Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Genesis 1 | Date: October 3, 2021 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

So through it, better in our conversation with others and our discussing the larger and important topic of creation. Help us, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

All right, the days of creation week. This is a notoriously complex question. There are difficulties, in my opinion, for all sides of the discussion. And I would like to say at the beginning—and I don’t think we have any trouble with this here, it’s just to clarify it—is that not all views on the days of creation are science-driven. There are considerations in the text of Scripture itself that have led people to different understandings of the meaning of the word “day” in Genesis chapter one, and then in chapter two, verses one to three as well.

There are some old-earthers that long predate Darwin. Some of them were influenced by the scientific findings of the geological ages and those kinds of things, but many of them long predate that. It goes back as far as Augustine. So we have views on different sides, and don’t think that if someone is an old-earther, that the days are ages or whatever, that he’s necessarily being influenced by some commitment to evolution or something like that.

I think the discussion calls for humility. The views on either side of this question—are the days to be understood as 24-hour days, or are they to be understood as ages or something else? And there are more than two options. Often those views are held with real heat, even if not much light, often. And actually, to tell you the truth, I approach this today only because there’s been so much interest in it when we come through the discussion of creation in Genesis 1. I’m a little bit afraid of it because opinions on this are often held with so much fervor and heat, and I think sometimes when they shouldn’t be.

I’ll just give you a little story of myself here. When I first taught on this subject, I was teaching in Denver, Colorado. I was an assistant pastor at the time. This was back in the early 80s. And I was in charge of a college and career age class. And most of the students there were students at Denver State. And many of those were science majors at Denver State. And they asked if I would teach on creation and evolution. So what am I going to do? So I did, and because I felt inadequate to it, I read fully a hundred books on the subject. Most of them from a Young Earth perspective, so I learned that very well. I also read Darwin and some other things as well. But I felt like I finally—I was well acquainted with the subject. I was at that time committed to a Young Earth position.

I’ll tell you now, I’m not committed to that. I’m not persuaded against it. I’m not committed to it like I was when I came to this area and went to seminary down here at Biblical Seminary. In the late 80s, I ran into some people who had done more work on the subject there from an older perspective. And the first thing that struck me about what they were saying was—I thought I had all the answers. First thing that struck me was, “All right, there’s more to this discussion than I was led to believe.” And so immediately it was a humbling thing.

We had a speaker here at RBC some years ago. Someone from the Creation Research Institute was in the area giving some lectures. And someone from the congregation requested that we have him in. He was available for a Sunday morning. They requested that we have him here. And so we looked into it. He had a list of topics that he would deal with. Age of the Earth was one. The meaning of the days was one. And we said, “No, we don’t want that.” And we picked a safe subject for him to address. He came here and addressed the subject of the age of the Earth and didn’t do what we’d asked. And we had some people who weren’t happy with that.

I’ve told you this story before. For those of you who haven’t heard it, I want to repeat it again. We went through a period at church where I served up in Schuylkill County many years ago in Pottsville. We went through a brief time where we discussed the question of the age of the earth, and the meaning of the word “day,” and all of that. Had some experts come in. And we were all excited about that kind of thing. Bruce will remember that. And one day, we were having a men’s meeting to discuss some business for the church. And we just got into the discussion again about the age of the earth, because that was the hot topic right then. And an old man in the church, Bud Lengel, a wonderful guy, he sat there quietly in the men’s meeting until finally he blurted out, “Who in the world cares how old the rocks are?”

And it was a learning moment for me. I thought, you know, he’s normal, we’re not. I think most people are like that. Who cares how old the rocks are? You get into the question of the age of man and all of that, okay, that gets a little more difficult. But how old are the rocks? I don’t know of anything that hangs on this question. I don’t know of any theological implications of it that hurt or help any other position. The answer to this question, I don’t think, helps evolution or hurts it. I think what you are about to hear is one of the least important Sunday school lessons you’ll ever hear at RBC.

