Bible Commentaries

The Creation

Genesis 2:1-3

There is a Persian fable that God created the world a vast plain and sent His angels to sow it with flower seeds. But Satan was watching, bent on destruction. He buried every seed underground; he called on the rain to fall and rot God's handiwork, and Genesis 1:1

Some words do not terminate in themselves. "Created" is only the first syllable in an infinitely greater word. What if at the end it should turn out that all the words expressive of power, John 3:16, "God loved the world". Love is a bigger word than create. Love will never give up the world. It is given to love to save the whole earth.

III. We might now reverse the process. Instead of saying, God created, destroyed, redeemed, loved, we might say loved, redeemed, destroyed, created. This is one of the great words that reads the same backwards as forwards. There are a few such words in the English language. All the time God is creating the earth. Do not imagine that creation is a separate and final act; it is God's inclusive ministry. Whatever He does is an aspect of creation, formation, culture, development, and ultimate sanctification, and crowning with the bays and garlands of the heavenly paradise. God is creating man. There is an elementary sense, in which man was created countless centuries ago: there is a spiritual sense in which man is being created every day. "Ye must be born again" is the gospel of every sunrise; every day is birthday. We are born into a higher life, a nobler conception, a fuller manhood.

IV. At what period of this process are we standing? Some of us are standing at the period of chastisement. We are being drowned or we are being burned, we are being sorely smitten or utterly desolated; but God has promised that He will see that a remnant remains out of which He will grow the flower of immortality.

—Joseph Parkes, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p128.

The Message of the Book of Genesis

Genesis 1:1

From some points of view the book of Genesis is the most interesting in the Bible. It is the book of beginnings, the book of origins, the book of the story of God's dealings with man. It has an interest and an importance to which no other document of antiquity can pretend. When we turn to the study of Genesis as a whole, the first thing we notice is the unity of plan in the book. Though forming part of a greater whole it also is a complete work. It was written to show how Israel, in answer to the call, and in accordance with the purpose of God, gradually emerged from among many other tribes and peoples, into a separate and distinct existence as the people of Jehovah.

I. Genesis emphasizes the Divine sovereignty and supremacy. Its opening words are as emphatic a testimony to this as can be found in the whole Bible. The Bible makes no attempt to prove the existence of God, nor does it strive to prove the supremacy of God. But look on the book before us. In it everything is traced up to God. God is sovereign, God is supreme, God is first. Therefore Genesis evidences itself to be a true revelation from God. But what is true of the book is true also of life. Our lives are meant to be revelations of God. This cannot be until by utter consecration of ourselves to Him we have in our lives made God first.

II. Genesis emphasizes the Divine grace and love. The revelation of the Bible is essentially a revelation of redemption, and the redemption note is sounded from the first. The whole record of Genesis is a record of the grace of God combating man's sin. The whole story is a story of Divine love, the story of One with whom judgment is a strange work. And this love throughout all this book is seen working with a purpose.

III. Genesis emphasizes the Divine holiness. It represents God as approachable to men, and yet as unapproachable by men. This book teaches us what subsequent revelation confirms, that if the sinner is to approach God so as to be accepted by Him, he must approach God in the way of God's appointment. But this is a lesson which, in our day, we need specially to learn. We dwell so much on the Divine love and the riches of the Divine grace that we are apt to forget that the grace is only bestowed upon us in the Beloved. In our joy at the revelation which Christ made to us of the love of God, we are in danger of forgetting that that love of God reaches men so as to save them only through Jesus Christ.

—H. C. Macgregor, Messages of the Old Testament, p8.

The Holy Trinity (for Trinity Sunday)

Genesis 1:1

Some people tell us that we cannot find any mention of the word "Trinity" in the Bible. Perhaps not; but we do find, what is more important, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity most clearly set forth.

