“The Days of Creation”

Sunday, July 28, 2024

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

(Genesis 1.1-2)

The first two sentences of the Bible testify to  the central truth of our lives.  There exists an all-powerful being, independent of the natural universe, and he is its designer and builder.  Just saying it doesn’t make it so, but the purpose of Genesis is not to prove anything.  Rather, it provides answers from that powerful, transcendent being—let’s call him God—that we can choose to to reject, or to accept on faith.  The Apostle Paul later observed that “what can be known about God is plain to” all mankind,

because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

(Romans 1.19-20)

The creation itself testifies to its creator; but what else does he tell us about the process?

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And 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, the first day.

(Genesis 1.3-5)

God took the formless “void” of verse 2, and started not only making new things, but creating order, as well.  Light was new, but God didn’t completely banish the darkness that had existed already.  Instead, he gave boundaries to each, and arranged a pattern for later, as yet nonexistent intelligent minds to discover, analyze, and appreciate.

And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” …And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

(Genesis 1.6-8)

This is another setting of boundaries, another layer of order imposed upon the primeval chaos.  This time the entities organized are more concrete, but still vast.  The result is another pair of distinct arenas, unpopulated for now, but with endless potential.

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.

…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. …And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

(Genesis 1.9-13)

God already organized the creation into vertical divisions, and now he does the same horizontally.  This is also the first appearance of life—plant, and not animal.  When we consider the arrangement of the story, it’s clear that God considers this to be part of the environment—the background, and not among the proper subjects of his creation, which will begin to appear, the next day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night.” …And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

(Genesis 1.14-19)

Now we have things that move.  They’re described in figurative terms, as if they had their own agency, to “rule” over day and night (v16)—the domains created on Day 1.

And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” …And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

(Genesis 1.20-23)

Animal life is made on Day 5, and the sheer multitude—“swarms”—highlights that the creation has gone from chaos, to order, to a level of complexity that appears, from a distance, to be more chaos!  These creatures populate the domains God created on Day 2.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so.

…Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

        male and female he created them.

…And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

(Genesis 1.24-31)

The final level of complexity comes with independent creatures inhabiting the domains created on Day 3.  This culminates in the most important of God’s creations, man, who sits atop the hierarchy of creatures, and is the only creation to bear the image of God.  The rest was all made in service to this greatest specimen of God’s handiwork.

And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

(Genesis 2.2)

The narrative does little, up to this point, to explain what is the purpose of all this; but God clearly considers it a job well done, and his cessation of activity on the seventh day constitutes, in a way, one final creation—the concept of satisfied rest.  If we appreciate his creation, we also ought to long for that same sense of completion and delight, as well as to share them with God, in God’s own presence.

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest…

(Hebrews 4.9-11)

Jeremy Nettles

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