We are continuing in our series on the Shorter Catechism, using the Shorter Catechism to set the topics that we're going through in the evenings. And the questions that we come to tonight are questions eight and nine. Question eight asks, how does God execute his decrees? And the answer is that he executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence. And then in question nine that begins to fill that out, what is God's work of creation? The work of creation is God's making all things of nothing by the word of his power in the space of six days and all very good. And so we're going to take up God's execution of his decrees in the work of creation this evening. And there's a lot in that catechism answer. It's a brief answer. but it's packed full with the various aspects of the truth that is held within the first two chapters of the Bible, that God made all things out of nothing, that he did it by speaking, that he is powerful, that he can just bring that which does not exist and call it into existence. But what I would like to especially focus on this evening is the pattern that is laid out for us, that God created in six days, resting on the seventh day, and that he made his creation very good, that he made his creation excellent, wonderful, delightful, pleasing, pleasing to him and pleasing to us. And so let's now turn to the creation account in the first chapter of the Bible, and we'll read from Genesis 1.1 through chapter two, verse three. This is God's word, please give your careful attention to its reading. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 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 there was morning the first day. And God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters. 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. And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called seas. And God saw that it was good. 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. And it was so. 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. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the third day. And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years. And let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. And God said, let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens, So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm according to their kinds and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters and the seas and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, behold, I have given you every plant-yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed and its fruit. You shall have them for food. And every beast of the earth, and every bird of the heavens, and everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it, God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. The world around us is a wonderful place. It is full of marvelous things. And we as creatures, as human beings made in God's image have been created with a capacity to appreciate all of these marvelous and wonderful creatures that God has filled the earth with. And each of us may have our own interests. No one of us can fully appreciate all that's wonderful in the world that God has made. And so to one person, there is a fascination with insects and looking under the microscope. And for others, there is a fascination with physics, whether that's physics at a very small scale, subatomic particles and so forth, or whether it's looking up into the night sky and imagining what lies beyond our atmosphere. The world everywhere testifies to the grandeur of its creator. And yet, there is about us, in the air about us, so to speak, a different view that is rather common in various forms. It's perhaps we might call it a disenchanted view. It's a view that looks out on what God has made and doesn't see anything there, really. It looks out on the world that God has made and it says, I don't see any intrinsic meaning in the world. I don't see any structure. I just see a blank canvas, and that any meaning is left up to me to construct. To give an extreme example of this, but nevertheless an example that I think you will recognize is about us in the air, is the confusion that exists over the creation of man as male and female in the image of God. There's a certain way of thinking and living that approaches that and says, the world is just raw material lacking any significance of its own, and it's up to us to create meaning out of this raw material. And it's for us to impose and construct meaning out of a meaningless world, out of a meaningless creation. This view we might call relativism or postmodernism. It's a view that looks on God's world and does not acknowledge any kind of structure, any kind of meaning placed within it by the creator. We can see this kind of thinking in perhaps more subtle ways. If you ever hear somebody saying that they did it that way in the Bible but that was just their culture and we have our culture and we live in a different culture so we can just totally disregard what they were doing in the Bible because it was cultural. That's a view at least in part influenced by this relativism. It's a view that says culture is totally disconnected from nature. That culture is completely arbitrary, it's completely constructed by societies, but it has no basis or no foundation in the way that God has made the world. We can call this the milieu view. This is the view of the milieu around us. This is the air. we breathe, and over against that, Genesis presents us with a much more glorious and enticing way of understanding all that God has made. We can call this the biblical view or the Genesis view, that the created world is positively good. The created world is positively good. We'll have more to say in our series about the destruction that man has brought to this created world, but we can recognize that in its createdness, God made all things very good. So as we consider the text of Genesis, as we consider the idea of goodness and that there's an inherent structure to creation and that this