Day 4

Genesis 1:14-19

Happy Wednesday! Oh, I know it’s Sunday night, but since God created the heaven and the earth on Day 1, and rested on Day 7, the Sabbath, we would know that Day 4 would be a Wednesday. I feel proud because I’ve been trying to get you to come on Wednesday nights and have finally succeeded!

Now notice how the 6 days of creation coincide with one another in groups: On day one he created light, on day four, he created the lights that become the means by which light is transmitted. He attaches the light to stellar bodies. Those two days coincide. On day two, he created the water below and on day five he created the fish for that water. On day two, he also created the air above and on day five, he created the birds to fly in that first heaven. On day three, he created the land and the plants and trees and on day six he created man and land animals who would live on those plants and on the dry land. So there are six days of creation that are wonderfully balanced.

All of this flow of creation is introduced with this little phrase, “then God said.” Verse 3, verse 6, verse 11, verse 14, verse 20, verse 24, verse 26 and verse 29, it’s always the mode of creation. That is to say, there is no process. Time adds nothing to this, having millions of years, billions of years, thousands of years add nothing to this. This is not some process that God initiated, this is something that God completed. God simply said it and it came into existence.

And the complexity of it literally staggers me. You look up and you think stars are in the same place all the time. They are moving so relatively slowly to the viewpoint of earth that they appear to be in the same place all the time. We can actually chart our courses by them over centuries, because they don’t appear to be moving, but the fact is, they are moving. Our own sun is taking our entire solar system and dragging it from one end of the universe to the other in an orbit that is huge, in fact, the whole Milky Way Galaxy is in an orbit that scientists calculate would take 225 million years to complete. And everything else is in corresponding orbits. The whole thing is incredible. And it all is doing now exactly what God designed it to do and created it to do in a simple word.

So at the very outset when he created light, before there was a moon, before there were stars, before there was the sun, there was light. It wasn’t attached to any of those celestial bodies, but there was light. God is light, and He created light, light is not created by stars. Light is not created by the sun. Light is simply created by God and attached to those luminaries.

People always say, well, you can’t have light shining all over the place without any stars, without any sun, without any moon, because the light we know comes from those sources. And they say, if there wasn’t any sun, there couldn’t be any plants on day three, how could God create plants on day three and a sun on day four?  Because photosynthesis which is critical to the life of plants doesn’t exist apart from the sun, and so, this doesn’t make any sense and critics depreciate the text of scripture on that basis.

But this is really silly. This is trivial. There was light already on day one. And where there is light there is heat. And where there is light and heat there is photosynthesis. The requisite conditions for plant life to survive on day three were already in existence because light was already there doing what light always does. Of course, plants could survive for 24 hours until Day 4 if needed…but it was not necessary.

Because the earth is tilted on its axis, it causes the sun to be at varying distances and angles from Earth’s surface at different points on the globe at different times of the year, which produces the seasons which are critical for the rejuvenation of life and the growing of crops and the flourishing of the earth and the blessing of mankind. God designed the sun and the moon to function in determining seasons as we orbit the sun. God also designed the sun to serve in the matter of days. Because a 24 hour day is simply determined by our rotation. So we have one period of time where the sun is shining and one period of time where the night is lit by the moon and stars. Also, it is the moon’s orbit that determines the month.

Did you ever ask yourself what determines a week?  There is nothing in the celestial bodies that determines a week, yet universally, across the face of the earth, mankind lives by weeks. Where do you think they got that?  Out of Genesis chapter 1. That was the period of time in which God created the universe.

While we reject the Big Bang Theory, there certainly was a big something when God simply spoke a universe of stellar bodies into existence and instantaneously, they came into existence. It was so. Even science says the universe is expanding outward with explosive power and that fits the Bible narrative of God stretching out the heavens as He flung it all into place.

Psalms 8:3-4

³ When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; ⁴ What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

Psalms 136:5-9

⁵ To him that by wisdom made the heavens: for his mercy endureth for ever. ⁶ To him that stretched out the earth above the waters: for his mercy endureth for ever. ⁷ To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever: ⁸ The sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever: ⁹ The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.

