Thank you all for coming to Grace Church, this is great.  We are so delighted as a church family to have you here, and especially to join with precious friends who are going to be speaking, as well as to partner with ICR Ministry that I have loved for many, many years.  It’s a real honor to connect The Master’s College with ICR.  And as you heard Lee say, everybody on our faculty believes the whole Bible.  We start at the beginning and we believe even that part of it, and all the rest as well.  And it’s a delight to partner with ICR, and it’s a special treat to be able to welcome you all to Grace Community Church, and hope you enjoy the hospitality of our time together today and tomorrow.

I am the Bible guy in the middle of this and not a scientist.  So tonight as we get started, I want to talk to you about the theology of creation, the theology of creation.  And I have a lot of things in my mind that I want to work through.  We’ll trust the Lord and see how far we get.

Theology used to be called the queen of the sciences, that because it was the ultimate reigning source of truth.  Biblical theology trumped all categories, and so it should always be recognized because nothing really has changed.  Since the Bible is the only book authored completely by God, it, of course, establishes truth because God Himself is truth; and God who cannot lie has revealed only what is true.

The Bible is not theory; the Bible is fact; the Bible is reality.  The Bible is truth, no matter what subject it addresses.  And when the Bible talks about origins, it speaks the truth, and that’s exactly what it does in Genesis 1, 2, and 3.  And I’m not going to go into that.  You can read Genesis 1, 2, and 3, and you will have a complete explanation of creation.  It is exactly what God says it is.

Scripture is unmistakable.  It’s reiterated again in the giving of the Decalogue in Exodus, chapter 20, where in verse 11 it says, “For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”  God created everything in six days, rested on the seventh day.

When Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” no one was confused by that.  No one can possibly misunderstand what that means.  It is so simple; except one of my grandchildren once, because she came home from class and said that her Sunday School teacher said, “God created everything.  God created everything.”  And she raised her little hand and said, “Oh, no He didn’t.  A whole bunch of stuff is made in China.”  So apart from her, no one is mystified by Genesis 1:1; and I had to try to recover the damage it did to my career as a pastor.

But as simple as that statement is, it is the first illustration in the Bible.  Genesis 1:1 is the first illustration in the Bible of God’s immense ability to cover profound reality in a simplicity of words, the meaning of which is utterly unmistakable.

Scientist Herbert Spencer who died in 1903 did not believe the Bible, but he was one of the early architects of categories, scientific categories.  He said, “Everything in the world can fit into five categories: time, force, action, space, and matter.”  And he was hailed and given awards for those catalogs: time, force, action, space, and matter.  That’s all in Genesis 1:1.  In the beginning is time, God is force, created is action, the heavens is space, and the earth is matter.  Sorry, Herbert, we were there before you.

No one gets past the first verse of the Bible without facing the test of submission to Scripture.  It isn’t unclear; it isn’t foggy; it isn’t oblique; it isn’t obscure.  It is crystal clear.  So you never get past the first verse without declaring your submission to Scripture, or lack of it.  So I want to give you three words to think about tonight, okay, as we kind of process through this.

The first word is fidelity, fidelity, or trust.  Either you believe what Scripture says or you do not.  If you do not, the burden of proof is with you to convince us that God didn’t say what He meant or didn’t say that at all, and we have a spurious beginning to Scripture.  Either you believe Scripture or you don’t.  You either accept it or you reject it, but you don’t have the right to alter it.

Think about it this way: there’s no evolution in Genesis 1, 2, or 3, or anywhere else in the Bible.  And by the way, whoever created the universe and everything that is in it, understands how it works perfectly; and has since He created it, not been waiting for man to advance scientifically to discover and discuss its systems.

The Creator designs it, creates it, sustains it, perfectly understands it.  He knows, for example, that the earth is spherical; turns on an axis suspended on nothing, sweeping through space in a fixed rotation and orbit in a more massive solar system orbit as the sun drags the whole solar system through space in its own orbit.  He knows the galaxies.  He knows all the far reaches of space, countless galaxies beyond our own.  He knows the cycles of air, water.  He knows all the facts of chemistry, all the facts of geology, all the facts of biology; and if He wrote a book, it would absolutely be true to that reality.

Whoever is intelligent and powerful enough to design, create, and sustain the incalculable complexity of the universe and all life is certainly intelligent enough to do the simple task of authoring an accurate book on Himself and His creation in a logical, comprehensible, consistent manner.  And since He is true and cannot lie, it will be the truth.  If the Creator wrote a book and told us this is how it is, then this is how it is.  He would be able to include the truth that no one alive could ever know, and that would be the truth about how it all started.

