In the Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth
February 8, 2009
In the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth
Text: Genesis 1:1 and Exodus 20:11
Proposition: Since God created the heavens and the earth, what is required of me?
Introduction
I. I am to imitate the one in whose image I am created
II. I am to realize that I am not to be blaming God for the suffering in the world; I need to lay the blood of all men on the head of Satan and man.
III. I am to realize that He designed me for a purpose
Mr. Obama told an interviewer, when asked during the election campaign about teaching intelligent design: “I’m a Christian, and I believe in parents being able to provide children with religious instruction without interference from the state. But I also believe our schools are there to teach worldly knowledge and science. I believe in evolution, and I believe there’s a difference between science and faith. That doesn’t make faith any less important than science. It just means they’re two different things. And I think it’s a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don’t hold up to scientific inquiry.” -Tom Joyce, “Obama Talks about York,” York Daily Record (March 30, 2008). (I took it from AIG Jan-March 2009 pg. 13)
The newly elected vice president, Joe Biden, is even more open about his views. Asked about intelligent design, he said, “I refuse to believe the majority of people believe this malarkey!” - HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, episode 74 (April 7, 2006). (I Took it from AIG Jan-March 2009 pg. 13)
Many people who claim to be Christians are like Obama and Biden. They don’t believe the first words stated in the Bible. They are double minded men who honor God with their lips, but their hearts are far from him. I think it is silly to claim to be a Christian and not believe the first two chapters of the book you claim to follow. The first two chapters provide a foundation for what is in the rest of the book. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” assumes that God exists. Someone who truly believes in evolution assumes God does not exist. The theory of evolution as the origin for all living things does not start with God. It starts with a fairy tale. Fairy tales usually start like this, “Once upon a time” or “Long, long ago in a far away land.” Evolution stories change it just slightly, “Millions of years ago” and then the fairy tale begins.
This year is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. He was born on February 12, 1809. This is the 150th anniversary of his book On the Origin of Species.
Darwin didn’t originate the idea of evolution. He only made it popular and acceptable to the world. We know that God is the creator, and Since He is the Creator, what is required of me?
I. I am to imitate the one in whose image I am created (How am I to imitate the one in whose image I am created?)
A. Don’t act like a monkey
B. Genesis 1:26 and 27
1. Evolution says, “My image is not God’s, I’m related to the ape.”
2. God says: you are created in my image. You are to imitate me.
3. Ephesians 5:1-2, We are to walk in love as beloved children.
4. Love originates with God
a. I John 4:7-8
b. We are to love one another. We are to love one another enough to lay down our life for one another
c. I John 3:16
d. Laying your life down for another person doesn’t go along with the survival of the fittest. Survival of the fittest says, “Let them die so you can live!”
e. Survival of the fittest gives rise to “ethical games” like Life Boat.
Lifeboat (By Steve Taylor):
Teacher: Good morning, class!
Class: Good morning, Mrs. Aryan.
Teacher: Today we're going to play a game!
Class: Yeah!
Teacher: This game is called Lifeboat. All together...
Class: Lifeboat!
Teacher: Good! Lifeboat is a lesson in values clarification. Can you say values clarification?
Class: No.
Teacher: Values clarification is where your little minds decide which lives are worth living and which lives are worth...ahem... not living. Now here's how we play. A big ship just sank. There are five people on the lifeboat. But the lifeboat is made for only two . I'll list the five people on the chalkboard, and you, class, will decide which three will be thrown overboard. Are we ready?
Class: Yes, Mrs. Aryan.
Teacher: Good! First, there's an old, old crippled grandfather. Second, there's a mentally handicapped person in a wheelchair.
Alison: What's mentally handicapped?
Teacher: It means they can never be a productive members of society. Third, there's an overweight woman on welfare, with a sniffling, whimpering baby.
Max: Is the baby on welfare, too?
Teacher: Let's not push Mrs. Aryan...
Sydney: Who else is in the boat?
Teacher: A young, white doctor with blue eyes and perfect teeth, and Joan Collins. Now, class, take five minutes to make your decision. ... Times up! Well, class?
Class: Throw over grandpa 'cause he's getting pretty old
throw out the baby or we'll all be catching it's cold
throw over fatty and we'll see if she can float
throw out the retard, and they won't be rockin' the boat
Teacher: Very good! That was fun, wasn't it?
Class: Yes, Mrs. Aryan.
Teacher: For our next lesson, we're going to do an experiment!
Class: Yeah!
Teacher: We're going to test the law of gravity, just like Galileo, by dropping two objects out the window--one heavy and one light-- to see which one hits the sidewalk first. Now, what shall we use for the lighter object? I'm thinking of something small and square...
Class: An eraser?
Teacher: Good! And what shall we use for the heavy object? I'm thinking of something round and bouncy... Tommy, I haven't given you permission to leave your sea... class, the bell has not rung! What are you... oohh! Class...put me down! Put me down this instant! Ooohhh! Ooohhh!
Class: Throw over teacher and we'll see if she can bounce.
we've learned our lesson--teacher says perfection's what counts
she's getting old and gray and wears an ugly coat
throw over teacher and we'll play another game of Lifeboat
throw over grandpa 'cause he's getting pretty old
throw out the baby, or we'll all be catching it's cold
throw over fatty and we'll see if she can float
throw out the retard, and they won't be rockin' the boat
Yeah!
