Good morning, church family. Well, today we are here. We are now embarking on our journey through Genesis 1 through 11. And I want to share with you how excited I am, because last fall we walked through the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. And today we are going to go all the way back to the beginning. So we saw how it ended, and now we're going to explore how it all began. So I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 1, the very first page of your Bible. And we'll be studying it, so hold it open as we go through our message this morning. You know, it's interesting that we live in a culture today where it seems as though people believe that you are either in the camp of science or you're in the camp of Christianity. And my question to us this morning is, is that true? Are these two concepts or two belief systems mutually exclusive? both a Christian and embrace science. I will argue this morning that you can. But we ask the question, how old is the universe? How old is our earth? How long has mankind been roaming on this earth? Were we created as kinds or did we evolve from a primordial soup? from the goo to the zoo to you. And I would argue this morning that we were created. In fact, we can debate, Christians can debate when creation happened. We can even debate how creation happened. But every Christian must confess and must proclaim that creation did happened that God created the heavens and the earth. I hope all of you were able to watch the video that I asked you to watch. It was an hour and 46 minutes. I've heard from several, A, that seemed too long for me to watch. And I will remind them of how many movies they have attended in their life. And then I've heard others say, well, we got through the first half an hour and then we had to go to bed. And I said, I reminded them of how many nights they stayed up thumbing through their Facebook and Instagram accounts. And then others said, man, I watched the whole movie and it just blew me away. And so I would encourage you, it's not too late. This afternoon, instead of taking that nap, As you're wrapped up in a blanket, go ahead and watch Is Genesis History? I think it will be a profound impact on you and your faith. I want to also mention that if you have questions, and I've already gotten several of them, but if you have questions, you can actually text the questions to this number up on the screen, or you can email them to that email address. And as appropriate, I will answer the questions as we walk through Genesis 1 through 11. And so that is available to you. The second thing I'll mention is that all of these slides that I'm going to walk through today and every successive week will be on our website, so you can actually walk through the presentation afterward and do further study, because there's a lot there. So why Genesis? A lot of people have asked me, Randy, why are we going through Genesis? Well, here are the reasons that I would submit to you are why we want to go through it. First of all, it is foundational to our biblical worldview. Now, a worldview is defined as the lens through which you see the world and interact with it. That is what a worldview is. It is the lens through which you see and interact with our world. And I would submit to you that if you boil it down, there really are only two worldviews. There's a biblical worldview, where everything is viewed through the scriptures, or there is man's worldview, that everything comes from man's understanding of himself and his surroundings, including the universe. And so I believe that Genesis establishes for us a biblical worldview. Number two, it answers the most fundamental questions. Where did we come from? And what happened if anything happened? What went wrong with mankind? Why is there so much murder and envy and strife and discord and war in our world? What went wrong? And then ultimately, what is the solution for humankind? And then where are we going? I believe that Genesis answers all of those life questions. Thirdly, it establishes God's design for his creation. And we'll talk more about this as we walk through Genesis 1 through 11, but there's clearly an intelligent design of this universe, of this world, and ultimately of humankind. Our bodies are an amazingly complex and intricate design. God's fingerprints are all over creation, if you only are willing to look for it. And then fourthly, it addresses some of the most important hot topic buttons. of questions that we debate, such as evolution, gender, marriage, and even race. And then fifthly, it provides the basis for our understanding of the New Testament. When you turn to the New Testament and you read it, you must do so through the lens of what Genesis teaches us. In fact, Genesis 1 through 11 has 68 references to it, clearly, it's an important study for us this morning. And then I want us to walk through here. This is what we have in store for the ensuing weeks. This morning we're going to answer the question, creation or evolution, and then next week, in his image or in ours, and then the following week, covenant or cohabitation. This is a really big issue in our culture today. And then number four is God's truth or my truth. This is, of course, another cultural hot button item. And then brotherly love or jealousy. And then finally, before we take our break for Easter, we'll study the question God's