From the Start - Part 2 (A Genesis Sermon Series Part 3)

If you would go ahead and turn to Genesis Chapter 1, it is

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

found on Page 1, in case you didn't know that.

And if you didn't know that, that's OK.

But we will be continuing, obviously our series in Genesis

for the next two years. Approximately 12 or 13 years

ago, I began to develop an obsession with the Aurora

borealis, the Northern Lights. I set about to learning some of

the science behind the Aurora. I found websites to show me key

information on when they might possibly be viewed at our

latitude. For a while I even had an app

that would call me or text me in the middle of the night when

when the numbers hit certain thresholds that I had set for

our location. Here.

I routinely went out to try and see the lights but would fail

time and time again, even when we were way far north, whether

it was in northern Michigan or in the UP or even at Glacier

National Park, which is practically Canada, I would

strike out. Conditions, you see have to be

just right to view the Northern Lights at our latitude.

The numbers have to be right. And you know what you don't want

clouds because then it's hard to see them.

But then April 23rd of 2023 I was finally able to capture them

with my phone. It wasn't the best, but after

many years of trying, I was excited to finally have caught

the Northern Lights. Well, most of the pictures.

You may know this, but most of the pictures you see are not

what our human eyes actually see, but our rather longer

exposures to let in more lights and more information into the

camera. However, without day four of

creation there would be no northern or southern.

For our southern friends lights last week we looked at days one

through 3 of creation. Those days serve as the

framework for creation. On day one, God created the

light. The the text didn't tell us what

exactly this light was or or how it worked, But in a place that

was formerly dark, light had now shone into the darkness.

And now there was both night and day.

Day 2. God created the skies.

There was water above the earth as well as water here on earth.

And, and somehow it was all mingled together in my mind.

I kind of imagined it being like July in San Francisco, which is

my mic doing that thing again, just once.

OK, perhaps you've heard what Mark Twain said.

The coldest winter I ever spent was the was the summer in San

Francisco. Yes.

No, it's real. Like it's very real.

The the fog just socks in San Francisco.

And we used to live in that fog. Summers are cold there.

But so I imagine it being like that thick fog sitting over the

coast there along San Francisco. It's just my imagination.

Who knows if that's what it actually was, but that's what I

imagined. So God took some then God took

some sort of Dome in their minds or a globe for our 21st century

perspective. And he set it above the earth to

to create our atmosphere and our skies, separating the waters

above from the waters that were below here on earth.

Then came the last piece of the frame.

On day three. God pulled all waters together

into one place so that dry land appeared.

And once the dry land appears, God speaks and he produces

vegetation and and the each tree or plant is given the ability to

reproduce after its own kind. I had initially intended to

cover days 4 through 6 today. I think I told you last week

that I was going to cover days 4 through 6, but that is a lie.

Once I started studying, I realized I couldn't do the 4th

day justice if I hit all three days in one message.

The 4th day is way too important to just fly over it.

So now if you're starting to count verses and time will

probably be like three years in Genesis.

No, see, what's going to happen is for the 1st 11 chapters,

we'll go slow ish. After that you get into the

narrative sections and and things move much faster.

So I don't anticipate us being two years in this.

It may be a year, but yeah. So if you're able, would you

stand as we read from Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 1,

Genesis 1 · chapter mention Genesis 1:14–19

verses 14 through 19. And God said, let there be

lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from

the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for

days and years. And let there be lights in the

expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.

And it was so. And God made the 2 great lights,

the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to

rule the night, and the stars. And God set them in the expanse

of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day

and over the night, and to separate the light from the

darkness. And God saw that it was good,

And there was evening, and there was morning.

The 4th day you may be seated both day and night needed to

have have their boundaries. So God made these two great

lights in order to create separation that He was

separating the day from the night.

He's separating the light from the dark.

Imagine, if you will, that it's always night.

People would be depressed all the time, lazy, unmotivated.

We would be purposeless people struggling to find our way

through life. The sense of safety that that

light brings wouldn't be a reality, so there might even be

a perpetual sense of anxiety about the constant darkness.

