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Creation vs Evolution
If you remember, last time I said that I wanted to set the picture in your mind as to the debate between Creation and Evolution. In so doing I said that nearly everything I will be saying will be contrary to just about everything you hear or see from the media. But I wasn’t going to just talk about the two concepts and inject my beliefs as it is better if I allow Scripture itself addresses popular evolutionary theory. Along the way I am going to point directly at facts such as what we will be covering this time as we continue with origins!
Last time it was said that the issue of origins is absolutely critical to all human thinking, human behaviour and human life. It is the foundation of our existence. It is the foundation of our purpose. And it is the foundation of our destiny. Without a right understanding of origins there's no way we can comprehend ourselves. There's no way to understand our earth, our universe or the ultimate meaning of anything.
And furthermore, there are only two options when it comes to origins. The two options are: there is a Creator God, or there is not. If there is not, then everything is an impossible, implausible, irrational result of chance. And chance is if you remember just a word that expresses a series of random happenings which are accidental or unplanned. And the equation that I gave you last time that evolutionists give is "nobody times nothing equals everything." If on the other hand there is a creative intelligence, if there is a Creator God, then creation is understandable. It is possible, it is plausible, and it is rational. Genesis 1: 1
Now the question is, if this universe is the product of a Creator God with an infinite amount of intelligence and power, how can we know anything about this God? How can we know who He is and how He created?
Well, there's only one answer and that is we can only know about Him and how He created if He chooses to tell us. That's the only way we can ever know. Has He? Yes, He has. In fact, He has revealed an entire 66 books of personal self-disclosure. And included in that revelation, in which God has revealed Himself, is very clear instruction about how He created the universe.
For example, in Psalm 19: 1-2 the psalmist writes these familiar words, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge." In other words, day and night, everything in the universe speaks of a Creator God. V3 "There is no speech, nor language where their voice is not heard." In other words, it's a silent revelation but it's a revelation that's unmistakable. Just look at the creation, look at the universe, look at the heavens and their expanse and everything that He's created. He says in V4, "Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." Everyone on the globe can look out and see the creative evidence of a Creator God.
The psalmist carries on in V4 to talk about the fact that He has made the created universe “In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber; And rejoices like a strong man to run its race. Its rising is from one end of the heaven, and its circuit to the other end; and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” He picks that one body, that one celestial body out of the great expanse of the universe, that one body that most dominates our life, the one that is closest to us in terms of a star, the one that has the greatest impact on us, (In the summer we are to hot and in the winter we want more of it). The psalmist says the sun runs its circuit from one end of heaven to the other so that nowhere in the created universe is its heat not felt. That's one of the things that science has discovered in modern times is that the sun is in orbit. We talk about the sun as the centre of our solar system and everything orbiting around it, but you need to know that it has been discovered that the sun itself has an orbit and this orbit goes from one end of the infinite space to the other. The sun is moving and dragging our entire solar system with it. It is not fixed any more than the things that revolve around it are fixed. So the psalmist says you can look up and you can look at the universe and look at the creation and it gives you loud testimony to the glory of God, to the majesty of His intelligence, to the massive character of His power to create all of this.
If we dip into the New Testament in the book of Hebrews chapter 1 v 1-2, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.” So, Hebrews 1 says that God made the world while Psalm 19 says He made the universe. Whilst Jerimiah agrees and adds a little more as we read in Jerimiah 51:15 “He has made the earth by His power; He has established the world by His wisdom. And stretched out the heaven by His understanding.”
Surely the only way we're going to know these things is if God tells us. We are natural. God is supernatural. The natural cannot comprehend the supernatural. So, on our own we can't find God, we can't discover God. The only things we know about God are those things which He has told us, and that's why He gave us the Bible.
2 Timothy 3:16, says these familiar words to us. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God”. God breathed it out, so that it is His Word. 2 Peter 1 v 20, "Knowing this first that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." The only source of knowledge we have about God is the Bible and the external evidence of God in creation. We can know about God by creation, but we cannot really know God except through Scripture.
We can know that He created, as we look at the creation around us. It's reasonable to assume there was a Creator. But we cannot know how He created unless He reveals it to us. So, we can know some things through what theologians call natural revelation. But in order to really know God, and how He created, and how He operates, and how He saves, we have to have a special revelation, which comes in and through the Bible, and the Bible alone.
Now with that in mind, go back to Genesis Chapter 1. When God began the Bible as His self-revelation, He began at the beginning. He began with an account of origins. He began by telling us how He created the universe. Verse 1 of Genesis 1 says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." We are told that God created and then in V2 we are told what it looked like ‘formless’, ‘void’, ‘dark’ ‘and covered in water’! How precise do you want God to be! He then briefly goes on to tell us how He turns this into a special place for ultimately you and I to live in!
And then He goes on from chapter 2:4 with a description of precisely and exactly how He created the universe. Now this is how Genesis begins. But it doesn't end there because Genesis is a book of origins and is aptly named as the word genesis means origins, beginnings and just to show you how important Genesis is, let me tell you the range of origins that are found in the revelation of this one book. Which incidentally goes on to form the basis of how as a society we live today.
First of all, and we have just noted, you find the origin of the universe. Genesis 1:1 is unique in all literature, all science, and all philosophy. Every system explaining the universe, whether in ancient religious myths or modern scientific models, starts with eternal matter, or eternal energy in some form. Only the book of Genesis starts with eternal God. Genesis then is the book of the origin of the universe.
