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[0:00] Let's read in Genesis 1, verses, we're up to day 4, verses 14, and we're going to do through day 5, so we'll read through verse 23.

[0:14] And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be for light in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth.

[0:28] And it was so. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.

[0:47] And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life and fowl that they may fly above the earth in the open firmament of the heaven.

[1:02] And God created great whales and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind. And every winged fowl after his kind, and God saw that it was good.

[1:13] And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and the fowl let them multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

[1:25] Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for this opportunity just to be together again, Lord. Lord, I look so forward to our times of fellowship. I thank you, Lord, that we have the basis of doing this, Lord, based upon your word.

[1:39] We have that foundation, Lord, that in fellowship, in prayer, in the breaking of bread, Lord, and the teaching of your word. Just thank you, Lord, that we don't rely on our own efforts.

[1:50] We don't rely on programs, Lord. We don't rely on any of this stuff, Lord. It's your word, and it's people. And we do thank you, though.

[2:00] Thank you for providing this space and this place, Lord. We prayed for, I would say, so long, but it wasn't so long. But, Lord, we prayed for months, Lord, and weeks and days. Just like, Lord, provide us a space and a place.

[2:12] And you have, Lord. And, Lord, now we pray that you would provide souls, Lord. Lord, that you would give us souls. That you would give us a harvest, Lord. That we could be part in these last days, Lord, of bringing in, Lord, a harvest.

[2:24] To bring with us, Lord, at the rapture. To be able to say, look, Lord, we went out into the harvest. Look at these souls, Lord. And we do thank you, Lord, for the work that you are doing. We pray that you would just pour out your spirit, Lord, on this community.

[2:37] And let us be a part of it. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Okay, so we've come as far as day four. Day one, two, and three. Day one was God creating the heavens and the earth and light and darkness.

[2:50] And day two, he made the firmament. That's what we looked at last time. Two and three were God made this firmament, this separation. We looked at how there was waters beneath. And then there's waters above this firmament, this separation.

[3:03] And how Psalm 148, verse four, clearly tells us that the waters that are above the heavens. And showing that the waters are still there, despite the idea of a model of this vapor barrier around the earth.

[3:17] What we're going to see here today, in day four, where God's going to, in the firmament of the heavens, he's going to place the sun, the moon, and the stars, and what we think of as the galaxies, are in this firmament.

[3:29] And so if there's water above this, then it must be outside of what we consider space. So as we look at this, if you remember, we kind of looked at our scripture in Romans, gave us our basis for, as we're on this side of the cross, we're on this side of resurrection, we look back through the cross, the filter of the cross and of Jesus, and we see, for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, and his eternal power and Godhead.

[4:03] So they are without excuse. The idea being there that, as he's saying, the wrath of God has come upon those that have rejected God, because God clearly is showing, through the things that are made, the things that are invisible, his attributes that we can't see.

[4:17] So we can look at creation, and we can look at this creation account, and see that it is meant to portray more than just, well, God made birds and fish, and God made trees, and God made the universe.

[4:28] There's more than that. God's trying to show us something behind this, because this is a revelation to man from God. Nobody was here. This is God revealing this to us. And we know this.

[4:39] Paul tells us, regarding the Old Testament, that for whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the scripture, might have hope.

[4:50] So as we read the creation account, it's meant, through the learning that we read in the scripture, it's meant to produce patience and comfort, that we might have hope.

[5:00] It should give us hope. It should be more than just a book of discovery, as we've said before. And so as we get into here, into verse 14 on day 4, God said, So 13, 14, and 15, he kind of says this is what he's creating.

[5:32] And then 16, 17, and 18, he's going to break down, he's going to kind of focus in on the two main lights we think of, the sun and the moon, right?

[5:44] But he says, what are they for? They're to divide the day and the night, to give a division. And also, they're for signs, seasons, days, and years.

[5:55] Well, what are years made up of? Days. So as we see each day, and we add each day together, we eventually get to a year. So if we apply that same thing to signs and seasons, what are seasons made up of?

[6:09] Well, if you strip out what we're so used to with our calendars, and, you know, the fact that it says on the calendars the first day of spring or whatever, and you don't have that, and you didn't have your watch, and you didn't have a clock, you would go by signs.

[6:22] You'd wake up one morning, like, Oh, I smell fall in the air. Or now we're getting into spring. You'd see the buds starting in the tree, and you'd see these signs. And as you saw one sign after another, after another, after another, you'd be like, well, spring is here.

[6:35] In the south, you can have warm weather in January. And think, spring's here. And then we go right back into the cold. But as you add up signs, you eventually get to a season.

[6:46] We're going to come back to that. Because there's scriptures in the New Testament talk about signs and seasons. So these are signs in these seasons. We looked at this before. Psalm 19 tells us, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament, the firmament that we've been talking about here, that he's placing the sun, the moon, and the stars into this firmament, the separating the waters beneath from the waters above.

[7:11] The firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night shows knowledge. There's no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. I like that verse.

[7:22] Right here it says, Every day, God is speaking. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night shows knowledge. What knowledge? The knowledge of God, that he's there. And for anyone who would respond to this and hear that, God is not going to leave them without a witness.

[7:39] Just as the days follow day after day to create a year, signs, signs, a season. Well, anybody who responds to God's call in their life, God's going to then give another step to take, and he's going to lead them to himself.

