Watching God Create the World

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 1.
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Many of you know that we were in an extended study of Genesis.
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We're going to be going through the whole book verse by verse, and we began in chapter 1, verse 1 back about four months ago, and we have taken a break during the Advent and New Year's season, and so we are back, and yet we haven't gone that far.
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Even though we were in it for three months, we have only really looked at the first few verses.
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And so this morning we're going to go back into our study of Genesis, and we're going to look at the next series of verses past what we have already seen.
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We have already looked at verses 1 through 5.
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We've dove deep into them.
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We've asked a lot of questions regarding them, but this morning we're going to go on now to verse 6 and read to verse 13, and my hope is that at the end of today's study we will have covered day 1 to day 3, because those three days put into our mind a picture of God making the earth habitable.
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And then in days 4 through 6 we're going to see God filling that habitable earth with creatures and people.
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So let us stand and we're going to read this morning Genesis chapter 1, and we're going to read verses 6 to 13.
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And God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.
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And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse, and it was so.
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And God called the expanse heaven, and there was evening, and there was morning the second day.
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And God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so.
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God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called seas, and God saw that it was good.
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And God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth.
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And it was so.
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And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.
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And God saw that it was good.
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And there was evening, and there was morning the third day.
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May God add his blessing to the reading and to the hearing of his word.
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May he write its eternal truths upon our hearts, and may he keep me from error as I preach.
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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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I said a few minutes ago, and I want to remind you that we have taken an extended break from Genesis over the Advent season, and now that we're back, I want to remind us a little bit of what we've learned to this point.
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But I promise I'm not going to take all of our time today on a rehearsal, because I've done that before.
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I've taken the whole sermon on the introduction and then had to rush through at the end.
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I'm going to rush through the introduction so that I can get to the sermon.
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Very quickly, what have we learned so far? Number one, we've learned that Moses is who we believe authored this book.
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We believe in Mosaic authorship.
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We believe he wrote this book under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, and therefore Genesis, as much as any other book in the Bible, can be trusted to give us an accurate understanding of what God wants us to know about his creation.
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Genesis means beginnings, and it's called Genesis because this book is about the beginnings not only of the earth, but of everything.
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It's about the beginnings of not only creation, but of mankind, and of nations, and of all of the other things that would come about.
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All find their roots and their history in the book of Genesis.
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Genesis assumes the existence of God.
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You'll notice in the very opening chapters, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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Genesis doesn't look to make an argument for God.
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It simply assumes God exists.
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There is no question about the existence of God, and we see this in the very first verse of the very first book of the Bible.
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And by the way, not just any God, but the triune God of Scripture is who's mentioned, because we see God the Father mentioned, we see the Holy Spirit mentioned, and we see when later it says, let us make man in our image, we know that is a reference to God in his fullness.
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God is triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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Genesis 1 states that God created the world by divine fiat.
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Do you remember what that means? It means he spoke the world into existence.
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He did not form it, he spoke it in the sense of having to gather things together and manipulate as if it were the way we would make something.
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God simply said, and it was.
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Genesis 1, as we have noted, is a very debated passage.
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And the two things that are debated most about Genesis 1 are the length of the days.
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Is it truly 24 hours in a day, or are these days metaphoric to represent a long period of time? And how far back in history is that beginning? It says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
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How far back in history is that beginning? Well, we've looked at four different theories.
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We've looked at the gap theory, the framework hypothesis, we've looked at progressive creationism, and we've looked at young earth theory.
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I'm not going to go over those with you because we've spent so much time on them in the past, but if you don't know what those things are and you're interested, you can go back and listen to our archives on our website, and you can listen through those messages because it is important to understand the distinctions.
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Our church teaches what is known as young earth creationism, basically what that means.
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And it is the most radical of the four positions, and we grant that.
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We take the radical position that God created the world in six literal 24-hour periods of time, or six creation days.
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Now, we do not make that a test of orthodoxy.
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If someone doesn't necessarily believe that, we would say that doesn't necessarily mean they're not a believer.
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However, we do say that if you take a position that would deny the historic Adam, and deny that God is the creator of all things, then you have departed Christian orthodoxy.
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So it's not so much the time and history and the length of the days, but it's the implication of those things that really does matter.
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Without a historic Adam, you don't have the introduction of sin, you have no fall, and you have no need for a Redeemer, thus no need for Christ.
