What did planet Earth look like in its very first moments of existence? We might expect a breathtaking paradise — after all, this is God’s handiwork. But Genesis 1:2 paints a strikingly different picture: "Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep." An empty, uninhabitable, barren wilderness. A vast, unending ocean with no shore, blanketed in total darkness.
And yet, from this unpromising raw material, God fashions a world of staggering beauty, variety, and abundance. Genesis 1:1-25 tells the story of how He does it — not in a single flash of omnipotent power, but through a deliberate, ordered, six-day process that transforms chaos into cosmos. And the way God creates the world turns out to reveal something profound about the way He works in every area of life.
The Surprising Starting Point
The two Hebrew words translated "formless and empty" in Genesis 1:2 are used elsewhere in Scripture to describe utter desolation. In Job 6:18, the same word for "formless" describes an untracked desert — featureless sand dunes stretching endlessly, shifting with every wind, offering no landmarks and no hope to a lost traveller. Deuteronomy 32:10 uses both words together to describe "a desert land, a barren and howling waste." When the prophets wanted to paint a picture of God’s devastating judgment on a sinful nation, these were the words they reached for (Isaiah 34:11).
That is what the whole planet looked like. Imagine floating on a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in total darkness, wrapped in thick fog. No light. No shore. No life. A frightening, inhospitable place.
And yet — God is completely in control. This is not an accident. He created the earth this way deliberately, with a purpose. Verse 2 makes that clear: "The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." The word "hovering" appears in only one other place in the Bible — Deuteronomy 32:11, where an eagle hovers over her young, watching over them, preparing them for the next stage of their development. So the Spirit broods over this dark, formless creation, surveying it, preparing it for what comes next.
There is something deeply encouraging here. God is present and active even at the bleakest moment of this world’s existence. If He is here at this point, then we can be sure He is active at all other times as well. As Psalm 139 reminds us, "Where can I go from your Spirit? Even the darkness will not be dark to you, for darkness is as light to you."
The Pattern: Three Days of Forming, Three Days of Filling
The initial state of the earth had two problems: it was formless and it was empty. Over the course of six days, God addresses exactly these two problems — giving the earth form where there was formlessness, and fullness where there was emptiness.
The first three days are like building a stage set and painting the scenery. The last three days are like filling the stage with props, furniture, and actors. And there is a precise correspondence between the two halves:
- Day 1 — God creates light and separates it from darkness (day and night). Day 4 — He fills the sky with light-bearers: the sun, moon, and stars to govern the light and darkness.
- Day 2 — God creates the sky, separating the waters above from the waters below, forming sky and seas. Day 5 — He fills the sky with birds and the waters with fish and sea creatures.
- Day 3 — God creates dry ground, dividing earth into continents and seas, and produces vegetation. Day 6 — He fills the dry ground with animals, insects, and above all, human beings.
Formless becomes formed. Empty becomes full. And the whole narrative builds in a crescendo — each day progressively longer, the focus narrowing from the universe down to one single human being, Adam.
A Masterpiece of Literary Structure
The recurring phrases that echo through Genesis 1 are not random repetition. They form deliberate, sophisticated patterns. The number seven — the biblical number of perfection and completion — weaves through the text in remarkable ways:
- "And it was so" appears seven times
- "God saw that it was good" (or "very good") appears seven times
- "The heavens" and "the earth" are each mentioned 21 times (7 × 3)
- The word "God" appears 35 times (7 × 5)
The number ten, representing fullness, also features prominently — "And God said" occurs exactly ten times. This is not a primitive piece of writing. It is a carefully structured literary masterpiece, deliberately crafted to mirror the order, design, symmetry, and beauty of creation itself. The previous sermons in this series explored the introduction to Genesis and our response to creation — and here we see just how much thought God put into the world He made for us.
Why Did God Create This Way?
This raises a question that goes to the heart of the passage. Why did God do it like this? Why begin with desolate chaos and gradually transform it into paradise over six days? It would have been just as easy for God to speak a finished, perfect world into existence in a single nanosecond. He didn’t need to catch His breath at the end of each day. So why the process?
Isaiah 45:18 gives us a clue: "He who created the heavens, He is God. He who fashioned and made the earth, He founded it. He did not create it to be empty but formed it to be inhabited." God never intended to leave the earth formless and empty. The destination was always a teeming, beautiful, inhabited world. But He chose a process to get there.
And that process reveals something fundamental about God’s character. His normal way of working is not to make things happen instantly. He works in stages. He takes unpromising, unlikely-looking raw material and transforms it out of all recognition. He speaks His word, and it brings life and order and meaning and value — gradually, at the proper time, in an ordered way.
God’s New Creation: You
This is not just ancient history. It is a window into how God works right now — in the lives of His people.
The Bible calls Christians God’s new creation. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." And Genesis 1:2 turns out to be a vivid picture of the spiritual state of every person before God changes them — formless and empty. Made for relationship with God, but instead of joyful communion, there is just a void. Life is a confused, disordered mess. There is no solid foundation for hopes or beliefs. There is an emptiness and formlessness deep in the heart.
But here is the good news. What God did in Genesis 1, He does every time He creates a Christian. Paul makes the connection explicit in 2 Corinthians 4:6: "God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." The same God who commanded light into a dark, formless world commands the light of the gospel into a dark, formless heart. And that is a powerful encouragement for anyone who has been sharing the gospel and feels like they’re hitting a brick wall. The hearts around us may look dark and formless and empty — because they are. But God’s word is irresistible. What He did with the chaos of Genesis 1:2, He can do with any human heart.
And once that new life begins, God doesn’t click His fingers and make someone instantly perfect. Just as He took six days to shape the earth, He takes a lifetime to shape a Christian. It is a slow process, a hard process, one that won’t be finished this side of heaven. Like a sculptor carving a statue from a block of stone — it starts looking like nothing, like chaos. But gradually, with patient, skilful work, the figure emerges until at last the finishing touches are made and it is complete.
For anyone who feels like a failure as a Christian — a disappointment to God, a poor-quality believer — Genesis 1 offers this comfort: God is not finished with you yet. If you had visited the earth on day one, or day three, or day four, you would have seen signs of progress, but not yet the paradise God had in mind. It was not until the end of day six, when all the work was complete, that God surveyed everything He had made and said those extraordinary words: "It is all very good" (Genesis 1:31).
Every Christian is a work in progress. And one day — the day we enter heaven — God will look at His finished workmanship in us with the same satisfaction. And verse 31 will be true of you and me.
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