But this time, let's turn in our copies of God's Word to the book of Genesis, chapter 1, verses 1 through 5. The book of Genesis is the first book in the Bible and the first book authored by Moses. And we'll be reading the first chapter, the first five verses. Let's give careful attention now to the reading of God's holy word. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day." May the Lord bless the reading of His Word to us this morning. Amen. With God's help, let's turn back to the passage we read. and focus our attention upon verse 5 of Genesis chapter 1, relying upon the Holy Spirit for His help and guidance. Here we're told that God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. The title of our message this morning is Creation, Creation, Six Literal Days. This is the sort of sermon that really shouldn't have to be preached at all. It's the kind of sermon that, to be honest, I don't really enjoy preaching in a certain sense. I feel like Jude in Jude 3 where he says, I was eager, very eager, to write to you concerning our common salvation. But he says, I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. This is not a sermon that should really need to be preached. This is not a question, as I said, I had to look at the bulletin to even remind myself what the question was. Six literal days. This is not a question in one sense that we should even have. Because the answer to this question is so explicit and is mentioned on so many levels in the Scriptures that it's just self-evident. I mean, you look at the Ten Commandments. God inscribed in stone the fact that in six days He created the heavens and the earth. In six days. Why is there a question mark in the title to our sermon? I don't know, but there is. And the fact is in our day, people are asking this question more and more. Some are even saying that, in fact, God didn't create the world in six days in the way that the Bible teaches it here. They come up with an interpretation that turns this into some kind of literary device. But this morning, we're going to take the time to address these concerns, to see the positive reasons. for understanding the Bible at face value, that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, six ordinary literal days, that we can trust our Bibles. When it says six days, it means six days. We're going to look at some positive reasons for that. We're also going to look at a number of alternatives to six-day creation, so that we can try to wrap our minds around what some of our otherwise faithful and godly Christian brothers and sisters perhaps are toying around with or have embraced as an alternative to simply answering the question, how many days did it take God to create the world? Six. Six days. In six days, God created the heavens and the earth. It's really a quite obvious answer, but we need to take the time to understand why it's obvious and why some of these alternatives are simply not very persuasive. Now I want to say this morning that This sermon is not going to be exhaustive. There's no way to be exhaustive in one sermon concerning this particular issue because it is such a controversial issue. And so I would refer you to a number of other resources. For instance, a few years ago, I gave a talk in this congregation called Five Reasons for Six-Day Creation. That's available on our sermon audio page. And I've also made that and a few other resources available on reform.com backslash creation. In addition, the first two sermons that I preached in this sermon series is Genesis history and the errors of godly men both address this issue. They address the fact that the book of Genesis, especially in chapter one, is presenting history. And they address the significance and the importance, which I'll allude to in a moment, of this issue. Why is it so important that we take the Bible at face value on this issue? And finally, in terms of additional resources, God willing, we will be looking at Genesis chapter 2 in a future sermon. Genesis 2 comes into play in this discussion, but we don't have time to get into it this morning. With God's help, we'll be looking at that in the future as we go along in the text of Genesis. But this is a subject that I'm not eager to address. But it is something that does involve contending earnestly for an aspect of the teaching of God's Word that we just don't want to surrender. John 17, 17 tells us that our Lord in His high priestly prayer prayed to the Father, sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth. And so the straightforward truthfulness and veracity and trustworthiness of the Bible is the sole and supreme basis for the entire Christian life. If we lose this, If we fudge this, if we turn this into some kind of elastic clause, then we destroy the fundamental basis of the entire Christian life. That's not to say that people who take a different view are not Christians or perhaps aren't even more godly Christians than we are. That's not the point. The point is, in principle, This strikes a blow at the heart of Christianity because it strikes a blow at that statement of our Lord. Your word is truth. And so we want to be charitable. We want to allow for other people to have views that we can interact with and so on. We don't want to be uncharitable. But we at the same time need to let the Scripture speak for itself and let it be the final judge and nothing else. Now the question might be asked, why is this so important? I've already said, the veracity of God's Word is at the foundation of the Christian faith. Because if we can't trust the Word of God, how do we know Jesus ever even prayed a high priestly prayer? or died on the cross for our sins, or rose again. It all goes back to the historical accuracy of the Bible. And in addition to that, we know that Satan's greatest tactic, his original tactic, his continuous, unrelenting tactic to bring down the people of God, is that notorious question. Did God really say? Genesis 3, how does He kick off the temptation that brought sin and misery into this fallen world? What does He say? Did God really say? Did He really say what He said? Can we really trust that God actually said what we've been told that He said according to the Word of God? Did God really say? We've seen when we looked at