TPW 37 So the Evening and Morning Were the First Three Zillion Years

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If this is a guy who believes that everything is billions and millions of years old, he recognizes that even if you tried to squeeze 20 or 25 missing generations between every single name in every genealogy in the
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Old Testament, you're still not going to get anywhere near millions of years. Therefore, if you believe that the universe is millions or billions of years old, the only place to put those millions or billions of years is into the days of creation.
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Pastor Patrick Hines here at Gridwell Heights Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee.
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It's freezing cold today. It actually snowed a little bit last night, which is kind of surprising, but the temperature has fallen out.
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My whole family's sick, except me. I feel fine, but my voice is still kind of shot. I've got to soldier on today.
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I've got to finish my sermon for Sunday morning. God is good.
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My sins are forgiven. I'm just so very thankful to be alive and to be a Christian and to know the
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Lord Jesus sits on His throne and that all is well between me and God. Today we're going to talk about creation in six days.
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This is also part of the Genesis series I've been posting. Many people would probably look at this sermon throughout most of church history and think, why in the world would such a sermon even be needed?
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What could be more obvious than that the days of Genesis are actually 24 -hour days, and yet that is actually a minority position today, strangely enough, because of the rise of evolution and all of the compromise that's gone on for a couple hundred years now, actually a little more than a couple hundred years.
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But I hope that you will listen carefully to this and that you can equip yourself and your friends and your children to stand upon the authority of the
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Word of God and to refute and to reject the compromised positions on the meaning of the days of Genesis chapter 1.
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And I hope that you find this edifying. Let us ask God together to bless our minds with understanding of His Word.
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Let's pray, please. Heavenly Father, we would ask you now in Christ's name to help us to understand what you have revealed to us in Genesis chapter 1 and in those first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis, where you have given us an eyewitness account, an infallible and authoritative and clear and straightforward understanding of the foundational history of the universe, of mankind and of the earth.
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Help us to see it and to understand it clearly. We ask in Jesus name. Amen. If you'll take your
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Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1, Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, and I will read the whole first chapter of Genesis, Genesis chapter 1.
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This is God's word. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep.
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And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, Let there be light.
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And there was light. And God saw the light that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night.
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So the evening and the morning were the first day. Then God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters.
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Thus, God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which are above the firmament, which were above the firmament.
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And it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.
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Then God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so.
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And God called the dry land to earth and the gathering together of the waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good.
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Then God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself on the earth.
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And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind.
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And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the third day. Then God said,
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Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and seasons and for days and years and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth.
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And it was so. Then God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night.
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He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth and to rule over the day and over the night and to divide the light from the darkness.
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And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Then God said,
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Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.
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So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves with which the waters abounded according to their kind and every winged bird according to its kind.
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And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth.
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So the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Then God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind.
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And it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind.
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And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
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So God created man in his own image and the image of God. He created him male and female.
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He created them. Then God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds, over the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
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And God said, See, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of the earth and every tree whose fruit yields seed to you.
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It shall be for food also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life.
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I have given every green herb for food. And it was so. Then God saw everything that he had made.
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And indeed, it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
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May God bless the reading of his infallible word. I've given you an outline there in your bulletin of this morning's sermon as an evening sermon outline on there as well.
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And this morning we will look at, first and foremost, why a sermon like this is necessary, a sermon about creation in six days.
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It seems to be one of the most obvious things that the passage teaches. But why is it important that we emphasize it in our day?
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That's the first point this morning. The second point this morning's sermon on your outline is the meaning of day in Genesis chapter one, the
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Hebrew word Yom. What does that mean? It's translated as day in Genesis chapter one. What does it mean?
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Thirdly, Genesis and the evangelization of America. Why? Standing firmly upon Genesis chapters one through eleven is foundational to recovering
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America, to evangelizing this culture. We have to stand upon the foundational history that is given to us in Genesis chapters one through eleven.
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But if you want to look at your outline there first, by way of introduction, why the sermon this morning's sermon will focus on the length of time
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God took to create the universe and everything in it, what the Hebrew word for day Yom means and why a firm stance upon Genesis is vital to recovering
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American culture and evangelizing this culture that we live in. We will cover how one why how one interprets the meaning of the word day in Genesis one is vital to our understanding of history and of biblical authority.
