We Live in a Fallen World, Part 2: the Whole World is Fallen (Romans 1; 8:19-23 and selected Scriptures; Acts 17)

Prepared and preached by Pastor Steve Rhodes for and at Bethel Friends Church on Sunday, October 28, 2020

When I was a senior in high school I was talking with a friend of mine about my Christian faith and how important Christianity is to me. Her name was Amanda. I don’t really remember the whole conversation, but I will never forget what she said. You know how you can envision the surroundings of an environment when you think of past memories? That is the case from this conversation. I remember, vividly, it was towards the end of the school year. We both had math class right after lunch. We were walking out of math class as she said, “I make up my own religion!” I don’t think I argued with her, but I still must wonder, “Where do people get these ideas?”

Just over a year before that conversation I had another conversation with a girl named Laura. I was working at Jack’s Aquarium and Pets. At this time, I was working at the Jack’s in Englewood, OH, which is just north of Dayton. Like the conversation with Amanda that was to happen a year later, I can remember what I was doing vividly. It seemed to be a wintry day. Our pet shop had not opened yet. I was cleaning the pet’s cages and giving water and food to them, and I was walking back to the stock room. At this time Laura said, “Everybody’s a Christian Steve.”  

More recently, I heard of some people from a past church I served, who don’t believe in hell and demons. The Scripture talks about them.

How do people get the idea that they can make up their view of God?

How do people get the idea that they can believe whatever they want to believe?

How do people get the idea they can cut from the Bible what they don’t like and paste into the Bible things they wish it would say?

Who do we think we are to do this? Are we equal to God?

The answer is the culture we live in. Our culture is what is called a postmodern culture. But the major answer is that we have a problem. Our problem is that we don’t want to submit to God’s Word and God’s authority.

We are in a sermon series about worldview. Everyone has a worldview. We started with the idea that everything was created by God and created good. Last week we talked about how creation fell. Creation is depraved. Today, we are going to take that a step further. Today, I want to look at a passage in Romans that shows how depraved humanity is.

My theme today is:

Creation is totally depraved, Romans 1:18-32 shows the possible extent of our depravity.

My application:

We need Divine intervention.

First, allow me to welcome you to post-modernity:

I asked how people get the idea that they can create their own authority. That is called post-modernity.

Modernity was all about facts and figures and optimism. Modernity began in the renaissance period and ended some time in the twentieth century, when post-modernity took over. Scholars debate when modernity ended and post-modernity began. This is likely true because it is not like it ended all at once.

Some think the first World War is when modernity ended. Others think 1968. Either way, modernity was all about positive developments. The world was getting better. They called the twentieth century the Christian century. But then as we entered the twentieth century. We saw great destruction. We had the first world war with trench warfare and mustard gas. Then we had the holocaust and then the cold war. So, probably gradually, post-modernity took over. This is a way of thinking as well as art and décor.

Here are some quick characteristics of post modernism:

A distrust of authority, somewhat a rebellion

A distrust of truth. There is no truth. They think up their own truth.

We see this with the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone is an authority.

In general, think about it, we go to the doctor and if we do not like their opinion, we do our own research.

There is no one view of the world but a multitude of worldviews.

A pessimistic view that existence is useless (nihilism).

There is a distrust of knowledge. Modernity was all about knowledge.

We think like a Global village.

Everything is a sound-bite. Books are old fashioned.

These are commonalities. None of these are true of everyone.

1. Dr. Tennent the President of Asbury Theological Seminary shares about this:

Miroslav Volf is a Croatian theologian who now serves as professor of theology at Yale University and formerly, where I first met him, of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek, Croatia. Volf’s award-winning book Exclusion and Embrace captures the violence of three cities. (1) Sarajevo in the grip of the Bosnian war and the birth of modern-day ethnic cleaning; (2) the Los Angeles race riots in the wake of the beating of Rodney King; and (3) the rise of modern-day neo-Nazis on the streets of Berlin. Those particular conflicts are not in the headlines today, but you could easily substitute them for the conflicts of our day. He argues that today’s cultural conflicts cannot be understood unless we first understand the impact of post-modernity on modern thought. He points out that post-modernity embraces an autonomous self, which turns away from the values and identities that connect us and, instead, focuses on social arrangements rather than people as social agents. Identity politics becomes a new form of tribalism, spawning endless conflicts and power struggles. Volf argues that we tend to shift moral responsibility away from ourselves as moral agents and, instead, shift blame onto socially constructed and managed agencies that allows us to escape from our own moral responsibilities.[1] 

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[1] https://timothytennent.com/2020/09/14/my-2020-opening-convocation-address-part-ii-from-privatized-church-to-public-missional-agent-of-healing/

So, that is the dominant thinking of our world.

Why is it this way?

First of all, post-modernity is not all wrong. There are good things. However, our world is fallen. Sin has permeated us and our culture.

The media is fallen.

The news is fallen.

The leaders are fallen.

Even we, in the church, are fallen, though redeemed.

So, let’s look at a passage that shows our potential fallenness, or depravity.

First, a few thoughts. Realize that Paul is pointing people to Jesus.

