Genesis 1-3

I bet many of you either gave or received a gift this year that required assembly. And if you didn’t, I imagine most of us have had to put something together at some time in our lives. And I would further imagine that there were times when we just knew we could do it without reading the instructions. After all, we’re not stupid. How hard can it be?

If you’re like me, you get started with the project pretty easily. Maybe you even get it almost done, only to find that that last piece just doesn’t fit. Or you wind up with an extra piece and have no idea where it could go. Or it’s together, but you wouldn’t want to sit on it, or let a kid play with it for fear of having it fall apart.

Then finally, with no-one looking, we pull out the instructions and read what the manufacturer says to do. Oh! That’s how it goes.

I hope you had a Christmas blessed with family and friends as you celebrated the birth of our Savior. And I trust you had a good New Year’s celebration, and ate all that food that will supposedly give you “good luck” in 2019. I found out yesterday that you aren’t supposed to do laundry on January 1 because that means you’ll just have to work all the harder in the new year. What?

I’m excited about my time in God’s Word this new year. As I shared before, I’ve decided to read through the Bible chronologically in the NIV. I’m kind of like a kid with a new toy, even though I’ve read these words over and over. I love how God can speak to me every time I read what He inspired so many men to write so long ago. This book is God’s love letter to me. And I never get tired of hearing what He says.

So I read it this morning and thrilled at how God created the heavens and the earth. I don’t know HOW He did it. The Bible only tells me that He DID.

Then this afternoon I was having a conversation with some friends and all of a sudden someone said he read someone found the fossil of a horse that is 400 million years old. I said, “Well, we know that’s not true.”

Someone else reminded me that a day to God is like a thousand years, so why can’t creation have taken billions of years to happen? “Well,” I said. “How much Hebrew do you know?”

Ken Ham tells us that the word for “day” used in the original Hebrew text of Genesis 1 is “yom.” And when it is accompanied by the words, “evening” or “morning,” it specifically means a twenty-four hour period. The word “yom” accompanied by a number also indicates a twenty-four hour day. In the creation account, God is qualifying times four, a twenty-four hour, six day creation:

There was EVENING, and there was MORNING, the FIRST DAY.

I appreciate what Ken Ham has to say about this. For instance, in one of his videos he reminds us that the whole of 2 Peter 3:8 says:

…With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Kind of ruins that argument, doesn’t it? Besides, Ken Ham asked a question I hadn’t thought about before. Why is the “day” in Genesis the only “day” we question? Why don’t we question the days Jonah was in the belly of the fish? I’ve never heard anyone speculate that Jonah was in there three thousand years. It’s the same word, “yom.”

(Millions of years with Ken Ham, YouTube Video; Ken Ham’s Foundations: In Six Days, YouTube Video)

We can try to figure things out on our own, we can go to other scholars, or scientists, or friends and get their input. But that’s like trying to put together that Christmas present without looking at the instruction manual.

I figure I will always let God’s Word be the final authority. He invented life. He created this world. And when I finally go and look at what He says about it, I say, “Oh! That’s how it goes.”

It does matter what you believe about creation. I pray that you will let God’s Word speak to you, let Him be your final authority. When you read the creation account as He inspired the writer, you will be in awe of this great God who loves you so much He died to save you. That God. That Creator. That Savior.