Bible Study Genesis Part 13-Firmament

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Well, we're back again in our Genesis study.

It's taken us a long time to get through these first few verses.

Why do you tell us that every week, John?

I kind of feel like I have to apologize because we're going so slow.

But I'm hoping that you're seeing the value in all of this.

You know, one of the things that you can be sure of is if you start telling people, hey, you know, I'm I'm listening to Genesis.

You were studying Genesis with my friend John, and they'll be like, Genesis?

You gotta be kidding me.

You might as well be reading, you know, uh, you know, some kind of fantasy book.

You might as well be reading Pooh Bear, because that's that's about as valuable as Genesis is.

But you're going to be able to tell them, no, you should listen because this is this is good stuff.

I mean, this is real stuff.

This is real.

You know, Genesis got a bad rap.

Don't listen to all those people that are that are denigrating the book of God, the book of Genesis.

Make sure that they that you tell them all is well in God's book.

It's perfect, it's loving, it's God's word to us.

He's telling us how he did things, and it's very, very important to all of us.

Today we're going to start with verse six.

As I said, we are in Genesis.

We're going to start with verse six.

Now, no need to read those first five.

We've covered them in quite a bit of depth so far.

Catherine said to me earlier today, you're not going to read the first five verses.

Who are you?

And what have you done with my husband?

But but the truth is, is we have gone through them in so much depth.

I am I'm confident that you're ready to move on quickly.

Besides, as I said last time, verse six is actually the beginning of a unique section of creation.

And so starting with just verse six shouldn't be too impactful.

Yes, I know we could have read those first five verses three times by now.

Anyways, verse six.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

So the wonders of Genesis just keep rolling on.

Actually, let's let's add the next two verses to our discussion.

We'll start again at verse six.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Verse seven.

And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.

That's an important piece of information.

And it was so.

And God called the firmament heaven, and the evening and the morning were the second day.

Now I like better the New American Standard Bible's version of verse 8.

It says, and there was evening and morning a second day.

The amplified Bible's translation is nearly identical.

Most of the other English language Bibles mirror what the King James says there's now says there.

Now the key point I'm trying to bring up is that in the New American Standard Bible, the one that I think is correct, it has the indefinite article.

You know what an indefinite article is, right?

It's a or an.

That's indefinite.

The definite article is the.

So it says a second day instead of what the King James says, which says the second day.

The King James has the definite article.

Now I believe translating it as we find it in the New American standard using that indefinite article is not only allowed in the original Hebrew, but it actually makes it a little clearer and certainly more consistent with verse 5, which, as you remember from last week, we said should be translated the evening and the morning were one day.

Now we said this translation, the verse 5 translation gives us a far more specific reference as to what kind of day God is speaking of.

Knowing that verse 8 is translated a second day continues to impress on us that this is something we are already familiar with.

Using the indefinite article tells us that this is nothing but an ordinary day that just happens to be the second of two so far.

This is a 24-hour day like we are already familiar with.

We have those same 24-hour days.

We always have.

We've never had anything different.

And there is nothing in the Bible or in science actually that tells us there has been anything but 24-hour days.

Now we've already beaten this to death.

I don't think we need to go over it again, but I did want to make sure that you see that God is consistent throughout his word.

It was a 24-hour day, six 24-hour days in total.

Moving on.

Now I want to remind you as I do often, as I've especially done during this journey through the creation story, that there is a battle going on for the mind of mankind.

God's word tells us certain things, and the world, directed by Satan, of course, wants you to believe something else.

In fact, anything else will do.

The world and Satan don't even care to give you a good alternative to believe in.

Yes, they'll give you options, but none of them are very satisfying.

Most of what they offer up is designed to play on your sensuality or your fear of being ridiculed or, well, your laziness.

They just hope you don't peek too close.

I'm talking about they being the world and the devil.

They just hope you don't peek too closely at what they offer as a substitute for truth.

And most of us are willing to oblige them on that.

Now, if it sounds good, then why question it is the way the world wants you to see things.

Let's go back to verse six.

Let's just go back to scripture and start over again.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Verse 7.

And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so.

And God called the firmament heaven, and there was evening and there was morning a second day.

Now, as you can tell, there's so much going on in this section of Scripture, a great deal of which can spark, can inspire, can lead to some pretty technical conversations.

Now, it's taken us several weeks to get to this point in Genesis, and we're not quite ready to emerge from the slow pace we've been on since the beginning.

Now, here is my concern.

The nature of the things I would like you to consider about these three verses may make an already bogged down feeling even more pronounced.

It's not that I don't think you can understand what I've called the technical stuff, and by that I actually mean information that's scientific.