Paul, and the other inspired writers of the Bible, were not afraid to offend people, and this is because we must be aware of our sin so that we realize that we need a Savior.

Preach the Gospel

I read somewhere: Nobody in hell says, “I’m glad my feelings were never offended.” Preach the gospel.”

Spurgeon said: “I will not believe that you have tasted of the honey of the gospel if you can eat it all by yourself.”

Romans 1:18-32

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ¹⁹ because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. ²¹ For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. ²² Professing to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. ²⁵ For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

²⁶ For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, ²⁷ and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

²⁸ And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, ²⁹ being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, ³¹ without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; ³² and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

1. I recently read someone had said “the difference between God and us is that God never thinks He is us.”
   1. This passage is about pride, pride puts us in the place of God and makes us think we can do whatever we want.
   2. Understand that God has set up a way in which we should live, and we have all broken it. We all have dealt with pride in these ways. But this is no excuse to keep living in them.
   3. This passage is showing our potential in sin.
   4. Once you commit to Christ, live for HIM!
   5. Live for HIM.
   6. This list of sins is not complete.
   7. Additionally, though these lists are pointing us to Jesus this also means that Christ followers must work diligently to let the Holy Spirit reign with us and not live in them.
   8. We have been bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:20).
   9. This passage is about the holiness of God and the wrath of God on sin. These are things that we do not understand, though we must. We must take these seriously.
   10. It seems as though there are many sins in this list which we have tried to excuse and in so doing we are also excusing our need for a Savior. I will repeat that:
   11. It seems as though there are many sins in this list which we have tried to excuse and in so doing we are also excusing our need for a Savior.
   12. This passage talks about how people shut God out and then God gave them over.
   13. Verse 24 says God gave them over…
   14. Verse 26 says, God gave them over…
   15. Verse 28: Gave gave them over…
   16. Notice in verse 18: The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against “all…” God’s wrath is revealed against all sin.
   17. Verses 19-20 are all about general revelation. What is known about God is evident. God made it evident. The passage says that we are without excuse. Isn’t that wonderful! God made Himself known to us! That is powerful.
   18. But then verses 21-23 goes back to how depraved we are: They knew God, but did not honor Him. They did not give thanks. Professing to be wise, they became fools. Wow! This is idolatry at its finest.
   19. That is in our world today. But before we are too critical of the world, that is in us as well. We all have a sin nature and we must lean on Christ.
   20. Verse 23 continues about idolatry.
   21. Verse 24: God gave them over…God gave humanity over to these sins. As we push God out, He eventually says, “Okay, have it your way.”
   22. Look at verse 25: For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
   23. God is to be praised, don’t exchange His Truth for the world’s lie.
   24. Verses 26-27: the passage says that God gave them over again. Why do people want to do things with the human body that are not natural or right? People are depraved and God gave them over. God let them go. I would argue that this is even part of God’s judgment.
   25. Women with women, men with men, these things are not natural. This is not the way creation was meant to be. I am also not saying that some do not have misplaced feelings. What I am saying is that feelings are not always right because we are fallen. We are depraved. We need Divine intervention.
   26. Verses 28-32: Wow, God gave them over to a depraved mind.
   27. This is the extent of fallenness. This is the extent of depravity.
2. Is this passage talking about everyone?
   1. Now, some could look at this and think “this is not me.”
   2. Yes and no. This passage is showing that we all need Christ. We all need Divine intervention.
   3. This passage also shows our potential in sin.
   4. This passage shows that apart from Christ we cannot trust our thinking. Our mind is depraved. Our nature is depraved. We need born again.
   5. However, in Christ, we are born again and our thinking is renewed.
   6. In Christ we have all the potential that Christ offers.
   7. Our world is fallen, we need Divine intervention.
3. Let’s apply this:
   1. Recognize that all of the world is fallen. All of the world is depraved.
   2. What makes people shoot police officers and then block the ambulance from getting into the hospital? The world is depraved.
   3. What makes people riot taking a city captive for over 100 days? They are fallen and in fallenness they think they have a better idea at a utopian society. In the meantime, in fallenness they want disorder. They are depraved.
   1. Why does the world want to justify and approve sin? They are fallen. They are depraved. Verse 28 says that God gave them over to a depraved mind.
   2. Without Christ every mind is depraved.
   3. What makes me do the sins I have committed? I was fallen, but I serve a risen Savior today.
   4. Trust in Jesus and point others toward Him as well.
   5. Who are you trusting in for Salvation?
   6. Are you recognizing that you need Jesus?
   7. Do you recognize that others need Jesus?
   8. Point others to Jesus?

Close:

There was an episode of the hit show The West Wing in which a lobbyist comes in to see the President and she is against something on Biblical grounds. The President responds using Old Testament Scriptures for example:

Lev 19:19

“‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

The problem with this is that then the West Wing is teaching Theology and Bible. But it is not only the West Wing. It is all of the world.

The writers of The West Wing are not Biblicist. They are not Theologians. They apparently don’t understand hermeneutics which is the science of interpretation. In the Old Testament They had civil and ceremonial laws. God was setting up a Jewish Nation state so when something is in the Bible one time in the Old Testament and not repeated it could, just maybe, be something for Israel. The Jewish dietary laws were settled in the New Testament in Acts 15 as was the rite of circumcision.  

