When Thomas Edison was seven years old, he overheard his teacher telling someone that he was addled, meaning he was confused, muddled, and unable to think clearly. Distraught, he raced home crying telling his mother. Nancy Elliot Edison was a former teacher, and so, the next day she marched back to school and fiercely defended her son and then withdrew him from school. She then proceeded to teach him personally. Years later, Edison was to write:
My mother was the making of me. She was so true, and sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint. Edison exerted a tremendous influence on modern life, contributing inventions such as the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera, as well as improving the telegraph and telephone. In his 84 years, he acquired an astounding 1,093 patents. Aside from being an inventor, Edison also managed to become a successful manufacturer and businessman, marketing his inventions to the public.[i]
In Edison’s life it all began with a few words that changed the course and direction of his life. Few of us really understand the power of words. The Hebrew wisdom writers expressed this truth succinctly: “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” (Proverbs 18:21)
shaped our world, but God’s word has power to shape our lives.
In Understanding Genesis, Jewish scholar, Nahum Sarna points out:
Whether the Hebrew Genesis account was meant to be science or not, it was certainly meant to convey statements of faith. …it is a part of the biblical polemic against paganism and an introduction to the religious ideas characteristic of the whole of biblical literature. It tells us something about the nature of the one God who is the Creator and supreme sovereign of the world and whose will is absolute. It asserts that God is outside the realm of nature, which is wholly subservient to Him. He has no myth; that is, there are no stories about any events in His life. Magic plays no part in the worship of Him.[ii]
This is a critical point in understanding the use of words. Sarna continues to point out a distinction between God’s words and magical incantations. Sarna describes what is meant by magic.
The pronouncement of the right word, like the performance of the right magical actions, is able to, or rather inevitably must, actualize the potentialities [underdeveloped abilities] which are inherent in the inert matter. In other words, it implies a mystic bond uniting matter to its manipulator.
Worlds apart is the Genesis concept of creation by Divine fiat [God’s declaration]. Notice how the Bible passes over in absolute silence the nature of the matter—if any—upon which the divine word acted creatively. Its presence or absence is of no importance, for there is no tie between it and God. “Let it be!” or, as the Psalmist echoed it, “He spoke and it was so,” refers not to the utterance of magic word, but to the expression of the omnipotent, sovereign, unchallengeable will of the absolute, transcendent God to whom all nature is completely subservient.[iii]
In other words, God spoke and it came to be. “He made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.” (Jeremiah 51:15) Hebrews 11:3 describes this activity and the response of believers. “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
In our scientific driven society, we have tried to understand the origins of our universe and life. Chapter 1 and 2 of Genesis have created all kinds of positions regarding the nature of how our world came about. Some have tried to exclude God as Creator and therefore believe in Atheistic evolution. Even believers express different position on how our universe came into being and then developed. There are four main positions: Theistic Evolution states that God created the universe and argues that His method was evolutionary and accepts the current theory of evolution as championed by the nonbelieving atheistic position.
Another position is called the Gap or recreation theory, which argues that between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, there is an indeterminate gap in time in which there was a destruction of the original world. During that gap God recreated the world with the unfolding of the various geological ages being found in that gap between verses two and three. In this position, the proponents of the Gap or recreation theory argue that from Genesis 1:3 onwards we have a six-thousand-year period of human history.
The third position view is the belief in literal creation in six days. This view is also called the Young Earth Position. The approach here is that all scientific data should be understood from this place. James Boice summarizes one of the key arguments.
The Hebrew word for “day” (yom) must refer to an actual twenty-four-hour day unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. They do not deny that yom can refer to an indefinite period, in which case it might be more properly translated “age”, but they consider this usage to be relatively rare.[iv]
The fourth position is called Progressive Creationism which sees the days as ages, which they argue that the order of creation fits into the geological ages. Creation then is understood in that sequence.
Rather than delve into these presentations, I want to focus on the first three days of creation and make some observations and implications that the Bible is revealing to us. Again, we need to realize that Genesis is not a scientific presentation but a theological one telling us something of the interaction between our Creator and His creation.
Let’s look at what God is revealing to us of His creation and the truths that we discover regarding not only His creation but who God, the Creator, is and what He created and how He went about it.
THE FIRST TRUTH AND IMPLICATION OF THE CREATION STORY IS THE NATURE OF GOD
We discover much about a person based on their character and the activities of their life. What God reveals to us in His word about the beginning explains what is necessary for us to know Him and what is valued by Him. The subject of these verses is God and what is created is the object. The Hebrew word for God here in chapter 1 is Elohim. James Boice explains the significance of this particular name of God.
