A great deal of this sermon leans heavily on a sermon/Bible study taught by John MacArthur – June 6, 1999. Accessed online Jan 8, 2014 (http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/90-215)
Wed Night Bible Study - Creation
Lesson/Sermon 3 - Days 4
Genesis 1:14-19 (ESV)
Creation Bible Study - Creation: Day 4
Let's look back at Day 1-3 & remember what we’ve learned:
We learned our world did not just happen but it was created
We learned that creation was God speaking the universe into existence from nothing...
We learned that our finite minds cannot comprehend total nothingness – so we will never be able to fully comprehend the infinite nature of what God did in the creation event.
We also learned that God created light itself...God did not create a source of light, but He created light itself.
At the end of what Scripture describes as day 1 we find that God has spoken and what was NOT… was now created! Light was created by God's powerful creative WILL and God had laid the template for the entire universe...
On what Scripture describes as days 2-3 we find Moses writing about God's actions, "...separating water from water..." and we learned what that meant -- God built the atmosphere for earth.
We learned that the word "atmosphere"? It is a combination of 2 Greek words... 1st is ATMOS which means vapor and…2nd is SPHAIRA which means sphere...
Atmosphere = A vapor around a sphere... our atmosphere is a vapor that wraps around and protects our planet... and God created it for us…
So on Day One the Universe and template for all creation was spoken into existence by God and on Day 2 God spoke the Atmosphere for our planet was into existence, but what happened on Day 3?
In v9 God takes a planet covered with water…and begins to terra-form it… He brings forth land and separates the waters on the surface of the earth.
God names the dry ground ‘earth’ and the gathering of the waters ‘seas’. After God has created light, an atmosphere and then separated the waters on the surface of the earth to create land… and he then begins to create vegetation with seed to fill the earth…
At the end of Day 3 God has spoken our world into existence, created an atmosphere where the world is protected from the harsh cosmic weather and radiation from our sun… and has spoken into existence every kind of plant/vegetation…
Now tonight I want us to take a look at Gen 1:14-19 where day 4 of creation is described and see what God did on this day:
14And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
Evolution has always struggled to explain all the celestial bodies that exist in the universe. How they could these celestial bodies have evolved out of spontaneous generation (all on their own).
All of our trips to the moon, all the satellites sent into space, all of the orbiting paraphernalia have given absolutely no insight into how the universe, the bodies in the universe could have possibly evolved. And that's understandable; since they didn't… they were created!!
Now I am no scientist but this verse is where I believe God completed and set into motion the universe which would include our solar system and earth’s orbit around that solar system! Let me try to explain what I mean…
At this point God had spoken the universe into existence, he had created light and he had created an atmosphere, dry land and vegetation… it is clear that the light he had created and the atmosphere he had created was sufficient to sustain vegetation, but God was not finished.
Scientists have balked at this order of creation by saying, "If there wasn't any sun there couldn't be any plants on day three. So how could God create plants on day three and the sun on day four? You know that without the sun “photosynthesis” is impossible, so this doesn't make any sense."
I find this a bit disingenuous and trivial by scientists because light was created by God on day one. And where there is light there is heat. And where there is light and heat there is the capability of photosynthesis. Light was present, it just hadn't been specifically attached to any celestial bodies at this time.
At this point Scripture says 14And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years,
Now we know that our planet revolves around our sun and that when it is daylight it means our side of the planet is facing the sun and when it is night our side of the planet is facing away from the sun… this happens by the revolution of the earth.
I believe this verse lets us know that God has set these things into motion… to separate the day from the night, but here is the part that seals it for me… to be a sign for seasons, for days and years…
This means that the solar system and all of the planets that orbit the sun and the universe in its motion had to be set into place for this to do these things…
We know that because of the earth’s orbit that there are times when the days are longer and times when the days are shorter… there are times when temperatures are higher and times when the temperatures are lower. It was here where God set these things into motion!
The remainder of this passage, up thru v19 describes what God did to make this happen.
