Three Days, Three Realms

Genesis 1:3-13

Space is the most important nothing. We define our spaces by walls and fences, even lines on maps. One of Joseph Beuys’ most famous sculptures was Underpass, a 20-ton beef tallow structure in the shape of the negative space under, as you may have guessed, a bridge underpass. Space is, in one sense, about the possibilities that may fill it. As we come to Genesis 1:3-13, we watch as God creates boundaries and defines spaces of light, air, water, and land.

Extraordinary Days

We have come to the point in Gen. 1 where we must address the question of days. A key text for this is Exod. 20:11, “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

To some people that may sound like a strange question, but God’s people, especially theologians, have spent a lot of time and ink on strange questions. One ancient Jewish writer before Jesus’ earthly ministry thought creation was instantaneous. His book, which is not part of the Bible, goes by several names, like Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, but it says in 18:1, “He who liveth for ever created all things at once.” Augustine and several medieval theologians adopted that view, seeing the 6 days as God’s condescension language, breaking creation down for us.

Then there’s the various day-age views, where people think each “day” is an age, like when we say “back in the day,” or even that there are gaps between the days. There are things in science like carbon-dating, petrified tree rings, and astronomy calculations that seem to indicate (but not necessarily prove) the world is older than the Bible seems to indicate. But we know that the facts of science and truth of Scripture are not in true conflict.

We also have to remember that whatever God says and whatever He inspires to be written in the Scriptures is true. Rom. 3:4, “By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, ‘That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.’”

We also need to keep in mind that we’re looking at God moving and revealing His glory, His sovereignty. God made time, and He can pause it or even move it backwards, as we learn from Josh 10:13, and 2 Ki 20:11. Long before Darwin’s half-baked theory and people carbon dating fossils, Luther wrote, “It must be granted that in the first work of creation the Creator speeded up the functions of the spring and fall so far as the herbs and the fruits of the trees were concerned.” The same scientific community that claims to have calculated the earth’s age tells us time is relative and affected by gravity, and light may have traveled faster at the beginning of the universe.

Therefore, I think God created in six days. God could have done it all in an instant or let it play out over ages, but He was using six days for foreshadowing purposes. There are some who would make the 6-24 hour day creation into the ultimate test of orthodoxy and true Christian religion. There are indeed topics that when confessed and adopted or denied and rejected definitively mark someone inside or outside of the true Christian faith. That may sound closed-minded of me, but when Paul heard the Galatians were talking about circumcision and keeping the Mosaic law, he told them that if they did it, Christ would be of no benefit to them, Gal. 5:2.

The question isn’t whether or not there are essential, core truths of Christianity that we cannot reject without excluding ourselves from heaven. The question is whether 6-24 hour day creation is one of those. Given the tradition of disagreement, which even predates the birth of Christ, we must say that it cannot be our line in the sand. As important as this debate may be, we should not be eager to anathematize a brother or sister in Christ over every disagreement.

But that being said, there are things in this same chapter that are non-negotiables, like God as creator, the sovereignty of God on display in creation by word, and in the course of the next few chapters, the historical record of Adam, Eve, the fruit, and the fall.

Keep in mind as we progress that this opening chapter of our Bible is less focused on how God created, but in revealing who, what, where, and why. Paul speaks of our creator in Rom. 4:17, “…the God… who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” And in Col. 1:16, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”

Day One: Enlightening Darkness

On the first day, God said, “Let there be light” and there was light. He saw that the light was good. He separated light from darkness and named them day and night. Ps. 74:16, “Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.”

There is a rabbinical tradition that carried over into several Christian theologians that this creation of light and separation from darkness speaks to the creation and fall of angels. But as we saw in the last article, the angels appear to be an audience for the bulk of the creation narrative. Job 38:6-7, “On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” So it’s more likely that this is just light for the angelic audience to witness the unfolding revelation of God in His creation. God is light in Himself, but as creation progresses, that light shines forth. That is a fitting metaphor for all of creation. God had created matter, the heavens and the earth, but now it was illuminated for the angelic audience.

