Genesis 1: 1 - 25

How did we get here?  Were we created, or did we evolve over millions of years? We are starting a new series in the Bible book of Genesis.  And this book describes the beginnings of everything from the earth to nations to languages.  And it gives us the answers to some more important questions; Why am I here? Is there a God, and can I know Him?  Take a listen. 

Transcript

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search. This creates user Some day, the piecing on rev. Lies hanging string weakness. Finding is in size. No, the it is some for one mole on can come hair with the were of life eternal, with its pre situation rare with the word of life eternal with its precepts. Croatian rare. Everybody welcome back to the PV Bible, a live broadcast. And as you may have noticed, we've added an introductory song to start us off. It's me singing with three of my oldest friends. I just put it together over the weekend, so don't be too harsh. If you wanna hear the full version, you can access it on Spotify under PV Bible alive or on our website at PV Bible alive dot com. Well, today I'm starting a new series in the Bible Book of Genesis, and so I probably need to clarify what we're doing here. Simply put, we're reading and studying the Bible together, but it's a different kind of study than what I usually do as pastor of my church. If I were to, for example, do a study in Genesis is my church, I would divide it into a series of messages and deliver them on a weekly basis from the pulpit. And since there are 50 chapters in Genesis, it would probably take me 2 to 3 years to preach through the entire book. Some of my members are probably thinking 4 to 6 years is more likely, and there are several reasons why it would take so long. But one of the big reasons is because I would feel compelled to dig deep into the text and cover it with a lot of detail. Well, that's not really the point here, but I want to do here is closer to the daily Bible study. Denise and I do together each evening. Denise is my wife of 31 years, and when we read the Bible together, we work on simply understanding what's going on in a particular passage. So we read a little talk a little, read a little talk a little, and we kind of have an agreement. I don't give her a sermon as we read, and she doesn't give me one either. Well, if while we're reading, she or I have a comment or a question, we stop reading and then we address it and then we go back to reading. In that way, we can go through the entire Bible in one year. Now we won't get through the entire Bible in the year in this podcast, but it will go much quicker than if I were preaching through it. So if you want to get your Bible out physically or virtually, you can turn to the Book of Genesis Chapter one with me. And as you do so let me kind of outline the book for you. The Bible Book of Genesis is exactly what its name implies. The word genesis in Hebrew, the original language that was written in is the word barrish it. It comes from the first words of the book. In the beginning, this book is about the beginnings of everything. The book details the creation of all the world and the expanse of the multiple universes. It tells us about the creation of human kind and animals, and it narrates the beginning of a number of other things. The first marriage, the first family, the first sin, the first judgment for sin, the first murder, other first that you'll find in Genesis are the first city, the first polygamy metal worker musician, boat tower, languages, city states and the first empires. And the book draws are focused on the beginnings of one particular people, the Jews. It tells us about their progenitor, Abraham and his descendants, who became the nation of Israel. Well, by the time we finished Genesis, we have the nucleus of the nation of Israel, 70 people migrating into Egypt. And it is the beginning of the Bible as well, because it sets the stage for the story of the Jewish people throughout the Old Testament. And it sets the stage for Jesus Christ coming into the world to bring salvation to the entire world out of the nation of Israel. So there are many beginnings in the book, but it also addresses some major questions about life. Like Did this world get here by a chance or by divine creation? What is the primary relationship that God designed for mankind? What is the basic nature of humankind? Are we good? Are we bad or we neutral? Is there? Ah, riel Satan, who initiated the first religion? Why is the world so messed up? How did languages start? And where did all the world's laws come from? Well, We're just going to dive in and see how far we get with this first episode. So if you are in Genesis Chapter one, Verse one, it begins like this In the beginning, God and the word there is Elohim, created in the word in Hebrew. There is Bara. It's all. It also occurs in Verse 21 in verse 27. He created the Heaven and the Earth. By the way, that word barrage is only used of God. It is a word that indicates creating something out of nothing. The one theme of the whole Book of Genesis here is beginnings. And what this first verse tells us is that it all started with God and by God in the beginning, God before the creation of the heaven and Earth and the vast expanse of the multiple universes, there was God and nothing else. Then God created everything. And as I said a moment ago, X knee. Hello? That means out of nothing. Now this verse opens up a couple of questions for us. Someone who is God and number two. When did this happen? So the first is Who is God? Well, the word for God used here is Elohim in Hebrew and it is a masculine, plural noun. A shortened form of it is l You