Finally ... A Word From God, Part 2

All of the intricacies of every aspect of your being were created and fashioned by God. Christ was demonstrating a fraction of his understanding of human anatomy and function that needed refashioning and hooking up in order for somebody to see. And he did it with the Word. Wasn't the evolving of cells that gave the capability of that one to see, it was immediate. It was sudden.

It was breathtaking. God created you. Do you believe that? You're not here because of random forces or because of the evolutionary process. God designed you.

Now, if that's true, and it is, there are implications to that truth. Today, Steven Davey will show you from God's Word that if God created you, he can save you from whatever you're facing. If God is powerful enough to create the universe, he's powerful enough to control the universe.

Here's Steven. What I want to do today is simply reveal to you a little bit of why creation is more than a paragraph in our creed, why it is absolutely necessary to your relationship with Christ and your hope in the midst of trials, why God would come to Job and take him on a tour of the universe. Ladies and gentlemen, the longest speech from God delivers to us the truth that creation and creationism is not some incidental viewpoint. It is a foundational piece of our salvation.

And if that sounds to you like an exaggeration, it is only because the church has, in our generation, bowed to the pressure of evolution and the disregard of Scripture. And so that strikes us as, does it really matter that much? I'm going to lay the groundwork today for why it does. I got an email from a gentleman in our church this past winter and I hung on to it.

It illustrates this very point. He wrote, my wife especially appreciates colonial when she has to be away on a Sunday, which happens periodically. Yesterday was such a Sunday.

She was in Charleston, South Carolina, for the weekend and chose to attend a congregational church nearby with a friend. As it happened, yesterday was, quote, Transfiguration and Evolution Sunday, end quote, for that church. You may have read in the newspaper that churches across the country are having Evolution Sunday in February in honor of Charles Darwin's birthday.

I had no idea what we've been missing here. Can you imagine churches honoring the evolutionary principles of a man rather than the creation of God? This man said in his email that the clergyman actually preached that Jesus's transfiguration was just one more step in his evolution. He said his wife ended up getting up and walking out during the sermon. Good for her.

And I hope she walked out rather loudly. The reason the average person is surprised to discover God's comfort through his creative handiwork is because the average person doesn't believe God created anything. Just all evolved with enough time and chance. Or that God sort of jump-started it and allowed billions of years for life to evolve.

There is no comfort in that because that is man-made. It strips God of power and meaning and it plays havoc with the words of scripture from the very beginning pages. There isn't anything more pivotal to our faith than the very first few words of the Bible.

Say them with me. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Perhaps Satan has launched his fiercest attack against that phrase. Today, theory after theory abounds.

They're not new. In fact, by 1808, there were cataloged at least 80 theories of origins. Darwin just happens to be one of them. Even those today, however, who claim to be evangelicals are holding to an old earth belief that's gaining in popularity known as framework hypothesis. This is the belief that the days of creation are simply overlapping stages of the long evolutionary process. Dr. Meredith Klein of Westminster Theological Seminary is propagating this view. The view basically states that the days of creation in Genesis 1 are symbolic expressions that have nothing to do with time.

It's just a matter of time. It's just a matter of words that have nothing to do with time. It's just poetry. The formation of the earth took billions of years, and the record of scripture is simply a metaphorical framework that would overlay our scientific understanding of creation. God simply guided the process of evolution. Listen, if chapter one can be written off as metaphor simply because it's too fantastic to take literally, why believe in the flood?

Why believe in the Tower of Babel and the creation of distinct races? Why believe any other biblical miracle? I mean, how fantastic is the virgin birth? How fantastic is a literal physical resurrection? How fantastic is the Atonement of Christ on the cross for you? Why believe any of it?

That's the point. Thus, defending creationism is not some secondary issue. It is vital for the believer.

