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"In the Beginning God…" (Part 2)
Rev. Charles R. Biggs
Text: Genesis
1:1
Propositional Statement: Although God
has created all things out of nothing, we his creatures deny the reality of
his revelation in creation.
I.O.W: We his creatures, become
creators ourselves! We "create" myths to account for the order,
beauty, and symmetry of the creation. We "create" myths to
account for who we are and from whence we came! Man has always done this
throughout history!
FCF: Although God has created all
things out of nothing, and clearly revealed himself in the work of his
hands, we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. We have created myths
to explain our existence so that we are not morally responsible for the
truth that God has revealed to us!
Introduction
Origins. We all want to know from whence we come! For
instance, when did our people first come to the United States for the first time? You see, our past enlightens
our present, so we seek our origins so that we might have a true sense of
our own personal history. Some search genealogical tables to find out their
particular origins. If this is true personally, as an individual, how much
more is true for who we are as human beings.
Even though some individuals have a
particular interest in their origins, the whole human race, every
individual that lives wants to know how she got here so to speak! The
question is asked within the person: "Hod
did I get here on this tiny planet, in this tiny
solar system, surrounded by great galaxies?" For us today, it is an
even more pressing question for man because we have developed
scientifically in such a way, that these questions seem to get louder from
within us!
We look under the microscope and can see
tiny organisms, little worlds; we can send men and women into space. We
send telescopes and cameras into space to give us perspectives and
information we have never had about our origins as human beings. Yet no
matter how much information these scientific discoveries reveal to us, they
can never satisfy the questions found in the deepest and innermost place in
our hearts! Man's heart is restless, it longs to
know of his true origins.
So did the Israelites! Restless hearts. Man's search for origins in
order to find dignity, to be able to better define who man is. Myths
that man makes in order to explain his existence in this world. The
Past informs our Present. We are not the only people who have tried
to tell the story of our origins.
Outline
The God who sovereignly
begins- All things (the heavens and the earth- merism),
had their beginning through a creative act of God.
God does not begin
(He is Eternal) - -but time does with creation: The Psalmist declares the
Eternity of God the Creator. He exclaims: Ps. 90:2- Before the mountains
were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and the world, Even
from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
- Creatio Ex Nihilo - Creation "out of nothing" (or
"into nothing"):
What is a
"Creation out of (or into) nothing? God created by an act of his Sovereign will.
There was not pre-existing stuff (that is why I believed it important to
preach last week on the existence of the Eternal Trinitarian God who
existed before all things). This shows God's sheer power by an act of his
will to bring all things into existence by his power!
- Hey, but I thought ex nihilo,
nihil fit - -"out of nothing, nothing
comes". Everything effect truly must have a cause. Ordinarily,
"out of nothing, nothing comes", but for God- - he creates
by his powerful word, and it is so. IOW: "Out of nothing,
something truly can come according to the Biblical account because
God acts by his Sovereign will and it is done! Listen to this
magnificent truth from Psalm 33:
6 By the word of
the LORD the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of
His mouth. 7 He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays
up the deep in storehouses. 8 Let all the earth fear the LORD; Let all the
inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. 9 For He spoke,
and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.
- God is the Sovereign Creator, who creates
into nothing. Moses is teaching in Gen. 1:1, that absolutely nothing
existed except God from eternity. But in the beginning, God created
the heaven and earth, WITH TIME, not in time. God created time along
with the heaven and the earth- - that is all things! The apostle
Paul captures this truth of God creating that which did not exist
before when he speaks of God's testing of Abraham in Rom. 4:17:
"…as it
is written, "I have made you the father of many nations" -- in
the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and
calls into existence the things that do not exist."
Toledot
in Genesis:
- Gen. 2:4: "These are the toledot of the heavens and the earth."
- Gen. 5:1: "This is the book of the toledot of Adam."
- Gen. 6:9: "These are the toledot of Noah."
- Gen. 10:1: "These are the toledot of Shem, Ham, and Japheth…"
- Gen. 11:10: "These are the toledot of Shem."
- Gen. 11:27: "These are the toledot of Terah."
- Gen. 25:12: "These are the toledot of Ishmael."
- Gen. 25:19: "These are the toledot of Isaac."
- Gen. 36:1: "These are the toledot of Esau."
- Gen. 36:9: [Repeat] "These are the toledot of Esau."
- Gen. 37:2: "These are the toledot of Jacob."
