Understanding the Reality of What Is Seen

Transcript

GR 1708
11/17/2013
Understanding the Reality of What Is Seen
Hebrews 11:3
Gil Rugh

We're in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter of the Bible as we often think of it, and rightly so. Put at the latter part of the book of Hebrews as we've noted, because first the Spirit of God directs the writer of this crucial book to unfold the details of the person and work of the Son of God as our high priest, the One who Himself was the sacrifice for our sins. In light of that we are encouraged to endure, as those who trust Him and the promises we have from God in Him. We noted the last part of Hebrews 10, verses 32-39 were a challenge to endurance. He reminded them at the end of verse 32 that “you endured in the past a great conflict of suffering in living out your faith in Christ.” He reminded them, verse 36, they needed to “continue to have endurance.” And all of this was focused on living by faith. He'll pick up that theme of endurance when we come to Hebrews 12:1, “let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” And then the example of Christ, who endured the cross. Hebrews 11 is set in the midst of this emphasis on endurance as believers. At the end of Hebrews 10, verse 37, we had the promise referred to from the Old Testament. Verse 37, “yet in a little while He who is coming will come and will not delay.” Then that great verse, “the just, the righteous shall live by faith.” These quotes are from Habakkuk 2:3-4.

And so he is going to pick up on that, in the midst of challenging to endurance he reminds them that God's righteous ones live by faith. Live by faith. We looked in our previous study, as Paul reminded the Corinthians, “we walk by faith and not by sight.” This is really tested when we go through trials. Whatever the trial—persecution for our faith; physical calamity comes to our lives; someone that we love, one of our children, our parents our family member undergoes severe difficulty, death—all these things press in. And we say things look bleak. We sometimes ask a person going through difficulty, how are things going? They don't look good. And humanly speaking that's true. But we don't walk by sight, we walk by faith. Things don't look good but God is still in control and the end couldn't be any brighter. How do you know? Well, we walk by faith, that's what the righteous do.

So he began Hebrews 11, “now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We noted that is not a subjective description of faith as the words assurance and conviction might give, we noted that word assurance, a word that is used for the foundation of a building, something that stands under, it gives substance. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, this is what makes our hope concrete—the truth that God has promised to us glory in His presence. How do you know? I believe what God has said. It's not my faith that makes it real, but it brings substance and reality to me. It's the promise of God that assures it, guarantees it. Well that connection to me comes through faith so that I can be just as confident that I shall some day gather in the presence of God even as much as I am gathered in your presence today. I see you, I've never seen the presence of God but it is just as real to me because I have the promise of the God who cannot fail, the God who cannot lie. That's the conviction, the evidence, if you will, the guarantee of things not seen.

Then he is going to transition to the examples. “For by it, this kind of faith, the men of old,” the examples he'll give beginning in verse 4 with Abel, “gained approval,” testimony from God. That word translated approval, a word often translated testimony or testify. We get the word martyr from it because a martyr is one who testifies to his faith, even giving his life in testimony to that faith. Here God testifies on behalf of these people. And when you have God's testimony on your behalf, you can have His approval. That's the point. God testifies that they are righteous. Doesn't mean everything went well in their lives, but they were walking by faith. Men of old gained approval.

He'll pick up by faith, that expression, this is where we really left off, that begins verse 3, “by faith;” verse 4, “by faith Abel.” And that will be repeated 18 times—verse 5, “by faith Enoch;” verse 7, “by faith Noah;” verse 8, “by faith Abraham.” On it goes with men and women who live their lives by faith in the promises of God, promises that they did not see realized in their physical life, but promises they believed. They believed God would do what He said He would do. They are those of old that will be talked about.