genealogy or man's. And then after that, we have six more studies in Genesis following Easter. Well, then we have to ask ourselves three very important questions before we begin the study. Number one, who is the author? Number two, what is the structure of Genesis 1 through 11? And then number three, can we trust the Genesis narrative? Can we trust it as a historical account? Well, first of all, who is the author? Most every scholar, most every theologian agrees that Moses is the human author. We know that the whole Bible is inspired by the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, but that God chose to use Moses to present this narrative for all of humankind. And so we see here in the life of Moses, I won't spend too much time on this slide, but it's like he lived three phases, 40 years apiece. As you may well know, Moses, of course, was born in Egypt, and then the Pharaoh wanted to eliminate all male children, and so he was safely placed into a basket and then reared by the Pharaoh's daughter. He was then led by God in his 40th year out into the wilderness where he became a shepherd. He learned how to shepherd because God's calling on his life would be for him to shepherd the people of God out of slavery into the promised land. And then finally, when he's 80 years old, Moses then is ready. to go and do the work that God had called him to do. And so Moses then oversees the exodus, them leaving Egypt, and them being able to then come to the Red Sea. And Moses would raise his staff and say, behold the deliverance of God, the salvation of our Lord. And, of course, then Moses leads them through the Red Sea to Sinai, where he then gives them the law. And then, of course, they rebel at Kadesh Barnea. The people rebel. And it's recorded for us in Numbers 14, this rebellion. And then, of course, the curse of God is that they would wander in the wilderness for 40 more years. And then we last see Moses at the end of the Pentateuch in Deuteronomy. He is on the plains of Moab and himself not able to enter into the promised land, only to see it from those plains of Moab. But it would be Joshua who would lead them in. So Moses, of course, is the author. But then we have to ask the question, what is the structure? Now most of us may have learned in Sunday school or in other studies that you begin with creation, then you have the fall, then you have the flood, and then you have Babel. That's Genesis 1 through 11. And then you follow the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then Genesis ends with the story of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers. And so many people think of it that way. There's eight steps or eight words that would define the outline of Genesis. But I believe that the Hebrew writing here. This is, of course, written originally in Hebrew. I think Hebrew wants us to look at it from a generational perspective. The Hebrew word is Toledot. And beginning in chapter 2, verse 4, the word Toledot introduces each new section. The generations of the heavens and the earth, the generations of Adam, and then Noah, and then the sons of Noah, concentrating on Shem, and then Terah, Terah being the father of Abraham. And so the Genesis or the generations continue all the way through Genesis. And it's interesting, it's a good way to look at it and as we study through we'll pick up on that in more detail. But then thirdly, can we trust this Genesis account? I am reminded of Psalm 19. Many of you know Psalm 19 begins with these powerful words, the heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his hands. We are also told in Job and in the Psalms and in several of the prophets, including Isaiah 45, where it says that God stretched out the heavens. Can you imagine the universe if you were to think about the universe that you might see on the web? It's interesting that to think of God's hands actually stretching out the universe. I can imagine that's what might have happened on those first days of creation. And then we see Jesus' words. Look at what He says here to the Pharisees in John chapter 5. You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to me that you may have life. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses. Moses, the writer of Genesis, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe His writings, how will you believe My words? In other words, if you believe Jesus, then you must believe the account of Genesis as it is plainly recorded for us. Secondly, Jesus would say this to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus following His resurrection. And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And then finally to his apostles, right before he would ascend up into the heavens, Jesus said these words. These are the words which I spoke to you while I was with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. And he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the scriptures. I think it's fascinating that Jesus not only affirms it, but declares it to be true what is written in Genesis. And so now I want us to go to Genesis 1.1, and I'll read the first verse, say a few words about it, and then I'll read the second verse and say a few words about it. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now this is our memory verse for this morning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. From that one verse, we can make many conclusions. Number one, that God exists and that God is eternal. Notice that the author here does not argue for the existence of God, does not explain how he came into being. It presumes him as already existing. God, the word Hebrew, in Hebrew is Elohim, exists and is eternal. You'll find that on your sermon notes this morning. Secondly, the universe had a beginning. In fact, that's what the word says here. In the beginning is the Hebrew, Bereshit. Bereshit. And it's interesting because if we look back at our discovery of the universe, beginning in the 1600s and 1700s, you and I can list off some of the heroes of science. Guys like Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, and Sir Isaac Newton. We think about these men who understood that their belief in Christianity would not prevent them from also being scientists. They actually saw the science as a discovery of God's laws. Every one of those men I just mentioned had laws associated with them. They all were law. They discovered laws. Of course, we know Sir Isaac Newton because of the laws of gravity. But there is so much there. We have to realize, though, that after the 1700s into the 1800s, there was a shift. There were several scientists who did not want to keep in play a divine creator, some supernatural force that we would call God. And so they became more naturalistic in their approach. They became more materialistic in their approach, trying to explain the creation or explain the universe in materialistic terms. People like Laplace and Charles Lyell and, of course, Charles Darwin. These men were scientists who were trying to postulate the creation or the evolution of this universe without God in the equation. I would argue that all of this kind of hit its peak with Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species and his idea of random variation and natural selection over the course of deep time. And that's where we get the concept millions of years. Even today in our science classes in high school and college, children are learning about millions of years. And the reason we have to have millions or even billions of years is to accommodate this concept of evolution. Well, evolution really just means change over time. And what has always been agreed upon is that microevolution happens, that we all change and we adapt to the environments in which we live. But never once has macroevolution, the change from one kind to another, has never been proven. And therefore, the theory of evolution remains a theory. The scientists of 1600s and 1700s that I just noted all were authors of laws, things that were facts. And here we sit, 170 years after Darwin's origin of the species, and we continue to call it a theory. And in fact, it's no longer even considered a plausible theory any longer. Any scientist today, worth their salt, would recognize that this simple living cell is so intricate. It is a supercomputer. Darwin would never have been able to see that in his day. you But today, we now know that the simplest of living organisms is a supercomputer that we just cannot possibly explain. No, we'll learn more about that. But this idea of naturalism and materialism comes into play in the 1800s and 1900s. And in fact, it's interesting that in the 1920s, Edwin Hubble actually creates a telescope that is able to see Andromeda, which is a galaxy adjacent to our galaxy, and he is able to identify certain red line or red lines between the stars that show that the universe is expanding. And if you know anything about Einstein, you know the guy with bad hair. He was the one who thought that the universe was static, that it was stable, that it neither regressed or grew. But in fact, Hubble's telescope proved that the universe is expanding. Now, obviously, the most important discovery of this is that now we know that there must be a beginning to the universe. And this troubled Einstein. In fact, he held on to his own law of theory of relativity in such a way that he would actually create a fudge factor of the constants that would be needed to keep the universe in its steady state. until he was invited by a Catholic priest to go and look through Hubble's telescope. And he did so in the 1920s. And after Einstein himself, Albert Einstein, looked up into the heavens, he then walked away and declared, it is now my opinion that there must be a beginning to the universe. And this, of course, begins another emphasis that was thrown out somehow to keep God out of the equation, and that was the Big Bang Theory. But of course, we all know the problem with the Big Bang, don't we? How did the matter and energy get there to begin with? Who created it? Theology is the only logical answer, rational answer to that question. And so with Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. We know this. There was only one eyewitness. No one who has ever lived witnessed creation except God himself and he has recorded it for us in his narrative here in Genesis and throughout the rest of Scripture. And I would argue this, that if you believe Genesis 1.1 you cannot be an atheist. Psalm 14.1 says, the fool says in his heart there is no God. what an atheist is. But Genesis 1.1 declares that there is a God. You can't be a pantheist. You can't believe that God is in everything because God is transcendent from that which he created. Furthermore, you cannot be a materialist. Because