The Necessity Of Creation And The Gospel - Part 1 Series

Open your Bibles this morning to Genesis 1:1 and let us read it together.

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Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

This morning we are launching our new church on Sunday mornings. These next several Sundays are our “soft-launch” preparing for our full launch the Sunday after Labor Day. But there is nothing soft or light about the significance of these Sundays leading up to September. Nor will there be anything soft or insignificant about the next several messages I am about to preach. This is by all intents and purposes the “genesis” of our church. In thinking about that I wanted to takes us to the Genesis of Scripture.

The subject of Genesis and the creation has crossed my path in several different ways over the last 6 months. In doing so, I began to more seriously examine the implications on the meaning of our creation and specifically the idea that man is created in the image of God. As I searched Scripture, listened to lectures, read articles and books, I came to a couple of conclusions: First, this is an issue that has grave and significant repercussions on every other subject in scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Secondly, the church has largely sold itself out on this issue or at least compromised to the point the aftershocks undermine our ability to stand on other issues, and even more importantly, we offset a crucial cornerstone to the meaning of the Gospel message.

So with that thought in mind, I wanted to start us here because how we move forward from here will have long-lasting consequences for our future. If nothing I say today and the upcoming weeks have any meaning to you, then what I say months or years from now will carry little weight.

Now, let me throw a few qualifiers in here for you. First, I am not a scientist. I am a theologian, apologist, and pastor. So, therefore, this is a study of Scripture and understanding that Scripture is the final authority. But I will demonstrate to you in many different ways how science and secular scientist are wrong using their own words, deductions, and arguments. And I will demonstrate to you how time and time again, science must bow its knee to the Bible.

Secondly, we are going to cover some hard topics right out of the gate. Issues like theistic evolution, the day-age theory, progressive creationism, and the so-called gap theory are capitulations of liberal theologians caving to false claims of science. If you look at the Genesis account, there is no room for this kind of compromise, so either you believe it or you deny the truth of Scripture. There is no middle ground.

Lastly, I am firmly standing against and speaking in opposition to what is being taught as fact in most of our schools and in our society. In fact, this is something that is imposed in our society in nearly every corner. From children’s cartoons to nature shows, universities, medical science, philosophy, and history. That over hundreds of millions of years, humans evolved from slime, monkeys, or whatever. By the time I’m done, I will clearly show you how this is categorically false, but even more, our very meaning and relationship with God is lost in this kind of teaching.

If Genesis tells us that God created everything in 6 days and He created man in His image and we reduce this to just allegory or poetry, then why should we believe anything else in the Bible? If the New Testament tells us that the Creator is our Redeemer, but we strip God as Creator, then maybe He is not our Redeemer as well. If 2 Peter tells us that God Himself will bring about an instantaneous de-creation of the entire universe as we know it, then that has tremendous bearing on His power and authority to create. If God is not the Creator, then can he or will he also prepare for us a place in Heaven or the New Creation?

So you either believe Genesis or you do not. It is a clear, unambiguous, absolute account of our origin. What I want you to understand is that the matter of our origin is absolutely critical to everything else we believe. It is foundational to how we live our lives, view morality, life, our relationships, and ultimately Who we are worshipping.

A well-known scientist named Herbert Spencer discovered that all reality, be contained in five categories: time, force, action, space, and matter. Now think about that and then with that in your mind, listen to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning” – that’s time – “God” – that’s force – “created” – that’s action – “the heavens” – that’s space – “and the earth,” that’s matter. You either believe that that verse is accurate and God is the force, or you believe that God is not the force and you’re left with chance.