Answers In Genesis - Sunday School - Week 16

So let's get started with prayer and we'll go ahead and get into our material this morning. Father, we thank you so much for The light that you've given to us. And that light comes in the person of your son and how you've sent him to be with us. And to die for us and to make it possible for us to have a relationship with you.

You're so good and generous to us, and we thank you for, just giving us that chance to be called your children. And Lord, we want to learn more, and we want to, learn more of you. And so may that be possible with our study this morning, open up our minds, help us to have understanding. And to understand your word as it's, it's presented before us.

In Jesus' name, we pray this. Amen. Right. This morning, we'll be looking at An idea, but this question, is something that came up some in our last, series of lessons.

We, and we talked about bibliology and really how it is that we come to understand what the Bible has to say, how we interpret it. And one of the things that we talk about in that is context. Context of the passage matters in our interpretation, and we'll see how that plays out in today's section of study that we look at. And is this going to work?

It's not Moving. There we go. No. Sorry, I was pushing the wrong arrow.

Yeah, I don't know forwards and backwards. OK, here we go. just as a reminder, the purpose of our adult equipping school is to train our families how to know, live, and speak God's word for His glory. That's our purpose for being here, that we may know more.

And so, the series that we're looking at, we began two weeks ago, is God is Creator and Redeemer. And we're in the 2nd session today. We'll be looking at the creation days 1 through 4. And these are the, what's ahead for us, it's what we're getting into in the days ahead.

Just as, as a, a brief review. the first question is from what did God make the universe? And as we looked at in the last session, it, it says in Hebrews 11:3, by faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. And from what the Bible tells us, what we understand is that God spoke.

Matter into existence, that it came from nothing. And, the Latin term is ex nihilo. It just came out of nothing. God spoke everything into existence.

That is, the, the biblical point of view on this. There is another point of view, That actually has an interesting parallel. The Big Bang, Paul Davies, a physicist and evolutionist. wrote this, He says, the Big Bang represents the instantaneous suspension of physical laws, the sudden abrupt flash of lawlessness that allowed something to come out of nothing.

It represents a true miracle. and people who are, who take the evolutionist point of view don't all agree with, with his position on this, and there are other theories, but he is one who Going back, taking things back, he, he, says you have to suspend. The physical laws as we know them. That something happened that we don't know what it was.

And he equates it with being a a miracle. So that was something that we looked at in the first session. The question is, is why is this more scientific than in the beginning God created? And it's really not.

As we see it, there, there is a, a sense where everyone has to begin with a faith of some in something. And so that's, that's where we ended things in the last session. Is the creation of the order of Genesis compatible with the evolutionary view of the origin of the universe? And we went through this.

showing how that there's a different order of things. that we have, in the, in evolution, it has the sun and stars existed before the earth. In the Bible, it's the earth was created before the sun and stars. the sun is the earth's first light under evolution, and in, Genesis one, we, we find that light was on the earth before the sun was even created.

first life under evolution are marine organisms. First life in Genesis one is land plants. First life or the reptiles predate birds in evolution. Birds predate land reptiles in Genesis one, and so on.

As you see, there's a different order, a different way things happen. And the reason why we look at these two things together, The reason why it matters is because there are people who are, who are Christians who try to synthesize these two views. And, and try to synthesize creation or God at least, and evolution. And what we, the reason why we point this out is to say that the God speaking through Moses gives a different story than what evolution allows.

It, they can't be put together. And as Christians, We're, if we're gonna believe the Bible, we're gonna, we're not gonna be able to take evolution. They can't both be put together. Either have to believe one or the other.

They can't be combined together. this is just a picture of the same thing. The differences, only this shows, much bigger time spans. Big Bang 15 billion years ago.

And then 10 billion years, 5 billion years, 4.5 billion to 3.8 billion years ago for all these things to happen. And what we're gonna be looking at in Genesis one is it all happens in one week. big difference. And so, again, putting all those things together is, we're, we're just not gonna be able to do it.

