Sunday, October 18, 2015

God's Creation: God's Works

Praise the Lord. I will extol the Lord with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are His deeds, and His righteousness endures forever. He has caused His wonders to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and compassionate. He provides food for those who fear Him; He remembers His covenant forever. – Psalm 111:1-5

He has shown His people the power of His works, giving them the lands of other nations. The works of His hands are faithful and just; all His precepts are trustworthy. They are established for ever and ever, enacted in faithfulness and uprightness. He provided redemption for His people; he ordained His covenant forever—holy and awesome is His name. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow His precepts have good understanding. To Him belongs eternal praise. – Psalm 111:6-10

Welcome! Today we continue our series called Sound Doctrine and look at God’s works. Obviously this is quite a huge topic. I think we can broadly classify God’s works into three categories: God’s works of creation, God’s work of upholding His creation, and God’s works in dealing with man and creation, most notably His work of redemption accomplished through Jesus’ death and resurrection. We could spend forever on these topics, and we will talk about redemption in detail later in this series. For this reason, I am going to primarily focus on the first of these topics, God’s works of creation.  I will also touch on the second topic, God’s work of upholding His creation, although we will really deal with it more next week when we talk about God’s sovereignty.

That God is Creator is the very first message of the Bible; Genesis 1:1 says,

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. – Gen. 1:1

This is repeated again and again through Scripture.

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth. – Psalm 33:6

Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. – John 1:3

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. – Heb. 11:3

Those who believe in the Big Bang sometimes think that science explains away the need for God, but the Big Bang theory does not do that. I was on the Georgia Tech campus for LINC, the summer program our association of churches puts on for college students to grow in their faith and in leadership, and I met a student who told me he was an atheist for this reason. I asked him, “So you believe that the universe expanded from an initial state in which everything was extremely dense and compact, right?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, where did that initial state come from? How did that stuff, whatever it was, get there?” There was a pause, and then he said, “Oh.” I don’t remember the exact conversation, but with other students at this point, I have told them what the atheist position actually is. I realize that maybe I shouldn’t teach people how to be better atheists, but being a former atheist myself I can’t seem to help it. Anyway, I probably told him that the atheist position is that the stuff “just was,” and that statement is absolutely no more scientific than the statement that God made it. I think at that point since I had his respect, I told him something like the following, which I have shared many times: how many years ago I too was an atheist and made the decision to actually read the Bible for myself, using all the mental tools at my disposal that I had, not just science, but logic and internal consistency and other historical sources and archaeology and the testimony of experts and whether prophecies in the Bible were fulfilled, all to see whether the Bible was believable or not. But there was no shortcut – the most important thing I did was actually read it for myself. And what I found was probably the last thing I expected – I became so convinced of its truth, despite my desire to remain an atheist for many reasons, that I was basically pulled into the Christian faith, metaphorically kicking and screaming the whole way.  

Little kids, even the kids of atheist parents, unless their parents drill them, instinctively know that something must have made everything. And by something they don’t mean a machine, or a factory, or a force, but they mean a someone. Really, it’s just common sense. The problem is that we abandon common sense because we don’t want to believe it.

For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Him. – Col. 1:16

I love this verse because it goes a little further. It doesn’t just say God is the Creator, it says He did it “for Him,” meaning for Himself. As we discussed last week when talking about the Trinity, God already had community within Himself, within the Godhead, even though it is hard for us to understand. God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit all existed prior to creation. None of God was created; the three-in-one God was eternal. 

Because of this, we can’t say that God created the universe to fulfill some hole in Himself, for example, because He was lonely. I think this type of thinking is completely wrong and probably very dangerous, in the sense that we are ascribing to God qualities that are not who He is. What this Colossians verse does say is that He did it for Himself. God has put this creative spark in us as well – we love to create. When we do it, our motives are often mixed; we might do it in part because we crave the approval of others, for example – but there is a motive that is pure, that simply wants to be creative because creativity is, well, good. We know God’s motive was pure, and Genesis later tells us it was good, even very good

And because it was good, it deserves praise. God did not do it because He craved the praise of others, but because He did it, praise is absolutely what He deserves. And this is affirmed in the song of the twenty-four elders in heaven in the book of Revelation:

“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they were created and have their being.” – Rev. 4:11

What did God create? Everything! The entire universe! And the heavenly realms, wherever or whatever exactly they are. God created everything. 