- Moses teaches the Israelites in Genesis
the narrowing down of the line of promise to them. If they trace it
back from "Father Jacob" (who was renamed "Israel), they will go back to their origins, to
their beginnings. But you might ask: "Why did not Moses use the
toledot formula of the generations to
explain In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth? Perhaps to avoid any identification of God
with the creation. The creation stories or myths of surrounding
pagan nations (not to mention Moses' own education in pagan Egypt) all say in one way or another, that the
creation is materially derived from divinity. Moses avoids this by
saying God created all things out of absolutely NOTHING!
- IOW: There is no toledot
of God. The "heaven and the earth" is not derived from
God. The creation is not a product of divine 'substance' as was
popular during these times in the ANE. God is just not part of the
history of things in that way. God created the heavens and the earth
out of NOTHING! Moses does not begin Genesis with This
is the toledot of God because 'the heaven
and the earth' did not come out of God. History is not eternal as
the pagans taught. It is not simply an extension of the life of God.
The 'heaven and the earth' came out of nothing! And God made it come
out of nothing!
- Creation "out of nothing" unique: Although Israel's pagan neighbors had created their own
creation myths to account for their existence, Genesis is absolutely
unique. It is interesting to note that in all of the pagan myths the
idea of creation ex nihilo was never considered!
The pagan god would always form perhaps with pre-existent stuff, or
matter, but never did the pagans ever conceive of a creation out of,
or into absolutely nothing! That is why it boggles the mind to
consider such a thing, but this is what our gracious God
communicates to us through Moses in the Book of Genesis.
- Although there are similarities between
the Genesis account and some of the pagan creation accounts
(particularly the Babylonian creation myth discovered in the 19th
century and it is helpful in considering the uniqueness of Genesis
in its historical context), it is the dissimilarities that must be
pointed out! Now remember: the pagan creation myths were attempts at
finding answers to their origins without a moral commitment to the
true God; as well, the pagan creation myths were perversions of the
truth! For instance, in the Babylonian creation myth, Marduk the god wars against Tiamat
the great sea dragon or serpent. It is out of Tiamat's
body once Marduk has put him to death,
that he creates the world. There is not indication where Marduk and Tiamat came
from! Also, notice the ease with which God creates! He creates all
things in heaven and upon the earth with no conflict at all! He
simply speaks and it is done. Isaiah 45 says:
5 I am
the LORD, and there is no other; There is no God besides Me…That they
may know from the rising of the sun to its setting That there is none besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other; 7
I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I,
the LORD, do all these things.' …I have made the earth, And created
man on it. I -- My hands -- stretched out the heavens, And all their host I have commanded…"Look to Me,
and be saved, All you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.
I have sworn by Myself; The word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness,
And shall not return, That to Me every knee shall bow, Every tongue shall
take an oath.
Israel was to be taught as they were about the enter the Promised Land of Canaan, that their
Sovereign Creator was the only God who truly existed! He was the only God
who truly created out of nothing! He was unique and their salvation to be
witnesses to this truth was unique! The only true account of creation that
had not been perverted by fallen man's escape from God's moral authority
was taught to them in Genesis 1:1. This is true for us today. The
Israelites were not the only people of God who were surrounded by creation
myths- - so are we today!
- Pagan philosophers in the past were
accustomed to asking questions of Scripture that Scripture did not
address. Like this one: "What was God "doing" in his
Trinitarian existence prior to the creation?" Pagan
philosophers tried to ascend into the secret things of the Lord, not
revealed in his Word. In reply to the question, Augustine said:
"God was busy in eternity, prior to creation, heating up the
fires of hell for the curious!" We must remember our
Deuteronomy 29:29 caution: "The secret things belong to the
Lord our God, but the revealed things to us and to our children
after us."
No place
for speculation- - but there is no place for
alternatives to creation either!
- Alternatives to Creation- Pantheism,
Materialism, and Dualism
- Pantheism: (Emanationistic)
No distinction between the Creator and his creation. God emanates in
his creation. The Creator and the creation develop together as it
were and the creation is as much divine as the Creator himself is.
But Hebrews 1:10-12 teaches that there is a huge difference between
the Creator and the creation:
10 And: "You,
LORD, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens
are the work of Your hands. 11 They will perish, but You remain; And they
will all grow old like a garment; 12 Like a cloak You will fold them up,
And they will be changed. But You are the same, And Your years will not
fail."
- Materialism: (Evolutionistic) Usually
posits in some way eternal matter. Matter and God existed alongside
one another. Matter had to have an origin, so anti-creationists
theorize and posit the equation of chance, plus change over time,
equals what we have today!
- Illustration: The National Association of Biology
Teachers (NABT), in their official 1997 statement in teaching of
evolution, wrote: "The diversity of life on earth is the
outcome of evolution: an unpredictable and natural process of
temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by
natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing
environments."
