The Days of Creation

The creation of all things, from atoms to atmosphere, from gravity to galaxies, occurred within a six, 24-hour window of days. This article will not attempt do disprove evolution, which is easy to do. But rather it will help us to understand when and what God did when He created the heavens and the earth, filled them with wonderful things such as animals, stars, water, and most importantly, a man and a woman.

Introduction

Moses is the writer of the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Although some dispute that assertion, it is the established fact, and has been for millennia. It was not until rather recently that people began doubting Mosaic authorship.

When he began to write the creation record, he began with a simple introduction of the work of God. He wrote:

Genesis 1:1–2 (LSB)

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And 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.

The very first verse of the entire Bible asserts the direct, and instantaneous, creation of time, space, matter, and all with a purpose. Before this verse, there was no time, space, nor matter. There was no earth, man, woman, nor any created thing. Only God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, existed in eternity, not being created nor having a beginning.

The reason this is important is because the motivation for God to initiate the creation of the cosmos (all created things in existence) must have been incredible. Paul summarizes the reason for the creation of all things, as well as affirming what Moses wrote in Genesis 1-2:

Romans 11:36 (LSB)

     36       For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.

Colossians 1:16 (LSB)

          16       For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.

Hebrews 2:10 (LSB)

     10       For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.

Simply put, the motivation for the creation of everything we interact with in this world, and beyond this world, is that it would belong to the Son. The eternal purpose of God to create and fill the cosmos for the Son is beyond the scope of this essay. However, the goodness of God is certainly on display, and reflects the purpose and nature of this creation.

The phrase “in the beginning,” informs us that this is the beginning of the first day. It is the “beginning,” as it were, of all time and matter. At this point, the clock of the eternal purpose of God started ticking.

Day One

Genesis 1:3–5 (LSB)

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

     4       And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

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

Moses gives us a summary of what God did on the first day of creation. God created darkness and light and began the solar cycle, yet without solar bodies to be the sources of that light. The creation week is given from the vantage point of the earth. From the perspective of a man standing on the earth, there was evening and then morning to complete the 24-hour cycle of time Moses calls “day”.

The sun, stars, and moons will not be created for another 3 days. Until then, from the perspective of the earth, assuming rotation on its axis, the source of light was God’s creative power. This condition indicates to us that God’s creation work was progressive, in a purposeful process. The indication is that His work moves from least complex in creative quality, to the most complex.

Day Two

Genesis 1:6–8 (LSB)

     6       Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”

     7       So God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so.

     8       And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

The planet was created in darkness, completely submerged under some depth of water. On day two, the next 24-hour evening-morning cycle, God separates oceans of water into halves in a transverse direction, like skinning an apple with one stroke all around the apple. This action separated water into two halves with air in between the halves. The verse indicates that the water below the air gap and the water above the air gap were the same water bodies. This air “expanse,” as it is called, surrounds the earth and gives the place in which the birds can fly. It also becomes the air which all life on the planet requires for respiration.

Day Three

Genesis 1:9–13 (LSB)

     9       Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so.

     10       And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.

     11       Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so.

     12       And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.

     13       And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

The 24-hour cycle following the separation of the waters, the third day of creation, shows us that God brings the soil of the earth out from under the water which is below the expanse of air. In other words, from under the oceans which completely submerged the planet, the ground emerges. The portion of the soil that was above the water is called “earth,” by the act of God. The bodies of water that were formed once the earth emerged He called “seas”

However, instead of one broad creative act of God, as in the first two days, on the third day, God also brought vegetation into existence by causing the seeds in the soil to begin to sprout. These varieties of vegetation all had seeds in themselves in order to perpetuate their kind of vegetation.

Day Four

Genesis 1:14–19 (LSB)

     14       Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;

     15       and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so.

     16       So God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and also the stars.

     17       And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,

     18       and to rule 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, a fourth day.

On this next 24-hour cycle God took the light He sustained by His own power, and designed stellar bodies to create the same light. In other words, God designed the suns across the cosmos to produce the created light that was, beforehand, simply existing without them. He placed the sun in the place where it would dominate the daytime sky, again from the vantage point of the earth, and the moon to be visible in the nighttime by means of reflecting the light of the sun.

