In this lesson, Pastor Dave Capoccia considers what the word “day” means in reference to the days of creation in Genesis 1. Pastor Dave then defends the 24-hour day view against several popular objections. Finally, Pastor Dave examines Genesis 1:1-19 to find out what exactly took place on the first four days of creation.
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love how the hush descends from the glass now especially nine o’clock let’s get started good morning welcome to Sunday school last week we overviewed the six days of creation presented to us in Genesis 1.
we saw that Genesis 1 gives all the indicators of historical narrative we saw that it means or we saw that the means by which God created is also indicated pretty clearly in the text God spoke and it was created got created by his word and we also saw the sequence of events described in Genesis 1 differs sharply with the popular view of Origins today the sequence of events suggested by modern secular scientific theory does not fit what the text says in Genesis 1.
today we’re going to focus more closely on the first four days of creation and here is our lesson agenda we’re going to examine the word day itself lots of controversy about this word what does it exactly mean we’re going to investigate that thoroughly we’re going to talk about objections to the traditional 24-hour day View whether those objections are substantial and valid and then we’ll consider specifically what took place on creation days one to four now today is going to be a little bit more apologetic in its focus rather than Life Application focused there’s not going to be a separate set of application questions at the end but I trust that this will still be edifying for us all let’s now go before the Lord in prayer lord it’s so awesome to meditate on you as creator father son Holy Spirit working creating in a way that is more powerful more amazing more mysterious than any creation that we do we have to work with things that already exist and we can only do certain things with them but God what is how can we comprehend your mind where you think such wonderful things and you bring them into existence so easily Lord it is a joy to go through this but God help me to be able to explain this well help us to understand and help us to be confident to be able to hold fast to what your word says hey this would be really blessed time together amen let’s start by talking about the word day you so frequently in Genesis 1.
what exactly does it mean and how do we know that well in any language words have multiple meanings if you look up for example the word run in an English dictionary you will find about 40 meanings just for the verb form not to mention the meanings that are used for the word when it’s a noun or an adjective however if a woman said to you I got a run in my stocking while I was running to the store and when I ran my eyes across the shelves to find my favorite favorite brand of toothpaste it wasn’t there because they had run out well even though run is used in four different ways in that sentence you know what each one’s means you understand that sentence how is it that you know it’s all based on context and what does that word mean foreign exactly what is surrounding the use of that word what are the other words and phrases that are used around that word they show you which meaning of the word is meant in a sentence and this is a fundamental concept of language this enables us to communicate in the elaborate ways that we do when a word has multiple meanings the words meaning is very dependent on its context especially the immediate context of a sentence now this is also true for the word day both in Hebrew and in English they is a word with multiple meanings but the meaning of the word day as intended by the author or speaker it will become abundantly clear based on context and allow me to demonstrate I’m going to give to you several passages from the scripture the Old Testament in particular that use the word day and as I show these to you I want you to answer in your own mind what does the word day or days mean in that sentence and how do you know answering your own mind and then I’ll ask an answer out loud so I think I have four of these First Genesis 35 28. now the days of Isaac were 180 years what does days mean in this sentence it does refer to his lifespan or to just generalize that slightly days refers to a period of time with a specific length doesn’t refer to 24 hours it refers to a period of time with specific length how do we know that oh wait Eric what were you saying exactly the rest of the sentence actually defines the period that is called days in the beginning part of the sentence it says the days they belong to Isaac and they are defined as being 180 years so you say oh this isn’t referring to those other meanings of days it must refer to a period of time that encompasses 180 years very good now let’s look at another one Leviticus 9 1.
now it came about on the eighth day that Moses called Aaron and his sons and the Elders of Israel now what does day mean in this sentence okay let’s be more specific a particular time okay uh you’re saying date a specific time we can be even more specific than that very good yes yes so we’re talking about days of the week which are 24-hour periods this is a 24-hour day in this sentence how do we know that what about this sentence shows this yes that’s the way you interpret day here okay so Glenn you’re talking about it being a particular day and Eric kind of built on that that number in front of the day the the number Eighth that is an indicator of a 24-hour day this is a uh a set of days in sequence it’s given a number this is a 24-hour day also this is a narrative passage we see events taking place it came about Moses called more likely to be a 24-hour day so narrative passage past tense sequence type verbs ordinal number 24-hour day okay very good let’s look at another one numbers 11 32.
