In the Beginning: God Ordered The World

This sermon was first given at Sherwood Community Friends Church on Sunday, February 8 during our GENESIS: The Preface series. Watch it here.

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If you’ve ever moved homes—or even just tried to find one thing in a garage that’s turned into a black hole—you know this feeling.

You’re standing there… surrounded by stuff… and none of it is where it’s supposed to be. You’ve got boxes stacked on boxes, tools buried under old Christmas decorations, piles of wood some furry creature has used to hunker down for the winter, cords that lead nowhere, and you’re thinking, “How did it get like this?”

And here’s what’s wild: the problem isn’t that you don’t own the right things. The problem is that nothing is in its place.

Because chaos isn’t mainly the absence of material.
Chaos is the absence of order.
Chaos is what happens when nothing has a name, nothing has a role, and nothing is working the way it’s meant to work.

This place of chaos is exactly where the Bible’s first book, Genesis, starts.

It doesn’t give us a science lecture or a creation timeline argument.

Genesis opens with a world already existing, but it is formless and empty—unassigned, unorganized, uninhabited, unordered—waiting for God to speak it into order, function, and purpose.

So today, as we step into Genesis 1:1–2:3, I want you to feel the tension of this movement.

Genesis doesn’t sprint through the creation narrative. Genesis sings a symphonic harmony from one rhythm to the next. If we rush it, we miss the beautiful music.

What we have in Genesis 1 isn’t just seven days of “and then, and then, and then.”
It’s a carefully crafted, literary-artistic design—symmetry and structure—like a symphony where each stanza answers the one before it and sets up the next one.

The Biblical story is doing something to us while it’s telling us something about God.

Disclaimer: Throughout our talk today, I’m going to offer a variety of interpretations of the creation narrative. As I present, I’m not trying to convince anyone of any one in particular, but simply offer potential readings of the Biblical text. Each of them allow us to remain faithful to the Bible and faithful to God’s power in creation as Creator. It’s okay to choose your position of belief in this regard, but I want to encourage you to not box yourself in or remain dogmatic simply because one view is how your church tradition taught you.

Let’s listen to the opening headline.

Genesis 1:1–2 CSB
“In the beginning God created the heavens (sky) and the earth (land).
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”

What happens next is not a formation of material composition that was not previously there.

What happens next is the ordering of the cosmos by God’s speech.

Again and again, the text says, “Then God said…”

He doesn’t eliminate the waters.
He doesn’t erase the darkness.

He orders all of it precisely where he wants it.

God’s creative work unfolds with rhythm, boundaries, and intention.

Creation happens in rhythmic movements and patterns in a way that feels less like construction and more like a symphonic composition.

Genesis is written like music.

The Symphony of the Seven Days

When we read Genesis chapter 1 slowly—and I mean slowly—you start to notice something most of us were never taught to look for.

The days are not stacked randomly.
They are intentionally paired.

They speak to one another.

They answer one another.

The first three days establish domains.
The next three days install inhabitants.

Day four answers day one.
Day five answers day two.
Day six answers day three.

Stanza One
On Day One, God separates light from darkness—creating time, rhythm, and the cycle of day and night.
On Day Four, God places lights within that ordered time—sun, moon, and stars—to govern seasons, days, and years.

Stanza Two
On Day Two, God separates waters above from waters below—creating sky and sea.
On Day Five, God fills those spaces with birds and fish—creatures that inhabit the space God has ordered for them to occupy.

Stanza Three
On Day Three, God gathers the waters so dry land appears, and vegetation springs forth.
On Day Six, God places animals—and finally humanity—on that land, crowned with status, vocation, and purpose.

What we’re seeing is God’s wisdom of order and function within his creation.

This is the ancient way of saying: the world is intelligible because its origins are from an intelligent Creator.

Tim Mackie (of the BibleProject) puts it this way: “Genesis [chapter] 1 presents a world where God brings about order by separating, naming, and assigning function. The repeated phrase “and God saw that it was good” is a declaration that the world is operating as intended.”

