In this sermon, the preacher focuses on the creation story from the book of Genesis. He starts by discussing the creation of light on the third day and how on the fourth day, God placed the stars in the firmament of heaven. The preacher emphasizes the incredible power of the sun, which burns 400 million tons of mass per second. He then reads from the Bible, highlighting the creation of the heavens, the earth, and the division of light from darkness. The sermon also touches on God's interaction with humanity and the struggle we sometimes face in recognizing our worthiness of His presence.

I believe that we got as far as verse 8, so I might as well start in verse 1. Just reading, just reading. In the beginning, if you're a baseball fan, that's not the big inning. You should have a Bible so you can follow along with us. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Heavens, plural, and the earth. The earth was without form and void. Darkness was upon the face of the deep. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, the darkness he called night. And evening and morning were the first day. God said, let there be a firmament, an expanse, in the midst of the waters. Let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, the expanse, 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, again interesting, heavens, plural. And evening and morning were the second day. Now this is where we left off. And by the way, if you're a gap theory fan, I'm not. You can be. We talked a little bit about that last week so you can get the tape. We stopped a little there between verses 1 and 2, not for endless ages, but just for a few minutes. And God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, or literally one bed in the Hebrew. Interesting how God, at least in our system today, you know, the earth has been rearranged since this original situation. It seems that before the flood, we had a different hydro system than we have now. Before the flood, it seems that because temperature was seemingly fairly even around the globe, even in the north and south pole that we know today seem to be tropical, that there would be probably slight breezes in evening and morning, bringing in mist and humidity from the oceans. And underground seems systems that would feed springs and so forth, but not the way we understand it today. Today our hydro system is 330 million cubical miles of ocean and 1.5 trillion tons of rain per day on the face of the globe. That's quite a system. It's not as good as the original one, but it's what we're left with. And that is a remarkable, remarkable system. And here he says he put the ocean in its beds. And the part of what you have to realize about that is the average depth of the ocean, the average depth is 200 foot when they average out everything. There are places like the Mariana Trench where God carved down and made it deeper because he needed more weight there. Did you ever see somebody put your tires on the thing when they're balancing your tires, and they hammer those lead things on there to keep your tires in balance? God kind of did that as he spent in the world. He needed a little more weight on one side and made the ocean deeper there. And it's a remarkable system that it's all balanced out. So he put the ocean in its beds and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And when we get to chapter 10, there are some things that indicate that all of the earth's land masses were interconnected at this point in time. And God called the dry land, earth, and the gathering together of the waters, called he, seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, now, we don't know if he takes a lunch break at this point, because he separates the waters from the land, and then he goes into the botanical world and makes all of the plants, several million different kinds of plants and trees. So I guess he separated the waters from the earth in the morning, took a lunch break, and then made all the different kinds of plants in the afternoon. Now, this is incredible. You know, as we go through this, there's a wonder to it. So it blows my mind as we look at this. God said, this is the same day, Let the earth bring forth grass, tender grass in the Hebrew, and the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so. Now, again, as we go through this process, and we'll mention it when we get to verse 21, three times we have this word bara, where God is creating something from nothing. Creates the heavens and the earth bara, something from nothing. Then our word is formed, as we go through. And the idea is, he's forming from that which already existed. As he makes the plant kingdom, he forms the plants out of the earth, out of materials that already exist. He's not creating something from nothing there, he's calling it forth. He says, let the earth bring forth, and he's forming the plant kingdom. Now, part of the remarkable part of that system, of course, is he formed the DNA now, that's part of that plant system, the message systems that are so intricate and incredible, he puts together in one afternoon. And by the way, as we go through this, you know, again, theistic evolution tried to help God out from looking so foolish, saying they create everything in six days. But the more we learn, the more ridiculous