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South Bay SDA Church

Genesis

Jeremy Arnall

02 Day 2 of Creation: Under Heaven’s Quilt

01 The Creation Account: Let There Be Light

03 Day 3 of Creation

I don't have mine with me, but we all know what it's like to have that interruption, that vibration in the pocket or the ring.

And an unknown voice appears on the phone and informs us that our car warranty is about to expire, right?

Or that there's some issue with the Social Security office or our taxes or, you understand.

We promptly hang up to the unwelcome voice who has undoubtedly annoyed perhaps thousands before us.

Texts, scams, junk mail, ping, ping, ding, ding.

It happens repeatedly throughout our week.

Unless we blame these intruders as the bane of our existence, let us remember that we purchased these personal devices in the first place, right?

That they might remain with us at all times.

If we had never purchased them, if we had agreed on this, they would still be, our phones would still be on the wall of our kitchen.

We had 1 on our wall, had a long stringy cord, coil.

If we had said no in the first place, we could let answering machines do the dirty work for us.

We have allowed technology to fragment our attention and drown out what matters most.

While we have benefited in many ways from our modern conveniences amidst all the fanfare, I wonder if we haven't lost something precious without even realizing it.

While High rises climb higher and roads stretch longer while massive machinery moves mountains to make way for what we would call progress.

Could it be that we're imperceptibly muffling the voice of God in our midst?

The very voice that spoke during creation week still echoes to us today.

But the question is, are we even paying attention?

On display all around us for our senses to behold is a masterpiece that reveals the heart and character of a loving God.

Yet too often we're like rowdy children in an art museum, playing mindlessly amidst the prized art, unaware that we're slowly damaging the very treasures that we were designed to cherish.

We fail to notice that God's greatest gift to us comes wrapped in nature and is there for us to enjoy.

Yes, 1 of the greatest gifts that God gave us was at the creation week.

Title of the message this week is a beautiful land, a beautiful land.

Dear Lord, I pray that you please speak to us this morning.

Please help us to appreciate and recognize a little bit better your beauty and your character as we consider what you did on day 3 so long ago.

Help our young ones to see in their mind's eye the beauty that you made for them and to enjoy this beautiful land more than any other land they have seen.

It was Henry David Thoreau who once wrote in Walden, quote, you only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.

But when was the last time we sat still long enough?

When did we last turn off our phones and step away from our screens and simply listen for God's voice amidst his nature, his second book?

When you arise in the morning, For instance, do you pause to appreciate the carpet of diamonds that God scatters across our land as he sprinkles it with dew?

Do you pause to appreciate the symmetry and the finesse that God put into each flower that opens for our delight.

Do you appreciate the detail and precision and the artistic symmetry that God offers through the leaves that cover us from the noonday sun.

When you arise on a cold and frosty morning and you jump into your car, do you loathe the fact that you have to scrape the windshield?

Or for a moment, do you pause to appreciate the way that God was decorating your car while you slept?

These tiny miracles surround us every day, whispering of a creator's love and artistry, but do we pause to enjoy?

For a moment, allow your mind to drift back thousands of years ago to a place where perfect silence reigned.

Accept, that is, for 1 sacred conversation.

Picture, if you will, the conversation within the Trinity itself as God plans and executes the creation of our world.

I believe they must have conversed that creation week for we do hold evidence of this divine conversation do we not?

For didn't the Bible record that on day 6 God said let us make man in our image.

That word us tells us something beautiful about the nature of our God.

He exists in loving community, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working together for perfect harmony.

So as the Spirit of God hovered over the waters and light bathed the earth, imagine the voice of God speaking on day 3.

Then God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into 1 place and let the dry land appear.

And God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters he called seas.

And then God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed and the fruit that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself on the earth.

And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind.

And so the evening and the morning were the third day.

Notice that twice, twice on this day, God saw that it was good.

Something special, something magnificent happened on day 3.

How many of you have sat along the seashore, listening as the sea repeatedly tries to inch itself up onto dry land as if attempting to escape its defined boundary.

Yet time after time predictably it retreats only to try again.

It's as though some invisible hand says this far and no farther and pushes it right back.

Something both majestic and humbling about peering out over the vast ocean and knowing that the water that's now caressing your feet has journeyed thousands of miles to reach you.

And think about that, that the wave touching your toes began its journey miles and miles away, and yet through the breeze and through God's direction, it has arrived at this precise moment.

Ever since day 3 of creation week, with that 1 notable exception of the worldwide flood, the waters have stayed within their God-appointed boundaries.

They were set in place by the voice of God and have faithfully obeyed ever since.

Job captures this beautifully when he writes in Job 38, or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst forth and issued from the womb?

When I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, when I fixed my limit for it and set bars and doors, and when I said, this far you may come, but no farther, and here your proud waves must stop.

Without the land, without the land, the waters would have nothing against which to display their power and their character.

They would have nothing to complain about.

But bring land onto the scene, and we're allowed to behold the sea's personality as it crashes upon rocks and shoreline.

The Lord gave the sea a voice we could listen to, something that could lull us to sleep at night with its eternal rhythm of praise.

When God spoke again that day, mountains and hills burst forth like some actors upon a stage as it entered to decorate and make our place beautiful.

This dramatic emergence of peaks and valleys and hills and all with 1 word.

And after bringing forth the dry land, God wasn't finished that day.

He decided to dress it up, to decorate it in anticipation of what was coming later that week.

Moses records that when he spoke a green landscape transformed what had been barren into something breathtakingly beautiful.

I hope you understand our God loves beauty.

I mean, he could have made the earth brown or gray, purely functional and, you know, practical.

But he chose green and not just plain green, but countless shades and textures of green.

Scientists have identified nearly 300, 000 plant species.

And catch this, about 90% of those flowers, I'm sorry, of those plants produce flowers.

Some 90% of this nearly 300, 000 plant varieties produce flowers.

With those flowers come thousands of colors and fragrances designed to delight our senses.

I mean, come on, husbands, you think you're doing something pretty special when you come home with 2 dozen, right?

God says, not having it, he produces almost 300, 000, 90 of which is flowering, and the other, just sort of the accents, you understand, and he says, I love you.

We're talking about the character of God.

And he he didn't just put them there, you know, because they had to have flower.

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Series

Genesis

03 Day 3 of Creation

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

When God Shows Up - Advent HOPE August 2019

When Waves Begin to Roll

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11. The Book of Job: Out of the Whirlwind

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The Curse and the Cure

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Signature of the Designer: Seeing God Through the Creation

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The Book of Proverbs

12. Proverbs: The Humility of the Wise

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OYC 2012 Seminars

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WYC 2009 Plenary Sessions

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Getting Through Life’s Toughest Times

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