Full Transcript

Hey, I am so proud of you! I am hearing so many reports of Christians being bold, sharing Jesus without fear, getting the gospel out to our friends and our neighbors. Now it’s my turn. It’s that time of the week for me to be bold. I told you last week that, in these next four weeks, I’m going to delivering the four boldest messages that I have ever brought before on topics that need a lot of boldness!

In these four weeks, we’re going to be talking about The Origin of Man, The Sanctity of Human Life, The Significance of Marriage and the Certainty of Judgment.

So, we’re going to have to open our Bible and see, what does God say about evolution, what does God say about abortion, what does God say about homosexuality and what does God say about Hell? (You knew that was coming, and you came to church anyway!)

Let me ask you to open your Bibles to. . .the beginning! Book one, chapter one, verse one, page one of your Bible! That will be the easiest verse you will ever find in your Bible. We’re going to be talking about the origin of man.

Here is my bold statement: I’m simply reading from the doctrinal statement of Harvest Bible Chapel. It says, “We believe God the Father created all things in six literal days for His glory and according to His will through His Son Jesus Christ, and He upholds all things by the word of His power in grace, exercising sovereign headship over His creation.”

That’s pretty bold. Some of you say, “I don’t see a problem with that.” And yet some of you are believing things and have been taught things and have assumed things that are absolutely contradictory to that statement.

We’re going to deal with some foundational truths here. We’re going to talk about the answer to the questions,

“Where did I come from?”

“Why am I here?”

“Where am I going?”

There are two foundational questions that every person must ask and supply an answer for:

“Did God create man?” or, the only other option is,

“Did man create God?”

Was man made in the image of God, like Genesis says, or was God made in the imagination of men, like evolution says? So, I’m going to ask Pastor Nate to join me up here. He’s going to help me out. Pastor Nate has been getting a workout this week. You’re going to see why in a minute.

There are two foundations you can choose to build your life on: One is the foundation of creation, the simple fact of what it says in our Bibles here. Look at it: Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Do you believe that?

Some of you say, “Yeah, I believe that, but maybe God used evolution to get that done.” We’re going to talk about why that’s a contradiction in just a minute. But please understand, you’re either going to build your life on the foundation of creation—what we’re going to read here in Genesis this morning—or, you’re going to choose to build it on an alternative foundation. Man’s best attempt to explain his origin without God is what we all learned in eighth grade science class, evolution.

If you choose to believe Genesis 1:1, then you understand that the Creator has actually given man some laws to live by. The Creator has some expectations for you. There are some things He wants you to do and to not do.

Yet, if you reject creation and you reject that there is a law-giver, who’s to say what law should be instituted? You could be a law unto yourself. You can be your own law-giver if you reject God as your Creator.

We understand that, as created beings, God has not only created us individually, but God has created something called “marriage,” for one man and one woman to come together in a one-lifetime, one-flesh relationship. Yet, if you reject God as Creator, who’s to say that one man and one woman should be together for one lifetime. Why can’t there be one man and one man, or one woman and one woman, or one man and three women, or who’s to say you even have to define it? Maybe you could just have all the sex outside of marriage that you want, or extramarital sex or gay sex, or gay marriage, for that matter. So, there are all kind of variations; you end up with unbridled sexuality.

But if you believe that God has spoken into creation, you believe that God has boundaries that He’s placed to protect the things that He’s created—namely marriage. So, we read in Genesis (we’re going to read it here in just a few minutes) that God actually created clothing. Did you know that? God said, “You’re not going to run around naked. That’s not good, because that’s not good for marriage.”

Yet, if you reject God as the Creator, who says you have to wear clothes? Or who says you can’t look at people who don’t wear clothes, if that is exciting to you? Yet, if He is the Creator, you understand that God has created some boundaries to protect what He has created.

Then, we understand that if God is the life-giver in creation, then every life has purpose, every life has meaning, every life has significance. But if you reject God as the Creator, then does life really have purpose? Why do teenagers commit suicide? Why do we throw away human life, or sell it for parts? What you have to understand about all these issues—these are cultural social issues that Christians care a lot about! As a matter of fact, we protest and picket and try to elect officials that maybe will make laws to prevent some of this.

But oftentimes we spend so much time focused on the surface issues, not realizing that it all goes back to foundational questions about, “Where did I come from?” Is there a Creator Who has given boundaries, or are we all just kind of a product of random chance over millions of years?

Well, here’s what we’re going to study this morning. . .

• God created everything out of (Genesis 1:1)

 

We just read it here. Theologians use a Latin term to describe God’s creation: It was created ex nihilo. What does that mean? It’s the Latin term for “out of nothing.” Do you know what means? We believe that before creation, nothing existed except God! And yet we believe that God has existed from all eternity past.