that is. You know, some of these plants needed bees to pollinate and to continue their own species. And if there were ages of evolution, that each one of these days equaled some ridiculous age, the plants would have died out long before. The system is so interconnected and so interdependent, that this has to get up and running in a short period of time. So we see all of these trees brought forth now. Now, again, I imagine it was amazing, this is before the fall. If scientists have turned up 50-foot asparagus ferns, and you know how big asparagus ferns are now, just imagine how big a grape was. Imagine how big a peach was. There were no Georgia peaches, because there wasn't Georgia yet, but there were Eden peaches. And I bet they grew cold on the tree, you know. A watermelon must have been about three blocks long. That would have been all right with me, too, I'll tell you. How remarkable. And again, look as we finish this. It says, The earth brought forth, verse 12, the grass, the herb, yielding seed, after his kind, the tree, yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind, and God saw that it was good evening and the morning, or the third day. Now, God sees it as good. And again, not for Him. He wasn't longing for fruit. In all of this, in the heart of God, is Adam. When he says this is good, he's thinking, Adam, his taste buds are going to explode when he bites into one of these babies. This is wonderful. This is divine fruit. This is before the fall. So, in his heart all along is Adam as he's doing this. And what an incredible system. The seed is in the plant. The plants are not coming from seeds. He creates the plant with the seed already in it. You know, the chicken and the egg thing? Obviously, the chicken came first if you read the Bible. And he creates each tree with a seed already in it. And what an incredible system it is. Were there rings in the trees? You know, people say, well, is God deceptive? I heard once I had to say that he made the trees with aging rings already in it. Who cares? Who cares? I don't know, did the first batch of trees have no rings? Just one ring but fully grown? I don't know. Who cares? Is God deceptive? No, because we're not fooled. For the unbeliever, they don't believe anything in the Bible. For you and I, I believe he created the whole system in progress. So, I'm not deceived. Only a scientist could get deceived by this simplicity. He creates all the different kinds of seeds one day. Now, again, they say, and it's incredible, the potential, if you take a single kernel of corn, when you make popcorn, one kernel, and you plant it, and then however many ears of corn grow on that single stalk, you take all those kernels, plant the second ear, all those kernels, harvest, whatever you get, third ears, in six years, you can cover the entire earth with corn. That's what a remarkable system it is. What that means is when you bite into an ear of corn, it's a great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of the first kernel that God, you know, the first one, that he just thought that would be interesting to you. And here he is creating all of this, you know. You ever see those little seeds that come down spinning? You get far enough away from the tree so they get light and they can grow. And those little, you know, those little burrs that get stuck in your socks when you run through the weeds? Before there were socks. He made burrs to stick in socks, you know. And the ones that stick on your dog, and then they're the ones that the birds eat them and deposit them later and spread out the forest. And there's an amazing, amazing system here. I mean, it's the plant kingdom, but this is an afternoon. This speaks of the genius, the unending, infinite genius of God. Looked at it and said that it was good. And God said, let there be lights in the firmament of heaven. Now, we have an interesting thing here. Literally, it's let there be light. If you look over in verse 3, God said, let there be light. Or, in the Hebrew, or. Now he says, let there be light. It's mayor, or light bearers. Things to bear the light. In other words, God created light, and a couple of days later, created light bulbs. Do you understand? The miracle of this, he initially created light. Without stars. Without anything to shine it. Just light. He doesn't have a problem with that. It's as easy for God to create a light wave as something to generate the light wave. So, he creates now the bearers of the light that he's already created. God said, let there be light bearers in the firmament of heaven. The purpose of them to divide the day from the night. Let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years. Not for habitation. There's no indication here of Martians, or aliens that are far superior to us living in distant galaxies. Again, last week we mentioned that there is not a single hard bit of evidence that there's another solar system anywhere in the universe, but ours, with these nine planets we know. And think we see one more hanging out there somewhere. And they look at the Doppler effect, and all the warbles on distant stars, and they say, well that means there's magnetic forces. But there's not a single photograph. There's no evidence at all. Now, a few of you asked about that. There is a book called, The Cosmological Anthropic Principle. Fairly recent book. I ain't reading it. If you're interested, I heard a scientist talk about it. It's thick. It's thick reading. Scientists would love it. But it covers this whole fact that we have not turned up a single shred of evidence, only hypothesis, that there's another solar system anywhere in the universe. What that means is, as far as we know, there is one planet that bears life, that is a jewel in the 30 billion light years of the universe, and it's the one we're sitting on this evening. And it is an incredible, incredible system. And God then sets the stars and the sun and the moon, light bearers, into places to mark off signs and seasons, days and years. That's for us. It's not for him. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens, plural, to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made two great lights, or light bearers. The greater light to rule the day, speaking of the sun, and the lesser light to rule the night, which bears light as but a reflection. And notice how he throws this in on the end. Oh yeah, he made the stars too. You know, that's pretty amazing. They say there's 1 times 10 to the 25th, at least, stars. They estimate to the human eye, if you go somewhere and get out of the smog, there's at least 100 million stars visible to the human eye. I haven't counted them. And it just throws that in on the end. Oh yeah, he made the stars too. Threw them out there. Amazing system. And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon 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, one, of course, in the evening morning were the fourth day. One of the remarkable things about this is that it indicates that he had created light on the third day, light waves. On this fourth day is when he put stars in their places, our sun burning 400 million tons of mass per second. 400 million tons. Don't you wish you could lose weight like that? 400 million tons of mass per second. That's what it takes to light us up and warm us and keep us at a steady temperature. And the moon. One scientist said it's easier to explain why the moon shouldn't be there than it is to explain why the moon is there. And that means when we look at a star that is 10 million light years away, that's 10 million years, 186,000 miles per second, 5.888 trillion miles per year at that speed, 10 million light years from here, that means that God took the light waves and put them from that star to the earth in place because we ain't old enough for that light to get here. If he'd just put the star there and we'd have to wait for the light to get here, we'd have been gone before it ever showed up. And I'm dumb and I thought of that. So that's why it says he created the light waves first and then the light bears on the fourth day and then placed them to be bearing the light waves that he had already created. Now that's interesting because when we come to the book of Revelation, it talks about the stars of heaven going out. Well, what that could mean is many of them may not really be there. We may just be seeing the end of their light wave coming. And he could have timed them so they'll all get here at the same time and go out. I'm dumb and I thought of that. But this is a remarkable system. This is a remarkable system that we're looking at. Verse 20 says this, And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly. The Hebrew is, Let the waters swarm with moving creatures that have life and the fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. It's just amazing. God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature. There is soul. It's the first mention in the Bible of the soul that has life and the fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created, here's our word, Barra again. And here's what he created. Great whales, every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. And God saw that it was good. Now, what he's saying is he created all of the sea creatures, water creatures, and all of the birds that fly in one day. Now, there are an estimated 11 million species of animals on the planet, of living things, 11 million species. And in the fifth and sixth day, he created all the birds, all the creatures in the water, and all of the animals and creatures on the land. So even if you divide that in half, that's five and a half million species per day if it's evenly divided. And he's measuring the day. He's only working during the day. He's not working night work. It doesn't seem that as we go through this. So if he's working an eight-hour day, figure out what five and a half million species is in eight or ten hours, how many per second his genius is bringing forth to swarm. And yet it says there's not one sparrow that falls to the ground without his notice. The very hairs of our head, and we're not created yet, are even numbered. Not counted, numbered. When one falls out, he goes, there goes number 3,224. Not counted, numbered. Let the waters bring forth abundantly. They begin to swarm now. Now, again, incredible as we look at this, because he's creating the whales before the mammals, by the way, and evolutionists have a hard time with that, because they say a whale is a cow who decided to go back in the water. Have you ever asked them about it? Well, the whales were here