I Believe — In God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth

Text: Genesis 1:1; Psalm 100:3

Theme: God expressed His almightiness by creating the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And so begins the biblical narrative and immediately—that is, if we believe this—immediately the biblical worldview collides head-on with the secular worldview.

God’s story—and that’s what we believe the bible is—it is God’s story, particularly His redemptive story about how He has chosen to redeem an Elect People unto Himself. The Apostles Creed begins with an introduction of the central figure of eternity past, present, and future—God. The creed then gives us three of His most significant attributes: He is the Father. He is almighty. He is creator of heaven and earth. All the ancient creeds of the Church begin with this fundamental confession. This is the starting place of Christian theology.

I. THE STORY OF CREATION IS THE STORY OF A CREATOR

1. before the creation of the universe, before stars and comets, before galaxies, and dark matter, before the earth, plants, animals and people, there was God

a. and that’s all there was

b. He existed as the self-sufficient, eternal fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

2. what was God doing before He created—speaking all things into existence?

a. that’s a good question, but not one that will lead to as many answers as we might like

ILLUS. I do like how John Calvin answered the question. John Calvin, the 16th-century Protestant Reformer—a man not widely known for his sense of humor—wrote in his systematic theology titled The Institutes of the Christian Religion, “When a certain shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man ‘What had God been up to, before the creation of the world’ the old man retorted that ‘He had been building hell for curious skeptics like you.’”

A. GOD ALWAYS HAS BEEN

1. the bible teaches us that God existed before the universe and as the Creator of the universe is outside the physical laws that govern it

a. He governs it, and it obeys Him as the miracles of Jesus so clearly attest to

ILLUS. The One who created the seas can walk on those seas if he so desires. The one who causes the wind to blow can command the wind to stop blowing when he wants.

b. speaking of God, Moses says, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” (Psalm 90:2, ESV)

c. when we think of God’s pre-existence, we tend to think of God existing for billions of years before creation

1) this only shows how finite and limited our own logic and comprehension of eternal spiritual realities is

2) God is eternal—that is He is above time, He is beyond time—because God is the one who created time

ILLUS. In Genesis 1:14 we read of God creating sun, and moon and stars to mark ‘time and days and years’.

3) and even though God is above and beyond time and space, He has chosen to enter into time and space in the person of God the Son, Jesus Christ

2. while we cannot fully comprehend what God was doing before He spoke the universe into existence, the bible does give us a few clues

a. 1st, Before the Universe Existed, There Was Only God—but He Was Not Alone

1) God is a Trinitarian Being—the persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all share in the same divine nature, and in their essence are One Being

a) Orthodox Christianity has always agreed with our Jewish friends, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One" (Deut. 6:4)

b) we are not tri-theists nor polytheists

2) but we do believe that God has revealed Himself in three Persons—God is Father, God is Son, and God is Holy Spirit—all eternal, all co-equal

a) because God is a Trinity, throughout all eternity, before the universe came into existence, the Godhead enjoyed perfect companionship, perfect love, and perfect contentment within its self

ILLUS. God is not like the board 15-year-old staring out the window complaining, “There’s nothing to do!”

b) Father, Son and Holy Spirit each share equally in the divine glory, and have a perfect relationship with each other

c) Jesus gives us a hint of this in his High Priestly Prayer ...

“And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” (John 17:5, ESV)

ILLUS. Over the years I’ve heard other pastors and evangelists say that God created mankind because He was lonely, and needed someone to fellowship with.” Friends, that’s ridiculous!

3) it is important to understand the inter-Trinitarian fellowship because it guards against the false impressions that God created people because He needed companionship or that He was lacking something without us

a) the Godhead is perfectly content and perfectly complete without us

b. 2nd, Before the Universe Existed, God Was Planning Our Redemption and Glorification

1) the whole reason for Jesus’ incarnation, ministry, and death was to save a people for Himself, and in doing so bringing glory to Himself and the Father

2) Jesus wants us to be with him, and that must be the Father’s will too, because it is the Father who gave us to the Son

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24, ESV)

c. 3rd, Before the Universe Existed, God Was Planning His Kingdom

1) God did not light the fuse of any sort of ‘big bang’ and hope for the best—He created intentionally with a specific end in mind, and that end is an eternal kingdom populated by an eternal, glorified people

