To my knowledge I’ve only once been cancelled from returning to preach at a church. I’m not sure what the message was about now, but I did make an off the cuff comment when speaking about the Creation account in Genesis. The remark was off the cuff; the understanding behind the remark was well researched, well considered, and in no way naïve.

I simply stated that to assert that the Creation of the universe wasn’t performed over six ordinary days is to question the veracity of God. Is that a radical suggestion? I think not, but let me explain.

As Christians we believe in the God of the Bible. We don’t simply believe in God. There are plenty of believers in God who are not Christian. We believe that the God who revealed himself through the words that we refer to as the Bible is the one true God. It is that revelation and our acceptance of it that distinguishes us from every other faith, philosophy, culture, or value system. Without the Bible we have no foundation for the assertions that we make about our God. We believe the Bible’s self attestation that:

All Scripture is breathed out by God (2 Timothy 3:16)

If that is not the case, then in what or who can we believe?

So, we take our understanding of God, self, and our environment from the one solid foundation: God’s Word. The question for understanding Genesis chapter 1, then, is what is God saying?

Before we look at that, it’s worth mentioning the one thing that we are not allowed to do with God’s Word. The term for this activity is eisegesis, and it refers to the process of reading external ideas into the Bible. That process may well be inadvertent, which is why it’s worth mentioning. If we believe that the Bible is God’s inspired Word, which cannot fail and cannot be untrue, then it’s the height of foolishness to read in the opinions of any mere human, be they Aristotle or Einstein, Darwin or Descartes. Take, for example, the debate about whether the universe is geocentric or heliocentric. Scientists eventually proved that the earth was not at the centre of the universe, but gladly also affirmed that they had proven that the sun was. In fact neither is true and neither position is to be found in Scripture. Contemporary science was wrong.

So, we dare not read anything in, we must read the Bible for what it is, God’s story to us of what he has done, what he is doing, and what he will do. To be explicit, this is a principle which must be applied. It does not preclude the use of tools such as commentaries, study Bibles etc., but it is to acknowledge that the only guaranteed truth is biblical truth. We must get to that above all else.

Genesis chapter one, as might be imagined, is pivotal for all Scripture. It is the first chapter in the Bible, and it sets out the fundamentals of how we came to be. I wonder if you’ve ever asked someone: tell me how it all came about? Perhaps it’s researching family history, how your parents met, or similar. That question is implied in Genesis chapter one, and the chapter is simply that: a how we came to be story. But that is a true and accurate story. We’d be less than pleased with a family member who made up stories, never mind one who started speaking that in poetry; and yet that is exactly what many suggest of Genesis chapter one, and to a greater or lesser degree the following chapters through to chapter eleven.

The story of Creation is a simple retelling of six consecutive days: morning following evening, numbered, and in sequence. The details are real, not poetic. It may well be described as exalted prose, but it’s still prose. Given the weight of the subject matter one might even expect it to be exalted in language. But, it is still genuine prose. It is still straightforwardly telling our family history: where we came from. It’s not a ‘just so’ story, but a simple honest retelling by the One who did the deeds, who was there to say what he had done.

Unless you bring other authorities to bear on the passage, and subsequently do exegetical violence to that text the plain simple meaning is clear to all. God made the universe, and all that is in it in six consecutive days; those days are the same kind that we count before we rest on the seventh.

So the question at the heart of the matter is this: do you believe what God says about how he made the universe? Do you trust the veracity of God? God help you if you don’t.