For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23

Six Divine Days of Creation Part 1 – Genesis 1:3-8

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Six Divine Days of Creation Part 1 – Genesis 1:3-8

17 October, 2021

Series: Genesis Series

Book: Genesis

Pastor Simeon Western

Pastor Simeon Western

Notes Download

Scripture: Genesis 1:3-8

Exposition of the first two days of Creation week in Genesis 1. A literal interpretation of Genesis is taken.

Brief review:

  1. The date of creation is approx. 4004 B.C. according to Archbishop Ussher’s chronological thesis. Other pre-Darwin scholars came up with similar time frames of three to six thousand years (refer chart).
  2. The Book of Genesis is foundational to the Christian faith. Remember, the debate over origins is not a matter of science vs. faith. It is the clash of two histories – God’s Divine account of creation Vs. man’s theory of evolution.

The Word of God makes it clear that God created the world in six literal, 24- hour days. Ex. 20:11 “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

It is significant that every verse in this chapter with the exception of verse 1 and verse 27 begin with the conjunction ‘and’. “This structure clearly means that each statement is sequentially and chronologically connected to the verses before and after. Each action follows directly upon the action described in the verse preceding it.” (Henry Morris)

There is a pattern in creation week – “God forms then He fills. He made 3 spheres of activity: the heavens, the land masses and the waters; and then He filled them with the appropriate forms of life.”1

In this message we will consider what God did during the first four days of Creation week.

Day One: Creation of Universe & Light (Vs. 1-5)

The Creation of the Universe (Vs. 1-2)

  1. Time – “In the beginning”.
  2. Space – ‘heaven’.
  3. Mass – ‘earth’.
  4. C.H. Mackintosh: “God was alone in creation. He looked forth from His eternal dwelling-place of light upon the wild waste, and there beheld the sphere in which His wondrous plans and counsels were yet to be unfolded and brought out – where the Eternal Son was yet to live, and labour, and testify, and bleed, and die, in order to display in the view of wondering worlds, the glorious perfections of the Godhead.”

The Creation of Light (Vs. 3)

  1. The significance of light
    1. This verse contains the first record of God speaking in the Bible. The Word of God brings light!
      1. Vs. 1 – The Father is the source of all things.
      2. Vs. 2 – The Spirit is the energizer of all things.
      3. Vs. 3 – the Word is the revealer of all things.
    2. It is of interest that light was created on day one. Light is often used in the Scriptures as a picture of God’s holiness and glory. “…God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5) Jesus said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12, 9:5). “Literal light drives out literal darkness, and the light that is God drives out spiritual darkness, because in Him there is no darkness at all.”2
    3. Gospel application: The same God who created the natural light, can shine the light of the truth of salvation into your heart and change you. 2 Cor. 4:6 “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Context of this verse is minds blinded by the god of this world “lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ…should shine unto them.”
  2. The sequence of creation week
    1. The order of the creation week is most interesting. We would have placed the creation of the sun on day one but God did not. Light was a provision of God on day one until the great light- bearers were put in place.
    2. “Since sinful man tends to gravitate from the high and pure worship of the Creator, to the base and degraded worship of the creature, we can see the wisdom of God in creating earth before the sun, moon and stars. Unbelieving peoples have often made these the object of their idolatry. While the modern evolutionary hypothesis makes the sun the “mother” of our planted, the Book of Genesis shows us earth’s uniqueness among the other heavenly bodies.”3 Interestingly, early church writers use the creation order (light on day 1 and sun on day 4) as an argument against paganism.
    3. “Creation of light before the sun adds a hallmark of authenticity to the account. If the Bible was the product of later editors as many critics allege, then they would have surely modified this to fit their own theories and understanding. Having ‘day’ and “evening and morning” without the sun would have been generally inconceivable to the ancients.”4
  3. The source of the light
    1. Very likely that God Himself (Shekinah glory of God) was the light source until day 4. The creation of light probably included the invisible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum such as infrared and ultraviolet light as well.
    2. For those who scoff at this, remember that the new creation in the future also will have no sun or moon.
      1. Rev. 21:23 “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”
      2. Rev. 22:5 “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”

The Categorization of Light (Vs. 4-5a)