the material got there somehow. Even if you hold to the Big Bang Theory, the original matter was there. Who created it? God did, and therefore material cannot create itself. You know in math, it's illogical for you to say X created X. It only makes sense when you say X created Y or some other And then, of course, you can't be a naturalist. A naturalist would suggest that there is macroevolution, that we somehow evolved from primates. But, of course, that's never been proven. The missing link is not just the missing link between primates and humans. The missing link is actually in every single area of the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. There is no way for us to be able to articulate any experience or any situation or instance where a kind produced another kind. It's never been proven. And of course, Scripture would say that can't be possible. And then finally, you really cannot be a humanist. You know, humanism is very powerful in our schools today. We talk about the power of the human being, the power of the mind. And of course, humanism believes that man is the ultimate authority. But in Genesis 1.1, we see that it is God who is the ultimate authority, that man hasn't been around forever. And so therefore, if God created man, then man is not the ultimate authority God is. And so we see in Genesis 1.1 that the heavens are plural, shamayim. Shamayim is literally the plural form. It's an indication that there are multiple heavens to think about. In the Hebrew, the Hebrew language doesn't include a word heaven. It literally says skies. but there are multiple of them. In 2 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul would say that he was caught up to the third heaven, indicating that there's a first and second heaven. Many scholars agree that this, in fact, is a reference to the fact that we live in this world and there's an atmosphere above us. And then above the atmosphere is the stratosphere. Even beyond that, the stars, the planets, and other galaxies. And then finally, there's the celestial sphere where God himself rules and reigns. No, Genesis 1-1 teaches us that God alone is the creator, that we did not evolve, that we were created according to our kind. And so I would ask us now to look at Genesis 1-2, and I know many of you are thinking, my goodness, Randy, we're at verse 2, and you're already 20 minutes into your sermon. I told you to pack your lunch. Verse 2, now the earth, that is eretz, is the Hebrew word, was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. I want us to point out a few things about this particular verse. Number one, the land was formless and void, or formless and empty. In the Hebrew, the words are tohu vabohu. It's a play on words in the Hebrew. It's a literary device to show us that this place, this matter, had no form, had no order, had no design. It was just like a jello mold. And it was just there. It existed. It was in chaos. Literally, the land was wild and waste. And it would be God who would take that matter, that energy, and he would then create what we know as good old earth. He would form it the way he designed it to be formed. Secondly, we notice here that the darkness was over the surface of the deep. There is darkness. Darkness is literally an absence of light. And of course as God steps into it, He Himself is that light. We'll get to that in day one. But it's interesting that this darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. It's as if the third person of the Trinity is anticipating the creative work of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. As Nancy read in John chapter 1 earlier, it was Jesus who was the agent by which God created everything that exists. And so we see here that the third person of the Trinity is in anticipation of the creative power of Almighty God. I want you to do something with me. The word here in Hebrew is ruach. You have to kind of clear your throat when you say it. Ruach. I want you to put your hand real close, maybe two or three inches up in front of your mouth. And I want you to repeat after me. Ruach. Ruach. Do you feel it? Did you feel it against your hand? It is. It's a powerful thing. It's the breath that came out of your mouth. You can feel it. It's like wind blowing the trees. You don't see the wind. You see the effects of the wind. This, of course, is the Spirit hovering over the waters, ready to blow this chaos into order, this waste into a perfectly beautiful, intelligent design. And so now we go from Genesis 1, 1 and 1, 2 to the six days of creation. And we'll walk through them as we go. I want us to understand that there is a repetition in Genesis 1. Then God said, let, it was good, the evening and the morning, and then the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, six days. And the word for day in Hebrew is yom. We'll talk a little bit about that in a few moments. But I want us to see, and I'll just put them all up here. Here it is, day one. Let me read it for us and I'll say a few words about it. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from what? The darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night and there was evening and there was morning the first day. Now it's important to note the evening and morning is exactly the way the Hebrew day still is Hebrew. If you know anybody who is Jewish their day begins at what time 6 p.m. in the evening, so evening followed by the day. It's interesting how this is written, established for us as a pattern. And so it is a 24-hour period of time. Now, the question that came to me, and I've already had several questions come in about Genesis, one was, well, wait a minute, there was light on the first day, but the sun, the moon, and the stars were not created until day four. Where did this light come from? From God. from God Himself. In fact, in 1st John chapter 1 it says, God is light. God is light. And it came from Him. It came from His essence, who He is. God is glorious. God is light. And He Himself established that the light would shine on the earth establishing that pattern of evening and morning until he established temporary luminaries, and I say temporary for a purpose, so until he established these temporary luminaries to order our seasons, our times, and our days. And it's interesting because if we remember back last fall when we talked about Revelation, the very last chapters of Revelation, it says that there will be no need for a sun or moon or stars because God himself will be what? light. It's interesting that all the way in the eternity as we look forward God will provide our light and we see here in Genesis all the way at the beginning that God himself provides the light. If this is too hard for you then you're probably not understanding the power and creative genius of God. And so God is light. The second thing I'll say here in chapter 1 verse 6, it's the second day. Look at what it says there. And God said, let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above the vault. Interesting. And it was so. God called the vault sky. And there was evening. And there was morning. The second day. Now, I think this is interesting because what the picture is, is that there is water below the sky. It's called seas. We'll see that in a few moments. But then there's water above the sky, too, a water layer. Now, we don't know exactly what that is. We don't exactly know all about it. But we do know this, that it is, in fact, water above the earth. And many scholars have looked at that and tried to explain. Maybe there was a purpose in it. And as we get further along in Genesis, we'll talk about some of the theories. And truly, they are theories. So let's not be dogmatic here. But theories about what that water layer does. And then we get to day three. In day three, it begins this way, and God said, let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let the dry ground appear, and it was so. God called the dry ground land, and he gathered the waters he called seas, and God saw that it was good. Now let me just pause right there. God brought all the water into one area of the earth, and then he had all the dry ground appear and another part of the earth. The implication here is that there is water, water and then earth, and they're separated. Can you imagine the globe in which we live, all of the continents, and how we are divided out now? Many people believe that this is an indication of what might have happened during the flood, what we now refer to as the continental drift. But all that earth was there as one piece. But as a result of the tumultuous flood, it broke apart, and it's now what we see on earth as continents. Interesting. And then in the second part of that day, it says that God said, in verse 11, then God said, let the land produce vegetation. Now, I want you to pay careful attention to the wording here. produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it according to their various kinds, families. Very important. The word species is not used. And we'll talk more about that as we go. And then it says this, and it was so, the land produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in accordance with their kinds. 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 vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, the days and years. And let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, and it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night. This, of course, is a reference to the sun and the moon. He also made the stars. Verse 17, God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good, and there was evening, and there was morning the fourth day. You see the pattern here. What's happening? We're going to see an interesting pattern between days 1 through 3 and days 4 through 6 here in just a moment. But we see here in day 4 the setting of the sun, moon, and stars is to establish the pattern of time in our world. And then, of course, in verse 20, it says this, and I want you to underline a few things here. And God said, let the water team with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky. So God created the blank great creatures. I want you to underline that. of the sea, and every living thing with which the water teems, and that moves about in it according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind." Once again we have this idea of kinds. God blessed them and said, be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning the fifth day. Now it's interesting, God created everything, it seems from the reading of this passage, as mature animals. He didn't say, I produced an egg and then that egg hatched and then that animal appeared over time. He created them in maturity. Many of us, when we get to Adam, when God created Adam