Septuagesima Sunday, 2003
Genesis 1; Psalm 24

It is becoming ever more common for people to deify creation. They find God in the mountains or feel closer to God in a forest than anywhere else. Not long ago I asked a gentleman if he attended church. He responded, "My church is the mountain trail that runs along the lake. I have a path where I walk or jog on Sundays. That is my church." In other words, he doesn't need the institutional Church. He would rather commune with nature. How does the Christian react to such a claim? Several points.

Though Christianity does not divinize creation, it takes seriously the goodness of the natural realm. More, creation has a touch of the holy and sacred. That sacredness and holiness is taught in Genesis 1. Each day God declares the things He has made to be "good," and then pronounces the whole of His creation to be "very good." Likewise, Psalm 19:1-2 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handwork. Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge." The Psalmist is telling us that the sun and sky, day and night, point to God. Creation in a thousand ways reveals God the Creator. The Church Father Theophilus had this to say: "No man can give a sufficient explanation of this six days' work, nor can he describe all of its parts. He could not do this even if he had ten thousand tongues." Furthermore, the older theologians used to say that two books reveal God: the (1) Bible and the (2) creation. They were correct. We learn about God and His glory from both of these sources. Therefore, beautifying nature and delighting in it are normal Christian instincts. Yet, in the Christian scheme of things nature never becomes an end in and of itself, nor a substitute for the life and worship of the Church.

Moreover, when a person claims that he finds God on a forest trail he is probably selecting only the best features of creation. A pink and purple sunrise, snowcapped mountains, and the brilliance of stars on a clear night are inspiring sights. But let us not leave out the dark side of nature: the floods that kill, droughts that parch, volcanoes that spew forth soot, earthquakes that rip and shatter, not to mention the Ebola virus, mosquito bites, and cockroaches. Nature displays a lovely side and an ugly side. The ugly side groans in agony, yearning that Christ's kingdom will come to set it free (Romans 8).

The lectionary appoints our readings for the Church year. If you follow the daily lectionary you would read through the Old Testament once a year. In most lectionaries the Old Testament begins on Septuagesima Sunday; Genesis 1 is read. Hence, every Septuagesima we have a pretext for treating the subject of creation. That is what we will do today.

The words of Genesis 1 inform us that God created all things in six days. This fact is repeated in the Ten Commandments: "in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day" (Exodus 20:11). How did creation come into being? Psalm 33:6 states that it came into being in response to the sovereign word of God: "By the word of the LORD the heavens were made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth For he spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." It is God's Word that made everything, and it is God's Word that sustains everything. Consequently, God's control of His creation is so pervasive that the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 11:36, "for of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen."

How and when did God make everything? The traditional interpretation of the days of Genesis is six 24-hour periods. The one exception was St. Augustine. He said, "this work of God was done in the space of a day.Thus, in all the days of Creation there is one day" In other words, he suggested that God created all of it in one day, or maybe even in one second. The remainder of the six days was a time of contemplation for the angels. For 1800 years the Church spoke with a united voice on the historicity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Adam and Eve were real, historic people. They lived in the Garden of Eden until they rebelled. The narrative about the Flood was regarded straightforward history as well. After Noah and his family entered the Ark, the rains came down and the fountains of the deep burst open. It was a global catastrophe. Water covered the entire earth and explains such present-day geological features as continents, mountain ranges, canyons, and plateaus. For 1800 years virtually everybody in the Church believed that God created the entire universe: earth, sky, plants and animals in 144 hours. Some of the early Fathers put the date of creation at around 6,000 B.C., but most of the Christian thinkers came eventually to calculate the origin of creation at about 4,000 B.C. St. Basil stated, "And there was evening and morning, one day. Why did he say 'one' and not 'first'?" He said 'one' because he was defining the measure of day and night. Since the twenty-four hours fill up the interval of one day." Ambrose declared, "Scripture established a law that twenty-four hours, including both day and night, should be given the name of day only, as if one were to say the length of one day is twenty-four hours in extent." Victorinus proclaimed, "God produced that entire mass for the adornment of His majesty in six days. On the seventh day, He consecrated it with a blessing." We could heap up quite a mass of kindred citations. Without doubt the Church spoke with a united voice until 1850. Is it wise to depart from such consensus? No, usually not, in rare cases, yes. If we do, we should have very good and compelling reason for it.

As you know, Darwin formulated his theory of evolution while sailing around the world on the Beagle. He set forth his ideas in 1861 in a book called On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life . When the first printing came out, men threw their hats in the air and shouted for joy. Darwin's book sold out overnight. Why the elation? Not because Darwin's case for evolution made sense, not because it had been proven, but because it seemingly made the Lord irrelevant to the events on earth. If natural selection and mutation could account for the origin and diversity of all living things, then the conclusion was logical: God doesn't exist, or if He does exist, He remains distant, impersonal, and emasculated. If God didn't create, He will not return again to judge. Let us never underestimate the soothing comfort that evolution's natural processes afford the unrepentant sinner. Evolution lets unbelievers off the hook. It is no wonder the unbelieving crowds went wild for joy.

