In The Beginning
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Ever since people have had the ability to look at God’s creation and ask “How does that work?’, we have been working to unlock the secrets of the universe. And over the estimated six thousand years we have been doing this I believe we have done a good job. Mankind’s first theories were not the most scientific; we now know it is not deities that cause rain to fall. We know stars are not pinholes in the cover of darkness but other stars. We understand the earth is not the center of the Solar System, but all the planets revolve around the sun. Yet, all of these were once accepted truths.
Science, for all of its claims, is neither exact nor is does it have all the answers. Think of scientific discoveries as a kind of scaffolding. Each new discovery is built upon the discoveries of the past, like scaffolding is built on the previous level. However, as new and better instruments are built, as new truths are found because of these instruments, the scaffolding gets torn down and rebuilt. The scaffolding is never torn down completely, perhaps a level or two, and each rebuilding builds the scaffold a bit higher, again just a level or two. An example of this happened with me. I took a biology class in college (I was about fifteen to twenty years out of high school at the time), and on the first day of class the teacher asked the class how many kingdoms there were (all life is classified into different kingdoms) and I answered to myself (thankfully) “three; animal, plant, and single-celled life forms”, this is what I learned in high school. I remember thinking this is going to be a long semester when the instructor said “If you said five you’re right, if you said six you’re right”. I soon learned that molds were moved from the plant kingdom to become their own kingdom and bacteria were moved from single celled kingdom to its own kingdom. The sixth was bacteria that live in the more inhospitable places; high heat, extreme cold, water with high sulfur or salt contents, and the like. Between the time of high school and that college class, the classification scaffolding had been torn down and rebuilt. This is a continual process and one that may never be complete.
But there are times when the knowledge gained by science causes a problem. One such problem occurs within the field of physics. There are two theoretical fields of physics; general relativity which deals with gravitational fields to understand high mass, large scale bodies, such as stars, galaxies, etc., and the quantum field which deals with magnetic fields for small scale, low mass objects like molecules, atoms and other small pieces of matter. Now the problem; the theories that explain general relativity and the theories that explain the quantum field are not compatible with each other, they will not work together. One of the few times this is a real problem is in areas of small scale and high mass, such as what some scientists believed happened immediately following the theoretical Big Bang. Physicists cannot give any mathematical evidence the big bang happened, the two theories cannot be made to work together to answer the questions.
For decades physicists have been searching for what has come to be known as the Theory of Everything. Scientists believe this theory can be used to explain everything in the Universe but most importantly how the two theories of general relativity and quantum field can be used to work together, and thereby give to mankind the mathematical explanation of how the big bang worked. So far, there has been no real progress in discovering this theory and some in the scientific community have come to doubt this Theory of Everything even exists, looking elsewhere to find a way to explain how these two theories can work together.
Talk about not being able to see the forest through the trees. People can be so dense sometimes that they don’t see the answer that is right in front of their noses. This Theory of Everything is not a theory, it is a fact, and everyone in this church knows what this theory is, as does every believer in the world. I read the proof of this before I started the sermon. Genesis 1:1 states “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Not only did He create everything, He created the laws and reasons everything works the way it does; all people have done is discover the Laws God has put into motion for everything to work according to His plan. God is the Theory of Everything, He is the reason why the universe exists and works as it does.
For some reason most scientists have been working very hard to prove God does not exist. By discovering the various reasons the universe works, men of science believe this gives credibility to the nonexistence of God. And this is not exclusive to any branch of science but this happens among all branches. As these people struggle to discover the operating of God’s creation, they fail to realize this does not disprove God but rather should give praise unto God for His forethought and ingenuity on making everything work so well. The scientist should be in awe of the Creator, but all they try and do is dismiss Him from all they discover. I am excluding those of the scientific community that are believers.
The comic strip B.C. is about cavemen and other prehistoric life. In 1984, the creator of the comic, Johnny Hart, became a Christian and he began displaying his faith in the comics he created. One of the characters in the strip is named Wiley and this character has taken it upon himself to create dictionary, but not all the definitions are exactly what you might expect. Another character read the entry of science fiction. According to Wiley (or actually Johnny Hart), science fiction is “Any scientific acclaim that omits God.” But if we really think about it, this is a very accurate definition, for any science, or any other field of study, that does not acknowledge the Creator can only be fiction! It’s like watching a movie and saying there was no director, creation cannot be talked about without first giving tribute to the creator.
As physicists struggle to find that elusive Theory of Everything, we know we have the answer we know why things work as they do. We know that answer as to how the two fields of physics don’t appear to work together. The first is that God made it this way and while the two might appear not to work together, they do work according to the will of the Lord. The second, and the most likely, is the reason they don’t work together is because they are not supposed to work together, and the Big Bang never happened.
We believers can see God as this Theory of Everything. We can see His fingerprints on everything in creation. He designed every piece of the universe and set it in motion to operate in accordance to His will. From the workings of the largest galaxies to the actions of the smallest particles of matter, everything acts in accordance to God’s design. There is nothing in the universe that we can look at and not see God’s stamp on it.
The greatest thing in the universe that has God’s fingerprints over it is the action He set in motion to redeem and save His creation. After mankind sinned against God in the Garden of Eden, the blackness of disobedience has darkened our hearts and caused us to push ourselves away from God and His goodness. But God would not allow us, His children, to remain away from Him. His love is much too great. God’s way for salvation included everyone who ever was, is, and will be to be brought out of their sinful condition and up to a restored, purified form. As was given to us in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world He gave His only-begotten Son”, the world-everyone; it makes sense then that our God, our Theory of Everything, would include everyone. Our God-given Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, humbled Himself to come to us and be born of a woman. The Creator became the created. Being one of His creation, being one of us, He was subject to His Law, which being God He fulfilled perfectly, something we can never do. With His life, our Savior, named Jesus, satisfied the Father’s conditions that the Law be kept perfectly. Jesus then surrendered Himself over to punishment and death, not the punishment and death of the Roman crucifixion, but to the Father’s punishment of all sins ever committed and to death we rightly deserve—and that is Hell. With the Father’s righteous justice against sin satisfied, He forgives His children. And for those who believe in Jesus as the Savior, for those who are in faith, He now sees us as we were meant to be seen, as perfect. With our God restored perfection, we will have entrance into heaven and eternal bliss in the presence God. Unfortunately, for those out of faith, they will not receive forgiveness from the Lord; they will not get their pardon. And without forgiveness, without that pardon, there will be no stay of execution; unbelievers will be sentenced to eternal punishment, they will go to hell. We are told this with Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats among many other places within the Bible.
First Corinthians 3:19 tells us “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God”. If the world can only offer foolishness, or science fiction according to Johnny Hart, why should we give these nonsensical views any weight? God certainly doesn’t! We should search out these views and with love correct these people’s thoughts. We are not going to change everyone, but we can get a few, perhaps a lot to change their minds and see there is indeed a God who created all things. If nothing else we can get the people to question what is being stated, and that is a good start.
The further men of knowledge push God out of creation, the harder it is for these men to explain creation. Removing the Creator from His creation does not mean God doesn’t exist. As men of learning try to find the Theory of Everything so they can explain what happened at the Big Bang, we believers know the two theories of physics work just the way God designed them to work and the men of science will never find a way to prove something happened that never did. The theories of the Big Bang and evolution do have the power to pull people away from God. But God’s Word is an even more powerful force to help bring back to Him. We have this Word, and God has told us to us it, and we start by saying, “In the beginning.” Amen.
