Sermon Tone Analysis

If you have a Bible, Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 are where we are going to be at tonight.

I am incredibly excited for this week because I think that we are going to be addressing some of the ideas and topics that have likely floated around your minds for a very long time and we will even be talking about a lot of the things that culture has thrown in your face and has pretty much demanded that you be able to give an answer for.

So, this is a very important week.

Teenagers, like yourselves, are going through an identity crisis and this week is designed to help you all confront that.

I remember going through the same thing as a teenager, asking the same questions that you have likely asked.

I asked, “Who am I?

Where do I fit in?

How do I address and respond to the things that are going on around me? Do I matter?

Do I have value?

What do I do with these thoughts, emotions, and feelings that have been eating me up inside?

Am I the only one who feels like this?”

The answer to that last question is no.

You and I are not the only ones that have ever felt like this.

I was doing some research a couple of weeks ago as I was preparing for tonight on the identity problems that teenagers deal with and I want you to hear some of these statistics.

20% of teenagers suffer from low self-esteem.

Over 70% of girls ages 14-17 say that they avoid certain activities like school or events if they think they don’t look good enough.

20% of teens will suffer from depression before adulthood and that percentage is likely even higher in the era of covid.

75% of teenage girls with low self-esteem say that they engage in negative activities like cutting, bullying, drinking, smoking, or develop an eating disorder.

7 out of 10 teenagers believe that they are not good enough or measure up to where they are supposed to be.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for kids ages 10-14 and the second leading cause in teenagers aged 15-19.

20% of high school students have seriously considered suicide with 9% having attempted it and those numbers continue to rise year after year.

Every year, roughly 5,000 teenagers commit suicide, that’s about 14 teenagers per day.

I know that there are several of you in here who know someone who has taken their own life.

These things are not uncommon and I am sure that some of you have dealt with depression or anxiety, and maybe have even thought of or have taken steps to take your own life.

Do you see why it is so important for us to talk about what our place is in the universe and who we are?

In order for us to know who we are, we need to go back to the beginning.

Who is man?

How did we get here and do we have any value?

Because if all of creation is just a cosmic mistake and man is just a byproduct of evolution, there is no value in any of us.

There is no real purpose behind mankind, there is nothing valuable or redeemable in any of us.

We’re simply an accident.

However, if there is a God who has created all things and has handcrafted each one of us and we are made in His image, that is a totally different story.

It is one thing for there to be a Creator, even the great philiosophical minds of the day like Plato and Aristotole didn’t deny that there was a Creator.

The thing that they and the world struggle the most with is if that Creator is also a Redeemer.

What I want to do briefly tonight is discuss the alternative to the creation story.

Let’s say hypothetically that evolution is true, what would that mean for us?

We’ll talk about that horribly depressing route and then we will talk about how God’s creation of us in His image gives each one of us value far beyond what we may recognize.

It is there where we see that our God is not just a Creator; He’s our Creator-Redeemer.

Let’s pray together and then we will read Genesis 1:26-31

Is Mankind an Accident?

Over a year ago, we did a series on apologetics while we were still worshipping together in the CLC and we spent one night talking about the evidence in favor of Creationism or the evidence in favor that everything was created by God.

During that time, we looked at evolution and Darwin’s theories and we sort of tried to nail down in about 40 minutes all of the problems with Darwinian evolution.

Now, with that being said, we certainly don’t have the time to do that again but there are a few things that are worth reemphasizing from that particular message.

I’m sure all of you have heard about the big bang theory and Darwin’s theory of evolution, and that is exactly what they are, they’re just theories that have been progressed to be seen as absolute fact.

Now the reason that this is, is because this theory is the only theory that is advocated.

Really, when you take the time to look at Darwin’s theory, they fall apart pretty much on their own but most people accept it as fact because it is the only theory that is ever talked about.

Now if all you ever hear about is evolution and the big bang theory, chances are you are going to take that theory as the one that is correct but a major problem arises with only hearing one side of an argument and that is that you will naturally assume that part of the argument is correct.

Solomon says in Proverbs 18:17 “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”

Arguments can be very persuasive until someone from the other side of the aisle comes to challenge it, so I want to spend a few minutes addressing from the other side of the argument, from a creationist worldview.

Why is it important to start here?

Because if creation is accidental, if man was just the result of one big accident and one monkey with big ideas, then there is really no point in arguing for human value because there is not anything there to establish value to begin with.

How does value happen?

In order for something to be valuable, something must first bestow it with value.

Take Benji for example.

His favorite thing in the world is his stuffed Yoshi from Mario.

Now if I were to put him in a room and at 1 end of the room was Yoshi and the other end was a million dollars, which one do you think he would go for?

He would probably go for Yoshi because he has placed value on Yoshi.

That money wouldn’t mean anything to him because there is something in his eyes that is far greater that he loves and values more.

Unless something is given value, it is valueless which means that if there is no Creator, there is no true value behind anything.

Let’s try to define Darwinism.

Darwinism is the theory of evolution by natural selection.

It’s the survival of the fittest idea and Charles Darwin created it.

Now with evolution we are taught that over an extended period of time, monkeys or primates evolved into humans.

And this is really one of the most important questions that people face in their lifetime: Are we just an accident that came to be by chance and are therefore no different than animals?

Or are you made special in the image of a loving God who made you with a purpose?

When it comes to evolution, we need to be able to properly define it if we are going to critique it.

No one wants to hear what someone has to say if they have no idea about the other side of the argument.

Evolution has multiple meanings.

Evolution means a change over time.

Life is different now than it was however many thousands of years ago, we have animals now that didn’t exist back then, and vice versa.

Now when you rub your skin, you have cells that are shed and are replaced.

Believe it or not, this is a form of evolution, when your hair grows, that is a process of evolution.

When the leaves of a tree change, that is a process of evolution because it is a change over time, now is that controversial?

No I wouldn’t think so.

There is another form of evolution known as micro evolution.

Micro evolution means something that evolves at a small or on a micro level.

Micro-evolution is a change within a species.

Charles Darwin had a famous experiment where he went to the Galapagos Islands and he noticed that there were 13 different types of finches, which is a bird, and he noticed that they had different colors and sizes so he believed that they must have evolved.

But here is the thing: micro-evolution occurred but at the root, they were still finches.

There was no change of kind which is what macroevolution pushes.

Now macroevolution is the theory of evolution that you are probably a lot more familiar with.

Now what Darwin taught was that from one species at the very bottom of the evolutionary tree, all forms of life came into being.

Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution.

It had been around 2000 years before Darwin set it into motion.

Even Darwin seemed to have his doubts though about his theory.

He writes in his book The Origin of Species, “Why if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?

Why is not all in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?

As by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?”

Even though Darwin had his doubts, the main theory of evolution that we will still talk about is the theory of common descent by natural selection.

Natural selection is also known as survival of the fittest.

What is natural selection then?

It is the idea that only that which is strongest will survive and that the weak will eventually die out.

But here is one of the many problems with this theory: If the strongest really do survive, that which is immediately different would be considered the weakest.

What do I mean by that?

Take the evolution of humans.

The theory is that at some point, some sort of fish developed gills and walked on land to breathe.

Now the problem with that is that the development of those gills would actually be a major weakness to the creature.

Before, it only needed water to survive but now it needs both water and oxygen.

How would this creature have figured out that it needed oxygen prior to dying out?

And wouldn’t stronger creatures have been able to see this weakness and exploit it?