before the cows. That's the next day. Now, again, these are created in process. There has to be, as the water begins to swarm, there has to be salmon going back to swim upstream to a place in a river to spawn where they weren't really born, in their migratory patterns. This thing has to be in process, or the whole system shuts down. There has to be porpoises, you know, they could never evolve because they have this like sonar system. They have a transmitter and a receiver. You imagine that evolving from one cell? You know, sending out their sonar, beaming, beaming, they're listening. You know, all of this created in one day. And placed within the animal now, and those of you that are pet lovers, the animal has a soul. God has taken and formed of the ground, of the elements that already exist, the body of the animal, of the fish, of the bird. But then he has to bring about another creative act, creating something from nothing to place a living consciousness, a soul, inside of that animal. So we have the second time, Barahir, verse 21, something created from nothing as he makes them a living soul. He gives them a consciousness. And it's within that consciousness that their instinct functions. You know, you look at your dog sometimes and you think, well, is this dog happy? Well, he's wagging his tail. He can experience certain emotions. I don't know, you know, he's not interested in the election or anything. But they have a certain capacity that we enjoy in domestic animals. And yet here's this incredible, incredible system that we're still discovering, by the way. We're still finding out about this. There are sea terns that migrate. We're not even sure of their complete migratory pattern. They come to Cape May. One day a year, they show up on the very day that the horseshoe crabs come and lay their eggs. Now, there's a timing in all of this. All of these things are independent. This is a closed system, where every system is dependent upon the other part of the system. It's a miraculous thing. You know, to embrace evolution is, as the Bible says, to be willingly ignorant. Forty billion years, scientists are saying, just for one cell, by random chance, to come into being a protein. Great whales. Every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind. Every winged fowl, after his kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters and the seas, and let the fowl multiply in the earth. And evening and morning were the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth, notice, bring forth again the living creature. Now, this day, he doesn't create a soul, because he created the consciousness the day before. So now, on this day, he is just taking the earth, again, the elements in the earth, he's creating bodies for the land animals, and he's granting to them the consciousness, which he's already created. So there's no creative act on this day. There is an act of him working and forming. God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind. And all through, it's after his kind. Cattle and creeping things, bugs, any of that stuff, lizards. And the beasts of the earth after his kind. Wild animals, dinosaurs, I don't know. I have weird ideas about that. I'm sure we'll hit on them sooner or later. And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after his kind, the mammals, reptiles, cattle after their kind, everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind. And God saw that it was good. I used to joke around that I had a dog that was created on the sixth day, but he had a brain from a bird from the fifth day that was left over. Now, you have to understand, as we're going through this, one of the things that evolutionists are not very honest about as they look at their theory is that in a closed system like this that we view, experience, that things do not go from less complex to more complex as they evolve, unless there is a superintelligence that is continuing to put information in. In the closed system of the universe, the way it's functioning, scientists say there would be necessary 270 bits of information because stars are mostly hydrogen, helium. It's really a basic, simple system. Putting it into place was extremely complicated, but the maintaining of the system, 270 bits of information. Whereas the basic bacterium that's on your skin right now, it's necessary for there to be millions of bits of information, extremely more complex than the universe itself. And in one human cell, billions of bits of information. And yet if the evolutionists had their way, we'd be getting simpler as we're evolving because they don't tell you that there has to be a constant input. There has to be a machine somehow to give more complex and more complex and more complex information. Information in and of itself in a closed system does not become more complex as it goes on. And yet when you wash your hands, every time you wash your hands, you wash off your hands five to six million bacterium. Aren't you excited? You'll all be home tonight going like this. That's why my wife always says to the kids, wash your hands. Did you wash your hands? Five to six million bacterium, each one of them with millions of bits of information for them to be what they are. And yet a single cell from your body, and there are a hundred trillion