Our reading this morning is gonna be from Genesis 2, starting in verse 15. And as we're opening up our Bibles to get there, a few weeks ago here in church, Genesis 1 was read. And I hope we recognize that as we read through Genesis 1, how clear God makes his word as we read through it. that this isn't cloaked in mystery or poetic language, that it is clear history that was written down. And we're gonna see the same thing this morning here in Genesis 2, clear history being written down. And really my goal for this morning is to show from Scripture, and I love the science, I love the science of creation, but we don't need this science to prove the Bible. We need the Bible to prove the Bible. The Bible does prove the Bible. And when we understand what the Bible says throughout the scriptures, we can't help but come to any other conclusion but for a biblical creation. And we wanna go even further to show that if we don't understand a biblical creation right, we don't have a consistent biblical message throughout the scriptures. That's really what it comes down to. And we're gonna walk through that this morning. This is starting in chapter two of Genesis, verse 15. Then Yahweh took the man and set him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. And Yahweh God commanded the man saying, from any tree of the garden you may surely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it. From the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die. Then Yahweh God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. And out of the ground, Yahweh God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky. And he brought each to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh of that place. And Yahweh God fashioned the rib, which he had taken from the man into a woman, and he brought her to the man. Then the man said, this one finally is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman because this one was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. This is the reading of the word. There have been many attacks against the Bible over the years. And you don't have to open your eyes for very long to recognize that those attacks have been coming down the pike so much faster in recent days, in recent years. Why? Why are we being attacked so much? Now, of course, the pat answer, the good answer is Satan hates God. Satan wants to drag everybody down with him. And that's true. From a human perspective, we and our simple nations have walked away from God in general. Unbelievers are walking down a different path than the path believers are walking. And so today, more than ever, we as Christians need to go out and proclaim God's word, his truthful word, his correct word, his word that is without error. As an evangelist, I get a chance to go around the country and evangelize on open air on college campuses, street corners, parades. I get to go to churches and preach the gospel and teach messages. I get to go to conferences and teach. And I can promise you this, of all the questions that people have about the Bible, Christians and non-Christians alike, more than half the questions people have about the Bible are, guess where? Genesis. And what's funny is it's not all Genesis. It's the beginning of Genesis. That for some reason people think, well, God didn't really speak authoritatively for the first three chapters or five chapters or 11 chapters, but somewhere in the middle of Genesis, all of a sudden now God is actually speaking. Is that true? I mean, does Genesis start at Genesis 12? With Abraham coming on the scene? I can't tell you how many parents that have come crying to me after a talk at a church or a conference, talking about their kids who have, quote unquote, walked away from the faith. Now we know that you don't lose your salvation, but these are people that just walked away. And the research shows is because they had questions that went unanswered. They had questions that they didn't know how to reconcile in their minds regarding science and the Bible. and typically what they choose is science. Bad science, mind you. So our goal this morning is we're going to walk through the scriptures and show that a faithfulness to Genesis is paramount to faithfulness to the rest of the scriptures. And we're going to do this here in four points this morning. Number one, the issue at hand, which we're already speaking about. Number two, the scriptural proofs of the 6,000 year old earth. Number three, the bad result of getting Genesis wrong. Number four, we're going to talk about 10 truths regarding God and man when the church does get Genesis correct. So point number one, the issue at hand. Now, I have to be honest, I cannot assume that even though we're in a faithful, Bible-believing, Bible-preaching, Bible-teaching church, that every single person in here believes that this earth and this universe are only 6,000 years old, that God didn't actually make us from different types of monkeys, that God actually made us in his image to be separate from the animals, to be separate from the rest of creation, to be the pinnacle of his creation. I can't assume that everybody in here believes that. And so my goal for you today is that you walk out of here having to really seriously think about your position in the Bible and how you interpret Genesis. Now, why is this so important? Well, how many of you have heard of the six degrees of Kevin Bacon? I know, good cultural reference, right? For those of you who don't know what that is Kevin Bacon's in a lot of movies and so what happens is you can start with any actor actress and say Reese Witherspoon and and you can pair her up with one of her co-actors or actresses and then take that person pair up with somebody else and Six degrees away or less you can get back to Kevin Bacon in a movie This is a game that people used to play in the 90s So my take on that game, I like to make everything, I want to Christianize everything. So I want to say, let's play the two degrees of Genesis. And we're going to do it from any Bible doctrine we can find. Now we're not going to do that this morning, but if you want to hit me afterwards, you can. Any doctrine in the Bible that you think has nothing to do with Genesis, I can get to Genesis in two steps. Here's the reality. Every major Bible doctrine is rooted in Genesis. And think about the problems we have today in culture. The fact that God made the male and female, period. Where do we get that from? Genesis. How about the fact that it's one blood, one race? Genesis. Marriage between one man and one woman only Genesis the dominion mandate the fact that we have laws to follow the fact that we have a sin nature How about death disease