The creation of the heavens and the earth is recorded in the first chapter of Genesis. Throughout the rest of the Bible, the authors refer back to creation as the beginning of everything, including time.
What is the doctrine of creation?
The doctrine of creation refers to God’s acts of creating out of nothing everything that exists in the heavens and the earth.
The doctrine of creation reveals some important aspects about God.
First, we see that God is transcendent. This means He is outside time and space, and far beyond us. And yet, at the same time, we see that God is immanent. This means He is also involved with His creation shaping it, designing it, and engaging it. We see Him talking to man and woman on a personal level.
The doctrine of creation includes the absolute power or omnipotence of God. His ability to create simply by speaking things into existence is an act of unlimited power.
God also has complete freedom in creating; no one required Him to create the world the way He created it, when He created, or in the order He created it.
Finally, the doctrine of creation is directly related to the doctrine of Revelation. God designed the world so that He could be perceived in it. He created people who could perceive both General and Special Revelation. Then He spoke to them directly so that they would know who He is and what He has done, ultimately leading to worship.
What do other authors in the Bible say about creation?
1. God created the universe out of nothing by the power of His word; this reveals His transcendent power. Nevertheless, He created everything for men and women to be able to walk with Him and know Him; this reveals His immanent presence.
Read Hebrews 11:1-8, 13-16 – Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going…
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
Why is faith important to understanding creation?
Faith is trusting that God’s word is powerful, and that what He has told us is accurate.
How is a faith based on accepting the reality of God’s actions in history different from blind faith?
The power of faith does not come from inside a person, but from the dependability and power of the person being trusted. Blind faith often refers to an irrational trust of someone who cannot do what is expected of them. The author of Hebrews, however, presents a long list of people who trusted God would do what He said He would do, and were vindicated for it.
Some people have said that God created the universe out of pre-existing materials. Does this passage speak to that question?
The author tells us that God made the world just using His words, bringing everything into existence from nothing. During the time the author of Hebrews was writing, there were different ideas about creation, including the idea that the gods made the world out of things that already existed. He is therefore speaking directly against this idea in this passage.
What do these verses tell us about the relationship between faith and God’s power?
Anyone who can create everything out of nothing has absolute power. He can therefore be absolutely trusted.
Why does the author mention all these different men from the first chapters of Genesis? Would it make any difference to the author’s argument if the people and events he is listing were not real?
These men are examples of people staying faithful to God and His word in extremely difficult circumstances. If they did not actually live and do what the author says they did, it would make an enormous difference. The author wants his readers to know that if God related this way in the past to people who had faith in Him, He will do the same in the present.
Why does the doctrine of creation always need to rely on the miraculous acts of God?
Creation is something far beyond our experience and comprehension. As Dr. Burgess explains, even the things we take for granted are much more complex than we realize. Furthermore, God’s act of creating was a way of revealing Himself. Whenever God reveals Himself, there is some miraculous aspect to it beyond our comprehension. This is why Paul compares receiving the knowledge of Christ to God’s first act of creation: “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.” (2 Cor 4:6)
2. God created everything in six normal days to provide a structure of time for man to live by. In other words, time was made for man, not man for time.
Read Exodus 20:8-11 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 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.”
This is the fourth commandment God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai. Why is this an important verse for understanding the duration of time in which creation happened?
God is revealing to the Israelites that His command about work and rest for a normal week is patterned on His own schedule of work and rest during the first seven days of creation.
If God is all-powerful, He could have created the world and rested in any amount of time. Why does He make a connection between the creation week and seven days?
God chose to create and rest in seven normal days to provide us the model for our weekly cycle. He even created mornings and evenings on the days before there was a sun and moon to show that these are essential structures for measuring time which He built into the creation. After all, it would seem no less strange to an Israelite than it does to us to have a source of light, and mornings and evenings, without the sun. Yet God chose to create this way for a purpose: He is the ultimate source of light for the world. God reveals the basic connection between our weekly cycle and the creation week in the fourth commandment.
How was God providing us a pattern of work and rest in our own lives? Why is this an important pattern for us to follow?
Just as God designed the eye to see light, and the body to digest food, He designed our ability to work and rest to fit into specific cycles that are good for us. If we do not pursue work and rest throughout the week, then we will be unhealthy; if we work seven days and do not rest, we will also be unhealthy. During the French Revolution, the government attempted to change the week to 10 days; it was an utter failure and they had to return to a normal seven day cycle of work and rest.
It is interesting to note that most major divisions of time are based on astronomical cycles (the day, the month, and the year), but the seven-day week is not based on anything we can observe. Instead, the week goes back to the very first week of creation. We therefore have a constant reminder that God structured the creation of the entire universe on a pattern designed for our well-being: six days of work and one of rest.
Read Mark 2:27-28 – One Sabbath [Jesus] was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”… And [Jesus] said to them,“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
What does this tell us about the purpose of the days of the week?
The days of the week were designed for us. God created those time cycles and worked within them to provide us a chronological structure for our lives.
What point in time is Jesus referring back to when He says “The Sabbath was made for man?”
Jesus is referring back to the seventh day of the creation week in Genesis 2:2-3. Moses tells us that “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.”
What does Moses mean when he says in Psalm 90:2-4: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You return man to dust and say, ‘Return, O children of man!’ For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.”
Sometimes people talk about “God’s time” as being a long age, but that is inaccurate: God is not bound by time.
In other words, to man a thousand years is always a thousand years and a day is always a day, but to God, who stands outside of time, they are the same. This means that when time indicators are given in the Bible, they are intended to communicate to us the timescale we all experience.
God made time for man to live within; it something uniquely designed for us. Although God and angelic beings live outside of time, they can interact within time.
At some point, however, God takes man out of time to be with Him. This is what we see in Genesis 5: “When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.”
Why is time so important in Scripture?
Because God reveals Himself to man in time. This is the very strong connection between the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of Revelation.
3. God’s original creation was ‘very good’ and operated on a different set of relationships than we currently experience. In His goodness, God provided Adam and Eve everything they would need to know and worship Him.
Read Genesis 1:28-2:4 – And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
What do these verses tell us about the nature and purpose of God’s original creation?
God’s original creation was very good. It was created not only for our benefit and use, but for the benefit of living creatures.
If, in the original creation, mankind and animals were only to eat plants, what does that point to?
It points to a world very different from ours, one without carnivory and animal death. As Dr. Kurt Wise points out in Is Genesis History?, this is somehow a world without natural evil. We cannot understand from a physical perspective how this could have been because we are on the other side of the Fall of mankind (something we will discuss in another lesson).
Nevertheless, we are given a hint of this unfallen world—and a hint of the new heavens and new earth that we look forward to—when God tells the prophet Isaiah: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:6-9)
Was the seventh day also a normal day?
Yes, the seventh day was also a normal day. This is in line with Moses’s comments in Exodus 20 and Jesus’s comments in Mark 2. The idea of God’s rest, however, is associated with the heavenly rest that believers have in store for them. This is what the author of Hebrews is referring to in chapter 4. Some have suggested that the seventh day is different from the other days in terms of duration, but there is nothing anywhere in the Bible to suggest that. Rather, the seventh day is a normal day set apart because God made it special.
Closing Thoughts
If God were not so interested in time, He would not have talked about it so much in His word. The fact that He has, however, should make us take note of what He says about it and what our response to it should be. There is no better way to end a discussion of time than with the prayer of Moses to God: “For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:9-11)
