Published: June 18, 2023 | Speaker: Tim Freitag | Series: God as Creator - Part 6 | Scripture: Genesis 1-2
Transcript
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we're several weeks in now and I like to move us out of Genesis before the study is over and look at some of the other areas but I I want to do one more pass here because we haven't actually talked about
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um the individual days and some of the things that we can learn in the individual days and I've probably got too much on the Slate this morning but we're going to give it a shot
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um as we look at Genesis and the creation week as it is usually termed in Genesis 1. there's several different devices that we can use to understand it
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and to explain it and I recognize now that having put this giant TV up here if I write anything over here only half of you are going to see it so we'll figure this out as we go I
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don't have everything that I should have had on my slides but um we talked last week about the
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we probably could I also can actually just do this well just actually put it back I can just do this I think I can just write right on here right this has some method for me to
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just write just write yeah there we go now I just gotta go find my technology here
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all right here we go so we talked about um what Ely pointed out was our acronym of lull
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order and life and life and the way that this responds to what we see in Genesis of the response to Darkness formlessness and void is
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answered then by the installation of light of order and of life that is one method or one mode of looking at these things and
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understanding them understanding them we're going to talk about another one this morning and that is the refrain of the good and I think most of you would recognize what I'm talking about out of the actual
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text of Genesis one as we go through and we see it creates the heavens and the Earth the Earth was formless desolate we've talked
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about these things in verse 3 God said let there be light and there was light verse 4 God saw that the light was good we have that first sort of
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idea that first instance of getting a notion of it being good or goodness being there being there we continue on God separated the light from the darkness God called the the
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light day the darkness he called night there was evening and morning one day he said let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters separate the waters from the waters God made the expanse and separated the
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waters that were below the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse and it was so and God called the expanse Heaven it was evening there was morning a second day God said let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one
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place in the dry land appear and it was so God called the dry land Earth and the Gathering of the waters he called seas and God saw that it was good we get there that phrase and as we go through
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the rest of the chapter we'll see it a number of times that God saw that it was good so this refrain that comes back again The Good the good and capped off of course with the very good
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there is this refrain that we see here and we have other instances of this idea of a refrain I think most of you would be familiar that you know Psalm 136 very
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famous one we sometimes sing it in our assembly you know his loving kindness is Everlasting continues throughout their repeats almost this sort of drum beat
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and it's clearly underlining or underscoring for us that the purpose the thing that the psalmist wants us to hone in on here is the Everlasting loving-kindness of the
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Lord you know it's why it's there over and over again it sort of drilled in here but in the goodness refrain as we go through it lands in
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slightly odd places if you notice as I was sort of reading there this first section we have the idea that God says the light was good and then it takes us actually a number
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of versus to get to that first refrain that first instance actually comes after the creation of the Seas the separation of the Seas from the dry land before we get
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that first it was good um you see the next one after the creation of plant life also in day three God saw that it was good in verse 18 comes after the creation of the heavenly
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bodies the installation of the light vessels in in day four verse 21 verse 21 creation of the Seas and the birds it comes at the end of day five and then we
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have it immediately in the middle of day six after the creation of the creatures and we finally get that Capstone that very good at the end of day six so the point being these refrains don't exactly
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line up with the evenings in the mornings do they when we read through Genesis you sometimes pick up on the refrain of the there was evening there was morning one day the it was good doesn't line up with
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those he lines up with the acts that God is creating here it lines up in a slightly different order
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the focus of the author here well I'll say it this way both of these things are in here there is an order of the days there is a refrain of the evening in the morning in fact the writer Moses gives us day one day two day three
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he has those the days are there and we're going to talk about the days but it seems though as though as he's moving through and the Cadence of what he's doing here with these pieces some have
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compared it even to A Hymn as having stanzas in this way he's underscoring for us I think in the same way that Psalm 136 is underscoring for us the goodness of God in creation
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now what does it mean when God looks at his creation he says it was good or God it says that God saw that it was good is God like a man he sculpted this he stands back at it and says
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I'm pretty impressed with myself that was good that came out well I don't think so I think what you're seeing here when it when God sees that it is good
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he's seeing the reflection of his own goodness in his creation it is reflecting back to him he's observing that goodness
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that goodness instilled in it when we think about our own burden of being the in the image of God that very good that we get at the end that Capstone we think about this
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sometimes in terms of spirituality and the things that we are called to do in our growth and Grace and all those things thinking about that reflection of God but I think what the
