Why I Believe in Creation
Sermon Transcript
0:00:14.0
How many of you have heard about the Superconducting Super Collider experiment going on in Geneva, Switzerland? Scientists around the world have gathered. And they have put together millions of high energy protons, spun them around at the speed of light in an opposite direction, and are smashing these protons together. I mean, it’s the ultimate science project if you like things like that. And it literally has scientists sitting on the edge of their seat to the universe. Apparently, one of the things they’re looking for is something called the Higgs boson. Now, I’m way over my understanding at this point. But the Higgs boson as I understand it is a small particle in physics that is necessary for something called the standard model to work. Now, that may not mean anything to you. It doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. What I found very interesting though is that the Higgs boson has another name to it. Are you ready for this? They call it the God particle. I heard one journalist say that, “Scientists from around the world hope that their experiment in Geneva sheds light on the origin of the universe.” Now, folks, that makes the book of Genesis a relevant study for us today. Because the book of Genesis does more than just shed light on the origin of life and the origin of the universe. But it does more than that. The book of Genesis is critically important for our understanding of so many doctrines in the Christian faith, including the nature of God, the nature of man, the nature and consequences of sin. It’s all there right in the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis, the early chapters, will also lead us to understand the origin and the definition of marriage. Could anything be more culturally relevant today? Genesis also tells us about work, that our work matters. It tells us something about the weekly day of rest. It tells us something about our relationship to the environment. Furthermore, Genesis explains how death, disease, pain, suffering and bloodshed entered into the world. It sheds light on our dark side and tells us about the origin of evil. And the book of Genesis also establishes that unifying theme in the scriptures we talked about over the last several weeks, that we all need a Savior to redeem us from the penalty and power of sin. It’s all there right in the book of Genesis. And I believe if we stumble in our understanding of the book of Genesis, we will veer off in a thousand different theological directions. So a study of the early chapters of Genesis is vitally important to us today.
0:03:04.8
Now, Genesis is not without controversy. In fact, the first 10 words of the book of Genesis introduce to controversy because it sets the framework for a worldview that not everybody accepts in our culture today. Let’s look at Genesis 1:1. If you have your Bible, you might want to turn there, but the verse is also on the screen. And I want us to read it together. This is a familiar verse, I’m sure. Many of you have it memorized. The first 10 words of the Bible, and they go like this. Let’s read it together. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It’s a pretty powerful statement, isn’t it? The Bible begins by assuming the existence of God, not arguing for it. And it tells us that God created the heavens and the earth. Do you believe that God created? Do you know or believe that you are created being? Or do you believe that you are the product of protoplasmic pond scum that evolved by random chance over millions and millions of years into the complex being that you are today? Those are kind of the options before us and a lot of other theories in between that meld those two together. What are we to believe about the book of Genesis and this powerful statement? Some people say that science and the Bible are irreconcilable. That they're at odds with each other. That you can’t get the scientists and the theologians together. But I want to show you how science and the Bible harmonize in the first 10 words of the Bible.
0:04:44.2
And I need to take you back—for some of you, way back—to your high school science class where you might have learned that for anything to form or develop and to understand that, there are five things that we must know: time, force, action, space and matter. Say that with me. Time, force, action, space and matter. Now, watch this. “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. The next time you think that science and the Bible are at odds with each other, that they just can reconcile or harmonize on the same page, just consider this. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of time for science to catch up with what God already knows. And there it is in the first 10 words of the book of Genesis.
0:05:47.0
Also in that first verse of the book of Genesis is the word “create.” It says that God created the heavens and the earth. And this comes from a Hebrews word bara, and it speaks of God bringing something into existence out of nothing. And that’s significant because the Genesis account of creation is unique. Unique as compared to all of the other creation mythologies that are out there in other aspects of ancient literature, like the Babylonian creation mythology. In every other creation mythology, those mythologies begin with the universe already in existence. But the Bible does something different here. It says that an eternal being who never had a beginning and never had an end—we learn that beyond, you know, even the book of Genesis—but God who existed at the very beginning of time, He created something out of nothing. Now, the evolutionist says that nothing plus chance and time equals everything. But the Bible says nothing plus God equals everything. And those are two worldviews that are competing in our culture today.
