Church, I invite you to turn with me in God's Word to the book of Genesis as we pick up where we left off last week, chapter one of this wonderful first book of God's Word. I invite you to turn with me there and to leave it open in front of you the whole time. For those of you who perhaps are somewhat new to the church, one of the things that we try to say is that we want our eyes to be on God's Word throughout the entire sermon, because what is true and profound comes from Him in His Word, not from the mere human speaker in the front of the room. Before we read, I invite you to bow your heads with me in prayer as we ask for God's help. Father in heaven, we come before you now so thankful for who you are to us, and for the way that you have revealed yourself to us in your word. Father, you tell us in your word, and therefore we know that your spirit works with your word to change us, to transform us, to give us saving faith, and to make our faith strong, taking hold of Christ and all that he gives to us in himself. So Father, we pray now that we would know that afresh, that we would taste today of the goodness of our God in your word, and that we would know the power of the Spirit of God now as he leads us to Christ through his wonderful word. In Jesus' name we pray these things, amen. Genesis 1, beginning in verse 3, and we'll read through verse 5. The word of the Lord. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and morning the first day. So far the hearing of God's word. Those of you who were here with us this past week will know that we began this book and this sermon series that we find ourselves in now with the first four words in all of God's word, a stunning statement. in the beginning, God. The great story of all stories that have ever been told or will be told all begin here in this wonderful first book in God's great book. And the story does not begin with me. And the story does not begin with you, but it begins with this one who is life himself, who has being within himself and gives life and gives being outward from himself to all that is and all that shall ever be. Verses one and two, as we said this past week, is a sort of prologue to the rest of the book. And it serves this function to introduce us to the one, the one who is the subject of powerful verbs. that we begin to encounter here in verse three. What are those verbs? And God said, and God separated, and God called, and God made, and God created, and God formed. You see, if we just skip over the fact that it is God who is the one who does all of these things, and our eyes go straight away to the things and the work of his hands, and we neglect the one who is and the one who does all of them, then we have missed the entirety of the point. And that's why we began where we began this past week. Verses one and two tell us that God made heavens and earth, all that is seen and unseen, but it did not speak to us about days. It didn't concern itself with time. Time is not the focus here. The focus is on God. The focus is on God shaping a world that he will make for his purposes with man. So we want to remind ourselves about the focus of the text as we begin to acquaint ourselves with the way that this text orients us so that we will know the things that God wants for us to know by his word. What God is revealing to us, here is that God has made a place and a space for man to know his God, for man to love his God, for man to serve his God, both in this age and in the age to come. Well, in what ways does God reveal what he wants for us to know and what he wants us to know about the work that he did on this first day? The first way is this. God tells us that he has made on the first day by the word that he spoke from his lips. He has created by his word. If you look with me at verse 3, the text tells us, and God said, let there be, let there be. Church, these are the very first words spoken ever. These are the very first three divine words spoken out loud. This is the first time that we have the record of divine speech. Now, we know that God does not have a mouth. We know that God does not have vocal cords or lungs with which to make a sound or with which to speak words that you and I think of as being words spoken out loud. So why does God reveal himself here as speaking with words? Well, of course it's not for him. He reveals this to us for our sake. He's speaking to us in ways that we can understand and so that we can follow after him in knowing the things that he wants for us to know. But now if that's the case, then we move on to the next thought that we all need to have in our minds, and that is this. Why does the Bible tell us that God said, let there be, if there was no one to hear the sound of his voice? Have you ever thought about that? There was no thing to hear the sound that he spoke out. There was no man there. Of course, man will not be formed from the dust of the ground until day six. And yet for the five days that precede that, God is going to speak the world into existence by the sound of his voice. So there is much more intent than just the mere sound being heard. What is God's intention? His intention is that Creatures would know by the record of what he has revealed and inscribed in this book that creation is for man. Creation is for man. Creation is the product of the verbal will of God. We are told time and time again in God's word that he has one will, he has one intent within himself, and he will bring about what he wills. And behind all of God's divine will is the purpose for which he will bring his will about. That is to say, he doesn't just will that things be, but in all that he wills into being, he has an intent, he has a design, he has a form to it all, he has a function in all of the things that he will do, and in all of the things that he will make. Each time that God speaks a word, the simple performance of His speech enacts the purpose of His will. What do I mean? When I walk into a room in my house and there are toys all around, and perhaps I stub my toe on them or trip on them, and for those of you who don't know what