In a sense, when you use the phrase “creation science,” that’s an oxymoron.  Science is a study of natural law; creation is supernatural.  You can’t explain creation by any natural scientific method.  It was the most massive supernatural miracle that ever took place.  And the only one who knows how it happened is the One who was there, God Himself.

God never says things in the Bible like the moon is 50,000 leagues higher than the sun and has its own light.  The Bible never says the earth is flat and triangular and composed of seven stages: one of honey, one of sugar, one of butter, and one of wine, and the earth sits on the heads of countless elephants who produce earthquakes when they shake.  No, that’s in the Hindu writings.  The Creator never says there are only 13 members of the body through which death can come; the Taoists say that.  God never says earthquakes are caused by wind moving water and water moving the land, as Buddhist literature declares.

The Book of Mormon says that Adam fell that men might come to be, and they are that they might have joy.  It says that in Nephi 2 in the Book of Mormon.  And in Alma 7:10 it says Jesus was born in Jerusalem.  Satan can’t get his facts right, but God never misses, never misses.  Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures says, “Man is not made of brain and blood and bones and other material elements.  He is some kind of ethereal being, incapable of sin, sickness, and death.”  Well that’s enough to make the point.

The Bible never says things like that.  People like the folks at ICR and other faithful believing scientists, who affirm the Word of God, have for decades now defended the integrity of Scripture and triumphed against all the false accusations.  The true Creator is an infinitely intelligent information and communication genius.  Since the whole universe and all life in it depends on information and the communication that information accurately, we expect that since everything in the creation works on right information, that when God spoke most clearly and with redemption in mind, that He gave us the right information.  And we have the right information on everything that God spoke about.

And people say, “Well, what about science?  Don’t we have to apply science to the Genesis account?”  And I say it again: you can’t apply science to a miracle; it’s impossible.  So free yourself from that notion.  I will liberate you right now.  You don’t have to explain creation by scientific methodology; you can’t, you can’t.  Get past that notion and you’ll free yourself from needless doubts and confusion.

There’s no such thing as creation science.  All science is based on observation, verification, repetition.  Creation has no observers and can’t be verified, and isn’t repeated.  It was neither observable or repeatable.  It cannot be described by any predictabilities that scientists are used to.  So free yourself up from needlessly thinking science will help you, it won’t.

It’s no more help than if you were there that day that Lazarus came out of the grave after being dead at least 72 hours, in which his body would have been oozing green slime, and had past rigor mortis and was literally softening, and a stench would have been almost more than people could bear; and when he walked out of the tomb, scientists went up to him and tried to analyze what happened.  You wouldn’t know anything about what happened because that’s not explicable scientifically, that’s a miracle.

And I suppose if some scientists had been hanging around when Jesus fed all those people and created bread and fish, they would want to analyze the bread and the fish.  Those were created out of nothing, ex nihilo [???].  They didn’t exist and then they did exist.

Now you can believe what the Bible says from the Creator who always speaks the truth or you can take another option: you can believe Charles Darwin.  He’s pretty convincing apparently because the latest statistics I read just last night, 99 percent of the universities in America are Darwinian, 99 percent.  The National Science Academy members who were self-described atheists.  Of the 93 percent of the National Science Academy members who described themselves as atheists, they all believed in evolution.  One poll says 98.7 percent of evolutionary biologists are atheists.  They backed into atheism from biology.  From a corrupted view of creation, they backed into atheism.

I might just let you know from a biblical perspective that moving from God to Charles Darwin is a form of apostasy.  It’s a form of defection from the Christian faith, and you’re following in a line from Rousseau, and Descartes, and Karl Marx – and Karl and Darwin lived in the same 19th century.  And people like Nietzsche and John Dewey in humanism.

Darwin came along after these other philosophers had done everything they could to shred Christianity; and Darwin came along with the answer that everybody had been waiting for, a way to explain the universe without God.  It took him 28 years, supposedly, to come up with his plan.  An apostate scientist looking for pseudo reasons to reject Christianity found their justification.  If God could be separated from origins, then we can be separated from God.  And if we can be separated from God, we don’t have to worry about sin and guilt and judgment, and we’re free to do whatever we want.