[7:50] And I was thinking about that, how the world we live in, especially being in the construction world, we live in a two-story world where most of our line of sight and most of where we kind of think of our world is about two stories.

[8:04] A telephone pole, trees, that's kind of like the tippy-top of our world. And maybe if you're in the mountains, you see the vastness of that. That gives you something more. In the heavens. So when you look up into the sky in the daytime, what do you see?

[8:18] Well, you see the sun. You see blue sky. Day into day utters speech. What is the speech that's being spoken to us at that point? Well, I think it's the speech, the fact that, like, that sun is coming up every day.

[8:29] It speaks to us. It speaks to us of the daily routine that God's faithfulness, and God is continually giving light every day that the sun is there. Midnight into night, and this is where I was thinking of how tricksy the enemy is.

[8:42] You know, I like streetlights. I like that I can turn the lights on in my house at night, but you don't see the stars very much, not around here, unless you're really looking. I was thinking of it as I was driving to work the other morning, and the streetlights.

[8:55] You know, I'm focused on this plane, and that's it. The cars in front of me, there are taillights, there are streetlights. Even as I'm coming home, that's where my plane is. In Psalm 121, David says, Very rarely do we lift up our eyes.

[9:16] Kids do. They do much more than adults. We don't lift up our eyes as much. Some people do. Some that are more, you know, that notice those things, that will look at the clouds. I mean, when was the last time you went out to look at the stars?

[9:28] When I see the sky at night, I might notice, like, the moon's there or it's not there. The stars are there, they're not. But to look and to notice just what God has done and what he's spread out. And where I see that a lot is when we go to the beach and we're standing on the beach and yeah, you have the lights behind you and you have the houses of the lights, but then you see at night when you're standing there, you have this vast, dark foreverness in front of you, the sea, and then there's like this vault just shoots out from the land behind you.

[9:50] You see all the stars and the Milky Way and it's huge and you just go. And I have something that can respond to that, right? I can go, wow, that the Lord made this. I don't know what other people do. They just go, wow, I guess.

[10:02] You know, maybe they just does something in them. I think that's why they end up worshiping nature. But there's something that calls to us that the Lord says. There's something else about this. There's heavens, or I mean the heavens that God is filling now with the sun, the moon, and the stars and he's using them to divide the day and rule over the day.

[10:20] It has to do with Israel. In Jeremiah 31, the Lord says this and I included the whole thing because it says so much about light and day and heaven and earth and I just like how God links Israel that when God was creating this world, when he created the system of day and night, it was like pre-programmed, you know, like that Israel was going to perfectly fit into this model of creation he's making.

[10:46] Thus says the Lord, which gives the sun for a light by day and the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, which divides the sea when the waves thereof roar.

[10:56] The Lord of hosts is his name. If those ordinances depart from before me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus says the Lord, if heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I like that, if heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the earth.

[11:16] What are the foundations of the earth? I don't know, but he just made them on day one. Whatever they are, he put them there. There's these foundations. The immovability of the earth.

[11:26] We looked at that with Noah where God commanded and said that the seed time and harvest and day and night and cold and hot would not cease.

[11:38] They're the foundations of what God's done. It's not going to stop. And he's linked Israel with this. He said, I will also, if these things cease, I will also cut off all the seed of Israel for all that they've done, says the Lord.

[11:52] When God made day and said it was the first day at the end of verse 5, we said how what God begins will continue until his purpose is fulfilled. And when God began day and night, it's going to continue until the purpose of day and night is fulfilled.

[12:07] It's funny, the world, man wants us to think that we have so much more control over this creation than we do. We're never given control. We have dominion. God says you just take dominion. Never control.

[12:18] You know, you never see man, man says now, you know, the world says as well, we're going to, you know, the environment, we're going to heat up the world so much, we're all going to fry and die or whatever. But you never see anyone going, well, you know what?

[12:29] We're probably going to shift day and night. That day is no longer going to come up. You know, there's not going to be a day anymore. Well, because we know that's so far out aside of anything we have control of. And the reality is, so is the rest of creation.

[12:42] It's in God's hand, not ours. Again, that picture where the enemy tries to keep us from seeing this creation. You know, you go on an airplane and all of a sudden you realize those big buildings are really big.

[12:54] All that space to you that seemed like your whole world was in this little picture is now a lot bigger. There's a lot more space out there. Why do you think they're trying today to get us to focus into these 15-minute cities and communities?

[13:07] Well, it's because I don't want you going outside of what I can make. Because if I only give you a picture of what I can control that you see, well, then I can control what you think and believe and I don't have to worry about you hearing the voice of God.

[13:20] And that's Satan. He's so stupid and pernicious. But God's put these things in creation that declare his truth and declare his attributes that are never going to change.

[13:31] They're never going to change no matter what the enemy tries to do. And the hope we have is if God links Israel with this and says, hey, when day and night ends then Israel will cease. Well, day and night will eventually end, but not until God is finished what he started with Israel.

[13:45] Because God will always complete what he starts. So eventually, day and night will end and Israel won't end, but God will have completed the process of what he's using Israel for. And we have great hope because guess how we have our salvation?

[13:58] We come through Israel. Paul says, it's of the Jew that you have your salvation. It's through the line, the seed of Abraham, which we're going to see in a little bit. So we have that same anchor.

