Genesis
CREATION DAYS FOUR AND FIVE
GENESIS 1:14-23
Let me begin by saying that this lesson may be the most interesting Sunday School lesson you’ve ever had. I’m not bragging. It has little or nothing to do with me. This subject is just fascinating! Unpacking the details of the Genesis creation account is very interesting and especially the two days of creation we’ll be looking at this morning – Days Four and Five. These are covered in v 14-23 of Genesis Chapter 1.
So, a quick review of the first three days of creation which we have already looked at. How did the physical universe as we know it come into existence? How long ago did this happen? How long did it take God to create it? When the Bible says the first day, second day and so on how long is a day? Was God pleased with what He created? What does the order of the creation say about God? What do we know about God from our study so far?
V 1, God creates time space and matter. He is the energy that made it all happen.
V 2, At first the earth is uninhabited and covered with water.
V 3, God speaks the various components of His creation into existence.
V 4, God is pleased with His creation and sees that it is good.
V 5, The author, Moses emphasizes what a day is “evening and morning.”
V 6-8, Expanse is introduced between waters below and waters above, sky, atmosphere.
V 9, For the first time, dry land appears.
V 10, This gathering together of the seas and the earth happens at one time, on Day Three. It does not occur over millions of years.
V 11, The first sign of life that appears is green vegetation – plants and trees of all kinds.
V 12, As with all creation so far God sees that it is “good.” The creation is a reflection of its Creator. God is good.
V 13, Three days so far, now we come to Day Four, v 14-23.
As I studied this lesson and began to contemplate the enormity and complexity of creation, I was reminded of David’s words in Psalm 8: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).
Our God is soooo big! He is an amazing God! And a lesson like this really drives this truth home in a powerful way.
READ Genesis 1:14
The light God created on Day One is now attached to the newly created luminaries that He places in the expanse that was created on Day Two. They are created by the spoken word of God, not by some gigantic explosion of cosmic energy. Psalm 33:6 says, “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.”
READ Genesis 1:15-18
That last phrase in v 16 always gets to me – it is so understated… “and the stars.” How many stars are out there? Scientists tell us there are 1 billion trillion stars (that’s 1 with 21 zeroes after it) in the observable universe (the portion of the universe we know about). And God creates all of them in less than a verse! So the lights mentioned in the expanse in these verses would include all the various galaxies and solar systems. Scientists tell us there are over a 100 billion galaxies out there of which our own Milky Way galaxy is but one. Is our God amazing or what? His power and immensity are beyond our comprehension.
Why did God make all of that? I find the explanation almost as fascinating as the creation itself – three reasons:
- To separate the day from the night, the light from the darkness.
- To govern the way we tell time – signs, seasons, days and years. To govern or rule means to control life patterns. A day is governed by the earth’s rotation on its axis, turning so that we see the Sun and get sunlight and then turning so that we don’t see the Sun and it is dark. One complete rotation is 24 hours. The orbit of the moon around the Earth governs or defines our months. The Earth’s orbit around the Sun governs our years. The word “signs” is paired together with the word “seasons” to convey the meaning of “seasonal signs.” It has nothing to do with astrology. It’s all about how we keep time.
- To give light to the Earth.
Think about it. All those billions of cosmic bodies out there were created in order to give light to our little planet here! Fascinating! God could have accomplished night lighting any number of ways. He chose to do it that way! What an amazing God!
Before we move on to Day Five, I have to drive home a point of just how BIG God is. Since I was a kid I have been fascinated by the immensity of outer space. Let me give you a sense of how big it is. The distance from the Sun to the center of our galaxy (Milky Way) is approximately 30,000 light years (distance light travels in one year, 186,000 miles per second, or a total distance of 6 trillion miles). We would say wow! That’s just mind boggling! But we really can’t wrap our finite minds around just how far away that is. So let me help you out. Let’s suppose we could shrink the universe down 2 billion times smaller than what it is now. At that scale the Earth is a quarter inch in diameter. The distance from the Earth to the moon is 7 ¾ inches. The Sun is 2 feet 4 inches in diameter and the Sun and Earth are 250 feet apart. A light year is now only 3000 miles long. At this greatly reduced scale the distance from the Sun to the center of our galaxy is still a whopping 90 million miles!
That is just from our Sun to center of our galaxy and there are billions of galaxies out there! Our God is sooooo enormous!! This great big God wants us human beings to praise Him for who He is and what He has done. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your glory above the heavens.” (Psalm 8:1)
READ Genesis 1:19
John MacArthur made this statement and I agree with him: “Everything in the universe points to an intelligent God.” We have been focusing on the enormity of God looking at the vastness of the universe. Now we will turn our focus to the complexity and intelligence of God in His created order here on Planet Earth, which is what we see clearly in His work on Day Five, v 20-23.
READ Genesis 1:20
To swarm means to move swiftly. Living creatures now appear on the scene. We’ve had the creation of living organisms, stationary plants. But now we see living creatures that are moving around – insects, fish and birds.
READ Genesis 1:21
“Great sea creatures” are a reference to some sort of a created sea animals. They could be any one of many giant sea creatures including whales and maybe even sea-dwelling dinosaurs. We’ll talk briefly about dinosaurs and where they fit into the created order next week when we get to the land mammals. What I want to call your attention to this morning is just how creative God is. Let’s just talk about insects. They’re here in Day Five. There are 900,000 different kinds of insects in the world. Ten quintillion individual insects (that’s a 1 with 19 zeroes after it). Staggering!
Do we have any fishermen or women in here? There are 34,000 known species of fish in the world. 3.5 trillion fish live in the oceans alone. This doesn’t include the fish living in all the rivers, streams and fresh water lakes and ponds. And birds? There are 18,000 species of birds. Three hundred billion birds in the world and God knows every one of them.
Notice the phrases “according to their kinds” and “according to its kind.” There is no evolution of the species. All the various kinds (the thousands of species I just referenced) were made at the same time. The fossils of dragonflies they found that are supposedly thousands of years old look the same as dragonflies today. For the theory of evolution to be viable you would have to at any point in time have all the various “links” existing, which of course you do not. The absence of these links as well as the technology of DNA completely debunks the theory of evolution. The Bible clearly tells us that God made all the different kinds of insects, birds, fish at the same time, on Day Five of creation.
READ Genesis 1:22
Notice here that created life is able to reproduce itself. It is self-reproducing. No invention of man has yet been able to reproduce itself. Your personal computer or laptop cannot produce little PCs or laptops. My Honda CRV cannot produce little cars. Like I pointed out last week – this is uniquely a God thing!
How can anybody with any sense look at creation and not see God? Paul puts it this way in Romans Chapter 1: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth [Genesis Chapter 1 is truth]. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Romans 1:18-23)
Paul says that instead of worshipping God, the Creator, they worshipped the creation. God made us to worship Him. This is His desire for us, to acknowledge Him and worship Him. And when people refuse to do this, it is an affront to God.
READ Genesis 1:23
Is our God awesome or what? When I look up into the heavens and see the work of God’s fingers, the Sun, the moon and the stars, which He set in place, what am I, who am I, that God is mindful of me, and the son of man that He cares for me? And yet this same God loved me so much that He sent His only Son, Jesus to earth to die for me! To save little, sinful, insignificant me from my sins! What an absolutely overwhelming thought!
“Thank you, Jesus, for loving me and saving my soul!” May that be our prayer of praise and thanksgiving this morning as we consider our awesome and good and loving Creator.