may be familiar that with that, if you've done any Bible study, you know that there are occasions when God is called El Shaddai or Elohim. There are individuals whose name begin with l a lie job. All of those have the word God in the name and then add some just descriptive to it. So Elohim is the name for God and it is in the masculine plural and say, Well, hold on a minute. Why is the name for God plural? Doesn't the Bible teach that there's Onley one God? Well, yes, it does. For example, in Deuteronomy, Chapter six, Verse four, it says Hear O Israel. Yeah, way That is a name God gave for himself. Our God And that word there in that versus Elohim. Yeah, way is one. So this verse says there's only one God, yeah, way is one. But what is interesting about this verse is that it calls God by two names. Yeah, way, which translates loosely I am. And Elohim in Elohim is a plural noun. So while it states emphatically that God is one. It uses a plural noun to describe him. Now this doesn't mean that there is more than one God. As one author, I read put it, Elohim really began as a title, a regal title, a title of Majesty. So the word is sometimes used for royalty. It's also used for angels, But on these occasions when it is used for God, it implies something. So while do Deuteronomy six Chapter four states that God's name is in the Pearl plural, it also says that yeah, way is one. While it states that God is one, it implies that there is something mawr to God than just his oneness. Isaiah, Chapter 44 Verse six says the same thing about God in terms of his nature, It says. Thus, says the Lord, the king of Israel and his redeemer, the lord of hosts. I am the first and I am the last Besides me, there is no god there. You have the Lord, the king of Israel and his redeemer, the Lord of hosts both saying I am the first and I am the last besides me, there is no God, so you have to personalities stating that there they are one God. Well, the answer really comes in that one of the principles that I use for Bible interpretation is to compare one Scripture to another Scripture. And if we go forward in the Scripture to the New Testament, John, Chapter one, verse one says this in the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God. If you jumped onto Verse 14 of the same chapter, it says. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth. So in John One we find that Jesus is described as the creator of the world. All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. So how do we reconcile effect that the Scripture says that God created the world, Elohim? And yet the New Testament tells us that Jesus created the world. It is reconciled in this statement. God is a trinity. God is the father in the Sun and the Holy Spirit. He is three in one. The Bible states that God the father is God. God, the son is God and God. The Holy Spirit is God, that they're all distinct from each other, but that there is only one God, Yeah, I don't know about you, but that's impossible for me to understand. Let me quote some statements to help clarify. This is what somebody wrote online. I don't know where this comes from, but I'll share it with you, Trinity Or try ad from the Latin means threefold holds the Trinity Doctrine holds that God is one God but three co eternal con substantial persons or hypo Stasis, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as one god in three divine persons. Now that makes it clear for your right. No, I I doubt it. How about the Baptist faith and message? It talks about the Trinity this way. The eternal Tryon. God reveals himself to us as father, son and spirit with distinct personal attributes. But without division of nature, essence or being, well, still not clear. Let me say this about what I believe concerning God as three and one. And this is the principle of Bible interpretation as well. And I return to it over and over again. As I study Scripture. When I come across questions like, how can there be only one God? And yet he is father, son and spirit. I draw on the Now write this down. This an important principle of Bible interpretation. I draw on the I don't know, principal a Bible interpretation When I'm asked, How can this be? So how can this work? How does that recipe come out of the oven? I respond. I don't know. I just believe it because I believe the Bible. And because the Bible says it, I figured God will work out the rest. Well, this brings us to a second principle of Bible interpretation, and that is this. We need to take the Bible at its word. It is reliable, complete and without error. So if something seems difficult to understand, the problem is not on the side of the Bible or God. It's on our side. We probably don't understand, because God is an eternal, all knowing existing everywhere, um, into t whatever word that we can put here without denigrating the Holiness of God, and we're never gonna entirely understand his nature. So this book of Genesis is all about the Tryon God and the beginnings of our world. Now, another frequent question that comes from these first verses is how long ago did this happen? It says here in the beginning. Now there are only two interpretations that I believe. Take the Scripture literally here, and that's 1/3 principle of Bible interpretation I want to share with you. It is this. Take the Bible literally, unless it gives you a reason not to. I mean, there are Scripture, passages that are parables, visions, even hyperbole, uh, that are clearly not meant to be taken literally. But the Book of Genesis is not presented as a parable or a myth. So we take it literally, What does literally mean? Well, some have tried to answer the question of how long ago was