But verse 3 is a transition. The first example of living by faith includes all of us. The subsequent examples beginning in verse 4 with Abel will all be people from Israel's history in our Old Testament. But this first example of living by faith includes the writer and his readers in their present day. By faith we, the writer includes himself, understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. We come to an area that causes confusion today. And it's interesting he picks this up as the first example of living by faith, how we come to understand how the things that we see and all of creation came into existence. We understand it by faith. We come to an area here that is a problem that has grown larger and larger, and as Christians have sought to become more recognized in the scholarly world, we have moved to incorporate more of the world's thinking, which is often viewed as being scholarly and intellectual into our approach to Scripture. We've talked about this in the past with issues regarding psychology. And since the world in its so-called intellectual pursuits and scholarly understanding has come to certain positions, we try to readjust our understanding of the Scripture, looking at the Scripture through the thinking of the world. That results in the corrupting of Scripture. This is an issue in how we understand and translate the Bible.

I was reading some material on Bible translation the last couple of weeks and they make the point—the view now that is agreed by all linguists is that you don't really try to concentrate on translating literally word by word, you're looking more for the sense and the idea. That has moved much of Bible translation not to trying to deal with each word, but try to give the sense in a broader way. Formal equivalents verses dynamic equivalents is often how it is referred. Failure to consider what? The Bible is a unique book. It's different than anything else that is translated. We are dealing with language to be sure, but we believe in the verbal inspiration of Scripture. That means every word is important. One of those writing in the modern day view of translation says, “well, the content is important but not the form.” I appreciate something that was written back in the 1970s by a man I would consider to be a scholar on a different subject. But on the Scripture he said, you must be careful. It's not only the content that is important, it is also the form because God gave it in words. How do you know the content without studying the very words. I realize we have issues in going from one language to another. We're going to use English words for words that were Greek or Hebrew words, for example. But the very words are crucial

All of this is background. We come to a verse now that addresses the subject of creation and how everything we see came into existence. The biblical view is God spoke it into existence. The world view is that it evolved somehow over time. I happened to catch part of a program this week, I think it was something on like the history channel, and I just got in on a part of it. It was talking about the importance of salt in the world. Now that has a lot of interest to me. But I stopped and they were starting at the beginning. In the beginning there was nothing but salt. That's not a beginning. How did we get the salt? Well, salt was there. We talk about Christians having faith, they have faith. Faith that salt was there in the beginning. And this is really, not word for word, but this is what they said. And then somehow out of that big block of salt there arose a piece of salt that was the beginning of life. You talk about faith. Did you know that you were once a piece of salt? And then they went on to talk about salt through history, I guess. I lost interest in the program. Is that science? We all have to deal with the fact something is rather than something is not. How are we going to explain what is seen? Well, as Christians have come to try to desire to be accepted in the scholarly world, they have tried to adjust their view of Scripture to incorporate viewpoints of the world. But you understand the world begins with the presupposition there is no God. And the Bible says that makes them fools, for the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. They can believe in god, small “g”, but when it comes to explaining reality you cannot include God in the equation. You know how that is in the schools. You are not allowed to speak about creation. You can't bring God into it. We have to explain what there is without referring to the possibility there is a God who did it. It's like saying, I have the answers, there is one correct answer to this, but you are not allowed to use that. Well, every other answer you come up with will be wrong.

Let me read you something, a book written about twenty years ago, I've referred to it on other occasions, called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. It was published to rave reviews in the evangelical world. Here is their kind of thinking. The greatest danger besetting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. I don't think that's the greatest danger facing evangelical Christianity. I think the greatest danger is that we move away from the Scriptures and their final authority. He goes on, who among the evangelicals can stand up to the great secular or naturalistic or atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship and research? Isn't that presupposing? Is that the goal of Bible-believing Christians which he calls evangelicals? Who can stand up to the great secular, naturalistic, atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship and research? Well of course not, we are starting out with God. We're trying to be accepted and recognized in that realm? It's going to require some major adjustments to how we handle and view the Scripture. Who among the evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology, sociology, politics? Does your mode of thinking have the slightest change of becoming the dominant mode of thinking in the great universities of Europe and America which stamp your entire civilization with their own spirit and ideas?

