
GENESIS 1
(Please click on the chapter to read from the Bible)
Genesis chapter 1 is one of the most important chapters in the Bible. It starts the history of mankind from “the beginning.” “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Also God is seen at the very beginning of our history as not only being present at the beginning, but also as the One who caused everything created to come into existence.
This chapter points to God as our creator. What is amazing is that we can see the presence of all three persons of the God-head; the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit represented by the one supreme title, “God.”
It is easy to grasp the truth that Jehovah, the father is God who created the heaven and the earth. The Holy Spirit, also, is the Spirit of God who moved upon the face of the waters in Genesis 1:2.
How does Jesus, the Son of God come into the picture? Colossians 1:16, talking about Jesus says that “all things were created by him, and for him.” John 1:3 confirms that same truth about Jesus that “All things were made by him.” Therefore Jesus was in the picture as God also.
At the very beginning of the Bible, the Trinity is presented to us in-between the lines; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, working as one in the creation of man when they boldly make the statement “Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness” (Genesis 1:26).
One amazing fact about the earth that many christians do not realize is that it is older than 6000 years. Genesis 1:1 summarizes the story of the creation of all things as God the creator created the heaven (which comprises the heavily bodies; namely, stars, galaxies, constellations, etc. that exist) and the earth which we live on AT THE BEGINNING of His creation. This BEGINNING goes thousands of years, before our creation. For these thousands of years, the earth was “without form and void…And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
However, when God commanded; “Let there be light”, it marked the first day of the history of the earth (that was without form and void for thousands of years). Everything that God created from this command made the earth habitable to man.
But why would the Spirit of God be present in the formless and empty earth? It is because this planet was to be the home of a people that He was going to create in His own image; a very special people that He loved even before He made them.
In these beautiful lines that account our origin as humans, we see God creating a timeline for the earth: “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gen. 1:5). A day was made of evening first and then morning, and not the opposite. That is why we Observe the Sabbath starting from Friday evening, and not Saturday morning. He also created the sun and the moon to mark the season, days and year pattern.
One important thing that we should not miss is that at the end of each day, God saw what He had done in that day that it was GOOD. However, at the end of the sixth day, He saw that everything that He had made was VERY GOOD, perfect, without fault. This means that there was no deficiency, whatsoever with God’s creation.
In the chronology of God’s creation on earth, He made everything that man would need with words out of His mouth, then He created man with His hands in His image. After that, he gave man dominion over everything on earth, including the earth itself. Nothing on earth was to be more powerful than man; be it a living creature, mountain, sea or even weather. It was only after man sinned that he lost his dominion to the devil who caused him to sin.
-Prince Boakye