Lenox Federated Church - Firm Foundations, Creation to Christ

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Firm Foundations

Creation to Christ

Lesson 5 - God Created the Heavens and the Earth - Part 11

Questions for the LFC Firm Foundations Coordinator may be emailed to firmfoundations@lenoxchurch.org

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REVIEW QUESTIONS:

1. Who, in the beginning, created the heavens and the earth? God.

2. What did God use to make the heavens and the earth? God didn’t use anything. He made everything out of nothing.

3. Why was God able to make the heavens and the earth? God is almighty. There is nothing He cannot do.

4. How did God know how to make the heavens and the earth? God knows everything.

5. Who taught God how to make everything? No one taught God.

6. Is there any person or any spirit who knows everything like God

does? No. Only God knows everything.

7. What was the condition of the earth before God began to prepare it for people to live in? It was without form and in total darkness; no land and no life.

8. What did God do in order to create everything? He spoke and commanded that things appear.

In our last lesson, we began to study what the Bible says about God in His mighty acts of creation.

- We discussed the fact that the Bible presents God’s true record of creation.

It is not a theory.

It is the truth.

It has not and will not change.

- We discussed the fact that the account of creation helps us see who God is:

The sovereign Creator

The all-powerful God

The all-knowing one

The God who exists by his own power

The holy and perfect God.

- And we discussed the events of the first two days of creation. We read that God created light just by speaking. He created the air and the sky and placed some water above the sky.

Now we will read how God made the land and the seas and filled them with living creatures.

God gathered the waters into seas and made the dry ground appear.

- Consider:

Have you ever witnessed the devastation caused by a flood or a tidal wave? What man can think of standing against such forces, much less commanding them? Imagine the power involved in shaping the seas—all in a day! Only Almighty God could command the waters encircling the earth to move and make the dry ground appear.

God made all of the plants and trees.

- God alone has the knowledge and power to create plant life. The more scientists study plant life, the more complexities they discover. God, in His infinite wisdom, was able to create all plant life and to perfectly suit every kind to the rest of the earth’s systems that He was creating.

- God made the plants to produce seeds which would produce more plants like the originals.

- Consider:

A fir tree doesn’t produce petunia seeds!

- Consider:

Have you ever made something you liked, only to have it wear out? If you want another like it, you have to start over. But when God created plant life, He put within each plant the capability to bear seeds which could sprout into new plants like the first. God is the giver and sustainer of life. The plants we have today came from those God created in the beginning.

- Why did God make flowers, trees, and plants? Did God need them?

- God is independent of all things.

- God doesn’t need anything.

God made the plants and trees for man, whom He was going to create next.

- God made the plants to meet our physical needs:

To provide food for us to eat

To give off oxygen for the air we breathe

To provide wood for building

And to provide many other things which are essential to our lives.

- God made the plants to delight us with His love for us: He didn’t have to make such a variety of colors, sizes, shapes, flavors, and fragrances. A few kinds would have met our needs.

- Consider:

God could have made everything black and white. But instead, He created colors—colors that could be seen by the eyes of the man he would soon create. Everything could have been tasteless. But God created flavor (and taste buds to taste it). He did the same thing with fragrances.

- The variety He made was to be a daily reminder of His great love and care for man.

- He made the earth not just livable, but truly beautiful.

- In plants we can see that God is a God of order—the Master Designer.

- Consider:

Look at a flower. Each flower of a certain kind has an identifying pattern that makes it recognizable as that kind of flower. The tiny seed from which it grew contained certain characteristics which always produce that kind of flower with that kind of orderly petal and stem arrangement, fragrance, etc. If you were to look at that flower under a magnifying glass, you would see other patterns characteristic of that kind of flower. If you took a tiny slice of the petal or stem and put it under a microscope, you would see still more orderly arrangements of minute cells characteristic of that kind of flower. All these things show that there is a Master Designer.

