Our first text, and where we
will be mostly, Genesis 1, verse 1 and 2, In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form
and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. Genesis chapter
19, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth
His handiwork. And in Romans chapter 1 and verse
20, For the invisible things of him
from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood
by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead,
so that they are without excuse. Now, our study today, did God
really create out of nothing and in six days? There is a question
that causes great disagreements among the peoples that consider
the question, and that being, how did the earth and the firmament
and the sky and the planets and all of that actually come into
being? How did the earth and all things
that we see and experience, how did the universe, how did the
solar system, how did the cosmos come into existence in the beginning? There's the sun, the moon, and
the stars. And how did the massive ocean,
and all there is that lives and moves in them come to be. And humanity that has filled
up the face of the earth, how did it have its original beginning? How did humanity come into existence? and filled all places and all
nations and have scattered themselves abroad all upon the face of the
earth. And remember that their offspring
are now by procreation. That is beyond any doubt or question. Not by an independent existence
do people come into being. Now basically, I guess we can
all boil this down and say, that there are really two views of
how all of this came about, about the origin of all things, about
the origin of humanity and of the Earth. And I would like to
call them two worldviews. There are two worldviews that
are held by people when they consider this question. Because
whether people, whether folk will admit it or not, all have
a bias toward one of these positions or the other. It is impossible
not to. all have a bias in one direction
or the other. And those two views that I'll
mention before we move along are, number one, the theory of
evolution. And that is that all things evolved
by a long and protracted process of time, untold millions of years. Evolutionists throw millions
of years around as if they were no more than pennies. And since
they speak in years, how be it millions of years? You'll never
hear an evolutionist speak in hundreds or thousands or that.
It's always millions of years. Now the question came to me this
week. Since they speak in terms of
millions of years, whence then came or began the cycle of years? Now think about that. So they
have years. When then began the cycle of
years? When did the various cycles of
day and of night, of seasons, summer, spring, winter, and fall,
and the year cycle, how and when did they begin? Was it by the
theory of evolution how to account for the beginning of the cycle
of years? Was it by evolution? Then was
it before the Big Bang theory? Was it before things came into
being as that gaseous mass moved and finally exploded? Was it
before or after the amoeba to man evolution that evolutionists
claim is the reason? Now as we can see, the theory
of evolution requires a very, very old Earth. The theory of evolution requires
ancientness, and that by millions and millions of years. Because
evolution, by their standard, requires millions and millions
of years to bring about the changes that are attributed unto evolution. No changes are evident in hundreds
of years, or even in thousands of years, so evolution only deals
in millions and millions of years, which, to repeat, requires a
very old Earth on their part. For a young Earth, is a death
blow to the theory of evolution for it does not allow enough
time for the process of evolution as they claim is the way. Then the second worldview is
that of biblical creation. there are those who believe in
biblical creation. And this is set forth in Genesis
chapter 1 and chapter 2. It's declared in many other passages
of the inspired scripture and that both in the Old Testament
and also in the New Testament. Now this is the biblical and
this is the Christian view, that in the beginning, as the Word
said, God created the heaven and the earth, and without Him
was not anything made. that was made. John chapter 1
verse 1 and 2. And we will continue to discuss
the two questions then mentioned in the beginning. Did God really
create out of nothing? using no existing material to
create what we see and what we know to be. No matter and no
material was used by God or rearranged by God so as to create the heaven
and the earth and all of that. And then the second question
is going to be, did God create the earth and all things therein
in those literal six days that are named and mentioned in Genesis
chapter 1. We call them a creative week. For in that creative week, God
made all things and He said it was very good. And then the question
comes, were these 24 hour days as we know them, and as they
began to exist, and as they exist now? But before we do that, it
might be a good thing to establish the authority and the authenticity
of the first book of Scripture, and that would be the book of
Genesis. For there we have the most comprehensive
account of the creation of the heaven and of the earth, that
God might make it habitable for the sons of men that they might
live upon it." Now, Genesis, the name and the word, actually
means The beginning or the origin. Genesis, the beginning or the
origin. The coming into existence of
