The Gospel In Genesis No.2 Two Creations

Job chapter 38. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.

Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the cornerstone thereof? When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and break up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shalt thy proud waves be stayed. Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days, and caused the day-spring to know his place, that it might take holds of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it? It is turned as clay to the seal, and they stand as a garment, and from the wicked their light is withholder, and the high arm shall be broken. Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? Or hast thou walked in the search of the depth? Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death? Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? Declare, if thou knowest it all.

Where is the way where light dwelleth? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof, that thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the path to the house thereof? Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born, or because the number of thy days is great? Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war? By what way is the light parted which scattereth the east wind upon the earth? Who hath divided the water-course for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder, to cause it to rain on the earth where no man is, on the wilderness wherein there is no man, to satisfy the desolate and waste ground, and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? Hath the rain a father? Or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice, and the hoary frost of heaven? Who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen. Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or lose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Maseroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds that abundance of waters may cover thee? Canst thou send lightnings that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are? Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who hath given understanding to the heart? Who can number the clouds in wisdom? Or who can stay the bottles of heaven, when the dust groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together? Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion? Or fill the appetite of the young lions, when they couch in their dens, and abide in the covet to lie in wait? Who provideth for the raven his food? When his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat. Today's a very special day in the experience of one of our members.

This is Kitty Spencer, who is 80 years of age, though you won't believe it when she comes to the pulpit here. But she's going to tell you a little of what the Lord Jesus means to her, and how he's kept her down these eight decades. Looks after me like a father, doesn't he? But we're all one family.

How do you give a testimony of 80 years of God's love and care in five minutes? That's what I'm allowed. But I'm going to try by just relating two incidents in my life. I was born into an ordinary family with a wonderful Christian mother.

She loved singing hymns, count your blessings, the glory song, ask the Savior to help you, and so on. No one in any kind of need was ever turned away from her door. As soon as I and my brothers could, we were taken to Sunday school.

This was more important to her than education in these days, in those days, if not more so. I loved my Sunday school, its teachers, the stories of the baby Jesus, how he grew up to be a man, and what he did for it all, the singing. In fact, I sang my first solo in the church at three years old.

I think I was a better singer then than I am today. When we began on the stories of the Old Testament, I was really thrilled, and I began to realize the greatness of God. I was given piano and organ tuition, and was soon serving in that capacity that weren't many of us about in those days.

I loved playing the old harmonium, I think they called it, in the senior department, because there was a nice young man there serving as a secretary. And soon we got to know each other, grew together, and were soon engaged, and everything looked rosy. And then disaster came.

One day, when Walter was returning home from work, he collapsed with trouble pains. His friend took him to a doctor's surgery, who realized what the call was, and he was being operated on immediately for a very serious illness. His parents were very distressed, and I thought my whole world had collapsed.

But I didn't give up. I prayed and prayed, until one day a relative said to me, why don't you face facts? Walter's going to die. Well, I was heartbroken.

I did what we are advised to do in the Bible. I went to my bedroom, in the Bible I think it calls it a closet, and I poured out my anguish and grieved to the Lord. And then a gentle voice spoke these words, let not your heart be troubled.

I looked round in the room, there was nobody there. Then I realized it was a message from the Lord himself. I got into bed, comforted, reassured, and when morning came, I went about telling everybody Walter's getting better.

And I told them of this incident, they looked at me as if I was queer, going out of my mind. But we learned after, it was at that moment that Walter took a turn for the better, and began improving. And we've now had 57 years of happy married life.

You always trust a God who can do that for you. Oh yes, we've had our ups and downs, problems, disappointments, but always we have relied on the Father. We had one daughter who married a young man from home.

Everything in the garden looked lovely, and then just six weeks after their marriage, they informed us at Mr. Rodman's first missionary convention, that they had volunteered for full time service in Africa, in response to an appeal that was made. This worried us somewhat, because the future seemed so bright for them. I argued, I protested, I tried to persuade them to think again, but no, the Lord had called them, and they were determined.

They started training at Glasgow Bible College, and then went to Africa. I have to confess that I rebelled against God in my heart, saying, why did he have to take my only child? Time passed, and then the answer to my question was given me one Sunday morning, when Mr. Tymon Childers preached at Holland Road Church, and I was sat just behind him in the choir. I don't remember his sermon, but his text struck me forcibly.

This was what it was, I think you'll find it in St. John 13 verse 7. What ye know not now, ye shall know hereafter. I bowed my head and accepted the fact, and peace was given to me immediately. I know that once again, God was giving me the answer through that dear man.