These things in the world cause us to question and step away from God’s way, but we must understand where they are coming from. That is the world and the world is the opposite of God’s ways.

God’s ways are right, the world’s ways are not.

Several years ago I was coming outside at night getting ready to leave for work. It was the middle of the night and we were living in the country.  I saw lights in the sky. The lights were slow in coming and that gave me time to think of what the problem could be.

I thought I was going to have a Divine encounter, then a car came up the road. The road had a hill which made the headlights go in the sky.

A few months before that Meagan was on her way home to our house in the country. She saw lights in the sky and got really scared. She called her step dad who told her about a blimp in the area.

We cannot rely on our own wisdom. We must rely on God’s Wisdom and help, which may not help immediately in situations as the ones I just mentioned; however, we can still seek out answers and wisdom and know that God’s Word is ultimate Truth.

God has a standard.

We need Jesus.

Don’t miss that.

Point people to Jesus.

Prayer

Children are dismissed to Junior Church.

We are going to be reading from Genesis 3 in a minute.

Chuck Colson shares the following:

What does the face of evil look like? A few years ago when I visited a South Carolina women’s prison, I learned that Susan Smith had signed up to hear me speak. Smith is the woman who drowned her two small sons by letting her car slide into a lake with the children still strapped in their car seats. Her reason? She felt that the man she was dating had hinted that the children were obstacles to marrying her.

As I prepared to speak that day, I scanned the audience, wondering what this unnatural mother would look like. I imagined some kind of female Dorian Gray, her face marked by the soul-struggle she had waged with evil. Recalling photos from the newspaper, I searched for her face, but I couldn’t pick her out.

After the meeting, I asked the local Prison Fellowship director whether Smith had even attended.

“Oh, sure,” he replied. “She was in the front row, staring at you the whole time.”

The face of evil is frighteningly ordinary.

In Jonesboro, Arkansas, an eleven- and a thirteen-year-old pull the school fire alarm, assume sniper positions, and then shoot at students and teachers as they file out of the school. They kill four students and one teacher, wounding eleven others.

In Oakland, California, a teenager with a knife chases a woman down the street, while a crowd gathers and chants, “Kill her! Kill her!” like spectators at a sporting event. Someone in the crowd finally trips the frightened woman, giving her assailant a chance to stab her to death.  In Dartmouth, Massachusetts, three boys surround a ninth-grade classmate and stab him to death. Afterward they laugh and trade high fives, like basketball players celebrating after a slam dunk. In New Jersey, Brian Peterson takes his girlfriend, Amy Grossberg, across the state line to a Delaware hotel room, where she gives birth. They kill the newborn and dump him in the trash. Killers with freckled faces. Killers on the playground. Killers who do it for sport.[1]

Chuck Colson is writing about those cases in a section of his book writing about the sin problem. Of course, those are dramatic examples. Do we not see evidence of sin all around us?

What do we think of these cities with riots? What do we think of a police officer who murders someone they are trying to arrest? At the same time, was the victim of the police officer innocent? What is the right response? Do we not need the police?  

Why do we need government? On August 12, 1986 President Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

How much government do we need? What is the primary job of the government? I believe from a Biblical worldview, that means, if we get our worldview, our view of the world, from the Bible, that means the primary job of the government is protecting the people.

We are in a sermon series about having a Biblical worldview. Last week we talked about how God created everything good. Today, and next week, I will talk about how sin has impacted the world creating total depravity, sometimes called fallenness.

1. I want to submit to you that we need government, police, and the military to keep us safe. We need these groups because of sin.
2. I also want to submit to you that we cannot fix ourselves. There is no utopian ideal government, or non-profit group that can fix humanity. We need Divine intervention.

People have tried and they continue to think that government, or non-profits, or psychology, or science can fix humanity. They think the problem is the lack of education, or poverty, or men, or something else. But the problem is far deeper. Colson shares:

…the denial of sin and responsibility is couched in therapeutic terms, such as the need to “understand” even the worst crimes as a result of a dysfunctional childhood or other circumstances. Symptoms of family breakdown—such as divorce, adultery, and abortion—are defended as expressions of the individual’s freedom of choice. Social engineering schemes are dressed up as public compassion. But these are all window dressings, for beneath these explanations lies the same false utopian… It is the same worldview that gave rise to modern totalitarianism. As Glenn Tinder writes, “Much of the tragic folly of our times, not only on the part of extremists such as Lenin but also on the part of middle-of-the-road liberals and conservatives, would never have arisen had we not, in our technological and ideological pride, forgotten original sin.”[2]

BLAISE PASCAL shared:

Certainly nothing offends us more rudely than this doctrine [of original sin], and yet without this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves.[3]

 The first and most fundamental element of any worldview is the way it answers the questions of origins—where the universe came from and how human life began. The second element is the way it explains the human dilemma. Why is there war and suffering, disease and death?[4]

Let’s Read Genesis 3:17-24 (This is after Adam and Eve sinned)

¹⁷ Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;

Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.
¹⁸ “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you will eat the plants of the field;
¹⁹ By the sweat of your face
You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground,
Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust,
And to dust you shall return.”

