Out of Nothing, by a Word

Clouds parting over a dark sea as a great beam of light breaks across the water and new land rises in the distance

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27
“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31

Introduction: What Are People For?

Clean out an old man’s garage after he dies and you will find things you cannot name. A bent piece of iron with a wooden handle. A brass fitting shaped like nothing you have ever seen. You can turn it over in your hands all afternoon and never figure out what it was for. The only one who could tell you is the one who made it.

That is the situation every human being is in. We are here, and we did not make ourselves, and the question underneath almost every other question we ask is this: what am I for? Our culture gives a hundred answers. You are for being happy. You are for achieving. You are for being true to yourself. You are a lucky accident and you are for nothing at all. Every one of those answers is a guess made from the inside, by the thing itself, turning itself over in its own hands.

Genesis 1 and 2 are the Maker’s answer. Last week we met the God who is there: eternal, holy, needing nothing, one God in three persons. This week we watch him make a world, and then make us, and we hear him say what we are for. If you get these two weeks, you will understand why people matter, why work matters, why your body matters, why marriage matters, and why the world is so beautiful. In Week 7 we will see why it also feels so wrong.

The Word: Image

Genesis 1:26–27 “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

צֶלֶם (tselem, “image”)

a carved or cast likeness that stands for someone; paired here with “likeness”

צֶלֶם (tselem)

“image”

Elsewhere it means a statue or idol: the “images” of Baal (2 Kings 11:18), and in Aramaic the golden image Nebuchadnezzar set up (Dan. 3:1).

דְּמוּת (demut)

“likeness”

Resemblance. When Adam later has a son, Seth is born “in his own likeness, after his image” (Gen. 5:3). Image and likeness carry the idea of sonship.

Payoff: Ancient kings set up images of themselves in lands they ruled, so everyone would know whose land it was. And a ninth-century BC statue of a ruler found in Syria uses the Aramaic forms of these same two words, image and likeness, for the king’s statue. Now read Genesis 1 again. God made the whole world as his kingdom, and then, as the last thing he made, he set his own image in it. He set a living man and woman, not stone or gold, made to show the world what its King is like and to rule it under him. No wonder Israel was later forbidden to carve images of God (Ex. 20:4; Deut. 4:15–16). He had already made his image, and it walks on two legs.

Keep that picture. Every person you have ever met is a living statue of the King, set in his world to represent him. Every one of us has defaced it, some more visibly than others, but none have ceased to bear it. That one word answers the garage question. You are for God: to know him, reflect him, and rule his world on his behalf.

A tall stone statue of a robed king with a gold crown standing on a hilltop, one arm raised over farmland and villages stretching to the horizon

An ancient king’s image marked his land as his. God set his own living image in the world he made.

Part One: Out of Nothing, by a Word

Genesis 1:1–3 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

Notice how God makes things. He speaks. Ten times in the chapter you read “And God said,” and whenever he commands something into being, it happens. A psalm puts it in one line: “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Ps. 33:9). He did not shape the world out of something that was already lying around. “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Heb. 11:3). Theologians use a Latin phrase for this, ex nihilo: out of nothing. The Shorter Catechism puts it plainly: “The work of creation is, God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good” (WSC 9).

Verse 2 gives us two problems, and the rest of the chapter solves them. The earth was “without form” (shapeless, not yet ordered) and “void” (empty, not yet filled). Watch what God does over the six days. On the first three days he forms: he separates light from darkness, sky from sea, and dry land from water. On the next three days he fills what he formed: lights for the day and night, birds for the sky and fish for the sea, animals for the land. And last, he makes the man and the woman to rule it all. Then on the seventh day he rests.

The pattern is in the text itself, and it shows you a God of order and generosity. He builds a house, then furnishes it, then puts someone in it to live. Nothing in Genesis 1 is random. Everything is made “according to its kind,” put in its place, and called good.

How long were those days? This study takes them as ordinary days of evening and morning, and the Westminster Confession says God created “in the space of six days” (WCF 4.1). God himself ties the Sabbath (the weekly day of rest he later gave Israel) to those days when he speaks the Ten Commandments: “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day” (Ex. 20:11). You should know that faithful Reformed teachers have read the days in other ways, as long ages or as a literary framework, and a person can love Christ and hold the Bible as God’s Word whichever of these views he holds. What every one of them holds, and what matters most, is the main thing Genesis 1 teaches: the one true God made everything there is, by his word, on purpose, and it was good.

Also read: Psalm 104; Psalm 33:6–9; John 1:1–3; Colossians 1:15–17; Revelation 4:11

Part Two: Very Good

A lush garden of fruit trees with one great tree in the center, a river dividing into four streams, and a lion resting peacefully beside a deer and lambs

“And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen. 2:9).

Six times in Genesis 1 God looks at what he has made and sees that it is good. The seventh time comes after he makes the man and the woman: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31).

Let that correct something many religious people believe. Some think the body is a prison for the soul, that matter is dirty and only the “spiritual” is holy, that the real goal is to escape this world. That is an old idea, and the Bible rejects it from the first page. God made trees “pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen. 2:9). He made bodies. He made taste and color and the smell of rain. He made work and marriage and rest. Paul says it bluntly to Timothy about teachers who forbade marriage and certain foods: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:3–4).

And the world was made for someone. The New Testament tells us who did the making: “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16). The “him” is Jesus. The Son through whom God spoke the world into being is the same Son the world was made for. When you enjoy a good meal, a sunrise, or the laughter of a child, you are enjoying a gift that was made through Christ and for Christ. That is why gratitude is the right response, and why the world’s goodness is meant to lead you back to its Giver.

The Turn: Made Through Him

John tells us who that creating Word is. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). The Son of God made the world, and the same Son came into it to rescue it. The world you live in is not an accident or a mistake. It is a gift, and it has a Maker who can be thanked and trusted. Start there this week: everything you have came from him, and was made through Christ.

Living It: Three Practices for This Week

1Read the two chapters twice. Read Genesis 1 out loud, slowly. Then read Genesis 2. Mark every “And God said” and every “it was good.”

2Keep the Lord’s Day. This Sunday, worship with God’s people and rest from your ordinary work. Receive the day as a gift.

3Give thanks for the ordinary. At one meal this week, name three things about it you did not make and could not make. “Everything created by God is good” (1 Tim. 4:4).

Before Week 6: Read Genesis 1:26–2:25 and Psalm 8. Week 6 asks what it means to be made in God’s image.

For Discussion

What answers does our culture give to the question “What are people for?” How does Genesis 1–2 answer it differently?
Look at the forming and filling pattern of the six days. What does it tell you about the kind of God who made the world?
Why does it matter that God called the physical world “very good”? Where have you seen Christians treat the body or the material world as less than good?
Read John 1:1–3. What difference does it make to you that the world was made through Jesus?

Sources & For Further Study

Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), Q. 1, 9, 10, 12, 16. Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), 4.1–2; 7.2; 21.7–8.
On the length of the creation days among Reformed teachers: Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Report of the Committee to Study the Views of Creation (2004).
For further reading: Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image; Derek Kidner, Genesis (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries).

Next, Week 6: Made in His Image · All weeks

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