In the Beginning…

Genesis 1:1-8

Jesus said, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.”

In the beginning God created time, space, and matter. (“beginning” = time; “heaven” = space; “earth” = matter) It was a trinity made by the Trinity, all of whom were present. That’s Genesis 1:1.

v. 26        “Let us” = Elohim, plural. That’s the Trinity of God! God made us in His image, a 3 part being of body, soul, and spirit. But because of the fall we have a sin nature, and our spirit is dead, so we are incomplete. We have a body that will only exist for a time, a soul that will exist forever, somewhere, and that location is determined by whether our spirit is quickened, made alive, born again. That happens when we repent of sin, believe, and are saved. We are complete then in God’s image, a 3 part being. Even our mind is a trinity of intellect [thinking], emotion [feelings], and will [decisions].

1 Thessalonians 5:23 [Paul said]

^… I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So it should be no surprise to us that the Trinity formed us as a trinity of sorts, in His image, and that He created these three: time, space, and matter. You see, when He created everything, that was matter, but if you had matter and no space you wouldn’t know WHERE to put it. And if you had matter and no time you wouldn’t know WHEN to put it. (“beginning” = time; “heaven” = space; “earth” = matter)

And each of those are a trinity in themselves. Time is made up of past, present, and future. Space has length, width, and height. Matter is solid, liquid, or gas. And each molecule has protons, neutrons, and electrons.

Our Lord is a God of order and precision, of mathematical perfection. And all life is made up of complex DNA which is the precise blueprint instructions. And the fact that it’s all made in His image is a testament to His glory. And we were created for His glory!

v. 2  It was desolate and uninhabited.  It hadn’t yet been shaped.  And it was completely engulfed with darkness.  The ‘deep’ is an Old Testament term for the ocean. The land was all covered by water at this point.

v. 3  He fixed the light/dark cycle into the permanent day/night continuum of 24-hour solar days. The sun had not yet been appointed it’s job. God was the light. But He established the day/night cycle. That’s why it says in verse 5 there was evening and there was morning. 

1 John 1:5

^… God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

Jesus said He is the light of the world, and then called us the same, teaching that we should reflect His light.

Psalms 104:2

Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:

God’s very essence is light, and here He shined upon His creation for the first time. He didn’t require the sun in order to provide light. It wasn’t created until day 4. He appointed it to take over in His stead, but He won’t need it forever.

Revelation 21:23

And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

vv. 4-5     God called it a Day! And we still call it a day. And if that’s not a normal day with evening and morning, with light and dark…if it’s actually eons of time going by, with billions of years of evolution taking place, we would have a very strong case to say, God, you deceived me! You tricked me with your wording. You talked about days and nights and evenings and mornings and those 7 days making up a week, and all the while you hid some very important details about what you really were doing for billions of years.

No, the simple truth is written down for us by the only eyewitness. He said what He meant and meant what He said.

Let’s go to day 2.  God continued to shape those elements into a habitable environment for the life that He would create. 

vv. 6-8     Day one, God separated light from darkness. Day two, God separated heaven from earth. The firmament is the separation between waters below and waters above. It’s a sky…an atmosphere. Day three, as we shall see, God separated water on earth from dry land.  So days 1-3 are a series of separations.  Firmament = expanse. It’s the atmosphere…the sky, and it continues up into space.

On day one the earth was covered all with water.  On day two, God separated that water into two places.  That’s what it’s saying here.  He put an expanse called the firmament in between and some water was above and some remained on the earth.

Now the word “firmament” is the Hebrew word raqiya.  It means spread out thinness.  The picture is of a thin area that God just carves right through the waters that surround the earth. 

v. 8 uses the word Heaven. It’s the first heaven, the atmosphere. The second heaven is space, or the stellar heaven, from verse 1. The third heaven is God’s abode; what John saw, and where Paul was caught up to, the city of God. I’m going to live there forever!

v. 8 is the first heaven of our atmosphere separating man’s level from outer space. It’s the realm of the birds which will soon be created. But it’s referred to as water that is above. What’s that about? We know that there is water in the air.  We feel the rain. 

