Main idea: Get your thinking straight about God’s creation of His Kingdom
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Good morning. Faith, Bible Church, it is so good to see you all this morning. So good that we can gather together. Welcome church family. You know you hear week in and week out, we are we always say we're thankful for the visitors. We're thankful for you too, and and we love you, and we are gathered. We love to gather together. It's just part of our ongoing praying as a couple that we would be able to encourage you, that we get good conversations, interactions. If you're visiting with us, we're really glad that you're here with us this morning, and I'd love to meet you. And if there's an opportunity for that after please, please see me, catch me out, out in the foyer or here. Love to get you connected. We are, as a church, going through the book of Genesis. We've just started it, and we're doing these, these opening chapters, and there's, there's an incredible amount of worldview and worldview shaping material in this, this opening and I want to encourage you with it, the big idea, as we think of for this week and next week's sermons out of Genesis, one is to get our thinking straight about the creation and God's kingdom. The whole point of Genesis, one is to walk from matter, matter, some stuff that is formless and void, to a flourishing a flourishing Kingdom full of plant life, animal life, all sorts of things, and to set the first king and the first queen in their place, that's the whole aim of this. And so you watch it unfold in a beautiful way, God and His kingdom are greater and better than any human can imagine. And here's the true origin story. Stand with me for the reading of God's Word. I'm going to read one through 26 we'll do five and a half days of creation. We'll leave mankind on the sixth day for next week, as well as some incredible theology, truths about who God is and how we should respond for it, but I'm going to read one through 26 this morning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 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. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light, and God saw that the light was good. God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness, he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day, and God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters. Let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so, And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening, and there was morning, the second day, and God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together, he called seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit, trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth. And it was so the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit, in which is their seed according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. There was evening, there was morning, the third day, and God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. Let them be for signs and for seasons, 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 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, there was morning, the fourth day, and God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above, above the Earth, across the. Bands 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 earth. Fill the waters in the seas and let the birds multiply on the earth. There was evening, there was morning, the fifth day, and God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so, And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. This is the word of the Lord our God. We we are in awe. We are humbled. We are humbled at the reading of this word, because it is beyond our comprehension that you could eternally exist, that you would have power to speak and bring things into being, that you would create a flourishing, full, vibrant world and sustain it all. Lord Jesus, we know from John one and Colossians one, that you made all of these things, and by your word, all these things still hold together. What a great Savior you are, Jesus, not only what you have done for us after the fall dying for our sins, but you sustain sinners until they call out to you for forgiveness. You provide you are good, Holy Spirit. We thank you. You were there at the beginning, empowering it, and now you are empowering your word. Help us see and understand and believe it. There are many faith, many faiths in our world today, faith in science, faith in other gods, but there is only one true one, and you have real, revealed it here. Help us take hold of that. I do pray as this is a world that's giving us all kinds of mixed messages about origins and purposes that you would recenter us. Help us remember your greatness and goodness. There are people here who are hurting, there are difficulties, there are challenges. Help them recognize today, if you are a God who has this kind of power at the beginning, and you keep sustaining, that you have power to sustain and uphold in the worst of times, and that you continue to provide for us all. We do pray that you would provide the needs of the churches around our city, those that are faithfully proclaiming the gospel, systematically going through books of the Bible teaching, and we are thankful. Pray that you would encourage them, strengthen them. May they glorify you, and may all of your people everywhere in the city who truly call on you give You glory Christ's name, Amen may be seated Well, the importance of Genesis one can't be overstated. It's Israel's origin story as they prepare to cross into the Promised Land, conquer Canaan. It's also the origin story of all the nations, including our nation and peoples. It's your personal origin story. Everybody likes to know their origins sometime in the last year or so, couple years Linda's brother did the blood test, you know, where, found out where they came from. And at that point she found out she was quarter Jewish. A year ago or so, we took our own Lynn blood test. I thought I was half German and half Norwegian. To my shock, I am 2% German. I don't know how you get 2% German and 70% Scandinavian. That is no shock. She took her blood test. There's no Jewish I don't know the tests are weird like but we want to know where we come from, don't you, don't we? Isn't that kind of fun to know where you come from? I mean, that's built in us. We want to know our origins. Here. In a three and a half minute reading, we get a simple and profound account of who our Creator is, how he made the heavens and the earth, and what he made it for.
