Lesson 1

The first mention of water in the Bible is in Genesis 1:2.

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (NIV)

Water has existed since the beginning. And water is essential for life as we know it.

At that time, the entire planet was covered with water. Scientists say around 97% is still covered with water. I’m going to take their word for it rather than collect the figures and calculate it myself.

So we have this planet covered in water floating around in space. Then God sheds some light on the subject. Nothing to produce the light, but the light was there. And light is essential for life as we know it.

Next He created the firmament. I wonder if King James ever said, “It’s getting stuffy in here. I think I go out for a breath of fresh firmament.” At any rate, He created air, which is essential for life as we know it.

Then He started pushing things around to get some terra firma above the water line and covered it with vegetation – food that is essential for life as we know it.

Now He creates the sun, moon, stars, and time.

14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years….

Then came water creatures and birds followed by land animals and man.

That’s creation in a nutshell.

I admit it: I’m a Fundy. I believe God created everything.

That doesn’t mean I believe Genesis is a literal history.

Every time I’ve been party to a discussion of creation vs evolution, the assumption has been that it was one or the other. If you believe in creation, you have to have faith to believe it in spite of scientific discoveries. If you believe in evolution, you have to deal with questions that can’t be answered like, “what caused that first cell to live?”

Who says it can’t be a combination of the two? There are some parallels.

CREATION	EVOLUTION
God created the earth.	Cosmic dust collected together to form solid bodies.
God created light.	As that dust gathered and began to spin, gravity pulled it closer and closer until it was so tight that the friction ignited it.
God created air.	Gravity held gases close to some of the bodies and those gases became what we call air.
God created dry land.	Movement of tectonic plates pushed up mountain ranges and volcanos spew dust, lava, and ash that eventually becomes land.
God created vegetation.	I’m not sure if science can explain what caused the first vegetation to appear, but vegetation does take root in areas that were wiped clean by volcanos.
God created heavenly bodies.	As I understand it, scientists think this is still happening today.
God created fish, birds, land animals, and man, in that order.	Science teaches that the first critters were water dwellers. They have now decided that birds are descendents from dinosaurs, although I’m not sure if they say the bird-osaurs came before land-osaurs, but they do say mammals came after all the others.

So the sequence of things in Genesis pretty well matches what science tells us.

Did creation occur in 7 days of 24 hours each (6 if you don’t count the day of rest)? It seems to me that 24 hour days couldn’t exist until the fifth day of creation when the sun, moon, and stars became the method of keeping time and by then God was nearly done. Besides, God is not bound by time.

It’s not like CNN was there covering the whole thing. Initially history was handed down verbally and anyone who has played “Gossip” knows that one person telling another who tells another who tells another isn’t the most efficient way of keeping up with the facts. And written language didn’t develop for many generations.

So who’s to say God didn’t set into motion the processes that allow evolution to occur? Couldn’t He have directed that gathering of cosmic dust and ignited the spark that lit the sun? Did He have to create the diversity of animal life we see today? Or could He create animal groups (like canines, felines, reptiles, etc.) and let evolution cause them to diversify (producing dogs, wolves, coyotes, and hyenas)? That would sure make Noah’s job easier and the ark less crowded. For that matter, He could have put the gene for legs in the fish and let evolution determine when that gene would become dominant and let the first feet hit the ground. None of that diminishes the magnitude of creation. To me it highlights the planning and creativity that went into it.

Now for application.

Water was present at the beginning and is essential for life. The water of baptism is present at the beginning of and is essential for eternal life. I know a lot of people play down the role of baptism in salvation, but the New Testament makes it pretty clear: "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved." If Jesus had to be baptized, what makes mere mortals think they don't need it?

Anyway, that’s it for this lesson. Next time we’ll look at geography.