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I preach this sermon, recognizing fully that it would have been completely unnecessary for the vast majority of church history.
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I'm preaching a sermon which if you could take every Christian person that existed from the death of the apostles for the first 18 centuries of New Testament church histories and brought brought them into this room, they would leave scratching their heads, wondering why would you even preach a sermon like this?
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Why would it even be necessary? The reason most Christians for the first 18 centuries after Christ would not understand why this message would need to be preached is simple.
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The vast majority of commentators, ministers and Bible scholars throughout church history have understood exactly what is meant in this passage by the
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Hebrew word Yom, which is translated day. But all of that has changed in the last 200 years.
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Suddenly we are now faced with what is called the day age interpretation of the word day, interpreting each day of Genesis chapter one to refer to very long periods of time, millions and in some cases billions of years each.
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We're also faced with another interpretation, the interpretation I was taught in seminary, the framework hypothesis, which asserts that the text is more poetic and figurative and thus is not to be considered a historical narrative.
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There's also the gap theory, the idea which says that there is a massive gap of time between Genesis one, one and Genesis one to a gap of millions or maybe billions of years.
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That just happens to be part of the text. But central to the argument is the proper interpretation of the word day, the
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Hebrew word Yom. Why the emphasis upon that word? Why is that such a stumbling block?
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Why do I have a book in my library that's 300 pages long about the meaning of the word day in Genesis chapter one?
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Here's the answer. Please listen to it carefully. Everybody recognizes both young earth creationists and people who believe in millions and billions of years.
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Everybody recognizes this. There is no way that Adam lived millions or billions of years ago.
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Even Hugh Ross, who is a proponent of older, the man who believes that the universe is billions of years old, that the earth is billions of years old, he himself said in the debate that I listened to this past week that the longest period of time ago that Adam may have existed is 100000 years.
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And this is a guy who believes that everything is billions and millions of years old. He recognizes that even if you try to squeeze 20 or 25 missing generations between every single name in every genealogy in the
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Old Testament, you're still not going to get anywhere near millions of years. Therefore, if you believe that the universe is millions or billions of years old, the only place to put those millions or billions of years is into the days of creation.
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That's your only option, and therefore we have the day age interpretation, we have the framework hypothesis, we have the gap theory, and it's very important that we recognize that what has driven these alternate interpretations of seeing the days of Genesis chapter one as being not 24 hour days with mornings and evenings the way we would normally experience them.
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The thing that has driven that has not been the text of Genesis one. It is not the exegesis of the text.
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It is not the lexicography of the terms. It is not what the words say in their phrases and in their context.
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It is outside information. It is men in white lab coats with elbow patches and pipes sticking out of their mouths.
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It is Christians being intimidated by that and wanting to have a place at the table to have human respectability rather than to stand upon the authority of scripture.
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This interpretation, this old earth perspective, has sadly come to dominate the professing
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Christian world to the point that it's very, very hard to find churches, presbyteries or denominations that will take a hard stance on it.
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In fact, I was shocked to find out that there was a presbytery in the PCA that actually had this as a requirement for ordination.
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I couldn't believe that when you all published that on your website a couple of years ago when I first noticed this,
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I had to wipe my eyes. Really? There's a presbytery that says you have to believe this to get ordained by them.
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I thought that was fantastic. Praise God for this presbytery. What a blessing. I dare say it is becoming more and more difficult to find anyone who will take the stance that the word of God demands.
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We take to find pastors, churches, denominations, seminary or Bible college professors who are committed to the straightforward reading of Genesis chapter one.
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As I said, I was taught the framework hypothesis when I was in seminary, that Genesis chapter one is poetry, that it's a literary figure of speech.
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And therefore, we need not concern ourselves with questions about astronomy or the age of the Earth. Those are all completely irrelevant.
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It could be millions or billions of years or it could be six days. My friends, the problem with that is this. Everybody can read
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Genesis one through eleven and they know exactly what it says. They know we're compromising.
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They know that we're coming up with alternate interpretations. They know we're not standing on what it clearly says.
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The rest of the world can see it clearly, even while the church is capitulating to it. The irony of this situation, the sadness of it is that as Christians who are born again by God's spirit and have been persuaded by the supernatural work of the spirit in their hearts, that every word of the
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Bible is infallibly true and everything that it says and teaches. We are the only people on Earth who can answer questions about the age of the
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Earth. We're the only ones that can. We're the only ones that can answer questions about the origin of man, the origin of species, the origin of the solar system, the origin of Earth's geology, the origin of different people groups, the origin of marriage, the origin of human languages, etc.
