This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. Let's take our Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 1. We're going to start reading at verse 14. This is God's inspired and infallible and inerrant word. Then 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 years and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth. And it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth and to govern the day and the night and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. Then God said, let the waters team with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens. God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves with which the waters swarmed after their kind and every winged bird after its kind and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth. There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. Then God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind. And it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind, and God saw that it was good. This is God's holy and inspired word. Amen. Well, we're going to cover days 4 through 6 today. As we think about this text that's before us, we're not gonna cover all of day six because the crown of day six is the creation of man as male and female in the image and likeness of God. We're gonna go right up to that. As we think about creation, one of the things that is just abundantly clear is that creation should cause us to worship and praise and honor the creator. And there is no doubt that the revelation of God's creation of the world in Genesis 1 is designed to elicit such praise. How fitting it is actually that we, the created, we the creatures, should in turn worship and serve the creator, the one who has made all things. In fact, the Psalms celebrate God's creative power The Psalms extol the minutia of God's creation and the grandeur of God's creation, and the Psalms continually elicit a fourth praise for a God who actually speaks and things come into existence and stand fast, and the God who actually causes the grass to grow Psalm 104, and the God that gives the birds their food in due season, and feeds the lions, and makes sure the lions go to bed before man gets up and goes to work in the morning. And the Psalms celebrate a God who is the creator of all things, and He is really, really good at what He does. And I was thinking about the hymns that we sing, that just extol God is creator. This is my father's world. Let all things now living. God all nature sings thy glory. I mean, the hymn book is just filled with hymns that are designed to extol the beauty of God, which is reflected in his creation. And so my goal today simple and I would say that it is simply in line with the goal of Genesis 1 which is to magnify and extol the greatness of God as the creator of all things and to draw forth from us worship and adoration and praise for all that God has done. Now, that's a simple goal, right? But we're gonna see there's two kinds of people in this room and really in the world. There are those who actually exchange the glory of the living God for the lesser glory of the creation. They believe a lie and they worship and serve the creation instead of the creator. And then there are those who actually by the grace of God have stopped suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and now worship and serve the creator of all things and his son, Jesus Christ. So, we're gonna look at the second triad of days. And so, I have a very technologically advanced multimedia presentation for you right now, okay? You got this column, and you got this column, all right? You have to use your imagination for this multimedia presentation, all right? So, over here on this column, you have formlessness. All right? And under formlessness, you have then days one, two, and three. And what God is doing in this column is He is, in days one, two, and three, is He's bringing form to the formlessness, remember, the tohu of the primordial creation. And so you've got days one, two, and three, so what God does, day one, He brings about light with darkness, and then day two, He creates the sea with the sky, And so he makes the seas and the skies, and then day three, which we saw all this last week, there is the fertile earth, that is the dry land, and he brings forth vegetation. And so what God is doing is he is bringing forth the form so that he now in days four and six, so now we're over here in this column, okay? Over days four to six, what he's doing is he's now filling the form. So you had formlessness and void. He fixes the form in days one through three and fills in the void in days four through six. And in fact, day one corresponds to day four. So remember your multimedia presentation, okay? So day one, light with darkness corresponds with day four, which is lights for the day and the night. Day two corresponds with day five. So day two is sea with sky, seas and skies. Day five is creatures for what? For the water and the sky. So God creates the fish and the bird, birds, that corresponds to sea and sky. It actually, it's really quite wonderful. And then day six corresponds to day three. Day three is bringing forth fertile earth. Day six is bringing forth the creatures that will actually inhabit or dwell on that fertile earth. All right? So let's take a look at day four, which is verses 14 through 19. As we get to day four, we see that day four is incredibly important. It's important, this is the way that Moses underscores the importance of day four, the structure of the fourth day, and then the repetitions in the fourth day. So I've told you many times that oftentimes in scripture, the way to emphasize something is through repetition. And that's exactly what Moses does on day four. But then we also see on day four that there's a progression that's happening. And that progression is from the light in general, which