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writer is trying to give us here is all through the creation all of these things that God is putting it's reflecting that goodness back to him because God made it
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he sees this goodness in his own works and so must we I mean it immediately calls to mind to me the the heavens are telling of the glory of God right for another Psalm another Psalm um nothing that comes from the mind and the hand of God can be anything less
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than good than good and so I think Moses is trying to give us this us this chorus this refrain if you like coming back again and again
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telling us telling us the goodness of God and he sees it he God recognizes that goodness of himself as reflecting back in his creation
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there's a correspondence with man's fundamental sin as we read it in Romans chapter one chapter one since the creation of the world his invisible attributes his eternal power
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and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse I think that's part of what we're
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getting at when we say God saw that it was good his invisible attribute is reflected back out of his creation they did not sorry so even though they
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knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened professing to be wise they became fools
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and exchanged the glory of The Incorruptible God for an image of the form of corruptable man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures I think this helps us understand a
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little bit hopefully what Paul means here that his invisible attributes have been clearly seen the goodness of God is fundamental to his uh
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his uh created order that the glory of the Creator is is underscored by the author of Genesis here and when we talk about getting to the nature of God as Creator and this is one of the
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things that I've set out to do in the study is to say okay how do we understand God as Creator what does it mean for him to be the Creator and do these things these things his goodness and his reflected Glory I
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think in this is Paramount that we see this and we understand this as the writer of uh Genesis is highlighting it for us
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any questions or comments about that
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doesn't Paul answer that in Romans 2 . I think so yeah you want to expand on your thought well he just talks about the Gentile who without circumcision without circumcision obeys that his
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right and he says um he says they are a law in some respects unto themselves in the in the sense that they have they are still answerable
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right it gets back to that larger concept of being answerable to God even though they did not have the same Revelation that the Jews had yet and
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this is what he's getting at in this context is context is the glory of God is there is evident in creation the the power of the Creator I mean we've we've I'm trying not to go
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into this road so much because I frankly think that a lot of us have thought about this and discussed this over time but one of the things that happens in the creation versus Evolution debate is intelligent design right
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we talk about intelligent design and there are theistic evolutionists who want to go down some of these roads but we see these things I mean you think of basically any of the
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scientific uh breakthroughs or any of the inventions that have powered the modern world all of these things man bent his mind to them he put his effort
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to it he carefully crafted them in many many of these inventions have been discovered to either have been directly inspired by things in nature
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or there are a few examples where we have built something and we have later discovered God already made it I mean you think of toothed gearing it wasn't until significantly after the
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Industrial Revolution we found a number of insects that have effectively toothed gearing in their legs to allow them to Spring okay these things exist in the world God has placed his intelligence in the world
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and we as sinful man want to erase all that and say oh it didn't need to be designed it didn't need to be planned it didn't need to be carefully crafted as good it worked its
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way out you know the inevitable result of these things never mind the theory of of entropy that is consistently demonstrated in the world the theory here is that all of this stuff eventually reached some higher level of
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order out of its formlessness and the writer of I think Paul here is is picking up on part of what we're reading in Genesis which is it was
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formless it was dark it was void lifeless and God put light into it God put form into it he ordered it he
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created all of these things and his you know when he says here his invisible attributes his divine nature have been clearly seen understood through what has been made
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been made he's saying they can't be excused just because they didn't have the same Revelation that we had
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the expectation I guess the expectation of God is for him to be honorable I'm not sure
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there is a phrase that has come out of the Theology and philosophy of these things which is the the difference um ought and can because somebody ought to do something
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does that mean they can do the thing and so there is a sense in which Paul is saying they they had no excuse they ought to have honored him as God and yet
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they are also condemned because they are without that revelatory power that we have in in the scripture
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Dishonored honored active and willful Valium against the god whose attributes and existence were without doubt
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just through the creation so it's not saying that those who were outside the elector did not hear the gospel can honor him it's saying that mankind
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Dishonored him Dishonored him even though his presence his nature his power were evident to all of them so if it's not a path towards salvation
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for the non-elect it's a reason for condemnation for the entire human race
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I mean it's worth thinking about absolutely and and it's worth dwelling on while we're here because it does connect back I think to what Moses is doing as he's underscoring the goodness of God is it relates back
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to this idea that it's that it's there that it's visible and that to deny it is a one of the fundamental sins of mankind
