Address—Tim Ruga
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Good evening everyone.
Welcome to the meeting tonight, and if we could, let's start the meeting with him #4 and our little clock inbox.
Hymn #4 Air God had built the mountains, or raised the fruitful hills, and so on.
Uh, well, let's see if I can give you.
A nice day just passing your hands and I have to follow up with where.
Increase your size down, it's greasy.
So I'm talking to beating my eyes and.
And then I don't know if you're gonna do it with my appreciation.
It's open with prayer. Our God and our Father, we thank Thee tonight that so many of us could be here to have a word open before us. We thank Thee that before Thou dost ever think about the creation of this world.
That's how this have in thy mind on thy son, and that there should be a bride for thy son.
We thank Thee, our God, that in time that thou to send him here, and Lord Jesus, tonight we acknowledge Thee as the Creator.
We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, that although Thou came into this world and came here and was rejected by men and women like us, yes, how to love us and Thou just give Thy life for us. We thank Thee for the redemption that we have through Thy blood, our God and our Father. We thank Thee for those words that we just sang together.
Which tell us the shortest to say center I am dying. And so with this confidence we look to thee. We ask for help in the meeting before us. We pray that that would help us each one to enter into thy word and.
That the message would be from these, that I would help the speaker to deliver it. We just ask for thy health and the precious and worthy name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
So tonight I'm taking a bit of a risk and I'm going to talk about creation. And as I talk about this subject, I am conscious that, umm, perhaps in this room there are ones who have a different viewpoint from my own. And, uh, and yet I think the Word of God has very important lessons about it that each one of us can benefit from and hopefully we can.
Agree on the important things. So umm with that I just want to go in start with a verse in Hebrews Chapter 11.
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Hebrews Chapter 11 and verse three says through faith we understand and I will read on in a moment, but I want to stop right there because if we don't get that point, the rest of what we're going to talk about tonight isn't going to matter very much through faith or by faith we under.
Stand. It's not any other way if we don't understand by faith.
We really don't understand at all. The Word of God says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And so we start right there. And we could do the same with many other verses in the Scripture. In a moment. We're gonna go to Genesis one and we can do the same thing there. In the beginning. God, before you continue on in that passage, stop right there and acknowledge what that's saying. God is in the beginning, and it's by faith that we understand.
It says by faith and through faith we understand that the world.
Were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. And so we understand by faith about this subject of creation and by faith we lay hold of the fact that the world were framed by the word of God. Now let's go to Genesis chapter one.
We just quoted the beginning of that. In the beginning, first one, God created the heavens and the earth.
And the earthquake without form and void and darkness covered the face of the deep. It was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light and so on. We'll look at this chapter a little bit more later on. But as I already mentioned at the beginning of this meeting, I am aware that.
There are some who.
Would have a bit of a different view from my own. I believe that this verse, these verses in Genesis teach that God made the world. No question about it. We all agree on that, but he made it as sometimes and we don't know when.
And afterwards it fell into a state of chaos. And thereafter God made it in the six days that we have in this chapter. And there are others, perhaps many others in this room who believe that God created everything from verse one 6000 years ago. If that is your view, then I have one point about that. That is.
If you take that view because this is what God says is in His word, you have the right idea.
I have no quarrel with you, and that is a big point I wanna make in this meeting, that we understand by faith. We don't understand by evidence of things around us. We understand what we know because God has said it. We may not all have the same understanding of things, but to have a Thus saith the Lord and.
To rest on what we believe God has said in His Word is very, very important for us.
As believers, having said that, I'm going to acknowledge something else. I'm aware that there are those who hold an older view of the earth position, like myself, who accused others who believe that Genesis One One was exactly or right around 6000 years ago of believing this because of things other than the Word of God. And that might be true with some, but every single one who holds the Genesis One one with 6000 years ago that I've ever talked to.
Holds that because they believe that's what God says in his Word. And I think that's wonderful. If that's your reason, then you've got the right idea and I hope we can agree about believing God. As I go on in this meeting, I'm going to explain a little bit more of what I think these verses are saying and I hope I don't offend anyone. I don't mean to.