was made on day one, now to the specific sources of light on day four. So day four begins, of course, with a command like all the days. and the command actually has a threefold commission, all right? So it starts off with a command, threefold commission, that command then or the threefold commission is then repeated in verses 17 to 18 in reverse order, all right? Now, I'm pointing this out because there is a very important reason as to why day four is being emphasized in the way that it is. Moses does not do this with every day in the creation week, but he does it here and he does it in a wonderful, wonderful way. So here's the threefold commission. God actually creates and commissions the lights first to separate the day from the night. So once again, what we have in God's creative power is another separation. And remember, those separations, whether it's separation in the expanse or separation of the sea and the dry land, now the separation of day and night, all of that separation is actually necessary to bring order to the planet so that we can now inhabit it. So God's separating power is nothing less than him bringing order to the created world so that we can live in it. So the first commission, separate the lights to separate the day from the night. The second commission is those lights are to be, notice it says, for signs, for seasons, for days, years, all right? Now, when you look at this text, Verse 14, let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. It looks like the lights are going to serve for four things, right? Signs, days, seasons, so forth. Actually, the light is only gonna serve as one thing, and that is as signs, but the signs or the indicators are for the seasons, the days, and the years. In other words, what God does in the second commission for the lights is he actually says, you lights are now the indicators for the seasons, the days, and the years. And so what God does is he brings about the seasons. You know, we sang this today, didn't we? Did you remember? Did you pick it up? Summer and winter. springtime and harvest sun moon and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness mercy and love That's what God does, is he commissions, he doesn't commission the stars and the moon and the sun to be signs so that we look up and go, oh look, there's a sign, it tells me this, there's a sign, it tells me that. Rather, the signs are the indicators making the seasons. The very fact that there is spring and a summer and a fall and a winter That should utterly amaze you. It is a reflection of the faithfulness and goodness to God, to all of his creation. It should also amaze you that we have a calendar. You ever think about this? We have a calendar. Do you know that during the communist revolutions, well, the French Revolution, which wasn't, well, it's kind of a communist revolution, but it was a pre-communist communist revolution. Anyway, when you had the French Revolution, which was atheistic, right? And then you later had the Russian Revolution, where they overthrew the czar and institute communism. You know, what's interesting is that many of these revolutions tried to undo something. and they try to go to a 10-day week. Okay? And you know what all of them had to do? They all had to go back to a seven-day week. You know why? Because the way that the earth rotates around the sun does not allow for a 10-day week. Everything revolves around a creation week that is a set of seven. God made it that way. He made it so that there are 365 days in a year. He made it so that there are 24 hours in a day. He made it so that there are seven days in a week. This is the way that God made it. And so the lights do that, that's part of their commission. So they separate the day from the night and now they serve as an indicator for the seasons, for the days and the years. And then he says, and let them be for light on the earth. And so here are the lights and they are simply created to serve the creation. Light is really an absolutely wonderful thing. If you don't believe me, go into pitch darkness. Okay? So, we're hunting one time, and we're out in the middle of nowhere, truly. We're like, nowhere. And, find on that, nowhere, that's where we were, all right? And there are these old forestry roads, and we were lost. Dusty was lost. I knew where we were. We're lost. The only thing that kept us from spending the night in the truck in the freezing cold was that off to our right there was a wall tent with some other hunters that had a light on. We used that light. Now, of course, Zach kept saying, Mr. Funk, shouldn't we turn left? No, Zach, we shouldn't turn left. And then finally we turned left and got back to the camp. But anyway, Dusty makes this observation. He says, you know what? Once those guys go to bed and turn out that light, we're gonna be stuck out here. We won't be able to see our hand in front of our face. God says, you know what? I'm absolutely committed to making sure that you are people who live with light. Now, is there a reason for that? And the answer is there's a huge reason for that, not only so that you can actually carry out a day's work and actually live a normal life as a human being, but there is also a magnificent reflection of the truth that Jesus Christ himself is the light of the world and he who follows him will never walk in darkness. So, God says, lights, I've got a job for you. You're to make the difference between day and night. You're to be the signal for seasons and days and years. And you are actually to provide light for the people that I'm about to put on this planet. And here's the result. And it was so. And here's the thing that I almost did this week. I almost got to, and it was so, and I almost just said to myself, okay, well, we've seen that already now three times. We can just scoot past it because it gets repeated so often. And I