GENESIS 1
In the book of Genesis we have brought before us the beginning of those things which work out in result in the Revelation. It is a most important book as the basis of all Scripture, and as presenting in principle most of the great subjects of Scripture. Creation, sin, judgment, promise, sacrifice, resurrection, God’s election of grace and His covenant, the separation of His people from the world, the pilgrim life of faith, translation, the final bringing of Israel and the nations into blessing under Christ as typified by Joseph, all have a place here. And there are many precious types of Christ and the church.
It is especially important that we should be established in the truth of this first chapter in an infidel age like the present, when all kinds of theories as to the origin of things are abroad. We need to be in the faith of God’s creative wisdom and power. It is “by faith we apprehend that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that that which is seen should not take its origin from things which appear” (Hebrews 11: 3). I doubt whether it lies in the power of man’s mind to conceive creation; it is a thought which can only be entertained really by faith. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. Man’s mind leaves God out, and wearies itself in endless speculations; faith brings Him in, and everything is simple. No one need be afraid that discoveries of geology, or any other science, will ever shake the truth of this chapter. It is God’s record, and all true science will be found in harmony with it. Any theory which definitely conflicts with the account here given is certainly wrong.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. That is all we get about the original creation. Then in the second verse we find things fallen into a state of ruin. “And the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep”. This was certainly not as it was created — for we are expressly told that “not as waste [the same word as in Genesis 1: 2] did he create it” (Isaiah 45: 18). The same words ‘waste’ and ‘empty’ are used of Edom (Isaiah 34: 11), and of Israel (Jeremiah 4: 23), when those nations have come under Jehovah’s vengeance and fierce anger. So that a solemn change had come about between the first and second verses of Genesis 1. We do not know what length of time elapsed between those two verses; possibly the long periods of which geologists speak might come in there. In verse 2 we find the earth a scene of disorder and darkness. It is in such a scene that God’s movements and activities are presented as taking place — activities which come to an end on the sixth day, so that on the seventh day God rested.
This indicates at the very outset the whole subject of Scripture. It is the unfolding of how God has worked, and will work, in a scene of moral disorder to bring about a state of things in which He can rest — a scene of order and life and fruitfulness where all will be [p. 3] under the dominion of Man in His image and after His likeness. This blessed end will be reached in the world to come, when God will “head up all things in the Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth”. This is the “good pleasure which he purposed in himself for the administration of the fulness of times”, Ephesians 1: 9, 10. Thus Genesis 1 has in view the ordering of the world to come, and the different elements which are essential to it. God had the end before Him from the very beginning. So that we have here, not only a divine account of how the earth was prepared to be the dwelling-place of man, but, underlying that, much that is of spiritual import. I think we might expect that it would be so, that there would be some correspondence or analogy between God’s material works and His actings in the spiritual sphere. This chapter makes us acquainted in a perfect and divine way with the ordering of the present material creation, but it also suggests typically great principles which are of the deepest interest and importance.
In “the earth ... waste and empty”, and “darkness ... on the face of the deep”, we behold a scene in which God could find no pleasure or rest — a striking figure of the state of man as fallen under the power of sin, Satan, and death, and without the knowledge of God. But it is blessed to see that, though God could not rest in such a state of things, He did move and work there. “The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters”. The word used is suggestive of affectionate interest, for it is the same as in Deuteronomy 32: 11, “As the eagle stirreth up its nest, hovereth over its young”. It has something to say of the solicitude of divine love which [p. 4] would put forth its activities where all was ruin in order to bring about conditions which could be pronounced ‘very good’, and in which God could rest.
