A Matter of Days - Progressive Creationism

and find your place at verse 1.

I feel as if it is necessary this morning to provide at least some preliminary feedback to the message before we read the scripture and move on to our study.

I know many of you have not been here for the study.

Some of you are visitors.

Some of you are relatively new to the church and we have a tradition in our preaching here and it has been so since I became the pastor that we would preach through books of the Bible and so we have preached through several books and we have found ourselves now at the book of Genesis and we have been looking at the first few verses now for several months.

We try to take these things apart and understand them better and that's what we are doing and what I have been examining over the last several weeks is the issue of the creation days and for someone who hasn't been in church or maybe for someone who hasn't been a part of this conversation or maybe hasn't heard about this particular issue some of the things that I'm going to say may seem so radically opposed to what you are used to that it might even sound as if I have lost my mind and so I would encourage you today to please and give me just some benefit of the doubt as we go through this text because this is not an easy subject and we started several weeks ago looking at the Genesis days and if you'll turn your bulletin over to the back you'll see on the back the outline that I wrote to start us off on this subject you'll notice that there are four positions which have been given and I have dedicated an entire sermon to each one so I'm not just giving you a short synopsis that's what the chart is but I'm giving you a full explanation at least as best as I can of each of these positions we have looked first at the gap theory the gap theory basically teaches this that before this world was created when God said or when the Bible says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth that he had created a world which is a fully functioning world that had animals and beings upon it and that that world fell into ruin was destroyed and was remade in Genesis 1-2 when it says the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters what the people who believe in the gap theory believe is that between Genesis 1-1 and 1-2 there is a large gap of time and as I said if you want to go back and listen to that sermon I would encourage you to you'll hear some of the reasons why people believe it and the reasons why I don't teach it why I don't believe that it's accurate I don't believe it finds itself in the scripture and I don't believe it finds itself in the historical narrative that we see in the Bible however that is one theory and what it's trying to do is it's trying to solve the issue of the apparent age of the earth versus what the Bible gives us which is a relatively short earth history so they say well there's a gap of time and it's liable to be billions of years in that gap and so that's where the gap that's where that billions of years ago I ain't worried about it are y'all okay I'm gonna keep on going the framework hypothesis on this you'll see on your sheet here that is an entirely different way of understanding Genesis 1 and that basically says that Genesis 1 is a parable it is not intended to give a chronological or even a logical understanding of creation but rather to give a literary picture of understand of creation a parabolic understanding and the point of Genesis 1 1 is not to tell us how God created but rather it is intended to tell us that God created and there are those who believe in the framework hypothesis which I believe is a very difficult thing for people to justify but there are those who believe it knows who teach it and oftentimes it leads to a belief in evolution and particularly in the evolution of man and so the framework hypothesis though it does not demand evolution does open the door for that today we are going to look at progressive creationism now again if you haven't been here I'm not I don't I hate feeling like you're diving into the deep end but I want you to understand why we're doing this we're taking each view we're breaking it down into its parts and we're seeking to understand it so that when we get to the view that we teach and we hold in this church we will at least have been fair to those who may hold different views it is my job as one of the elders and the pastor of the church to teach you the Word of God and to explain it as best as I can and sometimes that means stopping and really digging in to difficult things so if you came today hoping for a sermon on how to make your finances better or how to make your marriage better or something like that I'm sorry to disappoint you today we're gonna be talking about creation let me tell you this about that why that matters if you do not believe Genesis and you do not believe God as creator nothing else matters because if we don't believe in Genesis then we don't believe much of what Jesus said because much of what Jesus said is based in Genesis if we don't believe God created the world then we really don't believe that we are responsible to the God who created us there is so much that is founded in the beginning of the Bible that is dependent or rather that the rest of the Bible is dependent upon in fact I believe in my heart of hearts that this is one of the reasons why there has been such an onslaught of attack against the creation narrative in the Bible because if we can get people to believe that they are not special creations of God but rather that they are simply grown-up apes then we have a we have left the understanding of the dignity and true responsibility of man to God if you are not a person who has been created in God's image but rather you're just a grown-up ape then that really changes your entire worldview doesn't it changes how you understand yourself changes how you understand the whole world changes how you understand God so all of these things are important we're going to read Genesis 1 1 to 5 and then we're going to look at the subject of progressive creationism I want to invite you to stand I I I know we've been