It’s really interesting to me how close heaven and earth were in the beginning. God was near and communed in His creating. The chasm was created by sin. It continues to widen. Only Christ’s return can restore the peace that was. Let’s think about days three through five and most of day six.
I find it really fascinating to think about God speaking and things just happening. Yet the Word also tells us he formed things. Genesis 1 tells us he separated the waters from the waters, but elsewhere we are told how He stretched out the sky:
Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a cast metal mirror? [Job 37:18]
You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent. [Psalm 104:1b-2]
And we are also told how John saw this same sky rolled back like a scroll in the future:
The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. [Revelation 6:14]
As majestic as this creation seems to us, the mere spoken word of the Creator can change it all in an instant.
As the earth and its contents begin to take shape and form, and it begins to be filled with vegetation and life, it is clear that there is a design. Just as all things were created with a view to Christ, the earth was created with a view toward God’s ultimate creation of man, his image bearer. Just as God is intricate in every detail, he so designed the earth in perfect order, preparing it for its inhabitants.
Each stage of life that was created was created higher than the previous stage. Plants cannot move about and have no instincts. The fish of the sea and the birds of the air certainly do. The four-legged beasts have even stronger wills. Yet they do not have souls and were not created in the image of God as was man. Yet even in His creating, He planned for many of these animals to serve symbolic purposes in His kingdom to point the way to Christ.
It is almost painful to think about how perfect it was all created to be. No death—probably not even between animals. The lion was likely lying down with the lamb then. No survival of the fittest. As Homer Hoeksema puts it, “Originally there was perfect harmony: harmony between God and man, between man and animal, and between animal and animal. The creation was marked by peace, rooted in peace with God.”[1]
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. [Romans 8:19-22]
Enjoy this short video: Perfect Harmony
[1] Hoeksema, Homer. Unfolding Covenant History: An Exposition of the Old Testament, Vol. I, From Creation to the Flood. Reformed Free Publishing Assoc., 2000, p. 72.
