Sermon Tone Analysis

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Introduction and Scripture Reading

Scripture Introduction

It is no accident that God is the subject of the opening pages of the Bible, as he is the subject of the whole of existence.

We are here on this earth and in this, and every, place to worship and submit to Him as the only Creator and rightful recipient of all majesty and fame!

In the creation account, we read historical narrative intended to draw our attention to God’s true, sovereign, wise and personal nature.

God himself stands behind creation, and the orderliness of creation tells us that there is nothing random, or haphazard, about God.

He is sovereign, intentional, orderly, wise, and perfectly good in every way.

Scripture reading

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Let’s pray together.

Prayer

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Proposition

The Almighty God who creates, forms, and sustains everything by His powerful word is alone worthy of our delight, worship and obedience.

In the first verses of the Bible we see that the Father is the source of all things (verse 1), the Spirit is the energizer of all things (verse 2), the Word is the revealer of all things (verse 3).

Here in verse three we see the first record of God speaking in the Bible (Morris).

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I. God’s Word brings light!

(3-5)

And God said, “Let there be light” (3)

God (ʾĕl ō hîm — אֱלֹהִים), the Almighty God, said, “Let there be.”

Commentator Allen Ross draws out the significant word play here.

“I Am,” as God revealed himself to Moses, says, “Let there be,” “and there was.”

(“I Am” (ʾěh·yě(h) (explains Yahweh) — אֶהְיֶה), as God revealed himself to Moses , says, “Let there be” (yehî), “and there was” (wayhî).)

God saw, divided and called.

God assigns to everything its value (4a), place (4b) and meaning (5a).

After God speaks and it is, “God saw that “the light was good” and “God separated the light from the darkness.”(4)

God called/named light “Day” and darkness “Night.”

In ancient times the practice of naming something indicated sovereignty over it.

God communicates His sovereign reign over creation and all that exists so Israel knows without a doubt that the “I AM”, the Almighty, Majestic God is the one true God whom they are to delight in, worship and obey.

In God’s naming day and night, God distinguishes between “night time” and “light time” when He would do his work.

Night is not abolished, only subordinated.

God sets a pattern of distinguishing and dividing between what would be deemed as holy.

We see it throughout the creation account as well as in the law.

Lev 20:25 “You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean.

You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean.”

God creates, sees, separates, and names, and in so doing, gives purpose as He sees fit.

God created and defined a lasting, time-bound rhythm in the world: a regular evening and morning pattern that we observe to this day.

The Hebrew word “yôm” (יוֹם) means day, and in this context every time “yôm” is used with a number it means one 24-hour day.

Some say this refers to a period of time and stretch it to mean something other than the clear reading and interpretation of a single day, and evening and morning in the first day.

To be sure, we use the word often to refer to a days worth of activity.

Casually, when we say what did you do yesterday we don’t mean, “what did you do in the last 24-hours?”

but it’s clear that we’re referring to a particular day.

In Gen. 2:4 the same word is used, Gen. 2:4 “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”

Here he’s referring to the period, or time, when the Lord made the heavens and earth.

This is as normal a use of language as you and I would make referring back to something we remember.

Some refer to 2 Peter 3:8 when Peter says, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

Peter is clearly drawing a comparison, using a simile (like or as), to communicate the Lord’s great patience toward mankind as the Lord waits for the day of judgment.

These are examples of normal use of language, but here in the creation account it is an inescapable reality that Moses is writing of creation happening in six, literal, twenty-four hour days.

It i the most natural reading in Hebrew and as we read it in our English translations today.

Both in creation, and in the hearts of men, when God speaks, whatever he speaks happens just as God determines.

It’s not surprising, then that John, in his Gospel records that Jesus Christ is the Word of God, who created everything.

Early in Genesis, Israel learned that the Word of the Lord is the powerful transforming word that was first manifested in creation.

“How is there light without the sun?” you might ask.

Well John Calvin gives us good guidance as he helps us maintain a God-centered focus, untrampled by man-centered assumptions which would bring God down to our finite level:

Therefore the Lord by the very order of the creation, bears witness that he holds in his hand the light, which he is able to impart to us without the sun and moon.

God’s Word brings light!

Think about the analogy between two miraculous creations:

Psalm 119:130 tells us “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.”

And Paul quotes from Ge 1:3 in 2 Corinthians 4:6 when he says “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Only the Almighty God, the Uncreated Light could speak into the darkness of the newly created yet unformed darkness and into the darkness of the heart of a child or an adult, a peasant or a king, the poor or the rich and command light to be where previously no such light existed.

In both scenarios, order replaces disorder, beauty outshines the darkness.

I love how Henry Morris describes this in The Genesis Record:

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Beyond the visible light waves are, on the one hand, ultraviolet light and all the other shortwave-length radiations and, on the other hand, infrared light and the other long-wave phenomena.

In turn, setting the electromagnetic forces into operation in effect completed the energizing of the physical cosmos.

All the types of force and energy which interact in the universe involve only electromagnetic, gravitational, and nuclear forces; and all of these had now been activated.

Though no doubt oversimplified, this tremendous creative act of the Godhead might be summarized by saying that the nuclear forces maintaining the integrity of matter were activated by the Father when He created the elements of the space-mass-time continuum, the gravitational forces were activated by the Spirit when He brought form and motion to the initially static and formless matter, and the electromagnetic forces were activated by the Word when He called light into existence out of the darkness.

Of course, God is One, and all three persons of the Godhead actually participated in all parts of the creation and continue to function in the maintenance of the universe so created.

All of this was accomplished on the first day of creation.

The physical universe had been created and energized, and was ready for further shaping and furnishing in preparation for man, whose dominion it would be.

(Morris, 56–57)

“And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

(5b)

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II.

God reins over the heavens (6-8)

As the second day dawned, God said, “Let there be an expanse (canopy) in the midst of the waters to separate the waters from the waters.

God separated the waters below from the waters above and called the expanse Heaven.”

The word rāqîaʿ (רָקִיַע) for expanse carries the idea of stamping something with one’s foot so as to spread it out or stretch it forth.

This is the open expanse of heaven in which birds fly.

It’s the heavenly atmosphere as we know it where God will later place “the lights …for signs and for seasons” (14, 17).

Israel is learning that God is God of everything in the heavens.

They knew that rain came from the clouds in the sky but here God makes it clear the He not only sends rain from the heavens as the one who provides for the earth, but that He reins supreme over the heavens and all their beings.

Again we see the very important fact of God’s command and fulfillment.

When God gave a command, “it was so.”

It was then, and it is still so today.

What God commands always comes into being.

As Moses repeats this pattern of command and fulfillment, he’s highlighting the connection between God’s speaking and the reality coming into being.

“And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.”

(8b)

Transition statement: God Word brings light into the world, and his works are seen, beginning in the heavens and now moving to the earth where God will continue to focus our attention on His plan for this world where man will later be created and make his temporal home.

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III.

God alone gives life (9-13)

Until this point, the waters under the heavens were like shoreless oceans with nowhere for a boat to land.

The earth was there but covered by the waters and still uninhabitable.

Until God speaks by the power of His word and begins to gather the waters under the heavens together and calls the “Seas.”

And by His command dry land appears.