Basic Assumptions #2: God Created

How did the universe begin and what does its existence tell us about God? This message explores the evidence and assumptions behind the Christian belief that creation is not the result of random chance, but points to an intentional Creator. As we examine Genesis 1:1 and the nature of creation itself, we’re challenged to think deeply about what we believe and to discover that faith and reason don’t have to be enemies. 

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Well. Good morning. As we continue in our series entitled Basic Assumptions, is Christianity stupid? The goal of this series is to help us love God with our minds. You know, the great commandment is to love God with our with all our heart, with all our soul, and also with all our minds. Have you ever thought about the the different parts of the great commandment to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind? Have you ever asked yourself the question, what difference is loving God with my heart compared to loving God with my soul? Or what difference is loving God with my mind to loving him with my heart and my soul? What are the different parts of that great commandment? And what happens to us if we love God with only 1 or 2? But not all three of those are descriptive ways in which we are called to love God. Suppose, for example, I love God with all my soul and all my mind, but I don't love God with my heart. What is the consequence of that? Well, you know, I think it's clear that our relationship with God would be kind of dry if we just loved him with our soul and our mind, but not our heart. But what would happen if we loved God with our soul and our mind and not our heart? Excuse me. Rather, we loved him with our with our heart and our soul and not our mind. I think it is clear to say, you know, if we don't have direct understanding, intellectual appreciation for God that we are untethered from, you know, the truth and we're driven by our emotions and we can easily be sidetracked. In this series, we're going to definitely be emphasizing loving God with our mind, with and developing our intellectual relationship with God by comparing the basic assumptions of Christianity with the basic assumptions of those who are Christians, detractors or rivals. Now, again, to remind you, we're going to be going through this series based in the structure of of the four questions that every worldview must answer, every perspective, every worldview, every point of view must answer these four questions. Which? Which are. The first question is where did we come from? And that's what we're going to be looking at again this week and next week. We started with that last week. And then the second question is why are we here? Third question is what is the right thing to do? And the fourth question is where are we going? Now we began last week by addressing the question of where did we come from? By asking the first of three questions. We asked the question, did the universe have a beginning? Now this work, we're going to be asking the question, how did the universe actually begin? And next week we're going to be asking the question, what came first? Information or matter? How did the universe begin? Is the question will be addressing today. And there's two options to answering that question. There's two answers to that question. And everybody and every every school or train of thought falls into one of these two categories. The first answer is the way we answer the question, which is the universe was purposely created by an intelligent creator. And the other option is, is the the universe began as a cosmic accident. And there really is no order in the universe. What appears to be the product of purposeful design really isn't. It only appears that way. So those are the two options that we have to choose from in terms of asking the question, how did the universe begin? Is it. Is it stupid? Is it stupid for us Christians to assume that reality is actually how it appears to be? Is it stupid to believe that since there appears to be intelligent design and purposeful order, that there actually is? Is it really more intelligent to assume that those with a naturalist point of view are correct when when they say that the obvious order and design that is seen in the universe is only an illusion, it's just a construct of our minds. It is really more. Is it really more intelligent to assume that there is no purposeful order in all of reality than to assume that what appears to be designed is designed? Why did Christians passively allow our views to be generally thought of as unintelligent when they are, in fact, self-evidently true? By looking at the evidence, is it really stupid to believe that things are the way they actually appear to be? Now this is this following statement is true. No scientist, no atheist, no secular philosopher. No one. In fact, everyone would say this is true. Every person, no matter what perspective they come from, would say that when you look at a single cell of a living organism, it appears to be purposely designed. The more you discover the functions with the most simplest organisms, it appears to be designed. Everyone agrees that there is appearance of design, and that appearance is apparent everywhere. When you look at things in a microscope or you look from the perspective of a telescope, everything in reality appears to be designed. Yet the secular community thinks that we're stupid for assuming what appears to be true is true. The first assumption that we dealt with last week is that universe had a beginning, and the second assumption that we're going to be dealing with this week is the universe began as a result of a super intelligent being creating it. What do we see when we open our eyes and look at the world around us? When you're in the garden and you see a hummingbird hovering in front of a beautiful flower, and you contemplate the symbiotic relationship between the hummingbirds need for that flower and the flowers need for the hummingbird to pollinate the flower. Do you tend to go think to yourself? My goodness, this is sure. Awesome example of of random processes of molecules falling together and and and what a majestic thing it is that just this this there's just this accident right