Sound of Faith

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings friends and new listeners and welcome to the Sound of Faith. I'm Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Today's message is part two of a three-part series I did on Genesis, the recreation of heaven and earth.

In part two, we discuss days two, three, and four. In this exciting account, we discover the greenhouse effect the earth once enjoyed due to a canopy of waters that protected it. We will also learn about the zodiac, how it declares the gospel and how it has been corrupted, in the Genesis series, part two.

R. G. Hardy: We'll go back to Genesis 1:8, and the evening and the morning were the second day. So now let's go to verse nine. And God said, "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear," and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas. So you see, it's plural there for the seas. And God saw that it was good.

God saw that it was good. So by this time, there's a lot more water on the earth than there was when God created it. And I didn't check it, but I believe that the earth is about 70 percent water today. It's about 70 percent water: the oceans and the seas. And God gathered them and separated them.

I like what God's asking Job. Okay, Job, where were you? Can you answer this question? Who shut up the sea with doors? That means God put boundaries around the sea. Job 26:10, he surrounded the waters with boundaries. Psalm 104:9, you set a bound that they may not pass over. So God put the seas and the oceans where he wanted them, and he gave them verbal commands: you can go this far and no further.

It's only when there is a volcano that erupts under the water that then you get that tsunami effect and they overflow the land. But they have their boundaries. So we ended verse 10 saying, and God saw that it was good.

I want you to think about this. This is day three, right? It was the third day. Did we not see that? And God said that it was good. So if it's day three here and God saw that it was good, it's only the second time that God said that.

Are you thinking about this a moment? Day one, God said and it was good. Day two, that was verse eight, and the evening and the morning were the second day, period. Let's go on to day three. Ah, God did not say and it was good on day two. Did you catch that? So why did he not say it was good on day two? He said it was good on day one. God said, "Let there be light," and there was light, and God saw the light, and it was good.

When we did day two, we don't see anything about him saying it was good. But now we're on day three and God says it was good. He didn't bless day two and say that it was good. So the question is why?

All right, I'm going to give you one good answer. Ephesians 6:12, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in," King James says high places, but the Greek means the heavens, the heavens, in the heavens. Ah, who's ruling in the second heaven?

Satan. We learned about his fall. He used to be Lucifer, the beautiful covering cherub, but he fell and took one third of the angels with him, we learned last week. And so now he's ruling in the second heavens. He's not ruling in the pit. He's going to the pit eventually. Revelation tells us he's going to get thrown in the pit, but he's not there yet.

And so we see a picture of this. The Bible is very clear about this. We know that God is in the third heaven. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12, "I know a man who was caught up into paradise into the third heaven of God." So God is in the most high heaven. Satan rules in the second heaven.

We also got a behind the scenes picture of this in the book of Daniel. When Daniel was praying unto God and fasting, and for 21 days no answer came, and he continued to pray and fast, but on the 21st day, the angel Gabriel showed up and said, "Daniel, oh, greatly beloved of the Lord, from the first day that you prayed, God heard you and sent me. Sent me on day one."

But on the way down, I was accosted by an evil angel, the prince of Persia, who is a very powerful angel. He's ruling over there right now, over Iran and Iraq, and so we see all the trouble that perpetuates in that area of the world. He's a very powerful angel, and Gabriel and him were at an impasse. And Gabriel could not get loose to bring the answer.

But God saw how that Daniel did not give up, and he sent Michael, whose name means "He that is like God." He sent Michael down and Michael loosed Gabriel to come to Daniel with the answer. So what we see in this is we get to look behind the scenes and see the warfare that goes on in the heavens.

That's why you can never stop praying. You can never give up. You can never get discouraged. Oh, you don't know the battle that's going on up there. The devil is fighting. It's like my message that I have on CD, Satan cannot stop, Satan cannot block your prayers going up. Because Daniel, he was told God heard you day one and I was sent. But on the way back, he makes his attack because he's got to come through the second heavens.

And Paul said we are wrestling against these spiritual wickedness in the heavens. There's an interesting verse in Job 4:18 that says God charged his angels with folly. And the word folly there in the Hebrew means error. And the root of that, because everything has a root word from which it comes out of in Hebrew, the root word means to be boastful. And we know that Satan, Lucifer, fell because of his pride.

And when he went through the heavens trafficking through the heavens, that's what the scripture says in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, that he got these other angels to join him. And you know, my speculation being, how did he convince them to think they could dethrone God? How could he get them to follow him? Because he probably said, "Oh, you know, God is not doing for you what I would do for you. I'll give you a better position. I'll give you more authority. You're being overlooked and underused."

