly reactive and explosive metal, chlorine, which can be used to make a deadly gas that blisters your skin, and combined them to create table salt. God made the peacock mantis shrimp, a sea dwelling little creature that punches faster than the speed of sound. In

one week, God created gorgeous flowers, beautiful streams, majestic lions, and also salt, platypuses, and mantis shrimps. His creativity knows no bounds, yet we can try to box him in. We often pray, and go “oh Lord, there’s only one way out of this situation” or “there’s only one thing that can be done here”. Can we really do that? Say to God that he doesn’t know any other way. His creativity is as limitless as his power, why are we trying to tell him what the right way is?

Our world is like a funhouse. George two weeks ago used an analogy from a song from 1973, Norm last week used a song from 1952, so I felt it was only right to go way back to a song released in my early twenties. So in 2024 Katie Basden released a song called “Funhouse” where she says “Well I can look into the mirror, see my head’s too big for this one, and over here I feel so small, seems like I can’t ever get it right.” And I think this is an interesting allegory for God’s creation of us. We all naturally reflect a different aspect of God, though nobody can get it right and just perfectly reflect God. You step into a funhouse and look in a mirror, and your body is normal but your head is huge, or your feet get enlarged, or your right hand looks too small. None of them are perfect reflections of you, but they all get a little piece. And we as believers try to reflect the perfection of Jesus, but end up not being able to perfectly reflect him, our head gets too large, our body gets all warped. Sin is like the funhouse mirrors, it prevents us from truly living as God intended, reflecting his glory.

Which brings me to our purpose as created beings. Lexie and I watched a movie called “The Creator” this week, because I wanted to watch it as research for this sermon, see what the secular world means

by a movie of “The Creator”. Turns out it has nothing to do with our creator in a grander sense, but it’s the hunt for this machine creator named Niramata. The whole premise of the movie is that the US has waged war with AI, who now can think and feel and reason the same

way as humans, and the AI develop a superweapon that will help them end the war, which turns out to be this little robotic kid. And I learned this week that Lexie and I fundamentally watch movies differently. When a village full of humans and these AI synthetics are attacked and some of the robots are killed, the people are crying over their dead bodies. And Lexie goes “Why are they crying, they’re just robots.” And I realized that she watches movies as herself, an outside observer watching things unfold from an emotionally removed standpoint. I, on the other hand, watch them and try to understand the characters, their reasoning, their emotions. And from a worldly perspective, what would make robots different from humans at that stage of technology? If we were able to create robots that think as we do, feel genuine emotions, can cry and laugh, can inhabit bodies that have working hearts and organs, what makes them different? So I understood the characters’ motivations from that standpoint: these are people, and these people are being killed for a senseless war. And really, in the world which has no faith in any creator, what would be the difference between humans and people? And the answer is nothing. Yet, there are so many people who have no belief in a spiritual realm who are deeply concerned about AI reaching that level because they know, somewhere deep down, that they are more than just their electrical impulses that make their neurons fire. They know there is more to them than just their brain and their body. There has to be, or else what separates us from our own creations? Well there’s a simple answer found in Genesis 1:26, when God says “let us make man in our own image”.

Jack Kirby, creator of the Hulk, Magneto, Iron Man, and the X-men among many more, once said “If you look at my characters, you will find me. No matter what kind of character you create or assume, a little of yourself must remain there.” And that’s how we are as image bearers of God. Not that we have a little piece of God literally, we are not gods, despite what Mike Johnson would want you to believe. But that we are different from God’s other creatures. We have the ability to think, to communicate effectively, reason, and, most importantly, we have the ability to experience a relationship with Jesus. Our souls separate us, they give us relationship with God. And this isn’t just some willy-nilly creation. Whenever we, as humans, create, there is always a purpose. Try to think of a time when you would create something without having a purpose behind the creation. Did you make a craft because you were bored? Well your reason for creation was to alleviate boredom. Building a Lego set? Well it’s fun, and gives you satisfaction during the creation and afterwards. Knitting a hat for your grandchildren, well their satisfaction is the reason. Whenever we as people create, it is purpose driven. And God is the same way. He didn’t create without purpose, everything is made to glorify him. He made us to be beings that could live in relationship with him.