There he’s affirming God’s creation of the two great lights. The greater light to govern the day, the lesser light to govern the night, along with the stars also.

The sun is about 400 times more distant than the moon. Remarkably, it is also 400 times larger. So it has the same angular size as the moon—meaning it appears the same size and covers the same portion of the sky. It is interesting that God made both of the “great lights” the same angular size—and far larger (in angle) than any of the other celestial objects. There is no naturalistic reason why the sun and moon would be at just the right distances to have the same apparent size as seen from earth. As far as we know, the earth is the only planet for which this is the case. If we were closer to the sun, we would burn up…farther, we would freeze.

We are not talking about anything that’s a persona here, as the Egyptians worship Ra, the sun god. They also worshiped the god and goddess of the moon. Ancient Babylonian accounts make the sun and the moon and the stars into gods. And strangely enough, some of the rabbis even picked up on some of this stuff. There are rabbinic myths influenced by such paganism, which make the luminaries into persons. If you read Ezekiel chapter 8 you will find an illustration there. Israelites, in the temple of God worshiping the sun. All such idolatry, all such myth is excluded by the Old Testament. They are simply material creation. They rule only in the sense that they are situated above the earth and they control its nights and they control its days and thus they control its life patterns.

v. 16        “He made the stars also.” That’s it, what else can be said, the economy of words here is staggering. We can’t even figure out our own moon. Our own solar system is beyond us. In our solar system, our planets have a total of 63 moons that we know about. The leading theory is that it all came together from a cloud of dust.  They say it all must have evolved from the same material, so we can assume that they would have common material and similarities, right?  Well, they don’t. Some even revolve in a different direction. So much for it all starting with a swirl in one direction. They show the fingerprint of a creator.

And that’s why it’s so compelling to see in verse 16 that God made it all. He made it all. In his fresh and insightful manner, the great C.S. Lewis took the discussion of the solar system, evolution to its logical end. I quote from C.S. Lewis, “If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident and the whole evolution of man was also an accident. If so, then all our present thoughts are accidents. The accidental byproduct of the movement of atoms. This holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for everybody else. But if their thoughts are merely accidents, why should we believe any of them? I see no reason,” says Lewis, “that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents.”

Where does the sun get its energy? They have no idea. But by observing that the sun is contracting or shrinking, they are now proposing a very young age for the sun, at most, thousands of years ago. Not only does the sun demonstrate a young universe but the moon. The speed at which the moon is receding from the earth, it’s going away. We know how fast it’s going away. If the earth and moon are 4.5 billion years old, the moon should be out of sight long ago. It would have been touching the Earth just a million years ago!

The only explanation for the solar system, let’s go back to verse 16. “And God made two great lights.”

The psalmist had it right, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handy work. There isn’t any other explanation.

Psalm 8, “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth. Who has displayed thy glory above the heavens?”

Psalms 8:5

⁵ For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

We are the pinnacle of the divine creation. You see that was really what God was after in creation. God gave us the account of creation so we would praise him such as is done in Psalm 8.  And what does the evolutionist do?  The evolutionist robs God of his glory. He robs God of his majesty. He ought to be falling on his face, oh Lord, our Lord how majestic is thy name in all the earth. And wonder of wonders, you care about us. You care enough to love us, to send a savior to forgive our sins and to bring us to eternal glory. That’s the right response to Genesis 1.

Not to question it, not to argue it. Not to debate it. Not to turn science into some hermeneutic to try to explain it away. But to fall on your face and to cry with the Psalmist how majestic is your name. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. He understands the 500,000 trips to the moon that your DNA all stuck together would make. He understands all the codes in every one of the multiple trillions of cells in your body.

He understands everything about you. There is as much glory in the immensity and the complexity of the creation of your body as there is in the complexity and the creation of the universe. Everywhere you look, you see his majesty on display, anything less than a life of worship is an affront to God punishable by an eternity in hell, is it not? Let’s worship Him!