sitting for a moment but I invite you to stand because this is the Word of God and as is our custom we give honor and reverence to the Word of God in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters and God said let there be light and there was light and God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness God called the light day and the darkness he called night and there was evening and there was morning the first day may God add his blessing to the reading and to the hearing of his word may he write its eternal truths upon our heart may he keep me from error as I preach amen you may be seated what do we do with the days of Genesis 1 honestly this is not a question which has a lot of his six of historic significance because it was only a few hundred years ago that the idea that the earth was billions of years old really became popular the idea that the earth is billions of years old is something that most of us take for granted this Tuesday morning my wife is going to take our daughter and go to the Museum of Science and History I mentioned this a few weeks ago we go there every few weeks it's just something that we do we we enjoy going to the zoo we enjoy going to MOSH and so we do these things as homeschool parents we we find it enjoyable to take these little field trips and when we go to MOSH as we often do we are immediately confronted with the assumption that the world is billions of years old I believe the current position is that the the earth itself is four and a half billion years old and that the universe is somewhere in the neighborhood of 13.8 and some change that's the current scientific consensus and it's not really a consensus that is really argued if you go into a science classroom and you try to argue for anything other than billions of years you are not really given the time of day it's not something that people will allow for within the conversation and most people don't understand why that is because most people don't understand science and I stand before you today not as a scientist obviously but as a theologian and an expository teacher I teach the Bible but when I was in seminary and I was having to do my seminary work what one of the things that I wrote on for my master's thesis was on the conflict or the apparent conflict between science and the Bible because I knew having grown up public school product and having received a degree in social science from university that there was a lot of apparent tension between what the Bible teaches and between what science teaches and so there is a desire to try to find some form of a consensus and one of the things that I noticed right away when I was looking at the issue of the age of the earth is a belief in something called uniformitarianism now I'm not using that word to confuse you I want to try to explain it as best I can uniformitarianism is a geological scientific principle it was popularized by a man named Charles Lyell and it was popularized in the early 1800s and basically what it says is that things like erosion and change on massive scales happen as a result of slow uniform change over long periods of time here is an example that you are all aware of if you drive west far enough you'll fall into a big hole it's called the Grand Canyon I recommend not falling in it the Grand Canyon is a massive hole in the ground and if you go to the Grand Canyon and you take a tour they will tell you that this hole in the ground has taken thousands or hundreds of thousands of years to be carved by a very small amount of water which is flowing through the Colorado River you guys know that's how they understand how the Grand Canyon was formed that is an example of uniformitarianism we know how long it takes for water to wash away a layer of dirt therefore we can measure how long it takes a layer to be washed away and we can extrapolate from that data and move backwards and determine how long it took to make this hole based upon the depth of the hole based upon the movement of the water based upon the type of rock that's there we can make a scientific estimation as to how old that hole is okay that is a very simple understanding of uniformitarianism and uniformitarianism is the geological consensus that is taught today this is how the world operates so if uniformitarianism is true that would mean that the earth has to be billions of years old for us to currently get to experience all of the geologic anomalies that we see all around us such as the Grand Canyon and other major places where we see major change and the things had to take a long time to do and I remember thinking if we take the Bible and we read it and we see a shorter time span it doesn't give the time needed for these things so the belief system that grows out of that is the system called progressive creationism progressive creationism teaches that the days in Genesis are not days but rather they are epics of time each one having a beginning and an ending therefore each one marked with a morning and evening but that it's not a 24-hour period it's not a daylight nighttime period but that the days themselves represent long epics sometimes in the vicinity of millions and maybe even billions of years sometimes progressive creationism is called the day age theory you ever heard this you heard people say this that the days are not days but that they're long periods of time never heard of some I'm surprised you haven't because this really is especially since the 1980s this has become very popular in churches because of a desire to try to marry the seeming geological scientific consensus with the biblical data so there's been an attempt to sort of try to bring the two together the man mostly responsible for trying to bring these together is a man and I want to say this right now I respect this guy and I believe he's a believer so everything I'm about to say about him I say having having said right away number one I don't think he's fault I don't think he's a false brother I think he loves the Lord and I do think that he's doing what he thinks is right even though I may disagree with him okay so having said that I want to be clear his name is Hugh Ross dr.

