Chuck Larsen

In verse 14 of Genesis chapter 1, we move from vegetation in the third day to outer space. It says, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.’” In creating the stars and planets in space along with the sun and moon, God had a specific purpose in mind for us living on earth. Exell sees that as, “The moon by her four quarters, which last each a little more than seven days, measures for us the weeks and months. The sun, by his apparent path in the sky, measures our seasons and our years, whilst by his daily rotation through the heavens he measures the days and the hours; and this he does so correctly that the best watch-makers in Geneva regulate all their watches by his place at noon; and from the most ancient times men have measured from sun dials the regular movement of the shadow”^[1]

A website with current statistics said, “Around 63.4% of Americans follow astrology and nearly 1 in 5 — 19.2% — have made a money decision based on their horoscope according to LendingTree’s survey.” Another website says that the horoscope is a 2.2-billion-dollar industry annually. If you search for “astrology” you might raise the Wikipedia article which begins with a paragraph that discredits it. It reads, “Beyond the scientific tests astrology has failed, proposals for astrology face a number of other obstacles due to the many theoretical flaws in astrology including lack of consistency, lack of ability to predict missing planets, lack of connection of the zodiac to the constellations in western astrology, and lack of any plausible mechanism. The underpinnings of astrology tend to disagree with numerous basic facts from scientific disciplines.” Leupold asks “Is there perhaps a silent contrast involved with the superstition of the heathen that is wont to attach itself to the stars? The statement, therefore, is unusually exhaustive in order to show what purposes the Almighty fixed for the heavenly bodies and to leave no room for heathen misconstruction.”^[2]

God gave us the “lights” in the sky to mark off the movement of time. That’s pretty clear from Genesis 1:14. In his long book on the dangers and errors of Astrology, Morey concludes, “The theory and practice of astrology has been examined in terms of its origin, history, popular arguments, scientific credibility, philosophic integrity, and its compatibility with historic and biblical Christianity. The theory of astrology fails to validate its claims to be scientific and philosophically credible. Its internal contradictions and the scientific evidence against it are conclusive to those who approach it with an open mind. Astrology is merely the modern form of ancient planetary worship. Its language and raison d’etre are clearly polytheistic and anthropomorphic. As a religious world view, it is incompatible with Christianity. It has been weighed in the scales of history, science, philosophy, and Christianity and has been found lacking of any validity. Its only appeal to modern man is by way of superstition and magic. There is no place for astrology in the life of a Christian believer.”^[3] I’ll make someone mad but I must say that astrology is excrement from a male cow.

^[1] Exell, Joseph S. n.d. The Biblical Illustrator: Genesis. Vol. 1. The Biblical Illustrator. London: James Nisbet & Co.

^[2] Leupold, H. C. 1942. Exposition of Genesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

^[3] Morey, Robert A. 1981. Horoscopes and the Christian. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House.

As Genesis records God’s final creative efforts on the third day, He not only creates fruit trees and vegetables, he makes them so that they will reproduce themselves for all generations. “And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.”

That the statement, “after their kind” as Berkhof observes, “distinctly favors the idea that the different species of plants were created by God and did not develop the one out of the other. Each one brought forth seed after its kind and could therefore only reproduce its kind. The doctrine of evolution, of course, negates both of these assertions; but it should be borne in mind that both spontaneous generation and the development of one species from another, are unproved, and now largely discredited, assumptions…”^[1]

I’m not sure whether God created three types of botanical life in this verse or just two. If you want to see that there are three they would be grass, then plants and finally trees. But others think that the use of the first phrase “vegetation” is just a collective term that points to the two sub-categories of plants and trees. What’s interesting is that plants and trees, and grass for that matter, only produce after their kind. Gowan said this is because God had a concern to preserve the order of the universe for us. He is not a God of confusion. He writes, “But there is a pastoral concern revealed here also, in the repeated emphasis, ‘according to its kind.’ The reader is reminded that God has put regularity and predictability into his world. If one plants a lettuce seed, a lettuce plant will come up, not an onion. This is visible evidence that God has created a world of order and dependability…”^[2] Man, it would be a downer to plant sweet corn and have Brussel sprouts grow.  Exell says that the oak and the cedar we now know are the same trees Adam and Eve observed in Eden.  He adds, “And the odours we breathe in spring-time are from the same flowers” that were enjoyed by the first man and woman. He continues “And upon our thousand hills the cattle feed upon the self-same grasses that fattened the living creatures to which Adam gave names.” He concludes, “Around every seed, as it came from the creative hand, was bound as an iron fetter that thing we call ‘law.’ All the men of the world, with all their power and skill of chemistry and magic, cannot produce a rose from a lily seed, nor a pomegranate from a fig-tree.”^[3]

^[1] Berkhof, L. 1938. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co.

