Off to a good start
Genesis 1:1-23 · Vern Peterman · Dec 9, 2007
Genesis, No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926046564721

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

The new electives that are beginning in January. We have three new electives. And the first one, no, wait a minute. Something's wrong here. Taught by Brian White? Well, maybe not. OK. Let's try it again. We have Who You Are in Christ. And then the second one is the Gospel of John. The third one that we'll have is Biblical Anthropology and Biblical Counseling. We've said Biblical Anthropology is not old human bones and strange tribal practices. OK? But it's, what does the Bible say about man?

So anyway, those are the three. We greatly appreciate those who have already signed up. It really helps us to know what to plan for. So anyway, the sign-ups are available on the bulletin board if you have not signed up yet. The other thing now, we're going to step into the Genesis passage.

We introduced last week that Genesis is here among this first group of books, sometimes called the law. And Genesis is the first of those five. Initially, it was one volume. And the other thing that we told you last week is we want you to have Genesis on the brain. We said that we want you to memorize the book of Genesis. There's 50 chapters. You can do it. But so with Genesis on the brain, The way to do it is to actually memorize eight words.

Okay? So, the way we'll do it, and I want you to repeat after me so you can get this down here. Okay? So, creation, fall, flood, nations. Okay, that's the first four. Okay? The next one is Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Okay? That's how you memorize Genesis. Those eight words. So, just work on that. Okay.

The other thing that we told you last week, this was included in last week's handout, is here's the book of Genesis. It records a period of, and we'll explain this further later, at least 2,200 years and the beginning portion of human history. We also mentioned last week that in chapters 14 and 17, of the book of Acts that Paul, each time he spoke to a group of unbelievers, the major evangelistic message that he gave was regarding the first 11 chapters of Genesis, particularly focusing on creation. All right, now we're going to step into the passage here. Now, and you have, and this is on page one of your handout, the first slide. There have been various approaches to the understanding of this chapter one.

And one of those approaches has been theistic evolution. This is one that came up roughly 150 years ago. And so the idea is that God said, let there be evolution, right? And that all the various animal and plant species then derived from the one primordial ooze. Then along with that theistic evolution idea have come some other ideas in our current thought of things here. Now, another thought was the day-age theory.

This actually, oh, 35 years ago was one of my favorites as I was majoring in geology, in which I like to call it a day, okay? And the idea is that the days of Genesis are actually long ages in which God created everything over a long period of time. I spoke before the RMCF, the Rocky Mountain Creation Fellowship that meets here once a month, and explained to them how I had started off majoring in geology and ended up switching to civil engineering because I wanted something I could believe. The older timescale was one that I was trying to break up into six periods of time and make it match up with Genesis somehow.

I never did succeed. Now, another theory is the apparent age theory. And that's the idea that God created it all in six days with the appearance of long ages, okay? And so things are quite young, they just look old, right? Now, the other one here is the punctuated 24-hour theory, and that has nothing to do with punctuation or 24-hour clocks. What it is is the idea, and this is just theory, that God created everything in six days with long ages between.

So that's another idea to try to reconcile it with the long time periods in the evolutionary time frame. Oh, by the way, something I've got to tell you. People do a lot of this stuff. They come up with these theories about Genesis 1. in our thinking that they'll make the evolutionists happy. Let me tell you, they ain't happy. The next one is called the framework hypothesis.

Genesis 1 is just sort of a topical outline. The numbers are just accidental or incidental at best. A related idea, and this is one that's not written in your handout there, is the idea that God just revealed the contents of Genesis 1 to Moses in six days. The revelation was over six days, but how he created it was something entirely different.

So the idea is we have the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, but ignore it all. It doesn't mean a thing. One more idea. Oh boy. Historical creationism. The six days are really about God just preparing this little area of the Garden of Eden and not about how God made the world. That's another idea. Nobody's laughing yet. Okay. All right. The gap theory. That's not about the gap in my grandson's teeth. Okay. All right.

