Welcome to the Grace To You audio blog. After you hear what John MacArthur says, stick around and find out how to get in on the conversation. How did the universe come to be what it is now? Let's go to Genesis 1 and let's get the straight story here. Verse 1, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Verse 1 states the general fact. Then verse 2 to 31 breaks it down into sequence. Let's look at day 1. Verse 2, and the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters and God said, let there be light. and there was light. And God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness He called night and there was evening and there was morning one day." Or day one, if you like. Now as day one begins, we find the earth in a very unique condition. Three phrases are used to describe it. It was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Those three give us the condition of creation on day one. Let's take the first one, familiar. And the earth was formless and void. It was tohu wabohu in Hebrew. Now how do you understand tohu wabohu, without form and void? Well, tohu means wilderness. It means devastated place. It means waste place. And bohu means empty. It was an empty waste place. Maybe the best way to say it would be The earth was unfinished as to its shape and unpopulated. That's exactly what it means. And that's understandable. When day one started, the material was there, there was time and there was space and there was matter, but it was unformed and unpopulated. Secondly, we further get a description, verse 1, it says, darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the reason for that is there was no created light. Darkness was spread over everything, that's what it says, over the surface of...and it doesn't say the earth, but of the deep. Well that's interesting. That introduces another component here. What is this primordial deep? Deep is a synonym used in Scripture for the sea. In fact, look later in verse 2, darkness is over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was also moving over the surface of the waters. And here God, through the Holy Spirit, defines the deep as water. So what do we have here? We have the earth engulfed in darkness which in touching the surface of the earth touches the surface of water. So the earth is covered with water, the entire surface of the earth. It's a deep, it's a sea, it's a global primordial ocean surrounded by universal darkness. That is referred to also in Psalm 104 verses 5 and 6, He established the earth upon its foundations, thou didst cover it with the deep as with a garment. Like a cloak that covers you, the garment of the earth was water. And it says the waters were standing above the mountains. The unformed earth was literally covered with water. In a sense, this is like a potter who, wishing to fashion a beautiful vessel and then to fill it to be used, first takes a lump of clay and places it on the the wheel to mold and fit it to His purpose. So God first gets the raw material and it is a mix of elements covered with water existing in universal darkness, this before He begins to shape it. And this, by the way, I think is what Peter, 2 Peter 3...5 meant, the earth was formed out of water. Proverbs 8.27 says, he drew a circle over the face of the deep. The matter became spherical. So God had this ball of elements that would constitute the earth when He shaped it, engulfed in water. And the third commentary on the state of the earth on day one is most notable, the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. I love this word moving, it's the word hovering over this unformed and lifeless material engulfed in water and steeped in darkness was hovering the Spirit of God, ruach elohim , God the Spirit. And this indicates superintending divine care and supervision. Job 33.4 says, the ruach Elohim, the Spirit of God has made me and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. This word hovering is a beautiful word. If you want to compare its use to give you an analogy, you can go to Deuteronomy 32.11, just write it down for the moment, and you will find there that it's used to describe young eaglets. in a nest, not capable of feeding themselves, not capable of defending themselves, unable to survive, unable to live, unable to develop and grow, utterly dependent on the care of parents who hover over them, providing food and protection and warmth so they can survive and live and grow and develop And that's precisely the imagery here because the same Hebrew word is used of the Holy Spirit hovering over this undeveloped, unformed, lifeless mass of matter in space, covered by water, engulfed in darkness. And the Spirit of God is hovering over the surface of this earth, the brooding of the Spirit of God over the waters. Listen, that is a major detail in the creation account, not a minor one. It demonstrates, for one thing, the biblical world view of God is that He is directly involved in His creation. His hand is never lifted from the elements and the working of the material order. His presence is there, superintending, hovering over that. This is the antithesis of this philosophical deism that says God is like the originator of the creation, He wound it up and then walked away from it. Or theological dualism which sees a gap between a good God and spirit and a bad world and matter. But rather you have the living God superintending, brooding over, hovering over the waters, being directly in charge of the entire process of creation. As you go through the Bible, you will find that the Spirit of God is the source of all life. And by His Spirit He ordered the heavens, it says in Job 26 and many other scriptures. So the Spirit of God provides the energy to shape and organize and bring life. This is the work of God. First thing that happens. Creatively, after the original material is in verse 3, day 1, then God said, let there be light and there was light. Now scientists can fuss and fume and fuddle and muddle around for decades and centuries trying to figure out where light came from and all you need is one verse. There was no light. God said, let there be light and there was light. The one who is uncreated light, brought into existence, created light. The one, according to 1 Timothy 6, 16, who dwells in unapproachable light, commanded created light to exist in the place where there was only darkness and light came into existence. And with the creation of light, there was established a cyclical succession of days and nights, periods of light and periods of darkness. Which we shall see looking here in verse 5, called the light day and He called the darkness night, and you have the cycle of night and day. That means the earth immediately began rotating on its axis and there was a source of light on one side of the earth corresponding to the sun which wasn't created until later, and there was darkness on the other side of the earth as well. God created light and there was light, simply because God told it to exist. Oh God, I guess like a man who came to arrange various things that were scattered in confusion in some dark room before he does anything else, turns on the light. In verse 4, God saw that the light was good. Now that statement gets repeated in verse 10, verse 12, verse 18, verse 21, verse 25 and verse 31. Everything that God created was good, right? Everything that God created was good. In the end of it, verse 31, He sums it up, and God saw all that He had made and behold, it was very good. Now the works of the Creator could only be good, so that doesn't surprise us at all. Everything He made was good.