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All right, dear friends, I've
got 630. Why don't we go ahead and start? Let's open in prayer.
Father, we want to give you praise and thanks for your many blessings
to us. Lord, it is good for us to give
thanks and praise. It is good for us to rehearse
in our own minds and with our mouths the goodness of God to
us in Christ, the many blessings we have received. It's good for
us to remember that these blessings have come to us at the price
of the blood of your son. Jesus Christ, that we would get
nothing good if Jesus hadn't died on the cross for us, that
every good and pleasant, every good and perfect gift comes to
us through Jesus and through His blood, coming down from the
Father of the heavenly lights, who gives them to us through
Jesus. And so, Lord Jesus, thank You for paying for our sins. Thank You for giving us every
good and perfect gift. Thank You for Your suffering
in our place. And Lord, as we're gathered tonight
to study Your Word, we acknowledge again our dependence on you for
it. Father, we know that apart from
your power to interpret scripture, we would certainly go astray.
Our minds are so twisted, our understanding so limited, our
selfishness so evident. Lord, we would miss it. We would
make many missteps. And so we ask now for the giving
of your Holy Spirit again, a moving of your spirit, that we would
be very careful how we think about your word, how we listen,
that I would be very careful how I speak, all of us, as we
speak your word, Lord, make it right and accurate according
to scripture. Father, I pray as we consider tonight's topic
that our hearts would be lifted up and encouraged concerning
creation, the creation of God in the world, that we would see
it as the handiwork of God and not have that stolen from us
by bad doctrines and by the teaching and the cunning and craftiness
of men and their deceitful scheming, but rather we would see the works
of the Lord as what they really truly are, displays of your glory
in this world. So I pray that you'd be with
me as I discuss this tonight and that you would help us, O
Lord, to meditate together in Jesus' name. Amen. So tonight's
topic really is the proper relationship between Christianity and scripture,
all that, and science. It's really a pre-lecture before
we get into, just roll up our sleeves and dig into the issue
of creation and evolution next week. So this is kind of setting
the stage for it. And I just want to talk about
the relationship, the proper relationship between Christianity
and science. And, you know, specifically in
the area of creation, we'll get to that more in greater detail
next time. But in 2 Corinthians chapter
10 and verse 3 through 5, it says, For though we live in the
world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we
fight with are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary,
they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments
and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge
of God. And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to
Christ. This is really talking about a spiritual battle that
Christians are in, clearly a battle for the mind, a battle for how
we think. There are pretensions that are
set up. We're demolishing arguments.
We're taking every thought captive. This is a battle for the mind.
And so when we come to the creation and evolution discussion, we
realize that we're really seeking to destroy the handiwork of the
devil in faulty arguments and thoughts. It's actually, for
me, very depressing to go on non-Christian websites on this
topic and to swim in the sea of unbelief for a while. I can't
do it for very long. After a while, I just have to
leave it. Not because I'm threatened indirectly that I think somehow
the Bible is going to come tumbling down because of some website
But it's just my own weakness. I find myself subtly persuaded
by certain elements of their reasoning and other things, and
it's really not an easy thing to do. And so, therefore, you
really have to protect your mind. It's the same way it is for me
when I read liberal theology that attacks the inerrancy of
Scripture, or when I read feminist theology that attacks the biblical
doctrine of the roles of gender, of male and female, in the home
and in the church. I can't read that stuff for very long, because
it starts to influence me and it starts to drag me down. So
for me, I think it's important for us to take a positive view
of the scripture on science and try to understand what the Bible
teaches us. And so before we even get to the handout, I just
want to trace out some little elements of a proper view of
scientific discovery in the Bible. I really believe that the Lord
intended from the beginning that we should study the physical
creation and discover Him there. I think that that's what we were
intended to do. I think in Genesis chapter 2, when it talks about
this one river going out into four headwaters and these four
rivers that flow out from the Garden of Eden. And it talks
about this specific land where there's gold and costly stones
and onyx and other things there. Some of these things can only
be gotten by mining, by technology, really, that they would have
to dig to get the gold out and to refine it, etc. This is immediately, in Genesis
2, hinting at science. It's hinting at exploration and
discovery. This was meant to be a good thing.
The earth already filled with the glory of God and that we
would fill it with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the
waters cover the sea. And so, you know, I could imagine
Adam and his sons and daughters and, you know, moving out from
Eden where they were just supposed to start. That was the starting
line. And they were supposed to spread out throughout the
earth and discover what the Lord had put there and how exciting
that would have been. And I really just translate that
on into the new earth as well, the new heavens and the new earth,
that we'll be able to discover new things. We're not going to
be downloaded with instant omniscience the moment we're glorified, dear
friends. We'll have things to learn even in our glorified state.
Isn't that exciting? We're going to be learning things.
And there's going to be things to learn in the new earth. So
I say to you that science will go on forever. True science,
the science of the study of things as they really are, as God really
made them, as an act of worship, is going to go on forever. So
science isn't our enemy at all. The perversion of science is
our enemy. The way that Satan has taken hold of it and uses
it, that's our enemy. But from the beginning, technologies
and these kinds of things, I think, were good gifts that then the
sinfulness of man then takes and uses for perverse things. So, I mean, you look right at
the beginning, Genesis 2, I already hinted at, but look over at Genesis
chapter 4. As well, there you get the first
kind of inclinations of technology. In Genesis 4, verse 19 and following,
it says, Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other
Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal. He was the father of those who
live in tents and raise livestock. His brother's name was Jubal.
