Origins

By the way, if you're not helping your kids spot the propaganda related to the view that all humans are doing is messing up the world and mistreating nature, and if it wasn't for humans, Mother Nature would be so much better off. If you're not helping them see that in those Disney movies and everything else they're getting in the school, you are asleep at the wheel. Wake up! Counter for them the biblical worldview that they are a special creation given the privilege of ruling over nature according to Genesis.

Not mistreating it, but harnessing it, enjoying it. Where did life come from? How did it begin and who caused it? One of the Christian doctrines that is under attack like never before is the doctrine of God as Creator.

As Stephen mentioned a moment ago, the media, the schools, they want you and your children to believe a false narrative. The Bible says that this universe and everything in it is the creation of God. You and your children are not the result of random acts. You are a special creation of God. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davey is in Romans where Paul affirms what Moses made clear. God created everything. Romans chapter 4 verse 17.

It is written, a father of many nations have I made you, Abram. In the sight of him whom he believed, even God who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. In 1808, there were cataloged no less than 80 theories of man's origin, theories that man came from seaweed, from ape, from material left behind by some prehistoric intelligence. For the last 200 years, of course, Darwin's theory achieved and has achieved the status of factual truth even though there has not yet been unveiled one shred of evidence showing inner species or progressive evolution from one species to another. What is fascinating to me lately is that leading evolutionists are actually beginning to verbalize their frustration. The evidence of DNA alone, which Darwin knew nothing about, is so supportive of a designer that many unbelievers even are now referring to what they call intelligent design.

Even though they can't quite form the words in their mouths, creator God. They're getting close. One example is a group of biochemists at UCLA who several years ago concluded by their study of mitochondrial DNA that if family trees were taken indefinitely backward, they would ultimately converge on a small group of ancients who they believed were ancestors of us all. In other words, if we went far enough back, we would come up with one family. They went further to actually postulate in the article that they believed a single female is an ancestor of everyone on earth today and they have nicknamed her Eve. Isn't that great?

Close. Another important thing to note is the fact that many evolutionists are admitting their theory involves a measure of faith. Dr. Herbert Nilsen, a Swedish botanist who is an evolutionist, wrote this intriguing admission and I quote, my attempts to demonstrate evolution by experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed. It may be firmly maintained that it is not possible to find or construct new species.

Deficiencies are real. The idea of an evolution from one species to the next, get this, rests on pure belief. But the relentless truth remains, doesn't it? Man searches for his origin. The world wants an explanation of the beginning. While science marvelously studies the world around us and discovers amazing things, it will never be able to discover the beginning.

John Phillips illustrated the handicap of our observation this way. He wrote, science can measure the swing of a clock's pendulum and come up with an equation that will state exactly where the pendulum bob will be at any future moment. By changing certain factors in his equation, he can probe into the past to some degree.

However, the measurements and laws that now govern the swing of the pendulum do not explain how the pendulum first began to swing. The only way he can state with confidence this is how the pendulum began to swing would be if somebody who was there when it happened were to tell him. In other words, that kind of information that is not to be obtained by reason, but by revelation. Paul's statement again is the revelation.

Look at it again. As it is written, this is the revealed truth in the presence of him whom he believed, even God who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. What we have just read by way of divine revelation is something that provides the objective foundation for our faith. He gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. When did God call into being that which does not exist?

Where do we discover that truth? Paul is obviously referring to the Genesis account isn't he? The inspired account of origins and he is summarizing in a few words here what Moses recorded under inspiration of the Spirit of God in a few verses. I want you to hold your finger here and let's go back to Genesis 1, shall we?

You'll discover in this chapter that what Paul has just declared, Moses will detail. In Genesis 1-1, in fact, you probably don't even need to turn to it to know what it says. Say with me, in the beginning, God created the world, God created the heavens and the earth. If you just started at the beginning and took it slowly, in the beginning, God. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the stunning announcement before you ever get to the part about creation.

In the beginning, God. What you discover in that phrase is not a deduction about God, not even a defense for the existence of God, but a declaration that God exists. In fact, you don't even find an explanation of who he is, just a revelation that he is.

You know, I've never read a book that didn't have some sort of bio on the author, on the back cover, on the flyleaf, somewhere in it, usually a picture of him that's about 15 years old. Not in God's book. He doesn't say anything really about who he is, just we're told in a few verses what he did.

