The Surest Thing
Genesis 1-11; Why it's true and why it matters • Sermon • Submitted
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Best Bet
Best Bet
I’m going to be in Hot Springs, AR in a couple of weeks. My annual golf trip. I’ve know these guys for 40 years.
There’s some good golf there. And, there’s a horse track. It’s one of the top second tier tracks in the country. Not triple crown, but the winner of the AR Derby always is near the top of favorites for those races.
I went to the horse races there once when we lived in LR. It’s a fun day. Impressive animals, competition, the speed and power, and a little wager on the side.
I spent a little time at the $2 window. I lost on every race, except 1.
The horse I won w/ was a long-shot. Preacher’s Pride.
I had to bet on Preacher’s Pride. 12-1. So I won $24.
I ended up a little ahead for the day.
I know nothing about horses and horses and horse racing.
Dumb luck that I won anything. No faith at all.
If you watched the Kentucky Derby Sunday it’s a wonder anyone ever wins anything at a horse race.
Rich Strike won.
The horse that won was the longest shot in the field, least likely to win. Got into the race the day before when a horse that had been in had to scratch. So, they called that horse’s ppl.
Completely out of the blue.
They interviewed the owner and trainer after the race and asked them if they thought their horse had any chance to win.
Their response was, they never enter a horse in a race they don’t have faith that it could win. They were about the only ones Sunday.
They had faith in their horse, but few others did.
Faith. What is faith?
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Believing, being certain, about something you can’t see.
Something you don’t have all the facts about. Imperial evidence, objective truth, observable facts are limited, but you believe it to be true anyway.
Facts get you so far. Then faith takes you the rest of the way.
Faith shows up in many areas of our lives all the time.
We have faith the monsoons will arrive in July.
I have faith in this stool. You have faith in those chairs. If you didn’t, then you wouldn’t sit in one.
Or, we sit half on, half off if we didn’t have much faith.
I have faith all of you will drive on the right side of the road every time I get in my car.
Not a certainty. It happens from time to time that someone doesn’t. But we’re counting on ea other.
We are ppl of faith. Christians, church-goers are known as ppl of faith.
But really, everybody has faith. Everyone has faith in something spiritual or religious. Even atheists have faith. B/C no one has all the facts and answers. They have faith that a divine being does not exist nor determines what happens to them after they leave this life.
Atheistic, humanistic, evolutionists reject the idea of intelligent design. That is, humans, animal life, plant life, the earth, the universe were created by an intelligent designer for a purpose.
They have faith that everything came about over billions of years of incremental changes.
No one was there to observe and record these things. So, the research they do now gives them some facts. But their faith takes them the rest of the way to believe in evolution.
They believe the elements that are the basic building blocks of life; carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen were in place in a muddy, soupy, liquid and was struck by lightening and that jump started the first living organism.
The electric shock like the AED in our fellowship hall.
Over the first billions of years, something crawled out of the sea and up on land and evolved into land animals. Then, a land animal crawled back into the sea and evolved in sea mammals like whales.
That requires faith.
Ben Stein, Jewish comedian, actor, news commentator; did a documentary style movie that came out in 2008 called, Expelled.
The premise is how God is being systematically expelled from our society. Jewish and Christian college professors are laid off when they express their belief in a Creator/ God.
He went to Auschwitz and talked about how the holocaust could only happen in an atheistic and godless society.
You remove God and then whoever has the biggest stick gets to establish the laws and determine who does not get to live.
W/ God, we all submit to an All-powerful Sovereign being greater than us who establishes the rules and determines right and wrong, good and evil, who lives and who dies.
In the movie he interviewed a number of brilliant scientists and asked the question, where did the stuff come from that became us?
Building blocks, elements, lightening; where did all that come from before it was energized?
Richard Dawkins, British evolutionary biologist and professor at Oxford, w/ a straight face, when pressed, said, “Alien insemination.”
He has more faith that aliens planted the seeds that became life on earth than he could have faith in God.
Another scientist, Richard Ruus theorized that the basic elements first appeared on the backs of crystals, once energized by a lightening strike, that jump-started life.
These are brilliant people. But their beliefs are based on combination of facts and faith; just like ours.
Whether you are betting on horses, betting on that chair to hold you up, or betting your life on whether or not there’s a heaven and how to get there; faith is required.
