01-05 The Days of Creation, Part 2
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Genesis 1:6-13
Genesis 1:6-13
On the table in the foyer there are several resources that I wanted you to be aware of. They are proving to be helpful in my study of Genesis. There is a price list next to each resource in case you’d like to order one of those resources for yourself. If you do, write your name down and we’ll make an order in the next couple of weeks. I asked the church board if the cost of shipping might be handled by the church—you’ll only pay the actual cost of the book. Just don’t take the book on the table (that’s mine)!
Having started Genesis—and it is the experience of every teacher of God’s Word, I have studied/discovered 10 times what I have offered to you in the messages. Those books will be a tremendous blessing.
Just thinking about the magnitude of God’s creation—it sort of blows the gasket in the mind. It is staggering:
Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations (2202 Compared with Thickness of Page)
Imagine that the thickness of this page which you are reading is the distance from earth to sun (93 million miles). The distance to the nearest star (4.24 light years) would be a 71-feet high shelf of paper. And the diameter of our own galaxy (100,000 light years) is a 310-mile stack of paper, while the edge of the known universe is a pile of paper one-third of the way to the sun (31 million miles).
The title at the beginning of the section of Genesis 1 in my Bible is “The Creation.” That’s not right—it should read “The Creator.” That’s what Gen 1-2 is properly about. We discover a great deal about the creation, but most importantly is what creation teaches us about God:
Self-Existent: Aseity (latin from-self)
One of the most difficult (attributes) for finite human beings to come to come to terms with is His aseity. We learn from the account of creation that God has no beginning. “In the beginning God created...” That all things find their source in God is the explicit teaching of Scripture (source, instrument, goal):
For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
God, however, has no beginning, is independent as far as His existence is concerned—as such does not answer to His creation. That becomes a problem for us b/c we want God to be accountable to us for His actions. But He does not answer to His creation.
“For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.
Self-Sufficient: (self-existent=no origins) God has no needs—so He depends on nothing outside of Himself. God is not like us! We depend on so much (air, food, water, light, heat, gravity, etc…) But if these things were gone—God would still exist as He is
Some like to think that God created b/c He needed something from His creation—as if He were lonely and needed the company of His creation. That’s an unbiblical portrait of God.
A.W. Pink:
“God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That He chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on His part, caused by nothing outside Himself, determined by nothing but His own mere good pleasure; for He "worketh all things after the counsel of His own will" (Eph 1:11). That He did create was simply for His manifestative glory...God is no gainer even from our worship. He was in no need of that external glory of His grace which arises from His redeemed, for He is glorious enough in Himself without that...The force of this is, it is impossible to bring the Almighty under obligations to the creature; God gains nothing from us.”
God does not need helpers, He does not need defenders—He is truly self-sufficient. What value then does this put on humanity (the pinnacle of God’s creative activity)?
Ps 8
Eternal
Having no beginning and no end means that God can be trusted b/c He cannot change. When God reveals Himself to be who He is—He cannot deviate from what He has revealed. He is the same God, unchanging in all His attributes, as the One who spoke all things into existence so many years ago.
There are many other things creation teaches us about the Creator (sovereign, Lord, wisdom, goodness, power—elohim from the root el=”might, power, strength).
Creation: Day One
Creation: Day One
1. The Condition of the Earth
1. The Condition of the Earth
2. The Creation of Light
2. The Creation of Light
The creation pattern (holds true for each day of creation—with some variation):
Announcement (God said)
Command (Let there be)
Fulfillment (it was so)
Approval (saw…good)
Execution (separated light)
Explanation (God called)
Summary (Day number)
Creation: Day Two
Creation: Day Two
vv 6-8
The Creation of the Expanse
The Creation of the Expanse
What is the “expanse”?
What is the “expanse”?
Next, God created an “expanse in the midst of the waters” (“Let there be a vault between the waters”—NIV; Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters KJV/NKJ). The question, I’m sure you’re thinking “What is this expanse, vault, firmament?”
Heb raqiya— “to spread out” accomplished with the stamping of the foot or hammering.