Umm, if it. If you disagree with that and thank God made everything 6000 years ago, that's OK, as long as your reason is that this is what you believe God said and you rest on him.
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And what he has said in his word.
When I grew up, I learned that the there was a space of time between Genesis 1/2 and 1/3, as we'll talk about in a little bit. And I accepted that. I went through school with that. And then some years later I heard teachings about that that wasn't true and that everything was done 6000 years ago. And those teachings I found to be very compelling and.
I changed my view and I.
Then at that time accepted that Genesis One one was 6000 years ago.
Thereafter I changed it again. So you could say this guy changes all over the place. And if you wanna discount some of the view of Genesis one, OK, But don't miss what I'm saying about faith and believing God. That's the critical thing.
I hope I can take that experience that I've gained and maybe it can be a help to you, maybe it won't. So let's go on first of all.
The idea that faith is what is important. I just say this on the other side, I am aware that some.
Who hold a young earth view. And for those of you who aren't exposed to this, bear with me for a minute. I'll explain this in a moment. Many here have heard this before and I just, I'm talking to them for just a moment. But there are those who hold that if you that the earth was only 6000 years ago. And they look at men like some of our early brethren and say, well, they taught something different.
And they're very upset with that, and they won't even read their ministry, and they write them off as well. And I think that's sad because those men held to the verbal inspiration of Scripture, and their view was formed around Scripture. And I trust tonight my view also will be based on Scripture. I'm not going to refer to geology or things of science. We're gonna talk about Scripture tonight.
So let's go to Proverbs chapter 30 and just take off a little bit about this. Is the word of God reliable?
And I don't think I'm gonna find much disagreement in this on this point in this room, but it's a vital point. I think we need to start there.
Proverbs chapter 30, verse 6. Every word of God is pure.
Every single word of God is pure. This book, the Bible, is filled with words, and it's not that the majority of them are good and pure, and some of them are a bit shaky. No, every single word of God is pure.
Go back to Psalm chapter 12.
Psalm 12, verse 6.
The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in the furnace, and the furnace of earth purified 7 times.
The word of God is absolutely pure, purified 7 times. God has written in this book what he intends for us to know, and he means what he says in this book. And so we don't take some of it and discount others, other parts of it. And in that I'm not talking against people who disagree with me on creation because I believe from all the ones I've spoken to.
That this is your viewpoint as well.
I'm only striving to say that it's vital that we have this viewpoint when we come to any subject of the Word of God, not the least of which is the creation. And so every single word of this book is tried, purified 7 times. And what does this purified word, this infallible Word of God, say? Well, we already read some of those words, but let's go and look on again a little further in Psalm chapter 33.
Psalm 33 and.
Verse 6.
By the word of the Lord, where the heavens made, and all the hosts of them, by the breath of his mouth, he gathereth the waters of the sea together.
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As in heat.
He sorry, I'm gonna have to use my glasses here. He layeth out the depth in store houses that all the earth fears. The Lord let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him, for he speak and it was done. He commanded, and it stood fast.
That's what God has said in his Word. You know, we go and look into this world around us as we have to in many different ways, whether school or job, and we find many other things that are being said.
God has said in his word that He commanded and stood fast. He spoke and it was He brought these worlds into being and is vital if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ that you accept that every word of God is pure and this is what He has said. This world was created. It did not come to be some other by some other means.
And we understand that by faith. And what is faith? Well, it's worth defining our terms. On that. Let's go to John chapter 3.
John, Chapter 3.
And verse 33 says he that hath received his testimony hath sent to his seal that God is true. And so this is simply what faith is. It takes whatever God says. And it says I count on that. I will put my life on that.
God is right, Paul says in Acts 27. He says I believe.
God.
That was a bit of a glare, but anyway, that's OK, I'll check with you. And it's important that we have this thought that.
God is true. Faith simply lays hold of that and believes God. Now, these are important principles because you know, there's many children here and either you are going to school that you're going to go to school and you're going to be confronted with things, things that are going to be difficult. They're going to say this word of God is not pure. In fact, it's foolishness. And here's the truth. And they're going to give you things from science.
