Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20080113.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
Genesis: Explaining The Foundations Of History
Part I: Explaining The Creation Of The Universe, Genesis 1-2
B. Explaining The Process By Which The Universe Began
(Genesis 1:3-31)

Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

In 1920, America's public schools had no problem with their students believing God made the universe in six solar days instead of by evolutionary processes. In fact, the Tennessee legislature passed a law early in 1925 banning the teaching of evolution in tax-supported state schools (Bolton Davidheiser, Evol. and the Christ. Faith, p. 101).

However, in July of 1925, the famous "monkey trial," the Scopes trial of Dayton, Tennessee, changed all that. Ray Ginger's book, Six Days Or Forever, p. 78 claims one aim of the American Civil Liberties Union that sponsored the trial was "to educate the public on evolution" (cited in Davidheiser, p. 101). This explains why the ACLU lawyer, Clarence Darrow, tried to make evolution palatable in asserting "concerning the Bible, 'We expect to show that it isn't in conflict with the theory of evolution.'" (Ibid., citing The World's Most Famous Court Trial. A Complete Stenographic Report, 1925, p. 146)

Darrow tried "to exploit the testimonies of evolutionists who had a reputation as Christians" to make evolution seem plausible to the Bible-believing American majority, a move that has been promoted ever since, Ibid., Davidheiser, p. 95. Accordingly, this trial swung public opinion to tolerate and even accept the theory of evolution to where it is now taught as factual in many public schools, Ibid., p. 100-103. Indeed, "on November 12, 1968, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in tax-supported schools is unconstitutional" (Ibid., p. 103) even though over the head of the Court's Chief Justice are the Ten Commandments, one of which asserts the Sabbath solar Day was to be kept in view of God's having created the universe in seven days, Exodus 20:8-11 (The Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, The Rebirth of America, 1986, p. 68).

So pervasive is the belief that evolution is compatible with Scripture that many evangelicals now tolerate or even promote the very stance the ACLU lawyer himself presented at the Scopes trial: publications Christianity Today and Promise Keeper's, New Man allow for theistic evolution, the idea that God used evolutionary processes to create (Dave Hunt, The Berean Call, March 1997)!

Accordingly, we may ask, "IS Genesis 1 COMPATIBLE with belief in EVOLUTION? I need to know as I wonder HOW I can TRUST the STRAIGHTFORWARD reading of my Bible!"

(We turn to the sermon "Need" section . . . )