a thing is a Genesis. So the Genesis is the book of
beginning. but is also a foundational book
for the Bible, for the Christian faith, and for the Word of God. It tells us how the world came
to be. It tells us the origin of the
human family, consisting in two genders at the beginning, male
and female. It gives us the pattern of marriage,
man and woman. It tells us of the sin and of
the fall of the human race in Adam and Eve. It gives us the
true explanation for the existence of evil and sin and wickedness
in the world. And that's found in Genesis chapter
3. the fall of the race in Adam
and Eve, and the manifestation of that depravity spread out
upon the earth and filled it with violence, and God destroyed
it by the flood in Genesis. But again, it is also the book
of Genesis that gives us the first and the fullest account
of the great flood that God sent upon the world. It was sent upon
the world of the ungodly, II Peter chapter 2 and verse 5. And this was an instance of the
wrath of God being revealed from heaven against the unrighteousness
and the ungodliness of men as Paul notes in Romans 1 and verse
18. Now, no wonder therefore that
liberals and critics and evolutionists have rejected and have mutilated
the first 11 chapters of Genesis. There has been forever a constant
attack upon the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. Some
have called them myths. Some have said these are but
myths that are recorded in Genesis, Babylonian myths that are brought
over into the Bible. Therefore, to defend what is
said in Genesis, we must defend the authenticity of Genesis as
being divinely inspired and also as belonging to the canon of
Scripture. Now, unless we can do that, I
believe, because someone has counted and said that there are
New Testament references to every chapter in the book of Genesis
with the exception of five or six. that something out of every
chapter is quoted in the New Testament, giving it the authenticity
either of the Lord or of the Apostle. Not only that, but he
said there are some 200 quotations and references and allusions
to Genesis in the New Testament. Over a hundred to chapters 1
through 11. At least six times the Lord referred
to something in them. The Lord Jesus Christ referred
to something in these chapters in the book of Genesis. Here
is the point. Every New Testament referent
by whatever writer or whatever speaker, Lord, Apostle, or Scripture
regarded the events mentioned in the book of Genesis, take
it to be the inerrant and inspired Word of God. Not one who mentioned
Genesis counted them as a myth. Not one doubted the record of
creation or the fall of man or the flood that destroyed all
but the house of Noah. None questioned the division
of the nation. or the confusion of languages
there in Genesis, the call of Abraham, none question the headship
of Adam, or the choosing of a special people in Abraham in the beginning. so that Ham and Taylor did not
err in their book call, the Genesis Solution, in calling Genesis
a foundational book of Christianity, in that Genesis and Christianity
stand or fall together. If it goes down, so does Christianity. So does the credibility of the
New Testament minister who quoted from the book of Genesis and
take Genesis to be the truth of God and the Word of God. But now, with that behind us,
to get to our present study and again those questions. Did God
really create? We don't doubt that. But did
He create out of nothing? Where did all of this come from
that we see? And number two, did He really
finish that work in the six days mentioned in Genesis chapter
1? Well, look at our text. In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now these are
the first words of the Holy Bible. These are the first things that
we meet with when we enter into the door of the house of Scripture. In the beginning. In the beginning, God did something,
God acted. The same way that John begins
or opens his gospel. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God. Now, here's a phrase that is
to be reckoned with. In the beginning. Three words. Question. What beginning are
we to understand by this? In the beginning. Well, not the
beginning of God, for God had no beginning. You cannot speak
of the beginning of God, for there was never a time when God
did not exist, and therefore there will never be a time when
God does not exist. He is eternal. He had no beginning,
for He is the Eternal God. Deuteronomy chapter 33 and verse
27. 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse
17 calls Him the Eternal God. And being eternal, not only is
He without beginning, but He can also have no end. Let me say it this way, He is
the created eternal God. Now that really takes our mind,
gives it a challenge, does it not? That God had no beginning. Though the earth did and time
did, God had no beginning. Most commentaries that I care
to read understand it to refer to the beginning of time, the
beginning of the creation of God, of the world, of the lower
heavens, of man, and of the creatures to inhabit the earth and the
sea. of the solar system and the planet. The concordance gives the meaning
of the Hebrew word beginning to be the first in time or place
or order or rank. As in Mark chapter 10 and verse
6. From the beginning of the creation
God made them male and female. So that sort of makes a connection. The beginning of creation God
made them male and female. It is like the commencement of
time or of history. The beginning of the heaven.
