“By Faith”

Good morning.  What I'm going to be doing this morning and then the next 2 Sunday evenings briefly, and I'm going to talk briefly this morning  about something that really is summarized best by Hebrews 11:3, and then this evening I would like to talk, to speak about fossil plants and what implications they have for creation and evolution, and then a week from this evening, will speak about the movement of continental plates on the surface of the earth and what that has to do with the issue of creation and evolution, and I hope to have a relatively brief presentation and then open it up for questions that you might have.  I love questions so if you go till midnight, I'm not bothered by that sort of thing, so if you have questions, you can skip the first 50 minutes and come and then just ask questions, or whatever, [Laughter], but that's what we'll be talking about tonight and the week following. 

My experience has been many years now in the creation/evolution controversy.  I have spoken in many venues, in many situations over the years on the issue of creation and evolution, and if one were to ask me, "what is my greatest concern?" what concern I have for the church, I speak in secular settings but I also speak in many churches, and in many different situations, it seems there's a common element that concerns me among the people to whom I speak, and it is, I summarize it with the word angst, [ängkst] I guess it might also be pronounced AINKst, in typical distortion of English, [Laughter], and it's the ängst or AINKst that I feel is on the issue of creation and evolution is actually chaining Christians from achieving victory really in this particular area. 

I guess I really need to explain what in the world angst is first of all, so to give you an illustration of what angst is like:  Let's say you've not had a Saturday free in a long time, you've had to work and that sort of thing, but you finally got this nice Saturday free, you sleep in, and you are enjoying yourself and there is a doorbell that rings there and you go to the door and standing on the step is a Jehovah's Witness.  Well, not one, there's always two, [Laughter]  and at that particular instant, many people, many believers, this is what kind of goes through their head at this point.  "Ohhhh…. Uh… the pastor dealt with Jehovah's Witnesses 2 ½ years ago….uh….. where did I put those notes?  What in the world am I supposed to say?  I don't remember the verses… uh…. Uh….    So you kick the person off the porch and you slam the door and that's angst!  Okay, that's angst.  It's this anxiety that we need to know what the right thing to say is, what the right thing to do is, in a particular situation.  And, in my experience, people have angst on the issue of creation / evolution.  They are concerned about issues.  Perhaps they're parents who have children who are in school and they have deep concerns about what their children are being taught, or they are grandparents whose children are in school and they are concerned about what is being taught their children, or perhaps there's an evolutionist whom you know and you don't know what to say to them and how to minister to them, and how to witness to them, or perhaps it’s a teacher of your children that you would like to know, "What do I say?  I don't know the right verses, I don't know the right science, I mean, I don't know science." And there's angst, there's anxiety on the issue of creation and evolution.  I see this widespread, this is very widespread, and what I wish to speak about this morning is that very issue, to address that very issue, and I hope and pray that as you see what the Lord says in his Word, that that particular issue can be put behind you, if that is in fact a concern of yours, and, if in fact that is not a concern of yours, it also happens to work in the Jehovah's Witness situation, [Laughter], so that's kind of free!

A little bit of background because it's important for you to understand this in light of other things.  I am a scientist, practicing paleontologist, a person who studies fossils.  I have gone through 12 years of formal education and college, I could get through, you know, some of us just aren't smart enough to get a job right after high school, we have to go to college, and some aren't good enough after that, we've got to go to grad school, and so I've gone all the way through to Ph.D. from Harvard University in invertebrate paleontology; taught 17 years at Bryan College, taught Science at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee and now Professor of Science and Theology in the Apologetics Division of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  So, supposedly, by all that having been said, supposedly I am expert on issues specifically creation /evolution issues, and as an expert I am here to say that I want to say, I hope  I can pass something across to you that is very simple; not difficult, not, it won't take a rocket scientist, it won't take a paleontologist to understand this. 

I remember one day a parent of a student I had at Bryan College called me up and they were rather elated, they were very happy, that's not the common thing.  Usually the parents who contact you are not happy, but this particular parent was very happy and they just glowed on and on about that they were so thankful to me for what I had taught their child, and after they went on and on, I could hardly say anything, I asked, "Well, what is it that I taught your child that you are so excited about? "  And they indicated what it was and I said, "But that's what you've been teaching.  I didn't say anything different than what you've been teaching them your entire life." They said, "Yes, but they weren't listening to me!  They listen to you!" [Laughter]   So, sometimes for reasons that are part of the mystery of humanity, it sometimes takes an expert to say something simple to encourage people to actually believe what they've been taught so many times.  I'm not going to be saying anything here that you haven't heard a whole bunch of times before, but I pray that just because of that kind of background, that you can actually believe what you've already heard and already know.

