Sunday, February 2, 2014. God Is, Part Four: God Is Creator. Genesis 1:1-2, 31

- History begins with the Creator, God, who made the universe in six days and set humanity over it to tend it and name the animals until everything was under their dominion, even as they were under God's dominion.

- That is what Moses taught his readers.

- We live in a world that is dominated by evolutionary philosophy and in which many Christians have tried to fit the evolutionary story into the Scriptures.

- However, what many fail to understand is that when we try to fit the evolutionary story into the Scriptures, we compromise the authority of the word of God.

- Please, allow me to put this plainly and simply: evolution is philosophically opposite to the message of the Bible.

*- Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, and other self named Free- thinkers wanted to free science from Moses. That is, it was their earnest desire to remove any biblical or Christian influence from how the world thought about science.

- In reality, these freethinkers enslave themselves to their own thinking and to a world of death.

- You see if evolution is true, then Genesis is a myth, the gospel falls, and we have no need of a Savior.

- Genesis deals with the big questions of life: why am I here? Why does the world exist, why does anything exist? What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of my life?

- According to the Scriptures, there is a God, He is Creator and He is in control.

- In the evolutionary scheme, however, the universe is either some great accident or else it has always existed, life has no purpose, everything is meaningless. The only meaning your life and my life have is the meaning we each take from it.

- If, however, we take the Scriptures at face value, and I believe we are meant to, then what was received and written is historical fact.

- If we are going to accept and treat the Scriptures as real history, then we need to recognize that there are seven key events in the historical timeline presented in the Bible.

- The 7 C's of history: Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation.

- These events explain the big questions of life and oppose evolutionary philosophy. Let's briefly explore each of the 7 C's.

*-First, Creation: God created everything approximately 6000 years ago in six 24-hour days.

- The precise repetition the Hebrew author used to describe the days of Genesis 1 emphasizes that they were six 24-hour periods.

- Let's hear them together consecutively, so we get the plain sense of it: And evening was and morning was day one (Genesis 1:5). And evening was and morning was the second day (Genesis 1:8). And evening was and morning was the third day (Genesis 1:13). And evening was and morning was the fourth day (Genesis 1:19). And evening was and morning was the fifth day (Genesis 1:23). And evening was and morning was the sixth day (Genesis: 1:31).

- A good general rule of thumb with interpreting Scripture is "when the plain sense makes the most sense, seek no other sense, lest it become nonsense."

- The plain sense reading of these verses from Genesis 1 is that these were six literal 24-hour days.

- The other two repetitions in this account that are important are "God said" and "God saw that it was good."

- God speaks and it is done. And God looked at his creation each day and saw that it was good, and on the sixth day, he saw that it was very good.

*- This should cause us to consider that this was a world without suffering and sin, a world without death, disease, or decay. It was perfect, whole, complete.

- The evolutionary story claims that the universe exists because of the Big Bang approximately 13 billion years ago; the earth formed 4 1/2 billion years ago, and every living thing has evolved through billions of years of death, disease and decay to their present state.

- Biblical history teaches an opposite story.

*-Second, Corruption: The first human beings, Adam and Eve, disobeyed their Creator. Because of their disobedience, death, disease and decay entered the world. Such is the plain sense reading of Genesis 3.

- Billions of years of death, disease and decay do not fit with biblical history.

*- How can you have billions of years of death, disease and decay before sin?

- The straightforward, logical answer is you cannot.

- Either evolution is correct or the Bible, God's word, is correct. God's creation was perfect until the sin of humanity.

- No death, disease, and decay until after sin enters the picture.

*- Third, Catastrophe: After generations of sin, suffering and violence; death, disease and decay, God looked over all the earth and saw that every thought and imagination of humanity was consistently totally evil (Genesis 6:5).

*- Since only Noah found favor with the Lord God, then God by means of a catastrophic global flood destroyed the entire surface of the earth and every living thing.

- Only Noah, his family, and 2 of every land dwelling animal that had the breath of life (along with seven pairs of every clean animal) entered the 450 foot long ark.

- If Noah's flood were a real event, what would we expect to find as we look at the earth today?

*- We would expect to find "billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth."

- And what do we find? We find, "billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth."

- Contrary to the observable geological evidence, many dismiss the Bible's claims of catastrophic global flood and assume a localized flood in the region of Mesopotamia.

- For that to happen, however, the entire region would have to have been shaped like a bowl, which it is not.

- Genesis 7:19 states, "and the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered."

- There's that word again! All. The Hebrew word for all occurs twice in that verse, translated in English as all and whole.

