Well, good morning everybody.
I wanna take the opportunity to welcome anybody
that's here in our sanctuary for the first time this Sunday,
or if you're watching us online for the first time, welcome.
We're so glad you're here to worship with us.
I am Pastor Nathan and we will be celebrating communion today.
So everybody here in our sanctuary,
you should have gotten one of the communion cups
as you came in.
If you did not, when we get to communion later today,
I'll have the elders come through
and make sure you get one of the communion cups.
If you're watching online, this would be a good time
to get your communion emblems ready for us
to celebrate together at the tail end of the study.
But today we are going to be continuing our look
at the six days of creation found in Genesis chapter one
as we focus in on days four, five, and six.
Now just to kind of bring context and preface this again,
you guys might remember back in Genesis chapter one,
verse two, we were given a description of the earth
right after God created the heavens in the earth
or as a part of his initial creation.
And it says, now the earth was formless and empty.
Darkness covered the surface of the watery depths.
This was the account of creation
that the Holy Spirit gave to Moses,
that Moses then wrote down
under the inspiration of the Spirit.
And what he's giving us here all the way through chapter one
is God's remedy to that original condition of the earth.
God's remedy to the original condition of the earth
being formless and empty.
And as we've been reading through,
we studied in the first three days
that God had a very methodical,
a very precise process as he formed the earth.
And you might notice in Genesis chapter one,
the earth seems to be the primary focus
of the creation account,
at least in the context of physical matter.
What I mean by that is you have this entire universe
that we're situated in,
and we talked about some of that last week, right?
We're in a galaxy that's 100,000 light years across,
and it is only one of some 100 trillion billion galaxies
that exist in the universe.
And all of those stars and all of that,
all God has to say about the creation
of everything out in the universe,
is in verse one he said, God created the heavens.
And then in verse 17,
after we get the account of God creating the sun and moon,
almost as an afterthought, it'll say,
as well as the stars.
And that's it.
That's all God has to say about the entire cosmos.
The rest of it is about earth.
Earth is the focus.
And I believe it's the focus
because earth is the place that God had prepared
for the pinnacle of his creation.
That pinnacle being mankind made in the image of God.
And so those first three days of creation
that we looked at last week described the forming of the earth
as God was remedying the formlessness of it.
Again, verse two, the earth was without form or formless.
And so we read there how God formed the light and the dark.
God formed the sky between the waters above
and the waters below.
And then God formed the land and the seas
and the food that was gonna be in the form of vegetation
throughout the earth,
all in preparation of his filling of the earth.
And he said it was good.
God's creation was good.
That word good there means it exists exactly as it should.
Able to function and perform its function
exactly as it should.
Very precise language that really rails against the concept
that everything in the universe
accidentally evolved from nothing.
Instead, what we read in the creation account
is that nothing existed and then God created it all.
Speaking it all into existence.
And so we learn there that God forms.
God brings form to the formless.
And it is something that he does in our lives
of sin-ridden brokenness.
That he could bring form and function and purpose
into broken lives.
But today, we're gonna learn that God
doesn't just stop it forming, but that he fills.
That he fills after he forms.
It happened at creation.
It happens every single time a soul is saved,
a lost sinner is saved.
He takes emptiness and he fills that emptiness with purpose.
With joy, with peace, and with the Holy Spirit of God.
And that's what we're gonna be looking at today.
But first, we're gonna spend some time worshiping him
because he is almighty, amen?
He is God Almighty.
He is God Almighty, he is the God who created everything
out of nothing.
He is the God that has saved our souls.
He is the God that assures us eternity in heaven with him.
What a wonderful and beautiful thing.
Let's pray.
Father, we love you so much.
And we thank you God for who you are
and what you've done and what you're doing.
God, as we've been studying creation here
in chapter one of Genesis, Lord.
We've been so encouraged as we're reminded at who you are.
That you are God who has always been,
always is and always will be.
Lord, that you existed into eternity past
and you will exist into eternity future, Lord.
And that this creation, this universe, this earth, and us,
Lord, we are a creation that took place from your mind,
Lord, as you spoke everything into existence.
But God, there was a pinnacle of your creation
and that was us.
Lord, as you formed us uniquely,
differently than everything else, Lord,
you formed us in your image.
And so God, may we be encouraged today
about the point of that, the purpose of that.
Lord, that we would understand that as broken people,
as people who are empty, devoid of any goodness, Lord,
because we are sinful from birth, Lord,
that we would learn that God, as you created us
with a purpose, you can refill us with the purpose.
That God, when we trust in you for our salvation,
trust in you for everything, God,
you literally fill us with the perfect intention
of the goodness you created us with.
And that God, you give us the hope of heaven
at the end of all things, Lord, we love you so much.
We thank you and we wanna worship your name
because you are God, we love you.
It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Let's worship church.
All right, we are in Genesis chapter one.
We will be actually finishing the chapter this week.
I know you're surprised.
And we're gonna be going through verse 14
to chapter two, verse one.
And we're looking at the fourth, fifth,
and sixth day of creation here.
This is where we see God filling the earth
that he had formed on days one, two, and three.
And so read with me starting in verse 14.
Then God said, let there be lights in the expanse
of the sky to separate the day from the night.
They will serve as signs for seasons
and for days and years.
They will be lights in the expanse of the sky
to provide light on the earth.
And it was so.
God made the two great lights,
the greater light to rule over the day
and the lesser light to rule over the night
as well as the stars.
God placed them in the expanse of the sky
to provide light on the earth to rule the day
and the night to separate light from darkness.
And God saw that it was good.
Evening came and then morning, the fourth day.
And so in the very precise yet poetic
yet factual structure of the creation account here,
we touched on it last week where there was this
very neat parallelism in the account
where day one corresponded with day four
and day two corresponded with day five
and day three corresponded with day six.
And that's what we're seeing here.
On day one, if you remember, God formed light.
God said, let there be light.
And there was light.
Or in the original language, God said, light exists.
And it did.
He spoke it into existence.
And we know that that was the place there
where he formed that and he separated the light
from the darkness.
Here on day four, we're now seeing God
fill space with the luminaries.
The luminaries being the sun and the moon and the stars.
Now some people, as I'd mentioned before,
have a problem with the fact that light existed
on day one, yet the sun and the moon
didn't exist until day four.
