Our Most Precious Faith
Statement #2 – Creation
Turn to Genesis 1. Since I have been here at Elim on Sunday mornings for the most part we have gone through books of the Bible: Galatians, 1&2, Peter, the Gospel of John, 1&2 Timothy, and recently 1 Samuel, really verse-by-verse studies. But for this series we are going through our doctrinal statement, “What We Believe” statements here at Elim, in a series entitled “Our Most Precious Faith.” Last week we looked at our statement on the Bible and this week we will consider our statement on creation. We believe that the heavens and the earth were created by the triune God out of nothing in six literal 24-hour days. Therefore, all things that exist had a beginning, except God Himself. So, what I wish to do this morning is to look at two aspects of this statement, the majority part is about creation, but there is a secondary part that refers to God’s relationship to that creation. So, let me give these to you in two separate statements, what we need to consider this morning:
- Before creation, there was God alone, who has always existed in the Person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
- Everything else was created by God, therefore everything, except God, had a beginning and was created in six 24-hour days.
Now admittedly, to cover these two statements in thirty-five minutes will not happen, but I hope to give you enough this morning so that we will understand the meaning of our doctrinal statement. So, let’s begin with statement number one, which we will spend less time on.
Before creation, there was God alone, who has always existed in the Person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
When considering that before creation nothing existed except God, I thought this truth cuts against the grain of our culture significantly, a culture that focuses on self, satisfaction, pleasure, the here-and-now. Kent Hughes, a Christian writer for the Preaching the Word series says to just turn on a few TV ads and you will be bombarded with champagne, fine dining, an exciting vacation in Europe, the nicest 2026 automobile, and how to best play the sports lottery. Or pick up a magazine and read articles on how to sleep in longer, the latest on high-fashioned underwear, how to look twenty years younger, and how to feed your body, cloth it, warm it, cool it, refresh it, relax it, and entertain it. And this same culture will appreciate the creation of God. Yes, very much appreciate all that God has made, but without any thought of God.
Now this sovereign One, this Creator, has eternally existed, an overwhelming truth! Just trying to fathom that Someone or something never had a beginning. And somewhat related with His eternity is His self-existence, that God existing endlessly means He never came into existence. Therefore, He must be endlessly self-existent. In other words, He did not create Himself or make Himself who He is, for He has always been God and He never changes. As a side note here it is good the realize the great blessing that God has always been good and righteous and perfect, for what would be the hope of anything if He was not. Abraham first calls Him the everlasting God (Gen 21). The psalmist said in Psalm 90:
“Lord, You have been our dwelling place from generation to generation. Before the mountains were born or You brought forth the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.”
Psalm 90:1-2 (LSB)
And you will also notice in our doctrinal statement that all things were created by the triune God, which we know that this is also true of Christ who said:
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
Revelation 22:13 (LSB)
Likewise, the writer of Hebrews (Heb 9:14) refers to the Holy Spirit as the Eternal Spirit. It is good for us to contemplate that except for the past six thousand years for all of eternity past nothing but God in the Person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit has ever existed. And though we are not eternal as God is, in that we had a beginning, and God did not. The Bible clearly teaches that both the believer and the unbeliever will live forever. In other words, we have an eternal soul. Our stuff will not. Our pets will not. Teddy will not. For we have been made in the image of God, and God has placed eternity in the heart of men and women (Eccl 3:11). Teddy doesn’t sit and think about her eternal soul, but I should and so should you.
Well, we might wonder what God was doing before He created us, though I am not sure the question really needs to be asked as how we would ever comprehend it anyway. But surprisingly the Bible gives us a few insights as “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But before the foundation of the world the Bible does tell us about the relationship between the Father and the Son. Jesus said:
“Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”
John 17:24 (LSB)
The Apostle Peter said that Jesus was foreordained before the foundation of the world, in other words, before the world was created God had planned to send Christ to the earth to live as a Man. This means that before creation, before Adam and Eve ever sinned, before sin came into the world, God had already determined that Christ would come to pay the penalty of sin. Paul wrote:
“[J]ust as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love, by predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace.
