Genesis 1:1 In the Beginning, God

With any new study, we want to try to take the approach of an overview to give some context to the author and the time it was written, etc, even before we open up and begin to read the opening verses. Genesis is no different, and in fact, one could certainly make a case that there is no book in which the overview is more needed than in the Book of Genesis. And that's partly because it's so distorted for the sake of many who don't believe it as literal.

So let's begin at the beginning, the structure of the book, the way the book itself is put together. Notionally or generally there're two parts to the Book of Genesis. It's 50 chapters in the way it's divided up in our Bible now. When it was written originally it was one work actually - all of what Moses wrote from Genesis all the way through Deuteronomy. It was one big book, The Book of Moses or The Law.

But as we have come to know it now and the way we study it, the Book of Genesis, apart from the rest of the law, has been divided into 50 chapters. And within those 50 chapters are two large sections.

The first section runs from chapter 1 to chapter 11, and in those opening chapters God describes how all things began, how the creation of the universe, and how humanity and all in the world began, and it tells us how the nation of Israel and the rest of the world was established, and how humanity moved out of the Garden of Eden to become the nations that populate the world today. That's the opening section of Genesis through chapter 11.

From chapters 12 to 50, the focus is on how God established the Jewish nation in the nation of Israel. So, one-fifth of Genesis is about the beginning of the world, and four-fifths is about the beginning of Israel. So that gives you an idea just how important Israel is in God's plan for the world.

Many would argue that Genesis is the most important book in the Bible for many reasons, although there are certainly some who think it's no more than a book of myths and stories - stories like Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel and Noah - when in fact, Genesis is a work of history, and perhaps the most important work of history. It is the foundation of everything we can know in the world around us today.

In this book we will see the origins of matter, energy, life, marriage, family, society, morality, law, and even the seven-day week that we take for granted. All these things and many others begin with what Moses wrote in this book. It is the book of firsts everywhere you look – you would find the first human beings ever accounted in this book, obviously, the first marriage, the first birth, the first death, the first lie, the first trial, the first murder, the first case of self-defence, the first time that someone owns property, the first natural death, the first time rainfall ever takes place on the Earth. The first time a boat is ever created, the first time nations are formed and cities are built, and the first time a calendar is ever established, the first examples of God's grace, the first covenant, etc. Everything we take for granted today begins in the Book of Genesis.

Genesis is also one of the books that New Testament authors have often quoted, more than the other books except the book of Psalms and Isaiah. In other words, Genesis is the third most cited book by the New Testament authors. The Lord Jesus Himself quotes from this book at many points in His ministry. So if you have any doubts about how the Lord Jesus viewed the Book of Genesis, it’s self-evident by Jesus’ own words that He viewed it as a literal book of history, not as a book of story or a book of myths.  

By itself, if all we have is this book and none of the other sixty-five, Genesis reveals everything we need to know about the person of God and about man's relationship to God. It’s all here. It reveals God's character and His nature, and His person, including the Trinity itself. All of these can be seen in the Book of Genesis. We understand the purpose of His Creation out of this book and it explains everything we need to know about man and his relationship with God.

It explains and reveals the purpose of our very existence, which is a question everyone asks at some point. “Why do I exist? Why do all these exist?” It explains the reasons for our condition, it explains why the world is such a hard, mean and terrible place, it explains why bad things happen to people. All of that is answered in the Book of Genesis. It makes sense, in other words, of everything in life.

The book of Genesis is written by Moses. He wrote the Torah, or the Law, somewhere around 1445-1405 BC. At that time, the Jews were still wandering in the desert. It was originally one work, but of the five books that we now consider the Torah, or this book of Moses, 4 of the 5 are written by Moses as his own eyewitness account of events from Exodus through Deuteronomy. That’s the life Moses himself experienced. This book of course is full of events that pre-date Moses' own life.