And they go, see, that just shows how the creation account
in the Bible is not real.
It can't possibly be real.
But really the only problem, the only reason
to have a problem with those details in the creation account
is because you don't believe God's word.
That's how you have a problem with that.
Because Revelation chapter 22 verse five,
at the very end of creation, when we're in the new heaven
and the new earth, it tells us that there's no sun
and that there's no moon.
It says because the Lord God will give them light.
The Bible tells us that God is light
and in him is no darkness at all.
So if you believe the word of God,
it shouldn't be difficult to believe that the God
who created everything out of nothing
doesn't need the sun and the moon and the stars
to have light exist.
He doesn't need it.
He's God, right?
So the whole point of this creation account
is that God created the heavens and the earth
out of nothing, right?
That's the big underlying point.
That's the big miracle.
That's the thing where we go wow, how powerful is God?
How impressive is God?
How almighty is God that he created everything
out of nothing?
That is something we as humanity cannot do.
That is something in fact that the laws,
the physical laws of this universe we live in,
as we understand them, is impossible for us.
We can't create matter nor destroy matter.
It can only be changed from one form to the other.
But God is under no such limitations.
God can create matter and that's what it tells us here
in this creation.
And so thus he created light.
Light existed and then on day four he goes on
to create the luminaries.
And so we have to be very careful in our faith
not to limit God by our own cause and effect understandings.
We can't limit God by those things.
See sometimes we get caught up in that.
As we understand well this can't happen
unless this happens, we can tend to put God
in that same box, right?
Well this person, God I know you want me to pray for them
but they can't ever get saved because they've done this.
God's like why are you limiting what I can do
in a person's heart?
God you can't possibly answer this prayer.
Like one of the things that I'm highly
encouraged to do in my own heart
and I encourage you as a body is to pray.
To pray for our country.
To pray for our nation.
I mean look at what's happening on our college campuses
around the country right now.
We gotta pray.
And sometimes we go God can't fix that.
Yes he can.
Now the answers to God working aren't who's in the
White House, who's in Congress, right?
God can work through the hearts of anybody.
He used Pharaoh to get the Israelites out of Egypt.
So we gotta pray.
But we can't limit God.
We can't go oh God can't fix that
and cause ourselves to stop praying.
We pray saying God you created everything out of nothing.
Surely you can fix this problem.
Surely you can minister into the hearts of these students
who are just confused and deceived.
Surely you can work in this government and that government.
Surely.
Because you created light just by speaking.
And that's the encouragement we get here.
Now 2 Corinthians 4, 6 we see a little bit here that
the fact that God created light on day one
and then created the sun, moon, and stars on day four.
It also shows us that light is not just a physical thing.
It's not just a physical creation.
But there's also a supernatural aspect to the ideas
of light and dark.
In 2 Corinthians 4, 6 it says for God who said
let the light shine out of the darkness
has shown in our hearts to give the light of knowledge
of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
And so light existing is both real, both metaphorical,
both natural, both for supernatural.
You know in fact in Exodus chapter nine
we see the opposite of this.
Exodus, not Exodus chapter nine.
In Exodus when God was laying down the 10 plagues
the ninth plague was the plague of darkness.
If you guys remember that.
And it says there specifically that this darkness
fell upon the land and it was a darkness
that could be felt.
Right?
And the word there means physically felt.
Right?
We might understand the metaphorical application
like when it's dark it's like ooh it's spooky.
Right?
How many of you were kids and you would like okay time
like how fast you were able to run to your bed
when you flipped the light off.
Right?
Because the darkness, as soon as the darkness is there
the boogeyman's gonna get me.
Well this darkness in the ninth plague was physically felt.
We know darkness doesn't do that but it did.
And then later on in that same thing it says
there was darkness over this whole land
but Israel had light.
God can do whatever he wants.
And so there's this supernatural element
as well as physical element.
But here in Genesis in verse 14 it says
let there be lights in the expanse of the sky.
And that word lights simply means light bearers.
Right?
Things that will produce light or emit light
or reflect light.
Right?
But these are objects that God created
that are interacting with the light
that already existed in some way.
And you might think well how does that make sense?
Well I have a very kind of good metaphor here
but think of a flashlight.
Right?
If you were standing outside in the middle of the day
would you say light is all around you?
And then you turn on your flashlight
and that object emits light as well?
That's kind of like the idea here.
Light existed but then God created objects
that also produce light and emit light.
And so he said let there's lights be in the expanse
of the sky.
The expanse of the sky there.
Now when I was reading that I thought wait a second.
Didn't God already create the expanse in day two?
You guys remember there it said there was
God created an expanse and he separated
the waters from the waters.
And then it says God called the expanse sky.
So expanse equals sky.
But here you get to day four
and now it's the expanse of the sky.
You're like well is the expanse sky?
According to day one?
And if that's true is he saying that he created
the sun, moon, and stars in our atmosphere?
Well that would be difficult right?
We get a tan real fast but it would be a tough time.
No it's a different thing and it's rendered differently
and I just want to point that out to you
because in the Bible, in the Hebrew language,
and in the Greek language in the New Testament,
there was this Jewish understanding
that really helps you understand
what they mean when they use this word.
Now this word in the Hebrew is this word samayim.
That's the word that's translated sky.
But if you have like a New King James version
you'll see it translated heaven.
Like God created the expanse and he created,
separated the waters from the waters
and God called it heaven.
You're like wait, that seems to be talking
about our atmosphere, that's heaven?
And then here he seems to be saying expanse of the,
in a New King James version is translated heaven.
So what is he talking about?
Again the Jewish mind understood heaven
to be three different things.
In the Jewish mind, in this word samayim in the Hebrew,
it would refer to the first heaven which was the atmosphere.
That was called the first heaven or the terrestrial heaven.
It was the place where the birds flew, all right?
We know birds don't fly in outer space.
You should know that.
If you don't, that's an indictment
of our public school system.
Okay, birds fly in the sky not in outer space.
And that was what was created in day two.
That's why the CSB translation that I'm teaching from
renders it sky, right?
But when we get to the second idea here
is in the Hebrew mind or in the Jewish mind,
what you could see beyond the atmosphere, right?
If you were on earth looking up, you see stars
and you could see the moon and you see all this stuff.
