The God of Creation Forms and Fills, Part 1

It is no accident that God is the subject of the opening pages of the Bible, as he is the subject of the whole of existence. We are here on this earth and in this, and every, place to worship and submit to Him as the only Creator and rightful recipient of all majesty and fame!

In the creation account, we read historical narrative intended to draw our attention to God’s true, sovereign, wise and personal nature. God himself stands behind creation, and the orderliness of creation tells us that there is nothing random, or haphazard, about God. He is sovereign, intentional, orderly, wise, and perfectly good in every way.

Scripture reading

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Genesis 1:1–13 ESV

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. 9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

Let’s pray together.

Prayer

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Proposition

The Almighty God who creates, forms, and sustains everything by His powerful word is alone worthy of our delight, worship and obedience.

In the first verses of the Bible we see that the Father is the source of all things (verse 1), the Spirit is the energizer of all things (verse 2), the Word is the revealer of all things (verse 3). Here in verse three we see the first record of God speaking in the Bible (Morris).

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I. God’s Word brings light! (3-5)

And God said, “Let there be light” (3)

God (ʾĕl ō hîm — אֱלֹהִים), the Almighty God, said, “Let there be.”

Commentator Allen Ross draws out the significant word play here. “I Am,” as God revealed himself to Moses, says, “Let there be,” “and there was.”

(“I Am” (ʾěh·yě(h) (explains Yahweh) — אֶהְיֶה), as God revealed himself to Moses , says, “Let there be” (yehî), “and there was” (wayhî).)

God saw, divided and called. God assigns to everything its value (4a), place (4b) and meaning (5a).

After God speaks and it is, “God saw that “the light was good” and “God separated the light from the darkness.”(4)

God called/named light “Day” and darkness “Night.” In ancient times the practice of naming something indicated sovereignty over it. God communicates His sovereign reign over creation and all that exists so Israel knows without a doubt that the “I AM”, the Almighty, Majestic God is the one true God whom they are to delight in, worship and obey.

In God’s naming day and night, God distinguishes between “night time” and “light time” when He would do his work. Night is not abolished, only subordinated.

God sets a pattern of distinguishing and dividing between what would be deemed as holy. We see it throughout the creation account as well as in the law. Lev 20:25 “You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean.”

God creates, sees, separates, and names, and in so doing, gives purpose as He sees fit.

God created and defined a lasting, time-bound rhythm in the world: a regular evening and morning pattern that we observe to this day.

The Hebrew word “yôm” (יוֹם) means day, and in this context every time “yôm” is used with a number it means one 24-hour day.

Some say this refers to a period of time and stretch it to mean something other than the clear reading and interpretation of a single day, and evening and morning in the first day.

To be sure, we use the word often to refer to a days worth of activity. Casually, when we say what did you do yesterday we don’t mean, “what did you do in the last 24-hours?” but it’s clear that we’re referring to a particular day.

In Gen. 2:4 the same word is used, Gen. 2:4 “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” Here he’s referring to the period, or time, when the Lord made the heavens and earth. This is as normal a use of language as you and I would make referring back to something we remember.

Some refer to 2 Peter 3:8 when Peter says, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Peter is clearly drawing a comparison, using a simile (like or as), to communicate the Lord’s great patience toward mankind as the Lord waits for the day of judgment.

These are examples of normal use of language, but here in the creation account it is an inescapable reality that Moses is writing of creation happening in six, literal, twenty-four hour days. It i the most natural reading in Hebrew and as we read it in our English translations today.

Both in creation, and in the hearts of men, when God speaks, whatever he speaks happens just as God determines. It’s not surprising, then that John, in his Gospel records that Jesus Christ is the Word of God, who created everything. Early in Genesis, Israel learned that the Word of the Lord is the powerful transforming word that was first manifested in creation.

“How is there light without the sun?” you might ask. Well John Calvin gives us good guidance as he helps us maintain a God-centered focus, untrampled by man-centered assumptions which would bring God down to our finite level:

Therefore the Lord by the very order of the creation, bears witness that he holds in his hand the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and moon.

God’s Word brings light! Think about the analogy between two miraculous creations:

Psalm 119:130 tells us “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.”

And Paul quotes from Ge 1:3 in 2 Corinthians 4:6 when he says “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Only the Almighty God, the Uncreated Light could speak into the darkness of the newly created yet unformed darkness and into the darkness of the heart of a child or an adult, a peasant or a king, the poor or the rich and command light to be where previously no such light existed. In both scenarios, order replaces disorder, beauty outshines the darkness.

I love how Henry Morris describes this in The Genesis Record:

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Beyond the visible light waves are, on the one hand, ultraviolet light and all the other shortwave-length radiations and, on the other hand, infrared light and the other long-wave phenomena.

In turn, setting the electromagnetic forces into operation in effect completed the energizing of the physical cosmos. All the types of force and energy which interact in the universe involve only electromagnetic, gravitational, and nuclear forces; and all of these had now been activated. Though no doubt oversimplified, this tremendous creative act of the Godhead might be summarized by saying that the nuclear forces maintaining the integrity of matter were activated by the Father when He created the elements of the space-mass-time continuum, the gravitational forces were activated by the Spirit when He brought form and motion to the initially static and formless matter, and the electromagnetic forces were activated by the Word when He called light into existence out of the darkness. Of course, God is One, and all three persons of the Godhead actually participated in all parts of the creation and continue to function in the maintenance of the universe so created.