Much of which is science, falsely so-called. And parents, your children are gonna come to you with questions.
And you're gonna need to have answers for those questions. And what are you going to say to those questions that you're going to have? And young children, what are you going to say to your friends who ask you? It's important that you understand from where to the word of God what he says, and that you're established first of all, that God has said something and then that you believe it. And it doesn't matter what man says because.
You rest on what God has said and so.
This is really where we want to start off. As Paul said, I believe God and let's go to Genesis 1 again.
Look at some more things there.
I now want to just go through and explain.
These first verses and how it is that I believe or what these verses are teaching and verse one it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
That means he started out and he made it. He created them and he made them a certain way. Verse two says, And the earth was without form, and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Now as our brethren have taught from the Hebrew, and I believe that this the earth was or became without form.
Or waste and void or empty.
This is a condition that God did not initially created in. And if you go and read Mr. Kelly on this, I'm just gonna refer to it now and I'm not going to go any further than that. I'll let anybody want to pursue that, do that in their own. But he goes into the meaning of these words became and without form and void and shows that this was not the original condition that God created the heavens and the earth in.
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It ended up that way and then you get down to verse three. You find God doing something else.
And from verse three down in six literal days, God takes the earth and he makes it. He makes it in a condition then that is suitable for man and for God working out His eternal counsels with respect to man on this earth in which we now live. Another verse that we can look at is Isaiah 45. So I'm just gonna give a brief overview of this.
And those who want you can look into this further later.
But Isaiah chapter 45 and verse 18 says For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens.
Sorry, some are still turning. There is a 45 verse 18.
Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God Himself that formed the earth and made it. He hath established it. He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord, and there is none else, and as I understand it, every other place where.
Created not in vain is used, as in Jeremiah and other places, in the Word of God. It always has taken up in connection with a condition where things had initially been.
In an ordered state and then fell into a disordered state. And so that is what is described in Genesis chapter one. And I believe that now those who believe that the world was made 6000 years ago from Genesis 1 take verses one to two to be the introduction. Just saying that this is telling that God did it and then versus 3 to the end of the chapter telling how he did it.
That's the the, uh, simple structure.
Of Genesis one as they understand that I'm gonna come back to that issue and I hope I can give you something to think about on as far as that is concerned. I told you before that at one time I believe that the earth was made from Genesis 16000 years ago.
There were two main verses that convinced me of that.
But one of them was Exodus 20 verse 11. In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and all that in them is and the 7th day God rested and and so on. That was the one verse. Found it very compelling. The other verse is Romans 5 verse 12, which we will go look at right now because it's important. We'll start there and we're gonna come back to Exodus.
11.
Romans, chapter 5.
Verse 12.
Therefore, if by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all has sinned.
And so the thought from this verse is.
That God did not make the world at some earlier time and did not create animals or anything else in it, because there was no such thing as death in the world until Adam sinned, because the verse says.
Wherefore as by one man Adam, that is, sin entered into the world and death.
Entered into the world, that's implied by sin, and so death passed upon all men, so that all has sinned, And so the argument is that if.
Sin came into the world through Adam, and death came into the world because of that sin. Then there couldn't have been death before the fall of man, no death before the fall.
Now I don't believe that's what this verse is teaching.
And I'm going to just try to show why in a few words. First of all, we know that there was sin in the world before Adam sinned. And 2nd Corinthians Chapter 11 tells us that the serpent beguiled Eve. I think we all know that.
In Revelation chapter 12 tells us that the serpent is the devil and Satan. And so Satan came into that garden and he certainly sinned before Eve took of the fruit. He sinned before Adam sinned as we have here in Romans chapter 5. And I'm gonna tell you too, there was death in the world before.
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That that Adam sinned as well. The word of God tells us that the Lord gave to man.
We could go back and read in Genesis one, but I'll for time I'll just refer to it. He gave them fruit of the garden to eat, and when you eat fruit, necessarily cells die. I also spoke about every seed of a tree, every tree having seed in itself, and then it would bear, that seed would go into the ground, it would die, and other trees would grow of their own kind.