This is a man who claims to be an evangelical, claims to be writing about the scandal of evangelical minds and he says our goal is to dominate the world with evangelical thinking. I mean, what do I say? And it had rave reviews. They think this man is a recognized authority. And he does write some good, helpful stuff on history things. The world will never accept us. Is that what Jesus said we should be? He told us not to be surprised if the world hates us. And here we are supposed to be concerned that the world isn't bowing before our great intellects.

Come to Romans 1 which is foundational. We're going to get to our study unless I get totally sidetracked. Verse 18, “for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Do you have that underlined? They suppress the truth. And he's going to talk about creation. Verse 20, “since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power, His divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood with what has been made.” The creation reveals the glory of God, that's the point. They are without excuse. Now we expect these people to honor and bow before us and say, you have such great scholarship, you have such great intellect. They suppress the truth. They will never acknowledge the truth of the God of the Bible and His absolute authority over everything. So when we set as our goal the desire to be accepted and recognized in that realm, it will result in our corrupting and distorting and changing the clear message of the Word of God, which is a clarity and a fullness that goes beyond what is revealed in creation, that even message that is seen by all is suppressed. There is no such thing as a person anywhere in the world who does not know about the true and living God. That's not saying they have the fullness of revelation that we have in the Scripture that would bring salvation, but the heavens declare the glory of God, the earth reveals His handiwork. But even to that point they reject it, they suppress it. I mean, the very obvious. Not all the splendor and wonder of this creation, for example, came from a piece of salt, somewhere in the vast resources of what is deep time. Time is such an expanse, it involves such that what went on in deep time is different than what goes on in the time now that we have that is much more condensed and concise. Because we will not acknowledge that the creation is the revelation, manifestation of an all-powerful God and something of His very character is revealed, the wonder of what He has created.

I'm not done, let me read you . . . They have a whole chapter on science and the scandal of the evangelical mind. And his bad word for us is fundamentalists. In other words we're the people who live in the Dark Ages, the pre-scientific times. We think we should accept the Bible literally. He says, the spread of creationism, those who believe in the biblical account of creation, also reflects dynamics arising from fundamentalist theology. That's the bad word used repeatedly here for the people. I understand fundamentalist theology is biblical Christianity, believing in the verbal inspiration of Scripture, its absolute authority in every way, interpreting it literally.

Here is what he goes on. It reflects the dynamics arising from fundamentalist theology, particularly the eschatological mentality and the fascination for dispensational. I mean, these fundamentalists are interested in future things, that's eschatology. A biblical literalism, that's what he is criticizing. You take the Bible literally. This has been gaining strength since the 1870s. There have been works written from our viewpoint that have shown the errors in this great scholar and his historical errors in how he connects things. Gaining strength since the 1870s has fueled both the intense concern for human origins and end times. Those two things, how it began and how it ends. It is interpreting the Bible literally that makes you interested in those things. In other words we shouldn't take the Bible literally. We should just go to science to find out how it begins and science in how they think it will end. What do we have?

Literal readings of Genesis 1-3 find their counterpart in literal readings of Revelation 20 with its description of the thousand-year reign of Christ. He says that's ridiculous. So don't take the opening chapters of Genesis literally and don't take the closing book of the Bible, Revelation, and Revelation 20 literally. How are we going to take it, sir? We go the world and their scholarship. And the science of the world says it didn't begin with God creating it. So we'll come up with an idea. Genesis is not literal, it's creation-kind of literature. And we go to other accounts outside the Bible—the Babylonian account of creation and so on—and then we reinterpret the Bible in light of these unbiblical, non-biblical sources. Have we gotten things turned around? And then of course we go to the end and that's apocalyptical literature because we go to literature outside the Bible and find out they had fanciful writings about the end times. And so we take Revelation as a fanciful writing. That's why we say, scholars to be recognized want to demonstrate their scholarship, and you read Bible commentators that are written more recently, they spend more time talking about material outside the Bible that supposedly will guide us in interpreting the Bible, than they do interpreting the Bible.

