Title: Creation Week
Scripture: Genesis 1:6-25
Speaker: Nate Pickowicz
Just a reminder of why we're studying this book together. The blessings are innumerable, it seems, to understand the purposes of God and creation, the origins, the beginnings of all things, that we have an eyewitness account of what took place on the first day that's given to us in God's Word. And He has wonderful purposes for us to know these things, wonderful purposes for us to hold these truths in our heart and give Him glory and praise and honor for what He has done.
Last time we looked at the first five verses of Genesis 1. If you were here with us, we went through Genesis 1, verses 1 through 5, whereby God spoke creation into existence by the word of His mouth. Let's look at this together just to recap again, very famous words. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was formless and void, and the 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 the light was good.
God separated the light from the darkness. He called the light day, and the darkness He called night, and there was evening, and there was morning one day. Now, we covered quite a bit of material last time together in just these few short verses.
We talked about the fact that the triune God, the Father and the Spirit in Genesis 1, and also the Lord Jesus in John 1, that God created the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing. He didn't work from preexistent material, but rather out of the void of nothingness, God created light, and He set in motion the day-night cycle, the space-time continuum. We talked about how the Bible refers to six days of creation, not ages of time, but rather the Hebrew word yom is meant to signify a literal 24-hour earth cycle.
Furthermore, this is affirmed in Exodus 20, verse 11, whereby Moses writes that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and on the seventh day He rested. And the reason that's given to us is to inform us that we are to work six days and make sure that we rest and worship God on the seventh day. But we only covered the first day.
However, today I intend to blow your minds by moving past just more than one or two verses. Now, I intend to bring us all the way to the sixth day. We're going to cover verses 6 through 25 today.
Now, Moses very neatly organizes this account by including each creative day with a similar phrase at the end. At the end of each day, he writes, and there was evening and there was morning a second day. And then he says, and there was evening and there was morning a third day, and then a fourth day, a fifth day, a sixth day.
And yet we know that God gives order to the chaos. Now, in the wisdom of God, He divides up this creative work among these six days and even breaks up the week into two parts. Days 1 through 3 are really part 1 of the creation.
Days 4 through 6 are part 2 of the creation. On day 1, He creates light, but He does not put the sun, moon, and the stars into the expanse until day 4. Day 2, He creates space above and oceans below, yet does not populate it with birds and fish until day 5. And then the third day, He creates dry ground, but does not place land creatures or human beings on it until day 6. Why does He do it this way? Well, we have to remember that ecosystems are delicate. They're well-balanced things, and God is careful to set in motion the things that He wants to go in a certain order in His own wisdom and precision.
But I want to bring us into this right away here. I want to look at these wonderful days of creation. We're just going to work right through.
We're going to start. We've already covered day 1 last time. We're going to jump right into day 2 here, verses 6 through 8. So, after day 1, we read this, 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. So, once again, we see God creating everything out of nothing, ex nihilo, through the voice of His own mouth. He says, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters.
So, somewhere between day 2 and day 6, God has created water, but at this point, He makes something called an expanse. The Hebrew word is rakhuyah. Older translations render this as firmament.
If you have an old King James, you see the word firmament there. Essentially, it's an extended surface or space. One scholar refers to this as a spread out thinness, whatever that means, right? But later in verse 8, He's going to call this expanse heaven.
Not in the spiritual paradise sense, but rather like the upper sky. We look up at the heavens, and we see an expanse beyond even our stratosphere. But this expanse or firmament, He says, separates the waters.
Well, what is this? What is this separation? Well, even from our vantage point, if you were to go to the ocean and look out, you would see very clearly a line in your viewpoint here, and you would see a line that would divide the space above with the water below, that there is perhaps even above that space a cloud cover. And so, on some days, you'll see really a line and an expanse, and you'll see cloud cover. So, again, from this vantage point, this does make sense to us.
From our vantage point on earth, there is a line, a space between ocean and sky. And so, this expanse in verse 6, He says it separates the waters from the waters. This is interesting.
