Okay, today God creates the universe. How long did it take him to do it? It says six days. Six days, right. And so, on the very first day, where do you think he would start?
Uh what did he create first? We better read it and find out. Let's look at it today, here. Unmore than ink.
Well, hey, good morning. This is More Than Inc., and I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim. And we are sitting at our dining room table, as we have done for the last several years, actually, on Saturday mornings, with the Bible open. And today we're starting this massive adventure of reading the Bible.
That's a good way to look at it. Genesis. It's a massive adventure. It is.
Well, it's going to take us a little while. It is an adventure. As we begin to read Genesis 1 today, and the opening words are so familiar, and everybody thinks they know what it says. I just want to urge you, as you're listening, to listen for patterns, for repeated words, for things that seem to be a focal point in each little segment. Listen for the things that attract your attention, like why is that there?
Asking a good question of the text is a good Bible study technique. And so we're going to not make a lot of commentary, but we will pause in a couple of places to point out a few things because there are things that we trip over. Of everything we've read elsewhere sometimes, or all the things that people say Genesis 1 says, which perhaps it doesn't. And so we're going to stick real closely to the text. Yeah, what does it say?
So we'll be reading a lot today.
So we're starting in chapter 1, verse 1.
Okay. And let me read this for us. These first two verses are actually kind of the overview. In the beginning, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. We have a blank stage.
Shh. Yeah, yeah.
So clearly, I mean, and being Captain Obvious again, God made everything, and that's what it's saying right here: both, you know, the heavens and the earth.
Well, it tells us at a specific point in time, it began, which is interesting because a lot of people try to make Genesis 1 be a scientific text, which it is not. And yet, there is scientific agreement these days that the universe had a beginning. Right. And, you know, there's a lot of controversy in the Christian community, and some of it's not well informed about the Big Bang. Right.
And that's what we're talking about. But the Big Bang, really, the most important aspect of the Big Bang isn't the physics of how it happened. The most important part is the simplest part, which is people agree the universe had a beginning. There was a point at which there was nothing, and then suddenly there was something. And that raises a ton of scientific problems.
Like, you know, things cause things.
So what caused everything?
So that's, so you know, so we're back to what chapter one of Genesis says.
Well, and according to Genesis 1, it wasn't a what, it was a who. Right. Right, right. And by definition, even from a physics perspective, if the entire universe came into existence, then the thing that caused the universe can't be material like the universe. He's not contained within it.
Right. It has to be, whatever started the universe has to be wholly outside of it. And since there's great order to the universe, it must be intelligence.
So there are a lot of arguments that go with that. But just remember, Big Bang is just the idea that there was a beginning to the universe. And sure enough, in the first three words of the Bible, it says, in the beginning, God did it. Right. Genesis has been saying that.
Since it was written. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's totally right.
Okay, so we're gonna there's gonna be a pattern that's gonna emerge here, and I'm gonna just point your point it out to you before we even start. The next sequence of things happen in little segments, and they all start with, and God said, And then something happened.
So listen for that pattern because God is speaking. Into the nothing, and something occurs. Right. That's hugely significant. And there's a whole series of those.
Yeah, and God said, that's a huge repetitive thing. I'll just take it. Here we go. Verse 3: And God said, Let there be light. And well, there was light.
And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning. The first day.
The first day. So these are going to be separated into days of creation, which most people know about. And that was the first day he creates light.
Okay, but let's talk about the word day for just a minute, because again, this is something that's a huge controversy for people who really have not understood the text. The word day in Hebrew is the word yom, and it's used in a very fluid manner, it can mean a point in time. It can mean a specific length of time, but it can also mean a whole sphere of time.
Now, we use the word day that way today, right? Sure. We'll say in my father's day, meaning not on such and such a date, but in the era of time in which he lived. Right. Right.
So I just want to caution you ahead of time: if you are of the mindset that we're talking about 24-hour days, That may not be strictly so. Right. The word here used for day is a very fluid word. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And and uh the wrestling over the etymology of that word is I think in a sense it's wasted efforts. It is.
Because what God is doing here is he's going to tell us there's a sequence. Right. There's a sequence to the creation. It wasn't just a bang. There was a sequence to the creation.
Well, and we're going to see this the first day, the second day, and that functions kind of like a page turn in the story. Right. Like on this page, this happened. And then you turn the page, oh, we've got a new page. And what happened here?
Right, right. And this introduces what for me is the biggest question, and I'll hold it until we get to the end. But just remember, we're talking about a sequence, which is modeled with days in the week. There's order and intention here. Right.
So we have light created. Doesn't say where the light's coming from. It just says there's light.
So I like that.
So let's get to verse 6. We're on to the second day here. Verse 6. And God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters. What?