Now the universe is big. How’s that for an understatement? Scientists say that we can’t know for sure how large the universe is, but the observable universe has a volume of about 10^80 cubic meters, and a mass (ordinary matter, not including dark matter) of about 10^53 kg. (Scientists think the universe is about 5% ordinary matter, the rest dark matter and dark energy.) These numbers are so large as to be utterly incomprehensible to us. Earth is but a blip in our solar system, our solar system is a blip in our solar interstellar neighborhood, our solar interstellar neighborhood is a tiny blip in the milky way galaxy, our milky way galaxy is a blip in our local galactic group, our local galactic group is a blip in the Virgo supercluster, the Virgo supercluster is a blip in our neighborhood of local superclusters, and our neighborhood of superclusters is a tiny blip in the observable universe. 

Even atheists look at this and are overwhelmed. A few weeks ago I want to a talk hosted by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Clemson entitled, “A God that Could Be Real: Spirtuality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet.” The speaker, Nancy Ellen Abrams, was a book author on this general topic and the wife of a researcher who focuses on dark matter. A quote from the abstract for her talk states: “Shedding traditional religious conceptions, she builds on the idea of emergence, a powerful new scientific concept that cuts across many fields and hones in on the complex relations inherent in our universe. [She] presents a fresh approach to an ancient topic that has intrigued scientists and theologians for years.” It sounded “New-Agey” to me before I went, and it felt New-Agey to me while I listened as well. 

The speaker was raised Jewish, rejected her roots, and became an atheist, much like me. But then she kept being overwhelmed by the mystery and beauty and order of the universe. On top of this, she had a personal experience with addiction that led her to go to a twelve-step group. They told her to pray to a higher power, so she said that she “made one up.” She insisted that this God be in the universe, not its creator, and it not be full of moral restrictions like the God she imagined she left behind. And the amazing thing was that when she prayed, she was delivered from her addiction.
I cannot do justice to her ideas, nor do I particularly want to, but the shallowness of her understanding of the God of the Bible and especially her kneejerk reaction to any suggestion that He might actually exist was pretty astounding for its level of disrespect in a public forum, if nothing else. Since then, I found an article about her in, of all places, the Huffington Post, hardly a conservative publication, but it does a great job in this article. The article quotes her as saying, “It really would be a challenge for a cosmologist to be an evangelical in academia. No one would respect them at all. I can’t imagine how someone could be comfortable with disassociating the science they are doing from the meaning of the science.” 

The article then quotes evangelical Christian astrophysicist Deborah Haarsma as “laughing” in response to this assertion. She then went on to give a list of Christian world-class scientists who work in this area, and said, “I do not find Abrams’ picture of God very satisfying. But I don’t think science is equipped to prove or disprove God. The Christian picture of God leads us to expect a universe with a beginning, filled with order and beauty. What I find in science is in harmony with my religious experience.”  


In her talk, Nancy attributed her deliverance from her addiction to her “emergent” ideas about God, which somehow have power in themselves. But what I think might have happened is that the true God, the one she still rejects, showed tremendous forbearance and mercy in her life as He continued and continues to try to draw her to Himself. I pray that someday her eyes will be opened as God opened mine.

But, back on topic, the more we learn about our amazing universe, the more we should see not an emergence of human ideas, but the handwriting of God, the Creator of it all. I am reminded of Romans 1, including the following:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. – Romans 1:20

Our response should be like the people in Acts who witnessed Peter heal the lame beggar, along with seeing Peter and John released from jail after speaking before the high priest and other Jewish leaders and refusing to stop preaching about Jesus. The people praised God, beginning with the following:

“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “You made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” – Acts 4:24b

They understood that God is the Creator, and they worshiped Him as Creator. So should we.

I have so far focused on the outward direction, to scales larger than us, but the intricacy and beauty and astounding nature of Creation in my opinion only magnifies as we just look here on Earth. When I look at the apparent fine tuning in the properties of matter, including how it all just “luckily” works out from only a few kinds of starting materials, protons, neutrons, and electrons, along with subatomic particles, I am drawn to worship God just as I am when I contemplate the immensity and grandeur of the Universe as a whole. I don’t have time to go into depth today, but I would encourage you to just really explore the amazing properties of water, for example. Many of its often unique properties are absolutely necessary for life on Earth. 

John Bullard spoke a few weeks ago on the quantum world, which we only barely understand, as it seems to break the rules of even what it means to exist as we understand it. Scientists who refuse to entertain the possibility of a Creator God still blissfully speak of “spooky action at a distance;” but this is only one example of the craziness that is the quantum world. 