This is a plural word. It is used as if it were singular—that is, with singular verbs and (usually) with singular pronouns referring back to it—to indicate that there is but one God only. But the fact that it is plural also suggests that there are plural dimensions to God’s being. We must acknowledge that this in itself does not teach the doctrine of the Trinity. There is such a thing as a plural of greatness in the Hebrew language. Nevertheless, on the basis of the later revelation, particularly in the New Testament, we are right in seeing a preparation for that fuller revelation.[v]
This is the foreshadowing of the concept that God is not one but three distinct persons. Later in chapter 1, we read that God made man in “their image.” This is further developed in the NT when we read that Jesus is not only one with the Father but also Jesus is the Creator of all things that were made. One of the key lenses in biblical interpretation is Christological. Jesus explains to the religious leaders of His day their mistaken understanding of biblical texts, when he states that they point to him. “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” (John 5:39-40). After His resurrection, Jesus related that same interpretive lens to His struggling disciples.
And he said unto them, ‘These are my words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me.’ Then opened he their mind, that they might understand the scriptures; and he said unto them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’[vi]
In the gospel of John, we read in the prologue.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.[vii]
Paul in declaring the preeminence of Jesus states that truth so clearly.
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.[viii]
Why is this foreshadowing of the Trinity here in Genesis so important?
This is all very significant, because, when we recognize that the members of the Trinity are here at the beginning of creation, having existed before anything else, then the elements that we associate with the Trinity—love, personality, and communication—are seen to be eternal and to have eternal value. This is the biblical answer to man’s fear of being lost in an impersonal and loveless universe.[ix]
God reveals Himself as a loving and personal God preparing a place for the glory of His creation, namely us. People are made in His image. He created this world for us to fellowship with Him.
- God’s evaluation of his creation is that it is good.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he 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.[x]
We see four activities of God here in assessing His creation. He spoke, “God said.” He saw and separated the light from the darkness. Finally, God called or named and differentiated between the light in which He called day, and the darkness in which He called night. Naming suggests authority. Here we find that God determines what is good; and later we will discover that God delegates authority to humanity to name the animals meaning we are given a role of governance in God’s creation.
We notice that after completing a portion of His creation, God declares that it is good. The Hebrew word for good is tôb.
The meaning of tôb is quite fluid in the Old Testament as well as in Genesis, indicating for example that which is happy, beneficial, aesthetically beautiful, morally righteous, preferable, of superior quality, or of ultimate value. Here “light” is declared “good” because it accomplishes its purpose of dispelling the “darkness” that had characterized the earth (v. 2). The division of light and darkness here is the first of three separations (1:6, 9) that prepare the earth for life’s possibilities.
There is no place in Hebrew thought for material being evil in itself. Whereas pagan cosmogonies depicted the primal matter as threatening, v. 31 confirms that all of God’s created order is “very good.” An ascetic lifestyle predicated upon the notion of an evil body or material world is inconsistent with the Old Testament’s affirmation of the goodness of God’s world, its bounty, and the joy it brings the heart.[xi]
The original creation was good, and evil is a deviation from God’s will and purposes, which comes from rejection of God’s authority and the pursuit of self-autonomy. God’s purposes are outlined in these opening chapters, and the mandate of human purpose is expressed. In chapter 3, we come to the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve, in which they choose a path that disobeyed God’s purpose and will and discovered that this action brought shame and alienation both toward God and each other.
THE SECOND TRUTH AND IMPLICATION OF THE CREATION STORY IS THE MEANS BY WHICH GOD CREATED THE UNIVERSE
Again, we find this poetic rhythm of God speaking, and that which is spoken coming into existence. After creating, God is naming and then approving His work. What God does is good.
And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.[xii]
The theological significance of God’s creation of the skies is the clarification that God alone rules the powers of the heavens. Divine rule of the skies was particularly important for Sumerian religion, which gave prominent place to the heavens in its pantheon of gods (cf. 1:14). It was Anu, the sky god, and Enlil, god of the atmosphere, who established and deposed the kings of the Sumerian city-states. Baal in the Ugaritic pantheon is identified as the “Rider of the Clouds.” He was the god of storm and rain (cf. 1 Kgs 18), but Israel’s faith declares that Yahweh is the source of heaven’s powers (Ps 68:4). The passage therefore asserts that the heavens and their celestial inhabitants are merely instruments to serve God and his earthly creatures; they are not autonomous authorities.[xiii]
What Genesis is doing in the creation story is attributing creation to God, and not to the mythological distortions of the nations surrounding Israel. We are also gaining a profound sense of the creative reality of God’s word bringing things that are not into being. We see the power and authority of God’s spoken word, and His assessment of what He is doing, by declaring and determining what is good, beneficial, and has ultimate value. What we will discover in the book of Genesis is when there is a deviation from God’s word, it is defined as evil, not beneficial, nor has value both in this life nor the life to come.