Genesis is telling us that reality has a moral and functional coherence because it flows from the word of a good God.

This section of Genesis chapter 1 is not about how long creation took. It’s about what kind of world this is and who the main character of the story truly is.

Remember last week I mentioned, “Genesis 1 is not about God building a house. It’s about making the house a home.” — Dr. John Walton

So What Are We Supposed to Do with the “Seven Days”?

This is where many people get stuck—or quietly anxious.

Because for some of us, this passage was taught that if you don’t read it this way, you don’t take the Bible seriously. Take it all literally and at face value.

But Genesis itself does not defend its length of days.
It never argues.
It never explains.

Which should tell us something.

There are faithful followers of Jesus who hold to a literal twenty-four-hour days creation.
There are faithful followers of Jesus who understand the days as long epochs.
And there are faithful followers of Jesus who see the days as a literary framework—a sacred structure communicating theological meaning.

What unites all three is not agreement on duration.
It's an agreement on declaration.

God created.
God ordered.
God reigns.

As Dr. John Walton has emphasized repeatedly, “the biblical text is not concerned with material origins in the modern scientific sense. It is concerned with functional origins—how the world came to operate as God’s ordered domain.”

Genesis is not addressing, “How long or how fast?”
It addresses, “Who?”
And “For what purpose?”

The Bible does not gain authority by answering modern scientific questions it was never asking. It gains authority by forming us into people who trust the God who speaks order into chaos.

If God created the world in seven literal days—praise God.
If God created through long processes that align with evolution—praise God.
If God used mechanisms we don’t yet understand—praise God.

So therefore, the length of time changes nothing about the confession THAT God created.

But remove God from the beginning, and everything else collapses.

That’s why Genesis starts where it does.

Not with us.
Not with matter or a bang.
But with God.

And it does so with rhythm—because rhythm teaches us something about God himself.

He speaks.
He names.
He orders.
He rests.

Which quietly raises a question:

If this is the rhythm of God’s world, why do our lives feel so disordered?

And that question sets the stage for the next stanza which is the climax of the story in Genesis chapter 1.

The climax of this carefully ordered world is not light, land, stars, or the animals.

It’s humanity.

And to understand who we are, we first had to see the kind of world God prepared for us.

Two Important Sidebars Before We Move On

But before we rush ahead to humanity—and before we import our modern assumptions into this ancient text—there are two important sidebars we need to pause and address.

These sidebars help us hear Genesis the way its first audience would have heard it, and that is vitally important to understand it.

Sidebar One: Sun, Moon, and Stars Are Not Just “Stuff in the Sky”

When we hear “sun, moon, and stars,” we think astronomy.
We think physics.
We think gassy objects.
And I’m not talking about after you eat a carne asada burrito from Chipotle.

The ancient Eastern mind heard something different.

In the world Genesis was first taught orally and then later written into, the sun, moon, and stars were often understood as divine or semi-divine beings—spiritual powers that governed time, seasons, fertility, and fate. Entire civilizations ordered their lives around them. They were worshiped, feared, consulted, and obeyed these celestial entities.

Notice the Biblical text never names the sun or the moon.

Instead, it says:

Genesis 1:16 CSB
“God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—as well as the stars.”

This is direct theological defiance. Genesis deliberately demotes what the surrounding cultures deified.

Genesis is saying the sun is not a god.
The moon is not a god.
The stars are not spiritual rulers over your destiny.

They are lights.
They have a function.
God created them and they serve his ordered world.

In other words, Genesis is not arguing against science. It’s arguing against idolatry.

This is the author of Genesis quietly but powerfully saying to his audience and their friends in surrounding neighborhoods: “There is one God and everything else—no matter how bright, mysterious, or powerful—belongs to him.”

That theological truth matters deeply for us too.