He was the father of all who play the harp and flute. Zillah
also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out
of bronze and iron. So there, Tubal-Cain is the kind
of a predecessor of technology. Forging is a technological process. The making of useful implements,
a good gift of God. We shouldn't think otherwise
than later when you have Hury or Bezalel or some of these other
characters later on who have, by the Spirit of God, special
skill and gifts in making jewelry. or being able to refine gold,
or to set costly stones in a breastplate for the high priest. These kinds
of things are gifts, and they're spoken of very positively, both
for the tabernacle and also for the temple. And so this is the
gift, these kinds of technologies. So here in Genesis 4, you have
an inclination right away of the idea of technology. I could
talk about Noah's Ark. It couldn't have been made without
technology. Obviously, the ability to make a huge vessel that wouldn't
sink Obviously, there had to be some kind of knowledge of
woodworking and proper materials that could handle the salt water,
etc., and even of the structure of a ship. You know, all of these
things he had to know. And then in Genesis 11, we have
also technology there with the Tower of Babel. Now, the whole
world, it said, had one language and a common speech. As men moved
eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
And they said to each other, come, let's make bricks and bake
them thoroughly. They use brick instead of stone
and tar for mortar. Then they said, come, let us
build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens
so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered
over the face of the whole earth. Again, this is technology, the
idea of ceramics, the fact that building bricks and baking them
thoroughly made better building materials than stone. stones
harder to work with. You can imagine it would have
taken an awfully long time to dress the stone and get it into
a shape. And so, if you were able to make
bricks in a certain mold, you know, the brick, the clay being
soft and then fire it, you bake it, that's all technology, friends.
That's what it is. And so, the ability to do this
enabled them to make buildings. That's a good thing. The desire
to build a tower that would reach to the heavens to make a name
for themselves and not be scattered over the surface of the earth,
that's a bad thing. And so the good gift of technology then
taken by human beings and perverted and used for evil purposes. We
see this again and again. We who have lived through the
20th century, now into the 21st century, should know better than
anyone that's ever lived how technologies come to us as good
gifts and then are very quickly perverted for evil means. We've
seen it again and again. From the very beginning of technology,
electronics, we've seen a lot of this kind of thing, how it
could have had just nothing but a good use, but that was really
impossible given the nature of human beings. To me, one of the
key verses on science in the Bible is in Isaiah chapter 28,
and I've mentioned this verse before, but I think it's very
significant. If you have your Bible, just open up there in
Isaiah 28, verse 23 through 29. There, Isaiah is talking, I think
he's making a spiritual point about God's judgment, but he
makes it in a way that brings in additional points concerning,
I think, agriculture, which is itself a subset of technology.
Okay, so, you know, technology or agriculture, science, it's
just a study of the way things are, the way God made them and
the ability to use things for a certain purpose. And what's
so interesting here to me is God's personal involvement in
the education of the human race concerning technology. Isaiah
28, 23 and following, listen and hear my voice, pay attention
and hear what I say. When a farmer plows for planting,
does he plow continually? Does he keep on breaking up and
harrowing the soil? When he has leveled the surface,
does he not sow caraway and scatter cumin? Does he not plant wheat
in its place, barley in its plot, and spelt in its field? Now,
here's the key verse right here. Look at verse 26. His God instructs
him and teaches him the right way. That is maybe one of the
most important verses on technology in the Bible. Look at it again.
His God instructs him and teaches him the right way. What is the
right way? Is this a moral issue here? There's
a right way and a wrong way. Well, no, not really. It's just
there's a good way and a way that doesn't produce as good
results. Here it seems to be that you want to separate out
the crops. They may have a different effect
on the soil. Who knows what? But there's a
right way to plant wheat in its place and barley in its plot
and spelt in its field. And everything has to be done
in a certain way. And the point here is that God
teaches man how to do it. So I find that fascinating. And
I think he'll instruct them whether they acknowledge him or not,
whether they give him the glory or not. I think that God will
instruct and teach non-Christian scientists principles about physics
or biology or chemistry that are true, useful, beneficial,
and they don't give him the praise and the glory. Well, that's their
fault and they're going to be judged for it, but it doesn't
mean the principle is any less true. God still instructs and
teaches the right way. Carraway is not threshed with
a sledge nor is a cartway rolled over coming. Carraway is beaten
out with a rod and coming with a stick. Grain must be ground
to make bread. I tell you, that's an interesting
statement. You have to grind it to make bread. Well, isn't
that obvious? Well, that may be obvious, but
how you get coffee is not so obvious to me. I mean, think
about the process. It starts as a bean growing in a tree somewhere.
And how many steps before it finally ends up some kind of
inky black fluid that you drink with only with some other ingredients
that in my opinion alone make it palatable. All right. I just
admire people that drink black coffee. I don't I just I don't
know how you do it. But but think of all of the steps
you know the grinding up of it and the putting of hot water
through in a certain ratio and and allowing it to percolate
until the you know the oils and all of the stuff comes out in
a suspension and then you drink it and it tastes horrible. You
know but then it's like all right but maybe if we did this or did
that you know I actually believe Isaiah 28 is saying that God
taught us how to make coffee that actually tastes good. He
was the one that brought us through that whole process. All right?
Grain must be ground to make bread. So one does not go on
threshing it forever. Though he drives the wheels of
his threshing cart over it, his horses do not grind it. Now,
again, we get the same thing in verse 29. All this also comes
from the Lord Almighty, wonderful in counsel, magnificent in wisdom. So this is about science, friends.
It's about technology. It's about God's involvement
in the burgeoning human knowledge of the surrounding universe,
the world that we live in and the universe that's there. The
best example of this actually going on is at the end of the
book of Job, when God puts Job in his place by talking about
what he's made and noticing features and aspects of the cosmos or
of certain animals and their tendencies. Or Jesus when he
says, consider the lilies of the field, right? That's a scientific
process. It's an observation of the physical
world. And what I'm saying is God is
all over that and we ought to do it and we will be doing it
for all eternity. There's going to be so much of
the display of the glory of God in the new heavens and the new
earth. We will be enraptured forever. Our minds will be active.
We'll be studying and learning. I just don't think we'll forget
anything we've learned. I think we'll just keep on going in one
direction, learning more and more. You know, will He always
have more things to show us? Yes, always, always more to show
us. So for me, I think that Isaiah
28 teaches that God has been directly involved in the growth
of human technology and science, whether we have acknowledged
His role in it or not. God made it to begin with, and
not only did He make it to begin with, He then takes us by the
hand and shows us what He's done. And He's done it in a certain
consecutive order with every generation building on the previous
generation. I think this is wonderful, I think it's marvelous, I think
it's a great tragedy that human beings who have received these
gifts from God do not give Him the praise and the glory, but
rather take the praise and glory for themselves. And they win
their Nobel Prizes and they boast about themselves and they're
arrogant and they never knew that the eureka, the aha moment
came from God. That God showed them some aspect
of biology or chemistry or whatever, it was God that showed it to
them and they should have gotten down on their knees and given
Him the credit and the glory, not their own wisdom and knowledge.