cells in an adult human being, and in the genes, in the nucleus of each cell, if we were to write those bits out side by side, fine print on a piece of paper, it would take 600,000 minimum pieces of paper to line the bits up, fine print line upon line, billions of bits of information for your system to function the way that it does. Incredibly, incredibly complex. And yet if you took all of the information out of your cells, they say if you take all of the DNA out of all hundred trillion cells in your body, you could fit all that DNA inside of an ice cube. But if you took the information, and it's in strands, from one human body, just from the cells in your body, if you took the information, and you lined the DNA end upon end, it would extend from the earth to the sun and back again 400 times. And that's the throwaway container. That's just the meat. We haven't come to being created in the image of God yet. What an incredible, incredible, wonderful, complex system we are. Now, as we come to verse 26, we come to, as I look at this, an incredible, incredible place in Scripture. Because there is enacted at this verse an ancient, ancient plan that predates Genesis 1.1. And again, I will read to you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Again, and I could read many places. He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. So as we come to this 26th verse, we all of a sudden hear something different. Look in 26. God says, let us. Up until then, it's God creating. Now, all of a sudden, this counsel. Because you see, it was God the Son, God the Spirit, God the Father necessary in the redemption of man. And all of this, to this point, with all of its incredible complexity, with all of its beauty and majesty and genius, was only setting the stage for the plan of redemption to be enacted. And it's almost as though this day when it finally comes, within an interaction in the counsels of God and the Trinity that we'll never understand, I almost imagine the three of them, or the one of them, or however you can deal with that yourself, kind of looking at each other and sighing and saying, okay, this is it. It's all ready. This is it. Let's make man in our image, in our likeness. There is an incredible, incredible thing. The most significant thing in the history of the universe to date, as we're reading through, happens at this point. Because God brings forth mankind, that which he had loved before the foundation of the world, predestined before the foundation of the world, set this entire stage to bring into existence. And now God, we hear his own counsel. You know, it's interesting, the Orthodox Jews in Israel and Jerusalem, if I question them about this, say, well, God is speaking to the angels. Let us. They don't have a good answer. God said, let us, again, masculine plural, make masculine singular. The grammar struggles to agree with theology here. A singular verb with, again, a plurality. God said. Now, he doesn't say, let the earth bring forth. He's way more involved with us. As he makes the animal and the plant life and the fishes, he continues, he says, let the earth bring forth. This time, it's almost as though he's going to take the clay in his own hand. The earth. And atom, by the way, is from the same verb, edam, atom, which means red or dirt or mud. It's almost as though now God owns it. He just doesn't call it forth. He takes it in his own hands now. And he's not saying the earth brings forth. Now, it's let us make man in our image and after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Now, he puts man in the stage to be supreme over all that he has created to date. Let us make man in our image and in our likeness. I am not sure what that means. I know that when Jesus became incarnate, he took on the likeness of flesh. So, it isn't speaking of that. It doesn't seem. Man is created a free moral agent. That's a term we use in our dysfunctional theological family to describe what he is. He's created free from the bondage of instinct, that all that reigned in the DNA of all the other animals. He is created in the image and likeness of God. And we have our third word, bara, that man is created. His body is formed from the earth. God does that, personal involvement. His consciousness or his soul, his intellect, certainly way superior to the animal kingdom, but something that God doesn't have to create because he's already created the soul. Now, there's a third divine act, and that is God creating in his own image and likeness. We know that God is spirit. Man becomes a trinity. He is body of the earth, soul created consciousness like the animals, and then something spiritual in the image and likeness of God. What a wonder man must have been before the fall. Now, you have to understand, as high as a dog is above a tomato plant, you know, people today are crazy. They have you playing classical music to your house plants and talking to them, and I don't know, you know. I'm sure there's way more complexity there, we understand. I'm not arguing that, but when you look at the dog, I mean, he's just way more advanced and mobile and conscious than that plant is. And probably infinitely above the complexity of the animal kingdom and the consciousness of the animal kingdom now is man. It isn't even worth comparing a dog with