1050. The Biblical Position Regarding Creation

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

Today's speaker is Dr. Steve Pettit, who served as an evangelist for over 29 years before becoming president of Bob Jones University. I've decided this morning to really just preach a very straightforward message on the biblical position of creation as it is revealed in Scripture. My goal today is to be very simple and to be very clear to establish the view of creation as it's set forth in the Scripture with the idea that we believe the Bible is the Word of God. As we opened this morning's service, we had our affirmation of our creed and our creed begins with I believe in the inspiration of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. The Bible is self-authenticating.

It itself claims to be inspired. So as we approach the Bible, we don't come at it with our own ideas and see if the Bible fits into my ideas, but really the opposite. We come and seek truth as we seek to understand what does God say. And so this morning, I'd like to ask you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Genesis chapter one.

This morning, we're going to look at numbers of verses. We'll move very quickly through the Bible today, but I'd like us to begin at the beginning. In the very first chapter of God's Word, we read in the Genesis account where Moses, the author, affirms clearly that the creation of this world, the world that we live in today, finds its source and it finds its origin in God. Verse one says, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. So how did God actually create the world? Well, according to verses two and three, God worked in creation through the supernatural agency of both His Spirit and the authority of His Word.

Look at what it says in verse two, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said, let there be and there was. God supernaturally by His Spirit and through His Word created everything out of nothing. And from the very beginning of the Bible, we learn how it is that God's power works in the world today and throughout history. How does God work? God works by His Spirit and God works through His Word. The Spirit of God working through this book is the way that God is at work in the world today. And Moses goes on and he tells us in the Genesis account that the world did not come into existence by a random process or by chance.

It didn't just happen. But the world that we live in today was created by the wisdom of God where we see a strategic, orderly, and complete process. That process is found throughout the entire first chapter where the basic needs of life by God are created like light, water, land, seas, vegetation, seed-yielding plants, fruit-bearing trees, the sun, the moon, the stars, living creatures in the seas, flying birds in the air, living creatures and beasts upon the earth. And finally, on the last day, the ultimate creation, that is the creation of mankind both male and female.

God's making of us in His own image. And this supernatural process took place in an orderly manner. That orderly manner is called days. So in chapter one in verse five it says in the evening and the morning were the first day. The word day in the Hebrew is the word yom. Yom is a unit of time that is reckoned from sunset to sunset. For us, our days start at midnight and it goes to midnight. But for the Jews, it starts approximately 6 p.m. at sunset and then the next day it ends 24 hours at sunset.

That's why for the Jewish Sabbath day it always, always starts on Friday evening and it ends on Saturday evening. And so each day, God speaks about what He does. In chapter one in verse eight, He says the evening and morning were the second day. Verse 13, the third day. Verse 19, the fourth day. Verse 23, the fifth day. And verse 31, the sixth day. And so the plain reading of the Scripture is that creation of all things takes place in six days.

And then we come to chapter two. And the creation work comes to a conclusion or you could actually say a completion. And on the seventh day, what does God do? God has a Shabbat.

The word Shabbat in English means a rest. How many of you like to take a rest? My favorite place in the world is when I get in bed at night.

That's my favorite place. Genesis two verse one, on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made. So from the very beginning of creation, God establishes a rhythm in the world. And what is that rhythm? It is a seven day week, a complete week.

And those days have been designated as days of work and then finally a day of rest. So here's the question I'd like to ask. Does Moses ever speak of the Genesis account of creation in any other place?

You say, okay Steve, I've got it. Genesis one and two talks about creation, but what about other places? Well, I think it's important to remember that Moses not only authored Genesis, but he wrote the first five books of the Bible. We call it the Torah. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. So you would expect that if Moses wrote about the creation account outside of Genesis, that it would be consistent with what he had already written and it would be a confirmation on what he had already written.

