Series:
Growing Together in God's Grace
January 13, 2013
Dear friends in Christ.
A couple of weeks ago, we took a
look at who the true God is and how the God of the Bible in whom we believe is
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 3 persons, yet only one God. Last week we learned that believing in God the
Father, Almighty, means that we know who he is because he has revealed himself
to us in the Bible, which we accept is his Word, and through which we have come
to trust that all his promises are true.
Now, today, as we dive deeper into his word, we take a look at the very
beginning of all things. We take a look
at the foundation of all creation and the foundation of everything that we
believe and teach! We take a look at the
account of creation in Genesis 1 and as we do, we will learn, once again, “Why
the account of Creation is so very important!”
So, as we begin, I invite you to
open your Bibles to Genesis 1, which can be found on page 1 of your
Bibles. Now, as you turn to Genesis
Chapter 1, what I would normally do is give you a brief introduction of the context,
but today there really isn’t any introduction or context that I can give you
because before creation, there was only God.
Time and history as we know it did not begin until the Lord our God
began his creating work. Take a look
with me at Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." (Genesis 1:1, NIV84)
If these aren’t some very
familiar words! After all, these are
words that we have known by heart since we were little children. These are words that made our parents smile
when we first learned them in Sunday School or Christian Day School. These are words that we have cherished as
we’ve grown from Children to Teens and from Teens to Adults. But sadly, these are also words that have
sometimes been drown out by the cacophony of worldly ideas that bombard us on a
daily basis. Since we were little
children Television has been assuring us that the world in which we live is
billions of years old and that life evolved from the simplest organisms to the
complex organisms that we are today. Not
only that, but since the mid 1960’s our public school system has taught more
and more boldly and more and more factually that according to science all life
began when the first amino acids formed the first proteins in a puddle of
primordial soup somewhere around 3.5 billion years ago.
Yet, while science teaches us
that life spontaneously came into being around 3.5 billion years ago, if we
compare the timeline of world history with the timeline of the Bible, we find:
that Jesus was born on this earth roughly 2,000 years ago, that the flood took
place roughly 2,500 years before Jesus was born, and that roughly 1,500 years
before the flood our God created the heavens and the earth. In short, according to the timeline of the
Bible, it was roughly 6,000 years ago that the Lord our God called everything
into existence by his almighty word. As
Genesis 1:1 tells us in the Hebrew, (spelled Phonetically) “beraysheet barah
Elohim”. Now, this is something I taught
you a little more than a year ago when we went through the Stained Glass Window
Series. Beraysheet means “beginning” or
as we translate, “in the beginning.” (In Latin it would be translated as
Genesis, which is why the name of the first book of the Bible is, Genesis.) Barah means, “he created” with an emphasis on
calling something into existence out of nothing. “Elohim, which is the subject
of this sentence, means “God”. So, in
three short words Moses establishes the fact that until Elohim (God) created
(barah) the heavens and the earth, there was no time, no space, no matter; in
fact, there was nothing in existence except for the Lord our God, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit! There was nothing but
God until the very beginning of time (Beraysheet) when he, Elohim, Barah(ed)
began his creating work, creating time and space, light and dark, matter and
energy out of nothing; calling it all into existence as a formless and empty
lump of clay, so to speak, from which he would spend the next five, literal,
twenty-four hour days, forming the universe and all things. Just as Moses tells us in verse 3-5 “And God
said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was
good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light
“day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was
morning—the first day." (Genesis 1:3–5, NIV84)
That was the first day! From there the Lord went on to separate the
waters on the earth from the waters in the sky.
He called forth the dry ground and produced vegetation on it—never
planting seeds, but simply calling it forth by his almighty word. He set the sun, moon, and stars in the
heavens for the purpose of giving us light and helping us to tell time in
weeks, months, and years. He filled the
skies with birds and the waters with fish.
Then, finally, on day six, after creating all the land animals, he
formed Adam from the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life, and later that day formed Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. This is the work that the Lord God did in
creating the world and all that exists.
In six days, six, literal, twenty-four hour days the Lord created all
that exists, creating living creatures as well as the human race. He created a perfect world in which for us to
live and work and thrive, but sadly, as you know, our first parents ruined
God’s creation when they fell into sin.
Yet, even then the Lord promised to send his Son to be our Savior. We know how Jesus came to the earth, how he
was born, how he lived, and how he died in our place to free us from our sins
and to give us the gift eternal life by his side, in heaven, forever.
It is because of all of these
things that creation is so important!
For the truth is the account of creation is the foundation of our faith
in God. It is the foundation of our knowledge
of who the true God really is. It is the
foundation of our acceptance of his Word—the Bible. It is the foundation of our trust in his
promises. Yes! Creation is that important!
The problem is that our world is
filled with the ideas and the concepts that flow out from the Theory of
Evolution; a theory that works very quietly and at the same time very blatantly
at undermining the truths of Creation and the Bible. Just think about how the teachings of
evolution have been at work in our lives.
