Genesis 1:14-23 False Gods are always created.
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And 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, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
Let us Pray.
Children Dismissed.
Welcome back to the book of Genesis.
We are walking through the Creation account in Chapter 1
With the goal of discovering with greater clarity the awesome power and wisdom of our God.
Both of these attributes will be on full display this morning as we journey through days 4 and 5.
If I had to choose a favorite day of Creation, Day 6 would have to be my favorite, because that is when humanity entered the scene.
Without day 6, we wouldn’t be here today, so I believe that has to be my favorite by default.
However, with Day 6 aside, day 4 is probably my favorite day of Creation and Day 5 is probably my wife’s favorite, but more on that later.
So, I have been really excited all week for the opportunity to open God’s Word and explore this fascinating section.
A brief recap reminds us that it was God who created the Heavens and the Earth on Day 1.
God needed no additional help.
God was not one of many who put forth creation.
It was God and God alone who created the heavens and the earth.
In verse 2 we saw the state of the earth after the beginning of Creation.
Let’s be look back on this verse together.
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
We concluded that verse 2 gives us the template in which Creation would take place.
Days 1 - 3 would bring form to what was formless and
Days 4 - 6 would fill what was at that moment void.
Since we are working through days 4 and 5 we are in the scene in which God will populate the earth.
Bringing life to the emptiness.
What was also captivating this week is how the words chosen in this section not only declare God’s purposes and designs, but also hit back against the cultural beliefs of the day.
The Scriptures declared the greatness of our God while simultaneously revealing the societal foolishness that was the prevailing belief during Moses’s time.
So, our goal will be to understand these next two days in reference to God’s creation, but also understand how counter-cultural this account really is.
What we may also discover is that these counter cultural aspects are needed just as much today as they were in Moses’s day.
Now that we have our plan before us, let’s go to God’s Word and look to see what the Spirit will reveal to us within.
Open your Bibles or turn them on if that is your preference to the very beginning of our Bibles, the book of Genesis starting in verse 14 through 15
And 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, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.
Let’s be reminded of two aspects of these verses that we have already explored.
And “God Said” on one end, along with “And it was so” on the other end.
God’s speaking is God’s doing.
God does not speak forth and cross His fingers in hopes that it will happen.
God does not speak forth and hold His breath to make sure man does not thwart it.
God does not speak forth and awaits to see if creation would listen.
No, God speaks forth and out of nothing becomes something.
What was not there is now there.
Creation bursts forth and is set into motion exactly as God intends it to be.
To say, “And it was so”, is to say that God has established it to be as it is.
What was taking place did not let God know how it would function.
The complete opposite. It was God that established through His speaking.
Let us now turn to what was said, what was created, and what was established.
Let’s look closer at verse 14.
And 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,
We begin Day 4 with God speaking forth and lights burst forth into the expanse of the heavens!
If you are taking notes, and I hope you do, be sure to write this next part down.
The lights of Day 4 have three specific purposes that are laid out for us.
Purpose 1 is to separate day and night,
Purpose 2 is to guide the passage of time, and
Purpose 3, which we won’t see till the next verse, is to illuminate the earth.
And we see that this takes place in the expanse of the heavens.
Before we get to the purposes let me briefly explain the heavens so we are not confused.
Last week we discovered that the heavens was the atmosphere above.
We recognized that this term is used in different ways depending on the context.
In verse one and day 1, God created the Heavens and the Earth, Heavens referred to everything that was not earth.
In day 2, Heavens referred to the atmosphere.
Here in day 4 it again refers to that which is beyond the earth or as seen in the atmosphere from earth.
So, these lights would be in the expanse above the earth.
Now, let’s jump into our first purpose, we see that these lights will separate the day from the night.
Now, this may seem strange since we saw that God spoke forth light in Day 1 and separated the light from the darkness.
We also established that God created the morning and evening during day 1.
So, these new lights are now going to take over.
While this may seem strange, we find later in Scripture the reason for this.
We established last week that this light is the glory of God. Which is phenomenal.
However, we also discover through the Bible that man, in our fallen nature cannot be in the presence of God’s glory and live.