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We notice this. He made it for a kingdom. When we think about the big idea this week, they're broken. You notice we need to get our thinking straight about God's creation and his kingdom, especially pointing as we land a two parter next week in. To the creation of the kingdom, setting at Adam and Eve to exercise rule and dominion, multiply and fill the earth. This is what God is doing in Genesis. One he is making a world, a profoundly beautiful and fruitful, thriving world filled with life. And Adam and Eve are to be fruitful and multiply and fill that earth and subdue it. What's really interesting is that it's a, it's a, it's a declaration of a worldview, and it uses an economy of words, a grandeur of expression that's unmatched in all of literature. What it repeats. Because it does repeat some things. Tends to be the repetition of how God's bringing forth what is needed for life. God is the author of life, this positive declaration. And by positive, I don't mean encouraging, like, Oh, you're always a winner, John. I don't mean like, that kind of positive. I mean it's not correcting anything. It's not setting out saying this view's wrong. Here's why this view. It just says what is but in doing that, it does fly in the face of most of the accounts of origins that are around us today, and it did for them. It opposes every other worldview, every other origin story, simple and easy, profound. What it does for us is present us, a God beyond our comprehension. I was just having a lovely conversation the foyer. One of our saints is, I mean, I read Genesis one. I just keep asking, like, how did God get there? I mean, that's, that's the natural kid. That's the natural question every kid asks. And at some point, there are things beyond our comprehension. Eternal existence is beyond our comprehension. We're people. We're humans. We have an origin. We expect everything to have an origin. We have always had a word for it, supernatural. We have always had a word for it, although we can't comprehend it. So we want to get our thinking straight about God's creation of his kingdom he is going to rule as God over all, and he wants mankind to He has made us in his image, and he wants us to multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule it. How is our thinking warped or perverted? I mean, if I mean, if I talk about we need to get our thinking straight. There's very practical ways you watch it. You watch the symptoms of of warped thinking. We we all easily and frequently suffer from small God Small World syndrome. Small God Small World syndrome. I coined the phrase. Maybe it'll get in a book someday. But you know, you have it. I have it. We tend to measure our world and God's involvement based on what we see and experience. So in other words, we define our world and we define God based on our own experience. I mean, you're thinking about a new whatever fill in the blank. I'm doing the research because I need to buy a blank. And pretty soon you get obsessed with Do you know anybody who obsesses with research about a purchase? No, most people are like, just here's the card freak. Type it in, buy it. But you know, those researchers like they're looking at everything, comparing everything, they're going to make absolutely the right decision, and there's an obsession, or you you hear a bit of a tidbit of conspiracy. There's there's some news about the election, about a politician, and and you're hooked. We have a word for what I call small God, small world syndrome, going down the rabbit hole. We have a phrase for it. Have you ever gone down the rabbit hole? Something seemed really interested, and all of a sudden, you're like, you're all in, you can't really see anything else you might have small world, small God syndrome, if you go down the rabbit hole, emotional conflict that is a classic small God, small world. Source one, emotional conflict with a friend, a spouse, social media interaction can take over your whole mental world for days you Yeah, and we use all kinds of tricks. We use all kinds of schemes and tactics to take control back, we vent, we retreat, we get violent, we plot, we scheme, we retaliate, we get sanctimonious. I'm better than. So and so we belittle. And what's the result of those tactics? More pain, more sadness, more anxiety, more strife, more war, more greed, more crime, more suffering. We have our series of modern saviors, science, money, work life balance. You know, you've got to get work life balance right. Government, psychology, politics, have they really produced more joy and peace, or they produce more turmoil. The more you know what your sickness can do, the more obsessed like you. You go to WebMD and you find out what what your symptoms could be. Does that give you great peace? Hi, I'm so grateful for WebMD. I am. Actually, there's been some things have been helpful. But what do we tend to do? We tend we tend to it. There's no cure for small God, small world complex. Small God, small