I. What saith the Scriptures?—The Scriptures which have been brought before us in our services today are all concerned with the blessed truth that our God is a Triune God, and that in the unity of the Godhead there are three Persons—God the Father, God the Genesis 1:3

Dr. A. C. Bradley quotes these words in his Oxford Lectures on Poetry, pp57 , 58. He says, "I will take a last example. It has probably been mentioned in almost every account of the sublime since Longinus quoted it in his work on Elevation of Style. And it is of special interest here because it illustrates at one and the same time the two kinds of sublimity which we are engaged in distinguishing. "God said, Let there be light, and there was light." The idea of the first and instantaneous appearance of light, and that the whole light of the whole world is sublime; and its primary appeal is to sense. The further idea, that this transcendently glorious apparition is due to mere words, to a breath—our symbol of tenuity, evanescence, impotence to influence material bulk—heightens enormously the impression of absolutely immeasurable power."

Genesis 1:3

There is a very remarkable reference to this passage in the writings of St. John of the Cross (Obras Espirituales, vol. ii. p. S94). The Spanish mystic is seeking to draw a clear contrast between the dark night of the soul, as it is understood by the saints, and the darkness of sin. There may be two reasons, he says, why the eye fails to see. It may be in obscurity (á escuras), or it may be blind. "God is the light and the true object of the soul; and when He fails to illuminate it, the soul is in darkness, although its vision may remain very keen. When it is in sin, or when the appetite is filled with other things, it is blind." "Una cosa es estar a escuras, otra estar en tinieblas." By the first he means the darkness of vision, a darkness caused by excess of light; by the second he means the gross darkness of sin. He uses the expression "ciego en pecado"—"blind in sin". "But he who lives in obscurity may live there without sin. And this in two ways: as regards his natural being which receives no light from some natural things, and as regards his supernatural being, which receives no light from many supernatural things. Until the Lord said, Fiat lux there was darkness over the face of the deep cavern of the soul's understanding. The deeper that abyss, and the more profound its caves, so much the deeper and more unfathomable is the darkness when God, who is Light, does not illuminate them with His beams." Of itself, the writer goes on, the soul can travel only from one darkness to another—"guiado por aquella tiniebla, porque no puede Suiar unatiniebla sino a otra teniebla"—("guided by the darkness itself, because one darkness can lead only to another darkness"). He continues—"As David says: "Dies diei eructat verbum, et nox nodi indicat scientiam". [ Psalm 19:2, "Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge".] And thus the writer adds "one deep of darkness calleth to another, and one deep of light to another deep of light".

"Everywhere like calls to like, and thus to that light of grace which God has given the soul already (having opened its inward eyes to the Divine light, and made it well-pleasing to Himself) there calls another deep of grace, I mean the Divine transformation of the soul in God in which the eye of the understanding remains fully enlightened and well-pleasing unto Him."

Genesis 1:3

Coleridge, in his lectures on Shakespeare, observes that Shakespeare's plays are distinguished from those of other dramatists by the characteristic of "expectation in preference to surprise. It is like the true reading of the passage: "God said, Let there be light, and there was light"; not, there was light. As the feelings with which we startle at a shooting star, compared with that of watching the sunrise at the pre-established moment, such law is surprise compared with expectation."

A Light Unto Our Path

Genesis 1:3-4

"Let there be light." It is at once the motto and the condition of all progress that is worthy of the name. From chaos into order, from slumber into wakefulness, from torpor into the glow of life—yes, and "from strength to strength"; it has been a condition of progress that there should be light. God saw the light, that it was good.

We thank God for His revelation in the Bible. We are all persuaded in our minds that among the means of extending that light the Bible itself has for centuries taken the foremost place. But, with man's proneness to distort or misuse even the grandest of God's gifts, this very privilege has had a peril of its own. People have forgotten, in the using of it, the manner in which the book, under the guiding hand of God, came to take the form in which we know it now, and have neglected the help thus given to us for understanding how to use without abusing it, how to accept it as both human and Divine. It is because men, it is because teachers in the Church of God, have forgotten this that half our perplexities about the Bible have arisen.