What was up there where the celestial bodies existed
was considered the second heaven or the celestial heaven.
And then there was a third heaven
which is where God lives, right?
God's house.
That was the third heaven, the spiritual realm.
And we actually see this like in verse one of Genesis,
it says in the beginning God created the heavens.
It's referring to the cosmos, the second heaven.
But in 2 Corinthians 12, two, Paul writing,
he says I know a man in Christ who is caught up
to the third heaven.
And then two verses later,
Paul says he was caught up into paradise.
That's heaven in the traditional understanding, right?
When we think of heaven, we think of the place
where the angels are and where God's at.
That would be the third heaven
in the idea of the Jewish mind.
And so on day two of creation,
it says God called the expanse between the waters
samayim, sky.
Then on day four, he says let there be lights
in the expanse of the samayim.
And they translate it sky here again.
Now the context of day two clearly tells us
that it's the atmosphere, right?
It's the atmosphere around earth.
Day four, the context is clearly talking
about celestial bodies, right?
The sun and the moon, stuff that's out in space
as we understand it.
And that would be the second definition of samayim,
the region above the earth from beyond
where the birds fly to the farthest star.
So I'm pointing all that out to say that people
who would look at this and go ah,
he said sky in both places and stuff.
And when you get into the original language,
there's nuances of difference here, all right?
And so the sky in day four is not the same sky in day two.
Now how they rendered it in English,
they rendered it a little bit differently.
Day two he said call the expanse sky.
Here in day four, it's the expanse of the sky.
So it's rendered that way to let us know
that there's a difference between these two things.
Now, so God created these lights
up in the expanse of the sky.
In verses 14 and 15, we see the purpose of these lights.
They will serve as signs for seasons
and for days and for years.
And then they were also there to provide light on the earth.
And guess what?
We still use these lights in the sky for the same purpose.
Right, in fact, our calendar is based upon all this.
The ancient calendars back in the Babylonian times
of before, the calendar was based on the lunar cycle.
It was called a lunar calendar, right?
And so it was based upon the moon going around the earth
and that's how they tracked all the days and years.
But then at some time we switched over
to a different calendar system.
Today, just around the world,
we use what's called the Gregorian calendar
that came from the Julian calendar.
And that's a calendar that's based
on the movement of the sun, right?
So instead of going from the lunar cycle,
which was when the sun went down,
back to when the sun went down again,
the calendar now is from midnight
all the way through to midnight, right?
So, but these purposes, the purpose of these lights
is so that we can track seasons and days and years.
We've been doing that since the very beginning
and we still do it today.
Now verse 16, he starts to zoom in, right?
Verse 14 and 15 were kind of like a broad overview
of what he did on this day.
And then verse 16, we zoom in to our local solar system
and he's restating the work of day four in greater detail.
And he says that he created the greater light
to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.
Now when he says rule the day and rule the night,
the idea there is that this greater light
and this lesser light would be the largest,
most dominant light source in the sky.
Very easy to understand.
It's referring to the sun and then the moon.
Now again, some of you might be going, aha!
The moon doesn't emit light, it reflects it.
Well, that's exactly what the language is already intimated.
That these are objects that either produce or reflect
or emit or something of that nature.
And so, now the question for me when I read
he created the greater light and the lesser light,
why didn't he just say he created the sun and the moon?
Like why wouldn't he use those words
instead of greater light and lesser light?
We have to remember the context.
Israel's in the wilderness, Moses is writing
the account of creation to Israel who's been going,
hey, where did we come from?
Right, we were in Egypt for 400 years
and we've heard stories about our predecessors,
Abraham and Isaac and Joseph.
Like, can you tell us all about this?
And Moses is like, cool, I'll do that.
And so under the inspiration of the spirit,
he writes the account of where Israel came from
and he goes all the way back to creation.
So as he's writing this account,
he's consciously staying away from the word,
even in the Hebrew language sun, and the word moon
because in Egypt, the word sun was a god.
And the word moon was a god.
If you're familiar with Egypt, a pantheism,
the sun god was named what?
Ra.
Ra was the sun god.
Ra is simply the word sun in ancient Egyptian.
The word for moon was this word ayah or whatever
and it was the moon god and can be known as konsu
and all this stuff.
But Moses by saying lights, a greater light
and a lesser light, he's intentionally staying away from,
he created the sun and he created the moon
so that the people in Israel wouldn't be like,
oh, God created the God that's the sun?
No, no, no, they're just lights.
They're not gods, they're objects created by God.
And then, as I mentioned in the intro,
almost like an afterthought, it's like, oh yeah,
and he created all the stars too.
So then verse 17, we come back to earth
and I want you guys to notice that phrase there
where it says God placed these objects.
You know, when you consider our solar system
and you consider the cosmos
and everything God has made, right?
I mentioned that already, our galaxy,
the Milky Way, be in 100 light years across.
That's 588 quadrillion miles.
That's big.
And our Milky Way is only one of 100,000 billion galaxies
that exist in the universe.
You think of all of that, it's so huge,
it's so majestic.
And you think God placed everything
exactly where it needed to be.
What scientists have discovered about where the sun
and moon are in relation to the earth
is another one of those, well, it just so happens
to be exactly perfect to allow life on earth as we know it.
Exactly perfect.
Right, the sun is the exact right distance
away from the earth, 93 million miles.
93 million miles.
If the sun was a bit closer to the earth
or the sun was a little bit farther away from the earth,
the earth would either be too hot or too cold
to support life, it's perfect.
Then when you think of the moon,
the moon is the exact right distance from the earth.
Like if the moon was much closer,
the tides, every continent would be completely flooded
every single time the moon came around
and pulled at the tides.
If the moon was just a little bit farther away,
the tides wouldn't work right.
And then our evaporation and rain cycles wouldn't work right
and thus you would have no life on earth.
And there's so many other things, right?
The earth makes exactly 365 revolutions
as it travels around the sun.
It spins 365 times, right?
That's the days on our calendar.
Why is that important?
Well if it spun slower, each side would be exposed
to the sun too long and it would get scorched
and then the other side would be not exposed
to the sun too long and would freeze over.
If it spun too fast, same thing.
So it spins at the exact amount right time
to give us warmth during the day,
to give us coolness, to allow for scenes,
all this type of stuff, it's just amazing.
And people go, well it just happened.