Hezekiah's great mistake In 2 Kings, we saw that Hezekiah was desiring to sort of strip the gold from the doors of the temple and give it to pay a ransom to the king of Assyria so that the king of Assyria wouldn't surround Jerusalem and take out the entire city and destroy the entire temple. And so he's seeking to concede and compromise that first part of the temple the opening door of the temple, he's compromising that, trying to pay the ransom to keep the king of Assyria from taking out the entire temple itself. And we've seen that in that passage. that Hezekiah's compromise only wet the appetite of the King of Assyria even more to surround Jerusalem, to threaten it, and to threaten the very Holy of Holies itself. In other words, when we compromise the opening chapter of the Bible, the gateway to Scripture, we are putting the Holy of Holies, the Gospel itself, in jeopardy. Satan is never content with the gold from the doors of the temple. Satan is never content just to rework and reinterpret and nullify the clear teaching of one chapter of the Bible. He wants Genesis 1, he wants Genesis 2, he wants to go the whole way to the end of the book of Revelation. And of course, I don't have to tell you how many denominations have taken that route. And we've seen pretty much the full evolutionary process of their own doctrine based upon that principle. So this is very, very important. Now you say, well, how is this subject addressed in our doctrinal standards? Well, you can see in your bulletin insert that in Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 4, Section 1, it's very clear. that God made out of nothing the world and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good." That language is repeated in Shorter Catechism, question nine, and it's reinforced in Shorter Catechism question 62, which speaks of the Sabbath day being based upon God's own example in resting on the seventh day, implying that it was an ordinary day, to set that example of an ordinary day of rest that we would celebrate one day in seven. In Reformed Presbyterian Testimony, Chapter 4, Section 1, we're told the account of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 is history, not mythology. It's important to recognize the positive statement there. They're saying it is history. They're not saying that mythology is the only alternative that would deny the historicity of Genesis one and two. There are many people that deny that it's history and they invent another term rather than mythology. So it's not simply saying that it's history and not mythology. It's saying it's history and nothing else. The book of Genesis in chapters 1 and 2 is recording history. And John Calvin in his commentary on Genesis 1 verse 5 says this, For it is too violent a cavil to contend that Moses distributes the work which God perfected at once." In other words, people are saying God just did it in an instant, not in six ordinary days. He says that that's too violent a cavil to contend that Moses distributes the work which God perfected at once into six days for the mere purpose of conveying instruction. Let us rather conclude that God himself took the space of six days for the purpose of accommodating his works to the capacity of men. Now, it's interesting that this phrase, the space of six days, some people take to be just a scriptural Phrase, and so whatever you think the Bible means must be what the confession means, and it must be what Calvin means. But the phrase, the space of six days, appears nowhere in the Bible in connection with creation. The word space has been added to clarify that this is a literal period of time. And if you were to look up in the King James Version, A number of passages, Genesis 29, 13, Leviticus 25, 8 and 30, Jeremiah 28, 11, on and on it goes. You would find that the King James Version, 17th century English, which is the time that the Westminster Standards were authored, that it uses the word space to refer to a period of time. And in fact, nothing is more common in the King James translation of the Book of Acts to find instances where the King James uses the word space and the new King James uses the word time. or clearly indicates some equivalent of the word time. Acts 5-7, Acts 7-42, Acts 13-20 and 21. We could list these all day. Revelation 2 verse 21 is another helpful example. There are a number of these references. The point is that in the 17th century, to say, in the space of, is to say, in the time frame of. That's what the phrase means. So, our confessional documents are not simply repeating the language of Scripture, and then leaving it up to us to just interpret the Bible. They're actually saying, it's in the space of six days, in case you were unclear on that. It's in this period of time. And this understanding of the Westminster Standards is confirmed in our 2002 Synod decision. You may be familiar with that decision because people might present it as somehow representing a departure from the literal six-day creation view, but that's not actually correct. Let me just read a section of this to show you how this report, this finding of our synod actually confirms that the original intent of our standards is to teach literal six-day creation. Quote, current studies on the original intent of the confession on the creation days support the view that days of ordinary length are meant in the expression in the space of six days. In other words, the synod's affirming everything I just said. The positive evidence, though limited, points in this direction, and no evidence to the contrary has been adduced from any writings of the divines themselves. We suspect that this view of the Westminster Confession of Faith original intent is widely held across the RPCNA. They go on. We are persuaded that the Midwest Presbytery Declaration, which was seeking to provide a more clear affirmation of six-day creation in our standards. They were trying to sort of tighten it a little bit and cover all their bases and be more clear. They say that that declaration does express what was almost certainly the original intent of the confession of faith And then they go on to say that they have reasons for not tightening the position and not adding more specific language to our testimony and to our position. And I think there are probably some very wise reasons for that. Whatever you may think of that decision, they're saying There is a diversity of opinion within the church, and that therefore, in the confession's own language, picking up with the report, that we ought to let the Holy Spirit, speaking in the Scripture, be the supreme judge of any controversy in this matter, in the context of ongoing ministry that seeks to be biblically and confessionally faithful before the Lord. Well, that's what we're doing this morning, hopefully. is we're seeking to say, let the Scripture speak for itself. Take it at face value. Let the Scriptures persuade the people of God to embrace the clear teaching of the Word of God. Don't get personal. Don't attack other people, other elders, other ministers. Don't necessarily tighten the noose, but just let the Word of God speak for itself through biblically and confessionally faithful ministry. And I would submit to you, again, I've also included in the handout the dissent. There were a number of men that didn't agree with that. But what everybody agreed on is that the original meaning, the original intent of our Westminster standards was almost certainly to teach literal six-day creation. And I think you could make the case that letting the scripture speak for itself has been an absolutely fruitful decision, that over the last decade and a half, we've seen an increase in our accurate understanding of Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2 within the RPCNA. So God has blessed that. Whatever you may think of the decision, we respect that and we see that God is blessing the wise and discerning uh, courts of his church. But that's the position that this is the original teaching, the original intent of our standards. And yet we're just going to be charitable and let the scripture speak for itself. Now, what are some of the positive reasons for literal six day creation? First, six day creation stems from a plain reading of Genesis chapter one, verse one, through Genesis chapter 2 verse 3. Now we've already dealt with the genre of this passage, that this is in a sense a genealogical account of the origin of the universe, of the heavens and the earth. And we've also saw that this is a historical account. It's a historical witness and testimony by Moses that is meant to be taken accurately and historically. We've seen that in our first message is Genesis history. But just briefly looking at this passage, if you look at it in a straightforward way, you have in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And then notice all of the temporal or time indicators. Verse 5 says at the end there, so the evening and the morning were the first day. Verse 8, so the evening and the morning were the second day. Verse 13, the third day. Verse 19. The fourth day, on and on it goes. The evening and the morning were the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth day. And then, of course, the seventh day is mentioned as a pattern for the Christian Sabbath, and it's left a bit more open-ended. I'll say something about that in a moment. But at face value, there's an evening and a morning, and there is a day that takes place. First, second, third, down through the seventh. Now, some object to this straightforward reading. Some object to the fact that really, anywhere you go in the books of Moses, whenever you see evening, morning, first or second or third day, anytime you see that type of construction in the books of Moses and really throughout the Hebrew Bible, it always speaks of a literal ordinary day. But they say no. In Hebrew, the word yom, that is day, can often refer to a non-literal day. But again, we say, look at how Moses uses it, look at how the other Hebrew authors in the Old Testament use this word day in connection with evening and morning, and in connection with a numerical value such as third or fourth. Every single time it's a literal day. Others object that the word day in Genesis 2 verse 4 does not refer to a literal 24-hour day because Genesis 2 verse 4 says this is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. In other words, it's using the word day more generally to speak of the entire creation process. What do we say to that? Well, the word used in Genesis 2 verse 4 is not precisely the Hebrew word yom. It's the word be-yom. There's a prefix on it, which means literally, as it's translated, in the day. And so, again, from a technical standpoint, you just can't identify it strictly with the creation days in chapter 1. It's stated, it's constructed in a slightly different way. It's not a one-to-one sort of expression. Well, others say, look, the first three days of the creation week occur prior to the creation of the sun. And we dealt with that last Lord's Day. We saw that, in fact, the sun is not necessary. God created light on the first day. God was shining some type of light source, perhaps immediately from the God who Himself is light, according to 1 John 1. God is shining His light upon the earth, and the earth is rotating. That's really all you need for a cycle of day and night, and of light and darkness. Moreover, we saw that in the book of Revelation, we're told that not only, as Genesis says, the sun and the moon came after the original creation, but we're told that there's going to be a time when there will be no more need for a sun or a moon, but the Lamb Himself, God Himself in Christ, will be the light of the world to come. So the sun was not necessary on the first three days, and the sun certainly is not necessary at the end of history and in the life to come. In addition, others object that, look, time is relative, and the universe is expanding, therefore a literal day on earth could last eons in other regions of the universe. I'm not sure, but this sounds like the kind of thing you could probably find on YouTube. If time is relative and the universe is expanding, then a literal day on Earth could last eons in other regions of the universe. Well, isn't that interesting? But the fact is, the text is focusing not on these uninhabited regions of the universe, but on planet Earth. This is an Earth Day, quite clearly from the context. Others object that the seventh day to which no evening and morning is ascribed is therefore