The Course of Creation

Mother’s Day - the mother who bore us continues to care about us - cf. God - he made us, he continues to care about us.

When we look at Genesis 1, we’re looking at one of the most fascinating chapters of the Bible. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that this is the most God-centered chapter in the whole Bible. God is referred to no less than 43 times in 31 verses. He’s the great subject—the Great Doer—in this passage.

So it’s no wonder that Satan wants to keep us away from studying this passage. At the very beginning of the Bible, Satan tries to undermine our appreciation for who God is, and rob our respect for what God did. And he has two strategies for doing this.

1. He tries to make us ignore Gen. 1 by persuading us that it is just a quaint old myth about how the world supposedly began. Surely this account can’t possibly be true in light of the findings of modern science. And this is why many people have very little respect for Gen. 1—they just don’t believe it.

But if Satan can’t get us to simply not believe Gen. 1…

2. He’ll try to get us so tied up in knots trying to figure out how God did all this stuff, and when he did it, that we’ll actually lose our appreciation for what he did. There are a lot of Christians out there fighting and arguing about their various interpretations of Genesis 1. And they get so wrapped up in their arguments and counter-arguments that they just lose sight of the majesty and the wonder of this passage.

Now I don’t want us to do that. I want us to gain a new appreciation for who God is and what God did as we study this passage. So let’s examine this passage together.

We saw last week that verses 1–2 serve as a sort of prologue to the chapter. They stand apart as a sort of entryway into the passage. And then, beginning in verse 3, we have a beautifully structured narrative where God tells us about each of the six days of creation. Look at verse 3…

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he 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.

Now there are several elements that you’ll see repeated over and over again as you go through the days of creation.

1. There is a declaring, where God speaks. At the beginning of every day of creation, you’ll see the words “And God said…” And sometimes you’ll see those words in the middle of some of the days.

Days 3, 5, and 6 are like that, and interestingly, those are the days on which God created life—the vegetation on Day 3; birds and fish on Day 5; animals and man on Day 6. In fact, God does more declaring on Day 6 than on any other day, which must mean that Day 6 is special.

Back in the middle ages, there was a famous Jewish rabbi by the name of Nachmanides. He noticed that, in the Hebrew Bible, there were 10 separate times that God spoke during the days of creation. (Our English translations make it look like there are 11, but in the Hebrew, there are 10.)

Nachmanides concluded that since God spoke 10 times at creation, there must be 10 dimensions in the universe—four that are visible (length, height, width, and time); and 6 that are invisible. Now that’s rather quaint—except that modern physicists have discovered that there really are at least 10 dimensions in the universe—four that are visible, and the rest that are so tightly curled that we cannot see or experience them.

So you have God speaking during the week of creation. And the word of God is the activating force that brings into being all that exists. Every time God speaks, something wonderful happens. Something amazing comes into being. Where there was once emptiness, now there is life and light. We read in John 1:1…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Do you appreciate the Word of God this morning? You hold in your hand the written word of God. And it still has the same power that it did at Creation—the power to bring life and light into your life.

Something else you see repeated throughout the days of creation is a statement of accomplishment.

• Day 1, God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

• Day 2 (v. 6), God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so.

• Day 3 (v.9), God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so.

And you see this pattern over and over again. God speaks, and it is so. The Word of God is potent—it is powerful—it is productive - it is purposeful.

And then, throughout this account, there is a word of evaluation. The word is “good”. God saw that the light was good, v. 4. He saw that the dry ground and the oceans were good, v. 10. He saw that the plants and the trees were good, v. 12.

Over and over again, God saw that his creative handiwork was good. In fact, the very first time that God evaluated anything to be “not good” is in Genesis 2:18, where God said “It is not good for the man to be alone.” So he immediately rectified that “not good” with an amazing good—the creation of woman.

This passage teaches us that God, the Creator, is good. And what he made is good. Everything he does is good.

Another thing we see God doing throughout the passage is separating things. On Day 1, God separated the light from the darkness. On Day 2, he separated the water in the atmosphere from the water on earth. On Day 3, he separated the continents from the oceans. On Day 4, he separated the day from the night by placing the sun, moon, and stars in place.

And when he creates life, he separates the various plants and animals according to their kinds. There is a separation along species lines. You don’t see an indiscriminate overlapping of the species in the plant or the animal kingdom. That is certainly what you see today, and it is also what you see in the fossil record, in spite of the wishful claims of evolutionists to the contrary. There is a strict separation—you don’t have transitional forms between species.

This tells us that God is a God of order. He delights in bringing organization and variety and uniqueness into being. Each thing he creates has a specific purpose, and he has designed it to fulfill that purpose.

And then there is a repeated calling, or naming throughout the days of creation. Everything that God creates gets a name. He calls the light “day” and the darkness he calls “night”. He calls the expanse between the waters “sky”. He calls the dry ground “land”, and the gathered waters “seas”. Everything gets a name.