            God never had a beginning, and God will never have an ending. That means that God is the great self-existent One. That’s the definition of God—the Great Self-Existent One.

Do you remember over in Exodus, the second book of the Bible, when Moses was confronted with God and Moses was given an assignment by God? And Moses asked God, “Hey, who should I tell these guys sent me?” And God gave Moses His Name: “Tell them the I AM sent you.”

What is the I AM? Theologians call this the “is-ness” of God. God simply is, God simply has been and God simply always will be. That means that God is not dependent upon anyone or anything.

If somehow you have in your mind that created you because He was lonely and needed some companionship, or that God needed some help, you have a very small understanding of God. God is not dependent upon anyone or anything.

We read about this over in the New Testament, in the book of Acts. Paul is preaching to a bunch of godless people, and He wants to introduce them to God. And he says (Acts 17:24-25), “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man nor is he served by human hands, as though [somehow] he needed anything [from you], since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”

            “And he made from one man [anybody know his name? Adam] every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth . . .that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:26 and 28)

            Do you know what Paul is saying? “This great self-existent God that created everything is knowable. You can find Him. He’s available.” “In him we live and move and have our [‘is-ness,’] being.” (Acts 17:28) Do you understand, not only is God not dependent upon anyone or anything, but that means that, as created beings by God, you and I and every other molecule in the universe is completely and entirely dependent upon God for His or her or its existence! Do you understand the dependence we have on God? Not just our origination, but our continuation is dependent upon God.

In Colossians 1 (New Testament again, commentary on the Old Testament), Scripture says, “For by him [and, by the way, the antecedent of the pronoun ‘him’ in this context is actually Jesus Christ; did you know that Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Godhead, played a role in creation?] all things were created, in heaven and on earth. . . all things were created through him and for him.” (Colossian 1:16)

Lest you think that, somehow, creation is about you, you were created for Him; God does not exist for you—you exist for Him, and “He is before all things and in Him all things hold together.” Do you understand that only thing necessary for you to stop being is for God to stop holding you together?

Instead of you having “is-ness” you would just be “was-ness.” This is a great practical application for us! Does it ever feel like the world is spinning out of control? Is your world ever falling apart, are you ever falling apart? If you believe you have a Creator, in those moments when you feel you are falling apart you can go to your Creator and say, “God, You have the power and the wisdom to hold things together.”

Yet, if you reject God as Creator, what do you have in those moments when things are falling apart? We believe that God created everything.

Here’s the second thing we believe:

 

• Everything God created was good. (Genesis 1:2-25)

 

In the rest of Genesis chapter 1, we read a literal, historical, play-by-play account of what happened in the first week of human history. In verses 3 and 4 we read about Day 1, “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, and God saw that the light was [what?] good. And God separated the light from the darkness.”

            Day 2 begins in verse 6, Day 3 begins in verse 9. . .look at (Genesis 1) verse 10: “God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was [what?] good.”

            Look down in verse 12: “The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”

            Day 4 begins in verse 14, but then look at (Genesis 1) verse 18: “[He made the lights] to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.”

            Day 5 begins in verse 20, Day 6 begins in verse 24, and then in verse 25, Scripture says, “And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”

            Are you picking up a theme? Do you understand what we believe? God only makes things that are good! So, here’s our dilemma—do you have anything in your life that you would not put in the “good bucket?” Is anybody going through anything right now, where you would say, “You know what? That’s bad! This is really bad!” Any relational conflict, any marital problems, any disease, sickness—any tragedy that you’re going through. . .any hurt, any emotional pain, sadness, where you think, “This is not good!”

Here’s the reality—if you have any of that junk going on in your life, do you realize, you can’t blame God for that. That didn’t come from God. . .because God only creates what is good! Don’t ball your fist up on the face of God—when you are sad, or when you lose a loved one, or when there’s a tragic event—and blame God.

You say, “Well then, who is to blame?” That’s what we’re going to see, as creationists, here in a moment. And to understand this, that in the creation and in the declaration that what God created is good, we have an understanding of a moral God Who assigns good and evil. Man is not the one who decides what is good and what is bad—that is left to the determination of God.

And understand this: on the day that we stand before this good God, you and I will be judged on whether or not we were good. That’s a sobering reality for those of us who understand that we were created by God. . .and to understand this. In Isaiah5:20, God warns us that we need to agree with Him about what is good.

He says this, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. . .” Isn’t that exactly what we see in this world that is so twisted and upside-down in its perspective? To look at some of the things on the left, and you’re right, and say that our culture has accepted those things as something good, while God says, “Those are not good things!” We understand that it is God Who determines good and evil. . .

