Troy a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Creation;Finished & Completed; Genesis 1:1
The Bible opens with a monumental statement, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." And with that statement the Word of God, holy Scripture, affirms the existence of the universe and everything in it as the product of God's created act. It's a very important statement.
This verse, I'll say it again, affirms the existence of the universe and everything in it as the product of God's created act.
We are here shown in this verse that evolution, the dominant theory of science, is not true. What exists, exists not because it evolved but
because God created it.
Evolution is not scientific. Evolution is not reasonable. Evolution is impossible and irrational. There has never been one shred of
evidence that matter on any level chemically can or will, can or will organize itself all by itself. Even when energized, let alone
organizing itself by itself upward to viable life and continually higher life, and finally reaching human life, there has never been one
shred of evidence that matter does that, or can do that.
It was over a hundred years ago that Louis Pasteur proved that spontaneous biogenesis cannot occur. A cell cannot increase its complexity.
A cell cannot add information necessary in its DNA, or its genetic code, to take itself to a higher level. That is impossible. It has never
been done, it has never been seen.
Nothing mutates upward. In fact, natural selection, which was a phrase that Darwin leaned on, natural selection, or the process of change or mutation is always downward, never upward. Individual lifes who vary too much from the center of the species go downward,thelaw of entropy.
Thus, mutants don't improve the species, they are a decline. Inevitably they die at the cellular level. Natural selection then is
only downward, not upward, and natural selection actually prevents evolution from taking place. No species is capable of moving up. It can
decrease itself by a decrease in its information by some inotropic event that sends it into disorganization, but it cannot increase what it
is because it cannot come across new information.
Evolution with its theory of chaos and its theory of unintelligent matter existing in random features, organizing itself by chance into
highly complex forms and ultimately to the level of human intelligence and personality, is so preposterous and so impossible, and so
scientifically inaccurate that no honest person could believe it.
Evolution is a violation of all that modern science knows to be true.
On the other hand, we don't need evolution to explain anything because we just read how it happened in Genesis 1:1. Inorganic matter cannot organize itself upward to become organic matter. Organic matter cannot organize itself by random features to becomemore complex and ultimately reach the level of human intelligence and personality. That can't and doesn't happen.
Well people ask...and this is a very popular view today...but, "Couldn't God...we acknowledge God, we acknowledge a creator, but couldn't
God have used evolution after creating the original matter? Couldn't God have used evolution in the sense of theistic evolution?" No, God
couldn't have used evolution because evolution is impossible.
Evolution assumes that matter can organize itself upward by itself.
A.E. Wilder Smith, a brilliant scientist who has done some literally ground-breaking work on this subject and who is a staunch creationist,
wrote, "The necessary information to build man does not reside in the few elements it takes to compose him," end quote. You cannot explain
man even by the components that he can be reduced to in a lab.
Genetic information cannot come from nowhere. Genetic information cannot rise spontaneously, nor does matter itself operate itself into organizing itself in to some higher level of complexity.
Everything requires information from the outside. Intelligence is critical to all matter and all energy, information from an intelligent
life-giving source, namely God. There shouldn't be any question about how the universe came into existence, it is clearly answered right in
verse 1 of the Bible.
It's accurate to say that if there was a theory other than evolution, except divine creation, if there was something other than divine
creation or evolution, scientists would line up to get it. Scientists would gladly take a more rational explanation or a rational
explanation than to continue to postulate evolution, but they don't have any alternative except divine creation. And that is intolerable to
sinful man because the creator is also the moral authority of the universe and the judge of all men. Evolution doesn't make any sense at all. On the other hand, the Bible does.
Now, starting in verse 2, the first chapter of the Bible expands on verse 1. Verse 1 says that God created the heavens and the earth, and
starting in verse 2 we find out how.
"And the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the face of the deep, or the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was
moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good and God
separated the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness He called night, and there was evening and there was
morning, one day. "Then God said, 'Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters,' and God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse and it was so.