Sure, we may not bow to the sun or read the stars—but there are those who seek answers in astrology or meaning from cosmic powers. Maybe you don’t do that, but haven’t each of us, whether now or at some point in our lives, looked for meaning, guidance, and security in created things?

Genesis is confronting that instinct right here.

Before humans are even introduced, the text is already declaring: Nothing in creation gets to rule you except the Creator.

And that brings us to the second sidebar—because once we realize Genesis isn’t doing what we thought it was doing, the next question is inevitable.

Sidebar Two: The Days of Creation—and Why This Isn’t a Threat to Faith

Once we begin to see Genesis 1 not addressing anything scientific, but as a carefully ordered, theological account—structured, rhythmic, intentional—an unavoidable question almost everyone asks at some point:

So… did God really create everything in 7 days?

For many of us, this question carries more emotional weight than we realize. Because somewhere along the way, we were taught—explicitly or implicitly—that faithfulness depends on one correct interpretation. Usually, that's locked into church tradition rather than being based on authentic Biblical interpretation. Perhaps it might be a series of books we’ve read by so-called “experts” or curated videos on creation that we’re not willing to admit they hold a dogmatic agenda telling a narrative that fits their own beliefs. We’re led to believe if we read Genesis differently than we were taught by a certain church culture, we’re somehow being unfaithful to God or diminishing his power.

Let me say this clearly, boldly, and pastorally:

You are not being unfaithful to God by acknowledging that creation may have been a different time period than 7 twenty-four hour days, perhaps it may have taken millions or even billions of years.

You are not diminishing God by believing he works through long processes.
And you are not undermining Scripture by letting Genesis answer the questions it was actually written to answer.

In fact, for many people, these views don’t diminish God at all—they magnify him.

Throughout the history of the church, followers of Jesus who love God and Scripture, and submit to its authority, have understood Genesis 1 in several faithful ways. Let’s walk through them slowly.

1. Literal Seven-Day Creation

This view understands the days of Genesis 1 as normal, twenty-four-hour days.

God speaks.
Creation happens.
The week unfolds exactly as the text reads.

Many faithful followers of Jesus hold this view, and it deserves respect. It affirms God’s power, intentionality, and authority over creation. Nothing here is rushed, accidental, or uncontrolled.

And importantly, Genesis itself allows this reading.

2. Day-Age Creation

This view understands the word day (Hebrew: yom), which could certainly mean the period between two consecutive sunrises, however it could also represent a longer period of time—an age rather than a literal day.

It’s like when you say, “back in my day I used to run a 6 minute mile”. That’s not necessarily implying this took place on one particular day, but perhaps over the course of many years you were able to run a 6 minute mile.

In the Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible they say this: “Many people believe that the days mentioned in the Genesis creation narrative were 24-hour periods. The phrase “there was evening, there was morning” is used to support that idea. That expression, however, is actually a Sumerian literary figure that pairs opposites together to describe totality. Thus “evening-morning” means a complete phase of time within the total creative cycle; it emphasizes the completeness or comprehensiveness of the process, not the specific period of time in which that process was accomplished. The totality of creation, phase by phase, may have been thus depicted without any necessary reference to a defined time period.”

(Elwell, Walter A., and Barry J. Beitzel. 1988. “Day.” In Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, 1:587. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.)

For example:

Genesis 2:4 CSB
“These are the records of the heavens and the earth, concerning their creation, at the time that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”

Notice what it’s saying.

All six days are summarized as “at the time”—a single phrase covering the whole creative period.

Another key text:

Psalm 90:4 CSB
“For in your sight a thousand years are like yesterday that passes by, like a few hours of the night.”

And later echoed in the New Testament by Peter:

2 Peter 3:8 CSB
“With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.”

The point of the Day Age Creation is not to give us a conversion formula. It is to remind us that God’s experience of time is not ours because he exists outside of time.

In this view, Genesis still declares God as Creator, still affirms divine ordering, and still presents the days as structured and purposeful—but the timeline stretches.