It's about this idea that God judged a pre-Adam race and an angelic rebellion between verses one and two. And that the rest of Genesis 1 and 2 is about recreating the earth and bringing about a new race of beings. That's what the gap theory is in summary. With the gap theory, there was a fellow who wrote about, as a matter of fact it was a century ago this year. He wrote this idea that this gap theory explains how various things in the Bible came about.

There was a fellow, Arthur Custance, who's now home with the Lord. He is a believer. I met him before he went home with the Lord and talked to him about this. Very nice guy, extremely intelligent, but he still never convinced me. There have been some other fellows who likewise have spoken in favor of this theory. And there is a four-page handout. You'll see we have lots of supplements in this congregation. And so take your supplements, okay? They're on the cabinet to the right as you exit this room. And this is one of them. It's a four-pager that's available there. Feel free to take those.

And the one that I believe scripture teaches, and we'll also present some information on that in a supplement. That the day is actually intended to be 24 hours. That as Exodus says, actually twice, God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days. And there is a supplement available additionally on the cabinet to the right that explains some of the conflicts between various so-called scientific views and scripture.

And feel free to take advantage of that. Last week's handout had a chart like this. And to summarize quickly, there are five areas, five ways in which God has revealed himself, scripture, gives multiple support for each one of those ways that God has revealed himself. That's in last week's handout, I believe, on the fourth page. Today, you've got another one in this week's handout that is similar on the first page, and it takes up roughly half the page there. What it does, it takes each of those areas and then explains what does that mean. That is, nature Scripture says reveals God's existence and some aspects of his character. If we look at nature, it doesn't tell us everything that we need to know. Does nature by itself tell you that Christ died for your sins? Does nature by itself tell you that Christ rose from the dead? No. Nature won't tell you everything. One other clarification here. While we've got these things explained, something we need to point out. And this is not in your handout, so you might make note of it.

This revelation through nature is not a justification to make science equal with scripture. Scripture is an authority higher than and more certain than science. So, just as you see that, it's important. The reason I say that is because in recent decades, you might have heard this phrase, all truth is God's truth. That has been propounded. This was a book first published about 30 years ago that presented this idea, basically put science on the same level as scripture. Well, what happens when you have a conflict? It ends up undermining scripture. So that's just a clarification we want to make here.

All right, we have the Genesis creation week outlined on the first page of your handout and on the overhead here. each of the days in sequence. What we're going to be doing today is going through the first five days and then next week the sixth and seventh days.

Now as we step through this, the first creation day will be a bringing of the earth into existence but not with some of the definitions and the additional things that will be added. The second day is a definition of the atmosphere The third day is of the oceans and water bodies and of the vegetation, the first biological life. The fourth day, and this is sometimes surprising to folks, the sun, moon, and the stars. The fifth day is the birds and sea creatures, as Courtney read for us here. And then we'll be looking next Sunday at the sixth and the seventh day.

Now here's the pattern, and you might have already noted that as we begin reading, and Courtney read those verses for us. Here's the general pattern we see through the book of Genesis in that first chapter. Then God said, let, is the beginning part for many of these, and God made or created, and those words are synonymous, and it was so. And God saw that it was good, and there was evening and there was morning, one or a second or a third day. That's the general pattern that you'll see through each of the days of creation.

Genesis 1, 1, and 2 begins a little bit differently. Why? It's an introduction to the creative process. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth as a summary statement. God saw that it was good is not, interestingly, in the second day of creation. So that's one variation from the pattern. And on the sixth day, God saw all that he made and behold, it was very good.

That we'll be getting to next week. All right. So the question, how long is a day? Okay. Is it a day like I tried to make it? You see, I started off majoring in geology and went through a goodly portion of the program. And I thought, well, this is science. It's got to be true. And so I got to make the Bible fit. And so that was the way I was trying to do it. And boy, I tell you, I did not have enough scissors and paste. It was a tough thing to make happen. I never was really happy with it. And as time went on, I was stretching God's word more and more in order to make it fit what I thought was a scientific conclusion.