And God called the expanse heaven and there was evening and there was morning, a second day. "And God said, 'Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear,' and it was so. And God called the dry land earth and the gathering of the waters He called seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, 'Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants, yielding seed and fruit and trees bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them on the earth,' and it was so. And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind and trees bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind, and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
"Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them for signs and for
seasons and for days and years, and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heaven to give light on the earth.' And it was so. God
made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He made the stars also. And God
placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth and to govern the day and the night and to separate the light from the
darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
"And God said, 'Let the waters team with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.'
And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves with which the waters swarmed after their kind and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
"Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after
their kind,' and it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind and the cattle after their kind, and everything that
creeps on the earth after its kind. And God saw that it was good and God said, 'Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness,
and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' And God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him male and female, He
created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.' Then God said, 'Behold, I have given you
every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed it shall be for food for
you. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given
every green plant for food and it was so. And God saw all that He had made and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there
was morning, the sixth day.
"Thus the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts. And by the seventh day, God completed His work which He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."
Now there is the accurate eye-witness account of the creation of the universe. The creation account is laid out from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis
2:3. And the outline of the book of Genesis falls into two parts. The first part is the creation, Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. The second part is
called the generations. Starting in chapter 2 verse 4 you start to follow the history of man. The whole creation 1:1 to 2:3, starting in
2:4 you start to follow the history of man all the way to the end of Genesis and through the patriarchal period.
We could say then that Genesis 1:1 gives a general and inclusive account of creation. God created the heavens and the earth. You cannot make a broader statement than that. That covers everything. That's a way of saying God created everything in the universe, everything that exists, whether you're talking about galaxies, or whether you're talking about nebulae or solar systems, whether you're talking about those things that are at the farthest reaches of the universe in space, or whether you're talking about the smallest grain of sand, or whether you're talking about a bacterial microbe on the planet earth, absolutely everything was created by God. He is the creator of all things visible and invisible, and all things means everything from various ranks of angels, every form of life from whales and elephants to viruses. Everything, all things include every form of energy, every form of matter, the speed of light, nuclear structure,
electromagnetism, gravity, every law by which nature operates was created within the framework of this creation. All things...all things.
Behind the creation of everything in the universe stands the living God who had eternally existed as God but had not always been creator.
But here He becomes creator and He creates everything...absolutely everything.
Starting in chapter 2 verse 4, as I said, He singles out man and goes back over the creation of man. And then tells the story of man which
flows right really to the end of Scripture. But this is the only eye-witness account of creation, Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. It is not allegory.
There's nothing in the Hebrew text or in the English text, for that matter, to indicate that this is a fanciful story, that this is some
kind of an allegorical picture. There's nothing here to indicate that this is some kind of mystical poetry, that this is some kind of
lyrical literary style that is something other than actual history. To put it to you, this is purely expressed history from God, written
down by Moses. The creator Himself gave Moses this accurate account of history. And we accept the Scripture as inspired of God and inerrant
and there's nothing in this text to indicate that it's anything other than plain history.
Now when it says in verse 1 "In the beginning God created," it uses the word bara. Barawhen used in the...what's called the cowl-stem(??)
of Hebrew is used in Scripture only with reference to the divine work of God. It has a uniqueness about it here and that uniqueness is its
absoluteness. It means basically that the infinite, eternal, personal, triune God of the universe brought things into existence which were
not in existence prior to this moment. He created, the Latin says, ex nihilo(?), out of nothing. That is there was no pre-existing
material. Hebrews 11:3 says, "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." The things that we see in the created universe were not made from something else. They were made from nothing, ex nihilo, without pre-existing material. It's a way of saying everything around us, your body, the bench you're sitting on and the building you're in, the streets around us, the trees, the flowers, the city, the state, the nation, the continent, the world all of it, the stars, the moon, everything, everything you can see, everything you can't see, protozoa, amoeba, or sheer dust, any arrangement of
matter at all came into existence instantaneously out of no pre-existing material. It didn't come from things that do appear, it came from nothing. And Genesis is the only record of creation. It is the only source of creation information.