The word, science, probably doesn’t necessarily invoke the idea of something simple, but I assure you that's what I want to get across.  Let's begin in 1 Corinthians Chapter 1, verses 21-23.  This particular passage is fascinating to me and I believe I'm going to do something very dangerous here, I'm going to add to the Bible, so just prepare yourself for that. 

Verse 21 of 1 Corinthians Chapter 1, actually I probably should start in Verse 20, back up little bit for context, Verse 20 of 1 Corinthians 1:

1Co 1:20  Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

1Co 1:21  For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

Importantly here:

1Co 1:22  For Jews require a sign, Greeks seek after wisdom,

1Co 1:23  but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block  and unto the Greeks foolishness.

Dangerously enough, I would like to suggest that I am going to amend verse 22. It says: For Jews require a sign, Greeks seek after wisdom,

And I would suggest our culture, our people seek after proof.  In my perception, what I grew up with, the generation I grew up with, the people I interact with, it seems that they seek after proof.  The Jews, they were looking for someone to get rid of the Romans; we can have freedom.  If only we could, and we need that sign, we need the sign that You're the one!  You're the one that is going to free us from Roman rule.  They weren't speaking spiritually, they were thinking entirely physically, we want freedom.

The Greeks, they wanted wisdom so that they could achieve virtue, so that they could acquire the virtues and become virtuous and it seems to me as if we're in a generation now who is seeking proof that they need in order to know, in order to really believe, in order to understand, they've got to have proof, they've got to have evidence.  And scripture says that basically Jesus Christ was the answer to what all of these people sought in the past, and I would suggest He is still the answer to what people are seeking today.  The Jews needed a sign, but what greater sign was it than the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ, the miracles of Jesus Christ, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and they didn't see it.  They just missed it completely!  What greater wisdom was there than the Almighty God becoming Incarnate!  Wisdom personified, embodied and lived among them and spoke wisdom and they saw him not.  And I would suggest what greater proof is there of God's Word being true than the incarnation of that Word in the form of Jesus Christ and the miracles that he performed, and the death, burial and resurrection and what He's done for each of us.  This Word is true because God is true and we know it to be that because of who God is, was and always has been.  But, I would suggest most of our generation is missing it.  In fact, I think most of the people in the church are, and it's the source of that anxiety, that angst. 

When creation / evolution talks are advertised, "There's going to be a talk on Creation and Evolution," most people, in my perception, come to find proof, reasons to believe what they supposedly believe.  Most people who come to those talks are not unbelievers.  Most people who come to those talks are people who already believe that God created, well, at least that if you asked them, they'd say that's what they believe, but they are looking, they often come searching, seeking, needing proof!  And this distresses me.  And so, I want to address that particular issue, and I'm going to do it by giving you bad news and then good news.  I always like bad news before good news.  I always eat the food that doesn’t taste as good; then I can enjoy the food that does taste good.  It makes no sense to me to start with the dessert, as much as I want to start with the dessert, then I've got to eat the ooogghh afterwards, it just ruins it.  So I'm going to give you the bad news first and then the good news.  And the bad news I'm going to give to you first by example from my own experience and then again refer back to this passage before I finally give you the good news.