I, I don't think you can do it. And, and, and be intellectually honest or, or, Consistent All right. I want to go into a digression, for a little bit to kinda introduce the rest of our study. first of all, we have a view from afar.

you've probably seen this, the same commercial I've seen. It's, it starts off with this, intergalactic, Star Wars scene where all these characters are fighting each other and, and you have all this stuff going on, intergalactic battles going on. And then the, the scene fades back and you keep going back down to earth where you just see the stars and you end up in the front seat of a jeep. And, and, and the young woman there says, it looks so peaceful up there.

And, and so it's, it's, it's humorous and, and so on, but it's also ironic. Because the, our reality is it's really flipped, isn't it? The, the people who are out in space, like say on the space station, they look down at Earth and from their vantage point, it looks so peaceful down there, doesn't it? And, and when you see the pictures, even from Google Earth, you can see, how it looks.

The planet is, is, largely blue and you can see the cloud coverage and you can see when you zoom in a little bit, you can see the continents and, and it all looks so peaceful and so wonderful. But when you, we know, when you zoom in close enough, what do we find? We find conflict everywhere. We find war between nations, we find wars in, in the midst of nations.

We find conflict in between ethnic groups of people, we find conflict within families of people, conflict even within homes. The individual homes of people, we find destruction everywhere in just with the people. Then we have also disease, we have storms and, and, and geological things that happen that are so destructive. just this last week, we had the tornadoes down in the south, there's always these things are happening and that's our reality.

From way up above, It looks so peaceful. But when you get down into it, there, there's just all these thing, these things that are upset and they seem to be somewhat out of order. and so, that is the ironic part of this and this, and so it's always in conflict and, and I think of that as, what does God see? Does God just see this peaceful planet?

That's, that to him, it looks like everything's OK. Or is God have a zoom lens, he zooms in and he sees what's really going on. We know that he sees what's really going on because he chose. To send his son to come and live with us, to deal with that conflict.

And to also deal with another conflict that's even greater than the conflict that we have with one another. And that's the conflict that we have with God. And God chose to send His Son to, to help us with that greatest conflict that we have. And so when the angels announced his coming, And they say, peace on earth.

The peace they're talking about is that peace between God and man. That peace that, that can be settled because this little baby that's born. is going to be the one that reconciles man with God, through his, his death, his sacrifice for us. I also want us to, as we look at this passage, we're gonna look at the 1st 4 days of creation today.

I want us to, not just look at the technical things, which we're gonna see a little bit of and, and talk about. But I want us to also not miss the beauty and the grandeur of what is happening. As we, in fact, we're gonna actually read the passage a little bit later. And as we read it, try to let the beauty of it, just fill you as, in, in our first session, we saw the video of it and the video read through the passage then, then showed pictures that went with it.

And I was struck with that. I was just struck with the awe of, of what that must have been like and, and how cool it would be to actually be able to see a playback of that if, if God would ever show from his archives, how that actually played out. That would be so amazing. But what we read in scripture is amazing.

And when we think about what it really was, I think it's good for us to let the beauty of that, the, the enormous aspects of what that has to be, really fill our hearts with amazement and awe for God, for this one who, who created all of this. Then the third thing, in this digression is, we see here. The establishment of the law of physics, how that God, Puts things into place that make things work. We're gonna see how, light and darkness and, and we're gonna see the separation of those things and how all those things work.

We're gonna see, and, and we're gonna, we're gonna see the necessity of certain laws that come into play, such as gravity and so on. But there are these establishment of the laws of physics as God is speaking. this universe into existence. He's putting into place all these physical constructs that make it all hang together.

And, and so, that's going along with it. There's a, they're periodic table. God has his, his, list of ingredients that he's gonna use to build all this stuff. And so he, he says to himself, I need some NA.

What's in a Sodium, right? I need, and, and he starts naming all these things, and, and, of course, he's gonna have to have some gold cause we're gonna have to have something to use for monetary exchange, right? but he has all these wonderful elements that he uses to put together, not just our world, but the whole, the whole universe. And of course, he has in mind, as he does all of this, middle school science teachers cause they're the ones that are gonna have to try to beat this into the heads of little.

Skull's full of mush. So, God is already having this in His plan. All right. Now, as we turn to Genesis chapter one, We're gonna be looking at the use of words.

And so to start this off, Think of the word run. The word run can mean different things depending on context, right? And so context is what tells us how to, to do this. So, back in the day when women wore nylon stockings, they don't as much anymore, but they would get runs in the stockings, right?