So it’s self-evident that Moses wrote this based on accounts that were presented to him and depending on the scholars you might consult, the view is that there were somewhere between six and thirteen family stories. Those stories of these families were clearly evident in Moses' recounting of events prior to his life - stories that were handed down largely by men like Adam, men like Noah. Notice that Adam died just decades before Noah was born. So there were very few gaps between the major events of Genesis given the lengths of life that we see living in that time – it would have been relatively easy for all the stories we hear about in Genesis to be handed down to the point at which someone like Moses would have received them and then recounted them. And of course, never mind the fact that God, in His sovereignty and in His power has the capacity to ensure that the information flows as He desires it.

As mentioned, this was originally meant to be one work, not five books. You can see actually, in the way Jesus spoke of it back in Mark 12:26. Jesus said:

MARK 12:26 “But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB’?

That verse that He’s quoted is out of the book of Exodus of course, but notice Jesus referred to the book of Moses, not the books. In the way that the scroll was maintained, it was considered one work. If you look at the events of this book in terms of human history, it covers events from around 4000 BC, as best as we can account for the genealogies, up to about 1800 BC. Remember you count backwards for BC time. So, from 4000 BC to 1800 BC, this is the length of time captured by the Book of Genesis. If you were to examine in the Bible an equally long period of history, from 1800 BC forward, you would have to go from Exodus all the way to Revelation to cover the same period of human history, the same length of time. That’s how much history is contained in the Book of Genesis.

There is an interesting story behind the name Genesis. It is taken from the Hebrew word “toledath”, which is often translated to mean history, generations or account. It is seen several times in Genesis and always seems to mark a major account division when found in particular phrases eg. “These are the generations of….”.

The book could be divided not only by the two sections of Chapters 1-11 and 12-50, it can also be divided into the toledoth, or “the generations of”. You will see that division coming quite frequently in the book where you’ll see the generation of Adam, then you'll see generations of Seth, and then we'll see generations of so and so and so and so.

Those are the major divisions of the book in terms of generations. Or think of it as the family stories mentioned earlier. The family stories that found their way down to Moses.  Moses took them in and stitched them together in order. The word “toledoth” in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (which we call the Septuagint) is "Geneseos" from where we get the word “Genesis”.

So with that brief background, let's take a look at how this book opens in verses that are so common to us maybe some of the meanings have started to fade. So we will take our time with them. Genesis 1:1-2:

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

Genesis 1:2 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. 

The heavens and the earth here refer to the physical earth and the atmosphere. This is not speaking about the Heavens in which God Himself dwells and we will examine later in our study of Genesis why it is so. But for now we just need to understand that this is an account of how the physical world, in fact the entire universe, exists. It is not an effort to describe how the throne room of God came into existence.

From the first verse "In the beginning, God” - just from these four words, we learn at least four important things.

First, our world and everything in it had a beginning. There was a point before it existed, and then there was a point at which it came into being. Every man, perhaps, since the time of Adam, has contemplated the question of where everything began. “What was the beginning of all things?”

Even atheists pursue that question, and you know that because they have proposed theories about where things began, like the Big Bang Theory. So it’s an eternal question regardless of your view of deity.  But even with secular answers like the Big Bang there still is a question that these theories beg. And that question is “Where did the stuff for the big bang come from?”

You still end up at the point of asking, “Was there a beginning to everything. And if so, what was before that?” The reason the unbelieving world has no answer for what came before everything is that they limit their sources of information, by choice.  

They would only accept answers that can be taken from what they can observe from their natural world. They don't consider to look for answers and information beyond the natural world they live in. And since we can only observe what already exist, then by that fact we can never hope to learn what came before things existed.

You have to seek your answer from a source that existed prior to the creation of all things if your question is, “What was there before all things?” But if I only seek my answers from the things that “are”, I’m limited.   

But that in itself is the problem because if I’m going to seek knowledge about the question of “where things began” from a source that pre-dates all things, then I have to be able to acknowledge there is a source of all things. And that source would imply an authority or a judge.

The moment I am willing to agree, or even consider, that there was a source for everything that exists that pre-dates the things that exist, I am acknowledging a higher power, and I am acknowledging authority, and if I acknowledge there is a higher power and an authority responsible for what exists, I am also implicitly acknowledging that they have some authority over me and over the creation. You can’t escape it. It implies that if everything had a beginning, everything had an author.