. . .and understand this, too—the world God created us to live in, you and I have never experienced. We have never experienced the world that God designed us to live in! We live in a world filled with things that are not good. That’s not the world God created. Yet, there is a longing in our soul to live in that kind of world!

If you have ever been dissatisfied with this world, if you have ever had a longing to live in a better world, do you understand—that is an evidence of creation? That is stamped into your soul—to experience this world that we have never yet lived in. Everything God created was good!

Here’s the third thing, 3) The pinnacle of God’s creation was a good man named Adam. (Genesis 1:26-31)

            Look at it here in Genesis 1:26: Then God said, “Let us make man in our image. . .” Now, the first thing that’s interesting about verse 26 is that there are plural pronouns here referring to God. So how many gods are there? Everybody hold up the number of fingers for how many gods there are. [people probably hold up one finger] So, why is he using a plural pronoun? Because we understand, even from the first page of the Bible, that God is One Who exists in Three Persons. We call it the doctrine of the Trinity.

So in verse 26, God is having a conversation with Himself and He says, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” What’s that all about?

When I was a kid, I used to love to play with Play-doh. How many of you still love to play with Play-doh? It’s like a stress reliever. And you know what? If you love to play with Play-doh, that’s an evidence for creation. You love to create things. If you have any creativity at all, that is an evidence that you are the product—you are doing something in the likeness—of the Creator creating something.

I say that to say, after you have made the little Play-doh man and spun his little head around and put his arms together, and stepped away from your creation, do you know, we can always tell who made the Play-doh man? Why? Because your fingerprints are all over it!

The same is true for you. You are stamped with the fingerprints of God. The likeness of God is in you. . .the fact that you are an intelligent being. . .the fact that you are an emotive being (you experience pain and sorrow and joy). . .and the fact that you are a moral being (you look at something and say, “That’s good, that’s bad; that’s good, that’s bad. . .”) Do you understand that’s all evidence that the image of God has been stamped into your soul?

But here’s another thing. ..Because every human created by God is stamped with His image, do you understand that every human being has dignity, value and purpose? That’s why we understand, life is a gift! We don’t deserve it! It’s a gift, and it’s a gift that is to be protected. That’s why we stand to protect the life of unborn children. That’s why we try to help teenagers understand, “When you think you have no purpose, and when you think you don’t who you are, your life has dignity and worth and value.” That’s why we are opposed to physician-assisted suicide. It is God Who gives life, and man has no right to take it. That’s why we punish those who take life. That’s why we believe in complementary roles within marriage.

Look at Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; [then notice] male and female he created them.” Gender is a creation of God, and God is the One Who assigns gender, and each gender is good.

Now, ladies, just so I’m not out on a limb here, would you repeat this after me, “Men are good.” [Ladies respond.] Alright, so about two-thirds of you laughed, and about three of you said, “Men are good.” Can we just kind of validate my existence as a man up here for a second?”

Ladies, say this with me, “Men are good!” That was not enthusiastic at all! Let’s see if the men can do a little better. Men, you’re going to say something different, ready: “Women are good!” There you go, men acting like men! Did you hear that ladies—you got completely outdone on that statement. [laughter]

The reason we know [those statements are true] is because God creates men and God creates women, and what God creates is good! Some of you stopped believing those two statements a long time ago. Do you know why? Because you don’t believe [your gender] was assigned to you by God. You just think it was a product of random chance and you wonder, “Am I a man trapped in a woman’s body [or vis versa].. .Let me just kind of figure out what I want to be.” It’s assigned.

But, let me show you something else: Men are good, women are good, but look at what happens when God puts one man and one woman together. Look at Genesis 1:31, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, [what does is say?] it was very good.”

So, men are good, women are good, but men and women together in a covenant relationship for a lifetime—It is very good! It’s very good for you; it’s very good for your children to grow up with their biological parents who love each other and are in a trusting, secure, intimate, permanent, durable relationship. That’s good for societies!

And do you know what? When we stop believing that what God created in marriage is very good, the foundations crumble and we see society lawless, boundless—and all kinds of issues—when we reject what God has said about Himself as Creator. And so, because we are creationists, we believe that we should protect what God has created. ..and that we practice sexual faithfulness.

This is the reason we have a heart for orphans and refugees, because we believe the image of God is stamped on those people. That’s the reason we value adoption, that’s the reason that we reject racism. Why? Because we believe that we’re all descendants from one man named Adam.