the creation of the world by searching Scripture for clues. One of the most famous of those was James Usher. He lived in the 16 hundreds. He was a bishop or pastor in Ireland, and he searched the scriptures and came up with a creation date and answer to how long ago of 4004 BC More specific than that he actually came up with the month and day in which he said that the world was created. Now for those of you who can't who can do math in your heads, that's 4004 plus 2000 and 20 the year that I am recording this, and that means that the world would have been created 6000 and 24 years ago. By Usher's reckoning, you say, Well, how did he come up with that? In short, he used biblical genealogies and dates compared to world historical events. Now many people have turned his name into a joke because of his 6000 year old Earth determination. But Usher was a history and language scholar, and he was not alone in his generation in the quest to date the creation, no less a scholar than Isaac Newton, was attempting to make that determination. Now he would have been called a young earth creationist. That's one way that you can take the Bible literally when considering the Age of the Earth. And most of them believe the Earth is young not just because the Bible narrative, but because there is an abundance of scientific evidence that mankind and the earth haven't been around for billions or even millions of years. Now we're not going to deal with that here. That's not our purpose. To go into a deep scientific discussion about the age of the Earth. We will have some opportunities to present to some of that evidence as we unfold Genesis. But the second way that we can answer the question. When was the beginning other than the young Earth creationist view is called the Gap Theory. Now let me explain. We just read verse one of Chapter one of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the very next words in verse to our and the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. So the gap theory asked the question. What does it mean? That the Earth was without form and void the word in Hebrew toe who means formless, empty, chaotic means vanity or desolation. Bo, who means void or empty? They are used in Isaiah, Chapter 34 verse 11 and they're used to indicate confusion and emptiness. So those who subscribe to the Gap theory would say, Oh my goodness, it says that God created the heavens and the earth, and it was all beautiful and good. And then it says in Verse two, it was desolate and chaotic and empty. Well, what happened? Somebody must have messed up God's creation. And then he had to proceed to fix it. With the six day creation period described in the rest of the chapter, Well, that is the key to their way of interpreting Genesis. Chapter one versus One through to God made it wonderful in the beginning, and then it became formless and void. Toe who and Bo who? Now why would anybody interpret it this way? Because they're trying to reconcile the Bible with modern science. More particularly with the evolutionary theory. Modern science says that the Earth is 4.525 billion years old. That's a far cry from 6 to 10,000 years old. The biblical story covers just a few 1000 years, not millions or billions. So some have attempted to agree with science that the Earth is five billion years old but still believe the biblical record. So they read Genesis 11 through two like this. In the beginning, billions of years ago, God created the heavens and the earth, and then disaster struck and the earth became formless and void. Then, a few 1000 years ago, God stepped in to fix the Earth. That was a disaster by creating what we know today. So they insert some disaster between verse one and verse two. But what kind of disaster are we referring to? Well, some have put the fall of Satan in between these verses. Some have stuck cavemen and dinosaurs in between these two verses. Now those are two separate groups. Let me deal with the 2nd 1st Those who put dinosaurs and cave men in between versus one and two are deluded because they also insert billions of years. The problem with that interpretation is you cannot place any life on Earth before the story of Adam without destroying one of the major doctrines of Scripture. You see, the Bible continually credits Adam with bringing sin into the world, and the judgment for sin is death, it says in Scripture for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that the wages of sin is death. And it's not only death for mankind, but it is a curse on creation as well, and it is eternal death for mankind. Separation from God on this doctrine rest the entire doctrine of salvation. For example, Paul talks about it in Romans Chapter five, Verse 14 when he says. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those whose sins weren't like Adam's disobedience, who is a foreshadowing of him? Who is to come, It says Death reigned from Adam to Moses. First Corinthians, 15 22 for As in Adam, All die. So also in Christ all will be made alive. So Adam was the one that brought death first, Corinthians, 15 45. So also it is written. The first man, Adam became a living soul, and the last Adam became a life giving spirit. So here's the problem. If you place cave men and dinosaurs on the Earth for millions of years before Adam, then you have millions of years of death before the first sin ever entered the world by Adam. So the very curse that the Scripture says Jesus is overturning in the New Testament because of Adam's sin actually predates Adam by millions of years. That's a huge problem. And so, in my opinion, that pushes the biblical text too far to be a reasonable interpretation of Scripture. Now that group of