Creation. Gen. 1.
THOSE who believe God’s word, know more about the creation than all the wise men who rely on their wisdom to find it out. “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear;” (Heb. 11: 3) that is, God spoke and they came into existence—made out of nothing. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” We are not told when it was created. Millions of years may have passed before what is mentioned in the rest of the chapter took place. We are not told of the condition of the earth, or of what changes it went through, except an allusion to it in Isaiah 45:1818For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else. (Isaiah 45:18), to let us know that God did not create it at the first, “without form and void.” It must therefore have fallen into that condition.
God begins to work and brings order out of confusion, fitting it for the habitation of man. Read what He did each day, and how He chose to do it. Then when it was all ready, God saw that it was good. (v. 25.) God had divided light from darkness, water from land, clouds from seas. He filled the earth with fruits and herbs—all kinds of food. He made the animals, the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, the beasts of the earth. The sun, moon and stars were set in their relation to the earth to order its time, before it was said, “Let us make man.” 26th v. The creation of man stands by itself and takes a higher character than the rest of God’s creation, and man is made in God’s image, after His likeness, and set over all creation as head. Then “God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.” The work was finished; and there was nothing to mar it. God rested the seventh day and blessed and sanctified it. How soon that rest was to be spoiled by man’s sin!
God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” We are here shown the Godhead (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) consulting and acting together. They act in unison in all they do, as we may see in studying the Bible. For instance, in Luke 15, the shepherd, the woman, and the father point to the Godhead’s love and compassion over returning sinners.
Now, creation has fallen through man’s sin, and God has begun a new one, for the old one cannot be mended again. Man cannot again be innocent, but God has brought in righteousness, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Yes, dear young friends, we need not fear to trust this Saviour God now. Christ is risen from the dead; “quickened by the spirit,” “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,” and “when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” God could speak world’s into existence, but to redeem our souls it needed that His own Son should die. Dear children, you are born into this fallen creation, sinners. Tell me, do you yet belong to God’s new creation? If you have trusted Jesus, you are a new creature in Christ Jesus.
“Jesus died, and we died with Him,
Buried in His grave we lay,
One with Him in resurrection,
Now in Him in heaven’s bright
day.”
ML 11/04/1900