a plant because the image and likeness of God has to be infinite. And evidently man is created in the image and likeness of God. It seems to me, and we'll talk as we go on, that man is shrouded with light. It tells us in Revelation, as man is again brought to heaven, that he is given clean and white linen, and it says that white linen, it's not physical linen cloth. It is the righteousness of the saints. And created in the image and likeness of God, man must be a being clothed in light. It seems he has free access to step into the presence of God, much like Jesus after the resurrection could step in and out of the room. It seems that Adam must have had access to more than one dimension, that he could have stepped into the presence of God and fellowshiped with him and then stepped into this earthly domain that he had dominion over. And we don't know what the creation itself was like before the fall, how glorious it must have been. But now he's creating man in his own image and likeness. And I am sure there is vastly more here than we can understand as we read this. Man created. It says he became. When we get over to verse 7 of chapter 2, man became a living soul. It doesn't even involve... It gives us the indication that when God did it, and that's the Hebrew grammar, he became at that moment a living soul. That means that God made him. Did Adam have a belly button? I've often wondered. I'm sorry. That his genius, his mind was programmed, the software, who he was and who we are, was directly given by God and God's likeness. With all the genius in some ways of God's creative abilities, man is created. He doesn't have to grow up. He doesn't have to learn phonics. He doesn't have to learn how to read. All of this is given to him in the day that he's created in the image and likeness of God. He is brought forth and he becomes a being instantaneously as God creates. And we'll see when we get to chapter 2, God forms him of the dust of the ground. Same 17 elements that are in the dirt outside are the exact same 17 elements that your body consists of. We spend a lot of time fixing them up, don't we? We take them to the gym. We dye the hair on it. It's just dirt. It's worm food. Just kidding. Very complex. Wonderful, beautiful system. And then it says he breathes into the nostrils of man the breath of life, infinitely different than his involvement with the animal kingdom. Here man is created, bara, something from nothing. Let us make man after our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So, God created something from nothing again. God created man in his own image. In the image of God, created he him, male and female, and that is the order, no matter what anybody says today. Created he them. By the way, it's very difficult to get male and female from a single cell animal that in its most advanced stage tries to be both. Male and female created he them. And God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply. King James says, and replentish the earth. And the gap theory guys love to build an altar here. The Hebrew word is just simply fill, which is actually what the old English word meant. It doesn't mean replenish the way we think of it today. God told them to fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth and every tree in the which is the fruit of the tree yielding seed. To you it shall be for your food, for your meat. So man initially a vegetarian and I'm sure that if you could have bit into some of the things that were growing in Eden, you would not have missed porterhouse steak at all. And I'm a carnivore, but I would love to have been sitting around chewing on some of this. And to every beast of the earth, to every fowl of the air, to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein is life, I have given every green herb for food, when it says meat, and it was so. So even the lions, we see that during the millennium, eating straw like an ox. And so even the carnivores of the animal kingdom at this point in time, all vegetarians, all eating the fruit and the herbs of the field that God here had made. And God saw everything that He had made. Notice, everything that He had made. And behold, it was very good. Literally, it was exceedingly good. And evening and morning were the sixth day. So at this point, every single thing that God has created is termed exceedingly good. Because He looks at it and it's all created in progress. It's all in motion. Carl Reeves, that has the appearance of 50,000 years, are now two days old. He's created the whole system running. It's self-supporting. It's interconnected. The whole entire system is running and God is looking at it saying, this is good. The whole thing was up and running. Man was now in the picture and as God looks at it, He says everything is exceedingly good. Thus, the heavens and the earth were finished. And notice, all of the host of them, which would include angels, and we're not sure exactly when in those six days they came into being, once His creative act began. And on the seventh day, God ended His work, which He had made, and He rested. The word is ceased. It wasn't that He was tired, He had enough six days, get a day off. He rested on the seventh day, that's how I feel, from all His work, which He had made. Isaiah says this to us, Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary, there is no searching of His understanding. So it isn't God resting in the sense that we think, it is God has ceased now, because it's completed. Everything is exceedingly good, and God is resting in the sense that He's resting from His creative work of all the things that He had made, and God blessed the seventh day, and He sanctified it, set it apart, because that in it, He had rested from all His work, which God created, and God made. So here's interesting now, this is man's first full day of existence. On the sixth day, it seems that early in that sixth day, God created the entire animal kingdom and millions and millions of species. It is in the last part of the sixth day that God creates man in His own image and likeness. It's what He's been waiting for outside of the time domain for us to think about it for zillions of unending ages. He finally brings His creative act into being, the Godhead looking at one another and saying, okay, this is it now, let's make man. The end of the sixth day. And the seventh day, He ceases. And the seventh day, God sat with Adam and fellowshiped with him in the cool of the day. Man's first full day of existence was a day of resting, of sitting with God. His first experience, His first full day. He sat with God in the cool of the day. Because, you see, that was the purpose of man. God, it tells us in Revelation chapter 11, created him for His pleasure. And that's the reason that we exist. And, you know, unsaved people will take offense at that. That you're created for His purposes, not your own. You're created for His pleasure. But you have to understand, as a Christian, we begin to understand that His pleasure is to fellowship with us. We're created for His pleasure. His pleasure is to be with us. That's when He tries to describe Himself to us throughout the Scripture. He uses the anthropomorphisms. He uses... That's a big word that people pay a lot of money to learn so they can get their money's worth in an educational institution. What it means is He picks human things to try to give us shadows of His own purposes. So when He talks to us about His relationship, He says, He's the good shepherd. We're the sheep. Now, we don't appreciate that much because not many of us have been shepherds. I heard Sinclair Ferguson from over in Westminster, a favorite guy I love to listen to, just say one time that growing up in Scotland, he would wonder, why would anybody ever want to be a shepherd? He said, I look at these guys sitting in the field with these stupid sheep all day, every day. That's all they do. He said, I want to get out of there. He said, What would make a man want to be a shepherd? And he said, It was years later when God finally showed me, these are men who love sheep. There's no other explanation. And David understood that as a shepherd, fighting off a bear and a lion, laying his life on the line for the flock. Well, one of the relationships God tries to describe to us, it doesn't mean a lot to us because we're not from an agrarian society, is that of a shepherd and sheep. But of course, the things that are wonderful, he says that he's the bridegroom and we're the bride, which is a wonderful relationship filled with romance. He doesn't say husband or wife, that can cool off a little. He says bride and groom, that's really happening. He says that he is the father and we're his children. So when it says we're created for his pleasure, his pleasure is in the sons of men. His pleasure was to fellowship with us. And the first full day of man's existence was sitting in the garden, unoccupied, only being occupied with the very person of God. And God, completely occupied with man, created his image and likeness. Very important for us to remember, even today as Christians, that God is always more interested in the servant than in his service. We forget that. Oswald Chambers says, Sometimes the greatest enemy to our communion with God can be our service for him. And again, my kids at home are... I did not have kids to serve me. My joy is to look at their faces and to roll on the floor with them and just to be with them, to drive them crazy. I come home from church on Sundays and Wednesday nights, they're already sleeping, and I go up and I drive them crazy and I tickle them and I make them laugh in their sleep. I just want to be with them. I just want to look at them. And I think God the Father stands over us as we sleep, and he looks at us and he ministers to our heart and he speaks to us. And the little ones, I still have a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old, sometimes they're so crazy. You've got to sit on them, to hold them still long enough to have an intelligent conversation with them. You just hold them still. Sometimes I think circumstances in life do that. God finally just holds us still and says, Talk to me, look at me. In our lives, he just wants to be with us. And Satan wars there because we look at ourselves in the mirror, we're introspective, we look at our own hearts, we look at our own lusts and our own hypocrisy and our own selfishness, and we think, How could God ever want to be with me? And yet he loved us so much that he traded away his only begotten Son that whoever would believe would have everlasting life and never perish, that