Six Good Days
Text: Genesis 1:4-31
Proposition: Everything that God creates He intends to fill, even us.
Introduction: Last week we talked about the larger view of the book of Genesis, it’s author Moses, the 2000 years of time it covers and first acts of creation in terms of heaven or space being created and then the planet earth.being suspended in space. We hear echoes of this in passages like Job 26:7, “He stretches out the north over empty space, He hangs the earth on nothing.”. Then in six good days, days that had an evening and a morning, days of 24 hour successions, days which God declared were good, all that you and I have ever seen or touched or tasted or heard or smelt, ever, now began to be. It began with light, not the sun’s light but the light that came from God Himself, perhaps the very light that we will see again one day in the eternity of the New Jerusalem. That is where we've gotten to, that was the start. Let’s pick it up in Genesis 1:4.
Day One. Genesis 1:4,5
“God saw the light, that it was good…” , what do you think makes the light good? Is it that it drives back the darkness, is it that it reveals and defines what is there, is that life itself comes from the light? That God says it was good can only mean that it was good on a number of levels, esthetically, essentially, experientially… this light is for good. Then God does another act of creation, He in essence creates what we call time. He separates the light from the darkness calling the light Day and the darkness He calls Night. Is it at this moment that God begins the rotation of the earth, is it at this moment that time as we know it begins in a twenty four hour cycle that is one rotation of the earth? Note the way it is measured, it begins at sunset and ends at sunset the next day, one 24 hour day.
Day Two. Genesis 1: 6-8
The earth is at this point still formless and void, it is essentially a massive sphere of water with a dense core of matter that would eventually be land. Look at verse 6, God creates a firmament in the midst of the waters of the sphere. The Hebrew word for firmament can be translated, ‘expanse, space, heaven…’, it is something that separates the water of the sphere and takes some of the water into the regions of space. Henry Morris in his commentary on Genesis postulated, “The waters above the firmament thus probably constituted a vast blanket of water vapor above the troposphere, and probably above the stratosphere as well, in the high temperature region now known as the ionosphere, and extending far into space.” Russell Humphreys has used this idea to try to explain the expansion of space itself, “ God marks off a large volume, the firmament within the deep wherein material is allowed to pull apart the fragments and clusters as it expands, but He requires the “waters below” and the “waters above” the firmament to stay coherently together.” By this theory the expansion of the universe is defined as is the limited boundary of the universe and the idea that there is still a center from which it expanded. On Day Two, heaven and earth are defined.
Day Three. Genesis 1: 9-13
God now further defines the earth. He separates the waters below the firmament into one mass of dry land and one great sea. This separation God sees as a good thing, for now the stage is set for three realms of creation: earth, sky and sea. He is about fill that which He has created. With the dry land in place God speaks a command to the dry land to bring forth grass, herbs, seed and fruit. Note that what the earth brought forth was vegetation in its various stages, some seedlings, some mature fruit. When we get to the day man was created we see that Adam too was created at a mature stage of life, not as an infant. God fills the earth with plant life setting the stage for all that would depend upon that plant for food. For the first time we are introduced to the idea of things being able to reproduce after their own kind. It infers that God has set a boundary around living things. Sometimes the boundary can include numerous types like Mac apples and crab apples which can be made to reproduce within their boundary of kind, but a rose or a cucumber can’t be crossed with an apple tree. God established boundary when He set reproduction of kind in place and again God saw that it was good in more ways than we might imagine.
Day Four. Genesis 1: 14-19
It was on this day that God created the Sun, Moon and Stars. The purpose for them was that they divide the day from the night and to be signs for the seasons, days and years. The measurement of time is established, their ultimate purpose is to shed light on the earth. Note that the lights, the sun and moon and stars are in the firmament of the heavens and their placing and order and orbits were good. In the creation of the firmament we also have the creation of what we would call our atmosphere.
Day Five Genesis 1: 20-23
In this day God fills what He has created in the sea and sky. There are two things that catch our attention, both fish and birds are created in abundance and they are created after their own kind. Again God fixes a boundary in creation, again He creates multiple stages of life in each kind, minnow and mature fish, chick and hawk in full flight. It says they flew across the face of the firmament, the face being the sky above our heads. We also have for the first time a blessing being bestowed by God upon these creatures, a blessing to fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth. God declares their abundant presence, good.
Day Six Genesis 1: 24-31
In this day God creates three things that complete the setting of the stage. He creates domestic animals, wild animals and creeping creatures particularly the reptiles. Each are established after their kind, the order is fixed, each are from the earth, God created the earth and then filled what He had created. Now the stage has been set, now the pinnacle of creation for which all else has been set in place begins… the creation of mankind. The creation of man is fashioned after the image of the Triune God, that is man is extremely relational, more so than any other creature. Man is moral, more so than any other creature, that is he knows good from evil, even before the fall man in his moral nature had conscience. Mankind is created in God’s image, male and female He created them, from which we could infer that man and woman are unique in person and function as the Trinity is also unique in Person and Function. Yet we could also conclude that man and woman together reflect the image of God, each in their uniqueness combine to produce a whole picture of the image of God.
Some closing thoughts on the creation of man are these:
1. He was blessed to be fruitful and then was commanded to subdue creation, to rule over it.
2. He was a plant eater. All man was to eat was the green plant and the fruit and seed that came from them. In fact at this point there was no creature created that was to eat flesh that had blood in it, even tigers, even bears, even Tyrannosaurus Rex. There was therefore at creation, before the fall, no death.
3. God looked over all this that was created and pronounced it very good and it was sunset of the Sabbath Day.
It’s been said that Copernicus removed earth from the center of the universe and that Darwin removed man from the center of history. Yet all the order, all the power, all the beauty, all the diversity, all the mystery in creation… this is the handiwork of God that we would see and know Him!