Comments on Genesis 1-2:3

(Scripture from the NASB)

John 1:1-3
Psalm 90:2 “Before the
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
mountains were born or
the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came you gave birth to the
into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being earth and the world, even
that has come into being.” from everlasting to
everlasting, You are
Genesis 1:1-2 God”
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The
earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the
deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.”

God spoke the word of creation through the Word, the Logos of Hebrews 1:10 “You,
Lord, in the beginning,
God; the Word spoke the world into existence, launching the story of the laid the foundation of the
Father’s love for us and the incredible revelation of His glory and earth and the heavens are
majesty. This God, who existed before all that we know, by the strength the works of your hands”
of His own Hand, through the work of His own Son, whom we know as
Jesus, gives us our life, our breath, and our very being; it is He that
Colossians 1:17 “He is
created us, and it is His power that sustains us. before all things, and in
What kind of power does it take to create? To call into being stars Him all things hold
and planets, suns and moons, earth, water, and fire? How is it possible? together.”
We create using the materials that are at hand; we draw on paper and we
carve in wood. God creates using nothing that is at hand, His creation is Isaiah 43:13 “I act and
who can reverse it?”
as birth- He brings it forth, He calls it into being as if from Himself. Is it
blasphemous to suggest that the created world and its creatures are made
up of the stuff of God? Did He use the material of His own being in
making all that we see? Could it be a transmutation of part of His being
into other forms, those of our world and ourselves?
Before there was an earth and heavens and creatures such as we, Isaiah 40:22 “It is He
who view it all through particularly one-way lenses, God existed and who sits above the circle
completely filled the nonexistent space that stretched infinitely across the of the earth, and its
nonexistent universes. Through His omniscience He ‘invented’ creation inhabitants are like
and like a thought unfolding in our human brains the physical world was grasshoppers, who
stretches out the heavens
laid out across now existent space. He exists now as ‘before’, His
like a curtain and spreads
invention of time cannot hold Him bound, and His new physical world them out like a tent to
cannot push Him up into the heavens any more than our own creations dwell in.”
can push us outside of ourselves. His work does not hold Him, but He
holds and controls it, with complete authority.
His creation tells the story of His glory and it writes the complex
biography of His own nature. We cannot see Him nor even comprehend
Him in His fullness as we cannot comprehend the infinitude of the space
that He has created. But we do see His work and its wonder and we are
blessed by the revelation throughout history of Himself to us His
children. His creation presents the story of His glory and His love as He

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works to bring us all to a more perfect union with the perfect God.
When God brought forth the earth it was raw and terrible, a place Isaiah 45:18 “He is the
God who formed the
without life, without life support, and most notably, without light. God earth and made it, He
did not intend it to stay for long that way, without form and without established it and did not
purpose (The Hebrew word tohuw can mean, to lie waste, a desolation, create it a waste place,
and a worthless thing). This was only the beginning stage where darkness but formed it to be
was to be defined and new life in Him would be shown to stand always in inhabited"
opposition to it. It is difficult to imagine this formless void without
thinking of it as spherical for that is how we know the earth to be. How
could it have a surface otherwise? But then again, how could a formless
anything have a surface? Possibly its formlessness was its emptiness, it
may have had physical substance and shape but no life, nothing to
distinguish itself; it was empty therefore, void and barren, firmly encased
in a sheath of water. It was seemingly without purpose, but not without
hope, for over its waters the Spirit of God was ‘hovering’, contemplating
the next command. He was thinking, watching, considering, anticipating,
brooding (The Hebrew word rachaph can mean, to brood); this is one of
the most amazing points in all of history, where God begins the story that
will show him in all of His lovingkindness, mercy and grace. The story
that triumphs in the resurrection of His Son starts here at the moment He
prepares to speak the word ‘light’.

Genesis 1:3-4
“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. God
saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the
darkness. God called the light day and the darkness He called night. And
there was evening and there was morning, one day.”
Psalm 104:30 “You send
forth Your Spirit, they are
When God said ‘Light’, it is as if He said ‘Go!’ to the Spirit and created; and You renew
the Spirit of God stopped hovering and swept into the time and space of the face of the ground.”
history bringing the Light of the Lord into the dark places and banishing
darkness and evil to the corners. Light is now in the world and it is no
longer formless and void. It is no longer dark and empty, but filled with 2 Corinthians 4:6 “For
God, who said, ‘Light
life as the light of God invades the surface of the deep. This is the life shall shine out of
giving Light of Christ as He enters the world to begin His revelation to darkness,’ is the One who
His creation. It has been said that since God is really outside of time then has shone in our hearts to
He never really ever began this work but that it was and has been always give the Light of the
ever before Him. But God created time itself in order to tell this story to knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of
us who exist as the backdrop to it and the recipients of it. He entered time Christ.”
in order to begin the story. He entered time when He began to fill
creation with creatures. He entered time when He revealed Himself to
Adam and Eve. He entered time when He appeared to the Fathers and the Hebrews 1:11-12 “And
Prophets. He entered time when the Christ was born and was crucified they all will become old
like a garment, and like a
and He raised Him from the dead. And He will enter time again when He mantle You will roll them
comes to make an ending of it all and when He rolls up this creation as an up; like a garment they
old garment and shakes out a new one for His children to live in and will also be changed.”
share the blessing of His glorious Light forever without the shadows of