thought, no, no, no, no, no. You can't do that. The very fact that it just says, and it was so, cannot be taken for granted because what it does is it reminds us that the God of heaven speaks the word and it's done. Of course it's repeated, but it's repeated for a reason and that is so you don't take it for granted. This is a God of sovereign omnipotence. He just says, lights do this, lights do that, and the lights start doing that. It's an absolutely glorious, magnificent thing that the God of heaven and earth actually speaks, and even the inanimate creation simply does what it's told to do. Then it says, God made two great lights. The greater light to govern the day, what's that? Okay, good, you're paying attention. The lesser light to govern the night, and that is? The moon, right? How come he doesn't say sun and moon? He just says, he made a greater light and a lesser light. That's the way he did it. Then notice this. Does this sound almost like an understatement to you? And he made the stars. Really? I mean, you go outside and, you know, we live in a blessed place because our air is thinner, we're closer to heaven, and we can see the glory of the sky at night, right? And it's absolutely magnificent, and you look out and you see all these stars, and Moses says, and he made the stars. Victor Hamilton, who's a very good commentator on Genesis, says, he mentions the stars as if it's almost an afterthought. Now, then says God placed him in the expanse to give the light and to govern and to separate. So here we have that repetition, right, that I was talking about. So we have the first part of the day and then there's this repetition to give light, to govern, to separate, in reverse order, underscoring the importance of day four. And so then God evaluates the work. He inspects his own work, God looks at it, and he saw that it was good. In other words, God stands back, looks at the work of his hands, and he says, you know what? The light, the order, the seasons, the years, the days, they all reflect my wisdom, they reflect order, they reflect, therefore, my goodness. You know, this is one of the things that we so often forget is that the goodness of God is demonstrated all around us. If we would only have eyes to see, we would actually be people on whose lips God's praise was more consistent. When Calvin says, hey, even a single blade of grass is created to make you rejoice, get up in the morning or you're watching the sunset in the evening and you think to yourself, this is nothing less than the reverberation of the glory of God every single day. And it's almost as if all of creation knows it except for us. I don't know this for sure, but I think that when the lion is about to eat the antelope, probably says, thank you, Lord, for this food. You let me catch a slow one. You know, that's part of God's creation. That's part of the way it works. Every little part, every intricate part is just simply the orchestration of a God who says, I'm gonna reflect my wisdom, my power, and my goodness in the day-in, day-out ordinary stuff. If you've got eyes to see it, give me praise. So then we have this evening, morning, fourth day. So fourth day, fourth day is a big day, right? Big accomplishment, glorious accomplishment. Now we could marvel, we could marvel. I was thinking of doing this. We could marvel at the magnificence of the sun. We could marvel at the glory of the moon. we could stand back and marvel at the glory of the stars, right? And all of that would be totally worthwhile. I mean, stop and think that the latest estimate says that the number of stars is 10th to the 23rd power. Oh my goodness, he's doing math again. Now, I don't know exactly what that number is. It's like a heck of kajillion or something. It's like 10 with 23 zeros. That's how many stars. And you know the amazing thing is that God gave each one a name. You could think about that and you could just say, wow, then sings my soul, my savior God to thee, how great thou art, right? So creation's meant to do. The heavens are declaring the glory of the Lord. You're supposed to say, praise God. I want to point something else out. Day four is certainly designed to make you marvel at the sun, the moon, the stars, the seasons, the days, the weeks. It's supposed to make us marvel at the stuff that we take for granted. But there's another purpose for day four. And that purpose is actually a theological assault on the worldviews that surrounded Israel. Now, the heavens in the ancient world were actually a rich resource for superstition and worship. Every culture around ancient Israel had sun gods, moon gods, star gods, and astral deities. It doesn't matter whether they were Canaanite or Babylonian. It doesn't matter whether they were Ammonite. It made no difference. They all actually had their own name for the sun god. They had their own name for the moon god. They actually had their stars that were named for astral deities. There was also in the ancient world surrounding Israel, inherent belief that astrological alignment of the stars controlled the events of my life. Why? Because the heavens are deified in paganism. So Alan Ross says, they thought, the pagans thought of these heavenly orbs as objects of worship, as forces of destiny that were serviceable for divining through alignments and eclipses. So as we read day four, day four doesn't just say the heavens declare the glory of the Lord. Day four does that, but day four makes it very, very clear that the sun, that the moon, and the stars were created not to be served, but to serve. Notice why greater light, lesser light. God doesn't even take the time to name them. He doesn't even take the time to say, and I call that the sun and I call that the moon. Why? Because he is in a sense demonstrating that these lights, the greater and the lesser are just simply subservient in his created purposes. Why do you think it says