Genesis 1
McGeeCHAPTER 1THEME: Creation of the universe; construction of the earth; day onelight; day twoair spaces; day threedry land and plant life; day foursun, moon, and stars appear; day fiveanimal life; day sixfertility of animal life; creation of man
Genesis 1:1
CREATION OF THE UNIVERSEThis is one of the most profound statements that has ever been made, and yet we find that it is a statement that is certainly challenged in this hour in which we are living. I think that this verse is all we have of the actual creationwith the exception, as we shall see, of the creation of man and animals later on in the Book of Genesis. But this is the creation story, and I’ll admit that it is a very brief story, indeed. An incident was told by Paul Bellamy, the late city editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, that while he was making the rounds of the reporters’ desks one night, he noticed one of his men grinding out a “tapeworm” on what Bellamy regarded as a relatively unimportant event. “Cut it down!” he said. “After all, the story of the creation was told in Genesis in 282 words.” The reporter shot back, “Yes, and I’ve always thought we could have been saved a lot of arguments later if someone had just written another couple hundred.” It is interesting to note that God certainly has given us an abridged edition. The question arises: What did He have in mind when He gave us this particular section? What was the Author’s purpose here? Was it His purpose to teach geology? There is a great deal of argument and disagreement at this particular juncture. Sometime ago here in California, the state board of education voted to include the biblical so-called theory of creation in science books.
Now frankly, I’m not so sure that I’m happy about that. Someone will say that I ought to be because it is a step in the right direction. My friends, I’ll tell you why I’m not happy. My concern is relative to the character of the teachers who teach it. We don’t have enough teachers with a Christian background and with a Bible background to be able to teach it properly. Very few of the public school teachers are prepared, really, to teach the story of creation. Dr. Ralph Girard, professor of biology and dean of the graduate division at the University of California at Davis is reported by the press to have made the comment that the “theory of creation” makes about as much sense as teaching about the stork. He asked if a scientific course on reproduction should also mention the stork theory. The very interesting thing is that the stork theory is not mentioned in the Bible at all, but the creation story is mentioned. His comparison is not quite warranted, because the Bible deals literally with this matter of procreation, and if you read your Bible carefully, you never could have the viewpoint of the stork theory! So what this man says is certainly beside the point but reveals a very antagonistic attitude toward the Bible.
I’m of the opinion that this man probably knows a great deal about this particular subject, which seems to be biology, but he knows very little about the Word of God. This is quite obvious from the type of statement he has made. This problem of origin provokes more violent controversy, wild theories, and wide disagreement than any other. Always there is the inclusion of men’s hypotheses, and as a result there is a babble of voices that has drowned out the clear voice of God. Actually, there are two extreme groups who have blurred the issue, and they have muddied the waters of understanding by their dogmatic assumptions and assertions. One group is comprised of the arrogant scientists who assume that biological and philosophical evolution are the gospel truth. Their assumed axiom is “the assured finding of science,” and we’ll look into that in a moment. The other group is comprised of the young and proud theologians who arrogate to themselves the super-knowledge that they have discovered how God did it.
They write and speak learnedly about some clever theory that reconciles science and the Bible. They look with disdain upon the great giants of biblical expositors of the past as being Bible dwarfs compared to them. I would say that both of these groups would do well to consider a statement that was made to Job when the Lord finally appeared to him. God asked him the question: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding” (Job_38:4). In other words, God is saying to man, “You talk about the origin of the universe, but you don’t even know where you were when I laid the foundation of the earth!” There are a great many theories as to how the world began, but all of them can be boiled down to fit into a twofold classification: one is creation, and the other is speculation. All theories fall into one of these two divisions. The theory of evolution is comprised of many different theories in our day, and some of the most reputable scientists of the past, as well as of the present, reject evolution. So we can’t put down the theory of evolution as being a scientific statement like 2 + 2 = 4. Then there is the creation account in Genesis 1, which must be accepted by faith. It is very interesting that God has made it that wayby faith is the only way in the world by which you can accept it. Notice what the writer to the Hebrews said: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report.