Back years ago when I was much younger, much more idealistic than I am now, much less realistic than I am now, I was looking to go into college.  I came from a farming community. Academia was not part of the experience of the people I grew up.  I had 240 people in my graduating class; 5 of us went on to college, 4 of us went to the local agricultural school and got an Associates degree in Farming.  Okay.  College was just not in my experience, anywhere in my family, anywhere, so going off to the University of Chicago, it was a scary thing, but I also was going as a Christian.  I knew, I didn't know much about the University of Chicago really at all, but I knew that it was non Christian, and so I felt that one of the things I was doing, probably the most important thing I was doing was going as a missionary to the University of Chicago.  And so I, in my idealistic self back then, wanted to, my goal was to win the entire undergraduate population to Christ!  And, the way I was going to do it, was I figured, I knew a lot about this creation / evolution stuff, so what I'd do, is I would debate creation / evolution, get people to accept Creation and then they would accept Jesus Christ and that's the way to do it.  I had this wonderful opportunity at the college because our dorm had an eating complex there, it fed 400 students. So, 1/5 of the population of the entire university was fed there.  That's a good place to start; 20% I figure is a pretty good place to begin.  And, they had the eating set up in such a way that you, at 11:00 AM in the morning to 1:00 PM in the afternoon was open for lunch, come in anytime you want and eat for as long as you want and eat as much as you want, (that's great for a teenage guy) and in the evening it opened at 5:00, closed at 7:00, did the same kind of thing.  So I arranged my classes so I wasn't anywhere in conflict with those and would come in at the beginning of the lunch period, load my tray up with food, go out and look for a table where there were already people there and people were already talking about something.  And, I'd go to that table and whatever their conversation was, listened for about 20 seconds to what their conversation was, and then transformed the conversation into a debate on creation and evolution! [Laughter]  Some people just came to see the transition, which was fascinating.  How do you go from bowling  to…. uh… and so on. [Laughter]  It was actually very popular.  I would then debate for 2 hours for lunch and for dinner Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, took off Sunday and went and started over again on Monday.  I was very, very popular, there was always a full table.  Now, I'm not saying that people came for the best of intentions, most I do not think came to listen to a creation / evolution discussion.  In fact, my roommate was a very frequent visitor at the table, but his reasons were probably not unique.  See, there's a problem at the University of Chicago.  There's a male/female ratio of 5:1, but at my table, there was typical about a 50:50 male/female ratio, so he came there to pick up girls.  [Laughter]  Well, I figured, well, whatever the reason, maybe I could capture him somewhere in this process, it was cool to me, and, in the process of going through that freshman year, debating for the entirety of the year, there was one particular individual who really did take up the challenge of debating me consistently throughout the entire year.  He was a 4^th year geology student and he would come in with his arguments and so on for the first quarter.  The second quarter he came in with arguments from his professors and his graduate students, and the third quarter he brought in his professors and his graduate students.  There would be this person who would show up at the table, an older person, and wouldn't introduce me to them, but it was to check out to make sure what I was saying was right, and so on. 

The day that changed my life was at the end of the year, graduation day.  This young man, donned in his black robes, his graduation robes, finds his way through the crowd to find me, to shake my hand.  He says, "Kurt, I want to thank you.  It was an incredible year."  [I estimate by this point, by the way, that we had spent approximately, he and I, had debated for about 120 hours, approximately].  And, he says, "I am convinced that I learned more Geology from you debating you this one year than I learned in all 4 years at the University of Chicago.  You completely trashed all of my arguments for evolution, all of my professors' and graduate students' arguments for evolution, and I can't touch your arguments for creation, but I just want to tell you that I'm going to continue being an evolutionist."

Now, that wasn't the punchline… Because this young man was the President of the Intervarsity Group at the University of Chicago.  He was the leading evangelical Christian at the University of Chicago, and I don't use that term lightly; he was a soul-winner, he was a dynamic Christian!  When he said that, I sank to the ground and cried.  What happened?  What happened?  I don't understand.  I won, he said I won!  He said I defeated the evolutionary  argument, he couldn't touch the creation argument, but I couldn't even convince a Christian!  What's wrong?  I cried!  But the Lord hit me with an answer, you've got to watch it when you ask, He might actually tell you!  "You never opened the Bible!"  Oh, my word!  I had spent over 120 hours debating creation /evolution  with this individual who was a believer, and I had never used the Bible.  I had never opened the Bible with him; I had never spoken of the Bible.  I had used human reason, I had used evidence, I had used logic, I had used everything at my disposal and won the human argument and never touched his heart!  Folks, here's the first piece of bad news:  If you try it won't work!  Evidence won't work. Logic won't work.  And I'll show you why from the scripture in just a bit, but people do not become evolutionists because of evidence.  They do not become evolutionists in the first place because of logic.  They will not come out of that position by those things either.  Whoa!  Well, what is the answer then, you ask? But wait, I've got to give you worse news before I get there.