I. The Bible and Science.—"Let there be light." No Genesis 1:5

A wonderful scene is conjured up in the story of creation, and it is not without significance that God's first work on the first day was the creation of light. All the great mass of material creation had been called into being, but thus far "the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep," and then as the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, there came from Him Who dwelleth in the light that no man can approach unto, the irresistible mandate, "Let there be light," and there was light, and as the clouds rolled back and the darkness vanished before the great stream of splendid light that came from God Himself, there appeared as the light streamed over nature strange forms of matter ranging themselves into order and beauty out of darkness, and gloom, and confusion, and chaos.

May we not on this, the first day of a New Year, profitably consider some "First Days" and see what they have to teach us?

I. The First Day of the Year.—Our thoughts naturally turn at once to New Year's Day when we keep the Feast of the Circumcision. God's gift to the world on the first day of creation was the wonderful gift of light, but on this day we think of a more wonderful gift still—the gift of His own Incarnate Son. When the time was come that one was found who was fitted by her purity and her obedience to become the mother of the Incarnate God, when she had said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to Thy word," and in her humility and her faith, had resigned herself to God; and when in due course the Eternal Son of God was born of her in Bethlehem, then on the eighth day He was brought to His circumcision, and then was obedient to the law for Genesis 1:13

Six times these words are repeated, and the one lesson that rings out is that God counts His periods, not as man does from night to night, but from evening till morning.

I. This is true of creation. At present a veil is cast over all peoples. The creature is subject to illusion, to incompleteness, or, as the Apostle says, to vanity. Probably no earthly realization, however good and beautiful, can set forth all that there is in God; and certainly human sin has infected the house of human life, as cholera and fever infect the tenements in which they have bred. The horror of darkness is the dower of the blind forces to which some of our teachers attribute the system of "things of which we form a part". Creation shall participate in the glorious liberty of the sons of God. There shall be evening, there shall be morning, and a Seventh Day.

II. So of the race. The evening was dark when the children of Babel gathered in rebellion against God, and when the knowledge of the original law seemed submerged in savagery and passion. It was destined to become still darker. Darkness was to cover the earth, and gross darkness the people. There have been many dark skies since then, but never so dark as before; and no thoughtful student of history can deny that things are slowly becoming better.

III. So of the individual. Your life is dark. Sin is darkness; sorrow is darkness; and to a greater or less extent these three are part of your daily let. But the night is far spent, the day is at hand. The darkling waves, as they break around your boat, are bearing you onward to the morning meal upon the silver sands, where you will find love has gone before you with its preparation. It shall be evening and morning, and lo! a day without night.

—F. B. Meyer, Baptist Times and Freeman, vol. liv. p815.

References.—I:14-15.—A. P. Stanely, Sermons on Special Occasions, p138.

A Divine Revelation (for Trinity Sunday)

Genesis 1:26

The word "Trinity" is derived from the Latin word Trinus, which signifies "threefold," or "three-in-one"; and thus it exactly expresses the profound mystery of three Persons in the unity of one Godhead. Today the Church most seasonably brings the doctrine of this mystery specially before us.

I. It is distinctly a Divine Revelation.—It is absolute that this doctrine of the adorable Trinity be divinely revealed. And so it has been in various parts of Holy Scripture; but we confine our thought briefly to three instances.

(a) Take the text first.—"And God said, Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness." The word "God" Genesis 1:27

The characteristic of the Jewish portraits is their derivation from the period of youth, and this chord is struck at the very beginning.

I. The man who painted Adam knew he was painting a child. Is his picture childlike enough to be universal? This artist has no pretence hand; his is the touch of a master. The Garden scene has never become absolute, and the reason is that it is planted in that field of humanity whose products neither grow nor decline.

II. Why is this a representative picture? Because in the dawning consciousness of your own infant you will find exactly the same mixture of dust and divinity. But look again at the development of your child, and you will see how cosmopolitan is this biography of the primeval Adam.