and suffering you cannot answer the question of the problem of evil if God is so good and so powerful Why do bad things happen? You cannot answer that question properly unless you get Genesis, right? Different sermon different day How about the first promise of the Savior? You know that the first promise of the Savior came in Genesis 3 15 in the garden when nobody else was alive but Adam and Eve. Which means that the gospel message has been around since the very beginning. It is incredible to think about. Now, on the other side of things, that there's major scriptural issues when we have a belief in what I like to call go-to-you evolution, or molecules-to-man evolution. One of those problems is multiple races. The idea that there's multiple races, it leads to big problems. This is what leads to people's thinking of critical race theory intersectionality. You know how we get rid of all that? get rid of social justice altogether, when we go back to the Bible and recognize it's one blood, one race. All that's gone if we understand this truth to begin with. We're going to talk about today how death before sin undermines the gospel. That the very gospel message is undermined if you take any alternate view of Genesis. What about morality? Where's morality come from? Go talk to an unbeliever and ask them what their moral code is and where it comes from. You're going to find it's all over the place. Why? Because they don't have the morality rooted on the God who made us. Look, if we're just a bunch of animals running around, then who cares what morality is? We can have our own moral code. Same goes for homosexuality, transgenderism. So how do we then get to the point today of where we call our great-grandparents apes or monkeys? How do we get to the point today where men, men, manly men, like Bruce Jenner, who was an Olympic decathlete, gold medalist, on the cover of read boxes, this is who every man wanted to be. Till he pretended to be a woman. Dr. Richard Levine, for those of us who have doctor in front of our name, he was the health secretary in Pennsylvania. He became the assistant health secretary under President Joe Biden. He dresses as a woman and is leading the nation as supposedly as our healthcare voice. Yikes is right. How do we get transgenders, men who dress as women, who most of them, by the way, are pedophiles, registered pedophiles, who can't go within a school, who can't go within 500 feet, 1,000 feet of the school, within a library, a certain distance of a library, and yet they don certain clothes, they hold children's storybooks, and now all of a sudden they're given the red carpet to walk into libraries and to walk into schools and to walk into kindergarten classes to be able to teach all this nonsense to kids. How did we get here? Some of my friends were just at a school board meeting two nights ago in Elyria, Marin County, who were allowing filth of books into the library. There's pastors online who have gone to school board meetings and opened up the books that are allowed to be in children's libraries and start reading them. And these pastors are told to close their mouths that this is disgusting and we shouldn't be speaking of this at a school board meeting. And yet these same books are inside those libraries for the kids to check out at any time. How did we get here? Well, Genesis 3.1, now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made. And he said to the woman, indeed, as God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden. Other translations say, did God really say? This is a tactic that Satan has used many times over. Joseph Smith, the starter of Mormonism, New revealed knowledge. Didn't trust the scriptures. New revealed knowledge, new way to interpret scripture. Mormonism is born. Ellen White. New revealed knowledge, new way to interpret scripture. Seventh-day Adventists are born. Same goes for Murray Baker Eddy and the Church of Christ Scientists. Charles Taze Russell and Jehovah's Witnesses. L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. Muhammad and Islam. And the list goes on. It's always about this, I got new revelation that is above and beyond the scriptures. You know what another religion is that we don't often think about? How about our modern scientific age? Non-believers following it. A lot of Christian leaders following it. We got organizations like BioLogos and Reasons to Believe. that actually pay for Christian pastors, Christian school teachers, to go out and learn for a weekend all about evolutionism and old age. That undermines the scriptures. Scientists that don't believe the scriptures, that don't have the scriptures first, what have they done? No different than all these other false religions. New revealed knowledge, new religion. I know it seems harsh. but this is what has happened out there. And so as a result of the questioning of God's word, what has been the biggest attack on the church in the last 200 years? Well, this should be no surprise, it's secular humanism. It's always been the attack. It is that rather than God be the central agency of everything, rather than Him being the pinnacle, Him being the creator, Him being omnipotent and omniscient, instead we say, no, no, no, it's man. That I'm the one who has agency in this world. That I'm the one who's of the most importance. And anyone who has studied the Enlightenment period knows that that was the first time in history where the world's history was known as the age of God and now became the age of reason and the age of man. That all of a sudden it was about human agency in everything. That we were the center of science. We were the center of philosophy. We were the center of business theory. Secular humanism. Karl Marx codified a lot of this. Charles Darwin codified a lot of this from a scientific perspective. Do you know what Charles Darwin's real title of his book is? See, everyone quotes On the Origin of Species. Here's the real title of his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. It's kind of convenient that the internet has whitewashed that title. But you can still find it online. I have books that I own that are really old that have the full title on there. Guys like Charles Darwin who said, no, no, no, no, no. It wasn't God who made all of us. We just came from monkeys. Taking away the agency of God and God's superiority as creator and putting it on Mother Nature. creating a whole new god in the process. And so this then evolved into the idea of evolution, macroevolution, into millions and billions of years that have been thrust into the scriptures to try to account for the errant teachings of the scientific community. And so we've been attacked through long