1. The order of God’s creation (and God said… and it
was so)
2. The goodness of God’s creation (it was good, 1:31)
3. The crown of God’s creation (1:26-28)
4. The purpose of God’s creation (1:29-30)
How many of you like mysteries? You know, the ones where you have to examine the clues to find out whodunit? It seems like in most of those, the who is the easy part. A lot of times you know who did it right away. But in order to prove they did it, you have to have a motive. You have to figure out why they did it. Well, we’re not going to be looking at so much of a mystery today. We’re really going on more of an adventure. During each step of the way of our adventure, we’re going to make a discovery about God’s creation. And once we’ve made our discoveries, they will lead us to the mystery part. The part that reveals God’s motive behind the whole thing. Tonight we’re going to look at the creation of God.
We’re going to begin with the end of our text tonight as we read verse 31.
GENESIS 1:31
As we look at verses 3-31 tonight, there is something you should know right off the bat. I am what is called a young earth creationist. In other words, I believe that God created the universe in 7 literal days, somewhere between 6 to 10,000 years ago. The reason that I say between 6 to 10,000 years ago is that the Bible isn’t really clear on the timeframe. Many years ago, a man named Ussher added up all the ages of all the people in the genealogies in the Bible. You thought it was rough going through the begats in Matthew 1 last month. Can you imagine going through all the begats in the Bible to come up with the age of the earth? Well, that’s what Ussher did. According to his timing, creation happened about 6000 years ago. I believe that is the very soonest it could have happened because Hebrew genealogies are known to have gaps. In other words, they only include the significant people—not everybody. But there aren’t so many holes to make creation any older than 10,000 years. Now, to the 7 literal days part. This is an issue that good people can disagree on. But here’s why I believe in 7 literal 24-hour days. It is true that in Hebrew, the word for day can mean either a literal day or a period of time. That’s why Moses included a qualifier to indicate it was a literal day. He added a number to it. In the Hebrew language, anytime the word day was qualified by a number, it meant a literal 24-hour period of time. As a matter of fact, one qualifier wasn’t enough. He included two qualifiers. Not only did he qualify day with a number, he qualified it by saying, “and the evening and the morning was…” It’s like he put a number in front of it and put brackets around it to make sure we would know he’s talking about a literal 24-hour day. Now, that’s just some background information. We could talk about that for days—literal, 24-hour days. But that’s not our purpose tonight. Our purpose is to look at the creation of God. And by looking at the creation of God—what He created and how He created it—I want us to see why He created it. In order to do that, we’re going to discover four things about creation. The first thing we discover is the order of God’s creation. I want you to do something with me. I want us to go through verses 3-24. Either with a pencil or your finger, I want you to go through with me as we find these words—And God said… and it was so.
The order of God’s creation. The first thing we see about the order of God’s creation is how He did it. He spoke and it happened. There was no process. There was no series of steps involved in each day. He spoke and it happened—instantly. When He created the trees, we can assume they had age rings in them. When He created Adam and Eve, He created them fully grown. When He created the earth, it had what we would consider the appearance of age. When He created light, He formed it in the streams and paths that would make it appear as if it had traveled for billions of light years. God created in an orderly way. His first three days of creation were marked by three separations. First, He separated light from the darkness. Look at verses 3-5:
GENESIS 1:3-5
God spoke the light into existence and then separated it from the darkness. Did you know that scientist still can’t figure out what light is? Sometimes it acts like particles. But sometimes it acts like waves. We see light all around us. But we don’t really have a clue as to what it is. But we know that God created it. And then He separated it from the darkness. Picture a field full of gravel. Then all at once, that gravel is separated and stretched into a series of roads going across that field. That’s what God did with the light. Just like those roads were built before any place they would lead to, God separated the light before He made any planets or stars it would come from. It’s as if He separated the roads before He made the towns. But He also separated the waters from the waters on our planet. Remember, His initial step of creation was to create the heavens and the earth. And the earth was just a watery, chaotic mass—until day 2.
GENESIS 1:6-8
The word for firmament there describes what we would call sky or atmosphere. Now, your King James Bible has the word heaven capitalized in verse 8. That was a translator’s interpretation. There are no capital letters in the original. The word for heaven is used three different ways. It can either mean the sky, or outer space, or the place where God lives. Here it means sky or atmosphere. Basically what things looked like was there was a layer of water on the surface of the earth. Above that was a layer of atmosphere capable of sustaining life. Above that was another layer of suspended water. Like a canopy of water over the earth. Talk about your greenhouse effect! But that’s the way God designed it. He spoke it and it was so. And it looked like that until day 3.
GENESIS 1:9-10
This was the third and final separation of God’s creation. On the surface of the earth, God separated out the water from the land. Now, we can be very sure that the globe didn’t look like it does now. Many people contend that there was one land mass surrounded by seas. We don’t really know, but we know that the shape of the land changed significantly as a result of the flood. At that time, the land was broken up and water that was trapped underneath came rushing to the surface along with the rain. Things didn’t look the same afterwards. However it looked on day 3 was the way God designed it. Those first three days were marked by separations. He spoke them and they were so. The next three days were designed for man’s sustenance. Verses 11-13, God creates the plants according to their kind. Verses 14-19, God creates the heavenly bodies as signs. Markers to provide direction and to delineate the calendar and seasons. Verses 20-23, God created all the life in the water and sky according to its kind. And in verses 24-25, God created all the land animals according to their kind. Now what do you notice about all the living things that God created? He created them according to their kind. That simply means that fish make other fish—they don’t make birds. Birds make birds—they don’t make lizards. Lizards make lizards—they don’t make monkeys—and monkeys don’t make people—ever. Not in a billion years. Even if we could have been around that long. God made plants and animals to reproduce with their own kind. And reproduce after their own kind. God had an order in His creation. He spoke and it was so. His first three days of creation were marked by separation and His next three days were designed for man’s sustenance. That’s the first thing we discover about God’s creation—order. The second thing we discover is the goodness of God’s creation. Now, I want us to go back and look at the last three words of verses 10, 12, 18, 21, and 25. At the end of each of those verses, God says, “it was good.”