In Genesis we find the origin of order and complexity. Man's universal observation of his world is that it is an orderly world. It functions on fixed rules, and it is profoundly complex. But order and complexity never arise spontaneously. Yet in the book of Genesis we meet God, who programmed order and complexity into His universe.
We also find in Genesis the origin of the solar system. In the midst of this vast, limitless universe, God created a solar system. The Earth, as well as the sun, and moon, the planets, all the stars of heaven, were brought into existence by the Creator and we're told that He created them all.
The book of Genesis tells us about the origin of the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. The earth is uniquely equipped with a great body of liquid water and an extensive blanket of oxygen-nitrogen mixture of gas, both of which are necessary for life. These have never shown up on any other planets and are accounted for only by special creation by God to provide an environment for human life.
We also find in Genesis the origin of life, the marvels of the reproductive process. The almost infinite complexity programmed into the genetic system of plants and animals which are inexplicable apart from special creation by a great, supernatural, powerful intelligence.
Genesis tells us about the origin of man. Man is the most highly organised and complex entity in the universe. Man is the supreme illustration of order and complexity. He possesses not only innumerable, intricate, physical, chemical structures in the marvellous capacities of life and reproduction, but beyond that sort of physical part of man, there is a nature which can contemplate abstract entities of beauty, of love, of worship, and which is capable of understanding and thinking about its own meaning. The true record of man's creation is given only in Genesis.
In Genesis you also find the origin of marriage. The remarkable universal and stable institution of marriage and the home, a monogamous, patriarchal, social culture is defined and described in Genesis as having been ordained by the Creator.
We also find murder, promiscuity, divorce, abortion, homosexuality, and all the corruptions developed later after the Fall which corrupted God's initial order.
You also find in the book of Genesis the origin of evil. The origin of physical and moral evil in the universe is explained in Genesis as a kind of temporary intrusion into God's perfect world, allowed by God as a concession to the principle of human freedom and responsibility and also to manifest Himself as Redeemer of sinners as well as Creator.
You also find the origin of judgment on evil. All the forms of God's wrath are set in motion and illustrated in Genesis.
Then you find the origin of salvation by grace through God's mercy and a substitute. That's all in Genesis and it starts to show as God is merciful to Adam and Eve and doesn't kill them, even though they deserved to die for their sin. But instead, God develops a system of animal sacrifice which provides a picture of a substitute who will ultimately take the place of sinners, which is the ultimate act of mercy and grace from God to us.
Leading on from this God explains His plan of redemption leading to Christ which is even referred to in the book of Genesis as He talks about the seed of the woman, referring to the seed planted by God in Mary for the Messiah and Our Saviour to be born sinless.
It is in the book of Genesis that we find the origin of language. The gulf between the mindless, instinctive chattering of animals and the intelligent, abstract, symbolic communication of man is absolutely and completely unbridgeable by any evolutionary process. And the book of Genesis not only accounts for the origin of language in general, God is a communicating God and He created someone in His own image who thereby could communicate but Genesis also tells us not only how man was given by God the ability to communicate but how so many languages occurred from the judgment of God at the Tower of Babel. That's in Genesis, too.
You find in Genesis, the origin of government, the development of organised systems of human government for the maintenance of orderly social structures through systems of law and punishment.
You find in Genesis the origin of culture. You find here such things as urbanisation, the development of music, agriculture, animal husbandry, writing, education, navigation, textiles and ceramics. All of which starts in the book of Genesis.
You find in Genesis the origin of nations and that is related, of course, again to the Tower of Babel, as God takes one race and scatters them all over the world. This is the only source you'll ever find of how we have so many different peoples scattered all over the earth with different languages and cultures.
You find in the book of Genesis the origin of religion. Both the true religion and false religions appear, first of all, in the book of Genesis, organised systems of worship and conduct. The origin of man's unique characteristic, of man's own consciousness and his ability to comprehend a God and to structure a system of response to the God he believes exists. That all appears in Genesis.
You find also the origin of His chosen people, Israel, who were the conduit for God's revelation to all of the world. It was Israel that was God's people, through whom He gave His revelation and through whom His saving covenant came, in Genesis 12, to Abraham.
Now when you talk about origins you're going to have to go back to Genesis. This is a book of origins. Either you believe Genesis, or you don't. It's that simple. Either you believe what Genesis says about all of those origins or you don't. And if you don't believe the Genesis account, then I have to tell you, that you have no hope of coming to the truth.
All that I am trying to do is to point you to true facts about God because if you don't believe what He said about creation, what kind of precedent have you established for the rest of the Bible?
And what about the end? Do you know how all of redemptive history ends? You know how the whole story of humanity ends? It ends, according to 2 Peter 3 v 10, when the Lord destroys the universe which He so loving made. “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up”. There's literally an implosion, as the universe is totally turned against its existence, and takes it right back out of existence. That ends human history.
But, immediately after that it says in Revelation 21 that He creates a—what? A new heaven and a new earth. Let me ask you this, do you believe He can do that? Do you really believe God might be able to speak and call it into existence?
We have barely started in Genesis but surely you can see that the implications of rejecting the account of Genesis are profound.