There's astronomy, there's geology, there's meteorology, lots of scientific disciplines that are touched on here, none of which would be too difficult for any of us to comprehend, in my opinion.

But let me say what I always say.

Everything we need to know about creation is right here.

We really don't need any more details.

It isn't actually necessary to find anything more about the creation than what's listed right here in Genesis.

Of course, nothing in the world wrong with trying to find other things.

But listen to me, all inquiry beyond what Scripture says should be conducted cautiously.

Very often, men and women formulate theories about God based on some extra biblical research they've done.

And that very often causes them and others to drift from plain stated biblical truth.

Some are even driven to try and change what the Bible says about something in order to support their newly discovered theories.

And listen, I get it.

This section of scripture is intriguing, but we do have to be careful trying to guess what God said, or worse, going around what God actually said has a lot of pitfalls associated with it.

And you're going to find a lot of that here when people are discussing what God is trying to tell us in Genesis.

It is my opinion, sticking with what is written here is always a safe place to be, even if you or someone else tries to tell you that's just too hard to believe.

But John, what if I just don't understand it?

Maybe I want to believe it, but I don't understand it.

Well, that's okay, because the more you study this book, the more you're going to discover that you can trust God.

And the more that you can trust God, the more that you trust Him, you know, the less interested you become in knowing.

Believing replaces knowing.

Trust takes the place of knowledge when knowledge is a little difficult to come by.

It's not that we shouldn't try to understand as much of what God has to say as we can.

You know, I believe in absorbing as much truth as possible.

But when we just can't wrap our heads around something, it shouldn't worry us.

It shouldn't frighten us.

It certainly won't lessen our faith that the whole thing, the parts that we can figure out and the parts that we can all can't, all of this, all of it is true, whether I can explain it or not.

Listen to me.

The truth of God's word does not depend on human ability to understand it.

Let me say that again.

The truth of what God says does not depend on whether or not I can make sense of it.

It's true whether I can figure it out or not.

Back to Genesis.

God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so.

And God called the firmament heaven, and the evening and the morning were a second day.

Now, here is a prime of example of what I was just talking about.

Though so much of what we just read is rather complicated, listen to me.

Our first obligation is not to understand, but to believe.

But of course, that's not acceptable to a large share of, especially, the modern world.

And that even includes many in the church.

Since there is an obvious lack of scientific detail here, there are many who say they are unsatisfied with this narrative.

The overly curious often actually demand a more complete empirical explanation.

And since God has not offered that here, they've decided to fill in the gaps, if you will.

Now, the most obvious example that I can think of of this adding to is the evolutionary theory, or as what is sometimes referred to as Darwinism, named after that most famous of the proponents of evolution, Charles Darwin.

Evolution, of course, has to do with the origin and development of life on the planet, but we've not gotten there yet.

So far, there's no mention of life.

However, it's not too early to bring the subject up since we are actually beginning to see that God is starting to lay down the foundation and support systems for life.

Now, having said all of that, I want to focus for the moment on what is here called the firmament.

This is exactly what we've been talking about.

What is this?

Why is it here?

And why are there almost no technical details?

As a matter of fact, the details that are here seem to be a little foreign to our current understanding of the world.

And to make things just a bit worse, the very word firmament is not at all easy to accurately define, especially when translating from the original Hebrew.

Now, some more modern English translations use the word expanse, E-X-P-A-N-S-E.

The NIV chooses the word expanse.

The original word is rakya.

Strong says rachia means yes, expanse, but it also uses the word firmament in its uh definition, the complete word study dictionary as the term extended surface.

Now, none of that makes a whole lot of sense, if you ask me, given the context in which we find the word.

And in fact, the whole passage is rather unclear as written in the English.

Now, the standard explanation of what this firmament is, is that it's just a fancy word for the atmosphere, which again makes no sense because the word firm is purposely in the word firmament.

The original Latin and Greek, from which the English word firmament is derived, gives a sense of a solid structure.

It just doesn't seem to match what we know now as the atmosphere.

And then the standard explanation of the separation mentioned in the passage, the dividing of the waters, the waters under and the waters above, or that the waters below are the liquid waters found on the surface of the earth, you know, lakes, seas, rivers, etc.

And that the waters above are the vapors that make up the clouds.

Now, I think you'll agree with me that all of this just appears to be overly unnecessarily overly simplified.

But we're going to leave it at that for the sake of expediency.

Now, is it terribly important that we fully explain everything God has shared with us in the creation story?

In my opinion, no.

The obvious and most important message we should gather about creation, as described in the Bible, is that God was responsible for it.

God primarily wants us to know that He is the power behind everything that is made.

And he tells us that to establish His claim of authority over everything.

The Bible is here to tell us about redemption.