Hugh Ross has and he is an astrophysicist a brilliant man and he has proposed the idea that the days in Genesis are not literal days but that they are long periods of time and he wrote a book and I read the book in preparation for my teaching through Genesis he wrote a book called the improbable planet and in his book the improbable planet he describes what he believes is the process that God used from taking the earth from the Big Bang which he believes is the starting point of all things and moving through the process of change which he describes as taking billions of years and then the earth forming four and a half billion years ago and then the earth going through all of its massive cataclysmic change coming down to the point where he would argue that Adam and Eve were real people he doesn't deny Adam and Eve as real people and he would say Adam and Eve came on the scene about a hundred and fifty thousand years ago and if you read the Genesis account you say well there's not enough time for that especially in the genealogies he would say well the genealogies have gaps and those gaps make up the time and so he does have answers to a lot of the objections that people would propose the wonderful thing about dr.

Ross is he does love the Lord have already said that I feel like I feel like I'm an apologist from this morning I really do want to say I like this guy in a lot of ways I've listened to him preach I've listened to him teach and I've read his books I've read a couple of his books so I'm saying this this guy loves the Lord but I do not agree with a lot of his conclusions and so this morning I want to I want to read a few things that progressive creationists teach and I want to respond to them but then I want to provide you what I think is the most important response to this teaching and again this may seem like an odd sermon may seem like a theology class lecture but this is important stuff again I want to allow him to state his own case dr.

Ross says this he says these are six points of doctrine these are all from his website and this is what he says number one he says the Bible including Genesis 1 to 11 is the error-free Word of God amen that's his first point of doctrine I agree we are on the same page we're starting with the same book we're starting with the same principles he says it's the error-free Word of God I have no reason to doubt that he believes that's true okay so I give him the benefit of the doubt number two he says the creation account of Genesis 1 follows a basic chronology now I think that's a good thing to say because that separates him from the framework hypothesis remember we learned a few weeks ago the framework hypothesis says it's not chronological it's not intended to be chronological it's parabolic it's a story it's not the same so so so this is a second I think positive that dr.

Ross I he said it is following a chronology a basic chronology all right we're good so we're on the same page we're on the same page for number one we're on the same page for number two number three the record of nature is also a reliable revelation from God okay I agree but I want to add a caveat when dr.