How many times haven’t we been tempted to try to harmonize our God’s
work of Creation with Science’s ideas of Evolution? How many times haven’t your children come
home from school openly questioning the truth of creation and favoring the
“facts” of evolution because it is “scientific”? How many times haven’t you found yourself in
a conversation with someone who says that they believe the Bible and call
themselves a Christian yet, they simply can’t accept that the six days of
creation were actually six, literal, twenty-four hour days? How many times haven’t you heard someone talk
about the creation account in Genesis as God setting creation into motion and
then allowing it to evolve over time so that when things had evolved
sufficiently, God would step in on the next “day” and spark the next step in
creation which he would allow to evolve again until the time was right for him
to step in again?
These are but a few of the
evolutionary termites, so to speak, that seek to burrow in and seek to destroy
the foundation of our faith in the Lord by destroying the founding doctrine of
the Bible—creation. For if we begin to
doubt creation, we begin to doubt the Lord our God. If we begin to doubt that our God has the
power to create all that exists, out of nothing, by the power of his word
alone, then we begin to doubt who our God really is. If we begin to doubt that the six days of
creation are six literal twenty-four hour days, then we begin to doubt his
word. If we begin to doubt God’s Word,
then we begin to doubt his promises. If
we begin to doubt his promises, then we begin to doubt anything that our God
tells us in his word. If we begin to
doubt anything that God tells us in his word, before we know it, we have set
creation aside as a myth, Adam and Eve as a make believe story about our struggles
to delay our gratification and seek to work for the common good of humanity,
the promise of the Savior as a story to be reserved for Christmas, as long as
it doesn’t get in the way of santa clause, and the doctrine of heaven and hell
as nothing more than something to scare children into being good. For the truth
is, if we doubt that our God created the heavens and the earth and all that
exists by his almighty power, through his word, then it won’t be long before we
doubt our own sinfulness, our need for a Savior, the miracle of the Savior’s
birth, or the gift of salvation that is ours through faith in Jesus
Christ. In short we will begin to
believe that there can’t possibly be a hell, because a loving God would never
send anyone to hell. Nor would a loving
God keep anyone out of heaven because a loving God would accept everyone just
as they are, and that should be good enough to get into heaven.
This is why creation is so
important. It is so important because it
is the foundation of everything that we know and believe about the Lord our God. It is the beginning of his word which was
written for our salvation, and it sets the stage and the purpose for the Lord’s
activity in our life.
Now, even though I am seeking to
clearly emphasize how important the teachings of creation are for us as Christians,
please understand that I am not seeking to set Creation and Science as
enemies! For the truth is, in so many
ways, science is really about trying to understand God’s creation. Science is about using all the gifts that the
Lord has given us in our intellect and creativity to seek to utilize his
creation in a way that is beneficial for God’s people. In our world there are scientists who are
Christians, who approach science from a God fearing point of view rather than
an evolutionary point of view. There are
chemists, biologists, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, vets, and all sorts of
others who work in any of the scientific fields in our world, who are
Christians and who believe the Bible is God’s Word. The problem, however, stems from the fact that
in so many of the world’s colleges and universities, science is taught from an
evolutionary point of view. So often
science teaches the theory of evolution as a fact and ridicules the faith of
those who believe in a God who created the world in six, twenty-four hour
days. Because of this young Christians
in college can feel very isolated, and made to feel that they must choose
between their faith and their grade or even their future career. Because of this, young Christians can begin
to doubt their faith, doubt their God, and wonder if God can even exist,
because science has basically proven the non-existence of God by not being able
to prove that he exists. (Interestingly
enough, it seems that the theory of evolution has basically been proven by the fact
that it can’t be disproven. I’m sure it
goes deeper than that but that is how it seems on the surface.)
This is why creation is so
important! It is so important because it
is the foundation of everything else that we believe. Just like the sturdiness of any building
becomes questionable when the foundation becomes weak or even crumbles, so also
when the foundation of our faith begins to crumble, our faith quickly weakens
and is in danger of collapsing. So, as
we close, dear friends, let me encourage you to make use of the tools that God
has given you so that you can continue to grow in your faith and your trust in
him. Make use of all of the
opportunities you have to worship the Lord.
Strengthen your faith by reading and studying his Word on your own and
with other Christians. Take advantage of
things like the Meditations devotions and the Forward in Christ magazine;
devotions designed to help strengthen your faith, and the magazine designed to
offer encouragement, strategies, and to let you know others are going through
the same struggles. But on top of that
let me give you one incredibly valuable resource to help answer your questions
and prepare your children. That resource
is Answers in Genesis. This is the group
that runs the creation museum in Petersburg, KY. They are an independent organization and they
are not affiliated with our synod. They
are an independent organization and they are an amazing resource of biblical
truth and scientific knowledge, especially when it comes down to questions that
deal with creation, science, and many, many other issues. The easiest way to find them is through their
website, which is the same as their name, AnswersInGenesis.org. If you don’t use the internet and would like
more information about them, I would be happy to provide it to you.
This is how important creation
truly is! How amazing and how humbling
that the Lord begins our faith with such a solid foundation of fact! “Beraysheet barah Elohim, ate ha shamaim, ve
ate ha aretz.” In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Amen.
Pastor David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN