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sin blinding us and stealing our joy in the Lord.
This light is pronounced ‘good’, and what God declares good we
can trust to be. In opposition to this good stands the darkness, which can
then be seen as ‘not good’ (if not completely evil) and we can see how it
must then be separated completely from the good, the light. Good and
evil will not, cannot, occupy the same space in the presence of God. His
goodness, His holiness, is complete, and evil is crushed in His presence.
As light entered the world, darkness was pushed aside and was not Deuteronomy 30:19 “I
allowed a share in it; it is forced into corners and recesses until such a call heaven and earth to
time as the Light desires to root it out and destroy it completely. We are witness against you
not to live in the darkness of death while the Spirit is in the world. We are today, that I have set
to choose the light and the life and to spurn the dark and death. When we before you life and death,
the blessing and the
choose life we are set apart, sanctified, made holy and removed from curse. So choose life in
death. order that you may live”
‘Evening’ and ‘morning’ must be a literary device being
employed to help order the narrative. Day and Night cannot be isolated
here to the twenty-four hour period we are accustomed to because the
Sun and the Moon have yet to be created leaving the world without as yet
a timepiece, so to speak. ‘Day’ might symbolically refer to the Light
entering the world, and ‘Night’ to the darkness of the void. Instead of the
typical day and night scenario, imagine the abyss being violently
illuminated by the celestial power and majesty of the Spirit of God
entering it for the first time and marking the beginning of time. His very
being lights the world and orders it, giving it not only form and substance
but purpose and life. (In Revelation we read of a time when the new Revelation 22:5 “And
creation will need no light of sun and moon, and apparently will not need there will no longer be
their heat and pull either, but that the light of the Lord will be our light any night; and they will
and sustenance. At that time God’s light will suffice to heat the world and not have need of the light
of a lamp nor the light of
nourish it. In Genesis, as well, the light of the Lord as the Spirit entered the sun, because the Lord
creation for the first time brought all the essential elements needed to God will illumine them;
support life upon the earth.) and they will reign
With His presence, darkness is confined to its corners and rules forever and ever.”
are set in place for its continual subjugation. For darkness has a purpose
that must not be forgotten, it too serves the Light. Imagine a Creation
Story that is not simply Monday-Sunday from morning to night but rather
an orchestrated symphony of grand gestures and heroic commands that
forever mark the boundaries between Good and evil and the
overwhelming triumph of God. Evening and morning, morning and
evening; both become meaningless without the importance of this
understanding; they are used in order to help us as readers mark this
narrative and better understand its perfect plan.

Genesis 1:6-8
“Then God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the
waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ God made the
expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from
the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. God called the Isaiah 55:10-11 “For as
the rain and the snow

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expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second come down from heaven,
day. and do not return there
without watering the
God again speaks the word of creation, and it is so. His word is earth and making it bear
mighty and powerful, able to do what He commands, it accomplishes all and sprout, and
that He desires, and it is real, solid and majestic (Isaiah 55: 10-11). furnishing seed to the
And then God ‘made the expanse’- first from the mouth of God sower and bread to the
comes the word of creation, then from the Hand of God comes the act of eater; so will My word be
which goes forth from
creation. It is as if there was a two-step process to His work. First My mouth; it will not
command, then action. God speaks ‘expanse’, then God makes the return to Me empty,
expanse. In verse 14, God speaks ‘lights’ and then God makes lights. In without accomplishing
verse 20, God speaks to the waters and to the air for them to teem with what I desire, and
fish and birds and then God creates or makes the fish and the birds. In without succeeding in the
matter for which I sent
verse 24, God speaks to the earth to bring forth ‘creatures’ then God it.”
makes the creatures. In verse 26, God speaks ‘man’ and then God creates
man (In chapter two we have the account of how God crafted Adam and
Eve with His Hands). There is a sense here that His command creates the
principle or the concept, drawing it into reality by His awesome power,
but that the second part of the equation, the Hand of God, is what actually
brings the creation concretely into the physical world.
God called the expanse heaven (The Hebrew word shamayin can
mean, to be lofty, or the sky and the visible arch as well as where the
celestial bodies revolve), which refers to the sky and extends to the
inhabitation of the celestial bodies. The authority to name rests with the
Lord. In a name there is the character of the named, God calls His
children by name and He often changed their names as He changed their
calling. God gave authority to Adam to name the beasts and birds; God is
the Father who let His son Adam have a hand at the wheel as a human
father would allow his own son to try his hand at the family trade. God
gives the example, ‘God said... and it was so’, and then lets Adam, and to
the same extent each of us, try it on his own. We, His children, are now
called by His name; He has changed our designation from that of living
in darkness to one of light and life in the name of Christ.
God has put distance between the swirling, roiling mass of water
on the surface of the ‘earth’ and the waters, which He moved above this
expanse. This is hard to comprehend given what we know of space and
the Earth. We see the stars now with our eyes, we see the planets through
our telescopes, and we see the galaxies from our spacecraft. In all of this
we have no indication of an arch of water that once encircled the earth. It
has been suggested that this arch was the vapor mist that covered the
surface of the deep and that God caused it to rise up and become clouds
when He introduced the heat of light into the world (although they
assume that light equals sun, they do not assume that light equals Lord)
thus initiating the cyclical process of evaporation and rainfall which
incredibly supplies creation with the life giving water it requires (JFB
Commentary). Having said that, I find it much more exciting to imagine
that in the beginning it was very much unlike it is now and I ponder and
treasure the mystery of how it might have been. What if there were an Psalm 148:4 “Praise
Him, highest heavens,