And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse. The expanse from the waters that were above the expanse, and it was so, and God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening, there was morning the second day. Hmm.
So it's interesting because I've done some word studies here. There's two words that go back and forth in this account: Bara and Asa. And we have Bara in the first verse, God created. That means He created, produced it essentially out of nothing. Right.
It doesn't mean anything. No. But the second word, Asa, means exactly that. He fashioned it, formed it, sculpted it, carved it. Raw materials.
It deals with refinement of something that already exists.
So in the beginning, God spoke into the nothing and something happened that was created. But here in verse 7, God made the expanse, right? He already was there and he fashioned it, shaped it.
So it's kind of interesting to watch how these words show up in different places in the text, but it's not always visible in the English. Usually, one is translated created, and the other one is translated made. Made. Made. Yeah.
And if you're confused by this expanse and the water under and the water above, it's the idea from the ancient places that, you know, there's water in the seas. That's, you know, you see that water, but there's also water that comes down from heaven when it rains. Right. Water in the air. There's this idea that there's water above.
So the expanse is the space in between, which is called heaven. And heaven is used in many different ways in the Bible, three principal ways. There's heaven that is where birds fly. There's heaven where the stars and the moon are. And there's heaven where God lives.
So what he's saying right here is actually thinking of the first one of those, which is there's water below, let's say the atmosphere, the expanse, and then there's water above the atmosphere. And the thing in between is heavens. It's the heavens that the birds fly in. Right. The atmosphere.
Right. So I was just talking about the difference between the water and the sea and the water that comes down from in rainfall in this. And that's the second day. That's the second day.
So let's go on the next day.
So verse 9. And God said, let the waters under the heavens, see, right? The water under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so. And God called the dry land earth and the waters that were gathered together, he called seas.
And God saw that it was good.
Okay, we're still on the same day. But this is the second thing God has said was good. Right. The first thing he said was good was back there in verse 4. He saw that the light was good.
And now. this dry land that appears out of the water is good. Right. So now we have dry land, and there's something that happens on the dry land. Verse 11, on the dry land, God said, Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit, and which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth.
And it was so. And the earth brought forth vegetation, and plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit, and which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
And there was evening and there was morning the third day.
So now we have the emergence of dry land. And on the dry land, we got vegetation. Stuff growing on it. Yeah, and it's good stuff. And God likes it.
And of course, we like it too when we pick apples off of trees. But there's vegetation that grows on this dry land. And we're happy that there's dry land so that we can have these things. Because God is setting stage for something. Right.
So that was the third day. Shall we push on? Yeah. Okay, so verse 14, we're going to start into the fourth day here. And God said.
Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day and the night. Wait, didn't we read this already? No, no, we read the light and the darkness separated in the first day.
So here's this fourth day. He's kind of expanding this. 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. Oh, interesting. It's kind of like a calendar.
And they're timekeepers.
So let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw it was good.
And there was evening and morning the fourth day.
Okay, there's some things that are repeated here. Yes. Right? Like, there already had been light and darkness, but now God made these sources of light, right? He focused them and we're told at least twice to give light on the earth.
Yeah. So these are light sources that are focused on earth, on the land that has appeared. Which have lighting functions which serve both the darkness and the day. Yeah, so think of stage lights coming on. Yeah.
Right? The show is about to begin. And God says, oh, it's very good. But what do you make of the part where he says, they're for signs and seasons and days and years. Right.
So in a real sense. Sense and we recognize this in the anthropological history of mankind. Right. That those lights in the sky, we're talking the moon, we're talking the stars, we're even talking the sun, all act like gigantic clocks and calendars. Right.
Yeah, so that we understand the seasons that way. We understand months that day. Months are closely tied to the appearance of the moon. It goes in about a 28-day cycle. And they're not just random, they're not just darting around in the sky.
They work, well, we'd say like clockwork. Like clockwork. Clocks are modeled on the rotation of the universe. Yeah, and even the position of the stars, you know, in the ancient times where you didn't have street lights flooding the sky, you'd look up and you'd notice the position of the stars change throughout the course of a year. Yeah, in a cyclical cycle.
And then they start all over again.
So here's this cycle of the year that shows up by the movement of the stars. You have the cycle of the months by the cycle of the moon. And you even have the cycle of the days by when the sun comes up and down. Isn't that fascinating? It's a clock and a calendar.
It's like turning on the switch and things begin tick and move. And he says there's signs, there's also seasons and stuff. We'll find that in all cultures, then, during parts of the year where you want to celebrate certain things, you tie them to these seasons based on the position of the stars and even based on the position of the moon. And to this very day, Israel, their calendar is based on that. The months of the Jewish calendar always start on the new moon.
So the first crescent moon that you see at sunset after new moon, that's the beginning of the month. And so the month is tied to that. I mean, these are all tied to that. And so several of the celebrations that Israel had, the formal celebrations like Passover and stuff, are actually all tied to that particular month where that particular moon rises and it's a sign.