Do you know that evolution actually lays a foundation for racism? Charles Darwin, the one who presented this theory in his book On the Origin of Species back in 1859, and then followed that up with another book The Descent of Man. ..Charles Darwin said that he believed we evolved from apes, and that we’re still evolving, and various races have evolved more than other races.

Darwin classified—conveniently—his own race, the white race, as the one which had evolved the most. So, he believed that “lower organisms,” such as Pygmies. . .and he called different types of people groups “savages,’ “low,” and “degraded.” Why? Because they weren’t like him. We reject that! Because we believe that God has stamped upon every type of person—no matter what color, no matter where they come from—ultimately, they all come from one man that God created—a good man named Adam.

Because we believe that every life has dignity and value and worth, we even show respect to people who completely disagree with us theologically about what we believe—even about things as controversial as creation and evolution. . .people that disagree with us and that are caught and trapped in all kinds of things that we would consider sinful. . .we believe that even those people are created in God’s image and have dignity and value and worth and we show respect to even those people.

Do you know that evolution provides no foundation for compassion for those who are weak, disadvantaged or disabled? Evolution is built on the theory of “natural selection.” Do you remember this? Or. . .the “survival of the fittest.” What is the survival of the fittest? Simply this—the strong eat the weak. So, if you have in your heart any compassion, or if you’ve ever tried to help someone who is weaker or smaller or more disadvantaged than you—if you have a heart for disabled people—do you realize you’re actually a hypocrite, if you believe in evolution? Because what you’re doing is practicing something that’s put into you by God—to help, to serve and to protect those who are smaller and weaker than you.

Show me, in evolution, where that comes from. That’s completely contrary to what evolution teaches! If you’re an “evolving creature,” you are the best and the brightest and you simply step on and crush and smash anybody that gets in your way. That’s who you are as an “evolved being.”

We reject that, because we believe

 

• The pinnacle of God’s creation was a good man named Adam. (Genesis

1:26-31)

 

4) Biblical authority is under attack by evolutionary theories. (Genesis 2:15-

            17, 3:1-4)

           

            So, we move along through these chapters of Genesis and get to Genesis 2:15 and we read this, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Interestingly, work was not a result of the fall. Work was created by God, and because everything God creates is good, what is work? Work is good! Teenagers, did you hear that? Work is good. Just put that in your notes. . .homework is good; yard work is good, okay? Everything that God created was good, and God put Adam in the garden to work.

Genesis 2:16-17, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” So let’s see if they took Him seriously, and let’s find out whether or not they had a commitment to God’s authority.

We skip over to Genesis 3:1, 2, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say, “You shall not eat of any tree in the garden”’?” Notice, he didn’t come right out and say, “God didn’t say that. God doesn’t even speak—He’s so far away, He’s not even paying attention right now.” No, he didn’t—what did he do? He just came and cast little doubts—wants some clarification. “Are you sure you heard God right? Are you sure God wasn’t just being figurative? Are you sure it just wasn’t some kind of poetic phrasing that God kind of said about the tree? Maybe what God said wasn’t meant to be taken literally. Maybe God was just kind of giving a framework. . .”

He didn’t say, “God didn’t say it,” Satan just cast doubt on God’s Word. “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” Genesis 2:2, 3, “And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

Umm, did God say they couldn’t touch it? Now, right here on the second page of the Bible, we see the two great errors in theology: 1) liberalism—to say less than God has said, and 2) legalism—to say more than God has said. God didn’t say they couldn’t touch the fruit! They could climb the tree, they could sleep in the tree, they just couldn’t eat of the fruit of the tree.

So, don’t say less than God has said, don’t say more than God has said. Eve makes both errors in her judgment. You know what happened. Scripture says (Genesis 2:4), “But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.” The serpent challenges the authority of God, what God has said.

Do you know, that’s exactly what man has been doing ever since? He’s been casting doubt on what God has said, trying to harmonize different theories about man’s origin with what God has actually said about man’s origin.

Let me just say this, as creationists, we do not deny microevolution has taken place. What the Bible restricts—a proper interpretation of the Bible—is macroevolution. Microevolution is the fact that you can breed dogs and make smaller dogs, you can breed horses and make a stronger horse. You just can’t make a horse from a dog. That’s macroevolution. We understand that there have been all kinds of variations; we’re not denying that that has happened.

I’ll never forget walking into my eighth grade science class and learning—from my eighth grade science textbook—about evolution, taught by my very faithful football coach. Did anyone else have a science class taught by your football coach? Maybe not the highest authority on molecular biology, but—hey—he needed a job—and who’s to question the football coach?

