What does the Bible say about creation?

The Bible passages below can be used in sermons, prayers, or worship planning focused on creation.

• Genesis 1:1, God created the heavens and the earth
• Psalm 19, the heavens tell of the glory of God
• Psalm 24:1-2, the earth is the Lord's
• Psalm 96:12-13, let all creation rejoice; the trees of the forest sing for joy
• Psalm 148:3-6, all creation praises God
• Romans 1:20, God's power and divine nature have been present since the creation of the world
• Romans 8:19-20, all creation waits with eager longing to be restored
• 2 Corinthians 5:17, those who are in Christ are a new creation
• Colossians 1:15-17, Jesus is the firstborn of all creation
• 2 Peter 3:13, we are waiting for a new heaven and a new earth

Sermon ideas about creation

Creator and creation

What concepts can sermons about creation examine? First, the relationship between God the Creator and the physical creation can lead to some confusion. Christian thought has long fought to maintain a clear distinction between God and creation, thus consigning to the category of error the teaching of pantheism, which says that the universe itself is divine, that God and creation are essentially one and the same.  

In more recent times, a variation on this theme has developed in the form of panentheism, which teaches that creation exists somehow inside God — that although God and creation are not the same thing, there is a sense in which the creation is to God what our bodies are to us. That the creation is the body of God and needs to be honored as such. Many believe that panentheism likewise leads to error and confuses what needs to remain distinct — namely, Creator and creature/creation.  

However, at the far extreme of maintaining a clear separation between God and creation is the heresy of deism, which removes God so far from all things earthly or physical as to make God disinterested and uninvolved.  

To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, the Christian is always fighting on two fronts: to the deist, we need to make clear God's connection to cabbages and mountain streams, and to the pantheist we need to make clear the difference between Creator and all other creatures/creation artifacts, so that we do not fall prey to the sin of idolatry in worshiping something other than the one true God. 

Creatio continua

Sermons about creation can also explore God's continuing creative work in the universe. The so-called battle between creation and evolution in recent decades — and the intense focus on what happened "in the beginning" in terms of cosmic origins — has tended to obscure a longstanding Christian emphasis on the ongoing nature of God's creative activity. God did not merely create all things way back when and then check creation off his to-do list. God continues to create new life, new worlds, new daisies right up to this present time.  

Each newborn baby is as much a miracle of God's creative activity as the first person who ever appeared. God remains intensely interested and involved in the act of creating. When the Hubble telescope reveals a huge gaseous nebula in which new stars are being born even today, these stars are as much the handiwork of God as the first such nuclear furnaces that God made "in the beginning." 

Creation as God's choir

Another angle for sermons about creation to explore is creation's role in giving God praise. Particularly in the psalms but throughout the Bible, including the prophets, the physical creation is depicted not only as displaying the majesty and power of its Creator but also as a source of abiding praise. Just by being what they were created to be, mountains and trees, stars and hail, mountain lions and songbirds form a kind of galactic choir that — to God's ears, anyway — sings as eloquently to God in choruses of praise as any human-composed hymn or symphony. When in the book of Job God says that at the dawn of creation the morning stars sang together for joy, God does not appear to be speaking metaphorically! 

Creation care

Sermons about creation can also focus on our role in caring for creation. The Bible teaches that the creation itself is to be treated with care and respect by human beings, who were made in the image of God precisely to tend and keep God's handiwork on God's behalf. The physical creation is a matter of intense interest and investment for Christians, both because everything in it belongs to God and because Christ has redeemed the creation and will restore and renew it to a New Creation as the climax of his saving and redeeming work. Christians who treat the physical world as temporary, of no lasting value, as something that will give way in favor of some ghostly realm of vapor and cloud, are missing the Bible's clear teaching that God loves the physical creation and in Christ has secured its future. 

Sermon and Worship ideas for the Season of Creation

"The invocation of Jonah in Matthew 12:38-40 is particularly noteworthy for the Season of Creation. Within the book of Jonah, God's activity in creation prompts prayer and confession among the sailors who are caught in a great storm (Jonah 1:4-6, 11-16) and from Jonah himself (Jonah 2:1-9). In fact, the text depicts God acting in creation in order to instruct the prophet, whose concern for withering plant life becomes a sign of God's concern not only for human life but for animal life as well (Jonah 4:6-11)." Scripture Meditation or Sermon by Anne Stewart from Working Preacher  

"The Season of Creation is a time during the liturgical calendar in which churches across the globe renew their relationship with God and all of creation and commit to prayer and action for our common home. Starting on September 1 and ending on October 4—the Feast of St. Francis, the patron saint of ecology—the church praises God for Creation's beauty, focuses on their call as caretakers, and laments the brokenness and the groaning of all creation." Service Outline by Climate Witness Project from the CRC Network   

"Amazing God, creator of us all, 
even in the expanse of your universe, 
you know each of us. 
Thank you for your presence in our lives today and each day. 
Thank you for uniting us through this meal, 
with the bread of life." 
Communion Liturgy or Prayer by Ana Gobledale from Worship Words  

"God of all creation, who set the smallest microbe and the largest planet into their places, release our joyful, noisy song of praise that we may join with all creation in one huge choir of uninhibited praise and worship to the one who makes all life possible." Call to Worship by Lois Siemens from Together in Worship  

"For the fruit of all creation, thanks be to God. For His gifts to ev'ry nation, Thanks be to God. For the plowing, sowing, reaping, silent growth while we are sleeping, future needs in earth's safe keeping, thanks be to God." Hymn by Fred Pratt Green from Hymnary  

See more Zeteosearch.org results for the Season of Creation