So everything is structured. God put all of that in place and the clockwork is moving and life is beginning. to happen on earth, right? We need to press on here because we haven't got to the whole point of it yet. Right, right.
But it's a fascinating thing that when you're talking about light, which actually came up on the first day of creation and now you have light, but it's doing more than just illuminating. It's giving structure and order and time like a calendar and a stopwatch does. That's fascinating. And it draws your attention. Right, right, right, right.
So even before we had cell phones to tell us what time of day it was, you could use the lights in the sky to tell you what time of day it was, what day it was, what month it was, and where you are in the year. Yeah, fascinating. That that's just uh that's something you would not anticipate by talking about light. Shall we go to verse 20? We need to.
Okay, fifth day, fifth day, God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.
So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves with which the waters swarm according to their kinds and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them. God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let the birds multiply on the earth. And it was evening and there was morning the fifth day. Wow. Yeah.
Birds and water animals. Right. Wow. So we have the animals here who are not walking on the dry ground. Right.
These are the ones in the seas, are the ones that are in, he says it here, in the heavens, the heavens where birds fly. Flying in the air. Right. And both of those places, by the way, I might point out the obvious, are places that man, at least during this time, could not go there. Couldn't go.
He couldn't go there.
So they're places where living things are, but man is not. But man can see them and experience them and understand that they're there, but he can't live there. He's stuck on the earth.
So God tells these creatures what they need to do is to multiply and get very numerous. And he blesses them. He blesses them with that. This is God blessed them by saying this. This is the first time in this passage where he blesses something.
Right. Which is fascinating. And tells them: multiply. And multiply. And there are more of you.
Right. Be fruitful and multiply, multiply, multiply. Talking both to the fish in the sea and the birds in the air. Yeah. Okay, we got to go on.
I'll say one more thing about that. This is Captain Obvious. When you started the agrarian culture, when you planted crops like corn, you can actually make it multiply by how you plant and nurture it, but you can't do anything as man to nurture the sea creatures or the birds. This is a place where life will be that God takes care of. And we can only witness.
That'll come back to get us later on.
Okay. Okay. Verse 24: We're on this sixth day.
So God said. Let the earth bring forth living creatures. Oh, so now we're on the earth. We're not just in the sand. Yes, we're on the dry land.
We're on the dry land. Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock. And creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind.
And God saw that it was good.
Now, that sounds like the end of this day, but it's not. Those are interesting distinctions. Yeah. Oh, okay.
Okay. You're right. That's not good. That's not the end of the day. But it feels like it because there's a special creature.
Right. That lives on the land. That lives on the land. And here comes verse 26: a special creature. Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness.
This is the first time. First time. That anything has been made. In God's image and life. Yes, yes.
And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female. He created them. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop right there.
Whoa, whoa. We have two massive ideas. We've got. God made human beings in his image and likeness. Right.
And he made them male and female. Right. Okay, we both in the image. Oh, yes, together. But let's talk about image and likeness for a minute, because unless we really understand what those words mean, and this word for image means a representative figure.
Right. It's not an exact duplicate. But something about this human being that God has made reflects and represents God. Yeah, bears a resemblance. Right.
He's a representation of God. But interestingly enough, in the scriptures, most of the time that word is used, it refers to idols. Yeah. A representation of something you can't see. Right, right.
But humankind. Is a representation of a God we can't see in some way. That's this idea of image. But the likeness. It's like a portrait, a resemblance, a similarity.
So, again, something about humankind. Looks like God. Not literally, arms, legs, feet. Eyes But something about us indicates something about God. There's something about us that.
gives us the advantage of knowing a God who's outside of this universe. And that tells us we're not like the animals. Right. We're distinct in that sense too.
So that gives us some hope maybe of understanding God some because if you look at man, there's something about man that's quite distinctive apart from the animals that tells us something unique. For instance, and I'll just give you one example I've always thought is interesting. I always loved drama and theater and stuff like that. And I've always found it interesting that a playwright can write a play and you can fall in love with these characters. They invent a character, you know, they give them different traits and different things that they do.
And you can actually, us, we can fall in love with this character. And it's just a created character. This creature does not exist. It's substanceless. But man in his creativity, and I would admit that that's actually part of this resemblance in his kind, is the fact that we can actually conceive of beings that don't exist, but they have real meat to them.
Yeah. So we can create them in a sense. Yeah. Isn't that a crazy imagination? And you don't see the animals.
And they have a reality. They have a reality. And we literally fall in love with them. Animals don't have imaginary plants.
So I look at that and go, that's just an extraordinary capability. Maybe that's telling me something about a creator God who can actually create living, breathing human beings that have more substance than just the novel characters we put together. But that's just a fascinating thing.
