The Grand Design

Introduction

Q. Who Created the Universe?

A. God: Elohim — The Strong, Mighty, Powerful God — Created the Universe

There is one eye-witness to creation: the One who created it all

35 times from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3, God’s name is mentioned. In other words, God is saying, “Hey, in case you missed it in verse 1, I’m the One who did it all!” And we see God remind us over and over, not only in the creation account, but all throughout Scripture, that it was by His Word that everything came into being.

Psalm 89:11 (NLT)

11 The heavens are Yours, and the earth is Yours; everything in the world is Yours—You created it all.

Colossians 1:16–17 NASB95

16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

Why is God introduced as strong, mighty, and powerful?

Because God is about to do some strong, mighty, powerful things.

Psalm 89:6–8 (NLT)

6 For who in all of heaven can compare with the Lord? What mightiest angel is anything like the Lord? 7 The highest angelic powers stand in awe of God. He is far more awesome than all who surround His throne. 8 O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies! Where is there anyone as mighty as You, O Lord? You are entirely faithful.

The Psalmist affirms there is no one like God. He is the One and Only.

And this powerful God said, “I created the heavens and the earth.”

Why is it that the earth is singled out in Genesis 1:1?

The earth is the focal point of the creation process because there is nothing else like it. So as we go through these six days of creation, you are going to see exactly what God created and for what purpose.

Q. How Did God Create the World?

A1. God Created the World With a Purpose and a Design

The universe according to modern science:

Modern science suggests the universe began 14 billion years ago, and 4-and-a-half billion years ago, the earth formed from debris orbiting our sun.

According to modern science, all humanity and all life exist due to random chance. According to modern science, there is nothing special about you at all. You were nothing more than cosmic sludge that just happened to form a living, thinking person. According to modern science, your life is meaningless.

According to modern science, if you add enough time and enough chance, you can remove God from the equation.

But did you know that the scale of chance required for all this to take place by sheer happenstance is so astronomical it is impossible?

Even the “most elementary type of cell constitutes a ‘mechanism’ unimaginably more complex than any machine yet thought up, let alone constructed, by man.”

How complex are we talking here?

“[It] is possible to perform rough calculations of the probability that the endless breakup and reforming of the soup’s complex molecules would lead to a small virus after a billion years.”

He then tells us what those calculations lead to. He says they work out at one chance in over ten to the two millionth power, a “mind-numbing” number, which put more simply would be harder to achieve than just happening to flip “heads on a coin six million times in a row.”

“The probability of producing even a single functional protein of modest length (150 amino acids) by chance alone in a prebiotic environment stands at no better than a ‘vanishingly small’ [one] chance in ten to the 164th power.”

So what is the conclusion?

“[T]he spontaneous generation of life by random molecular shuffling is a ludicrously improbable event.”

Let me sum up. If it is statistically impossible for a measly virus or protein to form through random chance given a timeline of billions of years, what in the world makes us think us as human beings, or the earth we live on, or the entire stinking universe could form in all its complexity through random chance?

"If the overall density of the universe were changed by even 0.0000000000001 percent, no stars or galaxies could be formed. If the rate of expansion after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it reached its present size.”

“It would be very difficult to explain why the universe would have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”

The universe according to the Bible:

According to Scripture, we see that every aspect of creation was created intentionally and effortlessly by the mighty voice of God.

God’s speaking and His doing were one and the same — His Word is itself creative

In verse 1, Scripture tells us God created the heavens and the earth.

In verse 2, Scripture tells us the earth was formless and void.

What does that mean?

And in each of the subsequent verses, which highlight the six days of creation, we will see that God intentionally, and effortlessly, designed the universe with specific purposes.

V. 3 — Day 1 — Light

We can’t go but three verses into Scripture before objections are raised concerning the validity of the text. Opponents of the biblical narrative ask, “How could there be light if the sun, moon, and stars are not created until day four?” Clearly Genesis immediately contradicts itself.

So, how was light created? I don’t know. I just know that God created it. But I can tell you what I think is happening here. I think God is showing off. You say, “Where do you get that?” I’m glad you asked because it’s in your Bible.

John 8:12 NKJV

12 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

Revelation 21:23 NASB95

23 And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.

Revelation 22:5 NASB95

5 And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.

And God saw the light, that it was good — in other words, it was exactly as He created it to be.

Purpose —To create day and night, that God’s glory would be known throughout the universe, and that all He would continue to create would have the “Light of life.”

A2. God Created the World in Six, Literal 24-Hour Days and Resting on the Seventh

Verse 5 is yet another problem passage

How do we know that a day means a day? This Bible is so confusing! It’s not.

The word ‘day’ is always based on context.

Back in the day, there was a day, I spent the day playing with friends.

I used the word ‘day’ three times and yet you knew exactly what I meant.