But the thing that was discovered is true and valid and worth celebrating.
That's what I'm saying. If it's a true fact, we celebrate
it, we want to embrace it. We want to keep on considering
the lilies of the field. That's not on your outline. It's just
a diatribe on science. But it's in concert with what
I want to say in this outline tonight. And that is that science
is a good thing and that we should embrace it. But given the history
of the wickedness of the human race, We need to be very, very
careful about science these days. We need to be careful about,
and it's not just these days, it's been going on a long time,
really since before the Tower of Babel, but there it's very
clear. When I preached on Genesis 11, I think I entitled this sermon,
Good Gifts Gone Bad. And the two good gifts that I
had in mind were human language and human technology. These were
two things that were good gifts of God, and they're used for
bad purposes. when they say, come, let us such
and such. Hey, let's do evil together.
That's the bad use of a good gift. Language, okay? So what
does God do? Confuses the languages to slow
the wickedness down, okay? Concerning the tower, God shut
it down, okay? They couldn't continue building
it, et cetera. Because it's a good gift gone bad. We Christians,
we should do the opposite. We should use our language, skills,
and power to glorify God. We should speak the truth to
each other. We should encourage one another to praise and worship
God. That's a good gift. that's used well. And the same
thing with science. We should be studying these things
to the glory of God. When I was at MIT, there's this
place called Killian Court. It's this kind of cross-shaped
thing. I noticed that it was a cross.
I don't think they noticed, and I don't think it was intentional.
But at any rate, it's just the way the courtyard is. It's shaped
like a big cross. Up on the walls, up at the top,
it's this two-story building, really high stories, too. And
at the top, all around the top are these names inscribed of
great scientists. Some of them are in bigger font
than others, all right? So the ones that are on the faces
like that, those are the big guys. There's Newton, Galileo,
Archimedes, all right? These kinds of names. And then
there are lots of smaller names of lesser known figures like
Boyle and others. And so, you know, some of them
I don't even know, can't remember. But they're celebrating the human
beings that discovered these things, all right? I'm just telling
you, Isaiah 28, Based on that, God showed all of that stuff
to them. Galileo, it was God that taught all of this. And
I'll say another thing. I've never found a book that
did this. Maybe there is a book that does it. But the traces
out scientists that pursued scientific principles openly to the glory
of God were avowed Christians and were seeking to discover
what God had made so that they could proclaim his greatness
and his glory. Hello. Okay, he's a good example, but
I'm just thinking there are many, many, many others like him. People
who took their faith plus their scientific ability and used it
all to glorify God. They're in the great minority.
All right. What's that? Christian minorities. So, yeah, I would not be the
first. I would not be the first to notice this. I came at it
from church history and then found these guys and said, hey,
there's a lot of them. Isaac Newton, a bit odd theologically,
maybe even a lot odd, but still, you know, openly, avowedly desiring
to do it to the glory of God. That's what he wanted. I mean,
I don't know, you know, how many of these folks, you know, we
would embrace all of their theological principles. I mean, I think definitely
Pascal did it for the glory of God. He'd be another example.
I mean, there are numbers of them. So the idea of the just
openly pagan atheistic scientist is really an aggressive feature
of the 20th century, not so much earlier than that. It's something
that we really saw coming on then, okay? So, bottom line is,
we should be scientists who are Christian. I am not saying Christian
scientists, and I hope you know why, okay? It would be efficient
to say it, but sadly, Mary Baker Eddy took that from us, so what
can we do? We just have to say scientists who are Christians,
or Christians who are scientists, things like that, okay? Well,
let's look at the outline that I've given you. Today, I want
to talk about creation, scripture, and science, and the relationship
between scripture and the findings of modern science. So, when all
the facts are rightly understood, I assert there will be no final
conflict between scripture and natural science. This is the
famous all-truth-is-God's-truth approach. Now, that's a bit naive
when it comes to certain things. It is true to some degree, but
just understand that a lot of stuff comes at us tainted by
human interpretations. And, you know, it says in the
Bible, lead us not into temptation. When you get into the halls of
academia, you try to win a position or a prize or, you know, a government
grant. There is a pull at that point
and it's dangerous. But still, it's true. All truth
really is God's truth. All right. When it comes to these
things, there are certain possibilities as we try to look at creation
and scientific aspects of creation. Francis Schaeffer gives us seven
possibilities on that particular issue, the issue of where the
universe came from, and Genesis 1 and 2, etc. These seven are
listed. There is a possibility that God
created a grown-up universe. You know, I think it bothers
me when people say that that angle, that that aspect shows
a certain deceptiveness on God's part. You know, that God is purposely
laying traps for us. Scattering around all this evidence
for evolution, but it isn't really true. God, the deceiver, God,
the trickster. Well, first of all, I think that's
ridiculous and unfair. God hasn't told us why he made
everything as it was. But I know this. He created Adam,
not only fully grown, but fully lingual. All right. Unlike any
other human being, Adam and Eve both, I think, had immediately
full capability to communicate verbally. OK. Was God trying
to deceive? No, he's actually trying to instruct
thereby. He wanted to tell Adam immediately
what he could and couldn't do in the Garden of Eden. And so
he gave him a full complement of abilities. It wasn't his ordinary
way of doing it because then, you know, Cain and Abel were
born and my feeling is that they had to learn language the ordinary
way. You know, at mama's knee and,
you know, little by little, gradually being instructed and trained.
That's the ordinary way. But Adam and Eve were an exception,
and we would have to imagine also the creation of the physical
universe. I don't know what would have happened if you had cut
down a tree, you know, there. Would there be rings in the tree?
Would the rings be of all of them equal, concentric circles?