structure is good and objective and that it's there, We'll look at several features of the text in Genesis to draw this out, and then we'll make a couple of applications related to it, how we should relate to the creation in light of this text. So first, the creation has a rhythm. The creation has a rhythm. God works by day, and then at the end of each day, there is a statement. that there was evening and morning, the first day, the second day, the third day. There's a rhythm that unfolds as we read through the chapter. That God has created the world such that it behaves in a regular way with set times. Secondly, the creation has a structure. So it has a temporal rhythm, but it also has a structure in other ways as well. And this comes out as we consider the patterns that unfold across these six days. In Genesis 1-2, we have the statement that the earth was without form and void. That is to say, no structure and unpopulated. No form, unformed and unfilled. lacking inhabitants and lacking any kind of structure suitable for inhabitants. And what's going to unfold over the course of the next chapter is God bringing structure and inhabitants into this world. And so the first three days we'll focus on the first problem that the earth was without form. And God will bring form to the world over the course of the first three days. Day one he brings a that temporal form of day and night, of light and darkness. On the second day, he creates further structure separating the waters into the waters above and the waters below, creating two realms where creatures will inhabit. Then on the third day, he creates the dry land, collecting the waters below into a certain place and then drawing out land and causing the land to be fruitful, And so he's creating a structure, a separation, separating dark from light, waters below from waters above, water from land. In this way, there's a separation, a formation, a structure that is being given to the creation order so that it becomes a habitable place. And then in the second set of three days, God continues working and he begins to fill each of those spaces that he has just formed. So on the first day, he formed the division between light and dark, and now he fills it with inhabitants. He fills the period of light with the sun, and he fills the period of darkness with the moon and the stars to govern over them. And so he begins to fill this first domain that he created. And then on the second group of days, so on the fifth day, God creates inhabitants for the watery domains. He creates birds to live in the heavens among the clouds, and he creates all manner of sea creatures to inhabit the waters, fulfilling and blessing them, commanding them to be fruitful and multiply and to fulfill their respective domain. And then on the sixth day, corresponding to the third day, the Lord fills the domain of dry land, filling it with land creatures and above all, creating man after his own image. And so we see there's an ordered structure to these sets of days. Three days creating domains, forming, separating, followed by three days of filling and populating those domains. But there's still a further observation that we can make about the structure that God is putting into the creation in this first chapter. And that is that he has an intention for mankind, that he plants a garden for mankind, and then he gives that garden to mankind to bless him with it as food. As you read through the days, day three and day six are set apart from the other days in a particular way. They both conclude their respective set of three days, and there's a double emphasis that is placed on each day. that on day three, there is a double statement that what God did on that day was good. So for example, on the third day, verses 10 and verse 12, we read the double statement, that what God had created was good. And then again on day six, we have a double statement that what he has done is good, that he creates the animals and it was good. He looks, after creating man, he looks on all that he had made and it was very good. And we can consider this day three, the creating of the dry land and the bringing forth of plants, as the culmination of the first three days that God has planted a garden. He has given the earth green things that are suitable for eating. And then on day six, God not only creates man, but he gives that garden that he had made on day three to the man and to the animals for their enjoyment. Look again in verse 29. And God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food, and every beast of the earth, and every bird of the heavens, and everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. So the first three days culminate in the bringing forth of a fruitful earth, and then the sixth day, there is the creation of the animals, the creation of man, but also the giving of that food that God has caused to spring forth to the man. We'll return to this as we talk later about the intrinsic structure of creation and the way that God has made us to relate to the world. But moving on to a third point. Creation not only has a rhythm, not only does it have a structure, but creation has a ruler. And that ruler is man. And certainly we recognize in the absolute sense that God is the ruler. But God creates man after his own image to exercise dominion over the creation. to rule over the creatures. This is over against the milieu view that does not see anything unique about humankind, that sees us simply as one among many equally valuable or non-valuable objects within the creation, within the material order. Further, the creation not only has a ruler, but the creation has a blessing. The sea creatures are blessed and told to multiply and this blessing is also given to mankind in verse 28. God blessed them, the man and woman, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves. And we often call this the creation mandate. But I think calling it the creation mandate can give us the wrong idea sometimes. A mandate sounds like a burdensome command. This is what God created us to do and