the people spent all day and all night and all the next day and gathered the quail he who gathered at least gathered ten homers and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp now what does day mean here okay Eric you said light Mike you said a section yeah so what portion of the of the day is meant the daylight portion day here refers to the daylight portion of a set of 24 hours and how do we know that because it’s contrasted with night it says all day and all night okay they’re defined separately so we’re not talking about a 24-hour period even though this is part of a narrative it’s distinguished from night we’re talking about the portion of a day in which there is light very good now one more Ecclesiastes 7 14.
in the day of prosperity be happy but in the day of adversity consider God has made one as well as the other so that man will not discover anything that will be after him now what does day mean here all right Mike you say season any other thoughts a time period is this a specific time period you say yes and no uh Pastor Bobby you said yes do we know the limits of this time period it doesn’t have like oh it began here it ends at another point we just know it has a certain quality to it it’s the day of adversity it’s the day of prosperity this is an undefined period of time how do we know that oh I actually kind of started to answer that a little bit prosperity and adversity do not last according to 24-Hour segments with a portion of a day or the night or something like that this is just a period that doesn’t have a strictly defined start and end and moreover this is part of wisdom literature ecclesiastian Proverbs they often speak in Maxim type language referring to the fool the wise men particular periods of time or Seasons that you go through so because the details in the sentence and because of the genre of literature appears in we would say day is an undefined period of time period of time of undefined length oh these are just four examples but this is pretty simple isn’t it relatively straightforward you don’t need a PhD to figure out the meaning of day or days in each one of these passages and I’d even give you all the sentences around it I just gave you the sentence in which the individual sentence in which it appears this is a good thing this is the one this is God’s this is one of the gifts that we have in language we can confidently determine the meaning of a word like day just by looking at the words and phrases that are used around it now this sets us up for considering Genesis 1. so take your Bibles and open to Genesis 1 again and let’s ask what does day mean in this passage we’ve established that this is narrative this is historical narrative but let’s note a few sentences that use the word day so if we can figure out what are the days of creation verse 5 Genesis 1 5 notice it says God called the light day and the Darkness he called night and there was evening and there was morning one day verse 8 God called the expanse heaven and there was evening and there was morning a second day verse 13 there was evening and there was morning a Third Day verse 19 there was evening and there was morning a fourth Day verse 23 there was evening and there was morning a fifth day in verse 31 God saw all that he had made and behold it was very good and there was evening and there was morning the sixth day what is the sense of the word day in these verses okay certainly he’s connected with evening and morning we’ll say more about that in a second and it certainly does have a defined period but again we can be more specific what kind of days are we talking about here these are 24-hour days ordinary 24-hour days and how do we know that Glenn already pointed to one detail because it’s paired with the terms evening and morning and how do evening and morning connect with the 24-hour day that’s right they’re the beginning in the end or the two portions of a day so evening and morning put those together you get a whole day a 24-hour day what else shows this as a clue that this is a 24-hour day we’re talking about here because of the sequence not just the sequence of events of historical narrative connected with what’s happening on these days but because we see the number attached to each one of those days when you see a number like second third fourth if it’s not separately defined and distinguished from night we’re talking about a 24-hour day these are the three main details that I’ll point to this being a 24-hour day the elements of a day are given evening and morning repeatedly actually the days presented in a narrative sequence of events one happening after the other and because the days are all numbered second day Third Day Etc say that again Mike right right so Mike’s pointing out we don’t see some sort of insertion of clues that would point us in a different direction now these all fit together like a sequence of 24-hour days it really is that simple when we look at the grammatical context of the word day in each one of these sentences we see clear indicators of a 24-hour day this is the plain sense of the text it is the sense that the Hebrews would have understood as they received this from Moses going into the promised land we’re talking about simple 24-hour days so that’s the way we should take it but if that even if that weren’t enough there are other compelling reasons for us to take the days of creation first second third fourth fifth sixth as 24-hour periods I’ll give you four