The Bible – From Beginning to End Using the Twenty Cs
OVERVIEW
Creation, Corruption, Cataclysm, Confusion, Call, Castaways, Camp, Conquest, Crown, Captivity, Construction, Conception, Cross, Church, Caught Away, Chastisement, Coming, Coronation, Condemnation, Consummation.
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Series homepage: http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/Expository-20Cs.html
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This is a jet tour overview of the Bible, like an OT and NT survey course, but in preaching / teaching format.
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First message in series is here in formatted text w/ PowerPoint: http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/Creation.html
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Text only version:
1. CREATION
Nowhere does the Bible attempt to prove the existence of God, it is simply assumed. V. 1 says it simply. In the beginning God...
Whether you look thru a telescope or a microscope, the only explanation is God. The fool says there is no God.
1) First day: The creation of light - Genesis 1:2-5
Notice that God created light before He created the sun. God is the light. It is His nature. The Lamb will be the light of heaven.
2) Second day: The separating of the waters - Genesis 1:6-8
Did it look like this? [slide] Or this? [slides] We don’t know.
“Firmament” = a vast body of water vapor surrounding the earth in canopy form. It was like a greenhouse that explains some things:
-The longevity of life in those days w/ low radiation. If they got arthritis at 70 they would have it for about 800 or more years. But they didn’t. They didn’t draw social security at 65 or they would bankrupt the system! They had children for most of their lives as well, populating the earth.
-The atmospheric pressure and oxygen levels were also more favorable to life.
This is where a great deal of the water came from in the flood. Perhaps melted and falling when volcanoes erupted as much water came up out of the ground and earth plates moved violently.
[I skipped day 3 & 4 and the subject of evolution, preaching them at the end of this message in what was our PM service.]
3) Third day: The creation of plant life – Genesis 1:9-13
These verses totally refute the harmful doctrine of evolution.
Here’s the difference between a Biblical world view and a secular one. Evolution states that life began in the sea. The Bible says it happened on dry land.
“I was an amoeba when I began to begin,
Then I was a tadpole with my tail tucked in
Next I was a monkey swinging from a tree,
Now I’m a man w/ a phd!”
Have you heard about the monkey who was coming out of a library with two books under his arm, one was the Bible and the other was Darwin’s “Origin of the Species?” Somebody stopped him and asked him what he was doing, and he said, “I’m trying to find out if I’m my “Brother’s Keeper” or my “Keeper’s Brother?”
Here’s 3 bridges no evolutionist can cross: [They have no answers to these questions]
-The origin of life. They say life arose as a result of spontaneous generation. That it all began as inorganic matter, or pre biotic soup, a puddle of green slime. They call it a ‘fortuitous concourse of atoms.’ Doesn’t that sound intellectual? A flash of lightning hit the puddle of scum. Now why would intelligent people believe that? Here’s why, in their own words...
Dr. George Wald (a Nobel Prize winner in Biology and professor Emeritus of Biology at Harvard, until his death in 1997) said, "There are only two possibilities as to how life arose; one is spontaneous generation arising to evolution, the other is a supernatural creative act of God, there is no third possibility. Spontaneous generation that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. That leaves us with only one possible conclusion-that life arose as a creative act of God. I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God, therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution."
It’s a philosophy you choose to believe in, and it takes a lot more faith than it does to believe in God.
-The Law of biogenesis—which says that dna is fixed, the fixity of the species...everything reproduces after its own kind.
Genesis 1:11-12
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. 12 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.
“After his kind” is repeated 10 times in this passage. You can cross breed roses all your life and get different colors and sizes of roses, but you’ll never get a puppy. You can breed cats all you want and get many variations, but you’ll never get even a different species of cat. And scientists have done all kinds of mutations to fruit flies, and come up w/ some funky things, but all of them have been fruit flies!
They have no transitional forms in the fossil record. They have pictures and plaster of paris, but no real evidence...it’s a fairy tale for adults! It’s not just a missing link...the whole chain is missing!
Ill.—The abalone lives on the west coast...a type of mollusk. A marine biologist tried to cross it with a crocodile. He called it an abodile. But he wound up w/ just a crock o’ baloney!
True science is observable and repeatable. But this is false science. Paul told Timothy to beware of the coming of ‘science falsely so called’ [1 Tim. 6:20] So evolution isn’t science, it’s simply theory.
But things reproducing after his kind is observable and repeatable. Bible proof! And it’s even scientific.
These are bridges no evolutionist can cross: origin of species and fixity of the species. Here’s the 3rd:
The 2nd law of thermodynamics—says that energy can never be destroyed but becomes less available for further work as it unravels. In other words, the universe is like a wound up watch that is slowly winding down. Everything tends to wear out and slow down. Things aren’t moving from disorganization to organization, but the opposite.
Ill.—take a plot of weeds...it will never become a golf course on its own. But a golf course left alone will become a plot of weeds, like Nelson has!
Everything on earth is marked by death, decay, and disintegration because of sin, and the curse placed upon the creation, which groans for its redemption someday.
Evolutionists just need time. They say, give it enough time, and things will come together. That’s why they need billions of years, rather than the 6 thousand years old the Bible indicates the universe is.
They are a victim of their own argument. If you totally disassemble the church van and drop the parts from the roof will they come together? Will they be more or less organized when they land? What if we drop them from 1,000 feet? 10,000 feet? The more time we give them to fall the more disorganized they will become, and they will never come together w/out a designer, a creator, and organizer...His name is Jehovah God!