Anyway, I remember reading in my textbook kind of a summary of what we were going to be learning in evolution. Do you remember phrases like this: “The universe began with a big bang about thirteen billion years ago. And the stars formed about then billion years ago. . .The sun formed about five billion years ago, and modern earth. . .hmmm. . .about four-point-five billion years ago.”

“Of course, then, water formed on the earth about three-point-eight billion years ago, and over millions and millions of years life formed from non-life. . .”—A  little gap in the reasoning there, somewhere along the way—“. . .life formed from non-life and then there was this primordial soup and there were these amoebas swimming around—and lightning struck, woke them up, and then one amoeba married another amoeba and had amoeba babies [laughter] and amoeba babies had upgrades. . .”

“. . .and they were a little stronger, a little faster, could see a little better. . .and they just kept having amoeba babies that kept having upgrades. . .they were these slow minor genetic changes over millions and millions and millions of  years and finally there was a worm, and the worm turned into a fish and the fish took a chance and climbed up on the land, and liked it [laughter]. . .”

“. . .and so he grew a leg. . .” You’re laughing! You obviously did not pass the test in the eighth grade! But you gave the right answer, right?

And then, of course, you had “primates, and the primates stood up and invented fire, and. . .” here we all are, right? That’s the story. You’re laughing. So, we’ve been told that for so long (and by that way, who’s to question the football coach?), so we just kind of assume, “That must be true. Seriously, we’ve had PhDs and we’ve had people who write books—and they’re so much smarter than us and they just must know more than us. Who am I? I’m not a scientist, so I guess. . .I leave that to the scientists, and I guess I just have to believe that. But I also believe the Bible. . .”

So, here’s what we do. We end up creating some type of harmony between the Bible and so-called “science,” and we try to smash millions of years into the six days of Creation. . .Can I just tell you this? As Christians, we are not afraid of science! Science, properly conducted, is simply the study of a book that God wrote without words. Do you understand this?

God wrote two books—one without words and one with words: One we call “general revelation,” that can be studied through the observation of the universe, and one we call “specific revelation,” that can be studied by learning to read what God has written in the Bible. We understand, as Christians, there will be no final contradiction between God’s book without words and God’s Book with words.

If there is an apparent contradiction between the two books—understanding God is not contradictory—that we are either misinterpreting what we’re seeing in the book without words, or misinterpreting what we’re seeing in the Book with words. . .Ultimately they say the same thing. God wrote both.

We’re not afraid of science, we’re just afraid of philosophies that man has written into what God has said, trying to observe God’s book without words—without accepting the authority of what God has said in the Book that He has written with words. One is general revelation, one is special revelation: both are the revelation of God, because He wants us to know Him as our Creator.

Psalm 19:1-2 tells this very clearly: “The heavens [what we see in the universe] declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. [about what God has done!]

We’re not afraid of studying science. . .but what so many people have done is tried to reduce what God has said in the authority of His Book with words, to give authority to what they think they see in the His book without words. So we end up doing crazy things in our theology. We invent things like “theistic evolution.”

Do you know what I mean by that? It’s the idea that God used evolution to create everything. There are tons of problems with that. . .

. . .People say, “We read about the six days of creation, but who’s to say they’re literal days? What if the days are billions of years?” You’ve got a problem with that, because now your sequence is off. Evolution reports that stars formed billions of years before the earth. But the Book with words that God has written says that Earth was created on Day One and the stars were created on Day Four. How are you going to figure that out?

Evolution would tell us that reptiles were on the earth before birds, but in the biblical account birds were created on Day Five, reptiles on Day Six. Evolution would tell us that birds came after insects, but God’s Word says birds came on Day Five, insects came on Day Six. So there all kinds of problems. And the whole thing is flawed by the fact that evolution uses the tool of death to build on everything, but God’s Word says there was no death until after Day Seven. That’s a problem!

So, if you’re having a contradiction, you’re going to have to throw out the interpretation of one of the books that you are reading.

Other people have said, “Well, Genesis was never really meant to be taken literally. It’s kind of like poetry and you just have to. . .” Then you become the authority over which parts of the Bible are to be taken literally. So, do you take literally Jesus’ resurrection? Do you take literally the Beatitudes? “Sure!” Why? You’ve already thrown out that part of the Bible [Genesis account of creation]—what gives you the authority to not throw out other parts of the Bible? You’re in a real conundrum if you start editing the Bible!

Not only that, there are scientific problems with evolution. Can I just give you five of them very quickly? First of all, the fossil record. You don’t have to take that from me; let’s take that from a scientist. Let’s pick a random one—Charles Darwin. This is what Darwin said about the fossil record. He asked a question: “Why, if species have descended from other species, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms in the fossil record? Why is it not all nature in confusion instead of species being—as we see them—well-defined?”