^[2] Gowan, Donald E. 1988. From Eden to Babel: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 1–11. International Theological Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.

^[3] Exell, Joseph S. n.d. The Biblical Illustrator: Galatians. New York; Chicago; Toronto; London; Edinburgh: Fleming H. Revell Company.

In the first day of creation Light and darkness were separated and named “day and night” to mark the passing of the days, thus God created time! In the second day of creation you might notice that God created weather. By separating the waters below from the waters above he established a means of irrigation by either the waters on the earth or the waters above which would provide the moisture for all crops after the flood. There are those that argue that rain was an unknown before the flood, but that might not have to be the case. Regardless, either a mist came up from the earth to water it or there was water on the earth that watered it or it may have rained on the earth. Whatever, we have weather! Then the third day, Genesis 1:9 says, “And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so.” So we have time in day one, weather in day two and the dry ground in day three which sets the stage for agriculture which is next.

This might even be supported by Genesis 8:22. After God opened the doors of his heavenly storehouse and poured out the rain for a year which brought the flood, he caused the waters to recede and then told Noah and his children, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” You see? Seedtime and harvest refers to agriculture. Cold and heat as well as summer and winter have to do with weather and finally, day and night is again the reference for time. These are prime elements for the existence of man. MacArthur writes, “Those first three days of creation were foundational. Each day is marked by a significant division that occurs. On day one, as we saw in the previous chapter, light was divided from darkness. On day two, a firmament divided the waters above the earth from the waters below. And on day three, the dry land was separated from the sea. All of this was necessary to make the earth habitable.”^[1] God made it all for us! No other planet in the universe has what earth has and that’s because God made it for us to occupy. Isaiah 45:18 says as much: “For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): ‘I am the Lord, and there is no other.’”

Leupold asks a couple interesting questions about this verse. “Did depressions form and the waters rush down into them? We might think so. Or did elevations and mountains thrust themselves upward in the process of the congealing of the dry land and shed the waters as they rose?”^[2] It could have been both. In Psalm 104:5-9 we see the writer praising God for the creation and the separation of the water from dry land. It reads, “He (God) set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.”

^[1] MacArthur, John. 2001. The Battle for the Beginning: The Bible on Creation and the Fall of Adam. Nashville, TN: W Pub. Group.

^[2] Leupold, H. C. 1942. Exposition of Genesis. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

Now God, being a God of order and not chaos, gave the “expanse” (or firmament) a name. He called it “heaven.” We read in Genesis 1:8, “And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.” But if God is not a God of confusion, what did he mean by “heaven.” First of all, it appears that the whole created order consists of three places. Exodus 20:4 says, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” It appears that “heaven” in this verse is referring to what flies in the air, or what we call “sky.” We see that in Genesis 1:20 that reads, “And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” But in Genesis 1:14-16 we see that God places the stars and moon and planets in what is referred to as “the heavens.” But what we most often think of as heaven is the Spiritual realm where God lives. We find this in 1 Kings 8:30, which says, “And listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.”

The Bible teaches that there are three heavens. The first heaven is the heaven that immediately surrounds us and in which the birds fly, and clouds form and rains fall and snow swirls in the winter.  Some writers call this the “atmospheric” heaven. But from the account in Genesis and comments by other prophets in the Bible there is another visible heaven. We refer to that as the “celestial” heaven. This seems to be the “second” heaven. The first two heavens are what the Psalmist tells us “Declare the glory of God.” Paul uses the same idea in the book of Romans to point out that the order, design, beauty, grandeur and magnificence of which informs of the nature of God. Not seeing that has no excuse!

But Paul talks about another heaven. In 2 Corinthians 12:2 Paul says, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.” This is where Jesus now sits at the right hand of the father and who has prepared a place for all those who believe in him. One internet blog describes that place like this: “There are mansions of splendor and robes that are dazzling white. The third heaven is our eternal home as children of the Most High God. It’s the city where the Lamb is the light, where tears are never shed and goodbyes are never uttered. There is no sorrow or pain, only joy and sheer perfection. It is the city where we will one day join the angels in singing, ‘Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty!’ around the throne of God.” Let me just add one thought: “Heaven is for real.”