Or, you know, what are you going to say? Who can say? The Bible
doesn't address this. We're told that the thickness
of the rings has to do with the growing conditions, right? If
it grew well that year, the ring is going to be thicker than if
it doesn't grow as well. What are you going to do with
all that? The Bible doesn't address it. I'm just saying that God
isn't trying to deceive. God isn't pulling anyone toward
believing in atheistic evolution. God cannot be tempted by evil,
nor does he himself tempt anyone. But he has his own reason for
making rocks with certain certain mixtures of radon, plutonium
and other things. And he's got his own reason for
doing that. And his purpose is not to deceive. That's Satan's
job. OK. So what I'm saying is, I don't
think we can look at this universe around the way and then say,
OK, based on what we're seeing, we can extrapolate back to 4.3
billion years and all that. Nobody was there. Nobody was
there. And so basically you're taking
what's there and you're making certain assumptions based on
what you're seeing. So it is very possible that God created
a universe that appears to be very old and really isn't. OK,
that's one possibility. I'm not saying I necessarily
believe that that's true. Because I mistrust the dating
techniques. I think the dating techniques themselves have all
kinds of problems. But even if we could accept,
you know, a variety of problems there, still, you haven't proven
anything. Because the thing can start, I mean, for all we know,
the universe started yesterday. I just don't think it's a helpful
way of looking at things. I'm just saying, I don't have
any idea about the past other than what the Bible tells me.
And so the bottom line is, when we read, the scripture, and when
we look at it, we have to accept it as what it really is, the
Word of God. So, bottom line, I think when we look at these
things, whenever scripture and science contradict, that's where the
rubber meets the road. That's when you start having issues
and problems. Let's keep going with Francis Schaeffer's list.
There is a possibility of a break between Genesis 1, 1 and 1, 2,
or between 1, 2 and 1, 3. This is what's known as the gap
theory. This is repugnant to answers in Genesis. He's just
listing out, you know, various things. I have problems with
the gap theory as well. But he's just listing possibilities. There
is the possibility of a long day. This is the day-age theory.
I have all kinds of problems with that. You want to know why?
Ten Commandments is the number one problem I have with that.
Ten Commandments. Remember the Sabbath day to keep
it holy? Do all your work in six days
and rest on the seventh day for God created heaven and earth
in six indeterminately long periods of time and rested in the seventh
indeterminately long period of time. It doesn't really make
any sense at all. I mean, there's this indeterminate length that
God called a day And then, but we're all supposed to live on
this, there is evening, there is morning kind of schedule, all
right? That's what we know. Wouldn't it make much more sense
if God set up that rhythm right from the beginning since he was
creating the universe with man as the kind of pinnacle of his
creation to know his glory and to trust in him and believe in
him? And that he sets up a rhythm that's helpful for us. There
was evening, there was morning, the first what? Day. All right, I
know that. I know what the sunrise and the
sunset looks like. It seems like God would do that. It'd make
more sense. But anyway, he's just listing
possibilities. All right, there is the possibility that the flood
affected the geological data. I would say more than just the
possibility, I think it did. Fifth, the use of the word kinds
in Genesis 1 may be quite broad. I think that absolutely is the
case. There are different categories. Either that or Adam was unbelievably
quick at naming all whatever million or billion different
species there are. I think bottom line is he's just doing the king
and queen, mama and papa species, you know, whatever. Either that
or you're having problems on the sixth day. The sixth day
would have to be a really amazingly busy day, which I think it was
busy anyway. But moving on. There is the possibility of the
death of animals before the fall. That's an interesting and controversial
topic. I'm just reading a list right here. And where the Hebrew
word bara is not used, there's a possibility of sequence from
previously created things. That's his list of possibilities.
There are others as well. The bottom line is there's all
kinds of different ways of looking at this issue of creation and
evolution. Now, let's talk about stepping
back from all that, the basic concepts for Christians in dealing
with science. First is that we ought to be
humble. It really bothers me when people
on both sides are so arrogant, thinking that they know everything.
Our knowledge of both scripture and science is imperfect. We
don't know. I really think one of the great
effects of my time at MIT was to be humble about the amount
of knowledge I have. I was much more arrogant as a
senior in high school than I was a senior at MIT. By then I had
been majorly put in my place. And I realized that I could study
my own narrow field the rest of my life and still not be a
master in it. I would have not even read all
that there was of the literature available for my narrow field. I remember some statement about
the difference between Harvard PhDs and MIT PhDs. I don't know
if you've ever heard this before. At Harvard, you learn less and
less about more and more until you know nothing about everything.
And at MIT, you learn more and more about less and less until
you know everything about nothing. So that's the difference. And
if you know what I'm talking about, in technology, you have
to focus and then focus again and focus again and again until
you are just this narrow expert in some little arcane field.
And there you make your money and you get your fame, all that.
let's face it, there's just too much knowledge out there. And
so we just ought to be humble people. We ought to be humble
and say, I just don't know. We ought to say that a lot. And
the Scripture itself is really remarkably deep. It is. I think
the basic principles, God made the world, you know, there is
a God, He is loving and good, and He sent His Son. Those basic
things, the milk principles, are so clear and obvious anyone
can know them. That's what the Bible was written
for, is to give us the basic clear facts that we can be made
wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. So children
can know it, Simple-minded people who aren't, you know, highly
educated and really can't be, can know it. But that doesn't
mean that's all there is in the Bible. And I think one of the
things that really good, careful, systematic study of the Bible
should do is humble you. I mean, you should get to the
point where you're in awe at the Bible. I am. I mean, memorizing
all the books that I've memorized has put me in absolute awe. I
keep on learning new things in passages I've been over hundreds
of times. There's always more to know. And so we really ought
to be genuinely humble about both science and the scriptures.
Secondly, a principle of non-contradiction. If all truth is God's truth,
then no truth can contradict itself. That cannot be. Apparent
conflicts between evidence coming from the physical universe and
scripture cannot finally exist if God is in fact the author
of both. Doesn't that make sense to you? So why then are we in
error? That's a leading question. because
we don't know the Scriptures or the power of God. So, just
in light of this lecture, then, we're in error. We think there's
a contradiction because we don't know the Scriptures or the surrounding
universe like we should. There's some mistake there. If
there's some apparent contradiction, it's that we haven't understood
these things. Should there be an effort to harmonize Scripture
and science? Should we make an effort to do
that? Flynn, what do you think? Should we make an effort? Okay.