additional arguments as to why we should take the days as 24-hour days one of these we’ve already seen and that is the pattern of the Sabbath listen as I give to you Exodus 20 verses 8 to 11 again Exodus 28 to 11 I mentioned this last time this is from The Ten Commandments particularly their commandment to keep the Sabbath this is how God articulates it Exodus 20 verses 8 to 11 remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord that is Yahweh 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 four in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the Earth the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy so notice that Exodus 28 to 11 uses the fact that God created the Earth in six days and then rested on the seventh day and made the seventh day holy as the reason that the Israelites must work six days and then rest on the Sabbath day that’s the whole basis how God created the world and this setting aside setting apart the seventh day was no joke you might remember in the pentateuch soon after this was established there is an Israelite who went and gathered wood on the Sabbath do you remember what happened to him he was executed he was stoned to death you got to get this right God is serious about the Israelites keeping this day holy that God had made holy in the way he created the world however if the Sabbath commandment were based on a symbolic creation account if it doesn’t really tell us when or how God created the world how long it took to do so when he did what if the original creation week took a Time longer than a literal set of six 24-hour days then the reasoning that God himself gave Israel for keeping the Sabbath makes no sense how could he hold them to this standard if what he said in Genesis 1 didn’t actually take place as we noted previously God didn’t need to take six whole days to create the world they could have just done it in a moment people say oh you know why would you say God took you know six days certainly it took longer well actually the question we should be asking is why did God take so long why did he delay why did he prolong this process to six whole days of creation and one day of rest God didn’t even need to rest so why’d he do that there’s only one answer it was to set a pattern for Israel it was for the institution of Israel’s Sabbath and work pattern and this would serve another purpose on top of that it would ultimately serve as a shadow pointing to the ultimate Sabbath rest found in God’s Messiah Jesus Christ the Sabbath picture the Sabbath command they are tied up with how God created the world but taking the creation days is something other than 24 hours it makes this arrangement totally arbitrary yeah you know I didn’t really do it this way but that’s the way I kind of told you I did it so that’s you better keep this rule that would make any sense so not just the grammatical cues from Genesis 1 but the Sabbath pattern given us in Exodus 20 but then there’s more the third reason to take 24 hours is because of New Testament scriptures New Testament scriptures both Jesus and the apostles speak of Creation in the New Testament in a way that affirms a literal straightforward understanding of Genesis 1 and its days 24-hour days let me give you one clear example Mark 10 Mark 10 verses 5 to 8.
Jesus is speaking with Jews about marriage and divorce and Jesus says Mark 10 5-8 because of your Hardness of Heart he wrote you this Commandment that you can divorce but from the beginning of creation God made them male and female for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become one flesh so they are no longer two but one Flash they say what does that have to do with Genesis 1. well think about it this passage affirms 24-hour days in Genesis 1.
because Jesus says from the beginning of creation that phrase to have any meaning or any accuracy there could not be long periods of time between day one of creation and day six of creation because it’s on day six that God creates man it creates male and female he creates marriage that must be very close to the actual start of creation on day one or else it cannot rightly be said to be the beginning of creation that’s millions of years later that’s not the beginning of creation the only way to keep the time period short is by taking the days to be 24 hours now some say well the beginning of creation just means the beginning of the human races creation but that cannot be the phrase beginning of creation appears three other times in the New Testament one is a reference to Christ Revelation 3 14 calling him the creation’s architect and originator and the other two both mean in their context they must mean in the beginning of the world that’s Mark 13 19 and II Peter 3 4.
moreover I’m the 20 times the phrase in the beginning appears in the New Testament none of those other times other 19 times refer to the beginning of the human race so there’s nothing from the passage in Mark 10 5-8 that says oh this is just the beginning of the human race it’s much plainer to say oh this is the beginning of the world the entire creation and there’s nothing else in the New Testament that would make us take it that way so why take it that way except you want to fit in certain ideas that come from outside the Bible there’s no concrete reason from the immediate passage of the rest of the Bible to take Jesus meaning in Mark 10 6 to be referring only to the beginning of man’s creation so Jesus affirms 24-hour days in Genesis 1.