Back in the day — a period of time

There was a day — a twenty-four hour period

I spent the day — the daylight hours

On my anniversary date, I took my wife on a date where we ate dates

Anniversary date — the annual recurrence of my marriage

Took my wife on a date — a romantic evening of celebration

We ate dates — a fruit

Well, that’s not what it means here. Don’t you know that a day with the Lord is a thousand years?

That comes from two verses in your Bible

Psalm 90:1–4 NKJV

1 Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. 2 Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. 3 You turn man to destruction, And say, “Return, O children of men.” 4 For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it is past, And like a watch in the night.

2 Peter 3:7–8 NKJV

7 But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 8 But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Both Moses and Peter are using the word ‘like.’ When using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ in this way, that is called a simile. It is making a comparison.

I know that house like the back of my hand.

She sticks out like a sore thumb.

That answer was as clear as mud.

Even if that’s what the text meant here, and it doesn’t. But if it did, then we’re still only talking about 6,000 years for creation. Combine that with another 6,000 years since creation, then the earth would only be 12,000 years old.

In case it wasn’t clear enough, God says there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

God doesn’t say it was like anything. Genesis 1:5 does not read, “And there was evening and there was morning and it was like one day.”

What makes up a day? Evening and morning. Evening and morning came, day one. Period, end of story.

We don’t question days anywhere else in Scripture.

Joshua 6:2–5 NASB95

2 The Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors. 3 “You shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do so for six days. 4 “Also seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. 5 “It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead.”

Not once in this passage do you Joshua question God’s command. And that is pretty crazy because when you think about what God orders the Israelites to do, it’s wild. If Joshua were to question anything, you would think it would be, “Hey God, me again. Hey, are you sure about this whole ‘battle plan’ of Yours?” But if we were in the same situation as Joshua, because we’re so stinking smart, we couldn’t care less that God just told us that by marching around the city the walls would fall down and we would completely capture it. No, instead we would stand before God and say, “Hey, God, quick question. When you say seven days, do You mean seven, twenty-four-hour days? Or do You mean a thousand years? Just wanted to clarify because it just really wasn’t all that clear to me.”

Jonah 1:17 NASB95

17 And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish three days and three nights.

So, Jonah was in the belly of the fish for 3,000 years?

Why is it that ‘day’ means day everywhere else in Scripture, but in Genesis day means something entirely different?

And Because God knew 6,000 years later we would still be debating what God meant by the word ‘day,’ He makes it crystal clear in another text, a text literally penned by His own hand.

Exodus 20:11 NASB95

11 “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

God cannot make this any clearer. If the Word of God is your authority, then the universe was created in six literal days and God rested on the seventh day. If you say, “I don’t believe that,” what you are really saying is, “I have something else that is the authority in my life from which I get my information.”

V. 6 — Day 2 — Atmosphere

Verse 6 tells us God separated the waters on the earth from the waters in the heaven.

Space means an expanse. It’s something that is stretched out or expanded like a tent.

Some people believe this means there was a giant canopy of water which covered the earth, essentially making the earth a giant greenhouse. The fossil records, which contain plants and animals far larger than those on earth today, make this a very possible explanation. Some people don’t believe that. It doesn’t matter because God doesn’t tell us how He did it, He just tells us that He did it. God said, “I spoke it into existence, it happened just as I had commanded it to, man I’m awesome.”

Purpose — To create the perfect atmospheric conditions for life on the earth.

V. 9 — Day 3 — Land and Vegetation

Verse 9 tells us that God brought all the waters together into one place and all the land together into one place.

I believe that unlike the world we have today with the seven continents, this was one giant land mass. The reason for this is I believe in a global flood, and there is physical and scriptural evidence which affirm that at one point all the continents were together.

Verse 11 tells us that God brings forth vegetation: grass, plants, fruit trees each according to its kind.

What does that mean?

Purpose — To provide the earth with the capability to sustain life: a place for life to exist (the earth), things which produce oxygen (the plants and vegetation), and food sources (the plants and fruit trees)

V. 14 — Day 4 — Lights and Luminaries

While the first three days in the creation narrative can be summed up as God’s preparation of creation, the last three can be summed up as God’s perfection of creation.

On Day 4, God creates the greater light (what we call the sun), the lesser light (the moon), and all the stars. How many stars?

A 2016 article in science suggested there are 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.

A professor of astrophysics suggested in the average galaxy, there are about 100 million stars per galaxy.

With a rough estimate of 10 trillion galaxies (observable and non-observable universe), each with 100 million stars, the result is 1 septillion stars (1 with 24 zeros after it).

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

The same said scientist said this number was likely a ‘gross underestimation’

Show pictures of Hubble and James Webb

Purpose — Vv. 14-15 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 for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth.

V. 20 — Day 5 — Sea Creatures and Birds

On day 5, God creates all the sea creatures and the birds.

Once again, each was brought according to its kind.

God also blesses the animals he creates, telling them to be fruitful and multiply.