I am proud to be a fundamentalist, I believe in a literal interpretation beginning in the first verse of Genesis to the last book of Revelation. If you don't, your interpretation of the Bible is just subjective viewpoints that you alter according to the climate of the day.

One more thing I'll read. If the consensus of modern scientists who devote their lives to looking at the data of the physical world is that humans have existed on the planet for a very long time, it is foolish for biblical interpreters to say that the Bible teaches a recent creation of human beings. In other words do you know what the authority is? Unbelieving science. I read one man who has written a commentary on Genesis who was a teacher in several evangelical seminaries who has continued to move to adjust to science. He says, I presently believe in a literal Adam and Eve, but if science shows there was no literal Adam and Eve, that's fine with me. I won't believe it, either. In other words we have an authority over the Bible—science. If the consensus of modern scientists who spend their lives looking at the data of the physical world, not looking into the Word of God, is that humans have existed on the planet for a very long time. It is foolish for biblical interpreters to say that the Bible teaches the recent creation of human beings. I still believe God is right. Let God be true and every man a liar. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

So you understand this is not a matter of what does the Bible say or not. There was a time when religious people believed the world was flat. We're not saying everything religious people believe is true. The Bible didn't teach the world was flat. Some religious people taught the world was flat. We want to be careful that what we are teaching is what the Bible teaches. But we want to be very careful … back in the '40s the neo-evangelical movement started, the new evangelicalism. One of the three major points of neo-evangelicalism is we must have recognition in the secular, scholarly world. So this man's solution is we ought to have a Christian Harvard. I remember listening to a scientist back when I was in seminary. He had earned three doctorate degrees from three different countries in scientific fields. He says, with all those credentials, those degrees I cannot get a job teaching in the universities on the continent because they are closed to anybody who would hold . . . So you just close out these differences, there is no option. Now we're going to be accepted in the scientific world. Is creation by a sovereign God an option in our school system? But we want to be accepted as scholars. You understand these are people suppressing the clarity of God's truth revealed in creation.

With that we come to Hebrews 11:3, we will get through most of verse 3. And verse 3 is what I thought we were going to do last week with verses 1-2, and my original plan was to do verse 4 with verse 3. But we will get there, there is no hurry. And if we don't get there and the Lord comes, we will have it all answered anyway. Verse 3, “for by faith we understand.” That expression, by faith, the first of eighteen times he will say that because his point is to develop and emphasize the righteous one will live by faith. We enter into life by faith in Christ. And as we talked about, now we live every day on a road of faith. That's what gives us stability, that's what gives us endurance, what keeps us from being blown about by every wind of doctrine and idea of man that comes along.

“By faith,” this is faith in the Word of God. As we've seen in Hebrews up to this point, that's the whole theme—believing what God has said. That's going to come out here in a moment. We understand, we apprehend, we gain insight in. This is a word that denotes mental understanding. This is not a subjective feeling. I understand for myself, you understand for yourself as though truth is relative and varied with every person and their feelings. We come to understand reality as reality. Truth is truth. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God so that what is seen was made out of things which are not visible, or were not made out of things which are visible. The worlds were prepared. And that word worlds as you have in your margin is the word ages. And back in Hebrews 1, the opening verses, we were told that it was through the Son God the world was made. And the word there is the same as here—the ages. We noted that means all the periods of time and everything in them. It was the result of the sovereign creating work of God. He made all the ages and everything in them. They were prepared, fashioned by the Word of God. It's His sovereign action that brought them into existence. And the key here is by the Word of God. And our faith is in that Word so that what is seen was not made out of the things which are visible. In other words we can see the creation, everyone on the face of the earth sees the creation, but not everyone understands how it came into existence. We understand by faith that it came into existence by the sovereign power of God. And that same Word of God, and that word that we have translated Word, Greek has different words for word. We're familiar with the word logos, particularly from John 1 as his gospel opens up and other uses. And that's the word for Word. The word here is rhemate, not that you care. But it is a word that refers to the spoken word. By the spoken word of God is the particular emphasis of this word. By the word of God, that's how the things we see came into existence. How do I know? Well scientific evidence. We think if we marshal enough proof we can convince people. We can't. That doesn't mean you can't talk to someone that there is evidence that what we believe and what the Word of God says is not contrary to what science could demonstrate. Because you understand not the most brilliant mind on the face of the planet who is a scientific person and an unbeliever, he wasn't there, either. Nobody was there. All we have is what we see.