Keep in mind that God is creating more than light and separating it from darkness; He is creating day and night. These are realms of time for man’s work and rest, as we see in Ps. 104:20-23. As Godfrey says, “Daylight is the realm of man’s labor.”

And in Jer. 33:20-26, this is described as a covenant between God and the day and night, showing us that God’s relationship to His creation is covenantal.

The sun won’t be created until day 4, so some think this is the glory cloud that would lead Israel in the wilderness and settle in the tabernacle and temple. Others see it as the raw materials of the sun. God may even be using angels as a light source.

Acts 12:7, “And behold, an angel of the Lord stood next to him, and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his hands.” 2 Cor. 11:14, “…even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” Who knows, maybe cherubim have a pull chain.

But God saw that the light was good. Eccl. 11:7, “Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun.” God saw that light was good after He had created it. This might strike us as strange given the fact that God has decreed His own creation of it and then created it in perfect wisdom. God is certainly not surprised by the fact that His hobby project of light has turned out well, so what are we looking at? There is a sense in which the thing decreed or planned by God is observed by God for vindication after it comes to pass, because it doesn’t exist until it occurs. Gen. 22:12, “God said to Abraham, “…now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”’

Matthew Henry makes an interesting observation. “In heaven there is perfect and perpetual light, and no darkness at all; in hell, utter darkness, and no gleam of light. In that world between these two there is a great gulf fixed; but, in this world, they are counterchanged, and we pass daily from one to another, that we may learn to expect the like vicissitudes in the providence of God, peace and trouble, joy and sorrow, and may set the one over-against the other, accommodating ourselves to both as we do to the light and darkness, bidding both welcome, and making the best of both.” We even see that when Christ returns and makes all things new, there will be only light. Rev. 22:5, “And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”

But the real beauty here is in how God is making His metaphors from scratch. Yes, the world and we need light to function, but God could have designed the world to work in the dark. Ray Charles did pretty well with it. God made light as a type of Himself, Christ, and knowledge. John 1:4, “In him (Jesus) was life, and the life was the light of men.”

John 3:19-21, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

1 John 1:5-7, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”

2 Cor. 4:6, “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

James 1:17, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

1 Tim. 6:16, “who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.”

Again from Matthew Henry, “In the new creation, the first thing wrought in the soul is light: the blessed Spirit captives the will and affections by enlightening the understanding, so coming into the heart by the door, like the good shepherd whose own the sheep are, while sin and Satan, like thieves and robbers, climb up some other way.”

Day Two: Stretching Expanse

So now we have light to see what God is doing, but everything is still formless and void. It would seem the mass is a chaotic mixture of air, water, and dirt. So on the 2^nd day, God separates the waters to create an expanse called heavens. Ps 104:2, “covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.” There are some strange theories on all of this that we don’t need to get into, especially since most of them stem from ancient scientific theories now disproven. The really weird part of this is that when we get to day 4, it talks about an expanse of the heavens as outer space where God puts the stars, which baffled Luther to the point he said we just have to take it on faith. Maybe at the edge of the universe there is a shell of water?

Most likely this is God creating atmosphere and clouds, a sky with waters above and beneath. God has created realms of sky and seas. God is building habitats for birds and fish, but also “sets” for the scenes of redemptive history. Here are the skies from which angels will sing the announcement of Christ’s birth and into which Christ will ascend before the eyes of the disciples. Here are the seas where Jonah will be chastised by God and swallowed by a fish, waters to flood the earth in Noah’s day, waters for God to part and Christ to still at only His command.

Keep in mind, Moses is initially writing this for Israel in the wilderness to see God who created and commanded the waters that turned to blood, the waters that destroyed the Egyptian army, and even the waters that flowed from the rock.