- Consider:

What if you took a handful of marbles and dropped them on the floor? Would they fall into a beautiful pattern? What if they did happen to land in some pattern? Could you repeat the pattern over and over again? Now, what if you took the marbles one by one and placed them into a pattern of your choosing? You could do this over and over, because you designed the pattern and insured its repetition. Your design would not be a product of chance; rather, it would reflect the work of a designer—you. What God has created endlessly reflects His work as Master Designer of everything. When you see a design, bear in mind that there was also a designer. And when you see a design in plants or flowers or any other part of creation, remember that God is the one who is being reflected in that design. It didn’t just happen that way. God designed it all.

- Everything that God created on this day was good. All the plants were beneficial, lovely—created perfect.

- Thorns and weeds did not exist.

- No fruit was poisonous.

- Vegetables and fruit did not get diseases or spoil. Everything was perfect in the beginning, because God is perfect, and everything He does is perfect.

Think of the vastness of the universe.

- Consider:

In the last few decades, man has learned more about the universe than he knew in all previous generations. Powerful telescopes, controlled radio beams, electronic devices, space travel—all of these are products of this century. Men have set foot on the moon; space probes orbit the earth and travel outward through our solar system, gathering amazing new data. But what we are really learning is that we know very little about this solar system that includes planet Earth; and we know even less about our galaxy, the Milky Way; and we know still less about the endless reaches of the universe. We have assembled many facts and figures about distance, yet none of us can begin to fathom the immensity of the universe. For instance: light, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, takes several years to reach us from the nearest stars outside our solar system. And we are told that there are literally billions of stars beyond what we can see.

Now let’s read what God says about this.

God spoke, and the sun, moon, and stars came into being.

- Only God has the power to create such vastness!

- In Isaiah 44:24, Thus says the LORD, “...I am the LORD, who makes all things, who stretches out the heavens all alone.”

- As in the plants He created, the whole universe reflects the

work of the Master Designer.

- Consider:

Centuries ago, men discovered that our planet Earth revolves around the sun. Then they realized that we are part of a solar system, that is, a group of planets which revolve around the sun. Then, as more powerful telescopes were developed, other galaxies were discovered. But in the twentieth century ,men were able to take a look inward at another system, so similar in design that it overwhelms the mind to consider it. Experiments revealed that the atom, once thought to be the smallest part of matter, appears to consist of tiny parts, in motion around a center called the nucleus. The pattern in what was thought to be the smallest part of matter closely resembles the pattern of our vast solar system which is most empty space.

How could this be? There is only one answer: one Designer created everything, from the smallest to the largest. God and God alone created the universe and everything in it, and the stamp of His design is deeply imprinted in every part.

We can see only a tiny part of the endless reaches of the universe. Yet God created even the most remote galaxies and stars—He created everything. How could God have gotten to all those places that are countless light years apart?

- Jeremiah 23:23,24 says “Am I a God near at hand,” says the LORD, “and not a God afar off?...Do I not fill heaven and earth?...”

- Distance is no problem for God.

- God is everywhere.

- We cannot imagine the immensity of the universe; much less can we comprehend the greatness of God! Although God is everywhere present in the universe, He is distinct from it.

- The idea that God is everything and everything is God is a concept totally foreign to Scripture.

- There is one true God, not many “gods.”

- The Bible refers to the universe and everything in it as God’s creation, not as part of His being.

- God’s infinite wisdom and knowledge are displayed in the universe He created.

- Consider:

As scientists have studied and experimented, they have discovered physical laws that apply consistently throughout the known universe. These laws govern the physical behavior of all matter. Knowing these laws, men have been able to do amazing things, such as travel in space. Yet these “discoveries” are actually laws established by God and put into effect in the beginning when He created the universe.

- God never changes, nor do the laws of His creation.