two other New Testament scriptures that do the same on Mark 13 19 and Luke 11 50-51 Mark 13 19 Luke 11 15. why don’t have time to look at those right now but you can look at those later chapters 11 and 12 and coming to grips with Genesis also explained these scriptures very nicely all right so we see three reasons let me give you a fourth must be 24-hour periods because otherwise we have a problem with death and disease one of the reasons why people want to see long ages in the days of creation is because they need these to support evolution and the current popular interpretation of the fossil record we need long ages of time to explain the death the disease the Thorns the carnival carnivore killing that we do see in the fossil record but there’s a problem those things require death those things require things that are not good those things require a curse how can these things have appeared before the fall if these things appear in the fossil record and we need millions of years to allow it to play out how can these things have appeared before God finished his creation how could that be on a world that God the finishing of his creation says is very good a world that does not yet see death death disease Thorns carnivore behavior these are all seen in the fossil record by the way they don’t qualify as good and they contradict what the scriptures themselves say about God’s curse on Creation in the New Testament for example Romans 5 12 Romans 5 12 says therefore just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin death entered the world through sin and so death spread to all men because all sinned Romans says death came in through Adam’s transgression not the way God created the world and Romans 8 20 to 21 Romans 8 20 21 says for the creation was subjected to futility vanity not willingly but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God death the corruption disease Thorns that’s part of the vanity of this world and creation longs to be set free from that that’s not the way God made it it was the way God subjected it though after man rebelled that was not part of God’s originally good creation so to force long ages into 24-hour days and actually creates a problem by making God put corruption into the world before the fall Non-24 hour days pose a serious theological problem because they bring in these not good elements into part of God’s very good creation that’s four reasons and let me just give you one more church history Juris history up to the 1700s I again said something about this last time but say more about this now before the popularization of what’s called geological uniformitarianism now if you’ve heard the term uniformitarianism actually does anybody know what that means can anybody Define that for us it’s a scientific Concept in which you say the present is the key to the Past if we want to understand how the world was and how processes took place in the past let’s just look at how the world is now how long does it take for something to happen now that must be what took place in the past it takes this long for a rock to get eroded today well where did the Rocks come from that that stand in the Grand Canyon well it must have been a long process of erosion must have been really long must have been millions of years because the present is the key to the past but there’s a key assumption in that that the past is not very different from the present there wasn’t some catastrophic event there wasn’t some Supernatural event that um that would change things in a way that we didn’t expect in one sense this idea of okay things are constant in the world it is a it is a basic concept in science but when you apply it to geology or certain things to how the world was formed how the terrain came about how how various things the world came about you run into some problems geological uniformitarianism became very popular in the late 1700s everything we see today explains everything we see in the past before that oh I guess it should say something else once people started to do that that’s when certain Christians even certain Christian leaders start to say well maybe the days of creation aren’t 24 hours because like all these scientists they’re saying it took way more than a certain number of years uh what I guess young Earth people were saying at the time 6 000 years oh though the geology of the world could never have been formed in 6 000 years and needed millions of years oh oh well maybe we need to reinterpret this before that before these uniformitarianism ideas became popular and by the way second Peter totally contradicts uniformitarianism if you remember that passage from Peter where he says they suppose Jesus is not going to come again because everything that we see now is everything that was in the past and everything that’s going to be but Peter says they forget that God created the world out of nothing that was a big change that was very different and they got flooded the world that was a big change and that was very different and God’s going to make another big change in the future when he comes back it’s not going to be like the way things are now there’s going to be God’s um not catastrophic but this momentous intervention have gone into human history that even reshapes the world so actually uniformitarianism has super big problems when you just consider from the scriptures but before that idea began to start finding its way into the church virtually every Christian Theologian took the days of Genesis 1 as 24-hour days there were some exceptions but for the vast majority of church history every Church leader is saying obviously 24-hour days why is this even a question the Age of Enlightenment understand that’s kind of where uniformitarianism appears within that period Age of Enlightenment people are getting obsessed with autonomous human reasoning it was not the first time that the church encountered naturalistic explanations of the universe’s origin this is actually kind of surprising though it shouldn’t be let me give you an example it’s a great set of sermons on Genesis 1 from a certain 4th Century Church Father Basil of caesarea we actually met this guy in our church history course briefly it’s one of the cappadocian fathers love those guys three persons who are key for arguing the Divinity of the Holy Spirit and of Jesus Christ and the Aryan controversy basil is one of them he preaches this sermon series on Genesis 1 and in these sermons quite plainly takes Genesis 1 as actual history and he laments the Folly of those who distrust the Genesis account namely people who were not Christian people who distrust the Genesis account and suppose that the Universe came about merely by the chance interaction of material elements to somehow create life and increasingly Advanced forms does that sound like the same theories that are being offered today big bang evolution a version of that existed in the 4th century and listen to One exhortation from one of his sermons I just find really funny this is from homily eight it seems particularly appropriate today he says avoid the nonsense of