- Their earlier version of this statement
called evolution and "unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable,
and natural process." This is what has been popularly known as
Darwinism.
- There is also the very popular belief in
the so-called Big Bang. According to this myth, the entire universe
including matter, energy, space and time - all came into being from
an infinitesimal point in a gigantic explosion about 15 billion
years ago!
This is not
only harder to believe than the creation account,
it is getting harder for even the scientists to believe this!
- Robert Jastrow
quote: (Scientist who
calls himself agnostic, who wrote a wonderful book a few years back entitled: God and the Astronomers. He wrote
concerning science's plight and persistent problem of teaching the
origins of the universe. He said: "A sound explanation may
exist for the explosive birth of our Universe, but if it does,
science cannot find out what that explanation is. The scientist's
pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. This is an
exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians.
They have always accepted the word of the Bible, "In the
beginning, God created the heaven and earth." To which St. Augustine added, "Who can understand this
mystery or explain it to others?" The development is unexpected
because science has had such an extraordinary success in tracing the
chain of cause and effect backward in time…Now we would like
to pursue that inquiry farther back in time, but the barrier to
further progress seems insurmountable. It is not a matter of another
year, another decade of work, another measurement, or another
theory; at this moment it seems as though science will never be able
to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation."
"…For
the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story ends
like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to
conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is
greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for
centuries."
- The author to the Hebrews says it
like this: 11:1 Now faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it
the elders obtained a good testimony. 3 By faith we understand that
the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which
are seen were not made of things which are visible.
- Sometimes there is a
"theistic-evolutionary" view of creation. These will
change the Hebrew meaning of Genesis 1:1 from "In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth" to "When
God began to create the heavens and the earth…"
- Dualism: (Dualistic) This is a pagan
notion (found in many pagan religions of the Ancient Near East,
particularly in Babylonian and Persian religion). What it teaches
simply is that God and Evil are like equal foes - -one fighting
against another- - it is a variation on the theme of polytheism or
believing in many gods. Dualism believes that God is not the sole
and ultimate and sovereign Creator, but that he has an equal in
Evil, which he must destroy somehow in order to, create the world and
renew all things.
- Summary of the truth of Genesis 1:1:
- Creation in the Bible is more than God
artistically arranging existing material (although he does form the
material over the six days of creation, this matter did not exist
until God created ex nihilo). God is not
merely a Divine Architect or Builder who works with what is at hand
(like my dad used to make birdhouses out of leftover wood that he
had from building).
- Creation is not an emanation of God.
Creation is distinct from but never separated from God, because God
is omnipresent, or everywhere-present!
- Creation is not a natural product in the
sense that a child is procreated by its parents. In other words,
there is no organic connection between God, the Divine Creator, and
the Cosmos, or the creation. God is Creator- - He creates "out
of nothing"!
- Application: The unique truth of God's creating
"out of nothing" has very practical implications for us
as Christians today. (1) We notice that there should always be
prominent in our minds a distinction between the Eternal
Creator and we his creatures! (2) While
God is distinct from the creation, he is never separated from it!
God is not the so-called 'Watchmaker' that some Christians make him
out to be, who merely gets creation off to a start and then is not
providentially and intimately involved in it. Although Pantheism, or emanationism
is incorrect, all things are indeed from him, through him, and
to all things…to God be glory! as
Romans 11 teaches. (3) Creation is good and not something to be
"escaped" as the early Greeks who wanted to escape to the
pure spirit realm and escape from the prison-house of the
body. While we confess our sins and the sins of this fallen world
order- - we should never as Christians lament our humanity, nor the
creation that God has created for his glory and our good! Despite
the fall, we should still have the perspective of Genesis one,
particularly for those in Christ! We should be extremely concerned
about the creation mandate or order of God to "be fruitful, multiply,
fill the earth, and subdue it…" To rule over the
creation as God has commanded his people to do! Particularly in
teaching and living the gospel according the Great Commission.
Concerning
Science as a modern "creation myth":
- The late E. J. Young said: "Although
'Genesis' does not purport to be a textbook of science,
nevertheless, when it touches upon scientific subjects, it is
accurate. Science has never discovered any facts which are in
conflict with the statements of Genesis 1."
- Remember the quote from E.J. Young last
week: "Genesis is primarily concerned about who created and
why- -not about how and when. Science cannot answer the Who and
why; and Genesis is largely silent about the how and when!
- The problem of so-called science, is really one of religious belief. Oh,
the scientists would never claim to be religious, "only the
facts, ma'am", but they are extremely religious. According to
the Apostle Paul in Romans 1, the scientists see all the creation
around them. Through the creation, they behold God's Attributes of
Eternity, Power, Wisdom, Holiness, yet they suppress this truth!