0:07:00.5
I want to talk to you this morning about why I believe in creation. And I want to tell you up front that I am biased. I am biased by a belief in God. I am biased by my view of scripture, the inspired and infallible Word of God. I am a pastor and a theologian. I am not a scientist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express. Being interpreted as, I’m smart enough to go talk to some creation scientists and other scientists. And I did that a few weeks ago in a little journey to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, and had a fabulous conversation. They have a staff of very credentialed PhD scientists in molecular biology and geological history and a lot of things that I haven’t studied before. But it was fascinating to talk with these trained and credentialed scientists who look at the same facts that all scientists look at, but come to a different conclusion. And so with that in mind, let me tell you why I believe in creation. And there are four reasons this morning.
0:08:08.7
The first is because the plain reading of the infallible Word of God is preferred to the fallible theories of man. In Genesis 1:1 it starts this way. “In the beginning.” Now, what that tells us is that all of life has a starting point. And this is what the Creation Museum teaches you. You go into the initial room there, and it’s kind of the starting point room. And their idea is that all scientists kind of look at the same set of facts. They have two paleontologists in a field somewhere looking at the same fossil record. All scientists look at the same set of facts, but they come to different conclusions. Why is that? Well, because they have different starting points. My starting point in the Bible. For many of you, your starting point is the Bible. For many of us, our starting point is a theistic worldview where we believe in the existence of God and the supernatural. Others have a different starting point, an atheistic worldview where they interpret the data differently. Same set of facts, same data, different starting points, different conclusions. Now, the question is this with regard to evolution, Darwinian evolution, which the vast majority of secular scientists, if not all of them, believe is an incontrovertible fact. Can all those scientists, so many scientists, be wrong? And the answer to that question, with all due respect, is yes. They’ve been wrong before, respectfully.
0:09:51.7
Let’s go back in a time a little bit to a geometric theory that was popular among scientists many centuries ago. This was a theory that said that all the planets in the solar system revolve around the earth. Now, when this theory was popular and en vogue, the best scientific minds in the world that day believed in this geocentric theory of the universe until two scientists named Copernicus and Galileo came along. And they had a different spin on this. They believed that all of the planets in the solar system didn’t revolve around the earth, but around the sun. And Copernicus and Galileo were vilified by their fellow scientists, and a heated debate emerged in the scientific community for some time until finally Copernicus and Galileo prevailed. There was another theory that was popular even around the time that Christopher Columbus set out to sail the ocean blue. This was the flat earth theory. There were scientists back then that were saying, “You’re gonna sail right off the edge of the earth, Christopher Columbus.” And what was interesting is that even the Church jumped aboard this bandwagon. And the Church at time…and this is an embarrassing time in church history. But in an effort to accommodate the scripture to the popular and, I’ll say, fallible theories of man at the time, the Church went to find proof text and verses in the Bible that said, yes, the earth is flat. Well, I don’t know of a single scientist today that would say anything like that. The flat earth theorists were proven wrong, and so was the Church not only proven wrong, but looked silly at that time. And that’s an important thing to remember as we come in contact with a number of other prevailing theories today. You heard Dr. Mortenson in the video talk about how this whole debate between creation and evolution is rather complicated because it’s not just about Darwinian evolution and millions and millions of years, and young earth biblical creationism. Now we have a blending of the two driven often by church people and scientific church people who want to find a way to fit millions of years and Darwinian evolution into the Genesis record. It’s emerging theories like theistic evolution or progressive creationism. This idea that God participated in the evolutionary process. And with all due respect, I understand that some of you may hold ideas like that. Maybe you’ve done a little bit of reading about that. The vast majority of church and evangelical leaders today support those views. In fact, if you hold to the plain and normal reading of scripture about creation, that a day is a day that God created in six literal days, you are in a minority camp in the Church today. My question is, have we done the same thing that the flat earth guys were doing years ago and tried to accommodate scripture to the fallible, changeable theories of man, and will the Church end up looking silly again because we walked away from the plain and normal reading of scripture in Genesis 1?