there before me as this bird hovers with its wings flapping far faster than I could even perceive. And yet it's staying in a, in a, in a, in a in the same spot, suckling on a flower that happened to be by accident, come into being at the same time that the bird needed it. Is that something that you tend to think that it's an amazing coincidence of random molecules having combined blindly, for both the bird and the flower to mutually exist at the same time. Or do you see the handiwork of God? How did the universe begin? The the title of our message this morning is God Created, and we're going to be looking at chapter one again, chapter one, verse one again. And we're going to be looking at verse 21 and 27 also. So let's begin with chapter one, verse one again, which says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Heavenly father, Lord, as we take apart slowly your word, father, we just see how amazingly accurate it is to what we observe. And as we look at this word created today, father, may we appreciate the necessity that that something happened to start all causality. That itself had to come from an unmoved mover. Lord, we come before you today, and we just pray that you would cause our eyes to look upon your world and appreciate you to fall in love with you, with our minds. To see with our intellects how beautiful you are. Bless this time as we look at your word together. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Now, last week we examined, the reasonableness of the claim that the universe had a beginning where it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. We've seen that after a century of denying the assumption that they're evidence. The evidence was that the universe had a beginning that the scientific community has of late become persuaded. And what I mean by late in the last several decades has become persuaded that the steady state theory was wrong, that the universe did, in fact, have a beginning. Today, as we continue in our series Basic Assumptions, is Christianity stupid? We're going to look at our second basic assumption by answering the question how did the universe begin? And the theme this morning is this creation is a supernatural work of God. Let's take a look at verse one again. I have the word created underlined. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That word, the Hebrew word there for created is bara, and it means to bring something into existence that didn't that that is completely new, that didn't exist before. Now it's interesting. This verb to create is never, ever, ever used with any other subject than God himself. Nowhere in the Bible will you find this word attached to any other subject. Nothing. In the nowhere in the Bible will you see man Barad or nature Barad. It's only used with God as its subject. And when you understand its meaning, you can see why. Because when man creates something, he creates something out of what already exists. A potter makes a creates a pot out of clay. Nature may create a sand dune out of sand and wind blowing across the dune, but in both cases, everything that we create, our nature creates, that we create with substance that already exists. We rearrange things. God bras things, brings them into a newness of existence. And so that's why this word can't be used with any other subject than God himself, because it wouldn't make sense. We make stuff out of preexistent stuff, that stuff that already exists. We reform existing stuff only God brings into existence both the stuff and its form. When God creates, he creates both the form of the stuff and the stuff at the same time. Create this word. Create a borough is synonymous with the word miracle. The word miracle means that something came into existence through supernatural processes. In other words, it didn't happen through natural causal events. It's supernatural. It's a miracle is synonymous with the word miracle. Now it's interesting. When you, think about it. Either the universe is supernatural or it's natural. Even Albert Einstein made this quote here. Albert Einstein said this. There's two ways to live. You can live as if nothing is a miracle. Or you can live as if everything is a miracle. And by that he meant if, if, if, if creation came into existence supernaturally, everything that is the antecedent of creation, then therefore itself is a miracle. Everything that started is a miracle is itself an expression of a miracle. Or if there was no miracle. If we're just here as a result of natural processes, then nothing is a miracle. So I think I is correct in saying that we can either live as though everything is a miracle, or as though nothing is a miracle. And we we last week, we're represented the three views of the nature of reality with these three circles that I'll just review again this week. There's naturalism. That's the idea that everything is explicable by matter itself, that there isn't anything outside of the material realm. There's spiritual naturalism, which is still a closed system where everything is within nature, but there's spirits within nature, too. You know, there's sort of a spiritual element, but there's nothing outside of the natural realm, and there's supernaturalism, which is represented there by the infinity symbol that's in and through nature, but also above and beyond nature. And that's what we hold, that the nature of reality is supernatural, that it was created by a God that himself is in and through nature, but is also transcendent of of nature, above and beyond nature. If nature created itself through natural processes, then there is no such thing as a miracle. How did natural processes create order and design, much less love, beauty, justice, and heroism? Have you ever thought about that? How did how, how how could such a thing as justice be true? For example, if we are just the result of blind random processes, how did the natural processes create these things? How did the how did blind forces create even blind forces? You know, that's an interesting thought. None of these things can be the product of blind forces. Heck, mindless blind forces themselves can't be the product of mindless blind forces. If nature, it made itself through random forces. Where did those random forces come from? If nature made itself, then