Sermon Snippets

Have you ever achieved a long-held goal or been able to live out a dream? When was the last time you felt your heart beating fast and adrenaline coursing pure excitement through your veins?

I relate that kind of experience to Genesis 9. Ok, the Flood (in ch.6-8) was more of a nightmare than a dream, but it certainly seems to me a lot like those moments after you get off a super-fast roller coaster.

"Now what?"

"What's next?"

"Where's the bathroom?"

Scripture follows Noah and his family as God sets forth his desire for them to rebuild and replenish the earth.
And to guide them in the right direction, God confirms some special privileges for mankind moving forward.

They involve having babies, eating meat, and asserting one's dominance over other creatures. The privileges also involve security, peace, and confidence, symbolized by beauty. 

It's against this backdrop that the end of the chapter seems awkward. But this final record of Noah's life teaches us about the importance of how we handle our privileges. Do we exploit them, use them for our advantage or amusement (Ham-9:20-23) or do we use them properly and purely as Shem and Japheth (9:23)?

Spiderman comics have famously promoted the wisdom that "with great power comes great responsibility" - and Noah and his sons graphically personify it.

Music Mondays: Inspired by Genesis

This past weekend, we continued to follow the life of Noah, specifically looking at The Flood episode. The previous week's passage (ch.6) detailed everything leading up to the historic catastrophe, and the following chapters leave no doubt about God's powerful judgment.

While The Flood is largely about God's punishment of humanity for their pervasive sin, it is equally as much about God's grace to Noah, his family, and the animals on the Ark. God graciously directs, protects, remembers, and restores Noah.  Noah's response of obedience, patience, and worship provide examples for us to emulate. 

"Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" is quite possibly my favorite older hymn and it echoes those same themes found in Genesis 7-8.  It expresses commitment, praise, and humility much like Noah did through the most trying year of his life. 

The Flood renewed the physical creation that was Earth. It did not permanently renew the human heart (8:21) however, but God still promises blessing and we know ultimately had a solution in mind with Jesus. This great hymn likewise recognizes our continuing proclivity to sin and turns to Christ our Savior for the victory and forgiveness we need.

Music Mondays - Inspired by Genesis

Maybe the most well-known stories of the early chapters of Genesis is that of Noah and the Ark. 
Humanity is so depraved and wicked, God is left with no other option but to punish the world with a catastrophic flood that will destroy all living things - except Noah and his family. And the animals God sends their way.

Maybe no other song is as directly tied to the stories of Genesis as this one. It came out while I was in high school and I actually remember a non-Christian friend asking me about it before I'd even heard it. He had heard it on a secular alt. rock station. It took the imagery of The Flood and allegorized it a little so it applied to us personally. We all are weak, dying, and in need of God's help to save us. 

Jars of Clay's classic, Flood:

 

Music Mondays - Inspired by Genesis

In an effort to catch up a little bit, to where we are in our sermon series, I'm including two songs this week. One is an older traditional hymn, the other is from the early 80's - a time when contemporary worship was developing, but hadn't quite taken hold in most churches.
The hymn relates to Genesis 3 while the second song relates more to Genesis 4-5.

While Genesis 3 describes the Fall of Humanity, this song is about Faith providing us victory. How does the song relate? Adam and Eve's failure at its core was a failure to trust God and it plunged all of mankind into a depraved state for the rest of history. The only hope out of this position of spiritual death is faith. Faith truly is the victory!

After the Fall, mankind is pictured as slipping into a downward spiral, especially with Cain and his descendants (Gen. 4). But Seth is born as a third son to Adam and Eve and his descendants begin to "call on the name of the Lord" (4:26). In other words, they choose a path of devotion and faithfulness to God rather than the destructive path of Cain's family. The paths remain a choice each of us must face - as Joshua would later say, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Josh. 24:15).

Sermon Snippets

They say the "two certainties in life are death and taxes".  I assume whoever 'they' are came up with that phrase to emphasize the omnipresence of taxes. But of course we all know that death affects us all.