It was just random chance.
Random chance, you know throw down a bucket of bolts
and see if you come out with a Rolex.
It's never gonna happen, never going to happen.
No, it was an intentional design
by the supreme intelligence of the universe, God.
And it was good.
It was good, he says.
Everything in the universe, the sun, the earth,
our solar system, the moon, everything out there
exists exactly precisely as it should,
thus being able to perform its designed function
exactly as it should.
What was the function of the sun and the moon
and the stars and all this stuff?
It was all to function in a way that would allow
the life that God was about to create on the earth.
Look at verse 20.
Then God said, let the water swarm with living creatures
and let the birds fly above the earth
and across the expanse of the sky.
So God created the large sea creatures
and every living creature that moves and swarms
in the water according to their kinds.
He also created every winged creature according to its kind.
Do you see a repetition again?
And God saw that it was good.
And then God blessed them.
Be fruitful, multiply and fill the waters of the seas
and let the birds multiply on the earth.
Evening came and then morning, the fifth day.
And so again, in the symmetry and correlation between days,
on day two, we read that God divided the waters
into the waters above and the waters below.
The waters below became the ocean,
the water that surrounded the earth.
And then he called that expanse sky.
And it was that first usage of that word.
It's our atmosphere where the birds can fly.
And then now on day five, he fills, right?
We're seeing this theme where God forms and then God fills.
He fills the sky with birds and he fills the ocean
with swarming creatures and sea life.
And it's really kind of the same structure
as the previous day, right?
We get one verse to give you the grand bird's eye view.
Pun intended, come on guys, you're gonna work with me here.
He's creating birds this day, right?
I gotta explain it?
Okay, anyways.
One verse, boom, this is what God does.
And then right after that, he starts to get into the details.
He zooms in for closer detail.
And so, but there's a few words here
that just kind of give us the idea of what he did.
When he says let the water swarm with living creatures,
that means just let it be full of, right?
It's teeming with life, it's full of life.
When he says, so God created the large sea creatures, right?
That's specifically pointing something out that's unique.
The word sea creature in the original Hebrew,
it actually is the word dragon.
It's interesting.
He created the large sea dragons.
Or another rendition of the word is monster.
Sea monster, right?
And so people go, well, what is that?
If you read in the book of Job,
you might remember a reference to this sea creature
called the Leviathan.
And nobody quite knows what it is.
But God says, hey, nobody can tame the Leviathan.
It's a giant, like Leviathan,
it just means huge and scary.
And some people go, well, what could that be?
I'm like, it could be one of those sea dinosaurs
that we know existed.
Was it a plesiosaur, big flipper dinosaur, you know?
I mean, there was these creatures that existed,
some are extinct now, but God created all of it.
Then he says winged creatures.
That's an interesting phrase too,
because it doesn't just refer to birds as we understand it.
It's everything with a wing.
This includes bats.
This includes flying insects.
Guess what else it includes, a pterodactyl.
According to their kinds.
You remember, just like the seed-bearing plants
and the seed-bearing trees and the fruit trees,
they can have, well, the plants don't have offspring
in that sense, but the seed from an apple tree
grows what kind of tree?
An apple tree.
It doesn't grow a banana tree.
I don't even know if there is a banana tree, right?
It grows an apple tree.
It's of its kind, and so these creatures here,
again, God created them, and then they're gonna multiply,
and they're gonna multiply according to their kind.
So that dogs are dogs, cats are cats,
birds are birds, dolphins are dolphins.
Now, there are micro changes within the species, right?
Some people call that micro evolution, right?
You got different types of dogs,
different types of sea life, different types of cats,
but even though they're different,
they're still the species that they are.
But the idea of macro evolution, macro changes,
where one species becomes another, zero evidence.
You go look at the fossil record.
If all of the life that exists on the earth evolved
from form to form, there should be some evidence
of the transitionary forms.
Zero, none.
Evolution is just a false idea.
It is a godless idea, and there's no evidence,
and duh, of course, there never will be,
because that's not the truth.
God created the heavens and the earth.
Not nothing randomly evolved.
I mean, when you think about it, it's just,
it's this picture of this wonderful, beautiful,
creative God.
You look in the oceans, right?
I was like, well, how many ocean species are there?
Just kind of curious, right?
Well, they currently say that of fish, just fish.
We're not talking about dolphins and whales, just fish.
The things that are classified as fish,
there's over 36,000 individual species of fish
in the oceans.
And then get this.
There's 36,000 that they have identified.
According to a 2023 study in the, it's from NOAA,
I forget what it means, it's some big national oceanic thing.
They said 91%, this is of 2023,
91% of ocean species have yet to be classified.
It's 2023, people.
Mankind thinks it's so amazing and awesome.
We have conquered everything,
and we haven't discovered 91% of the fish.
The ocean's huge.
So 36,000 species of just fish,
and that's just within 8% of what we discovered.
God is awesome.
Birds, I was like, how many birds are there?
Well, there's about 10,906 individual species of birds.
That's not including insects.
It's just, it's amazing.
And they beget of their kind, right?
God blessed them with all,
blessed them all with the ability to reproduce
according to their kind.
And it has been that way since the very beginning,
and it's that way today.
And yet science keeps trying to say, no, no, no,
there's no God, there's no creator.
And then you're like, show me the proof.
And they can't because it doesn't exist.
So now verse 24, we get to day six.
Then God said, let the earth produce living creatures
according to their kinds.
Livestock, creatures that crawl
and the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds.
And it was so.
It was so.
You see, I want you all to, if you have your own Bible
or you're able to highlight in your app or whatever,
go back through all the days here
and look at where God said,
or it tells us that God said this,
and it was so.
Sometimes people wrestle with the idea,
am I really saved?
You know, I've confessed Christ.
I'm filled with the Holy Spirit.
I believe, you know, well, I read the word
and I see these promises.
And I read things like if you confess Jesus with your mouth,
believe in your heart, you shall be saved.
I read things like God so loved the world
that whosoever would believe on him
shall be saved and not die, not perish.
And then we go, am I really saved?
God says, I hear your prayers, and we pray and go,
does God really hear my prayers?
God said and it was so.
That is what I want you to remind yourself of
every time the devil tries to say, did God really say?
Right, that's what Adam Meve should have done.
Serpent came, did God really say you would die?
