Creation

August 21, 2016 / No. 3842

Dear Radio Friends,
I believe in God the Father, almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
These are the words of the Apostles’ Creed—a statement of the Christian faith, the very first article: I believe in God, the Creator.
Evolution does not. The theory of evolution is a denial of the very first article of the Christian faith. Evolution says, “I believe the world came into existence by a great explosion and by natural process.” Saving faith in Jesus Christ says, “No, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth” (Ps. 33:6). Evolution says, “The world is a product of time and chance.” Faith says, “No, by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb. 11:3). Exodus 20:11, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.” Evolution says, “God is not necessary in the world.” Faith says, “No, for in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17).
Evolution, the theory of evolution, is an all-out attack upon God and the cross of Jesus Christ. And the bride of Christ, the church, receives no part of it to her bosom, lest the church deny God Himself.
And yet we who, by grace, confess that God is the Creator and our Father, and we who walk among the wonders of the creation, so often do not see. And we ask, “Where is God? Is there wisdom in the most High? Can He help me? Where are His promises?” How true it is that without the work of the Word and Spirit within our hearts we are as blind as a bat, dead as a nail, and as dumb as an ox.
Psalm 104:24 says: “O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.” Grace, faith, the Holy Spirit, and the Word open our eyes to confess: “I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” Then we look around us, and the whole world, the creation, becomes a chorus of praise. It speaks His wonder; it shouts His power; it declares His wisdom, faithfulness, and care; and we bow down day after day in worship: “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds Thy hands have made,…then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee: how great Thou art.”
And then faith mounts up in victory.
The Creator is my Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ, upon whom I rely entirely.
How did the Lord Jesus address anxiety in His disciples? He said in Matthew 6: “Consider the birds of the air, the lilies of the field. Your Father knows them; your Father feeds them. Will He not take care of you?” He pointed them to the Father Creator.
What is the very first word of God brought to the congregation in a morning worship service? Your pastor stands before you after a week of struggle, as you come into God’s house. Perhaps he says words similar to these: “Beloved, our help is in the name of the Lord, who has made heaven and earth.”
What thrills the hearts of the saints in heaven? We read in Revelation 4 that they proclaim, “Thou art worthy to receive glory and honor; for thou hast created all things, and for thy glory they are and were created.”
And what is the hope that calms us, as children of God, and guides us in every difficulty? These words: “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth in which the first shall not be remembered.” Faith believes in God the Creator.
The creation witnesses to the glory and to the power of God. The creation was made and is sustained by God’s hand to witness of Him. The creation is God’s book to tell of Him. The creation says, “The Lord is great and great in might, and ever stands His name.”
It is right here that many go wrong. It is right here that unbelief shows its folly. There are many who view the world and say, “It says nothing about God.” In fact, the world of unbelief shouts that there is no God. There is only time and chance. Psalm 14: “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.”
There are others who look at the world and say, “God can’t be known. All we can see is the physical. We can touch and smell and hear and taste. But where is God?”
Still others say that the world proclaims that there are gods: Neptune, Zeus, Allah, and many others today.
But faith says: “Creation’s voice is overwhelming. The creation is undeniable in its testimony of the One eternal, self-existent, and true God: Jehovah, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The problem, however, when one does not see this, is spiritual. It is not that the creation is blurred in its testimony. The problem is in the heart. It is not a defect in the witness of the creation but in us. It is because eyes do not see and ears do not hear.
It is still worse. Spiritually there is a cover-up. There is a suppression of the evidence. The apostle Paul says in Romans 1 concerning the created things of God, as they testify of God, that the natural man holds this truth down in unrighteousness. The apostle says in Ephesians 4 that the denial of creation’s testimony is a chosen and a cherished denial. Paul says, “Having [their] understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” Systematically, man wants to remove God from the earth and erase the creation’s witness. II Corinthians 4:4: “in whom the god of this world [Satan] hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ…should shine unto them.”
