This
week, we are looking at the opening chapter of the very first book in the bible
called the book of Genesis. Yesterday we discovered that, unlike Eastern religions; unlike the New Age
Movement; unlike monism and pantheism, God and creation are not one essence that
are intertwined with one another. The Bible teaches us that there is a Creator
and there is a creation and that the Creator is distinct and separate from the
creation. There is only one God and you and I or any other created thing is not
God. “In the beginning God”. Today, with that in mind, let’s look at all of
Genesis 1:1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth.
Now
that leads us to a first and obvious question that has been asked by all of
humanity throughout history. And that question is this: How? How did God create
the Heavens and earth? We begin to find answers to that question beginning in
verse 2:
The earth was formless and void, and darkness
was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the
surface of the waters.
Moses records for us that God created the heavens and the
earth and that the earth was formless and void. But this morning, why would
Moses say that the earth was formless and void after God created the heavens
and earth? At first glance, that does not seem to make sense, does it? Here we
see Moses revealing for us the reality that God’s first creative act was to
create the materials that would be used to create the heavens and the earth.
Think of it this way. Prior to Genesis 1:1, there was
nothing else that existed except for God. Nothing. In Genesis 1:1 God created
the elements that make up the universe that we live in. In Genesis 1:2, Moses
is recording that the elements that God would later use to create the universe
were formless and void. It is kind of like this glob of play dough here. At
this point, this play dough is just a glob of play dough. It has no form and it
is devoid of any meaning and purpose. It is just here existing. That is what
has happened in Genesis 1:1-2. Out of nothing God has created the elements that
He will later shape into what we not know as the universe, which Moses refers
to as the heavens and the earth.
Now this leads us to another
aspect of the question “How did God create the heavens and the earth?” And that
aspect involves the time it took God to create the universe and how old the
universe actually is. Amongst people who have read and studied the Bible, there
are six prominent views when it comes to the time that God took in creating the
universe.
The reason that there are six
views is due to two reasons. First, the word used for beginning in Genesis 1:1, in
Hebrew, simply marks a starting point for what comes afterwards. This word does
not denote any specific length of time, nor does it mean that the next thing
follows immediately. In addition, the Hebrew word for day, yom, can refer to either a literal 24 hour day or a period of time.
And since both of these words can be ambiguous, it has led to a great deal of
debate and to six different views of how God created the universe.
So I just want to take a minute
to explain what these views are and how they relate to what the Bible teaches
regarding how God created the universe. The first view is referred to as Historic
Creationism. This view holds that what God created in Genesis 1:1 existed for
an undefined period of time before God began preparing the uninhabited universe
as a functioning system. God first created the stuff that would be used in
creation from nothing and then shaped that stuff into something. This view
holds that the preparation of the uncultivated land and the creation of Adam
and Eve occurred in six literal 24 hour days. So this view leaves the
possibility of an old earth, six literal days of creation, and a young humanity
on an old earth.
The
second view is referred to as Young Earth creationism. In this view God created
the entire universe, including Adam and Eve, in six literal 24 hour days. This
view affirms that the universe is less than ten thousand years old and interprets
the data of science in terms of Scripture and does not compromise God’s
teaching about the date and divine methods of creation with naturalistic
scientific theories.
The
third view is referred to as the Gap Theory. This view maintains that a first
creation occurred perhaps a billion years ago, then, a catastrophic event,
likely the fall of Satan, left the earth in the destroyed condition of Genesis
1:2. God responded to the disaster by recreating the earth as recorded in
Genesis 1:3-27. So the earth is old from the 1st creation and
mankind is young because of the recent creation. The problem with this view is
that the Bible does not speak of two creations. Also at the end of the six days
of creation, God declared all that He had made “very good” which does not
correlate with the claim that He made the earth very bad and destroyed.