In the beginning, here's what he did. God created the heavens and the earth. If you can believe Genesis 1-1, you can believe John 1-1. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Later on in the chapter, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, even the glory of the father, full of grace and truth. You can believe that. If you can believe in the first creation of Genesis chapter 1, you'll have no trouble believing in the second creation of Revelation chapter 21.

Let me read to you what it says. Then I saw a new heaven. I saw a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth, the one we know now, passed away.

There's no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, being suspended from heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is among men and he will dwell among them and they shall be his people and God himself will be among them. And he'll wipe away every tear from their eyes and there will be no longer any death. There will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain.

The first things have passed away. And he goes on to describe a little bit of the heavenly city. And the 12 gates were 12 pearls. Each one of the gates was a single pearl.

Now, wait a second. The city has no need of the sun or the moon to shine on it for the glory of God is illuminated and its lamp is the lamp. So all we can say about that, John MacArthur in his new book, Battle for the Beginnings, asked this question, do you really believe God can create this new world or will it take billions of years to evolve to get the new heaven and the new earth in working order? If we really believe he can destroy this universe in a split second according to 2 Peter 3 and immediately create a whole new one, what's the problem with believing the Genesis account of a six day creation in the first place? If he can immediately create, listen to this, a world at the end of the age, why can't he do it at the beginning of the age? Paul's statement in Romans 4 provides the foundation for our faith in every piece of revelation.

It also provides the answer of origins. If you go back to Romans 4, you can literally translate the last part of verse 17, the part that says who calls into being that which doesn't exist this way. He calling things, not being being a little wooden in its translation.

But what he's saying is the truth. One creative word after another and things that did not exist in any way, shape or form exist. His word was creative fiat.

You say, well, I don't understand that as if somehow our lack of understanding holds hostage his creative ability. If you go back to Genesis 1, Moses introduces the origin of several things, things that can be measured and analyzed, but the origin apart from Revelation would never be understood. In the beginning, that's the origin of time and measurement. In the beginning, God, that's the origin of cause, force and personality. In the beginning, God created.

That's the origin of action and movement. In the beginning, God created the heavens. That's the origin of space or cosmos. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

That's the origin of matter, the material world, time, measurement, cause, force, personality, action, movement, space, cosmos and matter. In the first 10 words of Revelation, you have the introduction of 10 origins. Furthermore, if you go through Genesis, you discover in this account the origins of many things, the origin of species, the origin of planets, vegetation, fruit, water, the animal kingdom in Genesis 1, the origin of man and woman in Genesis Chapter 2, the origin of marriage in Genesis 2, where Adam referred to Eve as his wife, the origin of sin, Genesis 3, the origin of guilt and blame, also in Genesis 3, the origin of disease, the origin of crime, Genesis 4, the origin of nations and distinct people groups, Genesis 10, the origin of diverse languages, Genesis 11.

But let me add this warning. Any person who says they're a believer and mixes theistic evolution with the Bible, believing it is justifiable, I'm here to tell you it isn't. In fact, those are contradictions. You need to know that in every New Testament reference to Genesis, the account of Moses as given in Genesis 1 is treated as historical, literal fact. James 3, 9 refers to the literal creation of Adam. In 1 Timothy 2, 13 and 1 Corinthians 11, Adam is referred to as literally created by God first and then Eve. In 1 Corinthians 15, 22, we're told that in Adam all die and in Christ all shall be made alive. That verse, by the way, and others indicate the theological importance of understanding Adam as the head of the human race in a literal fashion because Christ will be the head of a new race in a very literal fashion.

Spiritual eyes away the other and you lose the one that's most important to us. You lose the ground for redemption through Christ if you get rid of God's created order. In Mark chapter 10 verse 6, the Lord Jesus referred to the creation of Adam and Eve as an historical event.

Literally true. What's even more important to notice is that whenever you study the New Testament accounts of creation as given in the Old Testament, it consistently, without fail, refers to creation as a completed finished product, a past event completed in time, an immediate work of God, not a long drawn out billions of years process. So Paul's statement in Rome is 417 not only provides the objective basis for our faith, it not only gives us insight into the matter of origins, but it also reveals the special place, it hints at the special place of mankind and God's creation. The only living being God breathed the soul into was his human creation.