it's like to step on very sharp toys, it really hurts a lot. And some parents, when we're not at our best, might then verbalize speech. Not divine speech. but sudden speech. And sometimes I've been known to say, I'm sure this will be a shock to some of you, could someone please clean up these toys? And maybe sometimes I will add the word now. And I have an intent when I speak those words out. I intend for my direction to be followed, right? For the room to suddenly become clean. But if I look out at the sky today as the snow begins to fall, and if I speak to the sky and say, 85 and sunshine, Oh, you would all laugh at me, wouldn't you? Because my speech doesn't have that authority to command temperatures and skies, climate, and the very orbit of the earth around the sun. That is the distinction between God and between me and you. But you see, when God speaks, When God speaks his word, it always achieves both the effect and the purpose of his will for which he sends it out. The word of God itself tells us that as he carried men along by his both to speak out the Bible and to write it down. And God tells us that even in this room, Sunday by Sunday, when he sends out his word, that it always achieves the effect that he intends in the purpose of his will. Nothing is left to chance. God brought you here to this room right now. He designed this particular word to be heard in the sound of the hearing of your ears right now. And he has a purpose to achieve even with this word in your life right now. What a glorious, powerful, authoritative God. Creation is not just the product of the verbal will of God. We also want to remind ourselves, because of the world in which we live, that creation itself is not God. This text tells us that. Creation is not God, it is the product of God's will. He has formed the world that he has made by the sound of his voice, by the speaking of his word. And so what we want to observe here is the distinction between God and all that he has made. Now you say, pastor, that is simple. I know that. I'm not one of these people that goes off and prays to trees or finds the divine presence in a flower in the field. But when the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome, Paul was very sure of the way that the sinful human heart works, the way that your heart works, the way that my heart works. And in chapter one, he reminds us how easy it is to turn the created world or created things, things that God has made into idols that we would serve as if they were God. And you say, I don't bow down to carved things, to man-made things. Yes, you see, but when we raise them to a place in our life, when we make any creative thing to be a place of first importance in our life, If it is more important to us than the Lord, more important to us than His Word, more important to us than spending time with Him in prayer, then we have confused God with the things that He has made, and we have confused them for being God. Do you see how important it is for us to remind ourselves that creation is not God? Well then, next, this passage tells us that creation is of God without anything else. We are used to hearing the phrase that creation is ex nihilo, that it is out of nothing. But that's partly true. Because when we say that creation is out of nothing, we don't just mean that suddenly it came into being. Creation is out of one thing. Creation is out of God without anything else. There was no thing that pre-existed in the world that God made. He did not gather up a heap of stuff and use it to form galaxies, planets, stars, sun, and moon. No, he spoke it all into being by the sound. of his voice, and this is what all of God's word says. Hebrews tells us this. By faith, we believe that the world was made by the word of God, that what is seen is not made out of visible things. Hebrews tells us that we know that by faith, because science can't teach us that. Science is trying to find the stuff or the thing from which all things came from, right? And so if we go down that route, then we're always going to try to find something and we're going to frustrate ourselves. But you see, it's only by God's Word and God's Word that creates faith in our hearts as the Spirit reveals the will of God to us that we can know by faith the world was made by the Word of God. Things that are seen came into being not out of things that we can see, but out of the God who we cannot see. And because of this, the Psalms bring forth praise to God, to sing praise to Him, because He made the world in this way. The Psalms say, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and by the breath of His nose, all their hosts. For God spoke, and the world came into being. He commanded, and it stood firm. We see yet a new thing there, don't we? When God spoke creation into being, it isn't just that it began to be, but that it is by the word of his power that he sustains all things and upholds all things. And because of this, all things that God has made are bound to him who made them. Let's press into this a bit more. If you look with me at verse three, when God said, let there be, we see that these powerful verbs enact the will of the powerful God. This verb, let there be, is the simple verb, Yahi, Yahi. It is the root verbal form of the to be verb, yy. So you just think about the way that sounds. If yy is the root verb, and here in this form, it is yy, then we remember what God's covenantal name is, Yahweh. which is the same exact root word. God reveals himself by the name, I am who I am. He says, Moses, do you want to know what you are to call me? You are to call me, I am. Because I am the God in whom all being exists and from me come into being all that is. So you see, even in this first verb, Let there be. We see that God himself is inserting all that he is. He is infusing a word about who he is in the very performance of his will by his word. The God who is brings all things about by the power of his word. And so this helps us to know the one speaking, that God is powerful, that God is full of authority because his word is. And because his word is as true