It really doesn’t make sense to be an evolutionist intellectually because nobody times nothing equals everything doesn’t make a lot of sense.  You back into it morally because you want to get rid of God.  It’s a form of Christian apostasy historically, and I think even individually.  You can believe God as He revealed Himself in His Word, or you can believe Charles Darwin.  And Charles Darwin, among other things, supported eugenics and even genocide.  But I’ll give you a little biographical paragraph or two about Darwin in a book I read last night.

By his own admission, he was a sadist and he took great enjoyment in torturing and killing animals.  He especially loved to kill birds by pounding on their heads with a hammer.  From the time he was 17 years old, he dedicated his summer and autumns to killing animals for the sheer delight of killing.  As he made plans for the voyage on the Beagle’s famous voyage, Darwin included several guns in hope that he might be able to quote, “Kill cannibals.”  As a child, he would beat puppies simply from enjoying the sense of power he said.

Entire books have been written on the subject of Darwin’s psychological problems.  I found this paragraph interesting.  “He suffered from depression, agoraphobia – fear of crowds – insomnia, vision alterations, hallucinations, malaise, vertigo, shaking, tachycardia, fainting spells, shortness of breath, trembling, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, muscle twitches, spasms, tremors, cramps, colic, bloating, headaches, nervous exhaustion, dyspnea, skin blisters, tinnitus, and sensations of loss of consciousness and impending death.”  Think he had a little guilt for assaulting God?

Now if you want to pick Darwin for your hermeneutical genius to interpret Genesis, you just need to know that.  According to his own testimony, he said his problems began at 16; and by the time he was 28, he was virtually incapacitated by mental illness.  Spent the last 43 years of his life as virtually a mental invalid, and yet his book has redefined the worldview.  I don’t think you’re going to get sweet water out of a bitter fountain, do you, or good fruit off a bad tree.

Creation cannot be understood any other way than by believing the revelation of the Creator.  He’s the only One who was there.  He’s the only One who knows.  Creation has no connection at all to science.  Creation was not a scientific event, as if natural law played any part at all; it played no part.  Nothing explained by science happened in those six days, nothing.  All that is left for the reader then is fidelity: either you are going to believe the Scripture and be faithful to the Scripture, or you are not.  But don’t come and impose Charles Darwin on God’s holy Word.

Well somebody says, “Couldn’t God have used evolution?”  That’s an irrelevant question.  That’s an irritating question.  That’s an intrusive question.  That’s a silly question.  He didn’t because He told you what He did.  He said He made everything in six days.  Are you going to argue with Him?

Turn for a minute to Job 38.  I wish I could just read 38, 39, 40, 41, 42.  I’m resisting that urge.  I just love this.

Verse 1: “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge.  Now gird up your loins like a man and I’ll ask you, you instruct Me!  Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?’”  That’s a pretty provocative question.  I mean that’s laying it down, isn’t it?

“Where were you?  Tell Me if you have understanding.  Who set it measurements?  Since you know.”  The sarcasm’s amazing.  “Who stretched the line in it?  On what were its bases sunk?  Or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars, the angels, sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?  Or who enclosed the sea with door when, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; and when I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band,” I mean this is just brilliant poetry.  And God is just saying, “Don’t give me any of your guff.  Where were you when I made the universe?  Who do you think you are?”

In verse 12 He says, “Have you ever in your life commanded the morning, caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it?”  Verse 16: “Have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?  Have the gates of death been revealed to you?”  Verse 18: “Have you understood the expanse of the earth?”

He goes on like this for four chapters.  I mean this is a beatdown.  Poor Job.  This is a smackdown.  This is the count of ten, it is over, and Job finally says, “Okay – ” 42 “ – I had heard of Thee with the hearing of my ears.  Now my eyes seeth Thee and I repent in dust and ashes.”

That’s what evolutionists need to do.  They need to look at the creation, and read the account, and repent in dust and ashes.  Who do you think you are, questioning God?

In fact, that’s a pretty serious situation to be in because Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”  Did you hear that?  “What you see was not made from something else you can see,” that’s evolution.  “What you see was made out of nothing.  It is the way it is because it is the way it was created.”

I know we have people coming along and saying, “Well, you know, we have to accommodate science,” and so they came up with intelligent design (ID) and they think it’s maybe a safe middle ground.  But it’s far from safe because it’s deadly dangerous to reject the God who is Creator.  This is not a good place to be; this is a bad place to be. 