[14:08] You know, when you see the heavens, when you see the stars, when you see the moon, when you see that sun coming up, that to you can say, well, God's not going to stop this process in my life until he's finished with me. We got together, the guys did yesterday and had breakfast.

[14:22] It was great and we were talking about and we started looking at Philippians and the scripture in there that says that he who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. That we don't have to fear that the work won't be completed.

[14:35] It says it. The Bible says that he who began a good work will complete it. Well, I can't derail it. And there's many times I go to the Lord and I felt like I've derailed it. And the Lord, once again, is like, this is really not about you.

[14:48] You know, it's about you in the sense that my blessing's for you. But the completion in the work is mine. So, moving on. That's these seasons and we will come back and look at some of them how they apply to us.

[15:00] So, God has put into the heavens all of this and we're not, you know, yes, as God has created the stars and the sun and he's linked them with this light.

[15:11] Well, that means the light's already there and however many, you know, millions of light years it takes for the light to get to earth and God must have already had that in place. Yes, he did because he said God created light that's already been done.

[15:24] And so, in verse 15, he says, let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. And it was so. Where's God's focus in creation?

[15:36] God's focus is not upon that the sun and the moon and the stars is to give light to the universe. It's not to give light to Mars. It's not to give light to any of these places.

[15:47] It's to give light to earth. Earth. The purpose of God creating the heavens and the firmament isn't for extraterrestrial life or our discovery of a new place to live.

[16:01] He says what it was for. It's to declare his glory. It's to speak. It's to show his handiwork. God wanted man to be able to see something so much bigger than himself to see that this is my handiwork.

[16:11] This is just like something I fiddle with on the weekend. You know? Oh, look what I made up. And so that's what it's created for. For the earth. And it was so. And that's where God's focus is.

[16:22] God focuses and we're going to see this big picture where he creates the heavens and the earth. It's huge. It's for us. And then we're going to come and narrow it down in day five where he's making these teeny, teeny, tiny little things that is also for us.

[16:35] Also to declare the same thing. And then he's going to describe something here for us in verse 16. And God made two great lights. The greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.

[16:47] And he made the stars also. If you look in verse 15, you see the word light used a couple different times. And he said, let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.

[17:00] And if you look in verse 18, I know we're jumping a little here. He's talking about where he gives them to rule over the day and the night. And he says, and to divide the light from the darkness. Those three lights are all different.

[17:11] They're translated light in English. But the light where it talks about the moon and the sun is luminaries. So if a luminary means like a lamp or a chandelier or a candlestick, that which is giving off light, right?

[17:29] And then light where it talks about to give light upon the earth is to become bright or to shine. So if we read verse 15 with that context, and let them be for luminaries, a candlestick, a chandelier, something that gives off light, in the firmament of the heaven to become bright, to light up the earth.

[17:51] And it was so. But those aren't light. When in the beginning it says God created the heavens and the earth and he said, let there be light. And then in verse 18 where it says this is to divide the light, they are used by God in the purpose of shining forth the light.

[18:05] But they aren't the light and they don't produce light. That's something different that God's already made and created. And so that's these luminaries. And in verse 16 where he says he made two great lights, the greater to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.

[18:21] And he made the stars also. The word great there, the great lights and greater light, they're the same word. It means great or greater, but it also can mean older or elder as in the sense of greater in that sense.

[18:34] And then where we see lesser light to rule the night like younger, smaller, less important. Where we see that word when Samuel comes to find the next king of Israel to Jesse's house and all his sons aren't there and he says, do you have any other children?

[18:53] He says, there remains yet the least. That's that word. The youngest, the least. And he keeps sheep. And Samuel said to Jesse, send for him for he'll not sit down until he comes.

[19:06] He's the least, he's the less, the least light. And so you have the sun and the moon. We know today that the moon's light comes from the sun. Right? What a picture. That the moon, it's the same light that's being projected.

[19:18] The source of the moon's light is just reflecting the sun's. But it seems lesser, but it's the same light because it doesn't actually produce the light.

[19:29] It's just projecting it. It's the same light. And here's David. I was thinking of this picture when I was looking through the different places in Scripture where the word least or lesser or younger is used.

[19:40] And again, when we see the word, this is what's so fun about this creation story, we see words used for the first time ever in Scripture. And so here's the word lesser. The lesser light. And so as we go throughout Scripture, here you see David where Jesse says he's the least.

[19:53] And it's like, David's such a, he's not a very bright light. You know? He's not the star. He's not the sun. He's just the moon. He's just a small light. He's not really anything.

[20:05] But he's still, God sees that though. God sees him at this time and he says, I see, I see a light. I see a bright light. And then jumping all the way to the end of the book, Jesus says, I, Jesus, has sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches.

[20:20] I am the root and the offspring of David and the bright and morning star. And so there, David, who is the least at some point in his life, well, eventually he's going to shine bright in his kingdom.

[20:32] He's going to be king, right? God has that plan for him. But then looking even further ahead and seeing how there's a point in time where Jesus says, I am the bright and morning star. David, David, yes, he shined forth my light.

[20:45] He was lesser, but there was a time when this star would come to its fullness. And I was thinking about that with how Daniel tells us, says, days that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.

[20:59] They that turn many to righteousness as stars forever and ever. It's like, do you feel like a star? Man, I don't feel like a star. I just feel like a background singer. You know, are you a star?