Back in 1 Corinthians Chapter 1 Verses 20-22 again.  What does it say there? It says these people sought one thing that was given to them in far greater measure than they sought.  The Jews sought a sign and then the sign blew them away!  I mean, it should've.  A virgin birth, that's a pretty impressive sign, resurrection from the dead, that's a pretty impressive sign.  Whoa…. What's going on here?  Why did they miss it?  Because that's not what they wanted.  God gave them exactly what they needed and in far greater measure than they needed it, but they weren't looking for that.  They wanted to get out from underneath Roman rule, they were way down here.  Jesus was offering them eternal life!  And they just wanted to get out from underneath the Romans! 

The Greeks were seeking wisdom so they could be virtuous, they could acquire the virtues.  And Jesus Christ embodied that wisdom and offered them to become perfect!  The Sons of God!  They were looking for this and he offered them this.  They rejected it, they didn't even see it because in their pride they were looking for something that they thought they needed.

In our culture I believe we have people who are seeking proof, they think they need proof in order to believe.  They need evidence in order to believe.  They need logic in order to believe.  God knows otherwise, they don't need that one bit!  What do they need?  They need something they do not have, they need faith.  They do not need evidence.  Jesus came with the evidence.  He came with… I mean the evidence of his miracles, of his life, of his working of his transformation of people and it happens in our day - completely ignored by those who are seeking proof down here.  God gives them something greater, then never see it, miss it completely, including believers.  We seek for proof - why should we believe the words of the Bible? When, in fact, he's offered us something far greater than that.

Romans, Chapter 1:  The good news.  Now, I finally get to the good news.  It's not going to start out looking like that.  Romans Chapter 1 starting in Verse 18.  This passage right here is the center of what I have to say, and I would suggest if you get nothing else out of this, I would suggest you take Romans 1:18-21 and go on a little further if you wish, find a quiet place and meditate upon these words.  Don't take my word for what these words say.  Be sure this is what the Lord is actually saying here.  This is an incredible passage.  Beginning in Verse 18 of Romans Chapter 1:

Rom 1:18  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men…..

Now, wait a minute …. What does that say?  The anger of God is out against ALL sin, ALL unrighteousness.  What about the heathen in Africa?  ALL unrighteousness, ALL ungodliness, all sin, every single person on the planet is in trouble here.  Every single person.  Even those who have not heard.  This is the universality of this statement.  This is a scary, scary statement.  Because in Verse 19:

Rom 1:19  For that which can be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shown it unto them.

What?  Why is he angry?  See God is a just God.  He is not going to condemn people for sin that they don't know to be sin.   He's not going to destroy people for what they do not know.  So, somehow they've got to know that they're in trouble and it says they know it, it's in them.  What do you mean, it's in them? 

Verse 20:

Rom 1:20  For the invisible things of God, [God is an invisible god, right? Can't be seen, how can you know about God if you can't see him?], the invisible things of him from the creation of the world  are clearly seen namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

God is all powerful, God is all good, God is all those things you can't see.  It says that these things are clearly seen in the things that are made.  What?  What is it saying?  God is angry at ever single person's sin in this world.  Why?  Why has he just in having such anger? Because they know the very attributes of God and they are evident in the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead.   Whoa…. Next words….

 So they are without excuse.

They can't stand before God and say, "You never told me.  I didn't know about you!"  I don't get it.  What is it saying?  What is this… and the next words are amazing too.

Rom 1:21  For when they knew God, they glorified him not ……

Wait.  Slow down.  When they knew God.  It doesn’t say when they knew about God, when they knew about God's attributes.  It doesn’t say…. This is not an intellectual thing.  When they knew God.  These people knew God and they rejected him.  Oh…. Back up a little bit, this is deep stuff.  I'm sorry, it's simple but it's deep.  Ever single person on earth is guilty before God no matter whether they have the Bible or they do not.  Why?  Because the very attributes of God are they know and they knew God.

Now, what does this mean?  This means if you run into somebody who says, "Well, I'm an atheist, I've always been an atheist, I've never believed in God."  If the Bible is true, you can tell them, "You're a liar!" Because once you knew God!  He proved himself to you, he convinced you who he was through those things that are made and you rejected it.  That's what the Bible is saying.  Every single person once knew him and rejected that truth if they are now in a situation where they don't believe. They are without excuse.  If this passage is true, you'll never meet somebody that didn't already know that God is creator. What kind of implications are there, there?