Let me tell you what he is saying: You study the fossil record. If evolution is the way all this happened, you would expect to see in the fossil record fish, then a frog-like fish, then a fish-like frog and then a frog. But if you look at the fossils what do you see: fish, frog. Where is everything in-between? It’s not there! So, Charles Darwin actually admitted, “The fossil record is the most obvious and grave objection which can be urged against my theory.” Okay, let’s go with that one. That’s enough! Since you said that’s a good one, let’s use that one. It doesn’t work!

Secondly, we could talk about the complexity of advantageous mutations (if you want to impress your friends, just use those multi-syllabic words. If you want to confuse them, use them, too). Let me tell you what I mean by that: Evolution would say that all that we see, as we’ve been upgraded from amoebas to human beings, are the slight genetic changes that give us an advantage over those that didn’t get the change. So, all you have to do is have an upgrade—you have to be a little stronger, see a little better, hear a little better, and then find somebody else to marry and have a baby that has that genetic change. And over millions of years of time, it just all keeps getting better and we’re still evolving.

Well, that’s a problem, because every genetic mutation would have to give an advantage and it doesn’t work. . .because ninety-nine-point-five percent of  genetic mutations actually fuels extinction, not evolution. It actually would kill you!

Think about it, you’re a happy mom and dad and you give birth, and the doctor says, “I’m happy to announce—you’ve given birth to a nine-pound mutant!” Is that good news, or is that bad news? Wouldn’t you say, “What’s wrong!?” You don’t say, “That’s great, we’re so happy! He’s different!” No. It’s a problem.

Let me put it this way: There’s a bug named the bombardier beetle. He’s a handsome critter, don’t you think? [There must be a photo on the screen.] He has a defense mechanism in him that is absolutely amazing. He has these two swivel cannons on his tail that he uses to shoot poisonous gas at two-hundred-twelve degrees, at any potential predator that’s coming along. So imagine a man old army ant comes to drag Mr. Bombardier Beetle back home to his friends for a party. This ant unsuspectingly syncs up and gets blown away by this toxic gas. Let me show you how this happens. Watch this. (video plays) Yeah, it’s a bad day. Watch it in slow motion—watch the tail. Yeah, “Go find somebody else to play with.”

Do you know what it takes for that to happen? If you take the chemicals inside the bombardier beetle, what you find is it has actually two distinct chemicals that—if you take them out of the bombardier beetle and you put them together in a laboratory, they actually explode—they spontaneously combust. So, the question is, “Why don’t they blow up the beetle?” Well, the beetle has an inhibitor enzyme, and it’s not until these two chemicals go into the combustion chambers where he preloads his ammunition that the inhibitor is removed. Then he actually has the ability to aim and fire.

He can go up, he can go down, and move it directly toward his predator and fire this, and it actually makes a boom! And the stuff comes out at two-hundred-twelve degrees! It doesn’t kill the ant, but for a while it does kill the ant’s appetite for the beetle [laughter]. Do you understand what would have to take place on an evolutionary level for that to happen? What if the beetle would somehow develop the genetic mutation that would give him the two chemicals before he evolves the inhibitor? He’d blow himself up! Or what if he develops the two chemicals and the inhibitor without the ability to aim and fire his two swivel cannons? He sort of like just blows it all over the place and he never hits his predator.

Or what if just develops the ability to aim and fire without anything to fire? He just fires blanks, gets eaten by the ant. It’s not a good day either way, if the beetle has been a product of evolution. But if you believe that God created the bombardier beetle with all those working parts—with all of its complexity—from the beginning, you understand what an amazing God we have as a Creator!

Here’s a third problem: The shrinking sun. News report, weather report—does anyone want to know the weather today? Here’s the weather report, “Today the sun will shine, but not as brightly as it did the day before, because the sun—today—will actually shrink—at a rate of five feet.” And that’s been happening every day! Every day the sun shrinks five feet. So, if you extrapolate that four million years in the past, how big would the sun be? Four million years ago, the sun would have been touching the earth.

Statistics have shown, most people would die if the sun was touching the earth four million years ago! [laughter] A great inhibitor to the product of evolution.

Here’s another problem: the drifting moon. The moon is actually moving away from the earth at a rate of two inches per year. Four million years ago, the moon would have been so close to the earth that the earth would have been flooded by the gravitation pull of the tide. It would have flooded the continents twice every day. Statistics have shown that you can’t survive one drowning a day. [laughter]

Then, here’s the best—the scientific laws of thermodynamics. Do you know about the laws of thermodynamics? There are two of them. The first one simply states that matter is neither created or destroyed; what we have is what we have. In other words, there are basically two things—matter and energy. Matter is all the time, every day, being converted into energy, and energy is being converted into matter—but you never lose energy, you never lose matter. The constant remains the same.

