Creation

1 · Icebreaker · 7 min

Open the room

When you were ten, what did you think a good life was for? A job, a team, making someone proud, being left alone?

Leader. Get ordinary answers. You will contrast them with “for God” later. Do not correct anyone yet. Say that passing is allowed, especially the first few weeks.

2 · The word · 8 min

See it, then say it

Definition, from the book

Creation is God making the whole world and everything in it. He made people in a special way so we could know, love, and reflect Him.

In the original language

Hebrew asah — to fashion, accomplish, or produce. Greek poieō — to make, to create, to do.

Memory verse · Genesis 1:26–27

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Together, open the flashcard for Creation. Say the word, the definition, and the verse once. Then put the phone away.

3 · Open the Bible · 15 min

Psalm 8:3–6

The memory work is Genesis 1. Psalm 8 looks at the same truth from underneath the night sky: people are small, and yet crowned. Stay in this psalm. Do not reteach the garden essay.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.

Have two readers if you can. Bibles open. The excerpt is only here so a forgotten Bible does not stop the night.

From the passage

1. 1.In these verses, what belongs to God alone, and what is handed to human beings?Core

   Leader. God made the heavens. People receive mind, care, a crown, and a task. Dignity is given, not seized.

2. 2.The writer is looking at the sky while he says this. What kind of prayer is this — a boast, a question, or both?

   Leader. It is wonder. Creation theology that never becomes worship has missed the psalm.

4 · Around the room · 20 min

A conversation this chapter did not assign

1. 3.Colossians 1:16 says all things were made through the Son and for Him. If the gospel is God’s story before it is our rescue story, what has to change in the way we usually explain Jesus?

   Leader. Listen for answers that still put us at the center. Gently move the subject from “what I get” to “who He is.”

2. 4.Genesis 3:15 is the first promise that the Creator will not abandon what He made. Why is that promise already gospel, even though no one in the story has been to a cross yet?Core

   Leader. The rescue was promised in the same chapter as the ruin. Creation and redemption are one story.

3. 5.Isaiah 43:6–7 says God formed a people for His glory. Where do the people in our town go looking for a glory that creatures were never meant to carry?

   Leader. Keep it local: work, kids’ sports, romance, reputation, ministry success. No need for personal confession yet.

5 · Say it · 5 min

In one sentence

You were made by God and for God, and the gospel is how He remakes what sin broke.

Ask for two volunteers, not the whole circle. They may look at the sentence, then try it without looking. Clumsy and true is the goal.

6 · Pray · 8 min

Leave silence between these

1. Thank God as Maker — of the room you are in, and of the people in it.
2. Confess the ways we treat ourselves as the center of the story.
3. Ask for eyes to see the person beside you as image-bearing handiwork, not as a problem to manage.