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.”
(The full article can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/25/god-that-could-be-real-nancy-abrams_n_7138202.html)
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:
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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