And then, does this not mean that if the answer to your prayer is no, it also means that God's timing is perfect and for the best? Now, I've only been given five minutes, and I don't want to take up much more, but again, we proved God's faithfulness only a week or two ago, which means that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And I'll just close with this. We have a very dear pastor friend who visited an old lady.

She gave him a very, very old Bible, and she wanted him to have it. It was one of her treasures. When he got home, he was looking at this Bible.

He noticed a lot of ticks in various places, mostly in the New Testament, I believe. So he went to see her a day or two after to see what these ticks meant. And this was her reply.

Those are the promises of God which I have proved true. I hope you people can say that. I know I can.

Amen. I do believe in the importance of reading Scripture, so I'm not apologizing for the fact that I'm going to read three brief passages again to you. I suggest you turn only to the first one, and then we have a brief prayer.

The first is in the book of Genesis in chapter 1 and verse 27, where we read, So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

And then 2 Corinthians in chapter 5. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone. The new has come.

That was the 17th verse of that chapter. Finally, Isaiah 65 and verse 17. Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth.

The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create. For I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.

I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people. The sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. Father, we offer these moments to you.

Help us as we consider your Word to be drawn to conclusions that are inspired by your Spirit. And may we respond, young and old, to the glorious truths the God behind the world, the God of the atom, the God of the gospel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Last week, I made the assertion that I recognize the book of Genesis to be filled with fact and not fable. I acknowledge that in some degree, particularly the opening chapters, contain a pictorial representation of how God created the world and men and women. I acknowledge that the scripture is more concerned about answering the question why God created than how God created.

But where it does attend to that last question, how, I believe that it is entirely accurate. The most important statement in the Old Testament, probably, is the opening verse of Genesis. In the beginning, God.

Not in the beginning, primeval slugs. Not in the beginning, hydrogen. But rather, in the beginning, God.

And in one sense, that's the most important thing for you to take out with you from the sanctuary this evening. The God of the Bible is a personal God, and ordinary people can enter into a faith relationship with Him. I believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six days.

I believe it basically because that's what the Bible says, and more particularly, that is what our Lord implies in His teaching. I seek not to prove it scientifically, but I accept it by faith that I have in this particular book as being inspired by the Lord. But let me go on to remind you also of this.

The Bible not only tells us that God created the heavens and the earth, and man is the summit of His creation, it goes on to say, if I can put it bluntly, that man made a mess of things, and the work of God was spoiled by man's sin. The Bible goes on to tell us, however, that thousands of years passed, and then Jesus Christ, God's own Son, stepped into this world which He had been responsible for forming. He came as a humble babe.

He died as a mature man on the cross, and He released the power of recreation. And people who belong to Jesus have not only been once born, but twice born, and they are being prepared for something that God is yet to do, for He will restore the world, the universe, as it was when it first left His hands. Then it will be cleansed.

It will be uncontaminated by sin. There is to be a new heaven, so to speak, a rejuvenated universe, and members of the family of man who are destined to live there in the immediate presence of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are those who have been twice born. Well, that's a summary of all that I'm going to say this evening.

If you've got it in your mind now, you could sort of go to sleep for the next 20 minutes, but I hope you won't. But I'm going to come back and open it up a little bit more. But I'm going to indulge five minutes in going off to some degree on a tangent, and yet it's relative to what I have to say.

I listened to a very interesting program on Wednesday on Radio 3. It may well be that if you have a good memory, you recall that last Sunday evening, I quoted Malcolm Muggeridge's comment on the theory held some years ago by one of the leading British scientists, Professor Hoyle. And Muggeridge said that he thought Hoyle's Big Bang Theory to describe the origin of the world was infinitely inferior to the Bible's declaration in Genesis 1 that God made everything. Well, it so happened that this last week, though I wasn't aware of this when preaching on Sunday on this subject, Sunday last on this subject, that there was the publication of a new book called Evolution from Space edited by Professor Hoyle and a colleague of his from the University of Cardiff.

Publishers of this book were contacted and we tried to get a copy available for reference over this weekend, but it's not arrived despite the fact that we're told it was posted from London, first-class mail. However, from the interview of Hoyle on Radio 3 and also a summary of the book that was in the Times on Monday last week, we are confronted with the amazing sight, and we say this with great respect to one of the best minds in the United Kingdom, that Professor Hoyle has felt himself driven to make some fresh conclusions about the origin of the world. He has come to the deduction that the whole theory of evolution as taught by Charles Darwin cannot possibly be true.