The evolutionist says man started in darkness and is moving toward the light, and just needs a boost from beneath. The creationist says that man rather started in the light, but plunged into darkness. He doesn’t need an instructor but a redeemer. He needs not a boost from beneath but a birth from above!
Don’t fall prey to the thinking that you have to combine creation w/ evolution, they are diametrically opposed.
These are just logical arguments. There are moral arguments and spiritual ones too. Full series here: http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/TopicalSeries.html#Evolution
If man is just an accident then there’s no God, and no right and wrong, and no value of life. No wonder people act like animals...they’ve been told they are one!
4) Fourth day: The creation of the sun, moon, and stars – Genesis 1:14-19
“He made the stars also” – what a power packed phrase. For a detailed message on this go to: http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/ConsiderTheHeavens.html
These heavenly bodies were to function in a three-fold manner:
As signs—to remind man of his Creator.
Psalms 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Those who look up and don’t see God are simply not dealing with reality, and are trying not to have a God to answer to. The Bible says they are ‘willfully ignorant’.
Romans 1:20
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
Even the heathen can see that all this didn’t happen by accident.
It also reminds us of His transcendence. Popular Christian songs refer to Him as ‘JC’ and talk about how I’m gonna give Him a high 5 in heaven. No you won’t, you’ll fall flat on your face before His greatness.
Ill.—President Roosevelt said it was easy as the most powerful man in the world to get the big head. He sometimes would walk out of an Oval Office meeting and stand on the terrace and look up at the night sky. His advisers would stand by and look up as well. Usually for 5 or 10 minutes. Then he would say, ok gentlemen, I think we’re small enough now to continue the meeting.
As seasons
As a calendar they act.
As lights
On day 1 God created light before the sun was made. But now He ordains it for a time. But the SON is what we really should count on.
Day 4: It is a huge undertaking in our eyes, but He did it with just a few words in 1 day.
5) Fifth day: The creation of fish and fowl – Genesis 1:20-23
What an incredible variety He made. What diversity! How creative our Creator is.
6) Sixth day: The creation of land creatures and man -
Genesis 1:24-27; 2:7
We are created in God’s image, a trinity ourselves of body, soul, and spirit. Then God said to: [v. 28-31]
“Have dominion over” the animals. I’m tired of activists showing the concern they do for animals when they should show it to the unborn. I’m all for caring for animals and the earth, but it was created for us, not us for them.
All animals and man were created on the same day. This includes dinosaurs. The word comes from the Greek for ‘terrible lizard.’ Before the 1850s when that word was coined they were called dragons, and every major ancient culture has record of them. Mans footprints have been found in dino prints and in the same layers of earth. They walked together.
Besides, death came by man’s sin, so if dinos lived and died before man was born and fell into sin, that doesn’t fit.
· Plants are unconscious life.
· Animals are conscious life.
· Man is self-conscious life, the crown of God’s creation.
Only man could eat of the food of the garden and look heavenward and thank his Creator. No dandelion or dino could do that.
Man is the crown of God’s creation, but even man has been diminished by sin. Man today uses only a small % of his brain power. Adam was a far superior human than any alive today. The effects of sin were not just spiritual, but physical as well. Adam was far smarter. The human eye is 97% blind to the full color scheme of God’s creation. We’re missing most of it! An eagle can see a rabbit move at 2 miles distance. But we are under the effects of sin. Adam probably saw it all! We are 98% deaf compared to Adam. Any hound dog will prove this point. Did you hear me?
Adam was even able to have some form of communication w/ the animals. [Like the snake in chapter 3-Eve was not startled].
Adam was the original 6 million dollar man, married to the bionic woman! He had quite a vocabulary to be able to name all the animals. We’re talking about thousands of species [genus groups] alive today, and many more then.
He was made a 3 part being in the image of God- body, soul, and spirit. We have moved further and further from God’s image ever since, but will one day be reconciled to that image fully.
2:21-25 Rather than going back to the dust of the earth to create Eve God took a rib from the man. Wo-man = ‘out of man’. She was not taken from his head to be ruler of him, not from his feet to be trampled by him, but from his side to be equal with him. Under his arm to be protected by him. Close to his heart to be loved by him.
Now, did God do all the above in 6 literal days? Many Christians say no. They try to reconcile creation and evolution, calling each ‘day’ an ‘age’ of perhaps millions or billions of years.
A day is 24 hours in the plain sense, and Exodus 20 uses this illustration to talk about the 7th day of the week.
The genealogies are there to remind us how young our world is.
No matter what you believe about how everything came to be, it is by faith that you believe it. Hebrews 11:3 says:
“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”
You either take God at His Word [since you weren’t there] or you take the word of men who are grasping for anything else other than a God they have to answer to.
And you don’t have to put your mind on a shelf to believe in Creation.
7) Seventh day: God rested - Genesis 2:1-3
This is the only time God is seen resting until Revelation 21. Why?
Because of the sin of mankind. God hasn’t rested since. He didn’t rest when Jesus came to this world and was rejected. Christ never rested from trying to save mankind, certainly not on the cross. And He won’t rest until you are saved...or cast into hell once it is too late. How can you rest until you get it settled?
http://gbcdecatur.org/sermons/Creation.html
