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View this message at: https://mycrossway.churchcenter.com/episodes/65636
Introduction
Genesis 1:1–13 ESV
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. 9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
We have spent the last several weeks covering the creation account of Genesis of the Holy Scripture. The scripture that is God-breathed and authoritative. Over the last several weeks, I’ve demonstrated to you how theories like evolution are imposed to undermine Scripture and unseat God from His position as Creator. Something that I’ve shown you and I will continue to show you, has failed in all its attempts.
For some reason, various Christians or teachers have attempted to figure out a way to include the evolutionary idea into the creation narrative. Either they are looking for notoriety or acceptance in academic circles, or they are afraid to stand up against the false teaching. What is interesting is how science has become supreme to the Scripture and Scripture must now before what our world contends is the final authority in this matter. But as I told you last week, science is never an acceptable hermeneutic of Scripture.
So either you believe the Bible or you do not. If you do not believe this account, you fall into one of these two categories:
1. Theistic Evolutionist: Believes that God is real, yet He used evolution to evolve all things in this world to include the creation of mankind,
2. Naturalistic Evolutionist (which most non-believers are): Believes that everything evolved by accident and that there is no God nor Creator.
Neither of these are compatible with the creation narrative. In fact, the more science attempts to justify its evolutionary theory, the more it finds itself kneeling to the Bible. And every knee will bow before God. The question is will you worship Him as your creator and redeemer or will you stand before Him as Judge?
Paul Ackerman in his book, It’s a Young World After All, says this: “Let me be blunt on this matter. Evolutionists around the world have had to learn the hard way that evolution cannot stand up against creationism in any fair and impartial debate situation where the stakes are the hearts and minds of intelligent, undecided, but nevertheless objective and open-minded audiences. Experience will prove that the same is true for the age issue as well. Evolutionists’ beliefs regarding the origin and development of life cannot withstand the scrutiny of an informed opposition, and neither can evolutionists claim to the effect that the universe has existed for 10 to 20 billion years and the earth for 4.5 billion years. To delay the collapse of widespread public acceptance of such claims, it will be necessary for evolutionist scientists to carefully avoid debate,”
Genesis 1:9–10 ESV
9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
Now the dawning of Day 3 brings us to God creating dry land and vegetation. Secular scientists would say that this must have taken billions and billions of years because of rock formations, carbon dating, and the like. The age of the earth has continued to grow from millions of years to now somewhere around 45 billion years. If you can’t explain something you just add more time because something must come to be with time+chance+matter. There is an incredible amount of observable and scientific information to prove that this simply isn’t the case.
How many of you know what a rain gauge is and what it measures? Every once in a while you see on the weather report how many inches of rain we received. It’s not a very sophisticated test, you have a container with an open-top, and when it rains they measure how much water is in the container.
Now, it is possible to turn the rain gauge into a kind of clock. Let’s assume that we live in a location where it rains continuously, and rains at a known rate. When we set the container outside under those conditions of continuous rain and a known rate, we can generally determine how much time has gone by with the water in the container.
Now if we were to go out to Sidling Hill where they’ve carved the mountain down you make the road, or if you go to the Grand Canyon, you see the amazing geological stratifications. Evolutionists assume this has been this continually building up of sediment for billions of years. But there are a number of problems with this. Here’s one that I find very interesting: just like the rainfall, scientists can tell you how regularly meteors shower the earth. With the passage of billions and billions of years and the building up of sediment, it should be true that that sediment has within it meteors at every interval. If there is a regular and continuous fall of meteors on the earth, then you should be able to go down through the strata, or the geological column and find meteors all through that column and measure the age of the earth.
Interestingly enough, this is what the data shows: a survey of all literature on the occurrence of meteors in sedimentary rock failed to turn up one single case of a meteorite being found anywhere in any geologic column. The meteorite clock indicates we have very young earth; all the meteors are on the top.
The formation of the land that we see happened just 6000 years ago, the Bible says it, it is upheld (not denied) by science, and as the last separation of the first three days of creation takes place, the earth for the first time inhabits life. On the first day, God divides light from the darkness. On the second day, God divides the water below from the water above. On the third day, God divides land from the sea. God then commands these waters that cover the earth to be collected or gathered into one place. The Septuagint uses the word “synagogue,” a gathering place, to describe the land. All of the water surrounding the earth is now gathered into one place, and at the same time verse 9 says, “God said, ‘And let the dry land appear,’ and it was so.” So God separates the water from the dry land.
Henry Morris writes, “Great earth movements got underway. Surfaces of solid earth appeared above the waters, and an intricate network of channels and reservoirs opened up in the crust to receive the waters retreating off the rising continent.”
