Thank you for tuning in to the Covenant Podcast, a podcast dedicated to the teaching and preaching of God's Word. The Covenant Podcast is a ministry of Covenant Baptist Church located in Indianapolis, Indiana. And now, here is today's speaker. Alright, well let's begin our study time today. And I'm going to ask you to do a lot of thinking today. We want to take time to address a theory that has been used to attack the accuracy of the scriptural account of creation for a long time now. For the past two weeks we've been studying the account of creation according to the scriptures in Genesis chapter 1 and 2. We began last week looking at Genesis chapter 3 and we're going to finish our look at chapter 3 by calling this theory out. And we don't want to skip over this topic, but we want to address it and address it head on. I don't know if you've heard the phrase we use it commonly here in our country. Sometimes when you ignore questions that you know everyone is asking, you are said to be ignoring the elephant in the middle of the room. acting as though there's not an elephant when everyone would clearly know if there was an elephant in the middle of the room you would know it and see it. Well this theory that we're going to talk about today is the elephant in the middle of the room too much of the time we don't address it and note it and deal with it and so I would like to do that today before we begin then next week and move on specifically in our in our study of the scriptures with Genesis chapter four And the theory that I want to talk about today, the topic that I would like for us to discuss together today, is the theory of evolution. And the first question that might come into your mind is, why should we care? Why take an entire broadcast and deal with this subject? And I consider these times precious opportunities for us to speak about the Scriptures and about the Lord, so why would we take time to deal with this subject? Well, first, as I've already said, Many people have questions about this. Many young people in particular in my country have questions about this, and they're not being answered, I don't think, as clearly and as openly and as confidently as they could otherwise be. And so we don't want to skip over it. We want to address it. And so we're going to take this time today to do that. But why should we care as well? Well, the theory of evolution in its ultimate sense, certainly removes God as being our creator. And when you remove God from being our creator, when you remove God from being the one who has given us life, you also remove and you eliminate our accountability to Him. And if you eliminate our accountability to God, You eliminate all of the following as well. You eliminate the need for salvation. You eliminate the need to live a moral life, a responsible life. And you remove a hope in a greater good and purpose in life. So we should care, I think, about this and address it and not be afraid to address it, because it removes the fundamental things that we believe. And I believe The scriptural account of Genesis chapter 1 and 2 are historically accurate, and the creation of the world happened exactly the way that is described there. And in the world today, certainly, many would claim that that is a rather simple view, and an old-fashioned view, or a view that has been proven to be wrong, and I want to address that here today directly. But we should also care because, at least in our country, here in the United States, this idea of the theory of evolution is really the only thing that many of our children are taught in school. and there can be no denying the terrible negative impact that the teaching of evolution has had on our children and our society here as a whole. As we've already discussed, if you remove God from being our Creator, then there is no higher power to which one has to answer than oneself. And freedom, as they might say from God, it's been said that freedom from God is the tyranny of the self. If there's nothing greater than our own thoughts, our own lives, if there's nothing greater than ourselves, then life becomes very meaningless very quickly. So we should care about this. We should adamantly oppose teachings that claim that God is not our creator and be passionate about it. not unkind, not aggressive in a physical sense, not where we will not listen and engage, but we should adamantly oppose, we should be passionately opposed to this teaching and bring about the thoughts and some of the things hopefully that we'll bring out here today. We need to not let ourselves be intimidated into submission into what many call irrefutable scientific proof that proves evolution. As we're going to see, that irrefutable proof just doesn't exist. To the contrary, and this is why I asked you to think when we began our lesson today, and I encouraged you with this thought that we're going to have to think together. If we just think about what is being said, I think we're going to see that that proof that is being claimed, that scientific proof exists that says the Bible is not true. This proof that they're claiming, it just does not exist. The fundamental laws of science itself refutes the possibility of evolution. And we're going to address that today. How is that the case? So hopefully we've laid a groundwork as to why we should care. You remove God from creation. You've removed Him from our lives. You've removed Him from the world. And you're left with nothing but these temporary, short lives with no hope in eternity. And I think deep down inside all of us, there is a sense. We might push this sense away, we might ignore it, but I think deep down inside of us, all of us know that when our eyes close in death here, that that's not the end. It's just a separation. A separation from this life, which is temporary and earthly, to the next life, which is eternal. We pray heavenly, but it'll be eternal. It'll be eternal joy with God in heaven, or it'll be eternal separation from Him in hell. That is our