ages and ape men, that there's no global flood. There was just a local flood in Genesis 6, 7, and 8. And that again, we evolved from monkey-like creatures rather than being placed here by God, different than the entire animal kingdom. Let's be honest. Why does Satan attack the creation account so much? because this is the underpinnings of the rest of the scriptures. Everything comes off of this. Destroy the foundation and it's easy to destroy the rest of it. One of the things I like to ask people about, when I have theologians, pastors, other Christians who say, Don't you think that God could have used evolution, or God could have had a Big Bang, or God could have done some other way to make everything we see today? I mean, after all, Genesis 1 really isn't that clear. To which my response is this, I think it's pretty clear. Do you have another way that you could have made it more clear for us? And that's going to become apparent here in the next few minutes. But I want to say this statement as we walk into the scriptures here is, when we take long ages and dump them into the Bible, we're doing nothing more than taking a secular humanistic worldview and importing it into the Bible to try to reconcile what some of the scientific community has said that seems to be at odds with the Bible. That's all it is, is we're compromising on the scriptures. And here's how it happens. In one of my maybe not so good stories over my teaching career, I stuck a $100 bill at the center of a screen, my PowerPoint screen right behind me. And I did this before anyone came into class. And as people were filtering in, there was a $100 bill stuck to the screen. And I didn't say anything about it. I went 15, almost 20 minutes into my teaching that day, leaving it up there. And then I just stopped and I said, okay, you guys are all probably wondering why there's a $100 bill sitting in the middle of the screen this whole morning. And I'll say, here's why. Because I am so confident that the scriptures do not teach evolution or billions of years that if anybody can find a verse that says so, you get the $100. I'll give it to you by the end of today. And so here are the requirements. For evolutionism to be true, one of two things has to happen in the scriptures. You either have to show me anywhere in the scriptures where God took one created kind and then turned it into another created kind. So because in the idea of evolution, we took cats became dogs, or whales became dogs. We have some type of kind created into another created kind. Where the Bible only teaches that God created everything after its own kind, or to reproduce after its own kind. He says this 10 different times in the beginning of Genesis. So those two things are at odds with one another. If anybody can find where God took one created kind, made it into another created kind, you get the 100 bucks. Or, or this. The Bible speaks of seconds, hours, days, weeks, seasons, years, hundreds of years, and thousand years in the millennial reign. What the Bible doesn't teach is millions or billions of years. That's a concept that is foreign to the scriptures. So if anybody finds a scripture verse that says millions or billions of years in it, you get that $100 bill as well. And my wife was very happy. She didn't know what I was doing that day. Very happy because she got the $100 bill back. But here's the point, is that to believe in this macroevolution, to believe in goo to you evolution, you have to take the secular concepts from out there. the millions to billions of years, and the idea that God took one created kind into another created kind out there, and you must take that now and import it into the scriptures, and then reinterpret the scriptures in order to accommodate that teaching. That's the problem. This doesn't start from the scriptures, and no matter how many Christians try to tell you that the scriptures teach millions and billions of years of evolution, it's not true. These are foreign concepts. And so again, why do people attack creation? Why does Satan attack creation? Well, Romans 1, 18 and 20 has the answer for us. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness. Because that which is known about God is evident within them. For God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, both his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. God is proclaiming, in Romans 1 here, that every single person knows he exists by his creation in the things that have been made. The same way that we don't look at a car and say, wow, that was a, that was, what a masterful artwork that occurred over billions of years through lightning strikes and tornadoes and earthquakes. We don't look at that that way, do we? We recognize the unbelievable design of every single part that has to fit together perfectly for it to work the way it's called to work. It took some engineering minds. It took some knowledge to be able to do this. And God says, oh, you think that that needs to be designed. Wait till I show you what a single cell looks like. with millions of distinctly designed pieces, making up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of distinctly designed machines for that cell to be able to work. That's what God's saying here, is looking at His creation, you know He exists. And when you don't acknowledge it, you're suppressing the truth about Him in your sin. And so this is why we see Satan and unbelievers attack Genesis so mercilessly, because they know that it's by his creation that people acknowledge him, that people know him or know of him. Number two, the scriptural proofs of the 6,000-year-old earth. So we covered the issue at hand. Now let's actually talk about the scriptures and what it teaches. So I've got some really hard math this morning. So some of you kids, you're probably better than your parents at this. I want you to track with me here. So if we look at the calendar, we know that this year is the year 2023. Let's go back from now to the time of Jesus's birth, and that's about how many years? To the nearest thousand. About 2,000 years, right? So now we can go back to the Old Testament and we can read our genealogies. And we can add the years together of each part of the genealogy. And we can get from Jesus back to Abraham about 2,000 years. And then we can read more genealogies. And we can go from Abraham back to Adam and get another 2,000 years. Now Adam was made on the sixth day of creation. So let's do some math. We have 2,000 years plus 2,000 years plus 2,000 years plus six days. Nearest thousand years, how much is that? About 6,000 years. This was easy math, wasn't it? Pretty clear what the scriptures actually teach. And so anything short of that