Ross says the record of nature provides a reliable revelation from God that is true if you go to Psalm 19 what does it say the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaim his handiwork day to day it pours out speech right the the heavens are the greatest preachers that we've ever seen because every day they they come alive and the Sun moves through the sky and the Sun the Bible says is almost like a preacher himself because as he moves across the circuit of the sky every man has to look at the Sun and every man has to has to understand that was not put there by accident that was created by an Almighty God anybody who looks at creation and the intricate nature of creation and walks away and says yeah that's a big old accident I tell you what I remember when the day hope was born and I saw my wife give birth and they took the baby away and I'm holding my wife's hand and I'm crying and she's crying and we're looking at each other and she says go because she knew I want to go see the baby that moment was like a miracle and when I saw that baby I knew this is no accident this is life from God and so right there is is a reminder to us of of God's power this is no accident you are no accident if you walk across a and you look at a building and you see that building you say yeah that happened by accident you'd be a fool how can you look at the structure of the human cell and say that happened by accident you'd have to be a fool so Hugh Ross says nature is a reliable relevance revelation from God I agree with but here's where I take issue with that simple statement nature is reliable scripture is reliable but both of them have to be interpreted and no one interprets neutrally there is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to our worldview the Bible says that when I'm born I'm dead in my trespasses and sins the very nature of my heart is to rebel against my creator in fact the Bible says until I am born again I cannot even understand the kingdom of heaven I can't even understand the Word of God so if I say that the natural man is neutral towards God I'm lying the Bible says he is at enmity with God that he's in rebellion against God and so the idea that everybody's just looking at the data and everybody's interpreting it neutrally it's just not the case you want to know how true I encourage you there's a documentary it's not a Christian documentary but it is a documentary it's called expelled it was put out several years ago and it was about scientists who dared to question Darwinian evolution and rather propose the idea of intelligent design now intelligent design is not necessarily Christian intelligent design simply says that the earth and the human body and the cells that make up the body are so intricately designed that they must have a creator there must be an intelligence behind doesn't say if it's God or Allah or Buddha or anything else it just says there has to be an intelligent creator and the documentary shows how these people are not only remained outside of the classroom but some of them even lost their jobs as a result of simply taking a stand that there there there indicates in the creation a creator so again are people neutral no so I would agree with Dr.

Ross nature does provide to us a revelation but we have to interpret that revelation and everybody who interprets it comes with presuppositions and the vast the major presupposition of most people in the world today is what the earth is four and a half billion years old the universe is 13 and some change if that's your overriding presupposition you can't even have the conversation can you you can't even allow for any dissension so again I agree nature is a revelation from God but here's why I disagree one of the things dr.