0:13:12.4
There was another time that the Church looked silly, and this was around the beginning of the 19th century while embracing something known as the Gap theory. While we’re here in Genesis 1:1-2, you need to know that there was a theory that emerged about a hundred years before it became popular, but it was popularized right around the turn of the 19th century, I believe. And this theory said that there was a massive gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. And this gave theologians an opportunity to take the theories of man at the time in the scientific realm and fit them into Genesis 1. Now, what’s interesting is Henry Morris, a PhD scientist at the institute for Creation Research says this. “The death of the Gap theory came with the 1978 publication of Dr. Weston Fields’ fine book Unformed and Unfilled.” Now, there is a page turner, huh? But he goes on to say, “Fields specified the many biblical problems inherent in the concept. And with only a few exceptions, biblical scholars have now abandoned the Gap theory.” One of the reasons I am a biblical creationist, and I’ll even make a case for being a young earth biblical creationists in the weeks to come, is that the plain reading of the infallible Word of God is preferred to the fallible theories of man. Or, like they say at the Creation Museum, the Bible is the history book of the universe. Let’s start with the Bible, and then let’s interpret the facts from there.
0:15:00.7
The second reason I believe in creation is because living organisms are too complex to believe they happened by random chance over millions and millions of years. Now, we’ve been taught in our education system that evolution is an incontrovertible fact. Have you ever heard that? I was listening to a well-known female journalist the last couple of weeks. They were actually debating Sarah Palin’s view on creation and maybe teaching that in the public schools. And this well-known journalist had the audacity to say, “We all know that evolution is a fact.” And I said, “Boy, what books are you reading today?” In fact, Darwin himself didn’t even believe that his science was based on true science. In a letter to a friend named Asa Gray, Charles Darwin wrote, “I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science.” You ever heard that before? “It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaws and holes as sound parts.” Darwin in his own words. You see, the myth we have to expose is this idea that evolution is an incontrovertible fact. It’s not a fact. It’s a theory. It’s a hypothesis. And the truth of matter is that evolution cannot even be proven by the simple scientific method.
0:16:27.2
Again, back to your high school science class. Let’s go there for a moment. You remember the scientific method which says that for anything to be proven scientifically, it has to go through stages of observation, experimentation, falsification, and have proven results time and time again. Well, evolution fails on all accounts. It doesn't even, you know, hold up to scientific method. Now, in fairness, creation doesn’t either, but nobody is saying creation is provable by the scientific method. Duane Gish is a PhD scientist in biochemistry and a creationist. And he says it this way. “Evolution theory is indeed no less religious and no more scientific than creation.” The truth of the matter is that evolution is an atheistic worldview carefully camouflaged by science and taught in our education system to be a fact. And it’s anything but that. This has led many, even secular scientists, move toward something today called intelligent design. Maybe you’ve heard stories about it or read some books about it. Intelligent design is really nothing new. It’s really the resurgence of an idea put forth in the mid-18th century by a British Christian apologist named William Paley. William Paley is famous for what was called “the watchmaker theory.” And William Paley asked us to imagine walking along a path and stumbling upon a watch and picking up that watch and opening up the back of the watch and looking inside to see a highly complex mechanized system. And Paley asked the question, what would you and I conclude if we found that watch and looked inside of it? And the answer to the question that he purported was we would conclude that there is a watchmaker somewhere, a designer who put this intricate thing together.
0:18:25.8
Intelligent design basically says since Darwinian evolution came out, we have learned that the universe and life itself is very, very complex, unlike Darwin, who believed that single cell was a simple organism. Darwin was very wrong about that. We now know today that a single cell is a highly complex and sophisticated molecular machine that can store massive amounts of (0:19:00.1) information and take that information and redistribute it to create proteins and other things that cells do. It is very, very complex. On the other end of the scale, we sent telescopes way out into outer space and learned that our universe is so complex. And somewhere in between is you and me. I mean, just look at the human body. Even Darwin said that the eye, with the way the eye works, I mean, is so complex. How do you conclude that it happened by random chance mutations over millions and millions and millions of years? Those in the intelligent design community, in fairness, they do not conclude with the God of the Bible. They just say, “Listen, it’s far too complex to say all of this happened by random chance plus time over millions of years, and we need to (0:20:00.1) consider some other things.”