- Consider:

Imagine! One system of physical laws regulates the behavior of every part we know of the universe! And it is only as scientists and engineers operate in strict adherence and dependence upon these predictable laws that they are able to design a reliable spacecraft or a family automobile or anything else. You don’t have to be an engineer or scientist to see God’s laws at work. All of us depend on these laws every day, just to keep our feet on the ground.

Has there ever been a day in your life when the sun didn’t rise and set? Granted, it may have been hidden by clouds, but it did just what it always does, day after day. How about the moon? Did you know that calendars and tidal charts can be made years in advance because the movement and position of the moon and earth and sun are completely predictable? This certainly isn’t happening by chance; it was designed that way by God Himself.

He wanted us to have an orderly world with dependable days, nights, seasons, and tides.

- Consider:

We get very excited about seeing one vehicle thrust into a tiny path in space; and we certainly should, for it has taken an unbelievable amount of research and effort to achieve this feat. But imagine God’s knowledge! Imagine God’s creativity and skill as a Master Designer! Imagine His power! God spoke, and the entire universe was created!

- We need to watch this display and listen to the message God is sending us!

Everything God made on the fourth day was good.

- God is perfect, and everything He does is perfect.

- God was very pleased with His creation.

Imagine the beauty that suddenly filled the water and the skies!

- Just as He had done in His creation of plant life, God made numerous kinds of water creatures and birds with countless, colorful designs and shapes.

- The more we search the ocean depths and the remote places of the earth, the more kinds of fish and birds we discover!

- Why did God create such variety and beauty?

He did it to show His love to us. He did it to show us His creative power and understanding.

God made these wonderful things by His great power and understanding.

- Consider:

Could we make even one common sparrow?

- We might make a model or an “imitation.”

- But we will never make a living sparrow. But God can; He made sparrows and every other creature.

Even the tiniest, most ordinary creatures are God’s creation and are incredibly complex.

- Consider:

“Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10 to the minus 12^th grams, each is in effect a veritable microminiaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world.”

God created an unbelievable number and variety of animals.

- Some animals are very familiar to us as a part of our daily lives.

- Some can be seen at a zoo.

- Through television and books, we learn about many more. God created each kind of animal with unique characteristics, and each kind of animal is capable of reproducing only other animals like itself.

- Dogs have puppies.

- Cats have kittens, etc.

- Even in the smallest animal we can see the stamp of the Master Designer. Only God has the power to create animals.

Man has never created nor will he ever be able to create an animal.

All of the living things that God made on the fifth and sixth days were good. Everything He made was good. Because God is perfect, everything He made was perfect.

We are daily surrounded by evidences of:

- God’s existence

- God’s infinite power and knowledge

- God’s love

- God’s orderliness

- God’s holiness.

- We are surrounded by reminders of a Master Designer who created with skill and purpose. We can learn a great deal about God by observing the things He has made, but our true understanding of Him and how He created everything must be based on what God has told us in His Word.

- Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”

- God, the Creator, the one who was there before the beginning, has given us His record of creation in His Word.

This week:

- Look for evidences of the Designer, the Creator of all things.

- And think about what we have studied in His Word.

- In our next lesson we will continue to study God’s account of creation.

QUESTIONS:

1. Why was God able to command the ocean to go back and stay where He wanted it?

2. Why did God create everything beautiful, and why did He create water and all different kinds of fruit and vegetables to eat?

3. What did God say about all of the things which He created?

4. Why was God able to create all things perfect?

5. How was God able to create such a vast universe, with so many stars, so far apart?

6. Why did God create the sun to rise and set each day and the moon and the stars to follow the same path every year?

7. Upon what principles do scientists and engineers depend for everything they study and design?

Suggested Daily Bible Readings:

Day 21: Genesis, Chapters 41 and 42

Day 22: Genesis, Chapters 43 and 44

Day 23: Genesis, Chapters 45 and 46

Day 24: Genesis, Chapters 47 and 48

Day 25: Genesis, Chapters 49 and 50