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb_11:1-3). So today the great problem still remains. How did it get from nothing to something? The only way that you can ever arrive at an answer is by faith or by speculationand speculation is very unscientific. Now let us look at some of the theories of origin. There are those who tell us that we should accept the scientific answer. I would like to ask, what is the scientific answer? What science are we talking about? In the year 1806 Professor Lyell said that the French Institute enumerated not less than eighty geological theories which were hostile to the Scriptures, but not one of these theories is held in our day. Moses is the human agent whom God used to write the Book of Genesis, and I think he would smile at all the disturbance today regarding the creation story because he did not write it with the intention of giving a scientific account. Paul tells us the purpose of all Scripture: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2Ti_3:16-17). The purpose of the Scripture is for instruction in righteousness. It was not written to teach you geology or biology. It was written to show man’s relationship to God and God’s requirements for man and what man must do to be saved. You can write this over the first part of the Book of Genesis: “What must I do to be saved?” May I ask you, if God had given a scientific statement of creation, how many people of Moses’ day could have understood it? How many people even in our day could grasp it? You must remember that the Bible was not written for only learned professors but also for simple folk of every age and in every land. If it had been written in the scientific language of Moses’ time, it certainly would have been rejected. Therefore, men have proposed several solutions relative to the origin of the universe. One is that it is an illusion. Well, that is certainly contrary to fact, is it not? And yet there are people who hold that theory. There are others who believe that it spontaneously arose out of nothing. (In a way, this is what the Bible states, although it goes further and says that God spoke it into existence; He created it.) Another view is that it had no origin but has existed eternally. A fourth view is that it was created, and this breaks down into many different theories which men hold in an attempt to explain the origin of the universe. I have before me some of these theories which men have advanced down through the history of the world. Here is a statement by Dr. Harlow Shapely, the former director of the Harvard Observatory, who commented that we are still imbedded in abysmal ignorance of the world in which we live. He observed that “we have advanced very little, relative to the total surmisable extent of knowledge, beyond the level of wisdom acquired by animals of long racial experience. We are, to be sure, no longer afraid of strange squeaks in the dark, nor completely superstitious about the dead. On many occasions we are valiantly rational. Nevertheless, we know how much the unknown transcends what we know.” In other words, we are still absolutely in the dark relative to the origin of this earth on which we live. Dr. Loren C. Eiseley, Office of the Provost, University of Pennsylvania, was asked about this; he answered that “we do not know any more about matter and how it is produced than we know about spiritual things. Therefore, I think it is unwise to say in our present state of knowledge that the one precludes the other. The universe seems to exist as a series of emergent levels, none of which is like the level below. That man and all the rest of life have evolved and changed is undeniable, but what lies beneath these exterior manifestations, we do not know. I wish I could answer your question, but to clothe my ignorance in big words would benefit neither yourself nor me.” One article says that man is on the verge of discovering the mystery of the origin of the world. That happened to be written back in 1961. We haven’t had anything new on that since then, by the way. The biologist Edwin Conklin, speaking of evolution, stated that the probability of life originating by accident is “comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary originating from an explosion in a print shop.” That sounds very unscientific, coming from a scientist, but it’s true. There seem to be at least three theories of the origin of the universe which even astronomists have suggested, and it is interesting to note them. One is known as the “steady state” theory, one is the “big bang” theory, and another is the “oscillating” theory. A Caltech scientist, Dr. William A. Baum, speaking at UCLA, told the National Academy of Science that new findings tend to rule out the “steady state” theory that the universe has always existed and that new matter is continually being created. Several years ago that was the accepted theory; now they have a new theory for the origin of the universe. Dr. Baum apparently held the “big bang” theory, which is that a great explosion took place billions of years ago and that we are in for another one in probably another ten billion years. I don’t think we need to worry about that a great deal, but it is an interesting theory and one that was fathered in Great Britain. Several years ago, Dr. Louis Leakey, an anthropologist (the son of a missionary, by the way) discovered in Africa what he called a missing link. He dug up pieces of a skull with well-developed teeth, called it the “nutcracker man” and claimed it belonged to a teenage youth about six hundred thousand years ago. Well, we have had theories like that before, and since we’ve heard no more of this one since 1961, I guess the scientific world didn’t fall for it. There are other ways for explaining the origin of man. Dr. Lawrence S. Dillon, associate professor of biology at Texas A and M College, says that man is not an animal but a plant which evolved from brown seaweed. Now maybe you have been looking in the wrong place for your grandpa and grandma. Some folk have been looking up a tree. Now we are told that we should be down at the beach pulling out seaweed because that is grandpa and grandma! Some of this speculation really becomes ridiculous. A long time ago I read in a leading secular magazine that: “After centuries of bitter arguments over how life on earth began, an awe-inspiring answer is emerging out of the shrewd and patient detective work in laboratories all over the world.” You would think that by now we would be getting some straight answers or at least a little encouragement, but none has been forthcoming. It was the practice, according to J. V. N. Talmage, that the dogma which scientists followed was this: “The archaeological finds of prehistoric cultural objects must be so arranged that the cruder industries must always be dated earlier than those of a ‘more advanced’ type, regardless of where they are found.” It has been a little disconcerting to find some of the advanced civilizations underneath those who seem to be of prehistoric time. So many other theories are offered today about how the earth began. Dr. Klaus Mampell from Germany reportedly said that he didn’t see any more reason for seeing us (the human race) connected with apes than with canary birds or kangaroos. The evolutionary theory is divided up into many different phases and viewpoints. It has never been demonstrated as being true. It is unfortunate that when you get down to the level of the pseudo-scientists, and I’m thinking of the teachers today in our public schools who teach science, they really are not in a position to give a fair view because they were given only one viewpoint in college. There is no unanimous acceptance of evolution even by scientists. Here is a quotation from Dr. G. A. Kerkut, of the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry at the University of Southampton in England. Though he himself is an evolutionist, in his book, The Implications of Evolution, he writes: “There is a theory which states that many living animals can be observed over the course of time to undergo changes so that new species are formed.