It glorifies God to All right, when you come up short, you haven't
been able to harmonize them, what should you do? Well, stick
with the Bible. We'll get there in a moment.
Yes, stick with the Bible. All right. Fearless investigation. Thus, no Christian should ever
be afraid to investigate the evidence from both scripture
and science very carefully. Nothing will ever be dug out
of the earth to destroy the word of God. Amen to that. All right. So it does not matter what people
find in all that. And it doesn't mean that, you
know, Doesn't mean that there aren't some things that, boy,
that's a tough one. I don't know how that works or how that fits.
And there are definite moments like that. But another thing
that helped me at MIT is I'm not in awe of these people. I
don't care how many PhDs they got and all that. I see the humanness
in all of it and the limitations of it. I really believe that
you can only function in science by having a heart filled with
faith. You've got to believe. You know
what you're trusting? Fellow scientists and their research.
because you can't redo their experiments. You just have to
trust what they've done that it's going to work for you. Sometimes
you don't even have time to read their articles. You just have
to read the synopsis of the article. What do you think, Will? Do you
trust other scientists in your field? OK. Oh, OK. It failed. OK. OK. But seriously, in that case,
maybe he didn't do his work well or maybe he falsified his evidence,
which is all part of my lecture tonight as well. And it may not have been willful.
It's very hard to capture an experience in words. Seriously,
I'm sympathetic to those that write the assembly instructions
for a complex toy. I mean, that is just hard to
do. I mean, there it is, fully assembled. Now, there it is in
1,500 parts. And you have to come up with
a line by line description, verbal description of do tab A, slot
A, tab B, you know, all that. By the way, you never put tab
A in a slot B. I hate that. Why do people say that tab A
in a slot B? That's where you go wrong. Tab A always goes in
slot A. All right. You know, you have
to be careful about these things. But at any rate, the point is
it's hard to capture these things. However, this is my point. Scientists
must rest on other scientists to do their work. They openly
acknowledge that. I've stood on the shoulders of great men.
Even Isaac Newton said that. You have to accept what they've
done and move on. You can't redo everything. Or you could just
spend your whole life redoing some other scientist's life.
You know, what's the point in that? There, you got most of
his same findings. And look, now you want to move on. So you
accept by faith a lot of what they do. And that's even more
true now, when knowledge is multiplying, going faster and faster, and
there's this incredible exchange of information, with English
being the number one scientific medium, kind of somewhat reversing
the Tower of Babel. English plus the Internet, there's
so much exchange of information going on right now, and in my
opinion, the proliferation of evil thereby. But at any rate,
you have to accept what other scientists have done to make
progress. Yes, sir? Is it possible that creation
could have been done without things orbiting like they are
now? Don't everything have to be orbiting and the earth revolving
at the right speed otherwise? I don't know. I think it was
set up kind of the way we know it now. I don't see how it could
be any other way and that's where you get your 24 hour day. I think so. Obviously, there
are mysteries, like in the book of Joshua, when God made the
sun stand still. That's a poser to me. I don't
know how you do that. What do you think, Flynn? How did he do that? How did God
do that? I think probably suspended some laws of physics. Yeah, just
stop the earth from rotating, which will cause all kinds of
physical problems on the earth. But just don't underestimate
what God can do. God can do anything. But the
bottom line is, I think he set up the universe we know. I do. And that's why I also believe
that the new heaven, new earth will be very familiar to us, like
Jesus in his resurrected body was familiar but different. I
think that the new heaven, new earth will be familiar but different.
It's not going to be some weird kind of science fiction kind
of world. It's just going to be a perfect world. All right,
now, here's an important point. Suspicion of science before suspicion
of Scripture. First of all, can we just have
no suspicion of Scripture? How about that? Okay? Scripture is
the Word of God. All right, if you have doubts about that, you've
been listening to Satan. That's his job. Did God really
say he's been doing that from the beginning? But should we
be suspicious of science? Yeah, because it's a human endeavor,
you know, from top to bottom. I do believe God prompts and
whispers into the ears of scientists, but we don't always hear properly.
All right, so what is the nature of the scientific method and
the explosion of knowledge? Well, warning, science is an
ever building, constantly changing and very human thing. All science
is built on previous work done by others. Since we are not in
the lab with them, and since data can be interpreted many
different ways, we should be cautious in accepting theories.
Science is constantly undergoing major seismic shifts in understanding,
such as the seismic shift that happened with a couple of papers
that Albert Einstein wrote from the Swiss patent office at the
beginning of the 20th century. With Newtonian physics, they're
just having a little bit hard time understanding the behavior
of distant starlight, like around the sun and things like that,
couldn't quite get that figured out. But Newton covered everything
else. I mean, Newton's laws of motion
just pretty much had it. And I think they weren't troubled
by these little problems they were seeing there with light
and all that. So they basically figured they knew everything
that they needed to know about physics. Newton had done it.
They'd figured it out. It was done. It's for that same
reason that around that time the U.S. Patent Office said that
they were thinking about shutting down because everything that
could be invented had been invented. There was just nothing else to
do. Well, physics had some tricks to show in the 20th century,
didn't it? I mean, obviously, lots of electricity and magnetism
stuff and some physics stuff, too, coming our way in the 20th
century. And so, Newton wrote, you know, on the theory of relativity
and described why it was that the starlight behaved that way
around the sun. different things. He predicted some things accurately
and we started getting up into behavior of particles and issues
closer to the speed of light and Newton couldn't cover that
and all of a sudden science is reborn into a whole new era.