Ross has said he said nature is like the 67th book of the Bible you know we have 66 books and then nature provides a 67th book I get what he's saying and I don't want to throw stones but I think you're you're you're really treading some fine line there because while nature may be a revelation from God this book of Scripture is what we call special revelation this is God saw fit to have written down in a way that we could understand it and that's different from what we call natural revelation which is the revelation of the world around us that's natural this is special and they are not on the same playing field number four he says this the message of nature will agree with what the Bible says I agree but again it has to be interpreted number five the Bible contains a selective summary description of God's creation and there are no mention of dinosaurs bipedal primates quantum mechanics or the existence of other solar system planets this is his point to simply say that the doesn't intend to tell us everything I don't disagree with that but to say that the Bible has no mention of these things I think is making his is arguing a point that he can't prove number six God gives humans the privilege now here this is the one that really I think I struggle with God gives humans the privilege to fill in the details carefully though patient ongoing exploration and increased understanding of the natural realm so basically what he's saying this through patient ongoing exploration of increased understanding natural realm he's basically saying this the Bible doesn't tell us everything so we have the liberty now to fill in the details that again I'm not saying it's 100% wrong but that is a dangerous road to begin going down to say we can just fill in the details with what we think and what we discover so that is his point like I said I don't disagree with everything he said I don't even really disagree a wholeheartedly with everything that he has said but what I am saying is this his argument that we have to interpret nature like we interpret the Bible and essentially we interpret the Bible through nature and this is where I think it gets backwards do we use the Bible to interpret the world or do we use the world to interpret the Bible that's the that's really the heart of the issue because ultimately we have to start with the Word of God if the Bible is God's inspired infallible inerrant word then we have to start there does that mean that science can never tell us anything no science tells us many wonderful things and I think science does back up the Word of God but there are times when collisions come when we have to take a stand for one side or the other and one of the places where we have to consider taking a stand is on the issue of the word day as we noted when we began this study the word day can have various meanings even in English if I said in my father's day I'm not talking about a 24-hour period I'm talking about a time my father's day you get a gallon of gas for 25 cents that's not talking about a day of 24 hours and if I said I only let my kids play during the day outside well that's not talking about 24 hours that's talking about light and darkness right so there are many ways that you can use the word day and it means something different so when Ross and the other progressive creationists come along and say well here Moses is not trying to tell us about a 24-hour day he's trying to help us understand that these were long periods of times and he's using the day in the idea of the epic and here's what he says happens he says God created the universe first and then he through a process of many billions of years finally created the earth four and a half billions of years ago and this is all in his book the the book I mentioned earlier improbable planet he describes a creation universe he describes how he believes the Big Bang happened he describes how it took a long period of time and he describes how four and a half billion years ago the earth came to be and he says and now if you read Genesis 1 and it says the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was over the face of the waters and God said let there be light what it's saying there is that you have to consider that you were on the earth at that time and this is what you would be seeing so here's a here's a picture and I give you an idea he says ultimately the universe is created first four and a half billion years ago for 14 and a half billion years no 13.8 billion sorry the earth was created later 4.5 billion years ago and you are here so what you see is you see a darkness because he said at that particular period in Earth's history the atmosphere had not yet become transparent the atmosphere was at that time opaque and it would have been impossible to see any light and the first creative act of God in Genesis 1 to is that God made the atmosphere translucent not transparent but translucent so that light could penetrate and that's what is meant by let there be light there becomes a translucent atmosphere where now light can be seen but it isn't but for another hundred or two hundred or three hundred million years before the atmosphere would become transparent that is day for when we see the stars and the Sun and the moon which were always there they were there hundreds of millions of years and billions of years before the earth they were always there but they just couldn't be seen because the atmosphere was not yet transparent and could not be seen sounds great I mean it really does if you're trying to compound the Word of God and the science of men and you're trying to find consensus between two competing arguments he makes a lot of sense and he garners a lot of response you say well pastor if you're saying so much good about him why don't you agree with him I'm going to give you two reasons why I cannot accept progressive creationism personally and this is the consensus of our elders here so just so you know we're this is not me by myself but the elders here would would teach this there are two main reasons why I think progressive creationism is a problem number one progressive creationism says that prior to the fall of man there was death disease and destruction in the world say it again prior to the fall of man which happened when Genesis 3 progressive creationism says there has to be death disease and destruction prior to the fall say pastor what's wrong with that I don't believe it's biblical I don't believe it's biblical the Bible indicates when God created the world at the end of the seven days no matter how you interpret the days at the end of the seven days what it was seven days seven thousand years or seven billion years everything was good there was no death disease or destruction at that point all of those things come as the result of the fall in fact I just want to show you a scripture if I could turn with me to Romans chapter 8 and I want you to consider Romans 8 is this is a big part of the argument I'm gonna make but I want you to consider what it says here regarding what happened at the fall go to verse 19 actually we'll pick up a verse 18 that's where the paragraph begins Romans 8 verse 18 for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth to be compared with the glory that will be revealed to us so that that is the that's the promise we're all looking forward to we're all looking forward to the glory that's going to be revealed amen aren't you tired of this life you might say well I love my life this life can have many joys my children are joys my parents are joy to me my wife is a tremendous joy to me but every day I see reasons why I look forward to glory as my body breaks down as sin in me continues to be a battle as sin in the world continues to bring destruction I see why the Apostle would write here our present sufferings are not to be compared with the glory that's coming and it's a way of trying to encourage us to be reminded that there's a glory coming so stay faithful now that's the context of verse 19 for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God for the creation was subjected to futility not willingly but because of him who subjected it and hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now and not only the creation but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait for the adoption of sons the redemption of our bodies so what's this saying creation is waiting for redemption but why is it way and by the way creation here is referring to the created order the earth and the and all of that created things that are on it why is the earth being anthropomorphized here basically what that means is why is the earth being given a personality because we know the earth doesn't really have a personality trees don't think rocks don't think dirt doesn't think but here they're given a personality why because the writer the apostle Paul is saying something very simple the earth itself is in travail and it was put there by one person notice go back it says creation was subject to futility not willingly meaning the creation didn't do it on its own but because of him who subjected it that's talking about Adam that's saying that the creation all around us is subject to all of the futility the death decay and destruction all that was subject because of Adam progressive creationists have to argue that prior to Adam there was death disease and destruction I don't believe I don't believe that before Adam there was death disease instruction now you say why does that matter let me put this to you let me ask you this question and I hope this doesn't offend you and if it does is not my intention do you believe that this world had cancer prior to the fall because I can take you to several articles where they show dinosaur bones that have cancer in the bones so either one of two things is true either cancer predated the fall or those dinosaurs lived congruently with man after the fall I know it's a radical position but that's the position I take that's it it's the hard difficult position it's the position that gets me laughed out of the science class I remember when I was writing my master's thesis science teacher came up and asked me what I was writing about I told him and he said well to believe that you have to reject uniformitarianism I said I do you can't do that I said well yes I can uniformitarianism is a doctrine it is a teaching it is a belief that I reject I said what do you replace it with pastor catastrophism catastrophism is the different position what's that mean I believe that the earth looks the way it does because rather than a long period of time a very small amount of change I believe over a very short period of time there were radical catastrophes that cause great amounts of change in a very short amount of time and one of those things is the flood here's the thing about progressive creationism if you accept it and I won't you know what if you accept progressive creationism I'm not going to call you a heretic I'm not even going to say that you know I'll accept you as a believer that's not a problem here's the issue though not only do you have to believe there was death destruction and all that before the flood I'm sorry before the fall you have to deny the global flood dr.