This can be called the “Special Theory of Evolution” and can be demonstrated in certain cases by experiments. On the other hand there is the theory that all of the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the “General Theory of Evolution” and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis.” Now listen to the statement of the Swedish botanist, Dr. Heribert Nilsson, who is also an evolutionist: “My attempts to demonstrate evolution by experiment carried on for more than forty years, have completely failed…. At least I should hardly be accused of having started from a preconceived antievolutionary standpoint….” It may be firmly maintained that it is not even possible to make a caricature out of paleobiological facts. The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as due to the scarcity of material.
Deficiencies are real. They will never be filled…. The idea of an evolution rests on pure belief." May I say to you, he is moving into the realm of religion! My friend, to be an evolutionist you have to take it by faith. Evolution is speculation and always has been that. But, unfortunately, a great many folk have accepted it as fact. In our day a group of theologians (young theologians for the most part) who, not wanting to be called intellectual obscurantists, have adopted what is known as “theistic evolution.” If you would like to know what one scientist says about it, Kirtly Mather, in Science Ponders Religion, says: “When a theologian accepts evolution as the process used by the creator, he must be willing to go all the way with it. Not only is it an orderly process, it is a continuing one. The golden age for manif anyis in the future, not in the past…. Moreover, the creative process of evolution is not to be interrupted by any supernatural intervention. The evolution of the first living cells from previously existing nonliving materials may represent a quantum jump rather than an infinitesimal step along the path of progress, but it is an entirely natural development.” Theistic evolution is probably the most unrealistic of all theories. It is almost an unreasonable tenet and an illogical position.
There are those today who are trying to run with the hare and with the hounds. They would like to move up with the unbelievers, but they also like to carry a Scofield Bible under their arm. My friend, it is difficult to do both. It is like that old Greek race in which a contestant rode with one foot on one horse and the other foot on another horse. It was marvelous when the two horses kept on the same route. But, believe me, when one of the horses decided to go in another direction, the rider had to determine which one he was going with.
That is the condition of the theistic evolutionist. He ordinarily ends up riding the wrong horse, by the way. In our day there is so much misinformation in the minds of intelligent human beings. For example, before me is a clipping from a secular magazine from several years ago. It posed a question, then answered it. First, the question: “What, according to biblical records, is the date of the creation of the world?” Now listen to the answer that was given: “4,004 B.C.” How utterly ridiculous can one be? An article in Life magazine concerning the origin of life said that at some indeterminate pointsome say two billion years ago, some a billion and a halflife miraculously appeared on the surface of the deep. What form it took, science cannot specify. All that can be said, according to this article, is that “through some agency certain giant molecules acquired the ability to duplicate themselves.” My friend, are you willing to go along with the theory that giant molecules acquired the ability to duplicate themselves? Other ridiculous theories have been advanced. One is that man began on this earth from garbage that some prehistoric intelligence left on this earth in the dim and distant past. That statement comes from a scientist! While some scientists send us out to look for our ancestors in the trees, another sends us out to look at the seaweed, and now some send us to the garbage can! This is getting worse and worse, is it not? I don’t know about you, but I feel that God’s statement of creation still stands in this modern age. A famous definition of evolution which Herbert Spencer gave stated that: “An integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent, homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.” You ponder that one for awhile, friend! It still makes more sense to me to read: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Who created the universe? God did. He created it out of nothing. When? I don’t know, and nobody else knows. Some men say one billion years ago, some say two billion, and now some say five billion.