to his being as he is, we know that his word is his oath. His word, in a way, is his covenant. And when God speaks out his word, we know that we can trust his word because of him who speaks his word forth And the effect of his word is to bind all that he has made to the sound of his voice, that we should know him and obey him and serve him. And therefore God's creative word is his covenant. He speaks the world into being by speaking a covenantal word. Now you need to chew on this because it is dense. What these verses intend to teach us is not just about the origins of light and darkness. but the way that light and darkness and then from them in the following five days, how every single thing that God has made is bound to him, bound to his word as covenantal oath. That's why the light can't ever stray away from God and take up its own will to do whatever it might want to do. That's why the darkness doesn't have a will of its own to go out and do whatever it wants to do. Creation is bound to its covenantal Lord, to Yahweh who caused it all to be. Creation depends upon the unchanging word of God, that all of it might serve him and find meaning in him. Church, if the sun was not made to find meaning in itself, Then on day six, we will find that man was never made to find meaning in himself or on his own terms, or to go to try to seek and find it in his own places. Man, just like all of the rest of the things that God has made, was always designed to find meaning in God and in him alone. Well, now we move on to verse four. And when God said, let there be light, then he separated the light from the dark and he named each, he called the light day, he called the dark night. Have you ever stopped and thought about the very first act and all of God's creative work was to make light, was to make light. Why? Because creation is for man. God is forming a place for man to live in which he will serve, in which he will obey God. And so the very first thing that he does is to create light. This makes us scratch our heads, of course, because it won't be until day four that God makes the sun. So here, on the first day, God forms light, and he names it. But there's going to be three days where there is light that exists without the sun. Now, I don't know fully what that means, and I don't know if you do. If you do, please come and tell me at the end of service, because I would love to hear what you have to say. but that clues us into the intent of God as he records this in his word. If the light is something besides sunlight, then also in verse five, the word day is not day in the typical way that you and I think about a day. You and I think about a day as starting with a sunrise and coming forward to the end of the day at sunset. It's very difficult for us to think about a day without there being a sun in the sky or without there being a moon to reflect the light of the sun. So what the book of Genesis is trying to do with us is something beyond science. The book of Genesis is not designed to be read like a scientific textbook, nor is it designed to answer all of the various questions that we bring to it, like, What is there of light without the sun? Or what were those first three days like? Genesis doesn't tell me exactly what they're like in all of the ways that I might like to know what they're like. It reveals to me particular things that God has done in these sequence of days so that I will know what God wants me to know. but those aren't always the things that I want to know. And so doesn't that help us read all of God's word, not just this book? When I come to God's Word, there are lots of things that I want to ask God. Perhaps there are lots of things that I want for the Bible to teach me, to teach me about the world in which we live, or perhaps to teach me what God's will is for my life in the certain choices that I face. But sometimes the Bible doesn't answer the questions that I bring to it. Instead, it does something far better than that. It reveals to me the will and the intent of God. It teaches me what God wants for me to know authoritatively. You see, God is fashioning in the world that he has made a kingdom in which he is king. And in this kingdom, he will place man, but before he places man as the very pinnacle of all of the creation work that is spoken into being first, God makes a space for man, a space that is full of beauty, a space that is full of design, a place that has been made according to the will of God with divine order and with distinction. Did you notice that God did not just create light and create dark, but he separated the two from each other so that we would know one in contrast to The other, the world in which God has made is a world of distinction between the things. And the light of day will become a space in which God will place man to do what he has called man to do for the glory of God. Proverbs tells us this, doesn't it? That man has been put in the day to work. And that night is the time for rest. God has made us to need the rest of the night. But when the sun comes up, it's time for us to get to work and to do the things that he has called us to do. And you see that is revealed for us and enshrined in the very way that God made light on the very first day. Now, verse four, God tells us what he has done. Did you see in verse four, and God saw that the light was good. God saw that the light was good. Why did God say that? Again, if there was no man there to hear God describing the work of his hands as being good, then why did God say that about what he has done? Was God surprised? Did God fling the light into being and fling the darkness and name the two and then say, oh, look at that. Oh, that's pretty good. No, not at all. Because all of God's word tells us the way that he made the world in which it was full of design and intent and that Proverbs eight tells us that God designed the world with joy. So he knew exactly what he was doing. No, what God is telling us is that it is good so that you and I will know in the record of what he has done that all that God made is good and he has written the