The act of naming is of great significance in the Bible. Because it indicates a relationship of care, of love, and of authority. The father gives his child a name—and in BIble times, those names were carefully chosen. And in doing so, that father would prove the relationship, the sense of belonging and attachment between him and his son.

That’s why it is so significant that several Bible characters get re-named by God. Abram becomes Abraham. Jacob becomes Israel. Simon becomes Peter. Saul becomes Paul. There’s a relationship there between those men and God.

So this naming that God does during the week of creation shows that he cares about his creation. It belongs to him. He doesn’t just wind it up and go away. There is an ongoing relationship between the creator and what he has made.

Now you may have noticed that God does not go ahead and give names to the fish, the birds, and the animals. He doesn’t name them, because in chapter 2, he’s going to let Adam do that. He’s going to allow Adam participate in ruling over creation with him in the naming of the creatures. It’s a beautiful picture.

Another thing that repeats through Gen. 1 is the concluding statement at the end of every day. You read at the end of each day’s work: “And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”

Remember that the children of Israel always regarded a day to begin in the evening. The Sabbath day always begins on Friday night at sundown. What is this concluding statement designed to show us?

It shows us that God’s work on each day is complete. There is a definite conclusion. There is no need to carry things over into the next day—no loose ends left untied. And at the end of the week, there is a definite conclusion. On the seventh day God rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

So throughout the passage, we see these significant elements repeated: declaration; statement of accomplishment; evaluation; separation; naming; and conclusion.

Many Bible scholars have also noted a pattern that we see revealed in the days of the week. There is a kind of parallelism between the first three days and the last three days. Day 1 relates to Day 4. Day 2 relates to Day 5. Day 3 relates to Day 6.

Because on the first three days, God is creating form. He is creating a structure—but so far, it’s an empty structure. He’s getting it ready for the creation of life.

That’s what he does on the last three days—he fills the empty form with life. On Day 4, he fills the heavens with heavenly bodies. Now they themselves are not alive, but their purpose is to give light on the earth and to help man mark the seasons and days and years. On Day 5, God fills the sky with birds and the sea with fish. And on Day 6, he fills the dry land with animals and ultimately, man.

So there’s a pattern we see exposed here in this beautiful arrangement of days. First there is form, then there is fullness. And there is also a sense of this week moving to a climax.

Look at the length of the description of each day. As you move through the week, the description of each day gets longer than the day before. It’s like you’re climbing a mountain peak. In our NIV Bible,

Day 1 - 48 words

Day 2 - 53 words

Day 3 - 115 words

Day 4 - 125 words

Day 5 breaks the pattern - it drops back to 99 words, but that’s because it is the pause before the great climax of

Day 6 - 276 words

You’ll see the same thing with God’s speeches in Genesis 1. God doesn’t talk much at the beginning of the week. On Day 1, he only says “Let there be light”. He says a little more on Day 2. Then on Day 3, he speaks twice—and remember, Day 3 is foreshadowing and getting ready for what’s going to happen on Day 6.

On Day 4, God says a little more. On Day 5, he speaks twice. Then on Day 6, he says a whole lot. He speaks 3 separate times—to create animals; to create man; and then to give the creation mandate.

You cannot escape the fact that this creation story has been deliberately and carefully patterned to lead us to the climax on Day 6, when God creates man. There is a building anticipation—and then finally, it happens.

This reveals that we are very significant in God’s sight. God crafted all of creation to prepare for our arrival. The whole creation account leads up to our appearance on the scene, made in the very image of God.

That means that there is a reason for us to be here. We are not the product of millions of years of blind evolution—we are the deliberate handiwork of God. And we’re going to look more at that next week, as we study the Crown of Creation.

But in the time that remains, let me briefly summarize for you some of the various views of Genesis 1. People are always curious as to how God actually created the universe and put life on earth. They want to know how long it took him to do it… The Bible says it took six days, but what does it mean by that? Six literal solar days of 24 hours each? Or perhaps those days are not meant to be understood that way—maybe they refer to much longer periods of time?

And what mechanism did God use? Is it possible that he used a process of evolution; one species evolving into another over millions of years? There are some Christians who see room for this in Genesis 1. They call themselves theistic evolutionists.

However, their number is rapidly decreasing, as it becomes more and more obvious in scientific circles that the theory of evolution has very little hard evidence to support it.

This, by the way, is a well-kept secret in modern science. When you read the popular press—newspapers, periodicals like Time Magazine, National Geographic, Scientific American—you get the impression that the theory of evolution is a solidly proven fact. Modern school textbooks present it that way.

But in reality, more and more scientists are coming to the conclusion that you cannot explain the presence of life on earth by the theory of evolution. There is no evidence that it is happening today—there are no transitional forms between the various species of life.

When you look at the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom, what do you see? You see very clearly defined lines between the species. There are dogs and there are cats. There are no cogs or dats.

And you cannot breed across species lines. You cross a horse with a donkey and you get a mule—and its sterile. It cannot reproduce. You can only produce variations within a species. You can have poodles, and dalmatians, and Rotweilers, but they’re all dogs. And the variety in the breeds of dogs has come about as a result of man’s specific and deliberate intervention—not as a result of evolution.

