“God’s Mighty Work of Creation”

(Genesis 1)

I. Introduction.
A. Review.
1. For the past five weeks, we have been looking at the life and thought of Martin Luther and how the Lord used him to
reform His church.
2. We may have forgotten that before that, we were working our way through the Shorter Catechism.
a. So far we have seen why God created man – to glorify and enjoy Him – the rule He has given us to teach us how
to glorify and enjoy Him – the Holy Scripture – and what it is that Scripture teaches us – it tells us about this God
we are to glorify and enjoy and what He requires that we might do this.
b. We considered what the Bible teaches about God – the power and abilities He has, His character, and that He is
three persons but only one God.
c. And we looked at the fact that God has a plan – a comprehensive plan, that includes not only the mundane things
of life, but especially the most important things, such as the eternal destination of all men to either heaven or hell.

B. This evening, we will want to consider how God works His plan out.
1. Our Catechism tells us there are two main ways: Creation and Providence.
2. This is to say God makes a world (creation), then He guides that world to end for which He made it (providence).
3. To put it in other terms, God creates an arena or a stage on which He will display all His glory, especially the glory of
His grace in Christ.
4. This evening, we’ll consider what the Bible has to say about the creation of this arena, next week, the creation of
man, and then the following week, something of His plan for man that He might show the riches of His grace on the
elect, and the terrible retribution of His justice on the wicked.

II. Sermon.
A. First, let’s consider what Creation is: It’s God’s making all things that are, without using anything to make them.
1. Once there was nothing but God.
a. Only His Being existed.
b. If God dwelt in anything like space, that space must also have been an attribute of God, otherwise, there would
have been something that existed besides God and something that He needed to exist.

2. But God created something else.

a. This, as we’ve seen, was a part of His plan.
b. He made different things. We read about them in Genesis One.
(i) First, He made the matter, the stuff that He would later arrange or reorganize and He made light. Apparently,
when He originally made the planet it was covered with water, for at the beginning, the Spirit of God was
moving over its surface (Gen. 1:2; day one).
(ii) Then He separated the waters below the firmament from those above, creating the skies and seas (day two).
(iii) Then He gathered the waters together in one place and uncovered the land. He also created the various
kinds of plants (day three).
(iv) These were the different environments into which He would place the things that would occupy them.
(v) Next, He made the sun, moon and stars to fill the heavens (day four).
(vi) Then the fish and birds to fill the seas and skies (day five).
(vii) And then the land animals and insects (day six).
(viii) Finally, He made man last of all to rule with Him over all His creation (also day six).
(ix) Since we’ll return to this subject later, I won’t spend any more time on it now.
(x) And then God rested from all His work on the seventh day, blessed that day He rested and commanded man
 to do the same (Ex. 20:8-11).
(xi) God created a cosmos or an organized universe.
(xii) Much could be said about how wonderful it is and how it all works together to reveal God’s glory, but we
don’t have time.

3. The way God created was by what we call divine fiat.

a. The word fiat means, “Let there be.”
b. God said, “Let there be . . . and there was . . .” whatever He said.
c. He spoke and it came into being by the power of His Word.

4. When God commands, whatever He says comes to pass, even to the point of new things being made that didn’t exist
before.
a. God made something new.
b. What He made was not made out of Himself (pantheism).
c. It is separate from Him and it is His servant – which is how we can know that it is not God.
d. The author to the Hebrews writes, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God,
so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible” (Heb. 11:3).
e. And Paul writes, “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created by Him and for Him” (Col.
1:16).
f. Paul is actually writing about the Son of God, as John also writes, “All things came into being by Him, and apart
from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:3).

5. This is the creation of the stage of redemption and of the principle actors, including both man and the angels.
a. The interesting thing is that the creation of the angels isn’t mentioned. It’s believed that they had to have been
made during the creation week, most likely on day one with the creation of heaven, since the angels were definitely
there watching God for part of the week.
b. The Lord said to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have
understanding, who set its measurements, since you know? Or who stretched the line on it? On what were its
bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted
for joy” (Job 38:4-7)?
c. We know that the fall didn’t take place until after the creation week, because at the end of week, God
pronounced His Creation good, which means there was as yet no sin (Gen. 1:31).