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One of the main things that we have noted in our study is that there is a structure to Genesis, chapter 1.
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And I want to remind you of this structure, because this structure is going to actually help me in the next two sermons.
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This week and next week, I'm going to be looking at this structure very clearly, trying to show you how this structure helps us understand the creation days.
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And my hope is this, at the end of these two sermons, you'll remember, simply by the fact that you've got it memorized, what happened on each day, because it follows a pattern of logic.
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Days 1, 2, and 3, God is forming the earth.
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Days 4, 5, and 6, God is filling the heavens and the earth.
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So 1, 2, and 3, He's forming the heavens and the earth.
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4, 5, and 6, He's filling the heavens and the earth.
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So today, we're going to be looking at God forming those days.
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But remember how they work together.
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Day 1, God forms the light.
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Day 4, God forms the light bearers, the heavenlies.
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Day 2, God creates the sky and the sea.
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Day 5, God creates the birds for that sky and the fish for that sea.
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Day 3, God creates the land and the vegetation.
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Day 6, God creates the creatures that are going to walk on that land, the beasts, and of course the crowning of His creation, which is man himself.
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So you see how there is a structure there.
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And that structure is what we're going to follow to understand the creation that God has made.
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And it tells us something about God.
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God is a God of order.
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He does not simply just erupt, but God plans and makes decisions and works through a process.
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He is not a God of disorder.
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This is one of the things, and I'll quickly go off my notes for just a second.
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This is one of the things that bothers me about modern worship in a lot of ways.
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It's totally chaotic.
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And people are off in their own area doing their own thing and making their own noises and making their own shouts, and they're running around and hip-hopping and jumping and all kinds of things.
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And there's all this disorder.
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And they say, well, this is just how I worship.
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The Bible says all things are to be done decently and in order.
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And that passage is referring to worship is to be done decently and in order.
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And why does that matter? Because God is orderly.
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And God demands of us order.
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Think about how God was worshipped in the Old Testament.
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So specific was even the very dress of the priest who would come into His presence.
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They were given things that they were to wear.
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Now, I'm not saying that what you wear is important today, but what I'm saying is God had order down to the very point of what the man of God would wear.
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So today we think about our worship.
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Should our worship be orderly? Yes, because we worship an orderly God.
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And we see His order in the very first chapter of Genesis as God creates the heavens and the earth.
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And He creates the first three days, He creates the earth a habitable and hospitable earth.
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Now, I've entitled today's message, and next week is part two of this, Watching God Make the World.
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The reason why I entitled it that is because that's literally what we're going to do.
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We're going to read this and we're going to try in our minds, imagine, as little as our finite minds can, we're going to try to imagine watching God do this.
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Because that's what the writer is doing.
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He's giving us a word picture.
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This is God who is the Creator, creating the world.
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The world you're standing on, the world you're living in once did not exist.
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The world you're on once was nothing.
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And then God spoke and it became.
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And this is how it became.
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So let us turn our attention to days one to three, imagining ourselves as the observers.
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God is the one, the actor on the stage.
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God is the one who is on the stage and we're watching Him perform His great miraculous work of creation.
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Now, day one, we've studied it quite some length, but I want to just remind you again what it says.
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It says, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void.
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Now, those two words are important, remember, because it's saying that what He created first was all of the things that He was going to use to make the earth out of.
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He created the molecules and the elements and He brought it together in a formless and empty.
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That's what the word void means, it means empty.
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The world was formless and empty.
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But now He's going to bring it form.
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And the very first thing He does to add form to formlessness is create light.
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And God said, let there be light.
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Now, He's not just saying now, this is not the sun.
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The sun wouldn't come until later.
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According to Genesis, if we read it simply as it's written, if we read it in a sense literally, this is not the sun, but this is light itself.
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And God creates a separation.
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And remember this word, the word separation is hugely important in Genesis 1, because in Genesis 1, 2 and 3 we're going to see three separations.
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One, you're going to see the separation of light and darkness.
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Then you're going to see the separation of sky and earth and sea.
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And then you're going to see the separation of land and water.
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So each day there's a major separation that God is doing.
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He's taking His elements that are formless, He's forming them and He's separating them so that they can function as He's created them to function.
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So the very first thing He does, He says, let there be light and there was light.
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And it says that at that moment He had created day and night.
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Now, I don't know because I wasn't there, but I like to imagine that the earth at that point was a water globe and there was light emanating from one side of that globe, much like it is today.