Kenneth Mathews shares the significance of God’s word.
The Hebrew community understood that God’s creative word was the same authoritative word by which he brought about the affairs of human history and the nations. Just as the word created the universe, the word created the community of Israel. God created Israel as a nation among new environs, as God had called light into existence and curbed darkness. In the wilderness Israel enjoyed the cloud by day and the pillar of fire for “light” during its sojourn (Ex 13:21), and the tabernacle menorah with its perpetual light testified to the guidance of God’s word and way for Israel (Ex 25:37; Lev 24:2).[xiv]
What was true for God’s OT people is equally true for us today. It is God’s word that is a light to our path. It is this light that brings fellowship with God and one another.
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.[xv]
So, what should we glean from God’s powerful, creative, and enduring word? When we build our lives upon God’s word, we can be assured that it is good, enduring and unchanging. How often we see the biblical writers appeal to God’s creation to remind us of God’s unwavering, eternal word. “Your word, LORD, is eternal it stands firm in the heavens. Your faithfulness continues through all generations; you established the earth, and it endures.” (Psalm 119:89-90)
God’s word continues through all generations. What does this mean for us now? It still applies. It endures. We can trust His word because it is based on God’s character. God’s word is perfect, truthful, eternal, creative, powerful, loving, life-giving, and forgiving to name some of their qualities. When we believe God’s word by acting on what He says, transformation happens in our lives.
The call to worship is not only an appeal to God’s saving, redemptive work, but also to His creative work in creation.
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.[xvi]
It is because the Lord is the Creator, our Maker, and our Shepherd (we are the flock under His care), that the Psalmists appeals to us to listen and act upon God’s instructions. God’s word is meant to inspire, guide us, but also challenge us to respond in obedience so we can enjoy God’s blessings.
THE FINAL TRUTH AND IMPLICATION OF THE CREATION STORY IS THE END PRODUCT
We have a continuation of creation where God is fashioning a habitation for humanity.
Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.[xvii]
We are seeing the poetic description of God’s creation. God is now creating what will sustain life for us. The source of food to renew our bodies is created.
Unlike the first two days of creation, the third day includes a second act of creation. After the appearance of the land masses, God creates vegetation upon the land. This is the climax of the first grouping of days, where for the first time the earth becomes productive. The presence of vegetation prepares the way for the life systems to follow by providing the diet for animal and human life (1:29–30). … Also, for the first time God’s creative decree is indirect (also 1:20, 24). The land is commanded to produce vegetation (1:11). There is no hint of the pagan notion of Mother Earth. The land by itself, of course, does not produce vegetation; rather God enables the land to do so by his creative word. Whereas the ancients believed that vegetation and all reproducing processes were dependent upon the procreation of the gods, the Genesis account attributes vegetation to the inanimate soil. The sensual practices involved in fertility worship reflect the pagan misconception of life’s origins and renewal.[xviii]
So, what are the takeaways from the first set of three days in God’s creation? In distinction from the other ancient mythologies describing the creation of the world and humans, what is revealed is simply the supremacy of God’s self-existence and purpose in creating the universe and the earth in particularly where God’s crowning achievement is the creation of mankind. Here in the first three days, we have the preparation for the place in which we will come to inhabit. We will learn of God’s powerful, creative word to establish life and determine what is good, moral, and esthetic. What we ought to take away from the creation narrative is that God alone is Creator and His word is eternal and unchanging. His word, when obeyed, sustain us in chaos and in the changing world around us. Our response should be worship for who God is and what He has done. True worship moves us to faithfulness and obedience.
https://pixabay.com/photos/new-year-background-galaxy-star-3608029
[i] Life of Thomas Alva Edison | Biography | Articles and Essays | Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies | Digital Collections | Library of Congress.
[ii] Nahum M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis: The World of the Bible in the Light of History, (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), 3.
[iii] Ibid, 12.
[iv] James Montgomery Boice, Genesis, Vol 1: Creation and Fall, Genesis 1-11, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), 65.
[v] Ibid, 82.
[vi] Luke 24:44-47, The New International Version of the Bible, Zondervan, 2011.
[vii] John 1:1-4.
[viii] Colossians 1:15-17.
[ix] James Montgomery Boice, Genesis, Vol 1: Creation and Fall, Genesis 1-11, 82.
[x] Genesis 1:3-5.
[xi] Kenneth Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, Vol. 1A, The New American Commentary, (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 146-47.
[xii] Genesis 1:6-10.
[xiii] Kenneth Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, Vol. 1A, 150-51.
[xiv] Ibid, 145.
[xv] 1 John 1:5-7.
[xvi] Psalm 95:1-7a.
[xvii] Genesis 1:11-13.
[xviii] Kenneth Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, Vol. 1A, 146-47