Suppose you let all the dogs on earth interbreed. What would happen? You’d end up with a mongrel, something like a wolf—something which probably resembled the original dog creature that God made.

If evolution were true, we should be able to look at the fossil record and find transitional forms. But we can’t, because they are not there. There are millions of fossils of thousands of species, but no transitional forms between the species.

And even the most ardent evolutionists recognize this. So they have to scramble around to come up with some sort of explanation for the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record. They say that, at certain times, evolution happened explosively—that all sorts of varieties of species appeared very suddenly in the fossil record. They talk about things like the Pre-Cambrian explosion of life.

But that, of course, flies in the face of the basic presuppositions of the evolutionary theory, which says that gradual change happened over long periods of time.

No, evolution is a theory in tatters, but nobody wants the general public to know. It’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes. He’s really naked, but nobody is willing to say so. And respected scientists are more and more waking up to this fact.

Genesis 1 talks about special creation—God intervening and placing life on earth—and it certainly seems that the evidence supports this.

When people look at Gen. 1, they want to know how long ago did this all take place? There are many Christians who believe that if you simply add up the ages of the people listed in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, you have Adam showing up in the year 4,004 BC. In other words, the earth is only about 6,000 years old.

Others modify that somewhat to allow for possible gaps in those genealogies, but they still come out with a relatively young earth—maybe about 10,000 years old.

But then there are other, equally sincere Christians, who believe that the creative work of God in Genesis 1 allows for great lengths of time, on the order of millions or even billions of years, so that the earth is very old. They would say that the days of creation are not our days of 24 hours, so that God created the universe in 144 hours.

They are God’s days—and we don’t know how long they were. They point to the fact that there wasn’t even a mechanism for measuring days until halfway through the week, because it wasn’t until Day 4 that the sun appeared.

You see, we have to be very careful about reading our understanding of time back into this account. Sure, the word “day” usually means a 24-hour day most other places in Scripture. But when you come to Genesis 1, you are coming to a unique passage. The universe is in the process of being created. Time is in the process of being created. It seems rather forced to insist on a 24-hour day in that unique context.

Not that God couldn’t have done it using 24-hour days. He could have done it all in 24 seconds. But we need to be careful not to make Genesis 1 into a science text, with precise measurements, and dates and times. It’s not meant to be that.

The Creator does not work to our timetable. One day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day in his sight. He is not limited to time as we understand it.

So how old is the earth? Well, I don’t know, but I have a feeling that it is a lot older than 6,000 years. I have stood at the ruins of the city of Jericho—a city which had existed for thousands of years prior to the time when Joshua and the children of Israel conquered it in roughly 1400 BC.

And I have looked down into those archaeological pits, down to depths of 40-50 feet, and seen the ruins of buildings and towers and artifacts of ancient civilizations that are conservatively estimated to go back to at least 5,000 BC.

And then I have hiked down into the Grand Canyon and seen with my own eyes the fossils of sea creatures cemented into the rock strata 1,000 feet below the surface. And when you think of what it took to put those fossils there, it makes the ruins of 7,000 year old Jericho look very, very recent.

Some Christians say that maybe these fossils and rock strata such as you see at the Grand Canyon were a result of the Flood—great crashing waves traveling at upwards of 1,000 m.p.h. and tremendous water pressure and mass drownings and burying of the animals on earth.

But there are geological facts which cannot be explained away by the Flood—as terrible as that Flood must have been. There are geological phenomena which had to have been formed over countless eons of time in order to appear the way they appear to us today.

Some people say that maybe God created the earth with the appearance of age. Well, that’s a very neat explanation, I suppose. But what does that do to our concept of God? It makes him into something of a deceiver, doesn’t it? God gave us our innate scientific curiosity. He gave us our ability to reason logically to logical conclusions. I think he wants us to find out all we can about the wonders of His creation. So why would God want to “fool” us into thinking that the earth was old when really it’s not?

And besides, that explanation is a kind of argument that you can’t disprove. I mean, you can use the same argument to claim that God created the earth five minutes ago, complete with antique furniture and old buildings and people with memories of a history that didn’t really happen.

No, my gut feeling is that when we see evidence for the great age of the earth, and of the universe, we are seeing the truth. And that does not lessen my appreciation for God—it heightens it. It makes me realize that He is truly the ageless one—the one who lives forever. It heightens my sense of awe for what he has done. It makes me say with the Psalmist “What is man that you are mindful of him?”

You see, the magnificent creation account in Genesis 1 has a promise entailed in it. The promise is that the Great Creator—the one who is responsible for all this—continues to be involved in his creation. He hasn’t gone away and left us on our own.

He took the trouble to fashion us in his own image. He built us a universe in which to live, and a planet teeming with life for us to enjoy. He must care about us very much to have done that.

The promise of Genesis 1 is that the God who Made us continues to Care about us. And indeed, the rest of the Bible is about that very fact.