So it would be consistent and it would confirm. So the question is this, there are some who take the first two chapters of Genesis and they view them as literary poems, an analogy, and it's not a historic reality. So how is it that Moses would confirm what took place in Genesis one and two? And he does that for us in Exodus 20 and Exodus 31.

If you have your Bibles, turn to Exodus 20 and verse nine, for here we see the 10 commandments. And we come to the commandment in verse nine where he tells the people of God, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. So you are to work six days and rest one. Verse 11, here's why.

He says four, that's a marker of causation. That is, the six days of work are based on what he's about to say. Four and six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day, therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and He made it holy. What is Moses doing? He's actually confirming and giving us a commentary on Genesis one and two. And he is saying that what he said in Genesis one and two is actually what happened and he confirms that by saying that you are to have a Sabbath day rest according to the law and the basis of that is that God created the world in six literal days. Then we come to chapter 31 in verse 15.

And there once again he confirms for us. For he says in verse 15, six days may work be done but in the Sabbath is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord. Then we come to verse 16, wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath. Verse 17, it is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever.

Why? For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed. So what is Moses telling us in Exodus? It is a consistent testimony to what God did literally in Genesis chapter one and two and that is that God created the world in six literal days. Now there are many other places in the Old Testament where the Scripture speaks of God as Creator.

And here we see the numerous aspects of the Genesis account highlighted. For example, in the book of Psalms, Psalm 8, when I consider thy works, thy, thy heavens and the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man that thou visitest him for thou has made him a little lower than the angels? Psalm 19 one, the heavens declare the glory of God. What does the word glory mean?

It means your, your abilities are put on display. So when you sit, when you look at the heavens and you see the stars shining with, like diamonds with a backdrop of black velvet, it is a display of the creative power of God. The heavens declare the glory of God. Psalm 33 six, by the word of the Lord were the heavens made.

And all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. God spoke, let there be and there was. And then we come to the book of Isaiah and Isaiah many times speaks about creation but I love Isaiah 40 verse 22. He says, do you not know, do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in. Have you not known?

Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. The testimony of scripture is that God has created this world in six literal days. And we come to Ecclesiastes chapter 12 in verse 1. I mention this verse because I attended my undergraduate education at a school in Charleston, South Carolina called the Citadel. And every day I would walk to class, I would walk by the chapel and etched in granite on the front of the chapel were the words of Ecclesiastes 12 one. I read them every day and God used those verses to convict my heart because I was not a believer. I did not believe in creation. I believed in evolution. That was what I was taught in high school. But every day I was combated with the truth of Ecclesiastes 12 one when it says remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth.

Remember God while you're young before the evil days come. So the conclusion of the Old Testament, the reading of it, a simple reading is that the world was supernaturally created by God in six literal days. Now we come to the New Testament. We come to the Gospel of John. It's very interesting that John's Gospel in John chapter 1 in verse 1 uses Genesis 1 one language.

Listen to what it says. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The New Testament confirms what the Old Testament has established. That God created the world through the agency of His Word.

How do we know that? Verse three, all things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. He was in the world and the world was made through Him, John 1 10. So the question then is who is the Word by which the world was created? And John tells us in verse 14 when he says and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.

Who is the Word? The Word is Jesus Christ. And what does the New Testament tell us? It tells us that the Jehovah God of the Old Testament is Jesus of the New Testament and Jesus Christ is actually the Lord of glory and He had created the entire universe. And in the New Testament, many passages reveal Jesus as creator. Listen to 1 Corinthians 8 six, yet for us there is one God, the Father, for whom are all things and for whom we exist and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. The teaching of the New Testament is that Jesus Christ is the creator, Colossians 1 16. For by Him, Jesus, were all things created.