[21:09] Well, the Bible says, they that are wise, that their righteousness will shine, they'll turn many to righteousness, and they shall shine as stars forever and ever. And when you go out into the night sky and you look up, sometimes you just see the moon.

[21:22] If you're like me, I'm like, oh, there's the moon. I got things to do. I'm back down to my two-story world, you know? No, but you go out and sometimes you see all those stars, right? And some nights you see more stars.

[21:33] Well, there's stars you're never going to see just by looking up with the naked eye. But there's people out there. They have these telescopes and they love to get out there and look at stars and pinpoint down to this one star.

[21:46] There may be maybe half a dozen people in the world who have seen one particular star that nobody else ever will. But it's still there and it's still shining. And God says, he doesn't differentiate about the stars, he just says they're there for light.

[21:59] And so you may think, well, my light doesn't shine that bright. But it's shining. And the Lord gave that for a specific person and purpose. And whether it's one of those stars that everybody sees, you know, it's like, you think of the stars in the Big Dipper.

[22:14] Well, everybody's seen those stars. But then you think of some of the stars that are just, they're just there. Matthew tells us that we are the light of the world.

[22:25] Matthew 5, 14. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. The interesting thing about this creation sequence, shall I say, was light already there before God put the stars and the sun and the moon and all the planets into existence?

[22:41] Yes. Did he need the sun, the moon, and the stars? No, he didn't. These are completely extra. They were like bonus.

[22:53] He didn't need them. Jesus says he's the light of the world. I am the light of the world. He who has me has the light of life. But then he turns around and says to us, you're the light of the world.

[23:06] So when we go out into the world and we shine forth light, is it our light? No, we're just luminaries. We're just those lampstands, right? We don't hide a lamp under a bush and we put it on a lampstand that may give light to the whole house.

[23:18] It's not our light, it's his. It's his light. We just shine it forth. And how silly that the Lord who is light would use us and people may look at us and go, what are you?

[23:31] You're just some lesser thing. I was like, yeah, I am. But come with me and let me introduce you to the light, the brightening morning star. And so, Philippians tells us, for it's God that works in you to will and do of his good pleasure.

[23:49] Philippians 2.13, do all things without murmurings and disputings that you may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation among whom you shine as lights in the world.

[24:03] How? Holding forth the word of light. So it seems to indicate there that God who is working in us to will and do of his good pleasure desires us to hold forth the word of life to shine to this world and that our murmurings and disputings will stop that from happening, will dim that light that we can't shine it forth to the world.

[24:23] And God wants us to be able to be lights to the world that people see. In my life, you know, I tell you guys this all the time, I'm not an evangelist. You know, it was funny because the same weekend we had the youth retreat, right?

[24:36] And then over in Vietnam, they're having, you know, Franklin Graham's having this festival and, which is great and thousands, you know, that responded.

[24:47] And I'm on this side, you know, of the world, kind of texting with Derek and I'm like super excited because we had one kid that we'd been praying for. You know, respond to that light.

[25:00] And I think where the Lord says that he, that he rejoices over one sinner, that he leaves the 99 and goes after that one. And so where, where I can look and go, man, I don't know.

[25:13] I mean, what do I have to show for it? The Lord's like, just shine your light. There's somebody who needs to see that light. They need to see the greater light that's going to reflect off of you. It's not your light. And there's such a cool picture here, realizing that God didn't meet any of this.

[25:25] He already had the light. He said, I already created the light. I already created night and day. I already separated out the darkness. But now I'm going to put these things in there and I'm going to use them instead. It's kind of like the Lord backs off. But again, in Revelation, what does he say in the New Jerusalem?

[25:39] He said, oh, there's no need for the sun then because the Lamb is the light thereof. It's like, oh, I can't wait. I can't, that's going to be the purest essence of light. I don't know what that's going to feel like. I bet there's going to be a feeling of Jesus' light shining on us.

[25:53] Where right now we just have, we have where we see it. Right? What is light? I looked up what light was. It wasn't very exciting. It was bundles of photons, particles.

[26:04] I thought, well, that sounds like something man would do. You know, take something amazing the Lord does and boil it down to something like that. But I was thinking about it. It's like, what's a rainbow? What is a rainbow? Well, a rainbow is water droplets with the light shining through it that then it causes that refraction in the prism.

[26:19] That's not what a rainbow is. That's what a rainbow is made up of. You know? I can tell, and what a rainbow does, that's not what it is. You know what tells me what a rainbow is? Genesis. Tells me what a rainbow is.

[26:31] You know what light is? Well, without this book, you don't know what light is. You can tell me what it's made up of. You can tell me what it does. But you can't tell me what it is. And today, we have a world where people can't even tell what people are.

[26:44] What is a woman? I don't know. Well, that's because you didn't read Genesis. That's because you didn't read your Bible. So, the only thing that gives any form of definition to our lives is this book.

[26:57] So, what is light? Jesus says, I am light. I am the light of life. I lighten every man who comes into the world. And then, he gives us the privilege of not being the light in the sense, yes, we are the light of the world, but we are the light of the world in the same way the sun is the light of the world and the moon is the light of the world.

[27:13] He gives us the privilege of being like, just shine. Just shine. Don't worry about who sees you. You know, none of those stars up there are like, oh man. Boy, I hope my light reaches earth.