People who reject the creation account because they don’t want the God of Scripture are in the most dangerous position anyone can be in, and the position that all rejecters of the gospel are in.  They’re not helped by some middle ground.  It’s not safe.  But, again, by embracing evolution, sinners have enthusiastically tried to avoid morality, responsibility, guilt, and judgment.  Evolution is hostile to the Word of God.  It is, as I said earlier and I want to repeat it, a form of apostasy from Christian faith.

Listen to these words, 1 Timothy 6:20, “O, Timothy –” and I take this as a minister of the Word of God.  “O, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you.”  And what is that?  Divine truth, divine revelation.  “Guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called ‘knowledge’ – which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith.”  Evolution is a form of apostasy from the Christian faith.

So the first word that I want you to think about is fidelity, fidelity.  Trust in the Scripture, trust in the Scripture.  And know this: that all of these brilliant scientists who believed the word have your back with their skill and accurate understanding of reality, and they will tell you they can’t tell you anything more than Genesis tells you about creation.  But they can tell you this: evolution has not happened and it does not happen and they can prove it, and that’s all you need to know.

There was an interview with probably the most prominent national ministry in our country, you would know – I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and not name them.  They claim to be Bible-based, Christ-proclaiming, gospel-centered.  A question was asked about their view on origins and sent to the president of the organization.

The organization’s response I saw, and here’s what it said: “The organization takes no stand on creation, avoiding such secondary issues.  Our efforts are designed to bring people together based on the historically essential doctrines of orthodox Christianity.  Creation is one of those secondary doctrines.  We believe it falls into the category of non-essentials like spiritual gifts, eternal security, and the rapture,” and a few more.

It’s amazing.  What?  So it doesn’t matter how it started or how it ends.  It doesn’t really matter whether you get to the end apparently.  They’re not concerned about eternal security.  That is a propagated viewpoint of a huge national ministry.  I would assume that if that I said that, I would literally be spelling the death knell of our entire ministry because that’s such an unbiblical approach.  But those were a pretty soft landing people who hold that view because of the inroads of evolution.

I would suggest this – and I have a lot of conversations with people along this line about churches and about schools, colleges, seminaries – if you want to know about a ministry, any ministry, pick whatever the ministry is: church, college, seminary, a ministry you’re thinking of supporting, ask them one question: “Do you believe in a six-day creation as revealed in Genesis 1 and 2?”  Just ask them that and you will know.

If they say no, then they don’t believe Scripture.  And if they don’t believe Scripture there, they may also have decided they don’t believe the Scripture that’s against homosexuality either, or who knows what else.  The answer that reveals your attitude toward Scripture in Genesis 1 and 2 also reveals your attitude toward Scripture everywhere else.  And if the culture can overturn the clear teaching of Genesis, then the culture can overturn the clear teaching of the New Testament.  That’s the only question you need to answer.

Some years ago, there was a report done by the Christian College Coalition.  There were about 110, 105 schools, and the survey that I saw indicated out of 105, I think it was, Christian colleges, 5 believed in the Genesis account, Christian colleges.  That’s a problem, a serious problem.

Let me give you a second word to think about.  First word is fidelity, being faithful to Scripture.  Second word is simplicity, simplicity.  The Genesis account by all honest consideration is simple, plain, clear, perspicuous, uncomplicated, unmistakable, and it just keeps being repeated throughout the Bible.  You know what it says in Genesis 1 and 2.  I read you Exodus 20, verse 11.  You can see it again in Exodus 31:19.

You can see it again, for example, in the New Testament account, “In the beginning was Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and everything that was made He made.  Without Him was not anything made that was made.  In Him was life.”  That is what makes God God.  He is life.

He doesn’t just give life, He is life.  He is the original eternal source.  That is called by theologians the aseity [???] of God.  It’s His self-existence.  He is eternally self-existent, and from Him comes life.  Everywhere in the Bible that talks about creation gives God the full credit for creation.  Deuteronomy 4:32 speaks of the day that God created man on earth, the day that God created man on earth.

Look at Psalm – I’m just picking and choosing a little as a I go – Psalm 104.  And, again, you know the psalms well enough to know that they affirm the creation of God.  “Bless the Lord, O my soul!  O Lord my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering Yourself with light as with a cloak, stretching out heaven like a tent curtain.  He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters; He makes the clouds His chariot; He walks on the wings of the wind; He makes the winds His messengers, flaming fire His ministers.  He established the earth upon its foundations so that it would not totter forever and ever.  You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters were standing above the mountains.  At Your rebuke they fled.”

This is the creation.  This is how Scripture always refers to creation.  It is never anything but a work of God for which God is to be honored and glorified, and the language is always very simple.  Isaiah 40:28, “Do you not know?  Have you not heard?  The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired.”  Or Mark 10:6 – and there are so many: “From the beginning, God made them male and female.”

Ephesians 3:9, “God created all things.”  Colossians 1:16, “By Him all things were created.”  And there are so many, I won’t take more time.  It’s just simple, and that is why the Bible says, “Fear God, glorify God, honor God, worship God as Creator and Redeemer.”

This is a pattern for all our worship and for all the worship in the Old Testament.  We worship the God who creates.  Isaiah says this again, and again, and again.  We worship the One who is the Creator and the Redeemer.  That’s just for the sake of emphasis.

I want to give you a third word, and this is priority and this is where all this is kind of going.  The creation account is not something you trifle with.  It’s not secondary; it’s not arbitrary; it’s not obscure.  It is preeminent, primary, essential, critical, clear, and it is designed for a purpose, okay.  So the third word we’ll call priority.  So we have fidelity, simplicity, priority.

Why did God create?  Why?  What was His priority?  What’s the priority for the creation?  What’s the purpose for which He made everything?  What’s the goal?  What’s the end gain here?  What’s this all about?

And I’m sure if you’ve thought at all about cosmic things like that, you’ve asked yourself, “Why am I here and what’s this all about?  There has to be a purpose for this.  There has to be a scheme; there has to be an end.  There has to be an objective for the creation itself.  What is the objective?  What is God doing?  What is He accomplishing?”

And we have to believe also that God not only created, but God providentially controls.  You know the word providence, that great word.  Providence describes God’s total control over every single contingency, every circumstance.  Every act and reaction in the universe is under His control.  There isn’t a rebel molecule or a rebel word or act going on that is outside His control.  That’s what we call providence.  So God is both Creator and Sustainer; and by providence, He moves the whole creation toward an end.

It was Jonathan Edwards who said, “Providence subordinates everything.  Providence subordinates everything.”  Everything in the affairs of men is subordinated to the providence of God, everything from creation to consummation is part of some plan, and God is working every single detail.  There’s not a hostile molecule.  There’s not a person operating for a split second outside the plan, and yet people have freedom within that.  That’s part of the mystery of God’s will.

But where is it going?  Where is it going?  Is this thing eternal?  Is this thing eternal?  I mean is it five billion years old, and do we have five billion more to go, and do we have to preserve it for as long as they’re telling us its been here?

If that’s our responsibility, we’re in trouble.  We can’t even control the freeways.  And then the Bible says, “Look, if you think we’re messing up the plan, wait till you see what Jesus does to it when it disintegrates,” 2 Peter.  Where is it going?  Where is it going?

This is the most important thing I will say.  The entire creation is a stage; it’s a theater.  It’s a theater for redemption.  The whole creation exists so that God can call a bride to heaven for His Son, that’s what’s going on.  It’s all leading to redemptive purpose.  God is gathering a bride for His Son.

Before the world began, God determined redemption.  He wrote down the names of the people who would be redeemed in the Book of Life before the world began, then He created it.  He created the theater where the play of redemption would take place.  He created a universe and the people in the universe to redeem a bride for His Son and to put His glory on display through that redemption.

When we read the New Testament, we read that He’s calling out the redeemed, a church, to display His grace before the angelic hosts.  Before the world began, God determined redemption.  Christ literally was offered before the world began in the purpose and plan of God.  God chose us in Christ and predestined us before the world began.  In all of human history is the Father collecting a bride for His Son, a collective bride.  That’s why Jesus says, “All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me.”  That’s what’s going on.  He even thanks the Father in John 17 for gathering His people.

What is the goal of all this?  To bring to final glory a redeemed humanity for the sole purpose of glorifying the Son, and serving the Son, and literally reflecting the Son’s glory forever and ever and ever; all of that as a love gift from the Father to the Son.

It’s obscure in contemporary theology – I don’t have time to develop all of it.  Most people think that the love that’s operating in redemption, the greatest love is God’s love for sinners.  It isn’t.  That’s a secondary love.