is not being faithful to the scriptures. Let's go a little bit further. Seven proofs of the age of the earth. Of all the words God could have chosen in Genesis 1, There's a number of words you could have chosen to use for the word day, but there's a specific one he used, and that was the Hebrew word yom. And that word is the one that almost always, when it's used, it means a 24-hour literal day. So God specifically chose that word for a purpose, and he used that to describe the length of time for each of the days of creation. God goes even further is that he defined what that word day is in the beginning of creation. So Genesis 1.4 and 1.5, he actually says that it's a completed day and night cycle. He already tells us one day, evening and morning, night and day. Number two, the days are numerically ordered. So when we understand context of our scriptures, and context is king, Genesis 1.5 says, and there was evening and there was morning one day. Genesis 1.8, and there was evening and there was morning a second day. Genesis 1.13, and there was evening and there was morning a third day. And this pattern is repeated for the fourth, fifth, and sixth days. And did you know that these are what we call ordinal numbers? First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth. Every single time in the Hebrew that we take an ordinal number with the word Yom, it always means a 24-hour literal day. Always, without fail. Now just in case that's not enough evidence for you, let's go to the next one, number three. The word day is bounded by the words evening and morning. So again, Genesis 1.5, and there was evening and morning, one day. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. Same goes for days four, five, and six. Every single time in the Hebrew when we see the word yom with evening and morning, guess what it always means? a 24-hour literal day, which means that God has really tried to make this clear for us. Just in case the ordinal number wasn't enough, just in case the definition of the word yom wasn't enough, he's also given us the evening and morning. Believe it or not, I still have some theologians who question the beginning of Genesis, to which then I say, okay, well, this is number four. Let's talk about the six days. See, three times in the Bible, God explicitly says that he made everything in six literal days. The Bible never states anything longer than that. Genesis 1, clearest reading of it. We read through Genesis 1 and we see he's made everything in six literal days. Well, one of my favorite things to do for them is I say, you know, pastor, theologian, do you believe in the Ten Commandments? Oh, you do? Oh, that's wonderful. Well, I'm going to read a passage for you in the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20, starting at verse 8. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of Yahweh your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female slave, or your cattle or your sojourner who is within your gates. 4. In six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. God could have made the entire creation at the snap of his fingers. It could have been done in an instant. In fact, this was the argument at the time of Martin Luther. There are people who wrongfully say that Martin Luther was battling against old ages at that time, 500 plus years ago. That's not true, when a theologian tells you that. What Martin Luther was battling against was there were theologians that said, no, no, no, no. God, there's no way he took six whole days to do this. He didn't snap the finger. To which Martin Luther had a really interesting response to him, basically saying, if you don't trust the word of God, then at least trust the Holy Spirit being more learned than you are. And Martin Luther's whole point is that the scriptures were clear about six days. Now God does something interesting in this passage because he takes his six day week of creation, of making everything, resting on the seventh, to model what? Our work week. So God has connected his creation account to our work week. That's why God took six days and rested on the seventh. It was gonna eventually model our work week. And so if we want to try to insert millions of years into the Genesis account, what have we done to the Exodus passage here? We've now inserted millions of years, and that's bad news for all of us because we should still be working, shouldn't we? God tells this to Moses while on the mountain, right before he's about to come down to the golden cap. And God repeats it one more time in Exodus 31, 17, where he now, with his own finger, inscribes the Ten Commandments, including this, into those stone tablets. And so with all this as our background so far, I love to ask theologians the questions, or the question that if you believe God still isn't clear about his word in Genesis, what could you possibly do with the Hebrew to make this more clear that it would be a 24-hour, literal day, six days of creation? And of all the people I've asked, guess how many answers I've gotten? None. That's how clear God has made this. Let's go further, number five, Genesis 5 genealogies. Starting in verse three, when Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. Then the days of Adam, after he became the father of Seth, were 800 years, and he became the father of other sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. And Seth lived 105 years and became the father of Enosh. Then Seth lived 870 years after he became the father of Enosh, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. Now I could keep going, I won't for sake of time, but what do we see in this passage? We see that in this and the rest of Genesis 5, we see when everyone was born, when the next person in the timeline was born, how long they lived, and when they died. Now, I know some of us, we want to Christianize everything, so when we fall asleep at night, we don't count sheep, but we try to do the Christian thing and we read the genealogies instead, right? It helps fall asleep a lot faster. But God actually has a purpose for genealogies far more than even that. First of all, and he died, and he died, and he died, is a record of death. The death that now entered into the world because of Adam only a few chapters earlier. God was very clear about this record of death. But there's one other really, really important reason, I'd argue the most important of them all, why we have the genealogies in here. It's because for us to be saved, Jesus had to have two natures. He had to be fully God to pay the eternal fine to the Father on our behalf. but he also had to be fully human so that perfect human blood could drip and pay the human penalty for