Need: "Is belief in evolution compatible with Genesis 1?! I need to know if I can trust the straightforward reading of my Bible!"
  1. The Hebrew text at Genesis 1 allows NO ROOM for evolution:
    1. Some hold the Framework Theory that allows for God to have used evolution to create, but the Hebrew text makes no room for this view:
      1. The Framework theory claims Genesis 1 is at least semi-poetic so "the 'days' of creation have nothing to do with time, but are 'forms' or 'images' designed by God to help us understand creation," Frank H. Walker, "The Framework Hypothesis," Reformed Herald, Feb. 1998. It claims "the sun was not created until Day Four . . .", and "since the sun is the instrument used for measuring 'days,' there was no way to measure the first three days," Ibid., Genesis 1:14-15.
      2. However, though God did not make the luminaries by which man observes time until Day Four, time had existed since "Day" and "Night" had been created in Genesis 1:5 to register the first "day"!
      3. Also, Genesis 1:3-26 "runs on in a single continuous line" via the Hebrew grammar's waw consecutive, indicating the passage is a prose narrative of consecutive events! Thus, the Framework view errs! (George B. Gray, The Forms of Hebrew Poetry, 1972, p. 52; J. Weingreen, A Practical Grammar For Classical Hebrew, 1969, p. 91; Marks & Rogers, A Beg. Hndbk. to Bib. Hebrew, 1958, p. 38).
    2. Some claim the Genesis 1 "days", in view of 2 Peter 3:8, are long ages of evolutionary eras, but the Hebrew text allows no room for this idea:
      1. 2 Peter 3:8 (cf. Psalm 90:4) claims a day to God is as a 1,000 years and 1,000 years as a day, so "many people" like Hugh Ross say the Genesis 1 days were ages when God used evolutionary processes to create (J. Sarfati, Refuting Compromise, 2004, p. 13-15, 114).
      2. However, Peter used a figure of speech, a simile ("like, as"), to say God's longsuffering is so great that time seems trivial in view of it!
      3. Also, the context of 2 Peter 3:8 at 2 Peter 3:3-7 actually critiques the uniformitarianism on which evolutionary theory is based! [" . . . uniformitarianism . . . is the view that the cosmic processes of the present and the future can be understood solely on the basis of how the cosmos has operated in the past," Bible Know. Com., N. T., p. 875] (Roger Patterson, Evolution Exposed, 2006, p. 110)
      4. Then, Genesis 1 shows its creation days are consecutive solar days:
        1. The Genesis 1 creation "days" one through five are part of the consecutive events of Genesis 1:3-26 by way of the Hebrew waw consecutive (see "I,A,3" above), and "day" six must be like the other five as to kind, so they are six consecutive "days"!
        2. All six Genesis 1 creation "days" (1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31) consist of an "evening" and a "morning", marking them as solar days!
        3. Also, everywhere else in the Pentateuch where the word, yom for "day" is modified by a numerical adjective as it is in Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23 and 31 for each of the six creation "days", it is a solar day, Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978, ftn. to Genesis 1:5.
        4. Besides, Exodus 20:8-11 that institutes Israel's solar Sabbath Day observance uses the Genesis 1 creation "days" as its basis, meaning God made the universe in six consecutive solar days.
  2. Indeed, the Genesis 1 Hebrew text even CONTRADICTS evolution:
    1. The polemical intent of the author of Genesis counters evolution:
      1. The pagans in Moses' era taught a hero-god slew a sea monster that restrained innate creative forces to release them so that they formed the creation (Bruce K. Waltke, Creation and Chaos , p. 48).
      2. Moses countered this belief, noting in Genesis 1:2 that God began with no competitive sea monster or restrained innate life forces, but that He alone merely spoke into existence the whole universe!
    2. The order of creation events in Genesis 1 profoundly contradicts evolutionary theory: daylight existed before the sun (Gen. 1:3-5, 14-19), plants before galaxies (Gen. 1:11-19), birds before dinosaurs and fish before land insects (Gen. 1:20-24) all in sharp contradiction to basic evolutionary theory (Ibid., Patterson, p. 108-110)!
    3. Genesis 2:7, 20-22 contradicts the idea that evolutionary processes could have been used to create humans: God formed the first adult man's body from the dust of the earth, and then miraculously gave his lifeless body life. Later, God made a woman from the rib of the man! Humans were thus obviously made with no evolutionary processes!
Application: (1) May we trust in Christ as Savior to receive eternal life, John 3:16. (2) Then, may we rely on a STRAIGHTFORWARD reading of Genesis 1-2, trusting God created the universe with no evolutionary processes just as the author of Genesis intended!

Lesson: The Hebrew text at Genesis 1 not only gives NO room for evolution, it even CONTRADICTS it: Scripture thus teaches God created the whole universe by His miraculous power in six consecutive solar days just as the STRAIGHTFORWARD reading of the text suggests!

Conclusion: (To illustrate the sermon lesson . . . )

Dr. Henry M. Morris, Ph. D. in Hydraulic Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and devout believer in Christ as his personal Savior, wrote an article in 2005 that should encourage all who face pressure to adopt evolutionary beliefs as truth.

His article, "The Truth About Evolution," in the July-August issue of Israel My Glory, p. 11-13 reads at one point as follows:

" . . . the two most universally applicable and best-proved laws of science point absolutely to the primeval creation of the universe, not to its evolution out of nothing. These are the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, or, one might say, the laws of quantitative conservation and qualitative decay of all things. The First Law confirms that neither matter nor energy is now being either created or destroyed . . . This fact assures us that the universe could not have created itself because, by the First Law, none of its present processes can create anything. Yet the universe must have been created at some time in the past because the Second Law tells us that everything is now running down, heading toward stillness and 'death' . . . Now, if the universe could not have created itself (by the First Law) but must have been created somehow (since it is not dead, though heading inexorably toward death by the Second Law), the only answer is that God created it! That is the most scientific conclusion possible on the bases of the best scientific laws we have.

This Second Law also makes it clear why no one has ever proved any case of vertically 'upward' evolution from one kind to a higher, more complex kind. In all human history, no one has ever documented any such 'macroevolution.' There have been many cases of 'horizontal' variation (e.g., the different species of dogs) and downward variation (mutations, extinctions, deteriorations), but nothing else."



Thus, may we REST in the STRAIGHTFORWARD reading of Genesis 1 and 2, that God supernaturally created the entire universe by the immense power of His spoken word in six consecutive solar days! May we thus TRUST the rest of the Bible's statements, believing its Gospel of Christ's salvation by faith in His atonement to be saved, and grow in grace in light of God's Word!