4 Questions - Origin

Question: Do we have any born skeptics in the room?

The type of person that doesn’t just take everything at face value and says “I’m going to research that myself.” Also that uses reason, logic, emotion, and intellect to draw the best possible conclusions, or better yet, resolution. You were probably the person in the classroom that always raised your hand “teacher, how did you come to that conclusion?” You’re just not that easily convinced at most things.

I can relate. I remember early in my life going to conferences and seminars on the topics we’ll be discussing the next several weeks. I would stay up late at night reading books on both sides of the arguments. I would especially look at the historical evidence surrounding the stories, manuscripts, and artifacts described in the Bible. I remember so vividly those moments when certain aspects of God’s character and nature were revealed to me through discovery.

It’s my hope and prayer that through this series you will have a similar experience. May God give you wisdom and understanding as you seek to find answers to these great questions of origin, morality, purpose, and destiny.

Illust: Did you grow up with a parent that ever used this line “because I said so?”

How many of you grew up in an atmosphere where you heard “Cause the bible told me so.”? At Pinewood we believe the Bible did say so. And we believe that the Bible is our best source for finding answers to life’s greatest questions.

But I want to engage the conversation at another level and say that it’s ok to have a dialogue about these questions and not just simply be afraid or run from them. I want to give a better way than just “Cause the bible told me so.”

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The first question we are addressing in this series is the question of Origin: Where did we come from?

As I spent time thinking about this questions over the last several months there seemed to be a process of questions that needed answered before arriving at a basic level of understanding.

If we were created, then there would need to be a creator (not just of people, but of all things), and if there is a creator, then that creator would need to be an eternal being outside of the physical realm. (beyond time and space)

The outline for tonight is simple and I’m going to move through them quickly:

1. Is there a God?
2. Did God create everything?
3. Are we His image bearers?

Question 1: Is there a God?

• Three Major Religious Worldviews

1. Theism

   1. Belief in the existence of God

   2. Pantheism

   3. Belief that the universe is a manifestation of God

   4. Belief in many or all gods

   5. Atheism

   6. Belief in no God

• Problems with Atheism

1. Something can’t come from nothing.

   1. There’s difficulty in defining nothing. There’s books and books written on nothing. Sounds like a Seinfeld series for books.
   2. The reality is that something exists, something can’t come from nothing, therefore an eternal being has to exist.

   3. Atheism can’t deal adequately with our greatest questions in life.

   4. Origin, morality, purpose, and destiny.

• Problems with Pantheism

1. Universe has a beginning and it is not eternal

   1. It’s pretty much unanimous among all leading scientists that the universe had a beginning.

   2. A leading atheist and scientist, Stephen Hawking, who recently passed away due to ALS, said in a lecture on the beginning of time...

      1. “The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago.”
      2. We may have different beliefs on how the universe began; but I agree 100% with Stephen Hawking on the conclusion that the universe did indeed have a beginning.
      3. All gods and religious worldviews cannot all be true at the same time.

   3. Take for example the problem with destiny. Different worldviews teach different things about the afterlife from reincarnation, to heaven, to purgatory, to nothing at all as atheists would say. Anyone of these destinies could be true, or they all could be false. But hopefully we can agree that not all of them can be simultaneously true. We cannot be reincarnated, go to heaven, go to purgatory, and simply turn to dust all at the same time.

   4. There is a truth claim that needs to be made in order for the larger questions of life to make sense. The question becomes which worldview is true if any?

• Problems with Theism

1. God of the gaps

   1. Anytime a theist can’t explain something they throw God in the mix.
   2. A God that created all things is a fairy tale for which there is that has no scientific evidence.

   3. Where did God come from?

   4. If something can’t come from nothing, then who created God?

   5. This seems like a rational and honest question.

• Turn in your bibles to Genesis 1:1a
  • In the beginning God…

• Illust: Moses and the burning bush

  • “God said to Moses, “I AM who I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.” - Exodus 3:14

Question 2: Did God create everything?

• Genesis 1:1

  • “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
  • Only God can create ex nihilo (out of nothing).
  • Hebrews 11:3 says “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.”
  • Illust: Go get your own dirt
  • Revelations 4:11 says “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

  • Genesis 1 describes the biblical creation account.

  • Day 1: Light

  • Day 2: Atmosphere
  • Day 3: Land and Plants
  • Day 4: Sun, Moon, and Stars
  • Day 5: Fish and Birds
  • Day 6: Land, Creatures, Man, and Woman
  • Day 7: Rest

  • There is great debate surrounding the biblical creation account and evolution. Due to the amount of time that we have this evening, I’m not going to be able to adequately discuss each view, but I want to point out a few core beliefs as it relates to creation.

  • God created the heavens and the earth

  • God created species of like kind.
  • God created male and female in His image.

  • Notice that there is no mention of how old the earth is? There are many Godly men and women that adhere to an old and young earth model, and I would say that should not be a hill to die on.

  • One creation model places millions and billions of years between the time God created the heavens and the earth and the time he started forming his creation, preparing the earth for humankind.

  • Another creation model believes that each day could have been a long period of time and not a 24 hour day.
  • And then you have some that believe in the new earth creation story that the earth is somewhere between 6,000-10,000 years old. That God created the earth to have the appearance of age, but in fact it is very young. Just as God could created a 30 year old man from the dust even though he had only been seconds old.

  • Big Bang vs. Creation

  • Illust: The hummingbird

    • Beats its wings at 50-200/second
    • Heartbeat is 1200/minute
    • The only flying species that can fly backwards, and one of the only ones that can hover.
    • The rufous hummingbird has the longest migration of any hummingbird species. These hummers fly more than 3,000 miles from their nesting grounds in Alaska and Canada to their winter habitat in Mexico.
    • The ruby-throated hummingbird flies 500 miles nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico during both its spring and fall migrations.
      • Illust: The eyeball, galaxies, the ecosystem, this guy (pic)
      • Webster's definition of the Big Bang: a theory in astronomy: the universe originated billions of years ago in an explosion from a single point of nearly infinite energy density.
      • Webster’s definition of Creation: the act of bringing the world into existence out of nothing.
      • “Even Richard Dawkins, the most famous advocate for darwin's theory, admits that every cell in a human body contains more information than all the volumes of an encyclopedia, and every one of us has trillions of cells in our bodies, which all have to work together in marvelous harmony.”
      • Also, where did the small ball of energy come from?
      • Romans 4:17 says “as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’ - in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”

Question 3: Are we His image bearers?

• Genesis 1:26-27

  • “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
  • Where we come from is where we get our identity? How do I fit into the greater story?
  • “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
    ‭‭Psalms‬ ‭139:14‬

  • God’s image on us consists not of the physical, but of righteousness, holiness, and knowledge.

  • “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
    ‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4:24‬

  • “and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
    ‭‭Colossians‬ ‭3:10‬

God:

Order - God was intentional in His creation.

Love - We are a part of a greater love story.

Identity - We understand our beginnings.

Hope - We have hope for the future.

No God:

Chaos - Everything was birthed out of chaos.

Chance - We are all here by chance.

Searching - We are on a constant quest for answers.

Hopeless - We have no hope of life after death.

Closing:

To paraphrase CS Lewis “My belief in God is like my belief in the sun. I don’t believe it because I see it, but by it I see everything else.”