Before the work of the six days began there was this primary movement of the Spirit of God. In a fallen and ruined world, where all have come under sin and death, there must be a movement of the Holy Spirit in the souls of men as the starting point of any result for God. The new birth must be effected; otherwise divine light would shine in vain. In all ages and dispensations this has been essential, and ever will be. We read that “Jesus himself did not trust himself to them, because he knew all men, and that he had not need that any should testify of man, for himself knew what was in man”, John 2: 24, 25. There is nothing in man that God can trust until men are born anew. Of the natural man it is said, “There is not a righteous man, not even one; there is not the man that understands, there is not one that seeks after God ... There is no fear of God before their eyes”, Romans 3: 10 - 18. Therefore God has to prepare the way for divine light to come in by that mysterious operation which cannot be traced. “It is needful that ye should be born anew. The wind blows where it will, and thou hearest its voice, but knowest not whence it comes and where it goes: thus is every one that is born of the Spirit”, John 3: 7, 8. The preaching of the gospel would effect nothing if God did not move sovereignly in the souls of men by His Spirit causing them to be born anew. Man, the fallen sinner, is, as such, hopelessly lost, for he does not desire God, and when the light of God in Christ is brought to him he hates and rejects it.
The photographer’s plate has to be put into a bath of solution to make it sensitive to light, and it is by new birth that man becomes sensitive to divine light, so that when that light shines for him it stirs his conscience and moves his heart in an effective way God-ward. But apart from new birth even the shining of divine light would effect nothing, for there would be nothing in man to appreciate or respond to it. So that the new birth is a fundamental necessity.
Then on the first day “God said, Let there be light. And there was light”. God commanding light is very significant of the bringing in of Christ, for all true light that has shone for man has been the light of Christ. He shone in promise four thousand years before He appeared in Person. All through the Old Testament the light was shining more and more in promise, but now that Christ has come, and has died and risen, and been glorified at God’s right hand, there is perfect day. “It is the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”, 2 Corinthians 4: 6. That is the full glory of the light. But the light was ‘good’ from the very outset: how good, for example, was the light of Genesis 3: 15 and chapter 22: 18!
When light was brought in “God divided between the light and the darkness”. This is a fundamental principle; light and darkness could not go on together. Satan is always trying to mix them. But Paul says, “Be not diversely yoked with unbelievers; for what participation is there between righteousness and lawlessness? or what fellowship of light with darkness? and what consent of Christ with Beliar, or what part [p. 6] for a believer along with an unbeliever?” (2 Corinthians 6: 14, 15.) And in Isaiah 5: 20 we read, “Woe unto them who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness”. It is important to call things by their right names. “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night”. As Christ becomes light to our hearts we discern that whatever is not according to Christ is darkness, and therefore we cannot have fellowship with it. The rejection of Christ has left the world, as such, in darkness, but He is coming again, and will bring in the day. In the meantime believers are of the day — sons of light. Hence they are to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. People in the world may talk of progress and increased light, but the sons of light regard it as darkness because Christ is not in it. They confess Christ, and stand in separation from the moral darkness around them.
The words, “There was evening, and there was morning”, are six times repeated in this chapter, but there is no mention of ‘evening’ in connection with the seventh day. This is in keeping with the fact that in the millennium there is no evening lamb (see Ezekiel 46: 13 - 15). The thought of evening drops out. On the other hand Daniel 8: 14 has the remarkable expression ‘evening mornings’ (see margin to A.V.) in reference to the time of apostasy. All those mornings have really the shade of evening upon them, for there is no divine light in them. Indeed all man’s mornings are really evenings. Every now and then men think they are going to have a new day by some new form of government, new legislation, education, a league of nations, or something of that kind. But man’s new days are all evening-mornings; they are mornings which have the shade of evening on them from their very dawn. The true Light is absent from them. But a day is coming whose morning will be without clouds, ushered in by the rising of the Sun of righteousness, and there is no evening to that day. It passes, so far as the saints are concerned, into the endless day of eternity.
On the second day God brings in the firmament, or expanse, and it becomes a division between what is under it and what is above it, and God calls it Heavens. It is, I suppose, really the atmosphere; a sphere quite distinct from the ‘waters’ which it divides. It speaks morally, one would suggest, of a heavenly character of things brought in, which becomes the native air in which faith can breathe freely. We have remarked how God gave the light of Christ in precious promises, but He also gave from very early days to His saints the thought of what was heavenly, and this became a very separating principle, as we see in Hebrews 11: 8 - 16. Abraham waited for the city which has foundations, and that city is a heavenly one. Isaac and Jacob were heirs of promise with Abraham, and they sought a heavenly country. They breathed, we might say, the atmosphere of heavenly hopes, and its separating power made them “strangers and sojourners on the earth”. This dividing principle between what is ‘under’ and what is ‘above’ has made its power known from that day to this, and has marked off the saints as heavenly in hope and character.