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And yet so often Christians seem more interested in public respectability and having a place at the table among unbelievers rather than standing upon biblical truth.
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But people will mock us if we believe what the Bible says, I remember reading in seminary a framework hypothesis proponents said, and I remember the quotation, anyone who would teach the young Earth position and believe that God created in six literal days does, quote, a deplorable disservice to the gospel of Christ and the kingdom of God, end quote.
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People will mock us if we take this position. What about the established facts of science? I'd like to remind us that just a few hundred years ago, most of the civilized world didn't even realize the
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Earth was round yet and that the Earth traveled around the sun and not vice versa. There are incredible limits to what we know and what most think they know about the universe.
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The so -called findings and conclusions of science are constantly changing and are always determined.
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Please hear me, are always determined by the assumptions that scientists bring to the observable fact, observable, observable facts.
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Facts do not speak for themselves. Facts are always interpreted by the worldview of the one observing them.
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Let me give you an illustration of this. Let's say you take an evolutionist, an atheist, someone who believes the
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Earth is millions or billions of years old and they're standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon next to a Christian who is committed to biblical creationism, the biblical narrative about the flood of Noah's time, and who believes that the
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Earth is young and believes that God created in six literal days. The atheist looks at the Grand Canyon and says, wow, look at what a little bit of water and a whole bunch of time accomplished.
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And the Christian looks at the exact same fact and says, wow, look at what a whole bunch of water and a little bit of time accomplished.
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The very same facts, radically different interpretations. What determines the interpretation is the foundation upon which you stand.
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If you stand upon the Bible, what is the Grand Canyon? The Noahic flood did that in a short period of time.
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If you believe that there's never been a catastrophe in Earth's past and everything is continued on exactly the way it does today.
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Yeah, you would say a little bit of water over millions and millions of years did that. What determines what the facts mean is your worldview, your starting point.
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And as Christians, what is our worldview and our starting point is the Bible, scripture,
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Genesis chapter one, verse one that God created in six literal days. In a book that I have in my library, which
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I highly recommend, the Genesis Debate book. In fact, the guy that spoke at the officers conference over there, he co -authored the section on six 24 hour days with Ligon Duncan in that book.
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So I got to I got to meet him yesterday at Presbyter. I walked up to him and said, are you the David W.
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Hall that wrote the wrote part of the chapter? He said, yes, I am. So we're good. I'm going to be quoting you tomorrow. He said,
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I'm glad you found it helpful. Excellent book. The Genesis Debate book. In the opening chapter of that book, which is the six 24 hour day interpretation, giving their their perspective, it's the three major views interacting with each other, the six 24 hour days, the day age theory, which is
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Hugh Ross and Gleason Archer and then Lee Irons and another guy does the framework hypothesis. They all three make their presentation and they all three interact with each other.
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It's very, very useful book. Ligon Duncan and David W. Hall wrote this in their introductory introductory statement, quote,
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Objective historians, theologians and interpreters should admit that the debate over the creation days and their nature and length is strictly recent.
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While one may find in the record of historical theology, a small smattering of Orthodox theologians who approach the days of Genesis as something other than normal days, he will not find detailed debate over this matter until the 16th century and will seldom find a base between Orthodox divines arguing for and against the days as long ages until the 19th century.
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What are we to make of this undeniable fact? Simply this, the historic Christian tradition, which is rooted in a cumulative history of interpretation, has viewed these days mainly as normal days because it has viewed the
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Genesis account as historical. No significant debate existed on the matter before the 19th century because the plainest and most straightforward reading of the text has no sustained challengers and quote.
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This didn't become something you had to write a 300 page book to describe until a 19th century until geologists started proposing older ages for the earth.
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And another book, just last book recommendation I'll make to you is Terry Mortensen, who works for answers in Genesis.
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And if you'd like the details in the second, let you borrow mine or you can give the details, wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of the interpretation of Genesis, paralleling it to the history of geology.
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And what that book shows without any question is that these other interpretations came into existence because of geology, not because of the biblical text.