world syndrome, like taking in the majesty of the Creator. I mean, there's no cure against small God and small world syndrome like Genesis, one, where we find the Grandeur and Majesty and purposes of God who is intimately involved in making the creation and as the scriptures unfold, intimately involved in redeeming a people? What we're going to do today is work through the first five and a half days of creation. I have three outline points we're only going to get to one. Yeah, I have to set a timer, actually, because we have things to do at the end of the service. Here's my timer. I'm going to pull a John MacArthur. John MacArthur just says it looks like we have, that's all the time we have for today. I'm going to violate all preaching rules. Here we go. I'm supposed to have this neat and tidy conclusion all of the preaching rules I got 40 minutes. We're going to do is work through five and a half days of creation. There's some really important worldview things we need to think about here. And we're going to at least step into two matters. Before we finish, we know from what we've talked about in Genesis, 111, and two, with Nathan Thiry last week, as we look at the whole storyline, that we have the Holy Spirit involved here in verse two. We have Jesus involved in John. One, we have Jesus involved in Colossians. 115 through 19. Jesus is the one who is holding all things together. He sustains all things. We know that we have a Triune God who is over all of this creation. We know that He is eternal self, existent in the beginning. God means that he was there before. He is outside of he is separate from the creation. Although he is intimately involved with it, we know that he is great and good. Nathan walked through those categories as we looked at the survey of this theology. Last week, as we set the whole Bible in front of us, we know where it's going. We just finished an End Time series where we talked about the new heavens and the new earth. Here's here's the beginning. We know where the end is going. What we want to do is examine this creation to see what God has in store and as a real, practical implication, I think of number of years ago, I was had a load of work in ministry, like a lot of our elders and pastors. Do you do it and you go off to vacation, we have a dear friend who lets us stay at a place on a on a
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on the ocean, in Cannon Beach, or outside of Cannon Beach? And we, we drive there and we stop. I remember this one year, whole bunch of turmoil in the background, a whole bunch of stuff going on and life and family. And you, you pull up to the beach and you see the seagulls. And the seagulls were there last year when we were there. And you know, they don't have a lot of they don't have a complicated life. They look for crab to wash up, live or dead. They look for some fish. They squawk at each other, they move up and down the beach. Church, God took care of their entire lives, the whole year, and they were never worried. And I think, you know, at home, God's taking care of everything too. This is the God we have this kind of power, this kind of ability. So as we examine his creation, let's think about who he's revealing himself to be and what he's making out of all of this, so that as you deal with at least the next thing that's showing up in your life, you can at least look at this and say, I know who my God is, who has got my life in his hands. I know what he did at the beginning. I know what he keeps doing. I have him verse one. This is in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. The the created here is Bara. It's, it's this term in the Old Testament. It's, it's the kind of creation that only God can do. Create, creates out of his own power source. He doesn't take any matter. He makes everything from nothing, in a sense that there was no stuff existing, he just creates. And he creates by a word, verse two, the earth was without form, and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. So the title he is, he is creating the heavens and the earth, the heavens and the earth and this pair, I think, initially in Genesis, one have to do with the skies above and all of the stars and galaxies, all the stuff that we would consider our universe or our galaxies, the heavens and then the Earth. Later on, the heavens is going to apply to apply to God's domain that's outside of created order, so on. But here he's focused on, on this planet, the sky's above everything in it, the earth here, here's the summary. Verse two, the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the earth, form and void. There is an amassment of something as God created. There is there is some matter, some kind of material, but it doesn't have form. It doesn't have shape. You could translate it as topsy turvy. So it's this massive amount of of energy or matter or whatever, whatever we're trying to use in modern senses to get a hold of it, and it's not suited for life, formless and void and yet. And yet, darkness is over the face of the deep like it has some kind of shape. It's using ocean languages, the deep. Whatever this is, is massive, massive in potential, massive in material, swirling and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The Spirit of God, personal, this, this idea of hovering, brooding, the word gets used for an eagle mother hovering or brooding over her chicks, that picture of an intimate involvement, Holy Spirit of infinite power, right over the face of this material about to be formed into something beautiful and life sustaining, personal involvement,