0:20:01.1
For instance, Richard Dawkins, who is the most renowned Darwinian evolutionist today, a self-proclaimed atheist and a professor at the University of Oxford, Dawkins himself admitted, “We have seen that living things are too improbable and designed to have come into existence by chance.” Anthony Flew is a famous atheistic philosopher who kind of stirred things up recently when he embraced intelligent design. Flew said, “It now seems to me that the findings of more than 50 years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.” It’s amazing how the secular scientific world is moving away from Darwinian evolution toward intelligent design. Oh, they’re not concluding the God of the Bible, but it’s a step toward biblical creationism, isn’t it? Because life is just too far complex to conclude that it happened by chance. And yet, Darwinian evolution, for it to succeed and to be true, it depends upon massive changes or mutations in an organism that actually changes one species into another species.
0:21:23.3
And we need to understand the difference between microevolution and macroevolution. Everybody agrees that microevolution takes place. It takes place when a finite amount of DNA in a particular species gets reshuffled, sort of like the shuffling of a deck of cards. And so, you know, dog DNA shows itself in a golden retriever, a German shepherd, a poodle, a Rottweiler, you know, all the different breeds of dogs. But when you shuffle the DNA any more than you shuffle the deck of cards, you don’t end up with more cards. You don’t end up with more DNA. You just end up with changes or microevolution within species, or as the first chapter of Genesis says, within kinds. That’s understandable. It’s macroevolution, where the dog becomes a cat or the sea creature becomes a land creature…okay. One guy comes up to me after the first service says, “A dog becoming a cat would never happen because a dog is a higher form on the…” All you cat lovers out there, I’m gonna get the letters here, aren’t I?
0:22:40.3
Lynn Margulis is a biologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She said, “New mutations don’t create new species; they do create offspring that are impaired.” See, Darwin said that they not only create new species, but they create improved species. No, a mutation creates, you know, something weird out there, not an improved species. And even Darwin himself in his own words says, “If it can be demonstrated that any complex organism existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” And so the truth of the matter today is that the hardcore atheistic Darwinian evolutionist is on the run. Some of them are running toward intelligent design. A few of them are running to the God of the Bible, but that’s a whole other discussion.
0:23:41.2
There’s a third reason I believe in creation, and this is because the fossil record fails to confirm millions of years of evolutionary history. We’re talking about the transitional forms now, those missing links. Again, if Darwin was correct that these massive changes and mutations in organisms took place over millions and millions of years on a macro level and the sea creature became a land creature, then somewhere in the fossil record we should find that in-between stage- half sea creature, half land creature. No, the fossil record doesn’t show that. Actually, what it shows is certain species just appearing in the geological record. And that has led some scientist to come up with ideas like punctuated equilibrium and spontaneous generation just to explain. It just appears. Well, it sounds a lot like creation. Because it’s hard for them to go into the fossil record and to find these transitional forms. My point is simply this. Whether you believe biblical creation or Darwinian evolution, it’s a matter of faith. Now, that’s a hard word for scientists to embrace, just as hard as it is for some biblical creationists in years past to accept some scientific hypotheses. But it takes faith.
0:25:18.1
Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God.” By faith we understand what the biblical record in Genesis says. “So that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” It kind of gives reference to bara, created out of nothing, okay. That God created something out of nothing, and you and I are here as a result of that. We just accept that by faith. Verse 1 of that same chapter says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Christianity is an intelligent faith based upon reasonable evidence. The creation worldview falls into that category too. But at some point, by faith, we must accept these things. Duane Gish wrote a book years ago titled Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No. And he took Hebrews 11:1 and kind of turned it around in a creative turn of phrase. He said, “Now evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for, and the evidence of links not seen.” And that’s kind of the summary of that.