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It is as plain as the noonday sun to anyone who's willing to see it, anyone that's willing to read it. Moving on to point number two in this morning's sermon, the meaning of day in Genesis chapter one, let's look down into the text now.
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The meaning of the word day, the repetitious formula that we see use six different times in Genesis chapter one, there was evening and morning followed by a number followed by the word day.
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Look at Genesis chapter one, verse five, God called the light day in the darkness, he called night.
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So the evening and the morning were the first day. Now look at verse eight and God called the firmament heaven.
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So the evening and the morning were the second day, verse 13. So the evening in the morning with a third day, verse 19.
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So the evening in the morning with a fourth day, verse 23. So the evening in the morning with a fifth day and verse 31, then
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God saw everything that he made. And indeed, it was all very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
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You see the pattern there, evening, morning, numeral day, evening, morning, number day, evening, morning, number day.
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What is that describing? Evening, morning, number day. That's what it's describing. Okay. Successive days, the first day, a second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day.
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Remember the fourth commandment, the Sabbath commandment? Listen to how that's worded. Let me read it to you from Exodus 20.
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Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the
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Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work. You nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates.
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For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day.
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Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. That's why we have a six million year work week. No, we have a six day work week.
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Why? Because God created in six days. Just as God created in six days and rested the seventh, we work for six days and rest the seventh.
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There is no reason to think that any Jewish person who stood and heard the law read by Moses or by Ezra or by anyone would have thought that the word day in verse eight means something different than it does in verse 11.
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That the days of creation in Genesis 1 would be something different from the days that are mentioned in the fourth commandment.
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There's a question I would love to have asked some of the professors would be, are you seriously telling me that this incredibly complicated, poetic, literary framework, figurative interpretation, that that's actually what was going on in the minds of Jewish people when they heard this read, that they didn't think that these were normal days, that they would have thought the fourth commandment.
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Yeah, they're, they're literary. It's poetry over here, but over here it's literal history. That's asking too much.
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That's asking too much to believe when God makes a revelation to man. It is a revelation. It is a making known of something to us that we can read and understand, not an obscuring of that.
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The term Yom for day is used 2 ,301 times in the Old Testament. It's one of the first words that we learned in when
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I spoke Hebrew. I had a little flash card that had the word Yom on it. You learn all those words that occur thousands of times because when you see them, you can recognize them and be happy that you recognize one of the words in the text.
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2 ,301 times that word is used. And the thing is the lexicons for Hebrew that are used to translate the
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Old Testament, almost all of them site Genesis one, five, as an example of a quote day of 24 hours, that entry in the lexicon sites
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Genesis one, because the lexicographers themselves, the guys that put together those lexicons can see this as an example of a 24 hour day, evening, morning, number day, evening, morning, number day.
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So I have the question, why is this the only place in the 2 ,301 usages of day where it's meaning is so hotly debated and questioned?
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Why aren't there study committees being formed to figure out how long Jonah was in the belly of the great fish?
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It says in Jonah one, 17, that he was in there for three days and three nights. Does that mean 3 billion years? Maybe.
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Should we have books written to discuss that issue? How about Joshua and the armies of Israel? They marched for seven days around Jericho.
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Does that mean 7 ,000 years or 7 million years? Nobody questions the meaning of the word
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Yom anywhere else. It's used. This is the only place it's questioned, and it wasn't questioned for the first 18 centuries of church history.
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My friends, what does that tell you? There's no reason to question it.
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No reason to. I'd like to suggest to you the real problem. The real problem is that men, even though they say they're sincere, even though I know they think they're trying to do apologetics and they're trying to defend the faith, what they're doing is adding to the word of God.
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They're adding to the word of God. Plain and simple. Proverbs 30, verses five and six says,
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Every word of God is pure. He is a shield to those who put their trust in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.
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One of the statements that the day age interpretation in the Genesis debate book makes, they described their method of going at Genesis chapter one of these words.
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I want you to listen carefully. When I read this book years ago, I actually wrote in the margin next to this paragraph.
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They're showing their cards. Quote, We build our day age interpretation upon the conviction that we can trust
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God's revelation as truth in both the words of the Bible and the works of creation, including the entire physical universe.
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This conviction presupposes that truth is knowable, consistent, and although sometimes paradoxical, never contradictory.