C. Be perfect
1. Matthew 5:43-48
2. God our Father is our standard. We are to strive for perfection. We won’t reach perfection here, but it is still our goal.
3. Homo sapiens will not reach perfection through the process of natural selection, but we will reach perfection through the blood of Christ.
II. I am not to blame him for the suffering in the world (Why is there suffering in the world?)
A. Christian fundamentalists were as vocal, and in an 1860 letter to his collaborator Asa Gray, Darwin expressed his doubts about the teleological argument (intelligent design) which claimed nature as evidence of god:
"With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [a wasp that lays its eggs on a live caterpillar the eggs hatch and then larvae feed on the caterpillar] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice... On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance."
B. Sin is the reason for death and suffering
1. Ichneumonidae wasn’t made to lay its eggs on a caterpillar and the larvae feed on it until it dies.
2. Cats weren’t made to play with mice. (I don’t like for my cat to play with mice. Sometimes she brings them to the front porch. Then she meows until you come to see what she has. She throws it up in the air then she pretends she doesn’t know where it is so the mouse starts to move and lets it go a ways and catches it again. I always afraid the thing is going to get away so I stomp on its head to make sure it doesn’t get away. One time she caught some kind of a little ground squirrel. It was in the garage and behind some boards and she caught it. She carried it to the middle of the garage floor and let it go. She caught it again. That time I stomped on its head. Cats are cruel. From house cats to tigers. They torture and kill just for the pleasure of torture and killing.) But in Creation they weren't made that way.
3. In the beginning it was not this way.
4. Genesis 1:29-31
5. Everything was good. Everything was vegetarian. There was no death and no killing.
6. Cats didn’t eat mice. They ate fruit, nuts, and vegetables.
7. Isaiah 11:1-8, I think this is what it was like before Adam and Eve sinned. This is talking about the reign of Jesus and the peace he will bring.
8. Then Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and sin entered the world and along with sin death.
9. Romans 5:12
10. Genesis 3:8, sin makes a separation between us and God. God was Adam and Eve’s friend, but they are hiding from him.
11. Genesis 3:9-12, Adam blamed God and Eve for his sin, not himself
12. Genesis 3:13-19, pain suffering and death entered into the world
13. All suffering and death comes from your own sin or somebody else’s sin.
14. Genesis 3:15, within the curse there is the hope of the seed of woman coming to bruise the serpent’s head.
15. Jesus is the seed of woman who has bruised the serpent’s head.
16. Hebrews 2;14-15, Jesus came and has delivered us from the devil who had the power of death.
III. I am to realize he designed me for a purpose (What has God designed me for?)
A. God has not left anything to "chance".
1. Darwin realized that there were designed laws in nature. He could see that design in nature was the most powerful argument against his theory of evolution.
2. In a letter to a correspondent at the University of Utrecht in 1873, Darwin expressed agnosticism:
I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came from and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty from the immense amount of suffering through the world. I am, also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment of many able men who have fully believed in God; but here again I see how poor an argument this is. The safest conclusion seems to me to be that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do his duty.[64] ^ "Darwin Correspondence Project - Letter 8837 — Darwin, C. R. to Doedes, N. D., 2 Apr 1873". http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-8837.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-19.
3. Darwin continued to believe in time and chance as the designers in creation.
4. There is design to everything in creation. It is no different for us.
B. God designed for a relationship with him.
1. God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Then they sinned and hid themselves from their father.
2. How would you like it if you went to visit your children and they hid from you and didn’t want to be with you?
3. We are children of God, Acts 17:26-29. We may hide from God, but he won’t hide from us.
4. Many of the terms used in the Bible are terms of relationships.
a. We are the sheep. He is the shepherd
b. The church is his bride. He is the groom
c. The church is his body. He is the head.
C. To glorify God in our body
1. I Corinthians 6:20
2. I Corinthians 10:31
D. To do good works
1. Ephesians 2:10
2. God has plans for us in this life. Sometimes it may take a while for us to figure them out, but be patient continue with good works
E. To believe in His Son and spend eterntity with him.
1. He [Darwin] sometimes retorted sharply, "I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God" ^ "Darwin Correspondence Project - Letter 12851 — Darwin, C. R. to McDermott, F. A., 24 Nov 1880". http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-12851.html. Retrieved on 2008-11-19.
2. Darwin said, “Christianity is a most damnable doctrine.” As disbelief later gradually crept over Darwin, he could "hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine." Darwin, Charles (1958), Barlow, Nora, ed., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882. With the original omissions restored. Edited and with appendix and notes by his granddaughter Nora Barlow, pg. 58 London: Collins, http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_LifeandLettersandAutobiography.html, retrieved on 4 November 2008.
3. John 14:1-3, Jesus is preparing or has prepared a place for us. He wants to spend eternity with us.
4. Because we have sinned we have to have our sins removed before we can spend eternity with him. The blood of Jesus is the only way we can be cleansed of our sin. If I don’t believe in Jesus I cannot be cleansed of my sin
5. Mark 16:15 and 16
6. Acts 2:38
Conclusion
Either the Creator is right in the way his creation came into being or Charles Darwin is right on how man came into being by chance. Scientists and preachers are not always correct in what they teach, but one thing is clear. I am made in the image of God and Jesus Christ is His Son. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him. There is salvation in no one else, not even in god of evolution Charles Darwin.
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