Many of us know how this starts. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.” This is a perfect beginning to this journey we will be taking. So simple, yet so wonderous.
Genesis 1 starts giving a detailed account of the order in which God created all we can see and sense throughout the Universe. It is like watching a masterful painter being deliberate with every stroke of the brush. Start with a void. add light and darkness. Then create Heaven and after some rest create with water and land Earth, including plants. After some more rest create a sky with a sun and stars. Rest again and then create sea animals and birds. After another rest, finish the painting with all kinds of animals culminating in man. Then rest, enjoying the masterpiece that was finally finished for all to enjoy.
With each step it was good. Even creating every living thing on Earth was good. But when God created man, it was VERY good. Why? I think it goes back to Genesis 1:26 “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” That means each and every one of us were made in the image of God.
In addition, note that God refers to Himself as “We” and “Our”. AS we journey further, we will learn more about this, but it is the first instance of God having multiple natures – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We were created with the intention of using those natures to reflect God to all of creation. Perfect man without sin, reflecting a perfectly righteous and Holy God to all of creation.
There are those who wonder why I believe this when science tells us that creation started through “the Big Bang” or evolution. The answer to that is quite simple. First, space for all intents and purposes is a vacuum. There is not oxygen for us to breath. And energy would be required for a “big bang”. Yet, I have never seen energy that was created in a vacuum without something that sets it in motion. So if there was a “big bang”, i believe it was because God said “Let there be…”
Second, for the big bang of evolution to create life, we would have to believe that chaos created complexity and order. But that just does not happen. When a tornado strikes a house, life does not generate from that. Only destruction. For life to form with all the complexity, order, and synchronization that goes into life as we know it, everything down to the atoms in everything had to have a creator who was intricately forming it. I see no other way for life to begin.
Genesis 2 starts with a summarization of creation from Genesis 1. There are some that call this a contradiction and it is a “new narrative with a whole new order of creation”. That is simply not true. After God made man, God created the Garden of Eden, in which He created every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food, including the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But that was for the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:8-9). We know that there were already plants and trees from the third day of creation (Genesis 1;11-12). But this Garden was made especially for man. It was a home.
After placing the man in the Garden to keep it and care for it, God gives His first command…to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and if he disobeys the man will die (Genesis 2:17). This will become very important shortly in our journey.
At this point again, we see God forming from the ground every beast of the field and every bird of the air (Genesis 2 19) and brought them to the man. And as I already pointed out, this was WITHIN the Garden. We already know that there were animals roaming the earth and birds in the skies prior to this (Genesis 1:20-25). But God was using these animals created in the garden for a purpose. God was showing the man of his need for a help mate that was perfect for him (Genesis 2:20). And while man named each type of animal, there was not a suitable mate for him,
Man was then put to sleep, and using a rib God made a woman and brought her to the man. Notice his reaction to this gift. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” and it is declared “Therefore shall man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife. And they shall become one flesh.”
I can relate to this. I dearly love my dog, Daisy Mae, and am often overwhelmed by the joy that she brings me each and every day. But it does not come even close to the level of the relationship I have with my wife that God gave me. Sure, she and I have had our struggles. We still do at times. But I would not trade her for all the riches in the world. And I imagine that is how Adam felt when God gave him Eve. He cared for each animal he named, but they did not come close to the helpmate he found in Eve.
My Bible Journey In A Year (Chronological) 