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There's light, light only comes from one direction.
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Light comes from the sun.
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Now, of course, you could argue light comes reflected from the moon and other stars and planets, but my point is this.
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Our main source of light is this one central point.
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And so there's a light side and there's a dark side.
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Not like the Jedi light side and dark side.
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But there's day and there's night.
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And thus there's a separation that's naturally created.
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And God names them.
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He says the day, the light we're going to call day and the darkness we're going to call night.
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And there was evening and morning.
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Why evening and morning? Because evening is when the light goes away and morning is when the light dawns.
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It's all about the light.
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It's all about, and by the way we couldn't function without light.
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Unless God created us as bats with some type of supersonic hearing that we could hear, we couldn't function without light all around us.
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And think about what light does.
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Light shows us beauty.
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Light shows us the majesty of God.
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What does the Bible say? It says the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above His handiwork.
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And the sun that travels across the sky is like a preacher proclaiming the majesty of God.
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That light is showing us all of God's creation.
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Without the light we wouldn't see it.
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So the very first thing, it's not for God to see.
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God can see without the light.
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But we would need the light.
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And so He creates the light and He creates in that day and night, the first day.
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Then we get to day two.
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Day two dawns with a new act of creation.
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Again, God speaks into His creation and He commands separation.
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This time though the separation is different.
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Instead of separation from light and darkness, God is now going to separate an expanse between the waters above and the waters below.
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And this expanse He is going to call heaven.
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Now I want to give you an alternate translation.
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Because the word heaven in our modern vernacular often times when we think about heaven, we think about where God is.
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When I say we're going to heaven, when we all get to heaven, what a day, what a day that will be.
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That's heaven to us.
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But from a biblical perspective the word heaven refers to the sky.
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Now there are times when it refers to outer space.
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There's times when it refers to the abode of God.
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But in this context the heaven is referring to the sky that is around us.
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The ESV calls this the expanse.
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Now if you look at the ESV you'll notice there's a little number next to the word expanse and if you follow that number down it gives you an alternate translation.
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The alternate translation is the word canopy.
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I don't think that's much more help.
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But I do want to remind you of another word which you might remember.
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If you grew up on the King James Bible, and I know many of you did, if you grew up on the King James Bible you probably remember a word firmament.
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Remember the word firmament? And God separated the waters above from the waters below and He placed a firmament.
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Now what in the world is a firmament? Well the word firmament means something that is solid.
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It's actually from the root word for firm.
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If you think of something that is firm, it's solid.
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If you think back, that's really what the word means.
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He places something solid between the waters above and the waters below.
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And it's called the firmament.
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Now some people take great issue with this.
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Some they say, oh this is an example of pre-scientific thinking because the ancient people thought that above us was an ocean.
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And they thought we've got ocean around us and we've got ocean above us.
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And there's a thing that keeps the ocean from falling down on us.
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And it's this hard dome called the firmament.
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And it keeps the ocean above us.
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And why would they think there's an ocean above us? Think in your mind.
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Why would ancient people think there was an ocean above us? Well rain, yes, but it's blue and the ocean's blue.
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If you look up and you look out at the water, it's similar, right? Imagine looking out at the water and seeing the sky.
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There's only that thin line that separates the water horizon from the sky.
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And so the idea in the ancient world was like you were almost living in a snow globe, right? And there was a water above us and there was water below us.
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And some people think, well this is Moses being, he's just so unscientific.
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He's acquiescing to the unscientific mind.
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God's addressing the unscientific people and this is silly.
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There is no ocean above us.
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Now some creation scientists, particularly Dr.
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Henry Morris, who I greatly respect.
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Dr.
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Henry Morris was a hydrologist.
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He wrote the book, The Genesis Flood.
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If you've never read it, it's a tremendous book.
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It's very helpful.
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But he had the idea that prior to the flood, there was water in the atmosphere in the form of ice and that it created a canopy around the world and that ice essentially created perfect conditions of weather here on the earth.
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And that the weather here on the earth was what gave rise to long life spans.
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Methuselah lived 900 and something years.
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Adam lived 900 and something years.
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And the idea was that there was better atmospheric conditions prior to the flood and that what caused the flood was that that ice canopy collapsed and created that water which torrentially flooded the earth.
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Now as much as I respect Dr.