And they should have just been like, God said don't,
and it was so, we're not.
But they didn't, did they?
Remind yourself that God's promises are true.
God's word is true, God's word is true.
If God has spoken, it is so.
And so, God saw that it was good.
God saw that it was good.
He made the wildlife of the earth according to their kinds,
the livestock according to their kinds,
and all the creatures that crawl on the ground
according to their kinds.
So day three, when God was forming the earth,
we saw there, read there that he formed the dry land.
Apparently the entire globe was covered in water
at the very beginning, and then it says God caused
the dry land to appear, and then he covered that dry land
with vegetation that was to be food for day six,
the creatures, the creatures that he built.
So he formed it, formed the land,
and then he fills the land with life, land creatures.
Now, these categories are very broad,
very generic categories, like he says sea creatures,
and he says winged creatures, and then now he's going
livestock and things that crawl on the ground,
and wildlife, they're just the broad categories, right?
Livestock is referring to everything domesticated, cows,
sheep, crawling things is referring to small animals,
things that are really low to the ground or very small.
It could be rabbits, it could be reptiles,
it could be insects even, crawling insects,
and then the word wildlife is kind of the opposite
of the word livestock, this is all non-domesticated creatures.
Lions and tigers and bears, right?
But really, it should be oh my here,
because it's lions and tigers and bears and dinosaurs.
Oh my, right?
We can't say that dinosaurs didn't exist,
there's evidence, ample evidence that dinosaurs existed,
these creatures, ample evidence,
but you're reading here and it's going,
okay, God created all of the creatures, land creatures,
he created them all here on day six.
And you go, but wait, the natural history museums
tell me that dinosaurs reigned for 140 million years
and then they all died out 60 million years
before man even appeared on the earth.
Well, there's a problem with that.
The Bible disagrees with that,
because what else was created on the same day
as all the land creatures?
Man.
Man was created and we're gonna look at that
in the next verse, but before we get to that,
I just wanna encourage us, we can't forget.
We look at the beauty of the land
and the beauty of the sea and the beauty of the cosmos
and the perfection of ecosystems
and the perfection of all of it.
The mind of God created all of this.
It was just from his mind.
He spoke it into reality.
It's just, it's awesome.
When we contemplate the heavens,
we learn something of God.
When we contemplate our planet, our solar system,
like I said, the ecosystems that exist,
how this is dependent on this is dependent on this.
When we contemplate the diverse plant life
and the bug life and the animal kingdom
and all of that stuff, we learn something of God.
In fact, Paul said in Romans chapter one, verse 20,
for his invisible attributes,
that is his eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly seen since the creation of the world,
being understood through what he has made.
And as a result, people are without excuse.
All you gotta look, all you gotta do
is look at the complexity of life.
You look at all that stuff we've been talking about,
of even Stephen Hawking said, there's 40 things
that have to be exactly precise for creation to exist.
And he will see that, he will identify that
and then still go, but it just came from nothing.
God has been clearly seen
through the things he has made from the very beginning.
And every other theory and idea has been about one purpose,
to say there is no God,
and therefore there is nobody I'm accountable to.
I could live how I want, I could do what I want,
I could think what I want, there is no morality.
Everything to explain the way God created
the heavens and the earth is all about mankind
elevating himself, saying, well, we are gods.
We're in control of our own destiny.
And then we look around the world today and we say,
well, how are we doing?
Not so good.
But God's creativity is limitless.
It's limitless.
When he had made all of this, he said it was good.
And again, it's not like it was so good.
I was like, so worship nature, worship Mother Earth,
worship Gaia, no, it's so that we would worship
the one who created it all and give him the glory.
And so here we see that God had formed the world
in three days and now he filled it in three parallel days
with light, the light of the sun, moon and stars,
with trees and plants and vegetation,
with creatures of the deep and winged creatures
of the sky and just a zoo of incredibly,
beautifully, wonderful, wonderfully complex land beasts
and crawling things and you know, it's like,
I've always been like, hey God, could you not
create spiders?
That would have been awesome.
But no, he created spiders, you know.
And some people really like spiders and they still
freak me out to this day.
But it's beautiful, it was all good.
It was all good and so now creation is full
and creation is ready for its ultimate fullness
with the creation of man.
And so here in verse 26, we see that the pace
of the creation narrative slows down a little bit, right?
We've been just kind of running through these days.
But the pace kind of slows down because this is
the pinnacle of the narrative.
So read with me in verse 26.
Then God said, let us make man in our image
according to our likeness.
They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky,
the livestock, the whole earth and the creatures
that crawl on the earth.
So God created man in his own image,
he created him in the image of God,
he created them male and female.
The special nature of this section is apparent
in the fact that the narrative goes from the third person
to the first person, right?
The narrative so far has been third person,
God said this and God did this and God did this.
But here it switches to the first person
where we see God saying, let us make man in our image
according to our likeness.
And you should immediately notice there the plural, right?
Us, our image, our likeness.
And some people go, well, it's God talking to the angels.
That's not possible.
Because angels aren't made in the image of God.
Nor do angels create.
So he would not be talking to the angels,
he says, hey angels, let's make man in our image.
And then in verse 27, we see that he goes from this us,
our, this plural concepts.
And then verse 27 says, then says,
so God created man in his own image.
That word God there is that word Elohim.
It's a plural word to refer to a singular entity, right?
But then when he says created man in his own image,
that's a singular word.
It doesn't say so, God then created man in their own image.
Right, see God is not wrestling with what his pronouns are.
God knows what his pronouns are.
His, singular, one God.
Yet the language here tells us that there's also a plurality.
And again, we're seeing the glimpses of the Trinity here.
This is a picture of divine discussion
within the Godhead of the Trinity,
the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
God here is addressing himself.
And he could do that because although he is one God,
there's also a Spirit that is with the Father and the Son.
We saw that in verse two as the Spirit was hovering
over the waters of the earth.
And this Spirit is both one with him
and distinct from him at the same time.
And then the New Testament goes on to tell us
that not only is there a Father,
not only is there a Spirit, but there's the Son
who is also one with him and distinct from him
at the same time.
Again, we read that in John chapter one, verse one.
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
And all things were created through him, the Word.
And apart from him, not one thing was created
that has been created.
And so here in verse 27, you're gonna see this repetition.