Ephesians 1:4-6a (LSB)
Before the earth was created, God was planning salvation for His people. And before the world began He was pleased with His plan. In other words, God was pleased with what He had chosen to do. So, we must ponder that this great Creator, who is timeless, and the duration of His creation of the existing heaven and earth is but a blimp in time. Yet in eternity past, forever in eternity the Father loved the Son, God chose to create, God chose to save, and God was choosing a people for Himself, that before creation, there was God alone who has always existed in the Person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That statement should cause us to fall before such an awesome God. Now statement number two:
Everything else was created by God, therefore everything, except God, had a beginning and was created in six 24-hour days.
Now secular science believes, though not scientifically, that our universe is several billions of years old. They would claim that currently the human race as we know it began approximately 300,000 years ago; currently our world is 4.54B years old and counting; and currently our universe is 13.8B years old, give or take 110M years. Though the thought of 300,000 thousand years seems like a long time for man, yet when we consider the age of the universe, man’s existence on the earth really has been very short. I figured out that if the universe is 13.8B years old and man has been around for 300,000 years, that would be the same proportion if we said if the world has existed for twenty-four hours, then man has been around for just over three minutes. Yet this is not the truth we know from the Bible. For the Bible presents the time before creation as long and endless, and the time after creation to be very short.
Now we could say that scientists are right by the fact that something has existed for billions and billions of years, God has. Yet in this case their number is far too small. In fact, there is no number. I told you awhile back that the biggest number too large to fathom is called Graham’s Number, yet that comes too short in stating how long God has existed. I looked up what number described eternity past, present, and future and scientists call it infinity (a sideways eight). So now you can tell your friends how old God is limitless, outside of time, sideways eight. So, the Bible teaches that the time before creation is infinite. Not that time as we would understand it even existed before creation, and then at some point the heavens and the earth were created in a short period of time. So, here is the question. If God wished to relay to us the truth that creation took place in a certain time frame, how could He have done that? In other words, what is the purpose of God mentioning to us six days? In Exodus 20, Moses records for us the fourth commandment:
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of Yahweh your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female slave or your cattle or your sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore Yahweh blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.”
Exodus 20:8-11 (LSB)
Now think about what God has told us here. What do you think about it? “Christian” writer Rikk Watts, who doubts a literal view of Genesis and who doubts six 24-hour days asks these questions: Why did the various creative acts of the six days take the same amount of time? Why would separating the waters above and below take as long as creating all the land-dwelling creatures? Why exactly twelve hours and not two or 47-3/4 hours? Why would God only work in daylight hours? (Rikk Watts, Making Sense of Genesis 1 3). What Mr. Watts is doing here is actually questioning what God has told us. I would answer “why not?” to every one of his questions. The title of his book is Making Sense of Genesis 1. And to make sense of Genesis 1 he questions the literal nature of it and therefore clear truth God has given us. But he also must then question the literal statement of the six days given in Exodus 20.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Genesis 1:1 (LSB)
Now we do need to ask this question, what is the date of this creation? Now there are some things that we know from Scripture. In Henry Morris’ book, he wrote: Genesis 1 gives the time from creation of the universe to the creation of man (6 days); Genesis 5 contains chronological data from the time of the first man to the great Flood; Genesis 11 summarizes the chronology from the Flood to Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew nation; the historical books of the Old Testament contain chronological data of the nation of Israel from the time of Abraham to the captivity; and the chronology of the captivity and restoration is easily known from other prophetical books and Jewish history (Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record 43).
Now using the data that is given to us in the Scriptures, Archbishop James Ussher, who lived in the 1500’s, compiled a creation date of 4004 B.C. (now that would be approximately 6029 years ago). Isaac Newton accepted this date as well. Others, who accept a youth earth will often say that the biblical account will not support an earth any older than 10,000 years. That is a fairly common creation statement from conservative Bible scholars. But even that I would disagree with, as the Bible is very detailed in its timeframe and is likely much closer to the just over 6,000-year timeframe. Now, as soon as you get away from this shorter chronology, you are trying to fit evolution within these timeframes. Other scholars agree with this short timeframe. The Jews have dated creation at 3760 B.C. Martin Luther at 3961 B.C. As all these calculations believe in the accuracy of the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11. This is not really that hard to figure out if you read those two chapters and they certainly cannot be stretched to many years.