And God is at this point laying down the foundation of his sovereignty, his kingship, and that he alone, by virtue of his ownership of the entire universe, has the final say as to why and how and who of that redemption.

That is the real message of the creation that God is in charge.

Now, with that said, maybe we can do a little digging to help open up one of the more difficult concepts in scripture.

Now, I don't want to spend too much time here.

I'll introduce the topic, give some general information, and then we're going to move on.

Now, in case I neglected to mention it, we're going to briefly talk about the firmament mentioned here in Genesis verses eight through or six through eight.

Now, what makes our inquiries, our research into these sorts of things different than, say, those that peddle evolutionary theory, and this is important, is that we actually plan to use the Bible as our jumping-off platform, so to speak, to try to add to our knowledge of what is already there concerning the beginning of all things.

Instead of ignoring scripture, we're going to rely on it as our foundation, as we do every time we go to these teachings in scripture, in chapel ministries, Bible study.

So much so that we'll actually reject any theory or any proposed evidence if it conflicts with, thus saith the Lord.

Unlike the modern world, we're not going to bow to the physical sciences when it comes to educating ourselves, but we're not going to ignore them either.

We believe there should be balance.

We believe balance is necessary if we're going to get to the bottom of these things.

God gave us all of these facts in nature, as I've made clear several times through this Genesis account, God wants us to know more.

And that's why he gave us the opportunity to learn things, but we cannot go outside of what God's word says.

Otherwise, it invalidates all of the facts we think we've discovered.

Of course, you may be thinking, well, why is filling in the gaps on this one point about the firmament so important?

Well, these verses, believe it or not, and this is the reason why we're taking an entire lesson just to introduce this.

These verses may actually hold the key to better understanding one of the Bible's most fascinating stories, and one that is equally mysterious.

And one we're not even going to get to for quite a few more months.

These three verses are important to a very mysterious point in scripture.

It's here in Genesis.

These three verses will prove vital to understanding the upcoming story in chapter seven.

I'm referring to Noah's Flood.

Yes, believe it or not, these verses are going to be important to Noah's Flood.

Now the critic is going to look at this story, look at the story of Noah's Flood.

Now you're familiar with it, so we won't for now read it.

But the critic is going to look at this story.

In fact, the critics have looked at this story and said, look, even though it would be an incredibly devastating event, there's just no possible way a 40-day and 40-night long cloud borne rainstorm could cover the earth and water deep enough to kill every living being.

They're looking at that.

They're saying there's no way 40 days and 40 nights is enough to cover the earth.

You know, the Bible says it covers the top of the highest mountains.

They're saying there's just no way that 40 days and 40 nights of rain.

Are going to be able to do that.

And you know what?

I agree.

So their response to this criticism, to this premise, the critic's conclusion, based on this opinion of the 40 days and 40 nights, will take on one of two forms.

Now, we're getting somewhere with this.

Number one, the critic's going to say, because those facts are doubtful, then the whole story is false.

Or they'll say that there may have been actually a flood, but instead it was merely a limited event, only affecting not much more than the observable surroundings of whoever related the story originally.

Now let me say, either of these two assumptions would be correct if the Bible limited the flood to a steady six and a half week rain.

But like nearly every criticism of the Bible, there is important information missing from their analysis.

By the way, this is again why we spend so much time examining scripture.

Listen, if you're going to be a defender of God's word, an effective one anyhow, you have to arm yourself.

Your greatest weapon against the devil and his associates is knowledge.

Deep knowledge of Scripture.

And to be honest, doesn't even have to be all that deep.

A good working understanding of the Bible will insulate you from almost all of the devil's attempts to confuse you.

So back to this 40-day and night rain.

Contrary to what you might have been told, the Bible does not claim that the flood was caused by the rain alone.

Okay, now we can read it so that you can see that the prevailing criticism is flawed, not based on accurate information.

Hey, what does this have to do with the firmament?

You'll see.

Genesis 7, starting at verse 10.

And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

Verse 11, the one that follows 10.

In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, yes, I believe he was 600 years old.

In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights.

Now let me make a quick general observation that you've heard me make before.

It sometimes chills my soul to see how briefly the Bible mentions things and events that end up having enormous, eternal, universal impact on humankind.

Here we get just three set up verses to a catastrophe that killed everything on earth.

God is not one to waste time on wordiness.

I know you're all staring at me.

I can feel it.

And how the general comment that I just made that notwithstanding, let's read it again.

And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth in the 600th year of Noah's life in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month.

The same day were why did God give us all those numbers?

We'll have to reach that one of these days.

The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of the heavens were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

Now, verse 10 leads us to believe that the flood was on the earth before it started raining.

So it couldn't have been just the rain that caused it.