[27:25] 15 billion light years. Oh boy. You know, God's got his timing and it's perfect. All right. So then he says this in Thessalonians.

[27:35] He says, but you brethren, 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 4 and 5 says, but you brethren are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief. You are all the children of light and the children of the day.

[27:47] We are not of the light nor of the darkness. So where there's light is you have an absence of darkness, right? As we shine the light. There's never a competition.

[27:59] It's never like, man, darkness is shining so bright today. It doesn't work that way. We think of space as what we call space, you know, the heavens outside of the earth. We think of it as what?

[28:10] Dark, black. There's no darkness in space. Everything's light. When you are out there, there's nothing, unless something blocks the light, it's constant light. Unless you're in a black hole, which we don't really know if they exist because nobody's actually been there.

[28:24] It's just by the way the light waves are bent around this, you know, which appears to be the way it's coming to us around the gravitational well of a black hole. Possibly there's black holes. Anyway, either way, other than that, anywhere else you are in space, it's just light because there's always light shining.

[28:39] There's nothing to block it. It's not darkness. And we are children of light and children of the day. We are not of the night nor of the darkness. So we're to walk in the light as he is in the light. When we do that, we fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin because there's nothing to block the light.

[28:55] So as we round out here, the end of day four, we see God just being what God is, extra. He's just extra.

[29:07] Did he need the sun, the moon, and the stars? He did not. Not a chance. But he's like, I want you to see my handiwork because he's just wants us to know how cool he is? No. Because he's like, that is going to speak to you of something that is unseen about me.

[29:22] You need to see the stars. You need to see the sun and the moon. You need to see my handiwork because I need to let you know about something about me that I can't show you. I can't show you it.

[29:32] I can't put it into like something you can grasp. My love, my grace, my faithfulness. But I can show it to you in this picture of my handiwork. And God set them in the firmament, verse 17, of the heaven to give light upon the earth.

[29:50] Upon the earth. No E-T. Sorry. Again, how do we know that? Well, we have the Bible. How do we know what light is? How do we know what this creation's about?

[30:01] How do we know all that? Because God tells us it's his revelation to us. We don't have to guess or wonder. And to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness and God saw that it was good.

[30:11] And that's where we just looked at 1 Thessalonians 5. That we are not of the light or of the night but we are of the day. And so God divides that out. And we talked about that when God first made dark and light and then divided that.

[30:22] That's what God's going to continue to do. And he wants us to be a part of that process to divide out the light from the dark. Not always easy because what do we do with darkness? We hide things in it. Nobody plays hide and seek in the middle of a room like this.

[30:35] But if we turn out the lights, we can now play hide and seek and do a pretty good job. I know where everything is in my garage. And it's a mess. But I know where everything is. And I can walk through it confidently.

[30:46] I never trip. I don't stub my toes. You know, if the light goes out, I'm done. It's over. I had gone down in there and we have one of those lights that'll, when the garage closes or open, it comes on and stays on for so long.

[30:57] So if I don't click the extra light on, that light will just stay on with the timer. I forgot. I'm over there. I wound my way over my workbench which is far, as far back as I could get. The lights went out. Instantly my mind thought, oh no, where's the weight bench?

[31:10] And where are those weights? And I thought, oh, all I could think of was my toes. And so I'm very slowly leaning and feeling. Turn the lights on. It's like two seconds. I'm out of there. And that's what the light is.

[31:22] The light, it's not always a pleasant thing to shine the light into a dark space and to see what's actually there. And people resent that. Men would not come to the light because they love darkness, because their deeds were evil.

[31:34] And so we shine forth the light. And God divided the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the first day. All right, I'll go through day five. So God's just created this really, really big thing and the heavens and the earth or the heavens above the earth.

[31:48] He's got the sun and the moon and the stars and this whole amazingly swirling vortex of like gravitational processes, keeping the whole thing going.

[32:00] And now he comes back down to earth and focuses in on the smallest little things. And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly and the moving creature that has life and foul that they may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

[32:18] And that word there, eventually we're going to see like where he's going to say creeping things and all of the creeping things when he creates the land animals. And the word abundantly is the same word that he uses there for creeping things.

[32:34] It just means things that swarm or team. It doesn't mean the grossly, the icky little things of the ground when he creates the land animals and he says the things that creep. It just means that which is swarms or teams.

[32:46] So in context of when he creates the land animals and things that swarm or team, you know, you think of like insects. You think of the flocks and the herds.

[32:57] So right now he's talking about the things that are in the waters and in the air, the things that have life in them. And this is a different word here where he uses for the first time life. It's not like he didn't use that with the plants.

[33:10] He didn't use that with the herbs. He's using it now, this life. And it's something so that is something that is considered alive apart from plant life. Again, the world we live in can't distinguish between that because they don't have the Bible informing them of what life actually is.

[33:29] Which is interesting because the fall hasn't happened yet, right? Adam hasn't sinned. Death has not yet entered the world. But we've been told that God created the tree and the grass.

[33:40] And what did he say it was? Herb yielding seed after its kind. What does the New Testament tell us? Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die. It abides alone.

[33:50] But if it die, it brings forth much fruit. So seeds reproduce through death. But they're not alive. It's not life as God describes it.

[34:03] So it seems like there's a part of the process of creation of not so much death, but of propagating and regeneration that God's built into creation that is apart from the death which is going to come into the world through the fall.

