Who is Like the Lord Our God?
"To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?" says the Holy One. "Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these?" — Isaiah 40:25–26
What makes God truly unique in all the universe? The answer, according to the very first verse of the Bible, is breathtakingly simple: He made it all.
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." No elaborate argument. No philosophical defence. Just a magnificent statement of fact — one that sets the tone for the entire story of Scripture. God is at the centre. He is mentioned 35 times in just 35 verses of Genesis 1, and if we try to read this book — or live in this universe — without Him at the centre, we will inevitably distort everything.
As we continue our journey through the book of Genesis, this opening verse confronts us with four profound questions worth exploring.
Who Created?
In Moses' day, the prevailing belief was that the world had emerged from quarrelling gods. In our own time, the dominant narrative is one of impersonal forces and blind chance over billions of years. But Genesis 1 quietly and firmly sets the record straight: one God — the one and only God — created the universe. He had no rivals, no helpers, no raw materials. He simply spoke, and it was.
And here's something worth pausing over: this verb "to create" is used in the Bible exclusively of God. No one else ever does it. No one else can. Creation is the unique work of the one true God.
What's more, all three persons of the Trinity were involved. It is especially the work of the Father, the great initiator. But John 1 tells us that "through him [the Son] all things were made." And Genesis 1:2 reveals the Spirit of God hovering over the waters — present and active in bringing order out of formlessness.
When Did He Create?
"In the beginning." There was a moment when time, space, and matter began to exist. Before creation, none of these things were. And then they were — because God spoke.
But just because there was no material universe does not mean there was nothing. The Bible gives us remarkable glimpses of what was happening before Genesis 1:1:
- Jesus said, "Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began" (John 17:5)
- "You loved me before the creation of the world" (John 17:24)
- "He chose us in him before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless" (Ephesians 1:4)
That last verse is astonishing. Before anything existed — before time itself — God was already thinking about you. If you belong to Christ, you were in the mind of God before the first star ignited. He had a purpose and a plan for your life long before anything was.
How Did He Create?
God created the universe out of nothing, simply by speaking. He didn't need materials, tools, or helpers. As Hebrews 11:3 puts it: "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible."
And here's where it gets personal. The same word of God that called galaxies into existence is the very word we hold in our hands today. Paul makes this connection explicitly: the God who said "let light shine out of darkness" has shone His light into our dark hearts (2 Corinthians 4:6). Creation power and conversion power are one and the same.
That means when you share Scripture with a colleague at work, or hand a neighbour a Bible, or open this book with a friend over coffee, you are carrying the power that created the cosmos. Don't underestimate it.
Why Did He Create?
Not because He was lonely, bored, or needy. Within the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Spirit already enjoyed perfect love, perfect fellowship, and complete contentment. God created out of His good pleasure — to display His glory.
Psalm 19:1 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God." The universe is designed to be a showcase: His grace, His wisdom, His power, His patience — all on magnificent display for us to discover and marvel at.
The Hubble Deep Field — and the Wonder We've Lost
In 1995, astronomer Bob Williams decided to point the Hubble Space Telescope at a seemingly empty patch of sky — just a thirtieth the width of the full moon. His colleagues thought it was a waste of valuable telescope time. But after a hundred hours of exposure, that "empty" space turned out to be crammed full of over 3,000 galaxies, each containing trillions of stars, in every imaginable shape, colour, and size.
And that was just one tiny sliver of sky.
But the wonder doesn't stop at the cosmic scale. Consider what's right in front of us:
- Birds that migrate thousands of miles without a map, returning months later to the exact same spot
- Spiders that weave perfect, symmetrical webs — an engineering feat we can barely replicate with machines
- Your body: 37.2 trillion cells operating in near-perfect concert. Your lungs, spread out, would cover a tennis court. Inside you are 100,000 kilometres of blood vessels — enough to circle the planet twice
- Your heart has been beating faithfully since before you were born, every single day, without you ever asking it to
As Bill Bryson observes: "Our bodies are a universe of 37.2 trillion cells operating in more or less perfect concert, more or less all the time."
When did we lose our sense of wonder at all of this?
Six Things Every Atheist Must Believe
It's worth noting what it actually takes to not believe in a Creator. If there is no God, then you must believe:
- Something came from nothing
- Order came from chaos
- Life came from non-life
- Personality came from the impersonal
- Reason came from non-reason
- Morality came from matter
Any one of those is very hard to swallow. All six together? That takes an enormous amount of faith. As it turns out, the atheist's faith may be stronger than the Christian's — we believe in an eternal God; they believe in eternal matter. (For more on this topic, you might enjoy Can we prove that God exists? and Has science disproved the Bible?)
Open Your Eyes This Week
This week, try something simple. Consciously open your eyes. Look up at the night sky. Watch a spider's web catching the morning light. Notice how a cut on your finger heals itself without you doing a thing. And let it drive you to worship.
Who is like the Lord our God? What a mighty, wise, ingenious, creative God — and He made it all simply by speaking a word.
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