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God doesn't play something like God doesn't play tricks with with me he doesn't roll dice yeah and so I'm wondering if there's somewhere like that even though he may not be a believer is unaware
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I don't know go ahead well keep in mind I think it's it's a good point but keep in mind there were men who called upon the name of the Lord right before no yeah right so you know
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we tend to think Abraham and then Moses and those but there were people who honored God that's that's what they were probably people who have 100
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it's all God's grace and his his purpose we don't know anything about it because it's not in his Revelation this is this is where I sort of Drew my breath and then then paused because part of what Paul has in scope here I mean when we say man that that's everything from
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literally as he says the creation of the world up to when he's writing you have all of the the pre-diluvian folks who had some understanding there that we're
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not told right we we get Notions of of things they knew because we see them doing things and God saying yes that was right or no that was wrong but we don't see him giving them the revelation of
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this was the right thing or this was the wrong thing there are there are pieces there that are beyond the Revelation that were is recorded for us in Scripture that's hard to speak to because I don't have it
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right and there's there's been that thing that has bothered people in philosophy effectively forever Christian philosophers I mean you look at Dante's whole thing and and uh limbo and Purgatory you know he puts a bunch of the Greek philosophers into limbo
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because oh they just they were just such great philosophers and they just they were that close to honoring God and I I just I can't put them in hell right and so it's like we're only given the binary
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in scripture you either are you aren't and and the Catholic church has invented all sorts of intermediate States because they can't quite get over that um notion anyways we're going to go on
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to another literary device this morning another piece of this before I jump into the days but I'm going to use this to jump into the days and talk about them individually and that is the notion of uh parallelism
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um and how they uh work with each other you effectively have out of the six days setting aside the seventh day of rest the six days go in the two halves line
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up in this way day one you have the creation of light day four you have the formation of the sun moon and stars the vessels that are containing the lights then um in day two you have the separations
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of the heavens from the Seas the creation of the fish and the birds on day five the the upper and lower spheres in that sense of the of the lights and
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the or not the lights of the The Heirs the atmosphere and the seas in which the the fish are contained and then day three you have the Gathering of
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to be real embarrassing with me Gathering of the land and creation of plant life and then the creation of the terrestrial creatures and of man on uh day six day six so you have these
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um pieces lining up the second half of the week effectively fills in the first half we talked uh at some length last week
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about day one in the creation of light and the things that are happening there and the fact that it's not until day four that you have the Sun the moon and the stars there is a a level well we'll come to that when we come back to it but
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he's filling in a detail there he's he's establishing those things that are to govern the lights the the vessels the bodies that govern the lights from then
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on day two the separation of the of the heavens above and the Seas below and then he fills it in with the creatures that go there same with with day three and day six
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there's also emotion a progress if you like from light to matter you go from the sort of ephemeral aspect of light that we discussed that scientists don't
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quite understand what it is even and we go um on into the creatures the the matter in motion life if you like
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yes all now light so when we think about day one we did talk about this a little bit last week that God does not banish the darkness he does not completely remove
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it from existence he regulates it he orders it he sets it to his own purpose and his own task and in day one with light we have the separation of light and darkness it makes a period of light
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that we're he actually is terming for us day he also by the creation of light functionally establishes the passage of time we looked at this again very briefly but the the movement of light
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gives us the establishment of time it is in some senses that bridge of space and time that the movement of light gives us the connection between the physical order of the universe and the movement
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of time and so the creation of light does set that into order even though when we come to day four we're going to read that he gave them to govern the day right he gives the son to govern the day
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but the day exists for effectively three days before he he puts that in there um so yes he establishes time he establishes days and and one question
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that has come up for folks is um you know why why does the phrasing in Genesis go the way it does
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why does he say evening and morning and morning day one day one why does it go that way and I think part of it is because the very first action
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that you see the first thing that's made is light is light that's the period of the daytime the evening is the first transition then because you've had the day all the light
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all day the evening is that first transition into the order of the darkness and then you have the morning picking us up the next day it's effectively the punctuation for these
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because at the end of each day you have the transition from the period of light into the period of Darkness the evening and then the morning as far as we can tell God is suspending his action over
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the night not specifically stated that way but it seems to be implied in the structure of Genesis 1. um so there is a hierarchy here in the
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order as things progress that they're um you know one one has described it as an intelligible hierarchical order of being that you're going from Light which is
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again I use the word ephemeral down to man which is that image of God you know as you move through you have the separations the terrestrial sphere