This word day is translated from the Hebrew word yom, and no it's not yam, it's yom. This word yom certainly can mean other than a literal day, but that's when it's used as we use in our English figure of speech, things like in my day. which is certainly we mean more than a 24-hour day, but we don't mean millions of years, right? So when I say in my day, you don't mean millions of years unless you're my kids, and then sure, it's millions of years.

Okay. There is a mountain of evidence. I will not go through it all, but there is a mountain of evidence about how this word yom is used in Genesis 1 and the rest of Scripture. And that's very important. That pattern is very, very solid. It points to one very clear conclusion. In Genesis 1, yom, this word translated day, again and again, means a literal solar day as we know it. Just clean and clear as can be.

There is a two-page handout, two sides of one sheet of paper in the back, and feel free to take that supplement. I'd like, however, to take a brief moment to look at the backside of that supplement. And so I'll take a look. There's a fellow who was quoted on one part of it.

His name was James Barr. James Barr was previously at Oxford and then most recently at Vanderbilt. He died just last year. But he is definitely a world-class, world-renowned scholar on Hebrew. Also, we have Arnold Fruchtenbaum, and we'll speak about him shortly. One of the things he says here, probably as far as I know, he wrote this in a letter a little over 20 years ago, there is no professor, get this, so far as he's aware, here's a guy who gets together with other professors and talks in conferences and writes in journals, no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament of any world-class university who does not believe that the writers of Genesis 1 through 11 intended to convey to their readers The idea is that creation took place in a series of six days, which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience. The figures contained in the Genesis genealogies, etc. He goes on, or to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the days of creation to be long years of time, and he goes on, are not taken seriously by any such professors as far as I know. You can feel free to take a look at that and read the whole quote. This is an email written to John Doyle. And it was a response to an email that he had sent. And so the response came like this. Thank you for your email letter of January 26. Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum wrote this.

It says, while the Hebrew word for day, yom, could refer to a longer period of time by itself, as in my day, Whenever it's used with a numeral, it is only a 24-hour day. In the Genesis account, it is used with numerals, and therefore the Genesis account also mentions evening and morning, which reconfirms that it is only a 24-hour day. So Dr. Fruchtenbaum's opinion there.

Now, how old is the earth? Based on several assumptions that are not, get this, several assumptions that are not by nature verifiable, Some claim that the earth is about four and a half billion years old. We say, wait a minute, scientists came up with this. All right. Yes, they did. And here's what they did.

They used science to measure certain specific amounts, and they did it well, probably, measuring specific amounts of certain radioactive isotopes, and then they calculated an age based on unverifiable assumptions. Why do I say unverifiable? Was any of them back there four and a half billion years ago to check it out? The assumptions are outside of science. The measurement is scientific. The assumptions are not science. They are assumptions based on philosophy.

But a literal reading of the Bible, Genesis 1 and the genealogies of Genesis and other dates and time frames, we'll get into that more in detail when we get to the genealogies. gives us a date of at least 6,000 years old. And I'll use that word, at least, or the words at least, and we'll talk in more detail when we get to the genealogies. Certainly, it is way, way short of four and a half billion years. Now, here is the passage, and we'll dive into the details. Let's look at the first day, and I just would ask you to open your Bibles, take a look right there at Genesis 1-1. We'll start in the beginning.

It says, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And this is, as we said before, a summary statement about the entire creation. It summarizes what is given in further detail in chapters 1 and 2. It is a uniquely created physical universe, along with that, spiritual beings. So God created the physical universe. He also created spiritual beings, specifically humans are described here. God created, was moving, said, saw, made, called, separated.

You notice the verbs here, the actions, are all God's. God's doing. It's tough in the midst of that to just cast it all to chance. Because God is the one who takes the actions. God is the one who said. God is the one who made. God is the one who separated. God owns the verbs.

If we were to look at John chapter 1, the first four verses there, the first few verses, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning. Same phrase, in the beginning with God, all things came into being through him, through Jesus Christ. It is through Christ that everything was created. Colossians 1 verse 15 says something similar. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Verse 16, for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible. That is, all the physical world and the spiritual realm as well. Now, as we look at this, how does it start?