He didn't do it with all the teeming animals. In fact, the indication of the text is that he spoke the word and millions of animals, as it were, began to swim and roam and climb and fly. But yet he took one man, and you see him as a personal loving God, breathing into him. Life, a soul, immortal, made. The text tells us in the image of God, that is, God gave male and female mind, emotion, and will.

He gave us the ability to reason and to plan and to pray and to love and to worship. You remove the creator, you remove his purposeful creation, and you strip mankind of his unique place in creation. You take away the meaning, you take away the dignity and the purpose and value of life in the world, but it'll get worse than that.

The Russian Dostoevsky said it well when he wrote, get rid of God, and anything is permissible. We have seen in our own culture over the last 50 years on the heels of evolutionary propaganda that teaches man is just another animal, the results of just a philosophy. Man is beginning to act just like an animal. He acts like an animal because that's what he's been told he is. Males can now breed with as many females as will allow them, like the dogs in our neighborhood.

Gone is character, gone is integrity, gone is fidelity. As one rock band sang it a year ago, we're just another mammal, so let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel. The sexual revolution is logically and consistently born out of the teaching that we are simply animals, and we are reaping the startling loss of human dignity and the alarming rise of the rights of animals.

Those two things always go hand in hand. The fastest growing segment, by the way, in law is pet law, animal law. People for the ethical treatment of animals or PETA, they're referred to certainly on the fringe but becoming more and more mainstream, is well known for its stance that animal rights are equal to human rights. We're all animals. They maintain that killing any animal for food is the moral equivalent of murder. Eating meat is virtual cannibalism, and man is a tyrant species. But how convoluted the logic, in fact, I had a lady come up to me after the first service, she said I was buying a car that had two bumper stickers. One said meat is murder, and the other side of the bumper had said keep abortion legal.

How convoluted the thinking of society that has removed creator God. Now listen, if you want to be a vegetarian, go ahead. In fact, you can have all my squash and peas and spinach, and as far as I'm concerned, that stuff is still unclean.

I'll trade you your meatloaf and chicken and pork chops and banana pudding and sweet tea, whatever you got, I'll take that. The shrinking distance men and women is alarming between animal and human. A recent clipping I was given from a member of our church from the Wall Street Journal explains some legislation that has been recently passed in Germany.

They're further down this pike than we are. Legislation that is requiring pig farmers to provide for their pigs state-of-the-art central heating, homeopathic medicine, and even toys to help them enjoy their lives. They were also mandated to spend personal time in the Wall Street Journal with 1,500 pigs, estimated that he'd need to hire a full-time farmhand in order to spend 20 seconds a day with each pig in order to meet the new requirements.

How do you come up with that kind of regulation? Germany's national minister for consumer protection, food, and agriculture is a member of the Green Party, a social democratic party geared to basically saving animals from humans. The Green Party is a member of the Green Party geared to basically saving animals from humans. In America, PETA is not only following our European neighbors, but attempting to add further nonsense to our law books. It opposes the keeping of pets, period, and even companion animals, including guide dogs for the blind, that that is, in their view, servitude, a violation of the rights of the dogs. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's controversial founder, sort of summed it all up when she alleged, quote, there is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights.

A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. She's right, though. There is no rational reason to view a human as anything more special on planet Earth than any other animal, unless you have revelation which reveals a creator God. This is, ladies and gentlemen, the logical conclusion of someone who denies the special place of humanity as God's crown of creation.

She told a reporter this. I don't have any reverence for human life, only for the entities themselves. In fact, I would rather see a blank space where I am. This sounds strange, but at least I would not be harming anything. By the way, if you're not helping your kids spot the propaganda related to the view that all humans are doing is messing up the world and mistreating nature, and if it wasn't for humans, Mother Nature would be so much better off. If you're not helping them see that in those Disney movies and everything else they're getting and the propaganda they're hearing in the school, you are asleep at the wheel.

Wake up! Counter for them the biblical worldview that they are a special creation given the privilege of ruling over nature, according to Genesis. Not mistreating it, but harnessing it, enjoying it. The beauty of it all, given to us, is his crowning achievement of creation. The radical evolutionary theory, ultimately, ladies and gentlemen, is so driven by pessimism as it relates to the human race that it ultimately calls for the extinction of humanity as a solution.