The purpose of these great bodies is to bring regularity to time (i.e. “chronology”) and thus to give a rhythm to life on this planet. The fact that these bodies are constant also gives man the ability to travel in the directions he wishes around the world. The stars provide useful direction markers and, by God’s design, are constant and do not change positions. But, the original design was for the passing of time on the earth.

Day Five

Genesis 1:20–23 (LSB)

     20       Then God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the expanse of the heavens.”

     21       And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

     22       Then God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.”

     23       And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

At this point, God takes His creativity to a new level and instead of creating inanimate bodies, He designs and creates animate ones. Before this day, all the created items were stationary relative to their position on earth. But, now, God appears to be creating living beings, animals which have the “breath of life.” These animals live in the air above and the waters beneath. In this creation are animals which breathe air, whether above water, as is the case with the birds, or animals below water, as is the case with the sea life.

The birds and fish are also commanded to fill the world with their kinds. This reproduction mandate is not given to the vegetation, for their seed is already in them and they reproduce apart from the processes of the birds and fish.

Day Six

Genesis 1:24–31 (LSB)

     24       Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so.

     25       God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

     26       Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

     27       And 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 God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that creeps on the earth.”

     29       Then God said, “Behold, I have given to you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has the fruit of the tree yielding seed; it shall be food for you;

     30       and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that creeps on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so.

     31       And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

This final 24-hour cycle of evening and morning of God’s specific creation of entities on the earth finds us learning that God designed and created animals that will walk and move on the dry land that appeared out of the waters. These animals include domesticated animals, such as cattle. They also include the non-domesticated animals, which we call “wild animals,” as well as animals which “creep” on the ground.

In the final creative act of God, He designs and creates the man and the woman. The creation of the man and woman is after the creation of the land-dwelling animals earlier in the day. This part of His creation culminates His work.

The motivating reason that God initiated creation at all is not given to us in the Genesis record. However, we do have a statement by God for the specific reason He created the man. He created the man in order to make him a reflection of Himself. Or, in the words of Genesis 1:26, God made the man to be the “image and likeness” of God. These two terms tell us that the man is inwardly and outwardly to reflect God, or be His replica. In the terms of Genesis 5:1-3, Adam was created to be His son. In this way, Adam is actually the image and likeness of God.

The Man

The man, Adam, was created by the unified work of the Triune God. God made the man from the soil that made the earth.

Genesis 2:7 (LSB)

     7       Then Yahweh God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and so the man became a living being.

This creation by God was an incredible feat, really. The brain, eyes, torso, bloodstream, the inner organs, etc… all displayed the unequaled handiwork of God. It was not until God “breathed” into the man that his body received its “kickstart” and his heart began beating and his lungs filled with the air of the expanse. He opened his eyes and he saw the colorful wonder of the beautiful creation around him.

The Woman

After reviewing and naming all the animals, it was made obvious to Adam that there was no one for him to have companionship with, no one to specifically love. We deduce that his aloneness was bad not because of a systemic inadequacy in Adam, but because of something outside of him. The text has told us that all that God has made has been “good.” However, the creation of the man, having no counterpart, is “not good.” God’s remedy, being a predetermined component to His plan, was to make a being who complements the man in every way.

God made Adam fall asleep. While asleep, God took some bone and flesh material from the man, and created a woman from that material. The man’s bone and flesh were the building blocks of the one who would be, in the progress of creation, the most undeniably complex and wonderful act of the creation week. She, then, becomes the height of the act of creation in the progress of the six days. The man’s image is on display in her. The complementary nature of the man and woman is evident by their resemblance to one another, differences notwithstanding.

Conclusion

The final act of the creation week is the institution of a day of rest. God’s handiwork has ceased now, and God, although not tired, stops His work. He did this as an example to the man. God’s perpetual state of rest was to be a weekly reminder to the man of his own rest from his labors.

Thus concludes the week in which the Lord God made everything in the cosmos. The atom, light, mass, matter, time, planets, stars, blood, and flesh. The power to create and sustain His work is immeasurable. The detail, the interdependency, the beauty and expanse of it all tells us of the creativity, purpose, and absolute power of God.