He says that the chance of animate matter, that means people with intelligence like you and me developing, evolving from inanimate matter over a period even of billions of years, is as possible as a chance of one in 40,000. In other words, if you put one over 40 and put 40,000 knots at the end of that figure, you have a massive figure, impossible to calculate. That is the chance, says Hoyle, that all this came about by a mere fluke of atoms and the assembling together somehow or other of the potential of life accidentally.

And the last chapter of the book, which I'm dying to read, actually speaks about God and the possibility, indeed the certainty, that somehow, somewhere, there is a being bigger, greater, grander than you or I can conceive. And the origin of life are within the potentialities of that being. Don't misunderstand me.

Professor Hoyle and his colleagues are in no way becoming Christians, but they are making conclusions which, to quote the Times newspaper, has once and for all sunk Darwinism as it has previously been taught. Hoyle has some idea of God perhaps as some great cosmic chip in the universe. He has to go a little bit further and suggest, perhaps beyond his colleague who co-authored the book, that God has the idea of personality, the characteristics of being personal.

But the amazing thing is this, that a scientist of great reputation is pushed to the conclusion that in the beginning, not hydrogen nor a primeval slug. In the beginning, God. And that, I say, is really the most important message of the book of Genesis.

I'm really not bothered whether you agree with me that the days in Genesis are days of 24 hours. I've lived long enough to question some of the findings of our scientific friends. And where the word of God seems to distinguish between its teaching and scientific conclusions, then I'll wait a while and see if the scientists readjust their thinking.

But the fact of the matter, the basic point is this, my dear young friend, my dear older friend, it is infinitely more logical and satisfactory to believe that behind you, your personality, behind this world, behind this universe, there is God. And if I am dependent on that God, and if that God is personal, and if that God has granted to me life, then it's a pretty safe conclusion that I am morally and spiritually responsible to God for the way that I live. Now, this is one of the things that certain atheist scientists have always feared.

I remember reading a book by Huxley some years ago called Ends and Means. It was a very honest book, almost an autobiography. And Huxley said that in his days as a student at the university, he did not reject the notion of God simply because he felt logically he had to, but rather if he had conceded that there was a God, he would have had to have lived his life differently.

It's the times that said this week that the notion of a non-God, of a universe created as a fluke, coming into existence as a fluke of inanimate things, inanimate particles, was psychologically necessary in the last 50 or 60 years. Why psychologically necessary? Well, you see, if there's no God, it doesn't matter how I live. I can be a Hitler.

I can be a Mussolini. I can be an Amin. It doesn't really matter.

I can do what some of those Uganda soldiers were doing on Thursday in the West Nile area on the borders of Uganda. I can take a Sten gun and I can commit an act that is virtually an act of genocide. I can mow down Africans who might testify against me and some of my activities a month or so ago.

I can do this if there's no God. To whom am I responsible? I've covered up the evidence. You see, my friend, I acknowledge the fact of God, and you acknowledge also by logical implication the fact that you're a responsible person, and most of the evil men in this 20th century who hit the headlines for their evil deeds were men who had swallowed hook, line, and sinker, the primitive theory of Charles Darwin.

Well then, I said that this evening I would try to open up the little summary of the gospel that I gave you right at the beginning of my address. You see, when you move into Genesis 1, 2, and 3, you are confronted with the story of the first creation. When you move into the New Testament, you are confronted with the rather warming news of a second creation.

Let's take the first again, just for a few moments. The Bible tells us that God is behind man. Man has been created by the Lord.

God created man in his own image, Genesis 1, verse 27. In the image of God, he created he him. Male and female, he created them.

Going into the second chapter, in the seventh verse, there's a development. There's a fuller rehearsing of what God did to bring man about. And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

Notice there the stage. God takes dust, dust of the earth. He shapes it into the form that he wants.

And then the first kiss of life ever recorded in human history is deposited by God on the lips of man that he has created, clay man. And at that moment, man becomes a living being. The zenith, the pinnacle, the height of God's creation.

He bears the impress, the image of the Lord upon him. And God in his creative activity has caused an ideal environment for him to live in. He takes him to the Garden of Eden, Eden being a Hebrew word which means delight.

And there God allows man to enjoy his days, to enjoy fellowship with him. God, the creator of Adam, the creator of Eve. Life caused by God in the first instance.

But this human life, according to Genesis 2 and 3, is not only created by God, it's tested by God. God will test the piety of our first parents, Adam and Eve. He will give them a word.

God always speaks by a word. And the word will be one of permission, and it will also be one of prohibition. So in the 16th and 17th verses of Genesis 2, God speaks to our first parents and says, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.

