God is so wonderful! He is majestic and powerful. He is the One Who Was, and Is, and Is to Come. Before the world had life, He was the life. I want us to understand that this Holy God who wants to have a relationship with us is so great that He is the only one who can create something out of the void. He is the true Almighty Creator.
The Bible is divided into two major sections: the Old Testament and the New Testament. Each of these Testaments are divided into books. There are 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the new. Each book is then divided into chapters, much like books today, and then once again divided into verses. Right now, we will focus on the Old Testament. We will begin with the books of Moses, also known as the Pentateuch, or the Torah. The very first book in the Bible is aptly entitled Genesis, which means "beginning." Quite appropriately, that is where we will begin our Bible study. These first couple blogs or so, we will focus on creation itself.
Genesis 1:1 states that, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Before anything else, God was. The earth was not, the heavens were not, just God. And He is very creative and wanted to do something with that creativity. He decided to create the earth and all that surrounds it.
Verse 2 states that "the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." God created this earth, but there was not yet any true form to it. It was empty. No light was shed upon it. It was completely dark and barren, but He was just getting started. In fact, the verse goes on to say that "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Looking into the Hebrew, transliterated as raw-khaf (emphasis on the second syllable), the word "moved" means to hover, to brood over, to flutter, to shake. God took an active part in his creation, in forming it just the way He wanted it to be.
One of my favorite verses is also one of the most widely known verses in the Bible, taught in children's church around the world, and even common knowledge to those outside of Christianity. It is verse 3. "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." God said it, and there it was, just like that. It wasn't even a snap of His fingers. He just spoke it into being. In a couple days, we'll be coming back to this verse, because it holds more importance than what we already see here, and it's exciting to realize that God repeats Himself and His plan throughout the Word in such a fantastic way!
God saw that the light was good. He didn't say it was awesome, He didn't pat Himself and tell Himself what a wonderful creator He was; He just looked down and saw that it was good. He doesn't exaggerate; He tells it like it is. To Him, it was good. And He chose to separate the light from the darkness. This is another thing to keep in mind for later. When it was light, there was no darkness. God gave them separate names. He called the light "Day," and He called the darkness "Night." There was evening, and there was morning. That was the first day.
I love how He ends His day in joy, in light. I think we may have it backwards. We say that the day begins with the sunrise, or with our alarm going off in the morning, and that it ends with the sunset, in darkness, in weariness, in going to bed. But it all begins in our weakness, in our weariness, in our understanding that we need His light in our lives, that something is missing. Then He shows up, commands light to appear, and we are refreshed, strengthened, walking joyfully in the perfect path He has chosen for us.
The end of the first day was the dawn of a new era, for it was the beginning of God's Holy revelation to us. He separates light from darkness. Where there is light, there can be no darkness. Shadows only come because something is standing in the way of something and blocking the light from hitting it. But if you remove the obstacle, all things are revealed.
We are called to live in the light, not in the shadows. In the Bible, God says that "the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." (Proverbs 4:18) First there was darkness, and then God created the light to shine. As we will discover over the next couple of weeks, we are born into darkness, into sin. But God has such a grand plan for us to be able to come into His light and to receive cleansing from that sin so that only His light will shine in us. He always makes a way and His way is perfect.
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