those arrogant philosophers who do not blush to liken their soul to that of a dog I was once a dog we were once dogs and then we got to a higher form we say that they have been formally themselves women shrubs fish have they ever been a fish I do not know but I do not fear to affirm that in their writings they show less sense than fish well sad basil you should hear the rest of what he wrote don’t have time for it now but if you’re interested it’s in his sermon series called the hexameron which means six days just one example early Christians they faced claims of naturalistic origin from the world’s philosophers and they responded by saying that Genesis 1 account is true God didn’t create with the processes that you say he created how Genesis 1 says by speaking and 24-hour periods moreover early Christians lived in a time in which many ancient cultures claimed to have histories that went back tens of thousands of years oh our civilization is very old we were established a hundred thousand years ago Egypt would say things like that and other civilizations too yet Christians confidently dismiss those claims you say your your civilization’s not that long why would they do that because they trusted the Bible’s history they looked at what Genesis said and they actually came to the conclusion that the Universe was less than six thousand years old it was only during the Enlightenment so end of the 1700s into the 1800s that many Christians backpedaled on creation Miracles other aspects of the Bible that didn’t seem reasonable according to new trends in man’s thinking as only when they change then but nobody saw that in the text of Genesis 1 before that virtually nobody so that again that that strong evidence for us or strong reason for us to ask why should we take it differently is there really something in the text that our brothers missed for 1700 years or was it really something outside the text that of course that is pressuring us to change the way we interpret it the move is away from the plane sense I don’t know where I can explain this fully in the course but I’ve been wanting to say this there’s a wonderful Systematic Theology that I got to read as part of my Seminary education written by um his name is escaping me why can I not remember him right now maybe it’ll come in my explanation but this Systematic Theology is explaining the various aspects of God and theology so readable so worshipful but the writer waffles on creation he says oh you know there’s a lot of controversy about whether wait who is it Wayne Gruden thank you thank you wife for the wind Wayne grudum based on his writings I love him as a brother he’s a continuationist I don’t agree with that he also waffles on creation and it’s so interesting if you read that section where he talks about it he says if you look at the text it indicates 24-hour creation but if you look at the scientific evidence it seems to suggest something different so I don’t know in the end he says he doesn’t know how to interpret it I think he’s he’s pointing out something that is poignant and that is the text is clear a lot of people say well you know Genesis is kind of you know we don’t really know no the text is clear they say well what do you do with the evidence well you got to interpret the evidence through the lens of scripture and it is you are able to do that it’s not as if we say oh no what are we going to do with this evidence no Christians are able to deal with the evidence just a matter of where do you start from do you start from the scriptures and assess the evidence or do you start with man’s theories using the evidence to assess the scriptures so anyways I’m thinking a little bit along with this than than I meant to but plenty of reason for us to take the days of Genesis 1 has 24-hour days clear grammatical cues from the text has to fit this way to make the Sabbath command work a new testament’s treatment of creation the problem of death and Corruption if we take it then something else besides 24-hour days and the witness of church history so I hope you see that we have every reason to be confident that the days of creation are indeed 24-hour periods simple 24-hour days now I think we could just leave that issue right there and that would be very helpful but let me do even more for you let me talk about four objections to the 24-hour View that people have raised and see if we can’t respond to them in a cogent way four main objections maybe you have them maybe you’ve heard them Genesis 1 can’t be talking about 24-hour days because the sun wasn’t created until day four there’s no sun happy day campy night can’t be 24 hour periods when the answer to this objection is actually fairly simple an end review guess what it is Denny yeah God did it God doesn’t need the son to have a 24-hour day he himself supplies the light he himself enables there to be a period of light and darkness I mean in the new heavens and the new Earth it says that the lamb is the lamp there’s no need of a son why is there a need of a son on day one God can do it and you know what’s interesting this is not a novel reply our brothers in the early church made the same reply to the philosophers who objected the same way see God can make a day without the Sun you don’t need a son to have day and night God caused the light to shine supernaturally and he must have had it be a directional light because there was also Darkness the Earth was apparently rotating at that time so that you had day and night evening and morning 24 hours no reason that God couldn’t do this and that’s what the straightforward sense of Genesis 1 requires yeah I mean if God is speaking things into existence why is it a problem for him to create day without the sun yeah I mean it should be it shouldn’t be surprising another objection Genesis 2 4 shows us that the days of Genesis 1 are not necessarily literal let’s see what Genesis 2 4 says take a look at that Genesis 2 4 actually I’ll read verses one to four to give you a little bit more context Genesis 2 1-4 thus the heavens and the Earth were completed and all their hosts by the seventh day God completed his work which he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done then God bless the seventh day and Sanctified it because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made this is the accounts of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that Yahweh God made Earth and Heaven oh it says the day oh no this is a contradiction in the text no it’s not this is actually not a problem at all why does verse 4 of chapter 2 not contradict everything we just said about the days of Genesis 1.
yeah Dwayne exactly yeah Dwayne is pointing out how in my example earlier I use the word run in the same sentence in four different ways but that wasn’t a problem it’s the same thing here day is being used with a different meaning in verse 4 than it has been used even in the three verses right before it you say oh you know that was a big shift no this is a normal for language in fact the clues are all there how do we know that this day is not a 24-hour day in verse 4.