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Our day age interpretation treats the creation days literally as six sequential long periods of time.
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And here's the key sentence. Integrating biblical and scientific data, we assert that the physical creation events reported in Genesis appear in correct sequence and in scientifically defensible terms.
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And a quote, The great error in thinking here that leads to remarkable confusion is this viewing the
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Bible and our observations of the created order as being on the same level in terms of a revelation from God.
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My friends, they are not. So when you hear proponents of this position saying,
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God has given us two books, I've heard him say exactly like this. God has given us two books of revelation, the revelation that is found in creation and the
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Bible. That's an error. Has God revealed himself in creation? Yes, he has.
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He has revealed primarily two things to us. Number one, he exists and is powerful. Secondly, we're accountable to him.
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But what do men do with the revelation that God has made of himself in creation? According to Romans chapter one, we suppress that truth.
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The revelation that God has made of himself in creation is distorted by sin and the two are not equal.
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The revelation God makes in creation and the revelation he makes in scripture are not on par with one another.
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The revelation God makes of himself in the Bible is up here and everything else is down here. And we must interpret the revelation
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God has made in creation through the higher revelation of scripture. That is one of the most foundational points, and it really is the great error that leads to these other interpretations.
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The revelation God makes of himself in creation is so distorted by human simpleness that we become idolaters, according to Romans chapter one, and end up worshiping the created order itself.
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But once a person is born again, someone might respond to this. But once a person is born again, they understand nature correctly now because they're no longer suppressing the truth.
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They're now a child of God. But the response to that is this. The revelation God makes of himself in creation has two purposes, as I said, that God exists and is powerful and that we are accountable to him.
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He will judge us. Romans one and two lays that out very carefully. But the revelation that God makes of himself in creation, please hear me.
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It does not reveal to us the same thing scripture does. And brothers and sisters, this is why catechism is so important.
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One of the reasons the mainline denomination completely lost its way is it stopped catechizing its young people. They stopped teaching that Westernist or shorter catechism to the youth, and they grew up.
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They didn't have the categories in their mind. They didn't know the doctrinal truth they needed to stand upon. Think about those first three questions.
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What is man's chief end? What is the chief purpose for which we exist? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.
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Next question. What rule has God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him? The Word of God, which is contained in the scriptures of the
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Old and New Testament, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him. And then what do the scriptures principally teach?
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The scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man.
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What man is to believe concerning God is not revealed in creation. And what our duty is, is not revealed in creation.
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What we're supposed to believe concerning God and what our duty is, is revealed in scripture. We cannot put the revelation
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God has made in creation on par with the revelation he has made in scripture. The one is the interpreter of the other.
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We can't try to integrate them. The one general revelation is corrected by scripture, because scripture is
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God breathed. It is the voice of God. It is his word. It is infallible. It is inspired. So what man is to believe concerning God and what duty
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God requires of man is revealed to us in scripture, because as our catechism summarizes the biblical teaching, the
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Bible is the only rule to direct us, the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.
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Another thing that needs to be pointed out here about that statement, saying that we try to integrate the findings of science with the findings that we have in scripture, is this.
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One of scripture's primary functions in the life of a believer is that of correction. Remember what
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Paul told Timothy about that in 2 Timothy 3, 16? All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
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Question, does the scripture, do the scriptures ever say that about the general revelation God makes in creation?
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That God's book that he's given us, what they call the day age proponents say, God's given us two books, the book of general revelation and the book of scripture, and we integrate the two.
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Does the Bible itself ever tell us that the revelation God has given us in scripture equips us for every good work or that it corrects us of anything?
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No, it does not. The one is subordinate to the other. Very, very important point.
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General revelation is not profitable for doctrine, for instruction, for reproof, for correction. It does not make us complete and it does not thoroughly equip us for every good work.
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That is unique to scripture. The great John Calvin saw this so clearly and in book one of the
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Institutes of the Christian religion, he gives this marvelous illustration of scripture. He calls scripture spectacles.
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He describes man looking at the world around, looking at that book of general revelation that our eyes are dimmed and we can't see it.
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It's all blurry. Everything's messed up until God puts the biblical glasses upon our face.
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And now when we look at creation, now we can see what it really means. Now we can understand what it's all about.