choice. That is what life is about. And when evolution comes on the scene and gives us this lie, that God did not create the world the way it's recorded in Genesis 1 and 2, the perhaps even unintended consequences of such a claim begin to rob us of any joy, any purpose in our lives. So let's look together then. Let's think about this. Let's look at science and see whether or not it really does provide proof against Genesis 1 and 2, or whether those claims are unfounded. And so let's look again here. Let's first start with the scientific method. Some of you may be aware of what this is. This is taught in schools and young people from very early ages are taught what is called the scientific method. And the scientific method is the method used by scientists to answer questions about life and answer questions about the world and the way the world works. And there are five steps to the scientific method. The first step is to wonder, ask a question, pose a question. The second step is to hypothesize and to suggest a plausible answer to our question. The third step of the scientific method is to test our hypothesis or our theory The fourth step is to accept our hypothesis as true or false, and then the fifth step is to act accordingly. So again, the scientific method, as we're looking at it, and as we're trying to determine whether or not this theory of evolution is science at all, we have to put it up against science's own framework, and the scientific method. So the first question in the scientific method is to pose a question. So in our case, the question might be, where did the world come from? Where did you come from? Where did I come from? Where did that tree come from? Where did those mountains and the rivers, where did they come from? So that's step one of the scientific method is to ask the question. Step two is to hypothesize. So we come up with an answer that we think might be true. And so according to the evolutionist view of the world and the answer to that question of where did we come from, the answer is, well, maybe we all just appeared out of nowhere and human beings evolved over millions and billions of years. Well, step three of the scientific method would be to test it, right? That's what the scientific method calls for. We must test whether or not our theory is true or false. Well, the problem is, and this is where evolution runs into great difficulty with regard to wanting to be considered science at all. Because in order to test my theory about evolution, I would have to set up an experiment that would mirror exactly how things were before there were things. Remember, we're having to think this morning. If I'm going to test evolution scientifically, I am going to have to set up an experiment whereby I observe what happens before there is anything that was. It's impossible. I can't do that because there are things. There are mountains. You are here. I am here. I cannot erase those things. I cannot remove those things from any kind of test that I might set up. I don't have that ability. As we're going to see a little later today or this morning, matter is neither created or destroyed. It just changes form. And so within the bounds of science, I can't even set up an experiment in the first place to know whether or not my theory is true or false. And since I can't set up an experiment to test my theory regarding the original question, which is how did we all get here, I certainly can't observe any results of such an experiment. And since I can't observe results, I can't set up an experiment and observe results, I cannot make any statements of scientific fact regarding my theory. So it must necessarily remain a theory, but not fact. Remember step four of the scientific method? It was to accept the answer. Well, with regard to the theory of evolution, my whole problem scientifically is that I was unable to get past step three. I can't get to step four because I can't complete the experiment in step three. And step five of the scientific method is to act accordingly. It is to step four is to accept the answer. Step five is to say, okay, I have observed scientifically, what is the truth? And so I'm going to act accordingly, but I'm unable to get to step five because I was unable to complete steps three and four. So, in short, in order to be consistent with the fundamental concept of the scientific method, there can be no scientific proof offered for evolution, because evolution cannot be scientifically tested and validated, and it has not been. There's never been a single instance of someone observing a species evolving from one thing to another. not from one thing to something completely different. Even those who claim an ability to test certain species for evolutionary processes face a large obstacle in that most evolutionary processes, we are told, take place over millions and millions of years. Testing anything within this context over such a long period of time is simply not possible with any dependable level of consistency. Now I realize, I realize very well that this argument that I'm laying out would be ridiculed and considered maybe overly simple by many who hold to the theory of evolution. I would be attacked and have been, but in the case built against the argument I've laid out, Oftentimes very large words and complex ideas would be placed on the table for discussion. Many of those large words and complex ideas would be things of which I would say admittedly I know very little. In the attempt to refute my argument here that you cannot test evolution scientifically, it would be the attempt that those who believe in evolution would make, would use, as I've said, difficult concepts. And the question of how we all came into being, it would, there would be intimidating ideas and concepts brought to the table. But the question simply is this, how did we get here? It's not that we can just come up with our own ideas. In my experience, if you cannot answer a simple question, And instead, you start going down the path of