III. The common view is that the artist is describing a case of mere disobedience. That is not the deepest idea of the picture. The primitive narration has attached itself, not to the portrayal of obedience, but to the portrayal of justice. It is not the dependant forgetting the respect to his master; it is the partner ignoring his contract, the associate breaking his bond, the sharer of dual rights attempting to encroach upon the rights of the other. This child, every after child, has his tragedy inside, his dramatic personages inside, his dialogues inside. I do not think the tragedies would be less complete if the outward deed had been omitted; for the final act of injustice in the sight of heaven is ever consummated in the region of the soul.

—G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the Bible, p23.

The Origin and the Destiny of Man

Genesis 1:27

I. If we would profit by our own reading of the wonderful poem of Creation which is preserved for us in the first chapter of Genesis 1:27; Genesis 2:7

What are the great principles of religion which are revealed to us in these early chapters of Genesis? Speaking, generally, there are three.

I. The Revelation of a Personal God.—The first is the revelation of a personal God Who made the world and rules all our life. In the Old Testament the writers never question the existence of God at all. God is there. What the Old Testament writers do give is the character and nature of that God Who is there from the beginning. Any conception of God which other religions may have must be brought to the test of the revelation of God which is made to us here. For instance, if you bring to the test the idea that man is swallowed up in God—that the finite is absorbed and lost in the infinite altogether—you find that that must be wrong, because it does not allow man that independence which the Bible narrative reveals. Now we have here quite clearly marked the position of God. God is in the beginning, and this world's reality is through the Will of God. And you and I see that behind all the processes of Nature, whatever they may be, however long these processes may have taken, however strange may be the methods by which those processes have made the universe, it is God Who, behind all, is ruling. God is the beginning, God is the means, and God is the end. That is a practical matter, not merely one of intellectual delight. All that comes to us comes from the will, from the mind, from the heart of the living Person of God.

II. The Revelation of Man's Privileges.—Man has been made in the image of God. He stands quite apart from all the rest of the Creation. He has that power of self-consciousness which belongs to no other creature. His will is not like that of the animals, determined simply by the strongest physical passion or desire. In that lies this great fact: man is capable of union with God, he is capable of receiving a Divine revelation. Science itself is willing to acknowledge that there is this unearthly element in the nature of man. But as man has a higher side, so he has a lower side. God made man of the dust of the earth. There is the revelation of the material side of man's nature. What were the actual processes by which that material clay was prepared until it became ready for the breath of God? It was God Himself Who guided those early developments till the clay was ready for the gift of self-consciousness. On the one side man is at one with Nature. At the same time man is raised distinctly above the animals by that breath of God. The long struggle continually leading us to fight for the higher ideal, the nobler life, is a constant witness to the Divine side of man. If we are made in the image of God, then we have the capacity to know God.

III. The Revelation of Man's Fall.—Yet we know how man's life, as a matter of fact, falls far short of the ideal of the Divine life. We need that to be explained, and in this early account of the Creation we have the explanation set clearly before us. There are very few references to the actual story of the fall, and yet all the while, especially after the captivity, there was a very strong sense of the gravity of sin. The Jews never looked back to a golden age, always to a golden age to come. When you look at the account of the fall and ask yourself, "What does it really mean?" you must try to realize quite clearly what is meant about the state of man before the fall. It is perfectly true that man did possess before the fall what he afterwards did not possess—a moral purity and innocence. But man did not possess what men have sometimes thought he possessed, such perfection as perfection of intellectual capacity—such a capacity, for instance, as man possesses today. Man was just a child. He was perfect in the sense that he perfectly corresponded with the Will of God. Man by his disobedience to the distinct Will of God introduced sin into the world. There came a moment when this disobedience broke down the development of man's life. Thus we see the need of redemption.