0:26:37.9
There is a fourth and final reason that I believe in creation, and that’s because the creation worldview affirms the dignity of humankind and it gives meaning to life. Friends, if you get nothing else out of 10 weeks in Genesis 1-3, just know that your life matters because God created you in His image. We are the imago dei, a Latin term that means “image of God.” God stamped His logo on you and me, and with that comes great dignity and meaning and purpose and all of those things that we intrinsically are looking for in life. Every generation is looking for this. But in the absence of a creation worldview, such things introduce us to the idea that life is cheap and meaningless, found in things like abortion on demand, euthanasia. Oh, and let’s just throw the Holocaust in there as well. Can I do that for a moment? A professor and historian from California State University by the name of Richard Weikart raises the rhetoric a bit in his book titled From Darwin to Hitler. And he says some pretty strong words here, but I think it’s worth noting. He concludes in his book that “Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust. But without Darwinism, neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the world’s greatest atrocities was morally praiseworthy.”
0:28:27.3
A guy by the name of Francis Galton was Hitler’s cousin. And he introduced us and the world to something eugenics. Eugenics is the science of breeding better humans through Darwinian principles. And Hitler picked this up and, with the “survival of the fittest” philosophy of the world, he took it to the nth degree. He classified Jews and gypsies and handicapped as inferior people. And you know the story of the Holocaust. Is it a result of a culture we’ve developed that says life is an accident? Life isn’t the result of a creator God who created us in His image. Life is an accident, so life is cheap. Life is disposable. Survival of the fittest. And I want to suggest to you that in the absence of a creation worldview, we set the individual adrift in a sea of moral confusion that results in these kinds of atrocities. And I would like our presidential candidates to talk more about abortion on demand than what they’re talking about, because it is the Holocaust of our time.
0:29:49.0
But a creation worldview leads us to serve people and not destroy people. And we find this in the life of Jesus. Turn with me to John 13, and I want to show you something in conclusion here. I love this picture from our Lord’s life. It’s the beginning of a section of scripture known as the upper room discourse. And here is what John writes about our Lord. John 13:3, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God…” Now, in case I read that too quickly, let me read it again and insert a thought or two. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands,”—there is purpose—“and that He had come forth from God,”—there is origin—“and was going back to God,”—there is destiny. Look at what He did. He rose “from supper, and laid aside His garments,”—this is amazing—“and taking a towel, He girded Himself about.” Rooted in the core of His being as the Son of God was a sense of purpose and origin and destiny. He knew who He was, where He came from, where He was going, and what He was about. And I’m gonna suggest to you that in the absence of a creation worldview we’ve lost matters like this. We don’t know who we are, what we believe, where we came from, let alone where we’re going in this culture. We’re adrift in a sea of confusion. But you go back to Genesis, and we get rooted by the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
0:31:30.7
My wife Cathryn, her father used to say this to Cathryn and her brothers as they were going out to hang with friends on a Saturday night or maybe going out on a date. “Know who you are, what you believe, and where you come from.” That’s good advice for parents to give kids. Know who you are, what you believe, and where you came from, origins. They go off to college. “Know who you are, what you believe, and be sure of where you came from. Not just the house, but all the way back to get beginning to the book of Genesis.” I believe there is something holy about the ground we are on in Genesis 1:1 as the God of the universe gives us a glimpse into His handiwork. It’s a powerful, powerful study, a life changing one, and I think one that our culture needs to hear today. Let’s pray together.
0:32:33.6
Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for telling us how we got here. And we want to affirm today our belief in the infallible, inspired Word of God. Father, there are great discussions to have in science and biology and chemistry and places like that. We’re learning a lot that is maybe catching up to what You already know. But, Father, today we want to affirm our belief in You, our creator God. And for the person who may be here today and they're not quite to that realization, to that acceptance, Father, may they find this place a safe place to have an honest and open conversation about it. To examine the date, the facts, to examine Your Word, to understand the implications, and maybe even to lead us to the One who, as said in the scripture, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us,” even Jesus Christ. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.
0:34:12.4