- Whenever we see that word, all, I remind us we have to ask ourselves a question: what does that leave out?

- According to Genesis, the flood was a global event.

- So we can either accept the biblical account of a global catastrophic flood, which destroyed the entire surface of the earth, or we can reject the biblical account.

*- Fourth, Confusion: After the catastrophic flood of Noah's day, God blessed Noah and his descendents and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (Genesis 9:1). But Noah's descendents did not obey.

*- Instead, they migrated together to the plain of the land of Babylon. And because they all spoke the same language, God said, "Nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them!" (Genesis 11:6b)

*- So, God confused their language and since the people of that day could no longer understand one another, they were forced to spread out and migrate all over the earth.

*- The evolutionary story presents a kind of confusion in and of itself telling us that there are many different races of humankind and that these races are all at different levels of evolutionary development, migrating over 1000's of years.

- This idea is definitely at odds against the Scriptures.

*- As communicated in Genesis and as we heard from the apostle Paul a few weeks ago, "From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole Earth."

- The evolutionary story goes out of its way to reject the truth that every human being is either a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve.

- Evolution's goal has always been to remove God from the picture and see what our human imaginations can come up with to explain our origins.

- Let's be reminded this morning that our God is a missionary God. He is on a mission to redeem the world from sin, suffering, and violence; death, disease, and decay.

- So he called out a people for himself, promising that through Abraham's offspring all the nations of the earth would be blessed, which brings us to the fifth C, Christ.

*- Fifth, Christ: The gospel writer, John the apostle, wrote: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us..." (John 1:1-3, 14a)

- The Creator became human in the person of Jesus Christ.

- The birth of Jesus our Lord marks God's D-Day, the beginning of God's full-scale assault against the powers of darkness which rule his world.

 - The Lord Jesus obeyed God in everything. - Alike, yet not like Adam, he was tempted in every way, just as we are yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). By his perfect life, Jesus our Lord fulfilled the law.

- Evolutionists have a questionable interest in their story because if Jesus was and is who he claimed to be and everything he taught is correct, then the evolutionary story is a lie.

*- Those that tell the evolutionary story are comfortable with Jesus being a good man, a sound moral teacher, or even a prophet, but not our Creator.

*- CS Lewis called such an admission patronizing nonsense; either Jesus was and is who he claimed to be or he is not; our Lord himself did not give us any other options.

*- Sixth, Cross: In 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul gives his readers the basics about the good news: Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; he was buried, he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures.

- The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus from the grave established his place as Lord and Messiah, the Savior of the world.

- The historical facts surrounding his crucifixion, death, and burial, and the reality of the physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the grave vindicated him and the Scriptures themselves.

- All who put their trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior can have life in his name, both now and forever more.

*- The evolutionary story denies the significance of the cross of Christ by denying the supernatural and, therefore, the resurrection, thus seeking to rob the world of its Savior.

- In his cross, the Lord Jesus more than identified with sinners.

- As Paul wrote, "for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

- Because Jesus became sin for us and because he is risen, we are saved through faith in him. His resurrection vindicates the Bible start to finish.

*- Seventh, Consummation: God is a missionary God. He is on a mission to redeem the world from sin, suffering, and violence; death, disease, and decay. Jesus is coming again.

- God is going to renew his creation. He is going to establish a new heaven and a new earth. And everything that does not belong in that holy and perfect place is going to the incinerator.

*- God will judge the living and the dead. "And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who are in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire." (Revelation 20:13-15)

- There is a God, He is Creator and He is in control; the day is coming when that dominion will be perfected and restored and renewed.

- The Scripture testifies that the Lord Jesus says so, "Behold, I am making all things new"(Revelation 21:5).

*- Those who tell the evolutionary story are uncomfortable with God's judgment and hell.

*- In their story, humanity still has billions of years to get it right and if there is a God, which there probably isn't, he is loving, and he doesn't send anyone to hell.

*- However, since there is no God in their story, then there is no afterlife, and when you die you just cease to exist.

*- When confronted with the truth of God's word that makes us uncomfortable, many people try to ignore, deny, or explain it away.

- My prayer is that today you would affirm our take-home truth: There is a God, He is Creator and He is in control

- I also pray that you would be better equipped to stand on the word of God in response to evolutionary philosophy and other ideas that compromise Scripture.

- May God by his all powerful Holy Spirit and through his word enable each of us to separate truth from fiction, fact from fantasy.

*- Let us agree together in the Lord to familiarize ourselves with these seven key events of history: Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation so that we can continually be assured as well as assure others that There is a God, He is Creator and He is in control.