Sin cannot be in unified to, collaborated with, or in community along side a Holy God.
So, on day 1 it was God’s glory that illuminated the heavens and the earth.
One day, it will be God’s glory again that illuminates the new heaven and new earth.
But, on Day 4, we see that a change was made and this was before man was created and before the fall.
This shows us, as well as many Scriptures in the New Testament affirm,
That the fall of man and the invasion of sin into the world was something that God had a plan for before the foundations of the earth.
So, instead of continuing to shine forth His glory as the means of illumination, God created great lights for this purpose.
The first purpose then was to separate the day from the night.
Practically speaking, the earth was set into a rotation, and
These great lights would now shine on one half during the day and the other half during the night.
Thus separating our days and nights with the setting of the sun and the rising of the mon.
Next we see the second purpose of these great lights are for signs and seasons, days and years.
More specifically, for the passage of time.
The days and years help us see that these lights were put in place to give us our calendar.
Science shows us that the earth traverses around one of these great lights and makes a complete circle around it every year.
I specifically bring up science because I want to remind us this incredibly important truth; that Science is not anti-God.
Science is actually the study of How God created the Heavens and the Earth.
You will not find this in our modern text books, you will not find this on Bill Nye the science guy TV shows,
You will not find this in our universities today.
However, Biology is the study of how God creates and sustains living organisms.
Astronomy is the study of how God created and orchestrates the universe.
The difficulty of our day is that in our rebellion against God, many do science with other “gods” in mind.
The god of atheism which is the god of self.
Science done in this way presupposes that we come from pond scum and are made up of star dust.
We are just random molecules bouncing around with no real purpose or reason.
Do not think for a moment that atheism does not influence the outcome and the results of science, it absolutely influences it if not guides it.
It is this mindset that we get the absurdity of millions and billions of years in creation.
Maybe one doesn’t consider themselves atheistic but agnostic.
They do not know what god, but they believe in a god of sorts.
We can get a naturalistic standpoint going this route where we worship the god known as mother nature.
Our maker is the earth and our grand parents are other species.
Again, we have no rhyme or reason for being here, just that nature accidently produced us.
It is this mindset that gives us the insanity that we came from apes and call it science.
Yet, the Bible is what gives humanity its dignity, its worth, its value as it reveals that we are not a lucky mistake,
But a carefully reasoned and thought out creation of an almighty and all wise God.
So, we have science that declares how God purposed our Creation and within this we see,
our calendar created through these lights and we also have signs and seasons.
What is being spoken of in the sky with signs?
Well, we see that God would use a star to proclaim the birth of the Messiah in Matthew Chapter 2
We see that the sun, moon and stars, will all be used in the proclamation of the return of Jesus in Luke 21:25.
As for Seasons,
The axis that our earth sits on gives us different seasons depending on where we are at in the journey around this greater light.
Let’s look at the third purpose these lights will be used for in our next verse.
and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.
Purpose 3 is to light the earth.
We have the means for days and nights, we have the means for calendars and seasons,
Now we see that these greater lights gives forth the light itself.
Everything that we see during the day is because of the light that is shined forth from what God has placed in the expanse above.
All the means necessary for animals and humans to flourish is now shining down from above.
We also see the great but also lesser light guiding us through the darkness of night.
Now, you may be wondering why I have not come right out and said what these greater lights are.
I’m pretty sure we all know what this greater light is and what we call this light.
Do you have any thoughts on why I, nor Scripture, have put forth a name, yet?
Could it be that we are unsure of what these lights are?
Perhaps Moses did not have a name to attach to them?
Maybe God was not going to be Sovereign over these because He is not naming them?
Let’s see how our next verse unfolds.
And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.
The name that we commonly use is once again omitted.
It is replaced with the two great lights.
Perhaps we don’t really know what these great lights are?
Well, one of the great lights and the one that would be known as the greater light rules the day.
I wonder what that would be.....
The other great light, but the lesser of the lights to rule the night.
I wonder what that would be......
Oh yeah, and the stars.
At this point you may be asking yourself if the author of Genesis knew what it was they were looking at.