²⁰ Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. ²¹ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.

²² Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— ²³ therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. ²⁴ So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

Now let’s read Romans 8:22:

 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. 

Today, my theme is:

We live in a fallen world and fallen humans cannot fix the problem.

1. The world is totally depraved, and we cannot fix ourselves. Look at Genesis 3.
   • In Genesis 3 we see that sin entered the world. Again, in the past this has been called total depravity.
   • In Genesis 3:1-7 Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
   • We often think, why did God place it there to begin with?
   • Realize that God told them they could eat from any other tree in the garden.
   • Also, realize that God wanted to give us free will. Adam and Eve have free will and they exercised that free will.
   • We all see the effects of sin.
   • We see what God told Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. Adam will work by the sweat of his brow.
   • They are cast out of the Garden of Eden.
   • There has been death, and disease, and murder, and theft, and so much more ever since. I believe the world is actually getting worse not bertter.
   • Yet, we are in a world that denies sin and that is a great problem. We are in a world that thinks we can fix the problems on our own.
   • Colson shares:
   • But if the source of disorder and suffering is not sin, then where do these problems come from? Enlightenment thinkers concluded that they must be the product of the environment: of ignorance, poverty, or other undesirable social conditions; and that all it takes to create an ideal society is to create a better environment: improve education, enhance economic conditions, and reengineer social structures. Given the right conditions, human perfectibility has no limits. And so was born the modern utopian impulse.[5]
   • Someone once quipped that the doctrine of original sin is the only philosophy empirically validated by thirty-five centuries of recorded human history.[6]
   • By contrast, the “enlightened” worldview has proven to be utterly irrational and unlivable. The denial of our sinful nature, and the utopian myth it breeds, leads not to beneficial social experiments but to tyranny.[7]
   • The triumph of the Enlightenment worldview, with its fundamental change in presuppositions about human nature, was in many ways the defining event of the twentieth century, which explains why the history of this era is so tragically written in blood. As William Buckley trenchantly observes: Utopianism “inevitably . . . brings on the death of liberty.”[8]
   • Glenn Tinder writes, if one acknowledges “no great, unconquerable evils in human nature,” then it seems possible to create a heaven right here on earth.[9]
   • So, we as Christians must recognize that the world does not recognize our values. The world does not think the problem is original sin. They may think we sin, but they may not realize that it all goes back to Genesis 3. They think we can fix the problem on our own.
   • REALIZE, I AM NOT SAYING ALL GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS ARE BAD, I AM JUST SAYING THAT WE CANNOT FIX THE PROBLEM ON OUR OWN.
   • These utopian ideas continue.
   • Realize that when we think that humanity can fix the problem, that is humanism. That is thinking we have to make the world a better place for humans and we can do it on our own.
   • This has led to Marxist teaching and socialist teaching. Again, I am not saying these teachings are all wrong. Maybe I believe that, I will keep that opinion to myself. What I am saying is that it does not address the fundamental real problem.
   • Again, Colson shares:
   • The fatal flaw in Marxism’s utopian view of the state is once again the denial of the basic Christian teaching of the Fall. If one is to believe there is such a thing as sin, one must believe there is a God who is the basis of a transcendent and universal standard of goodness. All this Marx denied. For him, religion and morality were nothing but ideologies used to rationalize the economic interests of one class over another. Small wonder that the totalitarian states created by Marxism acknowledged no universal moral principles, no transcendent justice, and no moral limits on their murderous brutality. The party, like the General Will, was always right.[10]
   • So, the problems in humanity all go back to original sin. They all go back to the fall. These sin problems effect all of us. I am going to talk about that more next week. They affect our thinking, which leads to the effect on our media, our government, our schools, our churches, and every other institution or group. Nothing is untouched by sin.
   • Again, Chuck Colson shares:
   • Ideas do not arise from the intellect alone. They reflect our whole personality, our hopes and fears, our longings and regrets. People who follow a particular course of action are inevitably subject to intellectual pressure to find a rationale for it. Theologians call this the “noetic” effect of sin, meaning that sin affects our minds, our thinking processes.[11]
   • The Reformers coined the phrase “total depravity,” meaning that our sinful choices distort all aspects of our being, including our theoretical ideas.[12]
   • As an example of the complete effect of sin on institutions Colson shares:
   • One of the results of this utopian thinking was a shift in education. Classical education had always aimed at the pursuit of truth and the training of moral character. But if human nature was nothing more than a reactive mechanism, then it could be manipulated and shaped by the laws that science discovered. Thus, education became a means of conditioning, with the child being treated as essentially passive rather than as an active moral agent.[13]
   • Again, the problem is original sin and we need Divine intervention, humanity cannot fix the problem.
   • The church is actually unique in a place to fix the problem because Jesus is working in us, so we have the Divine intervention needed. However, things will not be made right until Jesus sets up His reign (Revelation 21-22).
2. God stepped in to fix us.
   • Utopian ideas won’t fix the problem and we have talked about that.
   • Let’s read Romans 5:12-15:
3. Romans 5:12-15:
   • Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— ¹³ for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
   • ¹⁵ But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.
   • I am not going to really take apart this passage today. My point is that only Jesus could fix the sin problem and He did.
   • Adam’s sin was passed down through all the generations and now Jesus has reset things, or at least is resetting things. We can be redeemed in Jesus, but the world is not restored yet. We will get to that in a few weeks.
   • So, what is problem? Sin.
   • What is the solution? We need Divine intervention—Jesus.
   • Jesus changes us and then we change society. Without Jesus we have not repaired the heart. We have to be born again (John 3).
   • It is interesting how Christian love confounds the atheist.
   • J.D. Greear: Years ago, I read a book about the famous atheist Christopher Hitchens. During the last years of his life, he toured university campuses, debating a Christian scholar named Larry Taunton, the author of the book. Taunton describes how very few of his intellectual rebuttals made any deep impression on Hitchens. However, during his last months, Hitchens began to question things in his conversations with Taunton, and it was mainly because of Taunton’s decision to adopt his daughter, who is HIV-positive. Taunton said Hitchins kept asking him why he did it and marveled at Taunton’s calmness in the face of death. Taunton doesn’t claim that Hitchens became a believer before he died but that kindness and hope did something in Hitchens’ life that intellectual argument could not.[14]