And so that comes out of that word boastful and they joined him and God charged them with error. Job 15:15, "Behold, he puts no trust in his saints," and there the word means angels, "yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight."

Isn't that interesting? Even the heavens are not clean in his sight and he created the heavens. And when he created them, they were beautiful. But now that Satan is there, he said they're not clean in his sight. And that's why I believe God did not say on day two, "and it was good."

How many see that? All right, let's move on to Genesis 1 and verse 11. And God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth," and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind. And God saw that it was good.

And the evening and the morning were the third day. So we're still on day three, but I stopped because I wanted to explain about why he didn't say it was good on day two. Now, we have here which is very self-explanatory. But I want you to pick up this. How many times on day three does God say and it was good?

In verse 10, after he gathered the seas together and called the dry land earth, and God saw that it was good. And we're still in day three. Now he makes the trees, the fruit trees and all of the grasses and all of the plants. And we're still in day three and God saw that it was good.

So God said two times on day three, and God saw that it was good. And just so you know, this is a Tuesday. Amen, it's the day Tuesday. And so God blessed Tuesday twice. Isn't this something interesting? I think you might get a kick out of. Do you know that many Jewish weddings take place on Tuesday?

Many Jewish weddings take place on Tuesday and here's the reason why. Because God blessed Tuesday twice. Now I know most people in America get married on a Saturday because everybody's off work, but you got to remember for the Jews, that's the Sabbath. So they're not going to be getting married on Saturday. But they choose Tuesday because it was twice blessed.

And in these verses, we see now a universal law that God puts in place and this law is for all people for all time. It even still affects us today and that's this: every seed after its own kind. Every seed after its own kind. It's a universal law. And we can say it this way as well: whatever you sow, whatever kind of seed you sow, that's what you're going to reap.

It doesn't matter what it is. Plants, if you sow corn, you're going to get corn. If you want tomatoes, you're going to have to plant some tomato seed. Whatever you sow, you're going to reap. It's true of plants and trees and all the grains on the earth. It's true of animals.

Dogs have dogs, cats have cats, and so on and so on. Now there may be a variety within the species. You might have a Saint Bernard or you might have a little Yorkie, but they're still a dog. And it's also the same with humans. Every seed after its own kind.

Do you know that this was repeated seven times in Genesis's creation? Seven times, God said every seed after its own kind. AKA, whatever you sow, you're going to reap. And you know that even is true of our words, our deeds, and our actions.

How many know that? Galatians 6:7 says, "Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap." I take it in the good context because I'm a child of God with his Holy Spirit. That means I have the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, meekness, longsuffering, temperance, faithfulness. I have those fruit.

But I realize that also I have control of my tongue to a degree unless I let the Holy Spirit have it. So whatever we sow, our words and deeds are going to come back to us. And where I quoted Galatians 6:7, I left out this part, "Be not deceived, God is not mocked."

And that's for the ungodly. That's for those out there that are lying against God, lying against his word, doing evil against his people, doing evil against his holy son Jesus. God is sitting up there saying, "You may think you're getting away with it, but all you're doing is sowing and sowing and sowing and when you get the harvest, it's going to be ugly."

Somebody said if you don't like what you're reaping, you need to start asking yourself what you've been sowing. And remember this too, there's always a season between sowing and reaping. That's universal. So sometimes we don't realize when we have this bad stuff coming back at us, we don't realize, "Oh, look back here to when you were sowing."

And that also means that you can start sowing good things and start having good things come back to you. It's such a universal law I could preach all day on just it. Because a lot of people try to say, "Well, if God is God, then why did he let that happen? Or why did this bad thing happen? Or why are children starving in India?" A lot of it falls under here. Whatever you sow, you're going to reap. If you go after pagan gods, if you worship demon gods, you're going to get what they have. Yes, it's a very broad subject for another day.

All right, let's go back to Genesis 1 and let's pick up at verse 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 lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth," 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. 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, and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Now here, speaking of what God is doing in the heavens, he says it's good because now we're talking about the planetary heavens below where Satan is. And God says that it was good. Now we know that on day one, we learned last week that on day one God separated darkness from light. He called the light day and he called the darkness night.

But now God is going further with light and darkness and he's actually modeling and creating two great lights. While they're not named right here, they're named throughout the Old Testament. For instance, Psalm 136:7-9, "Two great lights he created: the sun to rule by day, the moon and the stars to rule by night."

So we see that God created the sun and God created the moon. Life on earth could not exist without the sun. We need its light and we need its heat. And so God created the sun. And there are people in the pagan times and probably some today still that worship the sun because obviously all of its benefits.