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Once we have those spectacles on to see it. Listen to Calvin's word. Words here, he says, let this admonition, no less grave and severe, restrain the wantonness that tickles many and even drives them to wicked and hurtful speculations.
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In short, let us remember that the invisible God, whose wisdom, power and righteousness are incomprehensible sets before us
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Moses's history as a mirror in which his living likeness glows for just as eyes when dimmed with age or weakness or by some defect, unless aided by spectacles, discern nothing directly.
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So such as our feebleness, unless scripture guides us in seeking God, we are immediately confused.
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Man trying to understand the history of the world and what he sees around him without scripture will be immediately confused.
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He is feeble and his eyes are dim. He cannot understand it correctly, which is why the person committed to biblical truth and biblical revelation looks at the
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Grand Canyon. The same fact that the atheist does looking at the Grand Canyon and they have completely different interpretations of what that fact means.
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Where are we committed? Remember what Joshua said? As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Whose side are we on in these discussions and debates?
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Whose starting points will be our starting points? Moses, what God has said,
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Jesus, Jesus believed in literal historical Adam. Jesus believed in a literal historical
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Noah and his family and the flood and the ark and Jonah and everything else that God said in scripture. And there's no reason for us to have a different view of that history than Jesus had.
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And again, that's why catechism is so important to get these categories in our minds so that we know what general revelation, general revelation is insufficient to give us the right knowledge of God.
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It's insufficient to show us the proper way of worshiping God and what it means to really know him, to know ourselves.
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But scripture is the only rule that directions how to glorify and enjoy him. And scripture teaches us what man is to believe concerning God and what duty
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God requires of man. And nothing else teaches us that it's the Bible alone. Now, compare this, what
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Calvin says and what this whole idea of the Bible as spectacles through which you see everything else in creation to what
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Ross and Archer said. They said, we build our day age interpretation upon the conviction that we can trust
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God's revelation as truth in both the words of the Bible and the works of creation, including the entire physical universe that needs to be rewarded.
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We can trust God's revelation that he's made in creation through the lens of biblical revelation with that as its corrector, with that as its foundation.
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Then we can understand it. They are not on par with one another. Yes, we can trust God's revelation as truth, but the verbal and unchanging revelation in scripture is to be the lens through which we seek to understand everything else.
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The revelation God makes in scripture leads to life and salvation. Romans 1017 faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
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The revelation God makes in nature, distorted in our minds as it is by sin, must be understood and interpreted in the light of and through the spectacles of the non -sin distorted revelation
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God has made to man in the Bible. I hope that that's clear to everyone. Thirdly, and finally, this morning, just a topic that needs to be discussed quickly here is
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Genesis and the evangelization of America. If we, as the people of God, called by his name, set apart by the gospel, empowered by his spirit and armed with the sword of the spirit, the word of God, the
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Bible, if we hope to win this nation to Christ, we must first recover the foundational history explained to us by God in the book of Genesis.
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Why? The reason is simple. Genesis and the prevailing secular opinions differ across the board on everything they address.
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They are completely irreconcilable with one another, and the two perspectives are so completely different that any attempt to reconcile them or to merge them can only fail.
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Consider the following foundational issues and how Genesis 1 through 11 explains them versus how the evolutionary and secular humanistic philosophy that dominates our age would explain them.
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First, Earth's geological past, Earth's geological past. Why does everything look the way it does today?
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Well, the evolutionary worldview tells us that everything has been uniform. They teach a doctrine of uniformitarianism, that there's never been a global flood.
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There's never been a huge catastrophe at any point in the past. Everything is, as 2 Peter 3 predicted that men would one day say, everything has continued on the way it always has from the beginning of creation.
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They willfully forget that at that time God deluged the whole world and destroyed it. The assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe.
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In other words, there never was a global flood that radically altered the Earth's surface and atmosphere. And therefore, they look at the Grand Canyon and say, it took millions of years for that to happen.
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Earth's geology is interpreted by the book of Genesis in Genesis 6 through 9 as catastrophism.
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There was a global flood that radically affected the Earth's atmosphere and its continents and everything about it was radically changed by this catastrophe that happened.
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Remember the illustration of the Grand Canyon. That's a really good illustration. The same facts, radically different interpretations because of the starting points of the two viewers.
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Secondly, the origin of races, the evolutionary worldview, the secular humanist worldview out there would tell us man came from an ape man and woman came from an ape woman.
