Genesis

In Exodus 20, God comes down to Mount Sinai and speaks to Moses. When people talk about this chapter, they normally go straight to the Ten Commandments. But tucked inside verse 11 is this little statement that almost made my head explode the first time it was pointed out to me:

“For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them…” — Exodus 20:11

We read Genesis first, so we already know the creation story. Moses and the people of Israel didn’t experience the story in that order.

They are already in the middle of Exodus.

They have spent 430 years in Egypt. They have watched God send plague after plague. They have walked through the Red Sea. They have followed a cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. God has given them food when they were hungry and water when they were thirsty.

And now, at Mount Sinai, God reveals something even bigger:

The God who just did all of that is the God who made everything.

The sea He split? He made it.

The sky where the cloud and pillar of fire appeared? He made it.

The animals, the land, Pharaoh, Egypt, Israel, everything they had ever known existed because of Him.

Imagine what that would have done to their understanding of everything they had just experienced.

They probably thought they had watched God do some incredible things.

Now they were finding out that those things were incredible to them, but they were not difficult for God.

He wasn’t just more powerful than Pharaoh.

He wasn’t just the God of Israel.

He was the Creator of heaven and earth.

Next week we’re going to walk through that creation story.