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verse three, and God said, Let there be light. And there was light right away. In verse three, we find out something about God that's unlike anything in existence, he says, and there is this phrase, let there be light, and there was light, or he says, and it was so, it's so simple, he said, and it was so. That's an economy of words talking about a massive power that is beyond our comprehension. I know there are people who say you could speak your reality into existence, but you can. You can speak and manipulate people to get what you want in your existence, but you really can't speak anything into existence. This is our God. Now we need to talk about days we're looking at the first day God's speaking, and it's coming to existence. God saw that the light was good. God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the and the dark. He called Night. That all the called language here speaks of God's sovereign kingly authority to give things at their property, call them by name. There was evening, there was morning, the first day we got to deal with days. There are four common current views of what this means. They're not all the views, but they're the most current in our era. They're the most common current views of the Creation account, the first one. Write them down because you're going to, you're going to interact with these, whether you're a college student in a college class or high school student in a high school class, or you're going to watch a, you're going to watch a video account of creation. The first one is literal. So the first view of this is a literal view. These are literal days. And you have six literal days of creation, one day of Sabbath rest. That's the view that we have here, the faith, Bible, church. Here's why the word day is used four different ways in chapter one and chapter two. Right away. Here we have day as in distinction of night. It's the time where light is around. So you have light time and you have dark time. It's that period that's called day. So we call it daylight. There's day, then there's the 24 hour day, signaled by the ordinal word first or second or third. We have the first day, the second day, the third day, and we have that morning and evening. Phrase that morning and evening rhythm, there was morning, there was evening and there was morning. The first day, that's a 24 hour day, all the language signals this. There is the third way, which is that 12 hour part of a 24 hour day that shows up in verse 16, God's made the sun to rule the day. That's the daylight hours, the moon to rule the night. So there's a 12 hour part of a day. And then at two four, talks about the whole summary of the whole account. He says, In the day God made the heavens and the earth. And then that case it means a period of time. The statement of Exodus 20, verse 11, says this. So what are we saying? Is this a long period of time? Because that's one of the options we'll get to in a minute. Very, very long period of time. Are there gaps in between the days, very long period of time? Or is this six real days and a seventh day of rest. Moses, who wrote this, also wrote Exodus 20, verse 11. This is the 10 Commandments. Account says, For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. It is the motivation for Israel to keep Sabbath. You have six days of work. One day God worked, six days rested. One day. Moses certainly thought God did it all in six days, 24 hour periods and one day of rest. The literal reading understands that God brought forth a mature and complete universe. You can write that down, mature and complete. He fashioned Adam and Eve as mature and complete. He fashioned the sun, moon and stars as mature and complete. The universe as mature and complete. You