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arch of waters above the earth that was held back by the floodgates of and the waters that are
heaven until such a time as God emptied them upon His creation? Some above the heavens!”
have suggested that this occurred at the time of the great flood. Or maybe
it occurred after the time of the ‘misting (Genesis 2: 6) of the earth when
God’s seedlings were not yet sprouts and He opened the heavens to let
the waters through as the first rains.
God begins this ‘days’ work in the evening. Just as He would later
walk in the garden with Adam in the cool of the day He is working at the
beginning of time in the new evening of His second day. The ‘day’ begins
with the onset of evening and it is over with the end of the next morning.
This ‘day’ began with the creation of the expanse and ended with the
separation of the waters.
Psalm 95:5 “The sea is
Genesis 1:9-10 His, for it was He who
“Then God said, ‘Let the waters below the heavens be gathered made it, and His hands
into one place, and let the dry land appear’; and it was so. God called formed the dry land.”
the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and
God saw that it was good.”

God is preparing a place for His will to be expressed. He is

making a world inhabitable by His new creation. It is a creation of His
design, of utmost complexity and beauty. A creation that requires all of
the elements just introduced (earth, light, heat and water) in order to
survive. In this creation account we have the beginnings of life and the
order in which it was created to exist within. Everything has a place in
His plan and everything performs as He intends for it to perform. But
creation is not simply an object to be admired for its craftsmanship and
skillful workmanship. This creation tells a story. Each detail is layered
with meaning and symbolism. Each element points to the Creator and
shouts “Glory!” We see Christ in the light and we see evil in the Psalm 98:4-8 “Shout
darkness. We see order in the atmosphere and chaos in the deeps, even to joyfully to the Lord, all
this day. We look to Scripture and we find God over and over and over the earth; break forth and
again shown to us in every aspect of this world from its nature to its sing for joy and sing
praises. Sing praises to
people. His story is all of it- it is Sun and Moon, trees and plants, animals the Lord with the lyre,
and birds and fish, as well as people and salvation. All of it will be with the lyre and the
redeemed- but redemption itself is still not the end of the story. The arrow sound of melody. With
points to the Redeemer; it is back to God Almighty that it points. To Him trumpets and the sound
be the glory forever, Amen! of the horn shout joyfully
before the King, the
Imagine this world, churning and roiling on the surface and in the Lord. Let the sea roar
deeps. God commands the waters, be they mist and vapor or something and all it contains, the
else, to be removed to the heavens and the surface of the water became world and those who
visible. God commands, or rebukes these waters and they recede or dwell in it. Let the rivers
remove to their new places. Imagine them draining into newly formed clap their hands, let the
mountains sing together
valleys and recesses in the earth or evaporating to the heavens to add to for joy”
the waters there. “Dry land” now appears with mountain-tops and slopes
and flat lands across the new earth. It is birthed again as from the womb.
A new life offered up and a platform upon which the Word of Life will

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have its foundation.
“And it was so”; four simple words that convey a simple
meaning. What God said came to be just as He said it would. This was
not prophetic; God’s command for heavens and earth, light and expanse, Isaiah 45:6-7 “I am the
and now, dry land was not prophecy for the future but directive for the Lord, and there is no
here and now. God said. And it was so. And what a creation it was. other, the One forming
Heavens, sky, water, and whole continents shaped at His command. How light and creating
darkness, causing well-
powerful is this God who speaks; and life, death, creation, and being and creating
destruction, ensue. calamity; I am the lord
It is good to remember that God is the author of the story. He is who does all these.”
the One who owns us, He creates and destroys, and He cares for or
perishes us- we are subject to His command and are at His mercy. Praise
God that He loves us. What a mystery it is that He created us from
nothing and that He who has power over life and death, with life eternal
in himself, dies for us so that we might live for Him. The more I ponder
this profound mystery, the more I wonder at this God, His holiness, His
very nature; the more I see glimpses of the Truth. I see that He did not
create outside of Himself as we do when we draw or carve, His creations
do not merely adorn the walls or shelves in His Palace. His creation, we
ourselves, are integrated within His very nature. When He gave His
creation life He gave it something of more substance than the substance
itself. The life is more real than the object. It is beyond my ability to John 3:16 “For God so
loved the world, that He
capture in words or thought; it is as if the life He imparted was His own
gave His only begotten
Life. We are a part of Him as we came from him. As such it follows why Son, that whoever
He loves us so, because He loves Himself. He cares for His own, He is believes in Him should
Father, I am son; we are His children. The marvel of it is that He also not perish, but have
created sin, which He cannot allow to exist in His presence. More than eternal life.”
that, it simply cannot exist in His presence; it is destroyed by divine fire.
1 John 4:16 “We have
Again, the wonder of this mystery, He writes this story and, so that he come to know and have
can fully explain His love (as He is love) He writes evil into it, and places believed the love God
Himself on the cross at just the right time in order to save us from the has for us. God is love,
certain destruction of our own darkness and evil. He performs the and the one who abides
ultimate in sacrifice, the offering of His own Son, His own Self to save in love abides in God,
and God abides in him.”
His creation of sons and daughters (This is beyond me, forgive me Lord,
I am not a mind, I am nothing; I am in awe of You). We are connected to
this God at our own creation and in this very narrative in the Book of
Genesis.

Genesis 1:11-13
“Then God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation: plants yielding
seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed
in them’; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants
yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them,
after their kind; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and
there was morning, a third day.”