people place cavemen and dinosaurs before Adam. A second group simply says that the Earth is 4 to 5 billion years old, but mankind is only a few 1000 years old. Well, that explains his supposed age of the rocks on Earth, but it still leaves a big problem with dating fossils. And Early Man Science still says that fossils indicate that animals and man are millions of years old, but we will get to that later. But there's a bigger problem with inserting billions of years between verse one and two of Genesis one. Let me tell you the bigger problem. The bigger problem is that the Book of Genesis doesn't say any of that. There is only a blank space between verse one and Verse two, and you and I have no authority to write new verses in the Bible. And that's really 1/4 principle of Bible interpretation. I read it this way. If it ain't in there, it ain't in there. It kind of bothers me When people start adding opinion to the Bible now, it does not say in verse one how long ago God made the heavens and the Earth. So I don't have a huge quarrel with those who think the heavens and the Earth are very old. I disagree, but I do have a huge quarrel with those who try to put the fallen angels, the dinosaurs, Neanderthal man and whatever between versus one and two. It's not written in the Bible that way, so don't speak for God by inserting it there. So let's move on. It says In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was over. The face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. The original state of the Earth was land and water and the spirit of God. The Holy Spirit was active in the creation along with God, the father, God, the son and God said, Let there be light. And there was like, Well, hold it. Light comes from the sun and the moon and the stars. But in the creation God chooses to make light before he makes the sun, moon and stars. Now that tells me something that tells me that God doesn't need a burning ball of gas to make light. He is light first John 15 says, This is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Second, Corinthians 46 says, for it is the god who commanded light to shine out of darkness. Who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It tells us in the Eternal City in heaven, there will be no need of the sun or the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it and the lamb is its light. Anytime God reveals himself in the Old Testament and I would have to say many times, he reveals himself as light. And so, in Genesis, Chapter one light comes before the Sun Moon stars. Now, interestingly, science uses the speed of light to say that the universe is very old. Here's how they do so they say. Light travels at 299,000,000,792 1004 100. They say that light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second. Now the Hubble telescope found the farthest known star to be nine billion light years away. The speed at which light travels is how far light can travel in one one year. So if we see the light from that star, then they say nine billion years at least, must have gone by because that's how long it takes for the light to get to us. But here's the deal. If I'm going to believe there is a God, if there is a god, Ah, God, who can just create the world by speaking it into existence, why would I think that he is limited by the speed of light? What are we saying? That God created those distant stars and then said, OK, now I have to wait nine billion years for the light to reach Earth than I can make a living creatures on the earth who can look at those stars. Put it another way. If God can make a burning ball of gas out of nothing, whose light can travel billions of miles. Can't he also make the light from that star get to Earth more quickly? And that's exactly what Genesis Chapter one, Verse three, says. The very first thing God creates his light. He created light before he created the sun, moon and stars. And so the light stretched across the universe in all the places that he desired for it to be. Even before the sun moon stars were set in place 1st 4 says, and God saw the light that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness. Now this is interesting. God divided or separated. Now what did that look like? Did God kind of squished together the darkness in a big old ball on his right hand and the light in a big ball on his left and say, Wait there till I'm ready for you? No. As we read the creation account, we can kind of imagine what it means. We have days and nights, those days and nights, air separated by the laws of nature. Later, it says that God separated some other things, the expanse of the atmosphere and waters and and then some waters from other waters from the land. Atmospheric water from oceanic waters. All those things are bounded by scientific laws, land and sea. He doesn't form a great big ball of water and another ball of earth and then say, Hey, you guys stay separate as he is creating, he is setting in motion the laws of nature. There are laws that govern how water and earth react. Water seeks home Eustatius. If it's not acted on by an external force, it finds its level. It doesn't defy gravity and crawl over the side of a glass. Say Well, so what? Well, after God created light and dark, he set the rules for how they will work in the universe that he has created. He decided how fast light would travel through space. He decided how light would dissipate. Well, it goes on in verse five and says, and God called the light day and the darkness. He called night and the evening in the morning, where the first day. Now just a note on the word day, this is another way. Some try to merge the biblical account of creation with the theory of