Genesis Creation Account With References

Comments on Genesis 1-2:3 (Scripture from the NASB)

John 1:1-3 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” Genesis 1:1-2 “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 God; the Word spoke the world into existence, launching the story of the Father’s love for us and the incredible revelation of His glory and majesty. This God, who existed before all that we know, by the strength 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 created us, and it is His power that sustains us. What kind of power does it take to create? To call into being stars and planets, suns and moons, earth, water, and fire? How is it possible? 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 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, who view it all through particularly one-way lenses, God existed and completely filled the nonexistent space that stretched infinitely across the nonexistent universes. Through His omniscience He ‘invented’ creation and like a thought unfolding in our human brains the physical world was laid out across now existent space. He exists now as ‘before’, His invention of time cannot hold Him bound, and His new physical world cannot push Him up into the heavens any more than our own creations 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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

Psalm 90:2 “Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God”

Hebrews 1:10 “You, Lord, in the beginning, laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the works of your hands” Colossians 1:17 “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” Isaiah 43:13 “I act and who can reverse it?”

Isaiah 40:22 “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.”

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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 without life, without life support, and most notably, without light. God did not intend it to stay for long that way, without form and without purpose (The Hebrew word tohuw can mean, to lie waste, a desolation, and a worthless thing). This was only the beginning stage where darkness was to be defined and new life in Him would be shown to stand always in 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.” When God said ‘Light’, it is as if He said ‘Go!’ to the Spirit and the Spirit of God stopped hovering and swept into the time and space of 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 life as the light of God invades the surface of the deep. This is the life giving Light of Christ as He enters the world to begin His revelation to His creation. It has been said that since God is really outside of time then He never really ever began this work but that it was and has been always ever before Him. But God created time itself in order to tell this story to us who exist as the backdrop to it and the recipients of it. He entered time 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 Prophets. He entered time when the Christ was born and was crucified and He raised Him from the dead. And He will enter time again when He comes to make an ending of it all and when He rolls up this creation as an old garment and shakes out a new one for His children to live in and share the blessing of His glorious Light forever without the shadows of

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

Isaiah 45:18 “He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited"

Psalm 104:30 “You send forth Your Spirit, they are created; and You renew the face of the ground.” 2 Corinthians 4:6 “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” Hebrews 1:11-12 “And they all will become old like a garment, and like a mantle You will roll them up; like a garment they will also be changed.”

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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 allowed a share in it; it is forced into corners and recesses until such a time as the Light desires to root it out and destroy it completely. We are not to live in the darkness of death while the Spirit is in the world. We are to choose the light and the life and to spurn the dark and death. When we choose life we are set apart, sanctified, made holy and removed from death. ‘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 creation will need no light of sun and moon, and apparently will not need their heat and pull either, but that the light of the Lord will be our light and sustenance. At that time God’s light will suffice to heat the world and nourish it. In Genesis, as well, the light of the Lord as the Spirit entered creation for the first time brought all the essential elements needed to support life upon the earth.) With His presence, darkness is confined to its corners and rules 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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

Deuteronomy 30:19 “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live”

Revelation 22:5 “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.”

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 day. God again speaks the word of creation, and it is so. His word is mighty and powerful, able to do what He commands, it accomplishes all that He desires, and it is real, solid and majestic (Isaiah 55: 10-11). And then God ‘made the expanse’- first from the mouth of God comes the word of creation, then from the Hand of God comes the act of creation. It is as if there was a two-step process to His work. First command, then action. God speaks ‘expanse’, then God makes the expanse. In verse 14, God speaks ‘lights’ and then God makes lights. In verse 20, God speaks to the waters and to the air for them to teem with fish and birds and then God creates or makes the fish and the birds. In verse 24, God speaks to the earth to bring forth ‘creatures’ then God 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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”

Psalm 148:4 “Praise Him, highest heavens,

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and the waters that are arch of waters above the earth that was held back by the floodgates of above the heavens!” heaven until such a time as God emptied them upon His creation? Some 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.

Genesis 1:9-10 “Then God said, ‘Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear’; and it was so. God called 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 darkness. We see order in the atmosphere and chaos in the deeps, even to this day. We look to Scripture and we find God over and over and over again shown to us in every aspect of this world from its nature to its people. His story is all of it- it is Sun and Moon, trees and plants, animals and birds and fish, as well as people and salvation. All of it will be redeemed- but redemption itself is still not the end of the story. The arrow points to the Redeemer; it is back to God Almighty that it points. To Him be the glory forever, Amen! Imagine this world, churning and roiling on the surface and in the deeps. God commands the waters, be they mist and vapor or something else, to be removed to the heavens and the surface of the water became visible. God commands, or rebukes these waters and they recede or remove to their new places. Imagine them draining into newly formed valleys and recesses in the earth or evaporating to the heavens to add to 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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

Psalm 95:5 “The sea is His, for it was He who made it, and His hands formed the dry land.”

