Sermon Tone Analysis

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)

2202 Compared With Thickness Of PageImagine 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 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):

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.

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

1.

The Condition of the Earth

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

vv 6-8

The Creation of 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:

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.

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

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

Earth’s atmosphere.

NKJ “across the face of the firmament”

2. Space (interplanetary and interstellar).

This is the place where the luminaries are set on day 4.

3. Throne-room of God

Where Paul is caught up (2 Cor 12:2).

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.

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:

You will notice that day 2 is the only day there is not the approval of God “it was good.”