It is like going to Mammoth Cave and being led blindfolded deep down into a chasm, a beautiful cavern of stalagmites and stalactites. The lights are out and the blindfolds are off and one sees nothing…until “let there be light,” and then one sees!
So the power of God, who spoke the light into being in the darkness, is necessary. Through the Word, He speaks into our hearts. II Corinthians 4:6: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” We need another book than just the creation. We need a clearer book. We need God’s Holy Word.
We read in that Holy Word (Ps. 19:1), “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.” Psalm 19:1-6 declares that all of the creation reveals God; that there is no part of it that testifies to a big bang, to evolution, or to blind chance. Planetary motions and gravity and the laws of motion and the circling of galaxies and the rock layers in the Grand Canyon and the shape of a bird’s beak in the South Pacific and the color of the moths in England hiding from their prey—all of it, all of it, testifies of God. Not one particle of the creation, not one speck, testifies to evolution. We read in Psalm 8:7-9: “All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” Fire and hail, snow and vapor, stormy winds fulfilling His commands, mountains, trees, beasts and creeping things—let them praise the name of the Lord, for His name alone is excellent and His glory is above the heaven and the earth!
But we may go a step further. We may say that all of the creation reveals the glory of God all the time. Day unto day (Ps. 19:2) and night unto night sheweth forth knowledge. All the time the creation is testifying. When you awake and hear the birds and the light returns; when the clouds move through the sky during the day—you cannot turn off creation, as it always testifies of the great and the inescapable glory of Jehovah.
I commend to you a reading of the book of Job in the Bible, the chapters 38-40, where God speaks to Job after his severe trial. God says to Job, “You have been talking about Me, and you have wondered about My ways, and you have questioned where I am in your afflictions. I have some questions for you, Job: Have you given the peacock its goodly wings? Hast thou given the horse his strength? Does the hawk fly at thy wisdom? Does the eagle mount up at thy command? Have you entered the treasures of the snow, the icebergs, and the crystal chambers within? Can you bind the sweet influences of Pleiades or Seven Sisters? Or can you loose the bands of Orion?” Because God is strong in power, not one faileth.
This so often shows our blindness. Much of the time we are spiritually asleep and we do not think of the Lord’s handiwork. Because it is our calling not just to see the beauty, but to see God in everything in the universe. In the spectacular and in the ordinary. In the volcano and in the cloud. In the tiger in his lightning leap, in the lion’s roar, in the snorting and stamping of a horse, and in the worm.
But still, it is not enough to say that all the creation all the time testifies of God the Creator. We must deal with the volume of it. “The heavens declare [or shout] the glory of God.” And then we read in Psalm 19:3, “There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.” The testimony of the creation is heard throughout the world. The testimony of this sermon being preached must be translated into Hungarian, or into Tamil, or into Tagalog for those in the Philippines, or into other languages. But the testimony of the creation is in every language: in Mandarin, in French, and in Spanish. And it is not only in every language, but it is loud and clear and sweet. It proclaims, “God made me.” The Himalayas and the Andes, the Grand Canyon and Tahiti, the Sahara Desert and Lake Michigan, the daffodil and all the flowers—“They were all made by Jehovah.” The stream of revelation and the witness go forth all the time, everywhere, to everyone, with a loud voice, so that all are without excuse.
There is one aspect of the creation that is common to all mankind. It was made on the fourth day in the creation narrative (Gen. 1), so that a person, regardless of where he lives on the earth—the climate and topography, the vegetation and the exact circumstances in which he may live—all hear this testimony. It is the testimony of the sun, of the moon, and of the stars. We read in Psalm 19 that the sun is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices as a young man to run his race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it. And there is nothing hid from its heat.