In fact, let me give you three reasons why as we set the stage. Number one, without a literal creation, we have no scripture to trust. One of the best ways to interpret scripture, by the way, is to let scripture do the interpreting for us. What does the rest of scripture say about Genesis 1, for instance? Well, the scriptures repeatedly authenticate the integrity of God's creation of Adam and Eve as one example, not amoebas that eventually evolved into a man and a woman. In fact, Jesus Christ himself said in Mark 10, verse six, but from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Paul wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 2 13. It was Adam who was first created and then Eve.

In every passage of scripture, referring to the Genesis account, every one of them treats creation as an historical, completed, literal event. God is the author of scripture. And he was, by the way, the only eyewitness to those first movements, wasn't he?

And he said it this way. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. And the word what was God.

He was in the beginning. The word being Christ later on in the chapter makes it very clear with God. Now, in case we didn't get it, he says, all things came into being through him and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being.

Pretty clear? Listen, every time the New Testament refers to creation, it is always to a past completed work, an immediate work of God, not an ongoing billions of years process of evolution. In fact, the entire Old Testament system of Sabbath worship, that covenant sign hinged upon a literal understanding of a six day creation for as Exodus 2011 records in six days, the Lord made the heavens, not six eons, not six sessions of billions of years, but six days. The Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and then rested on the seventh day.

So therefore, Israel, you do likewise. Without creation, we have no scripture to fully trust. Secondly, without creation, we have no gospel to preach. When the apostles went out and preached, we tend to forget the fact that they were preaching to an evolutionary pantheistic culture.

Buddhism had already reached the Mediterranean world by the time of Christ. And you throw in the stoics and the Gnostics who believe neither in one supreme personal God, creating God nor in special creation. These were the scholars and the philosophers of Paul's day.

And you go back and you read through their messages to their culture. And it is laced with the truth of creationism. Acts 14, in Lystra, Paul cried out to these philosophers, scholars that assembly, we preach the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In Athens, they're worshiping all these gods and they have their views of origins and they have even a pedestal periodically placed to the unknown God, just in case they've left one out. And Paul comes along and he says, that unknown God, let me introduce you to him. Who is that unknown God? He is the God, Paul preached, who made the world and all things in it. Since he is the Lord of heaven and earth, he himself gives life and breath to all people. Listen to this. And he made from one man, every nation of mankind. Who would that one man be? Acts 17, 23 to 26.

How? I wasn't there. But he said, according to scripture, he spake and it was done. Psalm 33, verse nine. I love the way John Wesley, the founder of Methodism put it. He said, God created all there is and he didn't even have to try. The intellectual establishment of nearly every nation has repudiated creationism and in our generation has accepted some theory of evolutionism. The myths of evolution dominate today.

Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinoism, animism. It has even crept into Islam and Judaism and liberal Christianity so that no outcry existed when Pope John Paul II got up before the Academy of Sciences several years ago and opened the door to the mechanisms of evolution. Theistic evolution. It's no surprise that Satan would attack the word of God in this because without creation, the reliability of scripture is shattered and our gospel is basically rendered powerless. Without creation, there's no gospel message. We have no creator God. We have no God. Consider the fact that if Genesis 1 to 3 is not a literal account of origins and Adam really wasn't the first man and the forefather of the human race, then there are many other things we throw out the window. One, the Bible's explanation of how sin entered the world. That's just one more myth.

But it's worse than that. If we didn't fall in Adam as our representative, we cannot be redeemed in Christ, the representative of the new race of redeemed sinners, now saints. Paul wrote it to the Corinthians this way in First Corinthians 15, 22. For as in Adam, all die. Even so, in Christ, the second Adam, all shall be made alive.

Paul can't stress it enough. He writes to the believers in Rome, therefore, just as through one man, sin entered the world. Again, who is that one man?

Adam. Much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, capital M, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. For if by the sin of the one, Adam, death reigned, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in the life through Jesus Christ. This is the crux of the gospel, the creation of that first head Adam and the creative power of the second Adam, Christ, in whom we stand. Without a literal creation, we have no scripture to trust. We don't know whether to believe this or that. That's a little too fantastic.

That's a little bit too much of a stretch of my imagination. I guess we'll believe in this part or maybe that part. We have no way to discern or divide the text without a literal creation.