The wording in Genesis suggests that the land began as one great continent and you can see that in the forms of our continents today how they would nicely assemble together. They would be later divided into multiple continents by the cataclysm of the breaking up of the tectonic plates during the Flood when the fountains of the deep broke open the continent and pushed it into its current form. But at this time, the continent, perhaps only one continent, rises, and all the water is gathered into one place. In fact, if you look at the formation of the largest mountain range in the world - the MAR - it runs under the Atlantic Ocean from North to South. It shows the formation of the seafloor recently was involved in a pulling apart. There are abrupt edges and fault lines the indicate they were made within thousands of years, not billions or even millions of years. There’s something off the coasts called the shelf, where the ocean floor suddenly drops hundreds of feet. If the earth were billions of years or millions of years old, this would be slopped gradually by the cause of erosion. Likewise, the fans from the deposits of the rivers like the Amazon or Mississippi show sediment deposits into the oceans that indicated young earth.
What you have in Genesis is a very careful, detailed, believable, real account of creation, with nothing poetic, nothing legendary, nothing mythical about it. All of this happened by the Word of the Trinity. What I want you to understand is that Jesus was there. His Word was spoken and the living Word spoke this and it was for a purpose: for you and I and every person made in His image to have a dwelling place and share in relationship with him
John 1:1–3 ESV
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
Colossians 1:15–17 ESV
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him, all things hold together.
John 12:48–50 ESV
48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. 49 For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”
Up to this point on Day 3, God has not created anything, He is putting a final ordering to the shape of the earth. And God says it is good, and God can say it is good because it is ready to inhabit life. Then, with his second word on the third day, the emphasis began to switch toward fullness as he spoke plant life into existence:
Genesis 1:11–13 ESV
11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
notice that first of all in describing the plants, He says of them in verse 11, “plants yielding seed.” He says it again in verse 12, “plants yielding seed,” then again in verse 29, “plants yielding seed.” This is important for a couple of reasons. First, that the vegetation was capable of reproduction. One of the great, great wonders of the world is the science of seed dispersal. God designed seed dispersal, some of which is accomplished by birds who eat the seeds and then drop pre-fertilized seeds on your car or head or wherever. They are carried and distributed by the wind or animals or all kinds of ways.
Secondly, verse 11 tells us that the plants were made by God, not as seeds, but as full-grown plants. In fact, we shall see that’s the way the whole of creation was made, as mature earth. Everything was created full-grown.
Third, God made two categories of vegetation: plants and trees. The difference is the plant has the seed in it, and the tree has the seed in its fruit. Did you notice this little phrase "after their kind?” verse 12, after their kind; once in the middle of the verse, toward the end of the verse, after their kind. That phrase is repeated ten times in the first chapter of Genesis. The Hebrew word for kind is min and it indicates the limitations of variation. A plant can only bring forth something of its own kind. A tree can only bring forth something of its own kind. It only has the capacity to function on the basis of a genetic code that is in it.
In Genesis 1:11 and 12, you have the origin of all vegetable life, and you have not only its origin, but you have its orderly continuity through propagation which is there perpetuate all of life of its own kind. Never has a plant evolved into something higher. In fact, if you study mutations and changes in genetics, it’s always negative and downward.
You know, in all this, I have wanted to convey to you the idea of meaning. Creation by our God has a significant meaning. Your life has meaning. This place that He created for you has meaning. This was created by God for His pleasure and your dwelling place with Him. And yet we find it difficult to believe that because some scientist declares that the earth is a product of chance and so we assume that the Bible is wrong, God isn’t who the Bible says He is, and there must be another explanation. When you pull apart the fabric of your life, you have nothing to hold onto.
The realization of the truth of creation makes the gospel so much more clear. The gospel of Jesus Christ is beautiful and true, yet oftentimes one will ask, “How can it be true that there is only one way?” Odd, isn’t it, that we don’t ask the same questions of the laws of nature or of any assertion that lays claim to truth. We are discomfited by the fact that truth, by definition, is exclusive.
That is what truth claims are at their core. To make an assertion is to deny its opposite. Rather than complain that there is only one way, shouldn’t we be delighted? The question really is, how do we really know this is the truth?” Everyone has a worldview, which offers answers to four questions: 1) origin, 2) meaning, 3) morality, and 4) destiny. In turn, these answers must be correspondingly true on particular questions and, as a whole, all answers put together must be coherent. The Christian message is utterly unique and meets the demand for truth and clearly answers these questions. What happens to the message of the cross - your destiny - if we undermine the answer to the first question.
I will close with the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John
John 14:2–3 ESV
2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
He who built the marvels of this world we are living in today is preparing for you a home of eternity. Do you believe that? Reach for it in faith today!