[34:20] And so here are these creatures, these animals that have life, but they don't have what Adam's going to have. Adam's going to be alive also, but God's going to breathe in him the breath of God, the breath of life.

[34:32] Different than this type of life. And God said, let them bring forth abundantly in the moving creature that has life and the fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

[34:47] Translation should say on the face of the firmament. Because we just saw what the firmament is. The firmament's that separation between the waters beneath and the waters above. And it encompasses all of the sun, moon, and stars where they are.

[34:58] And so this is saying that the fowl may fly in the open firmament of heaven. It actually is, it's the only time it's translated that. Everywhere else it's translated upon the face of. And so if you're standing on the earth and you look up and you see the birds, they're essentially flying what looks like on the face of, you know, the rest of all that beyond them.

[35:16] The sky and the sun and the moon. And so the birds were meant for flight and the fish were meant for swimming. But he brought forth those things that teemed abundantly and God created great whales.

[35:31] That word is not whales. It's actually dragons. It's used in Exodus 7, 12 when Moses cast his rod down and it says that then Pharaoh's magicians did too and they became serpents.

[35:41] The word is dragon. They became dragons. And in Micah 1, 8, we're told that dragons wail. So we know what dragons sound like. He says that they all mourn like owls and wail like dragons.

[35:54] And so if you think dragons roar, they don't, they wail. And God created great dragons. You know, we know of Leviathan from Job. And every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind.

[36:12] And God saw that it was good. Abundantly. The things that swarm and team. Have you ever heard of the passenger pigeon? They're extinct now.

[36:23] The passenger pigeon, Mark Twain wrote about them and said that it was one of the things about America you needed to experience. That they would blot out the sky. James Audubon wrote about them saying that he stood and watched and hour after hour flocks just passed over and then when he drove back to wherever he was going he said it was 50 miles away and the whole time the birds were passing over.

[36:46] They would make it, they would turn night to day. There were so many of them. When they would land they would decimate forests. Their dung would be a foot deep. Millions of them. It was projected that they were the most prolific bird on the planet.

[36:57] Billions of them. They're extinct. The last one died off in like 1900. The last one in the wild was shot by a kid. And in 1910 the last one in captivity died. Extinct. But these things would swarm so many of them.

[37:12] But they were so easy to capture they could just take nets out or clubs. They were used for real cheap meat and they eventually they're extinct. And the point isn't about you know the extinction of them or ecology.

[37:24] It's the fact that God had made these creatures that were so vast and there's so many of them. And yet then the Lord tells us in the New Testament and says oh I number every single one of them.

[37:35] I know every one that falls. He tells us that he's numbered the stars and given them names. He knows every single one. And so now here are all of these things that are swarming and he's bringing them all forth.

[37:46] Tons of them and yet down to the very smallest minute one. God knows what it is. And here's what he says about them. And this is that's so fascinating about this day. It's a pretty short day. Like a description about it.

[37:59] Just as God says to bring forth things that are in the sky and things that are on the in the water. The things that team. The things that are abundant. And then he says in verse 22 and God blessed them.

[38:10] That's the first time the word bless is used in scripture. And it's about schools of fish and flocks of birds. God said oh bless them. But what is that blessing?

[38:21] Bless them saying be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let the fowl multiply in the earth. That's the exact same word that's going to then be used all throughout the Old Testament when God will come and say Abraham I want to bless you.

[38:38] What does that look like God? Man it looks like filling filling the sky with birds that will blot out the sun. Filling the waters with teeming teeming with fish with schools of fish abundantly.

[38:53] God's going to give the same blessing eventually to the land animals but he doesn't until after the flood which is really interesting. It's not until after the flood that he actually tells the land animals to multiply abundantly and fill the earth.

[39:05] He's going to tell Adam that to fill the earth. God as we said before likes population. God likes abundance. To him that's a blessing.

[39:16] To the world we live in it's a curse. That we need to get rid of people and now we need to get rid of animals. You know killing off the cows and the sheep and the chickens and no.

[39:27] Well that's just the enemy. That's Satan trying to just mess up what God's doing. So what is this blessing? Well Hebrews tells us in verse 7 of chapter 7 that without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better.

[39:41] And we know that. The less is blessed of the better. The greater always bestows the blessing on the one receiving it. Because the blessing by nature is something I don't have that the person blessing me has.

[39:53] So I can't bless you with something I don't have and you can't bless me with something you don't have. So I can't turn to the person who let's say has I don't know we'll just use money they have a million dollars and I have ten and I'm going to turn and I'm going to say I'm going to bless you with a million dollars.

[40:08] I can't. I don't have that. I could bless them with ten dollars because that's what I have. They could in turn bless me if they chose to. So the less is blessed to the greater. The word there and God bless them what does the word bless mean?

[40:20] It means to kneel or by implication to bless God. When we bless God as an act of adoration we kneel before him. But this is not a picture of us blessing God is it?

[40:32] This is God blessing or vice versa God blesses us as a benefit. We say oh God bless me it's a benefit. But do you understand what that means? To bless means to kneel.

[40:43] God when he brings a blessing has to he's kneeling to the lower. He's condescending to us. That God it's like when we come to the throne and we bow and we think of the king giving a blessing.

[40:55] Well the king is coming off of his throne and kneeling before us and offering us a blessing. That's not right. That's nuts. That's crazy. And that's what God's doing here.