This verse goads us into realizing that there's more to it than that.

Well, okay, you may be thinking, what then did what then caused the earth, the entire earth to flood?

Well, this isn't something God hid from us.

He said it was, yes, the 40-day and night rain, but there was also the fountains of the great deep.

This isn't all that mysterious either.

Most of us have seen geysers and springs and all of those sorts of things, either in person or in pictures on our property here.

We have a well and it goes deep into the ground.

And all the years that we've lived here, the water has never stopped flowing.

In fact, almost all of my neighbors, and it's a densely populated area, almost all of them have wells too.

And to my knowledge, they haven't dried up either.

My point is, there is plenty of water in the earth that God can use, and we know about it.

So this isn't a surprise to us.

As a part of this action, God just brought all that water up.

Makes sense.

No one is confused by that.

But then the Bible also says the windows of heaven were opened up.

Now we've already determined, and one of these days we're going to get into this in more detail, but we know, and the experts tell us that rain clouds alone could not do what God needed done.

So if these aren't clouds, if the windows of heaven aren't rain clouds, and let's face it, just the description windows of heaven don't make us think of clouds.

It sounds too dramatic to be just clouds, and God is not dramatic.

So then what are the windows of heaven?

Well, it's an intriguing dilemma, and some scholars, well-known, respected scholars, have laid out, in my opinion, a very good case for the alternatives.

And these passages on the firmament in chapter one may actually hold the answers.

In fact, I must myself believe, not that my opinion matters much, but I find the theory quite believable and possible that states that the firmament is what is being referred to, or probably more accurately, a part of what is being referred to in the scriptural flood narrative as the windows of heaven.

I believe the firmament has something to do with that.

I, and I said to you that the waters above and the waters below were separated.

I believe the separation has something to do with the firmament.

If you look at the screen, the notes on the screen, that is an artist's rendition of what the firmament may be.

Catherine found that on a search on Google.

That may be what the firmament looks like.

It may be what's separating the waters above and the waters below.

And when the flood came, God opened all that up and the waters came down.

Can't prove it, but that's what we're going to talk about in chapter seven when we get there.

Now let's read the relevant passages from chapter one.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under and from the waters which were above the firmament.

And it was so.

What are the waters?

We know what the waters below are.

We see the waters below around us all the time.

Seas, lakes, rivers, streams.

We've already said that.

But what are the waters above?

What is the firmament or what was the firmament separating?

The firmament is no longer there.

Look up, there's no firmament up there.

There's nothing separating the waters below from the waters above.

Where'd the firmament go?

Chapter 7.

Now, most experts say that's just the waters above, they say that's just the vapor that turns to rain.

Maybe.

But it just seems like it has to be more than that.

I believe the firmament is connected to the windows of heaven that were opened as a part of the flood of Noah's time.

Now, I will tell you, I initially planned on backing up my opinion here by sharing some relevant research.

And some very smart people have researched this and come up with some very good conclusions, but I think it may be too extensive and too, as I said earlier, technical in nature for this forum.

Now, we may talk about this when we get to the flood narrative in chapter seven.

I'm really tempted to do just that.

Or I may just develop a series of lessons on this YouTube channel.

I'm not sure.

Either way, I think it would be worth our time to examine.

I just haven't figured out how best to do that quite yet.

Anyhow, I think that may be enough for this topic and for this chapter here, since we have to make some progress.

This may be enough talking about the firmament.

I think we've talked about it enough.

We have to move on because there aren't a whole lot of details here associated with what it actually is.

So as I said, we're going to leave it there for now so we can make some progress through these earlier, early verses, these first eight verses.

I don't want to get bogged down too much on this firmament issue for now.

As I said, getting it getting into weeds may not be in our best interest.

And believe me, these are some thick weeds.

So, what was the point, John, of wasting an hour of our time tonight?

Well, it's part of my mission to convince you and everyone else who listens that the Bible deserves a thorough analysis.

For too long, most of us just go on believing what the critics say about it without doing a little research ourselves.

I want to get you to see that there's a lot more here than what than what we've been told.

And listen, if after spending a little time looking at all the evidence, you're still convinced there's nothing here that you can hang your hat on, then fine.

But listen, this is and and this is my advice about everything.

Don't just accept someone else's word about something that is this important.

As a friend of mine said the other night, this isn't just life and death, this is eternity.

How true that is.

In other words, what's contained in God's word isn't merely applicable to our time on this planet.

These things have relevance far beyond our earthly existence.

And if I can at least convince you of that, I think you may find it a valuable experience getting to know the facts a little better.

Okay, I sincerely hope that you don't feel like we wasted any time tonight despite all of the technical difficulties that we have.

Now, next week we will keep moving through these next verses.

See you then.

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