And so the very fact that the things like the Big Bang theory never endeavour to explain how the original material itself came into being is proof that the hardened unbelieving heart of the world is dead set against moving into territory that puts them into a conversation about deity. They refuse to go over that barrier. But then again it also leaves them with nonsensical explanations that just beg a question.

That’s the first thing we learn. The first thing we learn about those opening words is that there was in fact a beginning so therefore there is an author and there is someone who we are then accountable to.   

The second thing we learn is if there is a beginning, it implies there will be an end. That there will be a point when what has been created will cease to exist. After all, if it hasn’t always existed, why would we assume it always will? And of course, if you go to Scripture, Scripture affirms that view. 2 Peter 3:3-7 – here’s what Peter says, and read it in the context of the question, “Will there be an end?”:

2 Peter 3:3 Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts,

2 Peter 3:4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.”

2 Peter 3:5 For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water,

2 Peter 3:6 through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.

2 Peter 3:7 (Now pay attention to this) But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgement and destruction of ungodly men.

Peter says what we can imply from looking at verse 1 of Genesis 1, that there was a beginning, and it’s being reserved, kept, maintained for a future day in which by fire the earth will be judged and the world itself will go away. We know from Revelation that there is a point at which this heaven and this earth, the ones we see today - again the word heavens refer to the atmosphere, to the sky, to the solar system - that’s all going away, to be replaced. The unwillingness to acknowledge the biblical account of creation begins with, as Peter says, an unwillingness to acknowledge that a higher authority who holds us accountable. That is why the world will not accept the biblical account of creation.

The Book of Revelation tells us that the world does indeed have an end, and as mentioned already in Revelation 21: 1, John says:

Revelation 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.

In the beginning, things were made. And yet, they are not eternal. The irony here is that we are eternal but the world is not. Not this world. That’s the complete opposite of the unbelieving world’s viewpoint on the matter. Their teaching is we are temporary – get what you can while you got it, after you’re gone it’s gone, make the most of your life  while you can you only get to go around once, live, die, be merry for tomorrow you die, that whole sense of what the world thinks because you only have today, why worry about tomorrow. That’s not true. There’re consequences for who we are, what we believe, what we do, and they carry into eternity, as do we.

But the world is teaching us that we are temporary and yet the physical world is eternal. After all, it has been here for billions of years, and it will be here for billions more. From our limited point of view, that seems like eternity, might as well be eternity. The irony is that Scripture teaches the exact opposite and it is not the first thing, nor is it the only thing, that the Bible teaches that is the opposite of what the world believes.

So, that’s the first thing that Genesis 1:1 teaches us, that there was a beginning and there will be an end. The second thing that the opening line teaches us is that God existed before everything else. “In the beginning, GOD” The moment that the beginning is defined, and the creation process begins, God’s already there. In fact, He’s the actor, He’s the author. He was already there before the physical creation even began and therefore the conclusion you draw from that fact is that there is nothing in the creation that is equal to God or can be as powerful as God. It cannot be.  Look, can a painting challenge its painter? Can a sculpture ever contend with its sculptor? In our own experience, do we ever expect our creation could rise to a point where they can challenge us?

Nothing in creation can outlast God, nothing in creation can contend with God and when we therefore consider our plight and circumstances and the things that make us uncomfortable, or challenge us or try us – if their source is other than God, then there is really no problem at all, not in eternal term, not for the one who’s been made eternal and is a child of God - they are merely temporary and they are not happening apart from God’s sovereignty. He is not powerless in the face of His own creation which would then imply that if we are facing trials and tests and difficulties, they are allowed by God’s hand and they have some good purpose, and we have to seek for that understanding and not challenge God’s authority.

The third thing we learn is that time itself is measured according to the origin of the creation, not by the origin of God's existence. That is, time is a part of God’s creation itself. Time was created in the creation. So, the passage of time did not exist prior to the creation itself existing.  There is no way to put a date to God’s existence.  He is eternal. There is no beginning or end to Him.