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now, modern interpreters have challenged the literal view based on the very loud and popular claims of evolutionary science, the size of the universe, the geological record, the fossil record, all seem to contradict it. So they say, could Genesis one mean something different, the second view, and then the other. The next ones follow on with this. The second view, we might call the gap theory. The Gap Theory. There's versions of the gap theory, but let me just summarize it. There are any number of gaps of millions or billions of years before or between various days. Some like to keep a literal 24 hour creation peering it says what it says. But then between day four and day five, or day three and day four, there is a massive gap. Why do we need a massive gap that allows the 13 year old, 13 billion year old universe theory, it allows the 4 billion year old Earth Theory, those gaps could allow all those periods of time. The gap theory, the third. Third is the day age theory, and that's a little different. It claims that the days are metaphorical. Really, they are very long periods of time, up to millions and billions of years each. The fourth view, which has gotten a lot of popularity in our day, is the revelatory or poetic view. The account is a metaphor and poetry depicting God's ascending purpose in creation. The order isn't even real, not as in literal. It's just, it's a it's a piece of poetry describing God's purpose in creating things, man's existence in the world now all of the last three fail at the exegetical level. Meaning, what does it most naturally say? While day can meet a period of time, it's never used in the Bible for a limitless period of time. It's talking about a a bound read off period of time in the day God created, talking about at least six days like it's a it's a boundary. There's boundaries around the idea of day. It's not unlimited. And then naturally, Moses, reading of it from the 10 Commandments, says that the the people who were writing the Bible later, all viewed it as six days. And I know you could ask this question, but Doesn't the Bible say, with the Lord, a day? Is this 1000 years? And 1000 years? Is a day? That's Second Peter three eight. You're right. The Bible does say that, but that that means that means that to God, Second Peter 38 means this to the God who is eternal, 1000 years isn't a big deal. That's what it means to an eternal God. 1000 years is like a day he can he's very patient, which is the point of Second Peter 38 God is patient before the destruction of the world and the new heavens and the new earth come. Here's the problem to be consistent with the last three views. Here's what you have to say. If you're gonna allow these long periods of time, first, it would introduce death before the fall. I mean, the issue of the fossil record, all the animals dying. If you're going to add millions of years before Adam and Eve, you're going to introduce death before the fall and Genesis Chapter two promises death after sin. Genesis three displays what that looks like. And by Genesis five, the repeated phrase is, and he died, and he died and he died. That doesn't happen before you have to introduce death before you have to introduce death for all the creatures before the fall into sin. It would make Adam and Eve poetic figures, because when do we have a real Adam and Eve who have a story? Is this just the picture of mankind? Is this just kind of a parable? You start having real problems with who Adam and Eve really were. Are they really real? And I have brothers and sisters who believe in one of those three non literal readings of this. They really believe that at some point there was a real Adam and a real Eve, and there was a real fall, and there was a real promise of a savior and Jesus will really come. They really believe that, but they have to shrug at what seems to be obvious exegetically, we have to shrug at what seems to be scientific. It looks like the world's really big, and there are a lot of layers stacked up against on each other, and it looks like some things are really old. I'm voting for shrugging about the fossil record. That's what I Okay. I can't explain all that. Can't explain all that. I know that God made a mature world with age. Now you can use the flood to explain all of it. People do that, and we will when we get there.
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You really have to ask yourself, when you look at the Bible, when do the people in the Bible become real people? When is Adam and Eve really Adam and E is Abraham? Really Abraham? And here's what we are fundamentally getting up to. Are there really supernatural activities in the world? And if you're if you're going to really think through this line, you're going to ask this question, what is harder for God to steer all of creation to the current point? You. Over 13 billion years, or for him to make the world in six days, which is harder for God? The answer is, neither is harder. Science. Fact, do you burn more calories running up a hill or walking up a hill? You burn the same because it's you getting to the top, and it burns the same calories. Now, if you're out of shape, you die at the top because you don't run, because your body's not built to do it fast, but calorie burn is the same, like it's the same it's the same calorie burn for God, which that's actually silly to even say. It's no more work for him. So why wouldn't we trust the way that he's laid it out. If he wanted to say it was 13 billion years, he could have given us a lot of clues. If he wanted to say that it was in six days, what else does he have to do?