And that word run can, can be used so that she has to run to the store. And run her eyes over the shelf to get the exact ones that she wants to replace them. So that word run can, can mean different things depending on the context. You might have a person who runs for office.

So that word run, doesn't just mean dashing down a track, to try to win a medal. It, it can mean different things depending on context. Well, the same thing is true with the word day. The word day can mean different things depending on context.

a very common phrase that's used now is back in the day. Well, what is back in the day? What, how, how does, what does that word mean? Well, it means a period of time.

It could mean an era. It usually just means back when I was younger. But, that's the way a lot of people use it, but it could be back in the day of the founding fathers of our country or back in the day of the Israelites, when they were in, in Egypt or it could be any number of things. They could refer to an era of time.

So that word they can in that context mean that. We can also use, see they used As opposed to night. So it's the, the, the part of, of the 24 hour period in which we live, that is the light part, the time when we see the sun. So we have day and we have night.

And So in Genesis chapter one, we see it used that way as well. And then it also is, can mean a 24 hour period. So we have from 28 to 31 days in a month and we have 365 days in a year, except, of course, an election year which we need another day to accomplish that. So, that we, we have a day is a literal 24 hour period.

And so as we look at Interpreting that word day, this comes, this is important in our understanding of what Genesis chapter one is, is talking about. So, let's read these verses and just see what the context is telling us about day. So we read verse 5, it says God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, and there was evening and there was morning, one day. So we see the word day used in two different ways in this one verse.

one is for the, the light portion of the day, and the other one is for the, the whole 24 hour period of it, of it. Then we go down to verse eight. God said, God called the expanse heaven, and there was evening, and there was morning, a second day. Go down to verse 13, there was evening and there was morning, a 3rd day, we go down to verse 19.

There was evening and there was morning, a 4th day, verse 23, there was evening and there was morning, a 5th day. And then the last one, verse 31. God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the 6th day.

So, what Moses is writing here in Genesis chapter one, he, he's describing creation as being from context. A literal 24 hour period. Each day is 24 hours. There was evening and there was morning.

just think of it like this. How long was Jonah in the belly of the whale? From the book of Jonah, we read, it was 3 days. We don't think of it as being 3 long eons of time.

But just as literal 3 days. How long did Israel march around Jericho? 7 days and we don't try to interpret that as being 7 long eons of time. We, we, we interpret that as 7 literal days.

So why is there a debate just about this use of the word yom? And that is the, the Hebrew word here for day. And so, what we're trying to say is that people who, who want to have long periods of time for creation are inserting their own positions, their preconceived positions into the passage. And not just interpreting it naturally as you would, taking it from its own context.

That the word yom there does have specific meaning. Now I was supposed to have a video that had more information on this. I'll have to show it to you next time because for some reason, it doesn't come across in my flash drive when I brought it this morning. So we'll look at it next week in, in actual more, more of a detailed discussion on the use of this word yom.

In Genesis 2 chapter 2, verse 4, we get another use of the word yom and we see from its context, it would be interpreted different than a literal 24 hour day. So look in verse 4 of chapter 2, it says this. This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. So in the day, There is, is describing the whole week.

It's, it's summarizing the whole week and just saying in the day. So we see another way, the word day and from its, its context here of, of this verse, we can just easily see that it should be interpreted to mean that, that week, that period of time that, that, the creation took place. So we see the details of creation in chapter one. We see the summary here.

In, in, chapter two before, Moses goes into particular details of two of the days. OK. Exodus chapter 20 also gives us Some information about this, this week. And it gives us more understanding of what Moses was intending when he wrote, Genesis chapter one.

And so, in, Chapter 20, verse 8 through 11, he writes this. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 6 days you shall labor and do all your work, but the 7th day is the Sabbath of the Lord, your God. In it, you shall not do any work.

You or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in 6 days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the 7th day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath and made it holy. And so we see here Moses is is taking the position that it's just a literal 7 day period, and he's comparing, or he's drawing the connection with the Sabbath that God is telling them to set aside to the 7th day of creation where God rested.