And so this principle is introduced by God in the creation itself.
And that is no trivial matter. By the way, you go to John chapter 12 and you find that the Lord Jesus speaks about a corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying. He says unless according to week, falling to the ground and die isn't biteth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. And so this principle of death with a seed going into the ground is something that the Lord applied and tied to his own death.
It's no trivial matter that God introduced the principle of death before the fall ever was.
I'm saying that for a purpose, because the main reason for one of the main reasons why people discount that there could have been an earlier creation is that they say there could have been no death from any animals or anything else before there was the fall of man. And they do it on Romans 512. So what does Romans 512 talking about? It's not talking about animals. It's not talking about seeds or anything else. It's talking about man. You see it here.
It says wherefore as by one man.
Entered into the world and death by sin. And so death passed upon all men. For that all has sinned, all animals. No, all men have sinned. And so death passed upon all men. That's the subject here. So I just say that in case it helps someone, that there may have been, in fact, we know that there was death in the in the world before the fall of man, and there was sin as well. Satan has sinned before.
And I'm not going to say much about that.
But that's something that you need to consider, that sin had already come in before man fell.
Now I wanna go to Exodus 20 verse 11.
Exodus 20, verse 11.
Says in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is and rested the 7th day. Really if we were to start back a little bit earlier, it says verse nine, six days shall our labor and so on 7th day is the Sabbath and then a verse 11 goes on to the 7th day of the Sabbath and you see all through it's speaking about 6 literal.
Days and it's making a direct connection between those six literal days of the week and the Sabbath being the 7th and what God, God did in creation. And this agrees of course, with Genesis 1, which says the evening and the morning were the first day, the second day, and so on. These were six literal days that God made everything that we see on the earth around us today, every single thing.
As far as the animals, trees, man, anything like that is concerned, the things described there.
So you say, well, that seems so pretty open SHO shot if it's, uh, ever God made everything.
That's in them. Then how do you have anything made outside of that?
Actually, this verse is the one that convinced me more than anything else that Genesis 1 did not occur on the six days. And to show that I want to go back to Genesis chapter one and I'm going to just, uh.
Use a bit of an aid right now because.
We already talked about how Genesis One could be looked at as the 1St 2 verses being an introduction and the rest of it telling us how God did it. And it says if that's an if you just take a natural reading of Genesis 1, you'll arrive at one conclusion that is that God did everything 6000 years ago. I don't think that's right. I believe if you take a reading and just look at the words of Genesis chapter one that you'll see it's different and.
With that, I'd like to go through it. We can just start on these days and we'll go to the very end of them. If I have this working now, you're not gonna be able to read this first slide.
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I have it up here just to say that we have all of Genesis one in the first verse of Genesis 2 on on the screen and we're going to look and see how this chapter is broken up. And there's a very definite structure to this chapter and we know what it is. We know that there's six days and there's something before the six days, the 1St 2 verses and there they are in colors.
While I have them out as I guess 5 days here, I missed the dividing the 1St 2 days.
But you can see, obviously there's a structure. We all know what that is, but I wanna look at that structure and we're gonna start on the 6th day and we're gonna work up to the first. So please follow me on this.
Here is the end of the chapter.
The 23rd verse and the evening in the morning where the 5th day and so on. You get down to the 31St verse and then I have the last verse on the screen is the first verse of chapter 2. The question is the first question I have is.
How do we know when the six day ended?
Well, you go to verse 31, it says the evening and the morning where the 6th say and say that's when it ended. And how do you know that? Well, because the next verse says lost the heavens and the earth were finished and all the hosts of them. So that structure is pretty clear.
The next question is when did the six day begin?
Let me go up a little bit and you can see and God said that's in the 24th 1St. And how do we know that's the beginning of the 6th day? Well, because if you just go back one verse, you see in the evening, in the morning where the 5th day. And so the structure of Genesis one is actually quite simple and very clear, easy to follow.
And we can see then that something happened in the 5th day, and all of that which happened occurred between the words and God said.