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You'd have to ask the question, you know, it just seems supernatural to have this explanation. Yeah, It's Supernatural. It's supernatural for water to be turned into wine. You read the gospels, you don't doubt that it's supernatural for somebody to come back from the dead. But you want to believe that. I mean, are we really talking about it's really easy to raise one body from the dead, but it's impossible to make everything from nothing in six days. I mean, are we just arguing about the amount of strength you think it takes to do this? And I would advocate to you what God declares for us is believable. You can trust it. Now, on the other side, I want to add one more, one more important thing in the 1600s Archbishop James Usher added up all the numbers in the genealogies, and he added up as much world history as he could track, and he dated the creation at 4004 BC. He did it for a particular reason. He had picked up an old belief from the first three centuries of church history that there was going to be a 7000 year period of Earth history. Day is 1000 years. 1000 years is a day. So as there were six days, there's going to be 6000 years of work, or labor, and 1000 years of rest. So he added that factor in 7000 years. And he took the 7000 years assumption, he added everything that he knew about history, European history, ancient history, everything he knew about the genealogies and their dates, and he dated 4004 BC. You're going to find some of your favorite commentators say Archbishop Usher dated the Earth at 4004 I'm less than confident about the system. He could be right. He could be right. So here's what you need to remember. Moses isn't writing this for a scientific dating of the origin of the cosmos. He write wrote it so that we would know how God created genealogical tables in Genesis, like other portions, have gaps. They may be significant gaps. You can do it by lining up genealogies in Luke with genealogies in Genesis and so on, and you find that some names are in places and some names are not in places. It wasn't always the author's main concern to get every single person in. He's telling the story about what God has done. It could be longer likely, longer we don't have to pick macroevolutionary theory, which involves more chance, more time to solve where everything came from. But we also don't need to pick 4004 I just want to tell you, I don't know one atheist scientist that is happy with day age gap or revelatory theory. So if you're trying to win them over, stop they. They just deny it all. They've denied the supernatural. Furthermore, within evolutionary theory, they have their own intramural argument. There is evolution as as fact in their mind and evolution as theory. And the evolutionist theory in mind still has the problem of the fossil record. If it was really 4 billion years old, we should have a lot more fossils to choose from. We don't have that many fossils, and we don't have any viable candidates for the transitional life forms that move us from. Very simple organism to very complex organism. They you'll hear somebody come up, oh, here's an example of a transitionary life form. But their transitions are still micro it, you know, it's, it's not hard through careful selective breeding to go multiple generations and radically change the size of what we would call a St Bernard. Like you could come up with a St Bernard miniature and just a lifetime or two, just by selective breeding. Like we all know that there are micro evolutionary processes. Things change over time, but you can't really go. I got this from a guy named Johnson Darwin's black box, and he was talking about the inter mural debate within evolution, where you go from simple organism to an organism with an eye. To have an eye, to have an eye, requires so many anatomical or physical processes that have to all work at the same time together. It's not like, it's not like the genetic code holds some potential, by the way, there's genetic code. How is things passed on genetic code? The genetic code doesn't hold on to these cells later on, are going to sense light. The genetic code doesn't hold on to and we've got some other ones in a couple 1000 years, 10 a million years, we're going to use them for the eye twitch muscle. It doesn't do that even in the micro evolutionary sense. There are, there are very, very small changes in adaptations. But you don't go from no eye to eye in one burst. Evolutionists know this. And of course, if you can add chance and more time, you have an explanation for anything. This is but Dan, you say God is the answer for everything. Yes, I do. I'm not ashamed to say it. I make a faith statement. You make a faith statement which is more likely to be true, that out of nowhere, an eyeless organism develops an eye, poof, it just has an eye like which takes greater faith. You
