Study the Word

Pastor Thom Keller: Think over this question with us today on Study the Word. Why did God create all that he created? He created it for your enjoyment. You might say, "Now Thom, that's a bit egocentric." I mean, that makes it all about us. You're saying that the whole universe revolves around us, it all revolves around me, I'm that important. Well actually, this tiny little planet really is at the very center of God's universe.

You see, I know a thousand scientists would disagree with you. Well, the Bible proves it. Question: which was made first, the earth or the moon, sun, and stars? The earth was made first. The earth was made first and then God hung the moon and the sun and the stars all around the earth. So the universe really does revolve around you. You're very special to God.

Guest (Male): God created the world and everything in it in six days. So do we take that literally or figuratively? As you may know, there is some debate about that today. So today on Study the Word, we'll see there's good reason to believe in a literal six days of creation. Pastor Thom Keller will also point out the why behind God's creation and how we were created in the image and likeness of God. Get ready for an intriguing study in Genesis chapter one, here in part two of God's ultimate creation.

Pastor Thom Keller: God has a plan to restore mankind back to the garden, which for us will be our entrance into heaven one day. He has a plan to get us there. I've often said this, God has a plan to bring us back to the garden and the plan has a name and the name is Jesus. And it is only because of Christ's love for you that we have this hope.

This isn't in my notes, but I've often thought: who would have held the Trinity to account if they would have looked at Adam and Eve eating of that fruit, realizing Jesus would now have to die on the cross? And they said, "Look,"—you can picture God initiating this because Jesus would have been dutifully obedient—you can picture God initiating this statement and saying, "Jesus, let's just start over. Let's just snap our fingers and create another version. Man 2.0. Little better behaved, little more obedient. Maybe they have a better chance of getting it right. I don't want you to go to the cross."

But there was something about Adam and Eve, just the two of them, that would not allow for that. Even the cost of all the sin that would come through disobedience in the aeons to come, even so, there's a plan to get us back because of his love.

Graham Mason, 1937, he wrote this. He was a founder of the Westminster Seminary. Listen closely, this is so good. "Those who have been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ are in a far more blessed condition than Adam was before the fall. Adam before the fall was righteous in the sight of God, but he was still within the possibility of becoming unrighteous. But those of us who have been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ are not only righteous in the sight of God, but we are beyond the possibility of becoming unrighteous."

In our case, the probation is over. It's not because we have withstood the trials of life successfully, nor is it because we have earned the reward of assured blessedness which God has promised on the condition of perfect obedience. But it is because it is over. It's over because Christ has merited to us the reward that Jesus deserves, a reward that we do not deserve, by the way of Christ's perfect obedience to God's law. Isn't that beautiful?

Christ's obedience, not your obedience. Christ's performance, not your performance. Always remember this, folks: whenever performance enters a relationship, that relationship becomes conditional. If someone loves you based on performance, they love you conditionally. God doesn't love you conditionally. He loves you unconditionally, so performance is not a part of that relationship. He loves you because you love his son Jesus. It's that easy. It's that simple.

And then God sets up for both man and animals their cafeteria plan. Verse 29, "And God said, 'Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground, everything that has life.' And that is what happened."

Verse 29, "I've given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth." Back in the '70s, some of you remember this, but hippies used this line to legitimize the smoking of marijuana. "Hey, gave us every seed-bearing plant, baby. I'm all in. I'm all in on his plan." And I knew a lot of those guys.

But think it through. God also created poison hemlock, poison mushrooms, deadly nightshades, poppy plants, and many other poisonous plants, Chevrolets. But note the entire diet for both humans and animals excluded meat. Only plants, fruit trees, and grass. So when did that change? When did man begin eating meat?

Immediately after Noah and his family left the ark. In Genesis nine verse one, God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth." Same as to Adam and Eve. "The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast." This was new. "The fear of you, the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground, all the fish into the sea, into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything." Everything.

Also note that up until Noah, animals were not afraid of humans or vice versa. That's because back in the garden, every Thanksgiving meal was either a tofu turkey or a plant-based ham. How many here have ever had a tofu turkey? Oh, anyone else? There were a bunch in the first service. They're horrible. I've had one. Don't eat a tofu turkey or plant-based ham.

But I do want to say, for people that are vegetarians, that's fine. I know there are a lot of great benefits for being a vegetarian and there's nothing wrong with promoting that position. There isn't. There's nothing wrong with extolling the virtues of a vegetarian diet. I would not ever try to say that it's what the Bible says we should do, because it isn't what the Bible says we should do. And if you try me on that, I'm going to bring you right back here, show you this, and I'm going to eat my hamburger with great joy.

