Genesis 1:1–5

The opening sentence of the Bible sets us in the presence of God, the infinite source of all true blessedness. There is no elaborate argument in proof of the existence of God. The Holy Spirit would never take up such a task. God reveals Himself. He makes Himself known by His works.

For the believer this is a simple yet deep truth: everything that exists had a beginning. If God says it, the believer sees that nothing else can be true. Every effect must have a cause. But at its best, reasoning can go no further than this: it can say, "There must be a First Cause." It can never say, "There is one." God alone can say that, and He does.

A creation that always existed, matter that always existed — this is untrue and impossible. It contradicts thought itself, even without the word of God to teach us. God has all power, and He creates if He pleases. That is the whole truth of it… So creation was free to God, not something He had to do. It came when He pleased and as He pleased. And He was pleased to create. Creation exists.

In grammar, "dual" means two, so "plural" means three or more. Yet the verb "created" beside this plural name is singular! Why this apparent breach of grammar? The reason seems clear. At the very start of what we learn about God, we get a hint of a truth revealed openly later: He is a Trinity in Unity — three Persons, yet one God.

Take the plural form of the word and its link with singular verbs. Would it not be closer to the truth to say this? We cannot call it a revelation of the Trinity. Yet it is still a way of speaking that shows the Holy Spirit, the third Person, had the Trinity in mind. He used words whose full force we could only grasp once God had revealed that truth.

God created, as Genesis 1:1 tells us. But where Scripture sets the Persons apart, as it does here, it credits creation not to the Father but to the Son. The Son — whom we know as our Lord Jesus — was the mighty One at work in those scenes of creation, splendid beyond anything we can imagine.

There is a vast difference between "In the beginning God created" and "in the beginning was." The first tells us when created things started. The second points to Him who already existed when everything else began.

Take the six days however you like. On sound principles of reading, no one can deny two things. The first day begins with light. And the first two verses stand apart from the work of the six days, both in what they describe and in how they say it… "In the beginning" carries its own meaning. It is not tied to "the days" at all, except as the revealed start of God's creation.

In our human nature there is a thirst to know where things came from. God gave us that thirst, and God answers it. He does so in the first sentence of His own revelation to mankind… Some may ask and argue over how God could create so vast a universe. Faith believes what the word of God says.

Now who but an inspired man would have so written? The lower your view of Israel — an unlettered people, even rough and uncivilised — the greater the wonder. Did Egypt teach this, or Babylon? Did Greece or Rome? How did Moses come to declare the fact as he writes it? ... Any living man, judging by what everyone can see, has always regarded the sun as the great source of light. If the writing had been his, he would have spoken first of that bright orb. In other words, the work of the fourth day would more reasonably have taken the place of the first. That is what the philosophers taught for ages afterwards. But the truth is not so.

Darkness, no doubt through angelic sin, had entered His creation. As He moved with feeling over the scene, He commands, "Let there be light." This was creative power — the prerogative of God Himself. But it also says, "God saw the light, that it was good" — the first moral pronouncement of Scripture! "And God divided the light from the darkness."

A wrecked life lies hopeless in a gloom that, as far as its own efforts go, must be eternal. Over that life the Spirit of God in brooding love flashes out the knowledge of the presence of God Himself: "God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts." The light here shows nothing but itself, in which God can find pleasure: "God saw the light that it was good." He can only divide it from all that is not light, calling the one "day" and the other "night."

So God divided the light from the darkness. There was to be no compromise, no mixture, no vague twilight. For a season the darkness was to give way fully to light, and so there was a division between them. So there was evening and there was morning — a first day.

Earlier in this book we noticed that God called the light good, but said nothing like this of the darkness. In nature, darkness is a real benefit. After the toil of the day comes the rest and peace of night. But in a spiritual sense, Scripture treats darkness as a picture of evil. That is why Genesis 1:4 does not call it "good," as it calls the light good.

God did not say, "Let darkness be removed," but "Let there be light." The positive radiance of light drives out the darkness. So too, the light of God entering someone's soul drives out his moral and spiritual darkness. "God saw the light, that it was good." ... Then God divided the light from the darkness. So we know there was light before God set the sun in its place to rule over the day. In a spiritual sense this reminds us that light has entered the soul of every believer. Even so, night experiences will still come, because the fleshly nature is still in us, and its very character is darkness.

All is divine. God said, God saw, God called. His thoughts, words, and acts are presented throughout. ... How noticeable it is, too, that God gives everything its name! He calls as well as makes all things. Night and day, heaven, earth, and seas all receive their names as well as their existence from Him. What was for man's use, and to be put under man's control, is left for him to name.

We have now had five things before us that were named by God Himself. We note this because of what comes next. In the next chapter God brings to Adam the living creatures He had made on the fifth and sixth days, so that he might give them names... So God let Adam show his powers of discernment in many a smaller detail. But these five things he had to accept as named by God — Day, Night, Heaven, Earth, Seas.

Notice that the first day does not begin before the light, but with it. Otherwise it could not begin with evening, for evening implies light already there. But the light strangely comes only to fade and darken into night. Through that it reaches its morning by a kind of new birth, when (for that day, of course) the darkness is wholly past.

For a long time unbelievers took great exception to this statement of verse 5, because the sun does not appear until the fourth day. But the sun is not the only source of light.

The question is raised whether the days of Genesis 1 are literal, or figurative — vast periods of time... For ourselves, we believe it is to be understood literally. The figurative sense does occur in Scripture — "man's day," "the day of salvation." But that sense is clearly a secondary one. The literal sense is the primary... The repetition of "the evening and the morning" fits the primary meaning, and would have very little meaning in the secondary sense. Further, in verse 16 the sun is made to rule the day and the moon to rule the night, and we do not see how the primary sense can be avoided.

If the Scriptures were uninspired, we would surely have reversed the order and written that the morning and the evening were the first day. Man's mind runs naturally to morning first and then evening. We speak of the morning of life, and of the evening of life. For man, darkness follows light.

Practically, the day is not all light; "evening and morning" make it up. Yet though darkness in itself is "night," it is worth noticing something. Once light has come in, it is never simple, absolute night any more, but "evening." There are always some rays of the day. And in God's order, evening surely gives way to morning... its promise of the perfect "day" is never realised until God's work is finished and His Sabbath is reached. Then indeed there is no more evening, or morning either, but "day," without mixture or decline.

Here we have the two great symbols so widely used throughout the Word. The presence of light makes the day; its absence makes the night. So it is in the history of souls. There are "the sons of light" and "the sons of darkness." This is a very marked and solemn distinction.