Back to the beginning
Pastor James Drake opened the Foundations series on Sunday straight from a chapel service with the Miami Marlins and the LA Dodgers, deep into a long season. Some of those players were about to play on and some were about to go home, and all of them were tired. The game they loved as boys had become a job, more burden than blessing. So James asked them to do one thing: remember why they started. Remember being a kid, parents cheering, discovering they were good at this and could help the team win.
His point was that something happens when you go back to where it all began. You see the present more clearly.
He said the same is true in marriage. James and his wife Heidi speak to hundreds of couples at Weekend to Remember conferences, and before the weekend even starts they ask every couple one question: why did you get married in the first place? Going back to the beginning helps sustain the relationship going forward.
That is why the new series starts in Genesis. Foundations begins where Scripture begins: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
God eternal, or matter eternal
James pointed out that Genesis 1:1 does not argue for God. It announces him. Time, God, action, space and matter are all there in the opening words. As he put it, the chapter is not a court case making a scientific argument for God's existence; it is a cathedral built for his glory.
It also presents a choice. Either God is eternal, or matter is eternal. And if matter is eternal, how does it account for a world of order rather than chaos, for people who long for meaning, who know right from wrong, and who experience love?
James said that answer would take more faith than he has. "I do not have enough faith to be an atheist," he said. None of us were there at the beginning, so everyone is a person of faith when it comes to where the universe came from. He chooses to believe Scripture: that there is a God who spoke everything into existence out of nothing, and who is not only the Creator but the Sustainer of all things.
He was clear that science is not the enemy. Science depends on the order and the laws of a rational God. It comes into focus once God is seen as its founder, and many of the greatest scientists in history saw exactly that.
The Spirit hovering in the dark
James then turned to verse 2 and admitted he had read past it for years. This week, he said, it "hit him like a Mack truck."
Before there was any order, before anything was made, there was darkness and a void, and the Spirit of God hovering over the waters. James described that hovering as God preparing to work, ready to break into the darkness with light and life.
He applied it directly. For anyone facing a relationship that seems to be ending, a career with no clear next step, or a season that has no shape yet, the message of verse 2 is that God is already there. His Spirit is at work before anything visible begins, and he already has a plan.
Then come the six days of creation, and on the seventh, rest.
We work because God works
James noted that people have tried to improve on that week. During the French Revolution, France replaced it with a ten-day week. It did not work: people got sick and the economy struggled, and when Napoleon came to power he restored the seven-day week. That rhythm, James said, comes from the first pages of Scripture. "We work because God works, and we rest because he's in control."
After each day of creation, God called what he made good. James drew two lessons from that. First, creation is not to be worshiped. Genesis does not even name the sun and moon, calling them the greater and lesser lights, because the point is the Maker, not the things made. Second, creation is not to be neglected either. What God called good, his people are called to steward in a broken world, for his glory. "We're not polishing the brass on a sinking ship," James said. Every life has dignity, value and purpose, because God has work for his people and works through them.
James was also candid about how he reads the chapter. He does not want any filter placed over Scripture, whether a prosperity filter, a chauvinist filter, or even an American-dream filter. He reads the text for what it says: six days and a seventh of rest, and a real Adam, the man Jesus referred back to and Paul contrasted with Christ as the second Adam. Ideas have consequences, he said, and Genesis is not a children's story. It shapes everything that follows.
The same hands
From creation, James moved to the cross. "The same hands that put the stars in the sky are the same hands that hung on that cross," he said. The God who said "Let there be light" is the same Jesus who said "I am the light of the world." From creation to Christ to the cross, Scripture tells one story.
He described a Dodgers player who pulled him aside after the chapel with a question: it is good to remember why we started, but why did God create any of it? Why us?
James's answer was that we were created by a good and loving God to bring him glory. That purpose is not found in winning a World Series, providing for a family, or endless humanitarian projects. Those are good things, but they are not the ultimate thing. God did not need us; he made us because he loves us. Our purpose is not something we achieve. It is received.
James closed with an invitation: not to try harder or earn anything, but to come to Christ, who alone can bear the weight of our sin. That same morning, that new life was pictured in baptism, as people were buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life.
His closing question to the church was simple. Will you trust God's Word for what it says, and receive your identity from the One who made you, rather than from anything you have made?
It all begins with God, and so does everything after.