I think I’ve told you this before as well, but I want to say it again for those who haven’t, just to drive the point. I had a friend up in Pottsville at the church there who said I used to drive a tack with a sledgehammer. That’s what I’m doing now. The previous church where I pastored, one Sunday morning, a man came to the door, just really exercised over the question of the age of the earth. And I forget now if he was old or young earth, I forget which. Met me at the door on the way out and started in on it. And this is why—I’ll just say young earth—and this is why the Bible insists on it, it’s very important. And he went on and on about it, and I just nodded my head and said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.” The very next Sunday, honest, the very next Sunday, another man met me at the door, just the opposite opinion, just as exercised over it. And he’s going into all of his reasons, it has to be an old earth, and I nodded, and “Yes, yep, you’re probably right.”

And it’s just not one of those issues I want to fight over. But having said that, I do think there are some considerations that are worth taking our time, if nothing else, to temper our discussions and to make us more informed because it is such a relevant discussion in so many forums.

So we’ve got leading theories about the age of the Earth. We got young Earth. We got day-age interpretation of the days. There’s a view called the analogical framework that the days are not literal 24, but they’re analogous to the days of our work week, the seven days. We have the framework theory, literary framework. I’m not gonna get into all of that. If you would like a very helpful, brief, easy-to-read overview of the various interpretations of Genesis 1 regarding the days, get Verne Poythress’s book. It’s just a little booklet entitled Christian Interpretations of Genesis 1. It’s an easy read. You can do it at one sitting. It’s a marvelous little overview survey of the various interpretations.

So I’m gonna give some miscellaneous considerations here, and then we’ll see where we go from there.

First Of All, The Focus Here Is Not The Age Of Man

Keep in mind what I’ve already said. The focus here is not the age of man. It’s the age of the earth, whatever the age of man. And we will get to that question later in Genesis 5 and 10, where we have the genealogies. So this is an in-house debate; creationists differ on this question of the understanding of the days. This is not just a question between creationists and evolutionists.

Number Two, A Recognition Of A Mature Original Creation Is Important

But it doesn’t answer all the questions. Now I dealt with that last time, so I don’t have to go into detail with that this time. There are some old-earthers that like to use the argument that it takes so long for the light of the sun and the stars to get to the earth, it must be at least that old, and they calculate back. And I don’t think that that argument has any teeth, because any creation of any kind necessarily involves a mature creation. So I don’t think that that argument of the old-earthers holds any water.

Number Three, It’s An Open Question When Day One Begins

And this is a question, this is a point that I think is not often brought up, and that is it’s an open question when day one begins. Now you remember we pointed that out, Genesis 1:1 and 2: we have “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, the earth without form and void, darkness covered the face of the earth.” Then verse three: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Then we have day one.

Verses one and two are the original creation and then verse three starts creation week as we know it. There is no way to determine that I can tell exegetically if verses one and two belong to that first day or if it’s somewhere before. I can’t find a way to determine the answer to that. It’s an open question as far as I can tell.

Number Four, The Mere Use Of The Word Day Does Not Settle Anything

The mere use of the word “day” does not settle anything for either side of the debate. The word “day,” as you know, has a broad semantic range as in any language. It can refer to a period of 24 hours. It can refer to a part of a day, a work day. It can refer to a period of time. And all of that you find in the Scriptures as well. You have a day meaning a 24 hours. You have it meaning a work day. You have it meaning the day of Messiah, the day of trouble. You have the eternal day. And you have all kinds of expressions like that. The word “day” is not determinative. There must be other considerations to define it—the day of salvation, things like that.

In chapter one, if you’d like to look, verse 5, the word “day” is used in two different senses. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night,” and there was evening and morning the first day. “Day” is used in two different senses in the same verse. Then if you look at chapter 2 and verse 4: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” It seems like that word “day” is a reference back to the whole creation week. Now this is nothing surprising. The word “day” has that kind of a range of meanings in every language.

Chapter two, verses two and three: then we have the day seven, which I will argue in a little bit is—well, let’s look at it now. I think that day is permanent. That day was never closed. We don’t have the typical expression at the end of the seventh day, “the evening and the morning were the seventh day,” and that was that. This day remains open. And I’ll just mention this quickly to give reasons for that, why we think it remains open.