In chapter two of Genesis we read that the earth had not yet begun

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to grow vegetation because the earth had not yet had rain upon it. Here in
chapter one, God said ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation…’ How can it be
written here but not have happened until later in chapter two? It is
because we are reading a narrative that we expect there to be a
chronological listing of events. It appears an inconsistency to have details Titus 1:2 “in the hope of
such as this out of order unless we remember that God in His eternal life, which God,
Omniscience and power is not always easily comprehended and therefore who cannot lie, promised
long ages ago”
neither He nor His works can be expected to be confined to any page.
Because God is whom He says He is, we know that what is written is the John 16:13 “But when
Truth. First, we should remember that God’s Word is many layered; It He, the Spirit of truth,
has meaning upon meaning that only comes to us as we read and pray comes, He will guide you
and as the Spirit directs us in our understanding. Just as the Spirit entered into all truth”
the world when God said ‘Let there be light…’ and we conjectured the
literal and figurative implications of that light, so too here with the
vegetation we must look to the layers of meaning or to other explanations
for why this has been written the way it has. It is possible that what is
written is in somewhat of an outline form and that certain specific aspects
are written about in more detail later on. God has done that with the
record of the creation of man; He created man and woman and then later
on He gives us the story of the first man and woman in the garden. It is
possible that in the creation account God speaks the word and a concept
is created but the thing comes to be at a later date. He invents and brings
forth and the complex processes of nature begin to work in the world and
slowly turn to produce what He intended, as a cook in the kitchen makes
a recipe that only takes shape at the right time and under the right
circumstances. In this view God works as a composer and conductor,
writing the notes of creation and working with the elements of His
orchestra to bring about the beautiful symphony that we know as this
world.
God has commanded that the earth begin to produce all categories
of growing things, from the non-food bearing plants and grasses to the
plants bearing fruit and vegetables. God has now provided the storehouse
for His creation, the source from which His creatures will gain their
nourishment. His world is not to remain empty but is to be filled and James 3:12 “Can a fig
have purpose; it will produce and it will give life abundantly. He has tree, my brethren,
ordered the waters, the heavens and now the land and the earth. produce olives, or a vine
It is by God’s design that His creation produces things after their produce figs? Nor can
own kind. This basic principle dictates that trees produce fruit that carry salt water produce fresh.”
seeds that grow to produce the same type of tree. Reproduction. Luke 6:45 “The good
Vegetables reproduce and make more vegetables. James told us that figs man out of the treasure of
do not grow on olive trees and that fresh water does not come out of a his heart brings forth
salt spring. Jesus told us that men are the same way spiritually; good men what is good; and the evil
will bring up the good that is in their hearts and the evil man the evil in man out of the evil
treasure brings forth what
his heart. We make what we ourselves are, out of what we are already. is evil”
We reproduce what we have as seed inside of us. This simple law of
creation governs not only the vegetation, but also the souls of men. ‘After
its kind’- what kind of man am I; what kind of fruit will I produce?

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 The thing was made first (Thank you Rob Blatchford). The
chicken came before the egg and the tree before the seeded fruit. God
made man before the fall. Straight from God is the creation and
perfection it is, in its first state. The tree, the land, the heavens and man
were all created and God saw them as ‘good’. He produces perfection
and is pleased with His work. His work is for a purpose, for a greater
work. His work here is in preparation for life, for provision, for His story
and for His ultimate glorification. He begins with perfection and He will
end in glory. Amen?

Genesis 1:14-19
“Then God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens
to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for
seasons and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse
of the heavens to give light on the earth’; and it was so. God made the
two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light
to govern the night; He made the stars also. God placed them in the
expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day
and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw
that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a fourth
day.”

In Genesis 1:3 God said, “Let there be light” and it was so. This
first light I imagined as the presence of the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit
who had been hovering over the waters considering the grand design of
the Father. The Hebrew word `owr appears to mean ‘illumination’; or
light as separate from its source. In the present verse the Hebrew word
ma`owr appears to refer to the luminary itself, to the lamp that was
created. In the beginning God sent light itself into the world, in this verse
God creates the vehicle through which future physical light would sustain
and govern the world.
The first light, from the Spirit, bringing His life giving presence
to the new creation, is not given as merely light, it is presented as light
itself, in contrast to the darkness of the formless and void earth. Matthew
Henry describes it as light without order; that which would be ordered in
the present verse with the coming of the Sun and the Moon. But what
if…? What if this was so much more than mere chaotic light in a chaotic
darkness? What if this is the Light of Life, without lamp and without
wick; this might have been Light, removed from the source, terrible in its
power, shedding its beauty upon all that it touched and reaching into all
the dark places to make its presence and its purpose known. This is the
Spirit of God in His blazing glory, tethered to no thing and reliant on Colossians 1:17 “He is
none else for His illumination. This is the Spirit entering creation before all things, and in
Him all things hold
assuring through His presence in the world that we are sustained; together.”
reminding us that without Him we would perish.
The new lights, the greater light and the lesser light, are the
physical reminder to creation of the Spirit’s presence, doing literally with
1 Corinthians 13:12 “For

