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Unpacking Genisis 1

There are a lot of things to unpack within the book of Genisis: there’s compassion, wrath and greed, and that’s only within the first couple of pages. If we were to go into intricate detail, it would take days to fully comprehend the intention behind the book. But today, I wanted to highlight three points, only a fraction of how God’s character is explored within Genisis 1.  

 

  1. 1. God calls for the separation between light and darkness 

 

Genisis 1:4 

“God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness”.  

During God’s creation, he came to a realisation. He realised that they should be a seperation: a permanent division between light and darkness. We can view this verse through a scientific perspective, but Jesus uses this same term in the New Testament. Jesus calls us to be the light of the world (Matthew 5:14) meaning anything ‘dark’ in our life should be separated from us. This darkness could be bad friendships, maybe certain accounts you follow on social media, but the underlying root of it all is that darkness is anything that leads us to sin.  

  1. 2. God’s creativity is expressed through the formless 

 

Genisis 1:2 “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters 

Creativity is a term thrown around aimlessly. We call people “geniuses” and put them on a pedestal without first looking at the creator of all creation. With so much ugliness in the world, it’s hard to recognise all the beauty we are around. Take sunsets for example, it’s hard to beleive that God created that out of nothing, like literally nothing. From this we can come to the conclusion that God’s best work is done through the reduction of nothingness. The reason I say this is because whatever God has taken away from us, and made empty, we should remember that his best work is yet to come. God is creating something greater in you.  

  1. 3. God’s authority is illustrated verbally  

 

Throughout Genisis 1, a common phrase seen is “And God said”. Through this phrase, God creates light and darkness, the sea, the sky etc. God only has to say the word, and through just speaking the earth is formed. This not only explores the illustration of his authority but also shows that God is the authority: and that is over everything seen and unseen.  

 

 

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