Genesis 1:2-31

Last week we focused on the very first verse of Genesis. In this first verse we are introduced to the author of the story as well as the theme of the story. God is the author and He has a plan that involves humans and begins with creating the heavens and the earth. He doesn’t do so because He needs to, He just does it. Remarkably He does so by just speaking, and it was so. That should give us a sense of just how powerful and amazing God is. 

The rest of the first chapter of Genesis provides us with an overview of the order in which God put everything into existence. 

I believe it is imperative that we understand exactly what we are reading. This is not a scientific explanation of how to create a world and everything in it. 

This is a narrative that was given to Moses, by God, is to explain to the Hebrew people who God is and how He started this whole thing called “life.” Again, we need to be reading our Bible “in context.” Let’s go back for a moment and remember why this was written in the first place. Moses had taken a group of slaves out of Egypt and was leading them to the Promised Land. Do you remember one of Moses’ questions for God when he was first confronted with the job? 

How are they going to believe me? 

Who do I say sent me? 

God responds,

“Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.”

Moses wrote the first five books of our Bible to explain to the Israelites how things started from the beginning of time until his death. One of the details Moses was trying to clarify was their God, Elohim, was the creator God. We need to remember that the Israelites had been enslaved in Egypt for 430 years. The Egyptians and everyone else around them worshiped a variety of gods. The god of the Sun and the god of the moon being just a couple of them.  When Moses gets to day four he explains how the lights in the firmament of the heavens were created but he doesn’t write their names. He purposefully focuses on their functions rather than their names because everyone around them acts as if the Sun and the moon and the stars are their gods. Moses was trying to make the point that they are created objects and to focus on the creator not the creation. 

Verse two of Genesis tells us the state of the earth before God organized it. It was without form and void and dark and deep. We are also told that the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. So we have earth as dark water that is deep and without shape or form. God began His transformation by hovering over what He had formed. 

The Spirit of God begins every work of creation or re-creation. 

The verb “hovering” signifies a vibrant moving, a protective hovering. This same verb is used in Deuteronomy 32:11 to describe an eagle’s movements in stirring its young into flight. 

When the Spirit had hovered enough God began to create. 

He didn’t make things with His hands at this point He simply said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” Immediately upon doing so we are told God saw the light and that the light was good. 

He then went on to divide the light from the darkness. Did you notice God didn’t “create” darkness. Because God is light, 1 John 1:5, 

“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”  

Yet by creating light, darkness existed. God calls the light, “Day” and the darkness, “Night.” In doing so, God created the first day. 

Then comes day two. This is when God makes an atmospheric division. God does this creation by again, speaking and says, 

“Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 

Okay, we need to go back to the hovering Spirit of God and remember that He was hovering over the waters. That was what God had to work with. So He’s looking at the waters and decides to divide it. The waters of the land are separated from the water vapor in the sky. He continues by calling the water vapor in the sky, “Heaven.”

There is evening and morning, day two is over.

On day three, God was really busy. He divides the land from the sea and creates all types of vegetation. God speaks again and His words create dry land by gathering the waters under the heavens together into one place. The gathered water turns out to cover 71% of our planet. 

God speaks again and says, verse 11, 

“Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth.”

God created plants, full-grown, that were to yield seeds and fruits to multiply. Verse 12 tells us they did, 

“The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.” 

The phrase, “according to its kind,” appears ten times in the first chapter of Genesis one. There may well be variation within a “kind” but something of one “kind” doesn’t develop into another “kind.” 

God doesn’t call the land “good” until He has finished creating vegetation. Evening and morning again, thus the end of the third day. 

Day four is where things start getting confusing. God says, “Let there be light” again. Doesn’t light and darkness already exist?

Light does exist, but on day four God makes the sun and the moon and sets them up to be signs and seasons. In fact, God knew exactly how far to set the sun from the earth and just how much to tilt the earth so that we can experience life as we know it. 

The stars were arranged by God to give us signs or direction. Humans have been using these signs, or constellations since the beginning of time. Psalm 147:4 and Isaiah 40:26 tell us that God has not only numbered all of the stars, but has names for them. 

God completes this day with seeing that all He had done was good. Evening and morning of the fourth day.

Day five is where all of the animals show up. God speaks again and wa-la, the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures and the skies are filled with every winged bird according to its kind.  Birds, reptiles, mammals all share similar structures. This argues at least as persuasively for a common Designer as it does for all life coming from the same primordial cell. Evolutionists offer convincing examples of “microevolution” where within a species of its own kind adaptations occur due to a change in environment. 

For example, the ratio of black to white peppered moths may increase when pollution makes it easier for dark moths to escape detection; or finches may develop different beaks in response to their change in environment. But the moths are still moths and the finches are still finches. 

Moses tells us that during this creation day, God saw that it was good. Then God does something He hasn’t done yet, 

“And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 

The fish of the sea and the birds of the air get blessed. Maybe that’s why God knows when even a sparrow dies?

The fifth day is done. 

Next comes the day we have all been waiting for, the day of creation of humans. God begins the sixth day creating land animals, “according to their kind.” Cattle and creeping beasts of the earth are all labeled as “good.”

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Notice the plural pronouns. Moses makes a point to remind the Isrealites that their God is One God in Three Persons.  

God also claims that humans were made in His “image.” This claim demonstrates that humans are unlike any other created thing. 

It means humans possess:

• Personality: knowledge, feelings and a will, setting us apart from plants and animals. 
• Morality: we are able to make moral judgments and have a conscience.
• Spirituality: humans were made for communion with God and it is on the level of spirit we do that communication.