sin. You know why the genealogies are in here and so important and they don't skip? It's because we need to see that Jesus is in the line of Adam. He's the second Adam. He's the last Adam. That Jesus is connected all the way back to Adam, necessarily so. You mess with the genealogies and you mess with the humanity side of Christ. And then you mess with the gospel message. These genealogies are also important because Christ's own words validates them. In Mark 10.6, he says, Now if Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day of creation, which they were, about 6,000 years ago, when Christ spoke this was 2,000 years ago, so that means Christ would have been 4,000 years removed from Adam and Eve. Christ saying, from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female, that makes sense, doesn't it? Adam and Eve being at the sixth day of creation. But if we try to take the millions or billions of years and jam them into the six days of creation, we've now taken Adam and Eve and moved them way from the beginning. So that means we would have had Christ 2,000 years ago, would have looking back to Adam and Eve 4,000 years ago, and then from Adam and Eve, millions to billions of years in the beginning, would Mark 10 6 here make any sense? Not at all. They would now not be at the beginning of creation. So Christ's own words in Mark 10.6 here validates the creation account. Jude 1.14, there's some people out there who say, you know, there might be genealogies that are skipped. And we already talked about the problem with that. But in Jude 1.14, it says, but Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam. Guess what happens if you read Genesis 5? You'll find that Enoch was where? In the seventh generation of Adam. So our scriptures validates what we see in the creation accounts and the genealogies. Number six, the testimony of the New Testament. The New Testament treats Genesis 1 through 11 as historical narrative. For my own book, when I did the research eight to nine years ago and went through the entire New Testament for this one purpose, I found that every single author of the New Testament books, references creation as if it was literal history. Every one of them. And almost every single book of the New Testament has a reference to the beginning of Genesis being actual, literal history. So that means if it's good enough for the New Testament writers, it ought to be good enough for us. They were really clear about it. Now some of us might say, okay, well, That's still not quite enough. I mean, there's still science out there we have to deal with. I mean, maybe God used evolution or used the Big Bang, to which I say, well, do you like logic? Are you a logical person? I mean, because if this isn't enough, we're going to talk about some good logic here. See, in the Bible, it teaches that God created the Earth first and then the stars on day four. What did the evolutionists teach? Stars were first, and the Earth was billions of years later. They got the order wrong. The Bible teaches that the birds came first and then the reptiles. Evolutionists teach that the chicken we eat today is a descendant of T. rex. Kid you not. They believe the reptiles came first and then the birds. The Bible teaches that Earth was water first and then the dry land appeared. Evolutionists teach that it was a molten mass that cooled into land and eventually water magically formed. Got it backwards. The Bible teaches that land plants came first and then the sun. Evolutionists teach the sun was first and billions of years later the life on this planet came from plants and trees and then to the animals. In the Bible, it teaches, most importantly, that man came first and then death as a result of Adam's sin. The evolutionists must teach that death has been around for billions and billions of years before man ever set foot on this planet. The exact opposite. And so the reality is this, is these are just seven of the scriptural proofs we have. I used to, in traveling the country and teaching, I would go through and refute all of the ideas that were contrary to the biblical accounts in creation, in Genesis. Things like the day-age theory, that each day was really millions to billions of years, or the gap theory, where there was millions to billions of years magically added into the scriptures between Genesis 1 and 1 and 1 and 2, or progressive creation, or framework hypothesis, or the ancient Near East theory, and all kinds of other theories that are out there. What I've learned to do, though, is instead of having to teach through every single one of these, it's better just to say there are fundamental theological issues that occur with any alternate theory to what the creation account clearly says. And so I don't have time to go into all of them, but we are gonna go through the absolute most important one. So number one, now we understand the issue at hand today. Number two, we have the scriptural proofs of a 6,000 year old earth. And number three now, we're gonna talk about the bad results of getting Genesis wrong. The gospel. Now, what is the gospel? By the way, I'm teaching on evangelism two Wednesdays from now, so this might come up in a quiz that day. Hint. The clearest presentation of the gospel is in 1 Corinthians 15. specifically verses three and four. I'm going to start in verse one. Now I make known to you brothers the gospel which I proclaimed as good news to you which you also received in which also you stand by which also you are saved if you hold fast to the word which I proclaim to you as good news unless you believe for nothing. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. This gospel message, the centrality of the scriptures, is undermined when we don't get Genesis right. And here's how. Back when I was doing the final edits of my book eight to nine years ago, I would sit in a Starbucks, and I would write my book, and I would do my editing. And before some of you think that's not holy to be there, it is the greatest place in the world to evangelize. Everywhere you turn's a liberal, right? Everywhere you turn. So you can have a conversation in every direction. For those of you who are Marines in here, you say you love to get backed into a corner, right? Because you're going to charge in any direction. That's how I feel about Starbucks. And usually when I'm there and typing books or writing my next sermon, I'll listen for conversations. And so when I find an interesting one, I'll insert myself into it and start talking to them. This particular day, there is a Christian talk coming from the next table. And so I heard one say to the other, Pastor, I've got about five minutes left, I'm gonna have to get going