They must deny it, lest they must conform
their lives to the obedience of the truth that he has revealed.
They must live for his glory and his glory alone! Paul says in Romans
1:18-25:
18
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in
unrighteousness,
19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for
God has shown it to them.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes
are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His
eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
21
because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as
God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their
foolish hearts were darkened.
22
Professing to be wise, they became fools,
23 and changed
the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man
-- and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.
24
Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of
their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves,
25
who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and
served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
- The "proof" of the Creator is
in the creation! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, the
Good Creator who is Spirit and Invisible became visible through his
handiwork, through his creation. Illustration: We can always spot a
Rembrandt or a Monet painting. The glorious paintings reflect the
Painter (with a capital "P"). In the same way, God makes
himself known in what his hands have made! Calvin says it this way:
"Moses' intention in Genesis with the creation of the world, is to render God, as it were, visible to
us in his works. These are the truths of God which the Fathers of
the Israelites had delivered from Father to son, through a long
succession of years- - passed to their children." This is what
Moses is commanded by God to write down and preserve for future
generations, including us!
- We know God through his general
revelation in his works, but we know him savingly
through the special revelation of his Word!
The heavens
declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork.
2 Day unto day
utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no
speech nor language Where their voice is not heard.
4 Their line
has gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the
world…
- In Ps. 19:1-4, notice how the Psalmist
begins speaking of general revelation in creation making the
Invisible God visible, then in verses 7-11, moves to the special
revelation of the Word of God.
7 The law of
the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; The testimony of the LORD is
sure, making wise the simple;
8 The statutes
of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the LORD is
pure, enlightening the eyes;
9 The fear of
the LORD is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the LORD are true and
righteous altogether.
10 More to be
desired are they than gold, Yea, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than
honey and the honeycomb.
11 Moreover by
them Your servant is warned, And in keeping them there is great reward.
- When fallen man has been humbled to truly
see his deplorable fallen condition; when his myths and false
origins do not satisfy him because they are lies that he has
created out of the imagination God has given to him, he cries out
like Augustine in his Confessions:
"Can any
praise be worthy of the Lord's majesty? How magnificent your strength! How
inscrutable his wisdom! Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his
instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign
of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud. But still, since
he is a part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. The thought of you
stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you,
because you made us for yourself and hearts are restless, until they find
their rest in you."
The
God who sovereignly reveals himself to all men in
the creation!
- The Creation is the Revelation of God's
Glory and Handiwork to All Men.
- After the world had been created, man was placed in the world
as in a theater if you will. He was to behold above him and below him
the wonderful works of God. This would cause him to reverently adore
the Author of all things.
- All things were graciously ordained for the use of man, God's
creation. This was so that he, being under deeper obligation, would
devote and dedicate himself entirely to obedience towards God. He was
endued with understanding and reason, so that being distinguished
from brute animals, he might meditate on a
better life, and might even tend directly toward obedient fellowship
with God so that he might glorify him and enjoy him forever. God's
image was engraved on his own person as man.
- But alas, man was disobedient in this
beautiful theater of God's works of grace! He disobeyed the will of he who was eternal, whose will was eternal. He
took upon himself the sinful burden of having a purpose other than
that Eternal Purpose of enjoying the Divine Blessedness by glorying
in God. As we learned earlier from Romans 1, fallen man suppresses
the truth of only God. He sees as a man with poor spectacles,
beholding light now and then, but not seeing the creation and the
Creator through it, in all their splendor.
Fallen man in relationship to God's creation is now like a man
walking in the night in a lightning storm. He stumbles along in the
dark most of the time, but now in the then the lightning flashes
across the sky lighting his path. However, it is so brief that he is
back stumbling before he blinks an eye.
- The God who "begins again" by his grace (God makes a
New Creation).
- This is why it is so beautiful the way the
Apostle Paul describes the "new work" of God that had been
foreordained from the foundation of the earth! In 2 Cor. 5:17, the Apostle Paul teaches the believers:
14 For the love of Christ compels us, because
we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died;
15 and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for
themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
16 Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even
though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him
thus no longer.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he
is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have
become new.
18 Now all things are of God, who has
reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the
ministry of reconciliation,
19 that is, that God was in Christ
reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them,
and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
20 Now then, we are ambassadors for
Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's
behalf, be reconciled to God.
21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be
sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
For
the Apostle Paul, the reconciling and redeeming work of our Lord Jesus made
possible a new creation. Literally: "If anyone be in Christ - -new
Creation!" This is why Paul teaches us to put off the old man, the old
Adamic man, who lives according to the pattern of
this world and not according to God's Eternal pattern, that is, his will.