Many believe a controversial theory that originally there was a canopy of water high above the clouds; vapor, frozen, crystallized. A sort of greenhouse that held warmth in, kept radiation out, and diffused light. They suggest this is why animals and man lived so long and plants as well.  You had reptiles, which never stop growing, living long enough to become the dinosaurs whose bones we now find fossilized. Of course, so many species didn’t survive for long after the flood. We also find fossils of dragonflies with two-foot wingspans and millipedes over eight feet. The Bible speaks of giants in those days, and it’s a source of great wonder.

With it would come increased oxygen like a hyperbaric chamber. You had people living long enough to become like Methuselah, 900-plus years old because they were shielded from ultra-violet light because of this water canopy.  And then at the flood, that canopy burst loose and drowned the earth, along with the tectonic cataclysm that occurred underneath the earth that broke up the basic elements of the earth and created the post-flood environment.

But we can’t know that for certain.  There’s nothing specific here about that. Matter of fact, there’s a lot of holes you can poke in the canopy theory. We don’t know for certain how different the world was before the flood.

What we DO know is that at the flood when God moved to drown the earth, massive tectonic changes happened to the continents and vast amounts of water rose from under the earth. Most of the water rose, rather than fell. But the very crust of the Earth radically moving would lead to volcanism beyond imagination which would affect the air and certainly could melt frozen vapor above which would then gather together as liquid or freeze as solid and be heavy enough to then fall to the Earth. We DO know that lifespans went way down post-flood. We don’t have explanation of why so we can only guess.

v. 7 ends “and it was so.”  Is that redundant?  No, it serves a very necessary purpose.  There is no such comment in verse 3.  God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”  It doesn’t say, “And it was so.”

I’ll tell you why.  That little phrase used here in verse 9, verse 11, verse 15, and verse 24 is used to affirm something that is fixed, something that doesn’t change, something that has remained for all time.  You can’t say that after verse 3, “Let there be light and there was light,” cause there’s light and darkness, light and darkness, light and darkness.  It’s not fixed.  But when you say God created the heavens, that’s fixed.  “And it was so” lends itself to the understanding of the firm and fixed and unchanging nature of that element of creation.

Notice that God doesn’t say it was good yet.  He didn’t say it on day one.  He didn’t say it on day two.  He won’t say it until verse 10 when the earth is habitable.  Then He’ll say “It was good,” only after it’s finally shaped into its habitable condition. 

Here’s the psalmist’s praiseful recollection of God shining His light, stretching out heaven, and taking the water to the upper chambers. 

Psalms 104:1-3

Bless the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty. 2 Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: 3 Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind:

What a great God we serve! We will worship Him forever, so we might as well start now.

Psalms 19:1

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Psalms 8:3-4

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; ⁴ What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? [Ours is a visited planet!]

He came to save you and me, His fallen creation, who choose sin. He loves us. Consider the heavens, and allow Him to save you unto His heaven!

Or, give evolution the throne and you set the Bible on the shelf and you court disaster. Give it the throne in the first few verses of the first page of the first book of the Bible and you’ve abdicated at the very outset. We cannot allow our theology to be given a footstool while science ascends the throne.

God made us in His image, a 3 part being of body, soul, and spirit. But because of the fall we have a sin nature, and our spirit is dead, so we are incomplete. We have a body that will only exist for a time, a soul that will exist forever, somewhere, and that location is determined by whether our spirit is quickened, made alive, born again. That happens when we repent of sin, believe, and are saved. We are complete then in God’s image.

Time, space, and matter. One day all that God created will come to an end, and God will recreate a new heaven and a new earth. WHAT, WHERE, AND WHEN.

The what, matter, will all be dissolved with a fervent heat. Our bodies will be no more. We will be given glorified bodies, with our same likeness, made perfectly in His image.

The where, space, will be His eternal kingdom.

And the when, time…well, time will be no more. Jesus said, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” Our timeless God, who created time, sent His Son who stepped into time to redeem us. One day it will be the last day…the evening and the morning were the last day. The Lamb will be the eternal light of forever heaven that is timeless. And there will be no more night!