We have no gospel to preach. Third, without a literal creation, we have no heaven to reach. The truth is evolution eliminates the God of Genesis. And by so doing, it eliminates the God of Revelation. The God of Revelation will recreate a new heaven and a new earth by the word of his power.

This is the world to come. The promise of a new creation is portrayed in scripture as the result of God's powerful word, not billions of years. There are not gigantic oysters somewhere producing these gigantic pearls that will one day be the gates of heaven.

It's done. When John was given a tour of heaven, there was not scaffolding everywhere. It was finished, done by the word of his power. You have trouble believing he created this earth. I don't know what you're going to believe about the new earth and the new heaven. In fact, according to the scripture, it is the very crux of our faith. According to Hebrews, it is the basis of our faith that God created out of nothing, everything. And if you have trouble believing that, you'll have trouble understanding not only the new creation that 2 Corinthians 5.17 tells us we are now, that God can take a sinner, redeem him, and literally provide in him justification, make him right before God, ultimately give him a glorified body. Talk about a miracle. Glorified body. We're going to be able to eat and fly. Isn't that going to be great?

Won't hold us down, slow us down. We're new creations in that glorified state. Jesus Christ, the creator of it all.

There were hints of this. When Jesus Christ performed miracles on earth, he bypassed the ordinary processes of time to create. His miracles were a million fold in their demonstration. Consider healing a lame person who's been lame from birth. You don't just say, get up. There is in that miracle of saying, get up, everything from the mental capability to know how those legs work to muscle memory. When Jesus Christ said, get up, they with balance immediately without practice began to walk. He not only healed the disease, but he deposited instantaneously into their brains and bodies, all the necessary wiring and memory and history and experience so that they could get up and walk when he healed the blind.

What an amazing creative act. Science is only catching up to what it must have. The amazing part of this I've read inside the human eye are one hundred and seven million cells.

I think I'm down to about ninety five million. That's why I got to wear these things here. But about one hundred and seven, even with his limited knowledge, Charles Darwin admitted that the human eye caused him to doubt his theory more than anything else. The more we learn, he knew so little about it, but the more we know about it, it's even more amazing that God would create us with this capability and heal those who can't see and wire everything together. Seven million cells are cones. We know loaded to fire off a message to the brain whenever a photon of light crosses its path. The other one hundred million cells are rods. They're capable of distinguishing a thousand shades of color. The human brain will receive millions of reports simultaneously for my cells.

The brain absorbs sorts organizes them all to give you the image of what you are looking at. Christ was demonstrating a fraction of his understanding of of human anatomy and function that needed restoring and refashioning and and hooking up in order for somebody to see. And he did it with the word of his power. Wasn't the evolving of cells that gave the capability of that one to see it was immediate. It was sudden.

It was breathtaking. He revealed the same elimination of processes when he attended the wedding. You remember he turned water into what? Wine. The wine had run out. He told servants to pour water into the water pots and then for the servants to draw from the water pots and take them to the head waiter. Somewhere between pouring and drawing the water turned into wine.

All the marks of age and maturity. He completely bypassed the processes of fermentation and the aging process. And you had wine instantly. If you had a scientist look at that substance they would have said it takes certain amounts of time for this to happen. And Jesus Christ did it with the power of his word. The study of DNA has exploded on the scene.

This one more amazing creative magnificent part of what God has done. I've read that your DNA has enough information in it to fill six million pages. But those strands are also small they could fit into a tiny ice cube. However if your DNA was unwound and connected end to end it would reach the sun and back four hundred times.

Darwin knew nothing of DNA and the amazing depository of information and knowledge that you have. This is the amazing mind of God. And here's a man that's lost everything everything. What will God say. Job I need to remind you of what I have created what I have made by the power of my word. Let's take a tour of the created order.

We'll go all the way out to the furthest stars and we'll come back to the planet and we'll look at the animal kingdom. This is who you are job you fit into all of this and this is who I am. I created it all.