[41:06] He's kneeling down stooping down to this creation. The stuff that nobody even ever thought about. To that passenger pigeon. Nobody cared. You could kill off thousands of them and there was thousands and millions more and you'd use them for whatever.

[41:18] But God condescends and bends down and kneels down and gives this blessing. What does that blessing look like? Because this is going to establish what blessing is for all the rest of scripture. It's fruitful.

[41:31] Multiply and filled. So we can know whenever God wants to bless us it's going to be fruitful. There should be multiplication and God wants to fill us. Psalm 128.3 says Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house.

[41:46] Thy children like olive plants round about thy table. That's the idea of fruitful. It's to offspring. To have children. To bear. Tying in what we already looked at about our root of Jesse who will become the bright and morning star.

[42:03] Isaiah 11.1 says And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots. That word grow is the same word there. Fruitful.

[42:15] It's the same one for fruitful to grow and a branch shall grow. So when the Lord says bless them that they be fruitful that they would grow that they would bear that they would reproduce there'd be more of them and that's the same idea of fruitfulness in our life.

[42:29] And then oh I did include it. So that verse was the branch shall grow out of his roots the stem of Jesse and as we looked at in Revelation Jesus said I am the root and the offspring of David the bread and morning star.

[42:42] The word multiply. We see that with the blessing to Abraham as part of this idea of what blessing is.

[42:54] Fruitful and multiply. In Genesis 15 1 And after these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision saying fear not Abram I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.

[43:05] The idea there means to become much. Great is to become much. So he's saying to Abram I am your exceeding much reward. And then he tells them in Genesis 22 17 that in blessing I will blessing and in multiplying I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heaven as the sand which is upon the seashore and your seed shall possess the gates of the enemies.

[43:27] There we have again the blessing the promise creation Israel all tied together coming together in this man Abraham. The wording there is actually in the Hebrew it's not we stretch it out in the English but it's actually blessing blessing multiplying multiplying your seed.

[43:46] So the idea there is and in making much I will make much of your seed. That's what God does in making us great and the greatness of his blessing to be fruitful to bear offspring to multiply to become much.

[44:04] So God's saying here my blessing is that you would become much but not just that you become much but that muchness would be part would come from me that I am your exceeding great reward.

[44:16] And then lastly to fill that's an interesting one we think well I know what fill means is to fill something up something that's empty you pour into it well when you look at that word used in other places Exodus 29 verse 9 it comes out as the word consecrate the instructions given to Aaron by Moses God is saying and thou shalt gird Moses and his sons with girdles and you shall put the bonnets on them and the priest's office shall be theirs for a perpetual statue and thou shalt consecrate Aaron and his sons wait a minute fill and consecrate what does that mean well it means like to fill their hands with the thing that they are given to so Aaron and his sons are to be consecrated unto the office that priests are there to fill their hands with that that's what their life's to be about to be filled with and so when God says to the creatures here to fill the waters and the seas that's what they are to be consecrated to that's what they're to give themselves to Hezekiah in 2

[45:18] Chronicles 29 31 said in relation to he's just come into his kingdom and he is now restoring and cleansing the temple and he's after the fact saying to the people he says now you have consecrated yourselves unto the Lord come near and bring sacrifices and thank offerings into the house of the Lord so we replace it with that word fill and Hezekiah answered and said now you have filled yourselves unto the Lord what's that mean that's what you've given yourself to you filled your hands with that you've consecrated yourself unto the Lord because that's what you've filled your hands with now that you have been filled yourselves with the Lord and given yourselves unto the Lord come near and so this idea of blessing as we look through scripture then we see that when God says he blesses Abraham when God puts a blessing on us when he blesses his people it always is going to be tied back to this first time use in Genesis that a blessing is to be fruitful it's to be it's to bear fruit it's to multiply it's to be much and it's to fill and we see that in Ephesians

[46:30] Ephesians chapter 3 verse 14 Paul says for this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory fruitfulness to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that you being rooted and grounded in love that might have been more the fruitfulness one and the riches and the glory is more that he multiplies being rooted and grounded in love that you are to bear the fruit of love may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God so that same idea as we now read this blessing we can go back and we can look at that and go wow as God blessed his creation before man ever showed up which is really wild God spoke a blessing into creation he spoke goodness into creation he spoke light into creation before he ever made man and then man comes on the scene he's going to speak these things again to man and man will always have this revelation you know think of Adam

[47:41] Adam didn't have this right and God said Adam I want to bless you what does that mean God I mean maybe because you were created with that innate knowledge of that what is that what is the experience of that I'm not when I'm born again and I come into a relationship with Jesus I don't have an innate knowledge of what all of this is but through experience experience produces hope we learn to understand what God's character and nature and attributes are and so with Adam he said Adam look at my creation look at the handiwork look at and he came and spoke with him in the cool of the day he said Adam I want to bless you what's blessing God what's that look like Adam you see the birds oh there's so many of them Lord do you see the fish whoa it's just teeming with fish and they're just having more fish and there's more birds he's like yeah that's what I want to do for you I want to be a blessing to you I want to be more and more and more in your life I want you to just have a life that's completely consecrated over to me fill your hands with me and let me bless you in this way again the extra of God you see those sun moon and stars Adam didn't need to do that

[48:54] I created light already and day and night you know see all those birds and all those fish and you see all of that I didn't need to do all that could have been fine without it but I want you to know how much I love you as we round this out we're going to go back and tie the two days together so we have this picture of God placing us in a firmament what is the firmament it's a place between isn't it it's not heaven but it's not earth well guess where we are we're not really of earth anymore but we're not yet in heaven we're in a firmament and God's placed us there for a purpose for signs and for seasons and he says in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 1 but of the times and seasons brethren you have no need that I write unto you for you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night times and seasons why?