Look at verse 7 again. It says, God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse. What is He talking about? Again, interestingly, we have this expanse in verse 7, but it seems as though God is using this expanse to separate two bodies of water, the waters that are below the expanse and the waters that are above the expanse.
Well, what are the waters below the expanse? Well, that's very clearly the oceans. So, we have an expanse of waters, even to this day, that are below that space. But then we have this phrase, the waters that are above the expanse.
Some scholars would say that's simply cloud cover. It's cloud cover. But others believe that it's actually more than that.
And the theory, one theory is that when God created the world, that He also created a thick moisture or vapor canopy around the whole earth. It's as though He took this canopy and just surrounded the planet with this vapor or water canopy, a canopy that's far more dense than the cloud cover we have even today. In many ways, it's similar to the thick cloud cover around the planet Venus.
Venus has a cloud cover, but instead of sulfuric acid, earth's canopy would have been mostly water. What would have been the purpose of a vapor canopy? Why would God create that? Well, Henry Morris, who is a retired professor of hydrology, who later co-wrote a groundbreaking book called The Genesis Flood with John Whitcomb, he also wrote a complete commentary in the book of Genesis from sort of a scientific perspective. And in that commentary, he discusses the benefits of an earth vapor canopy.
I just want to read this to you because it's really interesting. For some of you who are in science in school right now and you just can't handle any more, I apologize to you, but this I think will be helpful. This is what Henry Morris writes about this vapor canopy.
You know, it's number one, since water vapor has the ability both to transmit incoming solar radiation and to retain and disperse much of the radiation reflected from the earth's surface, it would serve as a global greenhouse, maintaining an essentially uniformly pleasant warm temperature all over the world. It was a barrier. Number two, he says, with nearly uniform temperatures, great air mass movements would be inhibited and wind storms would be unknown.
We would not have the raging wind storms that we have today. Then he notes that with no global air circulation, the hydrologic cycle of the present world would not be implemented and there would be no rain except directly over bodies of water from which they might have evaporated. Then he notes with no global air circulation and therefore no turbulence or dust particles transported to the atmosphere, the water vapor in the canopy would have been stable and not precipitate itself.
Then he notes that the planet would have been maintained not only at uniform temperatures but also at a comfortable uniform humidities by means of daily local evaporization and condensation like dew or ground fog on each day night cycle. Then he notes the combination of warm temperature and adequate moisture everywhere would have been conducive later to extensive stands of lush vegetation all over the world with no barren deserts or ice caps. So now you have vegetation that are able to be thriving in this greenhouse planet.
Then he says a vapor canopy would also be highly effective in filtering out ultraviolet radiations, cosmic rays, and other destructive energies from outer space. These are known to be the source of both somatic and genetic mutations which decrease viability of the individual and the species respectively. Thus the canopy would contribute effectively to humans and animal health and longevity.
Then he says some have objected to the idea of a heavy vapor canopy because of the great increase in atmospheric pressure which it would cause at the earth's surface. With any reasons rather than being a problem, however, the effect would contribute still further to health and longevity. Modern biomedical research is increasingly proving that a hyperbaric pressure is very effective in combating disease and promoting good health generally.
There should be no problem in organisms living under high external pressures provided their internal pressures had time to adjust correspondingly. Later when needed these upper waters would provide the reservoir from which God would send the great flood to save the godly remnant from the hopelessly corrupt population of that day. The content of the water vapor in the present atmosphere if all precipitated would cover the earth only to a depth of about one inch.
Now I know that's a lot of information but as we're unrolling the days of creation and even going even further into Genesis 6, 7, and 8 we're going to see that this picture that's painted makes a lot of sense. As Morris mentions this all becomes more important when you get to the chapters on the flood. But this vapor canopy, this firmament regulated the earth's climate.
Again no extreme weather cycles, patterns, hurricanes, droughts, arctic blasts, floods, tsunamis, just one big greenhouse bubble to sustain life comfortably. Of course these details are theoretical but they do explain how it's possible that life could have thrived so well in a pre-flood world. And so if this is all something of what we see here then verses 6 through 8 set up the perfect environment for life to exist which starts to take place on the next day.