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34, ESV)

2) do you see it? ... the Kingdom we will enjoy for all eternity was prepared for you from the foundation of the world

3) in that Kingdom our fellowship with the Godhead will be unimaginably loving and glorious

“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (John 17:22–23, ESV)

4) and yes, in planning His Kingdom He was also planning the Lake of Fire as the final habitation for all those who reject His mercy and grace in Christ

3. why is all this important? ... why do we need to think about what God was “up to” before He began His creative work?

a. 1st, God did not need to create the universe, and He owes nothing to anything or anyone in His creation

b. 2nd, He has shown himself again and again as a gracious Provider and Sustainer who blesses us even though we do not deserve it

c. 3rd, Genesis presents God as fundamentally relational, and this affects our understanding of everything He does

II. THE STORY OF CREATION IS THE TRUE COSMOLOGY OF THE WORLD

1. we barely get into the biblical text when with great clarity and directness the Bible declares that "in the beginning God created"

a. these words are fundamental to our understanding of everything that follows in the Scriptures

1) if we get this right—if we develop a clear understanding of who God is, and what He is done, and what He is up to in His creative effort everything else will fall into theological symmetry

2. however, it should come as no surprise that the biblical cosmology immediately clashes head-on with the secular cosmology of naturalism

a. that the biblical cosmology conflicts with whatever the popular cosmology of the age is, is nothing new

1) the ancient world was awash with competing creation stories—accounts of how the universe and the world came into being

2) the Greeks, the Babylonians, the Arabs, the Hindus all had their ideas of how the universe began

3) only Judaism and Christianity have a cosmology that we believe was revealed to us by the One who created it all in the first place

b. the heavens and the earth—things both visible and invisible—require some kind of explanation

ILLUS. Nancy Pearcey (a fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture) is right when she says every worldview must answer four questions: 1) where does all of this come from? 2) what has happened to make it so wrong? 3) can it ever be made right? And 4) where is all of this going?

c. every single worldview needs to begin with an explanation for the world around us—why is there something rather than nothing?

1) because we are rational creatures with an inquisitive streak, the cosmos requires some intelligible answer as to why all of this exists

2) the clash between worldviews is not merely an ancient clash but remains a clash even today; we can summarize the modern-day clash in two words: naturalism vs. creation

3) why is this so important?

A. A FLAWED COSMOLOGY LEADS TO A FLAWED WORLDVIEW

1. the first fundamental question that any worldview must answer is: “Where did we come from, and who are we?”

2. for the first 1,700 years of western culture the Bible gave us that answer

a. the Genesis account of creation was pretty much unquestioned

b. the Bible said it, that settled it

3. for those of you who may be wondering, that still settles it for me—I am a young-earth creationist

a. I am a young-earth creationist, not because I’m stupid or anti science, but because I choose to trust the Creator who has revealed in His Word how He did it

ILLUS. And just so you know, that seems to settle it for about 40% of Americans. A 2019 Gallup Poll found that forty percent of U.S. adults ascribe to a strictly creationist view of human origins, believing that God created them in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years. And then another 33% percent of Americans believe that humans evolved over millions of years, but they think that it was with God's guidance. (I’m sure this drives the educational elite of academia nuts)

b. the alternative to creationism is naturalism

1) naturalism is the cosmological philosophy that everything in the universe arises from natural properties and causes

2) God does not—indeed cannot—exist

4. the cosmology of naturalism is a “scientific enlightenment” that has produced spiritual darkness

ILLUS. Some of you will remember the PBS program hosted by Dr. Carl Sagan who famously began and ended each program with the comment "The cosmos is all there ever was, or is, or ever shall be." Sagan's answer to the why the cosmos would be, "In the beginning was the cosmos, the cosmos was all there was, the cosmos is all there ever will be. In the cosmos everything that was made was a fluke of nature. In the cosmos was light, and that light spawned nascent life in a primordial puddle that began to evolve."

a. naturalism is the child of an intellectual movement that we’ve come to call, The Enlightenment

b. The Enlightenment was an 18th century philosophical movement that emphasized the use of reason and logic to scrutinize previously accepted doctrines and traditions

1) scientific inquiry and rational thought became the dual standards by which all knowledge and experience was tested

ILLUS. The hubris of modern science has reached the point where scientists like Stephen Hawking says that "We have come to such an advanced understanding of the workings of how the cosmos came together that even if there is a God there is nothing left for him to do." At the same time Hawking admits, "Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question: Why does the universe bother to exist? I don't know the answer to that."