In John chapter five, verse 17, Jesus says, “My Father has been working until now and I am working.” Now in that context, in John five, Jesus has just healed a blind man. It was on the Sabbath day. And so there’s this controversy. Should he be working on the Sabbath? Now there are plenty of arguments that Jesus could have used to answer that. The “ox in the ditch” principle would be the obvious answer, but that’s not the argument he gave there. In John chapter five, what he argues is “My Father has been working until now and I’m working.” What’s the significance of that argument? Well, it seems to be the assumption, the unexpressed assumption, is this is God’s Sabbath and he’s working. Now he’s not working in the work of creation, that work is finished, but he’s doing the work of redemption on his Sabbath—the work of redemption.

We’ll see some more about the significance of the seventh day later as well and the rest. We’ve already seen the rest of God in that passage. But Jesus then healed on the Sabbath. He’s accused of working on the Sabbath. His defense is, “My Father’s doing this as well.” And what’s the significance of that? The whole point, I think—I don’t think it can help his case at all unless he’s saying the Father is working on his Sabbath and I’m working on the Sabbath. Now, back to our question: what he’s saying then is that day seven is still open. It’s not been closed. And in fact, in Hebrews chapter four, or chapters three and four, the writer there picks up the same question and ties the creation rest (Genesis 2:2-3) to Joshua’s rest, to our rest in Christ, to our eternal rest in Christ in the final state. This day seven remains open.

Now the point there is to say that if day seven is not an ordinary day, must we understand days one to six as ordinary 24-hour days? Well let me give you a couple of arguments in favor of a 24-hour day.

One, and I think this is a good argument—I don’t think it works, but it’s an obvious argument—and that is that the usual meaning of the word “day” is 24 hours. That’s true. But it’s not usual enough to answer the question. So I think we just have to set that aside for the time being.

One prominent argument that has been used now for several decades regarding the Young Earth position, the literal 24-hour day position, is that when you have the numerical adjective—first day, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day—when you have that numerical adjective with “day,” it always means a 24-hour period. Again, I don’t see the real force to that. All that the numerical adjective demands, I think, is just chronology. This one’s first, this one’s second, this one’s third. I don’t think it demands a particular period of time. I think that argument is gratuitous. There’s nothing in the lexicons that would say that it has to mean that. I think that—and the argument would be that every other time in the Scriptures that “first day” or “third day” or “day four” or whatever is used, it refers to a literal 24-hour day. I’m not sure where on an old-earth view or a stretched-day view, where they would have opportunity to answer that. I think the argument is just gratuitous. First age, second age—when would you need that? You do, however, have a very close parallel to it in Daniel chapter nine, where you have weeks, 70 of them. And they’re not literal weeks. They are obviously weeks of years. So I think with that, other factors have to be brought in to determine it. I’m not saying that the literal day-age is necessarily wrong. I’m just saying that doesn’t answer it.

Then there’s the next expression: “the evening and the morning.” This is another argument used in favor of a literal day. The evening and the morning—that sounds like a 24-hour period; perhaps that is the simplest way of understanding the verse. But again, you’ve got to ask, why does it say “evening and morning” and not “morning and evening,” the normal way of speaking? What’s going on with that? Why does it reverse it?

Now you do have in Exodus chapter 20, with the law of the Sabbath, establishing an analogy. You work six days, rest the seventh day because God rested on the seventh day. There it is in the Ten Commandments. But again, does that mean that those were literal days or does that simply mean that that was an analogy, analogous to our work week? I don’t think the text determines that. I don’t see how it can. I don’t think we can get, in other words, out of Exodus 20 anything more than God’s work—our week of working six days, resting on the seventh is like God’s creation week of working six days and resting on the seventh. But how to define that, I don’t know.

Let Me Give You Some Arguments Against The 24-Hour Period

One is the semantic range of the word “day.” We already talked about that. Day can mean a lot of things: the day of salvation, the day of Messiah, the eternal day, the day of trouble, and so on.

Another consideration: we have the first three days, we have a day-night cycle, according to this view, the 24-hour view. But the sun doesn’t appear until day four on the Young Earth 24-hour view. The sun is not created until day four. Now my only question here is if the first three days were not solar days, what’s the requirement that we believe that beginning at day four they are solar days? That’s just a question.