notice what Clues are missing we don’t have it defined separately evening and morning we don’t have a number put in front of it like second third fourth and we have a whole chapter of Genesis explaining that God created in six days and rested on the seventh context would require just logically that day would have a separate meaning in Genesis 2 4. the meaning of the word day here is an undefined period this is normal for language that’s just the context of this sentence you can use different meanings even close together we don’t have the same Clues with this word as we do with the ones in Genesis 1. this is not really a contradiction by the way the phrase in the day that God created in Hebrew it can be correctly translated as simply with the word when you don’t even have to say in the day God created you could say when God created it’s it has the essentially the same meaning and that’s important because we’re going to come to the same issue or you’re going to come to the same issue when God says in the day you eat of the tree you will surely die but we know what happens they eat and they’re still alive after that they continue to live for a long time but they don’t die wait I thought God said on that day they were going to die it’s the same phrase when you eat of it death is going to be the result so this is not talking about in a particular 24-hour day does not contradict Genesis 1.
third objection what about second Peter 3 8 which says do not let this one fact Escape your notice beloved with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day surely this shows a set these days of Genesis 1. they could represent thousands or even millions of years in God’s eyes I’ve heard this objection more than once but to respond to it we need to understand second Peter 3 8 in context listen to verse 9 of second Peter 3.
second Peter 3 9. the Lord is not slow about his promise as some counselowness but is patient towards you not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance so remember what Peter is talking about in that section of scripture this is actually the same section where we talked about the uniformitarianism problem Peter’s audience they are persecuted believers who are also dealing with false teachers and they’re wondering about the apparent slowness of God to keep his promise to come back to the Earth rescues people judge wickedness there were Godless mockers saying that God was never going to come nothing was going to change on the Earth but Peter reminds the Believers that God isn’t slow at all in fact God’s sense of time is totally different from ours it can’t even be fully described verse 8 notice or just think back to what I read to you second Peter 3 8 not only says that a day is like a thousand years but also that a thousand years are like a day how can those both be true how can time for God be both really slow and really fast that’s just that you’re saying Judy God is not bound by time he can enter into time he can interact with us in time and yet he’s not bound by time we cannot fully understand time from God’s perspective but we can know what Peter says that God is patient and he does everything at exactly the right time that’s the point of second Peter 3 8 and 9. the point of that passage is not understand it is not to give us a formula for understanding days from God’s perspective or God days as some caller because if it were this was some kind of formula we’d be hopelessly lost because we get two contradictory formulas is that God day a thousand Earth years or is it one one thousandth of an Earth Day which is a god day not to mention we have Psalm 90 verse 4 which complicates the whole thing because it says a thousand years I like I watch in the night for the Lord I watch the night it’s about three hours so which formula are we supposed to use it’s fruitless for us to try and figure that out because God doesn’t experience days at all like we do God is an eternal and infinite being time doesn’t pass for him like us it doesn’t even go by really slow or really fast totally different furthermore it would be absolutely useless useless for any part of the Bible to speak to us in terms like God days why is that useless I mean first of all there’s no such thing but second of all even if there were it wouldn’t help us we couldn’t understand it because we don’t live in God days we live in human days we don’t experience those kind of days talking in terms of God days would only make sense of God we’re talking to himself but the Bible is God revealing himself to us to talk in terms of God days it wouldn’t be helpful to us that would we would only misunderstand in fact this would go against the pattern of the way God speaks to us in his word every time that God gives specific measurements in the Bible he doesn’t give it in some sort of unit we’ve never heard of God speaks in terms of human measurements he always speaks in human terms for example when God gives Noah the measurements of the Ark it gives it to him in cubits a measurement that Noah understood instead of the Hebrews or when he gives the measurements in the New Jerusalem to the Apostle John and Revelation it gives it in terms of stadia a Greek measurement that John would have understood Revelation 21 17 even says this Revelation 21 17 and he measured its wall 72 yards according to human measurements which are also Angelic measurements isn’t that interesting human measurements which are also Angelic measurements now these are just measurements of length and distance similarly in the Bible God always gives measurements of time in terms of human measurements days weeks months years hours God wrote the Bible to communicate with us it only makes sense that he would use measurements that we understand A system that we ourselves use so therefore there’s no reason for us to change our understanding of Genesis days based on second Peter 3 8 or psalm 90.
we shouldn’t be looking for days from God’s perspective God days no God speaks to us in terms of human days otherwise it’s hopelessly incomprehensible one final objection actually I’m not sure we’ll have time to go through that and somewhat more of a niche objection so if we have time at the end I’ll come back to it but uh some saying based on Hebrews 4 the Sabbath the Sabbath never ended the Sabbath rest of God so therefore day seven never ended but there’s a whole bunch of problems with that which I’ll come back to if we have time so the objections that people raise against a 24-hour view they ultimately don’t hold water and the text is very clear and even some things out just from church history and other places make it so we can be competent the days of Genesis 1 the creation days the 24-hour periods of time so with all that let’s actually examine what took place in those first four sets of 24 hours first 96 hours of the Earth’s existence day is one to four that’s what I’m going to do with the last portion of our class we’re looking at Genesis 1 to 19.