If we really have the light of the knowledge of God in Christ we need a new atmosphere. There is no one in the world to share or to sympathise with our joys or our exercises; we can only find our suited [p. 8] atmosphere in the circle of the brethren. How could a man truly converted to God breathe in an atmosphere made up of idolatry, hatred, and lawlessness? He longs to be with his own company; he loves the brethren, and thus has evidence that he has passed from death unto life.
Then on the third day the dry land appears. In the dry land I think we may see a figure of what subsists in stability, and becomes fruitful for God. It may be taken as typical of the special place which Israel had as divinely called, separated from the nations around them, and ordered by God. We cannot fail to see in Scripture how distinctive was the place of Israel, and how it was God’s thought that they should be a divinely ordered and fruitful people, so as to show forth His praise before the nations. As the custodian and cherisher of the promises, and partaking morally of the stabilities of those promises, and as ordered by the divine law and testimony, Israel would answer to the ‘dry land’. This was only true, however, in reality in a small remnant; Israel after the flesh failed to answer to the divine thought. They were under sin and death as other men were, and were law-breakers also. The consideration of this prepares us to appreciate the fact that the third day has often in Scripture a reference to resurrection.
The promises given to Abraham brought in the light of an order of things which will be established in the world to come, and which is dependent — man being what he is — on the coming in of Christ, and His death and resurrection. Abraham had to learn that the God whom he believed was One who quickens the dead. The promise came to one whose own body [p. 9] was already become dead so that he might learn at the very outset the character of the power which would substantiate the promise. That he had learned the lesson was plainly seen when he offered up Isaac. The promises which he had received to himself he held in the faith of God’s resurrection power, so that he could offer up Isaac, and receive him, in a figure, from among the dead. Thus faith was taught to look for the establishment of all that was in the thought and promise of God by a power that could act where, on man’s side, all was death. It was not only that a man and his seed were separated from the confusion and idolatry of the Babel world, but they were taught something of the fact that death was upon themselves, and that therefore all divine promise and blessing must be substantiated in resurrection power.
Later on, at a new starting-point of Israel’s history, Jehovah gave them the passover — a plain typical lesson as to their own state under death and judgment, and that Jehovah’s promises and covenant could only be established on the ground of the death of Christ for them. And just as all that they were in the past was based typically upon this, they will have to come to the apprehension of it in moral reality in a future day before they will be truly seen as a divinely ordered and fruitful people.
Christ has come in infinite grace into the death that lay upon man, but He has emerged from death to become the stable and imperishable foundation of an order of things marked by fruitfulness and life. We have come to ‘sure mercies’ now, to things which are ordered in all things and sure. We can be to Another now, even to Him “who has been raised up from among the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God”, Romans 7: 4. Consequent upon the, ‘dry land’ appearing, we find “herb producing seed”, and “fruit-trees yielding fruit after their kind, the seed of which is in them, on the earth”. Nothing but what stands in relation to Christ is really stable or fruitful for God. The assembly is in relation to Him now; Israel will be in a future day; then as having the sure mercies of David in a risen Christ they will be stable and fruitful for God’s pleasure. Meanwhile the saints of the assembly have that place.