And so now we move on to day 3, verses 9 through 13. Day 3 is broken up into two parts, the gathering of the land and the seas in verses 9 and 10. And then we see sprouting vegetation in verses 11 and 12.
But first we see the gathering of the land and sea. Verse 9, then God said, again an omnipotent power in his voice, he says, God said let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place and then let the dry land appear and it was so. And so we see here God gathering the waters into one place.
Now scholars have questioned what this language is referring to. But one theory that makes sense to me, whereas before in verses 2, 6, and 7 we see just an expansive body of water, there are no dimensions, there's no shape, it's just this abyss of water. But in verse 9, God gathers all of these waters together into one place, and I believe this is him shaping them into a sphere.
It's out of this spherical water planet that God begins to command dry land to appear. This has led some scholars to conclude that originally there was one big landmass that broke up after the flood into the continents that we have now. However, we can't be sure.
But verse 10 does say that God called the dry land earth and the gathering of the waters he called seas, and then we see that God calls it good. This is the second time that we read that God has called the creation good. The first was in verse 4 when he talks about the light.
But it's clear that everything is going according to plan, and God is pleased with what he's creating. And then we see verses 11 and 12 where now it's the time to begin creating organic life. Of all the amazing scientific breakthroughs in our age, one thing that continues to elude biologists is the ability to create even one living cell out of inorganic matter.
Out of all the technology, all the medical advancements, which are wonderful, I'm so thankful that I live in this era of time and not a thousand years before, not even a hundred years before, very, very thankful for that. I would not survive the 18th century, I can tell you right now. But out of all of that, we still cannot create a cell out of nothing or out of inorganic matter.
Life from lifelessness, and yet God does it with great ease. Verse 11, 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. This is the origination now of plant life.
Now, the Bible doesn't use modern scientific taxonomy, but it expresses these broad categories of plant life with three Hebrew words here. The first word is deshe, which is translated vegetation, but it can also refer to grass. So, there are grasses, there is a taxonomy of just general grass kinds of things, even though for our purposes we have lots of different species, the Bible uses just one word here.
The second word is eseb, which refers to herbage or plant life. And then there's one more Hebrew word that is translated trees or even more specifically fruiting trees. So, now we see God's decree and the command responds, earth creation responds to the command.
And so, we have three basic categories of vegetation, and then verse 12, the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind. And once again, we read that God saw that it was good. What's interesting here is that in verse 11 and 12, it's the first time we see the creation now responding to the Creator in obedience, whereas before we see direct creation acts, God speaking and something happening, but here He's creating from His own words.
He's telling the earth to sprout, and that's what the earth does. The earth brings forth vegetation, and so God influences the creation, the creation responds, He speaks, and it comes to pass. So, not only does God create matter and life out of nothing and bring it into existence, He can also cause what He has already made to produce as well.
He is altogether Creator, Orchestrator, Commander, Administrator, and Sustainer. We have more reason, more and more, to worship our great God that He's able to do this. We see an example of this same kind of thing, this power of authority in Mark 4.39 when Jesus is on the boat in the stormy seas, and the disciples are losing their minds, and Jesus stands up at the edge of the boat, and He speaks one word, hush, and the creation responds and silences.
Again, the Creator commands, the creation responds. But there's a second thing to note here is the existence of mature seed-bearing plants from the beginning. God doesn't create the seeds and then wait for them to grow over weeks and months later.
In verse 11 and 12, we read that the plants were created with seed in them. That's really important. From the beginning, God creates all living things with the appearance of age and with the ability to reproduce.
And so, for our purposes, the Bible answers the age-old question, which came first, the chicken or the egg? We know the answer. Ready? The chicken. The chicken, obviously, because God creates mature creation with the ability to reproduce.