Psalm 98:4-8 “Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth; break forth and sing for joy and sing praises. Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody. With trumpets and the sound of the horn shout joyfully before the King, the Lord. Let the sea roar and all it contains, the world and those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy”

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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, and now, dry land was not prophecy for the future but directive for the here and now. God said. And it was so. And what a creation it was. Heavens, sky, water, and whole continents shaped at His command. How powerful is this God who speaks; and life, death, creation, and destruction, ensue. It is good to remember that God is the author of the story. He is 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 capture in words or thought; it is as if the life He imparted was His own Life. We are a part of Him as we came from him. As such it follows why He loves us so, because He loves Himself. He cares for His own, He is Father, I am son; we are His children. The marvel of it is that He also created sin, which He cannot allow to exist in His presence. More than that, it simply cannot exist in His presence; it is destroyed by divine fire. Again, the wonder of this mystery, He writes this story and, so that he can fully explain His love (as He is love) He writes evil into it, and places Himself on the cross at just the right time in order to save us from the certain destruction of our own darkness and evil. He performs the ultimate in sacrifice, the offering of His own Son, His own Self to save 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.

Isaiah 45:6-7 “I am the Lord, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing wellbeing and creating calamity; I am the lord who does all these.”

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” 1 John 4:16 “We have come to know and have believed the love God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

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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 such as this out of order unless we remember that God in His Omniscience and power is not always easily comprehended and therefore 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 Truth. First, we should remember that God’s Word is many layered; It has meaning upon meaning that only comes to us as we read and pray and as the Spirit directs us in our understanding. Just as the Spirit entered 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 have purpose; it will produce and it will give life abundantly. He has ordered the waters, the heavens and now the land and the earth. It is by God’s design that His creation produces things after their own kind. This basic principle dictates that trees produce fruit that carry seeds that grow to produce the same type of tree. Reproduction. Vegetables reproduce and make more vegetables. James told us that figs do not grow on olive trees and that fresh water does not come out of a salt spring. Jesus told us that men are the same way spiritually; good men will bring up the good that is in their hearts and the evil man the evil in his heart. We make what we ourselves are, out of what we are already. 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?

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

Titus 1:2 “in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago” John 16:13 “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth”

James 3:12 “Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce figs? Nor can salt water produce fresh.” Luke 6:45 “The good man out of the treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil”

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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 none else for His illumination. This is the Spirit entering creation assuring through His presence in the world that we are sustained; 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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

Colossians 1:17 “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

1 Corinthians 13:12 “For

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daylight and nighttime what He does with the light of life and the darkness of sin; separates them forever. They are an example of how creation shadows what exists eternally with God in heaven and what is to come when God recreates creation. We see only a type of what really is and what is future intended when Christ returns to finish the story. We 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 His glory. And just as the Moon and the stars reflect the light of the Sun(s), let us also see Jesus reflecting to us the Light of the Father. If we look, and if we want to see, we will see in the Sun a symbol rising in the east of God’s bountiful provision. Even in our sin, which is likened to the dark and to the night, we are not left without a reminder of His love and His light. His light shines in the darkness, He comes to all who would hear His voice and seek His light. He is steady and constant, never changing, as our Sun and moon never change- He is always there, always caring and providing our every need. 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 grace for our benefit. 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 is daily involved in sustaining and working His creation. At His command the Sun and the Moon and the stars have their place, their number and their function. At His command they are kept in place or in orbit, but by the very same command He can stop them, darken them or even abolish them. By the Word of His command the Lord has changed the routine of the sun and moon and stars, He has caused the sun to be blotted out and the moon to disappear, and has caused both to stop in their courses. These lights in the sky should be seen as servants of His purpose, being used to reveal and make manifest His grand design and will for His creation. They are not fixed forever, but are temporarily placed above us until His story is finished and their utility has expired. The Sun and the Moon and the stars are God’s handiwork in the heavens, they are jewels in the sky that are too numerous to calculate and 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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”

Psalm 136:7 “To Him who made the great lights, for His lovingkindnes is everlasting: the sun to rule by day, for His lovingkindness is everlasting, the moon and stars to rule by night, for His lovingkindnes is everlasting.”

Job 9:7 “Who commands the sun not to shine, and sets a seal upon the stars” Joshua 10:12-13 “ ‘O sun, stand still at Gibeon, and O moon in the valley of Aijalon.’ So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies.” Luke 23:44 “It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour, because the sun was obscured; and the veil in the temple was torn in two.”