And then the moon he created to rule the night. I'm glad that God created the moon in the nighttime because think about before there was electricity and you lived in cities that were all lit up. Think about then, that the moon, and we'll get into this in a moment also, what the moon does for the earth.

So the sun is created for more than just light and heat and the moon also. First of all, we read he created them for signs and the Hebrew word "oth" means signals, pointing to something, marking out something, distinguishing something.

And this includes what we call the zodiac. Every culture and language shares the zodiac and when you go throughout these different cultures and languages, the names for the constellations are the same. I want you to know before you start getting prickly about it, about the zodiac, I want you to know that God created the zodiac and he not only created it, he actually wrote the story of mankind and our redemption in the constellations.

Let's turn to Job 38, Job 38 and looking at verse 31. This is God speaking to Job, letting him know I'm the creator and can you answer these questions. "Can you bind the sweet influence of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion? Can you bring forth Mazzaroth in his season or can you guide Arcturus with his sons? Know you the ordinances of heaven? Can you set the dominion thereof in the earth?"

So God is asking Job about these constellations. Pleiades is a constellation of seven stars. Orion is a constellation. Arcturus is a constellation and it's actually Ursa Major, and you've probably heard of that one: the Great Bear. How many have heard of that one?

But I want to draw your attention to Mazzaroth because what that means in Hebrew is the 12 signs of the zodiac. The 12 signs of the zodiac. It's the only place in the entire Bible where it is referenced.

I said a moment ago that God has written the story of the gospel in the stars. And that's what Psalm 19 tells us. Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech and night unto night shows knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world."

In them has he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices as a strong man to run a race. His going forth, this is still speaking of the sun, his going forth is from the end of the heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

So what we have here is a very poetic description of the heavens. So we see the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows forth his handiwork. The heavens there is the common Hebrew word for heavens "Shamayim" and it's plural. Shows forth his handiwork. So where it says declare, it means to recount, to relate. It basically means to tell a story.

The heavens tell a story and the story they're telling is about the glory, about the honor and the majesty of God. And the firmament shows forth, and that word shows forth there means to announce, to publish. It is being published across the heavens for every person on the earth to see. For the entire population of the earth can read this story in the heavens.

Publishes his handiwork. It means his deeds, his acts, and his labors. So anyone that wants to look up the constellation of the 12 zodiac signs will be able to see the story that God is declaring and publishing about his works. Day unto day utters speech and night unto night shows knowledge.

There is a continual testimony 24/7. There's a continual testimony of God's creative power. And the heavens are saying, they're declaring, "Look at us! There's a creator! Look at us! There's a designer! Look at us! We're telling you the story of man's redemption."

Psalm 148:5 says he commanded and they were created and he put them in the night sky. Because without the darkness of night, we would not be able to see the stars. I mean, how many stars do you see in the daytime? But in the darkness of night, that's when you can see the stars and that's when you, I realize the earth now has a lot of smog and so we don't see them like they would have back then in this time.

But nevertheless, those who do study astronomy—I didn't say astrology, I said astronomy—they study and they take pictures and we can go online and see them, we can read them in books. So without the night sky, we would never see the stars and the constellation. But day unto day and night unto night they're out there telling the story. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. They're telling the story and it doesn't matter what culture you're from, where you live on the earth, what language you speak, it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be translated into a language. You look at the constellations and you can read the story of God's plan of redemption because it's the language of the stars.

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Amen. I hope you are following us in this comprehensive study from my Genesis series, part two: the recreation days two through four. In this eye-opening account, we discuss the greenhouse effect of the firmament that once covered the earth, making it a virtual paradise with universal warm temperatures and lush vegetation before there was rain.

What happened to the firmament that altered this canopy of waters? You may be surprised to learn that day two is the only day God did not speak of his handiwork saying, "It is good." Why? Find out who is entrenched in the heavens and why God did not bless this day.

The Bible forbids astrology and consulting the signs of the zodiac because they are corrupted by Satan. Yet scripture says the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows forth his handiwork. Discover what each of the 12 signs of the zodiac really relate in the story of Messiah, the serpent's demise, and man's redemption.

If you'd like more of this teaching, the entire three-part series is available on three CDs for your love gift of only $20 or more for the radio ministry. You will receive part one, the recreation of heaven and earth, part two, recreation days two through four, and part three, recreation days five through seven.

Send your minimum love gift of $20 to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203 or go to our e-store at soundoffaith.org where MP3s are also available. But to order the Genesis series, the complete set of three CDs by mail, send your love gift of $20 or more to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland 21203. Request SK-777.

Until next time, this is Sharon Knotts saying maranatha.