Based on science, observable facts, objectivity, empirical evidence, and what is described in the Word of God; your best bet is to place your faith and bet your life on God.
Last week we looked at the first 5 verses and focused on the first 5 words of the word of God, the bible.
If you can’t trust the first 5 words then you can’t trust any of the rest of them.
The events of the first day of creation, In the beginning, God created....Light.
Today we are going to look at the rest of that first week; days 2 thru 6.
See what described as it happened and discover how God set things up perfectly for life to exist on earth.
Day 2: Sky
Day 2: Sky
And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
The vault, or some translations say expanse.
v. 20 he will say the birds will fly across the vault
v.15-17, the starts will light the vault.
The vault or expanse is the sky. The atmosphere from earth to the outer layer of the universe.
Water was separated. What he is saying here is if we could see it, the outer boundary of the edge of the universe is made of water.
Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars.
Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the skies.
But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water.
Between the water, in the earth’s atmosphere, air filled the gap, oxygen.
Air has weight and is held in place by gravity. Scientists cannot explain gravity other than observing that it exists. Somehow, it is related to earth spinning on its axis. If the earth stopped spinning, then gravity would stop pulling.
No other planet in our solar system has it like we do. So, on our moon and those planets, air has either be allowed to escape or never filled those gaps.
When he established the force of the wind
and measured out the waters,
The word there for force, means weight. God’s words tells us that air has weight and is held in place by gravity making it possible for living things to breath and have access to the oxygen.
Even plants need air.
This prepared the earth for life.
It was the perfect conditions to support life. The first day God created light. The second day he separated the water.
The earth existed and is beginning to take shape.
Now that it’s ready, the first life is introduced.
Day 3: Land and Plants
Day 3: Land and Plants
And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
First he had to pull the water back and allow dry land to appear.
How many continents were there at first, we don’t know. Maybe just 1. Remember, when we get to the flood we will see that the entire surface of the earth changed under the water.
So, however it looked before the flood, it was different than what we have now.
Between first creation and then the flood, marine life settled and died on mountain tops. There are marine fossils found on high ground that can only be explained if water covered the entire earth at least once, if not twice.
Plant life appeared on the land.
Not seeds, but mature grass, shrubs, and trees.
They were just a few days away from animals and man. There had to be food immediately for them to eat. They would not have been able to wait for years for trees to develop edible fruit.
The fruit has seeds so the plants can reproduce. By design, every type of plant is not one and done. The seeds hit the ground, get buried, get watered and fertilized, and grow into a new plant.
All kinds designed to be pollenated by bees or other insects. No kind ever was pollenated w/ another kind. PPL have created hybrids. But the plants themselves kept to their own kind.
The yucca plant, native to Mexico. It’s pollen comes in its sticky, gooey sap. Only the yucca moth is big enough and strong enough to pollenate it.
The plant needs the moth to survive and the moth needs the plant to survive. They had to have been created at the same time or else neither would have survived to today.
1 acorn grows into an oak tree. And God knew that trees would be needed one day to be used to redeem fallen mankind by being formed into a cross.
Water, air, and food are in place. Next, reliable light to help the plants grow.
Day 4: Stars and the Moon
Day 4: Stars and the Moon
And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
The Big Bang theorizes the sun came first. God’s word says the earth came first.
Now, there needs to be sources of light, stars. We have 1 star in our solar system w/ our 9 planets.
How many stars are there in the universe? Impossible to count.
There are over 100 billion stars in our milky way Galaxy alone. And there are too many galaxies to count.
But, God knows and he named each one.
He determines the number of the stars
and calls them each by name.
Why? Why so many beyond our solar system
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
Why? To declare God’s glory. 1 star couldn’t do it. A few, completely inadequate.
WWaaaayyy too many to count comes close to revealing the greatness of God.
Plants on earth need the sunlight to grow. You probably know from you elementary or middle school biology class that plants will grow and face toward the sun. They will move as the sun moves across the sky from east to west.
Flowers will move to face the sun.
Grass, like on putting greens, will change direction based on the time of day, changing the way the ball will break on its way by the hole.
Our sun is our source of light and the moon reflects its light at night.
The Son is our source of light, and we believers reflect his light in the darkness.
