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 2 – Genesis 1:9-19

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Six Divine Days of Creation Part 2 – Genesis 1:9-19

24 October, 2021

Series: Genesis Series

Book: Genesis

Pastor Simeon Western

Pastor Simeon Western

Notes Download

Scripture: Genesis 1:9-19

Exposition of days 3 & 4 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 briefly review days 1 and 2 of creation week and then study what God did on days 3 and 4.

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

  1. The Creation of the Universe (Vs. 1-2)
  2. The Creation of Light (Vs. 3)
  3. The Categorization of Light (Vs. 4-5a)
  4. The Completion of the First Day (Vs. 5b)

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.

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.”2
    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.
  3. 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.”3

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.”4
    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.”5
  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.6
    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.”7

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 K8, 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.”9 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. Ibid, p. 63.
  3. Dr. Russell Humphreys https://creation.com/our-galaxy-is-the-centre-of-the-universe-quantized-redshifts- show (Viewed 15/10/21).
  4. Sarfati, p. 195.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Ibid, p. 203.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Equal to 49,726.85 degrees Celsius.
  9. Ibid, p. 206.