In this case, we have the plant life with seed in it already ready to produce, and they do so, the Bible says, after their kind. In other words, grass produces grass, plants produce plants, and trees produce trees after their kind. As we're going to see in a minute, this phrase, after their kind, appears 10 times in Genesis 1 alone, demonstrating a very simple biological concept that all life reproduces after its own kind.
And so, already, we're seeing the theory of evolution sort of begin to crumble here. First, that inorganic matter cannot produce organic matter, only God can. And secondly, that species produce after their own kind, which we're going to discuss a little more in a bit here.
Verse 13, there was evening and there was morning, a third day. Now, at this point, at the end of day 3, we see a transition in the middle of creation week, whereby God has created the environments in days 1, 2, and 3, and now He's going to begin to fill up those environments that He has created, and that brings us to day 4. Again, a transitional point here. Day 4, verses 14 through 19.
Now, remember, way back on day 1, God created light, but now He places several lights, plural, in the sky. Look at verse 14. 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, and 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, and to separate the light from the darkness.
And God saw that it was good. There was evening, and there was morning, a fourth day. So, one thing you start to notice now here, in the creation account, is that it's written from the vantage point of earth.
It's quite literally Moses writing. The Lord is revealing truth to him, but he's writing from the vantage point of earth, for the benefit of people who live here. He's not writing for other purposes, other cosmic purposes.
He's writing because human beings are going to read this account. And so, in verses 14 and 15, we read about God creating lights now in the sky. Now, the way Moses writes the account, he begins with the purpose of the lights, and then he begins with the identity of the lights, and then he restates the purpose again.
But let's jump to the identity. What are they? Look at verse 16. He says, God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, the lesser light to govern the night.
So, he says, from earth's perspective, the identity of those two great lights, obviously, the first, the great light, is the sun. That's the greater light to govern the day. And then we have the lesser light to govern the night, that's the moon.
And then he also adds that God made stars as well. And so, we have the sun, we have the moon, we have the stars created on day four. Now, I've read and heard all kinds of arguments about, well, yeah, but it takes, you know, 186,000 miles per second is the speed of light, so the lights that are farther out, it's going to take time to get there, so it couldn't have been on day one.
And don't you think God could create the light pathways to get to earth on time? He creates everything ex nihilo, it's from nothing. So, he can bring the light waves to earth at the proper moment he wants to, it doesn't change a thing. And so, again, we have this, the identity of these lights, but then we now have the purpose.
Why did God do this? Why did he create these greater and lesser lights? Verses 14 and 15. These lights in the expanse, they separate the day from the night. And he says, and let them be for signs and 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 so, now Moses is identifying three purposes for these luminaries. The first one is separation. Separation.
Verse 14, the lights in the sky, particularly the sun and the moon, they separate the day from the night. For those people who live in parts of the world where the days are much longer, if you go to parts of Alaska, northern Alaska, the days are extremely long. They almost don't come to an end.
There are times of the year when there's almost no night. It's just one big long day. Well, at a certain point, that starts to mess with you a little bit.
When there is no day, when there is no night, and everything is just the same, you start to lose your cycle. You don't know where you are, when you are. It does mess with you a little bit.
People who've lived there have shared that. But we know that scientifically, day and night, they come because of the earth's rotation. The sun always shines, and the earth is always spinning away from the sun.
And we get the night, and then the moon is reflecting on the sun's light, and we get that lesser light. But then again, from our vantage point, the sunshine and the night darkness, they indicate the passage of time. So, even though the sun and the moon aren't moving anywhere, it's actually us that's spinning and moving.
We have the reality of that day-night cycle because of that phenomenon. But it breaks up. It separates the day from the night.
The second purpose of the lights is that it exists for regulation. Regulation. Now, Bible students have tripped over verse 14.
There's a phrase here where he says, let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years. Now, this has led some to conclude that the lights in the sky exist for maybe astrological reasons or zodiac signs or hidden meanings or gospel messages. There's all kinds of theories about that these bodies exist for the signs.
Now, there are rare cases in Scripture when God makes use of the sun and the moon and the stars to give some kind of prophetic sign. One example would be when God caused the sun to stand still in Joshua chapter 10. But remember that the primary purpose is to give, for these lights, is to regulate the seasons.