I personally suspect that they are all pikers. I think it was created long before that. My friend, we need to keep in mind that God has eternity behind Him. What do you think He has been doing during all the billions of years of the past? Waiting for you and me to come on the scene? No, He has been busy.
He has had this creation a long time to work with. You see, He really has not told us very much, has He? It is presumptuous of little man down here on earth to claim to know more than he really knows. You cannot put one little star in motion; You cannot shape one single forest leaf, Nor fling a mountain up, nor sink an ocean, Presumptuous pigmy, large with unbelief! You cannot bring one dawn of regal splendor, Nor bid the day to shadowy twilight fall, Nor send the pale moon forth with radiance tender; And dare you doubt the One who has done it all? Sherman A. Nagel, Sr. It behooves us to just accept that majestic statement which opens the Word of God: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” And with the psalmist let us consider His heavens, the work of His fingers, the moon and the stars, which He hast ordained (Psa_8:3) and realize that “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork” (Psa_19:1). The apostle Paul wrote this to the Romans: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Rom_1:20). And the writer to the Hebrews says: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb_11:3). We must accept creation by faith. Even science cannot tell us how something can be made out of nothing. God apparently did it just that way. And man today cannot tell when this was created. When we compare the Genesis record with other creation accounts, the contrasts are striking indeed. Most nations have a legend of creation, and probably all of them are corruptions of the Genesis account. For example, we find one of the best accounts of a secular nation in the Babylonian tablets of creation. Notice some of the contrasts: The Babylonian tablets begin with chaos. The Bible account begins with cosmos, with perfection. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” According to the Babylonian account, the heavenly bodies are gods, but they are nothing in the world but matter according to the Bible. There is a polytheistic theology in the Babylonian account but a monotheistic truth in the Bible account.
The Babylonian account says the universe is just the work of a craftsman, but the Bible says that God spoke and it came into existence. The Babylonian account is characterized by its puerility and grotesqueness, whereas the Bible presents grand and solemn realities of the Creator God who is holy and who is a Savior. The Babylonian account is definitely out of harmony with known science, but the Bible is in accord with true science. I reject evolution because it rejects God and it rejects revelation. It denies the fall of man and the fact of sin, and it opposes the virgin birth of Christ. Therefore, I reject it with all my being. I do not believe that it is the answer to the origin of this universe. There are three essential areas into which evolution cannot move and which evolution cannot solve. It cannot bridge the gap from nothing to something. It cannot bridge the gap from something to life. It cannot bridge the gap between life and humanitythat is, self-conscious human life with a free will. The press, of course, is always looking for something sensational and comes up with interesting findings. One of the things which has been put in my hands is a clipping from a fellow Texan. They have found near Glenrose, Texas, down near a place where I used to live, the tracks of dinosaurs. Now, I’ve known about that for years. You might expect that in Texas they would find the biggest of everything, and apparently the dinosaurs were there. But now they have found something that is quite disturbing: they have found some giant human tracks in the same place.
You know, that’s really upsetting because it is very difficult to start out with a little amoeba or a little scum on top of the water and then find that walking back there with the dinosaurs were human beings who were much bigger than any of us today. Evolution is going to have a lot of problems in the next few years. May I predict (and I am merely echoing a prediction of a scientist) that by the end of this century the theory of evolution will be as dead as a dodo bird. While there is a great deal more that could be said on these issues, there is a third question that arises. Not only are folk asking who created and when did He create but also why did He create. Believe me, this gets right down to the nitty-gritty. This is very important. The Word of God tells us that this universe was created for His own pleasure. He saw fit to create it; He delighted in it. In the final book of the Bible we find these words: “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (Rev_4:11). He created this universe because He wanted to create it. He did it for His pleasure. You may not like the universe, but He does.