15and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
Now again I want to reiterate that I am NOT a scientist or physicist and I do NOT claim to have extra knowledge about what God has done, but this is what the Scripture lays forward. That God created the sun, moon and stars and set day and night and the seasons into motion…all by His word… he spoke these things into existence.
Now did you catch the ‘throw in’ on v16? Moses said God created the sun and the moon… and the stars! If he created the stars so far away, how is it possible that they were noticed the same day as created?
(again I want to reiterate that the word ‘day’ here in the creation account is a highly debated word… I have my belief on this but I am not going to debate this timeframe, but merely going to use what Scripture says… it says a day… and that is how I am going to present it)
v16 sort of throws in that God created the stars…and I know that in school we all learn that light travels at 186,000 miles per second which is equivalent to 6 Trillion miles per year…
So, if we take what we know of the size of the universe right now because of the Hubbell Telescope… we believe that would take a light beam from the stars at the farthest reaches of the universe hundreds of thousands of years (maybe even more) to reach us here on earth!
SO then…"How can light from that far away reach the earth so fast during the 6-day creation period?
Well, I want us to think about this…
If we believe that God ‘spoke’ the universe into existence…
If we believe that God created light itself and according to Gen 1:3 He did…
If we believe those 2 things then it only stands to reason that all God had to do was put the light where He wanted to put it...
I don’t know about you but I believe that the God who created light itself and the universe can transcend the natural laws of the universe HE created! I do not believe we should place OUR limitations in this universe onto the God who created it!
George Wald who was formerly of Harvard and a winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine acknowledged the dilemma. He said, and I quote, this was from The Scientific American Journal, quote George Wald, "The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation. The only alternative was to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position."
You know that Wald is right...either we believe in the spontaneous generation of the universe… meaning that there was once nothing and then spontaneously it just came into existence on it's own, OR we believe in the supernatural creation of the universe as presented by Scripture. There's no alternative.
Now let's go back Gen 1:1 where creation is introduced. I told you several weeks ago that v1 was an overview statement of the entire creation process, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…"
And as I told you weeks ago, in that verse… in that one statement written by Moses we have everything that is knowable categorized.
Herbert Spencer was a scientist in the 19th century and he died in 1903. Spencer said that all that is knowable in the universe can be summed up into 5 categories: time, force, action, space and matter.
He was heralded as a brilliant genius and a great scientist for making this discovery. He posited that everything that exists in the universe can fit into those 5 categories. And don’t you know that is exactly what the first verse of the Bible tells us, “…In the beginning...that's time; God...that's force; created...that's action; the heavens...that's space; the earth...that's matter. It's all in that verse.
So day one, he creates the material to shape His universe into its final form and light. Day two, He creates the expanse of heaven between the waters above and the waters below. Day three He separates the dry land from the water which He gathers into seas and creates the trees and the plants. That brings us to day four.
On day four He created the lights that become the means by which light is transmitted. On day 4 God attaches his created light to heavenly bodies... he made them the purveyors of light!
In other words, it hasn’t changed or altered… it hasn’t developed over time or waned. God spoke it into existence and that's the way it has stayed, just the way He spoke it into existence.
The moon, the sun, the stars, the galaxies, the billions upon billions of galaxies, everything that is in space, everything that is there is there exactly the way it was when God made it. And the complexity of it should literally stagger anyone who contemplates it, I know I am blown away by that thought!
You may look up and think the stars are in the same place all the time, but they are not. Did you know that they move? They move relatively slow from the viewpoint of earth so they appear to be in the same place all the time.
But as v14 tells us that by these lights we can set the days, years and seasons… by these stars in the heavens we can actually chart our courses by them because they don't appear to be moving.
The whole thing is incredible and it all is doing now exactly what God designed it to do and created it to do in a simple word...then God said let there be... and there was… and that is it!
So we can come to this conclusion… light was created by God in v4 and then here in v14 God attaches that light to these celestial bodies… the sun does not create light but through God it became a purveyor of light through His creative word! The same with the stars… The moon we know does not ‘create’ light but is a reflector OF the light coming from the sun.