Now they decide you cannot credit God with bringing into existence what we see. So how are we going to explain it? It's there. Well, if you can't say God did it, as the Scripture says, and so somebody comes up with this idea, that idea, the idea comes that it evolved. All of this just evolved so you get this perfect order and wonder of everything in creation and the beauty of creation and then you come down to the complexity of your body. And you say it just all evolved. Well how long would that take? It's going to take a lot of time. These things don't just happen in a few hundred thousand years. Well, could you get all of this in a few billion years? No, you better give me more time, really get into deep time here. These things go back to vast periods of time when things were happening which are different than what we can observe. That's real faith. Things were happening back then that we can't observe happening now. Now we're out of the realm of science, we're into the realm of faith. Right? Well this is scientific fact. I read a statement by one person who said evolution is scientific fact. There is nothing to be debated. Well, I beg your pardon. I didn't realize you were there when it happened. Well, I wasn't but all the evidence supports it. But we read the evidence through our predetermined conclusion.

We as Christians believe it was by the Word of God. Come back to Genesis 1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was moving on the surface of the waters. And then God said.” There is nothing wrong with verses 1-2, we'll get in a moment in the prophets, God didn't create the world to be void. He created it to be inhabited. So all you have in verses 1-2 are the initial act of God in bringing this all into existence and now He is going to shape it so that it will be a habitation for man, which is where we are going. There is no gap between verses 2-3. This is how God began. Then He's going to take it step by step through it so when He is done it will be a beautiful place for the culmination of His creation, man as male and female, to live.

Then you have “then God said,” verse 3. Verse 6, “then God said;” verse 9, “then God said;” verse 11, “then God said;” verse 14, :then God said;” verse 24, “then God said;” verse 26, “then God said.” See that repeated emphasis. It was the spoken Word of God. He created it all in six days. Everything you see was brought into existence, formed and shaped by God to be as He would have it. That's the claim of Genesis 1.

You see what happens. Scientists, unbelievers want to come up with an explanation saying we have to do away with the first three chapters. Then those who want to claim to be evangelical Christians say, well, we don't take them literally. The man we read also said, don't take Genesis . . . So if we don't know how it began, we don't know how it ends, how can we be sure about anything in the middle? And it's the devil's plan to progressively dismantle the biblical position and revelation of God. And pretty soon we are just afloat with the authority of man as that which guides us.

Come over to Psalms. How does the rest of Scripture understand this? Come to Psalm 33, and I just have a few references because this would become its own study to go through it all. What does the psalmist say about creation? Verse 6, “by the Word of the Lord the heavens were made, by the breath of His mouth all their host.” You see it was what came out of the mouth of God, His Words that created it all. Come down to verse 9, for “He spoke and it was done, He commanded and it stood fast.” That's it. Well this is primitive belief. Well, I understand it is God speaking and recording for our benefit what He has done.

Come over to Isaiah 40:21, “do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? That's the beginning when God established the earth, created, brought it all into existence. It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” Now note this, goes with this, He is the creator of it all. “It is He who reduces rulers to nothing and makes the judges of the earth meaningless,” and so on. Do you know why man rejects God as the creator? If they acknowledge Him as the creator, they have to acknowledge Him as the sovereign ruler. They will have none of it. We will not have this man to rule over us. That's what the religious leaders said of Christ. That's man's attitude. So they go together. The Creator is the sovereign ruler. He sits enthroned over all His creation.

