Creation, Stars, And Science

Announcements:

Saturday meeting here at church at 10:30. We’re riding up to Renaissance fun park for some laser tag, go karts, and mini golf along with some lunch somewhere.

Camp is July 6-9th. If you’re going it’s 160.00 and you also have to go up to Mrs. Renee and say thank you for letting Chris take us to camp on your birthday.

June 4th we’re going to a Louisville Bats game. $13 for a ticket.

Prayer Request:

The Bible and Science

We’re getting into a new series that I hope will be at least the slightest bit interesting to you. If not, well sorry. Let’s start off with the question, do you think science and the Bible can go together? Do you think they compliment each other or contradict each other? There are a lot of people that will say, the Bible and Science contradict each other or that science actually disproves the idea of God. When in fact, a lot of the Bible has been proven by science. Most scientist don’t want to or refuse to admit that God is possible based on their own findings. Over the next few weeks, I am not going to set out to prove anything other than show that science and Scripture have a lot more in common than what we tend to believe. It’s my goal to help give you a few things to think about, research on your own to show I’m not making it up, and if you’re a Christian, give you something to help get other people thinking who don’t believe in the Bible.

Now I want to throw out my own disclaimer before we get fully started. I’m not a scientist. I don’t know everything there is about science and how everything works. I don’t understand how most things work as it is. I’ve done a little bit of research but some of you may have done more and actually know more about some of these topics we’re going to discuss over the next couple of weeks. I will gladly take any questions that you have, but know that I may not be able to answer it or explain it right away. If I can answer a question, I will explain it the best I can. If I can’t I’ll take your question and I’ll answer it next week or over the next few weeks. But I encourage you, ask questions.

With that being said if you have some kind of question regarding science and the Bible, write it down. At the end if you have one hand it to me and we’ll talk about it sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Open up to Genesis 1. What better place to start than at the very beginning.

I believe everyone has an understanding of how the Bible says God created the but we’re going to read through it just to make sure and then go from there. It’s a few verses

So Genesis 1:1-25 says:

So we’ve read of the 7 days but I’m intentionally leaving out the creation of man and 7th day for a later discussion. I want to focus on a few different topics that can be found in the first couple of days. Now again, I’m not taking this into a majorly deep discussion, but I do want to point out a few things from a Biblical perspective and a scientific perspective. But let’s cover the basics first.

So if you sit and think about it, these 6 days can be broken down into 2 categories. The first being forming and the second being filling. So we can take those days and line them up together.

Day one is light and darkness which is the forming, then day 4 filled that form with the sun, stars, and the moon.

Day two, God formed the heavens and the earth and separated the waters. On day five God filled the air with birds and the waters with sea life, fish, etc.

Day three God formed the dry ground and plants then on day six God filled it with animals and man.

So we can see God forming something and then filling it, which shows everything is done for a purpose, everything that happens, happens for a reason.

Creation Itself

Now we’re going to start our science and Bible in a place where there may not be a full agreement because there are multiple theories on how the earth was created.

First we’ve just looked at what and how Christians believe God created everything. If you noticed, no where did I read a date or set of years. So the Bible does not say the earth is 10 billion years old or anything like that. It just states that God did create everything over these 7 days.

Scientist have other theories on how the earth was created. The biggest and most popular theory is the “Big Bang Theory.” Essentially, it states that there was an explosion and things started expanding over billions until you get to how things are today. One issue we have with this explanation is simple statistics. The chances of an explosion occuring and EVERYTHING lining up exactly where it needed to is practically impossible. That would be like taking a handful of rocks and randomly throwing them in hopes that all of them line up exactly where they need to go on the first try. Most Scientist agree that if the earth was 4 Million miles closer to the sun or 34 million miles farther, than the world would either be too hot or too cold to sustain human life.

Another issue with this view is you can’t create something out of nothing. There has to be a creator. Take this phone as an example. If you walk up and pick up this phone off the ground, you don’t think this phone randomly appeared. Yes someone dropped it, but you know that someone HAD to create that phone. Same for a building, they don’t just show up. There has to be a creator. So why would one think that the earth and everything was created out of nothing, when we know that you can’t create a house or a phone out of nothing? So there has to be a creator.