things that are unprovable, but you start going down a lot of complex ideas and paths. In my experience, if you cannot answer a simple question, you're merely trying to cover up or obfuscate or confuse the truth. when you redirect attention to what you claim to be more complex matters look will be called simple people those of us who believe in genesis chapter one and two will be called simple people science of many people today will say we're simple not thoughtful not educated but i think the exact opposite is true in a twist of great irony It is those who, according to the scripture, in this sense are ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. It's a simple question, where did we come from? And people in the evolutionist camp would say, we evolved. We simply just have to keep asking the question, where did we come from? If I evolved from an ape, where did the ape come from? And if they have an answer to that, well, that ape came from this other animal. Well, where did that animal come from? And then they backtrack it all the way to the beginning. At the very beginning in their answer, many of the big bang, there was just a big explosion and the universe miraculously somehow came into existence. And very quickly we say, everyone believes in a miracle of some kind. I believe in a miracle designed and brought about by a living and holy God who intentionally brought the universe into existence. An evolutionist believes in a miracle of chance that we talked about last week was statistically impossible. So we have to answer a very simple question, and don't allow others to confuse the issue or intimidate you. Science is a tool that cannot be brought to bear when answering the question of the beginnings of the universe, because it cannot be observed. It can only be speculated. And if it's speculated, then you know what it is? It's faith. It's not science. If I can only bring to bear things that I believe, then it's faith and it's not science. Let's look at a couple of other things before we move on quickly. The laws of thermodynamics. There's a big word. It's not that scary though when you dive into it. The laws of thermodynamics, they're fundamental, universally accepted scientific laws. And as we will see, these laws clearly deny the possibility of evolution. Clearly it's not possible for evolution because they go scientifically, they go against the very fundamental nature of science itself. The first law of thermodynamics is also called the conservation of energy and matter and stated very simply it is this, energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed. This law is often referred to again as the conservation of energy and matter. It simply means that in relation to evolution, that evolution cannot be proven within the bounds of known science. If someone accepts the theory of a godless creation, and they accept the first law of thermodynamics, then they must believe in either eternal matter, eternal rocks, eternal planets, Since matter cannot be created or destroyed according to the first law of thermodynamics. You put heat to ice, do you destroy it? No, it turns to water. You put heat to that water, do you destroy it? No, it turns to steam. But the same molecules, the same atoms, the same things that make that up are still in existence. You didn't destroy them at all. You've just changed them. So if you're ever in a debate about evolution, you might simply just state that you would rather believe in an eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God than believe in eternal rocks. If an objection is raised that the first law did not exist at the time of the Big Bang, or at the very beginning of things, and that somehow things were different then, then you're still left with the question, which is unanswerable, of what then was the first cause of the existence of the world. Alright, we need to move on this morning. The second law of thermodynamics is called entropy, and it basically means this. Basically stated, the universe tends to move from a state of order to a state of disorder. Springs unwind, gases disperse. Your home becomes disorganized, your house gets dirty, unless energy is put in so that those things might be remedied. In order to return to a state of order, energy must be spent. Evolution, though, proposes that just the opposite happened. Evolution states that living cells moved toward a state of incredible order from disorder. The primordial ooze, as they say, began to mysteriously change and evolve and become more and more complex. But the idea that you can start with a single cell, which itself is made up of many individual parts and eventually end up with a human being, grossly violates the second law of thermodynamics, which again is a fundamental truth, a fundamental law of science. So what I want to say by way of summary to this lesson today is that evolution cannot be proven scientifically. It just cannot be. It goes against so many fundamental laws of science that are simple to understand when you think about it. When you're not confused by a lot of ideas that really still don't answer the question, The only way then, and this is the point as we come towards the close of our time today, this is the point. If evolution cannot be proven scientifically, and we've spent just 20 some minutes here today trying to talk and trying to show you that it can't be. If it can't be proven scientifically, then what is its proper category? If it's not science, then what is it? You've probably come up with the answer. The answer is it's a religion. It's a faith. Without scientific proof, one is left with faith. Since faith is the only option in light of a lack of observable scientific proof. So my friend, your life comes down to what you believe. And what you believe must be based upon the truth of God's word. One of the fundamental differences between one who believes in Genesis chapter 1 and 2, and one who believes in evolution, is the one who believes in the Bible openly admits his or her