One of them is you and I don't have the responsibility to convince people that God exists because he's already done that.  It is our responsibility only to remind them of what they already know.  Whoa!  Why is that important for angst?  See, there's a whole bunch of people in this world who seem to think that it's their responsibility, they've got to somehow convince this person who doesn’t believe in God that God really does exist.  They somehow have to convince this person that God is creator.  But, if Romans 1 is true, and that's why it is so important to meditate on these… if this passage is true, it means that we don't have a thing to do with convincing them of the truth, that God has already done it and we need only remind them of what's true.   You know, it's interesting.  This is the same that's true of the gospel.  As a kid, grew up in the church and I heard this term gospel and I knew all the Sunday School answers so I knew what gospel meant, it meant good news.  But that was a little bit oxymoronic for me because I knew the steps, you know, you're supposed to take somebody through in salvation.  You first have to convince the person that they are a sinner.  That doesn’t sound like good news.  That's the first thing you've got to do.  The second thing you've got to do, according to the rule, is even worse, because you're a sinner, you're going to hell!  Well, that's not good news either.  There's three steps to this.  Then you finally give them Jesus Christ is the answer to this, but 2 of the 3 steps were bad news.  How could you call the whole thing good news?  This just didn't make sense to me …… until I realized the first two steps are not my responsibility.  You see, this passage indicates that God has already convinced every person that he exists and he has his attributes of goodness and perfection and power.  And, according to Romans Chapter 2, there's something within each of us, you might call it a conscience or whatever, that has convinced every person that they are sinners.  Every person has broken their conscience and they know they've done wrong.  They can't stand before God and say, "I never did anything wrong!"  God's going to run that videotape of all those times your conscience was violated and you're going go, "Oh, oops, yep, Oh dear."  Long before you meet any person, including a child, they already know they're a sinner. God has already convinced them they're a sinner.  Then in Romans 1 it tells us God has already convinced them that God exists and he has the attributes.  Put those two together and what do you get?  I'm a sinner in the hands of an angry God.  I'm in trouble!  See, the first 2 steps you are a sinner is merely reminding people of what they already know, you don't have to convince them of that, merely remind them of it, use God's Word to make the statement, it reminds them of what they know, their punishment for sin is hell, they already know that.  Why is it when you go into a brand new culture no one has ever been in before, what are they doing?  They are trying to appease the Gods! They've created some sort of god, some sort of ….. they're trying, they know they are in trouble and they are desperately trying to make the gods happy. Why? Because every person is already convinced that God exists and they are a sinner.  That's why the good news is good news, because you don't have to convince anyone they are a sinner.  You don't have to convince anyone that there is punishment for that sin.  You need only remind them of what they already know and give them an answer that they could never come up with on their own.  The good news is good news because no human being could ever conceive of the answer.  I'm a sinner in the hands of an angry God.  How do I make it right?  I could struggle all my life and know that I can't make it right.  But the answer is impossible.  It doesn’t make sense in the human brain because here's the answer: God is a perfect God; He cannot exist in the presence of sin. God became sin so that we could become the righteousness of God.  Wait a minute, hold, stop, hold it.  What'd you say?  The God who cannot exist in the presence of sin became incarnate and became sin for us.  There's no way a human being would ever think that up.  It doesn’t make sense.  It's counter logic.  God is not constrained by human logic, he's much bigger than that, Praise the Lord!  You see, that's good news.  No human being could come up with that on their own and thus we have to give it to them, they can't get the thing on their own.  That's why it is so desperately needed that we pass the good news off to people, and the amazing thing about God is he put it in our hands.  Not a very efficient way to do things, by the way, but nonetheless he did it.  It is our responsibility to pass it on, and that's why it's good news because he's already done the hard work, he's done all the convincing. 

Hebrews 11:3  said it is by faith that we believe the heavens were created.  I've got to read it….

Heb 11:3  Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God…

By faith.  We've got a whole bunch of people walking around trying to find proof or evidence of the truth of God's word and ultimately people believe in creation by faith, not by evidence. That's why it didn't work for me to use the arguments with my friend at the University of Chicago.  It would never work.  He already knew that God was creator.  He had rejected that particular claim long before I first met him, and it wasn't, he didn't reject it because of evidence.  He knew God and he just rejected it!  And there's no amount of evidence to get him to move from that position because he never came to that position by anything other than a rejection of the truth.  It's by faith that we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God and faith is a gift of God, it doesn’t come from a person.  We have to believe this by faith.