On The Sixth Day Series

Genesis (4) (On the Sixth Day)

Text: Genesis 1:24-31

By: Ken McKinley

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Now if you’ve been with us so far in our study of Genesis, you’ll remember that I said that Genesis lays the foundation for all of Scripture, and we’ve talked about how the first two verses show us that God is the sovereign Creator of all that is, and that He has shown to us His might and power, His faithfulness and provision, His order and justice and mercy, all through His creation. And we’ve talked about how He brought form to formlessness, fullness from emptiness, and light to darkness.

Then we looked at the 6 days of creation and talked about how those were literal days, not eons or ages, but 24 hour time periods. And we talked about how as Christians, we shouldn’t attempt to harmonize Scripture with science, but rather, we should attempt to harmonize science with Scripture. The Bible is the bar; it is the standard that all other accounts must come up to. Then we talked about how Eve was created on that 6th day shortly after Adam. And I just want to touch on that one more time before we go on much further. And I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, because I think ya’ll will see it once you look at it.

We read about the creation of man on the 6th day and that’s in chapter 1:27-31. Then we get to chapter 2 verse 3 and it says, God rested on the 7th day. But when we get down to verse 7 of chapter 2 it starts talking about how He formed man again. Then in verses 15-25 we read about the creation of Eve. So what’s happening here? Well all this is… its a literary technique called a flashback… its God going back and giving Moses more detail about what He did on the 6th day. I don’t know where or when, or even how we got the idea that Eve came along after the 6 days of creation, but when we use proper hermeneutics and we read what’s in the text instead of what we want to be in the text, it’s pretty plain.

Now if you’re sitting here today and you’re saying to yourself, “I still can’t wrap my mind around this creation account given to us in Genesis.” Maybe the so called scientific evidences are just too strong of a pull on you, or the culture, or whatever. If so, then let me ask you one question. How does science explain the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

It can’t. It can try to explain it away, but it can’t explain it. The resurrection is beyond the scope of science. Science can’t deal with the matter of the miraculous. You see; to reject the miraculous completely, lies outside the realm of rational argument. Let me try to explain this. The person who rejects the miraculous says, “I don’t believe that miracles happen, therefore miracles do not happen.” Now that kind of statement is based on faith, it’s not based on science, because science has nothing to say about miracles or the miraculous, science deals in the realm of repetitive activity; science can ultimately only comment on that which can be put in a lab and produced, and reproduced, again and again and again. Scientific deduction is then made on the basis of the fact that this thing happens again and again and again. But by their very definition, miraculous events are not like that. Therefore it takes it beyond the realm and scope of science. When you or I as a believer say that we accept the miraculous; what are we actually saying? We’re saying, “That by an act of faith, we believe that God’s Word is true.” When an atheist or agnostic says that he or she rejects the miraculous, they’re saying the same thing –

By an act of faith, they do not believe that God’s Word is true. For the atheist or agnostic; faith then is grounded in the notion that such things couldn’t possibly be true and they say to themselves, “no sensible person would believe those things, and being that I’m a sensible person, I don’t believe them.” The Christian on the other hand; comes to the miraculous, via the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s the cornerstone of Christianity itself. So once you settle the matter of the resurrection, then God creating the heavens and the earth as described in Genesis simply falls into line.

Now the point I’m trying to get across is that if science doesn’t line up with the Bible, then either science or God, or the Bible is wrong. IF scientists are wrong, then we can trust God and the Bible. If God is wrong then we can’t trust the Bible because that’s where we learn of God and we should probably devote our worship to science or nothing. If the Bible is wrong then we have to consider God’s ability to preserve His Word, and we should throw it out and seek our answers elsewhere. Doesn’t give us a lot of options if you want to be a person of religion does it?