Creation and a Christian Mind #1

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in the Truth Pulpit. So glad that you're with us as we open the Word of God today and continue our study on how to know that God rules over all. And we've come to a very important, definitive, distinguishing subject matter for today that is really the bellwether issue in distinguishing a Christian mind from a worldly mind as we consider the doctrine of creation. Beloved, you cannot have a properly functioning Christian mind without understanding and embracing and submitting to the biblical doctrine of creation, which we are going to be studying today and quite likely next week as also.

Let me just invite you to turn to the Bible in Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. And in light of the predominant evolutionary mindset, in light of the worldly acceptance of the theory of a Big Bang origin to the universe, in light of the fact that these things even permeate in the supposedly evangelical Christian church, it is remarkable, in my judgment, to open the Bible and immediately, if you read it with any sense of understanding and perspective, to immediately recognize that the Bible is presenting a direct collision with the thought of the modern world. The Bible starts with a refutation of the prevailing spirit of our age. And beloved, we cannot shrink back from that challenge, that collision, if we are to be faithful Christians.

We cannot shrink back and try to mix the two and try to find a mixture of Bible and unbelief that will somehow be marginally faithful to Scripture and yet accommodate the world in a way that, you know, people don't criticize us or make fun of us. No, no, the Christian mind plays for keeps. Just as our Lord was, you know, playing for keeps isn't a great way to put this, but our Lord was playing for keeps when he went to the cross in order to redeem our souls. When Christ laid down his life and shed his blood in death, in a sacrificial death for the remission of our sins, beloved, Christ was not trying to coddle the world and its thought. He confronted the teaching of the world during his earthly ministry. That's why they crucified him. He did not accommodate himself to the demands of unbelief or the perspectives of religious people around him.

He confronted it, corrected it, as you will see in our message here today. And beloved, our call is to follow him. Our call is to know Christ not only as Savior but as Lord, to know him not only as Master but also as Teacher. And you cannot be a Christian if Christ is not your Lord. If Christ is not your Lord, if you are not conscious of being in submission to him and having new life from the Spirit, you're not a Christian.

We just need to be plain and direct about these things. And if you are a Christian and Christ is your Lord and Christ is your Teacher, then what he has taught through his Word is the final authority in your life. Not simply for what you do, not simply for external behavior, not simply for occasionally being in church now and then. Christ is Lord over your mind.

Do you understand that? That Christ asserts his authority over your very mind and directs the way that you are to think. And you cannot resist that, repudiate that, ignore that, and still maintain a profession of being a Christian.

This is a defining issue. Now I realize that for some that may sound like such a far-reaching statement and such a, you know, such a massive statement that you would hesitate to immediately embrace it. But understand that the greatest commandment, according to Matthew 22, is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. That you are to think God's thoughts as he has revealed them in Scripture after him. That you come not with independent thinking or dual authorities in your life or say that, you know, I'll take science and I'll understand Scripture in light of what science says. That is not Christian thinking at all.

That is a deadly spirit of compromise with the world that is lethal to your eternal soul. We can do nothing less than to take God at his word and to submit our minds and our thinking to it. And Scripture calls us to this in its very first words. In its very first words, we read this in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. Turn in your Bibles to the first page of the biblical text where we read, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now, beloved, prevailing thought in our secular world says that the earth and the universe are incomprehensibly old. The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, at least at one point, the science, so-called science on these things is always shifting. But at one point they estimated the universe to be 13.77 billion years old. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated the earth at one time to be 4.5 to 4.6 billion years old.

Now, just a couple of observations about that from the start. First of all, notice the incomprehensible length of time that they're talking about, billions and billions and billions of years, and recognize that this is supposedly science speaking with authority that must be submitted to and obeyed. And yet their own estimates differ by a magnitude of three. Something's already questionable about that when their own government estimates can be so wildly different. But, beloved, those dates rest on various scientific claims and assumptions, and it's very critical to understand that. No one was there at the time of creation that clicked a stopwatch, and then, you know, you've got a stopwatch running from the day that the universe began, and we have a precise estimate of that. It's based on all kinds of assumptions that may or may not be true, but you must understand that they're based on assumptions, not actual stated facts.