All right, so all I'm saying is those kinds of seismic shifts
happen. Now don't misunderstand me. We're not starting from scratch
every day. Okay, there are some valid observations
that we have made that are true and we just keep building on
that. But I'm just saying let's not be so Absolutely trusting
of science as though it's this monolithic, perfect thing. Let's
also remember the nature of the human heart. Scripture tells
us that human beings have a natural hatred for God, the creator and
ruler of the universe. They will thus suppress the truth
and unrighteousness. Romans 1, the wrath of God is
being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness
of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. Since what
may be known about God is plain to them because God has made
it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God's
invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have
been clearly understood being, have been clearly seen, sorry,
being understood from what has been made so that men are without
excuse. For although they knew God, they
neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their
thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Now that is key right there for the scientific process. Thinking
became futile, foolish hearts were darkened, and now go do
science with that. Do you see the problem? Big problem. All right, verse 22, although
they claim to be wise, scientists, right? Scientists are just from
the Latin root, knowers, people who know stuff. All right, though
they claim to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory
of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man
and birds and animals and reptiles. Now the phrase suppressing the
truth, the Greek word is literally holding the truth somewhat like
holding it down. It's like it's an enemy, like
the truth is an enemy. It's this beast coming after
you in the middle of the night, or like one of those cheap Japanese
horror Godzilla films, or something like that, with some creature
coming up from the subterranean, like the subway system of New
York City, and you gotta hold the manhole cover down, and the
truth is gonna come get ya. I mean, it's so sick and perverted,
but that's how they look on the truth. I have never heard a statement
that displayed this attitude more plainly than these two. Listen to these two examples
of suppressing the truth. This is by Richard Dawkins. Biology
is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having
been designed for a purpose. But if that's not a plain example,
how about this one? All right. Biologists must constantly
keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather
evolved. They've got to work hard at keeping that in mind.
Hey, look, when you're like holding on, you know, and like you're
about to be swept downstream to actually believing in God,
you've got to hold firmly and not let go of what you know. It really was evolved despite
all of the contrary evidence. Isn't that sad? I mean, look
at these two guys. These guys are brilliant guys. They really
are far more intelligent than me or any of us. But they're
fools. because they can't see the glory
of God in biology or physics or other things, all right? That's
what it's there for. It's very, very obvious the nature of the
human heart. So what does that mean? What does that mean for
the scientists in the laboratory? He's going to be interpreting
his data through a religious grid that's contrary to scripture.
He's going to be twisting his interpretation. First of all,
one of the most important things he's going to tell you about
the data is it has nothing to do with God at all. That is a
twist. It's a bent away. Do you see
that? The secular aspect of science
is twisted. It may be one of the main reasons
that Christie and I have homeschooled our kids. I'm not saying you
have to homeschool your kids, but one of the things that bothers
me the most about the government education is its secular nature,
that it tells you that God has nothing to do with English literature
or American history, that God has nothing to do with sociology,
has nothing to do with psychology, has nothing to do with science
at all. leave that at home or in the
church. But we can teach you and educate you in such a way
that God will be left out entirely. How does that relate to Romans
1? Well, it's everything to do with Romans 1. God has to do
with everything. God's at the center of everything.
I want to tell my kids that. I want to tell them about God
in each of these subjects and put God at the center of each
one of those things. So we've got to fight this secularizing
tendency all the time. Emperor's new clothes and professional
pride. This is a big issue here. Science is not some flawless
monolithic structure that cannot be questioned. The principle
of the emperor's new clothes functions in a huge way. In Anderson's
classic story, the adults were all told that if you could not
see the emperor's new clothes, you were incompetent for the
position you held. Everyone began praising the emperor,
though he wore no robes at all. Nobody wants to be told they're
incompetent for the position they hold. What does that have
to do with evolution? I think it has a lot to do with
evolution. Because the entire academy is telling you that you're
not fit for the academy if you don't believe in evolution. And
so you have to start singing from their piece of sheet music,
or you have to be extraordinarily excellent in some other way so
that you can get a position despite your aberrant view on this one
thing. It's very, very tough to get the societal accreditation
without singing from their piece of sheet music. And so you've
got to say, oh, I see it, it's just... And some people even
go so far, I love it. Have you read The Emperor's New
Clothes? How the elaborate praise given to the emperor's clothing.
Oh, it's magnificent, it's beautiful, it's all this, they're doing
all this stuff. I've read praise of the elegance of the theory
of evolution like that. How beautiful it is, how wonderful
that our lives mean nothing and that when we die, we'll all be
worm food and then the worms themselves will be worm food,
that we're all just cosmic dust. It's a beautiful thing. Isn't
it beautiful that you are meaningless? I mean, just I don't know the
beauty. I'm missing the beauty of it, the elegance of it. Yeah. All right. So also in science,
if you begin to question evolution, evolution, you will be mocked,
scoffed at, excluded, even professionally evicted. Research dollars funding
gets cut off, not awarded. Meanwhile, millions of dollars
are available for those who are researching, especially human
origins. Not so much money. At the other
end, the beginning of evolution, very little money available for
the first living cell. You know why? I don't know how
in the world you're going to do that. Where do you get life
out of nothing? Where do you get life out of
chemicals? You know, that's why I appreciate Will. I think down
at the protein level, that's where it gets really tough to
explain evolution. I don't know how they organized themselves
into amino acids and eventually became a cell wall. that respirates
and all this kind of thing. Where in the world do you get
the first living cell? I'll never know. We'll get to that next
week. All right? We'll get to that next week.
Evolution's weak link is the first living cell. All right?
It's not, you know, Australopithecus or whatever. That's their wheelhouse. That's where they live. And the
similarities of the skeletal structures of certain hominids
and, you know, apes and all that, that's their wheelhouse and that's
where the funding goes. All right? That's where people
get famous, like the Leakeys and all that. That's where it
happens. But down at the first cell, not too much work being
done. Do you know of any work on the first cell where that
came from? I know there was a prize some
time ago. We'll talk about that. But do you know of any research being
done toward a plausible explanation for the first living cell, Will?
No, but I'm not the best one to ask that. Oh, OK. Do you have
any idea where the first living cell came from? Probably with
all the other living cells. They're all in, you know, yeah. People like Stephen Jay Gould,
former professor of geology at Harvard University, probably
the leading popular apologist for evolution, is now deceased.
People like him make absolute statements in popular magazines
like Time and Newsweek. And it's intimidating. You read
this kind of stuff and say, gee, I must be an uneducated dunce.