in Genesis 1 verses 1 and 19 sake of time we won’t reread all the verses but just glance with me as as they work through this passage just trying to observe what happens on each day one is verses one to five what happens on day one what does God do Danny you said something okay he made lights and by that midday and night what else did he do that’s right he had to create the Earth in the heavens remember we went we talked about that last time he didn’t just create light on day one he also created the earth and the heavens so we could say on day one God creates the formless Earth with water the empty Heavens time and light and separates the light from the darkness God names the light and names the darkness day and night respectively what happens on day two of creation this is verses six to eight that’s right God he creates an expanse or firmament in the heaven and he separates the Water by this expanse there are Waters below and their Waters above and he names the expanse heaven so day two waters divided by expanse and the sky is created the Heaven is created what happens on day three versus nine to thirteen dry land was not created we have to be careful about this it was revealed very good the land was apparently already created but it was made to appear because what did God do he did speak he gathered the waters into one place so the waters that were below he gathered into one place and he caused the dry land to appear and he named the dry land Earth and he names the gathered Waters seas and he also did something else created all the vegetation on the land all the kinds of plants and trees that also reproduce according to their kinds and then what happened on day four this is verses 14 and 19.
it creates the Sun creates the moon and creates the stars all the hosts of Heaven the Hebrew word for stars in verse 16 it could indicate anything that shined in the night skies it might be like what about the commons of the asteroids that’s all covered it’s all covered in that term Stars and when these lights were created the text actually gives us a few purposes for them they are to according to verse 14 and 18 they deserve as agents that divide day and night they just serve as time markers for sign Seasons days and years according to verse 14 and they are to give light to the Earth verse 15 and 17. so God was producing the light before and then he kind of hands that task over to the celestial bodies on day four and he says now you’re going to be the ones that produce the light that’s what we see in the first four days of creation this is God forming finishing forming the earth and the heavens now two questions of interpretation kind of big ones what are the waters above that God establishes on day two what are the waters above the heavens it’s not a super easy question to answer the most intuitive answer is that the water above is the water that’s visible in the sky as clouds and that falls back down to the Earth as rain and I can imagine the ancient Hebrews being like yeah Waters above others have proposed that the water is above refers to a canopy of water that once surrounded the Earth but fell during the flood of Noah but there are some problems with these two main views verse 14 if you look back at that it says that the celestial lights were placed in the expanse in heaven while the waters were above the expanse wait a second could the sun moon and stars be placed within the sky Earth atmosphere or in a canopy above the water certainly they’re not below the water are they yeah that’s what the text seems to say isn’t that physically impossible also Psalm 148 verses 3 to 4 Psalm 1 48 verses 3 to 4 calls for creation to praise God by saying Praise Him sun and moon praise him all stalls stars of light Praise Him highest heavens and the waters that are above the heavens in other words according to this Psalm not only are the waters above the heavens associated with the highest height of heaven but they’re apparently still there after the flood uh-oh what do we do well some have suggested a third interpretation for the waters above they say that it actually describes a wall of water at the edge of the universe that is to say our universe exists in a giant bubble okay that avoids the previously mentioned problems in Genesis 1 and Psalm 148 but it seems kind of complicated would the Hebrews of Moses day with the psalmist in Psalm 148 understand this complicated sense call on the universe bubble to praise God the best answer this question but what are the waters above is actually the first that it is simply the clouds and the reason why this works is because Genesis 1 is using phenomenal phenomenological language to describe the heavens and its precipitation that is how the waters above appear to viewers on Earth rather than strictly scientific language and this is not a cop-out we actually do this kind of thing all the time in our language I mean consider the term sunrise and sunset scientifically speaking the sun does not rise and the sun does not set it’s standing still relative to the planets of the solar system as those planets rotate in place and then revolve around the sun but from the perspective of somebody standing on Earth the Sun appears to rise to move descent so using terms like sunrise and sunset it is accurate phenomenologically speaking in the same way when the Hebrews looked up at the sky they didn’t see it as we do with many different atmospheric and astronomical layers some closer some farther away they saw it actually much more together almost like Earth was contained in a dome and the clouds the sun moon stars Etc they were all pieces that moved along the surface the ceiling of this Dome therefore to refer to the waters as being at the same level of the Stars it would be phenomenologically accurate for the Hebrews that’s what it looked like even if that’s scientifically not strictly true and after Genesis 1 14’s assertion of the waters being above the firmament the Hebrew preposition as translated above can also be