order. Purpose, design, justice, truth, beauty, heroism, even evil itself, there's no explanation for evil if all of these things are only an illusion. How could you argue, for example, if Adolf Hitler was just preexistent consequence of a predetermined string of random processes? How could you say he's evil? He just is. What is? He's just the result of the continuing process of mindless development. How could you say anything is evil or anything is good? There's no way to say anything is good or anything is evil. If anything, if everything is just what is. If there is no transcendent God to a to to establish, this is good. And this is not good. Mindless processes have no heart, no will, no determination, no measure for good or evil. If if we're just part of this accidental flow of molecules, then there is no basis of saying that Mother Teresa is good and Hitler is evil. If naturalism is true, then there's just gray, meaningless, painful, fruitless, short, and worthless existence. Gratefully, however, the evidence of our being supernaturally created is endless. And everywhere. As we could quote from Romans chapter one, it says, for since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. According to that verse, it's self-evidently clear in looking at any aspect of creation that you can derive from that invisible qualities about God, his divine power and his divine nature that they're clearly seeing, that they're easily perceived by looking at what he has made. So, you know, you really have to try hard to suppress the self-evident truths that are everywhere to see around us, that we live in a miraculous, state, that we're the result of a supernatural creation. Now, C.S. Lewis said something interesting about miracles. He made an interesting point about the miraculous that I'd like to share with you. Would you say if you were there that day when Christ took the five loaves and the and the fishes and prayed over them, and multiplied those loaves and fishes, and fed 5000 people, and had baskets and baskets left over more left over, far more left over than what was started out with. Would you say that that was a miracle? Of course it's a miracle. It transcends natural processes. There's no way, in terms of cause and effect that you could explain that happening. But C.S. Lewis points out something interesting. He says that within a within the capacity of a single grain of wheat is the potential to become infinite fields of wheat and create other grains of wheat, which themselves could become infinite fields of wheat. And his point is, is that the only difference between what's inherent in a grain of wheat and the feeding of the 5000 is time. With with a little bit of time. The very thing that happened on that mountain happens within our observation throughout human history. We see within the seed the capacity to become an infinite increase and to produce other seeds with infinite increase. It's miraculous. It's miraculous. What is inherent in inside the potential of every single little seed here. And when we look at at the creation story, guess what we see in verse 11, it says, God said, let the land produce vegetation, seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it. According to it, to their various kinds. Did this capacity for things to endlessly reproduce itself, for life, to, to produce, you know, progenitor into the future, endlessly just come about through random processes. Is this miraculous, potential within each seed the result of blind processes? It's so clearly miraculous. Every slice of nature reveals how much more reasonable it is to believe that God created, than to believe that we were made out of a blind, unthinking, random processes. You know, recently, the 20th century's most influential atheist, Anthony Flu, who often debated our own C.S. Lewis, has converted to believing that God exists and what caused him to finally convert to a real. The realization that God must exist is the increasing evidence, from microbiology to the incredible complexity of the transmission of information within living cells. Not only is there complexity within this within the DNA of every cell, but there's the capacity within those cells to communicate that information outside of itself so things can grow and develop and become specific to accordance to their design. And the weight of that just was so overwhelming that he collapsed and admitted that he had been wrong. All of these years. Let me state with certainty that science, though reluctant science, though not wanting to science, though having a bias in a totally opposite direction, is going to inevitably come to the same conclusions and assumptions of Christianity, the assumptions that we have always held. And that assumption is the theme of our message this morning, that creation is a supernatural work of God. Point number one is, that's our theme this morning. Point number one is creation is progressive. Now, this word is used three times in Genesis chapter one. It's used in the first verse, which we've already read. We'll look at that again. And then it's used when animals are created and then it's used when man is created. And what we see in the Genesis account is the progressive nature of creation, that God first created stuff, then he created plant life, then he created animal life, and then he created man. And I'm skipping a lot of steps to, you know, there's, seven days in creation and there's seven progressive steps in which God created different things in order. And when we look at that order, that's a pretty magnificent demonstration of of the proof of God having done it and the Bible being correct, we'll we'll get into that in a minute. But look at chapter one, verse one. It says, in the beginning God created the heavens and earth. And then chapter 21 says, God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing which the waters teams according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And then verse 27 says, So God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him, male and female. He created them. So God creates his his bara as in stages. He didn't create everything all at once. He created in stages he he. His creation was developmental. He first created time and space and manner and energy. And that energy was in the