References.—I:27.—T. G. Bonney, Sermons on Questions of the Day, p1. G. Sarson, A. Lent in London, p142 C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p212. A. Gray, Faith and Diligence, p139. C. Brown, God and Genesis 1:28

There are many things which prove to be a puzzle to the brain of Genesis 1:31

The pessimist view of the Creation, nay, of man himself, of life, of all things, is now in the ascendant. I mean by the pessimist view, the view which tends to depreciate both man and his world. The wise ones of the hour, happily only of the hour, who lead the thoughts of this generation, and are listened to as its prophets, seem to be settling to the cheerful conviction that Creation has on the whole been a blunder, of which all sentient things have to suffer the penalty in the pain and futility which torment the world.

I. I believe that this pessimist view of man and the creation is just the reaction—the inevitable reaction—against that foolishly and wearisomely optimist view which, during the last generations, the writers on Christian evidences have dinned into the ears of men. The intellectual world is just weary to nauseation of hearing that all things in the universe work together with the smoothness and constancy of a machine, whose steam power the Being whom they are pleased to call the great Artificer supplied. The curse of our theology during the last century has been this, that owing mainly to the vigour of the Deistic and Atheistic assault on the truth of the Gospel, theologians have been tempted to think that they had to make out a case for God, and to hold the citadel of their narrow theology as a Divine fortress, which they were bound to defend at any cost. They have effected a complete understanding of the scheme of the universe; have explained away or hidden all that seemed inconsistent with the benignity of the Creator, and pushed forward and magnified all that fell in with their notions of His goodness, until their Creation—the Creation which they undertook to explain and to justify, whose design they were ever ready to expound, and whose plan fitted their expositions as a key fits its wards—had come to be a very unreal and unlifelike world.

When we hear from our wise ones in the lore of nature that there is more pain than joy within the range of their sight, we remind ourselves that Scripture told us it was a travail. When they tell us that it seems to be but a blundering and futile scheme, we remind ourselves again that the Scripture tells us that it is a seed time, and what can seem so blundering and futile as casting seed into the furrows to rot under the dull pall of winter, to him who has no eye to forecast the radiance of the coming spring.

II. The grand distinctive feature of the Creation, that which reveals the lovingkindness of the Creator, and is the signature of His goodness, is the law of progress which rules its development; the continued evolution of finer, compacter, purer, nobler forms of things, as the unfolding of the purpose of the Creator proceeds, so that the world of today is altogether a more beautiful, orderly, and joyful world to live in, than the world, as far as we can discern its features, of myriads of years ago. There is struggle, shock, and apparent confusion without question.

The world of today seems built on the ruins of the world of yesterday. The feet of the living tread everywhere the dust of death. But the living now stand higher than the living of old—with more erect port, with freer gesture, with braver dress.

Something in the inner soul of nature moves her to this continual refining and elevating of form. We cannot be blind to the manifest hand of the living God. It is the course of development which from the first He prophesied. As we see it complete itself we cannot help connecting it with the unseen Almighty hand. There has been through all the ages that law of progress working mightily, which is announced as the law of the Divine operation in the Scripture. All things there breathe the spirit of progress, of vital propulsive movement, of onward, upward development; progress, the onward, upward movement, is the breath of their life. It is with Creation as with history. God prophesies, not that we may be able to paint in detail the scheme of the future, but that when we see it unfold itself we may know that it is His work ( Isaiah 45:18-25).

III. There is that in the Creation which the largest and most developed human intellect and spirit, albeit conversant with heavenly things, and familiar with the thoughts of God, contemplates with eager and keen delight, which seems to transcend its power of comprehension and its organ of expression, which bends it low in something like awestruck adoration, while it murmurs, "O Lord, my God, how wonderful are Thy works, how glorious! In wisdom and in faithfulness hast Thou made them all."

—J. Baldwin Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi. p841.

References.—I:31.—T. G. Bonney, Sermons on Questions of the Day, p17. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p268. E. T. A. Morriner, Sermons Preached at Lyme Regis, p185. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii. p238. II.—G. Moberly, Parochial Sermons, p61. II:1-3.—J. Bowstead, Practical Sermons, vol. i. p19. J. Parker, Adams, Noah, and Abraham, p14.