More importantly, the very existence of time being a feature of creation is an element that lets us know the beginning from the end. Another way of saying it simply is that God ensures that time exists so that we have a way to measure the progress of His plan. Time itself is a kind of revelation to us, so that we have a way to keep track of what He is doing for our benefit in the course of the world.

Once the end does come, at the end of this world He’s created, time will have to take on a new meaning. It might not exist at all, or if it does exist, it may exist according to something different than we experience now.  Time is a feature of this creation, and when this creation goes away, then, time, which is a part of this creation, will also go away.

Finally, the fourth thing we learn, in the opening line of Genesis 1:1, those four words - "In the beginning, God" - single-handedly contradicts six popular philosophies in the world today.

First, Atheism. Atheism would suggest that there is no God.  But the first four words in Genesis 1:1 tells you that God exists.

Then there is Pantheism - the belief that there is a God in the creation, that the nature of the world is God, the trees are God, the ocean is God, and the mountains are God. The nature of the world itself is as God. But Genesis 1:1 says that God is distinct from His creation. God existed, and then the creation came into being. They are not one and the same.

Third, Polytheism. Polytheism is the belief that there are many gods. Now in Hebrew, the word for “God” is plural. We know it’s plural because it’s speaking of the Trinity. But the word for “created” in Hebrew, the verb is conjugated in the singular.  It’s an act of a single God head, in other words, not the act of many gods working independently.

Fourth is the term Radical Materialism. This is a spiritual view that says that matter itself is eternal and never had a beginning. But of course, here we see that matter has a supernatural origin, it had a beginning.

Fifth, Naturalism. This is evolutionism, which holds that creation happens over time, periodically, through a natural and ongoing process. But Genesis 1:1 says that when creation happened, someone, God, who is outside nature, intervened and made it happen. This is the opposite of what evolution says. Evolution says that nature itself evolves itself. The material itself produced its own movement forward.

Finally, Fatalism. Fatalism is a belief that there is no God and that events are created and fixed in advance by a force that is creating and pushing and making things happen. Genesis 1:1 tells us that we have a personal God who freely chooses to create.

Now we have talked about how these opening verses in Genesis contradicts worldview. However, even within the Christian family, there is considerable controversy surrounding these two verses.

First, we have the traditional view that says that verse 1 and 2 are a summary of the entire chapter with verse 2 describing an early starting point for God’s work and verse 3 describing the successive steps of creation as the world increases in order and complexity. So it seems that if you take the traditional view, the opening line just sets the stage for the purpose of the chapters in the book, the second line starts the creation process, and the 3rd and beyond just details how that happened.

And then we have the Gap theory, the Re-creation story that says this. Verse 1 is the initial formation of the earth, when the world itself, with everything in it, was created.  Verse 2 is God’s judgement on the earth as a result of Satan’s fall. So, when Satan falls into sin, God judges that sin, taking what has been created - orderly and whole - and making it invisible and void. And verse 3 is where God starts again, reforming or re-creating earth.

We’ll look at some reasons for and against the Gap Theory.

Now the reasons for the Gap view for those who have it, starts with the language of the text with the first few words of Genesis 1, in Hebrew it’s Erets hayah tohu bohu (translated it means “Earth was formless and void”). In the way that those words are conjugated in Hebrew, it’s a disjunctive conjugative subject verb. Where that goes is, where you see that particular sentence construction elsewhere in the Bible, that forces certain rules in Hebrew grammar and everywhere else you see that pattern of Hebrew in the Bible, you would not translate the word “created”, you would translate it “became”.

So go back and read Genesis 1:2 with that thinking instead of the way you may have heard it. In the second verse, “the earth became formless and void”. That would be the way some Hebrew scholars would insist this be translated based on the way those words are conjugated in Hebrew. Well, if it’s “became” and not “was”, or “became” suggests there was something before, and that's where the gap theory starts to come in, and people start saying, well, maybe it doesn't start with verse 1 or 2, maybe it starts with verse 1, and then they start to consider what that might mean.

