CREATION
(Some thoughts on Genesis 1)
Introduction:
1. Hebrews 11:3 “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”
a. It takes faith to believe that an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, God simply spoke the world into existence during a six (24 hour) day period which began a little over six thousand years ago.
b. It also takes faith to believe that about 13 billion years ago nothing became something and exploded with a big bang. That bang subsequently resulted in what we see today through a process of evolution. In spite of their claims to the contrary, this process cannot be duplicated in a laboratory!
2. These two opposing faiths have been at odds with each other for the past 160 years because some of the people decided that there was no God and their “science” had all the answers.
a. When Darwin published The Origin of the Species in 1859, most of the faithful in group “a” above began to lose their faith. They looked for ways to accommodate the people in group “b” above, because they didn’t want to be ridiculed for being stupid and unscientific.
b. Group “b” found a way to take over the educational institutions in the United States as well as other countries. They were able to convince most of the world that their theories were “scientific” when in fact they were not.
3. When “science” or as the Bible describes it “oppositions of science falsely so called” seems to disagree with or disprove the Bible, the faith of the believer must prevail. “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” (See 1 Timothy 6:20 and Romans 3:4)
The First Day of Creation – Genesis 1:1-5
1. The Gap theory was to accommodate certain fossil records that science claims is proof of millions or billions of years.
a. According to the gap theory, there’s a very long gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The world that existed during this gap was destroyed and God re-created it in the six days described in Genesis. This idea fails because it lacks biblical support and puts death before sin when Scripture describes death as the consequence for sin.
b. Many adherents of the gap theory claim that the grammar of Genesis 1:1–2 allows, a time-gap between the events in verse 1 and the events in verse 2. Into this gap—believed by many to be billions of years—they want to place all the major geological phenomena that have shaped the earth.
c. The “modified gap theory” or “precreation chaos gap theory,” which is the proposed “gap” between Genesis 1:2 and 1:3, is unscriptural, and ultimately unnecessary. In fact, several gap models have been proposed over the years for one reason—to add secular ideas of long ages to the Bible.
2. The Long Day theory was also created to allow room for the millions and billions of years. This is sometimes referred to as “Theistic Evolution” but the 24 hour day is what the Bible teaches!
3. The world was created with the appearance of age!
a. Did Adam have a belly button?
b. Did trees have “rings” and fruit?
c. The universal flood in Noah’s day totally disrupted the layers of fossils we find today. (Genesis 7)
4. The earth was “without form” at first, but Isaiah 40:22 calls it a “circle” (not a ball or globe). It was “void” of life, and “darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
5. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the (deep) waters.
6. God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
a. This was not the sunlight, but a different and special light. God said this light was good. (see Isaiah 45:7)
b. Heaven will contain a special light as described in Revelation 21:23.
7. Day and Night were present prior to the creation of the sun, moon, and stars which will be created on the fourth day. (Note: the first mention of the words “sun and moon” are not until Genesis 39:9 when Joseph described his dream to his brothers.)
8. God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night.
The Second Day of Creation – Genesis 1:6-8
1. The Firmament (the vault of heaven) was created to divide the waters.
a. There would be waters (not space) above the firmament.
b. There would be waters under the firmament. (Home of fish etc.)
2. The word” firmament” appears 17 times in the King James translation and in each case it is translated from the Hebrew word raqiya, which meant the visible vault of the sky.
a. The word raqiya comes from riqqua, which means “beaten out” or “to spread out by beating.”
b. In Job 37:18 we read, “Hast thou with him spread (raqa) out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?”
c. Elihu’s question shows that the Hebrews considered the vault of heaven to be a solid, physical object.
3. The word “heaven” comes from the Hebrew word shamayim and usually means the visible sky.
a. Psalm 19:1 – The heavens (shamayim) declare the glory of God; and the firmament (raqiya) sheweth his handywork.
b. While the heaven and the firmament are related, they are not the same thing. The word “heaven” is a general term that is used to include all aspects of what we refer to as heaven.
c. God called the firmament Heaven. (See a graphic of the Ancient Hebrew concept below.)
d. In 2 Corinthians 12:2, the apostle Paul tells of being “caught up to the third heaven.”
e. The three heavens are: the atmosphere, the firmament where the heavenly bodies are located, and the throne room of God.