I know everything. I understand everything and this will bring great comfort and assurance to Joe. And it was encouraging.

So you know for him not to have the answers. It did not humiliate him. It awed him. A college student went to class to take a final exam at the end of the semester.

I read recently Stephen Lawson in his commentary told about this to his amazement. He didn't know any of the answers. Not one. He had no possibility of passing the exam so he attempted to win the professor's mercy with humor.

How many teachers do we have in here. Does that work. No. OK.

I didn't think so. At any rate he wrote across the top of the exam page quote only God knows the answer to these questions. Merry Christmas. He turned into paper and went home for the Christmas break during the holidays just following Christmas the student received in the mail his exam that had been graded by his professor at the top it read in big letters. In that case God gets a hundred and you get zero.

Happy New Year. Job is going to be asked seventy seven questions and they will reveal he has none of the answers but it will reveal that God gets a hundred. He knows everything. There are going to be several lessons that will emerge from this pop quiz from God to Joe. Let me give you three of them very quickly and then we're going to dash away. Number one first if God created us he can save us.

Let me add an addendum to that first point. If he can fashion us he can forgive us. What the evolutionist destroys for themselves is the only personal God capable of taking them and by his grace making them a new creation instantly newly born a member of a new race redeemed capable of forgiving us. Secondly if God is powerful enough to create the universe he is powerful enough to control the universe. What we're about to discover as God begins to speak comfort is that the solution to suffering is not a proposition it is a person. Third if God can create this existing universe he can create an eternal universe. If God is powerful enough to create the universe he's powerful enough to control the universe. If he created us he can save us. If he fashioned us he can forgive us.

Ultimately Job and you and me this points us to our source of security God. We do not worship this awe inspiring creation. The unbeliever does that he refuses to thank God and he worships the tree the river the waterfall that were pointed ultimately and finally to a person. And I want you to listen as Peter writes this amazing text that I had never really quite seen until this study.

He said this. Therefore those who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful creator in doing what is right. Our hope of getting through suffering is related to the fact that we can entrust our souls to our faithful creator. God created all there is. God controls all that he has created. God coincides what he controls to bring about his creative concerns and we can trust him.

Why? Well this is just for starters. This is a great place to end because he is the creator God. That was Stephen Davey and a lesson he called finally a word from God. This series from Job is called When God Speaks. We'll continue through this section of God's Word in the days ahead. In addition to producing these daily Bible lessons we also publish a magazine. Each issue features a specific topic related to the Christian life. In the past we've explored topics such as a literal six day creation, the importance of thankfulness, how to study the scriptures, what can we learn from the life of Jonah, how can we face trials and difficulties in a way that honors God. Each issue also includes a devotional guide for that month. Stephen's son Seth writes devotionals that are theologically rich and filled with practical insight for your life. We send Heart to Heart magazine to all of our wisdom partners but we'd be happy to send you the next three issues if you'd like to see it for yourself. It's our gift to you just for you taking the time to introduce yourself.

You can sign up for it on our website or you can call us today. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE. One of Stephen's passions is training and equipping men and women for service to God. That's why he founded and serves as the president of Shepherds Theological Seminary. God is blessing that school. In fact it was recently recognized as one of the top five fastest growing seminaries in the United States.

We believe that God is blessing the faithful proclamation of His word. If you'd like to take classes at Shepherds Seminary you can do that at one of the four teaching sites across the United States. The main campus is here in this area of North Carolina not far from the offices of Wisdom International.

There's also a campus in Wyoming, Texas and Florida. Graduates of Shepherds Seminary are serving God in their churches and communities all over the world. Many men have earned their degrees from the school and have gone out to plant churches. If you or someone you know is interested in graduate level theological training I encourage you to consider STS. We have many people who just take a class or two. They want to have a better understanding of the Bible and theology. You don't have to leave your current job or relocate. All of the courses that are offered have an online option as well. Go to wisdomonline.org forward slash STS to learn more and then join us next time for more Wisdom for the Hearts. you