So, why do we need government?

To review:

1. I want to submit to you that we need government, police, and the military to keep us safe. We need these groups because of sin.
2. I also want to submit to you that we cannot fix ourselves. There is no utopian ideal government, or non-profit group that can fix humanity. We need Divine intervention.

We need Jesus. The world needs Jesus. Next week we will continue to talk about how deep the effects of sin are on all of society.

Prayer

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[1] Colson, Charles. How Now Shall We Live? (pp. 185-186). Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid, 168-169

[3] Ibid, 147

[4] Ibid, 147

[5] Ibid, 148-150

[6] Ibid, 150

[7] Ibid, 150

[8] Ibid, 150

[9] Ibid, 167

[10] Ibid, 172.

[11] Ibid, 174

[12] Ibid, 174

[13] Ibid, 177

[14] https://jdgreear.com/how-to-turn-misery-into-ministry/

Creation: Everything was Created Good, part 2 (Genesis chapters 1-2; Psalm 8; 19)

Prepared and preached by Pastor Steve Rhodes for and at Bethel Friends Church on Sunday, October 11, 2020

Please take a moment to recall the story I began last week’s sermon with:

In Chuck Colson’s book, “How Now Shall We Live” he writes about a father going on a trip to Disney World with his daughter. He planned the trip with his daughter because he was having problems with her. They had found marijuana in her purse. Additionally, she was no longer interested in church. Then, as they walked through Disney World they had time to talk. However, first he noticed something on one particular ride. They were on a ride in which Bill Nye, was talking about how everything developed. But he traced everything back to a naturalistic worldview. Nye talked about how everything simply evolved the way it was. The dad then realized the problem. He then realized that ever since kindergarten his daughter’s education had been against a foundational Biblical teaching. He was questioning what happened with her faith, but ever since kindergarten she had been taught at school that we are merely accidents. She had been taught macro-evolution at school. Macro-evolution means large scale evolution. Macro-evolution means that everything has evolved across species.

I am in a sermon series on having a Biblical worldview. The Bible exhorts us to Examine everything carefully (1 Thess. 5:21). Every form of media is giving us a worldview. Every news source, every movie, every video game, every form of literature, every commercial, really everything that we watch, read, or listen to is giving us a worldview. Certainly, some things are fine. Some commercials, or books, or movies, or news sources are not corrupting our worldview. However, we must test them. This is important for us as well as our children. This is important for the church.

Today, my theme is that everything was created good. Today, the focus will be on an overview of God creating in Genesis 1.

My application is: examine everything carefully.

Let’s read Genesis 1:1, 31:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Verse 31:

God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

1. God created, let’s walk through creation.
   1. Recall last week I spent a lot of time focusing on the high importance of seeing God as the creator. If you were not here, I highly encourage you to read that message or listen to it. Now, we will talk more about God as creator and then about the creation process.
   2. God created and this also means that God is separate from His creation. God is not the same as His creation. God is separate from His creation.
   3. God created the earth. Now, the first two verses are an overview of the creation of time, space and matter. Starting in verse 3 God gives order to this matter. God arranges His creation so it is not such a mess.
   4. So, the rest of this chapter deals with the details of the earth and its surroundings. God chose to create everything in 6 days.
      1. On day 1, God creates light, this light may not be the sun. Most have believed the light is light emanating from God.  On day 1, God also created the idea of the day and night.
      2. On Day 2, God creates the atmosphere. Notice the waters are already there.
      3. On day 3, God creates land and vegetation.
      4. On day 4, God creates the moon and the stars.
         1. Notice that the Bible doesn’t use the noun “sun,” or “moon.”
         2. If you study the ancient religions of the Middle East you can see that they worshipped the sun and the moon. So, Moses was careful not to use those terms.  In fact, if you really study this text, you can compare it with the other religions of the Middle East. In comparing you can see that Moses is writing this correcting those religions and showing that there is one God and He is supreme.
      5. On Day 5, God creates the creatures of the sea and the air.
      6. On day 6, God creates the land animals and humans. Humans are the only creation specified. Humans are also created in God’s image.
      7. Notice also that it takes male and female to reflect the image of God.
   5. If we read on to Genesis chapter 2, we see more specific detail about the creation of Adam and Eve.
   6. God created everything, seen and unseen.
      1. Nehemiah 9:6: “You alone are the Lord.
         You have made the heavens,
         The heaven of heavens with all their host,
         The earth and all that is on it,
         The seas and all that is in them.
         You give life to all of them
         And the heavenly host bows down before You.
      2. Col. 1:16: For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 
   7. Scripture affirms the direct creation of Adam and Eve.
   8. Wayne Grudem writes:
   9. The Direct Creation of Adam and Eve. The Bible also teaches that God created Adam and Eve in a special, personal way. “The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). After that, God created Eve from Adam’s body: “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man” (Gen. 2:21–22). God apparently let Adam know something of what had happened, for Adam said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Gen. 2:23)[1]
   10. In Genesis chapter 2 the Bible gives great detail about God creating Adam and Eve.
   11. Now, I know that I am being somewhat simplistic. Today, my goal to teach that God created everything good. That is important to the Biblical worldview. Today, my goal is not to teach on evolution versus creation and the evidence for a young earth creation. I have preached and taught on that before and will again. Today, my focus is that the Bible teaches that God created and He created everything as good.
   12. I don’t think I have to convince you about the importance of creation. I think I have to convince you of the importance to test everything (1 Thess. 5:21). Every form of media is trying to counter the Christian worldview.
2. Death, pain, and destruction is not how God meant for things to be.
   • If you read through Genesis 1 and 2, we see that God created everything good.
   • There was no death.
   • Listen, we were not created to die. In the Garden of Eden there was the tree of life (Genesis 2:9) and because of the tree of life humans could live forever. Genesis 3:22 shows that the tree of life is what allows us to live forever.
   • Some day God will restore creation and we see in Revelation 2:7; 22:2, 14, and 19 that the tree of life will be part of the new heaven and the new earth.
3. Apply
   • God created everything, we must worship Him as the creator.
   • God is the creator, this means that He owns everything.
   • God is the author of life, this means that we must submit to Him as the ruler.
   • God is the author and that means that He has a purpose in creating the world and us.
   • If we have a purpose that means we are designed, and life is NOT meaningless.
   • Being that we are not the author of life we do not have the authority to destroy life.
   • Being that we are created this means that life is sacred.
   • We must not insult God by failure to attribute things to Him.
   • We must trust God; why shouldn’t we, if He is powerful enough to create everything we see, then He is trustworthy.
   • God created. All of creation, seen and unseen comes from God.
   • We must NOT worship creation. Worship God.
   • God created, we must not be afraid, He is the creator and He is in charge.
   • When we see beauty, we must worship God who created it.
   • God created the world good, this means that when we see pain and suffering and bad things this is not as it was meant to be.

1 Thess. 5:21 shares that we are to examine everything carefully.

 J. GRESHAM MACHEN shares:

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here or there, if we permit the whole collective thought of a nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.[2]

Where did history come from? God created everything and everything was created good.

My challenge to you is that you go home and test things. This week tests every form of media: movies, music, news, books, and notice what worldview it is teaching. Make sure that you hold true to the Biblical worldview.

Pray

---

[1] Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; Zondervan Pub. House, 2004), 262–314.

[2] Colson, Charles. How Now Shall We Live? (p. 27). Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Creation: Everything was Created Good, Part 1 (Genesis chapters 1-2; Psalm 8; 19)

Prepared and preached by Pastor Steve Rhodes for and at Bethel Friends Church on Sunday, October 4, 2020

In Chuck Colson’s book, “How Now Shall We Live” he writes about a father going on a trip to Disney World with his daughter. He planned the trip with his daughter because he was having problems with her. They had found marijuana in her purse. Additionally, she was no longer interested in church. Then, as they walked through Disney World they had time to talk. However, first he noticed something on one particular ride. They were on a ride in which Bill Nye, was talking about how everything developed. But he traced everything back to a naturalistic worldview. Nye talked about how everything simply evolved the way it was. The dad then realized the problem. He then realized that ever since kindergarten his daughter’s education had been against a foundational Biblical teaching. He was questioning what happened with her faith, but ever since kindergarten she had been taught at school that we are merely accidents. She had been taught macro-evolution at school. Macro-evolution means large scale evolution. Macro-evolution means that everything has evolved across species.

I am in a sermon series on having a Biblical worldview. The Bible exhorts us to Examine everything carefully (1 Thess. 5:21). Every form of media is giving us a worldview. Every news source, every movie, every video game, every form of literature, every commercial, really everything that we watch, read, or listen to is giving us a worldview. Certainly, some things are fine. Some commercials, or books, or movies, or news sources are not corrupting our worldview. However, we must test them. This is important for us as well as our children. This is important for the church.