Verse 25, “to whom then would you liken Me, that I would be his equal, says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars. The One who leads forth their host by number calls them all by name. Because of the greatness of His might, the strength of His power not one is missing.” God is not only the Creator of all things, He is the sustainer of all things. We know something about the vastness of the universes and the stars. You ask God to point to any one, He has a name for it. Where did He come up with all these names? We can't come up with enough names to give our kids different names. And He named all the stars. And then He is sovereign over it all. Do you know what? Not one is missing. He is sovereign over His creation. He brought it into existence, He is the One who rules over it all.

This is to be a motivation. Verse 28, we're talking about endurance in Hebrews, look at verse 28. “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired, His understanding is inscrutable, He gives strength to the weary. To him who lacks might, He gives power. Those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength. “ This is our endurance. It's a travesty of the devil that he has undermined the clarity of the teaching of Scripture, even among believers, that God has sovereignly created it all. And He is the One who rules over all and He is the One who takes care of me. In the most difficult, crushing of circumstances and situations, I find my strength in Him and His promises. I walk by faith. When I begin to throw out that faith, I don't know that I believe that He created everything, and I throw out the book of Revelation, I don't know that He's going to bring everything to the conclusion He says. Pretty soon what do I have to believe in? A God who is at the whim of nature. Mother Nature is the creation of the devil. It's our Father God who has created everything and brings all things into existence. We'll see more of that.

Come to Isaiah 42:5, “thus says the Lord who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring—everything on the earth, vegetation and trees and all. Who give breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it.” How did it begin? God made Adam and breathed into him the breath of life. Verse 8, “I am the Lord, that is My name. I will not give My glory to another, My praise to graven images.” Some people worship before science. Well if science proves . . . How do they prove that? That there was no Adam and Eve? That won't shake my faith, I will still believe. I can believe the Bible and not believe there was a literal . . . What do you have to believe? What if science proves that people don't rise from the dead? Will you still believe in the resurrection of Christ? On it goes.

Isaiah 44:24, “thus says the Lord your Redeemer.” This gets brought close together. You'll see God has a Redeemer and a Savior. It is inseparably connected to His power as the Creator. Because He is the Creator He has the power to be the Redeemer of His creation. “Thus says the Lord your Redeemer, the One who formed you from the womb.” I always thought that was a natural process, just a natural process. God says, that is My hand at work in every detail. And it follows in a regular succession because I ordain it to do that. “I am the Lord, the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself, spreading out the earth all alone.” God did it, Father, Son and Spirit working together, but the one true, living God. I did it. All other answers are a suppression of the truth that man knows in his heart is true. But he will not acknowledge it.

Isaiah 45:9, “woe to the one who quarrels with his maker, an earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth. Will the clay say to the potter, what are you doing? The thing you are making say, he has no hands?” You understand, where is creation that we have a quarrel with God. We don't think you did it, God. I mean, how pitiful is that? Woe to such a person. Verse 12, “it is I who made the earth and created man upon it. I stretched out the heavens with My hand, I ordained all their hosts.” Verse 18, “for thus says the Lord who created the heavens,” He is the God who formed the earth and made it. He established it, did not create it a waste but formed it to be inhabited. “I am the Lord, there is none else.” It's the verse I referred to in Genesis 1 where the earth was without form and void. But God didn't create it to be that way. That's why you have the development of the six days. Created the heavens and the earth but now He is shaping them according to His intention so it would be inhabited.

Christ views the Scripture the same way. Come to Mark 10 in the New Testament. You understand when you reject the clear literal interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis, you are rejecting what the psalmist writes, you are rejecting what Isaiah writes, you are rejecting what Christ said. These are just samples I have picked out. Mark 10:6, when He is asked about marriage and divorce where does He go? Verse 6, “but from the beginning of creation He made them male and female.” He is interpreting the opening chapters of Genesis literally. That comes from Genesis 2. Christ says that takes you back to the beginning of creation. There weren't billions of years of creation before that. Go back to the beginning of creation. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The first three chapters unfold the details, particularly the first two, dealing with this. How does He take it? From the beginning of creation God made them, how did He take it? Literally. Male and female. That didn't happen, they evolved from a piece of salt. Don't you remember what science says? Or some scientists? Everybody has their own idea. Christ took it in the beginning God created male and female. That governs our life now. The authority of the Creator means it is one man and one woman. They'll reject that, they will promote what is contrary to nature but they will not bow before the clarity of the revelation they would know even is true.

