Youth Sunday School Genesis

Youth Genesis Study

This morning we are going to try to look at all of Chapter one of Genesis.

Last week we look at an introduction and verses 1 and 2 which serve as a thesis, so this morning we are picking up in verse 3.

Genesis 1:3 NASB95

3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

This is the first of a highly structured series of brief and conventional sentences expressing the creative commands of God.

Thus creation is accomplished by His word.

Each command consist of:

An announcement, God said.

A creative command, let there be.

A summary word of accomplishment, and it was so.

A descriptive word of accomplishment, the earth brought forth.

A descriptive blessing, God blessed.

And evaluative approval, it was good.

And a concluding temporal framework, numbering each day.

Let there be light: these words express a principle theme of the Bible.

God bringing light into darkness.

Here God produces physical light, the New Testament records God sending His Son to be the Light of the world.

John 8:12 NASB95

12 Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

Genesis 1:4 NASB95

4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

God saw that the light, this light is not the sun, as the sun was created on the fourth day, this is some other light source outside of the earth.

So then what was this light Source it it was not the sun, most believe this light source is indicated of the presence of God at creation.

God seen this light and that it was good, the divine evaluation that the light was good indicates that God is Judge, as well as Landlord, who evaluates the consequences of his creative word.

Genesis 1:5 NASB95

5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

Here God names the light day and the darkness night.

This shows God’s sovereign dominion and Lordship over His creation.

The evening and the morning were the first day, this seems to be backwards at least to us, but if we were Jews it would be normal, they recognize the new day at sundown.

When the sun set, at evening it began a new day, so the evening and the morning were the first day.

There is a lot of debate at how long a day was at the time of creation, was a day at creation a 24 hour period like it is now or was it maybe 48 hours or was it 96 hours, well when you do a word study on the word day in the first five books of the Bible, because Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible.

The word day is Yom in Hebrew when used with a definite or numerical adjective means a solar day or a normally calibrated 24-hour day. Another words the days at creation were the same length as they our days now.

Thus, the biblical account of creation clearly indicates that God created the world in six literal days.

Genesis 1:6–8 NASB95

6 Then God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. 8 God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

God formed a firmament or an expanse to create a boundary, giving structure to the upper and lower waters.

The firmament or expanse is the atmosphere that distinguishes the surface waters of the earth from the atmospheric waters or clouds.

There is evidence in the Old Testament that the Hebrews understood that clouds produced rain and thus, from phenomenological perspective, water can be described as belonging to the upper atmosphere.

in verse eight we God names this firmament, He calls it heavens or sky.

Heaven here is the skies that are visible to the human eye, whereas God’s abode is the heaven above, where his court convenes but cannot be seen.

The evening and the morning are the second day. God created light on day one, then he created our atmosphere on day two.

Genesis 1:9–13 NASB95

9 Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10 God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. 13 There was evening and there was morning, a third day.

The third day concerns the surface of the earth: the waters are gathered into seas, thereby distinguishing the land masses and the earth yields green vegetation.

God’s approval, it was good, for the second day was delayed until the third, when the final separation of waters was achieved.

God exerted authority as he named the dry ground land and the water seas, assigning them their place and function.

Unlike the first two days of creation, the third day included a second act of creation.

After the appearance of the land masses, God creates vegetation upon the land.

Here is a climax, where for the first time the earth becomes productive.

The presence of vegetation prepares the way for the life systems to follow by providing the diet for animal and human life.

The vegetation is of two kinds, expressed in general categories: 1 - plants producing seed and 2 - fruit trees whose fruit possess seeds.

This is the first occurrence of the term seed which takes a important significance in Genesis, most often meaning offspring and speaks of the children of an individual family.

The vegetation, like the waters, is given prescribed boundaries: they reproduce according to their various kinds.

God looks at what he has created and it was good.

The third day, God created the land and seas, and called for the land to bring fourth grass, herbs, and fruit trees.

Genesis 1:14–19 NASB95

14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. 16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. 17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. 19 There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

The fourth day the luminaries are created and placed in the heavens.

Here is when God made the sun and the moon, in the firmament, or in the heavens, our outer space.

The sun is described as the greater light and the moon as the lesser light.

Genesis shows that the sun and the moon are not cosmic deities worthy of reverence; the stars are no more than light-bearing bodies that are subservient to the needs of the earth.

They are to differentiate day and night and to distinguish the seasons, days, and years.

God looks upon the sun, moon, and stars and saw that it was good, and we have the fourth day.

Genesis 1:20–23 NASB95

20 Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” 21 God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

The fifth day concerns the filling of the waters and the skies, a distinctive feature of the fifth day is the first recorded blessing in the Bible.

God commands the waters to bring forth living creatures and the birds to fill the atmosphere.

God created great whales or what verse 21 says great sea monsters which includes great fish as well as whales.

The living creatures like the vegetation before are created according to their kinds.

God created every living thing that moved in the waters, and all the wing fowl and God says that it was good.

This is before sin, so there was no good and not good animals, or clean and unclean animals at this point in time.

God blessed these creatures by enabling them to procreate or reproduce, indicating His superior position.

This endowment for living things comes only from God since His word alone brings life.

The fifth day was deemed good.

Genesis 1:24–31 NASB95

24 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. 25 God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

The sixth day of creation is the most significant of all the days so far, more space and detail are given to its creative events than to the previous five.

God command the land to bring forth the living creatures, He sets boundaries for the land dwelling animals after their kind.

The crown of God’s handiwork is human life.

Human life is the pinnacle of the creation, and alone is created in the image of God and has the special assignment to rule over the created order.

Man was created both in the image and likeness of God.

An image is a representation or replica of one person or thing by another.

An image may be similar but necessarily identical to its original.

The term likeness is used as a gauge of comparison or analogy.

We are made like God, but we are not divine like God.

When man fell, he retained an impaired image of God.

Regaining a likeness of God is one of the accomplishments of salvation.

Our spiritual likeness is restored in justification.

Our character likeness is being continuously developed in the process of sanctification.

We will be like Christ physically when we are glorified, that is when we get to heaven.

The verb created occurs three times in verse 27, unlike the animals, who are said to have come from the land, mankind is a direct creation of God.

Male and Female both are image-bearers who both are responsible for governing the world.

Then in verse 28 the male and female are blessed, this is only the second of three blessings in the creation account.

As with the fish and fowl the divine blessing involves procreation to be fruitful and multiply.

He then gives the command to the human to have dominion or control over every living thing.

We are given the job of being caretakers over the world.

In verses 29-30, God is depicted as the beneficent provider, who insures food for both human and animal life.

Then in the closing verse of 31, God sees everything that He created and it was very good.

All that God had made was worthy of commendation. His highest acclaim is withheld until the completed creation because only after the sixth day was the lifeless earth fully changed.

Now the earth as a result of God’s spirit and animated word is well-ordered, complete, and abounding in life-form under the watch care of royal humanity.

And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

We have seen the six’s days of creation here, and out of everything that God created He created it for humans, and he created humans to have fellowship and relationship with him.

He desires for us to spend time with him, as a loving God He does not force us into that, He gives us that opportunity to make that choice on our own.