But it gives us the vocabulary to understand the waters of life that come from Christ alone. 1 Cor. 10:4, “and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” And there’s the waters of sanctification that wash us in preparation for eternity. Eph. 5:26-27, “that he (Jesus) might sanctify her (the church), having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”

Day Three: Fruitful Earth

On day 3, God separates the waters from the dry land. So now we have mountains and beaches as well as rivers and oceans. Job 38:8-11, God asks Job, “…who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?”

This is also where God makes all the plants and trees and such with design to perpetuate. It’s interesting that it only says tree in the singular, which could be the tree of life, but it’s probably just an idiom, like when God calls the hearts of the people the “heart” of Israel. Later on, the living creatures are often in the singular.

Now we do have to briefly address what some see as a conflict with Gen. 2:5-9, where suddenly there are no plants. It could be that it’s just a flashback to right after God dries the ground, as Luther and others hold, but I like Ross’s approach. Ross sees the barren land in ch. 2 as localized, not the earth as a whole, where the camera zooms in, so to speak, on an ancient desert on the 6^th day to show us the planting of Eden and the creation of man.

Again, we are seeing God create a realm or kingdom. This is the stage on which most of redemptive history will play out. The land will shift and change and even be remade through the flood. All the same, here is the dirt where Christ will leave footprints, the dust He will mix with saliva and cure a blind man. There is the hill on which Christ will die for our sins. Here is the ancestral tree whose descendant will be cut down, shaped, and stained with our Savior’s blood to save sinners.

It is interesting to consider the unseparated waters and land in its parallel to the sinner’s heart. Isa. 57:20, “But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.” It isn’t until God speaks to our hearts that the mired waters are separated and stilled.

Creative Word

But as we close out these three days, we want to meditate on that creative method of God, the divine fiat. God spoke and things existed and things that He already made separated. We’ve already talked about how this shows God’s effortless authority and power. Luther points out that the Hebrew word Moses used here specifically restricts this to the spoken, audible word, and cannot be construed as just a metaphorical word.

Later on, we will see Adam’s calling to name the creatures, which has its own reflection of God as God would rename Abram and Jacob and others. What’s interesting here, though, is how it’s a mirror reflection. Adam is given the authority to name the thing that he sees already existing, but only God can name something and thereby cause it to exist.

Gill describes God as the “one who can do, and does whatever he will, and as soon as he pleases…” which makes it all the more astounding to consider how patient He is with us.

And we must not miss that God created all of this to reveal His glory and invoke our praise. We might thank God for an extraordinary providence like the healing of a disease or a sudden windfall, maybe even for the life He has given us, but have you ever thanked God for light, for air, for water, for the ground you stand upon?

It even teaches us that God does things in intentional order. There has to be a space for the birds and the fish before they are made. We can often be impatient in waiting for God to fulfill His promises, but we need to remember that God does everything well and in perfect timing. As God separates out things in your life, it is likely that He is making space for good things to come.

But it also prepares us for key concepts of Christ. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created the world, the heavens and the earth. But the Son in submission to the Father would proceed like a word to recreate creation, to make all things new, to accomplish redemption. It is an unstoppable, effectual word. John 1:1-3, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Luther writes, “The created word is brought into being by the uncreated Word” which is Christ. But the uncreated Word also makes us a new creation by His grace.

God also separates by His word. He separates light and darkness, sky and sea, water and land, elect and reprobate. His call is effectual to separate His sheep from goats. He calls those who are spiritually dead to life. Pink points out that in the creation we are seeing the dual working of the Spirit and the Word of God, and when we see the new creation where sinners are born again, it is by the dual working of the Holy Spirit in the heart and the preaching of the Word of God.

Hear and heed God’s Word, God’s command to repent and believe. We are sinners, who have broken God’s holy law, but His promise in the Gospel is clear and true. If we repent and believe on Christ, we will be saved to the glory of God.