Dr. Bradford Reaves
Crossway Christian Fellowship
Hagerstown, MD, USA
www.mycrossway.org
View this and other messages at: https://mycrossway.churchcenter.com/channels/8118
Before anything else happened… there was God. Scripture DIDN'T start out: “In the beginning, the earth was without form and void.” OR “In the beginning before the sun and solar system existed” OR “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”
It simply says "In the beginning… GOD” Many Christians mistakenly believe that the Bible is Geo-centric and God inserted Himself into life. That’s not true. The Bible is actually “Theo-centric” It’s centered on God. God is the central character in the whole book. Everything in scripture is built - not so much around the earth or man - but around God. We may be actors on the grand stage of life, but God owns the stage. He owns the props. He owns us. Everything that you see and touch in this world - belongs to God.
A group of scientists got together and decided they no longer needed God. One of them said to God, “We’ve decided we no longer need you. We can do all kinds of things through science. We can even clone people and make body parts, so we just don’t need you anymore.”
God listened patiently, “Let’s have a man-making contest just like in the days of Adam.”
The scientist agreed and bent down to grab himself a handful of dirt.
And God smiled and said, “No, no, no – you get your own dirt.”
It’s all God’s.
Everything is His.
Once you figure that out, everything else in Scripture begins to make sense.
This past week, I had the joy of witnessing some beautiful sunrises. I love that morning time when the light is just beginning to emerge from the horizon. Can you imagine the first morning on this earth as God created it? Day 2 saw the light from God’s radiance dissipate the darkness for the first time.
Sunrises, like all of creation, communicated a message to us from God that says, “Worship me.” Over the last couple of decades, there is an emergence of a worship movement. We assimilate all kinds of elements in a worship environment to stimulate the senses: lights, fog, music, emotion, art, and so on. I don’t think the problem today is knowing how to worship, but rather understanding who we are really worshiping. That really is the starting point for us to worship God.
When we understand God as Creator, then we understand the rest of Scripture. We understand the answers to our origin. We understand God as our redeemer and therefore we understand the answers to our own meaning. That is why studying this passage is so important.
Two American Sailors were in London on liberty and went to the local bar where they indulged themselves beyond their senses in the drink. As they stumbled out of the bar and into the thick London fog, they realized they were lost. Upon seeing an officer in the British Royal Navy, they stumbled over to him and slurred out, “Hey there buddy, can you tell us how to get back to our ship?” To which the Admiral responded, “Don’t you know who I am?” The one sailor looked at the other and said, “Now we’re really in trouble. We don’t know where we are and he doesn’t who he is!” (Zacharias)
That’s the condition we are finding ourselves in the world today and it is only getting worse. We have people who are denying their own biology. But the church isn’t immune to this, we bear some of the responsibility! So many right here in the church have lost our way because we’ve stopped look to God for answers and instead we look at God as part of the conundrum. There are four questions in life for all of us:
Origin
Meaning
Morality
Destiny
Where do I come from?
What gives life meaning?
How do I differentiate between good and bad?
Where am I going when I die?
I have told you over the last few weeks how evolution cannot answer any of these questions and, in fact, evolution robs us of these answers and our identity. Evolutionary science was designed to destroy the God of the Bible and is fundamentally incompatible with creation. Genesis on the other hand answers all of these questions directly and they continued to be answered throughout Scripture.
Evolution is a pattern of death. It is the survival of the fittest. There is no death in the creation narrative until man sins and sin corrupts creation. Creation and God as Sovereign Creator isn’t just a topic here in Genesis, it is a theme throughout the Scriptures and it is prevalent even in the New Testament, the Gospels, and Revelation.
?
This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 13:35 ESV)
?For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be. (Mark 13:19 ESV)
?All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. (John 1:3 ESV)
?And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:4 ESV)
?And, “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; (Hebrews 1:10 ESV)
?He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, (Matthew 19:4 ESV)
?For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of the water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. (2 Peter 3:5–6 ESV)
I want to say this before we get into Day 2 of creation: Science is never an acceptable hermeneutic of Scripture or Creation. Genesis is the only and accurate eyewitness of the origin because it is from God Himself. Creation by God was declared to be “very good” when God completed His work and stepped back to look at it. When God completed His creation, He had created mature earth as we will see as we get into days 4-6. And then God ceased to create. Evolution claims a continued and ongoing creation. That’s not biblical or accurate.
The naturalist believes that God exists only in the mind of gullible people who are not intellectual. They’ve created this false chasm between faith and science. That they are fundamentally and diametrically opposed. If they are true, then man created God and God did not create man. And therefore, belief in God is nothing more than a groundless superstition, and anything in Bible, like the Ten Commandments, the moral laws, and so forth are there to harm. So they aren’t interested in what religious people think, especially those who believe the Bible, we are a threat.
This point came to mind this week as I read about a school teacher, Laura Morris, in Loudon County Virginia who was brave enough to resign before the school board over the demonic teaching on Critical Race Theory. “Within the last year, I was told in one of my so-called equity trainings that white, Christian, able-bodied females currently have the power in our schools, and that ‘this has to change,'” This is not the first time I’ve heard such comments from teachers in Loudon County, Virginia and I do not believe Loudon County is the exception, but the norm.