4. God sits upon the circle of the earth according to Isaiah 40:22.
a. The word “circle” is translated from the Hebrew word chug which is pronounced “khoog.”
b. Isaiah 22:18 uses another Hebrew word, dur, to describe a ball which can be tossed. This would be the proper word to describe a globe.
c. God is in His high and lofty position where He beholds the stars through the clouds. (See Job 22:12-14)
5. The prophet Ezekiel describes the firmament in Ezek. 1:22-26 and 10:1.
The Third Day of Creation – Genesis 1:9-13
1. The waters under the heaven were gathered together unto one place and the dry land appeared.
a. There is no “map of the world” that depicts the size and shape of the Earth or land mass at the time prior to the universal flood of Noah’s day.
b. Genesis 10:25 mentions a man named Peleg (division) who lived in the days when the earth was divided.
c. Some believe that the “continental shelf” marks the edge of the Earth’s continents before the Earth was divided in Genesis 10.
2. God called the dry land Earth and the waters He called Seas and said that it was good.
3. All of plant life was brought forth on this day.
a. Whatever was brought forth was “after his kind” so that there was automatic expansion of the kinds of plant life.
b. Grass, fruit trees, herbs and other trees were in the Garden of Eden prior to the fall of man into sin in Genesis 3.
c. Much of what we see as plant life today is a result of the curse in Genesis 3:17 which is not good.
The Fourth Day of Creation – Genesis 1:14-19
1.The firmament (vault) of the heaven (sky) is home to the lights.
a. As in verse 2, God spoke the lights into existence.
b. The lights are IN the firmament and they are FOR lights in the firmament.
c. Their first purpose is an additional means to divide the day from the night. (See day 1)
d. They are also for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.
e. And to give light upon the Earth; And to rule over the day and the night.
2. God made TWO great lights.
a. In order to accommodate “science” of the last few centuries, commentators have changed the meaning of scripture to say, “God made one great light and a reflector.”
b. The grammar of the KJV along with nearly all versions of the Bible, is clear to anyone with common sense who is not “willingly ignorant” of this fact. (2 Peter 3:5)
c. The greater of the two is the Sun and the lesser of the two is the Moon. (Their names appear for the first time in Genesis 37:9)
d. If the “lesser light” were merely a reflection of the “greater light,” they would both give off heat, but the opposite is true. The temperature of the Moon light can be measured and it is cooler that the areas protected from the direct light of the Moon.
e. He made the stars also. This implies that the stars are all of lesser light than the Moon. (The scientists tell us that the Sun, Alpha Centauri A, is the closest star to the Earth.)
f. Is the Sun 4.3 light years from the Earth hurtling through the Milky Way galaxy at 500,000 miles per hour? Or is the Sun in the firmament where God said He put it? (See day 2)
3. The Long Day of Joshua 10:12-13 “when the sun hasted not to go down about a whole day.” Options of explanation:
a. Science claims that the Sun is stationary and the Earth moves; therefore, this couldn’t have actually happened as the Bible claims.
b. It is a metaphor and the Sun and Moon represent something else. It just seemed like they stood still!
c. The Bible claims that the Earth is stationary and the Sun moves in its circuit along with the Moon; therefore, the sun and the moon both stood still as God describes the event.
4. Hezekiah and the sun dial of Ahaz in II Kings 20:1-11 and Isaiah 38:8
a. Ten degrees of the sun dial would account for the rest of the “about a whole day” in Joshua’s long day.
b. This was a visible miracle of the Sun not just standing still, but actually going backward in such a way that it could be measured.