He never asked me about where I wanted this little world on which I live to be located in His universe. In fact, He didn’t even ask me whether I wanted to be born in Texas or not. Of course, if He had given me the opportunity, I would have chosen Texas. But He didn’t give me that choice. May I say to you that this universe was created for His pleasure. He saw fit to create and He delighted in the act. The second reason that He created this universe was for His own glory. The original creation, you remember, sang that wonderful Creator’s praise “…When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job_38:7). It was created for His glory. And in the prophecy of Isaiah are these words: “…I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him” (Isa_43:7). God created this universe for His own glory. The Word of God also tells us that God created man in this universe for fellowship. He wanted to have fellowship with mankind, and so He created him a free moral agent. God could have made a bunch of robots. God could have made mechanical men and pushed a button to make them bow down to Him. But God didn’t want that kind of a man. God wanted a man to be free to choose Him and to love Him and to serve Him. My friend, in the midst of all the unbelief, the blasphemy, and the hostility toward God which is around us today, the greatest thing you can do as a human being is to publicly choose the Lord Jesus Christ. To believe in God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth and to receive His Son, Jesus Christ, is the most glorious privilege that you and I have. We hear a lot of talk about freedom of speech and freedom of every sort, but this poor crowd around us who talks so loudly of freedom doesn’t seem to know what freedom really is. We have real freedom when we choose Jesus Christ as our Savior. Now let’s return to the first verse of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This is a majestic verse. It is a tremendous verse. I am of the opinion that it is the doorway through which you will have to walk into the Bible. You have to believe that God is the Creator, for he that cometh to God must believe that He is. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” “In the beginning"that is a beginning which you cannot date. You can estimate it as billions of years, and I think you would be accurate, but who knows how many? Certainly man does not know. “God created.” The word “create” is from the Hebrew word bara, which means to create out of nothing. This word is used only three times in the first chapter of Genesis, because it records only three acts of creation. (1) The creation of something from nothing: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (2) The creation of life: “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth …” (v. Gen_1:21). That’s animal life of all kinds. (3) The creation of man: “So God created man in his own image …” (v. Gen_1:27). Theistic evolution is not the answer.
It attempts to follow creation until the time of man, then considers Adam and Eve to be products of some evolutionary process. The theistic evolutionist considers the days in Genesis as periods of time, long periods of time. I do not believe that is true. God’s marking off the creative days with the words, “And the evening and the morning were the first day,” etc., makes it clear that He was not referring to long periods of time but to actual twenty-four hour days. “God created the heaven and the earth.” The earth is separated from the rest of creation. Why? Well, the earth is the hometown of mankind; that’s where he is to be placed. We are very much interested in him because we belong to this creature. We need to realize, my friend, that you and I are creatures, creatures of God, and as creatures of God, we owe Him something. It was years ago that Herbert Spencer said, “The most general forms into which the manifestation of the Unknowable are re-divisible are time, space, matter, force, motion.” Those were his categories of division. A very fine personal worker, George Dewey Blomgren, was talking to an army sergeant who was a law graduate. Mr. Blomgren was attempting to witness to him. The sergeant mentioned Herbert Spencer, so Mr. Blomgren replied, “Did you know that both the Bible and Spencer teach the great principle of creation?” The sergeant’s eyes widened and he asked, “How’s that?” The reply was, “Spencer talked about time, space, matter, force, motion.
In the first two verses of Genesis we find: ‘In the beginning [time] God created the heaven [space] and the earth [matter]. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God [force] moved [motion] upon the face of the waters.’ It took Spencer fifty years to uncover this law, but here it is in fifty seconds.” The sergeant had no grounds for argument and soon trusted Christ as his Savior. It is very interesting that God has put down these great principles in the first two verses of Genesis. How important it is for us to see that.
Genesis 1:2
Although this view has been discredited by many in the past few years, I believe that a great catastrophe took place between verses Gen_1:1 and Gen_1:2. As far as I can see, there is an abundance of evidence for it. To begin with, look out upon this vast creationsomething has happened to it! Man’s trip to the moon reveals nothing in the world but a wasteland up there. How did it get that way? May I say that there came a catastrophe in God’s universe. That is specifically mentioned in regard to the earth because this is to be the place where man lives, and so the earth is described as being “without form and void.” “Darkness was upon the face of the deep” indicates the absence of God, of course. “Without form, and void” is a very interesting expression. “Without form” is the Hebrew word tohu, meaning a ruin, vacancy; “void” is the Hebrew word bohu, meaning emptiness. Notice this statement in the prophecy of Isaiah: “For thus said the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else” (Isa_45:18). Here God says that He did not create the earth “in vain,” and the Hebrew word is tohu, which is the same word we found in Gen_1:2. God did not create the earth without form and void. God created this universe a cosmos, not a chaos. This is the thing which Isaiah is attempting to make clear.