The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep. and the Spirit of God was moving, moving over the surface of the waters. Something very interesting here. This word for moving over the waters is used in the Old Testament for a dove fluttering or brooding over a nest. Isn't that interesting?

What we find is God the Father is the one who provides direction. Jesus in the Gospels, was always saying, I do what my father says. He listens to his father's direction. And yet it is through him that everything, Jesus Christ, everything is created. The Holy Spirit, even as now, is the one who is personally and directly involved in the creation and in our own lives. He is the one who has the implementing, hands-on ministry I use that hands-on as a figure of speech here. Now, then it says, and God said. Now, you know, coming from a technical background, that you know what God said. God said this, right? And God said, and there was light. I won't bother to read the whole thing. You get the idea. Okay? All right.

And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and morning one day. So notice, here's new beginnings. God acts in multiple ways. Did you see that? God does this. God does that. God is the one who takes the action here. God also creates by communication. Did you see that?

Repeatedly we find in this passage, and God said, and God said, and God said. When Jesus Christ comes again, do you know how he will defeat his enemies? He will say it. He will say it. God acts by communication. And that's made clear in this passage here. God also defines the parts of His communication. He separates this from this. He calls this what it is. He defines and identifies things. That's who He is. This is also the first of this ending pattern that we see. There was evening and there was morning one day. The Hebrew actually literally says day one. Day one. Let there be light. He created it all. Now on the second day. Here in Genesis 6 through 8, what we see is the creation of the atmosphere. We see a separation of the waters below from the waters above.

And one of the things that's a little hard to illustrate now is there may well and likely were differences in the atmosphere at that point in time versus what there is now. But there's something that we need to take a look at here, and it'll help us not only here, but farther down as we go and look at this passage, and that's this. In the Hebrew mindset, there were three levels of heaven. Let's talk about what those are.

The first heaven is where clouds drift and birds fly. We're going to see that here in this passage and farther on in verse 20. That's the first level of heaven. That's the open expanse between the waters below and the waters above. This is this first level here. It's the atmosphere around the earth. The second level of heaven is where there are stars and planets. This includes the sun, the moon. You get beyond our atmosphere and you're in that second level of heaven. Third heaven is the domain of God and the angels.

You're going to see this later on in Genesis 28. Ever hear the phrase, seventh heaven? That's Islamic. That's Islamic. Third heaven is the highest heaven in the Jewish understanding. So when he talks in here in these verses, 6-8, this is the first heaven. This is the atmosphere. Not talking about higher than that. Now we have the third day of creation. Here on the third day of creation.

And God said, let the earth sprout vegetation. First, we have the gathering up of all the land and the water separately. Now the land begins to take definition and God puts vegetation on the land as well. We see numerous examples of it and you can imagine that early earth before things got, well, things like paved over, you know, things built upon, trampled. It must have been gorgeous. Vegetation everywhere of all kinds, impressive vegetation. The land and the waters defined, separated, and the vegetation placed over the earth.

Vegetation of all sorts, growing lush and green. And then we find the fourth day. And the fourth day, very interesting, it's on the fourth day that God created the sun, the moon, the stars, and that second heaven that we looked at earlier. This is outside our atmosphere, but not in heaven that is the abode of the Lord and the angels. The second heaven.

Here He created the sun. and the moon with all its phases. Don't watch that too much or you'll go nuts. Anyway, he created the solar system and all the planets. He created the stars and all the millions and millions of galaxies of stars, each of those galaxies having billions of stars. He created the moon and the Earth system. Something very interesting I thought about this. He created something that makes a really good analogy.

Have you noticed in here the Sun is what really produces the light and the Moon only reflects the light. And typically the Moon is reflecting that light mostly on the dark side of the Earth. Have you noticed that the Lord Jesus Christ is the very light source? And we, who are the church, have the opportunity to reflect that light. The light, where does the light come from? Not from ourselves originally, but from the Lord Jesus Christ, back to a very darker.