Everyone has a worldview, but most of us do not think about our worldview. It is under the surface. Ravi Zacharias argued that a coherent worldview must be able to satisfactorily answer four questions: that of origin, meaning of life, morality, and destiny. He said that while every major religion makes exclusive claims about truth, the Christian faith is unique in its ability to answer all four of these questions. Further, Taking it a step further, the three tests for truth must be applied to any worldview: logical consistency, empirical adequacy, and experiential relevance. When submitted to these tests, the Christian message is utterly unique and meets the demand for truth.[1]

So, today, we are dealing with the origin question. Today’s sermon was too long and so I have decided to split it in two parts.

Today, my theme is that everything was created good. Today, the focus will be on God as the creator and next week we will spend more time on Genesis 1.

My application is: examine everything carefully.

Let’s read Genesis 1:1, 31:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Verse 31:

God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

1. Everything was created good.
   1. A biblical worldview teaches that everything was created good (Genesis 1 and 2); creation is now fallen because of sin (Genesis 3); Jesus has redeemed us (John 3:16); but creation is not restored yet. Creation will be restored eventually (Rev. 21 and 22).
   2. In Genesis chapter 1 we see that God created everything. God created everything and at the end of the week of creation He looked upon His creation and everything was good, but not just good, it was very good.
   3. There was no death, there was no pain, or suffering. We see that does not enter the Biblical narrative until Genesis 3.
   4. Psalm 8 is about how awesome God’s creation of humanity is. Then, we have Psalm 19 also about God’s awesome creation. Then, we have Psalm 139 about how God creates a baby in his mother’s womb.
   5. We are intricately woven together.
   6. We need to notice a few things. We must notice that God created and we must notice that creation was good.
   7. God created.
      1. God created. Things were created by God, not naturalism (the world as we see it). Realize this. Naturalism would say that everything just evolved, totally evolved. Colson writes: Every worldview has to begin somewhere, has to begin with a theory of how the universe began. Naturalism begins with the fundamental assumption that the forces of nature alone are adequate to explain everything that exists. Whereas the Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1), naturalists say that in the beginning were the particles, along with blind, purposeless natural laws. That nature created the universe out of nothing, through a quantum fluctuation. That nature formed our planet, with its unique ability to support life.
      2. That nature drew together the chemicals that formed the first living cell. And naturalism says that nature acted through Darwinian mechanisms to evolve complex life-forms and, finally, human beings, with the marvels of consciousness and intelligence. Naturalistic scientists try to give the impression that they are fair-minded and objective, implying that religious people are subjective and biased in favor of their personal beliefs. But this is a ruse, for naturalism is as much a philosophy, a worldview, a personal belief system as any religion is. Naturalism begins with premises that cannot be tested empirically, such as the assumption that nature is “all that is or ever was or ever will be,” to use a line from the late Carl Sagan’s popular science program Cosmos. This is not a scientific statement, for there is no conceivable way it could be tested. It is a philosophy.[2]

• Further, Colson writes:
• In one of his many best-selling books, Sagan mockingly describes the Christian God as “an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow.” Sagan regards the cosmos as the only self-existing, eternal being: “A universe that is infinitely old requires no Creator.” On point after point, Sagan offers a naturalistic substitute for traditional religion. While Christianity teaches that we are children of God, Sagan says that “we are, in the most profound sense, children of the Cosmos,” for it is the cosmos that gave us birth and daily sustains us. In a passage that is almost certainly autobiographical, Sagan hints that the astronomer’s urge to explore the cosmos is motivated by a mystical recognition that the chemicals in our bodies were originally forged in space—that outer space is our origin and our true home: “Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return.” And the astronomer’s “awe” is nothing less than religious worship. “Our ancestors worshiped the Sun, and they were far from foolish.” For if we must worship something, “does it not make sense to revere the Sun and the stars?”[3]
• One more Colson quote about naturalism: This religion is being taught everywhere in the public square today—even in the books your child reads in school or checks out of the public library. Not long ago, Nancy picked up a Berenstain Bears book for her young son. In the book, the Bear family invites the young reader to join them for a nature walk. We start out on a sunny morning, and after running into a few spiderwebs, we read in capital letters sprawled across a sunrise, glazed with light rays, the words: Nature is “all that IS, or WAS, or EVER WILL BE!”[4]
• There are many problems with naturalism, but it does give people a worldview without God and that is why I think it is so popular.
• Chuck Colson’s book, How Now Shall We Live gives great detail of the problems with naturalism. One of which is it is based on macro/ large scale evolution. But there is a quote which I like [Design] is the most empirical of the arguments for God [based on] observational premises about the kind of order we discover in nature (FREDERICK FERRÉ)[5]
• I want to share a few more things to add to that and these come from Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearsey:

The late Christian evangelist Francis Schaeffer used to offer an argument against evolution that was simple, easy to grasp, and devastating: Suppose a fish evolves lungs. What happens then? Does it move up to the next evolutionary stage? Of course not. It drowns.

Living things cannot simply change piecemeal—a new organ here, a new limb there. An organism is an integrated system, and any isolated change in the system is more likely to be harmful than helpful. If a fish’s gills were to begin mutating into a set of lungs, it would be a disaster, not an advantage. The only way to turn a fish into a land-dwelling animal is to transform it all at once, with a host of interrelated changes happening at the same time—not only lungs but also coadapted changes in the skeleton, the circulatory system, and so on.