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Morris and as much as I love his work, I don't think that's a necessary interpretation.
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Also, some later creation scientists came along and said, you know what, if that actually were true, it would have created bad atmospheric conditions and not good ones.
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It would have created a runaway greenhouse effect which would have made almost life impossible.
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So if you've ever heard about the ice canopy or you've ever heard that study, I'm not saying it's impossible, I just don't think it's accurate.
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I don't think it's necessary.
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You say, well, Pastor, what does it mean that there's water above and there's water below? Here's what I believe that it means, and it's very simple.
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The water that is above and the water that is below is simply separated into different parts.
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You say, what do you mean? The same chemicals that make up the water that is in the oceans and in our seas and our rivers is the same chemicals that's all around us.
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It's the same chemicals that is above us.
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The same hydrogen and oxygen that make up water is all around us.
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And so when God separates, what I believe is happening is I believe He's separating the atmosphere from the earth itself and He's creating a livable condition for us to be in.
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I don't think that it is assuming there's an ocean above us.
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I think what the assumption is is there's water all around us.
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You understand that the same chemicals that make up the water are all around us.
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This is why when you put your cup and it's cold, what does it do? It condenses because those chemicals begin to change around that cup and it becomes wet.
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This is why you never put a cup on this pulpit without a coaster because it's going to leave a ring on my pulpit.
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You understand, right? So there's water all around us.
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Now there's also something above us that we could consider and that's the clouds.
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Clouds are full of water.
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But as Brother Mike and I were talking last night, it's a good chance there weren't clouds at this time in history because there was no rain at this time in history.
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So it's probably not talking about the clouds.
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It's probably simply referring to the fact that there is an expanse that we're made to live in.
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You realize that above us are several layers of gaseous layers that are designed to protect us from the universe outside of the earth.
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There's the troposphere, which is what we live in.
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This is where all of the weather and everything takes place.
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This is where birds fly and this is where we breathe and live and this is where planes normally fly.
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Outside of the troposphere, good students of science, what's the next one? The stratosphere, that's where jets fly.
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And the stratosphere is also where the ozone layer is.
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What does the ozone layer do? Protects us from the harmful rays of the sun.
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Past that is the mesosphere.
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The mesosphere is where if there are any meteorites coming into the earth, often times they burn up as they hit the mesosphere.
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Outside of that is the thermosphere and then past that is the exosphere and then you're out into outer space.
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But think about each layer that is there is intended to do something different.
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The thermosphere protects us from x-ray and ultraviolet rays that come from the sun that would kill us dead if that wasn't there.
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Now I don't know if those things were there when God created the world or if that's a product of something that happened after the flood.
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I'm going to say right now, I don't know.
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But I do know this, we cannot for a second think that this world is not created when you think about how much is there to tell us that God is keeping this world intact.
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So again, is there water around us? Yes.
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Is there water above us? Yes.
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Is there water below us? Yes.
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But there's this thing called the firmament and the firmament is where we live.
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We live in this air that is around us and it's comfortable.
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You realize that atmospheric pressure could crush you or it could cause you to expand or cause you to float or cause you to crush but the earth, air around you is perfect.
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It feels comfortable, right? And somebody says, well this can't be the firmament because you can't feel it.
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The word firmament means firm, right? We said that earlier.
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So if we can't feel it, it can't be the firmament.
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You can feel it.
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If I hit you with air at 25 miles an hour from a big gust of wind, you feel it.
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When the space shuttle comes back into the atmosphere after it's been in orbit, what happens to it? 3,000 degrees.
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Do you know why? Because it's pressurizing the air around it and it's heating up to a white hot flame.
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This firmament is tangible even though we can't feel it but we do feel it.
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Does this make sense? Are you guys with me? So if you say, what did God do on day two? He made the earth livable because prior to that there was no atmosphere, there was no air, there was no water cycle.
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Now we have all of those things.
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Necessary.
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And think about how necessary the water cycle is.
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Think about how necessary air pressure is.
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You ever gone somewhere where the air pressure changes? Your ears pop? I used to scuba dive.
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If you go down more than 60 feet scuba diving, the pressure on your brain is immense.
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You have to blow in your nose to cause your ears to pop just to keep them from being overloaded with pressure.
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Same thing happens when you go up in an airplane.
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I hate riding airplanes.
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I used to work downtown at Bell South, 15th floor.