Come to Mark 13, Christ again speaking. Verse 19, “for those days will be a time of tribulation.” Talking about future times. We don't take future time literally, but Christ does. “In those future days there will be a time of tribulation such as has not occurred, not this, since the beginning of the creation which God created until now.” How did He take it? Where did Christ say all that we see came from? We go back to the beginning of creation which God created. It didn't come into existence on its own. We go back to when God brought things into existence in the beginning. Everybody recognizes how Genesis 1, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

One more passage where Christ speaks on this, Luke 11. Verse 50, and here He is talking about the guilt that will come upon the generation that He is dealing with during His time on earth and so on. Verse 50, “so that the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation, from the blood of Abel.” That's where we're going in Hebrews 11:4 in our next study. Where does He take Abel? Back to the foundation of the world and the first shedding of blood we have when Cain killed Abel. That's back in the very beginning in the early days of creation, the first murder. That's back in the foundational days, from the foundation of the world and the first murder in God's creation. Christ understood Genesis literally. That's the foundation of the world, that's when it began. The first murder, it was Cain killing Abel shortly after God created the world.

Christ is key in this. Come over to John 1. We talk about God being the Creator. At times that can be referring to God the Father, at times it can be referring to God the Son. And the Spirit of God also is involved. We read that in Genesis, the opening verses where the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters. In John 1, “in the beginning. What beginning? Well, the only beginning we have. God has no beginning, but Genesis 1:1 says in the beginning God created.” That's where we have to begin. God is eternal, He has no beginning as well as no end. But in the beginning, back when you come to Genesis 1:1 the Word already was. The tense there indicates when you get to the beginning He was already there. “The Word was with God, the Word was God.” He is both with God and He is God. He's God the Son. He was in the beginning with God. “All things came into being through Him,” God the Father creating through God the Son with the activity of God the Spirit. But here the focus is on the Son. “And apart from Him nothing has come into being that has come into being.” That's Hebrews. God created what you see out of nothing. It didn't come out of things which are seen. There is nothing in existence that Christ didn't bring into existence. God is the only eternal thing. Man functions as though matter were eternal, always looking for a replacement for the God of the Bible. Do we believe the Scripture? Well, science says…. Science says a lot of things. You understand we have men who are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, men who with all their intellect, all their knowledge are fools. God says, “the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” Well, not every scientist that believes in evolution denies the existence of God. In reality they do. If you reject the God of the Bible and what He has said, you've rejected the only God.

Come over to 1 Corinthians 8:6, “for us there is but one God.” And this is in the context of verse 5, “even if there are so-called gods,” small “g”, “whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods, many lords.” I mean, in Paul's day there was a pantheon of gods and many other gods outside that pantheon and people worship them down to today. But for us there is but one God the Father from whom are all things. We exist for Him. One Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things. We exist through Him. That's it. So anyone who does not acknowledge and bow in faith before the God who has revealed Himself in His Scriptures has created another god, whether he calls it a god or not. In rejecting the God of the Bible he is now worshiping something of his own creation, his own mind.

Colossians 1:16 is the last verse we will take on this. Talking about Christ, “for by Him, by Him all things were created.” That includes everything “in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible.” I take it angels were created on the first part of the first day of creation, Genesis 1:1. As we read it in the Old Testament the angels rejoiced together at the creation. But the angels aren't eternal and they would be part of the invisible creation. So they would be part of what God created on that first day. Visible and invisible, thrones or dominions, rulers and authorities. That means Lucifer was present at the wonder of God's creating power and out of that he determined that he would replace God and be sovereign over the creation that he did not create, but that God created. Amazing. “All things have been created through Him and for Him.” Understand the doctrine of creation is crucial. We recognize it was not only created by Him, it was created for Him and we bow and worship Him as the sovereign creating God.