and of the earth, which Psalm 100 and 15 and 16, this earth
is given unto men as their dwelling place. Jeremiah 27 and verse
5. Now who did this? God the first
name by which He is called in the scripture is Elohim or Elimhim. And it is a plural noun, so say
those that are fluent in the Hebrew. And it is the only name
by which God is referred to in the first chapter of Genesis. It is used in almost every verse
of Genesis chapter 1. In the beginning God, or the
name or word is Elohim created the heaven and the earth. Now, we move to the word created. In the beginning, God Elohim
created. It is not said that Elohim arranged
are rearranged or form some existing matter, already existing. The word created, which is the
Hebrew word bara, used five times in Genesis 1, in verse 121, and
three times in verse 27. created. In addition, there is
the word made, and God made this or that. God created, God made,
Genesis chapter 1. Made is also five times in that
chapter. verse 7, verse 16 twice, verse
25, and verse 31, God made this or that. Again, there is this
phrase that leaps out at us constantly in Genesis chapter 1, and that
are the words, let there be. God said, let there be. As in verse 6, Let there be a
firmament in the midst of the water. Verse 14, let there be
lights in the firmament. And several times we read, let
the waters under the heaven be gathered in verse 9. Verse 11,
let the earth bring forth grass. Verse 20, "...let the waters
bring forth abundantly those that live in them." Verse 24,
"...let the earth bring forth the living creatures after His
kind." And finally, there are those conclusive statements,
"...and it was so." That's something that you read again. Some places
are, verse 7, 9, 15, 24, and thirty. In all of those,
and it was so. In other words, God spoke and
it was done. God spoke and it came to pass. Let there be and it was. Now
for our first question. God created. With all this professing,
Christians should agree. And all true Christians do agree
that God created all that we see. For it is written that God
created. But we go further. Did God create
using something or nothing? Did God create using nothing? Or did He use existing matter? Now, it cannot be the latter,
for nothing existed before God created it. It could not exist
on its own, and it could not exist until God created it. For nothing can bring its own
self into being. Nothing can give itself being
of its own. Nothing cannot be something on
its own. It just cannot be. When nothing
existed but God, nothing could be then except God created or
called it into existence. Nothing existed before God's
creation of it. God is eternal. Psalm 98 and
verse 2. before the mountains were brought
forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, even
from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." From everlasting
to everlasting is an expression of eternity in scriptural usage. See also Isaiah 43 and verse
10. So then, how did God create if
there were not any materials at hand? When the potter wanted
to make something, he simply reached down and got the clay,
put it on his wheel, fashioned it, and formed it. But how did
God create when there were no materials, no substantive thing
at hand? Who can bring a clean thing out
of an unclean? Not one. Job 14 and 4. Who can create using nothing
absolutely? Only God. And when God created,
He spoke the heaven and the earth into existence. And I suppose
we could also say that He willed them into existence. He willed
them. He spoke and it was done. He can think a thing and it come
to pass. He can will a thing and it be
so. The psalmist often reflected
upon creation as he wrote. I'm not going to turn there,
but in the 33rd chapter, verse 6 to verse 9, if you want to
take it down or make a note of it, he ascribed it to God who
had created. Especially in the 6th verse of
that chapter. By the Word of the Lord were
all the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath
of His mouth. In verse 9, He spoke and it was. He commanded and it stood fast. Now there's the psalmist declaring
that God created in that fashion simply by speaking or by the
power of the breath of His mouth. Now evolution cannot account
for the absolute beginning of matter or material or gaseous
mass. They take it for granted that
it was so, while at the same time, here they are, chiding
us for believing in the living, uncreated, eternal existence
of God, who did not create Himself, by the way. Don't think of it
in that light. He did not even create Himself. He did not explode into existence
by any kind of a big bang. Nor did another give Him His
existence, for there was none to do that. Nor did He evolve
to become God over a billion or a million years. He is both
self-existent and eternal, and these stand or fall together. If God is self-existent, He is
eternal. If He is eternal, He is self-existent,
for there were none to aid in His being. So to sum up the first
question, yes, God created using nothing. Out of nothing, God
brought into being. John Gill said, this means that
God commanded by His mighty power, non-existent, non-entities into
being, simply by speaking, let there be, and it was so. And our Scripture teaches us
that God made all things out of nothing. Nothing was there
for Him to put together or to arrange or fasten together. Now
the next question is interesting too, and has brought forth, I
believe, a lot of heresy in the Christian Church. How long did
God's creative work last? How long was God at work creating
all of the things that are mentioned and that yet exist unto this
day? Did our God finish creating actually
in six days mentioned in Genesis chapter 1? And were these, I
say again, days as we know them? Or were they lengthy periods
of time, as some have said. What some have called, quote,
day age, quote, theory. day age is how some view it. And by that they mean long protracted
periods of time of indefinite length, but not literal 24 hour
day. Indefinite period, long ages. That's how they interpret the
days in Genesis chapter 1. Now before we consider the creative
week, there are a couple of theories to connect with Genesis chapter
1. Let's look at them and get them
out of our way. and creation. Both of them are
