Trusting God

With all the ideas being thrown at us today as right and true, the debate over evolution and Creation seems to not even exist anymore and I think I know why. I believe our culture, including many within the church, have accepted the idea of evolution as truth and now they are having to deal with the consequences of that. Think about it. We have “races” battling for equality and acceptance. There is unchecked violence and looting that is dismissed as the underprivileged just taking what is rightfully theirs to take. If you want it just take it. Sounds a lot like “survival of the fittest” if you ask me. Then we have 50 years of genocide. Millions of unborn babies have been killed, mostly in the name of convenience. Not to mention the LGBTQ+ movement which is very actively trying to convince a generation that you can be anything you feel. There is much more but I think you get the idea. Recently, after reading another shocking news article, I told a friend that I felt like we were living in Alice’s Wonderland. 

How in the world did we get to this point where right is wrong and wrong is right? 

I believe the answer lies in the fact that we’ve strayed so far from The Truth and the foundations of that Truth that even as believers in Jesus, we have a difficult time determining which way is up. 

I can not stress this enough. As believers, followers of Jesus, we must not only read God’s Word, we must SATURATE ourselves in it. We must allow it to transform our minds and hearts. Many times when I’m teaching, I use the illustration of a sponge. If you wave a dry sponge around, more than likely, no one will notice at all. However if you take that same sponge and immerse it in a bucket of water and then begin to wave it around after pulling it out, people are going to notice. Why? Because, if they are anywhere close to you as you begin to swing that sponge, they’re going to get wet. 

Our lives should be so saturated with the Word of God that everyone around us notices. 

So where do we start?

All the way back at the beginning, literally. 

Genesis chapters 1 and 2 give us the account of Creation and how God started the whole thing. Even now, I feel some of you cringing because you don’t really fully believe this account as it’s written. You have all kinds of ideas that you have come up with or read somewhere that helps you to reconcile God’s account of Creation and what we’ve been taught about evolution. I’ll not get into all the different positions now. I just want to walk with you through the Truth of God’s Word and let you decide from there. 

Get out your Bible and take a look at Genesis 1. Read through to Genesis 2:3. 

Take notice of a couple things.

First, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Period.

That statement is true or it’s not. I want you to think about this, meditate on it this week. If we can’t believe the very first statement of Scripture, can we truly believe any of it? I plan to dig deeper into this in my next post so stay tuned. For now, read on. 

Genesis 1:3-5

Then 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. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and morning were the first day.

(There is a whole message in just these three verses, but we’ll come back to it another day.)

Verse 8

So God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.

Verse 13

So the evening and the morning were the third day.

Verse 19

So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Verse 23

So the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

Verse 31

Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Notice a pattern here? 

“Evening and morning” numbered days….

If you read it literally and I believe we should because it’s history, you see that God is talking about literal 24 hour days not great expanses of time.

How do I know for sure? 

The original Hebrew word that is used here is Yom. Just as with many of our English words, the word day can have several meanings. It’s no different in Hebrew. Yom is commonly rendered as day in English translations, the word yom can be used in different ways to refer to different time spans:

*Point of time (a specific day)

*time period of a whole or half a day

*Period of light (as contrasted with the period of darkness)

*Sunrise to sunset

*Sunset to next sunset

*General term for time ( as in ‘days of our lives’)

*A year “lived a lot of days”

*Time period of unspecified length. (as in ‘back in the day’)

So again, how do I know this is literally 24 hour days in these Genesis passages? 

Context. 

Look at it again. He doesn’t say, “back in the day” or “in the day this was created” which could refer to an undetermined amount of time, He quite literally says “the evening and the morning” and then numbers it, day 1, day 2, day 3, etc. 

Based on this and what I know of God through my relationship with Him, I choose to take Him at His Word and believe that He made all of Creation in 6 literal days. After all, don’t you believe in a God who is able? 

There is so much more Truth in these passages and in the coming weeks, we’ll dig DEEP to truly understand them and equip ourselves to stand firm on God’s Truth in this ever changing world we live in. 

I encourage you to read them again and again this week, meditating on them and allowing the Holy Spirit to prepare your heart for His Truth.