Then on the fourth day lights are set in the expanse of the heavens “to give light on the earth ... the great light to rule the day, and the small light to rule the night, and the stars”. This seems clearly to intimate the thought of God that the earth should be in the light of what is set in the heavens, and under heavenly rule or influence. Jesus glorified is ‘the great light’ in the heavens. When He was here “the dayspring from on high” visited men, and He was “the light of the world”, but the moral darkness in which He appeared was so dense that it did not apprehend the light. He is now as a risen and glorified Man in heaven, and in the world to come He will shine forth publicly as the Sun of righteousness. But in the meantime those who believe on Him are in the light of His shining. “The world sees me no longer; but ye see me” (John 14: 19); “We see Jesus ... crowned with glory and honour”, Hebrews 2: 9. What will be true in another day of Jerusalem, “Arise, shine, for thy light is come”, is true spiritually for His saints now. “Wherefore he says, Wake up thou that sleepest, and arise up from among the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee”, Ephesians 5: 14.
It is because the assembly is in the light of Christ [p. 11] that she answers to the moon — the subordinate light. Israel will also be in the place of ‘the small light’ in a future day, when as the ‘new moon’ (Psalm 81: 3) she will come afresh into the shining of Christ. The moon only shines as she is in the light of the sun; so the church abiding in the light of Christ becomes a luminary through the night of Christ’s rejection. The saints are in the light of the day; indeed, they have been begotten by that light; they are sons of light and of the day; hence their walk is to be of a character suited to the day. They are to shine as heavenly luminaries in the world; Philippians 2: 15.
Christ is the Sun of the spiritual universe, and all other light is His light reflected, whether in the assembly, or Israel, or individual saints. While the sun is absent the moon shines; so heavenly light now shines through saints of the assembly; and by and by when the moon has gone the stars will appear. Daniel 12: 3 says, “And they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the expanse; and they that turn the many to righteousness as the stars, for ever and ever”. That refers to the remnant of instructed ones in a future day. Christ has gone, and the church will soon go; then after that other saints will come into view as vessels of divine light, as we see in and after Revelation 7.
The lights are made, and set, to rule. It will be so in the world to come; the nations will walk by the light of the heavenly city. There will be no insubordination or lawlessness; they will walk by the light of God which shines in the city. In the present day the assembly rules in the sense of shedding abroad holy and divine influences upon men. There is a shining out of divine light from those who are walking [p. 12] in righteousness, holiness and love. It has often been noticed that men who are in the habit of using bad language will refrain from doing so in the presence of a Christian. There is an influence there. The saint in the light of Christ is clothed with shining armour; he has on the armour of light, and it affects people: How often those in difficulty or danger are glad to have a Christian near them! They recognise the shining, and know that there is something beneficial in it.
Then we have the thought of the lights being “for signs and for seasons, ... and to divide between the light and the darkness”. This is most important in a moral sense. The Christian should be intelligent as to times and seasons. The sun set in this world by its rejection of Christ. Now the assembly is a luminary as the vessel of the Holy Spirit; there is a divine Person dwelling here in the saints, and divine light is shining for men through a vessel that corresponds anti-typically to the moon. By-and-by light will shine through other saints. Some years ago a book was written to prove that the millennium had come! He could hardly have known the seasons, or the difference between day and night; subsequent events must have rather upset his theories!
The first four days may be regarded as giving the establishment of the conditions of life; then on the fifth and sixth days life itself is introduced. The conditions of life are light, atmosphere, food, and rule. The light in which spiritual life is possible is the revelation of God. Then an atmosphere suited to those who know God is found, as we have already observed, in the circle of the brethren, where spiritual affections are in activity. Then life must be sustained by food;
[p. 13] this is very essential. John 6 speaks of food — the bread of life. And, finally, there is heavenly rule; there is no lawlessness in the sphere of life. Darkness, ignorance of God, idolatry, hatred and lawlessness; all that is death. But when the light of God is brought in, love and obedience are set in movement in an appropriate atmosphere, and sustained by suitable food, and under heavenly rule, and there is life.
On the fifth and sixth days we view a scene teeming with life. God is the living God, and He delights in life; one is struck with that even in nature. God, having established the conditions of life, takes pleasure in exuberance of life, and in growth and increase. ‘Living souls’ are such as can enjoy the conditions of life. God’s thought even as to unintelligent creatures was that they should enjoy the conditions in which they were placed. As soon as living souls were created He blessed them; it was His first moral act; and the evidence of His blessing was fruitfulness and increase. This is the unfailing accompaniment of the energy of life. The conditions of life in a spiritual sense are now established, and our exercise should be to avail ourselves of them. In doing so we shall enjoy the blessing of God.