So let's talk about male and female for a minute.
Okay. Because somehow God... in himself Said, well, when I'm going to make these human beings, I'm going to make them male and female. That tells us that everything we recognize as male and female both has its origin in the being of God. And who God is.
Yeah, yeah.
That's fascinating. Yeah, and you really need to write that down and underscore it because many people say, well, you call God your father, so he's male. No. When he's trying to communicate to himself, he uses the imagery of a father. Right.
But that doesn't mean that females are any less representative of the image of who God is. That's what I'm trying to make.
Something about male and female together indicates a fullness that resides in God. Right, and we'll see this in the next chapter, but he's deliberately teasing in half this representative creature to show you something by contrast or by distinction, something about the nature of this one being, which now is split into two so you can see different aspects about it. It's a deliberate team.
Okay, and just again, to state the obvious, as you so often do, there are only two genders here. Right, right. So we live in a time when that is in dispute. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, there actually sometimes examples are cited from the animal kingdom. There are animals that transgender or don't have gender. But we're not talking about animals. We're talking about the distinctively different human beings created in the image and likeness of God. Right, right, right.
Well, let's move on because I'm running short.
So 28. There's the male and female. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, Behold, I've given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree of the seed and its fruit, you shall have them for food, for food. And to every beast of the earth, and every bird in the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.
And it was so. And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good, and there was evening, and there was morning the sixth day. Ah, did you hear it? This is the first time God says it's very, very good. Very good.
Quite satisfied. Satisfied with what he's done. Good. It's as it should be. Right.
And it fills the idea of purposefulness. We talked about the beer. If there's a creator, there's a reason why he's creating. And as he's looking at us, he's saying, what he's saying is it's good. This is fulfilling that purpose.
This is exactly what I intended. Everything is in place now. Yeah, yeah.
And so he reiterates again the idea that humanity is going to have dominion over all this creation. Over these creatures, over the fish, over the birds, over the things that move on the earth. I mean, over all of this stuff, which again begs another interesting question: why would God make all this stuff and then just tell these created beings that you're in charge of the whole place? You're in charge of this place. Why would God entrust this creation to a bunch of doofuses like us?
You know, that's one way that we may be functioning in his image and likeness. Exactly. He has given us dominion over these things he's created in the same way that he has dominion over us. And he's given us a purpose. He made it, and now we're to maintain it.
So, there's just a lot of questions that come out of this about God's purpose and what He's doing, and what He's asked us to do, what He has appointed us to do. And one of the things He's appointed us to do, like the animals, is be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Fill the earth. And sure enough, as the story goes on, we'll see how that multiplying goes on as he looks at the first two created human beings. But one of the things I appreciate about this passage so much is that the order and the intention about the way it's presented.
Again, it's not a scientific text, but it's not anti-scientific. It's intended to tell us something about God, the very specific order and purposeful way he went about creation. Nothing is random. Nothing is accidental. He doesn't go, oops, I didn't intend that.
Or, oh, look at that. Isn't that surprising? It's intentional. Yeah, and the question I was going to save to the end, since we're at the close here, is this. Why would God elect to to do creation in a six-day story.
Because everyone knows, everyone knows since he's omnipotent, he could look and say, I've got this idea, he could snap his fingers. And it would happen in an instant. But instead he says, no, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this in a six-day sequence.
Now, without arguing about whether the days are 12 hours, 24 hours or not, let's forget about that for a second. But why would he actually do it like this? Why not just have it happen? Why not the first verse of Genesis says there was the big bang and everything existed. And boom.
But he says, no, we're going to tease this out into a six-stage process. That's the question I think that needs to be asked. That's a good question. That's the question that needs to be asked, because in a sense, it's a teaching tool, and we're not actually asking the question of being taught by why would God do this? And in fact, the answer will start coming when we start talking about the seventh day.
And then some things will start to become clear.
So I want you to think about that and ruminate on that. Not how long the day is, but why do a six-day sequence of creation? Why is there this pattern at all? Right. And there's so much emphasis on the seventh day as a Sabbath.
So all of those things are tied together. This is a teaching opportunity for you.
So ask the question and we'll pray about it and we'll probably come back to it many times as we continue on.
Well, we're going to get to some of it next week, I think. That's exactly right.
So we'll push into chapter two next week and we'll do kind of a little flashback a little bit and what's happened in the creation story and we'll look at men and women specifically here on Morning Inc. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. And while you are there, take a moment to drop us a note. Wow, isn't it amazing that the entire creation account can be read in just a few minutes? Right, in one chapter.
Massive story. Yeah, well, we're going to tease it apart a little bit more as we go on.
So, this is going to be a great addition. Oh, so fun.
Okay, we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