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daylight and nighttime what He does with the light of life and the now we see in a mirror
darkness of sin; separates them forever. They are an example of how dimly, but then face to
face; now I know in part,
creation shadows what exists eternally with God in heaven and what is to but then I will know fully
come when God recreates creation. We see only a type of what really is just as I also have been
and what is future intended when Christ returns to finish the story. We fully known.”
see a pattern of what is reality in the heavens, we see a shadow of what
we will one day come to know in full. This Sun and this Moon, the
heavenly bodies and the stars, point to God, glorifying Him, reflecting Psalm 136:7 “To Him
His glory. And just as the Moon and the stars reflect the light of the who made the great
Sun(s), let us also see Jesus reflecting to us the Light of the Father. lights, for His
If we look, and if we want to see, we will see in the Sun a symbol lovingkindnes is
rising in the east of God’s bountiful provision. Even in our sin, which is everlasting: the sun to
rule by day, for His
likened to the dark and to the night, we are not left without a reminder of lovingkindness is
His love and His light. His light shines in the darkness, He comes to all everlasting, the moon
who would hear His voice and seek His light. He is steady and constant, and stars to rule by night,
never changing, as our Sun and moon never change- He is always there, for His lovingkindnes is
always caring and providing our every need. everlasting.”
They are for “signs and for seasons and for days and for years”,
they point to something and we look to them to help order our lives.
These lights in the heavens tell us when to plant, when to move, when to
harvest. They tell us when to worship, sacrifice and praise. They tell us
when to celebrate and how long to wait and how long has passed. These
lights are our markers giving us time and calendar. They are symbolic
and functional. They allow us to see in the day and the night. They are for
the animals and for man. They are for warmth and light. They are
connected to life on the earth, without them the earth would return
quickly to the darkness and chaos of the void. But God has ordained them
for this time and they will not fail us, they continue in their work by His Job 9:7 “Who commands
the sun not to shine, and
grace for our benefit. sets a seal upon the stars”
The Lord who made these great lights retains the authority to use
them for His own purposes. He keeps His hand firmly on His creation
and orchestrates it’s every function. He did not create and step back, but Joshua 10:12-13 “ ‘O
is daily involved in sustaining and working His creation. At His sun, stand still at Gibeon,
and O moon in the valley
command the Sun and the Moon and the stars have their place, their of Aijalon.’ So the sun
number and their function. At His command they are kept in place or in stood still, and the moon
orbit, but by the very same command He can stop them, darken them or stopped, until the nation
even abolish them. By the Word of His command the Lord has changed avenged themselves of
the routine of the sun and moon and stars, He has caused the sun to be their enemies.”
blotted out and the moon to disappear, and has caused both to stop in Luke 23:44 “It was now
their courses. These lights in the sky should be seen as servants of His about the sixth hour, and
purpose, being used to reveal and make manifest His grand design and darkness fell over the
will for His creation. They are not fixed forever, but are temporarily whole land until the ninth
placed above us until His story is finished and their utility has expired. hour, because the sun
was obscured; and the
The Sun and the Moon and the stars are God’s handiwork in the veil in the temple was
heavens, they are jewels in the sky that are too numerous to calculate and torn in two.”
too wonderful to possess. Their brilliance and beauty shout of the Creator
and their magnificence are said to extol the glory of His Name (Isaiah

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49:13, Psalm 148: 1-6). We must remember the Hand that fashioned these Deuteronomy 4:19 “And
lights, the God who is more grand and beautiful than all sunsets and beware not to lift up your
eyes to heaven and see
starry nights, The God who cast these into place and has woven each the sun and the moon and
intricate detail with its own mystery is Himself beyond comprehension the stars, all the host of
and understanding. He has strewn the heavens with an infinity of space heaven, and be drawn
and an innumerable array of bodies. But, as with everything that God has away and worship them
given us for a sign or for a season, as symbols or shadows of better things and serve them, those
which the Lord your God
to come, we have perverted these heavens with our own sin. Like the has allotted to all the
love that He gave to us in order that we might in turn show it to our peoples under the whole
spouses and one another, that we instead turned to lust, envy, adultery heaven.”
and jealousy; like the religion that He gave us to order our service and
worship of Him, that we instead turned to greed, idolatry and blasphemy; Isaiah 47:13 “Let now
the astrologers, those
the sun and the moon that He gave us to govern our days and our nights, who prophesy by the
to provide light for our nourishment and our protection, we have instead stars, those who predict
polluted and perverted with sin that stains His creation with darkness by the new moons, stand
itself. Instead of looking to the heavens at night and seeing the glory of up and save you from
the Lord and shouting ‘Majesty!’, man looks and attempts to divine his what will come upon
you.”
own destiny. Man has devised evil from God’s great good by practicing
idolatry, astrology, and divination with the gifts God has given him (And Isaiah 60:19 “No longer
God knew that he would.) will you have the sun for
These lights are beautiful, enduring, nourishing and sustaining, as light by day, nor for
God declared them to be. They most assuredly point to the Creator who brightness will the moon
give you light; but you
fashioned them and they stand as a reminder of not only His power, but
will have the Lord for an
also His presence. One day they will be refashioned along with all of His everlasting light, and
creation and our days will be governed not by their light but by His own. your God for your glory.”

Genesis 1:20-23
“Then God said, ‘Let the waters teem with swarms of living
creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the
heavens.’ God created the great sea monsters and every living creature
that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every
winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. God blessed
them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and
let birds multiply on the earth.’ There was evening and there was
morning, a fifth day.”