It doesn't really matter what these trees were. They had no magical significance about them. It was what they represented, the permission of God, the prohibition of God, the graciousness of God, the ultimate judgment of God.

And man using for the first and only time, note those statements, for the first and only time he employed free will, and he determined he would not follow the way of the Lord, but rather he would follow the path of the tempter. God's word was rejected in Eden. Adam, most towards Eve, who in turn had taken a step toward the forbidden fruit, a small step for the first man, a landslide for humanity.

Oh Adam, says one of the Jewish rabbis in a book that never made the Old Testament, oh Adam, what has thou done? For it is not thee alone who has sinned, but all your descendants thou hast taken with thee. Adam, tested by God's word, has to be judged, and so he's tossed out of the garden of delight. A curse is passed on the very earth that God created and called good.

Adam, who was made from the earth, will now make his living from the sweat of his brow as he attends mother nature. Adam, in a fallen state, will hide from God. In shame, he and Eve will make aprons of fig leaves.

In shame, they will be expelled from the presence of the living God, for if eternal life is to know God and to enjoy him, then eternal punishment is to be debarred from access to the presence of the Lord. So Adam and Eve are expelled from this garden. But you remember from what I said last week, whenever you come across God's judgment in scripture, you always come across his mercy.

His judgment is a nettle. His mercy is a dark leaf. And to those who have got eyes to see, and ears that will hear, and minds that will understand, encapsuled in Genesis 2 is the suggestion that God will not abandon man to his own evil.

He will step into time and space, and the seed of the woman—what a strange expression, for it goes against our knowledge of human biology—the seed of the woman from the descendants of the female species, so to speak. One day will come someone who will be able to smite the head of the serpent, even Satan himself. So Adam and Eve, the representatives of God's great creative activity, are expelled from paradise.

And the world, nature, the universe, feels the effects of sin. It's like a virus, and it spreads all over. And the story of humankind is explicable historically when you agree to the fact of the original fall of man.

No wonder when the writer of Ecclesiastes gets very, very depressed about life and its imponderable difficulties, he says, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. I look to the universe. I look to the world.

I look inside my own life. It just doesn't make sense. Meaninglessness of meaninglessnesses.

That's how you could translate the Hebrew. Nothing seems to make sense. Man is without God, and the world seems to continue without any discipline at all.

And that's a pretty fair statement, actually. When you look at the world outside the context of Genesis 1 to 3, and outside the teaching of the New Testament, it doesn't make sense. That's why there are university students on the continent who have come across the teachings of atheistic philosophers, the University of Sorbonne in Paris, and they have committed suicide simply because of the teaching of the meaninglessness of life.

And on the viewpoint of atheism, on the viewpoint of no God as the originator, there is no meaning. All is weariness. All is vanity.

All is darkness. Ah, but my friend, the Bible tells us in Genesis 3, and as a development throughout the whole of the Old Testament, and it becomes clear in the New, that this God behind the creation of the heavens and the earth will one day step into the very cosmos that he has made, and he'll take flesh, and he'll dwell amongst us. God contracted to us an incomprehensibly made man, says Wesley, and you hear a little cry in Bethlehem's manger, and you follow eventually as the years go by the pilgrimage of the Christ, and you listen to his teaching, and you watch him at his work, the miracles he performs, an uncanny ability this man has.

He can speak to nature, and it obeys him. He can suspend its laws, and water walk on water. He can multiply grain.

He can cause bread to grow in front of the eyes of the people. So many things this man can do. Uncanny, I say.

Explain, Christ, how do you understand him? Is he just a mythical figure? Well, you've got the historical documents that would offset that argument. Is he just a madman? Well, how has he influenced so many people for good? There are no plausible reasons to answer who Christ is than to come back to what scripture tells us. He is the second person of the ever-blessed trinity.

When he spoke eons ago, the world came into existence. What God created, said a New Testament or an early church writer and brilliant preacher, what God created, it would take God to recreate, and so what does God do? He steps into this world, and he starts to speak about a new life, about a new world, about a new life principle. He speaks to a man by the name of Nicodemus.

Now, Nicodemus knows all about theology. He's been to college. He's got all his degrees.

He's a doctor of divinity. He's a doctor of philosophy. You can't teach Nicodemus anything, can't you? This man can.

The God-man can. I've got a problem, says Nicodemus. It's a problem of eternal life.

