The Majesty of “God Said”: Genesis and the Power of Divine Utterance

The psalmist wrote in Psalm 33:6, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their lights.”

By the word of the Lord… by merely the breath from His mouth… the heavens were made!

Is that not the most awesome and wondrous picture we have ever been given? God spoke… and everything in the seen and unseen universe was created!

Let us consider the majesty of the biblical expression “God Said” in Genesis 1 and meditate on the power of this divine utterance. 

Note the repetition of “God said” in Genesis 1 (NIV):

• And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (v. 3)
• And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” (v. 6)
• And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. (v. 9) 
• Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. (v. 11)
• And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years.” (v. 14)
• And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” (v. 20)
• And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. (v. 24)
• Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” (v. 26)

God said. 

God spoke. 

Had we been there, observing “nothing,” we would have heard the voice of God and, in overwhelming awe, in a blinking of an eye, we would have seen the formation of the stars throughout the heavens. 

Can we imagine what that might have been like? 

In C. S. Lewis’s book The Magician’s Nephew, several people witness the creation of Narnia. Lewis captures the wonder as best as anyone might.

In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing… the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it… Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out… If you had seen and heard it…, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing…

The Voice on the earth was now louder and more triumphant; but the voices in the sky, after singing loudly with it for a time, began to get fainter… Far away, and down near the horizon, the sky began to turn gray. A light wind, very fresh, began to stir. The sky, in that one place, grew slowly and steadily paler. You could see shapes of hills standing up dark against it. All the time the Voice went on singing… The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold. The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose… The earth was of many colours: they were fresh, hot and vivid. They made you feel excited; until you saw the Singer himself, and then you forgot everything else.

It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy, and bright it stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song and it was about three hundred yards away… And as he walked and sang the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the Lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave… Soon there were other things besides grass. The slopes grew dark with heather. . . . And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction… But now the song had once more changed. It was more like what we should call a tune, but it was also far wilder. It made you want to run and jump and climb… Showers of birds came out of the trees. Butterflies fluttered. Bees got to work on the flowers as if they hadn’t a second to lose… And now you could hardly hear the song of the Lion; there was so much cawing, cooing, crowing, braying, neighing, baying, barking, lowing, bleating, and trumpeting… Then there came a swift flash like a fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

In conclusion we need only read three scriptures:

• By faith we understand that the world has been created by the word of God so that what is seen has not been made out of things that are visible. (Hebrews 11:3)
• Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created. (Revelation 4:11)
• Praise Him, highest heavens, and the waters that are above the heavens! They are to praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created. (Psalm 148:4-5) 

Might I suggest a word of praise to Him as worthy to receive the honor?