On the fifth day the waters swarm, and on the sixth day the earth brings forth living souls. Both the fish of the sea and the living creatures of the earth have been taken up by the wisdom of God as figures to set forth the present working of His grace. The fish in the sea represent men in their natural state and element, from which they have to be taken if they are to enter into the blessing of God’s kingdom. The Lord makes those who follow Him ‘fishers of men’ (Matthew 4: 19),
[p. 14] and the seine cast into the sea is one of the similitudes of the kingdom of the heavens. In this connection we find there are good fish and worthless, the good fish representing those in whom there is a divine work, who can be gathered into vessels. And no doubt the net full of great fishes drawn to the land in John 21 is a figure of the great gathering for millennial blessing in another day. The net does not break then, and there is no suggestion of any worthless fish in that net.
While speaking of the sea we may remark the striking fact that in the new earth “the sea exists no more”, Revelation 21: 1. The sea, and the life connected with it, is only for time; but the earth continues in the eternal state, it speaks of what is stable and abiding, what is really of a spiritual order. The spiritual alone is eternal.
Then the living creatures of the earth are seen in the vessel which descends “as a great sheet, bound by the four corners and let down to the earth”, for Peter’s instruction in Acts 10. Peter had to learn not to call any man common or unclean. He had to be moved away from his standpoint as a Jew, from which he regarded the Gentiles as unclean, and to come to a spiritual view of things, according to the universality of the thought of divine and heavenly grace. He had to learn the wide scope of grace, its universal bearing, and to see that God had brought in cleansing for men by the death of Christ so that even Gentiles might have the forgiveness of sins, and receive the Spirit through faith in Christ risen.
All the work of the six days, up to the point of man’s creation, was to provide a sphere where man could be set in dominion according to the thought of [p. 15] God. The creation of man was a most solemn and deliberate act. God, as it were, takes counsel with Himself as to it. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over the whole earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth”.
Adam was “the figure of him to come”; everything is to come under the dominion of Christ. In Psalm 8 it is said of the Son of man, “Thou hast made him to rule over the works of thy hands; thou hast put everything under his feet: sheep and oxen all of them, and also the beasts of the field; the fowl of the heavens, and the fishes of the sea, whatever passeth through the paths of the seas”. Every created being will be made subject to Christ. And we see in Adam as a figure the character of the influence which He will bring to bear.
The first revealed thought as to man was that he was to be the image — the visible representative — of God in the universe. God intended this peculiar dignity and greatness for the creature of His delight. But in this disclosure of the divine mind we must look beyond Adam to the One of whom he was the figure. God’s thought was to have a glorious Head of the whole living system, able to dominate all things and to hold them for His pleasure. Christ is the “image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation”, Colossians 1: 15. That is, when He comes in He takes the first place as Adam did in figure. Everything is to be gathered together in One; whether the heavenly or the earthly, all is to be centred in Christ. Indeed nothing is right in the universe that does not centre in Christ.
“No man hath seen God at any time”, John 1: 18.
[p. 16] That made it necessary that One should come in as the Image of the invisible God. “The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”. The God whom no one had seen has now been seen perfectly in a Man, One in whom has been fully set forth all that God is. It is necessary to be guarded when we speak of ‘likeness’ in relation to Christ because we must ever remember that Christ is God. And no doubt we may see the wisdom of the Spirit in the fact that though He is definitely spoken of in the New Testament as the ‘image’ of God, He is not so spoken of as the ‘likeness’. But we may contemplate Him as the blessed anointed Man who moved in love God-ward. “The Christ loved us, and delivered himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour”, Ephesians 5: 2. And He is able to give impulse to all that comes under His influence so that it may be found in moral correspondence with God. He will not only as the ‘Image’ irradiate the whole universe with the light of God, but He will give such an impulse God-ward that there will be ‘likeness’ — perfect moral correspondence — with God in the whole vast system of which He will be the glorious Head. This ‘likeness’ will all be derived from Him. God is going to bring all under the domination of that blessed Man.