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Genesis 1 through 11 says, no, God made Adam and Eve. Man has always been man and every human being is descended from them.
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Paul told the Athenians in Acts 17 26, and he has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the
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Earth. Every single person on this planet is related. I've had people ask me before, what do you think about interracial marriage?
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And my response is, there's no such thing. There's no such thing as race. In fact, on our census forms, when it asks us for a race, we should all write in Adams.
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There are no other races. We are all descended from Adam and Eve. What is all the different ways that people look in a different skin pigmentation, different melanin contents that we have in our skin just show the wide genetic diversity that exists in the
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DNA that God created among human beings. Look at dogs. I mean, technically, a Great Dane and a
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Chihuahua are the same kind of animal. What does that show us? That God has built in an incredible variety in the way that we can look and people come in all shapes, sizes and colors because of that.
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So the origin of races, we all descended from Adam and Eve, not from apes and different trajectories of different kinds of apes in different parts of the world at different times.
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The origin of the species of animals, the origin of animals, the evolutionary worldview tells us that one kind gradually became every kind.
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And yet what did we just read over and over and over and over again in Genesis one? Let's look at it. See verse 11 of Genesis chapter one.
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Then God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself on the earth.
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And it was so. We look at verse 12 and the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind and the tree that yields fruit whose seed is in itself according to its kind.
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Verse 21. So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves with which the waters abounded according to their kind and every winged bird according to its kind.
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God saw that it was good. Verse 24. Then God said, let the earth bring forth a living creature according to its kind.
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You get the point. Animals reproduce according to their kind, according to their kind.
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They don't become other kinds of animals. And yet the evolutionary worldview says, no, one kind became every kind.
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They are completely contradictory to one another. They can't be reconciled. We gain nothing by trying to reconcile the two.
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And that's why when you find snakes in the fossil record, they're already snakes.
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When you find squirrels in the fossil record, they're already squirrels. When you find elephants, they're already elephants.
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When you find birds, they're already birds. You don't see anything becoming anything else. The fossil record itself is no friend of the evolutionists because it shows abrupt appearance.
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It shows that animals are already what they are. There aren't transitions. There aren't things becoming other things in the fossil record.
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That fits perfectly with what you would expect to find in the book of Genesis. The origin of the solar system, the evolutionary worldview teaches the big bang, the big bang theory, which is embraced sadly by many, many
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Christian people that tells us that the sun came before the earth and the earth came afterward as a molten ball of hot lava for a long time before it was ever covered with water.
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Genesis 1 -11 says that God made the sun on day four and he made the earth on day one. Earth came first.
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The two are completely irreconcilable with one another, completely irreconcilable with one another.
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If the church is going to allow and simply roll over and simply accept what the unbelieving evolutionary worldview teaches about biology, anthropology, astronomy, and geology, and then turn around and tell those very unbelievers, you're a sinner because of the literal and historical fall of Adam in the garden of Eden.
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And therefore, you must repent and trust in the literal and historical gospel of Christ. We've already given them every reason to reject that.
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We have to start a Genesis 1 -1 and say, this is what God has said. The only authority who can tell us what happened because he's the only one who saw it, the only one who was there, he was the one who did it.
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So often we hear today, these aren't salvation issues. The Bible doesn't say you need to believe in Jesus and repent and be a young earth creationist and believe that God created in six literal days.
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And therefore, there's no need to make a fuss about that. My answer to that is this. My friends, these are the issues that relate to the authority and fallibility of the
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Bible, and we have to defend that authority. I've titled the sermon series
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Earth's Foundational History, Genesis 1 -11. And as I mentioned last week, there is no section of the
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Bible that has undergone more scrutiny and attack than Genesis 1 -11. And it really does stand as a unit because Genesis 12 marks the call of Abram and in the beginning of the
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Jewish nation. Genesis 1 -11 is its own historical unit that is idly important for us to understand and embrace and defend against critics.
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Yes, these are not salvation issues per se, but they are foundational to all salvation issues that are addressing
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God's holy word. If we don't believe in the literal and historical Adam and his fall into sin, why would we believe in the second
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Adam, Jesus Christ, that he literally and historically was born of a virgin and went to the cross and died there and was buried and rose again?