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so the Spirit of God is over this water. Spirit of God is hovering over the face of the waters we have the days set. The Spirit of God is intimately involved as we go through the days briefly here, let's take a look what's happening. We're going from disorder or formless and void to highly sophisticated order. God said, Let there be light, and there was light. We don't know entirely what the light is. It's not the sun and the moon, because that comes on day four, but it is life sustaining. It allows visibility to see between night and day. And we have the movement from unformed to formed. We have this. I don't know if it's a cloud. I don't know how the properties work, but there is a time in that first day where it's light, and then there's a time where God turns the light switch off and there is darkness. He names them day, night, and we get the first set of the rhythms. And this light and day is going to provide the rhythm for the animal kingdom and for us to have time of work, play worship. It's going to have time for the creation to have time of work, play worship and rest built into the first day. Day two. God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters introduced in day one is light. Light is necessary for all living things they're going to need to get their food and sustenance for life, even today, the things that, quote, unquote, grow in the dark, grow from the nutrients and the other things that are supplied by others. So light is necessary. Now we have the waters, and of course, added to number one prerequisite light number two is water. And he says, let's let there be an expanse in the midst of waters. Let it be let it separate the waters from the waters. God made the expanse. Separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. This idea of expanse, it's a great translation of something that is that is firm and spread out, or stable and spread out. And what we have in verse eight, God called the expanse heaven. You. He called the water below earth. We have an atmosphere formed the water is below light will give Power for Life. Water will be the first building block that is consistent with science today. The upper atmosphere is likely very humid. We'll get to it when we get to chapter six, seven and eight, where there appears to be some kind of atmospheric, humid shell, and it's going to drop much of its rain to flood the earth. But for now, we have two great realms, the skies. We would call them, the heavens and the earth. We have a place for fish and birds. We have a place for fish and birds. We have a place for all other life. Verse nine, God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together in one place. Let the dry land appear. And it was so and just just those phrases, it was so needs. You need to remember how powerful God's word is when he seeks to create. God called the dry land, earth, the waters that were gathered together, he called seas. And God saw that it was good. We have moved from formless and void to light and dark, regulating cycles we have now sky above, an atmosphere filled with water. Earth below covered with water. Now we have the earth below separated into land and to seas, and
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he saw it all and called it good, perfect, beautiful, complete. God said, Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit, trees bearing fruit and which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth. And it was so don't think in modern scientific taxonomies. Rather, think of the various different kinds of ground plants. They did it like they would experience. You have ground plants that produce seeds, wheat, barley, the grains that are going to be used for food and that are going to be self propagating, you'll be able to plant them and use them. You have the trees, which could have been applied to shrubs or bushes like tomato plants or fruit trees, like apples, like you think of, think of these two. And here is the picture of not only how those are going to reproduce, but how they are going to feed. This is the source of food for everything that's coming next, all the things that are going to fill the earth need food. Here it's going to be there for them. There was evening, there was morning the third day. So by the end of day three, we have light to see by that gives energy to all plant life. We have land and vegetation, which in turn will be for food for all the animals in the heavens and on the earth. Verse 14, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. Let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and for years. We get a purpose the lights and the expanse of the heavens. Here. Now this light that is, I don't know what it's like, a fog, just a shining in the air. We don't know what that first light is, but now it's all coalesced. It's Sun and Moon. The greater light, lesser light. Notice there is a purpose for it right away. Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. Let them be for signs, objects where we know God is at work. Seasons. Remember the stars that are going to be thrown in you notice he just says and the stars at the end of verse 16, and the stars, and now we know how big stars are. It's like, it's just like, and it was so like, that is amazing. It's, it's mind blowing. But, but think of this, animals, ocean animals, birds, plants are migratory animals. They they move and migrate in seasons. God's going to put Adam and Eve. They're going to have children. They're going to be fruitful and multiplying and fill the earth. They're going to need to be able to mark time, location, space, direction, and all of these things are going to come into play. Where the sun rises, where the sun sets. We watched it when we went to Stonehenge this year, like people have marked out for a very long time, where the winter starts, where the summer begins, as part of the cycles of living and the prediction of day and night, God is making a. Very orderly planet, tilted just so to sustain life and to sustain a movement, they'll be able to navigate how far they have gone by the stars that they see. They'll navigate where they are on the globe, on a boat by the stars that they see. God is making an ordered creation, so that his king and his queen and their offspring can fulfill his objective.