All of this was accomplished on the first day of creation. The physical universe had been created and energized, and was ready for further shaping and furnishing in preparation for man, whose dominion it would be. (Morris, 56–57)

“And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” (5b)

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II. God reins over the heavens (6-8)

As the second day dawned, God said, “Let there be an expanse (canopy) in the midst of the waters to separate the waters from the waters. God separated the waters below from the waters above and called the expanse Heaven.”

The word rāqîaʿ (רָקִיַע) for expanse carries the idea of stamping something with one’s foot so as to spread it out or stretch it forth. This is the open expanse of heaven in which birds fly. It’s the heavenly atmosphere as we know it where God will later place “the lights …for signs and for seasons” (14, 17).

Israel is learning that God is God of everything in the heavens. They knew that rain came from the clouds in the sky but here God makes it clear the He not only sends rain from the heavens as the one who provides for the earth, but that He reins supreme over the heavens and all their beings.

Again we see the very important fact of God’s command and fulfillment. When God gave a command, “it was so.” It was then, and it is still so today. What God commands always comes into being. As Moses repeats this pattern of command and fulfillment, he’s highlighting the connection between God’s speaking and the reality coming into being.

“And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.” (8b)

Transition statement: God Word brings light into the world, and his works are seen, beginning in the heavens and now moving to the earth where God will continue to focus our attention on His plan for this world where man will later be created and make his temporal home.

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III. God alone gives life (9-13)

Until this point, the waters under the heavens were like shoreless oceans with nowhere for a boat to land. The earth was there but covered by the waters and still uninhabitable.

Until God speaks by the power of His word and begins to gather the waters under the heavens together and calls the “Seas.” And by His command dry land appears.

The energizing agent is still and will always be the Word of God as he commands, and it is so.

God set the boundaries for the seas, demonstrating his sovereign control over them. Allen Ross helpfully points out “The fact that the Canaanites worshiped Prince Yam, a deification of the cosmic ocean, adds greater significance to this portrayal of God’s sovereignty.” (110)

God assesses and it was good, because all of His works are good. Psalm 104:7-9 beautifully and powerfully depicts this:

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Psalm 104:7–9 ESV

7 At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. 8 The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. 9 You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.

As the earth is taking shape just as God designed, God declares that the earth will sprout vegetation, plants with seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth. And it was so.

God created fertile ground, and it was immediately fertile. Verse 12 shows us something that’s critically important about the trees and plants that God created on the third day: they were full grown at the beginning, with their seed in them. “Vegetable life was formed,”as Doug Kelly describes, “with the capacity to reproduce itself through seed ‘after its kind,’ so as to pass on its living characteristics in orderly fashion for that future, which God had in store for the natural order.”

And again, God saw that it was good!

All of this stands in contrast to the ancient mythologies about idolatrous “gods,” which are figments of man’s imagination.

In Canaan, for example, religious myth claimed that Baal could produce fertility. At the end of the year Baal died—an idea that explained why the crops died—and was said to be captured by a god “Death” (Mot) and carried away to the abyss, the domain of Prince Sea.

But in the spring the goddess Anat, Baal’s associate, rescued him in a bloody battle, defeating Prince Sea in the process. Baal’s reappearance ensured that the crops would grow in the new year and accounted for the change of seasons in the spring.

Most of the ancient religions had such rituals, designed to induce the gods to produce crops and fruit (and life as well). (Ross, 110)

Contrary to corrupt accounts of fertility, Genesis simply and powerfully asserts that God gathered the seas together and decreed that the fertile earth produce vegetation. Fertility is a self-perpetuating process decreed by God, a capacity only made possible by the true Lord of life.

There is no sea god, Baal is only a figment of man’s imagination, and only God gives life.

“And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.” (13)

Transition statement: Do you have an superstitious beliefs that bring you false comfort? You would do well to realize that this is a way of stealing glory from God, and robbing you of true peace. After all, that’s what false gods do. As figments of our own imaginations, we worship what is false if we believe these fictitious accounts. Put your confidence in the one true God, who made heaven and earth and gives life to plants, trees and, as we’ll soon see, everything else.

Conclusion and Transition to Communion

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Proposition

The Almighty God who creates, forms, and sustains everything by His powerful word is alone worthy of our delight, worship and obedience.

“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6), the living Word of God (John 1:1, 14) who is the “light of the world” (John 8:12). “In him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

When you look at God’s creation, don’t set your heart on creation. Admire the beauty, enjoy it fully, but delight in, and worship, creations Creator God.

Does your pursuit of enjoying creation ever take you away from the corporate worship God commands of us? We’re to worship Him with our whole hearts as we delight in His majesty and life-giving power.

Communion Transition

Prayer

Communion

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Barrett, Matthew. 2019. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books: A Division of Baker Publishing Group.).

Boice, James Montgomery. Genesis: An Expositional Commentary, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 81.James Montgomery Boice, Genesis: An Expositional Commentary, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998).

Calvin, John. Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, 76.

Kelly, Douglas F. 2017. Creation and Change: Genesis 1:1–2:4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms. Revised & Updated Edition. Ross-shire, Scotland: Mentor.

Kidner, Derek, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1967).

Morris, Henry M., The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1976).

Poythress, Vern S. 2019. Interpreting Eden: A Guide to Faithfully Reading and Understanding Genesis 1–3. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Ross, Allen P. 1998. Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Waltke, Bruce K., and Cathi J. Fredricks. 2001. Genesis: A Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Wenham, Gordon J. 1987. Genesis 1–15. Vol. 1. Word Biblical Commentary. Dallas: Word, Incorporated.