And what about life? Life, all life, is beyond a doubt the most amazing thing of all in God’s creation. And here too we see atheist scientists frequently slip up and talk about this animal or that animal’s amazing design. You see this even in the top journals such as Nature. Um, I don’t think that design is the word you meant to use. You can’t have design without a Designer. Sometimes they will say that Nature designed it. But that too can’t be right, if you hold to a designer-less universe in which everything that has happened has only happened by random changes leading to some favorable outcomes (and mostly unfavorable ones) that are reproduced and propagated via natural selection. 

Now no teaching on God as Creator would be appropriate without looking at the Genesis 1 creation account, so let’s do that now.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. – Gen. 1:2-5

And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. – Gen. 1:6-8

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. – Gen. 1:9-13

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day. – Gen. 1:14-19

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. – Gen. 1:20-23

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. – Gen. 1:24-27

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”  Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. – Gen. 1:28-31

Now we will talk about the fall in a few weeks, but I do want to touch on it here – God said repeatedly that Creation was good, even very good. What about our modern world? Is it still good? I would say yes and no. Adam’s sin led to a curse on all Creation, but it is still completely appropriate to marvel at God’s works and give praise to God as Creator because, even though affected by the curse, it still points to the glory and magnificence of God. The analogy I might use is that if you love someone you look past outward appearances; you don’t stop loving someone just because they didn’t put on makeup or brush their teeth! In the same way, Creation is marred by Adam’s sin, but it still reflects God’s glory within. 

At the same time, Creation is broken. Scripture teaches that God won’t just apply glue and duct tape to Creation; Revelation shows that He will make something new, something better, and we will be there, with new bodies, a part of that new Creation, forever with Christ, because of Christ and His sacrifice.

So should we talk about the 12,000 pound elephant in the room? The question that troubles so many Christians in this modern age – how to reconcile science and the Creation account? I suppose that would be a good idea.
 
What are the real questions here? One is the following: How literally should we take the Genesis 1 account? Another, which unfortunately, gets asked more rarely, should be this: How trusting should we be that science is correct now? I say “now” because science has of course continued to change its story. Darwin’s book Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection was written in 1859, which may seem like a long time ago, but not when you compare it to when the Bible was written. 

As you probably know, sincere Christians have a variety of beliefs in response to these questions, and I think there is room for a variety of beliefs. There is a third question, however, that is a game changer, and this one I have a problem with. It would very rarely be asked this bluntly, but here goes: Can Genesis 1 just be entirely wrong? 

The problem with this question is that if you are willing to go there, what is there to stop you from asking the same question about any part of Scripture at all (especially the parts you don’t particularly like)? I don’t think we want to be like Thomas Jefferson, who actually cut out the parts of the Bible he didn’t agree with, do we? 

If you have questions about whether Scripture is really trustworthy at all, you have much deeper issues than how to reconcile science and the Bible. I personally trust my life on the Bible, and I also don’t trust myself. I know my heart is deceitful, just like Scripture says it is, and our earlier messages on the Bible dealt with how we can trust the Bible – and there is a wealth of more detailed information available that shows why you can trust the Bible with your life.

So, discounting that third question, the real questions are (1) how much room for interpretation is fair with Genesis 1 and (2) how much we really can trust science to be currently right. Let me start with the second question. All I can tell you is that understandings and beliefs in science are changing more rapidly than ever. Physicists are questioning everything, including whether the constants of the universe are really constant. And I would encourage you to think of over examples beyond the Creation question – for example, I thought eggs and cholesterol were terrible for you. Now they are saying they are good for you, and so is butter? I thought carbohydrates were supposed to be our main source of calories – now they are saying that that is a terrible idea? All I am trying to point out here is that the track record of science speaks for itself. And I say this not to disparage the scientific method – I think true science is great and an example of people using their God-given intellect to methodically and logically explore our universe. The problem is that so many conclusions go far beyond the scientific method. This is especially true when you try to use to science to explain things that are not repeatable. Understanding things like evolution and the beginning of our universe is extremely difficult via science, and humans being humans, our sin gets in the way of everything we try to do, including science.

So what about the first question? Francis Schaeffer wrote a book called No Final Conflict. The title means that eventually, our understanding of Genesis 1 and our scientific understanding will agree, because there is only one truth. He also develops some possible positions people who believe in the total truthfulness of Scripture might take: 

1. God might have created a “grown-up” universe.
2. There might be a beak between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2 or between 1:2 and 1:3.
3. Days in Genesis one might be “long” days.
4. The flood might have affected geological data.
5. The “kinds” in Genesis 1 might be quite broad.
6. Death of animals might have occurred prior to the fall.
7. Where the Hebrew word bara is not used, there is the possibility of sequence from previously existing things.
 