2) the Bible, however, does answer the "why" question—very simply it says this universe exists because God intended it to be so

5. one of the products of The Enlightenment was a man by the name of Charles Darwin

a. after a trip to the Galapagos Islands, he wrote a book entitled The Origin of the Species which was published in 1859

b. he postulated that all species have gradually evolved into the forms they are today—including man—through the process of natural selection over millions of years

1) enter the Theory of Evolution

6. this worldview is the dominant cosmology being taught in academia

a. it’s even crept into the books your children read

ILLUS. Many of you are familiar with the Berenstain Bear book series for children. In one book, the Bear family invites the reader to join them for a nature walk. We start out on a sunny morning, and after running into a few spiderwebs, we read in capitol letters spread across a beautiful sunrise, these word: Nature is all there IS, or WAS or EVER WILL BE.

b. if the naturalistic worldview is correct, then humanity has only himself to answer to and it’s up to us to determine our own fate, our own morality and even our own truth

ILLUS. Charles Coleson writes in his book, How Now Shall We Live, “If nature is all there is, there is no transcendent source of truth or morality. Truth is relative, and we are left to construct morality on our own. Every principle is reduced to a personal preference. If we are animals and have no intrinsic value, then how is killing another human different from killing a cow or chicken?”

B. THE (4) CONSEQUENCES OF REJECTING THE GENESIS COSMOLOGY

1. some pastors tell their congregations that as long as Christians believe in God, does it make any difference whether we believe that God created the world in six literal days, or slowly over billions of years?

a. most say this without ever contemplating the doctrinal consequences of doing so

b. let me share with you four theological consequences when you reject the Biblical account of creation

2. 1st, If You Deny the Accuracy and the Authenticity of the Genesis Cosmology than You Deny the Authority and Inerrancy of the Scriptures

a. that is dangerous

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16, ESV)

“And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:19–21, ESV)

b. the Bible is first and foremost a book faith

1) it's story and message are utterly fantastic and is predicated on the presupposition that God is almighty and can and does intervene in the course of history and the lives of men

c. but just because the message is fantastic and requires faith does not mean that it's stories and miracles are non-historical and cannot be taken literally

1) we believe the stories because we have a God who cannot lie and who would not ask us to put faith in myth

3. 2nd, If You Deny the Validity of the Genesis Cosmology, You Make Jesus a Liar

a. Jesus believed in the historical accuracy of the Scriptures

1) he believed that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch the first five books of the Bible—which includes Genesis and the biblical cosmology

“For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”” (John 5:46–47, ESV)

2) if you cannot bring yourself to accept that God created the universe in six days, how can you believe that God raised a three-day-old corpse from the grave?

b. throughout the Gospels, Jesus upheld the authority and inspiration of the Old Testament Scriptures

ILLUS. I actually remember one of my more liberal professors in college claim that, as the Son of God, Jesus knew that Moses really didn't write the Pentateuch and that the Creation account wasn’t true, but he pretended that they were so as to accommodate the ignorance of the common man of his day.

1) fooey!

4. 3rd, If You Deny the Accuracy of the Genesis Cosmology, You Lose the Origin of Sin and the Necessity of Salvation and the Absoluteness of Judgement

a. I’ve got a question for the naturalist—if everything is evolving upward then why after 10,000 years of recorded human history have we not eradicated hunger, greed, hatred, war, malice, poverty, etc., etc., etc.?

ILLUS. I know we have a few other Trekkies in the church—folks who watch and enjoy the plethora of Star Trek TV series and movies. It has been a cult phenomenon for decades. The underlying premise of the show is what happens in a culture when scarcity, want, war, crime, and poverty are all done away with. Star Trek shows a utopian society where money no longer exists, people work because they want to, and if they don’t want to, well, that’s OK because there is plenty of everything for everyone. All the problems of mankind have been solved—Earth is a paradise.