The Lord set up this analogy, but the Lord also made clear here his purposes. What were his purposes for this arrangement of the moon and the stars and the sun. He had purposes that are laid out in this passage. Purpose 1, separate the day from the night. Purpose 2, sign seasons, days and years. And Purpose 3, give light on the earth. There's also a pattern in this chapter that shows up and you see it throughout the whole chapter of Genesis 1. And that is when the Lord does something, you see consequences. Let there be light. And there was light. And from then on out, what do you see repeatedly? And it was so. And it was so.

Ever had an experience where you did something and when you finally stood back, you said, that wasn't quite what I had in mind? That wasn't quite what I thought was going to happen? It wasn't what I was thinking about when I did this? Well, because we can attempt to do something and it doesn't turn out like we thought it would.

The Lord didn't go, rats! Blew it again. Oh, I've got another day. The Lord doesn't have that problem. Let there be light. And there was light. And it was so. And it was so. And it was so. Why? The Lord doesn't do trial and error. He has a purpose in each thing. And He does it.

Now we have the fifth day. In this fifth day, He created the birds of the air and the creatures in the sea. We have the birds in the air of all kinds. Lots of kinds. A great many. and they're in that first heaven that we talked about. They're the ones that occupy that area and Genesis 20 mentions that. Even birds of the air or creatures of the air that are now no longer in existence, likely included in that original creation. Fish of the sea of all kinds. And there's something else that I need to talk to you about with this, and that is, it talks about some passages in here. I think one translation has whales, another translation has great sea monsters.

I want to tell you about a personal experience I had. I developed this habit when I was starting in high school. I didn't like chlorinated water a whole lot, so I liked to swim in open, natural bodies of water, including the ocean. and I didn't mind swimming out way, way far where the people on the shore were getting either tiny or nearly invisible. And so I would swim way far out and this one place I was swimming was out off the coast of Albion, California and looks about like that. But I swam way, way out and there were people on the shore and I was just way, way far out there having a great time. As I was swimming way out there and there was nothing in view out in front of me, I just kept swimming, I noticed that there was something rather big under the water, real close.

I said, boy, that is awful big. I wonder what that is. Well, when I saw that, I had a pretty good idea what it is. It was awfully close, probably about as close as for me to the front people up here. And I decided that was a very good time to turn around. But I also got the very distinct impression when he said, these great sea monsters, I had a pretty up-close idea, yeah, it's those big things. That's what he's talking about.

But probably also creatures that maybe are hard to find or non-existent that are included in that description. The sixth day and the seventh day, we'll get to that next week and go into that in more detail, specifically including the description of the creation of human beings. But there are some things that are revealed here that we want to take note of. One of the things you notice is you get right to the very beginning of Genesis, in the beginning, God. There's no philosophical argument, there's no justification, there's no proposition, well, if you believe in God, then so and so. No. Factual statement. It's assumed. It's fact.

He proceeds through the creation account, never questioning God's capacity. Every once in a while you run across these little jokes of, you know, God tried and created something and it wasn't quite what he had in mind and so he created something else, you know, and I hear jokes about like that with bald heads, but anyway. One of the things we see is God's capacity and ability to carry things out is never challenged. It doesn't say God tried to. It doesn't say, and God said, and it didn't happen. What it says is, and God did this, and God said, and it was so. Whatever God said took place.

God's capacity is never challenged. We could describe that God is infinite. God is never at a place in our own lives where he says, I'd like to help you, Vern, but I just can't pull it off today. I'm a little busy. Same thing in the creative act here. As God created, there was never any threat to God's capacity. God was never frustrated in being able to carry something out. Genesis 1 reveals that God is separate from his creation.

And that's important. We'll talk about that in a minute. He is the creator. Everything else is a creation. It's that distinct. Also reveals that God is a personal being. And by that, I don't mean that he is a person like a human being, but that he is a personal being versus a non-personal being. And let's talk about what that means. It means that God has intelligence. As a matter of fact, here's a God that can, without all those formulas, just say, let there be light.