we could sit with him and behold him open-faced. God desires to be in fellowship with us and the reason that he can do that is that when he looks at you, he doesn't see all those things you see about yourself. He sees Christ Jesus. He sees the righteousness of Christ. He's the God that calls things that are not as though they were, and that's why he can say to us, You are justified, you are sanctified, you are glorified. And those are from three points of view. That which was, that which is, and that which is to come. You are justified, was. You are sanctified, is. You are glorified, is to come. He looks at us from outside the time domain and sees us finish and loves us and can't wait for the day all of this is consummated. The first day, sitting with God. Now, by the way, we don't know how many Sabbaths took place before the fall. Was there just one? Was there a year? How many Sabbaths took place before the fall of mankind? We don't know. It is my personal conviction, and you can have your own, that Satan was still in his unfallen condition at this time. God looked at all, and his heavens, all through the first chapter, plural, that means the atmosphere, the stellar heavens, and the spiritual heavens. All that he made, everything he made was exceedingly good and God could rest. Now, if Satan was loose and things were fallen and there were, you know, from past ages, between chapter 1 and verse 2, ages of dead sedimentary layers and fossils, there's no hint of death anywhere. Or rebellion. In the heavenly realms, in the layers, the stratas of the earth, there's no evidence anywhere at this time of death or ruin. There is only God looked at every single thing that he had made. It was exceedingly good. And he sat and he rested. He could not have rested if Satan was loose because Satan was entering into the time-space world, into this earth, into this atmosphere, into this domain. Again, in the book of Revelation, for mankind to experience a millennium, a thousand year of Christ reigning on the earth, Satan has to be bound for that period of time where it can't be experienced. For there to be that rest, that Sabbath, that thousand year period. So, it's my personal opinion that at this time, Satan is Lucifer. You read about it in Ezekiel 28. Thou hast been in Eden. The carbuncle and so forth. In fact, I'm going to turn there and you don't have to turn. I will read it to you. Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardis, the topaz, the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, the carbuncle, the gold. The workmanship of thy tabrets, and it's a shame if you have an NIV, they robbed that from you. The workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth. I have set thee so. Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God. Thou walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day thou wast created until iniquity was found in thee." So there it describes Lucifer in Eden in his unfallen state. Ezekiel 28. And I think God rest it, I think everything was good at this point in time. Next week, as we head off into the second chapter, we have then an elaboration of the first chapter. As you read it on your own, it may seem that things are out of chronological order. That's typical in Hebrew literature. It's typical the way God inspires. He gives us the facts in the first chapter. He backs up a little in the second chapter and describes some particular things a little more in depth. But we see in that picture, as we head then to the third chapter, somewhere in that time frame it seems that Lucifer falls because he says, as Isaiah tells us, I will be like the Most High. I think he's envying the position of man. He alone was created in the image and likeness of God. I will be like the Most High. I will ascend in the congregation on the sides of the north. I will lift myself up above the stars, the angels of God. You see, because it tells us in Psalm 8 that what is man that thou art mindful of him, the son of man that thou visiteth him, thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, for now, in our fallen state. Initially, we were created a higher being than the angelic realm. And I think because of that, when Satan fell, Satan hates us. He hates mankind. And I think he pursued man. The first lie he brought to man was you can be his God. The same thing that he fell over. The same thing that brought him down. And I think the real struggle is between mankind and the devil. Satan has no chance in eternity of warring against Christ, against God. He is a created being, just like a tomato plant. And he has no greater possibility of defeating God than a tomato plant. Now, I'm not mocking or speaking evil. He is a great malevolent force filled with wisdom. But, you and I are blood-bought and sealed by the Holy Spirit. And the same seal that keeps him sealed for a thousand years, the same exact word is placed upon us. It says the evil one comes, he touches us not, he has no place in us. Because, again, very simply put, our dad can beat their dad. He does not mess with us because of our dad. And yet we hear all kinds of things in the church. Again, I banged you, I do this, I shackle you, I put chains on you, I do all this. No, cut me a break. Just look up and go, Dad, rescue me. That's all that matters.