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Every time I went up to the 15th floor my ears would pop because the pressure was changing and it was uncomfortable.
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That's only 150 feet up.
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Have I made my point? Can I move on? I don't like heights.
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No, I don't like heights.
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The point is this.
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On day two God is creating the atmospheric conditions for us to have a livable environment.
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Water below, water above in the sense of the chemicals that make up the water and the sky around us.
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This firmament is where we're going to live in and have our air and all the things necessary to survive the pressures of this world.
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Now, day three.
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Day three.
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Day three dawns with yet another creative act of God.
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God speaks and the dry land appears.
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Again, the third separation.
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He separated light from darkness.
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He separated the sky from the sea.
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But up until this point it's just been all water.
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A water covered earth and God creates the land.
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Now, it's possible at this point that all the land was together.
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Because he basically says, if you read it says, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together in one place and let the dry land appear.
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It doesn't say the dry land is necessarily in one place, but if we look at the way that our world is now, we're not looking at it as it was originally created.
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Because as it was originally created, it was created pre-flood.
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What we call the anti-diluvian earth.
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We live in the post-diluvian earth.
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We live past the flood or the deluge.
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But in the pre-diluvian or the anti-diluvian earth, the earth was much different.
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There's a good chance, have you ever heard of Pangaea? Pangaea, the supercontinent where all the continents were together.
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It's a good chance that that's what it looked like.
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That it wasn't all broken into parts, but that it was all together.
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Now, some people argue it could be.
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I'm not saying it is or it isn't.
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I'm just saying it probably looked a lot different than now.
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Everything looked different than it does now.
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And so we have the earth that is brought up out of the sea.
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It's created.
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The sea is separated from the earth and there's now a livable land.
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And the amazing thing that happens on this day is not the exposure of the land, but is the arrival of the vegetation.
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It tells us that plants would yield seed bearing fruit.
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And this is actually a very important fact that we're given right here because this is the first time in the Bible that we see the idea of reproduction in God's creative act.
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Not only did God create plants to provide food, but he provided plants that would provide an abundance of food and would reproduce and provide more food.
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So that not only would there be a source of food, but there would be a replenishable source of food, a reproducible source of food.
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And we see the three objects that are mentioned.
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The seed, the tree, and the fruit.
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The seed, the tree, and the fruit.
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God made the tree first.
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From the tree comes the fruit and inside the fruit is the seed.
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That seed falls into the ground.
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It goes into the ground and it creates a new tree.
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That new tree produces new fruit.
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And that fruit has within it seeds that can then go into the ground and produce new trees and produce new fruit.
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You say, why are you stressing this, Pastor? We know this.
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We know how agriculture works.
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Well, I'm trying to point to you how amazing it is that God created the world in such a way that it repeatedly produces what we need.
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Oh, come on.
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Think about how amazing that is.
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You realize if the earth didn't repeatedly create and produce what we need, we would no longer survive.
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If the earth didn't repeatedly produce what we needed to eat, we would die as a species within a generation, within a few days.
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We would eat all that there is and we wouldn't have more and we wouldn't be able to produce more.
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But God creates this amazing...
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It's not even close.
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We think about how intelligent we've become and how technological we've become and how amazing we've become with our technology.
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We cannot produce anything that reproduces itself.
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The ability to reproduce itself...
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This is God's miraculous handiwork.
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He's producing something that is naturally reproductive.
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And He uses a little phrase here that is very important for you guys to understand because this is going to come up again when we get to day five and six.
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He says that it produces according to its kind.
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You say, well, what does that mean? God did not create one kind of tree with one kind of fruit and that tree then changed into several other kinds of fruit and then those trees mutated into other types of fruit.
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No.
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God created the world with variation at the beginning and this fruit tree here would produce the same type of fruit tree there and that fruit tree would produce the same type of fruit tree over here.
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You can't plant apples and grow grapes.
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You with me? You understand what I'm saying? You can't plant one thing and get another because God creates these seeds and in these seeds there is a kind.
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You say now, alright, I went to school and in school we learned about species and we learned about genus and we learned about family and we learned about order and we learned about class and we learned about phylum and we learned about kingdom but ain't nobody ever said nothing about no kind.
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Are you all still with me? Are you bored? I don't ever remember my science teacher talking about kind.
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Kind is a uniquely biblical word because I do think that kind is actually a larger, even larger than the species because it's encapsulating a certain kind.