almost as an afterthought and he created the stars? It's because he's downplaying the fact that the stars themselves simply serve a divine purpose. They're not to be looked for or looked at for divination or to try to determine what my day is going to be like or anything like that. And so Isaiah, centuries later, would say, to whom then will you liken me that I would be his equal, says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see who created all of these stars. the one who leads forth their hosts by number, he calls them all by name, and because of the greatness of his might and the strength of his power, not one of them is missing." Day four is this loud blast, this loud trumpet blast that says, who rules the heavens? God rules the heavens. It is God. The luminaries are not gods. The moon is not a god. The sun is not a god. The stars are not gods. They are created by the true God, and they're not to be worshiped, nor are they to be looked to for guidance. Would the Israelites have to be reminded of this little fact? I just read this morning in my devotional reading. You know what King Ahab did? Went and worshiped the stars. Well, this is what he should have known. Deuteronomy chapter 17 is what he should have known. Listen to this, verse two. If there is found in your midst in any one of your towns, which the Lord your God is giving to you, a man or a woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God by transgressing his covenant and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly hosts, that's the stars, which I have not commanded. And if it is told you and you have heard of it, then you shall inquire thoroughly, behold, if it is true, the thing certain that this detestable thing has been done in Israel then you shall bring out that man or that woman who has done this evil thing to your gates and that man or that woman shall you shall stone them to death well the Israelites would be reminded over and over and over again that it is God who's to be trusted, not the sun, the moon, or the stars. And so psychics and mediums and spiritists and astrologers and fortune tellers and horoscope readers are actually doing something that the Bible absolutely utterly forbids because the call was always to trust God. You don't look to the stars. You don't look to the stars to see how your day's gonna go. You trust in the God of Israel. And so Isaiah says, when they say to you, consult the mediums and the spiritist who whisper and mutter, should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living to the law and to the testimony? If they don't speak according to this word, it's because they have no dawn in them. And so I asked today, does the fourth day of creation have any relevance to us? You better believe it. You better believe it. If you read your horoscope online or in the paper, stop it. Stop it. You are actually violating the word of God and demonstrating that you're putting your trust in something other than the God of Israel who created the stars. When I was in Denmark, I was looking online and I noticed the psychic down on the road on 395 got arrested for fraud. Whoa, what a surprise. Excuse me? Nevermind, I'll stop there. Okay, now, day five. Day five. Verse 20. Then God said, let the waters team with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens. God created the great sea monsters, every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind and every winged bird after its kind. and God saw that it was good. So now, this command, God is now gonna start filling the waters and the skies. And so day two brings about the environment necessary by creating expanse, brings about the environment necessary for habitation. Now God is actually bringing about the creatures that are going to inhabit that environment of the seas and the sky. And so God says, let the waters teem with swarms of just living creatures. Let the birds fly above the earth and the open expanse. On the fifth day, God speaks and brings into existence this massive multitude of both fish and fowl. Says he brought the great sea monsters. Now, understand that when he says sea monsters, He's talking just simply about large sea creatures. So God says, bring forth big, giant sea creatures, and then boom! Here is this gigantic whale. But not like one of them, probably like hundreds and thousands of them. And he brings him about all these large sea creatures. Now, here's the interesting thing. Just as day four is a rebuke to those that would look to the sun, moon, and stars as deity, you have to understand that in... Ugaritic literature, which is the literature of Canaan around them, they would speak of the god Yam, which is the god of the sea, and they would speak of the god Lotan, which in Hebrew ends up being Leviathan, and they would look at Yam and Lotan, and they would look at them as these great monster gods that were to be feared and to be worshiped. And so Genesis turns around and just says, no, they're just creatures that God made. And he put him in the water. And in fact, later in Job, it says, you know what I do? God talking to Job, he says, I take a hook, bigger than any hook you've ever seen, Job, and I just stick it in Leviathan's nose and I'd make him go wherever I want him to go. Why? I made him. He's mine. I made the whales, I made the gigantic sea mammals, I made the sea creatures, I've done absolutely everything. They're just mine and I made them and I just stuck them in the water. Hamilton again says, Genesis 1 could not be written with a more anti-mythical basis than it is. In other words, Genesis 1 just comes out and is just like this gigantic steamroller that is just smashing down pagan ideology after pagan ideology after pagan ideology, pointing to the true and living God, not the false gods of the nations. Every creature that moves, and so here God says, okay, let's see, how many fish are