It is used some 17x in OT:
As for the idol, a craftsman casts it, A goldsmith plates it with gold, And a silversmith fashions chains of silver.
Job 37:18 (NASB95) Elihu
“Can you, with Him, spread out the skies, Strong as a molten mirror?
Exodus 39:3 (NASB95) of the priestly garments:
Then they hammered out gold sheets and cut them into threads to be woven in with the blue and the purple and the scarlet material, and the fine linen, the work of a skillful workman.
“Thus says the Lord God, ‘Clap your hand, stamp your foot and say, “Alas, because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel, which will fall by sword, famine and plague!
The Function of the Expanse
The Function of the Expanse
The expanse then something created by stretching or being spread out…and its function is “to separate waters below…waters above.”
So trying to grasp what God is creating here on day 2…the surface of the waters that the Spirit of God was moving over (brooding, vibrating—vs 2) were separated by this expanse causing waters to be below it (would become the waters of the surface of the earth—from which land would emerge on day 3) and waters to be above it.
The Definition of the Expanse
The Definition of the Expanse
Notice God’s definition of this expanse: “heaven” (vs 8).
It is easy enough for us to comprehend the waters below (earth’s seas) but the waters above is a bit unusual for us. For this we need to understand what God called “heaven” In the Jewish understanding, there were 7 heavens (mainly realms under the control of angelic beings). In Scripture, there are 3 designations of heaven:
Scripture’s Three Heavens
Scripture’s Three Heavens
Earth’s atmosphere.
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.”
NKJ “across the face of the firmament”
“But the land into which you are about to cross to possess it, a land of hills and valleys, drinks water from the rain of heaven,
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
2. Space (interplanetary and interstellar).
This is the place where the luminaries are set on day 4.
And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not flash forth their light; The sun will be dark when it rises And the moon will not shed its light.
3. Throne-room of God
Where Paul is caught up (2 Cor 12:2).
“Listen to the supplication of Your servant and of Your people Israel, when they pray toward this place; hear in heaven Your dwelling place; hear and forgive.
The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men; From His dwelling place He looks out On all the inhabitants of the earth,
“Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.
It seems to me (I could be wrong), that this expanse is properly the atmosphere that encircles the earth (includes breathable air). Initially—what God created was an atmosphere that brought separation (a theme in ch 1—light/darkness; land/sea) b/t waters above/below.
What were those waters above? There has been much debate among scholars...
Henry Morris III The Book of Beginnings
“Whatever it was, it would not have consisted of clouds or mist or fog; these all have droplets of water that obscure light. Nor could it have been some form of ice band in the upper reaches of earth’s ‘heaven,’ since such a barrier would have obscured the sun or be melted by it.”
Peter speaks of this in 2 Pt 3:5-6
Peter is speaking about the pre-flood earth and replying to the scoffers who reject the promise of the coming of the Lord (vv 3-4). The pre-flood earth was formed out of water and by (between) water. This agrees with what Moses is writing in Gen 1 that the earth stood between waters around it and under it and the waters that were above the expanse.
Peter highlights the fact that this pre-flood earth “was destroyed, being flooded with water.”
Turn back to Genesis 7.
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.
There were 2 sources of water that God used to flood the earth in that cataclysmic judgment. The 2nd source is most likely those waters that were above the expanse…it has been suggested that a water-vapor canopy of sorts was in place over the earth that collapsed as rain fell 40 days and nights.
That is as good an explanation that I’ve come across…But the reality is that none of us really knows except for what God has revealed. Scientifically, there is no such vapor canopy—though we have this:
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; Praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels; Praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all stars of light! Praise Him, highest heavens, And the waters that are above the heavens!
God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
You will notice that day 2 is the only day there is not the approval of God “it was good.” This doesn’t mean day 2 was not good but Moses not including it is important and probably means that the work finished on day 2 was incomplete as far as making earth a habitable place for humanity (and other creatures). This takes us to:
Creation: Day Three
Creation: Day Three
vv 9-13
2 things happen on the 3rd day of creation:
Land Emerges
Land Emerges
Notice God’s command once again… “let...”