And here's the thing. Recognizing that in our secular universities, secular schools, and in the secular mindset, and in the appallingly weak and compromised aspects of the evangelical church that are making room for these things, here's the question that you and I need to ask before we go any further. This is the question that you need to ask about the prevailing thought about the age of the universe that is in the atmosphere of thought all around us.

Here's the question that you need to ask. Is the prevailing thought correct? Is the prevailing thought correct?

That leads you into a really important matter that over the past few months we've prepared you to deal with. Before you debate the science of these issues and the scientific assumptions that underlie these time estimates, before you debate the science, beloved, you must resolve a prior question. If you are going to get to the right answer, and if you are going to function with a Christian mind, and if you are an unbeliever, you're not in Christ, for you to start to be delivered from having other people think for you. Before you debate the science you must resolve a prior question.

Do you know what that question is? It's the most fundamental question of them all. What is the authority for truth? What is the authority for truth? How do we know what is true and accurate? Now, we have all been browbeaten with propaganda for decades and decades, for a couple of centuries now, as rationalism rose in the comparatively recent past, that science is the objective basis for truth, and that science can teach us what is right and accurate, and we defer to science.

Well, that's such a ridiculous way to operate, and I can easily prove that to you. Let's just go to a portion of science known as medicine. And people think that doctors have answers, and that whatever the doctors tell you is necessarily correct. Google sometime.

I really encourage you to do this, and I've mentioned this in the past. Sometime to disabuse yourself of this blind trust in science, you should Google these search terms, debunked medical practices, debunked medical practices, and that will quickly bring up for your review articles from places like the Mayo Clinic and the New England Journal of Medicine, as I recall, that will show you just in the past 40 years or so that a survey of what were once accepted medical practices, 40% of them now are no longer the standard of care, and they've been repudiated by subsequent research and subsequent medicine. The idea that there is fixed scientific truth that is enduring and unchanging is simply not true.

But they intimidate you into thinking that it is, and you just blindly go with whatever scientists are saying today in complete ignorance of the prior context that scientists thought a whole lot differently not that long ago. What is the authority for truth? Beloved, those of you that have been with us, now it starts to come together. Everything that we've been teaching since January starts to come together, and it all starts to flow into a bigger stream. We've been building a Christian mind. We said, how do we know that God exists? We look at creation. We look at the canon of Scripture. We look at the principle of conscience in the human mind. We look at Christ. We look at the church and conversion, and we realize that God has manifested himself in a lot of different ways. How do we know that this book is true? How do we know that the Bible is true? And that question leads us immediately into the eternal, unchanging authority of Jesus Christ, who in his earthly ministry affirmed the truthfulness and accuracy of the Old Testament and made provision for the writing of the New Testament through his apostles. And those two subjects were probably 20 messages long. We explored also the question of how to know that Jesus is Lord and looked at how the Old Testament prepared the way for him, that he is the king that the Old Testament anticipated, that by his death and resurrection and ascension he rules over all.

And that was another five or six or eight messages. Beloved, we've laid a foundation for what we're saying here today. I realize that not everybody's had the benefit of hearing those messages, and some haven't cared to really pay that much attention to it.

But that's not the problem of our church or of the pulpit. The foundation has been laid for what we are about to say. Those prior studies are the key. They are central to these things, that God exists, that he has manifested his authority in Scripture, and he has manifested his authority in the Lord Jesus Christ. And to ignore all of that is to just close your eyes and ears to the whole nature of the discussion here.

This is really central. We're talking about how to know what's true. And this issue of creation is a flashpoint for all of it, a flashpoint for identifying what it is that we rely on as our final authority for truth, how it is that we respond to the world around us. Do we follow the world, or do we think independently of the world?

Do we assess what the world is thinking, or do we just blindly follow whatever the thought of the day is? Beloved, I want to tell you, each one of you, I say this sympathetically, but I say it urgently and I say it seriously. Each one of you have to make a decision about what you're going to believe and on what basis you're going to believe it, because it's not going to be any excuse for any of us to stand before God with a life that denied his truth and give an account for that. It's not going to be an excuse as, well, you know, my professors and teachers said this, and so I just believed what they said. God would be well within his rights to say, but why didn't you believe what I said?