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And as I said towards the beginning of my introduction, the great problem facing the other interpretations, the day -age theory, the framework hypothesis, gap theory, and the thousand and one permutations of those positions is this.
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The meaning of Genesis 1 -11 is simple and anyone can read it and understand it. And the meaning of Genesis 1 -11 taken as a whole is simple and straightforward, and even the non -Christians can see that.
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They know that those are compromised positions. They know that that's us trying to gain their respectability rather than defending what the text says.
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We need to answer the challenges of the evolutionary worldview of the secular humanism that has come to dominate our society, not capitulate them.
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We need to answer them, not capitulate, so that when we call them to repent, so that when we tell them
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Jesus Christ is coming back, repent and believe the gospel, they know that we stand on the authority of the book that tells them to do that from the first verse to the last.
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And so we've seen why a sermon like this is important, because Genesis 1 -11 has really been handed over by the majority of the church to the secular world.
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We've pretty much said we'll just do to it whatever you want us to, so that you'll respect us, so that you'll think that we can have a place at the table and have your respectability and approval.
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But it is not the ones that man approves who are blessed, it's those whom the Lord approves that are blessed. Second, we looked at the meaning of the word day in Genesis 1.
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Even the older lexicons recognize the best example of a 24 -hour day in the Bible is
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Genesis chapter 1. There's no reason to debate its meaning. It's very simple and straightforward the way that this word has just been the last 200 years that people have questioned its meaning.
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And then thirdly, we've looked at Genesis and the evangelization of America. One of the most critical things for people to understand about themselves is that God made them.
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People need to know that, that they did not evolve accidentally from pond scum, that they are created in the image of God with dignity, that God made them, and that therefore they're accountable to him.
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And so Genesis chapter 1 through 11 is foundational to us being able to say that. You didn't evolve from an ape man or an ape woman.
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God made man as man, and we've always been man, and man is in the image of God. He's different from the animals.
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He stands apart from the animals. He alone has the capacity to know God. He alone is in a covenant relationship with God.
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He alone can sin against God. He alone needs redemption and salvation and forgiveness from God.
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In the coming weeks, we'll begin to walk through Genesis 1 through 11 verse by verse and also look at how the rest of the
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Bible itself looks at the historical reality of Genesis 1 through 11, how the Old Testament, the rest of the
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Old Testament and the New Testament look at Genesis 1 through 11 as foundational to what we are to believe about God and what we're supposed to do with our lives.
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So my final application to us this morning is this. Let us pray that God will raise up a generation of believers who are entirely committed to everything that God has given us in scripture, beginning at Genesis 1 and 1 and going all the way through to the end.
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May God give us the courage we need to stand our ground and the sharpness of mind that we need to answer everyone who asks us a reason for the hope that is within us, but to give that answer with gentleness and reverence as the scriptures command us to.
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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are indeed so very blessed and privileged to have a simple account of the early history of the earth, of what happened, of how you created, how long you took to create, that that's why we have the weekly
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Sabbath, that that's why animals reproduce according to their kind, that's why man is special, that's why we're different, we're created in the image of God, that death was no part of this creation.
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As the end of Genesis 1 says, both man and animals were entirely vegetarian before the fall happened.
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And Lord, we see these things so clearly spelled out in scripture, and we have dear, dear Christian family, brothers and sisters in Christ that we love and care for who don't see this, who have rejected the clear teaching of Genesis in favor of theories that are more pleasing to the world of unbelief.
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Lord, give us the answers that we need to be able to stand our ground on that biblical authority, that we might have a firmer foundation upon which to call sinners to repentance, and that we ourselves would have a correct understanding of the history of this planet and of what we see in the world around us in terms of anthropology, geology, biology, astronomy, and everything else that's addressed in Genesis 1 to 11.
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Help us to see it clearly that in our thoughts, we would glorify you by knowing and believing the truth.
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God, thank you for giving us your revelation in scripture. May we never be afraid to stand for what it says.
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We ask in Christ's name. Amen. This is
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Pastor Patrick Hines at Brittle Heights Presbyterian Church, located at 108 Brittle Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee, and you've been listening to the
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Protestant Witness Podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any Sunday morning at 11 a .m. sharp, where we open the word of God together, sing his praises, and rejoice in the gospel of our risen
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Lord. You can find us on the web at www .brittleheightspca .org,
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and may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.