God is not hurried.
God is not constrained.
God works patiently, faithfully, and intentionally over time.

3. Evolutionary Creation (or Theistic Evolution)

This view holds that God created the universe and life through long, guided processes—including biological evolution.

And this is where a lot of people get nervous.

So let’s slow down.

This view does not say:

“Nature did it instead of God.”
“Creation happened on its own.”
“God was hands-off.”
“Humans evolved from monkeys.”

It says something quite different.

It says God is the source, sustainer, and sovereign guide of all processes.

That the same God who speaks order in Genesis is the God who continues shaping, forming, and bringing life through the laws he established.

Scripture itself affirms this kind of ongoing creative work.

Psalm 104:30 CSB
“When you send your breath, they are created, and you renew the surface of the ground.”

Creation is not just a moment.
It’s an ongoing act of God’s sustaining presence.

Or as Paul says:

Colossians 1:16–17 CSB
“For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.”

Notice the language: hold together.

This view doesn’t shrink God’s power but it expands our sense of how intricately woven his cosmos is. It invites us to see creation not as a one-time flash or bang, but as a long, faithful unfolding of God’s wisdom through order. This view does not see science and the Bible opposing one another, but in tandem. In fact, many Christian scientists hold this view.

4. The Original Audience Creation Perspective

Considering the Jewish authorship and original audience for this section of scripture, let's get inside their heads.

In the Jewish midrash* (ancient commentaries of the Old Testament text) and later in rabbinic teaching, Genesis 1 is consistently affirmed as a six-day act of creation followed by God’s rest—but those “days” were never treated as simple 24-hour units the way we measure time now. The rabbis noticed that the sun and moon don’t even appear until the fourth day, which led them to understand these days as God-defined periods—stages of ordering, revealing, and assigning purpose rather than ticking hours off a clock.

Some midrash thoughts even suggest that creation itself was instantaneous and that the six days describe how God brought structure and meaning out of what he had made, while others speak of worlds before this one, emphasizing that Genesis is telling the story of this ordered, intentional world.

The Deeper Point Genesis Is Making

The point was never to satisfy scientific curiosity but to reveal a theological truth: God is sovereign, creation is good and purposeful, time itself is part of what God creates, and the rhythm of six days of work and one day of rest grounds the life of God’s people. Genesis 1 isn’t asking us how long creation took—it’s inviting us to see who God is and how life is meant to be lived under his ordering presence.

Genesis is not asking us to pick a side in a modern creation debate because it was written long before those debates existed.

It is not answering:

How long did creation take?
What mechanisms were involved?
How old is the universe?

Genesis is answering something far more foundational:

Who is the One that explains reality?
Who gives the world its meaning, order, and purpose?

Genesis is declaring—without apology—that:

God alone is Creator
God alone orders the cosmos
God alone defines what is good

That’s the message Genesis chapter 1 is communicating.

And when we get so wrapped up in how the world was created, we often miss what Genesis is actually trying to form in us: trust.

Science and Scripture aren’t necessarily enemies.
I think they’re just asking different questions.
What if Genesis isn’t threatened by discovery—but enriched by wonder?

Again, I’m not here to convince you of one view or another or lead you by sharing my own view point.

I’m here to help us read the Bible faithfully—on its own terms—so that God’s authority through it can truly shape our lives.

Because the authority of Scripture doesn’t rest in giving us modern explanations.

It rests in revealing the God who stands at the beginning of everything.

And with that settled, we’re finally ready to turn our attention to the crescendo of the story.

The Climax of Creation: Humanity as God’s Image and Partners

Up to this point, everything in Genesis 1 has been preparing the stage.

Light and darkness.
Sky and sea.
Land and vegetation.
Creatures that swim and fly and crawl.

The world has been ordered.
The spaces have been named.
The rhythms have been established.

And then—only then—God pauses… because what comes next is different.