evolution, they say. Well, God took six days to create the world. But maybe his days are like, you know, 750 million years long. By the way, that's not just some arbitrary number I came up with. It is the number 4.5 billion the age that some scientists claim for the Earth, divided by six the number of days of creation. So our gods, days seven and 50 million years long. Now, if we're to believe the Bible, we would say no. Why? Because the word for day in Hebrew is Youm. More specifically, it goes on. And, as versus to say, not only did he call it a day a joohm, but he said, after each day there was evening and there was morning the first day. And then there was evening and there was morning the second day, and so on. But is indicating is that these are normal days, these air days that had evenings and mornings, just like we experienced them today? Well, some people say, Well, we can believe in billions of years for the age of the Earth because we don't know how long God's days of creation were. Maybe God's days were millions of years long now I have no problem with God doing whatever he chooses to do. The thing is, it doesn't describe these days as being millions of years long. It says. There was evening and there was morning the first day, and that word JOOHM is also an indicator. How long these days were for that word is used here and throughout the entire Hebrew Old Testament. It doesn't use a different word for day when it describes the days of creation. Then it uses in the rest of the Old Testament, when it's talking about a normal 24 hour day. For example, when God sent Noah into the ark, it says it rained for 40 days and 40 nights when God revealed the 10 Commandments. The Fourth Commandment says, honor the Sabbath Day. That is a 1 24 hour period, the day of rest. And by the way, if you go back to Genesis, that day of rest is first instituted by God in the creation. So if you're going to mess with the length of the days of creation, you also have to mess with the length of the day that God rested and turned it into longer than a 24 hour period because the same word is used for each of those days. By the way, the fourth day of creation, God created the sun, moon and stars, and it says he created them for a purpose for signs and seasons and days and years. So the fourth day, God made a huge astronomical clock to regulate time for humanity. So I say, All that is to say is that God's six days of creation, his one day of rest can Onley reasonably be interpreted as literal 24 hour days. So let's go on into text, it says in Verse six. And God said, Let there be a firmament. It's old English. More modern translations will say expanse in the middle of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse and divided the waters, which were under the expanse from the waters, which were above the expanse. And it was so and God called the expanse heaven or sky, and the evening in the morning were the second day again. God divided. The firmament or expands were sky that separates the gathered waters in the seas below. from the waters gathered in the clouds above 1st 9 says, And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together to one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so and God called the dry land Earth and the gathering together of the waters called He seas and God saw that it was good. God said, Let the earth bring forth grass the herb yielding seed, the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind whose seed is in itself on the earth. And it was so and the earth brought forth grass. They're building seed after his kind, the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind and God saw that it was good. You might have noticed that it repeats the words after his kind after his kind whose seed is in itself, and it repeats the same kind of notion with plants, birds and animals. But this does. It speaks of how God created everything that reproduces to do so with reliable consistency. And it's amazing how consistent that reproduction is. Every plant is encoded with the blueprint for reproducing mawr plants like itself, so much so that you can look at fossils of plant leaves and identify exactly what plant the leaves came from. Why, because they look just like those same leaves that those plants have today. I look at a few pictures online. There's palm tree leaves, rose leaves, sycamore leaves, ginko maple leaves, fern leaves in in the fossil record and their distinctively the same as those leaves are today. They are created so that they will reproduce after their kind. Now, evolutionary theory teaches that all of life began with a single celled organism and then mutated, changed and evolved to the higher organisms we have today. But Genesis teaches that God made it good the first time and built into every creature safeguards against radical changes. In other words, Evolution teaches that a fish evolved into a lizard and then to a dinosaur and then to a bird. Genesis teaches that God made a fish, and when fish had babies, they were still fish. Lizards did not become dinosaurs. Lizards laid eggs, and when they hatch, they were lizards. Dinosaurs were created as dinosaurs, and they stayed dinosaurs until they went extinct. Birds beget birds. Apple trees grew apples, peach trees grew peaches and guess what? If you look at the animals and life we have today and look at the fossil record, that's exactly what you find. And God made it that way for our protection. Because our survival has not depended on adaptation. It has depended on consistency. Well, let's continue, Verse 13 says. And the evening and the morning were the third day, and God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heaven