Perhaps there is not a word in their language that best describes these lights?
If we look at the historical context during this writing, we discover that Moses wrote this and knew exactly what He was doing.
There is a specific reason why He omitted the names the Sun and the moon.
There is a Hebrew name for Sun and a Hebrew name for moon, but get this:
These names were appropriated by the culture of the time and referred to as gods themselves.
The Pagan cultures, including and especially Egypt where the people had just escaped, believed and worshipped these objects as Gods.
It is a reason why the plagues went after these false gods and the 9th plague specifically went after their belief in the sun God.
Thus, Moses intentionally does not name these created objects for the purpose of declaring what they do.
These two lights were not to be worshiped.
These two lights were not to be prayed to.
These two lights were not to have alters or temples dedicated to them.
Moses wanted the readers to see these objects not as gods but as objects created by God.
Thus, instead of using terms that the pagan nations would associate with gods, and could confuse God’s people, Moses chose to go a different route.
We can certainly understand this in our day as well when language is changed to fit a false narrative.
I was speaking to a friend this week and we were talking about the term Gender.
I was sharing how 20 years ago gender had a specific definition and a specific understanding.
Today it has been appropriated by a group and definitions are being changed daily on what gender is supposed to mean.
One could point to science as the reason why the term gender needs to change.
However, we already established that Science is the way that God does things and God is very clear on the definition of gender.
For God is who creates gender and God is who assigns gender.
However, when we begin with atheism or naturalism or any other ism that is not God, we leave ourselves open to all sorts of insanities.
So, in this sense, we are no different today than the pagan nations of thousands of years ago.
Speaking of Sun, Ecclesiastes reminds us of this unfortunate truth.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
What Moses dealt with in His day, we still deal with in our day.
Though it will go by different names,
Though it will be packaged differently
It is the same concept over and over, generation after generation.
Thus, Moses seems to have chosen to use language that would demean the false gods of the culture and elevate the true God of creation.
It would have been disrespectful to share the function of the god and not elevate the god.
So, Moses shares not only the function of the Sun and the Moon but declares that they were created by God and submit to the authority of God.
They have no purpose or reasons outside of what God gives them.
This is pretty fascinating and easy to miss if we are just scanning through this creation account.
But, we might be tempted to mock these early nations and think of how wise and superior we are today.
How silly, we might think, is it that people used to look to the Sun and the Moon to get answers and to plead for their fortunes.
You may think that society has progressed, yet how many people today look to horoscopes and identify themselves by their astrological signs?
I could say, “I’m a Leebra or you may be a Taurus.”
We could say, “That makes sense why they are acting this way because they are a Virgo or a Gemini.”
Don’t think for a moment that our society has progressed beyond these primitive beliefs.
Let me state the obvious for a moment. A Christian does not look to horoscopes to understand themselves or the world around them.
Doing so puts you in the same category of as the Pagans of old.
My point is that some things never change, when we abandon God, we will seek to fill that void with anything we can come up with.
However, it always includes elevating a created thing instead of looking to the Creator.
The main goal of this creation account is to point to God, elevate God, and declare who our true God is.
Since we speaking of astrology, we can now look at the last part of this verse.
And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.
I actually found this part very amusing as I was studying this week.
It is like Moses throws in the stars as an after thought.
Like, oh yeah, and the stars.
Which would be quite telling because of the culture that put so much emphasis on stars.
Here Moses tosses it in as just another side thing that our Great God created.
The creation of the stars would be used, not to worship itself, but to point to whom we worship.
The stars would be a great gift to God’s people to help with navigation, to order our seasons, and to declare God’s glory.
Stars would assist with the greater lights and be used for calendars.
For instance, I know fall is here and winter is coming when I see Pleiades (plee-uh-deez) or the great Orion Nebula coming up later at night.
Plee-uh-deez is a formation of stars known as the seven sisters and can be seen with the naked eye in the winter.
The Orion is a constellation that looks like a warrior in the sky.
When speaking to Job, God used these great star formations to declare His glory and power.
“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion?
God was using a rhetorical question to display His power and wisdom and Job’s weakness and inability.