The goodness of God’s creation. Have you ever seen one of those T-shirts that says, “God don’t make no junk.” Well, the grammar might be bad, but the theology sure is good. The fact is that when God created the universe, He was able to look around and say it is good. Each step of the way, it was good. Are we able to say that today? Are we able to look around at everything in creation and say that it’s good? No. Hurricanes aren’t good. Tornados aren’t good. Earthquakes aren’t good. Disease isn’t good. Cancer isn’t good. So what happened? Well, something happened between the time God created everything good and the bad things we see in creation today. It’s called sin. Not so much individual sin that we commit on a day-to-day basis. But the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. Now, we’ll get into this in more detail when we get to chapter 3, but suffice it to say that the bad things we see in creation today weren’t in it to begin with. They are as a result of the curse brought on by sin. God spoke. It was so. And it was good. No disease. No genetic defects. No death. No sin. No curse. It was good. By the way, this is one of the greatest arguments against God directed evolution and those who believe the 7 days were 7 ages. Those who argue for those things readily admit that death and disease must have existed during those extended periods of time. But the Bible clearly says that death is a result of sin. Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death. If death is as a result of something else then our whole belief in salvation because of Jesus’ death on the cross is messed up. But no, death is as a result of sin. Adam and Eve committed the first sin. Anything that existed before that time was not subject to the penalty for sin. It wasn’t subject to the penalty for sin, because God created it good. He spoke, it was so, and it was good. So far, on our adventure to figure out God’s purpose for creation, we’ve discovered the order and the goodness of His creation. But as we move on to verses 26-28, we discover the crown of His creation.
GENESIS 1:26-28
The crown of God’s creation. When God created man, He did it as the capstone of all He had made. He created him in His image. His very likeness. Now, of course that doesn’t mean He made us as little gods. What it does mean is that He created us as personal beings. And as personal beings we are created for relationship. We think and talk to ourselves. Smart people call that being able to reason. I guess they’re self-conscious to admit they talk to themselves. But that means we have a relationship with ourselves. We interact with creation itself. If you’re an outdoorsman or a farmer, you realize we have relationship with the land. Of course we have relationships with each other. And God created us to have a relationship with Him. But not only are we made in God’s image, we’re made with God’s provision. God provided for man’s every physical need in creation. He gave us dominion over all the animals and told us to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. By the way, that word replenish in verse 28 really is the word for fill. Of the over 300 times it is used in the Old Testament, it is almost always translated fill. So, it would not be valid to build a doctrine around that word. The point is, God gave all of creation to man. He gave us His image and He gave us His provision. Man is the crown of His creation. All of creation led up to the point where He created us. All of it paved the way. It was all preparation for the crown of His creation. So, why did He do it? Along the way on our adventure, we’ve discovered the order of God’s creation. The goodness of God’s creation. And the crown of God’s creation. But that still hasn’t told us his motive. Why did He do it? What was the purpose of God’s creation? Look with me in verses 29-30:
GENESIS 1:29-30
The purpose of God’s creation. So, here’s our mystery. Why did an all powerful God create the universe? It certainly wasn’t because He needed anything. He is all sufficient. It wasn’t like He was lonely or anything. He existed in perfect relationship as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. There was nothing lacking in who God is that caused Him to create. He simply created us because He loves us and He wants us to love Him. Look at the first 5 words of verse 29: “And God said, ‘Behold I…’” All of creation—the herbs and plants and trees and fruit—the animals and birds and fish and creepy-crawly things. Everything that existed—living and non-living. God created for one purpose. Turn with me to Psalm 19:
PSALM 19:1-6
God fashioned all of creation to point us to Him. To show us how much He loves us. To show us how much He wants us to love Him. But not only does He want to point us to Him. Creation isn’t just some sort of cosmic billboard. He gave us creation as a gift. Read on in verse 29: “And God said, ‘Behold I have given you…” I know one of the things my wife and I always wrestle with at birthdays and Christmas is what to get the kids. Part of you always wants to get them everything they could possibly want. All their hearts desire. Well, that’s what God did for us with creation. He gave us everything. And then He gave us dominion over it. And He did it for one reason. He lavished all the rich gifts of creation upon us just simply to show us how much He loves us. To point us to Him so we will recognize His glory and love Him back. And what did we do? We acted just like the spoiled brats we are. We took all of his wonderful gifts of creation and we turned our backs on Him in sin. We looked at Him and said we want more. We want to be in charge. We don’t want to follow your rules. And we turned our back on Him. But He didn’t turn His back on us. He gave us one more gift. The greatest gift of all. Greater than all the gift of creation. The gift of His Son. He gave His only begotten Son as a blood sacrifice to pay our penalty for turning our back on Him. That’s how much He loves us. That’s how much He loves you. Each of us has turned our back on God. Until we repent of that and turn back toward Him, we’re acting like spoiled brats. Brats who are on our way to a sinners’ Hell. But when we repent of our sins and trust that the shed blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient to cover all our sins. When you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved. That is a promise. It’s real. It’s as real as God’s creation around you. Are you a spoiled brat? Have you enjoyed all of God’s gifts and still turned your back on Him? Or have you shown Him your love and appreciation by accepting His free gift of salvation? Let the Lord examine your heart.
