Jesus: From Genesis to Revelation

Day 1: Days 1-3: Light, Sky, Land, and Vegetation

Reading

Historical Context

Genesis was composed as the opening act of the Torah, the five books Moses gave to Israel. The original audience was a nation of former slaves, fresh out of Egypt, camped at the edge of a promised land they had never seen. They had grown up surrounded by Egyptian cosmology – stories in which the sun god Ra emerged from a primordial ocean, battled the chaos serpent Apophis each night, and required human worship to sustain his strength. The Babylonian Enuma Elish, which Israel would later encounter in exile, told of the god Marduk splitting the carcass of the sea goddess Tiamat to form the heavens and the earth, then creating humans from the blood of a slain rebel god to serve as slave labor for the divine council.

Genesis 1 confronts every one of these claims – not by arguing against them but by quietly replacing them. There is no primordial ocean with a will of its own. There is no battle. There is no rival. There is only a voice, and the voice is sovereign. The sun and moon, which Egypt worshipped as gods, will not even appear until Day 4 – they are creatures, not creators. The sea, which the ancient world feared as a symbol of chaos, is simply told where to go, and it goes. And humanity is not made from the blood of a defeated deity to serve as divine slaves. Humanity is made in the image of the one true God, crowned with dignity and given dominion.

The Hebrew of the opening verse – bereshit bara elohim et hashamayim ve’et ha’arets – is seven words, a number that will structure the entire chapter and carry the weight of completion and divine intention. The verb bara (“created”) is used exclusively in the Old Testament for God’s activity. Humans build, form, fashion, and construct. Only God creates – calling into existence what was not there before, with no pre-existing material and no resistance.

The first three days follow a pattern of separation and naming. Day 1: God separates light from darkness and names them Day and Night. Day 2: God separates the waters above from the waters below, creating an expanse he names Sky. Day 3: God gathers the waters below into seas and lets dry land appear, then commands the land to produce vegetation. Each act is an exercise in ordering chaos – taking what is tohu wabohu (“without form and void”) and giving it structure, boundary, and purpose. The stages are being built. The filling will come next.

Christ in This Day

The New Testament does not allow us to read Genesis 1 as a story about an anonymous divine voice. John’s Gospel opens with a deliberate echo – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3). The ten “God said” commands of Genesis 1 are the voice of the pre-incarnate Son. Every time the text says “God said,” the eternal Word is speaking. The Father creates through the Son. This is not a later theological invention imposed on Genesis. It is the claim the apostles made because they had met the Creator in the flesh and recognized his voice.

The light of Day 1 deserves special attention. God speaks light into existence three days before the sun, moon, or stars appear. This is not a scientific error – it is a theological declaration. The source of light is not a celestial body. The source of light is God’s own word. John identifies this light with Christ himself: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4-5). When Jesus stands in the temple courts centuries later and says, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12), he is not borrowing a metaphor. He is reclaiming an identity. He has been the light since before the world began. And Paul makes the connection explicit: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). The first creative act of Genesis and the new creation act of salvation are the same God doing the same thing: speaking light into darkness.

The author of Hebrews adds a further claim: the Son is the one “through whom also he created the world” and who “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:2-3). The universe does not merely owe its origin to Christ. It owes its continued existence to him. Every atom holds together because the Son sustains it. The light, the sky, the land, the vegetation of Days 1-3 – all of it exists because Christ spoke it into being and has not stopped speaking.

Key Themes

Connections

Old Testament Roots

Genesis 1:1-13 establishes the vocabulary and patterns that the rest of the Old Testament will use to describe God’s saving acts. The separation of waters on Day 2 will be echoed at the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21-22) and at the Jordan River (Joshua 3:15-17). The dry land appearing from under the waters on Day 3 will be echoed after the flood (Genesis 8:13-14). Isaiah will describe the new creation God promises in the same terms: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19). Creation is the template; redemption is the re-creation.

New Testament Echoes

John 1:1-5 identifies the creative Word as the pre-incarnate Christ. Colossians 1:16-17 declares that all things were created “through him and for him” and that “in him all things hold together.” Hebrews 1:2-3 affirms that the Son is the agent of creation and the sustainer of the universe. 2 Corinthians 4:6 draws a direct line from “Let there be light” to the light of the gospel shining in human hearts. The New Testament is unanimous: the God who speaks in Genesis 1 is the God who becomes flesh in the Gospels.

Parallel Passages

Psalm 33:6-9 celebrates creation by the word: “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made.” Psalm 104:1-9 describes the same ordering of waters and land in poetic form. Proverbs 8:22-31 personifies Wisdom as present at creation, “rejoicing in his inhabited world” – a figure the New Testament identifies as Christ (1 Corinthians 1:24).

Reflection Questions

  1. Genesis 1 presents creation as effortless speech – “God said… and it was so.” There is no struggle, no resistance, no uncertainty. How does this picture of God’s sovereignty over chaos speak to the areas of disorder in your own life?

  2. The light of Day 1 exists before the sun. If this light is ultimately the light of Christ (John 1:4-5; 2 Corinthians 4:6), what does it mean that the very first act of creation is a preview of the gospel – light entering darkness?

  3. The New Testament identifies the “God said” of Genesis 1 as the voice of the pre-incarnate Son. How does knowing that Jesus is the one who spoke the world into existence change the way you hear his voice when he speaks in the Gospels?

Prayer

Creator God, you spoke and light answered. Before the sun, before the stars, before anything existed, your Word went out into the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it. We worship you as the God who creates by speaking – who needs no material, no assistance, no struggle. Open our eyes to see that the voice behind Genesis 1 is the voice of your Son, the Word who was with you from the beginning and through whom all things were made. As you once said “Let there be light” over the formless void, speak light into the places in our lives that are still dark, still disordered, still waiting for your creative word. In the name of Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Amen.