What did God think of his work?

On this day God brought into existence the lower animal creation, and finally when all is prepared He created man. With the creation of man God’s activity had reached its climax. Up to now we read four times over the formula, “And God saw that it was good,” including all reconstruction and creation (exclusive of the creation of man), but when we come to the sixth day and God surveys the whole scene, including man and woman in their ordered place as having dominion over the whole, we read, “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was VERY good.”

The whole creation was ordered for the pleasure of man, and man was made for the glory of God. Day by day, as God acted, He revealed His Power and wisdom and tender care for man, and when the day came for him to be set in his ordered place it was to be surrounded by all these evidences of God’s care and interest.

The writer refers to creation to show that from the beginning God has had before Him “rest”, and to manifest the character of God's rest. After the world was formed and man was created in the image and likeness of God, the creation works of God were finished. This led to creation rest with its two distinctive marks: firstly, God's satisfaction in all that He had made, as we read, “God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good”; secondly, the entire cessation from all His creation work, as it is written, “He rested on the seventh day from all his work which He had made.” (Gen. 1:31; Gen. 2:2). Thus we learn the two great truths that mark God's rest: the absolute complacency in the result of the labour; and satisfaction being reached, the absolute end of all toil.

There are few subjects on which so much misunderstanding and contradiction prevails as the doctrine of "the Sabbath." Not that there is the slightest foundation for either the one or the other; for the whole subject Is laid down in the word, in the simplest possible manner. The distinct commandment, to "keep holy the Sabbath day" will come before us, the Lord permitting, in our meditations on the book of Exodus. In the chapter now before us, there is no command given to man, whatever; but simply the record that, "God rested on the seventh dray." "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. and God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." There is no commandment given to man, here. We are simply told that God enjoyed His rest, because all was done, so far as the mere creation was concerned. There was nothing more to be done, and, therefore, the One who had, during six days, been working, ceased to work, and enjoyed His rest. All was complete; all was very good; all was just as He Himself had made it; and He rested in it. "The morning stars sang together; and all the sons of God shouted for joy." The work of creation was ended, and God was celebrating a Sabbath.

Here experience is necessarily at fault. For only the Bible could give us the truth as to the primitive phase of man and the creatures around him. But it at once approves itself, when revealed, as being the sole conceivable state in which the Creator could have placed creation and its head suitably to His own goodness. Hence the force and moral beauty of His final survey in the last verse. "And God saw everything that he had made (i.e., in the Adamic earth), and behold, it was very good." So with the one exception of day second had He called each thing "good"; now as a whole it was superlatively so in His eyes.

Yet the unbeliever, scientific or not, is misled by his abuse of experience about a time where he cannot have a tittle of evidence to contradict scripture, and imputes to God, if he allow there is One, such a world as would be the production of a fiend, not of the Only True God. Even on his own ground it is the grossest assumption to assume that at the beginning (and science is now compelled to own there must have been a beginning) things were as they now are. It is illogical, as well as infidel, to take for granted that the present state is a normal one, or that God made men sinful, vain, proud, selfish, to say nothing of more abominable outbreaks; that He left men indifferent, so as to become heathen or Jews, Mahometans or Christians, of any religion or of none, without guidance or proof. It is evident that the state of the world is offensive to God; and that it has been so since man left records more or less credible. This is a fact, Bible or no Bible.

Verse 31 gives God's pronouncement, not only as to the sixth day, but as regards all the work He had done in all six days: "it was very good." Thus, God's work literally in the first creation was very good. His work in individual souls too, pictured by creation, is very good. His work in all the dispensations also just as clearly typified in these days, is very good.

With the creation of man — male and female — and his being set in dominion and blessed, the work of the sixth day reached its end. As it concluded, God surveyed all that He had made. Six times already we have been told that God saw it was good, now on this seventh occasion, when the whole was inspected, we are told that all was very good. Let us take note of this for it demolishes at one blow the whole system of error, miscalled "Christian Science," which has, as one of its most fundamental dogmas, the idea that matter is evil and only spirit is good. The truth is the exact opposite of this, for when evil entered it came in by way of spirit and not matter.

It may be said or thought, was not the first creation a work of God, good and agreeable to Him, when it was made? It was so. God viewed it over and pronounced it "very good." But it is not so now. It pleased God to make that first creation dependent on its head, the first Adam. He listened to a voice which he ought not to have listened to; sin came in by him, and by sin death, and now the whole creation groans in bondage. (Rom. 5 and Rom. 8)

God's work as Creator had been quickly soiled in man's hand. Man had ruined himself; so that it is written: "God repented that He had made man." (Gen. 6) A terrible change in the Divine mind, since the day when God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was "very good"! (Gen. 1) But in the Lord Jesus, the Divine complacency in man was restored.

He declared the work of His hand to be very good, but in the travail of His soul He shall find satisfaction. The first, spite of its creation-beauty, was speedily marred by sin. Soon Satan introduced, through the first man, the evil that was to demoralize and alienate the whole scene.

God’s Sabbath, his rest in creation, was broken by sin; and the verdict just pronounced had thenceforth to be changed from “very good” to very bad, as man, the master-piece, dragged down in his fall that creation over which he had been placed. The beautiful work of God’s hand was spoiled, as it were, in a moment.

Were I to read the opening of this fine scripture, and just expose my heart to the simpler earliest impression of what I get there, it is this thought which would engage my mind; and yet with all ease we can account for this strange and wondrous revolution. In Genesis 1 God was alone, producing the fruit of His own handiwork, in wisdom, goodness, and skill, and then all was good and desirable. On the return of every evening and morning the divine delights lingered over what the divine hand was working out, and behold all was very good; and the seventh day was sanctified for the celebration of this rest and enjoyment. But now, it is not God's hand presenting a perfect work to God's thoughts and affections, but it is man, the apostate artificer, spreading out a wide scene of corruption and violence for the grief and repentings of the divine mind. The secret of the chance lies there. Man has been at work; man has been fashioning and furnishing the scene, and not the living, blessed God. The earth is therefore filled with violence; giants there are, mighty men, men of renown; and the imaginations of that heart which was now making "this present evil world" are only evil, and that continually.