Sermon preached on Sunday, April 14, 2013 at Garden Valley Chapel during our Sunday morning service based on Genesis 1:14-19.

Take your Bible if you will and open it to the book of Genesis 1, Genesis chapter one.

We resume our study of creation, the account of creation; the sober history that recounts what actually transpired at creation.

It is God´s own eyewitness account of what happened in the beginning. And because it is special revelation of God, it is reliable, trustworthy, and it speaks with absolute authority.

Sadly men have picked it apart and they themselves have chosen what in Genesis one corresponds to reality and what does not.

They dismiss Genesis 1 as poetry, but it is not.

As the well known Reformed theologian and OT scholar Edward J. Young has stated -

"Genesis one is written in exalted, semi-poetical language; nevertheless, it is not poetry."1

You have heard me say it before: Genesis 1 is a prose narrative,2 a straightforward discourse, an unusual narrative because God is the only character/chief character.

It is God who creates, says, sees, separates, names, makes appoints, blesses, finishes, makes holy, and rests. God.

It is God-centered.

In fact God is the subject of virtually every action verb, except for Genesis 1:12, where the earth brings forth vegetation - but even that is in response to God´s command.

Francis A. Schaeffer rightly noted -

"Christianity as a system does not begin with Christ as Savior, but with the infinite-personal God who created the world in the beginning..."3

In fact, one of the first and foremost components of the Gospel is God as Creator. That is where we begin. Men must understand He created it all. God said, "Let there be" and "there was" or "it was so."

Yet men have dismissed it as a mere "epic" - the stuff legends are made of; "a narrative poem that centers about the exploits of some hero." But it is not a poem.

Poetry is found in Job 38:8-11 and Psalm 104:5-9. Just read Genesis 1:6-8; Job 38:8-11 and Psalm 104:5-9 in that order and you will understand the difference between the Genesis account and the poetic accounts of creation.

That is not to say that Moses does not use a certain order, scheme, framework, or arrangement to describe each day of creation, as we shall see with day four of creation.

His concern was not a "schematic classification or arrangement of material" but rather to relate how God created the heaven and the earth.

Undoubtedly there is enough repetition and arrangement in words that it grabs your attention, and thus fulfilled its function.

Make no mistake about it, Genesis 1 is divine, authoritative, and trustworthy. It is God´s account of creation and as such we pay close attention to it, not turning "aside to the right or to the left" (Deut 5:32), but observing His Word and to do just as God has commanded us.

And in all of this study the aim is for you to be awed, amazed, and cause you to worship God as Creator. That when in "awesome wonder" you "consider all the worlds [God´s] hands have made" whether it be the stars, thunder, the universe, that your soul would sing, "My Savior God to The; how great Thou art, how great Thou art!"

That is what we have come to do this day as we consider day four of creation.

I invite you to stand in the reading of God´s most Holy Word.

Read Genesis 1:14-19.