That's primarily what they're for. In fact, once again, while the earth is spinning on its axis, we experience that day and night cycle. And then as the earth is rotating around the sun, it gives us our seasons accompanied by other astrological phenomena, which is constellations and eclipses and things like that.
And so, we have this regulation. But then we also have a third purpose for the lights in the sky, and that's illumination. Of course, we know that God is able to provide light in other ways, but in the sun and to a lesser degree the moon, God provides light for the earth.
Well, how do we know that that's the intended meaning of these things? Well, because Moses restates these purposes in reverse order in verses 17 and 18. He goes in reverse order. Verse 17, He placed them in the expanse of the heavens to, number one, give light on the earth.
Then verse 18, to govern the day and the night. And then He says, lastly, to separate the light from the darkness, and God sees that it's good. And so, now we have this concluding phrase one more time.
Verse 19, there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. Now, at this point in the text, things begin to heat up and things get exciting. Day five, verses 20 to 23, the Lord begins to populate these two great domains, the sea and the air.
Look at verse 20. Then God said, let the waters team with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens. So, now we see these dynamic swarms of living creatures.
We don't see here one tiny amoeba that bumps into another tiny amoeba, and then we get another more complex amoeba. No, rather the Lord is filling the seas with living creatures, all kinds of living creatures. He's also filling the sky with birds and other winged creatures.
Again, all of this is occurring on one single day, day five. But then in verse 21, Moses gets more specific. He says, God created the great sea monsters.
What is that? The Hebrew word is tanin, which is translated various ways. In Exodus 7-9, it's translated serpent. In Isaiah 51-9, it's rendered as dragon.
In Psalm 148-7, it's rendered as sea monster, which is what it's rendered here. It's interesting that King James translates this Hebrew word tanin in Genesis 1-21 as the great whales, the great whales. Well, the question is, well, why does Moses single these out? And there's been a lot of strenuous discussion about why Moses specifically goes after these great sea creatures, whatever they are.
Some scholars believe Moses is addressing the current pagan practices at that time of actually worshiping sea monsters as gods. Another theory is that many of these ancient cultures, the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, and the Canaanites, they actually had local legends where there were battles fought between the gods and the great sea monsters of the deep, and there was this warfare between these two parties. But here, Moses is explicit.
God created the sea monsters and every living creature that moves. It's asserting God as the dominant force, the dominant power, the dominant being over even the mysterious and great sea monsters. And then he repeats that similar phrase from the previous day that he creates all of these on both land and sea, existing and progressing after their kind.
Every creature is after its kind. Now, we should note here that there's a repetition of this phrase, and it's flying in the face of evolutionary theory, specifically the existence of what is called macroevolution, whereby species are evolving into other species. Not only does the fossil record refute that theory, but the Bible itself refutes the theory that fish don't become lizards, which become monkeys, which become men.
We don't see that in the Scriptures. We don't see that, again, in the fossil record either, but rather species are reproducing after their kind. What we do see, however, even in the material world around us, is adaptation.
It's what is also called microevolution. This occurs when an organism's genetic code either mutates or it destroys or removes information, and then that species begins to change. But these are mutations, and they don't add new information to the creature itself.
It doesn't create a more complex or highly developed creature. It's changing. It's morphing.
And yet what we don't have is evidence for macroevolution, monkeys to man. We don't have that. But we do have ample evidence for adaptation.
Just a funny little story. This week, actually, they discovered a new species of cat. It was the very…you guys see that news story at all? You should look it up.
It's pretty cool. It's a new…they haven't had a new species of cat in over a hundred years, but they found it, and it was in some other continent somewhere. You're Googling this right now.
I know you are. But again, when they find this creature, this is not an evolution. This is some kind of mutation, an adaptation.
This is another species, again, of cat. It wasn't formerly a fish. This is another cat that was born after its own kind.
