How amazing what we have here in this chapter. We are told the beginning of the world! For all mankind tries to do with archeology and different sciences, no one can tell us this. Yet here we have God telling us exactly how He formed the heavens and the earth, all animals and plants, and mankind on the earth.

We can sometimes feel we want more from God, but imagine what we’d be without with just this one chapter!

And how beautiful is God’s creation! There is a place in all of humanity's hearts for God’s creation. A longing and desire. A deep peace and satisfaction. A craving for beauty and awe.

So many feel this great love for God’s creation, the purity and life of the earth. God shows us here that He knows exactly what our hearts desire; He has written paradise into our hearts.

What is tragic is how many try to take the creation without the Creator. To the natural mind, this can seem like a higher purity to be so invested in Earth and nature, but it very often exposes what the sinfulness of godlessness is—to take what God has created with no mind to God.

It should be said too that in our day we have a mindset about nature where we think that the more we exist “one with nature” the more elevated, enlightened, innocent, and superior we are. And while on one side, it is a very legitimate thing for many to feel such a lack in their souls for God’s creation—a desire to live closer to nature. Many feel this, and there can be much legitimacy in this. The problem is that many take this into a belief system, and think much of themselves by it. We can get so caught up in this that we completely miss the path of living righteous and godly lives.

There are many worldly hearts today that think they are superior for such a lifestyle, and they cannot see how this can be its own worldliness and self indulgence. And that they take this “purity” in place of holy and godly purity. Substituting the commandments of God for the commandments of their own minds. This sort of “goodness” can blind us with a false self righteousness, and lead us away from seeking a true righteousness in God.

Another issue here is that while we long for this pure earth—this calm purity and glorious beauty—we often do not long to be worthy of it. This reveals another part of the heart of sin in us. How we can expect good, even demanding it, yet we do not equally expect good from ourselves.

We expect God, His creation, the government, parents, and so on to be good and upright, while very often we take license to live however we like. We expect that we can live however we imagine in God’s world, and yet receive paradise despite how we have lived.

This reveals the great heart of presumption in mankind. Presumption is expecting good for ourselves without walking deserving of it.

And this sort of presumption exists in the world, it is also certainly rampant in the church—it is even what many people take the Gospel to grant them! The great foundation of the Word of God is righteousness, and this has practically been lost in our day. To see that God is righteous and calls us out of sin to be righteous, and thereby to live worthy of God and heaven.

That it is to the righteous that God will give eternal life with Him, and the “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 Pet 3:13) We reveal only sin in us if we expect good from God without expecting to live in true goodness before Him.

The creation of God is good, and it will all be put good again. God is speaking to our desire for the restoration of all things. Our desire for this should not just be for the ocean, trees, and animals, but should also be for the restoration of the human being. The greatest misery in this world is that of sin. That of all the dark and twisted ways that we live. All the “self satisfied without any true righteousness” ways that we live. All the ignorance of God and good we continue in. All the ways we pay no mind to God’s righteousness and obey Him in it.

And to the Christian—many are guilty of “calling on the name of the Lord” without any real change in these areas. We profess to acknowledge God, to say we are against sin, and yet far too many have any real change on these points. Our Christianity is merely a system of ideas about God, and can lack any real light or salt. This reveals the nature of sin in us.

Yet God is true, and there is true righteousness in Him. There is real wisdom and life. And for all of us, God is saying to the Christian and the unbeliever that we either truly seek God—past our little narrow ideas of Him—that we truly seek righteousness in Him, or we reject Him.

It cannot therefore be stated enough just how much the name of people doing this is a hindrance to the true form of it. That so many declare to others to “obey God’s law”, when their ideas about God’s law are nothing more than foolishness, prejudice, hatred, traditionalism, and self conceit. Content in their own form of self righteousness.

Many of us profess to obey God’s law who are a million miles away from truly listening to Him. They have lost the whole point of God’s law—a real righteousness and godliness. It is only in truly listening to God that we are changed. Otherwise we remain in our sins, and they just take up religious forms.

How many are not truly changed? Their sin is just rooted in their religion. They are just as ignorant and hard hearted, their “faith” now just is the root of it. How many are so sure they know and understand when no one can really show them how harsh and hateful they really are? They oppress the world in their sins, and yet believe they render service to God!

Therefore what I am saying is not obeying these “commandments”, but truly coming to understanding a real and living righteousness found in God, through Christ. To obey what is truly good, fair, merciful yet just, and what is truly of God. All of us are accountable to this. And God says to all of mankind that we either seek the God of all of us, and look and truly listen for what is good before Him, or we reject Him and righteousness, and will have no part in His paradise.

(This is an excerpt from the Genesis 1 commentary.)