Verse 27 is in the Hebrew language, it's poetry.
It's written like a little three-line poem.
And it's repeating the word created.
So God created them.
In his image, he created them.
He created them, male and female.
So the idea of this repetition is that
this is the pinnacle of what started in verse one.
God created the heavens and the earth.
Then he created and he created and he created and created.
And now it's like, boom, this is it.
This is the masterpiece.
You consider, you could,
if you could leave the earth and travel
a hundred times the speed of light
and fly past trillions and trillions of magnificent stars
of various kinds, dwarfs and red giants
and all this stuff, and you could get to the edge
of the Milky Way galaxy and look across
and then zoom through whatever's in between the galaxies
and get to the next galaxy and zoom past
trillions and trillions and trillions of stars.
And you could see just all the wonders of the cosmos,
nebulas and quasars and everything.
Witnessing the birth of stars and the death of stars
and the majesty of it all, nothing would ever compare.
You would never witness anything equal
to the birth and wonder of a human being.
In all of creation, mankind is the pinnacle
of what God made.
Every single little baby boy and baby girl
is the apex, the culmination,
the masterpiece of God's creation.
That's you and me.
Kind of humbling, isn't it?
My God, you know what goes through my mind.
And he goes, you're my masterpiece.
But God, I did this, I said this.
I said this, and he goes, you're the pinnacle of my creation.
It's humbling.
And why?
Why is it such an amazing thing?
Why are we the masterpiece of God's creation?
Because we are made in the image of God.
The image of God.
That is something wholly unique to us as humanity.
You know, every child is an eternal living soul
that at one time did not exist.
And then they did.
And then the Bible tells us God gave that soul
a physical body that was knitted together by God
in the womb of its mother.
The whole beauty of man and woman
and the miracle of life.
And then he gives that body and that soul,
they come together and then it has sentience,
it has awareness, it has life.
When you ponder this, you can begin to understand
why abortion is so abhorrent.
That this is God's masterpiece.
And mankind wants to rip it apart and throw it in the trash
because, eh, it's inconvenient for me
to be a parent right now.
It's terrible.
It is terrible.
So when everything that exists in our universe
fades away, everything that exists in our universe
fades away, every human soul will still live on eternally.
That is a wholly unique expression of existence
that only humans get to experience.
Being in this creation in the image of God.
So what does being made in the image of God mean?
You know, one, it means we're different from the animals.
We're different from the animals, we're not the same,
we're not descendants of.
We're wholly different.
Sure, there's similarities.
Well, yeah, because the same thing happens
and we're not the same.
Well, yeah, because the same dude made it all.
But we're not evolved from monkeys.
We're wholly different.
Image of God also means that we're created
as a trinity as well.
Right, Father, Son, and the Spirit is the trinity,
the Godhead, we are made body, soul, and spirit.
1 Thessalonians 5.23 tells us,
may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely.
And may your whole spirit, soul, and body
and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We're made in the image of God.
That phrase image, it means after the pattern
or after the likeness or in the likeness of God
who is himself a trinity.
And so in the beginning, man and woman were pure,
perfect, righteous.
We were everything, every potential of eternal goodness.
That is how God created mankind to be, like him.
Every potential of goodness in his likeness,
in total fellowship with our creator,
permanently, always fully in his presence,
eternal living forever.
That's how he created us.
And so yeah, I wanna point out real quick,
he said he created them male and female.
Genetics supports this.
Biology supports this.
And yet today in our culture, it's like, nah.
You know, it's the only place
multiple genders beyond male and female exists
is in the fabrication of mental illness.
Now I don't say that to make light of those
suffering from such mental illness.
Those in our culture today that are suffering
from this mental illness, they need help.
They need prayer.
They need care.
They need support.
Not in continuing the delusion,
but in learning that it's not true.
That just because they feel that way
doesn't then mean reality is bent to that way.
But it is wrong and cruel to encourage gender dysphoria.
It is wrong and cruel to say,
you have this mental health issue,
but we're not gonna treat it.
We're just gonna lean into it and say,
oh yeah, no, it's totally fine and totally okay.
And then to go from that to talking children
into irreversible surgeries
based on their confusion and the fact that they're kids,
they're growing up, they're figuring out life.
They're figuring out who they are.
And we say, no, no, no, that delusion is true.
Let's forever mutilate you.
It's disgusting.
But it was the fall, right?
We're created in the image of God,
and then the fall is what diminished and marred
and diluted and then it's gone.
And then the fall is what diminished and marred
and dimmed that image.
The fall is what messed up that image.
It destroyed that likeness in that sense, right?
Sin brought death to the physical world
and it brought death to our physical bodies.
We were supposed to live forever.
But sin came in and corrupted all of creation.
Sin, according to Romans chapter one,
made our thinking worthless,
darkened our hearts and made us fools.
That's what sin did.
Sin is what makes us think feelings alter reality.
Sin is what makes us think a good Supreme Court justice
shouldn't be able to define what a woman is.
And yet they should be deciding what law interpretation
is for the entire nation.
Sin makes us think that makes sense.
Sin destroyed the original righteousness that we had
and it killed our fellowship with God.
But again, even in that,
our souls are created to be eternal.
Our souls are created to be eternal,
so thus without Christ,
death in our physical bodies
leads to eternal separation from God.
Hell, darkness, forever.
And so the Bible tells us that Adam,
he failed in the garden.
He failed.
But Jesus, who the Bible calls the second Adam,
he did not.
You wanna see what God fully intended for us
as his creation?
Look at Jesus.
Study his life, his behavior,
what he did, how he acted.
That is what God intended for us as his creation.
Perfect, flawless, sinless.
And the ultimate restoration to that state,
well that's what faith in Christ grants us.
When we come to him and,
God I believe in you.
Forgive me of my sins, come into my life.
It tells us that his perfect righteousness
is what died for our sin.
And then when we put our faith in that,
we're granted his perfect righteousness.
That's not a fair deal.
But he loves us and he does it.
And then with that perfect righteousness comes the promise.
That one day, when this body of sin and death
passes away because it is corrupt,
if you've been saved and forgiven,
God's gonna give you a brand new glorified body.
Probably one like the original one
that was meant to be in the direct presence of God
dwelling forever in eternity.
And that is what we look forward to as the church.