Before taking his seventh day rest, God looks over the sum total of his six days of creative wonder and he says this in verse 31. God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. Only after God added man to his creation did he add the word "very" to good.

And when I see a little girl—I know little boys are cute too, but there's just something about a little girl—when I see a little girl, I think that is the absolute pinnacle of God's creation. How can you exceed that? Oh, so precious. How could you not? Okay, you made an orangutan, you made a giraffe. That's really good. You look at that and say, "Whoa, that's very good." How could he not delight in creating mankind?

How does today's lesson apply to me? Well, first of all, what do you do with the six days? The six days of creation. Do you take them literally, figuratively? Is it fiction? Here is the truth. The more literal your interpretation of the Bible, the bigger your box becomes and the more you will think outside of the box.

At the extreme opposite end of that continuum is the rationalist who sadly has no room for anything that is outside of the box of only natural occurrences. They live in a much smaller box than Christians do. And I mean this with all sincerity. I genuinely feel sorry for them, to live in such a limited mind, such a small box that only rational natural occurrences are worthy of consideration. What a limited mind, what limited possibilities.

But what do you do about the six-day account? Well, there's so much involved in God's creation that is so above our pay grade. Here's the bottom line: what right do we have to question or doubt God on any of this? We'd almost have to declare ourselves an equal to question what he says he did. That's a bit brazen.

As an example of what to do with the six days, as an example, Chuck Missler wrote the following article supporting a literal six-day creation entitled "The Nature of Time," which changes what a 24-hour day looks like. Listen. One of the many advantages that 20th-century science has given us is that thanks to Dr. Albert Einstein's discoveries, we now know that time is a physical property and is subject to mass, acceleration, and gravity.

We've come to realize that we live in a four-dimensional continuum properly known as space-time. It is interesting that when one takes the apparent 10 to the 12th power expansion—10 with 12 zeros behind it—expansion factor involved in the theories of the expanding universe, that allows for an assumed 16 billion years to reduce down to six days.

So if you're one that says, "I just can't live with the fact that he did it in six literal days," well, this proposes the idea that because of the expanding universe back then, it could have been that one day would have been over a billion years. You read the article. It's way over my head, but it is very interesting. Google Chuck Missler, "Nature of Time."

What does science have to say about the age of man? Well, the Smithsonian, that place, they say six million years ago man was created. And yet by genetic tracing mathematically, going back through the genetic code, they've been able to reduce man to no more than 20,000 to 40,000 years old mathematically.

I know that that is a much higher number than the 6,000 year the Bible teaches, but to a scientist, it is terrifyingly closer to what the Bible says at 6,000 years than to the six million years science promotes. And how did they come up with man being six million years old anyway? By carbon dating the bones of ancient human relics.

I found an article years ago that shows how wildly inaccurate carbon dating is. In 1993, a block of wood was discovered completely entombed, completely encapsulated within volcanic basaltic rock, a flow of basaltic rock. The basalt was carbon dated at 39 million to 58 million years with a margin of error of two million years. So it's not like they're saying there's a lot of room for error here, two million years, up to 58 million years. The wood inside was carbon dated at 29,000 years. Do you get it? How could wood inside be 29,000 years and yet the rock around it 58 million years?

Labmate Online is a leading European life science publication. They display new products for labs, new technical applications, new articles and news. Labmate asked this question: "How accurate is carbon dating?" Their answer is: "Carbon dating is unreliable at best and at the worst downright inaccurate."

Now even beyond that, what would a rock proven to be 100 million years old really prove anyway? Because in the day God created the trees in the garden, were there rings on the trees the day he created them? Day one, were there rings? Of course there were. He created a mature Adam, didn't he? On day one, he didn't come out as a baby. He's a mature man day one. So couldn't he create a mature rock on day one that would have all the markings of the age of a rock, whatever he wanted that to be? So again, bigger box.

Second application, verse 26, "Then God said, 'Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.'" God says we were originally created out of the dust of the earth in both the image and likeness of God. Being human, we by definition exist in the image of God. But also we were created in the spiritual likeness of God, with the primary evidence of that likeness being our capacity to love God.

And this love for God can only be present when God and man are in fellowship. Through the fall, that fellowship was destroyed. But now Jesus our redeemer has created a bridge back to God, back to that heaven which we will once again live in and allow us to perfect our fellowship with God. The Bible says we now look through a glass darkly, but one day, one day we will be like him as a result of seeing him face to face. Can you imagine what that'll be like? Wow.