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and then you have the plant life at the end of day three the the sort of lower order of Life as we think about it and then as you move through you get the you know establishment of those things ruling over the seasons the fish and the
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birds which everybody knows are not as good as good as um you know the land animals that's why we only eat fish on Fridays no
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but you move on to the terrestrial creatures and then man is that Capstone you're moving from the Lesser to the greater in some respects in terms of the intelligence and the way that God interacts with them
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reflecting it back to him and being very good yes good yes and so similar to what we looked at last week of you know we have creation of light without vessels at the very
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beginning we see in Revelation that in that new Temple God is going to have the the lamb is its light we're told we we don't have the Sun and Moon ruling over the the day and the night we're returning back to
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that state and there is a there's an aspect also of you start with God and you end with the image of God the reflection of him in this back to him we're also going to
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probably well I'll save that for the end because we probably don't have time but um so as we think about those things day one then is is the separation of light from Darkness establishing time establishing a period of Light which is
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the day the day two he separates the waters from the waters and establishes the firmament um most of your if you're not reading a King James or a new King James
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Translation your Bible probably says um expanse instead of firmament I I prefer the word firmament but it has been excised somewhat because it's more
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scientific to say expanse because firmament gets us into trouble with medieval theologians who thought that this guy was like literally solid and all this kind of stuff um the point of all that is
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the firmament is the atmosphere the clouds the precipitation The Ordering of weather as he separates the the heavens the the separation of the waters
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he is creating an order over the weather we think about how important this would be to the people particularly in an agrarian society to have too much precipitation is bad too little
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precipitation is bad we're gonna end up dead either way in fact it's only going to be eight chapters later that we're going to see a lot of precipitations really bad for the majority of humanity um there's also this level of you know
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people want to argue about oh the you know use of the firmament Etc I mentioned this I think in our opening study when the Apollo Astronauts are hurtling back towards the Earth and they were coming up on the
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magnetosphere pretty quickly boy it sure does seem awfully solid because if you hit it wrong you're going to skip right back off into the outer Cosmos okay there's a level at which that atmosphere
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and that magnetosphere and all that stuff that surrounds us and holds our atmosphere in I don't know about you guys I don't follow astronomy super closely but as far as I can tell we have yet to find another planet that does
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this in the entire universe that we can see and we can see a long way now this is a really unique bubble so on day two God is establishing that Shield that protection that order
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in which all of the life that will come can be guarded and protected and established and so he's establishing that order as he moves through day three is he separates the lower
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Waters from the earth and orders and delineates terrestrial space just as day two was The Ordering of that sort of atmospheric or cosmic space as he pulls the waters back and and
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exposes the dry land and then we have the the the the command of God saying that the the land of the earth should bring forth the plants and um
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establish these things from the ground I was a little bit surprised I hadn't really thought of it this way as I was reading through some of these things that some contend that nothing was actually created on day three
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because what does God do on day three if you read the verse he pulls the waters back he establishes the land and he says that the Earth should bring forth its plants that the
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seeds should start growing now it doesn't particularly bother me if you want to take it one way or the other I tend to think that he was creating plants and and seeds in life and establishing all that stuff but just in
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case you wanted to know the things that people argue about behind the scenes on some of this stuff the idea of whether or not God created stuff there but at the same time there are some
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logic here logic here because you think about it especially again the context in which this was given to the people of Israel an agrarian society you have
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soil water seeds water seeds the production of of Life of food of of agrarian society is established here and
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that you have that dry land you have the precipitation has already been ordered and now you have the plant life so you have that fundamental that foundational aspect of of creation there
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in the post-flood period and we've already sort of talked about the deluge is in some ways a reversal of the separation of the waters isn't it it's a reversal of these two aspects because the waters come down and the waters come
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up and he floods the surface of the Earth um so there's a reversal of that I think you would also see again this Genesis is being written to the
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people of Israel who just came out of Egypt I find it impossible to believe that The Parting of the Red Sea would not have been in their mind as they're thinking about God pulling the waters back
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exposing the dry land and establishing a place or a path for life on the Earth God tells us in his promise
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at the end of Genesis 8 his his um sort of poetic offset that's set there it says while the Earth remains seed time and harvest cold and heat summer and winter and day and night shall not cease
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his promise to his creation is that these things will be established well what are we looking at here this is effectively the reverse order of food weather and time or if you like life
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order and Light so he's renewing his promise as the Creator there to keep his established
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order his established life his established light that these things will not be done away with or obfuscated by their maker