You think that's exaggerating? Listen to one article published in Wild Earth magazine, which is a radical environmental agency or magazine. The article says, quote, if you haven't given voluntary human extinction much thought before, the idea of a world with no people and it may seem strange, but if you give it a chance, I think you might agree that the extinction of homo sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.

What inane, immoral, humiliating, demoralizing logic that is. No purpose for mankind. To put it simply, evolution in the last 150 to 200 years is simply the latest theory that eliminates God. And in the process, however, it eliminates meaning for mankind. Carl Sagan, one of the most prolific and articulate evolutionists, a man who disliked Christians.

He was interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline when he knew he was dying from terminal disease. Koppel asked him, Dr. Sagan, do you have any pearls of wisdom you would like to give the human race? Sagan responded, and I quote, we live on a hunk of rock that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up our one Milky Way galaxy.

That is well worth pondering, end quote. So much for a pearl of wisdom, instead the tragedy of pessimism. In a book published near the end of his life, Sagan wrote with this kind of pessimism by someone who's ignored his creator and found only meaninglessness in life. Listen, he said, he wrote, our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic darkness.

In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. When I read that, what came to my mind was the wonderful statement of our Lord in Luke 19 verse 10, where he said, I have come to seek and to save those who are lost. Bill Brown recently wrote an article to his constituency, and I got a hold of the magazine, and he told the story of Nancy Grana, who endured a lifetime of disappointment and failure. This Alsip, Illinois native dropped out of high school. He wrote and lost her job. She separated from her husband after suffering two miscarriages. Whatever she did, wherever she went, she felt that failure marked her. She met her failures with alcohol, which only made her life darker and more meaningless.

She found a kindred spirit in Karen Logan. She had her own problems with life, and together they developed a tragic bond of mutual misery and sadness, he writes. Together, they tried to fight the ugliness that life had become for them. Then together, they decided to give up. One cold day in March, Karen moved into Nancy's house where they drank, laughed, and cried. After four days, they went into the garage and shut the doors. Climbing into Nancy's car, they started the engine. Nancy slumped down behind the steering wheel, crying and clutching her wedding album, the symbol of her only moment of happiness on earth.

Karen hugged a stuffed animal and arose. In less than an hour, their lives ended. On the dashboard, they left nine sealed letters to family and friends. Between them on the seat was a sheet of paper with the lyrics to a song by the rock group Metallica. The song expressed their reason for calling it quits. The lyrics read, I have lost the will to live, simply nothing more to give. There is nothing more for me. Need the end to set me free. Death greets me warm.

Now I will just say goodbye. Nancy was 19. Karen was 17. Two girls who had grown up in a society that had erased the wonder of God and led them to the ultimate goal of the ultimate logical conclusion. When you get rid of God and you get rid of the meaningful purpose of life, and that is the song urged them, as it said, away from God and to end their lives.

What answer would you give them, by the way? What could you tell them without a creator God who gives purpose to life? You know, Francis Schaeffer once said that if he had 60 minutes to spend with an unbeliever, he would spend the first fifty-five telling them about creation and a creator God and the last five telling them about the plan of salvation.

Why? Well, because if God created the world and He created human beings with such care, then maybe He did love the world. Maybe He did so love the world that He gave His only Son that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. How can God promise to give everlasting life if He didn't create life to begin with? Only the creator of temporary life can give the promise of eternal life. Since God created life originally, then He has the ability to give you life eternally. If God is indeed your designer, He knows what it takes to be your redeemer. If He is in fact creator, He is capable of being Savior.

Carl Sagan was wrong, tragically, eternally wrong. Help did come to this hunk of rock. It came. It came to redeem those who would place their faith in Him. That was Stephen Davey with wisdom for your heart today from God's Word. Today's Bible lesson came from a series called Father Abraham and it's entitled Origins. I want to make sure you know that Stephen's most recent book also deals with the topic of God's creation but in more detail. The book is called In Living Color. Stephen explores several aspects of what we find in the world around us and shows how it points to the truth of God as creator.

Adam Dorman, our graphic designer, created the full color illustrations. If you'd like a copy of In Living Color, you can call us today at 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-482-4253. There's also information on our website which is wisdomonline.org. I'm so glad you were with us today. Tune in tomorrow for more wisdom for the heart. God bless you.