B. Now it’s interesting that there’s hardly any disagreement in the church over the things I’ve just mentioned. But there is
on the time frame in which God did this. Just how long did God take?
1. The early view of the church was that it was either done instantly or in six days.
a. Augustine held the instantaneous view and some followed it.
b. While others took the language of Genesis One at face value and believed that God did it in six days of essentially
ordinary length.

2. With the rise of the study of geology and the idea that the earth is much older than the Bible seems to indicate (at
least on the six day view and if there are no gaps in the genealogies), other views arose. Let’s take a moment to
survey three popular views.
a. Gap theory.
(i) The idea here is that there is a space of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, as much as you want to explain the
apparent age of the earth.
(ii) The problem with this is that it doesn’t fit the structure of the language: verse one works as a title or summary
of what follows, what follows is what happened.
(iii) In other words, there really is no gap.

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b. Day Age Theory.
(i) This sees each day as a long period of time and not a day of ordinary length. On this view, you can fit as much
time into the days as you need.
(ii) The problem with this view is that it disregards the meaning of the word day when it is used with ordinal
numbers (such as, first, second, third, etc.). When it is, it always refers to a day of ordinary length.
(iii) It also contradicts Exodus 20:11, where God’s working six days and resting the seventh forms the basis for
our work week.
(iv) The Lord doesn’t say that He worked for six thousand years and then rested on the seventh thousand, but
that He worked six days and rested on the seventh.
(v) The only reason that can be found why He took six days to do something which He could have done instantly
was that He was setting a pattern for us to follow.

c. Finally, the Framework Hypothesis.

(i) This view is probably becoming the most popular in Reformed Seminaries.
(ii) It sees the six days as an artificial literary framework on which to hang God’s work of Creation and to
communicate to the Jews who were about to enter into the land of Canaan that God created the plants and
God created man; therefore, you must look to God for your food and for your fertility and not to Baal or
Asherah.
(iii) Meredith Kline, who popularized the view, believes that the statement in Genesis 2:5, “Because it had not
rained,” and the fact that there was light on day one, proves that the days can’t be in the right sequence.
(a) Genesis 2:5 appears to say that there wasn’t any vegetation, because there hadn’t been any rain, showing
that all things worked according to ordinary providence when God made them. If this is true, then there
wasn’t a world full of vegetation on the third day as there appears to be.
(b) And if it’s true that everything worked according to ordinary Providence from the beginning, then you
couldn’t have had light on day one without the sun on day four.
(c) Days one and four are really the same: the days are not in order.
(d) The reason why Creation is placed in this temporal framework is to set an analogous pattern for us to
follow: God worked six days and rested on the seventh, therefore we are to do the same (Ex. 20:11).
(e) Dr. Kline does not hold to this view because it allows more time. In his view, God could have done it
instantly or taken as much time as He wanted. He holds to it because he believes that Genesis 2:5 requires
it.

(iv) The problem with this view is that it doesn’t take into account the different words used for plants.
(a) The words used on the third day refer to general plants and trees.
(b) The words used in Genesis 2:5 refer to the kind of plants that germinate after a rainfall and to cultivated
plants.
(c) God did fill the earth with vegetation and trees on day three.
(d) But there wasn’t any spontaneous growth, such as germinate when rain falls, or cultivated plants, because
there wasn’t any rain nor any man to cultivate the ground.
(e) So God rectified the problem by causing the rain to fall, and He made man (v. 6-7).
(f) Since God did fill the earth on day three with vegetation, things didn’t necessarily work according to
ordinary Providence during the creation week.
(g) And since they didn’t work this way, you could have light without the sun, just as it will be in the eternal
state (Rev. 21:23).

d. Having said this, there are sincere Christians who hold each of these views, who believe that these refutations aren’
t valid. But I’ll leave it to your own judgment before the Lord and His Word and Spirit to determine what you will
hold to as truth. Be as the Bereans and search the Scriptures (Acts 17:10-11).

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3. As I said, Creation is the making of the stage upon which God will display His glory. In the next couple of weeks,
we will see the setting of the stage for the story of redemption to unfold. Amen.