Much of this sermon is based heavily on a sermon/Bible study taught by John MacArthur – June 6, 1999. Retrieved online January 8, 2014 (http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons /90-215)
Wednesday Night Bible Study – Creation
Lesson/Sermon 3 – Days 4
Genesis 1:14-19 (ESV)
Creation Bible Study – Creation: Day 4
Let’s review Day 1-3 and remember what we have learned:
We learned that our world not only happened, but was created
We learned that creation was God speaking for the universe to come into being. of 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 light source, 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 the mighty creative WILL of God and God had set the pattern for the entire universe…
In what the Scriptures describe as days 2-3 we find Moses writing of God’s actions, “…separating water from water…” and we learn what that means: God built the atmosphere for the earth.
We learned that the word “atmosphere”? It is a combination of 2 Greek words… The first is ATMOS which means steam and the second is SPHAIRA which means sphere…
Atmosphere = A vapor around a sphere… our atmosphere is a vapor that envelops and protects our planet… and God created it for us. he talked about the atmosphere of our planet existing, but what happened on day 3?
In v9, God takes a planet covered in water and begins to terraform it. He causes the earth to spring up and separates the waters on the face of the earth.
God calls the dry land ‘earth’ and the gathering of the waters ‘seas’. After God created light, an atmosphere and then separated the waters on the surface of the earth to create the earth… and then starts creating vegetation with seeds to fill the earth…
At the end of Day 3, God has spoken for our world to exist, created an atmosphere where the world is protected from the harsh cosmic weather. and the radiation from our sun… and he has spoken for all kinds of plant/vegetation to exist…
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, 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 And 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 light from darkness. And God saw that he was good. 19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Evolution has always striven to explain all the celestial bodies that exist in the universe. How is it possible that these celestial bodies have evolved from spontaneous generation (all on their own)?
All our trips to the moon, all the satellites sent into space, all the paraphernalia in orbit have given absolutely no insight into how the universe, the bodies in the universe could possibly have evolved. And that is understandable; since they didn’t… they were created!!
Now I’m not a scientist, but this verse is where I believe God completed and set in motion the universe, which would include our solar system and the Earth’s orbit around that solar system. Let me try to explain what I mean…
At this point, God had spoken for the universe to come into being, 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 were enough to support the vegetation, but God was not finished.
Scientists have objected to this order of creation saying, “If there weren’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” doesn’t make any sense.”
I find this a bit false and trivial on the part of scientists because light was created by God on the first day. And where there is light there is heat. And where there is light and heat, there is the capacity for photosynthesis. The light was present, it just hadn’t been specifically attached to any celestial body at the moment.
At this point, the Scripture says 14And God said: “Let there be lights in the expanse of heaven 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 daytime it means that our side of the planet is facing the sun and when it is nighttime our side of the planet is facing away from the sun… this happens because of the revolution of the earth .
I think this verse lets us know that God has set these things in motion… to separate the day from the night, but here is the part that seals it to me… to be a sign of the seasons, of the days and of the years…
This means that the solar system and all the planets that revolve around the sun and the universe in its motion had to be set up for it to do these things…
We know that because of the earth’s orbit there are times when days are longer and times when days are shorter… there are times when temperatures are higher and times when temperatures are lower. It was here that God set these things in motion!
The rest of this passage, up to v.19, describes what God did to make this happen.
15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 And 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 light from darkness. And God saw that he was good. 19And it was evening and it was morning the fourth day.
Now again I want to reiterate that I am NOT a scientist or a physicist and I do NOT claim to have additional knowledge about what God has done, but this is what the Scripture presents. That God created the sun, the moon and the stars and set in motion the day and the night and the seasons, all by his word. he spoke these things into existence.
Now, did you catch the ‘throw’ in v16? Moses said that 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 on the same day they were created?
(Again I want to reiterate that the word ‘day’ here in the creation account is a much debated word… I have my belief in this but I am not going to debate this time frame but I am just going to use what the Scripture says … says one day … and this is how I am going to present it)
v16 says that God created the stars… and I know in school we all learn that light travels at 186,000 miles per second, which is 6 billion miles per year…
So if we take what we know about the size of the universe right now from the Hubbell Telescope… We think it would take hundreds of thousands of years (maybe even longer) for a beam of light from stars in the far reaches of the universe to reach us here! on earth!
So how can light from so 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 & #8216;spoke’ the universe into existence…
If we believe that God created light itself and according to Gen 1:3 He did…
If you believe those 2 things, then it 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 that HE created! I don’t think we should impose OUR limitations in this universe on the God who created it!
George Wald, formerly of Harvard and a Nobel Prize winner in physiology and medicine, did not recognize the dilemma. He said, and I quote, this was from The Scientific American Journal, I 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 party.” position.”
You know Wald is right…either we believe in the spontaneous generation of the universe…meaning that once there was nothing and then spontaneously it came into being by itself, OR we believe in the supernatural creation of the universe as presented in Scripture. No alternative.
Now let’s go back to Gen 1:1 where the creation is introduced. I told you several weeks ago that v1 was a general 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 statement written by Moses we have everything that can be known categorized.
Herbert Spencer was a 19th century scientist who died in 1903. Spencer said that everything that can be known in the universe can be summed up into 5 categories: time, force, action, space, and matter.
He was heralded as a brilliant genius and great scientist for making this discovery. He postulated that everything that exists in the universe can fit into those 5 categories. And they don’t know that that’s exactly what the first verse of the Bible tells us, “…In the beginning…that is the time; God… that’s strength; created… that is action; the heavens… that is space; the earth… that is matter. It’s all in that verse.
So on the first day, 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 that he gathers in the seas and creates the trees and plants. That brings us to the fourth day.
On the fourth day he created the lights that become the medium by which light is transmitted. On day 4, God unites the light created by him to the heavenly bodies… he made them providers of light!
In other words, it hasn’t changed or altered… it hasn’t developed over time or diminished. God spoke for it to exist and so it has remained, just as He spoke for it to exist.
The moon, the sun, the stars, the galaxies, the trillions and trillions of galaxies, everything that is in space, everything that is there is exactly as it was when God made it. And its complexity should literally astound anyone who beholds it, I know I’m in awe of that…