The Pleiades and the Orion, are real objects in our night sky and they are stunningly beautiful.
Here is a picture of the great Orion Nebula that I captured last winter with my telescope from my backyard.
If you have binoculars or really good vision, you can make out a hazy section in the Orion Constellation, around the belt, and this is what you are seeing.
One fascinating aspect is the top part is called the running man.
Because, if you turn the picture up and down, it literally looks like a cartoon style man that is running. It is really cool looking.
God would also use the stars to encourage His people as He did with Abraham.
Using the stars to number His offspring.
It was actually this verse in Genesis with Abraham that first got me excited, not about astrology, but about Astronomy.
Speaking to Abraham or Abram has he was called at that time, we see the scene in Chapter 15 verse 5.
And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
I remember reading that verse and walking outside on a beautiful crystal clear night and began counting.
1, 2, 3, 15......Apparently 15 would be the number of offspring for Abram.
The problem is we live by Disney and the entire sky by 192 is lit up 24/7.
The light pollution is strong in this area.
I call it the Disney glow that illuminates the horizon and blocks all the stars.
It is what sent me on my journey to discover the dark areas of Florida and how I found Kissimmee Prairie State Park.
At this park, which is about 2 hours away, on a moonless clear night, you can see thousands upon thousands of stars.
Nolan and I laid on the grass and attempted to count. I think we got to 100 before we gave up.
If you did not grow up in a dark sky or visited one, it is truly breathtaking.
Yet, this incredible view is not to cause you to worship the sky, but the God who hung every start in the sky
And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
The subject matter is repeated to give emphasis to the point that is being made.
It isn’t objects that are gods, but these objects, no matter how great they are to us, point us to a magnificent Creator.
The more we discover, the more that it becomes more and more difficult to deny a Creator.
Don’t get me wrong, society will continue to reject God, but it isn’t for lack of evidence, it is for another reason that we will dive into in the weeks to come.
Let me give you two examples of discoveries that are a bit hard to imagine as mere cosmic accidents.
First, let’s look at the Heart and Soul Nebulas.
The Heart Nebula I captured last year at a place called Lake Kissimmee State Park near Lake Wales.
If this was not breathtaking by itself, right beside this nebula in the Cosmos is another Nebula called the Soul Nebula
Soul Nebula
And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
The sun and the moon and the stars are all there to declare the glories and wonders of God and to point us to the one we are to worship.
The more we discover about the universe, the more it seems to be impossible to deny our Creator.
Let me give one more example that will help us tie into Day 5 next.
Two weeks ago I spent 4 days at Kissimmee Prairie State Park to capture my latest image with my camera and telescope.
It is not an easy task to convince my wife on why I need to stay away from the family for 4 days by myself, but
I said number 1, I have to do this, it is absolutely necessary for today’s sermon. God’s glory would be at stake!
She told me I could just google the image and save 4 days.
When that didn’t work, I said I wanted to do it as a gift to our new house that would go in the guest bathroom that she is decorating.
It would be a conversation piece and I would be thinking of her as I captured it!
I’m pretty sure she rolled her eyes, but she let me go and now I can give you the world premier of my latest image
And the perfect, God created, segue from day 4 to day 5
The Dark Shark Nebula,
What is truly fascinating in this regard is not only is this something that God created out in the cosmos, but, He created this a day before He would create the actual shark.
How do we know this?
Well let us turn to verse 20 and the beginning of Day 5.
And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”
Day 5 begins creation with all of the creatures of the sea along with all of the birds of the air.
Thus what we see of the Dark Shark Nebula on Day 4 comes to life in the waters on Day 5!
While the focus moves from filling the heavens to filling the earth, the counter cultural point remains the same.
It was not just the objects in the heavens that people worship, but also the creatures themselves the pagan cultures would worship.
These were not gods in and of themselves, but were created by the one true God to be a testimony of His creative powers and wisdom.
So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
It is important to note in verse 21 these are called great sea creatures.
In the NASB and the all new LSB that several of you are now using, call them the great Sea Monsters.
The KJV uses the great whales.