5. Where does the Bible say that the Earth is still or stationary?
a. 1 Samuel 2:8 “…for the pillars of the earth are the LORD’S, and he hath set the world upon them.”
b. 1 Chronicles 16:30 “…the world also shall be stable that it be not moved.”
c. Psalm 93:1 “…the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.”
d. Psalm 96:10 “…the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved:”
e. Psalm 104:5 “Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.”
f. Zechariah 1:11 “…We have walked to and fro through the earth, and, behold, all the earth sitteth still, and is at rest.”
6. Consider the day of our Lord’s crucifixion in Luke 23:44, 45.
a. From noon until 3:00 p.m. there was darkness over all the earth.
b. The sun was darkened by Jesus for a full three hours.
c. If this is a metaphor, so are the crucifixion and resurrection!
7. God saw that it was good, but,
a. Man saw the Sun, Moon, and stars as an opportunity to engage in idolatry; and Satan was very willing to assist man in this endeavor.
b. Every nation in the world has a form of Sun worship with the names of their gods and goddesses being the only difference.
c. God’s warnings to Israel and their eventual punishment with the Babylonian captivity and the later destruction of their temple in 70 A.D. was due to their worship of idols and mixing idol worship with worship of their true God.
d. Man has a tendency to corrupt everything God gives him.
8. History of Sun or Baal worship [by God’s people] in God’s word.
a. The Tower (to heaven) of Babel in Genesis 11.
b. Their years in Egypt with Osiris, Isis, and Horus.
c. The golden calf after crossing the Red Sea.
d. The Judges, the Kings, and the Prophets.
e. The Pharisees with their Talmud and Kabbalah.
9. Warning to Israel upon their entrance to the Promised Land after being in the wilderness for 40 years with the Tabernacle as their means of worship: Deuteronomy 4:15-20: Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the LORD spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female, The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth: And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven. But the LORD hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day.
10. From the Encyclopedia Britainica: Helios, (Greek: “Sun”) in Greek religion, the sun god, sometimes called a Titan. He drove a chariot daily from east to west across the sky and sailed around the northerly stream of Ocean each night in a huge cup. In classical Greece, Helios was especially worshipped in Rhodes, where from at least the early 5th century bce he was regarded as the chief god, to whom the island belonged. His worship spread as he became increasingly identified with other deities, often under Eastern influence. From the 5th century bce, Apollo, originally a deity of radiant purity, was more and more interpreted as a sun god. Under the Roman Empire the sun itself came to be worshipped as the Unconquered Sun.
The Fifth Day of Creation – Genesis 1:20-23
1. There is an abundance of life in in the water.
a. The microscopic “moving creatures” in both salt and fresh water.
b. The larger creatures include all the “fish” as well as large whales.
c. Reptiles and creatures who can adapt to land as well as the seas.
d. Vegetative life in the seas is probably included on this day.
2. Fowls and all flying creatures that fly “above the earth in the open firmament of heaven” were created.
3. All of these “living creatures” brought forth (reproduced) abundantly after their own kind.
4. An amazing provision for the care and feeding of the human race.
5. God saw that it was good.
The Sixth Day of Creation – Genesis 1:24-31
1. All living creatures in the animal kingdom were created this day.
a. Cattle, creeping things, and beasts.
b. They were to “bring forth” (reproduce) after their kind.
2. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
a. In the Hebrew language, personal pronouns have singular, duel, and plural, so that “us” and “our” in these verses indicate three or more persons.
b. The image of man is similar (likeness) to the triune Godhead.
c. Man has Intellect, Emotion, and Will or Head, Heart, and Hand or Spirit, Soul, and Body.
d. It appears that it takes both male and female to be in this image. (See Genesis 2:18-24 where we find marriage and the “one flesh” concept.)
3. “And God blessed them and said unto them,”
a. Be fruitful and multiply.
b. Replenish and subdue the earth.
c. Have dominion over all the other living things.
4. Herbs and trees were to be for meat (food).
a. This applied to all living creatures.
b. Sin and death had not yet entered the world.
5. And God saw everything that he had made, and it was VERY GOOD.
Pastor David Johnson