How did the Church react? Not very well. Perhaps the Church was still reeling from the Galileo fiasco. Using bad biblical interpretation, many theologians had insisted that the earth was the center of the universe. They persecuted Galileo for claiming that the earth orbited the sun, but later on they were stung when he was proved correct. The attitude of the Church toward science shifted from antagonism to cowering servility. Thus, too many Christians submitted to evolution. In an effort to avoid the scorn of the evolutionary academic establishment, too many Christian thinkers capitulated on important areas. Noah's flood was reduced from a universal catastrophe to a local one. Adam and Eve were seen as mythological people. Most Christian academics came to embrace evolution's millions and billions of years. Attempts were made to pack five billion years into Genesis chapter one. The gap theory inserted billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. The day-age view interpreted the days of Genesis one as eons. Each eon could last millions of years. The framework hypothesis squeezed millions and billions of years out of Genesis 1-2.

Is there a problem with abandoning the traditional 144-hour creation? Yes. One concession to evolution tends to lead to the abandonment of other biblical truths. A surrender to secularism tends to diminish other miracles. As we already mentioned, most of the people who accept the billions of years come to reject the global flood. Some begin to doubt whether Adam and Eve were real people. And let's not forget the damage done to our confidence in Scripture. For if the Genesis texts do not mean what they say, then numerous other texts are finally doubted. It is a mistake to compartmentalize biblical doctrines. The major teachings of Scripture hang together, or fall together. Harm one and the others suffer.

Granted, the Intelligent Design movement is currently waging a wonderful war against the evolutionists. We applaud and support them. The Intelligent Design spokesmen like Phillip Johnson, William Dembski, and Michael Behe are truly brilliant. They are doing good work. But it is a shame that they are so resistant to the more biblical young earth position.

The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 was a scientific eye-opener. The heat that flashed out from that volcanic explosion created immediate forests of petrified wood. The gushing forth of underground water and lava cut deep canyons in a matter of days. Before this event many scientists had believed that petrified forests and the Grand Canyon required hundreds of thousands of years to form. Now they know that they form rapidly under catastrophic conditions.

The people who insist on vast ages for the universe point to the stars in the sky, or the precious stones and fossils buried in the earth. Pretty persuasive arguments can be made that these components are indeed much older than 6,000 years, probably millions and billions. How does a young earth advocate respond to that challenge?

First of all, there are many young earth organizations that are doing top-rate scientific research. They have convincing evidence that sets a recent date for creation. It is unfair to so quickly write off the discoveries of Creation Science as quack science.

Second, why couldn't God create a world that looks old? The person who carefully thinks about how God fashioned the stars, plants, animals, and dirt would expect these things to have an appearance of age. For instance, God put trees in the Garden of Eden. He made them whole instantly. The idea that God created fully-grown plants, animals and human beings is called the doctrine of mature creation. There is nothing odd about it. If Adam had cut down a redwood tree in order to build a house or craft a violin, what would he have seen? He would have noticed annual tree rings in the tree trunk. This tree that God had only created one week ago would have displayed numerous tree rings, perhaps hundreds. Adam probably would not have figured out what the tree rings signified until later. In the meantime he worked with a tree that had the appearance of hundreds of years of age, which in reality, was one week old.

Likewise consider the wine at the Wedding of Cana. Jesus turned 180 gallons of water into wine, and why was the wedding host dumbfounded? The taste was exquisite. Jesus had just turned that water into wine five minutes before, yet it had all the taste and qualities of having been masterfully bottled and aged. The same idea can be applied to anything we find in the realms of astronomy and geology. If they look old, it is because God created them with the appearance of age.

This is a great time for creationism. Darwinism is a bankrupt ideology. Secular people hold tenaciously to evolution not because it is based on good science; rather they believe it because it is their religion. Evolutionists are losing their confidence these days. They are fighting with each other, they are defensive, they are on the run. More and more honest people are coming to see what an absurd and impossible idea it is. The late Malcolm Muggeridge had the right perspective. He wrote, "I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially to the extent to which it has been applied, will be one of the greatest jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity it has."

The doctrine of creation is foundational to Christianity. Why should we assume that scientific speculation about the origin of the earth is more honest and accurate than the plain statements of Scripture? Science has its place. We honor the blessings that science has bestowed to mankind. We live longer and healthier lives thanks to science. However, science is helpless to explain miracles, and that is what Genesis 1 presents to us. The Bible speaks very plainly and clearly about the origin and age of all things. There is no reason to replace that teaching with the outlandish guesses of secular scientists. To a large degree, they are driven by a mad desire to eradicate God from the universe. What drives the Christian? God's glory and His truth. As you face the challenge of evolution v. creation, is that your driving passion? Your faith will be strong and your theology sound to the extent that you hold to the traditional doctrine of creation. The Church calls you on this Septuagesima Sunday to renew your commitment to God the Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth.

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