[49:48] we see the signs you can see the signs and God says I've given you for a sign to these people I've given you so that they will know the times and seasons that they're in in this world but you have to shine the light to do that for when they shall say peace and safety then sudden destruction comes upon them as travail upon a woman with a child and they shall not escape but you brethren and this is what we looked at earlier tying this together you are not in darkness in that that that day should overtake you as a thief you are all the children of light and the children of day we are not of the night nor of the darkness so as God has placed us in this in-between place superficially that he didn't need us but he chose to use us well it's to do what?

[50:32] it's to be a blessing to this world and we see what that blessing looks like it's to be fruitful it's to multiply and it's to fill so when we go out as a blessing as a light to this world we go out with God's fruitfulness God making much in us and doing much with us and we go out consecrated unto him filling our hands with his work and filling our hands with his blessing and the evening and the morning or the fifth day as we close and do a couple more songs you know it's just thinking about what is that message and to me I just think it's we are nothing without God's blessing we sometimes get a little too what's the word false humility right oh no no no don't bless me bless my brother you know or bless God I want to bless you yeah we do but do you guys you have nothing without God's blessing nothing God's blessing is what it's you getting something that you have not already received that you can't have that again

[51:34] I can't bless you unless I already have something to give to you right and the less is blessed the greater the idea being you're receiving something you didn't have already and so God blesses us well he's blessed us that's just grace he's blessed us with salvation he's blessed us with the presence of his spirit you think of the blessing in salvation Jesus came to this world he didn't need to he was way up there but God where he focused down on the very smallest of the small the teeming masses of humanity today people don't care ah you kill off one what's it matter who cares if you have an abortion there'll be more there's too many oh well you died oh well what does it matter and God looks at every one of those lives and says that's a star I made that that's my handiwork and I'm it's not it's not a plant and it's not an animal it's something he breathed life into and recognizing God we need God's blessing so that we can shine his lights so that we can be filled and fruitful and multiplying and no

[52:37] I want his blessing I want to be I've been asking the Lord that just when I sit with him I'm like Lord would you bless me and then it just it's not like bless me Lord with a house and car and riches and you know and children who don't talk back amen right he has blessed me with that mostly no I want his blessing the blessing of his spirit I want the blessing because then it gives me that perspective where he gives me that vision of like you just hand it to me when I don't deserve it but when he comes to Abraham Abram and he says Abram I want to bless you okay will you let me do that and he's like yeah that's what it is and we never have to leave that point of blessing so Lord we just thank you for the opportunity Lord to be blessed by your word receiving something we don't deserve something completely extra Lord that's just how you are right from the beginning you didn't need to give us a seven day creation account you could have just created man with none of that and just said hey don't worry about it

[53:42] I've got it I'm God and instead you gave us this beautiful picture of creation and then you tell us we're so blessed on this side of the cross to be able to look back and have you say to us hey I did all of that for a purpose that that would speak to you of things that you can't see that you would know of them through the things that are seen and Lord today we've seen how you made these luminaries Lord that you wanted to give light to the world to the earth and Lord that's what you've done with us you've called us to yourself Lord you've not yet taken us to heaven you've not left us here on earth Lord you're with us and you're calling us to go out and to shine and we pray that we would Lord I pray this church this little church Lord would be a light a luminary to this world Lord that we would shine brightly for you not with our light with yours but that we wouldn't do anything to hinder the light and Lord the only way to do that is to receive that blessing the blessing you chose to put on the most unlikely of your creation the thing that is so abused and used and nobody thinks of there's always more fish and more birds but Lord then we see that you put the same blessing on your people and on man and on us Lord that you want us to be fruitful to multiply and be filled and I pray that Lord for each person here

[54:58] Lord that they would be satisfied and settled Lord in their relationship with you that Jesus you who died for our sins and rose again three days later so that you could put your blessing on us we would stop trying to earn what we already have and we would just come and receive Lord we are lesser and you are greater and Lord how impossible it is when you kneel before us Lord that picture Lord Jesus after dinner was ended you took and girded yourself with a towel and kneeled down to wash the disciples feet to give them a blessing you kneeled what a picture Lord and Lord I pray that you would do that for us Lord that in humility would come to the throne Lord and that we would not pull back when we know everything within us says this is so wrong that God kneels down to bless me but we would let you do that work Lord that we would die to self in our own pride and allow you to wash us Lord and so Lord as we just sit in your presence now as we respond to what you've spoken in Lord as we speak out to you in prayer Lord pray that you would speak Lord to us and ratify and those things in our lives that we be doers and not hearers in Jesus name

[56:08]  Amen We will pray with you and on just персонаж Amen we are there that we pray on this path in peace and other ways that we are to fix the terms and put our word and to new people that we are it is our way and so that we are praying we pray on this path and people we are up to you or pr tys it is it is that we are and the KP are and