Hugh Ross says the flood wasn't global he says it was a local flood and it flooded the plains and Mesopotamia but it was not global that to me is the second reason I can't be a progressive creationist one because I don't believe there was death decay and destruction before the fall but two because I do believe the flood was a worldwide event so if you want to come to me later if you want to send me an email you want to take me out to lunch and tell me why I'm wrong those are the two places that I'm going to hold because I don't believe there was death disease and destruction before the fall and I don't believe that the flood is a local event now go back for a moment catastrophism you want a good example of catastrophism the year I was born nineteen hundred and eighty which makes some of you laugh because you're a little older than me nineteen hundred and eighty I was born on April the second well just a few months apart from my birth there was another major event in world history it's kind of a joke Mount St.

Helens erupted in 1980 the amount of geological change which occurred at the result of the blowing of Mount St.

Helens and the the resultant destruction was so massive that it's almost unbelievable you can go there today and see 30 foot tall layers of rock that most geologists if they hadn't known it had happened in an afternoon would tell you it took hundreds of thousands of years and yet we saw it happen in two to three hours I can't give you all of the answers to all of the scientific questions but I can say this if I say I believe the earth is not as old as some would have us believe I'm not saying so simply because I want to be argumentative or that I want to be on the fringe of science I'm saying so because the Bible gives me certain parameters which I must stay within one the belief in the flood and when we get to that point in Genesis I'll explain more about what I believe happened and how I think it changed the whole face of the world I don't think the world looks anything like it did prior to Genesis 6 when the flood happened I don't think the world looks anything like it did in fact the beauty that we have now and we do have a beautiful world you go up to Tennessee and you see the leaves change and you see those wonderful cold springs pouring out over the waters and it's some of the most beautiful sights in history and all that is scars left over from the fall and the flood imagine what we had before the amazing beauty that we had before is not even to be compared and somebody says to me but pastor I just don't I can't believe that the earth is young well next week I'm gonna try to make an argument for that because that's our last one that's the position I hold so I've been over the last several weeks giving you the positions I don't and I hope that I've been fair and I hope that I'm teaching you as the people of God how to be honest with people with whom you disagree and how to not drive their name into the dirt while doing it I hope that I've been fair to dr.