it's burdensome. But notice what the text says in verse 28. This is a blessing, God blessed them. And this is the blessing, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and take dominion. And so we might use this illustration. It's like when a man says to his wife, come dance with me. Now technically, that's a command. Technically, that's in the imperative mood. But it's so much richer than that. It's a blessing, it's an invitation to come enter into the joy of the dance with me. And that is what God is here doing to his creatures, that he has formed these various domains, he has populated them And now he has made man in his own image to be his imitator and to resemble and to reflect him. And he blesses them and he says, now you be like me. You begin to do what I was just doing. I have formed the world. I have filled the world with inhabitants. And now you go form, go separate, go bring order to the material world. Undertake civilization building and fill the earth with offspring. Finally, the creation has a destiny. After these six days that we have been looking at and the patterns within them, we notice that there is a seventh day in which God has ceased from his work and he rests. And this is the rest of delight and enjoyment, not that he was worn out, but rather that he had finished the work, he had pronounced it very good, and now there is a time of delight and enjoyment of what he has created. And we could use this illustration, if you imagine somebody who's putting in an in-ground pool in their backyard, and they've dug it themselves by hand, and they have built a deck around it, and they've sweated and labored and labored, and they say that the man finished his work, and he rested. What that means is not that he went inside and took a nap, but it probably means is that he began to enjoy. He began to enjoy what he had done, what he had created, and he jumped into the water and delighted in the work of his hands. So now as we have observed these various structures and patterns within creation, we may make application to them. Two broad points of application. The first point of application is that we should align ourselves with the creation order. That God has made us in his image, that we are to imitate our God, and that we find the New Testament writers and even the Old Testament as well coming back to these opening chapters of Genesis as a pattern for how we are to live our lives. In other words, this is not just simply a story of what happened, it's a story of what happened and it has bearing on your life and how you're supposed to live as we have been redeemed and renewed by Christ. So for example, in the fourth commandment, we find God using his creation pattern, the Lord working six days, resting the seventh, as becoming the pattern for his people. You also are to work for six days and rest on the seventh. God works by day in Genesis chapter one. He undertakes his creative activities during the day and then there's a period of night. There was evening and there was morning. And then after that resumes on the next day more activity. And we find in various ways the New Testament alluding to this basic natural pattern and making a spiritual application of it. But the natural pattern that is being referred to is the fact that you have to work while it's day. Are there not 12 hours in a day? Night is coming when no man can work. And that's a spiritual application to Christ and we will certainly develop that in the sermon in just a bit. But it's rooted in just a creational principle that we are intended To be working by day, resting by night. We should imitate God in his giving structure to the unstructured. And this is something that we all do in one form or another, depending on what our vocation is. You can think of how trash truck drivers bring structure and order to that which is disordered. Everybody generates their waste that they have at their homes and it's all mixed up with the good and usable things of their household. And it needs to be separated and removed so that we can continue to live in a hygienic and orderly society. The man who goes down into the mines to dig up precious metals is engaged in the work of separating. He's taking that which is precious and he's separating out the unusable portions of it. He's going to then use that or somebody else is going to then use that to further fashion and take dominion over the creation. The mother who does laundry is engaged in this work of dividing and forming and bringing order, separating the lights from the darks and separating one child's clothes from another child's clothes. Musicians. bring order out of disorder. Organizing pitches into a singular pitch or a set of pitches with a particular quality and then arranging them in time and bringing order and formation to structure to what is otherwise just noise. Those who are involved in circuits and hardware arrange and bring order to various electrical components in a meaningful way so that they operate. Software developers draw on the huge English language and meaningfully arrange words in a certain order so that there's a meaningful result that comes from them. The boy who stocks the grocery store shelves is bringing order so that you can go to the grocery and not have to wonder where a loaf of bread is, whether it's going to be in this aisle or that aisle, or if it's just all mixed up. We engage in this task of bringing structure and order any time we undertake any task of dominion-taking or civilization-building, or simply the mundane things of day-to-day life are part of our imitation, are being created in the image of God where we bring order and structure to the domain that God has put us in. We should further imitate God's filling the empty. We should uphold marriage as the general pattern for most people. Again, there is all kinds of exceptions where we will say that marriage will not take place. Jesus lists three categories. The eunuchs from birth, those who are made such by men, those for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. So