form of light. The very first expression of energy was in the form of light. Interestingly, that's what scientists now believe was what first was admitted at the beginning of the universe was light. Secondly, he he starts to create the expanse of space and, and the difference between liquids and, and solid matter. And he separates the water and the land, and then he creates vegetation. He creates living plants on the planet. Then he creates the stars, and the first stage is then over. The first stage of creation is over. Time, space, energy, matter and vegetable life are all created now. It's interesting that this happens to be the same sequence that scientists believe that it occurred, and we have been considered stupid all this time for believing the Bible. We're always considered stupid until the Secular Committee community comes to agree with us on any given point, and then it's thinks they were stupid for something else. We're just by definition stupid for believing the Bible is true. And of course it it it. Then it comes to agree with the Bible on any given point. And we're stupid for some other point that we believe. Verse 21 says this. Whoops. Did I, Forgot to put the slide in there. I'll go back one. Verse 21 says, God created the great creatures of the sea, and every living and moving thing within the waters team with which the waters teams according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Again, the word is the same word that he used for creating the material world. He created animals. How did animal life come into existence? Well, the naturalistic explanation is that somehow rocks came alive. Somehow matter turned into life. And that is a complete mystery to the naturalistic scientist to explain how did that transition occur from inert matter to living things. They've never had any kind of way of explaining that transition. And, rather than explaining it, they just say we're stupid for believing it, that that life was created out of a miracle. One of the troubling things that evolutionary scientists have had to deal with is what they themselves, selves call the Cambrian explosion. What is the Cambrian explosion? Well, the Cambrian explosion is what we find in the fossil record. There's a period of time in the rocks that, all of a sudden, there's this mass explosion of life. Prior to that, they just could find little, maybe little one cell things in the rocks. But all of a sudden, there's this massive explosion in the fossil record. They call it the Cambrian explosion. It comes far too suddenly for evolution to be a slow and gradual process, which Darwin proposed. And so in this explosion of, of of life, where every phylum of life, every kind of animal is apparent in the Cambrian explosion, to try to explain that from an evolutionary standpoint was pretty impossible. They continued to try to do so, and that's why they came up with ideas like punctuated evolution, where the notion was evolution all of a sudden happened quickly, that life all of a sudden sprang up. Suddenly there was no concession that the Bible seems to be true here, that just as it said, that God created animals all in a single stage. That because the fossil record seems to appear that way, that the Bible must be true. They came up with an even more, difficult, theory called punctuated equilibrium, where evolution happens not gradually but suddenly. Of course, this idea of animals appearing suddenly after light and matter and earth and vegetation fits the biblical account. But the biblical account can't be right, because it's the biblical account and because it's supernatural, and because we don't believe in supernaturalism. It can't be right. Because it's supernatural. It's sort of, circular argument there. The, the basic assumption of naturalism is there is no God. So whatever explanation we have that includes God can't be right. Now, think about this for a second. Think about how amazing it is that Moses, in writing a genesis by the inspiration of God, got all this stuff right. Moses had no idea about photosynthesis. How is it that Moses came up with the idea that plants came before animals and light came before plants? And when you think about what we are, one of the ways that you could think about yourself is that you are. Light. Your reconstituted light. Plants are a machine that takes the light from the sun and turns it into sugars. And we eat those sugars and grow and develop. All of our nourishment is transformed light. And therefore you could say we are transformed light. In order for us to exist in our current state, light had to exist first, then plants had to exist, and then animals could therefore exist after that. Well, how is it that Moses got that order right? How is it that somebody, not knowing nothing about this all of a sudden created plants with not what not only produce the sugars that we need, but as a byproduct, produce the oxygen that we need. How is it that Moses got this sequence right? Is it just a coincidence that he happened to get the right sequence? He certainly couldn't have known the properties, that that of our dependance upon plants in the detail that we know today. He couldn't have known the relationship between lights and sugars and photosynthesis and oxygen. Yet somehow, this sequence is the sequence that we see must have occurred in order for us to exist. Plants became the foundation of animal life and were created prior to animal life. And I'm lost in my notes here, so I'll skip down to here. Is it really stupid to think that, that progressive creation is supernatural? Is it really smarter to believe that this amazing progression was just the result of an accidental expression of time and chance? Again? Creation is a supernatural work of God. Point number one is creation is progressive. Point number two is God created both physical and spiritual reality. Let's take a look at, verse 27. This is the third verse where it says God created in Genesis chapter one God bara man. So God bara God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female. He created them. Now he first created non-living, inert things. Then he created living things. Then there was the height of his creation. He created man. He created man with an additional dimension to the animals. He created man not