I don't believe in evolution. I mean, it's very easy to feel
that when you're in lectures, you know, in college, you just
like, you know, you get laughed at. You don't believe in, you
know. And so this kind of thing, like Dorothy, we're not in Kansas
anymore. It was when Kansas Board of Education, you know, decided
to, the Kansas Board of Education removed evolution from the state's
public school science curriculum. Gould was not in favor of that
action. And Time put it on a cover article,
How Man Evolved, you know, right there, right there in front.
There's no question about it. Gould's article was, Dorothy,
it's really Oz. So it's like this mental problem
that you would even think that evolution isn't true. He's making fun of Kansas, that
we're not in Kansas anymore. This is what Stephen Day Gould
wrote at the time. Teaching biology without evolution is like teaching
chemistry without the periodic table or American history without
Lincoln. He also says that the struggle between evolution and
religion is completely unnecessary. He said this, no scientific theory,
including evolution, can pose any threat to religion. For these
two great tools of human understanding operate in complementary, not
contrary, fashion in their totally separate realms. Science as an
inquiry about the factual state of the natural world. Religion
as a search for spiritual meaning and ethical values. Now here's
the thing, it may seem to you that he's saying the same thing
I did at the beginning of this lecture. We're saying very different things.
I believe there's a complete harmony of the two possible.
And if we can't harmonize, that's our problem, not science or Bible's
problem. Okay? He's saying there's no
harmony needed, perhaps even possible. They're two entirely
separate realms. Well, that teaching, entirely
separate realms, that is secularization. That's the very thing I was telling
you. They should be kept separate. And you don't teach religion
in school. So you just teach science with no God at all. So
there are two things that Gould is saying in this little article
there. Number one, evolution is an indisputable fact of science,
not merely a theory, because teaching evolution is like teaching
American history without Abraham Lincoln. It's just indisputable
fact. Secondly, evolution and Christianity can peacefully coexist. All right, now, number one should
be rejected by open-minded scientists. We'll talk about that in due
time. Both of these facts must be rejected by Bible-believing
Christians. Now, I know that some people do try to harmonize
evolution and creation. I just don't think it can be
done. And I'm going to make that case somewhat today and more next
week. I just don't think it can be done. Furthermore, I think
the pressure to do it is not coming from the Bible. And when
that pressure is coming from man, from society, from pleasing
people, then be suspicious. When you take that desire to
please people and go back to texts of Scripture and start
looking at them differently, that's a danger I have to face
as a pastor, as a preacher, that I take human opinion about controversial
issues and bring it back and look again at a text and say,
gee, you know, maybe we could look at it this way. That's dangerous
and it's something I face not just in this area, but in lots
of different controversial areas. Now there are six or seven hot
button issues, hot potatoes that pastors get in trouble for all
the time. You want me to list them, I'll do it another time.
But I know what they are. You probably can, come on, give
me one or two of them that get pastors in trouble. What do you
think? Calvinism, that's one of them.
Certainly. Gender roles. Gender roles have
gotten some people in trouble before. Divorce and remarriage
is tough. Homosexuality. Materialism. Various things. I mean, there
are different aspects and you start preaching on that stuff,
you're going to get in trouble. And if you take that stuff and you
go back to the Bible and say, you know, maybe it doesn't, that's
a bad methodology. Nathan, were you going to say something? All right. The rapture. I'm going to get to that real
soon, guys. You get to hear me preach against the secret rapture
in probably three weeks from the pulpit. That'll be loads
of fun. So, in due time. I think it's unbiblical. I think
it's unbiblical. Wouldn't it be cool if like everyone
but me got raptured in the middle of the sermon? That would be
really exciting. I would immediately repent of
my faulty views. I wonder if it was too late to
get the tail end of that rapture. I need to move on. All right,
let's just move on. No, but I'll stick to my guns.
I'll stick to my guns on the secret rapture. As lightning
that appears in the east is visible even in the west. That's the
coming, the second coming. It's no secret. I mean, you're
going to get me started. Don't get me started. That's for another
day. All right, some theories about creation seem clearly inconsistent
with the teachings of scripture. Secular theories. Any purely
secular theory about the origin of the universe is unacceptable.
Secular means does not hold that an infinitely powerful personal
being purposefully and personally created the universe by intelligent
design. Big bang, eternal universe, purely materialistic Darwinism.
That's obvious. Well, that's just pure atheism
is all that is. I mean, that's just, I mean, that's not even
a Christian effort. there is no God that made anything,
well then you're just flat out an atheist and you don't even
worry about the Bible at that point, you just don't believe
anything in the Bible. But then there's this issue of theistic
evolution. What is theistic evolution? Well, it's a merging together
of Darwin's evolutionary concepts with biblical faith. Problem,
it's a desire to serve two masters. What to do when there seems to
be a contradiction? You know what generally gets pitched?
The scripture generally gets pitched. Generally when they
go head to head, you're going to accommodate scripture because
it's flexible. You know, it's poetic or, you
know, it's symbolic or different things, but this is science. This is indisputable fact, that
kind of thing. So they tend to get pitched. Are there some objections to
theistic evolution? First of all, the purposefulness
of God's creative work versus the randomness of evolution.
Essence of God's creative activity is purpose in everything he does.
Essence of evolution is random mutations There's a big difference
between the two. I can look at something and say,
it was made that way for a purpose. God did it that way. There's
a purposefulness. Random mutations are the key
to evolution. I mean, that's really where it all comes from.
Now, what the theistic evolutionists say is, well, they're not random.
God kind of tweaked the mutation to make it happen, etc. But I
just think it's just evidence of serving to message. Why do
you even need to talk like that? You know, etc. You know that
God created it originally for a purpose. You know, intelligent
design. God said, let the land produce
living creatures according to their kinds, livestock, creatures
that move along the ground and wild animals each according to
its kind. And it was so. So, I mean, you
look at the verbs and what's going on there. The creatures
are created to do stuff. Consider the birds of the air.
Jesus didn't just call them birds. He called them birds of the air.
So they had a realm to operate in. They were created to fly. They didn't evolve up to fly.
God wanted them to fly from the beginning. And so their realm
was the air. The fish's realm was the sea.
And so they were made with gills and other things because that's
where they would be. Our realm is the whole planet. And so we
can see that we can move through the sea better than any fish
and move through the air faster than a bird and higher too. Not
in the same way. They have a certain natural freedom
that we don't have. But we are more versatile than
any other creature by far. There is no creature that goes
to the depths of the sea and goes up to the moon as well.