Charles Spurgeon concerning these verses says this, quote, "At the close of the sixth day the earth is complete, now that man has come upon it. But man is completed when the image of God is upon him, when Christ forms in him the hope of glory, but not until then," end of quote. So a question: are you in fellowship with God? It's been said it's not enough to stare up the steps, you have to step up the stairs.

The third application is rather profound as it relates to marriage. When God said, "Let us make man in our image," this denotes the polarity of God and yet the oneness at the same time. In the same way, this polarity of Adam and yet the oneness of Adam at the same time exists in the same way in the marriage relationship. In other words, God's own personal relationship with himself is three-in-one perfectly. And Adam's own personal relationship with himself was two-in-one perfectly. That's another way that we're made in the likeness of God, husband and wife.

The third application is really a question: why did God create all that he created? He created it for your enjoyment. You might say, "Now Thom, that's a bit egocentric." I mean, that makes it all about us. You're saying that the whole universe revolves around us, it all revolves around me, I'm that important. Well actually, this tiny little planet really is at the very center of God's universe.

You see, I know a thousand scientists would disagree with you. Well, the Bible proves it. Question: which was made first, the earth or the moon, sun, and stars? The earth was made first. The earth was made first and then God hung the moon and the sun and the stars all around the earth.

The universe really does revolve around you. You're very special to God. And to be accurate in giving credit where credit is due, Jesus the second person of the Trinity was actually the member of the Trinity who created all that is seen and unseen. If you wonder who did what, Jesus did all the creating. Colossians 1:15 says so.

"He, Jesus, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him, Jesus, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him." And Jesus created all of this why? So that you would glorify God and you would enjoy and appreciate what he has done for you. Again, as the Westminster Catechism says, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever."

With this in mind, I would like to encourage you and myself to daily take time to appreciate Jesus' marvelous creation. A child does this without thinking about it. You see a child laying in the grass marveling at the shifting clouds, changing from an elephant to a clown to a rabbit.

As adults, we unfortunately can begin to take the rising of the sun every morning for granted. But I have to believe that God doesn't take the sun rising for granted, but waits for each and every morning with keen anticipation of the sun once again gloriously breaking across continents and oceans.

G.K. Chesterton likened God's inexhaustible enthusiasm for the day-to-day repeating of his creative wonder to that of a child. A small child when picked up by his or her father, vaulted up into the air, giggles with glee and says, "Do it again, Daddy." And then when the father tries to stop, the child cries out, "Do it again, do it again!"

Chesterton says this, quote, "They always say 'Do it again,' and the grown-up person does it again till he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning 'Do it again' to the sun and every evening 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all days alike. It may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy, for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

One concept, aspect of God I hope you never let go of is his boundless enthusiasm. Entheos means the spark of God exploding in you, en-theos. Theos is God and en is God in. God lives in a world where he is just so enthused and enthused about you.

I picture already when I wake up in the morning, I picture Jesus at the foot of my bed with a baseball cap on and says, "Hey, we're gonna have a great day today." And I say, "Oh, I messed up so bad yesterday." "Forget about it, forget about it. New day, Thom. We're gonna have a great day today." Every day. Isn't that who he is? Right? What would limit him from enabling that to take place? Nothing. Is that his heart for you? Absolutely, that's his heart for you.

With this picture of Jesus' zest and zeal for each new day, it causes me to think about how I view each 24-hour day. What do I do repeatedly day in and day out? What do I get tired of doing over and over again? What do I wish I could be doing instead of what I'm doing right now?

The problem is these thoughts cause me to yearn for tomorrow instead of enjoying today. But I believe Jesus wants us to find joy in the monotony of everyday life as Jesus does with every new sunrise. In my experience, and this is just my experience, I would have to say that I have more often found God in the mundane things than in the sublime.

It is really precious, beautiful, appreciated when you get in a jam and God helps you out. I get that. But there is something so precious about God acting in your life in small ways and small things because you think, "How could he be that interested in me to be involved in these little details?" The big things I can see how he could make time for them, but the little stuff? So in my experience, I would have to say that I have more often found God in the mundane than in the sublime.

I'm not saying God isn't there in the magical things because he is. But I think Jesus loves to hide himself in the ordinary in hopes that we go searching for him there. So what things are you growing tired of doing over and over again? How do you think God might be speaking to you through the mundane tasks of life? And I suspect that if you search for God in the routine of life, you will end up finding him in surprising ways and in unexpected places.

Guest (Male): We've been learning about God's ultimate creation today on Study the Word: the creation of the first man and woman. It's just part of Pastor Thom Keller's study in Genesis. And you can hear it again online at CCLEB.com, CCLEB.com, or visit our YouTube page. Subscribe to our channel at Calvary Chapel Lebanon and you can watch our services live or on demand.

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