dependence on faith, while an evolutionist attempts to cloak or hide or disguise his faith with inaccurate yet impressive sounding claims of scientific proof. And it's just not science. It is belief, and it is faith. And that's where we want to bring our broadcast to a close with the salvation and focus section. And I hope that you'll listen for just a few more minutes as I present these thoughts to you. What is the significance here? Again, when we tie this back to our study of a chronological survey of the Old Testament, we want to call out what was the impact of sin in the garden? Well, after their sin, God expelled Adam and Eve from the garden, and he placed a cherubim, or an angel, at the entrance of the garden to do this, according to the scripture, keep the way of the tree of life. Well, this driving out of man from the garden is the event that makes it clear that man and God are separated from one another, and that that separation was made because of man's willful and knowing disobedience to the command of God. The disobedience in the garden is not a type, it's not a shadow, it is not an example, it is the very event and the very reality to which all of the pictures of man's fallen condition in the rest of the Bible refer. The way to the tree of life has been made impassable to man apart from God. The way to the tree of life remains impossible for man, for you and me to pass through without God. is the only way we can be restored to the presence of God. He said that himself in John 14, 6, where he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. If you don't know Jesus and you're wondering why you can't get a hold of truth and life and meaning and purpose, well, there's your answer. I am the way, Jesus says. If you don't know me, then you don't know the way. If you don't know me, then you don't know the truth. If you don't know me, then you do not have life. If we do not understand the significance of the third chapter of Genesis as we said last week, it will be impossible for us to rightly understand and interpret the rest of the Old Testament or the New Testament. There are many who think that salvation is a simple decision that we make. I merely decide. However, I want us to think, I want you to think, to claim that you can decide your way into heaven is to say that Adam could have simply decided his way back into the garden. Would the cherubim, the angel set to guard the way of the tree of life, would that cherubim have allowed Adam back into the garden simply because Adam walked up to him and said, I have decided I would like to return to the garden? Would the cherubim not have believed that Adam would have wanted, in maybe some ways, all his heart to regain what he had lost in the garden? Certainly, I believe this would have been the case. Clearly then, since Adam would have desired to go back to Eden's paradise, his decision or his desire merely to return was insufficient by itself to restore him to that wonderful land of peace and safety. Similarly, for you and me, our mere intellectual desire or our decision today to be saved is not by itself sufficient to gain heaven. The question is not merely do you want to go to heaven. Everyone who is of a right mind and who is speaking honestly will say yes to that question. Just like Adam would have answered yes if you'd ask him if he would like to go back to the way things were before his sin. It is only by true repentance and faith in Jesus that man can find the city whose builder and maker is God. And once found, we know we've found it. And our searching for the way has come to an eternal end. By the lack of a full appreciation for what occurred here in Genesis chapter 3, many are being told that their decision alone has returned them to God, with no instruction that a real change wrought by the Holy Spirit must take place within when salvation is obtained. When we are saved, the scenery of our souls, it might be said, go from death and decay to life and incorruption. Adam knew the difference between where he lived before his sin and where he lived after it. He observed what it was to go from light to darkness and life to death. And when we travel the road back to God through Jesus Christ and find salvation, we go the opposite way. We go from darkness that we inherited from our father Adam, all of our father yours and mine we go from darkness to light and death to life and we too will observe a difference in the scenery of our souls all of this too so important here final few words for you today all of this begins with the prompting of God in our hearts as he comes to us like he came to Adam and called out Adam where art thou Remember, did Adam and Eve go running to God after their sin? No. They went and hid. They covered themselves. We covered that last week. But God came to them, and that prompting and convicting call of God started Adam on the road to admitting his sin, repenting of his sin, being clothed by God, and beginning his long walk of life, traveling the road of life on his journey to God. If God is prompting you, and calling you, and convicting you of sin, turn to Him with sincere, true, godly sorrow. Repent. Ask God to forgive you. He's faithful and He will. Have faith in Jesus' death on the cross when He took your place there. Pray this way until God grants you peace. Then pick up your cross and begin following Him today. It doesn't have to be like yesterday. It doesn't have to be the hopeless thoughts of tomorrow that perhaps you've lived with to this point. Go to Him when God comes to you in your heart and says, where are you? When you wonder to yourself, where am I? Before God, when He works in your heart, He knows the answer. He's asking you so that you might know the answer. We hope you have enjoyed listening to today's program. Please visit us at www.covenantmbc.com to access our podcast archive and learn more about the ministry of Covenant Baptist Church. Visit us on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com slash Covenant in Indie.