How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all.”        Psalm 104:24

God took great care to show us the chronology of His creation in six literal days.

The Meaning of Day

Yom—the Hebrew word for “day” in Genesis 1—is used both in the singular and plural form 2,301 times in the Old Testament. Although yom can have different meanings, similar to our English word “day”, the context in the Old Testament outside of Genesis 1 points to the literal 24-hour interpretation. Consider the following (Ken Ham, The Foundations):

• The Hebrew word for day with a number [e.g., “. . . and the evening and the morning were the first day”] occurs 410 times, and always means an ordinary day.
• The phrase “evening and morning” occurs 38 times, and always means an ordinary day.
• The word “evening” with “day”, or “morning” with “day”, occurs 23 times, and always means ordinary day.
• The word “night” with “day” occurs 52 times, and always means an ordinary day.
• We also structure our week from God’s six 24-hour day creation week and seventh day of rest.

Creation Days  

(source: AnswersinGenesis.org)
“For in six days God the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.” – Exodus 20:11

• Day One – Light (so there was light and darkness)
• Day Two – Sky and water (waters separated)
• Day Three – Land and seas (waters gathered); vegetation
• Day Four – Sun, moon, and stars (to govern the day and the night and to mark seasons, days, and years)
• Day Five – Fish and birds (to fill the waters and the sky
• Day Six – Animals (to fill the earth), man and woman (to care for the earth and to commune with God)
• Day Seven – God rested and declared all He had made to be very good

God’s Creativity and Power

God capped off His creation with Eve. (When Adam saw her, he whistled and said “Whoa! Man!”) 🙂 Instead of making her from the dust of the ground like Adam, He chose to sculpt her from Adam’s flesh and blood. This illustrates God’s intention of marriage between man and woman—beyond becoming best friends—to become one in unity and purpose. Marriage is also used to describe Christ and the church (Eph. 5:23, 32).

Of God’s other creation, Francis Chan, in Crazy Love, writes: “Why would God create more than 350,000,000 galaxies (and that is a conservative estimate) that generations of people never saw or even knew existed? Do you think maybe it was to make us say, “Wow, God is unfathomably big”? Or perhaps God wanted us to see these pictures so that our response would be, “Who do I think I am?”

Chan also reminds us of God’s detailed intricacy and diversity in His smaller creations:

• A caterpillar has 228 separate and distinct muscles in its head.
• The average elm tree has about 6 million leaves on it.
• God made hundreds of different kinds of bananas; 3,000 different species of trees within one square mile in the Amazon jungle; and quite a variety of laughs—wheezes, snorts, silent, loud, obnoxious.

This list could go on and on. Chan has a great video called “Just Stop and Think”. When you have 15 minutes, I encourage you to see it below.