We must put off the old man and put on the new man in Christ. We are to act
like we belong to a new creation, wherein reigns righteousness! Listen to
the way Paul explains the "Creation theology" in Colossians and
Ephesians.
·
In
Colossians 3:3-11, Paul connects the important link between the origin of
all things and the moral responsibility owed to our Creator - -the purpose
that was regained in Christ:
3 For ye are dead,
and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.
5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon
the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence,
and covetousness, which is idolatry: 6 For which things' sake the wrath of
God cometh on the children of disobedience: 7 In the which ye also walked
some time, when ye lived in them. 8 But now ye also put off all these;
anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. 9
Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his
deeds; 10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after
the image of him that created him: 11 Where there is neither Greek nor Jew,
circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian,
Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.
·
In Ephesians
4, Paul describes the new creating work of God in this way manner:
17 This I say,
therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the
rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,
18 having
their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because
of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart;
19 who, being
past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all
uncleanness with greediness.
20 But you
have not so learned Christ,
21 if indeed
you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:
22 that you
put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt
according to the deceitful lusts,
23 and be
renewed in the spirit of your mind,
24 and that
you put on the new man which was created according
to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
Conclusion and “Things to Think
About”-
The people we know, some in our families, those we work with who do not
know Christ, their lives have absolutely no meaning because they are
disobedient to God's eternal will. They are blind to his revelation in the
creation, suppress the truth they do see, and without ultimate purpose.
Some try to deny this and live inconsistently, but they are like little
people in a small sand aquarium.
Illustration: Imagine
if you will small people living in a sand aquarium. They are your
creatures, but they turn their backs to you (even though they see your
reflection through the glass). They gather themselves together to fight
against you so that when you open the lid of the aquarium and seek to know
them by comforting them with your hand - they spear you! They make war and
build ideas and philosophies about who they are and why they live in a sand
aquarium, but they are never able to come to the truth!
This is the plight of those who live in God's creation, yet do not
acknowledge the truth! They live in God's world denying God's existence and
ultimately their own. They live according to their own wills and not God's;
they live for all purposes other than God's glory. Therefore, they live
inconsistently and lack the full extent for which they were all created!
Now, all Christians
affirm the importance of science- -or they should at least because it is
the study of all of God's creation. It is truth about God's creation that
we have been able to discover and harness to make
our lives ultimately for fulfilling and give us greater ability to enjoy
God's good creation. However, in our time, science has become full of
mythology and lies.
The myth of modern
science is that as so-called Enlightened people we know better than to
think religiously about a Creator God (that is, they say). You see, the
science community is the new priesthood who provide our culture with all of
the paradigms and perspectives of our reality as human. They have gone
under the microscope, observed things on the subatomic level; they have
ascended far above the atmosphere into outer-space, and they have not been
able to empirically verify the existence of God. So - the new priests of
the new mythology of science says he just doesn't exist and you need to
wipe the religious hope and grin off your face and face the grim reality of
existence alone in this universe (unless, of course you are Carl Sagan or Stephen Spielberg, hoping for redemption from
E.T.)!
What our scientists
friends fail to realize is that they have biases and presuppositions when
interpreting and verifying the data. There is nothing wrong with the creation, that is the raw data, there is something wrong
with the heart that sees the microscopic organism; who perceives the
subatomic particles; who takes a look at the earth from outer-space…
They have a "heart-problem" - -they refuse to admit the
presuppositions and biases that they are just not looking for a God and in
their scientific endeavors have already discarded even the possibility!!
They must have myths, even scientific myths, because they must account for
their origins because they are made in God's image. Despite their blind
vision and misinterpretation of the data, they are seeking answers because
their hearts are restless within them!
A Sovereign Creator, is also a Sovereign Judge. They know that they
will be held accountable and so they truly "believe a lie" and
like the Athenians at Mars Hill, they have set up science as the Idol to an
Unknown God- - suppressing the truth and all the time subjectively
believing a lie!! What a shame! May God grant that they can have eyes to
see; a mind to rightly understand; ears to truly hear; hands to really feel
God's creation; and a heart that finds rest in the Sovereign Creator of all
things - both the heaven and the earth!!
Repeat: the advice of St. Augustine and St. Anselm is helpful here! May we tell our
well-meaning, scientific and religious friends, that they should Believe in
order to understand; do not wait to understand, and then to believe. For
just as some of us were at one time, they need a Sovereign work of God's
Word and Spirit! This will be our sermon topic for next week, Lord willing!
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