I found it interesting that John Calvin, a theologian in the 16th century who said this in his commentary about Gen 1:
“The only difference is this, that the light was before dispersed but now proceeds from lucid bodies which in serving this purpose obeyed the command of God.”
Long before space travel was even thought possible, Calvin knew and understood this text of Scripture! Light existed (because it was created by God) and here in this Scripture it was simply connected by God to the sun, stars and celestial bodies…
Now, follow along because this is very important as we look at the text. This account of the creation of the lights defines their purpose in three functions...three functions. They're very clear.
16And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
The first function, to separate the day from the night…
Again we need to understand that sun has not always been the cause of daylight for the earth… Remember that there had already been three periods of daylight and dark before day four.
It is God who created these bearers of light and it was God who took to the task of separation. So, now from our standpoint, because of God’s assignment, we have the sun to bring us the light of the day, it is the sun’s reflection off the moon, along with the stars that brings us the light at night. So the first purpose then for these celestial bodies in God’s plan was to separate the day from the night.
The 2nd purpose was to create a day, as we now know it, a 24-hour period of time… a unit we call a DAY. First purpose was to separate and second purpose was to dominate!
Let’s follow in the text from v14, 14And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens …and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years,
What kind of signs? "For seasons, and for days and years." The verb here, way-ha-u in the Hebrew, let them be, means let them serve. God gave these celestial bodies to serve the light… to serve US and help US, his creation.
Let’s follow this logically… one revolution of the earth equals a day. One orbit of the moon around the earth equals a month and one orbit of the earth around the sun equals a year… days, years and seasons…
So the first purpose of these luminous bodies was to separate and then the 2nd purpose was to dominate. We can see that they literally dominate our lives.
The 3rd purpose is to illuminate... first to separate, second to dominate, 3rd to illuminate...In v15, Scripture tells us 15and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” We can see that the 3rd purpose was just to provide light, to illuminate.
Finally we see at the end of v15 we have the short phrase, “...And it was so...” This short phrase carries a HUGE meaning.
Umberto Cassuto who is not a Christian, but is a Jewish writer who wrote from the Jewish understanding of the book of Genesis, is helpful in this matter.
His writing really comes to grips with the Hebrew understanding of the text and he simply says over and over again that this little phrase indicates that it was so but not just that it was so but that it also remained so through all the life of the universe.
It is a way of saying that this thing we look to as the creation of the universe was something that was done and fixed… not started to continue evolving! It militates against the idea of progressive creationism, and it states that God made it, God fixed it, it was firm and permanently established!
This coincides with what Scripture tells us in Psalm 33:9
9 For he spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm.
One other observation I have here is we know where we get a day from… we know where we get a month from… and we know where we get a year from BUT where did we come up with the WEEK?
All over our world people center their lives around the unit of measure we call the week… where did we get that? We got it from the creation event… six days and a rest! Just a thought…
Let’s complete our Scripture tonight by looking at v16-19
16And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
Two great lights… we know as the Sun and the Moon… look at the 1st part of v16, “And God made…” the creative force of God is once again brought to the forefront by Moses.
v17 does the same thing as well when it says, “And God set them…” God created them and then God placed them where he wanted them in His creation!
v18 reveals their function, the Sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night (along with the stars) their purpose was/is to bring light to the day and night!
God sees his creative activity here on day 4 and he sees it as a good thing…
Now I have NOT belabored this point about the period of time that is called a day here in Scripture, but when we see the enormity of God’s creative action over these 4 creation days, it is NOT a hard leap for one to believe that if God can speak matter, space and light into existence by his mere word, then creation in 6days is more acceptable.
Believing in a literal 6day creative period does not mean that it can be fully comprehended or understood or that we may know HOW it could have be done! However, if we truly believe that God CAN actually create as it is written in Scripture, then why can we not believe the timeline associated with the creative activity?
Again I do not judge those who may have a differing viewpoint, but from Scripture I do not understand why one would doubt that God could do such a thing…
Next week we will cover day 5…