And there it is. He can say, let the oceans swarm with these creatures. And all the biological and ecological details are all there. His intellectual capacity is never challenged. He is able to evaluate. God said that it was good. He's able to will and determine, let us do this, make this, separate this, create that. He's able to execute into action. He didn't say, let there be light and nothing happened. No, it happened. It took place. He's able to communicate.

Repeatedly, we find in this passage, God said, God said, God said, God said. When God speaks, it means something. He acts with purpose. One of the things we looked at on day four is we saw three definitions and declarations of purpose. God doesn't create and then say, what did I do that for? Right? He is able to reveal. We have this entire account in orderly fashion set before us. And it's not because God just sort of spilled the beans accidentally or let a rumor get out. He deliberately revealed. He wanted it to be known.

The contents of Genesis 1 puts God in contrast to a lot of other worldviews and world religions. In contrast to secular atheism and agnosticism, it says without question, there is a God. In contrast to Buddhism and parts of Buddhism and Hinduism, In the ultimate, God is a personal being. See, Hinduism will have hundreds and hundreds of gods that are subsidiary gods, and some of those have personal characteristics. But the ultimate God is impersonal.

I was talking to Dr. Bhanu Dave one time. I would talk to him for hours. He was a professor of religion over in India, and he came to the United States, and so I would talk to him and talk to him and talk to him. And he said, we are but a dream of God.

It is all over, that is, when we've all been through reincarnations until we're all done with them. Then the dream of God will go back into the infinite, impersonal, holy other. That's as significant as you are. You impressed? It's also not polytheism. Multiple gods.

In contrast to the pagan religions of biblical times, God existed before the creation existed. Remember we said, Paul used creation in Acts 14 and Acts 17. In Acts 17, he spoke to two different groups of Greek philosophers. Both of those, the Epicureans and the Stoics, both of those groups of philosophers believed in a creation that pre-existed the gods. The gods even would fight one another and a dying god would create a mountain range.

That's not the kind of God that we see in Scripture. The order and manner of creation doesn't place the control of our lives in the stars or inanimate objects or other animals. Nothing created is the ultimate in controlling our lives. He alone. God is in control from, to use the Hebrew order of things, day one. Genesis 1 doesn't present God as just sort of random. Oh, I think I'll just have Vern have this problem today. God doesn't just create accidentally.

Whoops. He doesn't go, oh, no, that's not what I had in mind, which is really good. Everything is orderly and deliberate. God is a God of purpose and meaning and significance. He does this for a reason. This will provide for this. This will provide for this. This has this result. He speaks so that there will be a consequence.

We're going to find out as we proceed through Genesis 1 and into the next chapters, God was making a place suitable for human beings. Beings who were initially innocent and in harmony and in fellowship with God. God made a place that spoke about his character. Psalm 19, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. Not only did he speak to bring things into existence, but what he made spoke of him. That's amazing stuff. Speak to bring it about, and then have what you bring about speak of him. That's phenomenal.

He was certainly making a place suitable for human beings, and He is, as we'll soon see, going to make this creature called man, who has the capacity to relate to this physical universe and the capacity to relate to Him. He put man there to have fellowship with Him. That's God's intent. As we go through these chapters, we're going to see how God actually, even with Adam's rebellion against God.

Even with that, His intent will be continuing fellowship. And He will do whatever it takes. And whatever it takes is the Lord Jesus comes and dies on the cross and is raised again. Why? For fellowship with you and me. That's what He created for. And that's what He sent Jesus Christ for. What we're celebrating this time of year. That Jesus Christ is the way for us to behold the Father, to behold the Lord, and to be growing, transformed from glory to glory. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this introduction to your creation that tells us so much. tells us immensely marvelous things and at the same time reveals that you're a God who cares about each individual part of our lives. What a phenomenal and fantastic, unfathomably wonderful thing that is. We thank you for these truths revealed because you love us. In Jesus' name, Amen.