God does not give such knowledge by direct revelation. The Bible tells us that God is the Creator, and it reveals something of his purposes in creation, but if people want to find out how the physical creation functions, they must do so by hard work as God has appointed ( Genesis 3:19).

God is pleased when people study his creation and learn its wonders ( Psalms 111:2). Even we ourselves, who came by natural processes of birth, are said to be formed out of clay and made from the dust of the earth ( Job 10:9 Ecclesiastes 3:20). Likewise when it says that God ‘made man from the dust of the earth’ ( Genesis 2:7), it does not mean that he took in his hands a ball of clay and formed it into a human shape as a baker makes a gingerbread man, but that he made man out of common chemicals. When it says that God ‘sits above the circle of the earth’ ( Isaiah 40:22), it does not mean that he sits in space somewhere above the horizon, but that he is the sovereign Lord of the universe. In reading the Bible we must understand not only what the Bible says but also what it means. The sun is merely the ‘greater light to rule the day’, and the moon the ‘lesser light to rule the night’. But to people of ancient times, and even to us today, the earth where people live is the centre of their world. The scientist may speak of the sun as the centre of the solar system, with the earth a minor planet of the sun, and the moon a small satellite of the earth. The Bible speaks of the heavens and the earth as ordinary people see them from their standpoint on earth.

The argument his accusers used was that the Bible says the earth remains still and the sun rises and sets upon it ( 1 Chronicles 16:30 Ecclesiastes 1:5). Centuries ago people thought that the sun moved round the earth, but when one scientist suggested that the earth moved round the sun, he was condemned for not believing the Bible. They show a misunderstanding of the nature of the Bible’s language. For example, the Bible speaks of the four corners of the earth ( Isaiah 11:12) and of the pillars, bases and cornerstone of the earth ( Job 9:6 Job 38:4-6) but if people use those statements to deny that the earth is a globe, they misuse the Bible. The purpose of the Genesis account of creation was not to teach scientific theories, but to give a short simple account of the beginning of things in language that people of any age would understand.Īs with the rest of the Bible, the book of Genesis was written in the everyday language of the people of the time. If its language were that of modern science, people in former ages would not have understood it, and people in future ages would find it out of date. It is not concerned with the sort of investigation that modern science is concerned with. The Bible was never intended to be a scientific textbook. The Bible demonstrates this order of importance from the outset by fitting the story of creation into a mere week, into the opening page of a 1,000-page Bible. The story of creation is but an introduction to the story of God’s dealings with the human race. Human beings are its main concern, for they alone are made in God’s image. Modern science has revealed so much about the wonders and the size of the physical universe that human beings may seem almost to be nothing.

Verse by verse bible study genesis 1