  1. The Division of Light from Darkness (Vs. 4)
    1. “God saw the light, that it was good” = the first of seven declarations that creation was good. Seven is the number of Divine perfection.
    2. ‘divided’ = We see God making Divine divisions all throughout creation week. God is a God of order and He established laws for the governance of His universe.
    3. N.T. application – God has also made a separation between spiritual darkness and spiritual light for His people. Separation between light and darkness was a Divine law for the natural creation and separation between light and darkness is a Divine law for the spiritual creation (the church).
      1. Eph. 5:8 “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:”
      2. 1 Thess. 5:5-8 “Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.”
      3. 2 Cor. 6:14 “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?”
      4. “In Scripture, light is associated with Christ (John 8:12), the Word of God (Ps. 119:105, 130), God’s people (Matt. 5:14-16; Eph. 5:8), and God’s blessing (Prov. 4:18), while darkness is associated with Satan (Eph. 6:12), sin (Matt. 6:22-23; John 3:19-21), death (Job 3:4-6, 9), spiritual ignorance (John 1:5), and divine judgment (Matt. 8:12). This explains why God separated the light from the darkness, for the two have nothing in common.”5
    4. The Designation of Light and Darkness (Vs. 5)
      1. God names the light Day and the darkness Night.
      2. Note: In Genesis 1, God names things. In Genesis 2, man names things.

The Completion of the First Day (Vs. 5b)

  1. Clear from the language that a 24-hour day is in view. The pattern is evening, morning and number all the way through the passage. The only way you get long time periods in Genesis 1 is to read something into the passage based on pre-disposition towards an evolutionary theory of origins.
  2. Henry Morris writes, “In fact, it was necessary for him to be completely explicit on this point, since all the pagan nations of antiquity believed in some form of evolutionary cosmogony which entailed vast aeons of time before man and other living creatures developed from the primeval chaos. The writer not only defined the term “day,” but emphasized that it was terminated by a literal evening and morning and that it was like every other day in the normal sequence of days. In no way can the term be legitimately applied here to anything corresponding to a geological period or any other such concept.”6
  3. The overwhelming majority of the use of the word ‘day’ (yom) in the Old Testament is to a literal, 24-hour period. There are a few occasions when the Hebrew word ‘yom’ refers to a longer time period (e.g., “the day of the LORD”) but the Bible itself makes that clear. We should take the day in its normal, literal sense unless the Bible clearly reveals otherwise. Words travel in meaning according to context.

Day Two: Creation of the Atmosphere (Vs. 6-8)

The Definition of the Firmament (Vs. 6a)

  1. The word ‘firmament’ comes from the Hebrew word ‘raqia’ meaning “an expanse” or “spread out thinness”. God calls this ‘Heaven’ in Vs. 8. It refers to what we call “the sky”.
  2. There are three heavens in Scripture as follows:
    1. The Atmospheric Heaven (where the birds fly and clouds float). Jeremiah 4:25 “I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.”
    2. The Stellar Heaven (where the stars and planets are located). Isaiah 13:10 “For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.”
    3. The Heaven of heavens (where the throne of God is located). Heb 9:24 “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:” Paul referred to it as the “third heaven” (2. Cor. 12:2).

The Division from the Firmament (Vs. 6b-7)

  1. The lower waters – these are the waters below the atmosphere on the earth.
  2. The upper waters – these are waters above the atmosphere.
    1. Some suggest this is a reference to clouds but it cannot be as these waters are “above” the atmosphere.
    2. This points to a feature of the pre-flood world. While we cannot state dogmatically what it was, Henry Morris offers a compelling theory worthy of consideration. “The ‘waters above the firmament’ thus probably constituted a vast blanket of water vapor above the troposphere and possibly above the stratosphere as well, in the high-temperature region now known as the ionosphere, and extending far into space. They could not have been the clouds of water droplets which now float in the atmosphere, because the Scripture says they were “above the firmament.” Furthermore, there was no “rain upon the earth” in those days (Genesis 2:5), nor any “bow in the cloud” (Genesis 9:13), both of which must have been present if these upper waters represented merely the regime of clouds which functions in the present hydrologic economy.”7
    3. Morris goes on to suggest the following conditions would prevail on earth with such a water canopy above earth’s atmosphere:8
      1. It would create a global greenhouse effect, maintaining an essentially uniformly pleasant warm temperature all over the world.
      2. With nearly uniform temperatures, great air-mass movements would be inhibited and windstorms would be unknown.
      3. With no global air circulation, the hydrologic cycle of the present world could not be implemented and there would be no rain.
      4. The planet would have been maintained not only at uniform temperatures but also at comfortable uniform humidities by means of daily local evaporation and condensation (like dew or ground fog) in each day-night cycle.”
      5. The vapor canopy would also be highly effective in filtering out ultraviolet radiations, cosmic rays, and other destructive energies from outer space, thus contributing to human and animal health and longevity. Genesis 5 reveals that people lived a LOT longer prior to the flood in Genesis 6.
      6. Later, when needed, these upper waters would provide the reservoir from which God would send the great Flood, to save the godly remnant from the hopelessly corrupt population of that day (the content of water vapor in the present atmosphere, if all precipitated, would cover the earth only to a depth of about one inch). See Gen. 7:11- 12.