It's a problem of understanding this world. Whither am I bound? Where am I going? Covad, is Jesus. And as Jesus responds, verily, I say unto thee, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

Born again, a twin birth, what does he mean? Do I shrink back into an embryo? Am I placed back in my mother's womb? What would that do, Nicodemus? You'd come out the same way with all the difficulties, with all the contradictions in your own personality. Man be reasonable. That would not satisfy anything.

That would not solve anything. You must be born again. It's not so much your body, Nicodemus.

It's your spirit. It's the rebellion against the holy God. That must be dealt with.

And that's the essence of the gospel, my friend. Being born again, responding to the creative principle that Jesus introduced into this world. If any man be in Christ, Jesus says, the apostle Paul, he is a new creation.

That's why Dorothy and Judith were so right in singing the piece that they sang so beautifully a few moments ago. That's why Brother Richard Sharp was right some while ago when he taught us a refrain at our prayer meeting, I'm a new man. This is what Christians are, you see.

They are new beings because the principle of new life has been applied to them. They've been to the cross where Jesus died for the sins of humankind. And they have found that he released there a power that cleanses the sons and daughters of Adam of the vilest sin.

Jesus said that if we accept his word, we should be freed from condemnation. Adam was judged by a word, and my friend, you will be judged by a word. What have you done with the word of Jesus? What have you done with the gospel of Christ? Here you were in the tabernacle on a Sunday evening.

It was brought to you, the phenomenon of creation. God was behind it. Man spoiled it.

You've contributed your own share. You can't just blame historically Adam or your parents or your grandparents. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

Ah, yes. But here is the God-man Christ. He moves into the world.

You can see him. At least you can read of him. You can feel him.

You can know the power of his spirit. You can hear 10,000 testimonies like Mrs. Spencer's as to what God in Christ can do for you. And you reject it.

So what happens? You remain a once-born man. Hear me as these moments tick by. A once-born man will never enter into the kingdom of God.

A once-born man shall never enter into a paradise regained. Behold, says Jehovah God through his servant Isaiah, I shall create a new heavens and a new earth. I and the fisherman Peter picks up an echo of what he says, for he writes in the epistle that bears his name about this new universe that shall come.

And one of the prophets sees it from a distance, and he says that the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. Look into the heavens on a starry night and scan all those bodies to which we made reference, to which Job made reference in that beautiful reading from his word. Tell me, is all this for nothing? All these planets we hear of, all these thousands of universes that scientists tell us are there, is that all for nothing? It doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense. God has got some great purpose. Eye has not seen.

Here comes my favorite verse of scripture. Ear has not, eye has not seen, ear has not heard the things that God hath in store for them that love him. Oh, my dear young friend, don't put all your eggs in the basket of mother earth as though you're going to be here forever.

You're not. This life is but the prologue of a book. It's but the beginning.

There's something else coming. It's glorious. Eye says the apostle Paul, I can't describe it.

And when we look into Paul's teaching in Romans, he tells us that the very inanimate world, even nature itself, is groaning, longing for its redemption. Mother earth, cursed because of Adam's sin, is longing for the day when the bondage is broken and when she is rejuvenated and restored to her pristine beauty. Oh, I wish I had half an hour longer.

I wish I dare take you that length of time and show you something more of what lies beyond as to what God has in store for those that love him. But I won't. I will tell you this, however, that if Hoyle is right, as I believe he is, if other logically thinking scientists are right and there is a personal God, then one day you will have to give an account of yourself.

If your life did not come about, I'm not even talking about your body, I'm talking about your personality, your soul, what makes you different from me and me different from you. If that has as its origin God, if it was the kiss of life passed on through Adam and his descendants that reached me, then that life will return to God, its giver, when this body of mine decays and lies a-molding in the grave, as one popular song says. To where does this body, to where does this spirit go? It returns to the Lord.

It returns to give an account of itself. It returns to await the day of the rejuvenation of all things. Tell me, at that moment, will you be a once-born man or a twice-born man? Do you face eternity with certainty or with fear? Make no mistake, my friend, you can't hide behind your fig leaves from God.

You can't hide behind your excuses from God. One day you'll be before him, and to fall into his hands as an unrepentant sinner is a horrific experience. But to know him as a God and Father of Jesus Christ, who has made recreation possible, is to know the best friend in the universe.

I put it to you again, do you know this God? You young folks in the balcony, are you twice-born people? Do you recognize the authority of this word? Do you recognize what the second Adam has done for us? I plead with you, I beg of you, if the Spirit of God works upon your heart this evening, if it opens the heart and the minds of older friends to respond to the gospel of Christ and see how the world makes sense as you become a Christian and as you receive the kiss of eternal life as the Spirit of God embraces you. Amen.