Now as we look at this first verse, let's ask three questions, and I think these are fascinating questions and I think you'll find that out
as we go. First question...how? How did God create? By which method? We've already suggested to you that He couldn't have used evolution,
for two reasons we affirm that. Number one, the text of Genesis 1 leaves no room for evolution. And two, evolution doesn't happen. How did He do it? How did God do this?Very simple really, verse 3, "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." Verse 6, "And God...then God said, 'Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the heavens," and that's what happened. Verse 9, "Then God said, 'Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, let the dry land appear,' and it was so." Verse 11, "Then God said, 'Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them on the earth,' and it was so." Verse 14, "Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. Let there be...let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and years. Let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,' and it was so." Verse 20, "Then God said, 'Let the waters team with swarms of living creatures. Let birds fly above the earth and the open expanse of heaven,'" and goes on to talk about that creation. "And God saw it and it was good." And then in verse 24, "Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things, and the beasts of the earth after their kind,' and it was so." Verse 26, "Then God said, 'Let's make man.'"
How did God do this? What was His method? He spoke...He spoke...He spoke it into existence out of nothing. This is...this is God. Psalm
33:6 and 9, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth for He spoke and it was
done, He commanded and it was established." That is the psalmist's affirmation of the Genesis account of creation. God said, "Let there
be...let there be...let there be..." and every time He said it there was. This is what we call fiat creation, He willed it and spoke it
into existence. Psalm 148:5 says, "He spoke and they were created."
This is where everything came from. It didn't exist. God willed it to exist. He spoke and it came into existence. That is the divine
account of creation. In Mark 13:19 it talks about the beginning of the creation which God created...just in case somebody might question.
And you have that all through the New Testament, the emphasis on the fact that God created. Matthew 19:4, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female?" Again and again the Scripture makes reference to God as creator. Romans 1 says it's so evident that God is the creator that if you don't see it you're without excuse. Colossians, that great first chapter, verse 16 where it says, "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 by Him and for Him."
That sums it up. That is always the biblical, the New Testament
and Old Testament, affirmation of God as creator. Hebrews 1:10, "And Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth and
the heavens are the works of Thy hands." I mean, Scripture just continually affirms God as the creator and He created simply by willing it and then speaking it into existence.
Listen to Romans 4:17, this is another testimony. It says, "As it is written, a father of many nations have I made you, in the sight of Him
of whom he believed, even God...and here is the definition of God...God who gives life to the dead...listen to this...and calls into being that which does not exist." That's Romans 4:17. Creation is God calling into existence what does not exist. There's no room in that for
evolution. Evolution is something appearing that has mutated from something else. That's not creation.
At a particular point in eternity the eternal God spoke everything into existence, made up of components which had never before existed.
Therefore we say the material, space-time-universe, had an absolute beginning, not some kind of relative beginning. And the plain...going
back to Genesis, the plain meaning of Genesis 1:1 is frankly not arguable, it's unmistakable. "In the beginning God created
everything...everything." St. Augustine wrote in his Confession, "For You created them from nothing, not from Your own substance or from
some matter not created by Yourself, or already in existence, but from matter which You created at one and the same time as the things that
You made from it since there was no interval of time before You gave form to this formless matter," end quote.
There was no pre-existing material. And nothing is in existence that God didn't create. John 1:3, "All things came into being by Him and
apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." There isn't anything that exists that God didn't create. That's a very,
very clear Scripture.
Go back to Genesis 1 for a moment and I want to remind you of something that's very important. All creation began and ended in six
days...clearly there's no argument about it. Look at chapter 2 verse 2, "And by the seventh day, God completed His work which He had done
and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done." He created the entire universe out of nothing, from no pre-existing material and He did it in six days. We know that from verse 5.