The Designation of the Firmament (Vs. 8)

  1. Reference appears to be to the atmospheric heaven in particular as opposed to space in general as in Vs. 1.
  2. No pronouncement on day two of it being good but this does not imply it wasn’t as when God reviewed the whole of creation in Vs. 31, he pronounced it all as “very good”. On the next day (day 3), the pronouncement is given twice in the one day.

Day Three: Creation of Land, Sea & Plants (Vs. 9- 13)

The Gathering of the Waters (Vs. 9a)

  1. “the waters under the heaven” = again highlights that the waters on the earth are being discussed rather than the waters above the firmament.
  2. “be gathered together unto one place” = appears in the pre-flood world there was one main body of water. Genesis 2 speaks about a river flowing out of Eden and then dividing into four tributaries.

The Revealing of the Land (Vs. 9b)

  1. “let the dry land appear” = up until this point it appears the waters were covering the earth. By gathering the waters into one place, it allowed the land to appear. The word translated “dry land” is the same word translated ‘earth’ in Vs. 1.
  2. It could also imply there were certain topographical changes to the land.

The Naming of the Land & Waters (Vs. 10)

  1. Dry land is called Earth.
  2. Gathered waters are called Seas.
  3. God sees that it is good.
  4. God questioned Job along the theme of creation in Job 38:4-11 “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. (5) Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? (6) Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; (7) When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (8) Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? (9) When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it, (10) And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, (11) And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?”

The Creating of the Plants (Vs. 11-13)

This is the beginning of biology.

  1. The Classification of Plant Life.
    Observe 3 ascending classifications in the vegetable kingdom:

    1. Grass – all spreading ground-covering vegetation.
    2. Herbs – all bushes and shrubs.
    3. Trees – all large woody plants including fruit-bearing trees. God created plant life with the capacity to reproduce – “whose seed was in itself”. “Implanted in each created organism, was a “seed” programmed to enable the continuing replication of that type of organism.”9
    4. Plants are “God’s self-replicating solar-powered food factories.”
    5. Note: These plants were made not as seeds but as full-grown plants. God’s creation was made with functional maturity.
  2. The Confines of Plant Life
    1. Three times in relation to the plants we have the phrase “after his kind”. This phrase occurs 10 times in Genesis one in relation to both inanimate life (vegetation) and animate life (animal kingdom).
    2. This is a significant and important phrase in Genesis 1 as it reveals that God has set impassable genetic barriers in the things He has made. Within each kind there is scope for lots of variation on account of the tremendous amount of information God has placed there in the DNA code. However, these variations never cross over into something entirely different. This is the complete opposite to the molecules to man evolutionary idea that suggests we go from the goo to the zoo to you!
    3. The whole of creation week is full of Divine divisions decreed by God which can never be crossed by sinful man. While there is prolific variation within the kind, the division cannot be broken down.

Day Four: Creation of Sun, Moon & Stars (Vs. 14- 19)

The Purpose of the Heavenly Luminaries (Vs. 14-15)

  1. To divide the day from the night (Vs. 14a)
  2. To determine the calendar (Vs. 14b)
    1. Signs = likely a reference to navigational signs (Job 38:31-33). They are also signs of God’s glory (Ps. 19:1).
    2. Seasons = even though the climate would have been fairly uniform on account of the water vapor above the atmosphere, there was still discernable seasonal changes in earth’s atmosphere. Implies the earth’s axis was already tilted from Creation week.
    3. Days = since seasons and years are literal time measures it stands to reason that “days” are also literal days.
    4. Years = the sun enables years as a year is the time of one revolution around the sun.
    5. Note: This would be of particular importance later on for the Jewish nation for their religious observances.
    6. To deliver light to earth (Vs. 15)
      1. This purpose repeated in Vs. 17.
      2. Note: Shows that earth is the jewel in the universe as it was created by God to sustain life and would be the domain of the man created in His image. It is amazing how that not only is the earth in the optimum location in space to sustain life, it is also in the optimum location to explore the universe. We live in a wonderful observatory! In fact, recent scientific discoveries indicate our galaxy is located very much in the center of the universe. “God put us in an optimal position, not at the outmost rim where the Milky Way would be dim, but far enough out to see clearly into the heights of the heavens.”10