soon. To which that was my cue, so I turned to them, said, hey guys, couldn't help but overhear you speaking about Christianity, what are you doing here? And the pastor spoke up, said, well, I'm an Assemblies of God pastor, and this is a newer person in my church, and we're doing some discipleship this morning. I said, wow, that is so wonderful, you just do not hear about intentional discipleship much in churches anymore. And he goes, yeah, yeah, it's been a blessing so far. And he goes, what are you doing here? I said, well, I'm putting the finishing touches on my book, On the Origin of Kinds. And it's a book that goes through biblical creation. And it goes through biblical evangelism and presuppositional apologetics at the lay level. And I weave them all together to teach people how to witness. And he goes, oh. What do you mean, oh? And then he goes, well, I just don't think it's that important anymore, creation. And I said, hold on a second, you're an Assemblies of God pastor, you guys are one of the few denominations left that actually still believes a little creation. And he goes, well, actually, we've been getting away from that the last few years as a denomination. I said, pastor, you guys are going the wrong direction. Well, why do you say that? I said, pastor, I have a question for you. Why did Jesus have to die? He looks at me, silent. Can you repeat the question?" I said, sure. I mean, now I know that without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin. I get that part of it. But why death? Like, why did the father not just put his son in a corner for a timeout? Give him a spanking, right? I mean, without sounding ludicrous. Like, why death? He looks at me. I know this is a trick question. Ask her. I assure you, this is not a trick question. I asked it to him again. This time I just gave him the answer. And I opened up my Bible to Genesis 2, the same passage I read earlier, and said, look, because of sin, God already had a prescribed punishment in place. He gave that to Adam, a prescribed punishment. And the moment that Adam and Eve sinned, guess what happens? That punishment was now put into effect. An immediate spiritual death, and now the promise of a future physical death. Those bodies are now going to die. Why did Jesus have to come and take the penalty of death? Because that was the punishment prescribed all the way back to the beginning of the Bible. Now, let's take this a step further. Because if we believe the Bible to be true, which I'm sure all of us do in here, we've got a creation account. We have six perfect days of creation. God looks over his entire creation in Genesis 131 and said it is very good. It is perfect, exceedingly perfect. In a perfect creation, would we expect to find death and disease and suffering in it? Not at all. So in that perfect creation, we have that perfect creation, Adam and Eve choose to sin, and now what enters into the creation? Death, disease, famine, thorns and thistles, suffering, all the bad stuff we see today came in because of Adam's sin. In fact, that death that entered into creation is what God calls in 1 Corinthians 15, 26, the last enemy to be destroyed. Now, by the sound of this, is death a good thing? Would God have called this very good in creation? No. Now, let's look at the alternate. Let's look at if we want to insert millions to billions of years into the scriptures. We now have the beginning. God would use what he calls his last enemy to be destroyed for billions of years. Killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, then all of a sudden, oh, these monkeys look a little prettier. You're Adam and you're Eve. And then continue, oh, I kid you not, that is a belief of a number of theologians, that God just, boom, they must be human now. So this death in this system would have been around forever, since the beginning. That means that when Adam and Eve sinned and death entered into the world, who cares? It's already been there. Famine, disease, thorn in business, already been there. Adam didn't change anything if we believe millions of years were inserted before Adam and Eve sinned. We've literally undermined the gospel message by both Christ's atoning work on the cross and his death, and then burial and resurrection, but also in the fact that we would be calling death good, we would have to say that God called death good, and that God used death for his purposes. That's a big problem. So we talked about the issue at hand today, number one. Number two, the scriptural proofs of the 6,000-year-old earth. Number three, the bad results of getting Genesis wrong. And now number four, 10 truths regarding God and man when the church gets Genesis right. Now, as I walk into this, I know some of you are probably thinking, isn't there a lot of good science? I mean, so far you've badgered the science. Yeah, there's good science. We have really good science. In fact, when I went through the Creation Museum for the first time, I was pretty mad years ago. And I carry that chip on my shoulder to this day, as you can probably tell, because I walked through these halls for two hours and saw all the creation science that was hidden in the schools. that if I would have had all the science to look at, what secular scientists say is science versus what creation scientists say is science, there is no doubt I would have looked at the creation science as being true. And you don't have to be a Christian to look at both sides either. The science is really clear on the creation side of things. It just gets hidden from the public. One of my favorite things to use is this issue. For evolutionism to be true, now we've already talked about the scriptural side. From the scriptures, it can't be true. From a scientific side, for macroevolution to be true, we need to have a mechanism that allows new information to be added into the cell of the human being. We need to have that initial simple cell that they said was simple, that somehow formed out of the pond scum, to now create all the life we see today that's complex. For that to happen, we needed to have lots of information magically enter into the cell to go from a simple cell to all the complex life we see today. And of all the mechanisms that are proposed out there, they all rely upon one thing called mutations. You need mutations to increase functional genetic information over time in an organism in order to go from the simple to the complex. And of all the tens of thousands of mutations we've ever discovered in the human genome, of the hundreds of thousands if not millions of mutations we've discovered in animals and plants, guess how many have ever been discovered that increases functional genetic information? None. Zero. I gotta be honest with you, when you actually look at the scientific side opposed to the Bible, it is not science. It is fairytale. It's why they start off with long ago and far away. The pond scum became like, you know all scientific law, it goes against all scientific law to believe that life comes from non-life anyway. They know that, and yet that's part of their fairytale. It's absolutely incredible to think about. So, okay, let's transition back to point number four. What happens when we get Genesis right? Well, number one, God's the creator of all. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are really clear about who deserves the glory for creation. It's God, it's not Mother Nature. It's God, it's not this macroevolution of randomness. Hebrews 11.3, by faith we understand that the worlds are prepared by the word of God, that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Colossians 1 16, for in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible. Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him. The Scriptures are clear, God made everything. Number two, God made the male and female, Genesis 127. And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them. This is by God's design. This is what natural law shows. The entire creation works because of a male and a female and the ability to procreate. Bottom line, and guess what? Every single person knows that. We don't need to read scientific textbooks to know what happens in nature. It is evidence. Number three, God made the human race in his image. Genesis 127 again, and God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Genesis 320, now the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all the living. All people on this planet that have ever lived have come from Adam and Eve. We are all related, one blood, one race, all the way back to Adam and Eve. The scriptures are very clear about this. Number four, God designed woman as helper for man. Genesis 2 verses 18 to 20, Then Yahweh God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. And out of the ground Yahweh God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky. And he brought each to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. Us creationists love to go around and talk about, well, you know, Adam, he was able to name all the animals because there was only this many animals that were beasts of the field, and if he did this many, you know, he did one every five seconds, and it would take about three hours, and therefore, it could happen in a day. And I say, that's great. We've got great apologetics to how Adam could name all the animals. But there's a bigger point to this. It's that God wanted Adam to see for himself there was not a suitable helper for him among the animal kingdom. If Adam was merely a good-looking ape, then when the beast of the field came across his path, as he's naming him, he'd say, oh, there's my helper. But he didn't. There was not a helper suitable for him. He knew that the entirety of the animal kingdom that was paraded in front of him was not one of him. to which God let him see that, put him to sleep, and then fashioned Eve out of his rib, and then brought her back to him as his suitable helper, and then God designed marriage right then and there, one man and one woman. Which gets us to number five, God created marriage. Genesis 2 21-25 So Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed it with the flesh of that place. And Yahweh God fashioned the rib, which he had taken from the man into a woman, and he brought her to the man. Then the man said, This one finally is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Woman. because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." So God immediately created biblical marriage that was the standard for all human beings going forward. One man, one woman. Why? Well, one of those reasons, number six, God gave humans dominion over the earth. Genesis 128, God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that creeps on the earth. God said, go out, multiply, which only one man and one woman could do, by the way. Go out and multiply, fill the earth, take control of it. do good science to help subdue that creation. So if you want to drive your car 100 miles and joyride one day and burn a bunch of fossil fuels, have fun. If you want to wear your leather belts and leather shoes, great. If you don't want to eat steak, don't, because that'll be an extra steak for me. But the point is we get to use this creation for our good and for God's glory. He gave it to us to use. We're not to be worshipping the creation over the creator, which is the mistake of the unbelievers, the mistake of the secular sciences according to Romans 1. He gave us that creation. Number seven, man is the cause of sin and death in the world. Genesis 3.6, and the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise. So she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate, and the eyes of both of them were opened. Adam and Eve are the ones who brought death and disease and suffering into this world. Now what's the proof of that? Well, remember how I just read in Genesis 2.25, and it seems odd, right? When you read Genesis 2 for the first time, all of a sudden you get to Genesis 2.25, the last verse of Genesis 2, and it says, and the man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed. And you're like, whoa, where'd that come from? Well, in Genesis 3.7, we get the answer. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. All of a sudden, the nudity that they had, there was something different about it. Their eyes were opened to the evil that could come out of that. Immediate spiritual death occurred right there. And then we know from there, through other areas of scripture, that death came into man because of sin. Death came into the world because of sin, because of Adam, I should say. And that's in Romans 5. Now, as a result of this curse, we get to point number eight about Genesis, that humans will be in conflict not because of natural selection, not because we are trying to kill one another in order to kill off the weakest to preserve the natural resources for the strongest. That's natural selection. That's evolutionism. That's not why there's conflict in the world. Conflict in the world is because of what the Bible says, and the first time God warns of it is here in Genesis 3, verse 16. Conflict has now entered into the marriage of Adam and Eve. That same conflict is the conflict that we deal with, not only in our marriages every day today, but in the entire creation today. Again, not from evolutionism, not from natural selection, but because of Adam and Eve, according