The first day He created light and it says there was evening and there was morning, one day. Just to make sure you don't miss it, He says it was one day. And then just to make sure you don't exactly what He means, it was the kind of day that has an evening and a morning.
What kind of day is that? Well that's basically what we call a solar day, it's just a plain, ole normal common every-day day.
Now I want to tell you something. God did all this in six days. Verse 8 says there was an evening and a morning on day two. And verse 13
says there was an evening and a morning on day three. And it goes all the way down that way. Verse 19, there was evening and morning on day four. Verse 23, there was evening and there was morning on day five. And verse 31, there was evening and there was morning on day six. He's just talking about six normal common days...just like we understand days to be.
The whole of creation, folks, was over on the sixth day. And the Bible, and this is very important to note, the Bible always speaks of
creation as a past event. Mark that in your mind. The Bible always speaks of creation as a past event. Evolution speaks of creation as
continuing, right? It's always going on. That's never how the Bible refers to creation. Hebrews 4:3 says, "His works were finished from the
foundation of the world." Hebrews 4:10, "For the One who has entered His rest has Himself also rested from His works." The Bible always
views creation as completed and finished. It is a past event. God finished creation, never adding to that original creation.
On the seventh day He rested from creation and He's continued to rest from creation.You say, "What's He doing now?" Not creation, conservation. You want to get the flow? Creation, Genesis...conservation, He upholds all things by the word of His power. Millennial Kingdom, restoration, when He restores the earth as we know it in the universe back to it sedenic, or near edenic character. So you have creation, conservation, restoration...finally, recreation is the new heaven and the new earth. But creation is a past event.
Conservation is a present one. Restoration is a future millennial one. And recreation is the new heaven and the new earth. The creation work, that's past, and the Bible always speaks of creation as a past event. It is not an on-going event. Evolution demands on-going transition, even theistic evolutionists who say they believe the Bible have the evolutionary process of necessity going on and going on and going on and ostensibly bringing new things to life.
Amen
TROY
Creation;Finished & Completed; Genesis 1:1
The Bible opens with a monumental statement, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." And with that statement the Word of God, holy Scripture, affirms the existence of the universe and everything in it as the product of God's created act. It's a very important statement.
This verse, I'll say it again, affirms the existence of the universe and everything in it as the product of God's created act.
We are here shown in this verse that evolution, the dominant theory of science, is not true. What exists, exists not because it evolved but
because God created it.
Evolution is not scientific. Evolution is not reasonable. Evolution is impossible and irrational. There has never been one shred of
evidence that matter on any level chemically can or will, can or will organize itself all by itself. Even when energized, let alone
organizing itself by itself upward to viable life and continually higher life, and finally reaching human life, there has never been one
shred of evidence that matter does that, or can do that.
It was over a hundred years ago that Louis Pasteur proved that spontaneous biogenesis cannot occur. A cell cannot increase its complexity.
A cell cannot add information necessary in its DNA, or its genetic code, to take itself to a higher level. That is impossible. It has never
been done, it has never been seen.
Nothing mutates upward. In fact, natural selection, which was a phrase that Darwin leaned on, natural selection, or the process of change or mutation is always downward, never upward. Individual lifes who vary too much from the center of the species go downward,thelaw of entropy.
Thus, mutants don't improve the species, they are a decline. Inevitably they die at the cellular level. Natural selection then is
only downward, not upward, and natural selection actually prevents evolution from taking place. No species is capable of moving up. It can
decrease itself by a decrease in its information by some inotropic event that sends it into disorganization, but it cannot increase what it
is because it cannot come across new information.
Evolution with its theory of chaos and its theory of unintelligent matter existing in random features, organizing itself by chance into
highly complex forms and ultimately to the level of human intelligence and personality, is so preposterous and so impossible, and so
scientifically inaccurate that no honest person could believe it.
Evolution is a violation of all that modern science knows to be true.