without merit. Both of these ideas are rejected
by some of the best expositors that I've read about. And I confess,
at one time, when I was more ignorant than I am now, of being
sucked in to both of these theories. It sounded good, mysterious,
and I liked it. Now, one is what has been called
the gap theory, if you have heard of the Gap Theory, sometimes
called also the Ruin and Reconstruction Theory by some who study the
Bible. Now, according to this theory,
the Gap Theory, as they call it, some cataclysm of some kind
occurred after verse 1 of Genesis chapter 1. After creation and
that cataclysmic judgment through all of creation into chaos. And they even translate like
this, and the earth became without form and void. And then they
say that verse 2, the last tag and forward, describe the re-creation
or the reconstruction of the earth to make it habitable for
the dwelling of men. Some trace this doctrine to a
man by the name of Simon Episcopius, a strong Arminian who opposed
the doctrine of grace vociferously, born in 1583. Then it was espoused
by the theologian Thomas Chalmers in the 19th century and you're
also going to find it including in some edition of the Scofield
Bible. I think it was the early one
back in early 1900 and you will meet it taught by pre-millennials
and in their Bible school and in their churches and Clarence
Larkin with all of his charts and dispensational truth, and
some even, in connection with the Gap Theory, hold to a pre-Adamite
race of men, destroyed in some way by a catastrophe. Now the
second theory, we set that aside, the second theory is what I mentioned,
the Day-Age Theory, which rests upon the assumption And it is
an assumption that the days mentioned in Genesis 1 need not be literal
24-hour days, not a 24-hour cycle, including a period of light and
a period of darkness or night, but six long ages of time. Now this also will answer to
the name of theistic evolution. that God created using evolution. That's the theory of some who
profess to be a Christian. Such as Hold This View might
quote those texts in Psalm 90 and 4, 2 Peter 3 and verse 8.
that a thousand years is with God as a day and a day as a thousand
years. Now neither of these have any
connection to creation or to evolution. So the question is
this, why do so many professing Christians so readily accept
evolution as ascribed unto God? Why do so many who say they're
Christians, therefore espouse theistic evolution? They say
that God might have used evolution to create, but evolution is not
creation, my brother and sister. Why give place under these theories? Why did they find any traction
or any footing among what's supposed to be Christian influence. Now, me think they got it right
who say these views, these two views, the gap theory and the
day-age theory were adopted so that they could reconcile science
and geology, and the scripture, carbon dating, and all of that,
with the scripture claim that the Earth is young, and evolution's
claim that the Earth is very old. the theistic evolution,
it thinks, to give place to both scripture and evolution, there
do. And so, they combine them together,
and this is a godless, untrue heresy, if ever there was one,
that God needed to create by a process of evolution. But the day age and the gap theories
says this. Okay, science says that the earth
is millions and millions and millions of years old. Okay,
let them have all the millions of years they want. We'll just
put them between verse 1 and verse 2 of Genesis in that gap. But it is a horrible insult to
God and to Scripture and a devilish compromise contradicting the
Scripture to take any such view as that. Now, let's look at the
six days of creation laid out in Genesis chapter 1. Clearly
marked off in this manner. first day, second day, third
day, etc. right down the line. I agree
with Henry Morris, I was reading him again this week in the Genesis
Record, that it makes it very clear that the six days of creation
are literal days and that they are not long periods of time. that even if the Hebrew word
day can mean a period of time, the specific context in Genesis
chapter 1 excludes any such meaning here in this place. The evening
and the morning. Now consider Genesis chapter
20, 8 and 9. Six days shalt thou labor, and
do all of thy work. Now who would think that this
refers to six indefinite periods of time that one is to work before
he takes the day of rest, the Sabbath. Six days! No way that we can understand
that to be a lengthy, protracted, undetermined period of time. Now something in Genesis chapter
1 And verse 2 is very important, and that is where it says, And
the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. In reading
that, there is a tremendous amount of water in God's creation. Water. Oh, water above, water
below, water evidently at first mixed together with the mass
water in great, great abundance. water so necessary to life upon
the earth. For were there no water, there
could be no life. Now the word here, moved. The
Spirit of God moved. I was looking and I found that
that is the same word translated, flutter, in Deuteronomy chapter
33 32 and verse 11, talking about the
eagle fluttering over its nest or over its young. And that the
word means to hover, to brood, to shake, or to vibrate. And
therefore the Spirit of God moved, or hovered, or brooded, or did
vibrate upon that creation to bring the created earth into
form and into shape and into beauty. Day 1 we have in verse
3 through 5. Look at it. The creation of light,
then separated the light from the darkness, calling the light
day and the darkness night. And perhaps here began the rotation
of the earth on its axis. Even and morning were the first
day. Now there's the first day of
creation, verse 3 through 5. Then look at day 2 in verse 6
through verse 8. Here we have the creation of
the firmament, also called heaven in the passage, to separate the
waters above and the waters below the firmament. We might call
the firmament space, I guess, sky, and even heaven, or the
air as we some times do. And then notice again, the evening
and the morning were the second day. And thirdly, on day three,
verse 9 through verse 13, there was a division of the sea from
the dry land. And God made that great division.