How old?

Now the next question, how old is earth or the universe? Right now it’s agreed upon by most scientist that the earth is roughly 4.5 to 13.5 billion years old, give or take a few million years. They guess this based off of rocks found in Canada that they say is 4 Billion years old. Now remember, this is just a guess at how old the rock is. There is nothing saying for a fact this rock was that old. Also this is also one of those areas where I can’t explain exactly how they came to that conclusion either, but I can say that science is not always an absolute fact.

Now on the Christian side of things, there are a couple of different theories. One follows a similar path as science. There are some that say well the earth has to be billions of years old because we are able to test the rocks. So yes, God did create everything, but He created everything billions of years ago. Those who tend to believe this also tend to believe that God didn’t create everything in exactly seven days. They believe it’s not a literal seven days but a period of time that was just called seven days. One problem we have with this line of thinking is that calls into question the truthfulness of God’s word. If we say one part of God’s word is false, then all of God’s word is false.

One of the other theories is based off Jewish calendars, and the work of a man, Archbishop James Ussher, puts the earth being created at 4004 B.C. So that would put the earth at being roughly 5800 years old. Those who believe this usually believe that the earth was created in seven literal days. The problem with this view, comes from a scientific perspective that says rocks and things are millions and billions of years old.

Now for my personal thoughts. I don’t think it really matters exactly how old everything is. If it mattered God would have put it in the Bible. I’m not saying I am fully convinced that the earth is roughly 5800 years old, but I am fully convinced that God created everything in 7 days because that’s in scripture.

Sun, Stars and Moon

Now let’s look at another part of creation. Day one God created light and dark, and day 4 He filled it with the sun, stars and moon. We have a few verses that address this outside of what I read a few minutes ago.

Genesis 22:17 God’s talking to Abraham and says I will bless you, and multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.

Jeremiah 33:22 says As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the descendants of David My servant and the Levites who minster to Me.

These two verses talk about how many stars there are and how many pieces of sand. It’s physically impossible to count how much sand there is. Same thing for the stars. If you have the right conditions, you can see roughly 3,000 stars without any assistance. Scientist have admitted that we cannot ever know exactly how many stars are out there.

Ok one might say well whenever these verses were written they were able to see into space in some way, so they knew there were more stars than what we can see. Well the first telescope was invented in 1608. That’s well after the Bible was written.

On the topic of stars, 1 Corinthians 15:41 says There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.

When you look at the stars can you tell them a part or do they look the same? I think we all agree they look very similar right? According to astronomers, each star is different. The different colors mean different temperatures, each star has a different radius so their sizes are different. So again, scientist have backed up Scripture by agreeing the stars are all different. Which is not something they had the knowledge of or the ability to study when the Bible was written.

Jeremiah 31:35-36 talks about the precision of movement in the universe. It says Thus says the LORD, Who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, who disturbs the sea, and its waves roar (The LORD of Hosts is His name: If those ordinances depart from before me says the LORD, then the see of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me forever.

So here there talking about the rotation of the earth around the sun, the rotation of the moon around the earth, which helps with the rise and fall of the ocean tide. Scientist believe that without the moon, a day on earth would only last six to twelve hours. There would be thousands of days in one year because the moon helps slow the earths rotation. It would also mess with the earths tilt and the axis would vary over time. If it wasn’t for this tilt, we would either have no seasons or a huge extreme in all the seasons.

In Job:26:7 the Bible says “He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.”

Here we see the Bible saying the earth is in space there, with nothing holding it up.

Again, these last few verses I’ve shared have all been backed up and proven by scientist.

In closing for tonight we looked at how God created everything and how the Bible and science can actually agree together on some things. I stated earlier that God formed things and then filled them. God had a plan from the beginning. He knew sin would enter the earth and He knew that it was going to take Jesus coming in, living a perfect life, dying on a cross, and raising again to take away that sin so we could eventually get back to the way He intended things at the beginning. If you have never accepted Christ as your Saviour, let’s have a conversation right after this. I’d love to share with you what that means. Maybe you have accepted Christ, but you’ve strayed away. Christ is always there waiting for you to come back to Him with open arms. He won’t ever throw you away. Let’s pray.