Waters gathered into one place (LXX translates this Heb term sunagogen—a synagogue is a gathering place). If you think this through, if waters are gathered into one place then so must the dry land emerge into one place. The prevailing theory among scientists/geologists is that all of the land masses on earth were once connected and formed 1 large supercontinent (Pangaea). It is very possible but not as described by the secularist /naturalist (who thinks this was the condition of earth over 200 million years ago). As land emerges from the waters one large continent is likely to have existed and the reason they are separated today is not b/c of millions of years of plate tectonics, gradually moving the continents apart, but during the flood when...
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.
That cataclysmic event would account for continental drift. The dry land that appears is called “earth” by God. Similarly God names the waters, “seas.” The shear magnitude of the physical forces that brought this about is too great for our finite minds to fully comprehend. Yet God did this with a simple act of His spoken word. It happened instantaneously.
Job 38:3-11;
vv 3-7—Reminds Job that He is the creature and has no right to bring God to account for HIs actions.
vv 8-11—description of 3rd day of creation.
Earth Produces
Earth Produces
vv 11-13
Everything about the creation account stands contrary to all modern evolutionary theories which describes ages-long processes of biological development. Everything that has been discovered and observed through out human history regarding “plant science” (and there are people who major in this subject—spending their entire lives studying plants) everything about every plant/form of vegetation comes into existence at the end of day 3.
God’s command was very simple: lit “earth, sprout grass” (Heb term for grass is a general term referring to all ground-covering vegetation). It includes plants yielding seed (Herbs—all bushes and shrubs) and fruit trees (all woody plants—fruit/nut).
Just quickly…2 observations—(1)God brought forth mature plants/trees. They were already fully rooted and developed, bearing fruit and seed. On their 1st day of creation they were capable of reproducing.
(2) They always and only reproduce “after their kind” (10x in Gen 1). That is a difficult expression that not everyone agrees about—but it mostly applies to living things (grasshoppers to cattle and vegetation). What this means is that an apple tree can only produce apples not grapes.
Henry Morris III
However, one biological function is certain. There is absolutely no proof of a "common ancestor" to all living things-other than as told by the sophisticated stories of evolutionary naturalism. What is absolutely certain, as far as observation is concerned is that every plant and every animal reproduces only "after its kind." Each has its own DNA and can only direct the reproduction of the same "kind." There is no indication that a fish can become a duck or that algae can become a cow--none. Time is irrelevant. The informational changes are so vast, that no amount of "random mutations" could ever innovate those huge structural changes to the cellular data.”
God looks on His creation and once again it is good and we have the usual marker of the end of the day “evening and morning...”
Application
Application
Many questions remain unanswered for us:
How can our planet remain suspended on nothing (Job 26:7)?
What holds earth’s foundations together (Ps 104:5)?
Why is it that the tides and actions of oceans not destroy the land surfaces and why do continent remain in place (Jer 5:22)?
Why do stars remain in their configurations (Job 38:31-33)?
What holds this universe together? I would draw your attention to
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 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. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
The LJC—He is the agent/means of creation. Jesus creates light…He Himself is Light. He creates the air/clouds—we are instructed:
“And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.
Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen.
God/Christ is trustworthy (b/c He is eternally unchanging). But b/c of who He is, He is also inescapable. Jesus is coming again—and when He comes, He comes to judge the living and the dead. And He will judge men according to what each one has done.
“For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every man according to his deeds.
But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each person according to his deeds:
And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.
JC is inescapable. If you ignore Him and reject Him—you will be rejected in the life to come. If you receive Him—well, then you have the right to become a child of God, forgiven of every single unrighteous, evil, sinful deed—made possible thru the precious blood of the Creator—the LJC. Repent, turn from your sin and trust in Jesus for eternal life.
For those of you who have done that—the coming of Christ in the air.
See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
Beloved, to purify yourself means to forsake sin and unrighteousness, cleansing ourselves from defilement and pursuing the things that are holy, righteous, just, pure, good—all the things that LJC loves. Christ may return at any moment—be ready for Him by purifying yourself thru the HS in you!