translated on so rather than thinking the water is standing above the Stars think of it more like on the inside of this ceiling what looks like a ceiling the waters are sitting on the inner portion of it so actually in front of the stars and the rest of the heavens so it’s like the waters on the surface of the ceiling and the stars and the Sun and everything is also behind it so I see the waters above us simply referring to the water in the Earth’s atmosphere this is just accurate phenomenologically speaking this isn’t trying to be a scientific statement but whatever exactly the waters above refer to we can say for sure that on day two God more fully formed the heavens including the Earth’s atmosphere and Cosmos finally let’s return to the plants that are created on day three times we see the phrase in that section after they’re kind and appearing in connection with the plants and trees producing seed what does the phrase after their kind tell us about these first plants Judy you had something uh depending on what you mean you say all the same what’s all the same okay I think I’m following what you’re saying there were different kinds created but for a particular kind when it’s said that it’s going to reproduce with its seed after its kind it’s always going to be the same kind so if it’s a wheat it’s going to continue to be a wheat this is important this phrase after their kind it tells us that these first plants and trees they could be classified according to kinds and that they would reproduce in a way that is consistent with that kind so to say that another way when God created vegetation it created them in fundamental kinds and these kinds only reproduced after or according to those kinds and this is actually what we observed today isn’t it we can scientifically classify distinct kinds of plants according to their similar characteristics according to their fertility with one another and you can think about different kinds that you have seen or eat there are many different colors many different shapes many different flavors but only of particular kinds say a pepper kind there are lots of different kinds of peppers and yet they’re all peppers or as Judy mentioned there’s types of grains wheat barley oats Rye but they’re all grains now if you plant pepper seeds are you going to get something other than a pepper plant no or if you plant some barley seeds or you get something other than a grain no they reproduce according to kind it’s not as if you plant one of those you suddenly get a pumpkin plant or a watermelon now depending on how you bread your plants you might see new variations within the kind I painted this certain kind of pepper and it came out a slightly different kind of pepper that is possible but you’re not going to see a plant suddenly become a new kind this is what God is describing for us in verses 11 to 13 of Genesis 1.
on day three God created the original kinds of each plants all at the same time so the pepper kind the grain kind the onion kind the berry kind the bean kind whatever the mankinds are these kinds did not yet have the great variation that we see in our world today they contained within them though the genes that produce the great variety that is now evident and this is another way really that the Genesis account contradicts what is asserted by popular scientific theory today evolutionary theory Evolution supporters see all life originating from one source and then branching out in various directions according to evolutionary change this branching the sub-branching forms or from a common source is sometimes referred to as the tree of life I have a picture of it up there from The evolutionary perspective of plants there was first a progenitor plant or plants and these first few plants evolved in multiple directions over millions of years these first plants produce plant offspring that change kinds becoming new kinds of plants through the process of evolution and that process has repeated until the present day so the theory goes but that’s not what Genesis says it’s not what the trustworthy word of God says in the Genesis account instead of describing a tree of life we have what’s sometimes called an orchard of life all the different kinds of plants were present at the beginning and always reproduced according to their kinds but increasingly they would display variety within the kind over time but never changing kinds and as we’ll see next week this fact would also prove true of animals created on day five and six and also man animals and Men reproduce according to fundamental kinds of the variation within the kind but never changing kinds so to recap what we’ve seen today we’ve observed evidence for why the days of creation should be taken as ordinary 24-hour days we’ve discussed answers to some objections the normal understanding of days in that way we’ve also looked at specifically what God accomplished on the first four days of their creation week we are out of time now if you have questions or comments on based on what you heard please come talk with me afterwards or email me next time looking at days five and six of creation let’s close in prayer Lord thank you for this time your word is true the wisdom of the world is proved foolish so often Lord when compared to your word we can trust your account there is not truly evidence that contradicts that shows that your word is not true no Lord we start with your word and when we use that to assess the evidence it fits it’s not really a big problem and that’s encouraging the Lord help us and Lord to praise you give your give you glory for the way you created the world it is truly awesome it displayed your power it displayed your wisdom in your creativity we enjoy this creation that you’ve made even while it has been marred by the curse but Lord I pray that we would as as we enjoy this creation be directing our fellow men and women to get right with their creator for Lord we are all beholden to you in Jesus name I pray amen all right thank you everyone