The term to describe this kind of interdependent system is irreducible complexity. And the fact that organisms are irreducibly complex is yet another argument that they could not have evolved piecemeal, one step at a time, as Darwin proposed. Darwinian theory states that all living structures evolved in small, gradual steps from simpler structures—feathers from scales, wings from forelegs, blossoms from leaves, and so on. But anything that is irreducibly complex cannot evolve in gradual steps, and thus its very existence refutes Darwin’s theory.

The concept of irreducible complexity was developed by Michael Behe, a Lehigh University professor of biochemistry, in his 1993 book Darwin’s Black Box. Behe’s homey example of irreducible complexity is the mousetrap. A mousetrap cannot be assembled gradually, he points out. You cannot start with a wooden platform and catch a few mice, add a spring and catch a few more mice, add a hammer, and so on, each addition making the mousetrap function better. No, to even start catching mice, all the parts must be assembled from the outset. The mousetrap doesn’t work until all its parts are present and working working together. 

Today we can confidently say that his theory has broken down, for we now know that nature is full of examples of complex organs that could not possibly have been formed by numerous, slight modifications—that is, organs that are irreducibly complex. Take the example of the bat. Evolutionists propose that the bat evolved from a small, mouselike creature whose forelimbs (the “front toes”) developed into wings by gradual steps. But picture the steps: As the “front toes” grow longer and the skin begins to grow between them, the animal can no longer run without stumbling over them; and yet the forelimbs are not long enough to function as wings. And so, during most of its hypothetical transitional stages, the poor creature would have limbs too long for running and too short for flying. It would flop along helplessly and soon become extinct. There is no conceivable pathway for bat wings to be formed in gradual stages. And this conclusion is confirmed by the fossil record, where we find no transitional fossils leading up to bats. The first time bats appear in the fossil record, they are already fully formed and virtually identical to modern bats.[6]

Another example of irreducible complexity is the human eye. It could not develop in stages. My point is that God created, and we will come back to that in a minute, but let’s move on.

• If God created then, we have a purpose.
• God created: this is NOT nihilism which means life has no purpose. We have a purpose because God created us. We are created and if we walk through Genesis chapters 1 and 2 we see God giving man and woman a purpose. Man and woman were called to tend the garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15). We are still called by God to steward the planet. We are called to have children, that is still part of our purpose.
• God created: this is NOT existentialism, which means I must find meaning in my life because my life has no meaning.
• No, God gives us meaning to our life. God created us.
• God created: this is NOT hedonism: life has no purpose, have fun, go for it! Funny as it is, those who make life all about their own purpose are the most unhappy.
• No, life has a purpose and it is not simply about our fun.
• God created: this is NOT humanism, I must make the world a better place for humans.
• No, God is the creator. Humanism is closely linked with naturalism, which I already mentioned.
• God created: this is NOT transcendentalism which is nature is God, not pantheism, not panentheism.
• God created: this is NOT Pantheism which teaches that all is God. “Pan” means “all” and “theism” means God.
• God created: this is not panentheism which teaches that everything is in God. “Pan” means “all” and “en” means “in” and “theism” mean God.
• God created: this IS Theism

Wrap-up:

Do you understand that when we take God out of the picture it does not work. I have shown you a fraction of the evidence against macro-evolution, further, the Bible makes clear that God is the creator and we will talk more about that next week.

Further, understand, when God is taken out of the picture it makes life meaningless, purposeless. When we take God of the picture it leads to what our society is experiencing today. Right now, there is no authority, why is that? It is because they have taken God out of society. There is now no right and wrong because God has been taken out. The Biblical worldview begins with God creating everything good.

1 Thess. 5:21 shares that we are to examine everything carefully.

Test everything with the Biblical worldview.

Ravi Zacharias shares:

Common is the sentiment among recent college graduates that they went in feeling like they knew something, and leave realizing, in fact, how little they know. I remember what this felt like, walking down the aisle to accept my diploma, wondering at the irony. Yet as uncomfortable as that moment of recognition might be, I am convinced that the thought is an important place at which to arrive.

Ravi Zacharias tells of being a graduate student when the new encyclopedia Britannica was released in its fifteenth edition. It was a massive collection that had taken fourteen years to produce, and he remembers being fascinated by the statistics: two hundred advisors, three hundred editors, four thousand contributors, over a hundred thousand entries, thirty-four million dollars, forty-three million words. Even so, in the last pages of that work, one of the editors had the audacity to conclude: “Herein contains the entirety of human knowledge.” The number of outdated encyclopedias lying in thrift stores and recycling bins does not help their point.[7]

 God created everything. Test everything, cling to a Biblical worldview.

Prayer

[1] https://www.rzim.org/read/just-thinking-magazine/think-again-deep-questions

[2] Colson, Charles. How Now Shall We Live? (p. 52). Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

[3] Ibid, 53.

[4] Ibid, 54.

[5] Ibid, 57.

[6] Ibid, pages 87-89.

[7] https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?e=dbeab94ce5&u=45b75085e6ab57e339ea89d67&id=eb5a919869