A
fourth view is referred to as the literary framework view. In this view Genesis
1 and 2 are intended to be read as a figurative framework explaining creation
in a topical, not sequential, order. The six days of creation, according to
this view, are to be interpreted metaphorically. The problem, however, is that
even when God uses figurative language in the Bible, it does so to communicate
a literal truth, which is not what this view does when it comes to creation.
A
fifth view is referred to as the Day/Age view. In this view, God created the
universe, including Adam and Eve, in six sequential periods of time that are
geologic ages, not literal 24 hour periods of time. The biggest problem with
this view is that the order of events in the six days is not the same order as
held by old-earth science. For example, the sun appears on day four, which
contradicts the scientific view of creation. Another problem with this view is
that the six days of creation seem to be six literal days, which we will see in
a minute.
A
sixth view is referred to as Theistic Evolution. Theistic evolution maintains
that God essentially began creation and then stopped working directly with
creation to instead work through evolution. This view has three huge problems.
First, it inherits all the scientific impossibilities of evolution as a theory
of origins. Second, evolution teaches that one species evolves into other
species, while Genesis 1 teaches that each species had offspring “according to
its kind”, not another kind, as evolution postulates. The scientific data
actually agrees with Genesis on the impossibility of one species evolving into
another. And third, the rest of Scripture portrays God as being continually
involved in the details of creation, not indirectly involved.
Now
this is where the meaning of the Hebrew word for day comes into play. If you
believe that the six days are literal 24 hour days, then you must accept either
historic creationism, young earth creationism, or the gap theory as how God
created the heavens and the earth. However, if you believe that the six days
are not literal 24 hour days, then you must accept one of the last three views
of creation, which are the literary framework, day/age view, or theistic
evolution.
So
how can we tell which of these views is right? When we read the story of
creation in the Bible, which we will do in a minute, it seems apparent that the
six days are six literal days. We will see that each day is numbered so that
there is a succession of days, with morning and an evening, which is the common
vernacular for a day. In addition, in a section of another letter in the Bible
called the book of Exodus, we see God say the following to Moses in Exodus
20:8:
"Remember
the sabbath day, to keep it holy. "Six days you shall labor and do all
your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you
or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle
or your sojourner who stays with you. "For in six days the LORD made the
heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the
seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
In
God’s command to the Jewish people to remember the Sabbath, God’s creative work
is set as a precedent for us. God Himself, speaks of the creation as being in
six literal 24 hour days. So what view is the right view? Here is a question to
help you think through this issue: Did Adam and Eve have a belly button? Did
Adam and Eve have to have a belly button? Do you think God created Adam and Eve
as babies and said good luck surviving? Do you think that God created plants as
seeds that had to grow into plants to produce fruit?
I believe
that both Young Earth Creationism and historic creationism align with what the
Bible teaches regarding God’s creation of the Heavens and the earth. Young
earth creationism faithfully communicates God’s creative activity as recorded
in the first chapter of the book of Genesis and also does not contradict
scientific evidence, such as carbon dating, because the Bible states that God
created the universe as a fully functioning and mature system that was ready
and able to sustain the creation.
And
Historic creationism, which holds that what
God created in Genesis 1:1 existed for an undefined period of time before God
began preparing the uninhabited universe as a functioning system, which
occurred in six literal 24 hour days also faithfully communicates God’s
creative activity as recorded in the first chapter of the book of Genesis and
also does not contradict scientific evidence, as this view leaves the
possibility of an old earth, six literal days of creation, and a young humanity
on an old earth.
And
more importantly how God created the universe is an open handed issue. What is
a closed handed issue is that God did create the universe from nothing. Since
no one was around when God created the universe, whether young earth or
historic creationism is right we will not know until we go to be with Jesus.
What
I find so interesting is that the people in the Bible were far more concerned
about knowing who God was than how God did. The Bible was not written by God as
a scientific textbook to explain every detail of God’s creative process.
Instead the Bible was written as God’s revelation to humanity of Him being the
Creator and sustainer of the universe.
Tomorrow,
with that in mind we will look at how God created the universe…
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