Now I know, some people will look at our creation and go “Well God kinda sucks for doing that.” The second book of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy of five starts with “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” Because from our sin perspective, yeah, what’s the point? God doesn’t need us, so why create us? And the answer is twofold: 1. He wanted us around, he wanted people to be in relationship with, and 2. Deuteronomy 29:29 says “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all

the words of this law.”, so we can’t understand all of his motivations. But he wanted us around, and so he created. And he created us with choice. That’s the other half of the whole “God sucks for creating” debacle. “Well God did a good thing by creating, but why did he put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden?” And I get the sentiment. He had a perfect creation, why even risk screwing it up? And the answer boils down to his desire for true love from us. We recently played a game of dodgeball where we removed all the dodgeballs and told the youth to play dodgeball without the balls. So they ran up to the centre and started grabbing the cones that make up the centre line and whipping those at each other, which we did not see coming. But they were aimless, they had no choice, no say in how anything would turn out. God didn’t want that for us. So he gave us a choice. All you have to do is stay away from this one tree. You have a huge location full of every tree and animal imaginable, just stay away from this tree. We don’t know exactly how big the garden of Eden was, but given that it had five rivers flowing through it, it was probably very big. Adam and Eve could’ve hung out as far away from that tree as possible, yet they choose pretty quickly to take a quick lil bite, just to see if they die. And God upholds his promise. We wronged him, the punishment for sin is death. So we will all die. But God sets in motion a plan for our redemption through Jesus. This redemption plan is first mentioned way back in Genesis 3. God had been planning our redemption since he knew we were going to sin. Then that plan is fulfilled by Jesus. He is born as a human, lives a perfect life, and takes all of the sin of the world on himself by dying on a cross and rising from the dead. The very people he created, on the very earth he created, hung up on a piece of wood made from a tree he created. I saw a deeply thought provoking question on the internet somewhere that said “Jesus was a carpenter; do you think when he smelled the wood of

the cross he briefly thought of home?” He was there to conquer death, and he was going to return to his father shortly, to those he had created with. But he had to endure so much suffering before then. Not an easy process to get back there.

So how do we live in realization of our Creator? He created us and sustains us, what do we do now? Well the first thing is to believe in Jesus Christ and turn from your sins. Repentance is a daily act, every time we sin we need to repent and turn from our sin. Ask God to make your sin more obvious, that you can turn away from it more readily. And 1 John 1:9 says that “If we confess our sins, Christ is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Place your full trust in his righteousness.

The second thing is to see everybody around you as image-bearers of God. If you try to look through the eyes of God at the people around you, you will not want to do anything but be loving, gracious, and merciful. Superman says in the JLA/Hitman crossover, while looking down at the earth, that “If you knew how you are loved, not one of you would raise a hand in rage again.” And that’s so true. If we saw how Christ sees, the very man who said “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” while he was tortured by the very people he was praying for, we would never want to sin against each other.

So then the third point is very closely related to the second: make it easy for people to see God’s image in you. Display the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Be hope-filled people. Slow to anger. Abound in love. Yield it all to God. And this might sound like a high bar, because it is. But I had one of the youth give me a really cool piece of advice while we were all talking about a lesson. He said “I woke up feeling metaphorical today, but if a bar is too high to reach by yourself, go grab

a ladder so you can take steps to the bar.” So take those steps. Reach out to one person this week, to spread love. The next week, add one person to that. Yield just one thing to God this week. “God, this week I will not take steps to control this aspect of my life. I can’t yield it all to you yet, but I can give you this one thing”. Then as you keep taking those steps, as you continue in sanctification, you will get closer and closer to that bar before you finally reach it at the end of your years, when you get to join your saviour. Those steps will not save you, but they will help display God’s character through you and hopefully lead others to salvation as the Holy Spirit through your actions.

And the final point is this: live in community. God created us for community. If you don’t think that’s true, look at the fruits of the Spirit. Lexie and I were talking about this the other day, how much of what Jesus commands us means being surrounded by people. Love. Who are you going to love if you have nobody around you? Peace. How will you practice that avoiding situations that will force you to be peaceful? Patience. Patient with who, your oven? Kindness. You need others around you to be kind to them. And on the list goes. We are made to live in community. So be who God created you to be: a redeemed image-bearer who lives in harmony with those around them. Spread the joy of God, the one who knitted you in your mother’s womb and continues to work through you to this very day.