Approximately seven times in Genesis 5, the author dresses up an otherwise monotonous genealogy with the cold hard truth, "and he died".

Death is an overriding theme and ever-present reality even with Seth and his descendants, who are supposed to be the 'good' side of history's first family (vs. Cain - 4:17-24).

Most of us don't like to dwell on it too much, but we are all mortal. We aren't guaranteed a certain amount of time in this life.

But as is common, the author of Genesis places some hopeful details within an otherwise dark story:

• Enoch (vs. 21-24) doesn't actually die. Why? He "walked with God". He had a close relationship with his Creator and pleased God by his life. 
• Noah (vs.28-31, 6:8) also stands as a symbol of comfort and relief from the curse of the ground mankind has to deal with because of the Fall.

It becomes a consistent theme as the rest of Scripture's meta-narrative unfolds - those who walk with God have hope, even when the world is crumbling and death threatens us.

Death is a certainty in life. But it's not the end and it's not a certainty that saps all hope and meaning from this life.

A Battle of Worldviews: Reviewing the Debate at the Creation Museum

      

Last night, I tuned into the free live webcast of the latest national debate between evolutionary science and creationism. Bill Nye "The Science Guy" and Ken Hamm represented each side.

Each represented their position well. The debate didn't devolve into personal attacks from either side and overall I thought the tone of the discussion was very respectful.

The central question posed was "Is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era?"  The debate in its essence though was one of worldviews. Hamm acknowledged this and transparently admitted his worldview was based on Scripture, while Nye contended natural science was sufficient to explain both the origin and present state of the world.  Albert Mohler does an excellent job of breaking down the issues involved with this central idea with more specificity here. 

I've come to realize that the reason I dislike political debates like those presidential candidates take part in, is that they seem to use their time for answering new questions to refute what their opponent stated previously. They never seem devote significant time to the questions, they just go around and around in rebuttal. I actually was pining for that during this debate. On several occasions, both Nye and Hamm threw out questions aimed at the other that they wanted answered. But the debate format did not require the other from doing so, nor did it offer natural opportunities to revisit those issues.  From my own recollection, Nye posed these questions more than Hamm, and therefore I was left wishing Hamm could concisely revisit what Nye had brought up.

I'd like to conclude my review by addressing the mistakes each made. And I'm going to be a little harder on Ken Hamm because he was representing my side. 

Where Nye Went Wrong:

• Nye spent a lot of time in his arguments dismissing the biblical account of Noah's Ark and the worldwide Flood. In some respects I understand why, as he knows this is part of creationism's argument for the fossil and geological record. Still, he seemed overly dismissive of details like: the possibility of Noah being able to build an ark, the ark being able to contain the animals, the realistic notion of feeding the animals, and the sea-worthiness of a vessel that size. Legitimate points of contention, but not major ones in my opinion.
• Nye also resorted to what essentially were 'bandwagon' arguments. Multiple times he advocated the evolutionary theory because "billions of people" agree with it and not creationism. I believe it was in my freshman Speech class in college we learned about debate methods like the bandwagon approach that may carry some weight, but are still very fallible. People widely accepted many things throughout history that they believed to be absolutely true, yet were proven to be false. 
• While Hamm consistently admitted to his presuppositions and assumptions (that were based on Scripture), Nye would not admit to his own. As Mohler states, "Nye seems to believe that he is genuinely open to any and all new information, but it is clear that his ultimate intellectual authority is the prevailing scientific consensus. More than once he asserted a virtually unblemished confidence in the ability of modern science to correct itself. He steadfastly refused to admit that any intellectual presuppositions color his own judgment."