There are some other passages but I want to take you back to Job 38. Job went through a lot of trials. He is the epitome of suffering in the Scripture in all that he lost in family, in health, in friends. Finally you come to the end of these trials and God is going to address him. And Job had bemoaned, if only I could talk to God face to face, I'd have some things to say. I don't think this is fair, and you're not doing the right thing with me. So now he gets his chance. Job 38 begins, “then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” You think after all Job has been through, all his suffering, all his loss, God might have come, put His arm around Job and said, Job, I understand. It has been difficult, I understand your frustration. I know at times you were upset with Me, but that's okay. That's not how God comes to Job. He says, “who is this that talks and doesn't know what he is talking about? Gird up your loins like a man, stand up. I will ask you, you instruct Me.” You know so much, you tell Me. I have some questions. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” See where God takes him back? To the beginning when I created it all. You're so smart, you understand everything. Where were you on that day? Obviously, he wasn't even in existence. “Tell Me if you have understanding. Who set its measurements since you know? Who stretched out the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together, all the sons of God shouted for joy?” There is the verse I referred to that the angels were present and had been created in the first part of that first day. “Who enclosed the sea with doors?” All the details of creation, He did everything.

I love verse 12, I use it myself. Sometimes when I am frustrated and think, something is wrong. Have you ever in your life commanded the morning? Caused the dawn to know its place? We say, that's Mother Nature at work. It is not. God says, “I command the dawn.” Did you ever do that? Lord, this doesn't seem right, I can't see any good out of this. I sometimes quote this verse to myself. Gil, have you ever commanded the sun to rise? Well, then shut up. I mean, do you think God doesn't know what He is doing? We have the whole chapter on this.

Verse 16, “have you ever entered the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?” We're just even now beginning to plumb some of the depths and are amazed at what we are finding down there. He said to Job, “have you ever been down to the deepest part of the sea?” Now we're finding out there are creatures down there we didn't even know existed. Of course, he wasn't there. “Do you know where the dwelling of light and the darkness is?” I mean, he goes through all of this and He controls the animals and how they hunt and keeps on going in Job 39, why the animals mate.

Do you what? The denial of God as Creator is a major manifestation of a lack of faith in the Word of God. We as Christians should not be shaken. The God who is my Redeemer is the God who created everything. That faith in Him as the One who created it all, rules over it all, controls it all and determines that all will be brought to His appointed end is security and stability. That gives me endurance. No, I wasn't there at creation; no, I don't understand all that God is doing in the world; no, I don't know why He brought this trial and difficulty into my life. I don't know why I got this disease. I don't know why this child of mine is suffering so much. I don't know why. I don't have to know why. We have the song, I don't know what the future holds but I know who holds the future. That's what gives me stability. You're a Christian, you think you have all the answers? No, I don't, but I know the One who has all the answers and I can trust Him.

So believing that God created everything by the Word of His power and it wasn't that long ago—several thousand years and that will wrap it up. That's it. Well, how could that be? Because He is powerful and His Word called it into existence. And that's the very Word I am trusting. It goes back, I believe it from the beginning and I continue to trust Him today.

Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for the riches of your Word. Lord, how awesome it is that we bow in your presence, you the living God, you the One who has created all things. You are the One who controls all things, sustains all things. There is not a force apart from you, an operation to bring these things about. You are the God who rules over all, you are the God who cares for us. You are sovereign in our lives, we belong to you. You are working all things for our good and your glory, the things that we seem to understand, the things that we don't understand. Lord, that is our confidence. That is what enables us to endure. When we don't know and don't understand, we trust you and you are the God to be trusted. May these truths encourage our hearts and give us a greater appreciation of who you are. In Christ's name, amen.