On the other hand, we don't need evolution to explain anything because we just read how it happened in Genesis 1:1. Inorganic matter cannot organize itself upward to become organic matter. Organic matter cannot organize itself by random features to becomemore complex and ultimately reach the level of human intelligence and personality. That can't and doesn't happen.
Well people ask...and this is a very popular view today...but, "Couldn't God...we acknowledge God, we acknowledge a creator, but couldn't
God have used evolution after creating the original matter? Couldn't God have used evolution in the sense of theistic evolution?" No, God
couldn't have used evolution because evolution is impossible.
Evolution assumes that matter can organize itself upward by itself.
A.E. Wilder Smith, a brilliant scientist who has done some literally ground-breaking work on this subject and who is a staunch creationist,
wrote, "The necessary information to build man does not reside in the few elements it takes to compose him," end quote. You cannot explain
man even by the components that he can be reduced to in a lab.
Genetic information cannot come from nowhere. Genetic information cannot rise spontaneously, nor does matter itself operate itself into organizing itself in to some higher level of complexity.
Everything requires information from the outside. Intelligence is critical to all matter and all energy, information from an intelligent
life-giving source, namely God. There shouldn't be any question about how the universe came into existence, it is clearly answered right in
verse 1 of the Bible.
It's accurate to say that if there was a theory other than evolution, except divine creation, if there was something other than divine
creation or evolution, scientists would line up to get it. Scientists would gladly take a more rational explanation or a rational
explanation than to continue to postulate evolution, but they don't have any alternative except divine creation. And that is intolerable to
sinful man because the creator is also the moral authority of the universe and the judge of all men. Evolution doesn't make any sense at all. On the other hand, the Bible does.
Now, starting in verse 2, the first chapter of the Bible expands on verse 1. Verse 1 says that God created the heavens and the earth, and
starting in verse 2 we find out how.
"And the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the face of the deep, or the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was
moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good and God
separated the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness He called night, and there was evening and there was
morning, one day. "Then God said, 'Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters,' and God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse and it was so.
And God called the expanse heaven and there was evening and there was morning, a second day. "And God said, 'Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear,' and it was so. And God called the dry land earth and the gathering of the waters He called seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, 'Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants, yielding seed and fruit and trees bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them on the earth,' and it was so. And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind and trees bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind, and God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
"Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them for signs and for
seasons and for days and years, and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heaven to give light on the earth.' And it was so. God
made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He made the stars also. And God
placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth and to govern the day and the night and to separate the light from the
darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
"And God said, 'Let the waters team with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.'
And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves with which the waters swarmed after their kind and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
"Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after
their kind,' and it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind and the cattle after their kind, and everything that
creeps on the earth after its kind. And God saw that it was good and God said, 'Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness,
and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' And God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him male and female, He
created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.' Then God said, 'Behold, I have given you
every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed it shall be for food for
you. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given
every green plant for food and it was so. And God saw all that He had made and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there
was morning, the sixth day.
"Thus the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts. And by the seventh day, God completed His work which He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."
Now there is the accurate eye-witness account of the creation of the universe. The creation account is laid out from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis
2:3. And the outline of the book of Genesis falls into two parts. The first part is the creation, Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. The second part is
called the generations. Starting in chapter 2 verse 4 you start to follow the history of man. The whole creation 1:1 to 2:3, starting in
2:4 you start to follow the history of man all the way to the end of Genesis and through the patriarchal period.
We could say then that Genesis 1:1 gives a general and inclusive account of creation. God created the heavens and the earth. You cannot make a broader statement than that. That covers everything. That's a way of saying God created everything in the universe, everything that exists, whether you're talking about galaxies, or whether you're talking about nebulae or solar systems, whether you're talking about those things that are at the farthest reaches of the universe in space, or whether you're talking about the smallest grain of sand, or whether you're talking about a bacterial microbe on the planet earth, absolutely everything was created by God. He is the creator of all things visible and invisible, and all things means everything from various ranks of angels, every form of life from whales and elephants to viruses. Everything, all things include every form of energy, every form of matter, the speed of light, nuclear structure,
electromagnetism, gravity, every law by which nature operates was created within the framework of this creation. All things...all things.