from the dust of the ground, none of us thinks that he created an embryo, do we? No. In fact, all of what's happening here is that God, who is over time, He can facilitate the laws that He Himself put into place in order to create everything in maturity. Notice the birds are flying in the air. I don't know about you, but when an eagle hatches, it stays in the nest for a period of time until mother eagle kicks it out of the nest. But there's a time period there that doesn't seem to be evidence of any time passage here, because it's in a day that it happens. And then, of course, we get to verses 24 and 25. Let me finish with those, and then we'll talk about the length of a day. And God said, let the land produce living creatures, underline that, according to their kinds. The livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind. And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And we'll pause there. We'll pick up next week on verse 26. But let me just ask the question, how long did it take for God to create. Notice the symmetry that we see here in the days. Days 1 and 4 are correlated by light. Days 2 and 5 are correlated by the animals in the water and in the sky. And day 3 and day 5 are correlated by the land animals and the trees and fruits and plants that produced on the earth. and of course humankind ultimately. And so we see here this beautiful symmetry that's playing out that God formed the light, the water, the sky, and the land and vegetation, and then He filled it. He formed it, and then He filled it. He produced, and then He populated. And that's the power of Almighty God. You see the structure, you see the intentionality behind it. If you and I were to come up on a hieroglyph and we were to read it, or if we were to come across a book that somebody wrote, or we were to look up a computer program and we were able to use an app on our phone that had some kind of computer coding associated with it, every single one of us would know that there was a mind at the source of that intelligent design. So why is it that somehow we cannot come to the conclusion that there is an intelligent mind behind the universe? There is, and His name is Almighty God. Well, there's lots of theories that have been promulgated. Oh, by the way, Genesis 1 is the creation of the cosmos. Genesis 2 is the creation of the Anthropos. Some people ask, wait a minute, there's two creation accounts of Adam. And we'll talk about that more next week. But just so you know, it's interesting how the Hebrew literature is oftentimes written. It tells you the big picture, and then it goes in and gives details on an important element. And then we get to this concept of days. How long is a day? And I'll walk through these quickly. How many of you ever heard of the gap theory? The gap theory basically says that the original creation occurred in verse 1, and then Satan and his angels fell, and then there's billions of years. In between verse 1 and verse 2, that's the gap, and then beginning in verse 2 is God now renovating and recreating the universe after Satan's fall. There's several problems with that. First of all, God said that it was good and very good in each successive day in the renovated creation. He couldn't say that because of Satan's fall. Second of all, Scripture traces all sin from Adam. and all sin's consequence is death. If there's billions of years that have gone on, this is not just death of humans, this is death of every plant, tree, every living thing. And so it couldn't have happened. There's no way. Death cannot precede the penalty for sin, which is death. And that occurred with Adam. And then thirdly, humans have existed from the beginning. Jesus himself would say in Matthew 19, it has been this way from the beginning of creation about man. And so therefore, Jesus himself attests that the beginning is, in fact, in Genesis chapter Well, we move on from the gap theory to the revelatory theory, basically, that God showed Moses a six-day movie. Boy, I can imagine Moses, if we can't watch an hour-and-a-half movie, how he must have felt. Oh, gee whiz, God, when is this going to get over? No, I don't think that's really, that's not a plausible explanation. Once again, it's a theory. The third one is a solar non-consecutive days. This basically says that there is some gap of time between the days. But it doesn't seem like that is what the author is intending for us to take away. In fact, many would say that this concept has many, many problems, including the problem of what's alerted to us by the second law of thermodynamics. That there's entropy that plays into all of creation. That there is a tendency for us to dissipate heat, dissipate energy over time. This is called entropy. And of course, this would not work if you had gaps in between the days. And then the fourth theory that's been put forward, and that is the day-age theory, that each day is its own age of time. Many people subscribe to that as well. The problem is that Moses chose to use the word yom. which, when connected to a ordinal number and also attached to evening and morning, always, in scripture, always, always, always refers to a literal 24-hour day. No, no, no. And Moses could have used a different word in the Hebrew which was available to him, and it's the Hebrew word olam. Olam, meaning that Olam is an age of time. It's a period of time. But why Moses chose not to use it is pretty evident, that he intended, as God had told him, that it would be six literal days. In every case, as I said, the word Yom, which occurs 359 times in the Bible, in every case when it's attached to an ordinal number, always means a 24-hour period of time. It's interesting, you know, how many millions of years did Joshua and his armies march around Jericho? I mean, in the Bible it says he marched around Jericho, what, 13 times? Well, I mean, 13 days. So is that millions of years? 