eternal and can't be a literal ordinary day. And they appeal to Hebrews chapter 4 which speaks of the typology of that eternal rest that remains for the people of God in heaven and which is prefigured by the Christian Sabbath. How do we respond to this? The reason that the evening and morning is most likely not mentioned is that this is presented by Moses as a type of the eternal Sabbath. Think of Melchizedek in Genesis 14. In Genesis 14, Melchizedek is presented, but Moses, though speaking of him as a king and a priest, leaves out his genealogy from the account. And then in Hebrews chapter 5, the author of that epistle draws out of the fact that Moses left out a reference to his father and mother and genealogy. He draws that out as a type of Christ who literally had no priestly genealogy and ultimately as the Son of God is eternal. So the absence of Melchizedek's genealogy pointing to Christ the ultimate literal fulfillment is very similar to what we have here. The absence of the evening and morning being mentioned is meant for us just to draw out the reality that this Sabbath day, this ordinary day of rest that God enjoys and then passes along to us as His example and as the basis for the weekly Sabbath, that that It is a type of eternal rest, and it's presented in that way. In fact, Larger Catechism 116 says the fourth commandment, requireth of all men the sanctifying or keeping holy to God such set times as he hath appointed in his word, expressly one whole day in seven, which was the seventh from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ." Now we'll just stop there. Our standards teach that we are to rest expressly one whole day, that is one whole ordinary day in seven, and then it simply says which was the seventh from the beginning of the world. Literally it's saying there were six days from the inception of the universe, and then the seventh day from that point, was the first whole day in seven that was given for rest. And it was that seventh literal day to the resurrection of Christ. It just weaves the literal ordinary Sabbath day with that initial seventh day. So from a confessional standpoint, there's really no doubt that that seventh day did have an evening. and a morning. In fact, you know, the Sabbath was created for man, and so we see God instituting it right on the heels of creating man. He creates man on the sixth day, and then on that very next day is the first Sabbath. Others object that the orderly structure The theological implications, the poetic style, and the cultural relevance for Israel under Moses suggest that the text is actually not intending to communicate historical facts, but rather it's simply meant to give us instruction. This is what Calvin was so upset about in the quotation that I read earlier, that this is just a matter of spiritual or theological instruction or poetic style rather than an account of six literal days. But think about it. We've seen this before. The book of Deuteronomy has a very precise, complex, and elaborate structure to it and order to it. Does that mean that we would say that Deuteronomy does not present accurate, literal, historical events? The miracles of Christ, for instance, when He gave sight to the blind, or when he multiplied the loaves and the fishes. These have important spiritual and theological ramifications. But does that mean that these accounts are not meant to convey real, literal, historical facts? The book of Job is highly poetic, but does that mean that it's unhistorical? The Exodus account was culturally relevant for Moses and the Israelites in their own day, but in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 11, Moses makes clear that these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition or instruction on whom the ends of the age have come. So in other words, Paul saying, yeah, these things were culturally relevant for the Israelites, but they were actually written for us. And these things actually happened. It's not mere instruction, it's instruction grounded in historical facts that the Bible is relaying accurately to us. Well, We've said the straightforward reading of the text in Genesis 1 and following points to literal six-day creation. Secondly, as a positive reason for this position, six-day creation preserves the proper relationship between creaturely death and human sin. It preserves the proper relationship between creaturely death and human sin. Most of us are aware that in the book of Genesis, God created in Genesis 129, he created the herbs and the plants and he gave them to Adam and Eve. He gave them to the creatures that he had made, the animals as well. He gave them these plants for their food. There's really no indication that anybody was eating meat until after the flood, as indicated in Genesis chapter 9, verses 1 through 3. And so, before the fall into sin, presumably, there's no death. In fact, God says that in Genesis 2 verse 17, in the day that you eat of this forbidden tree, you shall surely die. And then when Adam and Eve eat of the fruit and God pronounces the curse in Genesis 3, 18 and following, there are implications. Adam and Eve's death, humanity's curse has implications and brings a curse upon the created world around them. For instance, the thorns and the thistles. In Genesis 3 verse 21, God takes Adam and Eve and makes them tunics of skin and clothes them as a foreshadowing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, whose blood was shed. God sheds the blood of these animals, takes their skin, and clothes Adam and Eve as a picture of the righteousness of Christ that clothes His people by faith alone. But the point is, that this is the first time we see anything dying in the Scriptures. And it's animals. And those animals die as a picture of the judgment of God against human sin that Jesus Christ would sustain as a substitute for His people. So the death of those animals from which God got the skins to make the clothing, the death of those animals is a sign of judgment and the wrath of God for sin. We see in the flood that God not only sent a worldwide flood to destroy all of humanity except for Noah's household in the ark, but also that God sent that flood to destroy all of the animals in whom was the breath of life. We see in the Old Testament sacrificial system that equally a sign of God's wrath and judgment against human sin is the sacrifice, the brutal slaying of animals as part of that Old Testament ritual to point ahead to the death of Christ. They slaughtered the animals. I'm not saying that it's some kind of cruelty to animals here, but it certainly is a curse upon animals. And it's a curse upon animals to die. It's a curse upon animals to die in that kind of way. And the Bible presents consistently the death of animals in connection with God's wrath and judgment against human sin. Paul picks up on this in Romans 8, verse 20, and he brings the full implication of human sin. It's not just human death, human sickness, human disease, and things like that. He says, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. Because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. And that word, corruption, that he says is the result of human sin and has brought about this futility, this bondage upon the created world. That word corruption is consistently used by Paul to speak of death. 1 Corinthians 15, 42, the body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. Galatians 6 verse 8, he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. You see that he's placing destruction on one hand, and life on the other. Why? Because destruction is the opposite of life. It refers, in Paul's writings, consistently to death. So death in the created world, death for the animals, for the creatures that God made, is a result of human sin and of the fall of Adam and Eve. And six-day creation preserves that. The moment that you begin to say that there was this long period of time, and it's all figurative, and modern geology, and modern views of the fossil records, and modern evolutionary biology, and we bring all of that in and reinterpret the Bible to fit that kind of paradigm, now we have animal death, if not human death, before the fall. And that's a huge problem, theologically. So six-day creation avoids that problem. Thirdly, third major positive reason, six-day creation serves as the exemplary basis for our literal weekly Sabbath. Notice again, Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 11. We need to memorize this particular verse. Because he says that these things, speaking of the Pentateuch, he's bringing a story out of the books of Moses in that passage. He says these things happened as examples. Not that they're examples that were added back into the text to create a basis for the practice of Sabbath-keeping, but these things happened as examples. In other words, God's example of resting on a literal, ordinary day the basis of our resting on a literal, ordinary day. It happened as an example. The exemplary nature of it is not something that's being figuratively thrown together. It's the actual, literal, historical event as it happened. And that's the way it's presented in Genesis 2, verse 2. On the seventh day, God ended His work which He had done and rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made." It's just a straightforward historical account. God rested on that seventh day, and at that moment, He sanctified it, because Adam and Eve had been created on day six. He communicates to them, hey, this day is holy, And it's to be set apart for rest because of my example. And you see it in Exodus 20 written in stone. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. Verse 11, what's the basis of this? God's example. Therefore, in other words, on the basis of that historical fact, The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. And there Moses in the Ten Commandments is actually alluding back to Genesis chapter 2. He's saying that's the reason that He hallowed it and sanctified it way back then. Because the Sabbath was created for man. And He instituted it with the first man and his wife, Adam and Eve. The same could be said for Exodus 31 verse 17. God makes it clear that he rested and that's the exemplary basis of the Christian Sabbath. That's how our standards present it. That's the straightforward reading of the text. And that's a great positive reason for holding to six-day creation. Fourthly, and this just by way of an aside, by definition, supernatural events are outside the field of natural science. I'm just repeating this from a previous sermon, but we need to remember that supernatural events are outside the field and scope of natural science. Natural science couldn't do a test on Adam and Eve five seconds after they were created and tell us how old they were based upon the development of their bodies and their DNA. They couldn't do that because God created them with age and with maturity. Scientists couldn't go back to the wedding feast at Cana, as we said, and test that wine that Jesus made out of water and tell us that it was five seconds old. Because Jesus created it as aged wine, the best wine, even though it was only five seconds old. Science really can't tell us much about miracles and about how old things are that have been created in a sense out of nothing supernaturally by God himself. So science, as we said, needs to stay in its lane and study the natural world and leave supernatural events and chronologies and historical events to the Bible and to God's own testimony concerning himself. Now there are some alternatives to six-day creation. Some theories that are out there that are being bandied about. Some people are promoting them. Some of these are just have gone by the wayside and we won't spend much time on them. But the first major alternative to six-day creation is the gap theory. The gap theory. This theory teaches that the Bible can be reconciled to modern geology, which says that the world is far older than the Bible presents it to be. The Bible can be reconciled to that view of modern geology by acknowledging a sizable gap of time between Genesis 1 verse 1 and Genesis 1 verse 2. and then recognizing that after that time gap there are six literal days of creation. So they're saying, look, we can still have our six literal days of creation and our old earth that is millions and billions of years old because in between the statement, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, In between that, and the statement, the earth was formless and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. In between those two verses, there is this gap of millions and billions of years. And they try to use this to reconcile the Bible to modern geology. This does address the issue of the Earth's age, yes, that's the case, but it fails to reconcile the remainder of Genesis 1 with modern science, specifically modern evolutionary biology. So if you're going to take the view that we need to sort of reinterpret the Bible to fit the paradigms of modern science, why reinterpret it to fit modern geology and then you still have to write off modern biology? Because if you still have the six literal days, and you still have this literal order by which God created each of these things in sequence on each day, That just can't be reconciled with modern evolutionary biology. So you're basically going to have to contradict modern science anyway. So it really it's unclear what the usefulness of this would actually be. Another problem is that Jesus says in Matthew 19 verse 4 that Adam and Eve were created and joined together in marriage at the beginning. So Moses says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And then later on at the end of chapter 1 and on in chapter 2, it talks about the creation of Adam and Eve and them being brought together in marriage. Jesus lumps all these together with verse 1 in the beginning. They were created in the beginning, at the beginning. So Jesus didn't seem to see a huge gap of millions and billions of years in between the initial act of creation and the creation that took place on the six days recorded. Also, this theory rests really upon an arbitrary, unnatural, and at best possible interpretation, which is really motivated by trying to respond to natural science. And as we said, natural science is really not in play here. We need to listen to the voice of God. The second major alternative to six-day creation is the day-age theory. This theory says that the term yom or day in Hebrew does not necessarily signify a literal 24-hour day, but is simply equivalent to an age or a stage. Psalm 90 verse 4, 2 Peter 3 verse 8, a day is a thousand years, a thousand years are as a day in the sight of God. The problem with this is that while this theory does provide for longer days or ages, It fails to account for the irreconcilable discrepancy between Moses and modern science, just like the gap theory. The content and sequence of these ages, or day ages, is still not anywhere near in accord with modern science. So it really doesn't even accomplish what it sets out to accomplish in trying to reconcile the Bible with modern science. Also, those statements in the Bible Psalm 90 verse 4, 2 Peter 3 verse 8, both use the word day literally. That in the sight of God, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day, or like a watch in the night. That's the literal use of the word. It's saying, in other words, God is eternal. For God, a day, a literal day, is no different than a literal millennium. And the only way to extract the real theological truth there is to take these terms, day and year, in their literal sense. Literally speaking, there's no difference for God in terms of His eternal nature outside of the constraints of time. There is no difference between a literal day and a literal millennium. So it's not really even a figurative use in those passages at all. Third major alternative to six-day creation is the literary framework hypothesis. And there are three versions of this, so we're just going to call major alternative number three the theological framework hypothesis. This view essentially says, I have a quotation, I don't have time to read it, but it essentially says that the framework of Genesis chapter 1 has been put together with a very complex and elaborate structure so that the first three days speak of God, culminate in God filling the earth with vegetation, The next three days culminate in the creation of man and there are all these connections between the first three days and the last three days of this six-day creation framework. And so it's really meant to narrate a real historical event in a topical way. to communicate certain doctrinal principles, but not providing the exact chronological sequence of the creation. And many scholars in Reformed churches have held to this view, and they're saying it's just a framework meant to convey certain theological principles and truths according to this elaborate Now the problem with this, as we said already, is that this theory seems to operate on the unspoken assumption that theological truth cannot be revealed through chronologically accurate, literal, historical accounts. And the problem here is that if we begin to take this to its logical conclusion, what do we do with typology? What do we do with the theological significance of the literal events and experiences in the life of King David? What do we do with that? When we recognize that the life of King David speaks volumes concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, and informs our Christology, and conveys so much teaching and instruction concerning the Gospel, when we say that, are we immediately saying in the same breath, therefore it's not a literal historical event or occurrence. that we can't trust the chronology that's provided concerning the life of David. I mean, did David really come to the throne at age 30? Maybe that was just a type and a shadow that was inserted in the text as a framework to point to the fact that Jesus was baptized and began his ministry around age 30. So you see, this is a problem. God actually embeds theological truth in historical narratives, and we don't need to resort to this sort of theological framework hypothesis. Again, 1 Corinthians 10, Paul looks at historical events in the Exodus, and he says, in a single day, A certain number of the Israelites were judged and were killed, 1 Corinthians 10 verse 8, in a single day. And he lists exactly how many of them were killed in that single day. And then he draws out theological and typological truths from that literal historical event. Why? Because these things happened as examples. Well, the fourth major alternative to six-day creation is the cultural framework hypothesis. It's very similar to the theological framework