Genesis opens with ten words in English that answer the greatest questions of life: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The Bible does not stop to prove that God exists. It begins with Him. Before there was time, space or matter, God already was. Everything else has a beginning; He does not.
The next verse describes the earth as “without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep.” Notice the pattern of the six days that follow. On days one to three God forms what was formless: He separates light from darkness, the waters above from the waters below, and the dry land from the seas. On days four to six He fills what was empty: the sun, moon and stars fill the heavens, the birds and fish fill the sky and seas, and the animals and mankind fill the land. God is a God of order, and He brings order out of chaos.
Again and again the text says, “Then God said.” Creation happens by the word of God. He does not wrestle with other powers or struggle against the chaos; He simply speaks, and it is so. Psalm 33 says, “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made.” The same word that called light out of darkness is the word we hold in our hands when we open the Bible.
Six times we read that God saw that what He had made was good, and the seventh time, at the end of the sixth day, He saw that it was “very good.” Creation is not an accident and it is not evil. The material world — the body, food, work, beauty, family — is God's good gift. Sin will damage it in chapter 3, but sin did not create it and sin cannot have the final word over it.
Then comes the seventh day. God “rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done,” and He blessed it and sanctified it. God did not rest because He was weary. He rested because the work was finished and very good. Rest is built into the fabric of creation, and from the first week God invites His people to stop, to trust Him, and to enjoy Him.