God commands the waters to ‘bring forth’ or swarm with living

creatures. He calls forth creatures that wriggle and abound in plenty,
filling the waters of the deep. He calls forth creatures that are alive with
breath in their bodies; this is life on the earth. God calls forth creatures
that will cover the face of the sky. They will fly upon the face of the sky
of heaven filling the air with their movement and music as the creatures
in the sea fill the waters with their own. God worked to provide His
creation with all of the necessary elements to sustain life, light, water, air
and food; with this days work God has created not only creatures that
have life, as with the vegetation, but creatures that live. They move, they
swarm, they fly, they breathe, they reproduce. God saw that His work

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was good and He blessed these creatures, commanding that they go out
and increase in number, being fruitful and multiplying. He did not need
to bless the light of Day One. He did not bless the land or the waters or
the vegetation or the heavens; but He blessed these living creatures.
This is the Lord Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, king of all
future kings, blessing his own creatures for their own benefit. That God,
in His power, deems it just to bless even the smallest of creatures points
to the hugeness of His own love. His is a blessing for life- God says to
His first creatures, “Live!”.

Genesis 1: 24-25
“Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures after
their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their
kind’; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind,
and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground
after its kind; and God saw that it was good.”

God is moving His work from the general to the specific.

Preparation has been made for the great work God will do in and through
the creation of man, and now we see the deeper level rising out of this
story. Starting with the void, God created order then substance. He
ordered the substance by setting boundaries in the heavens and on earth.
He planted and the earth produced according to its kind. He fills in the
spaces with creatures that live and move and eat freely of His provision.
With each of these steps the story of creation broadens and branches out
from the light that began it all. In that Light, all of this and all of us have
our roots and we have our ultimate life and security.
Note that when God creates living things they are brought forth
out of the earth or the waters. The vegetation sprouts, the waters teem,
and the earth brings forth. God says, ‘Let there be’, and there is; God
says ‘Let the earth bring forth’, and it does. God commands both the
waters and the soil- with His Word the gift of life was placed in them and
with this gift, the power to generate life. It is easy to fall to evolution for
an explanation of how He accomplished all of this; to say that evolution
is the response to God’s command to ‘bring forth’. The process of
evolution is slow but it would surely provide for the incredible diversity
that God desired. On the other hand it is much more difficult to see in
your mind’s eye the ground shaking and the ocean bubbling in turmoil as
creature after creature is birthed into a new world and new life. What
would it have been like to see the earth bring forth cattle and beasts and
to see the oceans roil with ‘teems’ of newly formed creatures? Which is
more awesome to consider? Which gives God His glory? Which gives us
more faith to move mountains? However He did it, we stand in awe of
His might and majesty.
God saw that what He had done was good. This was the final
work before the final stroke of His creation of man. The preparation is
over and our world and our universe is filled with life. What remains is

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the story; the props are all in place, the focus of His power is on the life
of this planet and this world. Think of the eternity that exists in all
directions surrounding the earth. Filled with the wonder of the galaxies
and suns and who knows what else in the form of bodies and light and
vacuum. Think of the universe that surrounds our sun and this planet and
the dance of time and the seasons and the years. Think of our earth with
is own bubble of atmosphere separated from the void and filled with an
internal light from the Spirit of God. Think of the earth itself and the
waters and streams and oceans and depths. Think of the canyons and
mountain and the highest heights. Then think about the complexity of the
filling of every nook and cranny, a diversity so overwhelming that its
detail becomes invisible to us as we do the business of living. Everything
points deeper and deeper to this sphere and the life and breadth of
creation. God works from the large to the small and then obliterates the
small with the hugeness of detail. He is pointing His Almighty finger at
us and asking if we see, if we will to see, the story He is writing, has
written, through His creation. It begins here, but it ends in Him, when all
His creatures bow and proclaim, ‘Holy!”

Genesis 1:26
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in Our image, according to
Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds
of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’”

God says, ‘Let Us make…’; God refers to Himself in the plural. Is

He split in His court and conversant with His members? Is He indeed a
Tri-union of selves? How can we understand this; how can we understand
the full counsel of God? In this first chapter we have seen the Spirit of
God (hovering, then entering creation), the Word of God (whom we
know to be the Son, Jesus Christ), and God (whom we know to be the
Lord Almighty and Father); these are three with power in creation,
eternity in being and authority of command. These we are taught are the
three Persons of the Trinity, separate in person, one in nature. A mystery
for sure but one thing we know, He is unified in His will and purposes for
His next creatures whom He called ‘man’.
The Hebrew word `adam means ‘to show blood in the face, i.e. to
flush or turn rosy. In the KJV the same word is translated hypocrite,
common sort, low, and man (mean, of low degree). This `Adam is
definitely not God or a god. This is a creature of low position next to the
Creator but nevertheless one who has just been given lordship over all of
his maker’s possession. Yet this man, who is not like either the creatures
made before him nor physically more like the Creator than them, is
somehow made in His image. He alone has the distinction of being made
in the image and pattern of God. He is a statue, modeled after the pattern
of God, not in physical appearance but in essential nature. Some say that
the soul is the essential nature of man, and that it is the soul, sometimes