Again, this expression, “the evening and the morning,” rather than “morning and evening,” we find that in Genesis 1 verse 5, verse 8, verse 13, verse 19, verse 23, 31. Something else, I think, is being indicated. And I think I’ll say more of that in a minute.

I think very importantly here—and this is the one that first got my attention on the subject of the meaning of the word “days” here—is that some of the days in creation week seem to involve more than what can be accomplished in 24 hours. Now, I’ll say up front, God can do anything in any amount of time he wants to, of course. But some things are going on here that seem to require more than 24 hours.

For instance, day three. Look at verses Genesis 1:9 to 12. “God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called the seas. And God saw that it was good, and God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.”

So here we have the shaping of the globe with the emergence of mountains and seas and lakes. And now we have here in this day, the vegetation brought forth. Plants yielding seed. It does not say something like, “Let the earth be covered with vegetation and great trees standing at their full heights.” It says, “Let them bring forth.” And they brought forth. “Let the earth sprout vegetations, plants yielding seed.” And then the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to its kinds, and trees bearing fruit, which is their seed according to its kind. So did all of this happen instantaneously? Or is this describing something that happened over a period of time?

E.J. Young, years ago, famous respected Old Testament scholar from Westminster of a couple generations ago, argues this: that the trees and plants, they begin to grow. They’re growing up out of the earth. Until they’re covered, it seems to be what is being described here. Now, I’m not going to hang my hat on that. God could certainly do that in a moment. But the question here is, what does the text say? And then more precisely, what does the text demand? I don’t think it demands necessarily one way or the other.

More importantly, look at all that’s going on in day six. When we get to day six, we have not only those few verses at the end of Genesis one, but we also have all of Genesis two. That’s what we’re told when we get to Genesis two. Verse seven, he creates man—that’s day six. Verses five and six, he gives us the setting for that. So we have: God created animals on day six. He created the animals. That’s chapter one. Then we get to chapter two, verse seven, God creates man. And then verse 18, Adam senses his loneliness. God says it is not good, in chapter two and verse 18, “It is not good that man should be alone.” That’s important because in chapter 1, verse 31, it says everything’s “very good.” So already in day 6, something is not good.

Adam senses a little aloneness. And then in the narrative, we have verses 19 and following, God brings the animals to Adam and he names them, presumably by their characteristics. How many hundreds of species? How many thousands? Don’t know. And then verse 20, at the end of the verse, we still have Adam sensing his loneliness. And then verse 21, Adam sleeps. Then verse 22, Eve is created. And then verses 22 and 23, Eve is brought to Adam. And he says, “At last, there’s someone like me.” Now in the NIV, it’s translated “now”; I think all agree that the idea here is that “at last,” and that’s the way it’s translated in the ESV here. The sense of the passage is: Adam is lonely. He senses the loneliness. We go through this process with the animal. God puts him to sleep, takes out a rib, makes a woman, brings the woman to him, and “at last I have someone like me.” And then verse 25, they’re both naked and not ashamed. Verb tense here could very well indicate some ongoing condition. How long it is is not stated. Seems to be a summary kind of a statement of a happy, even a carefree lifestyle for some kind of period. All of that that we see in chapter two happened in day six. Can that be squeezed into 24 hours? I have serious doubts about it.

Now the next two that I’ll mention—these together—and I’ve already alluded to them already. One, day seven is left open; it’s still open. God continues to rest from his creation. And then we have the repeated refrain, “There was evening and there was morning,” the nth day of each of the six days. Now it’s a strange order—the evening and the morning—and so it calls for some kind of explanation. Evening and morning, what does that expression describe? Does that describe a 24-hour period? Or does it describe the time between the work days?

So you have some expressions like in Numbers chapter 9, verses 15 and 16: “On the day that the tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony, and at evening it was over the tabernacle like the appearance of fire until morning.” Evening to morning—it’s the time between. So there’s the nighttime, it’s the time between the workdays. Is that expression then reflecting God worked during this period, the evening and the morning, the time when he rested between or took off between those work periods? That could work.