My personal approach to this question was to explore the Hebrew in depth, using my own knowledge along with that of experts who knew far more Hebrew than I.  I did this a number of years ago, and one book that especially helped me was an extremely detailed and technical book by Jonathan Sarfati. My conclusion was that taking the “plain” meaning of the Hebrew was much less of a stretch than trying to accommodate these other kinds of theories, and so my basic beliefs are to take Genesis 1 quite literally. I would rather do this and turn out to be wrong than to cling to one particular less-than-literal interpretation and turn out to be wrong about that. 

Now going beyond these seven positions in No Final Conflict is the view of theistic evolution, which argues that living organisms came to be just as Darwin suggested, but that God guided that process so that the outcome was just what He wanted it to be. People with this view often suggest that God intervened at several critical points, such as the creation of matter, the creation of the simplest life form, and the creation of man. My concern about this view is that it really isn’t compatible with evolution. A true Darwinist would utterly reject the idea that God intervened with man, for example, by suddenly creating man apart from a gradual evolution from other creatures that were less intelligent, more apelike, etc.

I should mention that there is an ever-growing body of work, becoming ever more solid scientifically, that really challenges the fundamental ideas of evolution. I don’t have time to go into these here, but they touch on almost every conceivable front. I would be happy to point you to some resources that discuss these if you want to explore them further.
In my brief remaining time I want to mention some of the most common beliefs among those who believe the Bible is true and trustworthy.

One is the young earth belief, that days are literal days. There’s not really much to discuss here, except to note that it is at odds with not only evolutionary science but also physics which argues for a much older universe and older earth.

Among old-earth beliefs is the day-age view, which simply argues that the days of Genesis 1 are extremely long ages of time. This seems consistent with an old earth, but runs into problems with science which doesn’t agree with the order of the things created on each day. Especially problematic is the idea that the sun, moon and stars (Day 4) were apparently created millions of years after plants and trees (Day 3). In response, some argue that the sun, moon and stars were created on Day 1, but only made visible or revealed on Earth on Day 4. However, the Hebrew word choices for the verbs make this, in my opinion, somewhat of a stretch. Some also argue that the verbs should be taken as perfects, so that it reads, for example, “And God had made the great lights…”  This is a possible interpretation of the verbs for Day 4, and seems to take less mental gymnastics than other approaches.

Another old-earth view is the literary framework view, which points out a powerful literary structure in what happens in days 1-3 and 4-6 and argues that the passage isn’t meant to be taken as a chronological account at all. I have talked about this literary structure in past messages; in brief, Days 1 and 4 both deal with light and darkness, Days 2 and 5 both deal with water and sky, and Days 3 and 6 both deal dry land and the seas. Furthermore, Days 1 through 3 primarily deal with separating things (light and darkness, sky and waters, dry land and seas) and Days 4 through 6 deal with filling the things that have been separated (the heavens with the sun, moon, and stars, the sky and water with fish and birds, and the dry land seas with animals and man).
 
Again this is possible, but my personal reading of Genesis 1 just naturally reads to me like a sequence of events through time. And the idea of working 6 days and then resting (the Sabbath) doesn’t seem to make sense if there is no chronological framework at all in the days of creation. And as I have pointed out before, God often orchestrates real history by sticking a literary framework on top of it. He is God, the Author of History, and can do that. Just because the literary framework is there doesn’t mean that the historical framework isn’t also there.
 
I understand that it is frustrating to not know with certainty how to interpret Genesis 1. But I would counsel two things: First, that if you have come to definite (in your mind) conclusions one way or the other, to extend grace to those who have come to different conclusions than you. As Paul writes, 

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. –I Cor. 13:2

There are far more important things than whether you are right about this issue. Second, if you haven’t come to definite conclusions, don’t let your uncertainty cloud your understanding about the rest of the Bible. The issue isn’t whether the Bible is trustworthy. The issue is that Gen. 1 is a sparsely worded account and that science, whose opinions are ever changing, is trying to answer the hardest questions science can ever attempt to answer. But the Bible is trustworthy. You can stake your life on it. Most importantly, you can trust your life to Jesus, to God, to the Author not only of the Bible but of all of Creation. 

I am reminded of God’s answer to Job in the storm. Among many other things, God asked,

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? – Job 38:4-7

We were not there, and we do not know. And that’s OK. Job replied to God, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” For now we wait and trust. Some day we will not see darkly, as through a veil, or a storm, but will see Jesus face to face. And either our questions will be answered, or we won’t care to ask, because we will have something infinitely better than answers.   

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