Genesis 1

Today’s Passage: Genesis 1

This is the first page of the Bible, and it opens with God already there. Before there was anything at all, He was. Then He begins to make a world, and the way He makes it is by speaking. He says the word and light comes. He speaks again and there is sky, then sea and dry land, then plants and stars, fish and birds and animals, and at the very end a man and a woman made in His own image. He works through six days, and each one closes the same quiet way, with evening and morning. When it is all finished He looks it over and calls it very good.

As you read, hold this: God spoke, and the world was.

Genesis 1:1–5 (BSB)

¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ And God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

So it begins. The earth is dark and empty, nothing but water and shadow, and over it the Spirit of God is moving, close and unhurried, the way a bird settles over its nest. Before any of that, though, God has already created (בָּרָא) bara, pronounced bah-RAH. Strong's H1254, to create, to bring into being out of nothing (used of God alone). In the Old Testament this word is kept for God alone. A potter shapes clay he already has, and a builder raises a house from wood and stone that were lying there before him. This word is different: it names the thing only God can do, to call into being what was simply not there before. The very first sentence of the Bible reaches for it. Whatever else you make of the beginning, the Maker is God, and He started with nothing but His own word. the heavens and the earth: not shaped from something older, but called into being from nothing at all. Then God speaks. He says, “Let there be light,” and there is light, and He looks at it and calls it good. He gives the light and the dark their names, day and night, and the first day comes to its close with evening and morning. This is how the rest of the chapter will move. God says a word, and what He says is simply how things are.

Genesis 1:6–13 (BSB)

⁶ And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters, to separate the waters from the waters.” ⁷ So God made the expanse and separated the waters beneath it from the waters above. And it was so. ⁸ God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

⁹ And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered into one place, so that the dry land may appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry land “earth,” and the gathering of waters He called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

¹¹ Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants and fruit trees, each bearing fruit with seed according to its kind.” And it was so. ¹² The earth produced vegetation: seed-bearing plants according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. ¹³ And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

Now the making spreads out. God lifts a great open space between the waters and calls it sky. He gathers the seas into their places so the dry land can rise, and He names the land earth. Then He tells the ground itself to turn green, and it does, with grass and plants and fruit trees, each one carrying its own seed to make more of its own kind. Three times in these few verses the same steady phrase comes back, “and it was so.” He says it, and that settles it. A God who keeps His word about the seasons and the seed is a God you can trust with far more than that.

Genesis 1:14–19 (BSB)

¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to distinguish between the day and the night, and let them be signs to mark the seasons and days and years. ¹⁵ And let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶ God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And He made the stars as well. ¹⁷ God set these lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth, ¹⁸ to preside over the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

On the fourth day God hangs lights in the sky, a greater one to rule the day and a lesser one to rule the night. Notice that He never gives them names. The sun and the moon that the nations around Israel bowed down to and worshiped as gods are here only lights, things God made to mark our seasons and our days. And then, almost in passing, comes one of the largest sentences ever written: “He made the stars as well.” Every star in the sky, the whole reach of space we still cannot measure, is a single clause in God’s workweek. The next time you stand out under a clear night, remember that He made all of it with a word, and had breath to spare.

Genesis 1:20–25 (BSB)

²⁰ And God said, “Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky.” ²¹ So God created the great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters teemed according to their kinds, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²² Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” ²³ And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

²⁴ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, land crawlers, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. ²⁵ God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that crawls upon the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then the world fills with life. The seas begin to swarm with fish and great creatures, the air fills with wings, and God blesses them and tells them to multiply. On the sixth day the land brings out its animals too, the herds and the wild beasts and everything that creeps along the ground, each after its own kind. Everywhere you look, life is beginning, and it is beginning because God said so. He is not watching from a distance while it happens. He is the reason it happens at all.

Genesis 1:26–31 (BSB)

²⁶ Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.” ²⁷ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. ²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth.”

²⁹ Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit contains seed. They will be yours for food. ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth and every bird of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth—everything that has the breath of life in it—I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.

³¹ And God looked upon all that He had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

And then God does something He has not done all week. Until now He has said, “Let there be,” and things came to be. Now He says, “Let Us make man in Our image.” There is a kind of pause in it, a deliberateness, as though the whole week has been building a house and the family is about to move in. He makes them male and female, both of them in His image (צֶלֶם) tselem, pronounced TSEH-lem. Strong's H6754, image, likeness. An image stands in for someone. In the ancient world a king would set up his statue in a distant corner of his kingdom to say, this land is mine and I rule here. God fills the whole earth with His image, and it is not carved from stone. It is people: the man and the woman, and every person you will ever meet, the difficult ones included. Genesis pairs this word with its poetic parallel, likeness, doubling the point rather than adding a new one. This is why a human life is never just one more animal among the animals. Each one carries the likeness of the God who made it. , and He blesses them and hands them the world to fill and to care for.

When God is finished He does not look only at the last thing His hands have made. He looks at all of it, the light and the seas and the stars, the animals and the man and the woman together, and over the whole of it He says the same word: very good. That is the Maker’s own verdict on the world He made. And a world its Maker calls very good is one you can receive with open hands, and praise the God who gave it.