The sun. The sun has been measured by God to the inch, so that we do not burn as on Venus or freeze as on Neptune. It is God’s heat upon the back and the face of a man. It brings him his food from the ground. And by it he can set his watch. The moon, by God’s power, lifts the ocean tide and lowers it again. And the stars (Gen. 1:16). God made the stars also. We read that God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night (that’s the sun and the moon), and God made the stars also. Yes, that, too. Imagine the ceiling being lifted off you and you are transported into a clear desert sky at night. And you see the stars. Billions of them. And galaxies, light-years away. No measurements are possible for men. Some greater than others. Nebulae.
And then we read, “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” We read in the Bible, “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.”
And now, the most marvelous part. How did God make all of this? How does God keep all of this? The answer: By His Word. He spake and it was done; He commanded and it stood fast. “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth” (Ps. 33:6). By the word of the Lord, the cattle calve. How? By His word. And God said, Let there be light. By fiat, by command; for God is not like you. God need only speak. Awake, thou that sleepeth, and Christ shall give thee light.
How does God create? By His own word He created all things. And why did He create all things? The answer is, first of all, that He might reveal Himself to us. “Behold your God, consider who hath made all these things.” He is the eternal, existing God who is the source of all things. God is God, and there is no other beside Him. There is but one God: Jehovah, the God of the Bible. He is before the world. Matter is not eternal. Matter is not self-producing and self-sustaining. Matter was made by Him. God owes His being to nothing outside of Himself. The apostle declares in Acts 17 that He was not made with hands. God made the world and all things in them, seeing that He giveth life and breath unto all things. He is not, says the apostle, like unto anything on the earth. He has no beginning. He has no end. He is not a local deity. He is God.
He is omniscient. He is omnipotent. That means that He is all-powerful, and He is all-knowing. He knows all things because He has made all things and He upholds them all by the word of His power. He is wise in all of His ways. Science is such a wonderful and noble study for faith. In science, and in the creation around us, we see the hidden wisdom of God intricate, thought-out, planned, and devised. God is skilled as no one else. The human body, a bee hive, the world of the planets, the insects, atoms, molecules, amoebas, mitosis—in all of these God shows His wisdom.
But there was another reason why God made all things. And that was to reveal a purpose in Jesus Christ. For, we read in Colossians 1:16: “For by [Christ] were all things created.” All things were created by Him, and all things were made for Him. God made all the world to be the theater in which to accomplish His eternal good pleasure in Jesus Christ. A good pleasure, says the apostle (Eph. 1:10), to gather all things together in Christ Jesus. When God stood with Adam and Eve in the cool of the Garden, He saw another Paradise. He saw the darkness of the valley of death. He saw in that valley a marvelous light called the Cross of Jesus Christ. And God made all things for that day when Jesus Christ Himself shall come and a newborn world will be at His command. No sin there. No aging. No death. But, body and soul, we shall live before God in glory. Do not marvel. Do not say, “Wishful thinking.” Is there anything too hard for the Lord?
Believing this truth, we need not fear. Believing in God the Creator, your Creator, you need not fear man—wealthy man, intellectual man, intimidating man. “Cease ye from man” (Is. 2), “whose breath is in his nostrils. For wherein is he to be accounted of?” “Trust in the Lord. Wait patiently for Him.” Do not fear cancer, do not fear back operations. He will guide you through dangers all, will not suffer you to fall. Do not fear persecution for confessing Christ. Do not fear rejection for believing in Christ. Do not fear anything. If God be for us, who can be against us? Confess your God. Do not fear death. Death poses no problem for God. Death cannot separate us from God. Do not worry. Do not fear. Believe in God the Father, the Creator.
But there is one more thing that we must do. Not only is it incumbent upon us to have no fear if we believe that God is our Creator. It is also incumbent upon us to have joy. Yes, fruitful trees and woods and grass and hills and streams—rejoice. And you, chosen of the Lord and precious, rejoice in your Creator and be at peace.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank Thee again for Thy holy Word. We pray that it may be sealed to our hearts by the Spirit in a true and living faith. In Jesus’ name do we pray, Amen.