Evolution can’t account for the origin of matter or energy. Where did that come from? It never changes—it’s always there. We would just simply say, “God created matter, God created energy.”

Here’s even the bigger problem—the second law of thermodynamics. Do you know about this? It’s simply this—everything in the universe tends toward disorder. It’s called the “law of entropy.” How many of you have a teenager? Alright, let’s say you love your teenager so much that you take the chance and go clean his room. Alright? You, as an intelligent, creative person who understands design and organization go in there and expend energy in order to put things back in their place and clean the room. . .you come back there a week later, step into the room. . .what do you see? [laughter] Do you see order? Do you see disorder? What happened? The second law of thermodynamics, in the form of your teenager, entered the room, right? And lived there all week long. And without any intelligence, the thing went from order to disorder. That’s called the second law of thermodynamics—the law of entropy.

You go through the drive-thru at Chik-fil-a, you get you a large Diet Coke, you sit it in your car and forget about it. You come back at the end of the day, and what’s happened? There’s no ice, no fizz. The second law of thermodynamics: everything in the Coke went from complex to simple, everything went from order to disorder. That is a scientific law that is observable in the universe. There’s no debate in the scientific community about the second law of thermodynamics.

What do you do when a theory contradicts a law? Do you throw out the law—or do you question the theory? You question the theory. Do you know that the second law of thermodynamics actually proves the what the Bible has to say? Because the Bible talks about the second law of thermodynamics in the Genesis account, and all the way over in Romans, as it gives a commentary of what Adam experienced in the creation.

            (Romans 8:20-21) “For the creation was subjected to futility [now, we read that God created it good, but it was subjected to futility], not willingly, but because of him [Adam] who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

             The context of this is all hope. It’s looking forward. . .One day God is going to remove the second law of thermodynamics. When did the second law of thermodynamics begin? When did everything start going chaotic? God created a world that was orderly and good. It was after Adam sinned that the curse came upon the earth, and everything started falling apart.

Do you understand that what happened to the earth actually proves that there was a Creator? Romans 8:22-24 says, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves. . .GROAN inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.”

            Have you ever had such an awful day? Everything was spinning out of control. . .There was disease, there was death, there was chaos, there was calamity, there was heartbreak. . .Have you ever had such a day that you just audibly gro-o-a-aned? If you’ve ever had a day like that, that is an evidence that you are a subject of futility—the second law of thermodynamics—the curse—you are living in a world God never designed you to live in! And, without a Creator, you have no way to explain that. Your life is hopeless, purposeless and meaningless and random. If you don’t believe in the Creator, you have nowhere to turn on that day, when things are falling apart. Simply put, I do not have enough faith to believe in evolution, with all of its gaps, with all of its holes.

Do you know it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe that a loving, intelligent Designer created the world with purpose and hope, and put you in the midst of it and wants you to know Him? That’s what we believe! And I’ve got faith to believe that!

Here’s the last thing: Bold belief in the historical Adam is essential to grasping the gospel. (Genesis 3:15; 1 Corinthians 15:21-22; Romans 5:17-19)

Do you grasp the gospel? Listen, if you try to deconstruct the narrative of Genesis, and try to say that Adam was just this archetypical poetic figure that kind of represented Cro-Magnon Man or Neanderthal Man, and just kind of, “God said, ‘Okay, there’s the first group of men.’” Do you understand that in doing that, you deconstruct the gospel, because everything that we believe about the gospel finds it origin in the historical Adam.

Without an historical account of Adam we cannot understand our Bibles.

            We can disagree about the age of the earth. If you want to appreciate and grasp the gospel, you must grasp a literal, historic Adam as it is recorded in the book of Genesis, because from Adam flows the entire human race! Adam’s historicity is foundational to every doctrine in the rest of the Bible. You can’t even understand the Bible without grasping an historical account of Adam.

We understand that the Bible is inspired, inerrant, authoritative and sufficient. But how can you claim the other parts of the Bible are to be taken literally if you want to throw out the historic Adam? We believe that God inspired the author of Genesis to write an accurate, literal description of God’s creative activities in six consecutive, literal days.

The Bible presents Adam as a single individual, not as a group of ancestors that evolved. The New Testament writers—all of them [that reference this]—agree that the Genesis account is to be taken literally. The biblical books that refer to the first pages of Scripture understand Adam to be a literal, historic figure—including Jesus Christ, as He talked about this person named Adam, the first man who ever existed. So if you accept the historic Adam, you have the key to unlocking the understanding of the whole of Scripture.