And the words and the evening in the morning were the 6th sex. And what were those things that happened? Well, we can easily pick them out. Then in the chapter we find that the living creatures who are made, the cattle, the creeping thing, the beast of the earth and man, that all was on the 6th day. Now what about the 5th day?
Well, we just go back up a little bit and we see again and God said in the evening, in the morning with a fifth day.
And what happened on the 5th day? We find the waters bringing forth abundantly. The fowl that fly above the earth and great whale are all mentioned on the 5th day. What about the 4th day?
Just go back up a little bit and again you see the same structure never varies. The 4th day we can easily then find that we have lights in the firmament of heaven. 2 great lights. We know that the sun and the moon it ends with He says he made the stars also.
These are the things that are introduced.
On this on the, uh, fourth day, likewise the third day beginning with thank God said ending with the word third day.
And there we have dry land, grass, herb, herb, the fruit tree.
Second day, same structure and God said evening and morning for the second day there we've got the firmament of heaven, the sky made where the birds fly today. That's what was on the second day.
And of course, we had the, the waters being divided, separated in the beginning of that. I didn't highlight that the first say, what do we have? I think we all know that. And God said that could be light and there was light, uh, separated the light from the darkness. And that first day, of course, goes on the same exact structure.
And so if we look at that, put that together, we can see that we have this structure all through Genesis chapter one and then before we had these two verses.
That we started the meeting with. And just to summarize all of that in one slide, here we have.
These six days, the first day was light, second day firmament, heaven, dry land, grass, so on. All these things very clearly marked out as what happened in those six days. And that takes care of God, making the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that in the midst. The question is, when did God create?
00:35:01
The heaven and the earth. When did God create the water? Let's mention in verse 2 all of that was created. When was it? Well, some people say, well it was right before, maybe day zero, but that doesn't work because you don't have six days anymore. You have six days plus days zero, and then you can't get to Exodus chapter 2011.
In six days the Lord made heaven and earth.
To see and all of them that in them is I've gone through this exercise because This is why I believe what our brethren have written when they say that the word made is different from the word created on 6 days the Lord made things on the earth and those things that were made are listed in some reform up here on the screen in the green text and.
There were things that weren't made in those six days and those things are given in versus.
One and two, the heavens and the earth, whenever that was, it was made outside of those six days and the waters were on the earth made outside of that six days. The darkness as well. I hope everyone sees that. Umm, I believe that's the main reason for that line of things and.
For me I wanna say that I do not.
Compromise with geology or evolution or anything like that. Because of this, I have found there are a number of things that I see that perhaps they can fit in there. If they don't, what do I care? God said He created it. Is evolution true?
They say yes. Is it true? Of course not. God said he made man, He made the animals, He made the heavens and the earth. I don't care what they say. I don't care what evidence they default. It doesn't matter. God made it. And so whether you believe one way or another in some of these verses, the important thing is that as believers we believe God. He said he made it, and so he made it, and that's the end of it.
Now I just want to go back and look at a few more things with that.
And say too, that the heaven and the earth weren't the only things created before, umm, these six days. Angels were created as well. And we just do that real quick job. Chapter 38.
Job chapter 38 and.
Verse one you see if the Lord answering Job out of the whirlwind.
And verse four he says, Where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou has understanding, who hath laid the measures thereof it found knoweth, and who has stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the cornerstone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Now we see that this is the time God is Speaking of when he laid the foundations of the earth and what happened at that time.
There were sons of God there, and it says that they were shouting for joy. Now who are these sons of God? Go back for a moment to Job chapter one.
Job chapter one.
And verse six. Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.
And we see then Satan was one of them. These were angels that came. God had created the angels before he ever created the earth. And so there were things created earlier. And the Word of God doesn't say much about that, but it does tell us something about that. And we can at least see from that that God has not told us everything that He did. He told us what we need to know. He told us about His purposes with man, and He told us about His purposes with the Son of Man.
And all that he's gonna do in glorifying him. This is the subject, the theme of Scripture. And when it comes to creation, God has told us certain things.