The waters gathered together and He called them sea. The dry
land gathered together and He called that earth and the earth,
the dry ground brought forth vegetation, each one of them
after their own kind, and God saw that it was good, and this
was done on the third day. Now the fourth day, verse 14
through verse 19, saw the creation of what we might call the heavenly
bodies. the sun, the moon, and the stars,
a greater and a lesser light. Psalm 136, 7-9 speaks again about
that. One to rule the day and the other
to rule the night. And this He called the evening
and the morning were the fourth day. And then in day 5, you have
that verse 20-23, saw the creation species that would inhabit the
earth, that live on earth. They fly in the air and they
swim and live in the sea. Evening and morning were the
fifth day. And then day six we have in verse
24 to 31. Here's the culmination. Here's
the finishing of the creative work of God. And on this day
there were cattle and the beast and the creeping things upon
the earth, what we might call the higher animal life inhabiting
the world, the earth in which we live. And it was on this day,
the sixth day, that God created humans. in two genders, male
and female, the high species of earth-dwellers. These were
made after His image and in His likeness that passage tells us. And He gave them dominion over
all of the works of His hand. Let them subdue it. Let them
have dominion over all the beasts and what God had created. Now
while God spoke all else, into existence, he made Adam and Eve
by his own hand or direct work. Out of the dust of the ground,
he made the man. Out of the side of the man, he
took a rib and made the woman. And you know, if you don't believe
all this, you might as well stop right here and go on your way.
If you won't accept this record in the beginning of the Scripture,
what else will you not accept? How can you be right if you do
not accept the very beginning? I'd like to close by saying creation
is a matter of faith on our part. Hebrews 11 and verse 3. By faith we understand that the
worlds were framed, literally the ages, were framed by the
Word of God, 2 Peter 3 and 5. We must not be deceived by evolution
disguised as science. Now they come with us and they
say, oh this is science. This is a scientific fact. And
yet they have fraudulently used science to perpetrate the fraud
of evolution upon us. A wrong view of creation. leads
to wrong views on most other things as well. A good example
I think, well that would be the environmental movement. They
worship the world, the Earth. They worship the created rather
than the creator. Evolution destroys the gospel. Many evolutionists are humanists. They're not Christian and don't
claim to be. It denies the fall of mankind.
It denies the flood. It denies the redemption of Christ.
It denies heaven and hell and judgment and an immortal soul
and there are no moral standards. with evolution. None at all. An evolutionist view by society
will lead to that society self-destructing. A society that embraces fully
evolution will self-destruct. It will tend to greater immorality,
greater violence. If man is just another animal,
if man is just an evolved creature, then abortion is acceptable and
what's to keep euthanasia from becoming acceptable as well. Kill the baby, kill the old and
the infirm. This is a godless society when
it embraces evolution. Yes, God created out of nothing. He spoke it into existence and
He did it in six days. The evening and the morning were
the day, period. And it was so, and it was good. And finally God saw all that
he had made, and behold, it was very good. Thank God for this
record, which is easier to believe. That God has always existed.
or that something by some means or other came into existence
and from that came all of this. Scripture teaches us the eternal
God created out of nothing in six days. That's the testimony
of the Word of God.