to divide the day from the night, Let them be for signs for season, for days and for years let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light on the earth. And it was so he made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night he made the stars. Also, he sent them in the expanse of the Heaven to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. Now, some of the testimony to the wonder of God's creation is found in the heavens. There's also a great evidence there that God made it all and that it wasn't that long ago. Now I'm not going to pretend to be a scientist, but I have read and sing and seen a number of arguments for a young earth based on the universe as a great big clock. For example, if the universe is 4.5 1,000,000,000 years old, you would expect certain things. But one author wrote this regarding the recession of the moon's what he called it in astronomy. He said the gravitational pull of the moon creates a title bold on Earth that causes the moon to spiral outwards very slowly. Because of this effect, the moon would have been closer to the Earth in the past. What he's saying, as is that as the moon orbits the earth, it slowly gets a little further away. Each year that passes because of gravitational forces and the current rate of recession, we can calculate how much the moon has moved away over time. So, he says. If the Earth is only 6000 years old, as young creationists say, there's no problem because in that time the moon would have only moved about 800 feet or 250 meters. But most astronomy books teach that the moon is over four billion years old, which poses a major problem. Less than 1.5 billion years ago, the moon would have been touching the earth. What he's doing is reasoning backwards, he's saying. If the moon is moving away each year now, then if you go backwards in time, then in previous years the moon would have been closer to us. Well, if you only go back a few 1000 years, then we're OK because they would only be it would only be a few 100 feet closer. But if you're going to go back billions of years, in fact, 1.5 billion years ago, the moon would have been sitting right on the top of the earth. Goes on to say in the Stars and the sun have similar attributes that contradict the idea that they've been around for 4.5 billion years. Well, if we get down to brass tacks here, modern evolutionary scientists try to portray creationist, especially young earth creationist, as though they are members of the flat Earth Society. But I can guarantee that those who whom I have read and who I've seen were very intelligent and reasonable individuals who were looking at evidence and trying to draw reasonable conclusions. And those conclusions bear out the truth of the Bible's creation account. Well, back to the text, it says in Verse 19 and the evening in the morning where the fourth day and God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly, the moving creature that has life and foul that may fly above the Earth in the open firmament of heaven and God created great whales. Now that's the King James version that says Wales there, uh, some translations say great sea creatures or even sea monsters. Well, later, in the K J v ah form of this same word in Hebrews translated dragons. So here it says that God created great sea dragons. Well, a lot of people think that maybe the Bible or even myself, have gone off the deep end when we start talking about God creating dragons, Um, as I said, the King James version called them Wales. Because in the day that the King James was written in 16 11 the biggest sea creature that they were aware of was the whale Now we know now there are sea creatures that existed that were much larger than the whale. There are a lot of large sea creatures. They have fossils of Ah, mega Ladan shark that is 60 feet long. Um, there's a super crock called the Sarko Suk us. I don't know if that that it's a pronunciation for that, but it was 40 feet long and the I'm gonna destroy this. But the IQ Sile saw, which is a giant poor pough's, was 85 feet long And then you have the place use our which is larger than that. And if you think of a place CEOs are think of the Loch Ness monster. Anyway, the blue whale is 98 feet long. So when it says here that God created great sea dragons or sea monsters or sea creatures, you could consider any one of these as part of that group. They're just massive sea creatures. Now, if you want to take the Bible seriously, we really have to believe the record of Scripture that God created all creatures. And he did so during this six day creation week. So see, dinosaurs, if you will would have been created on the fifth day of creation and land dinosaurs would have been created on the sixth day, the same day that man was created. You say, Well, hold on. Dinosaurs and humans didn't live at the same time. Well, that gets us back to the creation vs evolution argument. I believe that they were both created by God during this six day week. And to bolster that argument, let me read you a passage of Scripture from one of the oldest written Bible books, the Book of Job. In fact, it is one of the oldest books, period in Chapter 40. There's a description of an animal that sounds an awful lot like an herb eating dinosaur, and that what that indicates of us is that the author of Job, who wrote this early book, was familiar with a creature that looked like what is described here and if indeed it is a land dinosaur and then later a C dinosaur, Then mankind was familiar with dinosaurs. I listen to Job, Chapter 40 verse 15 it says. Behold, now, behemoth. Now that's the name that's written in the old English. We don't have a direct translation