I mean, basically, that's because we're in the image of God. But
the earth was given to us to rule because we're created in
the image of God. We all have a place, a scope, a realm. So
consider the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, these kinds
of things. They were made that way from the beginning. You know,
evolution, random mutations. And God said, let the earth bring
forth living creatures according to their kinds. 87,492,871 attempts, God finally made a
mouse that worked. Theistic evolutionists are in
effect saying this. For them to answer, but God intervened
in the process along the way, one no longer has true evolution.
No secular scientist would call it guided purposeful intervention
evolution. If a Christian's going to argue for that, why not simply
for a direct immediate creation of a fully functioning mouse
without the millions of years of transitional forms? You know
why? Because the Christians are intimidated by the old earth
theories and they say there's no answer for it. And so they
say, well, we've got to fit in and we've got to accommodate
it. So they say, well, then we just fit in evolution to what
we know about the Bible as best we can. All right. Especially
note, dear friends, since there's no fossil evidence for such transitional
states that God is finally a working mouse. There are no transitional
states for the evolution of the mouse. That's huge. We'll get to that next week,
all right? There should be transitional states, not just for man, but
for every species we see around. We should be tripping over them.
We should have a hard time driving home for the transitional states.
We'll get to all that. Anyway, scripture pictures God's
creative word bringing immediate response. By the word of the
Lord, Psalm 33, verse six, by the word of the Lord with the
heavens made in their starry host, by the breath of his mouth,
for he spoke and it came to be. He commanded and it stood firm.
Well, that's the cosmos. Look again at the top of the
page. And God said, let the land produce living creatures. See,
there's a direct activity of God. He speaks and it is. Not
he speaks and we'll get to it eventually. You know, he speaks
and it is. Things just come into being.
Like Malchus's ear after Peter cut it off. And Malchus didn't
have millions of years to wait for another one to evolve. God
made a fully functioning ear immediately. He has that kind
of power. And the fish, the loaves and the fish, did they come out
cooked? Were they ready to eat? They
were ready to eat fish? I think they did. What do you think,
Nathan? Five loaves and two fish. I'm thinking the loaves were
fully cooked. It's not a bunch of ingredients. Wait a minute.
We'll get to you. We'll be back. We got to cook. I mean, that'd take
a long time. Those were hot, steaming loaves ready to eat.
And those were fish that were cooked and ready to go, unless
they were sushi or sashimi, in which case, I don't know. But
there's no evidence that the Palestinians ate sushi or sashimi. I think
they were cooked, they were ready to go. They came into the world
ready to eat. I had never thought of that before,
but there it is. All right. Thirdly, God creating
kinds such that living things reproduce according to their
kind. This destroys evolution. You know, the essence of evolution
is that kinds change. All right. How do you know a
kind? It has to do with reproduction. OK, if the Chihuahua can get
together with the St. Bernard and they can make something.
All right. I don't know what, but they are
of the same kind, aren't they? Yes. But you don't get despite
what National Enquirer tells you, you don't get species that
come across. Yeah, they cannot reproduce.
And so reproduction, from Genesis 1, it has to do, they come according
to their kinds and let them be fruitful and multiply according
to their kinds. And they multiply, the word kind
ends up being huge. And so it has to do. But evolution
teaches that at one point these could not mate, but then they
evolve and they can. Or things that came from different
kinds, they originally came from the same kind. That's actually
completely different than what we have. And we don't see that
going on at all. See, microevolution going on
for sure, but you never see things that couldn't mate at one point
down the road their great-great-great-great-grandchildren can mate. That never happens.
Has to do with kinds. Reproduction. All right. God
is a hands-on creator in Genesis. Theistic evolution is more hands-off.
It really heads toward deism at many levels. God just doesn't
get involved. There are different types of
theistic evolution. You know, one is that God just kind of
rigged it all to evolve and just didn't need to interfere. It's
by how he set it up. at the beginning, but others
say God just kind of interferes and does the mutations. But I
just see that throughout the Bible, God just interferes all
the time. I mean, do you see that? That
God just steps in. I mean, look at Psalm 104. This is a hands-on
world. I would put it this way. It's a needy world, a dependent
world. God did not create an independent world. He created
a world that depends on Him to do stuff. And so it says in Psalm
104, How many are your works, O Lord, in wisdom? You made them
all. The earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea vast
and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number, living things
both large and small. There the ships go to and fro,
the Leviathan, which you form to frolic there. That's an anti-evolutionary
verse. It was made to frolic there.
God formed it for that purpose. These all look to you to give
them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them,
they gather it up. When you open your hand, they
are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they
are terrified. When you take away their breath, they die and
return to the dust. That is a God active in the world
verse. God is just feeding and bringing
to life and killing living things all the time. Hands on for people
as well. The Lord God formed the man from
the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life and the man became a living being. Job 10, 8 through 12,
your hands shaped me and molded me or made me. Will you now turn
to destroy me? Remember that you molded me like
clay. Will you now turn me to dust
again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like
cheese? Clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together
with bones and sinews. You gave me life and showed me
kindness. And in your providence watched over my spirit." That's
an active relationship of God the creator. That's a very anti-abortion
verse or passage right there. God directly active in that process,
et cetera. Ecclesiastes 11 5 just as you
do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the
womb of the pregnant woman so you do not know the activity
of God who makes all things powerful God is active in natural the
natural world and Psalm 139 teaches the same thing God creates all
of our own form beings now I'm going to start here next week
I'm going to talk about the theological issues that depend on on one
man one woman Adam and Eve from the beginning the fact that that's
really the the linchpin to my argument. You can't have evolution
and still have Adam and Eve. And if you don't have Adam and
Eve, you don't have original sin, you don't have gender and authority
roles, you don't have a lot of stuff that comes from Adam and
Eve. We'll talk about that next time and a bunch of other things
besides.
The Doctrine of Creation, Part 2
Series Grudem's Systematic Theology
| Sermon ID | 82213124920809 |
| Duration | 59:41 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Language | English |
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