But what if it was always day? What if it was always bright

out? There would be no natural break

in our day to to give us rest. It would be relentless sun and

heat, no time to relax. Each night when we go to bed we

we bury the troubles and concerns of the day, looking

forward to the next day when when things will in a sense be

made new. The day creates opportunity for

for work and productivity, but the night serves to give us the

rest that we need. So God created these two great

lights to rule over the day and night.

Obviously the sun is the greater light and the moon is the lesser

light. Now remember, the Bible isn't

trying to make any scientific statements here, but is written

from their human perspective. So it calls the moon a lesser

light. The Babylonians, Sumerians, and

Egyptians all believed specific gods ruled over over the day and

the night. And there were various myths of

course associated with these gods.

For example, the sun God who was known by either U2 or Shamash

would watch all that happened on the earth as he as he drove his

fiery Chariots across the sky each day.

And as he watched the going down the goings on of of the earth.

He he decided that he would then continue traveling through the

underworld at night to bring judgments and and impose his

divine justice. Then there's the moon God.

The moon God's name was Nana or sin.

Don't conflate those two things. Don't call your Nana a sin.

Might not be good, but he he guided the moon God would guide

travelers. He was associated with fertility

of the land as well as fertility of cattle.

And often he's depicted as as the father of the sun God.

And, and this was in order to demonstrate his seniority, his

authority over the sun. But these myths, these

Babylonian and Sumerian and Egyptian myths, they, they stand

in stark contrast to what Moses is communicating to the Hebrews.

First God created lights. There was light without any

specific source, no object that could be worshipped in lieu of

the Creator. Then here on Day 4, God has

placed these two lights up in the up in the Skydome to to

watch over the people both by day and by night.

These are their figurative rulers of the day night, not the

Babylonian, Sumerian, and Egyptian gods that they looked

to. Now let's take a minute to learn

about these great lights that God made.

This is fun. At least I think it's fun.

I hope you enjoy it. The sun is obviously the source

of our light, right? That's the simple part.

We understand that. But let's consider some other

facts about the sun. The sun is 110 times the size of

the Earth and could contain as many as 1.3 million earths

inside of it. Do I have a picture of that?

Yes, the the Earth, the third rock from the sun is the little

one, and obviously that's the sun 100.

It's 110 times the size of the Earth and could contain 1.3

million Earths inside of it. Even though we think of the sun

as being immensely huge because hey look, it's huge, right?

It's actually small. It is actually considered a

yellow dwarf star. Super giant stars like

Beetlejuice, which is in the upper left shoulder of Orion,

are as much as 1000 times larger than our sun, which just blows

my mind. Then the Sun contains 99.8% of

the mass of our entire solar system, and it travels at 137

miles per second through space as its orbits around the center

of the Milky Way. The surface of the Sun is

10,000°F, and the core of it is 27,000,000°F.

Don't ask me how they figure that out.

I don't know, but I think that's cool.

Then there's the moon. The moon is the ruler of the

night. The moon is.

It's much larger than I thought it was.

I hadn't realized how big it was.

It's a diameter of 2159 miles and and that that diameter is

actually more than 1/4 of the Earth's diameter.

That is roughly the distance from San Francisco to Champaign

is roughly 2159 miles. So that's a pretty big, pretty

big thing that's out there floating around, orbiting around

our Earth. And it is actually bigger than

the now promoted Pluto. It controls the tides.

There are two high tides and two low tides each day.

The temperature on the Moon ranges from 215° in the Sun to

-243° in the dark parts. The moon circles the Earth in an

elliptical pattern, and it completes a full orbit around

the Earth every 27.3 days, and it travels a distance of almost

1.5 million miles each month. Like these numbers blow my mind.

Now here's something really cool.

While the moon orbits the Earth, it spins at the exact same rates

that the moon is orbiting the Earth.

This is called synchronous rotation, and because of this

synchronous rotation, do you ever see the other side of the

moon? No, we only see one side of the

moon because of this, because it's orbiting and spinning at

the same exact rate. The moon has virtually no

atmosphere. So there's no, no diffusion of

of light at the moon's surface, which is why the moon is so ably

reflecting that light back to us.

But then interestingly, if you're standing on the moon,

because there's no atmosphere, if you look up at the sky, the

sky is black because there's no atmosphere.

We have an atmosphere, so we see the sky as blue.

Isn't this interesting? I hope some of you find it

interesting. Like there, there were so many

deep holes for me to go down this week, especially learning

sciency stuff when I'm not necessarily a science person.