That are in Heaven and that are in the earth, visible and invisible. Whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by Him and all things are created for Him. And then we come to the book of Hebrews chapter 1 verse 2 where it says that God hath in these last days spoken to us by His Son whom He hath appointed heir of all things by whom also He made the worlds. Folks, unless you are deaf and you cannot listen to truth, the declaration of the Bible is that God supernaturally created the world through the agency of His Spirit and His Word and His Word is His own Son. It's very interesting to me that when Jesus was questioned about His position on divorce, He responded by appealing to the Genesis account. In Matthew 19, it says, have you not read, Jesus says, have you not read that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female? He said, for this call shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh where there, where there are no more two but one flesh, what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

You know what He's doing? In a few short words, Jesus has established that the creation, He establishes the creation of mankind, both male and female. And in this short passage of Scripture, we get God's approach to our sexual identity.

So He answers all the issues of transgenderism. We get God's proper viewpoint on sexual relationships so we understand what is sexually sinful and what is not. We get God's position on the permanence of marriage between a man and a woman only because marriage is between a man and a woman, not between a man and a man and a woman and a woman. I mean that's Bible. And this is all rooted in the Genesis account.

Most of the social issues that we are facing today in 2019, especially the moral issues that we're facing today, can be actually answered in the first two books of the Bible. Perhaps there's no place in the New Testament that so clearly affirms creation and the fall of the first man as what we read in Acts chapter 17 verse 24 where Paul is preaching in the city of Athens. Listen to what Paul says in verse 24, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.

Nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth. Paul says that God is the creator of all things and that the entire human race descended from one man, Adam. So why is it that the six day creation is crucially tied to Adam? Because according to the Bible, sin and death did not exist before Adam sinned.

You go back and read what Paul writes in Romans five, he says by one man sin came into the world and death by sin so death passed upon all men for they all have sinned. God puts forth an order and that is He creates the world, He creates on the sixth day mankind. And then after that man sins and after that death comes into the world.

Why is this order so crucial? Because if God created the world over millions of years then death existed long before Adam. And Paul tells us that Jesus came to fix what Adam messed up. Because we have the first Adam in the garden and we have the second Adam in Jesus. For the first man, Adam, brought sin into the world and the second man, Adam, Jesus, brought salvation into the world. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Folks, we can't even understand the real Gospel message if we don't understand that it's rooted in the fall of Adam. And it deals with our own sinfulness, our own fallenness in our nature. By the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift comes upon all men under justification of life.

And so what do we find? We find, we find in, in the very beginning, we find the entire plan of redemption, salvation rooted in creation in the fall. Folks, let me tell you something, believing in Jesus and salvation and separating it from creation and the fall, the creation of the world and the first man and Adam, you can't separate the two. And so, we have in the, in the Bible, clear accounts of the truth of God.

But what about history? What is the history of the church? We go back and read some of the church creeds and what do they say? The Nicene Creed in 320 AD says we believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

The Apostle's Creed says I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. The Westminster Confession of Faith, speaking of creation, says it pleased God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom and goodness in the beginning to create or make of nothing the world and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days and all very good. The testimony of the history of the church is that God has created the world supernaturally. And it's from this belief that we get what we call a worldview. Probably the best verse in the Bible I think that speaks of a worldview is Hebrews 11 three. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of the things which do appear.

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. That's our worldview. A worldview is the lens by which you see this world. You put on the glasses and you see through those lenses and we see the world through a particular worldview. A worldview requires faith because nobody was there when everything got started. Today we have opposing worldviews, competing worldviews. We have a secular worldview that is fundamentally atheistic, that believes that everything has happened through natural and random causes. That has a meta-narrative, a big story that began with a big bang and then everything has evolved over time from a, from lower forms of life through an evolutionary process to higher forms. And in the end that view is really a materialistic view because there is no God and God doesn't really matter and the only thing that matters is matter.

The only thing that matters is living for yourself. But the Christian worldview is very different. It believes that God created the world and God created the world for His own glory and this world has purpose and meaning and though it's fallen in sin, God is redeeming sinners through His Son Jesus Christ and is one day going to actually recreate the world that we live in. So today, this worldview is the battleground that we face. In many ways, it is being seriously challenged through secular society, through secular education and through secular social issues.