13 million years? How about Esther when she prayed for three days? Did she pray for three million years? No, but in every other case where the word Yom and a number occurs, we always think of it as a 24-hour day. And then, of course, when we come back to Genesis 1, because we have millions of years that have been indoctrinated into our lives through the scientific atheistic community, we say, oh, but that's ages. That's millions of years. No, it's a literal six-day week. And finally, and this is most important, that the six days of creation actually are a pattern for the work week. Go home and read Exodus chapter 31 and you'll find that God Himself intended that His six days of creation would be a pattern for the work week, Sunday through Saturday. And so if that's the case, then God using His own creation As a pattern for the work week, we have to conclude then that we are talking about six literal days. Finally, a couple more things I want us to see here. This is from Sir Isaac Newton. Remember I talked about how maturity may be an explanation for how things may appear to be from an age perspective. This is what he would say in the late 1600s, though these bodies may indeed continue in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity. This, of course, he's talking about our solar system. And look at what's underlined there. They could by no means have at first derived the regular position of orbits themselves from those laws. Folks, this is an amazing statement. What Sir Isaac Newton is articulating is the fact that God has stretched out everything into its proper place so that everything that he designed it to do would do according to his own laws. Folks, if we are off by one one millionth of a degree, we will either freeze to death or we will burn up. God has ordered it all perfectly for us. This, of course, is why Newton would conclude, thus, this most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. I love that quote. You know, it's interesting. There's another quote here from Professor James Barr of Old Testament. He says this, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer of Genesis 1 through 11 intended to convey to his readers the idea that creation took place in a series of six days, which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience. Listen, a plain reading of scripture tells us that they are six literal days. Well, what do we want to conclude? The fact is is that God created the plants and the trees and the water and the animals, the birds, the land animals, and even man in maturity. Jesus turned water into wine. He therefore overrode the natural law of aging. He produced bread from five loaves. He was able to multiply in in rapid succession, all of the bread to feed the hungry. Why? Because God is the Creator of all things. Jesus is the agent through which He created, and all laws subscribe to Him. How did the Son stand still in Joshua chapter 10? Because God established how that would happen. It was God who did it. And therefore, all of us can agree this morning that in the maturity that we see in the universe, you may see from dating sources, I mean, carbon-14... Somebody asked a question this morning about carbon-14 dating. Do you know how unreliable carbon-14 dating is? Next week, I'll share with you some stories about how carbon dating cannot be trusted, nor can any of the radiometric dating methods that scientists use today, potassium argon and others. And because what will happen is you send it to different labs and you get three different answers that are remarkably different from one another. You cannot trust the dating methods that mankind has. Next week, I'll talk a little bit more about that. But I close this morning with a quote from... Well, actually, here's the recap, and we'll have that in for you. But let me close with this quote from Robert Jastrow, the astronomer. for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason. The story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance. He is about to conquer the highest peak. As he pulls himself up over the first rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. I'm convinced this morning that mankind knows only what we know. We don't know it all. And the beauty is that this one eyewitness that we have has, in love, produced for us his eyewitness testimony as to how he created the universe and everything in it. May we praise him who is the creator and sustainer of all. Pray with me. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for Genesis 1. And Lord, we ask that you will stir in our hearts a desire to learn more about you and your word, to learn more about your creative power and how we, your highest created order, can serve you and can spread the good news that Jesus is the Savior of this world. Father, thank you for this time, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen and amen.