Where Hamm Went Wrong:

• Let me start by saying Hamm exceeded my expectations. I have heard him speak on these subjects several times before and I was wary that he would reflect a dismissive attitude while making simplistic arguments. But he portrayed himself well. That said, he like Nye, resorted to fallible debate techniques. He was obviously unable to use the 'bandwagon' approach, but Hamm did fall back on a 'slippery-slope' argument: "If you let X happen, Y and Z will undoubtedly happen too - and we wouldn't want that to happen would we?" Answers in Genesis often uses this inaccurately. Last night Hamm focused on how Evolutionary Theory leads to Moral Relativism which leads to things like Euthanasia. In reality, one does not necessarily lead to another. And to accuse the other side of advocating such things is a poor argument if not outright untrue.
• As mentioned above, I wish Hamm would have been able to directly answer some of the semi-rhetorical questions Nye threw out in his presentation. Time was of the essence, so it was basically 'pick your poison' as far as what to address without going to much off topic. He did so in a couple instances, like animals having sharp teeth, space in the Ark. But he left a few issues un-addressed such as propagation of the species post-flood and speed-of-light as we observe astronomical data.
• One of Nye's strong themes was his call for young people to pursue science to keep America at the head of the pack in terms of technology, research, and discovery. Hamm did assert that creationists can be excellent scientists, as he cited several experts past and present who were young-earth scientists who contributed important advancements to the scientific community. However Nye's passion for scientific exploration and finding joy in science far surpassed Hamm's. God's creation can reveal to us amazing things, especially his incredible character (Romans 1:18-20) and we can express even more enthusiasm for science because of this truth.
• My biggest issue with Ken Hamm's presentation is his insistence on a baby-young age of the earth.  Nye repeatedly dismissed creationism because Hamm believes it's been only 4,000 years since the flood and the earth is only 6,000 years old. Now I will admit that the position I am about to take would not eliminate all of Nye's issues with creationism, but it would have taken some of the force out of his arguments. As one of my former professors, Dr. Davis, espouses in this book, the Flood may have occurred 18,000 years ago, not 4,000. As he describes comprehensively in pages 28-32 of his commentary, ancient genealogies often skipped multiple generations to highlight important figures according to the author's purpose. Gaps likely exist in the lists in Genesis 5 and 11. Therefore, AiG and Ken Hamm likely err when they simply add up the ages of those listed in the biblical account. Davis adheres to a six-day literal creation account as well as a world-wide flood, but he offers a well-supported argument that the earth, while still young, is not as young presented in this debate. Additionally, we believe Scripture to reveal a God who is infinite and all-powerful and there is every reason to believe he created this universe 'fully mature', with trees that had 100 rings in them the moment they were made, new rocks that were made with the qualities of being millions of years old, and light that instantly appeared even though it has to travel over 8 minutes to get from the sun to the earth (though the Sun was created after light according to Genesis, but you get my point).  Again, these points would not completely silence Bill Nye and others, but I would be very interested to hear him respond to this more nuanced position. 

In the end, I was encouraged that Ken Hamm shared the gospel in a way relevant to the discussion and I enjoyed the two opposing sides civily disagreeing with one another without resorting to personal attacks or mocking. I hope this does encourage people to continue to pursue scientific advancement, though hopefully we can continue to offer a biblical worldview in an appropriate way without being unfairly disregarded. 

Music Mondays - Inspired by Genesis

"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good."

Genesis 1-2 beautifully describe how God made the heavens and the earth. They are duplicate accounts that underscore God's creativity and care in creating both our world and humanity itself.

However perfect that original world is in our minds eye, we err if we minimize the fact that God spoke and it came to be. His very words ushered in the existence of all things. This is truly mind-blowing and incomprehensible. And that's the point.

God is in charge, this is His world. And it all reflects his glorious nature.

So for this week's selection of songs inspired by Genesis, let me offer "This is My Father's World" in correlation to Genesis 1-3. Yes, I include Genesis 3, because the third verse of Maltbie Babcock's classic assures us:

This is my Father's world. O let me ne'er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father's world: why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King; let the heavens ring! God reigns; let the earth be glad! 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_is_My_Father%27s_World