Sermon Tone Analysis

Sometimes the lack of details in Genesis can be frustrating.

Jules Verne was a very detailed author.

His novel 20,000 Leagues under the Sea is a great story about a marine biologist who ends up trapped on the submarine of the crazed Captain Nemo.

The plot of the story is rich and thrilling, but for some reason Verne decides to add random touches of realism to his novel by recording the various fish species that his marine biologist protagonist has the opportunity to observe while in the submarine.

He goes on for pages and pages listing species after species.

Those detailed sections of the story can be quite tedious reading.

Moses, on the other hand, didn’t focus that much on the details in his inspired record of creation in .

There are several questions in the story line to which we don’t have answers.

Think about it: God creates light on day 1, but the sun on day 4; how is their morning and evening on the first three days without the sun?

On day 2 God separates the water, but we are never told where the waters come from.

When God creates the sky on day 2, was it different than it is today, or are the waters above just the atmosphere?

On day 3, were there various areas of dry land separated by water, or was there just one big land?

We just don’t know.

But the fact is that if we demand too much from the text of Scripture, we will either rest our faith on theories that answer objections rather than the objective truth of God’s Word or we will reject God’s Word outright and turn to secularism and science.

I don’t have answers for the questions, but I do know that Genesis is true, and it wasn’t written to be a science book.

God is much less concerned about revealing how everything works than He is about revealing Himself.

We must be more concerned about seeing Him than we are about seeing all the details.

In , Moses summarizes the creation week by stating that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

v2 informs us that there was nothing before God moved, as creation is described as formless and empty.

As the narrative continues, God spends half the week forming creation and half the week filling creation.

Today we are looking at the the first three days of creation and God’s forming of creation.

When God forms, it isn’t random; it’s orderly.

God’s creation formed an orderly environment that was good for life.

These first three days of the universe and really all of God’s creative work reveal His majestic power.

So we can see from that . . .

God powerfully forms and orders His creation; therefore, we must trust Him.

How do we trust our forming and ordering God? God’s actions in the first three days of creation reveal four aims that will drive us toward trust.

The sermon has a unique layout.

Usually we would walk through a passage and see how the thoughts builds as the author lays out the narrative or argument; however, this morning’s passage has several repeated themes throughout the various days of creation; themes that are repeated even beyond v13 into the last three days of creation as well.

So as we walk through these four aims, we will be looking at the passage as a whole to see how these aims are emphasized and repeated in the narrative.

And by the way, I do want to emphasize that this passage is narrative.

There are those in evangelical Christianity, Tim Keller is one of the them, who are conservative in nearly every way, but this one.

They have been influenced by our society’s fascination of science and have begun to try explaining away the facts of .

In order to do so, they have called this passage poetry, but their argument doesn’t hold up.

The conjunctions that connect nearly every clause and verse in are those that the Hebrew language uses to mark a sequence of events and are rare in obviously poetic passages like the Psalms.

We also can note that Hebrew poetry is much more than high figurative language, although that is a part of it.

Hebrew poetry is marked by parallelisms, repetitions that say the same thing in a nuanced way for emphasis.

Think of

Can you see the parallelism of does not walk, nor stand, nor sit; counsel of the wicked, path on sinners, seat of scoffers?

While there is repetition in it is much different than this kind of poetic parallelism.

repeats phrases with the exact same words, while poetic parallelism repeats ideas in different words.

is not poetry.

And the dismissing of as such is a weak, uninformed argument.

Sorry for that little rabbit trail, but I didn’t want that common dismissal of God’s Word to go unaddressed.

Now let’s get to those four aims that drive us toward trust.

First, we must . . .

Hear God’s words.

v3 begins with the clause, “Then God said.”

This same formula is repeated in v6, v9, and v11.

God continues to speak throughout the creation week, creating with His very words.

This is the emphasis of

Our God is a speaking God, and His Word has creative power because the Word is God.

This is why in , the author emphasizes the living nature of God’s Word.

God’s Word is not passive.

It is not like our words that spew from our mouths with no power.

We often criticize people who do not practice what they preach.

Our words create only lofty images of ourselves and our dreams, but God’s Word is active, it’s piercing, and it’s judging.

It is performing actions beyond mere images and dreams; it accomplishes initial creation in the world and new creation in us.

I find it interesting that nearly every time God speaks in this chapter it is eventually followed by a short clause, “then it was so.”

When God speaks things happen, which helps us recognize with Isaiah that God has a specific purpose in the Word that He speaks,

So we recognize with Isaiah that God has a specific purpose in the Word that He speaks,

isa

Here in , the purpose of His Word is to create, and it happens.

God is still purposing fantastic life-changing creative things for His Word, and it will be so.

That is what Isaiah means when he says, “It will not return . . .

empty, without accomplishing what I desire.”

This gives us courage to trust the infallible omnipotent Word of God.

But we can’t trust what we don’t know or haven’t heard.

In after Paul reminds us that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved, he asks,

But God’s Word

In order to believe God, to trust Him, we must begin by hearing His powerful Word.

What is preventing you from hearing God’s Word?

Are you too busy to read it regularly?

Is it too difficult for you to meditate on it?

Are worship services too inconvenient for you?

If you never hear God’s Word, you’ll never trust God.

Creation reveals the awesome power of God’s Word, a Word worth trusting; so in order to trust God, you must listen to God’s Word.

Hear it.

But hearing it is only the beginning, not only do we need to hear God’s Word, but we must also recognize God’s sovereignty.

Recognize God’s sovereignty.

God’s sovereignty over creation is all over this narrative, but a couple of repeated actions specifically highlight it:

First, He separates - in v4 God separated light from the darkness; in v7 He separated the waters below the sky from the waters above the sky; and in v9 He gathers the waters to separate them from the dry land.

God’s separation of the light and darkness, waters, and dry land reveal that He sovereignly sets the boundaries of creation.

God decides where light will be and where it will not, He decides where the water will be and where it will not.

And all the rest of creation is subject to His sovereign separation and ordering.

He also names - in v5 God calls the light day, and He calls the darkness night; in v8 He names the sky heavens; in v10 He names the dry land earth and the gathered waters seas.

God’s naming of the day, night, heavens, dry land, and seas reveals His sovereign dominion over each of these things.

Naming rights have always belonged in the realm of dominion, and this fact highlights God’s designation of authority and sharing of dominion with humanity by allowing Adam to name the animals.

When God names, creation submits to His sovereignty.

Now consider the implications of this for us.

God is still sovereignly naming and separating even though He has ceased from His creative work.

When God called Abraham, his goal was to have a people on which He could put His name.

In God provides a blessing for the priest to give Israel.

In blessing the people in v27 God says

God reiterates this concept in in calling Israel to repentance he offers a promise of forgiveness and healing if His people who are called by His name humble themselves and pray and seek His face and turn from their wicked ways.

According to God called Israel by His name so that they would be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

In other words they were called by His name so that they might be set apart, or separated, from the rest of the nations.

Now as a new a people of God, God is doing the same thing with the church.

The church acknowledged this in at the so-called Jerusalem council:

Peter applies the same language to us the church in .