It was all there. I manifested myself in so many different areas of life and the world and in Scripture. Did you not care enough to search Scripture to see what I had to say about anything? These are urgent matters, and no scientist is going to stand at your side on the day of judgment and say, I'll take responsibility for that.

I taught them the error. They're not going to stand up beside you. You're going to stand alone before God and give an account. We have to say these things strongly, clearly, and decisively to somehow and in the hopes that the Holy Spirit will give an edge to the knife of the spoken word to cut through the foggy, demonically controlled thinking so that we would approach the word with a sense of urgency and submission to see what God has to say about it. It's that important.

It's that urgent, beloved. And so recognizing that for the past six months we've laid a foundation for this next sentence that I'm about to say, this is not what I'm about to say, beloved, is not a dogmatic assertion that has not been established beforehand. There has been an entire foundation laid to vindicate the absolute truthfulness of what I am about to say that is so critical as we move forward. And here's the statement where I ask the question, what is the authority for truth? The answer to that question is the Bible is the authority for truth, starting with Genesis, starting with Genesis 1-1. Now, my former pastor used to critique matters relating to Genesis in this very effective way. People will say, well, I don't believe Genesis 1-1. I don't believe six literal 24-hour days in a young earth creation.

His response to them is to say, okay, fine. Tell me where you kick in. If you reject Genesis 1-1, do you kick in at Genesis 2 with the creation of a literal Adam? You know that there was a single head to the human race.

Do you kick in there? Do you kick in at Genesis 3 in the fall of man? You say you don't like the idea of Noah in a worldwide flood, so you don't kick in at Genesis 6-9 either.

Do you maybe kick in at Genesis 12 with Abraham? Where do you kick in and recognize and submit to biblical authority? You see, that exposes the whole problem in the evangelical church of people wanting to use their independent judgment informed by changing scientific presuppositions and use those as the basis by which they interpret Genesis. And at the bottom of all of it is saying, I will be the final authority on what the Bible says and means. I will decide what's true rather than letting Scripture tell me what is true. It doesn't work that way in a Christian mind. The best that you could say about that, recognizing that some of you in the past were in this position, the best that can be said about that if you've been under that influence is to realize that it's a profound ignorance of biblical authority. And for those that teach these things and maintain them and attack biblical authority, it's nothing less than utter rebellion that exposes their unregenerate hearts. Because this is not the Spirit of Christ that's speaking when a man teaches you or a woman teaches you to disregard the authority of the Bible and to listen to what they say instead.

It's what you have to do. You have to look in the mirror and say, what do I accept as the authority for truth? What's going to tell me the truth? And be willing to forsake your own opinions and to bring your mind into conformity with the Word of God. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Not a big bang. Well, my friend, thank you for joining us here on today's broadcast of the truth, both of whom we'd love to be teaching to God's people, God's Word. And I just want to send a special invitation to you. If you're ever in the Midwest area, come to see us at Truth Community Church. We don't look at science and let science tell us how to understand Scripture. We look at Scripture and let Scripture tell us how to understand science. That's fundamental. That's fundamental. And you can't blur the distinctions now.

Many, many, many issues of science are affected by the doctrine of creation. I know that. And I want to make a confession before you, as well as pointing you in the right direction. When it comes to matters of technical science I freely confess to you that I am not qualified to speak on those kinds of issues. I'm not ashamed to tell you that. That's not been the realm of my life study. I'm not qualified to speak on matters of technical science. But I'll tell you this, beloved. Our church, our church is qualified to speak on it.

You can see Dr. Andrew Snelling. You can get his book titled The Genesis Flood Revisited and find all those issues of science that are so commonly raised against the biblical doctrine of creation dealt with in both biblical and technical detail in a way that answers the questions that are so often brought up. And so collectively we speak as a church on these matters without apology, with full complete vindication of biblical authority, and without any sense of intimidation of scientists who would mock what we have to say. Period. Full stop.