But sadly, it's also being compromised today by those who are professing Christians. There's an organization called Bio Logos, you can go online and read it, it's almost shocking. Their mission statement says, Bio Logos invites the church and the world to see the harmony between science and Biblical faith as we present an evolutionary understanding of God's creation.

And their core commitments, they have two of them. It says we embrace the historical Christian faith, upholding the authority and inspiration of the Bible and secondly, we affirm evolutionary creation, recognizing God as creator of all life over billions of years. Let's add today that they are supported by men like Tim Keller, N.T. Wright, just recently five Wheaton College professors with a grant from Bio Logos produced a book entitled Understanding Scientific Theories of Origins, Cosmology, Geology and Biology in a Christian Perspective. And their Christian perspective is that God created the world over billions of years. They are theistic evolutionists.

So what we're facing today is just not only the challenge of secular society but the significant compromise of God's people. I find it very interesting in Bio Logos that they talk about the different views of how the world was created and one of them is called the calendar view. It says Genesis 1 is a straightforward — here's the view — Genesis 1 is a straightforward historical narrative in the modern journalistic sense.

The repeating formula there was evening and there was morning the first day and so long for six days refers to six 24-hour periods. This conclusion combined with the summation of years given in biblical genealogies lead most advocates to this view to believe that God created the material universe in one ordinary week between six and ten thousand years ago. Those who hold this view are known as young earth creationists. I'd like to pose for you what we believe at Bob Jones University. Bob Jones University believes the account of origins in Genesis is a factual narrative of historical events. That is God created the universe including all original kinds of living organisms including man in six literal days. We believe the genealogies recorded in Genesis 5 and 11 indicate a date for the creation week less than 10,000 years ago. I'm so glad that we are what Biola says we are.

I want to close with this this morning. I became a Christian at 19 years old. I would not have believed in creation especially in college until after I became a believer and I actually began to understand salvation and then all of a sudden reading the Bible it all started making sense to me. So by the time I was a senior in college I was a thorough going creationist. But I was in a secular school and I used to have guys come up to me and ask me do you actually believe in creation and I said absolutely.

I wanted to ask him do you believe in the monkey story? I used to have a guy that would come into my room almost every night because every night about 1030 I would be laying on my bunk and I would be reading my Bible. I always kept my Bible with me. The fact is I put my Bible under my pillow because it was so precious to me. And he would come into my room and he would just kind of stare at me.

I mean we were friends and we made fun of each other a little bit but he was still underneath it all he was very serious and he would look at me like Pettit why do you believe that? And I would say well because it's the Bible it's the Word of God. I said I don't believe in evolution I don't believe in that story. And then he would get all frustrated with me he would say Pettit this is the way you view the world and he'd take his hand and he'd go you see the world this way.

I said yeah but it sure looks good doesn't it? And I never forgot I never forgot that I was mocked. I was mocked because I believed in creation. And on March 26, 2014 I received a phone call from the chairman of the board of Bob Jones University and asked me if I would consider coming here to be the president of Bob Jones. When I became the president of Bob Jones University I cannot tell you how humbled and honored I am to be in a school where we have 23 Ph.D.s in our science department.

We have degrees from literally all over the world and all 23 Ph.D.s believe God created the world in six literal days, yes. I cannot tell you how — how — what a blessing that is. And I'm thankful. As long as I'm here as the president we ain't changing one iota.

Not even close. Because the Bible is the word of God. And God has spoken. And thank God he created the world and he created you and I and he loves you and I.

And he died on the cross so that we could spend eternity with him. May we bow our heads together for prayer. Father we thank you for your wonderful word.

You have spoken. We believe. And help us Lord to continue to stand and be true and faithful to the word. Not giving in to the pressures of this world and not being conformed to this world. But standing on what is true and right in Jesus' name, amen. We hope you'll join us again next week as we study God's word together on The Daily Platform.