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called the heart, that is stamped with God’s pattern. God used Himself as
that pattern. He made our physical bodies after the fashion of the earth,
but He made us walk upright, and He gave us what the other creatures
will never have; a spirit, a soul, a heart. We are like to Him, but we lack
His complete holiness, His perfect love, His patience, His power- but we
share in His spirit and we are made with the possibility of attaining to
perfection after His pattern. His example is of unity within Himself and
the Spirit and the Son, we are to model His love within Himself.
God has set man down on the face of the earth and commanded
that he establish rule and dominion over it. God has given stewardship of
the work of His own hands, but has retained the authority for Himself.
God blesses man and directs him but he reserves for Himself the titles of
King and Almighty and Lord and expects from us the obedience and
obeisance that those titles deserve. Man is free to rule over creation but
always while cognizant of the ring he wears belonging to the King of
Heaven and earth, the Almighty God. Matthew 19:4-6 “Have
you not read that He who
created them from the
Genesis 1:27
beginning made them
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He male and female, and
created him; male and female He created them.” said, ‘For this reason a
man shall leave his father
According to His pattern in creation God spoke the word and then and mother and be joined
to his wife, and the two
proceeded with the making. Man is as God intended. Man is plural as
shall become one flesh?’
God seems to be. Man is not masculine, but male and female. Man is a So they are no longer
unit of pairs as we know the rest of nature to be. A pattern of plurality two, but one flesh. What
existing as one, a pattern existing within God Himself and manifested in therefore God has joined
us, His creatures. God has given us the desire for union, for love, and He together, let no man
has given us the capacity to love. We have been given a taste of the very separate.”
nature of our Lord’s essence, love!

Genesis 1:28
“God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the
sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves
on the earth.’”
Psalm 127:3 “Behold,
The blessing of God to His creatures; a directive to mankind to go children are a gift of the
out and produce more of their kind as the animals are also to do. His Lord, the fruit of the
womb is a reward. Like
blessing is a command and a calling. God has made man for a purpose, arrows in the hand of a
this purpose, and now He calls them to fulfill it. Sin has interfered with warrior, so are the
this first purpose. Where man was made in the image and pattern of an children of one’s youth.
unchanging and ever unified and self-loving Godhead, sin has corrupted How blessed is the man
and perverted that image of union. Male and female we were made. One whose quiver is full of
them”
flesh we were to be with our spouses; but sin has destroyed our oneness
and caused a barrier to divide our flesh, separating our unity and
hardening our love. We were called to go out and multiply to fill the
earth, but we were to do it as He intended- as pairs, as couples, and as
Genesis 9:1 “And God

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units of pairs solidly bonded together as one. The command to fill the blessed Noah and his
earth has been obeyed, but how much by love between one-flesh and how sons and said to them,
‘Be fruitful and multiply,
much by sin amongst the flesh? and fill the earth. The
God declared once that it was the latter. In the days of Noah, He fear of you and the terror
pronounced judgment on the entire earth, completely covering it with of you will be on every
water and destroying all living things except Noah, his wife and their beast of the earth and on
three sons and daughters in-law. When God set the ark back on solid every bird of the sky;
with everything that
ground, He renewed His covenant with mankind and again blessed them, creeps on the ground, and
telling them to go out and multiply and fill the earth. But this time there all the fish of the sea,
was a difference; man’s dominion over creation would, this time, be into your hand they are
through fear and terror, rather than peace and love. Sin and death have given.”
exacted a heavy toll on creation and it recoils from man’s subjugation and
there is no peace.
Is it this fear, through which mankind now exacts the subjugation
of his world, which is at the root of the difficulties within our marriages?
At creation man was like God in unity and loving dominion over all
creation. After the fall isn’t it our sin that causes us to fear and to bring
about fear in others? Do we now not rule by force rather than by loving
Leviticus 26:3 “If you
leadership? Is not our authority backed up by our ability to exercise it walk in My statutes and
rather than God’s ability? That the animals fear us is not a good thing. keep My commandments
That our marriages are in constant turmoil is not good either. We want so as to carry them out,
peace in our unions, peace though love and not as a result of war. God then I shall give you
rains in their season…”
told the Israelites of the blessings that would be heaped upon them if they
walked in His statutes and obeyed His commands. He would give them
good food and peace from enemies, strength as a nation and safety from
nature. He would multiply them and confirm His covenant with them. If
they would obey, God promised to do all of this. He promised to make
His dwelling place with them and to never reject them. He would be their
Leviticus 26:13 “I broke
God and they would be His people. We can enjoy this kind of peace as the bars of your yoke and
well if we would walk as God intends for us to walk. The clue to God’s made you walk erect.”
blessing is to do as He commands, and He commands us to ‘be fruitful
and multiply’, to be His people, to walk in His statutes, and to love one
another. Then we will have peace; then we will walk ‘erect’.
We are to live in this land, fill it with our children and use it for
His kingdom. We are to be the rulers of creation. Beneath us are the
animals and the creatures of the sea. Beneath us is nature itself. We have
been given the authority to rule and this was included when God saw all
that He had made as good. We are not imposters in this land but have
been placed here, sent here expressly for this purpose. To do less than this
requires, letting creation rule us or to begin to serve it rather than the
Lord would be to disobey God’s oldest commandment to us.

Genesis 1:29-30
“Then God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding
seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit
yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and Psalm 104:14-15 “He
to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which causes the grass to grow
for the cattle, and