goodness of his own divine being into the creation that he has made. You see, if God is the source of all that is good, if God is goodness in himself, then of course, all that God makes is good. Of course, light is good, and darkness is good, and as we'll see in the next few days, that the plants are good, and the fish are good, and the birds that will fill the sky, it's all good. So away with all of these thoughts that somehow the darkness is bad. Away with all of these dualistic myths that somehow there is this force that is out there that is beyond God or somehow at odds with God that would set up this yin and yang in the cosmos. That's just absurd. That is just pure myth. Because Genesis 1 verse 4 tells us that every single thing that is is good because God has made it to be. good. We need to know this, that both light and dark are good things because God has given them to man to frame this space in which we will live and know him and serve him. God has revealed that to us so that we can marvel not just at the power of God, not just at the authority of God, but so that we will marvel at the goodness of God that he has shared with us. We need to know that God has revealed his goodness in this world that he has made, and that we can enjoy him by enjoying the goodness of the earth. Friends, that's why science doesn't need to be scary. That's why science doesn't need to be a threat to our faith. That's why We don't need to warn our kids not to become scientists. No, science is very good because it explores all of the world that God has made and it seeks to fathom the goodness of the good one who has made all things according to his pleasure, you see. So what are we so afraid of? What are we so afraid of? If we serve the one true sovereign God who has spoken all things into being by the word of his power, and he says that it is all good, and I have made this world for you, then believers, why do we shrink back in fear? You say, we serve the good one who has made it all. and we serve the good one who has revealed to us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. You see, what does Genesis 1, 3 through 5 have to do with Christ? What does it have to do with Jesus? How is this passage about how God made light and dark and named them both, what does it have to do with Jesus? Well, you see, God's word is wonderful in this way, because as the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he picked up this theme from chapter one, verses three through five, and he's speaking about the way that the word of Christ in the gospel comes to us, whose hearts are darkened post fall in sin. And in a few weeks time, we will come to the fall, and then to all of the effects of the fall, and to man's fall, and to the guilt of sin, and to the darkness that has fallen upon us. But before we get there, you and I know that by experience. We know that our minds are darkened by sin. We know that our hearts are darkened by sin. We know that our souls are darkened by the effect of sin. And the Bible tells us that if God spoke the creation into being by his word and made a light, the scriptures also tell us that his work of re-creation occurs in exactly the same way. God brings us to saving faith. in the same way that he worked his work on day one. The God who said, let light shine out of darkness has now shown in our hearts, in our hearts, that we're just fully dark by sin. He has spoken light. and distinction from the dark. He has revealed the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in, what, the personal face of Jesus Christ, our Savior, who has come to obey the law of God for us, and then to suffer in our place upon his cross. That is the good news that God speaks into our dark hearts and creates light for the very first time so that what? So that we can see Jesus for the very first time. You see hearts that are dark in sin cannot see Jesus Christ. They can come to church week by week by week by week by week and not see it, not perceive him, not know the grace of God in Christ until God divinely, sovereignly says, be born again. And see, it's that time, it's like the lights come on for the very first time, and then I see Jesus Christ full of loving grace and kindness towards me, a sinner who does not know Him, who on my own does not seek for Him, who does not desire to know Him. God says, let there be. And God gives saving faith so that we can see the love in Jesus Christ's face for the very first time and know the love that he has for us. It's the greatest miracle in all of the world when a sinner comes to saving faith in Jesus Christ. It is more stunning than God's speaking light into being for the very first time, which is glorious. When a sinner comes to saving faith in Christ, it is nothing short of a miracle. because God has moved heaven and earth. He has sent his own divine son to take on human flesh to bring all of this about, because all of my will could never have brought that about. It tells us what the saving will of God alone is for you, for me. Friends, we ought not to be so hard on our friends and family that do not know Christ yet. We shouldn't be hard on them because God has not made himself known to them yet. We ought to pray for them, that God would speak light to their souls and reveal Jesus Christ to them and his saving power and It ought to humble us, shouldn't it? That this all-powerful, all-wise, sovereign God has made himself known to us. What a wonderful saving God he is. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you so much for all that you are, for all that you are to us. And we thank you for the son whom you have sent. We thank you for the ways that you tell us that in Christ we live and move and have our being. that our entire life is to be found in Him, joined to Him, united to Him by faith, so that all that we are might be derived from all that He is. Father, I pray today, both in these moments now and throughout the rest of the day, that you would teach us what it means to live upon Christ and to find in Him all that our heart desires. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.