Behind the creation of everything in the universe stands the living God who had eternally existed as God but had not always been creator.
But here He becomes creator and He creates everything...absolutely everything.
Starting in chapter 2 verse 4, as I said, He singles out man and goes back over the creation of man. And then tells the story of man which
flows right really to the end of Scripture. But this is the only eye-witness account of creation, Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. It is not allegory.
There's nothing in the Hebrew text or in the English text, for that matter, to indicate that this is a fanciful story, that this is some
kind of an allegorical picture. There's nothing here to indicate that this is some kind of mystical poetry, that this is some kind of
lyrical literary style that is something other than actual history. To put it to you, this is purely expressed history from God, written
down by Moses. The creator Himself gave Moses this accurate account of history. And we accept the Scripture as inspired of God and inerrant
and there's nothing in this text to indicate that it's anything other than plain history.
Now when it says in verse 1 "In the beginning God created," it uses the word bara. Barawhen used in the...what's called the cowl-stem(??)
of Hebrew is used in Scripture only with reference to the divine work of God. It has a uniqueness about it here and that uniqueness is its
absoluteness. It means basically that the infinite, eternal, personal, triune God of the universe brought things into existence which were
not in existence prior to this moment. He created, the Latin says, ex nihilo(?), out of nothing. That is there was no pre-existing
material. Hebrews 11:3 says, "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." The things that we see in the created universe were not made from something else. They were made from nothing, ex nihilo, without pre-existing material. It's a way of saying everything around us, your body, the bench you're sitting on and the building you're in, the streets around us, the trees, the flowers, the city, the state, the nation, the continent, the world all of it, the stars, the moon, everything, everything you can see, everything you can't see, protozoa, amoeba, or sheer dust, any arrangement of
matter at all came into existence instantaneously out of no pre-existing material. It didn't come from things that do appear, it came from nothing. And Genesis is the only record of creation. It is the only source of creation information.
Now as we look at this first verse, let's ask three questions, and I think these are fascinating questions and I think you'll find that out
as we go. First question...how? How did God create? By which method? We've already suggested to you that He couldn't have used evolution,
for two reasons we affirm that. Number one, the text of Genesis 1 leaves no room for evolution. And two, evolution doesn't happen. How did He do it? How did God do this?Very simple really, verse 3, "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." Verse 6, "And God...then God said, 'Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the heavens," and that's what happened. Verse 9, "Then God said, 'Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, let the dry land appear,' and it was so." Verse 11, "Then God said, 'Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them on the earth,' and it was so." Verse 14, "Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. Let there be...let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and years. Let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,' and it was so." Verse 20, "Then God said, 'Let the waters team with swarms of living creatures. Let birds fly above the earth and the open expanse of heaven,'" and goes on to talk about that creation. "And God saw it and it was good." And then in verse 24, "Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things, and the beasts of the earth after their kind,' and it was so." Verse 26, "Then God said, 'Let's make man.'"
How did God do this? What was His method? He spoke...He spoke...He spoke it into existence out of nothing. This is...this is God. Psalm
33:6 and 9, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth for He spoke and it was
done, He commanded and it was established." That is the psalmist's affirmation of the Genesis account of creation. God said, "Let there
be...let there be...let there be..." and every time He said it there was. This is what we call fiat creation, He willed it and spoke it
into existence. Psalm 148:5 says, "He spoke and they were created."
This is where everything came from. It didn't exist. God willed it to exist. He spoke and it came into existence. That is the divine
account of creation. In Mark 13:19 it talks about the beginning of the creation which God created...just in case somebody might question.