But I find it all incredibly interesting because it all

speaks to our creator. So these are the 2 great lights

that God made. And interestingly, the word used

here, a saw is different than the word that we saw in verse

one. That word was baran.

Baran means to create out of out of nothing.

God created. It says in verse one out of

nothing, but then we get here to verse 16 and it said and it's

using the word Assad. And that means to to take the

materials, to take raw materials that already exist and to make

or fashion something out of those raw materials.

Now, I have no idea how how this worked, but we can imagine, I

like to imagine that perhaps there was this big ball of fire

sitting out there somewhere. God takes his metaphorical hands

and he and he throws balls of fire further out into space all

over the universe, and that gives us what we have and he

creates the sun and the stars. It's just my imagination.

God created these celestial, these heavenly bodies to to

separate day from night. Then then we see that these

celestial bodies were, were created in order to regulate the

times. It's it says that they were

created for regulating see signs and seasons and days and years.

So this is for regulation of the seasons.

It says in verse 14 sign seasons, days and years.

And then in verse 16 says God made 2 great lights, the greater

light to rule the day in the lesser lights to rule the nights

and the stars. I love the economy of words here

in reference to the creation of the stars.

Moses said God made the lesser light to rule the night, and

then he simply writes just a little addendum and the stars.

That's all he says. The stars are kind of an

appendix here, which is funny because we don't look at the

stars as an as an afterthoughts. Humans naturally love to go out

and look up at the stars. Sure, modern science has of

course helped inform our awe of the stars, but we have this

compulsion to go out and look at celestial objects.

Humanity has been doing this from the very beginning.

I can't help but wonder what ancient people stopped when they

looked up at the stars. There were there were thousands

of little specks traversing the sky and at various times a year

disappearing and then reappearing months later.

Sure, they had an understanding of the timing of these things,

but what did they really think they were looking at?

I'd love to talk to them and know what they thought.

Fortunately, we have modern science to tell us what they

were looking at. Stars are huge balls of fire and

there are countless numbers of stars, literally.

We live in the Milky Way Galaxy, and it's estimated that within

the Milky Way Galaxy there could be as many as 400 billion stars.

Obviously the exact number can't quite be known due to the

difficulty of observing our Milky Way while we're sitting in

the middle of our Galaxy. So our star sits in in the Orion

arm of our spiral Galaxy. It's about 2/3 of the way from

the center out center where out to the edge.

That's where our sun and us sits.

As I mentioned, some stars, supergiants, are 100 million

times larger and brighter than our Sun.

I can't even fathom how big that would be.

Then the closest star to us besides the Sun is Alpha

Centauri. Did you know you were going to

astronomy class this morning? I loved astronomy class,

absolutely loved it. However, Alpha Centauri, the

closest star to us is actually a triple star system with one star

similar to our Sun and then then two other smaller stars orbiting

around it. And then should you decide that

you would like to go visit Alpha Centauri using today's

technology, today's means of travel, it would take you 70,000

years to get there. That is to the closest star to

US, 70,000 years. And when we look at Alpha

Centauri, we're actually looking back approximately 4.3 years.

Because Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away from us.

Some stars are binary stars that they're two stars orbiting each

other. Some of what we observe as a

single * nebulae, which are clusters of stars.

You may know of a few of them. There's Orion, there's there's a

crab, there's horse, head and ring.

These are among some of the most well known and most photographed

nebulae. So we look at the stars for

pleasure, but they're intended for more than that.

They're for signs for seasons, for days and years, as it said

in verse 16. So what does this mean?

First of all, the Hebrew word for signs is is oath, and it

means a beacon or or a signal. Stars point to something.

Scripture doesn't tell us exactly what these celestial

bodies were pointing to, but we do know that stars have always

been used in navigation. For millennia, humanity has has

plotted its path across land and sea using the stars as a guide.

And I would suggest they also point to God.

But I'll touch more on that in a moment Now, since the text says

the stars are for a sign, I think it's important to say that

stars are not for astrological purposes.

They don't serve as Zodiac signs or omens of events to come.