we gonna make? Let's make lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of fish. And so here you have this massive amount of little fishies, big fishies that are filling the waters. In fact, here's the great thing. There's stuff that God has made that we haven't even seen yet. You know, they stick those cameras way, way, way down where people, where divers can't go, and then they start discovering, like, oh my goodness. My earthly opinion is that some of those are just like, frankly, just frightening, okay? They're like scary looking, you know? But God says, you know, I'm gonna make this, and nobody's going to even see it or enjoy it for thousands and thousands of years but me, right? And so he brings forth all of the fish, the big and small, and then the winged creatures, right? The birds, big and small. And really there's something, again, we could actually focus on the magnificence of a bird, right? You can think about these birds that have the ability to fly. I was getting my car washed last week and there were some hawks in an open field and they're making their, I'm gonna kill you mouse noise, and they're circling around and then they go down and boom, it's awesome. I mean, unless you're the mouse, it is awesome, all right? And so God says, you know what, I'm making those. I'll make some bald eagles, I'll make some golden eagles, I'll make vultures, I'll make, I mean, just everything that you can imagine. And so it all is absolutely glorious. And here's God's evaluation. God looked at the 21st century and saw that it was good. So the form is now filled. There's variety, there's beauty, there's power. Of course, his thinking of these creatures causes us to reflect on the glory of the creator. I mean, even stuff that is annoying to us, like Blue Jays. Up until this week, I would have said, I hate Blue Jays. And I still don't like them. But even if you watch a Blue Jay, absolutely glorious, magnificent creatures that God made. We're in St. Louis, we start to see Cardinals everywhere. Not baseball team, but actual birds, okay? We're up in Vancouver, we see a bald eagle on a guy's arm. It was awesome. We saw two brown bears. One was eight feet tall, the other was nine feet tall. One was about 800 pounds and the other was about 900 pounds. And we saw them close up and just awesome. And God says, you know what? I'm gonna make something that is just wow, ferocious, glorious, magnificent, a bear. Wow. And you look all around and it is absolutely glorious, absolutely magnificent. And so, God makes all of it, it reflects His glory. And then God turns around in verse 22, He says, be blessed, that is, be filled with the potency of life. God pronouncing his blessing is actually giving them the power to propagate life. And so God's first blessing is not on man, but it's on the inhabitants of the sea and the sky. He says, be fruitful and multiply. So the fish and the fowl have their own sphere of dominion. The next blessing is gonna be on man as the inhabitant of the land, but then we get to evening, morning, fifth day, and what an absolutely glorious day it was. I love being outside. And I love it when you see stuff that you don't get to see just driving through Gardnerville. One time we were out in Eastern Nevada, We were taking care of a deer, and we started to hear a cow elk start calling. And then we heard the bull start bugling. And it just sent shivers down your spine. And you could hear him get closer and closer. and the cow was calling. And then you could hear him just mowing through the mountain, just crashing. And he comes up and he's got branches hanging off of his antlers because he's just been like, where is she? Wah! And you know what? You see that and you go, that, that's awesome. That is a reflection of the glory of God, you know? You're sitting there, you got Chad Elliott behind you calling in a turkey, and you hear these turkeys gobbling, and you're getting like all excited, and you know that these turkeys are gonna come up, and then here they are, and they start turning color, and their feathers go out, and you're like, whoa, awesome. Come just a little bit closer, okay? We'll cover day six next week in its entirety, okay? When we get to day six, everything, days one, two, three, four, five, actually lead us right up to the crown of God's creation, humanity. He's made this world. He's given us seasons. He's given us weeks and days. He's filled it with these magnificent birds of the sky and creatures of the sea and of the land. And you know what we're supposed to take away from the created order and the land and the sea and that which fills, and we're supposed to stop and think, you know what? God is faithful. God is good. God is powerful. God is wise. He is creative. He's an excellent planner. He's sovereign. He alone is God. He's to be thanked and he's to be honored and he's to be trusted and he's to be worshiped. And so let us make sure that we are not those that exchange the glory of the creation. for the glory of the Creator, who's the living and true God, who eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, three persons, glorious Creator, blessed Trinity, forever praised. Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the revelation of days four and five. What a glorious Creator you are. How magnificent are your ways, your thoughts, your plans? Father, we love you. We thank you. You've given us a beautiful world in which to live, and we certainly don't deserve it. We pray, Father, that we would be those that give you honor and thanks and praise for all that you've done for us. We pray even this week, Father, you'd give us eyes to see the signs and the wonders of your created order. Give us eyes to see and hearts to praise. We ask this in the name of the One who is the Word of God through whom all things came into being, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.