Then they point to Satan's fall, which is described in Ezekiel 28. Some elements of Ezekiel 28 seem to suggest that there was an Earth that was previous to the one that we know today and they take that as another part of the theory and they sort of stitch that thinking together, and that’s about the extent of it. In other words, that’s about as much evidence there is to offer for why someone might propose the Gap theory.

So, what are the arguments against the Gap theory? Well, first of all, there is a similar structure in the language in the beginning of Chapter 2 and yet we don’t take the view that they proposed when we look at Chapter 2.

The second reason, Hebrew grammar would actually expect a different verb construct if it were describing items in a sequential order. In other words, if what they are saying is, the earth was created, then it was made void because Satan did something bad, then it starts over in verse 3, the Hebrew grammar for sequential order is not present in the text. It doesn’t suggest “sequential”.

Third, earth and heavens are clearly described clearly as beginning in verses 6-10.  The earth and havens are said to originate in verses 6-10. Not be re-created, but originated.

Fourth, all biblical cross-references throughout the rest of the Bible says that the earth was created in 6 days. Not created, destroyed, re-created in 6 days. They all talk about the earth itself coming out of nothing into existence in 6 days.  In fact, elsewhere in Scripture, God gives the commandment for the Sabbath. His argument for the Sabbath is what?  “I took 6 days to create and then I took a day off. So, you should take a day off.” That argues for the creation to require only those 6 days, and it argues for it to be a one-time event.

And the last reason for why one does not subscribe to the Gap theory is that it is not natural. It's not the natural reading of the text, is it? If no one ever proposed the Gap theory to you, you wouldn't have read the text right now saying to yourself, “Oh my goodness, there's a gap!” It's not natural. It's an unnatural reading of the text that you have to convince somebody of. And that is not how Scripture works. The natural reading of the text almost always is the right reading of the text.

Now one of the motivations for people to propose the gap theory in the first place is because there are things that they want to put into the gap theory, into that gap of time. For example, they would like to put millions of years of time and they would like to put dinosaurs – not that they didn’t exist, they certainly existed but the Bible tells us when and where as opposed to what science tries to propose - and a whole lot of other things so that they have a way to find the place in the bible for what they refuse to let go of from the scientific community. The gap theory is most accepted by Christians who also believe in evolution. It’s their way to reconcile the scriptures with something they've been taught in school and feel silly rejecting, because, after all, if everyone else believes it it must be true.

So let's take a look at the actual start of the creation process itself.  God begins creation, we are told, with an initial stage where everything was formless and void, with the Spirit hovering over the waters.

Hovering in Hebrew is “rachaph” which literally means fluttering. Think of it as a bird, fluttering over the surface of the waters. Now just in the fact alone, God is already shown in 2 persons. How far do we have to go in the Bible to see that God is more than one person? Two verses. And If we take what John wrote, in chapters 1:1-3:

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:2 He was in the beginning with God.

John 1:3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

So the Gospel of John gives us the other element that Jesus Himself was present in this beginning. And when you hear that God speaks, for example, in verse 3, when He says, "Let there be light." what the Bible is saying is that the Word was Christ.

When we hear that there is a word said and things happened, it’s not to suggest necessarily that God literally spoke, although He could have. It means that Christ Himself did that work. He was the Word.

What made the light? The Word. Jesus, the creator. All things are created by Christ. He was the Word that is being mentioned in chapter one of Genesis.

These words don't necessarily mean literal sound. It means the Word of God, meaning Christ, the creator, the one who’s in the God head, the creator of all things.

So you have all three persons now represented in the opening verses of Genesis when you consider what the New Testament gives us as well.

Looking at what we have now, forgetting the Gap theory, forgetting all the other stuff, what do we actually have now? We probably imagine it might look a lot like today, grey and wet.

And yet not exactly. If we look at the Hebrew words - formless and void - that is tohu and bohu again. These words literally mean chaos. TOHU means confusion, or without meaning, BOHU means empty, as in a vacuum.