So it is just a 7th day or a 7 day period for creation. And think about this too, in creation, if we were looking at, at the 7 days, at, at, at least the 1st 6 days as being, each one a long period of time, even if it was 1000 years, just say, but it would, for, for, Most old Earth people to make it much longer than that. But you take each one, each day being 1000 years, Adam and Eve being created on day 6, then day 7 is how long? Doesn't it also have to be That long period of time, and then sometime after that, you have The, the fall, you have.

Adam and Eve going into the garden. And eating the, the forbidden fruit. So, You have this long day of rest, then after that, you have the fall, then after that, you have the first children being born. To have Adam and Eve be together for that long period of time with no children.

doesn't make any sense. And so, for consistency's sake, what we read in Genesis is that it's a literal seven-day period. I think that's the only reasonable interpretation for that passage. Also in Romans 5:12, says that by one man, sin entered into the world and death by sin.

And so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned. Paul, who's writing Romans, who is an educated man. very knowledgeable about world's philosophies. is taking a very literal seven-day creation period of position.

And he, he also understands that the where the fall is and that death comes because of sin. Whereas, The ones who argue for the, the old earth and the long periods of time in those six days of creation. are trying to account for fossils. The, the age of the fossils and that fossil record having to be hundreds of thousands of years old.

Fossils are created from what? Death. Death has to occur for the fossils to be created. and what Romans 5:12 is saying is that death comes because of the sin of man, which happens after.

The 7th day. And so, Dealing with what, what we have to see at the very least is Paul's understanding of Genesis 1 is a literal seven-day creation. OK. So let's go ahead and read the 1st 19 verses here, and let's get a sense of, of what's going on.

And again, let's really grab hold of the grandeur of the, of the creation. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, let there be light, and there was light.

God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning, one day. Then God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.

God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below. The expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so. God called the expanse heaven, and there was evening and there was morning, a second day. Then God said, let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear, and it was so.

God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters he called seas, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them. And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind.

And God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a 3rd day. Then 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, and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens, to give light on the earth, and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night.

He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth and to govern the day and the night, to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a 4th day.

What we see is the amazing construction. Of a place that we call home. A place that where we now stand in it and we, in the evening. at least if we get out into the desert somewhere, we're away from the lights, we can see the, the expanse of the stars.

For those of us that live in Southern California, you mostly have to go on the internet. And and see the pictures other people take of it because it's so blacked out by our light, but, God put all of that out there. And he gave us the sun for the day, the moon for the night. And Excuse me.

He, he blessed us with the, the order of it and gave us the constellations and, and, and how they move and, and, and are used for guidance., people used to use those as they, they, got in their ships and go across the seas and they could keep track of where they were. all of those things being in place, being in order, and, and being able to be understood. And of course, to create great arguments as we have seen in the past as to what it all means, But Really a a a way for us to, to understand.

Well, before we get into that.

The, we see God taking the earth. And cradling it in his hands, day one. In that sense, we see him, him speaking into existence and he's holding it in his hands and he's He's actually then creating everything around it. First, he creates light to shine on it and then he separates light from darkness.

So we see he's creating the properties of physics with that and he's then creates the thing, the things surrounding it. First of all, he separates the water and takes water out into space and creates the space. He creates the He creates the, the, the way the whole, the whole universe actually then fits together by putting the stars out there, the constellations out there. He actually separates the water from the land and on earth then creates the possibility for plants to come up and, and to grow.

And so there's the atmosphere that's being created right around the earth, and then there's the space and, and all of that that's there. And so God is making all this, putting it all into place, and we see this, this grand, working of a great architect, a great engineer, putting it all together in a way that it all works and holds together and has, has held together for all these years, all this time that's gone by. And so we see a, a God who has a purpose and has, is able to work it out to make it an amazing and beautiful creation.

Now, one of the things that it looks like to me is it's being created.

is that God speaks the world and, our planet into existence first, and then then it's described as the, the spirit hovering over it. And then there's the, the separation of the water from the land and so on, but everything then is created around it. The sun and the moon, the planets, everything is created around it. And so we have almost a, an earth-centric creation.

And I know that's roll over Copernicus, right? But I'm not saying that the earth is the center of the universe. What I'm saying is that the earth, at least the way it's described, seems to be the center of God's creation. His, the center of his purpose.

