Welcome, friends, to the “front porch.”
I want to tell you today what I believe to be as real and solid as anything in this world:
I believe with all my being that God created this old world and everything that is in it.
The reason we believe that God created the world is simple: We believe it because God’s Word declares it. As soon as the Holy Spirit opens the curtain of inspiration, He says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
The Lord never goes about “proving” His existence in His powerful Word. He declares it profoundly and emphatically. Should a man choose to question the great truth, the Spirit offers the ultimate rebuttal, saying, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God” (Psalm 14:1).
A couple of years ago, a news shows reminded me how the world tends to question God’s grand declaration of Genesis 1:1. I happened upon a panel discussion on one of the national news stations where the host asked several guests to share a great scene in history they would go back and witness if possible. One by one the panelists recounted some great American moments they would re-visit, such as Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you …” speech, or to Martin Luther King’s speech at the great Lincoln Memorial.
But one panelist surprised the entire group when his turn came to speak. He said, “I think I’d go back to the resurrection.”
The panel laughed loudly, thinking, I’m sure, “What a strange request! How could you go back to a scene that never really happened?,” even though we know the resurrection is the greatest event in the history of the world.
I could not help but think at that moment: What a sad thing for a man or woman to live such a faithless life! The host of the show – obviously in reaction to the previous gentlemen – said, “Well, I think I’d go back to the big bang.” The group was more than pleased with that countermove and chattered on a good while about that worldly response. When the chatter died down, the first gentleman – unwilling to concede to faithless notions – said boldly, “Well, I subscribe to a different belief.”
It was refreshing to see a man – there on national television – subscribe to what the world sees as an old, archaic, out-of-date belief: “In the beginning God created …”
It may be out of date to the world, but it is not out of date to us! And it was not out of date to those writers whose pen the Holy Spirit guided long ago.
The psalmist writes pointedly: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth … For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33:6, 9).
Nehemiah, one of the last writers of the Old Testament – writing around 400 B.C. – says, “Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all: and the host of heaven worshippeth thee” (9:6).
The Hebrew writer adds, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:2).
David nor Nehemiah witnessed the creation, nor does Paul or any of the New Testament scribes. They are not there when God creates the heaven and the earth powerfully by a simple word. They were not there when God takes invisible objects we now know as “atoms” and makes all of matter. They are not there when God’s Spirit glides majestically across a formless, unorganized mass of water and matter (Genesis 1:2), adding organization and structure to a vast universe and to an earth designed for life. And they are not there when God reaches down to the dust of the ground to shape the crown of His creation – man – in His very image (Genesis 1:26/ 2:7).
But these inspired writers choose to believe in God’s creation by “faith” – no, not by “blind” faith but by the vast “evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith does not mean we cannot know. Faith only means we cannot see!
Man may become so “intellectual” that he can deduce the glory of the heavens to a random, accidental explosion. There was an “explosion,” for sure, but it was not accidental. We stand today with the psalmist, and we declare with assurance: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork …” (Psalm 19:1, ESV)
I have to say I was proud of the gentleman on that panel of worldly scholars. He took the unpopular stance of faith amidst an unbelieving crowd. While that stance may be old, archaic, and out-of-date to the world, to us who believe it is something different.
To us it is still new and refreshing, just like the early morning dew.
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