This Hebrew word can be used for serpent, monster, sea creature or even dragon.
So, what is being said here is certainly pretty epic and singled out to grab our attention.
The Pagans worshiped the great sea creatures as dragons and monsters in rebellion that had to be subdued.
In ancient Canaan Low-tan was the Hebrew equivalent for Leviathan.
A Leviathan was a massive sea monster that swam in our oceans.
Coty believes this is Hebrew for the great Megalodon shark.
I can neither confirm or deny this to be the case.
But, I can confirm that whatever it is, it was something extraordinarily massive.
Job 41 gives us a bit more details on this fantastical beast.
“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook or press down his tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?
Can you fill his skin with harpoons or his head with fishing spears? Lay your hands on him; remember the battle—you will not do it again!
It sounds like they will need a bigger boat.
The point is that man cannot control this incredible animal.
This animal is not to be worshipped though, it is to point you to its Creator.
If we marvel at its size and strength, how much more should we marvel at its Creator.
And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
The 5th day comes to a close with the famous words proclaimed, be fruitful and multiply.
God gave the means in which His creation would begin to play a vital role in the filling of the earth.
The void is starting to become full.
Yet, the problem of Moses day was the temptation to worship the created instead of the Creator.
The counter-cultural aspect of Moses day was that it wasn’t the creature that should be elevated by the creator of the creature that is to be elevated.
We still have this same problem, today.
If we are honest with ourselves we too are tempted to and must fight against the worship of the created.
Whether that is the worship of a celebrity, the worship of a game may be trying to captivate your attention by watching the time, or the worship of a family pet.
What the great nations and majority of the people of Moses’s day believed, was in rebellion to that of God.
Yet, when we compare the Creation account and the Scriptures to what many believe in our day today.....
We see that this message is just as counter-cultural today as it was thousands of years ago.
Today there is still a focus on what was created instead of letting it point us to the Creator.
Today, as we look around, although it looks different, culture is still actively rebelling against God.
Today culture is still enamored with the created, but perhaps what is most different is the obsession with self.
We are not looking at the sun and the moon as much as we are looking at ourselves.
It looks different in every generation, but the core of the problem, the root of the issue is always the same.
It is a denying of the one true God and it is a replacement with what God has made.
To believe in one God, the True Creator, was counter-cultural then, and absolutely counter to culture today.
You would be hard pressed to find someone more controversial and more counter to that of society than Jesus.
Jesus did not come to claim that He was wise, or to tell us how to live our best life.
Jesus, left His throne in Heaven and clothed Himself in humanity to dwell in His Creation, thus declaring that He is God.
Speaking of Jesus, John declares these words.
All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
To believe in Jesus means that we reject the ever changing created wisdom of man for steadfast eternal wisdom of God.
When we do this we will buck up against the culture of this generation and every generation.
It is radical to those who are in rebellion against God to claim that:
The One who created every one and every thing came to Earth to rescue His Creation.
To be the redeemer of that which is His.
To restore that which was tainted with sin due to their rebellion against their Creator.
The culture should embrace and celebrate Jesus.
Yet it was the culture of Jesus’s day that crucified Him.
It is the culture of today that believes this to be just another fairytale.
Today, as did believers from yesteryear declare this is not just a store of make believe but of reality.
Today we see that what shines above isn’t a lucky accident or a random explosion,
But, a carefully crafted and expertly designed universe made for the glory of God.
What this should do for us is three things.
When we trust in our Creator this will enhance our worship,
We will worship as we were designed to worship. We will point to that which we were designed to point to.
Secondly it will elevate our adoration,
We will become enamored, not with the created, but with the Creator.
We will long for a relationship and pursue the relationship that God has given us in Him.
Lastly, it enlighten our mind to the greatness of our God.
We will see, hear, and know the wonder and beauty and wisdom, and be in awe of our God.
This is Day 4 and 5 of the creation story found in Chapter 1 of the book of Genesis.....the book of beginnings.
May we look to the stars, gaze at the birds, and seek out the creatures of the sea and find new and wonderful ways to praise our God.
Amen? let’s pray.