And then he creates everything else around it. And it's, it's an amazing way of, of it being, of the progress of the way it, it comes out in its structure that is so beautiful and so amazing. All right, some suggest that the days of Genesis 1 could not be 24 hour days since there wasn't even a sun until day 4 to provide light for the earth. There can't be day and night, or evening and morning without a sun.

Now looking at Genesis one, What does it tell us? In order to understand that. Because light is created on day 1, the sun is created on day 4. And so, what should we, what should we understand from that?

Well, what we should understand from that is That the source of light, the creation of, of light. And the existence of light is not dependent upon the sun. It's dependent upon God. God is light.

And so God Already has light because God is a is a glorious God. If we read in Revelation, we read about at the very end of the Book of Revelation, Revelation 24. We see the new Jerusalem. Descending out of heaven and in its creation.

It says there is no sun there, but there is light everywhere. But there is no sun needed because God is there. And so God is the source of light. God creates light and God puts light in this.

Little, universe that he creates. And he separates the light from darkness so that there could be a, a division, a separation. He did not require a sun for a light source. He later creates a sun and stars to be light sources.

in the universe. But he, he does, he's not dependent, nor is the universe dependent upon the sun in order to have light. And so that would be the way you, you, I, I would look at that in Genesis there in chapter one. All right.

then, finally, our last point here. 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 15 calls Christians to give an answer for their faith. But it also tells us that we should do it with gentleness and reverence, not with arrogance. We have Within our Christian family around the world, we have differing opinions.

Upon how Genesis one should be interpreted. And as we looked at the late last year, we looked at this idea. In, in some depth. but one of the things I think is really important for us as we Deal with the issue of interpreting Genesis one is that we treat each other with grace.

Even with people who have different opinions, different views on how This should be interpreted. I would say that, that there are very respectable theologians who have different, a different interpretation model for Genesis one. And. We still should be treating each other with grace.

We're, we're still family. We still are, calling on Christ as our Savior. And, and so we need to, to have that, grace with each other. So, as we have opinions as we have views on how we should be interpreting this.

I think we need to, to work hard to, to have good understanding. We need to be diligent in our study of it. And, and we shouldn't be afraid to, to, have discussion about what we think, but we need to treat each other with gentleness and reverence, not with arrogance. This is really important.

Not only with other family members, but with non-believers as well. Treating each other. With, with that grace. We need to give people the dignity and space to arrive at the truth at their own speed because that's how we would want to be treated.

We want to be treated that way too. You see, none of us are right about everything. We all need space, we all need the dignity to come to those, to come to the truth, to, to find the truth, and we need to give that to each other and so treat each other with gentleness and reverence, not with arrogance, because what? This isn't my truth.

This isn't your truth. It's just the truth that comes from God. And so we, we can be humble before that, should be humble with it. With the truth And because I didn't have that video, I'm really gonna finish early.

So, For homework, finish the lesson, begin memorizing Exodus 20:11. That's the, the passage in the 10 Commandments on the Sabbath day. There's, there are online resources for more information. And then also, you can email Pastor Mike if you have any questions or comments, like maybe you wanna trade the substitute teacher for a player to be named later.

You can email him for that, how, whatever you wanna do. but anyway, that's all we have for this morning. So let's closing prayer. You, God, are awesome.

And to know that all of this is in your hands is a great comfort to us. To know that you have a plan, that you have a purpose. And that you have the power to accomplish it. is a great comfort to us.

Father, we know that you are wise. That you always know what to do. And that we can rest in that. We can know that as crazy as our world is, and the crazy as it looks to us, We know that you are the one who controls the end.

We look forward to the day when there really is peace on earth. But until that time comes, Father, may we walk in the peace that we have with you. And may we be generous with others in trying to help them to have that peace with you as well. Lord, may your spirit flow through us, use us to be a blessing to others.

Maybe we, we be diligent in our study of your word. And in, finding the truth and how it should be rightly understood. Lord, may your spirit deal with us strongly and well. May we be open to that and submissive to what you have to teach us.

Thank you, Lord, for all that you have revealed to us. May it make the most in us and transform us. So that it's not just knowledge that we gain, but it's a changed life, one that is more submissive to you. We need your blessing.

We thank you for your work in our lives. Amen.