A Matter of Emphasis 1/12/41
Scripture: John 1: 1-14.
Text: Genesis 1: 1; “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”
There have been a few times in my life when I have made a New Year-like resolve to read my Bible from cover to cover, beginning at the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis and continuing through every word of every book until I had reached the last verse of the last chapter of Revelation. The resolution was never carried out, for I seem to be one of those to whom that method of reading the Bible has little appeal.
Nevertheless, waving aside all considerations as to the various kinds of literature to be found in those sacred pages, and ignoring all possibility that some passages are of tremendous spiritual value whilst some of the genealogies are about as nourishing as desert sand, I would wade in. Genesis, first chapter, first verse: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” That was the way it began. It seemed that that was about all there was said about the heaven. The rest of the creation story dwelt largely with the way in which the earth came into being.
It was an important earth. Even God could not get it all created at one quick stroke! He had to take care of the problems of light and darkness, of land and water, of all vegetable life - trees, grass, herbs, flowers -, of all animal life - fish in the sea, birds in the air, and all the creeping, crawling and running things on the land. There were some other things that had to be attended to, also, like separating the earth from the rest of creation and creating the sun, moon, and stars. And then, after all of that was done, God created mankind! And mankind, made in the creator’s image, grew and multiplied and controlled and ruled the earth. Yes, it was an important earth.
Perhaps thousands of others have read the story and seen in it the same meaning I saw. But, we live and learn. And some time ago I learned something more about that story when I heard Dr. Fredrick Norwood, then of London, read it. He read that same verse which you and I and hundreds of others have read over and over again. But he put an entirely different emphasis on it! When he read it, the story went like this: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” During the course of Dr. Norwood’s sermon, following the reading of that verse, I came to see that his emphasis was much nearer the eternal truth than mine had been.
The earth, great as it truly is to our little, finite minds, is not so important after all, except in its relation to far greater existence.
The first great reality is God. In the beginning, God! The Creator is always greater than the creation. No electric light bulb can compare in importance with the mind of Edison. No telescope, however marvelous, is as great as the mind of the astronomer who designs it, has it built, and uses it to search new truth from the starry firmament. The earth, with its day and night, sea and land, trees and animals, and its men and women fades into properly subdued significance, yes even to a certain insignificance, beside the eternal being of its Creator.
The earth is by no means the most important fact of creation. The sequence of the verse is correct in placing something else first, because of its greater importance. For, “in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”
We must, probably, remind ourselves that the earth is a small thing. It is difficult for us to be great enough to comprehend our smallness. How may an ant know that a hillside is not all there is to the world? We are only slowly coming to realize how small is our world, and we are having to come at it from different angles.
For one thing, we a finding ourselves thrown suddenly together, from the ends of the world, by increasingly efficient methods of communication. The peoples on the other side of the earth, and the environment in which they live, are no longer fancies (strange, romantic, queer, distant), but very real facts. You may hear, in an instant, reports of present interest from any quarter of the earth if you have access to a good radio. Presently you shall not only hear the report, but you will instantly see the face of the reporter by television as he speaks from New York, London, Shanghai or Moscow.
120 years ago, missionaries to the Hawaiian islands went, with much discomfort and danger, on a strenuous sailing voyage from the northeast coast of America. The trip took months. For some of them it meant separation, until death, from friends and relatives. The only communication thereafter was by very infrequent mails.
Now one may fly that far in three days or less in ease and comfort. If we wish, and have the cash, we may telephone cousin James in Boston or New York or Honolulu at only a few moment’s notice. Really, when you come to know it, it is a very small world!
And then there are the astronomers who have been telling us all along that our little “lump” isn’t so much! And they become more insistent about it as they make further discoveries with more powerful telescopes, special photographic apparatus, and finer formulae and calculations. Really, our little earth isn’t much more than a beach pebble in comparison with the size and number of the myriad bodies of the starry firmament! It might be utterly lost to any but the all-seeing eye of God.
But that is not all of the story. For even the firmament seems to be dwarfed by heaven. What, after all, do suns, moons, stars and planets amount to beside the great eternal verities of truth, justice, love, righteousness. For here in this highest realm is the abode of the eternal God. Here is the greatest of all that is creation, declaring the glory of God, while “the firmament showeth His handiwork,” and the earth adds its own little voice to the chorus of all things praising the Creator. “In the beginning, God created the HEAVEN and the earth.”
You see, it is a matter of emphasis. Probably most of the difficulty that holds us fettered and keeps us unhappy as we trudge along over this world is that we allow our minds to be so closely confined to the earthy. To some of us, the earth with all of its doings, seems all-important - as the activity in an ant hill doubtless seems to the ant. We fuss and stew and fret and shove and wear ourselves out without knowing exactly why. But we are driven by a strong earthly urgency. To others, the earth is such a stupid little affair that it need hardly be taken seriously. We quote the psalmist as he says, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him?” [Psalm 8: 3, 4a].
But let mankind not forget that the most important thing the psalmist had to say followed that part of the quotation -
“For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.” [Psalm 8: 5]. Man is not to confine himself only to this little earth, not even in order to exercise dominion over the beasts, the fish, the birds, the forests, the land and the seas. He is to roam, in contemplation, over the starry firmament as well. And he is to inhabit heaven - to know God in truth, mercy, justice and love.
We are so seriously occupied with the earth just now that we think of little else. Fascinating mechanical developments command our attention. It is an interesting age in which we live. So much is being discovered and we are forced to adapt ourselves so speedily to such greatly changing developments following our discoveries, that we take little time for anything else. (Terrible age with political upheavals, war.)
A fair section of mankind has tried to get a new grip on the personal relation of a man to his fellows during our day. Not a few are trying to take seriously and make effective the command of Jesus - “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” [Matthew 22: 39]. There is an attempt to make the gospel effective in society which is prophetic. And this movement is altogether right and necessary. He who avoids it is still only half a disciple.
But even this does not come first. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This,” said the Master, “is the first and great commandment.” [Matthew 22: 37-38]. The other goes with it and is definitely corollary to it. But this is where the primary emphasis belongs.
We are scarcely God-loving people, and we are certainly not Christ-following people, if we fail to serve our fellows in any kind of need which we have the power to meet. This is an obligation in itself and is an indirect service to God. But there is nothing about such service, or any earthly achievements of ours, which makes mankind king of the earth. The earth and all its fullness are the Lord’s. Man’s place in it may be instrumentally important, but is humble in rank.
“The only way we can render God any direct service is to show our appreciation of Him.” (Sweet, p.14 of C.T.S. Register-Aug. ‘26)
We can do nothing for him directly. He can run the universe without us if need be. Our deeds, so far as God is concerned, must indeed be of slight consequence. When we are no longer here, things may go on quite as serenely as though we were here. The only thing we can do for God directly is to praise him. Our worship is our attempt to show our appreciation of God.
Only as we become decently humble do we find ourselves, as men and women, in our proper place of useful service in this world. A man is great in his attitude toward his own parents only when he recognizes the fact that he can never fully repay them for what they have lavished on him from childhood up, except in gratitude. One may be great among the Sons of God only as he takes his proper place of humility and grateful praise toward the Father.
It has been so from the beginning of time and will be so evermore. For “in the beginning God created the heaven, the HEAVEN, and the earth.”
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Dates and places delivered:
Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, November 29, 1936 AM
Mokulua Conference, September 13, 1939
Wisconsin Rapids, January 12, 1941
W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, February 19, 1941