males, but males and females. When we say man here, we mean all of mankind. He created man with this additional dimension as being described as being created in his image. His height of creation was to create these beings that were able to reflect something about him who is spirit. Now you notice on this screen, we are able to discern the image that is projected on on it without the screen. If we projected that image out into space at infinitum, we wouldn't be able to see it. The screen is not the image, but it's able to capture the image and reflect it back so the image becomes visible. God created man, especially male and female, and the way that they relate to one another, with the capacity for God's invisible nature to become visible as a result of the way man conducts himself. It's a beautiful thing to think about that the height of God's creation was the jewel of God's creation, was something that could show himself off to, to display himself as he really is. He can bind. He created this animal that had a spiritual nature to it. He he created both what was physical and spiritual. Spiritual man is something unique. He is the crown of his creation. In the coming weeks, we're going to ask the question, what went wrong to this majestic moment in human history when everything was good and the crown of God's creation was glorious and everything was right in an order in the garden. And it was just beautiful to behold. And God rested and marveled at the wonder that he had done. And he was pleased with all that he had created. Now something went wrong, and we'll be addressing that in the weeks ahead. But today, I just want to recognize that God created first matter and energy, then life, then the jewel of his creation, and he infused his spirit into man. And it was all good. And the height of it was a man and a woman together, being able to make the nature of God visible. Now the naturalist assumption denies both the spiritual nature of man, and they also deny the superiority of man over the rest of God's creation. Based on our observations, let me just ask, is it reasonable, based on our observations, is it more reasonable to for man to, to be considered different from animals or the same as animals? Is it more reasonable for us to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the animals, or is it more reasonable to recognize that, or think that we're just the same as every other animal? There is no accounting for any distinction between man and the other animals. If we're all products of mindless evolution. Returning to Einstein's quote where he says we have two options in life, we can either live life as though everything's a miracle or as if nothing is a miracle. Those two ways of looking at it, are, you know, we're faced with that. If nothing is a miracle, then we're formed out of blind and purposeless, heartless, cold and unthinking, unreasoning, unfeeling forces, which leaves us as just temporal accidents of time and chance. And there is no glorious distinction about who we are or what we are created to be. But gratefully, the reasonable evidence points to our miraculous origins. And if we accept the Christian assumption that we were supernaturally created by God, by a good God, and we're the height of his creation, then we. Our purpose is to be the most beautiful thing visible in the universe. You know, when we look at that, when we look at the account in Genesis, we have to ask the question, what wrong? And we're not going to have time to address that now. But let me just say this that the borough of God has never stopped. And at the end of the book, it says he's going to be creating a new heaven and a new earth. But even throughout human history, God has has had these punctuated moments of creation. And one of those moments was in the womb of a peasant where God brought broad something new, his only begotten son. He created in her womb. The solution to the problem that we now face. God did not walk away from us because we're broken. He, created through a new act of creation in this peasant girl's womb the solution to our problem. Again this morning. Creation is a supernatural work of God. Point number one is creation is progressive. And point number two, God created both physical and spiritual reality. Let's take a look in conclusion at what it says in Psalm 19, verses one through three. Psalm 19, verses one through three says this the heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they poor for speech. Night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Let me ask you this question. Is that really true? Is that really true? Is it true that the heavens declare the glory of God in every language, to every people throughout the earth? Is it really true that the existence of God and His beauty is a self-evident truth that is undeniable? Let's pray. Father, I thank you for eyes to see what is self-evident, and we pray for those who are blind to the majesty of your beauty. Through all the evidence that is displayed in any aspect of creation, whether we're looking in a microscope or through a telescope, or through unaided vision of our own eyes, we see you and we see the evidence of you. Your glory is displayed in the heavens. It speaks to us in every language and in every tongue, and it's speaking all of the time. May we hear the voice of what you've made, and come to sound and reasonable conclusions about you. Father. It is a burden to be considered foolish for believing in you, but it's not nearly so burden in some, as the burden of being shown to be foolish for all eternity for denying you. And so we pray for those who are in folly right now, who claim that you do not exist, who deny your authority over us, and your right to rule and determine what is right and wrong. And we ask God that you would like. You have begun with Anthony Flu and others, that you would just bring them to their senses, that they might taste of your goodness and might experience your embrace, and might realize your love and desire to fix what is broken. Lord, you spared no expense and bringing the solution to our sin. And we thank you, father, and we pray the same for those who don't know you. Lord, help us be winsome. Defenders of what is self-evidently true. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.