Genesis 1:26 LEB
“And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image and according to our likeness”

That phrase—“Let us”—signals something weighty— deliberate and communal.

Creation has been happening by command.
Humanity is created by council.

That plural language often raises questions. Some assume this is the Trinity—but that’s not what Genesis is trying to explain.

In the ancient world, God is portrayed as ruling in the presence of a heavenly host or a divine council. Dr. Michael Heiser puts it this way:

“God alone creates humanity, but he does so in the presence of the heavenly council.” —Dr. Michael S. Heiser

In other words, God isn’t sharing creative power or asking permission. He is declaring his intention before the watching heavenly host.

And here’s why that matters: humanity is being given a role that no other creature receives. Humans are created as God’s image-bearers—his authorized representatives on earth—entrusted with intentional partnership in his ordered world.

This is not about multiple gods.
It’s not about the holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
It’s about God elevating humanity above all creation and assigning vocation.

And that makes the image of God even more weighty.

God’s divine council isn’t isolated to Genesis. Scripture consistently presents God as ruling in the presence of a heavenly assembly.

Deuteronomy 32:1
“Pay attention, heavens, and I will speak; listen, earth, to the words from my mouth.”
Job 1:6 CSB
“One day the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord.”
Psalm 82:1 CSB
“God stands in the divine assembly; he pronounces judgment among the gods.”
1 Kings 22:19 CSB
“I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and the whole heavenly army was standing by him at his right hand and at his left hand.”

These passages, and many others, don’t describe rival gods or shared authority. They show the God of Scripture as supreme—speaking, ruling, and declaring his will in the presence of the heavenly host.

Genesis 1 fits naturally within this Biblical vision and is the first time we are exposed to it.

God alone reigns and creates humanity—before heaven itself—as God’s imaging partners on his ordered earth. The story has been moving toward this climactic moment all along.

What Does “Human” Mean Here?

The Hebrew word used here is ’adam.

It’s important to slow down and hear this carefully.

’Adam is a collective noun. It’s not a name.
It means mankind; humanity; humankind.
All of the living human inhabitants of the Earth; often considered as a class of created beings

(2017. In The Lexham Analytical Lexicon of the Hebrew Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.)

Grammatically, it’s masculine—but biologically, it is not male-specific. Genesis 1 is not zoomed in yet. It’s giving us the big picture.

That’s why the very next line clarifies:

Genesis 1:27 LEB
“So God created humankind in his image, in the likeness of God he created him, male and female he created them.”

Male and female are both included in the image.
Neither precedes the other.
Neither is closer to God.

Genesis 1 is not about hierarchy.
It’s about order and shared vocation.

The Bible will later zoom in and tell the story of differentiation and relationship in Genesis chapter 2. But here, the emphasis is unmistakable:

Humanity—together—bears God’s image.

The Image of God: Not a Trait, but a Calling

For many of us, the phrase image of God was taught as something we have.

Reason.
Morality.
Creativity.
Spiritual awareness.

Those aren’t wrong—but they’re incomplete.

In the ancient world, an “image” was not primarily about resemblance. It was about representation.

Kings placed images of themselves throughout their territories because they declared, “My authority extends here.”

Dr. Michael Heiser said: “the image of God is not first about what humans are like—it’s about what humans are authorized to do.”
“Being made in the image of God is not about possessing certain attributes. It is about status—about being God’s representatives on earth.”

We are his royal partners—placed within his ordered world to reflect his character and extend his rule.

This is why Genesis immediately connects image with assignment.

When Genesis says we’re made in the image of God, it’s not talking about something private or individual. It’s not about me bearing God’s image on my own. The image of God is shared. Collective. Plural. From the very beginning, God’s image is carried by humanity together.

We image God not in isolation, but in relationship—men and women, families, communities, and ultimately the people of God living faithfully together in the world. To be made in God’s image is to be invited into a shared calling: to represent God, extend his order, and reflect his character as his people.