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49:13, Psalm 148: 1-6). We must remember the Hand that fashioned these lights, the God who is more grand and beautiful than all sunsets and starry nights, The God who cast these into place and has woven each intricate detail with its own mystery is Himself beyond comprehension and understanding. He has strewn the heavens with an infinity of space and an innumerable array of bodies. But, as with everything that God has given us for a sign or for a season, as symbols or shadows of better things to come, we have perverted these heavens with our own sin. Like the love that He gave to us in order that we might in turn show it to our spouses and one another, that we instead turned to lust, envy, adultery 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; the sun and the moon that He gave us to govern our days and our nights, to provide light for our nourishment and our protection, we have instead polluted and perverted with sin that stains His creation with darkness itself. Instead of looking to the heavens at night and seeing the glory of the Lord and shouting ‘Majesty!’, man looks and attempts to divine his 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 God knew that he would.) These lights are beautiful, enduring, nourishing and sustaining, as God declared them to be. They most assuredly point to the Creator who fashioned them and they stand as a reminder of not only His power, but also His presence. One day they will be refashioned along with all of His creation and our days will be governed not by their light but by His own.

Deuteronomy 4:19 “And beware not to lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.” Isaiah 47:13 “Let now the astrologers, those who prophesy by the stars, those who predict by the new moons, stand up and save you from what will come upon you.” Isaiah 60:19 “No longer will you have the sun for light by day, nor for brightness will the moon give you light; but you will have the Lord for an everlasting light, and 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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

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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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

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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. Genesis 1:27 “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” According to His pattern in creation God spoke the word and then proceeded with the making. Man is as God intended. Man is plural as God seems to be. Man is not masculine, but male and female. Man is a unit of pairs as we know the rest of nature to be. A pattern of plurality existing as one, a pattern existing within God Himself and manifested in us, His creatures. God has given us the desire for union, for love, and He has given us the capacity to love. We have been given a taste of the very nature of our Lord’s essence, love!

Matthew 19:4-6 “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

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.’” The blessing of God to His creatures; a directive to mankind to go out and produce more of their kind as the animals are also to do. His blessing is a command and a calling. God has made man for a purpose, this purpose, and now He calls them to fulfill it. Sin has interfered with this first purpose. Where man was made in the image and pattern of an unchanging and ever unified and self-loving Godhead, sin has corrupted and perverted that image of union. Male and female we were made. One 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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

Psalm 127:3 “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them”

Genesis 9:1 “And God

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units of pairs solidly bonded together as one. The command to fill the earth has been obeyed, but how much by love between one-flesh and how much by sin amongst the flesh? God declared once that it was the latter. In the days of Noah, He pronounced judgment on the entire earth, completely covering it with water and destroying all living things except Noah, his wife and their three sons and daughters in-law. When God set the ark back on solid ground, He renewed His covenant with mankind and again blessed them, telling them to go out and multiply and fill the earth. But this time there was a difference; man’s dominion over creation would, this time, be through fear and terror, rather than peace and love. Sin and death have 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 leadership? Is not our authority backed up by our ability to exercise it rather than God’s ability? That the animals fear us is not a good thing. That our marriages are in constant turmoil is not good either. We want peace in our unions, peace though love and not as a result of war. God 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 God and they would be His people. We can enjoy this kind of peace as well if we would walk as God intends for us to walk. The clue to God’s 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 to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given.”

Leviticus 26:3 “If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out, then I shall give you rains in their season…”

Leviticus 26:13 “I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.”

Psalm 104:14-15 “He 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.” “Look what I have done for you!” The Lord has provided for every need of His creation. He has prepared a table for not only His children, but also the lowest of His creatures. His is the only perpetual motion machine ever devised; it sustains itself, ever producing and reproducing, its cycle is closed except to the Lord. Things grow and have life, they die and their death feeds the ground for rebirth; this is for our benefit, we are fully provided for. Absent from this provision is the mention of meat. He did not give to man the flesh of animals; that comes later, after the Flood. It is not clear what the relationship between man and the animals was to be at the beginning, but it seems pretty clear that it wasn’t simply to kill and eat. 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. Genesis 1:31 “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” He sees all that is before Him; he is able to take in the work of 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, we are His possession; we should always remember that. With His possessions He will do as He pleases. Genesis 2:1-3 “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” At this point in the account God is finished with creation; His work is complete. But because of the awesome breadth of what He has done we are left mouths agape with many questions. Was His whole story set in motion at this point or does He continue to enter time and 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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

vegetation for the labor of man, so that he may bring forth food from the earth, and wine which makes man’s heart glad, so that he may make his face glisten with oil, and food which sustains man’s heart.” Psalm 145:15 “The eyes of all look to You, and You give them their food in due time. You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.”

Psalm 99:3 “Know that the Lord Himself is god; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” Exodus 20:11 “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Exodus 20:8-10 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God”

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 in control and that it works just as He planned. Praise God for His mighty hand! “Thus were completed the heavens and the earth and all their hosts.” The host of heaven and earth are assembled, a great army for God’s great campaign, which is for His glory and for our salvation. Because He loves us, we love; because He is love, His story involves loving us, which is His sacrifice. His host, His creation prepares to 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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:16 “We have come to know and have believed the love God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

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us these numerical clues, as well as others, that we might ponder Him and seek to know Him more fully. God finished His work on this seventh day. There was another time when God called his work finished. At the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, after he had taken his last earthly taste of wine, He bowed 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.

John 19:30 “Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’ And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.”

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

Soli Deo Gloria He knows…

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