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has life, I have given every green plant for food’; and it was so.” vegetation for the labor
of man, so that he may
bring forth food from the
“Look what I have done for you!” The Lord has provided for earth, and wine which
every need of His creation. He has prepared a table for not only His makes man’s heart glad,
children, but also the lowest of His creatures. His is the only perpetual so that he may make his
motion machine ever devised; it sustains itself, ever producing and face glisten with oil, and
reproducing, its cycle is closed except to the Lord. Things grow and have food which sustains
man’s heart.”
life, they die and their death feeds the ground for rebirth; this is for our
benefit, we are fully provided for. Psalm 145:15 “The eyes
Absent from this provision is the mention of meat. He did not of all look to You, and
give to man the flesh of animals; that comes later, after the Flood. It is You give them their food
not clear what the relationship between man and the animals was to be at in due time. You open
Your hand and satisfy the
the beginning, but it seems pretty clear that it wasn’t simply to kill and desire of every living
eat. thing.”
It was (and is) always as He said. God decrees, God approves,
and God brings forth. It is His story and it is ready to be told.
Psalm 99:3 “Know that
Genesis 1:31
the Lord Himself is god;
“God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. it is He who has made us,
And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” and not we ourselves; we
are His people and the
He sees all that is before Him; he is able to take in the work of sheep of His pasture.”
His hands at a glance. He surveys that which He has made and He
pronounces judgment on that which is His own. We too belong to Him, Exodus 20:11 “For in six
we are His possession; we should always remember that. With His days the Lord made the
possessions He will do as He pleases. heavens and the earth,
the sea and all that is in
Genesis 2:1-3 them, and rested on the
seventh day; therefore
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their the Lord blessed the
hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, Sabbath day and made it
and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. holy.”
Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He
rested from all His work which God had created and made.” Exodus 20:8-10
“Remember the Sabbath
day, to keep it holy. Six
At this point in the account God is finished with creation; His days you shall labor and
work is complete. But because of the awesome breadth of what He has do all your work, but the
done we are left mouths agape with many questions. Was His whole story seventh day is a Sabbath
set in motion at this point or does He continue to enter time and of the Lord your God”
manipulate and make changes? Can He be understood as a conductor,
actively engaged in the day-to-day events of this world, tweaking
instruments on His left while coaxing those on His right? Or was the
whole story already written at this point, with the myriad of details
preconceived and the future already written? Is the future fluid in His
plan, can He add to it, change it; does He have new ideas ‘daily’ and
incorporate them into His grand design? He enters time when He answers
our prayers and when we neglect to pray we wonder if the outcome might
have been different if we had only asked Him. How does it work? How
1 John 4:19 “We love,

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does He do it? We may never know, but we know that He does, that He is because He first loved
in control and that it works just as He planned. Praise God for His mighty us.”
hand! 1 John 4:16 “We have
“Thus were completed the heavens and the earth and all their come to know and have
hosts.” The host of heaven and earth are assembled, a great army for believed the love God
God’s great campaign, which is for His glory and for our salvation. has for us. God is love,
Because He loves us, we love; because He is love, His story involves and the one who abides
in love abides in God,
loving us, which is His sacrifice. His host, His creation prepares to and God abides in him.”
witness the ‘greatest story ever told.’
It is amazing that in the space of thirty-four verses that the entire
story of creation has been written. (I have filled up these pages just
discussing them …) What glory and majesty must have been at the
coming of the light of heaven? How beautiful that light must have
appeared as it burst across the chaos of the void. Yet it’s account is
recorded in only five verses! Why so few words? Why are we not privy
to a more detailed description? Our God is a God of understatement. His
creation needs no other words- it IS majesty, it IS beauty, it IS awesome.
I think that God holds back words in order that we might grow eyes with
which to see for ourselves. Does not creation speak to us of the Lord if
only we could see and hear what it has to say?
This day of creation is unlike the other days in the account
because it does not include the typical final ending, ‘evening then there
was morning’. This day, the seventh, is special. Remember that God
began His work in the ‘evening’, or so I think, and it can be expected that
this ‘day’ begins in the evening as well. Symbolically it is interesting to
note that there is no morning recorded for us, this ‘day’ seemingly does
not, or has not ended. When will the eighth day come and what will it
bring to us? What will God do this ‘evening’ before the great and
glorious coming of the Son in the morning?
On this day God Himself rests from all that He had done. God
initiates the rest and God calls the day special by blessing it and
pronouncing it holy, thus separating it from the other days of the week.
This ‘rest’ is a ceasing of work that He could have been doing. God chose
not to work; He desisted from work in order to set the pattern for life on
His creation.
God set the pattern at seven days, and to this day we universally
organize our lives around a seven-day week. Why this number? The Holy
Scriptures are full of numerical references that seemingly carry great
symbolic meaning. The number seven is used an overwhelming number
of times, six hundred times throughout scripture (International Standard
Bible Encyclopedia), beginning with the Lord’s oath that whoever would
kill Cain would suffer his vengeance seven-fold, through the sevens of
revelation (churches, stars, lampstands, spirits, seals…). God uses
numbers symbolically to give us a taste of His character and nature. He
sets patterns for us throughout the bible that not only help us to
understand the context and the story but also make us wonder as to the
mystery that enshrouds our God. God, the God of understatement, gives

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us these numerical clues, as well as others, that we might ponder Him John 19:30 “Therefore
and seek to know Him more fully. when Jesus had received
the sour wine, He said,
God finished His work on this seventh day. There was another ‘It is finished!’ And He
time when God called his work finished. At the crucifixion of our Lord bowed His head and gave
Jesus Christ, after he had taken his last earthly taste of wine, He bowed up His spirit.”
his head and said, “It is finished”. That day is given to us to remember in
the Lord’s Table that we share in the church. When we take of the bread
and the wine and we eat it together we look to that finished work on the
cross and we bow our heads in remembrance and thanksgiving. One day
the eighth morning will dawn and Jesus Christ will once more say those
words, “It is finished”, when His enemies are brought low and his
children are released to Him forever. Then we will live in the Sabbath
rest of our God forever and nevermore will there be a darkness in the
world to hinder our union with Him.

Revelation 22: 3-5

“There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of
the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will
see His face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will no
longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp
nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and
they will reign forever and ever.”

July 9, 2006

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