hypothesis, but this says actually, and I'm just alluding to some direct quotes here, that this view suggests that by borrowing the events of Egyptian cosmogony or Egyptian accounts of the origin of the universe and placing them in a seven-day framework, the author of Genesis was emphasizing the theological significance for the nation of Israel. In other words, the Egyptians had a one-day creation. In order to combat that as a sort of ancient Israelite apologetic, the author of Genesis, notice, I don't know why they don't just say Moses, all these kinds of books that I'm having to read to prepare for this sermon, they always say the author. Moses was the author according to the Lord Jesus Christ, but in any event, The author, for whatever reason, as an apologetic against the Egyptians, framed it according to these six days or seven days of the creation week in order to make a theological and cultural point. And so, what they're emphasizing here is that the interpretation of the text really hinges on our study of extra-biblical, cultural, anthropological information, really speculation. rather than upon the plain, literal meaning of the inspired text. As our synod says, when we address this question, we need to let Scripture itself speak as the final authority and not impose our own extra-biblical speculations and anthropological theories on the text of Scripture itself. Another problem is that this theory basically says that the text of scripture cannot mean anything different from what it meant to the original audience. And they deny that the meaning of the text rises above the culture and humanity of the human author and the original recipients. In other words, they're essentially denying that, well, they wouldn't say this, but in principle they're inconsistent with the idea that God is the primary author, that the text means what God intends it to mean, that it's not limited by the intent of the human author, and essentially it denies what Paul says is the case, that these things happened as examples and they were written for our admonition as New Testament Christians at the end of the ages. It's written for us, not just for some original audience, and then we go trying to speculate, what did the original audience think, rather than what the text actually says in black and white. This was written for us, and it's fairly straightforward in the Bible. This theory also wrongly equates historical accuracy with scientific detail. As with most of the framework hypotheses, this view is continuously accusing young earth creationists of reading Genesis 1 through a sort of scientific or journalistic lens. That we're trying to turn the Bible into science or journalism or something like that, and really it's an ancient text that only these scholars can help us to understand, and it doesn't just mean what the straightforward reading of the text says. That's a false dichotomy. We're not actually saying that Genesis 1 is a science textbook. We're not saying that it's scientific even. What we're saying is that it is historically accurate. That the event is described accurately and factually. And it's a false dichotomy to say because it's not science, therefore it's not historically true. Scientists can do what they're going to do. We have an accurate description in the Word of God of how the universe came into existence, including the six-day chronology. Well, finally, the liturgical framework hypothesis. The liturgical framework hypothesis. The author of this view says this, it is my thesis that dates are added to certain events for their liturgical remembrance, not as journalistic details. Dates, such as Six Day Creation, link a historical memory to the specific festivals that later Israel observed. The dates of the festivals are set by the heavenly lights and naturally occurring seasons and harvests of Canaan. The timing of the festivals, I'll explain this in a second, are not based on the historical events they commemorate, such as the Sabbath is not based on the original creation week. Rather, the reverse is the case. The historical events are ascribed with the dates of Israel's festivals in order to associate those memories with later Israel's progress through each year's calendar. In other words, what this liturgical framework view is saying is that it's not as though there's a literal historical event of six-day creation that's then the exemplary basis of the weekly Sabbath or the Sabbath festival of Israel in the Old Testament. But rather, Israel was celebrating a weekly Sabbath and a weekly cycle of work and rest based upon the heavenly lights and basically upon nature and agriculture. That was the basis of their seven-day cycle. And that while they're in the land of Canaan, long after Moses and Joshua, this was now added to provide them a basis to say, hey, we've already got our seven-day week, but let's attach to it the creation of the world. And let's have a narrative under inspiration that can associate the creation with our existing seven-day week, so that we can actually celebrate God's work of creation every week. This is a concern. Again, let me break this down a little bit. This view is holding that the Old Testament festivals, including the weekly Sabbath, were not instituted at the time of the historical events that they commemorate. but were instead grounded in various natural and agricultural cycles, such as the sun, the moon, the seed time, the harvest, that were observed by Israelite after its conquest and settlement in the land of Canaan. And that afterward, these things were added to the event of creation and the chronology for the Passover, for the flood, for the creation, all of these things were injected back into the narrative in order to present a sort of a memorial of these events in Israel's annual life as a nation. And this is a huge concern. There's a problem with this because in Genesis 2, God tells us that He instituted the Sabbath at the time of creation. In Exodus chapter 12, it says that God instituted the Passover at the time of the Exodus. In Exodus chapter 20, God says that, in fact it says He spoke from heaven the fourth commandment as part of the Ten Commandments, that He actually instituted the Sabbath, or reconfirmed the Sabbath, however you want to put