And you have that all through the New Testament, the emphasis on the fact that God created. Matthew 19:4, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female?" Again and again the Scripture makes reference to God as creator. Romans 1 says it's so evident that God is the creator that if you don't see it you're without excuse. Colossians, that great first chapter, verse 16 where it says, "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 by Him and for Him."
That sums it up. That is always the biblical, the New Testament
and Old Testament, affirmation of God as creator. Hebrews 1:10, "And Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth and
the heavens are the works of Thy hands." I mean, Scripture just continually affirms God as the creator and He created simply by willing it and then speaking it into existence.
Listen to Romans 4:17, this is another testimony. It says, "As it is written, a father of many nations have I made you, in the sight of Him
of whom he believed, even God...and here is the definition of God...God who gives life to the dead...listen to this...and calls into being that which does not exist." That's Romans 4:17. Creation is God calling into existence what does not exist. There's no room in that for
evolution. Evolution is something appearing that has mutated from something else. That's not creation.
At a particular point in eternity the eternal God spoke everything into existence, made up of components which had never before existed.
Therefore we say the material, space-time-universe, had an absolute beginning, not some kind of relative beginning. And the plain...going
back to Genesis, the plain meaning of Genesis 1:1 is frankly not arguable, it's unmistakable. "In the beginning God created
everything...everything." St. Augustine wrote in his Confession, "For You created them from nothing, not from Your own substance or from
some matter not created by Yourself, or already in existence, but from matter which You created at one and the same time as the things that
You made from it since there was no interval of time before You gave form to this formless matter," end quote.
There was no pre-existing material. And nothing is in existence that God didn't create. John 1:3, "All things came into being by Him and
apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." There isn't anything that exists that God didn't create. That's a very,
very clear Scripture.
Go back to Genesis 1 for a moment and I want to remind you of something that's very important. All creation began and ended in six
days...clearly there's no argument about it. Look at chapter 2 verse 2, "And by the seventh day, God completed His work which He had done
and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done." He created the entire universe out of nothing, from no pre-existing material and He did it in six days. We know that from verse 5.
The first day He created light and it says there was evening and there was morning, one day. Just to make sure you don't miss it, He says it was one day. And then just to make sure you don't exactly what He means, it was the kind of day that has an evening and a morning.
What kind of day is that? Well that's basically what we call a solar day, it's just a plain, ole normal common every-day day.
Now I want to tell you something. God did all this in six days. Verse 8 says there was an evening and a morning on day two. And verse 13
says there was an evening and a morning on day three. And it goes all the way down that way. Verse 19, there was evening and morning on day four. Verse 23, there was evening and there was morning on day five. And verse 31, there was evening and there was morning on day six. He's just talking about six normal common days...just like we understand days to be.
The whole of creation, folks, was over on the sixth day. And the Bible, and this is very important to note, the Bible always speaks of
creation as a past event. Mark that in your mind. The Bible always speaks of creation as a past event. Evolution speaks of creation as
continuing, right? It's always going on. That's never how the Bible refers to creation. Hebrews 4:3 says, "His works were finished from the
foundation of the world." Hebrews 4:10, "For the One who has entered His rest has Himself also rested from His works." The Bible always
views creation as completed and finished. It is a past event. God finished creation, never adding to that original creation.
On the seventh day He rested from creation and He's continued to rest from creation.You say, "What's He doing now?" Not creation, conservation. You want to get the flow? Creation, Genesis...conservation, He upholds all things by the word of His power. Millennial Kingdom, restoration, when He restores the earth as we know it in the universe back to it sedenic, or near edenic character. So you have creation, conservation, restoration...finally, recreation is the new heaven and the new earth. But creation is a past event.
Conservation is a present one. Restoration is a future millennial one. And recreation is the new heaven and the new earth. The creation work, that's past, and the Bible always speaks of creation as a past event. It is not an on-going event. Evolution demands on-going transition, even theistic evolutionists who say they believe the Bible have the evolutionary process of necessity going on and going on and going on and ostensibly bringing new things to life.
Amen
TROY