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Later when we talk about animals we're going to talk about the fact that if you think of a wolf and a pug, they're both the same kind because they're both dogs.
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Can't you imagine when the wolf looks at the pug how disappointed? This is what I have become.
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But you understand if you have a pug and you love him, I'm just teasing.
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But the point is those kinds is what the Bible is.
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When the Bible talks about a kind it's talking about a larger group but it's still within a kind.
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And within fruit there's kinds.
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And one type of fruit, one kind of fruit produces its same kind.
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Apples don't produce bananas and bananas don't produce oranges.
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Do you understand what we're saying? God creates variation from the beginning.
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There's variation.
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And the fruit and the vegetables that He makes are absolutely nutritious, absolutely delicious except for okra.
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So I wanted today, and I didn't get a chance to do it, I wanted to bring in a piece of fruit and a Snickers bar.
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I didn't get a chance to go to the store to pick them up.
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So imagine I'm holding a piece of fruit and a Snickers bar for this part.
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Because if you think about a Snickers bar, a Snickers bar is a tremendously tasty food.
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And it's got all kinds of good stuff that we like, especially Americans we like sweet, sweet stuff.
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So we like the milk chocolate and we like the nougat and we like the peanuts and we like the caramel and we like that it's all put together perfectly in this nice little bar that we just shove in our face.
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It's absolutely bad for us.
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Even though it tastes great.
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But you know what a Snickers bar will never do? Make little baby Snickers bars.
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I mean it will always be just that until you eat it and then it's gone.
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God produces an apple which comes in its own case.
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Its skin works as a biodegradable and edible protection.
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It comes nutritious.
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Your body can actually digest the apple more than it can digest and better than it can digest the Snickers bar because the Snickers bar has the artificial sugars and the corn syrup and the other things that make it as sweet as it is.
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And when we eat that our bodies don't digest it as well and a lot of that sugar becomes fat because it's bad for us.
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But when we eat that apple, the fiber in the apple take the sweetness and don't cause it to convert to that bad sugar and hurt us, but it becomes an energy source and it's better for us.
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God made the better fruit and the better food.
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And inside of it is the capacity to make more of it.
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Because we know when we eat it and we bite down really hard and we look and we see those little black seeds, that's God's miracle of reproduction in the fruit.
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Something a Snickers bar can never do.
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My point in all of this is to simply say, God created a world that was miraculous and prepared for His living creation of birds, of animals, of animals, and fish, and beasts, and man who are about to come.
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Because the earth is ready by the way.
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Day three, the earth is ready.
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It's like you have a contractor who's built you a home and he's got everything ready.
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It's move in ready.
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So next week what we're going to see is the tenants, the tenants begin to move in.
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Light bearers move into the heavens.
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Fish move into the seas.
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Birds move into the skies.
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And beasts of the field move into the land.
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For God in three days has created not only a habitable world, but a hospitable world.
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And now it's ready to take the tenants for which it was created.
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God has created a world with air, water, food, and like a master craftsman, God has made us this home.
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When we think about God's creative work in making this beautiful, comfortable, hospitable world, it should cause us to burst forth in praise.
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One of the most beloved hymns of the church is based on a poem by a Swedish pastor named Karl Boberg.
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And it begins like this, Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.
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I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder.
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Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
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Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee, how great Thou art.
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But think also with me about verse three.
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And when I think that God his son not sparing sent him to die, I think to myself how great I scarce can take it in.
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For on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, he bled and died to take away my sin.
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God created a habitable world in three days and then he saved it when his son went to the cross.
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And when his son died on the cross, he went into the tomb and three days later he burst forth in glorious day.
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So that's where we are today.
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We are at this side of glory, this side of the cross and we get to look back and we get to say God who created the world sent forth his son that whosoever believeth in him will not perish but have everlasting life.
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Let us pray.
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Father I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the opportunity to preach this morning.
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I pray that we have learned more about your creative genius, that we have learned more about your creative power and that we have considered the fact that you who created the world also saw fit to send forth your son.
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Your son is the great culmination of all creation.
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The world was created by him and for him.
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And Lord now as we consider him and we consider the wonderful works of his hands let us as a church be ever moved by what he has done on our behalf.
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Oh Lord our God when we in awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hands have made.
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Lord let our souls sing to you now in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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I want to encourage you now to stand with us as we sing and we are going to sing How Great Thou Art.