A related expression is Psalm 104 verse 23: “Man goes out to his work and his labors until evening.” Then the evening and the mornings, then we have the next day. That might be what’s going on here. That would help us understand chapter two, verses one to three, the seventh day. There’s no “evening and morning” refrain. It’s curious for its absence because God doesn’t take off from work now. He just stops working altogether. There’s no rest time after day seven because he’s still resting; it’s still open. And then chapter 2 verse 4 begins a new story.

All right, something else. Chapter 2 verses 5 to 8. We saw this before; I want to bring it up again just quickly. Here we have this strange discussion about “no bush of the field yet in the land, no small plant of the field had yet sprung up.” Why? Not because it hadn’t been created yet, but because “the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there’s no one to work the ground,” no gardener. And so this mist or stream of water or whatever it is going up to water the land, face of the ground.

Now we saw that—what this evidently means—we saw it several weeks ago in our discussion of this passage. What this is talking about evidently is some particular region where it was dry. Rainy season comes, but it’s not cultivated. And so God puts a man in the garden, a gardener, to cultivate it, and the problem’s solved. And now the idea is to extend the garden outwards to the end of the earth. So you have a watered area, but the ground is not irrigated. And you have—it’s not watered sufficiently for the plant growth. And so God takes the needed steps of making the gardener, puts him in the garden, and the problem is solved.

So as one guy writes—this is Jack Collins—in some particular land, in some particular year, at the time of the year before the rainy season had begun, and when the mist, or rain cloud, or stream, or whatever this is, was rising, which may suggest the beginning of the rainy season, that’s when God formed the first human, planted the Garden of Eden, and transplanted the man there. So it seems to assume then some kind of seasonal cycle. Yearly cycle? Perhaps.

All right, now, if that’s the right understanding of verses five and six, that you have a seasonal thing going on here within day six, there’s some entailments to that. Number one, it defines “day” as a period of time longer than 24 hours. I don’t think a 24-hour day can account for chapter 2 and verse 5 and what’s going on there. Another entailment of this is that it relieves the tension of all that’s going on on day 6. You don’t have to make all of that squeezed into 24 hours. All of chapter 2, verse 5 to 25 fits in day 6.

I think I can skip that. But I want to say this: if that understanding that I’ve just given of chapter two is correct—that you’ve got a rainy season, all of that happening in day six—it defines it as more than 24 hours. Even if that is the right interpretation, none of that defines old earth or young earth. We might be talking in a few years. We might be talking in an age. We just don’t know. And we’re left back to where we began: I don’t know how old the rocks are. And I think that’s where we’re left.

But even if we define these days as more than 24 hours—and I think we have to, that’s how I lean anyway—that still does not answer how old the earth is. It still has to be answered with other considerations. How much time was involved in all of this that’s described in Genesis 1 and 2? I don’t know. It doesn’t necessitate ages. If you’re nervous with ages before day one, you don’t have to say that this teaches that. It doesn’t. There’s nothing of that demanded here. So Old Earth or Young Earth, that question must be decided by other factors.

Another thing I want you to notice in all of this that I’ve mentioned: all of these considerations arise from the biblical text itself. None of this is science-driven; none of this is depending on evolution; it’s just dealing with the data that we have in Genesis 1 and 2 itself. It doesn’t resolve all questions, but I think what we are ended up with then is the days of creation week are analogous to our days, but not necessarily 24-hour days. And this, in fact, has been the view of many in the history of the church. William G.T. Shedd was one. He is the outstanding Reformed theologian of a century ago. Franz Delitzsch, Hermann Bavinck, the great Dutch theologian—the Dutch Protestants held to this today. One of the most informed and articulate spokesmen on the subject, Jack Collins from Covenant Seminary in St. Louis; he’s one that holds this kind of a view.

Again, none of this answers the question, “How old is the earth?” And none of this touches the question of creation/evolution. I am convinced to my socks against the doctrine of evolution. But I don’t think this question impinges on that at all. So I think it’s wise to be aware of the different alternative understandings of the passage. I think it’s also wise to recognize human fallibility in interpreting the Scriptures, just like there’s human fallibility in interpreting scientific data. And I think given that this question in particular has had so many good men on both sides of the subject—good interpreters—that would call for a degree of humility on our part.

All right. So there’s the most irrelevant Sunday school lesson you’ve ever heard me teach. Questions? Yes.