So verse 28, and we'll try and get through this quick here.
God blessed them and God said to them,
be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.
Rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky
and every creature that crawls on the earth.
God also said, look, I have given you every seed bearing
plant on the surface of the entire earth
and every tree whose fruit contains seed.
This will be food for you.
For all the wildlife on the earth,
for every bird of the sky,
and for every creature that crawls on the earth,
everything having the breath of life in it,
I have given every green plant for food.
And it was so.
God saw all that he had made and it was very good indeed.
Evening came and the morning, the sixth day.
You notice a transition here where it says God said to them.
It wasn't just God said.
Right, we, mankind, we are the image bearers of God
and that means that we are uniquely built, designed,
equipped to hear God's word and to receive God's word.
We have that unique ability.
No other creature can do that.
It's unique to humans.
But it also means that we're responsible to what we hear.
We're responsible to the morality of God.
We're responsible as spiritual beings.
We're accountable.
But God speaks to us.
And so part of the image of God includes dominion
over everything, right?
It said man was created to rule over everything.
The intent was supposed to be God, us, creation.
Right, God's in charge.
He appoints us to be in charge.
And we rule over all of creation.
That was the intent.
But then again, Romans one tells us that the foolishness
of sin is that we worship the creation instead of the creator.
Instead of the creator.
So as image bearers of God, we were meant to rule
over everything as his appointed stewards.
That also means that we have permission to study creation
and to learn about creation and to harness
the potential of creation.
I believe that's a gift of God.
The fact that we could study and learn.
The fact that we could look up in space
and see everything and the fact that we could,
I mean it's just beautiful that God gave us this ability
to study it and learn it and harness it.
He says to subdue it and to rule it.
That means to study it and to use it
for our benefit and our joy.
And then it seems to be here, some of you are gonna groan
that the original intent was that everything,
including man, were created to be on a vegetable diet only.
But praise the Lord, after the flood in Genesis nine,
God said to man, eat the flesh of the beast of the field.
So before anybody cancels their Memorial Day barbecues,
we're good for steak.
Okay.
So we see man as the pinnacle now of a fully formed
and fully filled creation made by God for God.
We see this wonderful picture that before the fall,
man and woman created the image of God,
stood under God as appointed rulers of all creation
in a state of perfect spiritual and social
and ecological perfection, right?
They had food, more food than God provided at all.
They were at peace with God.
They were at peace with nature.
Right, what does it tell us that's gonna happen
in the new heavens and the new earth?
It tells us that the lion and the lamb
are gonna lay down together.
It tells us that children are gonna be able to go up
and pet the lions, right?
Back in the beginning, you had a T-Rex and you could pet them.
That's the picture.
And then as we get forward into Genesis,
we'll see after the flood, well,
that's really after the fall, things change, right?
Things changed.
Chapter two, verse one, it says,
so the heavens and the earth and everything in them
were completed.
That's the story of creation.
Beautiful, perfect.
But unfortunately, the fall did come.
Mankind sinned.
Our nature was altered.
We're still in the image of God, but it's a marred image.
It's a broken, diminished image,
and we're separated from our creator.
And we went from being perfect and full and everything
to formless and empty.
The idea is that our spirit died.
And our spirit is dead until we come to know Jesus Christ
as our Lord and Savior,
and then the Bible tells you you are born again.
Your spirit comes back to life.
That part of us that was connected to God
and His perfection, His creation,
that part of us that was just able to be in His presence,
the part that died when we sinned,
God brings it back to life.
So what awaits the Christian believer?
It's the very likeness of Christ. That's our hope, right?
Colossians 1 says Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
Hebrews 1.3 says the Son is the radiance of God's glory
and the exact expression of His nature.
Jesus, the second Adam, He succeeded
where the first Adam failed, and because of that,
He has the right, if you will,
to grant all those who believe in Him forgiveness.
And so, we're in the image of God.
All those who believe in Him, forgiveness, life, restoration.
Now, 1 Corinthians 15.49 says,
just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,
we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.
That's the destiny for every Christian.
Those who put their faith in Jesus, to be in His image,
in the image of God as God originally intended it to be,
ruling with Jesus.
Why? Because Jesus is the perfect bearer
of the image of God.
And then look what it says after Colossians 1.15
where it says Jesus is the picture, right?
He is the image of God.
It goes on to say, for everything was created by Him,
in heaven and on earth, the invisible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities,
all things have been created through Him and for Him.
He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together.
He is also the head of the body, the church.
That's us.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
so that He might come to have first place in everything.
For God was pleased to have all His fullness
dwell in Jesus.
And through Jesus, to reconcile everything to Himself,
whether things on the earth or things in heaven,
by making peace through His blood shed on the cross.
The one who filled the earth with light,
the one who filled the sea with fish
and the air with birds and the land with creatures,
He specializes in filling hopeless, empty, sinful
men and women with His righteousness,
with His peace and His joy
if you simply call out to Him in faith.
He does that and He did that.
It told us there by making peace
through His blood shed on the cross.
And so in closing this morning, I just wanna ask you,
anybody here, are you watching online?
Is there emptiness within you?
Do you feel that dark emptiness, that sense, that void,
that whatever you wanna call it, that,
I was made for more than this.
That the life I'm living just seems pointless
and dark and evil.
If you're sensing that emptiness,
will you bring that emptiness to Christ this morning?
Will you bring it to Him and give it to Him
and set it down at His feet?
Do you sense your need for forgiveness and righteousness?
If you do this morning, then come to Jesus.
Come to Him and His fullness will become your fullness.
Lay down your life at His feet and say,
God, I believe in you and I believe who you are
and I believe what you said about sin
and I believe I am a sinner.
And if God is speaking to you this morning
and you wanna be filled with peace
instead of guilt, you wanna be filled with joy
instead of sadness.
We're not even gonna heads bowed and eyes closed.
If you wanna receive Jesus this morning,
I want you to raise your hand right now where you're seated
and say, I need to be saved, I need to be forgiven.
If you're watching online and you know
that God is speaking to you and you need to receive
forgiveness, just in the chat on whatever platform
you're viewing on, say, I wanna receive Jesus.
Anybody in this room, God is speaking this morning.
If you're not right with Him, you need to get right with Him.
You have to get right with Him because the end
is going to come for all of us.
