The Six Day's Of Creation Series

Genesis (3) (The 6 Day’s of Creation)

Text: Genesis 1:3-31

By: Ken McKinley

This morning; as we continue our study of the book of Genesis, we’re going to be looking at a bigger chunk of the text. We’re going to be looking at the six days of creation, and then next Sunday we’re actually going to look at the 6th day under the microscope so to speak. So if you have your Bibles with you this morning please turn with me to Genesis chapter 1 and follow along as I read verses 3 – 31 (read text).

Now there is so much information in those 28 verses that we could easily spend the next year or so looking at all of it, and there are people who specialize in that sort of thing. Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis comes to mind. He’s devoted his life to teaching the book of Genesis, and even he would say that he still has a lot to learn. So I think that an overview of the days of creation might be what we need right now, and then, Lord willing we may come back to this passage of Scripture sometime in the future and examine each individual day more closely.

But before we get started; I need to say one important thing about the use of the word “Day” here in our text. Historically; the Church has always viewed these to be literal days, 24 hour periods of time. But about 150 years ago that changed in some religious circles, and the reason for that change was a work published by Charles Darwin titled The Origin of Species. And for Darwin’s theory to even be plausible, the earth had to be very, very, very old. And what happened is that you had Christians who instead of saying, “Science has to line up with Scripture in order for it to be believable,” instead said, “oh we have to make Scripture line up with science in order to make it more acceptable to society.” And so Christians tried to find some way to harmonize the Scriptural account of creation with Darwinian theory.

What happened was that all kinds of interpretations came about. There was the figurative or allegorical 6 days of creation theory which says that the Genesis creation account isn’t a historical account, but is an allegory… a mythical account, there was also the “gap theory” which says there was millions of years that took place between Genesis verses 1 and 2. That God created the earth and it “became” formless and void and that God then “re-created” the earth, there was also the “day – age theory” which borrows from 2nd Peter 3:8 which says, “… with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” All of these theories come up short however, when proper hermeneutics are applied. If you remember, hermeneutics is; in a nut shell, rightly interpreting Scripture. And I’ll explain to you why they fall short. First of all Genesis is written as a historical work. It is a history book, not a book of mythology, not a book of poetry, it’s not apocalyptic literature… its history, not allegory. Secondly; and this one seems pretty obvious, we see in the days of creation, the words, “evening and morning.” The “evening and morning” were the 1st day, the “evening and morning” were the 2nd day, and so on. So even though the word ‘day’ in the Hebrew language is the word Yom, which can mean a period of time raging from a couple of hours to months or years, the phrase “evening and morning” make it pretty clear that it was a 24 hour period of time, or something pretty close to it. And thirdly, chapter two tells us that God looked at ALL THAT HE HAD CREATED and it was very good. (The Hebrew is tov meod which means perfect and having a complete absence of evil of any kind).

This tells us that the earth couldn’t have “become” formless and void because that would require sin to be present in the world… but the phrase tov meod shows us that Adam, or anyone for that matter, had not yet sinned.

Now if you remember; I told you last time that the first 3 days show us God giving the world form, and the last 3 days of creation show us God bringing fullness to emptiness. The first day is shown to us in verses 3-5. God said, “Fiat Lux!” That’s the Latin for “Let there be light!”

And what this shows us is the amazing power of God. God spoke light into being. He spoke it into existence. Now I wish I could tell you what that means exactly, and everything that entails. I’m not an astrophysicist, so I can’t give you all the technical jargon. But I can tell you this: it is an awesome, awesome thing. And remember God created this light ex nihilo, “out of nothing.” We don’t know the exact extent of this light, how much it was, or anything like that, but to be able to speak something into existence is a show of incredible power. No human can do that, no angle, or devil can do that, no created thing can do this. Only God has this kind of power.