this isn't to say that this is the requirement for each and every individual. But we can recognize that the general pattern that is held forth in the scriptures for us is that marriage, within marriage, procreation is the normal pattern that God has set for humanity at a creational level. And whether married or unmarried, we can all honor marriage through, for those who are unmarried, through chastity and recognizing that marriage is the only appropriate context for carrying out the filling the world blessing, that we do not attempt to populate and fill the world apart from the context that God has ordained in marriage. We should imitate God's planting pattern even. As God plants a garden, he also makes the man to cultivate the earth. Man was taken from the earth, his body is derived from the earth, and his calling in a creational way is oriented towards the earth. The woman was taken from the man, and her calling is oriented towards the man. She is to help the man fill the earth with inhabitants. Adam can't do that by himself. Eve brings to completion the task given to Adam. But Adam, being from the earth, has a different calling. His calling is towards the earth and the creation. This will manifest in various ways, as we mentioned, any kind of dominion taking. But I think one thing that Genesis chapters one and two might challenge us is, to what extent does the agricultural imagery of God in creation, revealing himself as the one who creates a garden, the one who causes the earth to bring forth green fruit, to what extent should that imagery influence our understanding of the way we relate to the earth around us? Is this also still part of a pattern that we should seek to recognize and in our respective ways, in our respective places and stations in life, seek to honor in the way that we find best able for our own context? So, being redeemed by Christ, we recognize that grace does not destroy the creation, but that we come back to this opening chapter and we find in it a pattern of life for us, made in the image of God, we imitate the creator God. As he forms and as he populates, we, just as a general rule at the broad creational level, this is God's pattern for us. But now having said that, Most importantly, doing all of that does not get you saved. That you can undertake all that we just talked about. That you can cultivate the earth. You can move out to the country and buy a homestead and be 100% self-sufficient and grow a garden. And you can marry and you can bear children and you can carry out this creational mandate, this creational blessing. and you can still end up eternally lost, suffering the wrath of God in hell forever, where none of those blessings will exist. Because if we read on in Genesis, we find that mankind rebels against God. He does not keep his charge. That mankind plunges himself into death and he drags God's good creation with him. That there is a curse that is placed upon the ground on account of the man. And so that now all creation groans and that the purposes of creation, the destiny of creation are lost except should one come to redeem it. That one is Jesus Christ, the creator, the one mistaken by Mary or supposed by Mary to be the gardener when she encountered him after the resurrection. that the first gardener, the first cultivator of the earth failed. He failed to honor God's command concerning the plants that he had placed at his disposal. And he plunged the creation into death. But now here comes the second and better, the last man, the last Adam, who is the better cultivator of the earth, who uses his own body as a seed to be plunged into the earth, into the tomb in death and brings forth many to everlasting life just as a grain of wheat multiplies itself as it grows up out of the ground. He is the better gardener and he is the one who brings creation to its consummate end. He is the one who fulfills God's purpose for creation. And so that if we undertake to get in step with the natural order, it profits us nothing if we have not come to Christ. if we have not recognized and confessed him as the true man, as the last Adam, who accomplishes God's purposes. It is this one who will bring us into Eden. It is this one who will bring us again into the garden of God, but not as that garden existed in its infancy in Adam, but that garden of God in full bloom. in the age to come, in which we are given free access to the tree of life, in which creation is released from its bondage to decay. And so, yes, while it is good to be aware of the creation order, of the distinction between day and night, there is a more important day in which you must be active. Do not let the sun set on your life without having done the work of God, to believe in Jesus Christ, the one that the Father has sent. It is in Him alone that we will see the goodness of creation brought to its final fruition and fulfillment. And so let us anticipate that day where the creation will again be not just very good, but will have been advanced to a greater goodness than it was even on that sixth day at the beginning of history. In the meantime, let us seek to honor Christ in such a way that we seek to be sensitive to the way God has made us to live as creatures, to recognize our humanity, to be sensitive to the fact that we have a history that begins in Genesis chapter one, and that history has implications for us in the way that we live. Let's pray together. Our God and Father, we thank you that the world is not meaningless, that it is not just so much raw stuff that's out there for us to do with whatever we might happen to think up. But we thank you that there is an order to it, and though that we have rebelled against this order, we have broken your law, you have sent that one, Jesus Christ, that in him there is the resurrection, the life everlasting, and there is that new heavens and that new earth, which are this heavens and this earth as they are, redeemed and purged, cleansed, and refashioned, transfigured, according to Christ's almighty power. We praise you in Jesus' name, amen.