Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20090531.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
Exodus: God's Forming The Nation Israel For His Abrahamic Covenant
Part I: God's Deliverance Of Israel From Egypt, Exodus 1:1-15:21
H. God's Glorifying Himself By Egypt's Plagues, Exodus 7:14-12:36
1. God's Proof As The Sole Creator Of Life By His Plague Of Blood
(Exodus 7:14-25; Revelation 6:8-9)
    Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

    There is a growing STRENGTH of commitment in the world to the belief that the universe came to exist by evolution as opposed to belief in the literal creation account of the book of Genesis:

    (1) Last Sunday, a believer told me of the claim by a nationally known Christian ministry that many people in our country are not open to the Gospel of Christ specifically because they have been convinced by secular education that evolution is a fact! This conviction leads to seeing the literal Genesis record of creation by divine miracles as false, and that sabotages trust in the Bible and its Gospel of Christ!

    (2) This believer's claim is verified by a report in the April-June 2009 issue of Answers In Genesis' Answers magazine, p. 13. It noted: "Large arenas across America -- and now in the United Kingdom -- have been hosting the high-tech spectacle Walking With Dinosaurs." This work that shows full-sized dinosaurs crossing the stage, fighting and killing each other "is so well-crafted that its incorrect claims come across as legitimate." (Ibid.) Answers editors concluded: "In a world easily deceived by appearances, this spectacle will surely buttress the BBC's agenda to indoctrinate young people and adults in evolution . . ."

    (3) However, this growing dedication to the evolutionary view exists not only in secular realms, but in evangelical circles as well. The answersingenesis.org web site on March 26, 2009 reported how Bryan Litfin, Associate Professor of Theology at Moody Bible Institute said on the Moody Radio Network that evolution and the Genesis record are compatible, that God created basic life forms, but used millions of years of evolutionary processes to diversify them into current species (progressive creationism, a form of theistic evolution)!

    (4) Locally, an area middle school teacher has told me that many teachers now entering the public school system increasingly no longer view evolution as a theory, but as a concept to be promoted ardently upon their students as a scientific fact!



    Thus, we ask, "With the growing commitment in the world to the evolutionary view that counters the Bible's literal testimony and thus its truthfulness, how may I respond, and why?"

    Need: "With the growing dedication in the world to evolution that strongly counters trust in the Bible, how may I respond, and why?!"

  1. God told Moses to turn the Nile's water into blood to urge Pharaoh to heed the Lord's call to let Israel leave Egypt, Exodus 7:14-18.
  2. This plague countered Egypt's beliefs in some of its gods (Exodus 12:12b) to urge Pharaoh not to trust in them, but to heed the Lord:
    1. The Egyptians worshiped the Nile as their source of life, cf. Russell Grigg, "The Ten Plagues of Egypt," Creation (vol. 27, no. 1), p. 36.
    2. Thus, as God had Moses turn the Nile into blood, He discredited Egypt's gods (a) Khnum, guardian of the Nile, (b) Hapi, spirit of the Nile and a fertility god, (c) Osiris, god of the underworld, whose bloodstream Egypt held was the Nile, and (d) Hathor and (e) Neith, protectors of the fish that died in the plague, Ibid.
  3. As God had planned and predicted, Pharaoh hardened his heart at this plague, and did not let Israel go, Exodus 7:19-25 with 4:21-23.
  4. Yet, this plague was NECESSARY in a GREAT SPIRITUAL WAR in HISTORY for MAN'S FAITH in whether LIFE NATURALLY EVOLVED in WATER or if GOD MIRACULOUSLY MADE IT:
    1. This war over origins existed before Abraham's era:
      1. After the Genesis 11 Babel apostasy, pagan groups taught that a hero god slew a creation-repressing monster, and from its body fluids, the sea, that had native creative forces, life sprang up, Bruce K. Waltke, Creation and Chaos, 1974, p. 5-12.
      2. Genesis 1-2 countered this view, claiming there were no creative forces in nature, that God miraculously created all life, Ibid., p. 48!
    2. This war over origins now exists in the creation vs. evolution debate:
      1. Evolutionists hold life evolved naturally in a "'primordial soup'", a chemically rich ocean warmed by volcanic action and energized by rain and lightening, R. Patterson, Evolution Exposed , 2006, p. 136.
      2. In contrast, Genesis 1-2 literally claims God miraculously created all life on earth, and much of it on dry land, Genesis 1:11; 2:7, 19!
    3. This war over origins now widely affects even Evangelicals, and that even over whether Egypt's plague of blood was a divine miracle:
      1. In 1957, Greta Hort whose views are "widely cited in Bible reference books and encyclopedias" (Ibid., Grigg, p. 34, 38) wrote the Nile only looked like blood due to red algae and mud washed into the river by rain upstream on the Abyssinian plateau, and that the algae deoxygenated the water, killing the Nile's fish, Ibid.
      2. This view aids Satan by opposing the idea that God proved He was the true Source of Egypt's life by turning the Nile into real blood!
      3. Yet, Hort's view scientifically errs: (1) Her theory's proposed algae, Haematococcus pluvalis and Euglena sanguinea, are green in flowing waters like the Nile, Ibid., p. 35! (2) These algae live only in sub-arctic waters, Ibid. (3) Mud particles in water hinder algae photosynthesis, and stick to the algae, sinking it, so Hort's view is self-defeating, Ibid., p. 35-36! (4) Algae did not kill the fish by deoxygenation as Hort theorized: that can occur only after an algal bloom that cannot happen in Hort's muddy water view, Ibid., p. 35!
    4. This war over origins will continue into the Great Tribulation when God applies His plague on the Nile to the oceans to counter Satan's lie about the origin of life in the theory of evolution, Rev. 8:8-9:
      1. God will apply Egypt's plague of blood on the Nile to the oceans, destroying a third of its fish and ships, Rev. 8:8-9; Ex. 7:14-25.
      2. This plague will include God's casting a fiery mountain into the sea (Rev. 8:8), discrediting the evolutionary view: since evolutionists claim life naturally evolved in a chemically rich ocean warmed by volcanic action and energized by rain and fiery lightening , God will CONVERSELY miraculously rain a fiery volcanic mountain down on the sea, turning it into blood that kills life, not evolves it!
      3. Revelation 12:4 reveals Satan led a third of the angels in his fall, so the "third" number applied to this plague shows its judgment is on a Satanic aspect! So, the view that life evolved in a "primordial soup" is a lie promoted by Satan, for God miraculously made life!
Application: The creation-versus-evolution debate is fueled by the angelic conflict, so we must first (1) trust in Christ for salvation to be rescued from Satan's rule and transferred to God's kingdom, Jn. 3:16; Col. 1:12-14 ESV. (2) We must then rely on the Holy Spirit Who is greater than Satan (Gal. 5:16-23; 1 John 4:4) for the power to hold to God's truth (2 Tim. 1:13-14), and (3) focus on Scripture to witness God's truth to a needy world, 1 John 2:14; Acts 20:32b.