He created it not tohu va bohu, but the earth became tohu va bohu. God formed the earth to be inhabited, and it was God who came to this wreck and made it a habitable place for mankind. Our current study and exploration of space has revealed, so far, that you and I live in a universe in which only the earth is habitable for human beings. I believe that Genesis is telling us that this earth became without form and void, that it was just as uninhabitable as the moon when the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. I believe that the entire universe came under this great catastrophe. What was the catastrophe? We can only suggest that there was some pre-Adamic creature that was on this earth. And it seems that all of this is connected with the fall of Lucifer, son of the morning, who became Satan, the Devil, as we know him today. I think all of this is involved here, but God has not given us details. The fact of the matter is that He has given us very, very few details in the first chapter of Genesis. “And the spirit of God moved.” The word for “moved” means brooded, like a mother hen broods over her little chicks. He brooded upon the face of the waters. The Holy Spirit began a ministry here which we will find Him doing again and again. It is re-creation! He comes into this scene and He recreates. This is precisely what He does for us. You will remember that the Lord Jesus said, “…Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (Joh_3:5). The water is the Word of God. Now, if you want to make baptism the symbol for it, that’s fine. But the water means the Word of God. And the Holy Spirit is the Author of it. This is very important for us to see.
Genesis 1:3
CONSTRUCTION OF THE EARTHWe have seen the construction of the universe in verse Gen_1:1, the convulsion of the earth in verse Gen_1:2, and now we come to the construction of the earth in six days (vv. Gen_1:3-31). I believe what we have here is this development. There are several things here that I would like to call to your attention. In Exo_20:11, it reads “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is….” There is nothing in that verse about creating. It says “made”; God is taking that which is already formed and in these six days He is not “creating” but He is recreating. He is working with matter which already exists, out of the matter which He had called into existence probably billions of years before. God created life and put it on the earth, and for the earth He created man. That is the creature we are interested in because you and I happen to be one of those creatures. This makes the Genesis record intensely important for us today. DAY ONELIGHTThat must have been a twenty-four hour dayI don’t see how you could get anything else out of it. Notice that God said, “Let there be light.” Ten times in this chapter we will find “let there be"let there be a firmament, let there be lights, let the waters be gathered together, etc. Someone has called these the ten commandments of creation. This is the divine decalogue that we find here. “God said, Let there be light.” This is the first time we are told that God spoke. These are His first words recorded in Scripture.
Genesis 1:6
DAY TWOAIR SPACES"God said, Let there be a firmament"the Hebrew word for firmament is raqia, meaning air spaces. “Let it divide the waters from the waters.” What does that mean? Well, God first divided the waters perpendicularly. There is water above us and water beneath us.
Genesis 1:7
Out in the Hawaiian Islands, when we were there one year, five inches of rain fell in Honolulu in just a very short timeI started to say in a few minutes and I think I’m accurate in that. We were in a place where over two hundred inches of rain fall in a year. My friend, there is a whole lot of water up there if two hundred inches of it can fall! Well, that’s what God did. He divided the waters above from the waters which are beneath.
Genesis 1:8
“God called the firmament Heaven.” This is not heaven as you and I think of it. Actually, there are three heavens that are mentioned in Scripture. The Lord Jesus spoke of the birds of heaven, and I think that is the heaven mentioned in this verse. Then there are the stars of heaven, meaning the second heaven, and there is the third heaven where God dwells. So the first layer up there, the first deck, is the deck where the clouds are and where the birds fly.
Genesis 1:9
DAY THREEDRY LAND AND PLANT LIFENow there is a horizontal division made of the waters. First the waters above were separated from the waters beneath. Now the water is separated from the land, from the earth. May I say to you, there is nothing unscientific about this. They tell us that every spot on topside of this earth on which we live today was covered with water at one time. That was evidently a judgment that had come upon the earth way back sometime in the distant eternity of the past, and we know practically nothing about it. Anything we say is speculation. God has really told us very little here. But He has told us enough so that we can believe Him, that’s all. “God called the dry land Earth.” What is He getting ready to do? Well, it looks like He is getting ready to make a place where He can put man, a place that is habitable. Man is not a water creature, even though there are evolutionists who think we came from the sea and from seaweed, as we mentioned, and others who think we came out of a slop bucket! How absurd can they possibly be?
Genesis 1:11
Now God is putting plant life here because man, until the Flood, was a vegetarian. Man will eat nothing but fruit and nuts. The forming of the plant life completed the third day.