to any creature that is it. Assistant today, which I made with you He eats grass is an ox low Now his strength is in his loins and his forces isn't the navel of his belly. He moves his tail like a cedar. The sinews of this stones air wrapped together means his tail is the size of a cedar tree. Now early biblical interpreters thought this described an elephant. I don't think elephants move their tails like cedar trees. His bones are a strong pieces of brass. His bones are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God. He that made him can make his sword approach to him. Surely the mountains bring him food where all the beasts of the field play. He lies under the shady trees and the covert of the read and fends. The shady trees cover him with their shadow. The willows of the brook compass him about listen to verse 23 beholding drinks up a river. He trusts that he condemned raw Jordan into his mouth. He takes it in with his eyes. His nose is pierced through with snares. No, it is a description of a creature that they're using poetic language to describe as massive, very large creature. First Chapter 41 sounds kind of like a carnivorous dinosaur, it says. Can you draw out leviathan with a hook or his tongue with a cord, which you let down? In other words, can you go fishing and get this animal up out of the the sea or out of some river? Before Bible interpreters who were not acquainted with dinosaurs thought this was describing a crocodile? But this creature is far larger than any crocodile, verse two says. Can you put a hook in his nose or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Can the companions make a banquet of him? Can they part him among the merchants? In other words, he's saying, If you did manage to catch him and kill him, would you be able to sell him at market by cutting him up into pieces and and distributing the meat for seven? Can you fill a skin with barbed irons or his head with fish spears lay hand your hand on him. Remember the battle No more. Behold, the hope of him is in vain. Shall not one be cast down? Even at the sight of him. In other words, you see him, you think I am going to tackle that. None is so fierce that dare stir him up. Who then is able to stand before me. I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion who can discover the face of his garment, who can come to him with his double bridle? Can you put a bridle on him like you would a horse who can open the doors of his face? His teeth are terrible. Roundabout. His scales are his pride. Shut up together, as with a close seal, No one. That one is so near to another that no air concomitant Tween, they're joined one to another. They stick together. They cannot be sundered by his ness ings, a light that shine in his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. In other words, he's describing poetically that the eyelids of this animal or so largest like the sun coming up in the morning out of his mouth, go burning lamps and sparks of fire leap out out of his nostrils. Go smoke as out of a sieving pot of cold or cauldron so we'll hold on a minute. Smoke coming out of his mouth. That's a fire breathing dragon. And that's mythology. Well, no, I think God is describing this creature as any man might have seen. The creature and more than one man would have gone out into the woods on some early morning in the cool of the day and either ran across a dinosaur sleeping or walking by and saw smoke coming out of his mouth. And what was that smoke? What we know what it was. It was condensation occurring because the warm air leaving the lungs on a cold morning. But if you look a dinosaur and it's huge lungs and mouth, the cloud of smoke would have been much larger. That would explain how the idea that dragon's supposedly breathe fire could have come about. Well, Verse 21 continues. His breath kindles coals and a flame goes out of his mouth in his neck. Remains strength and sorrow has turned into joy before him. The flecks of his flesh are joined together, their firm in themselves. They cannot be moved. His heart is as firm as a stone, yet as hard as a piece of the nether millstone. When he raises himself up, the mighty are afraid by reason of break ings. They purify themselves well here. It describes this animal raising itself up from a lying down position and that when it does so, everyone is afraid and that when it's rising, raising itself up, it's breaking things as it does so. As I said, some thought this was a crocodile. I don't know about you, but when a crocodile raises himself up are the mighty afraid. 1st 26 as the sort of him that lays at him cannot hold the spear, the dart or the habit. Jin. He esteems iron as straw and brass as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make him flee. Sling stones air turned with him into stubble darts. Air countered as stubble. He laughs at the shaking of a spear. Sharp stones air under him. He spreads sharp, pointed things under the mire. Upon the Meyer, he makes the deep to boil like a pot. He makes the sea like a pot of ointment, describing an animal that goes into the sea. And as it does so, it creates a wake or foam. I don't know about you, but does a crocodile make the deep boil like a pot. He makes a path to shine after him. One would think the deep to be hoary or frosty upon earth. There's none like him who has made without fear and Verse 34. To top it all off, he beholds all high things. In other words, he sees everything that's up high. Is that a crocodile? He is a king over all the Children of pride. Now there are 27 occurrences of this word in Hebrew for dragon or monster. Here in job. There's also the word for Behemoth Ah, and leviathan