And He dominates by love, for if He is the Image of God He is necessarily the setter forth of the love of God, for God is love. Image is the revelation side, and likeness is more the perfect correspondence with the revelation in a Man. Everything is to come under the influence and domination of that Man, and under His rule and Headship everything will be held for the pleasure of God. As we come under His rule and [p. 17] Headship everything is adjusted. One under the rule of Christ will be a good husband, father, mother, child or servant; whatever natural relation he is found in will be filled for the pleasure of God; and he will be right in the sphere of spiritual things too.
“Fill the earth, and subdue it”. That suggests power in Christ to subdue every contrary element; and then He will bring all into correspondence with Himself as Head. He will “transform our body of humiliation into conformity to his body of glory, according to the working of the power which he has, even to subdue all things to himself”, Philippians 3: 21. In the meantime subduing and transforming are going on now spiritually as the effect of the power of One who is the image and after the likeness of God; it is in bringing the blessed influence of God to bear that everything is subdued.
It is of interest to see that here the woman is, so to speak, included in the man. “Let us make man in our image ... and let them have dominion ... God created man ... male and female created he them”. The assembly is included in Christ; before the world’s foundation God had chosen the saints in Christ; Ephesians 1: 4. “Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself for the administration of the fulness of times; to head up all things in the Christ ... in him, in whom we have also obtained an inheritance, being marked out beforehand according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his own will”, Ephesians 1: 9 - 11. That answers to what we are reading in Genesis. We see Christ in universal Headship at the end of Ephesians 1, and the assembly with Him, and His fulness.
Then “God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it”. Blessing is on the line of increase and multiplication, for God is the living God, and He delights in what is living, and what multiplies; nothing is stagnant with Him. The very glory of the Son of man is that He can fill a world with fruit for God; He has gone into death for that. God delights greatly in the thought of increase; Christianity began with twelve men, and multiplication has gone on until at this moment there are holy myriads of saints on earth in spite of all that people say about the lack of conversions! God has brought in wonderful conditions of fruitfulness and multiplication in Christ, and every soul that is converted through divine grace is the proof of it. It is wonderful that through the blessing of God there are so many hearts able to take in what God is, and to enjoy it, and to give Him praise. That is the fruit God is seeking. God values the human heart; the heart of a creature made so as to be capable of knowing Him; the heart of a creature that has been sunk in the lowest depths, but now brought to God through redemption. God seeks to have such hearts to praise Him.
There was in Adam and Eve a power of natural life which has filled the earth. All the millions on earth are the fruit of that pair. It is a suggestion of the power of life in Christ — the Corn of Wheat that fell into the ground and died and brought forth much fruit. He is able through death to fill the universe with fruit for God.
If this power of life is to work in us we must have living food. So we get at the end of the chapter the thought of food. “I have given you every herb [p. 19] producing seed ... and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree producing seed: it shall be food for you”. It is herb producing seed, and fruit producing seed that are given to man for food. There is something living about seed; it is food that has the power of life in it. No one ever saw a more wonderful thing in the natural sphere than a seed; it is often a tiny thing, and yet who can tell the potentiality of it? There may be power in it to produce a forest that would cover the earth. It is important to see that man must have food that has the power of life in it; seed and fruit producing seed contain vital elements. They are marked by reproductive power.
Much spiritual weakness is traceable to the kind of food people live on. We must have sustainment. The Lord could say, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God”; and again, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of”; and again, “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me”. The thought of food is carried on into resurrection, for the Lord partook of food as risen; and even in the heavenly city there is the tree of life for food. All this shows what a far-reaching principle of sustainment is suggested by food.
It is important that we should get vital food. We should ask ourselves, Is there the principle of life in what I am feeding on? If not, it is no good. We should always look for the seed principle. Even for the beasts it was ‘every green herb’; they were to eat what was fresh and full of sap. If we want to be in spiritual freshness and vigour we must have fresh and living food.