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day four he gives us the lights that govern the times and the seasons the markers of what God has already established he does give them governance over those things in fact he tells us that the the sun will be as a sign to
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rule over the day or to govern the day and so you have that set up there in day five and moving through these somewhat quickly because I want to try to get them all today day five the creatures of
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the air and the Sea are set to populate those Realms the purpose and the function that God gives to them is to team or to multiply um that he establishes them and tells them
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to to fill their realm their um place that he's given them I'm going to read from the end of
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so in uh verse 20 verse 20 21 really God created the great seat Well I'm going to start in 20. God said let the waters team with swarms of living creatures and let the birds fly
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above the Earth in the great open expanse of the heavens well that that would have been enough right and then God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that
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moves with which the water swarmed according to their kind every Winged Bird according to its kind and God saw that it was good this is the first time in Genesis that we return to the use of that word Bara
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that we talked about at the beginning created that God made a thing that he created it this is the only time that this shows up again in this section as we move through here rather the first time it shows up
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again even though he's created these other things other things he uses this term and I think he's singling out the great sea creatures in part again is somewhat polemical to the
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society in which it was given there's an awful lot in the surrounding ancient cultures especially if you look at their cosmologies that the god or the hero or whatever had to go on some sort
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of conquest and frequently he wrestles with some great sea creature in fact we'll even see Echoes of this pulled up in job later where he talks about God doing battle or or chaining or leashing
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if you like Leviathan um there's a lot of sort of ancient thought that goes around this and I think what the reason that he's singling out the great sea creatures is he's
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saying there's no contest here God made them they're firmly under his control he established them just the same as he established everything else
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as we bring my chart back up finally in day six you have the creatures again given function according to their kind and their purpose is to reproduce to fill the Earth similar to the plants that we see being told to
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sprout and expand and fill there is a use again of the land where he he speaks to the land and he says you know let the land bring forth
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doesn't mean in the sort of Greek um you know Genesis of clay things coming up out of the ground I think it's effectively just the same as saying you know the the places the
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boundaries of their their habitation that God has established let them be from the land creatures of the land and finally the the last part there in in sort of what we would call 6B
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God establishes man gives him a similar function to multiply he gives him an increased function of governance over the Spheres the Spheres both the terrestrial sphere and the Sea
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and the air he gives dominion over all of it of it we have another function of man as we read it in Genesis one before we pick back up with the the
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sort of details in Genesis 2 we have the male and female we have the um relation of man and woman and woman and finally we have the function of
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relating to God as bearing His image it's a bit odd in some senses or it's very odd in terms of the larger ancient near Eastern context
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because the rest of creation is placed in relation to man if you contrast this to a lot of the ancient cosmologies the creation is established for the benefit of the god
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um the the things are created here in fact some of them we have wars between man usurping things from the gods and yet God here has established man and given him Authority given him Dominion
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set him over it it ends on a somewhat anthropo anthropocentric note man in the image of God is this climax of creation and this
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is well we're probably going to do our last bit out of Genesis next week as we've talked about the Ancients and we've talked about their their images and the things they've carved where do you keep the image of your God
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are you going to leave it in the street do you where do you keep the image of your God when you've you've gone to Corinth or Athens or wherever and you've carved this and you've spent all this money on Silver and you're just going to leave it out in the open do you
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keep it in the temple you make a temple and you house the image of your God in it and I think that's what you've seen here and we're going to pick up theme up next
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week of creation of Eden as the temple in which God has placed the image of himself in fact at the beginning it's going to be the place where God dwells because he
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walks with man and that picks up a thread that goes as we talked about in our introductory lesson all the way through to the end when we finally get back to a place where God and man dwell together in that
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creation Jenny
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yes yeah I think that's a valid way to look at it or to think about it um so we're going to leave that off there and we're going to pick up that that element of creation as Temple and
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man dwelling in that Temple and and how those pieces relate as we go down through the rest of Redemptive history we're going to leave that here and we're going to close in word of prayer and go
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the father we do thank you for your word we thank you for the glory that you have revealed in it both in your written revelation of yourself and indeed even in all of your creation all of your
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established order that we can see around us and glorify you in and so as we gather together as a body father we go to worship you in song in prayer and in
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the receiving of the word preached we ask that you would be glorified that your name would be lifted up we ask that you would Empower your preacher to deliver your word in that spirit that
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you have given to us that it might be received and kind and given its do work in our souls and our minds we ask all of this in Jesus name amen