The primary love is the Father’s love for the Son.  And the Father so perfectly, inexhaustibly, and eternally loves the Son that He must give to the Son an expression of that love, which is a redeemed humanity, and at the same time, put on display His mercy and grace, compassion, kindness.  All of us then who are saved are being gathered in as a bride for the Son.  That is why the New Jerusalem in the final state is called the bridal city, the city of the bride.  Israel was God’s wife in the Old Testament.  The church in the New is the bride of Christ.

There is no reason for God to have some useless billions of years go meandering by to achieve His redemptive purposes.  The connection between salvation and creation is clear in the New Testament.  First Corinthians 15:22, “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all made alive.”  We’re so familiar with that.  Sometimes we might even overlook it.

Romans, chapter 5 – just a couple of things to read you as I try to make this point clear – Romans 5: “So then through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.  For as through the one man’s disobedience, Adam, the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.”  You have Adam and Christ, Adam and Christ, the first and the last.  Adam is such a picture of Christ.

First Corinthians 15 says the first Adam was given life.  Adam: the first Adam was given life.  The second Adam gives life.  First Corinthians 15 says the first Adam brought death, the second Adam conquers death.  Revelation says the first Adam lost paradise, the second Adam gains paradise.

First Corinthians 15, the first Adam is earthy, the second Adam is heavenly.  First Corinthians 15, the first creation is in the likeness of God, the new creation again is in the likeness of God.  First Corinthians 15, the first creation of bodies diverse, the new resurrection creation of bodies diverse.  The juxtaposing of Adam and Christ, and Adam and Christ, and Adam and Christ all through the redemptive story; all these are salvation analogies drawn out of Genesis 1 to 3, all of them.

There’s another beautiful salvation picture, 2 Corinthians.  Look at it for just a minute.  Let’s see how salvation happens, 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

Why are you a Christian?  Why are you a Christian?  I’ll tell you why you’re a Christian, because God said, “Let there be light.”  That’s a creative act.  You were dead in trespasses and sin and He made you alive together with Christ.  You were regenerated; this is from above.  You must be born from above.

Do you know that?  John 3: “You must be born from above.”  Nicodemus understood that.  He said, “How can that happen?” because he knew you can’t make a contribution to your own birth.  What role did you play in your own birth?  It’s an absurd question.  It’s equally absurd in your spiritual birth.

The whole point of the analogy is that there’s a heavenly work going on in which you don’t participate.  This has to come from God and it’s a creative act.  He says, “Let there be spiritual light,” and all of a sudden the glory of God shining the face of Jesus Christ in the gospel becomes clear to you.  That creative miracle that happens in a moment in the life of a believer is like God stepping out into nothing and saying, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

In creation, everything began with darkness and formless and void, and God spoke the light into existence.  So in salvation, the sinner is in a dark void spiritually until the light, the brightness of God’s glory shining in the face of Jesus Christ engulfs him.  The recovery of the elect from the darkness by the instant power of the Spirit of God puts the darkness to flight, opens the mind, the heart to gospel Light; and the analogy that Paul chooses is the analogy of creation, blazing miracle.

Now the whole purpose of our existence is redemption.  There is no point in dragging it out.  Not only is there no evidence of it, that’s not how it happened.  But what’s the point?  You say, “Well, do you believe it’s 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 years?”  It’s as long as Scripture says it is, and that’s pretty good, pretty good guess, as close as we’re going to get.

But then you have to ask the question: “Why would God make it any longer?”  He’s trying to reach a goal and the goal is redemption.  And that’s exactly why He’s done what He’s done in creation.

Creation isn’t the end.  This whole thing is going to be burned up.  This is a disposable planet, completely disposable.  It’s going to be an implosion.  The elements are going to melt with fervent heat, the whole thing’s going to go out of existence, and it’ll be over.  And then we’ll see the Lord in an equally dynamic miracle create a new heaven and a new earth in a split second.

This is just for now, and it’s brief now.  But the redeemed are forever, and that’s God’s purpose.  If you trust His Word for redemption, you can trust His Word for creation, right?  Let’s pray.

Father, we thank You for time tonight to think about these things and what Your Word says with regard to creation, redemption.  Give us that fidelity, that trust, that faith in Your Word.  Make us people who believe You, know You to be a God of truth who cannot lie.

And we remember that Genesis is quoted or referred to by every New Testament writer maybe 350 times.  So those who wrote the New Testament believed in the truth of the Old.  May we follow their lead.  Make this conference rich and blessed, informative, encouraging.  Strengthen us to hold high the banner of biblical truth, and use us to bring many to the knowledge of Christ, we pray in His name.  Amen.