And there's only God who can make something
out of our lives.
Anybody else?
God is speaking to you this morning.
Well, I said earlier that we're gonna end
today's service in communion.
You know, communion is the time where those
who have been filled with forgiveness
and filled with grace and mercy in the Holy Spirit,
it's the time where we collectively together remember
the shedding of that blood on the cross.
And so, here in the room, you should have all gotten
a communion cup, okay?
If you're online or watching online,
please get your emblems ready.
If you did not receive one of these cups
as you came into the sanctuary today,
please raise your hand nice and tall
and our elders will get some to you over here,
right here in the front, right here in the middle.
Okay, keep your hands up so they could find you.
But for the rest of us here, just quick instructions.
There's two little tabs on the front of these cups,
a very tiny little plastic tab and a thicker tab.
If you would all pull the tiny thin tab back right now
and it'll reveal the cracker that's in the top of the cup.
You know, in the gospels it tells us
when Jesus took the bread, it tells us that he gave thanks
and then he broke the bread and as he gave it
to his disciples, he said, this, this is my body.
This is my body which is for you.
He said, do this in remembrance of me.
And that's what we do today.
You see, as we learn today, our bodies, our physical bodies,
they were corrupted by the fall.
They were corrupted.
Perfect righteousness was lost when mankind sinned
and to regain that glory, to regain that righteousness,
to regain that perfect state that God created you and me in,
only a perfect atonement could pay the price for our sin.
And that perfect atonement was Jesus Christ.
The only man who ever existed, he was both fully God
and fully man at the same time, but in his humanity,
he never sinned.
He never thought a sinful thing, said a sinful thing.
He never did anything wrong.
He was perfect.
But he willingly gave his perfect body
to suffer the full wrath of God for our sin.
We're the ones who've disobeyed God.
We're the ones who broke his law.
And yet as we're remembering today,
those of us that are saved have been filled with the grace
and mercy of God, we remember.
We deserve death.
We deserve the consequences of sin.
But he loved us so much, he took the price.
He paid the price for you.
It was his body given for us that paid the price
for our eternal future.
And so when we by faith trust in him and his death,
and that's what we've done if we call ourselves Christians,
we've trusted in him, although this body of sin and death
will one day die, we know, we celebrate that the salvation
of our soul is secure, that we will one day have a new body,
the one we were intended to have.
Some of you are like, can I change my eye color or my hair?
Right, I don't know.
Ask God.
But the point is, is it will be a glorious body
able to stand in the presence of God Almighty forever?
And it was because he went to the cross for us.
Father, we thank you so much.
Lord, we are so grateful that you came and lived
in this body, this flesh that we're in,
but God, you lived in it perfectly,
without sin, without error, without wrongdoing
in any way, God, you lived the life
that we were created to live in that sense, Lord.
But because sin entered the world, Lord,
we became corrupted, and our bodies now die.
And Lord, the only reason your body died
is because it was nailed to a cross.
God, that you died in this body of flesh, to pay the price,
first, and to pay the penalty, and then after you
were resurrected to show us the body of glory
that you have prepared for us.
Lord, we know we don't deserve that,
and yet we say thank you, we're so grateful, God,
that you took the full wrath of God
onto your perfect body to pay the price for the sin
that we do and we commit in this body.
We love you so much.
We thank you, God.
Let's partake together.
And so if you very carefully pull back that thicker tab,
be very careful, it'll review the juice underneath it here.
And this part is in memory of what Jesus did.
He took that cup that had the wine in it,
and he said, this is the new covenant,
new covenant in my blood.
And he said to them, do this in remembrance for me, right?
Remember what I did for you, and we remember
that when he shed his blood on the cross
to make peace for us, it was a permanent
solution.
It was a once for all time solution.
The wrath of God is permanently satisfied.
The wrath that is against our sin was permanently satisfied
because Jesus shed his blood as the atoning sacrifice.
Hallelujah.
It's not a temporary covering.
It's not a you're good until you do something bad again.
It's forever.
Jesus said it is finished on the cross.
You and me, we are the pinnacle of God's creation.
That's not meant to puff us up,
but we are the masterpiece of God's creation,
marred by sin, and God said, I love you so much
that I will shed my blood to wash you clean
of all the mar, all the darkness, all the blemish.
And that's what his shed blood meant,
that all the darkness was washed away.
All the stain of sin was washed away
so that we could then be filled with hope
and filled with righteousness and filled with joy.
You, his greatest creation, us, his greatest creation,
the Bible says we were the joy set before him.
We were the thing that led him to the cross,
that caused him to go there willingly,
knowing what was gonna happen,
but he said, you are so important to me.
I love you so much that I will shed my blood for you,
and it's in him we experience the fullness of God.
Everything that he intended for us in the very beginning
when he created mankind.
And sure, we've seen a glimpse of it in this life,
but we look forward to the fullness of that in heaven.
Father, we're so grateful that you sent your son
to die for us.
Lord, we see in your word that you're clearly one God
that simultaneously exists in three distinct persons, Lord,
and even though our minds might not be able
to comprehend what that means, Lord,
you said it in your word, and so it is so.
But you also said in your word
that the wages of sin is death.
You said in your word that there is none righteous,
no, not one.
And that's why you came to this earth 2000 years ago,
to live a perfect life, to die as the perfect atonement,
that Lord, we would be able to be made righteous in you,
to experience the fullness of that restored relationship
with you, our creator, that we had in the beginning.
So God, we who are made in the image of God, Lord,
when we come to know you, our spirit is born again,
made alive, and we are then back into that place
of that image of God that we enjoyed in the beginning.
And we know, Lord, that here on this earth,
we still have this messed up body,
we still have this sin nature that wrestles against us.
And so, Lord, we strive through reading your word
and trusting in you to be the people you've called us to be
while we look forward to the perfection that is ahead of us,
the glory of being with you forever in heaven.
But God, we know it was all because of what you did
for us on the cross.
And we thank you, we love you so much.
Let's partake together.
I pray God would richly bless your life,
that as you walk with him, you never forget
that God created everything out of nothing.
There's nothing you can't do in your life.
That as he fills you with his spirit,
he wants to fill you with all the fruits of that.
And he'll do it as you trust and rely on him.
Why?
Because he said it, and it is so.
Amen?
Let's worship the Lord.