One source I read regarding the number of species reported in the world, if these numbers are correct, I think it's pretty amazing, that scientists believe there are over 800,000 different kinds of insects, 30,000 kinds of fish, 9,000 kinds of birds, 6,000 kinds of reptiles, 3,000 kinds of amphibians, and 5,000 kinds of mammals. Actually, 5,001 now because they found that cat, right? But again, of which humanity is just one kind of mammal, of creature within that larger creation. But then we see something very interesting happening in verse 22.
Within this creation, we have a blessing and a command. Look at verse 22. God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters and the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.
Now, it's interesting because God doesn't bless the elements. He doesn't bless the air and the water and the earth. He doesn't bless the sun, doesn't bless the moon, but He does bless all life.
All life. The Hebrew word is nefesh, used in verse 20, which refers to the living. Nefesh is also translated in other cases as soul, but it refers to breath, living.
So life is valuable to God. God blesses life, and He commands that all living creatures be fruitful and multiply. He commands and commends reproduction.
Again, verse 21, God calls this good. It's good that the creation continues to reproduce. Verse 23, And there was evening, and there was morning, a fifth day.
And that brings us then to day six, verses 24 to 31. Now, you got to buckle your seatbelt because a lot happens on day six, and we're not going to get to all of it today. But here on day six, God is creating land animals as well as human beings.
Now, we're going to only look at verses 24 and 25 today. We're going to save the second half of day six for next week, and it's actually probably going to stretch a little longer than next week as well because there's just so much here in day six. But we read in verse 24 here, Then God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures, once again, He says, after their kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind.
And it was so. Once again, God is speaking creation into existence. And corresponding to the land He created in day three, He now populates that land with living creatures.
Now, Moses starts to get a little more specific, and he designates the basic kinds of land animals that we see. First, he notes that they were cattle, which generally refers to quadrupeds. Scholars have observed that this represents all of the domesticated animals.
This is just a sort of a, not, the word is a catchphrase, but it's sort of a one part of the whole, okay? Then he says that he's created creeping things, which is creatures that are living and walking close to the earth. So, insects and worms and reptiles and things like that. And then he says he created the beasts of the earth, which are the larger, more wild animals.
So, he's creating the diversity of all of the animal life that's on the earth. And then he says in verse 25, God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. And God saw that it was good.
And so, Moses again is repeating this information from verse 24 about what God creates. But again, look at the repetition here. Five times on this day alone, we see the repeated phrase, after its kind, after their kind.
It's almost as if God knew when He was telling Moses to write this, hey, in 3,500 years, this is going to be attacked pretty fiercely, so make sure you have something for them. Because we're dealing with that. I mean, up to this point for the first 3,000 years, 3,300 years of the biblical narrative, the existence of it, there was no question Genesis 1 and 2 was accepted as written.
And then in the wake of the Enlightenment, the challenges began to arise, and you have naturalism, you have evolutionary theory that's arising. But it's not just the development of theories now. There is a deeper, more devious root to these philosophies.
Science is not just generic or nonpartisan, or it's not benevolent. Christian apologist Jonathan Sarfati explains, the framework behind the evolutionist interpretation is naturalism. It is assumed that things made themselves, and that no divine intervention has happened, and that God has not revealed to us knowledge about the past.
Then he goes on to say, evolution is a deduction from this assumption, and it is essentially the idea that things made themselves. It includes these unproven ideas that nothing gave rise to something at an alleged Big Bang. I do believe in a Big Bang.
It's the Lord making a Big Bang when He created, okay? So, I don't have a problem with that. It's just what's causing that thing. Also, he notes nonliving matter giving rise to life, single-celled organism giving rise to many-celled organisms, invertebrates giving rise to vertebrates, ape-like creatures giving rise to man, non-intelligent amoral matter gave rise to intelligence and morality, man's yearnings gave rise to religion, etc.
That's the theory. To be clear, this is not an honest effort to understand truth. Why? Well, because ultimately the truth will lead you to God.
When you look at everything around you, prove to me that God exists. Have you ever seen something that has been designed without a designer? This building didn't just show up. It had to be designed and built and put together.