Purpose — to fill the seas and skies with living creatures

V. 24 — Day 6 — Land Animals and Human Beings

On Day 6, God made all the land animals, each according to their kind.

And if that wasn’t enough, God created human beings: in His image, to subdue creation, and to have dominion over creation.

You and I are uniquely set apart from the rest of creation.

Genesis 1:27 NASB95

27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

From this verse, we see a couple of things:

God created two genders — male and female

God created one race — the human race

God tells them to be fruitful and multiply, that they’re going to be vegetarians, and that all the animals will be vegetarians.

And God looks over all that He has created, culminating with the creation of mankind, and He says it is very good.

Purpose — to fill the earth with living creatures and to create conscious beings who bear the image of God and whom He has delegated to rule over His creation.

Genesis 2:2 — Day 7 — Rest

If there is anything God creates on Day 7, it is rest. The God of the universe ceased from His work, not because He was tired, but because He was basking in His glory and what He had done.

And by sanctifying this day, or setting it apart, God establishes a pattern for us, who are made in His image, to also rest and bask in His glory and power.

If you simply read the Bible at face value, and approach God’s Word as truth, here is what you come away with after reading Genesis 1: The almighty, all-powerful God created the heavens, the earth, and everything in the universe in six, literal 24-hour days and rested on the seventh. And everything He created was very good. That’s it. It’s so simple.

But this leads us to the final question:

Q. Do You Believe It?

A. Only you can truly answer this question.

It comes down to a question of biblical authority. Believing the Genesis creation account is not a salvific issue. You can choose not believe the Genesis account and still be saved. But it is an authority issue.

Believing God’s Word is not hard. In fact, if you take Genesis literally, all the rest of Scripture falls into place.

In Genesis 5, when we look at God’s birth certificate for how old the earth is, you will see it aligns perfectly with a literal six day creation.

When we discuss where all the people, skin colors, and languages came from in Genesis 10, it will make perfect sense.

In Luke 3, the genealogy of Jesus is traced all the way back to Adam. If you believe in millions or billions of years for creation, you really struggle with the timeline laid out.

If you don’t accept Genesis 1 as literal, you have a lot of holes in your theology and have to twist Scripture in order to accommodate those holes.

Or, you could just take God’s Word as is and be perfectly fine. But we have too many Christians who want to change or distort God’s Word in order to appease man.

B. Theological Problems With Alternative Viewpoints

1. It Challenges God’s Authority

If Genesis 1 isn’t true, then why would you continue reading the rest of the Bible? Why would anyone else read the rest of the Bible?

If we’re able to set aside the creation account as not true, what is to stop us from picking and choosing what is true and what is not from the rest of Scripture?

2. Every Other Theory Contradicts God’s Word

The Day-Age Theory — that each day is a significant period of time.

The Gap Theory — that there is a gap of millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.

Theistic Evolution — that God created the world by starting the evolution process.

3. Seeks to Celebrate Man

Why? Because no man was there.

Any theory we come up with places the authority on man’s ideas and goes away from the Word of God

4. Aligns with satanic Ideology

I am not saying every person who does not believe in a literal six day creation is a satanist. I am saying that they have been influenced by satan.

What is the first thing satan says in Scripture?

5. Minimizes God’s Power

What presents God as more powerful?

6. You Make Jesus and Paul Liars

Matthew 19:4–6 NASB95

4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

If day 6 is thousands or millions or billions of years after the beginning, it’s not really the beginning

2 Corinthians 4:6 NASB95

6 For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

7. Creates a False Timeline of the Future

Revelation 22:6–7 NASB95

6 And he said to me, “These words are faithful and true”; and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the things which must soon take place. 7 “And behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book.”

If the earth is 14 billion years old, and Jesus says He is coming quickly, does that really create a sense of urgency?

But if the world was created 6,000 years ago, God flooded the earth 4,000 years ago, and Jesus came, died, and rose 2,000 years ago, when Jesus said He is coming quickly, that places a sense of urgency on us.

8. Misrepresents the Gospel

It places death, disease, and suffering before the Fall

In the fossil record we see death, we see animals eating other animals, we see cancer, we see tumors, we see thorns.

Death was punishment, a consequence (which we will see in Genesis 2) and both humans and animals were affected by it.

Why is this a problem?

Romans 5:12 NASB95

12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—

Genesis 1:31 (NASB95)

31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good …

If death and disease and and sin and pain and suffering existed before Genesis 1:31, then God is saying it is very good.

Prior to the Fall, sin did not exist and therefore death did not exist.

9. It Accommodates Worldly Ideas in Hopes to See Salvation

Romans 1:16 NASB95

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Luke 9:26 NASB95

26 “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

Jesus’ words would also include Genesis 1.

John 14:6 NASB95

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

If we can change Genesis 1 to fit man’s ideas about how the universe came into being, what is stopping us from changing the Bible to include every other god man chooses to worship as a means of salvation?

Conclusion