to the scriptures. Number nine, humans tend to hide in their sin, Genesis 3.8. Then they heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves in the presence of Yahweh God in the midst of the trees of the garden. Immediately they sinned in the previous verse, their eyes were opened, they covered their nakedness, their shame with fig leaves, and then they promptly hid or attempted to hide. Now, this should sound familiar, because even as believers, we sin, and what's our first inkling to do? Try to hide from God. What do unbelievers absolutely do? Well, in Romans 1, it says they suppress the truth about Him in their sin. They're doing the ultimate hiding. They're closing their eyes, putting their fingers in their ears, and chanting themselves to do their best to block God out while they're in their sin. Now number 10, ultimately God blamed Adam, our federal head, even though Adam was deceived. So Genesis 3.17, Our ground was cursed. For any of you who try to grow a garden or to grow a plant bed, a flower bed in front of your house, knows that your flowers are a struggle to grow. Your weeds are not. That's from Adam and Eve. Imagine how easy it would have been to do work back in the day before weeds came. Think about that next time you guys garden next year. So far we've covered, number one, the issue at hand today, number two, the scriptural proofs of a 6,000-year-old birth, number three, the bad result of getting Genesis wrong, and number four, 10 truths regarding God and man when the church actually gets Genesis right. So now what does all this mean, as we conclude? We're in a battle today. We're in a battle over the Christian worldview. Now, way too many Christians today think that, you know, there's other battles to be had. Why do we need to deal with Genesis? Right, let's just give up Genesis and let's make sure we get the cross right. Well, I hope we understand that we can't get the cross right unless we get Genesis right. And that people really have hangups about God and his creation, his majesty and creation. We need to be really clear as Christians that God is the maker of everything. He's the maker of every one of us. And because of that, he's also a rightful judge. When I go out there and I talk to homosexuals on college campuses, my friend Mike and I just did that on Thursday at Cleveland State, that we can talk to homosexuals and use the Bible as our support. We don't have to use all kinds of well-crafted human arguments. We can go back to what God said. We can go back to the natural law that God created. Because according to Romans 1, they already know this. We're pointing it out to them. We can be confident in the scriptures when we go talk to them. Same thing with transgenderism. When I was at the parade back in June here in Cleveland and preaching there, I had a guy that was six foot four, six foot five in a dress and high heels come yell at us for preaching the gospel. To which I said, sir, and all of a sudden he got offended. And I said, look sir, You and I both know you're a man. That's how God created you. His mouth stopped. I don't know if I'm the first person who actually told him that or not. I hope not. I hope others have. But the point is is that people like this that are really hurting, that have gone so far as to pretend they're the opposite sex, completely against nature, lovingly tell them the truth. about what God said and how God made them. Same goes for the feminism movement of today that continues to creep into the church that we have to battle. And same goes for macroevolution that puts the glory of God onto the glory of random chemical reactions, robbing him of his glory. Why do these points ultimately matter? Every one of us is gonna stand in front of God when we die. Hebrews 9.27 says, every man's appointed once to die and then to judgment. You are either, have already repented and believed, you then have Christ's righteousness cloaking you. The moment you die, you go directly to heaven based on Christ's merit. If, however, you're not in Christ, If you've not repented and believed and you are somebody who is still dead in your sins and trespasses, you have not been reconciled to God as of this moment, your appointment is not going to be so good. You're not going to be able to tell God, you know, God, I, I just didn't know you existed. I mean, I really thought we just, we came from monkeys. I mean, we had all kinds of teachers telling us this. I thought it was mother nature was the God of this world. he's gonna say you're without excuse and furthermore I gave you a free gift that was my son Jesus that free gift of salvation calling you to repent and believe and putting your trust in his death burial and resurrection for the payment of your sin So if there's anybody in here today who doesn't know Christ as Lord and Savior, I pray today is the day you do repent. Today is the day you give up your sin and you have yourself reconcile to God, that you call out, cry out to Him in your sin. Because there will be no excuse. Lord, I just thank you for gathering us together today and giving us an amazing word. And what a start to the 66 books of the Bible, laying out your creation and your majesty in creation, going against all known laws of science. And for us just to be able to sit in awe, looking at your creation day in and day out, looking at the stars and the sun and the moon, the birth pains of a mom giving birth to a child, another miracle we see. Lord, what an amazing creation you have. Lord, I pray that today you've given either more confidence to every one of us in preaching your word from the very beginning, or for those of us who maybe walked in today that have questions about Genesis, that you now reassure them that they can trust the entirety of the scriptures from beginning to end. And most importantly, give all of us that fire to go out and preach your good news, preach your gospel. Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and Christmas right around the corner, so many opportunities to be able to hand somebody a gospel tract and smile and say Merry Christmas. So many opportunities to sit down around the dinner table Thanksgiving and Christmas to be able to speak of our thanksgiving, both for what you've given us in terms of material things and food, and also what you've given us in you coming to this earth to take down flesh and pay that penalty for us. Your holy impression and we pray, amen. Thanks for listening to the pulpit ministry of Medina Bible Church in Medina, Ohio. You can find church information, a complete sermon library, and other helpful materials at medinabible.org. This message is copyrighted by Medina Bible Church. All rights reserved.