The moon, besides reflecting the sun’s light at night, produces tides in the oceans. The motion of the tides allows the water to cleanse itself, providing perfect conditions for sea life.
Another difficulty for evolutionists. The salt in the oceans can be measured over time. It is produced as rivers carry silt from the land into the ocean. If this process had taken billions of years, then concentration of salt would be so high that oceans would be incapable of sustaining sea life.
But, as they were created, and as they are, the oceans are perfect for sea life. So, that’s what came next.
Day 5: Birds and Fish
Day 5: Birds and Fish
And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
The water was ready. Both the salt water and fresh water were prepared to receive life.
And birds need air. Their wings, like the wings of airplanes require air to flow under them to keep them in flight.
God controls them. The ravens fed Elijah while he was in the wilderness in the midst of a severe famine and drought.
Ravens don’t even feed their own young. But God directed them to provide for Elijah to keep him alive.
Evolutionists believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs. But that would mean the dino’s scales evolved into feathers. And their lungs evolved into entirely different organs.
Each to his own kind. One kind of life never became another kind of life. 10x in this passage it says, “according to its own kind.”
Kinds does not cross over. W/in a kind, there is growth. There are many breeds of dogs, K-9s. There were only 2 on the ark.
And, the bible answers the age-old question, which came first, the chicken or the egg.
The chicken did. Nobody would have been around to sit on that next to hatch the egg. God created the mature bird first, who laid the first egg.
5 days in, 1 day left.
Day 6: Animals and Man
Day 6: Animals and Man
And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
According to their kind. Apes did not evolve into humans. Apes have changed. But, not like that.
Animals don’t try to reproduce outside their kind. Designed to be attracted to their own. Perfectly planned and created for sustainable life.
Once again, I’m going to wade into some terminology that is a pretty hot topic in today’s environment.
We are created in God’s image. He said He created us in (plural) their image. 1 God, 3 persons, the trinity.
God laughs, sees, smells, hears, speaks, and touches. We do that, too.
Adam is the Hebrew word for Man, mankind. And, biblically, man includes both males and females.
God created 2 genders. You’re either and XX or an XY. It’s in the 23rd chromosome.
This doesn’t explain how an individual may feel, more masculine or feminine.
Science is so jacked up, that we cannot agree on what our DNA proves.
And, we can’t talk about it b/c it’s so emotional and ppl are afraid they will lose too much of themselves if we settle on 2 genders.
In reality, they will find themselves when the embrace who God created them to be.
What kind of society have we become when a Supreme Ct justice, who is tasked w/ drawing conclusions and making difficult judgements cannot say what the definition of woman, is.
Eve is the Hebrew word meaning “Mother of all living”.
Ishshah is the Hebrew word for woman.
God has given mankind the responsibility to rule over the earth. He has given us dominion. Take care of the animals and tend the garden.
W/ the responsibility, we get to use all the resources He made available to us.
We are stewards. That is, the earth is God’s and He put us here to manage his property.
As we use the resources He made available, we have to do better w/ out carbon emissions. We have done a pretty sorry job of taking care of our planet.
But the idea that we control the climate w/ our behavior is the height of arrogance.
We know how the world will end. The existential threat to all of us is sin and God’s judgement for a lack of faith and disobedience.
The world will not end due to overpopulation or an abundance of greenhouse gasses or man-made climate change.
God will destroy His creation in His time.
One example of our attempt to solve a significant problem as flawed sinful beings. Drinking water.
Bad water kills more children in 3rd world countries than anything else. Dysentery.
We have saved thousands of lives by making clean water available in plastic bottles. In so doing, have created a huge environmental disaster in our oceans and waterways w/ the empties.
And, BTW, every animal was vegan until after the flood. Humans and wildlife both only ate plants.
Some scientists postulate that b/c dinos had sharp teeth they must have eaten meat from inception.
Giant pandas have incredibly sharp teeth and they mostly eat bamboo.
Not steaks or cheeseburgers until they exited the ark on Mt. Ararat.
In fact, nothing died, no blood was shed until the fall when God killed an animal to make clothes so Adam and Eve could cover themselves since sin became a reality.
Whether you are betting on horses, betting on that chair, or betting your life on heaven; your best bet is lay everything you have on God and have faith He will deliver you into the Paradise He created for all eternity.
That’s your surest thing. Your best be.