And beyond that, we don't know.
We can see what certain structures are as we've gone through tonight, but beyond what's revealed, we just simply have to rest on what God has said, regardless of what we see around us. I'm going to say a little bit more about that, but I just wanted to take up this issue again about evolution because so many who are here are going to be faced with the question of evolution in school. And the question is, is evolution true?
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We already spoke about that and the answer is no. Well, it some of it might be, but by and large it is not. There are two things. One is called macro evolution, which is that somewhere in the process of time one species can change into another. And God said no, He created animals after their own kind and they don't change into another animal.
A horse doesn't change into a cow or anything else like that.
There is such thing, however, as microevolution, and that's not hard to observe. For instance, eight people are on the arc and those eight people eventually became what we have on the earth today, whether Africans or Eskimos or sorry, I didn't use the right word there, but umm, whatever terms we have for the different peoples of the earth, the Nordic and so on, very different in structure, the Asian and in this room we have quite a diversity.
Of, of backgrounds as far as these, uh, ethnic differences or cultural, umm, racial differences that exist among us. God allowed for that. It occurred as man, uh, moved to different parts of the earth. And today we see the effect of it and it occurs in animals as well. But that's a very different thing from the teachings of evolution. They go and wickedly.
Extrapolate that back to some beginning of a common piece of plasma or something like that.
And that isn't the truth at all because God created the animals and God created man. The Word of God says so and there's no question about it. And God created the animals. How long ago? 6000 years ago. You go out up to dates in the in our Bibles and you get back to that. These six days of Genesis one were approximately 6000 years ago. When did God create man? Approximately 6000 years ago.
And it doesn't matter what science says, and this is important.
Because you're gonna be confronted with it, and you may not always have the answers, but you need to know that this is what God has said, and you need to rest and what God has said in His Word. So I just wanna go on and address a few more things. What about dinosaurs and other animals?
The word of God doesn't tell us.
Where they in some earlier creation of God before Genesis 13 perhaps?
But the Word of God doesn't tell us, and so we can leave that question.
Now here's an important one. What about man? Did God ever make man before?
That one we can answer because the Word of God takes up the subject of man and the subject of the Son of man. I want to go back to some of the verses Josh is referring to yesterday, 1St Corinthians 15.
Important to see this because they now are talking very much about man and having existed many thousands of years ago and.
And a common thread coming all the way through to the present. I don't care what they find the word of God says otherwhere otherwise and they're simply wrong.
And we need to get a hold of that. What does the word of God say? And do we rest on that or do we get swayed by the opinions of men?
First Corinthians chapter 15 and it says in verse 45 and so it is written, the 1St man Adam. See that it wasn't, It wasn't a man before Adam. God has said so. He made it very clear in his word. Adam was the 1St man.
The first man Adam was made a living soul.
Now what about men? Will there ever be other races of men that God creates? The answer is no. We have that in this verse too.
The last atom was made of quickening spirit. Who is that? Ask the Lord Jesus Christ, and it calls in the last Adam. Why? Because Adam is the head of a race, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the last Adam. Because he's ahead of a race. He's ahead of the new creation, and he's not just ahead of another race. He's the last Adam. There won't be another race after him. He's the head of the last race that God has made all of God's purposes.
Are centered in His Son, and He brings it all to a head in Him, and that is the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose in our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:45:03
And that new creation that's in him, these are the important things that God has laid out in his word that we need to lay a hold of. And it doesn't matter what man says about all these other things. This is what God says and we rest on it. Now. I just want to go in our time that remains and cover just a little bit more on this subject of faith and maybe.
Somewhat of the question of well then what do I answer unbelievers if I'm challenged, maybe at school they come and say, well, what about, uh, them finding dinosaur and human footprints together? Or what about?
Any number of things.
Let me just suggest this answer. I don't know, don't be afraid of it.
And this answer of I believe God, don't be afraid of it.
Make sure you get that second answer right and really think hard about that first one. You aren't gonna figure out everything.