Genesis 1:14
DAY FOURSUN, MOON, STARS APPEARGod didn’t create the sun and the moon at this time. They were already up there. God just brought them around into position.
Genesis 1:15
One of them was to take charge of the day, and the sun does that pretty well. Also the moon does a good job by night. I don’t know about you, but I proposed to my wife by moonlight. That moon has a lot of influence over the night, I can assure you. Then there is just a little clause, “He made the stars also.” That was a pretty big job, by the way, but not for God. It was John Wesley who said, “God created the heavens and the earth and didn’t even half try.” God “made the stars also.”
Genesis 1:17
You will notice that it is God who does the dividing here, “to divide the light from the darkness.” You know, He still does that! There are those today who ask, “What’s the difference between right and wrong?” God has drawn all the lines. How can we know what is right? God says what is right. God has put down certain principles. God divides the light from the darkness and there is just that much distinction between right and wrong. He is the One who makes the difference, and He still does it.
Genesis 1:20
DAY FIVEANIMAL LIFEWe do have a certain amount of development. This does not mean that everything came from one little cell but that God made one of each creature and there has been development from each one. God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly,” and the next verse adds “after their kind.” The word “kind” does not mean species, as even Darwin said, but it means more than that. The word is phylum. I have been reading that one scientist said he had been looking around for another word. Well, I had a professor in seminary, a very brilliant man, who gave phylum as a synonym for “kind.” If you will look up that word in the dictionary, you will see that it means a direct line of descent within a group.
For instance, it would include not just one horse but every animal in the horse family. God created one like that, and there has been development from each one, tremendous development. Also there has been devolutionthat is, there has been development, then later there has been degeneration.
Genesis 1:21
“And God saw that it was good.” Notice that. When God does it, it’s good.
Genesis 1:22
By the way, one scientist I quoted previously said that if our schools teach the creation story, they might as well teach the stork story. Believe me, the Bible certainly gets rid of the stork story. If you read it carefully, you will notice that these animals had to “bring forth.” This will be true of mankind also. You won’t find little Willie under a stump, and the stork won’t bring little Susie, either.
Genesis 1:24
DAY SIXFERTILITY OF ANIMAL LIFENotice again the expression “after his kind"after his biological phylum. Now we will see that God separates plant life and animal life from mankind, and He says, “Let us make man in our image.” This creature is of great interest to you because he happens to be your great-great, etc., grandfather, and he is mine, also. This means that you and I are cousins, although maybe not kissing cousins. But the whole human family is related.
Genesis 1:26
CREATION OF MANThe first question that arises is: How was man created? The next chapter will tell us that. “And let them have dominion.” God gave him dominion over the earth, and I do not think this means that God made him a sort of glorified gardener of the Garden of Eden. Adam had tremendous authority given to him. We will find out a little later that God says to him that he is to do certain things relative to this creation that God has given to him.
Genesis 1:27
We have here just the simple fact of the creation of man. This is the third time we find the word bara, which means to create out of nothing. So we see that man is created; he is something new. Bara is the same word that occurred in the first verse of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” He created the physical universe. Then He created life: “And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth …” (Gen_1:21). Now we see that God created man: “So God created man in his own image.” God will give us the details of His creation of man in the next chapter, and we can see from this that God has left out a great deal about the creation of the universe. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” is all the information He has given to us, and it’s about all we can know about it.
He could have filled in details, but He didn’t. He will go into more detail about only one act of His creation, and that is His creation of man. Do you know why? It is because this record was written for man; God wants him to know about his origin. It is as if God were saying, “I would like very much for you to pay attention to your own creation and not be speculating about the creation of the universe.” This verse tells us something tremendous. “So God created man in his own image.” I want to submit to you that this is one of the great statements of the Word of God. I cannot conceive of anything quite as wonderful as this. What does it mean? Well, man is like God, I think, as a trinity. Immediately someone is going to say, “Oh, I know what you mean. You mean that man is physically and mentally and spiritually a being.” Yes, I believe that is true.
Paul, in 1Th_5:23, says that very thing: “…And I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Although this is true, we will see when we get into the next chapter that it actually means more than that. I think that it refers to the fact that man is a personality, and as a personality he is self-conscious, and he is one who makes his own decisions. He is a free moral agent. Apparently that is the thing which is unique about mankind. I believe this is what is meant by God creating man in His own image. “Male and female created he them.” These verses do not give to us the details of how man was created and how woman was created. We won’t find that until we come to the second chapter. That is the reason that I say that God did not intend to give us the details concerning the creation of this great universe that we are in or He would have given us another chapter relative to that. But He offers no explanation other than He is the Creator. This puts us right back to the all-important truth which we find in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb_11:3). Things we see today were made out of things which did not even exist before.