that, in the Ten Commandments. on the basis of the six-day creation week. And all of that took place long before Israel had settled the land of Canaan. And so to say that the six-day story of creation was injected or interjected back into the story long after Moses and placed in the book of Genesis contradicts those passages. Indeed, if we say that some revisionist, even if he was inspired, took these already existing festivals and attached them to these key events in Israel's history, such as the creation, flood, and the exodus, by restructuring the narratives around those observance dates of the festival, and sort of put into the text of Genesis these observance dates rather than the literal historical dates in which they actually took place, what we're doing is we're equating biblical holy days with man-made holy days. In fact, the author of this particular theory says this, Christmas commemorates the day Jesus was born, yet its assignment to December 25th is based on the winter solstice rather than any evidence that Jesus was actually born on that day. The author goes on to say, this method of assigning dates would be like telling the Christmas story and stating that Mary laid her baby in a manger on the 25th day of the 12th month, That was not the date on which Jesus was actually born, but the date would associate that memory with the timing of its annual observance, December 25th. For certain, modern historical conventions would regard such a saying as inaccurate, hence the sentiment of many scholars, and so on it goes. The point is they're saying, just like people say Jesus was born December 25th, and they read that back into the so-called Christmas story, The Israelites in Canaan had this sort of equivalent of a solstice. They had this weekly observance of work and rest, and they inserted that back into the creation week. Just like we might say Jesus was born on December 25th, they're saying God created the world in a literal week. They're inserting their own man-made practices back into the text. Now, all of this, I realize, may come as a shock. It may seem wild and fanciful, and I'm not saying it's wild and fanciful. I'm just saying it may, just from the look on some of your faces. But the fact is that we need to be aware of this. Because if we say that the authors of the Bible are able to tweak historical events just to establish their own doctrinal agenda, just to give a basis, for instance, for various holy days and so on, what we're doing is potentially undermining the very basis of the gospel itself. Potentially, what could happen is we could say, look, well, where does it end? How do we know that the gospel writers don't fudge the details of Jesus' life and ministry? How do we know that they don't fudge those details and conform them to their own agenda to provide a basis for the first day Lord's Day, for instance? How do we know Jesus rose again on the first day of the week? How do we know that blood and water flowed from His side? How do we know that He wore a crown of thorns? How do we know anything about the death, the life, the ministry of Christ? Maybe the apostles are just reconfiguring this to teach us various lessons. And unfortunately, the author of this particular theory makes the case that in fact we should understand the Gospels such that the Gospel writers do present contradictory timelines of the events of Jesus' death. One presents Jesus as dying before Passover. Another presents Jesus as dying after Passover. These are different timelines that don't come together. They can't be harmonized or reconciled, but rather the gospel writers are just writing these things to communicate various truths about Jesus' Messiahship, using descriptive latitude, as the author says. But again, how do we know that that descriptive latitude, that ability to change the text and reconfigure the chronology and the historical details, how do we know that it's limited to the creation account? How do we know that it's limited to the timing of Jesus' crucifixion, how do we know that it doesn't undermine the historicity of every single detail in the Gospels? And yet this view says, look, the six literal days of creation in Genesis 1 were never intended to record the literal, chronological, historical event of creation as it actually occurred, but simply to provide a religious calendar of events that would help Israel to observe that seven-day agricultural observance in the land of Canaan to celebrate God's work of creation. I don't need to tell you that it appears that this view is backwards. that in fact, biblically, the historical event is the basis of the teaching and of the observance. We're here on the first day of the week because Jesus really did rise from the dead on the first day of the week. And so I'm simply reminding you and hopefully preparing you as you perhaps encounter theories like this to recognize that these things happened. They happened as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come." Our purpose this morning is simply to let the Scripture, let the voice of God, as our synod says, speak in the Scripture itself. Let the Scripture define our view of creation in six days. Let Scripture define our view of the timeline of Jesus' life, death, crucifixion, and resurrection. Let the Scriptures themselves, even more so than our subordinate standards, let the Scriptures themselves define biblical history for us, and biblical teaching, and biblical practice. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, We desire that you would be honored and glorified, that you would enable us to hold dear your word, for it is in the truth of your word that we are sanctified and conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. We ask your forgiveness as the Church of Jesus Christ on earth for the theological errors that we hold. If we knew they were errors, we would not hold them. But because of our errors, we're forced to deal with questions like this. And Lord, we pray that you would give us understanding to answer these questions, that we would all embrace the faith once delivered, that we would be charitable to those who disagree. but that we would boldly cling to the truth of your word and never let it go. May it speak to us even this day for Jesus' sake. Amen.