You have, according to the Bible, the world, the creation, beginning with something, confusion, or without meaning, and empty, in a vacuum and there was darkness over this “deep”.  The word “deep” here, literally is TEHOM which means abyss.

So the opening moments of creation as God began, were completely chaotic, with no form, with no light, with a kind of vacuum or space. TEHOM could also mean deep water like sea, but it became that later, as the Jews always feared the sea, that's why they didn't sail. Their view of the sea is like a picture of hell. They began to use the word TEHOM to describe the sea, but at this stage the word only meant deep abyss, not water.

And therefore, we don’t want to be thinking a big rolling sea although that’s likely the first thing that comes to our mind, based on the words, but that's unlikely to be what we're seeing here. After all, water itself wasn't created, and the sea wasn't created until later on the second day of creation. There no suggestion here necessarily that we are talking about a bunch of water, because the text would imply formless, void, space.

What’s more likely here is that we’re seeing the creation of space in the sense of space and time. The creation of a space. But yet without any form, without any real construct that we can understand, just dark, empty space. The only thing that matches this description would be matter absent form or order.  

And then you see the Spirit here moving or hovering over the deep, what you really sense here when you see these two pictures together, a formless void of matter and the spirit moving, is to suggest that you have matter, and the Spirit becomes the energy for the matter.

God putting energy into the creation through the movement of the Spirit. And this understanding, if we are right, will match our own scientific understanding of how matter and energy are intimately connected. E=mC2, energy equals matter times the speed of light, squared. The only thing missing so far is light. Verse 3:

Genesis 1:3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

You have God creating the foundation of all that must now come from it:  matter, energy and light such that they are - somehow in a way that we still don’t understand - linked. We still don't understand why those things, those properties relate in that way. We just know we can measure it and put an equation to it. But it becomes obvious from the opening verses of the text that God decided as He went about building this creation, that this basic rule, this basic algorithm for how the world itself functions, would be the building block on which He can then construct all the order that we now take for granted, that physicists are still trying to make sense of.

Genesis 1:3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

Genesis 1:4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

Genesis 1:5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

So the basic equation that explains all matter and energy and all the universe is consistent with the Bible’s description of creation, and the way to show people who have some doubts whether they can accept the text of Scripture as literal is to show how consistent it is with our measured and observed science. Not to say it’s consistent with all the theories put forth by men who try to explain what they measure, but it's consistent with what we measure, with what is in place.

Before anything existed, God created matter, formless and dark. He created it ex nihilo, literally meaning “from nothing” in Latin. Then, He introduced energy and then He spoke light into existence.

And here you see in the fact that God is shown with His Word speaking, you have the third Person of the Trinity.

Then He said something interesting. He said that "The light was good.” He saw that the light was good. Saw, rā'â  it means He reflected upon, He concluded. It's not that He had to see it for Himself, it's just that He considered it good. "Good" in Hebrew means beneficial, not good versus bad. God can't create anything that’s bad, by definition. It’s good in the sense of “beneficial”.

So, why does God create something, then turn around and consider it beneficial? When you say something is beneficial, you imply a purpose for it and so it begs a question, “What is it beneficial for?” And not just the light, God also created the darkness, did we all notice that?

He named them – light and dark - and He said they are to be separate. Now we’re very likely to be thinking, “How do we have light without the apparent source of light?” Because the sun doesn’t show up until day 4. How do have light when we don’t have the sun yet?  Where does it come from? Where does the light come from?

And then the fact that He "created" darkness.  Now we know you don't have to create darkness, because you already have the darkness. Darkness is just when you don't have light, but it says here that He created it. In fact, if we go to Isaiah, Isaiah reaffirms that. Isaiah 45:6 said:

Isaiah 45:6 That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me.  I am the LORD, and there is no other,

Isaiah 45:7 The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all there.

So we have two questions on the table. Why is it that light exists absent of sun? What does this tell us? What does it mean? Is it literal? Can we take it for what it says? Then, second, why did darkness have to be created? We can start answering one of them at this point.