is how it's been interpreted. At least you would have to conclude that job was familiar with some large reptilian creatures. Now some people discount this account and job as mythology. Just like today, we imagine dragons, which are mythological creatures. Now I'm not going into great detail here. But another truth we may glean from Scripture is that mythology sometimes has a basis in some reality in the historic past. In other words, that would mean here that men came up with stories of dragons because in the ancient world people encountered dragons or dinosaurs well as we continue with the creation account. It goes on a verse 21 by saying he also created every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind and every winged fowl after his kind. And God saw that it was good and God bless them saying Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let foul multiply in the earth and the evening in the morning or the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle creeping thing and beasts of the earth after his kind and it was so Now here we have God making the land animals and they're divided into three classifications. We have domesticated or clean animals that air called here cattle. They're like cows or sheep. We have unclean beast on be horses and camels and so on. Um, and any wolves and and things that under Jewish law, they're not allowed to eat dogs. Then you also have bugs. Here they're described as creeping things. It says that God made the beast of the earth after his kind and cattle after their kind and everything that creeps on the earth, and God saw that it was good. Now word here about it being good, good means favorable, better, beautiful, handsome, well festive, Mary pleasing. It means that God looked over the land, the water, the atmosphere, the birds, the fish, the dinosaurs and the bugs that he had made. And it was beautiful. It was efficient. It was pleasing to him. By the way, this is a completely different viewpoint than the evolutionary one. In evolution, the beginnings of life are very primitive and basic. God created life instead advanced and complex. When God finished his creation, it wasn't incomplete. It didn't need evolving to a higher creature. It was already there, which is what we see in creation today. The animals are beautiful. They're complete. They're efficient even after the fall. I mean, I think it's fascinating to see things like Ah, hummingbird fly or a dolphin jet through the water. I think it's telling, in fact, that many nature shows about animals talk about how efficient animals are, whether we're referring to camouflage coloring or some means of building a nest. Those shows tell you how wondrous the natural world is. Well, that's because God created them to be complete. They don't need further evolving. Let me conclude today with an example of that, when God created the world, he put all the parts in place for a very intricate and elaborate machine or organism. Take, for example, the honeybee. Today, people are becoming alarmed about the declining bee population because of pesticides, etcetera. The number of honeybees is going down dramatically now. Why are they worried about this? Because honey bees pollinate flowers and those flowers lead to the growing of foods that we depend on. In other words, no bees, no pollination, no plant foods, which could lead the worldwide starvation well. God's creation is balanced. That means, as God made the bees to be a part of creation and to contribute their part in plants growing up and feeding people. In fact, not only do we have to have honeybees, the honeybees have tohave Harry legs. When honeybee enters the flower to retrieve its nectar, the flowers pollen sticks to the hair on the bees legs. Then the B goes to another flower to retrieve nectar, and some of that pollen falls off of the bees legs into the second flower now that's how pollination takes place. So what we have is a symbiotic relationship between bees and flowers and plants and animals and people. They are interdependent, yet evolutionist have to propose that the flowering plants and the Harry leg bees evolved precisely at the same time if they didn't evolve at exactly the same time, neither the baby nor the flower would survive because they both need each other for their survival. That's very difficult for an evolutionist to explain. How did the flower evolve separately? And how did it continue to grow if it didn't have the be for pollination? How did the baby survive and get the nectar? If there were no flowers evolved at the same time that the B came into existence? But it's pretty easy to explain if you look at the creation story in the Book of Genesis, because God created them in the same week. Well, it's a spectacular world that God created, and we give him glory for it. Well, that's about all the time we have for this podcast. We're going to continue next time with verse 26 of Chapter one, the height of God's creation. Human beings let us. Pray, Henley. Father, what a wonder you are. We marvel at the world around us. Even in its fallen state. It is beautiful, intricate, precise and majestic. And if it this is how it is now we have to wonder what creation was like in his perfect state. And we wonder what the new heavens and the New Earth are going to be like. Lord, we thank you for teaching this out of your word. Guide us into truth. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. So Jesus claimed rages off his grace thio of light eternal shines and glows on every phase through the the of the shadow Let it lie. Lie Only way, Teoh. The the flow of morning brightens to the perfect day till the glow of morning brightens to the perfect day.