We're just not going to do it, you know? What if God not only said he created the heavens and the earth, which man rejects, but what if God also said that there's going to come a day when he is going to take people who have been dead, doesn't matter how many years, and raise them back up to life, bring their bodies back?
All those particles wherever they were eaten by fish.
Dissolve the dust or burn to ashes and scattered in their Ganges river. He's gonna collect all of that and put that together in a body and reunite it with soul and spirit and that person is gonna be raised again.
What if God said that? How do you explain that to your friend?
You need to think about that.
Did God say it? Romans chapter 8.
We know he did. Romans 8.
Verse 11 If the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up price from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you. Many other verses that we could look at, but the important thing here is that God has said it and this is a far more difficult thing than creation.
You go and you look and see what God has said. You see, this is the measure of God's power.
Just stop for a moment and say something. There are Christians who go out in apologetics and they say something like this, they say.
Faith is not reason.
But faith is reasonable. Is that true?
Kind of a neat thing.
What I'm gonna tell you here, I don't believe that's true at all.
Faith is not necessarily reasonable at all. Do you believe God's gonna take particles of people and put them back together? What's reasonable about that? How do you explain that to an unbeliever? You know, you go to Acts chapter 17.
And Paul told them about their resurrection. They mocked them. You go to Acts chapter, uh, I think it's 26 and.
The resurrection was considered there by Gentile to be a thing incredible. And that's what it is in the world. Talk about absurd that God is going to raise the dead. Oh sure, spirits or something like that. But raise dead bodies, put them back together.
That's nonsense in this world. But is it nonsense or is it true?
And this is an important challenge to each one of us, because does it matter what an unbeliever thinks about the resurrection?
No, it doesn't. It really doesn't matter at all. God has said it. It's true. I believe it. I lay hold of it by faith. I count on it. It's the hope for all those who have gone on before. Those of us who are living, we have an even better hope that the Lord Jesus may come and take us straight home to heaven.
But our faith is not necessarily reasonable at all. But our faith let's hold on God no matter what it is that God has said. And it says that that is so. God is true, and I believe God.
So faith rests on God's Word, and it doesn't need any confirmation from science. Remember that faith does not need confirmation from science. All it needs is a. Thus saith the Lord. Now I just wanna go.
00:50:07
And talked in the last few minutes about one final subject. And that is, umm, something that has come in to Christianity that might affect us sooner or later in our Christian lives. And that is the thought of creation evangelism. And I'm using that as an example, just tied to the subject. But there are other forms of it that are equally, I believe, unscriptural.
And I just want to address that because the idea is, and I wrote down this quote from a leading exponent of that, where he said if the first bulk of the Bible can't be trusted.
In their eyes, then, why should any other be trusted?
And the idea here is that we have to explain what God has said in his Word in a way that makes sense to men and women who are lost and in their sins so that they can believe it. And if they believe that, then they can go on and they can believe the gospel story and they can get saved. And that's what we want to do. We want them to be saved.
And I agree with them on the last part, but I don't agree on the first part. We do not try to convince those who are lost about the gospel. That is not God's way. And I just want to look at that First Corinthians chapter one.
Just a very few verses here in our last few minutes.
Because we talked about faith for us as believers. Now I'm gonna talk about faith for unbelievers and how it comes and it does not come through the intellectual First Corinthians chapter one.
And verse.
21.
Says For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God to please God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
But the Jews require a sign. The Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews, a stumbling block unto the Greek foolishness. But unto them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
See what he's saying here? We don't go. We don't go after the wisdom of this world. Look down in, umm, Second Corinthians.
Chapter 2. See how Paul came to the Corinthians verse one. He says Hi brethren, when I came to you, I came not with Excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.
For I determined not to know anything among you say Jesus Christ and him crucified. Paul did not go back to Genesis and try to convince him of that.
He instead took up Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling in my speech. And my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. Why?
That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
This is how we take up the truth of God. This is how we preach the gospel. This is how Paul went to them. This is how they believe the only way God reaches man. Go down a little farther here chapter 2, verse 14. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness unto him.
Neither can He know them because they are spiritually discerned.