When this pandemic hit, everyone was asking me what was going on. I told them and I told my church then and made public professions that we must humble ourselves as 2 Chronicles 7:14 calls. But what did we do? We’ve put all our hope in science and vaccines without any consideration of God. The two main forces behind this vaccine are Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci, who are humanists to the core and have no regard for the Bible. They’re the intellectuals and you are the deluded religious fanatic. Now we’re falling further and further into chaotic violence in our cities, our economy is heading for shambles, there is suffering like we’ve never seen.
According to the naturalist, people don’t do wrong because of sin. They do wrong because somehow they overextended their rights or they have warped values. There is no Creator, there is no moral law, there is no moral judge. There is no purpose for life. There is no reason for life except to get through it as happy as you can. This is the opposite of what the Bible teaches and those in power today - be in a schoolhouse or the White House - want you silenced.
What happens in a relativistic society is lines become blurred. They’re trying to define absolutes with ambiguous terms. Have you ever been sitting at a light or in the parking lot when something in the corner of your eye, like the car beside you, begins to move? What happens? You think you are moving and you must find a fixed object to reorient yourself. This is what is happening to us because we’re trying to define absolutes with moving and changing objects.
This, in essence, is what was happening on Day 2 of Creation. Let’s read it together:
?
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. (Genesis 1:1–8 ESV)
On Day 1, God creates time, space, and matter. There is tohu and bohu; a vast expanse of darkness, formless, shapeless form as God creates time, space, and matter. With the creation of time, space, and matter, God creates light. There was morning, evening, and Day 1 is complete.
Our planet is in what’s called the “Goldilocks zone” – not too close to the sun and not too far away.
• If the earth were 1 degree closer to the sun, we’d fry! If we were 1 degree further from the sun, we’d freeze!
• If the moon was any closer or larger, the tides would destroy the coastlines. If the moon was any smaller/further away -oceans would die from a lack of nutrient movement.
• If our distance from Jupiter were any greater, asteroids and comets would pepper the earth. If we were any closer to Jupiter our orbit would become unstable.
• If earth’s surface gravity was any stronger, it’d retain too much ammonia and methane and we couldn't breathe. If it were any weaker, the earth’s atmosphere would lose too much water and we’d not have the liquid necessary to survive.
• If the earth’s crust were any thicker, it would absorb too much of our oxygen and we wouldn't be able to breathe. If it was any thinner; the earth would move and shake beneath our feet and would make life impossible.
Day 1 God separated the light from the darkness. Day 2 God separates the water from the earth with an expanse with water above. Day 3 God will separate the water from dry land. So day one, day two, day three, series of separations. Before God can create life He has to separate light from darkness and create the continuum of light and dark in the 24-hour solar day. He has to separate heaven from earth, which He does on day two. Then He has to separate the water that is now completely engulfing on day one and two, He has to separate that from the dry land so there’s a place for the fish in the sea and the land life on dry land.
So on day 2, we have the water that was on the earth and covering the entire earth. Over the water is hovering in careful attendance the Spirit of God. And now God separates that water and creates an expanse between the 2 waters, called an expanse. Now the word “expanse” is the Hebrew word raqia. It means to spread out thinness. And looking in the Old Testament to find its usage, in Exodus 39:3 when they were making things for the worship of God in the tabernacle, it says they got gold and they hammered out sheets of gold. They flattened it out and spread it out into thinness. That’s expanse.
Look at verse 8. God called this expanse what? Heaven. It’s what we understand as heaven. It’s what we understand as the space above us. Heaven is shamayim, and it literally means the sky or the skies. It refers to the universe and the space above us. The Jewish commentator, Cassuto, says, “From this, we may infer that immediately after its formation the firmament occupied of its own accord the place appointed for it by the will of God, which is the sight of the heavens as we know it. Thus as soon as the firmament was established in the midst of the layer of water, it began to rise, arching like a vault.”
Now, some hold that this is describing the blue sky we see today. The atmosphere is this space between the Earth’s surface out to about sixty miles. It goes up that far. That’s the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s held to the Earth by gravity. It’s made up of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen. That’s significant. It’s a very important ratio that makes up the air that we breathe and so on. If the oxygen level were greater on the Earth, things would start catching on fire and blowing up. It would be combustible. Just the right amount of chemicals in the air, gasses that exist there.
Now in the passage, it says He separated the waters from above from the waters below. Which leads some to believe that maybe when God first created the world that there was this water canopy around the world, kind of a greenhouse effect. This greenhouse would then allow life to grow and things would flourish. When God sent the flood, this whole vapor of water that was above the earth came crashing down. If that’s the case, maybe that’s why the first people lived over 900 years, whereas after the flood the lifespan of a person decreased rather quickly.
“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.” ? Viktor Frankl
What we would see as chaos, was God’s creative powers holding everything together in perfect order. If God can hold together like this, what can He do in your life? That’s really the question we’re asking today. We’re in this expanse of life and may have difficulty in finding purpose in it all. But it does have a purpose. And it is found in God’s creative marvel that you are made in His image. G.K. Chesterton the moralist philosopher said: I learned more from observing a nursery than I ever did in my lectures in philosophy. It is here we are looking. Most importantly as a church to establish our meaning in this community. Before we can do that, we ourselves must know who we are and our identity in God. It is Jesus Christ who restores our identity when he abolished the curse of sin in your life. Will you come to him today?