Now what many have done to try to make Genesis numbers work in an old earth is what is known as the Gap Theory, where there is a distinction between verses one and two.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
Genesis 1:1-2 (LSB)
That after verse one, God recreates the world in verse two. This was brought about by a gentleman by the name of Thomas Chambers, which is taught in many US seminaries. Even C. I. Scofield taught this. What this attempts to do is to allow for a literal understanding of Genesis but leaves room for billions of years between verse one and two. And we do not have time to get into this but there are some serious problems with the Gap Theory in that it is supposed to account for an older fossil record. Yet this introduces sin and death before Adam and Eve. Which is a great theological problem in Scripture, when Paul pinpoints sin and death coming, not from verses one and two, but through Adam.
So, now we come to another question, the core of our statement of whether each day described in Scripture is a literal day or not? Many question the literalness of each day being a 24-hour period. Therefore, some hold to what is known as a Day-Age Theory, and this has taken a strong hold on thousands of believers. Biblical scholar, James McKeown in his commentary on Genesis said this:
“No indication is given about the length of these days, and since the first three were without sun or moon, some argue that each day could represent an age of unknown duration. This suggestion about creation in six ‘ages’ allows its advocates to reconcile Genesis with scientific theories. It is a popular approach because it enables the modern reader to accept the text as literal while also accepting scientific discoveries about the age of the earth.”
James McKeown, Genesis- The Two Horizons of Old Testament Commentary 22
I was teaching up in Blind River, and we were going through a creation series. And when I mentioned about a day being 24 hours in Genesis 1, someone put up their hand and said without any kind of disrespect, “No it’s not!” No, a day is what? 1000 years! For that is what she had been taught. So, for the day-age theorists, a day can mean 1000 years, or 1000’s of years. Well, there are two obvious problems with this as well. One, we would then have death before sin; and two, the Hebrew word “yom” literally means one day. I want to go back to something that I mentioned earlier, and ask this question that Henry Morris asks:
“Suppose the writer of Genesis wished to teach his readers that all things were created and made in six literal days, then what words would he use to best convey this thought? He would have to answer that the writer would have used the actual words of Genesis 1. If he wished to convey the idea of long geological ages, however, he could surely have done it far more clearly and effectively in other words than in those which he selected. It was clearly his intent to teach creation in six literal days.”
Henry Morris, The Genesis Record 54
We also see the careful boundaries that are set around the clear truth.
“And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”
Genesis 1:5 (LSB)
As the writer here is doing his best to help us. In fact, if God had taken years and years, would He not have told us? See, because if God said that He created the heavens and the earth in six literal days, He is either lying, exaggerating, or telling us the truth. I would like to make this statement: If it took God billions of years to create the earth, would He not have told us? Why not? Could He not brag and say, ‘My creation is so great, it took Me billions of years to create it!’ Yet He is really saying, ‘I am so great, for look what I did in six days! There is only one reason that this clear meaning of the Bible is ignored in Genesis, science, yet not even science, but unproven theory. And I use the term theory, and I would not even call it scientific theory, because there is no true science in opposition to God’s Word. So, the question becomes, is some kind of theory enough for you to doubt God or to try to re-interpret the Scriptures?
Folks, there is no scientific reason to believe in any form of evolution. It cannot be proven, and it cannot even be debated. To believe that the vast greatness and beauty of creation could come into existence without an Intelligent Designer is absolutely false, delusionary, way off base, completely distorted, and simply wrong. And it is simply a product of man’s rebellion against God. Think of it—the beauty of a rose, the gracefulness of a bird, the glorious view of a sunset, a breathtaking waterfall or mountain, the intricacies of the human body, the vastness and the smallness of the universe—could ever be explained outside of a good and perfect and vastly Intelligent Designer and come about simply by some kind of big bang is silliness, complete silliness. It would have to take Graham’s Number times a billion to ever believe! As my friend Phil Laird would say, “Ottaway, that is ridiculous.” Or as my Mom used to say, “How can some people be so smart and at the same time be so stupid.”