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He'll be able to mark days and years the lights are going to give light upon the earth. Now it's their role, the sun's rule to provide the energy to grow the plants, plant life. Signs, seasons, days, they're all here. God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night and the stars. God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule the day, over the day and over the night, to separate the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. It doesn't mean that they thought that the Earth went around the sun. I mean that the sun went around the Earth. It doesn't mean they thought that there's, there's no evidence that they they they were thinking of geocentric existence. God had just put it all there display His glory and His Majesty. And there was a very helpful use for Adam and Eve and things that come later. Verse 16, I'm sorry. Verse, verse 25th, day follow the emphasis and God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures. You notice this language. Watch this teeming, swarming language, the herds, when we get to land, the air, the sea creatures. Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures. Let the birds fly above the earth, across the expanse of the heavens. So God created the great sea creatures, every living creature that moves with which the waters swarm according to their kinds, every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. We have skies. We have seas and skies. Skies. By the end of day five, squawking and chirping and calling and honking like everything that you can think of, it is swarming you've pictured the birds that just love to play swarming in a summer evening, the geese that are going in flocks. It was a loud, robust sky with creatures swarming the Great, the small. I remember this vivid picture the first time my dad took me fishing on his ocean going boat, and I was, like, my early teens, and we came across a bait ball. The fishermen are looking for a bait ball. The bait ball is the small sardines or anchovies, whatever, swimming in that part of Canada. And a bait ball happens at the surface when something underneath wants to eat them, and they go to the top and the water's boiling. All the jumping a big, wide bait ball. They're all like, we don't want to die. Let the guy down there die. You know, the fish are trying to get away from the the whatever's trying to eat them swarming. And you've watched the documentaries, whether it's pods of whales or schools of fish, the world was filled with swarming creatures. I get to this part and say, God is a God of life. He's a God of life. He makes life. He sustains life. Verse 24 that's day five. Verse 24 Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things, beasts on the earth according to their kinds, and he's talking about domesticated and undomesticatable animals. God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good, complete, whole, perfect, beautiful, over and over, God is good. What he makes is good. His creation is good because he is good. What is this kingdom like? Before Adam and Eve are made? There's a state. Able Earth rich geological resources for developing culture and society. It is powered, lit by the sun travel is guided by the moon and the stars for the creature to fulfill the Earth, it is planted with a super abundance of food producing vegetate food producing vegetation, and trees teeming with every kind of creature that will soon bring forth their young. I mean, we're about to have all the chicks and baby giraffes and the herds of willed the beast, all these things are about to come. God blessed it. Notice, God blessed it. That means he spoke grace so that they would fulfill their calling. They would be prosperous. I mean, this is the king. This is the kingdom ready for the first queen and first king. We go from formless and void to structure and filled. So we need to get our thinking straight about what all of this is. It's orderly, it's lively. It needs a little taming. It's so wild, there's so much life, it's going to need some taming. It's not a product of chance. It's a world so well crafted and structured that all science, all engineering, all art, all music, all government, all family, all agriculture can flourish. It begs us to our responses. I just have time for two, if God made everything by words that God said, and it was so, you have a person intimately involved by the Spirit of God, with all of this creation, who intimately cares for you. We know the rest of the story. There's a fall coming. We didn't talk about how certain like killer whales like to kill baby gray whales and eat them. Cute, ooh, sad. I mean, it depends on who's telling the story and when on a documentary. We haven't talked about that. I haven't talked about the fall, but I would at least say this. Least say this. Your world can get small as you experience life. We suffer with small God, small world syndrome, and Jesus uses this example in Matthew 626, about the loving care of a Heavenly Father for his children. Jesus says, Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Do not be anxious saying, What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? For the Gentiles, seek after all these things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. We're going to look at your kingdom mandate next week, and as you work it out in your daily personal life, your heavenly Father knows if he could make the world, and Jesus sustains the world today. He knows what you need, and you can trust him. You can trust him. And finally, as we prepare for the Lord's Supper, Jesus was there at the beginning. Jesus made the first man, and Jesus became man, the God outside all Creation humbled Himself and took on the limits of a created person for what purpose, for restoring you to the infinite God. Let's pray, Father, thank you for this good word that we have here, and I pray that You would help us just sit back and absorb these things this week. Pray that you would help us recognize if you have this kind of power, then you have this kind of power. Now, if you desired blessing, then and you desire blessing. Now, through Christ, we can trust Christ. We can trust you. Help Us apply that at the heart level, at the thinking level, so that we can do what you've called us to do Christ's name we pray amen.
Dr. Dan Jarms is teaching pastor and team leader at Faith Bible Church in Spokane Washington, as well as associate dean at The Master's Seminary in Spokane. He has been married for over 30 years to Linda, and has three adult children. He earned his B.A. in English at the Master’s College, B.Ed. at Eastern Washington University, M.Div and D.Min in Expository Preaching at The Master’s Seminary. His other interests include NCAA basketball, woodworking, and art.
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