The Principle Heavenly Luminaries (Vs. 16-19)

  1. The Greater Light – the sun.
    1. “The sun is by far the most massive object in our solar system, about 330,000 times larger than earth. Its diameter of 1.4 million km is 109 times that of the earth, and has 1.3 million times the earth’s volume and 330,000 times the mass. Its surface is 5,778 K (5,504 degrees C) while its core is 14,000,000 degrees Celsius.”11
    2. The sun has a phenomenal power output and is the source of most of earth’s energy. “The sun’s power source is probably nuclear fusion: four extremely fast-moving hydrogen nuclei join to form one helium nucleus – this requires temperatures of millions of degrees…The sun’s power output requires four million tonnes of matter to be converted every second into energy – this is huge, but negligible compared to the sun’s enormous total mass.”12
  2. The Lesser Light – the moon.
    1. The moon is actually largely black, because much of its surface is basalt but it looks white in the sky on account of the fact it shines by reflected sunlight.13
    2. The moon’s gravity is essential for life on earth as it is the main cause of the tides. These tides “cleanse the ocean’s shorelines and help keep the ocean currents circulating, preventing the ocean from stagnating.”14

The Plentiful Heavenly Luminaries (Vs. 16b)

  1. Mentioned almost as an afterthought – “he made the stars also”. A reminder of the indescribable, infinite power of Almighty God.
  2. There is a huge variety of stars with different colors, temperatures and sizes. Some dwarf the sun in size and power. For example, “The most massive and luminous star known is called R136a1, is in the galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. This is a very violent type of star called Wolf-Rayet, a subset of blue stars, the hottest colour of stars – R136a1 has a surface temperature of over 50,000 K15, almost nine times hotter than the sun’s surface. This one is 265 times more massive than the sun, and shines 8.7 million times brighter.”16 The Apostle Paul wrote, 1 Cor. 15:40-41 “There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.”
  3. The stars are so numerous they cannot be numbered. In 600 B.C. the prophet Jeremiah wrote, “…the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured…” (Jer. 33:22) The first man acknowledged to have counted the stars was Hipparchus in 190-120 B.C. After making a study of the stars, he announced that there were 1,080. It is now generally accepted that without the aid of a telescope and on a very clear night, up to 4,000 starts can be seen. With the aid of modern telescopes, it is estimated that there are 10 to the power of 22 stars. That’s the number 1 with 22 zeros after it! Interestingly, this number is also an estimate of the number of grains of sand on the seashores of the world. To illustrate what a vast number that is, if you could count 20 stars per second, it would take you 100 million billion years to count that many stars! Or to put it another way, if you could use a computer that could count a trillion of these every second, it would take over 300 years to count this high.
  4. God not only knows the number of the stars, he knows the name of each one – “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.” (Psalm 147:4)

Conclusion

We stand in awe and say with the Psalmist, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psalm 8:4) What a wonder that such an Almighty God would make us the object of His saving love. Will let the Creator create in you a new heart?

References

  1. W Wiersbe, Be Basic: Commentary on Genesis 1-11, David Cook Publishers 2010, p. 29.
  2. J Sarfati, The Genesis Account, Creation Book Publishers, Georgia USA, 2015, p. 115.
  3. I Western, Notes on the Book of Genesis, p. 8.
  4. Sarfati, p. 116.
  5. Wiersbe, p. 30.
  6. H Morris, The Genesis Record, Baker Book House Publishers, Michigan, 1994; p. 56.
  7. Ibid, p. 59.
  8. Ibid, pp. 60-61.
  9. Ibid, p. 63.
  10. Dr. Russell Humphreys https://creation.com/our-galaxy-is-the-centre-of-the-universe-quantized-redshifts- show (Viewed 15/10/21).
  11. Sarfati, p. 195.
  12. Ibid.
  13. Ibid, p. 203.
  14. Ibid.
  15. Equal to 49,726.85 degrees Celsius.
  16. Ibid, p. 206.