The creation was made ex nihilo, out of nothing. Somebody says, “Explain that.” My friend, I can’t explain it. And evolution doesn’t explain it either. Evolution has never answered the question of how nothing becomes something. It always starts with a little amoeba, or with a garbage can, or with a little piece of seaweed, or with an animal up in a tree. Our minds must have something to start with, but the Bible starts with nothing.
God created! This is the tremendous revelation of this chapter.
Genesis 1:28
We see here that God has given to this creature something unusual. First He says to man, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” We will hear Him repeat that when He creates woman. God seems to be the One who introduced the subject of sex. It is quite interesting that our generation thinks that they have made a new discovery, that they are the Columbus that discovered sex. God mentions it here at the very beginning. In fact, there are four methods that God has used to get mankind into this universe.
One was by direct creation, which produced Adam. A second way was by indirect creation, which produced Eve. The third was by the virgin birth, and this was how Jesus Christ came into the human family. The fourth way is by natural generation, and that is pretty well known in our day. We have certainly dragged natural generation down to a level that God never intended for it. God created man to reproduce. This is a wonderful, glorious truth, and it is not to be made into a dirty, filthy, slimy thing as man is doing now. People are writing dirty, filthy books and calling it literature; they are producing dirty, filthy things and calling it art. Some of the critics are beginning to speak out against this, and we thank the Lord for that. They are saying what I have long contended, that much of what is called art is revolting and repulsive and that it is not art at all. It is nothing in the world but obscene, and it is done simply for the almighty dollar. God never intended for sex to be abused in this way. God created this man in His image. God is the essentially personal Being, and in giving the man an immortal soul, He gave him also a true personality. Man has a self-consciousness, he has the power of free choice, and he has a distinct moral responsibility. He is in the image of God. “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” God tells man to fill the earth by reproduction. And notice that He uses the word “replenish.” That is an interesting word and seems to indicate that this earth had been inhabited before by other creatures. Whatever the creatures were, they had disappeared before man was created. God also tells man to “subdue” the earth. This, I think, is the basis of learning and of scientific exploration in our day. One of the Proverbs says this: “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter” (Pro_25:2). God hides diamonds way down in the earth and God also puts the treasures down where man has to dig for them, and I believe that today the same thing is true about knowledge. I think it is true about the study of the Word of God. God wants us to go into the laboratory to use the test tube and the microscope, but unfortunately man comes out with an atom bomb, and he is trying to destroy the human family in our day. “And have dominion” is God’s instruction to man. Adam was not just a gardener to cut the grass. Man was created to rule this earth. I think that Adam could control the weather just as we control the air-conditioning in our homes. He ruled this earth. This is what we see in the Lord Jesus. When He was here on this earth, He had control over nature. He could say to a storm, “Be still.” He could feed a multitude with five loaves and two fishes. It is my opinion that Adam could have done all of that until his fall. At the Fall he lost the dominion that God had given him.
Genesis 1:29
From this statement I assume that man was a vegetarian at first, and not until after the Flood did man become a meat eater.
Genesis 1:30
This brings us to the end of chapter one, and it might be well to make a resuméat this point. What are some of the things we should note here? Well, one of these things is the fact that God is mentioned here thirty-two times. The Bible makes no attempt to prove that there is a God. Why not? Because He says, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God …” (Psa_14:1). The Bible is a Book written to reveal the spiritual, the religious, the redemptive truth, and that comes to us only by faith. So we have here the fact that God is the One who created. In this first chapter we see the unity and power and personality of God. This is exactly what Paul wrote in Rom_1:20: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.” How are they clearly seen? “Being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” I say to you very candidly that God has shut you up to faith in Himself. We will notice some other truths in this chapter. It denies polytheism: One God creates. Secondly, it denies the eternity of matter. The first words are: “In the beginning"and it all had a beginning, my friend. This is true in spite of the fact that there was a time when science taught the eternity of matter. Thirdly, this chapter denies pantheism. God is before all things and He is apart from them. Fourthly, it denies fatalismGod acts in the freedom of His will. Finally, let me enumerate the striking features in chapter 1: (1) Order (2) Progress (3) Promptness (4) Perfection