God sets about here to create the world with light and darkness from the very beginning. And these features are present in the universe before there are celestial bodies.  In fact, as mentioned, the sun and moon don't arrive until day 4

That leads us to discover an important pattern that we’ll use as we move forward through the days of creation. It is a great pattern that is embedded in the text. God has created it in a certain way so that the pattern would be evident because the pattern helps us understand His purpose. 

People have often criticized the Book of Genesis as being unrealistic and therefore impossible to be literal. On one basis, perhaps more than any other, and that one basis is it is impossible that all the universe could be created in only 6 days. It's just too quick. It's impossible to consider that all that we see and experience could have come into being just like that.  That tells them, perhaps more than anything else, that they cannot believe the book of Genesis.

But the irony is, they are asking the wrong question. The question is not why did it happen so quickly. The question is, “Why did God take so long?” And that’s a good question asked. If you’re asking that question, you're asking a question that will arrive at a very useful answer because that is the right question.

Why did He take so long? If He can do it at all, then He doesn't need 6 days to do it. If He has the power to make these things happen as they are described, then He could have done it all at once.

The fact that He didn’t is a question in itself, and the answer to that question will help you understand its purpose. Why did He take 6 days? There's a good reason. The pattern that began to appear in the text that helps us answer the question of "why", is that for the first 3 days, God is spending His time, so to speak, creating spaces.

And then in the last 3 days of creation, He takes time making the things that fill those spaces. We haven't gone very far in the text obviously, but if you know the story, you remember it goes from space for light and dark, followed by space for water creatures and air creatures and then lastly space for land creatures.

And then when we go back to days 4-6 days and it becomes sun, moon, stars that fill the light and dark space; birds and fish fill the sea space and man and animals fill the earth space. And here there's a real clear pattern that seems very interesting. Why would He do it that way? And that’s the question we'll be answering as we go along in our study.

Now the final thing we’ll look at today is why light and dark are being created. Why does He need both? Well, let’s look at some verses out of Scripture and see if the answer doesn’t start to come up for yourself. Job 30:26 Job said:

Job 30:26 “When I expected good, then evil came; When I waited for light, then darkness came.

What is God associating there for us? Light-dark, good-evil. That comparison of light with good and dark with evil shows up all over the place. Remember what Paul said, we are not of the night, we are of the day? Don’t be in the night, be in the day? Christ was the light that came into the world, but the darkness did not understand it. You can see how light and darkness in the Bible are constantly being used to represent good and evil.

Now, as He begins His creation on this day, is there evil in the world? Not yet, not according to the story of the Genesis. But God is determined that we need darkness in the world that we will experience even before there is evil. But that would suggest that God is already anticipating, and therefore planning, for what is about to happen in His creation, that evil will arrive one day and when it does, He is going to make sure that His world has in its design the things He needs to give us pictures and explanations of the difference between good and evil. Metaphors that were usefully present in the creation so that right at the very beginning, He was already prepped to tell us there is good and there is evil, there is light and there is dark.

Now if we need further proof that this is something He’s doing strictly so that He has a useful tool to teach us about evil,  consider what He does when He has the chance to do it a second time. When God gets the opportunity to design this world yet again, and create a new heaven and new earth, start from scratch, do it any way He wants. What does He do the second time, in a world in which there is no sin, in which the enemy is no longer present in this new world that will be created? How does it get described then? Revelation 21:4, speaking about that time, John says:

Revelation 21:4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

And in his description of that time in Revelation 21, it is said to be a time in a world in which there is no darkness, there is no night, only daytime. So, when there is a world to come, in which there will no longer be sin to worry about, He will create a world that only has light. But in the world that He was creating here, where He knew sin was going to come, He created it anticipating the need for a metaphor for evil.

And that’s where we are ending, but of course it's also just the beginning. Every day of creation is equally rich with information about not just what was going on, but why, and where it’s going to play into God’s plan, into history, and we will give it the proper attention.