1) Earth was a paradise, but the 1st Adam ruined it; Earth will be a paradise again, when the 2nd Adam restores it

b. if the Genesis Cosmology is just a story, then how do you explain the depravity of man’s nature?

1) if Genesis isn't accurate, then what is the cause of man's pain, unhappiness, suffering, and death?

2) and if sin is not the source of man's problems, then why do we need a Savior?

5. 4th, If You Deny the Validity of the Genesis Cosmology, Man Becomes Just Another Soulless Creature of the Animal World with No Special Standing

a. the result is a popular world-view called Secular Humanism

1) Secular Humanism maintains that this life is the only one you're going to get, so enjoy it while you can—do what makes you happy

2) Secular Humanism maintains we have a right to make our own rules—you chose what is right and wrong for you—so do what you can get away with

3) Secular Humanism says there is no reason to feel guilty about anything done with our sexual drive—there is nothing morally wrong with homosexuality, adultery, or promiscuity—do whatever makes you feel good

4) Secular Humanism maintains there are no moral absolutes—you get to make the rules and no one has the right to say you’re wrong

5) Secular Humanism believes that you have absolute autonomy over your body—if you want to change the gender of your birth and mutilate your body it’s your body, your choice or if you’re a woman with an unwanted pregnancy— it’s your body, your choice so just kill the baby

6. these consequences to rejecting the Biblical Creation account pretty much reveal the dystopia western culture is quickly becoming

7. The Story of Creation Is the True Cosmology of the World, and Reveals the World as it Really is

III. THE STORY OF CREATION IS A STORY OF FALL AND REDEMPTION

A. MAN IS FALLEN AND DOOMED WITHOUT AN INVOLVED CREATOR

"For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." (Lk 19:10, KJV)

1. the debate between Naturalism vs. Creationism is not about dinosaurs and DNA

a. it is really a debate between competing worldviews

2. at the heart of evolution is the assumption that the beginning of the world, it’s development, and its existence have an entirely naturalistic explanation

a. it is a philosophy that is the dominant view of academia and is taught in our classrooms schools as unquestionable fact

b. the result of the evolutionary worldview teaches that nature is all that exists—there is no such thing as the supernatural

1) if the naturalistic worldview is correct, then man has only himself to answer to and it’s up to us to determine our own fate, our own morality, and even our own truth

3. in contrast to a naturalistic worldview, Christianity teaches that a transcendent God is the ultimate origin of everything

a. it’s a revelation we take be faith

"Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." (Heb 11:3, KJV)

b. the universe is dependent at every moment on His providential governance and care

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." (Colossians 1:15-17, NASB95)

1) a biblical worldview teaches that man was created by God and is God’s crowning achievement in creation—that we were created in His image

2) a biblical worldview teaches that man’s fundamental problem is sin—all the world’s woes and problems flow from that reality

3) a biblical worldview teaches that redemption through Jesus Christ is man’s—and society’s—only hope

4. if the biblical worldview is correct, then man has a God he is accountable to

a. ... and God has a will that we must seek

b. ... and God has revealed an unchanging moral standard of right and wrong that we must submit to

c. ... and God has an opinion about everything that we must discover

Con. There are three great questions in life ... 1) Where did I come from?, 2) Why am I here? 3) Where am I going? Only the Christian Bible adequately answers all three questions.

Daniel Dennet in his book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, writes: “We used to sing a lot when I was a child, around the campfire at summer camp, as school and Sunday School, or gathered around the piano at home. One of my favorite songs was “Tell Me Why.” Here are the lyrics.

Tell me why the stars do shine,

Tell me why the ivy twines,

Tell me why the sky’s so blue,

Then I will tell you just why I love you.

Because God made the stars to shine,

Because God made the ivy twine,

Because God made the sky so blue,

Because God made you, that’s why I love you.

Dennet goes on to say: “This straightforward, sentimental declaration still brings a lump to my throat – so sweet, so innocent, so reassuring a vision of life! And then along comes Darwin and spoils the picnic. The sweet simple vision of the song taken literally is one most of us has out grown. However fondly we may recall it the kindly God who fashioned each and every one of us – all creatures great and small – and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for out delight, that God is like Santa Clause, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete of abandoned altogether. Let all the people of the earth assuredly know that we are a band of insane and deluded adults, for we do believe this.”