I also want to add that it is important to note here that there is likely another creation that took place here on Day 1 or at least before Day 3, and that is the multitude of angels, since they were present when the foundation of the world was made. In Job 38:4-7, God says:
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell Me, if you know understanding,
Who set its measurements? Since you know.
Or who stretched the line on it?
On what were its bases sunk?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
When the morning stars sang together
And all the sons of God [angels]shouted for joy?”
Job 38:4-7 (LSB)
It is unlikely that the angels existed before creation. Paul wrote:
“For in 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 through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, And in Him all things hold together.”
Colossians 1:16-17 (LSB)
And remember the Exodus passage, when God said that He made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. We are also told in Hebrews 1:14 that the role of the angels is to minister to men. Therefore, as we study Genesis, we are really faced with three options: accept the literal truth; reject the complete account; or change the clear interpretation.
One more thought that I want to leave with you because many believe that the process in place has always been that way. They are referred to as uniformitarians. They assume that the forces at work today in nature are essentially fixed and constant. In other words, he cannot see past what he sees now. That if we choose to believe that things are the way they are because of some form of evolution, what do we do with many other parts of Scripture: the parting of the Red Sea; remember the axe that did not sink in 2 Kings 6; or the day that the sun stood still in Joshua 10. Do we understand here the leap in believing in evolution, which has not been proven, just because we cannot accept a supernatural God, while we believe that the Red Sea was stopped, when water does not stop; while we believe that an axe floats, when an axe does not float; and while we believe that the rotation of the earth stopped, when the rotation of the earth does not stop.
To the uniformitarian the Bible must indicate to them that God can break through at anytime and cause such things as a worldwide flood or catastrophic events as recorded in the book of Revelation. For fossils to be formed something catastrophic has to happen, because if it does not as Job says, bones only decay and turn to dust. Yet something out of the ordinary had to occur for the discovery of large animal bones in the world’s highest mountains. Sort of reminds us doesn’t it of what the unlearned Peter said:
“[They will say,] ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.’ For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being deluged with water.”
2 Peter 3:4-6 (LSB)
We also know from the Bible that things were mature when God created them on Day 3.
“Then God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them’; and it was so.”
Genesis 1:11 (LSB)
Adam and Eve appeared like normal adults. Likewise, vegetation, trees, and animals with age. God speaks of the completed work on Day 7, everything fully functional, elephants with tusks, rivers, mountains, rocks, waterfalls, and canyons. As Adam saw stars that without a working universe would have taken years and years for their new created light to be seen two days later. As even the closest star’s light takes four years to arrive to the earth, as the closest star is 9.461 trillion kilometers away. Remember when Jesus turned the water into wine, the secular scientists could say, “No way, it takes time!” But it did not. Yet still some Christian theologians today persist in saying that if we do not accommodate current theories, we weaken our testimony. So, they re-interpret the Bible and weaken the Scriptures. Yet, we believe that the heavens and the earth were created by the triune God out of nothing in six literal 24-hour days. Therefore, all things that exist had a beginning, except God Himself.
One might ask, “Why is it so important that we believe that the earth was created in six days and the teaching of a young earth?” Well, last week we started out with our commitment to the Word of God, and we said that the Bible is without error in all that it affirms, and that we teach a literal interpretation that focuses on the plain meaning of the text. Well, the Bible affirms that the earth was made in six 24-hour days. The biblical genealogies affirm that this also means a young earth of just over 6,000 years. And this would be the obvious literal interpretation. (prayer) Father, we praise You for Your great creation. We praise You that in eternity past You were already considering Your people, and that You chose to send Your Son to die on our behalf. And Lord, when we consider the beauty of Your creation. It is beyond our understanding what You have planned for eternity future when You create a new heavens and a new earth. And Lord, we believe Your Word this morning, that when all is said and done, that when all the facts become known, they will demonstrate that the Bible is entirely true and never false in everything it affirms. And all God’s people said, amen.