Without an historic Adam, we cannot understand our world. A real Adam accounts for the origin of real evil in the world. The world that God created was very good, but the world that Adam created was very evil. If Adam had never disobeyed God, do you understand that we would never have experienced death, cancer, Alzheimer’s, orphans, human trafficking, refugees, terrorism and a thousand other evils that are in this world.

But if you understand what God created in His Word, and understand the Adam’s sin, you have an understanding of where evil came from. If Adam hadn’t sinned, there would never be flooding, there would never be tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, famine or Ebola. So where did it all come from?

I want you to look at Genesis 3:17-19: (God is talking to Adam after he has sinned), “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed [do you see the word?] is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;

and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”. . .the introduction of death.

Every time you go to a funeral, you understand, you are experiencing the result that came from a real Adam committing real sin introducing real death into the world that we live in—not the world that God designed us to live in.

Without an historic Adam, you can’t even understand your sin. If Adam is a fable, sin is a fable. If sin is a fable, the gospel is a fable. If a real Adam did not commit real sin, then we do not need a real Savior to provide real forgiveness, real grace, through dying a real death on a real cross. So we believe in an historic Adam.

I want you to look down at Genesis 3:21, “And the Lord God made for Adam. . .” Now, just stop and think about that. God has created Adam, put in a perfect environment, gave him a perfect command. . .Adam rebels, disobeys, commits tyranny against the God of the universe. . .sets himself up as God—and God lovingly, graciously still comes after Adam.

The Bible should have ended with verse 17, and yet because God is a loving God He came and made one more thing for Adam. Look at what it says in verse 21: “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.” Skins. Where did God get skins? From an animal. How did God get skin off an animal? An animal had to die. Death is the result of sin! On the third page of our Bible, we see that the price of sin is blood, and something has to give its life in order for Adam’s sin to be covered.

Do you understand that on the third page of the Bible, we have a picture—a preview—of coming attractions, for what is in the rest of the Bible? In verse 21, we have a preview of the cross! One day God would send His Son as the Lamb of God, and this Lamb of God would shed His blood to cover the sin of all those like Adam, who would kick God off the throne and rebel against God.

In order for our sin to be forgiven, someone had to die a substitutionary death. That’s what we see in Genesis 3:21. That’s what the rest of the story of the Bible is about. We can’t even understand our sin without an historical Adam, and without an historical Adam, we can’t even understand our salvation.

I want you to look at Romans 5:19 (again, the apostle Paul is giving a commentary as to what happened way back on the third page of the Bible): “For as by the one man’s disobedience [who’s the :”one man” he’s referring to? A literal, historical Adam.) many were made sinners. . .”

Notice he doesn’t say, “many committed sins”—the passage says “many were made sinners.” Because of Adam’s sin—and he was your great-,great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaddy, we have all—ever since Adam—been born as natural-born sinners. I’m not a sinner because I commit sins, I commit sins because I am a sinner. That means the answer to man’s problem is not reforming his mind; the answer to man’s problem is replacing man’s heart. The heart of sin has to be taken out and it has to be replaced with a heart of righteousness. How did God get that done? Do you know what He did? He sent another Adam. Notice what it says in the second part of Romans 5:19: “. . . so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”

            Who was the Second Adam? Jesus Christ, verse 20-21: “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death [that’s the history of the human race], grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

            We can’t even understand our future without an historical Adam.

You say, “Man, who cares what happened in the past?” Listen! What happened in the past is a foundation for what we know is going to happen in the future. Read in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 this statement, “For as by a man death came, by a man has come also the resurrection from the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” It’s as if Paul sums up human history in two men. The first Adam rebelled against God, death came on all, and because we are found in Adam we are all going to die.

The second man, Jesus Christ, came so that by believing in the Second Adam we can be connected to Christ and be found in Christ. Here’s the reality, the sum of everything we’re saying—One day we’re going to stand before our Creator and He’s will determine whether we are good, not based on what we have done, but based upon what the First Adam did, or the Second Adam did. Either you will be found in Adam—a disobedient sinner worthy of judgment. . .or you will be found in Christ, a justified sinner made right because He obeyed in our place what we couldn’t do ourselves.

On the cross, blood was shed so that our sin could be covered! That’s why the first three pages are so important! That’s why the Devil wants you to reject it, because he hates the gospel and he hates the shed blood of Christ!

Do you have enough faith to believe a loving God created you with purpose and design? He wants you to know Him and He wants you to be found in Christ, the Second Adam. Do you believe that? Have you embraced Christ by faith? Are you connected to Christ? I trust you are.