Image Leads to Partnership

Genesis 1:28 CSB
“God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.’”

This is not domination language.
It’s stewardship language.

God does not create and then withdraw.
He creates and then invites.

He shares authority.
He entrusts responsibility.

The world God ordered is meant to be cared for, cultivated, and sustained by his imagers who reflect his wisdom and goodness.

Remember: God didn’t just build a house.
He made a home.

And humans are not tenants.
We are partners.

We were not created as an afterthought.
We were not placed here to merely survive.
We were not designed to live disconnected from God’s purposes.

We were created to participate in God’s ongoing work in the world.

To bring order where there is chaos.
To cultivate life where there is barrenness.
To reflect God’s character into every space we inhabit.
To steward with goodness what we have been given.

And that raises the question Genesis wants us to feel—not answer yet, but feel:

If this is who we were created to be…
why do we so often live disconnected from this calling?

Genesis 1 doesn’t resolve that tension yet.

But it names our dignity before it ever names our failure.

And that’s God’s grace from the beginning.

Close

So here’s where we land this week.

Genesis is not asking us to solve the mysteries of creation. It is inviting us to trust the God who stands at the beginning of everything.

A God who:

speaks order into chaos
gives the world purpose
and entrusts his imagers with real responsibility

And if that’s true—if we were created in God’s image, placed in his ordered world, and invited into partnership with him—then the most important question we can ask this week is not “How did God create?”

It’s this:

What does it look like for us to live as God’s order bringing imagers together—right where God has us?

Genesis 1 isn’t just telling us how the world began—it’s showing us the kind of God who is still at work now. A God who speaks. A God who orders. A God who brings beauty, rhythm, and purpose where there was once chaos.

The same God who hovered over the waters in the beginning is the God who is still hovering—still present, still active, still inviting.

And here’s what Genesis quietly insists:
We are not a spectator in God’s story.

We were purposefully created to image him.
Given dignity.
Entrusted with responsibility.
Invited into partnership.

This is who we are—not as individuals, but as God’s sons and daughters, as his people, as his church to bring order in his world today.

So this week, I want to invite you to return to the beginning. Read Genesis chapter 1 again—slowly.
Sit with it. Let the rhythm of it shape you.
Pay attention to what God names, what God orders, what God calls good.

And as you do, don’t rush ahead.
Because next week, the story slows down even more.

We’re going to zoom in.
We’re going to watch God work with intention and intimacy.
We’re going to meet two named humans— as people formed by God’s hands, breathed into by God’s Spirit.

We will see as we read the Bible they are not just words on the page. God is using real flesh and blood people in his story and this is where we encounter them first.

Until then, let’s ponder together the question I asked earlier—not to answer quickly, but to carry with us this week, to pray through, to meditate on, to let it settle into our bones:

What does it look like for us to live as God’s order bringing imagers together—right where God has us?

Sit with that.
Walk with that.
Let God meet you there.

Pause with me now to pray.

Bibliography

The Bible. Genesis 1:1–2:3; Exodus 20:8–11.
(Six days of creation, God’s rest, and the Sabbath rhythm grounded in creation)
Genesis Rabbah. 1:1; 1:3; 3:7–8; 12:1.
(Creation as intentional and ordered; time as created; “days” before sun and moon; worlds before this one)
Mishnah Avot. 5:1.
(Creation by intentional divine utterance and ordered purpose)
Talmud. Pesachim 54a; Rosh Hashanah 11a.
(Time and reality beyond creation; theological framing of creation’s timing)
Rashi. Commentary on Genesis 1:5.
(“Day one” understood apart from solar time)
Nahmanides (Ramban). Commentary on Genesis 1:1.
(Creation from a single point unfolding by divine wisdom and order)
Maimonides. The Guide for the Perplexed. Book II, Chapter 25.
(Genesis communicating theological and metaphysical truth rather than scientific process)