And so we don't take up with those who are lost through the intellect. We don't try to convince them of anything. Instead, what do we do? We give them Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's the only thing that will ever help them. Don't try to convince your friends that the Bible is true. Just go and give them the word of God. Let's turn to Romans chapter and 10 for a final verse.
Romans 10.
And.
Verse 17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
They can't understand. Why can't they understand why? Well, that's where we started by faith. We understand they don't have faith. How does how is someone who's lost going to get faith? It comes by hearing and hearing comes how? By the word of God.
00:55:11
You don't have to convince them that it's true that person is lost. They're dead in trespasses and sins. And the Word of God teaches us that when we preach the Word of God, the Spirit of God takes that living Word of God and it applies it to one who is dead.
And it produces life there. That dead, lost Sinner comes to life and they get this wonderful gift from God. As Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 8 tells us, faith is the gift of God. And then they can understand as well.
And then they can know what God has said that's important both in how we believe ourselves and then how we approach others with the gospel or anything else about the Scriptures they can't understand until they get that wonderful gift of faith from God through His Word. Just a story in closing. I worked years ago with a man.
Who was older than me. He worked for me at the time he was a geologist and he.
Uh, had spent his whole life from his education in geology, and as part of that he learned all the tenets of evolution and everything that went through with that, and there wasn't a question in his mind.
And he told me one day, he said I walked into a Baptist Church and I sat down there and that preacher started to speak and he described me.
He described me as being a lost and guilty Sinner before God. He said that preacher was right. He said I repented before God and I believed in Jesus Christ.
He came to life. He was dead as can be. He went in there. The word of God found him.
In that Baptist Church and that dead man came to life. I rejoiced with him.
After I said so, what about creation?
The Big Bang and all of that.
He said, Well, when I believe, when I learned all those things, I always had a doubt. It was matter that went through a Big Bang. Where does that matter come from? He said, I always had doubts. I said, still, then, what about the creation? How does it fit together with all you've learned? He said, I don't know. He said, When I get to heaven, I'm gonna have to ask the Lord about that.
That was it was done, intelligent guy working in a difficult field, still working right along and all of that. That didn't matter to him. His faith rested in God. And that's the critical message of tonight, that our faith cannot rest in anything else but God, in his word. If you have a thus saith the Lord, you understand that God has said something in the Scriptures, then you lay hold of that.
And you accept it because God has said it, and no one.
Can shake you. Well, I hope that can be a little help to some of us. I hope I didn't confuse especially some of those who are new to this subject too much by going back and forth. I suspect it could be so if you have further questions, I'd be glad to talk further with any. But the big thing is that we believe God and let him be God and we as creature. So umm.
Just say 2 on these slides. The first slide that we had was from the Hubble telescope.
And uh.
There's just a few slides left on here that are all taken in space. Quite a, a marvelous thing when you actually look at God's creation. It's no wonder David said what he said in Psalm, uh, chapter 19. It's just marvelous. What I'm sorry, went by that one pretty quick. All the man is discovering that God has done out there. And when you see all of this, to think that's a very man who went out and, and got these pictures.
And then put them out here for us to look at them. Deny that very God. It's difficult to imagine such foolishness.
But we can take these pictures and glorify the God who made all of this.
The vastness of his creation.
And that's the last one. So like to close with prayer.
01:00:04
Eric Gardner Father, we pray that Thou would enable each one of us to simply rest on Thy word and to have the confidence in Thee that no matter what it is that we see or hear around us.
That now are true, we thank Thee that Thou art not only the God of creation. Lord Jesus possess our heart, the God of redemption.
That thou, Lord Jesus.
Died and rose again.
That's Howard alive, a living, powerful Savior. We thank the Lord Jesus.
That there is coming a day when thy voice will raise the dead, when all the mighty power of God will be revealed. That mighty power with which He raised thee from the dead will be worked in all the rest of this creation to bring about.
The fulfillment of all His purposes. We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, that in that day all glory will be today. We give thee glory now and thank Thee so much for all this. How it's done. We thank Thee and thy most precious and worthy name. Amen.