Lesson: The plague of turning water into blood, whether it involve the Nile River in Moses' era or a third of earth's oceans in the Tribulation, reflects a great war in history between a Satanically fueled lie that life sprang up from water versus the truth that God miraculously created it!

Conclusion:

(1) An illustration of this message was given in a letter to the editor in the April-June, 2009 issue of Answers In Genesis' magazine, Answers. The letter from Sarah S. in Austin, Texas noted: "I find it so interesting that one of the reasons Darwin was accepted so rapidly was the church was already teaching extra-biblical ideas as biblical, and Darwin "proved" that [the] "biblical" idea was wrong, thus undermining the Bible because people didn't read the Bible for themselves. [They] just believed what the church told them it said!"

(2) Sarah's letter is remarkably applicable to the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial". A highly publicized part of the trial was when Mr. William Jennings Bryan took the stand to testify that the Bible and evolution are irreconcilable opposite the efforts of the ACLU lawyer, Clarence Darrow. Dr. Bolton Davidheiser, author of Evolution and the Christian Faith, 1976, p. 96, noted: "Mr. Bryan was a believer and he studied the Bible, but he really was not a Bible expert." (emphases ours) Thus, when Mr. Darrow exposed the limits of Mr. Bryan's own Bible knowledge, he left the audience with the impression that all Christian fundamentalists like Mr. Bryan were uneducated foes of true science, and swayed public opinion to believe that the Bible and evolutionary theory were quite compatible!

That was a tragedy, for the Bible reveals that (1) the "days" of Genesis 1 are each composed of an "evening" and a "morning", solar days that do not give room for long evolutionary ages to occur in creation! (2) The Bible provides grand exceptions to evolution in the order of its creation events: daylight came before the sun (Gen. 1:3-5, 14-19), pansies before the solar system (Gen. 1:11-16), birds before lizards (Gen. 1:20-25) and whales before ants (Gen. 1:21-24)! (3) The Bible reveals man did not originate by evolution: the first woman came from an adult man's rib (Gen. 2:20-22), a non-evolutionary means of origin, and since she was the first woman, man originated without evolution because he had no natural mother!



Thus, we must rely on the Holy Spirit's power and immerse our minds in Scripture to deal with the potency of evolutionary belief! After all, we are in a HISTORY-LONG SPIRITUAL WAR where we succeed ONLY by using GOD'S POWER and WORD!