I mean, that's just logic. It makes sense. It's reasonable.
It's repeatable that there is nothing that exists in the world that was self-created out of nothing. Sarfati goes on to quote a scholar from the early 20th century named David M.S. Watson. He was a paleontologist and an evolutionist who kind of tips his hand here, and he quotes from Watson, and Watson says this, evolution is a theory universally accepted.
This is what Watson says, not because it can be proven logically coherent or evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible. So Sarfati concludes, so it's not a question of biased religious creationist versus objective scientific evolution, rather it is the biases of the Christian religion versus the biases of a religion of secular humanism resulting in a different interpretation of the same scientific data. The data is the same.
The creation is the same. It's how we view and interpret what's there. Could God have used the evolutionary process to create the world? He's God.
He could do anything He wanted to. But the question is, did He? Did He use evolutionary process? And when we get to farther down the line here in Genesis 2 and 3 and beyond, we're going to see that that's untenable. Part of the way is because we're dealing with the entrance of sin into the world and death through sin.
But Genesis 1 tells us very explicitly that the creation came by the word of His mouth that God created. He spoke creation into existence. It came so by divine fiat, not through a long period of time, but through the the explosive power of the Word of God.
And it also tells us that it was in the span of six literal 24-hour days. And yet modern science rejects this, not because they're seeking truth, but because they desire to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because here's the thing.
If creation has a creator and there is an author, then the author has authority. And if the creator and the author has authority, then he has the right to tell me what to do. And in my sinfulness, I don't like that.
I don't want that. And so man fights against the Lord. And we can read verses like this, however, and we can marvel, can't we? Genesis 1 gives us cause to worship, gives us cause to marvel at the wonder of God and the wisdom of God and the power of God and the goodness of God, that God would create all of this and then place us here to live our lives.
So as we bring this to a conclusion, I want to read from Psalm 148. Psalm 148. You can follow along if you'd like.
This is a wonderful psalm of praise and worship toward the end of the psalter that gives us cause to praise and glorify our God for what He's made. Psalm 148. Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord from the heavens. Praise Him in the heights. Praise Him all His angels.
Praise Him all His hosts. Praise Him sun and moon. Praise Him all stars of light.
Praise Him highest heavens and the waters that are above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created. He has also established them forever and ever.
He has made a decree which will not pass away. Praise the Lord from the earth, sea monsters in all deeps, fire and hail, snow and clouds, stormy wind fulfilling His word, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things in winged fowl, kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth, both young men and virgins, old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for His name alone is exalted.
His glory is above earth and heaven, and He has lifted up a horn for His people. Praise for all His godly ones, even for the sons of Israel, a people near to Him. Praise the Lord.
And that's what we can do, isn't it? We can praise Him for His wondrous works and His mighty deeds. Heavenly Father, we thank You for just a very brief entrance into Your word. Lord, we have covered so much ground in such a short amount of time, and yet we've just seen a whiff, a hint of the majesty of Your hand, composing and creating all of these things.
Lord, the earth and the heavens, the sea and the land, the creatures, and Lord, as we're going to see next time, that You've created us in Your image and likeness. And yet we understand that we are fallen in sin. After Genesis 3, we are fallen, and we are in need of salvation.
And yet, even You have provided a way of salvation through Jesus Christ, who came and lived on the earth that He created, walked here, lived here, died here to pay the price for our sins, and then rose again the third day to bring us new life in Him, that all who would repent of their sins and trust in Him would have life eternal. So, Lord, we are so thankful for giving us Your word, for giving us an eyewitness account of what You did in these early days. Lord, let us have cause for praise and worship.
Lord, I also pray that You would help us not to become twisted up and arguing with people and fighting with them and locking horns unnecessarily, but rather that we'd be winsome. And Lord, encourage others to examine what's in front of them, to look at the heavens and the earth and ask, who did all of this, that they might see just the work of Your hand and may bring You glory and praise. We thank You for all of these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.