Astrology is actually an occultic and Pagan practice, and

as such it's, along with fortune telling, is strictly forbidden

in scripture. Deuteronomy 18 outlaws

divination and fortune telling. Divination is the practice of

trying to discover hidden knowledge or predict future

events by looking at the stars, and fortune telling attempts to

see omens in the alignment of the stars, and both of these are

an abomination to God. Don't engage in anything related

to these, whether they be overtly occultic practices or

the seemingly benign horoscope readings.

These are outlawed in Scripture was driving out the people as

the Israelites entered the promised land.

The stars are signs for seasons and days and years.

They set our calendars. The length of our year can be

set with the stars and seasons signaled as the sky changes.

For example, here in the US, indeed in the northern

hemisphere, as as Orion starts to come into view at night, we

know that when Orion starts to come into view the weather is

going to start cooling off, and as Orion starts to fade from our

view, then we know that the weather is going to begin

warming. These ancients knew all about

the stars and they could count years by them.

In a sense, all of human life is governed by these heavenly

bodies. The sun determines our days, the

moon more or less determines the months, and all the celestial

bodies determine the seasons and years.

We can view these objects and know based on their location in

the sky, what the season and day are.

And all these objects are in perfect balance and work to

bless us with a variety of climates and weather patterns.

So God created the celestial objects to separate the day from

the night to regulate the seasons and calendars.

And this brings us to the last purpose in this text.

The last purpose the text mentions is illumination.

The stars are intended to illuminate verse 15 read and let

them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon

the earth. God created these lights in

order to give us light. This sounds remedial, but this

is reality. God's creation on day 4 was

intended to give us light, and it's God's kindness to humanity.

I don't think it's a stretch to actually call this common grace.

Common grace is the grace that God gives to all people

throughout all time. And this is differentiated.

Common grace is differentiated from salvific grace, which is

the grace that God extends to someone who will believe in him.

Common grace is is God's grace given to all people for all

time. So the sun rising every morning,

that is God's common grace extended to all of humanity.

Let's take a moment to consider light.

I know a science teacher could probably do a slightly better

job of this than I, but here we go.

Light is energy. Light is energy.

The sun's energy comes in the forms of both visible and

invisible light. We can obviously see all the

colors of the rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue,

indigo, and Violet. But beyond the visible spectrum,

there's UV, ultraviolet light, There's infrared, X-ray,

microwave, and radio waves. All these forms of light are

invisible to humans and they carry energy.

They have so much energy that in excessive amounts they are

harmful to our bodies. And all this energy serves a

couple purposes. First of all, yes, it

illuminates the earth, but secondly, it helps plant life

grow. And this process, I told you,

we're getting sciency here this morning.

This process is called photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis, you may recall from, I don't know, maybe third

grade or 4th grade, I don't know, is the process by which

plants use the sun's energy to produce sugar, carbohydrates,

and other nutrients from the carbon dioxide.

And plants act as the earth's lungs.

They take in CO2, they process it and give off oxygen, while

our lungs of course take in oxygen and we give off CO2.

All this, of course speaking to God's magnificent design and

creation. So God spoke it all into

existence. Was it just to create an

environment for humans to live and thrive in, or was there more

to it? Obviously these celestial bodies

serve even greater purposes. Significance of God's creating

These heavenly bodies can first be found in displaying God's

glory. They display God's glory.

Psalm 81 says, O Lord our Lord, how majestic is your name in all

the earth. You have set your glory above

the heavens. The Psalm 19 one the heavens

declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his

handiwork. To say that the heavens declare

the glory of God is to say that first of all, the celestial

objects point to our Creator. Second, they point to a reality

beyond what we can even see. When we look at the skies, we

get glimpses into God's presence in the world, His character, and

the nature of his attributes. God's name, God's glory is

revealed through his day for creations.

God's glory isn't revealed through a bunch of happy little

accidents. No, God is an intentional artist

and and he brought purpose in his creating.

And that purpose wasn't just for the signs and the seasons, but

to show His glory to humanity. These celestial bodies also

display God's concern for creation.

They display God's concern for creation.

As you're writing that down, go ahead and turn to Isaiah 40,

Isaiah chapter 40. We are done with Genesis, so you

Isaiah 40 · chapter mention

don't need to keep a finger there.

Numerous times in in Scripture we see God's concern with his

creation and particularly humanity.