That's the way it is. Now, what I want to do today is just cover two aspects of creation here and not matters of how creation functioned, but for us to understand the theological and biblical place of creation. That's where we want to start, probably leaving some other matters for discussion next week. But first of all, if you're taking notes, I want you to just write down this, the theological place of creation. The theological place of creation.

And this is a very simple point. It's going to take me maybe five minutes to make it, if that. But it is of profound theological importance to recognize the connection between things that we have studied with things that are yet to come. Because what we've studied, as Andrew pointed out at the beginning of our service, over the past couple of weeks we've studied the divine decree.

I'll explain that more for those of you that weren't with us in just a moment. We studied the divine decree. This week, probably next week, we're looking at creation. And then, after that, we're going to spend several weeks talking about the doctrine of divine providence.

Now, here's how those work in just a very simple overview fashion. Before time began, God decreed everything that would happen. God decreed everything that would happen. Stated differently and more simply, God planned everything that would ever happen in the course of the entire universe for all time in eternity. We established that two weeks ago.

Over the past two weeks, I should say. We showed that biblically. Before time began, pre-eternity, God made a plan that would determine everything else that would happen.

Having done that, logically speaking, just thinking in a logical manner, what came next? Once the plan was established by God in His omniscient mind, what came next? The answer to that is creation. God planned it.

God made it. And having made it in that first week of creation, what we'll see is that the doctrine of providence tells us that He's comprehensively guiding everything according to His plan and directing every detail of life and humanity in the universe to accomplish the purpose that He decreed before time began. So that before creation, the divine decree, creation, it's set into motion.

Providence, God is actively directing it to accomplish His ends. The decree, creation, and providence. And that is how we know that God rules overall because He established the plan, He started the plan, He continues the plan.

One day He will culminate the plan. Now look, I understand why an unregenerate carnal man would rebel against those kinds of statements. Because when you understand biblical truth like that, all of a sudden you realize God is supremely great and you are microscopically small in comparison. The biblical teaching is designed to glorify God, not man. To extol the wisdom and the goodness and the greatness of God. Certainly not the wisdom, goodness, and greatness of man who is a creature of flesh, a vapor of smoke, and a sinful vapor at that. So when we look at the theological place of creation, we see it in the great big overall context of the decree of God, the eternal plan of God, and creation was the beginning of the inflammation of what He had decreed to take place.

It's not really that difficult. Now, one writer defines creation in this way. When we speak of creation, what are we talking about? Creation is that act of the almighty will of God, whereby He gave to the things that were eternally in His counsel, existence and distinction from Himself.

I'll say that again. Creation is that act of the almighty will of God, whereby He gave to the things that were eternally in His counsel, existence and distinction from Himself. What that's saying, and the language that we've been using, is that God had His eternal counsel of how the world would go and what the world would be consisted of.

That was in His mind. At creation, He spoke into existence and gave an independent existence to all of those things in the universe, separate and distinct from Himself, so that the universe is not God, it is not part of God. We are not pantheists, believing that everything is somehow part of God.

No, what we see, who we are, the visible universe, even the invisible things of creation are distinct from God, not part of Him. And so, in creation, God gave to the things that were eternally in His counsel, the things that were eternally in His mind, an existence that was distinct from Himself. That's the theological place of creation. Theological place, what we mean is the decree, creation, providence, culmination.

There's an outline of eternity for you. That's Don Green here on The Truth Pulpit. And here's Don again with some closing thoughts. Well, my friend, just before we close today's broadcast, I just wanted to give a special word of greeting and thanks to the many people that listen to our podcast internationally. It's remarkable to me, the last report that I saw listed 83 different countries that in one way or another are listening to us, and I just want to send a special word of greeting to those of you that are in lands that are distant from my own home here in the United States.

You know, we've seen people from every continent, except maybe Antarctica, and people from countries like Ireland and Australia and Singapore, Canada, the UK, India, I have friends in all of those countries. And whether you've met me face to face or whether you only know me as a voice through your favorite device, I just want to say God bless you. Thank you for your interest in the Word of God. And may the Spirit of God work deeply in your heart as you continue to study God's Word. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your prayers. God bless you. My prayers and love are with you as well. And we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.