I know humans have yet to be created in our timeline, but I

love how Isaiah puts it in the 40th chapter of his book.

This is a well known section but but approaching it in its

context helps us understand God more deeply.

Isaiah 40 beginning at verses verse 25.

We'll read 25 through 31. Verse 25.

To whom then will you compare me?

That I should be like Him? Says the Holy One.

Lift your eyes on high, and see who created these.

He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by

name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong

in power, not one is missing. Verse 27 Why do you say, O Jacob

and speak, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, That is to

say Jacob, God's people are saying, my way is hidden from

the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.

Verse 28 God says, have you not known?

Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God,

the creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary. His understanding is

unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and

to him who has no might he increases strength.

Even youth shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall

exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord

shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings

like eagles. They shall run and not be weary.

They shall walk and not faint. I liken this passage to Jesus

words in the in the sermon on the mounts in the sermon on the

Mount, Jesus, Jesus says, Hey, your, your father takes care of

the of the sparrows. So if he takes care of the

sparrows, I'm pretty sure he's going to take care of you.

Not pretty sure he's going to take care of you.

Isaiah is saying kind of a similar idea.

God gave each of the stars names.

He put them in their place. He takes care of all the stars.

He keeps track of them. So if God named the stars, he

keeps track of all the stars, don't you think He's going to

take care of you? He's going to provide for you

and watch out for you? God has great concern for all of

His creation. Lastly, the celestial bodies

point to the existence of God. These celestial bodies point to

the existence of God. When you and I look to the

heavens, we naturally point to God.

We look up and are awestruck by what God created.

But it isn't only followers of Jesus who were to do this.

All of humanity is able to see God when they look to the stars.

Romans 1 is a well known passage that speaks to the evidence of

God found in creation. Romans 1 verses 19 through 20

Romans 1:19–20

read. For what can be known about God

is plain to them, because, because God has shown it to

them. For His invisible attributes,

namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly

perceived ever since the creation of the world in the

things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

God's attributes, His power in nature are clearly seen in all

He created. Paul says this is this is so

much the case that people who choose not to acknowledge him as

creator, they're with an out. They're without an excuse.

Presumably the text implies on the day of judgment because of

because of how God has revealed himself to them through

creation. I can imagine Paul has David's

words in Psalm 19 in the back of his mind is as he is writing and

David writes in Psalm 19 verses one through 6.

The heavens declare the glory of God in the sky above proclaims

his handiwork. day-to-day pours out speech and night tonight

reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are

there words whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to

the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for

the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,

and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

His rising is from the end of the heavens and it's circuits to

the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

When David looks to the heavens, he sees God not in the sense of

worshipping the heavens, but rather worshipping the Creator

God. As David considers the days that

go by and the sun that goes from one end of the earth to the

other, he acknowledges it all points to God.

On May 10th, 2024, I knew the numbers were right for the

Aurora. I walked outside my house after

a brief rain and and looked up at the clouds and even through

the clouds I could see they were purple.

I took some pictures and the pictures confirm this to be the

case. Somewhere around midnight that

night, I left the house to head north.

I made a few stops along the way.

As I drove, I could see that the sky was turning green and

purple. I occasionally stopped to to

take it all in. I reached Maquoketa and I headed

West on Hwy. 64. In just a just a few minutes

outside of town, I pulled over right there on the highway.

Nobody's around. It's like 1:00 in the morning.

Got out of the car, I looked up and tears came into my eyes as I

was completely astounded by what I was seeing.

Flashes of Aurora we're shooting across the sky.

The sky was pulsing and and moving and all I could do was

silently express praise to God as I watched the Aurora dance

across the sky. Sure, the heavens separate day

from nights. They regulate days and and

seasons and and illuminates our lives.

But more than that, the heavens scream into our hearts.

There is a God. Let's bow our heads and close

our eyes. God this morning we echo the

words of of Psalm 8. What is man that you are mindful

of him, that you care for him? When we look up at space and

consider all of your day for creations, the sun, the moon,

the stars, all the other celestial objects, we consider

them and yet you are still concerned for us.

How awesome is that? The creator of all these things

loves us. So we thank you, we give praise

that the heavens declare your glory, that they declare your

concern, and they say there is a God.

Amen.