SUMMARY KEYWORDS

god, faith, view, conversations, creation, world, genesis, hold, years, answers, origins, heard, grow, agree, young earth creationism, graph, challenges, passages, called, story.

SPEAKER

Phil EuBank

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Well, good morning, Menlo church. So glad to be with you today, shout out to our campuses in San Mateo got to hang out with you guys last week, down in Saratoga, Mountain View, here in Menlo Park, joining us online, we really are so glad that you're joining us today. Happy Father's Day as has already been extended, and welcome to our first weekend of an important series that we're going to be walking through together all summer, talking about how our faith grows as we do. And that's a really important idea. See, a lot of times, if we have church experiences growing up, it can mean that we learn biblical stories in a way as kids that we understand. But as we grow up, our understanding of those same stories doesn't always grow up with us. This series is an attempt to help us grow up with our faith and not grow out of it. And so I know that this message will be a little different than the way we normally give messages. And some of this may not feel immediately relevant to you. I hope it does. But I hope it's an encouragement. It's an encouragement, if you've been even just emotionally sort of working your way to the back door, your faith has been fading, that there might be something hopeful for you in the midst of it. And if you've just completely written off faith, nobody knows. But you really have that. This could be an invitation that some of those barriers to belief that you've had might not be as strong as you otherwise thought. But before we get started, I'm going to pray for us. And if you've never been here before, never heard me speak I pray kneeling. Because the work that needs to happen in your heart for that change to take place God has to do not me. Let's pray that he does it in all of us. Would you pray with me? God, thank you. Thank you that no matter the story we walked in with you have written a story for all of humanity, written a story that began before the foundations of the world, the story of hope, the story of love, story of forgiveness. As we look at that, through the lens of creation in the origins of our world, help us got to see you to see your fingerprints, to hear your voice each step of the way. It's in Jesus name. Amen.

So you have maybe seen one of these before a flannel graph. You're welcome. Maybe you saw it in church, or maybe you saw it somewhere else. But if you were a church kid in the 80s and 90s, this flannel graph and Puppet ministry were pretty much the main sort of ways we learned faith, right? A teacher would sweetly explain a biblical story. In this case of how of how creation took place, by placing these things on the flannel graph, the story would begin right in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and they put the things on - the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. And he called the light day and he called the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And over the course of it right as the creation week went on, we heard about the waters and the land. We heard about plants and trees, seasons, animals. And finally, we heard about us well, sort of. We heard about Adam and eventually Eve, created uniquely in the image of God different than the rest of creation, with a unique capacity for relationship with God Himself. See, the problem is that for us, like maybe even as I say that it feels like I just took you back to Sunday school. Like if you grew up in that you just had a flashback. And if you're new or newer to faith, the problem is you're like, wait a second, is that really how you learn all of this? And I'm telling you, it really is. But it's actually really helpful. See I'm not critiquing kids ministry, we teach kids stories in ways that match their current capacity. That's the way we all learn. The problem is that sometimes we don't keep that as our capacity increases. We don't keep increasing our knowledge and understanding of some of those stories that we learned in simple ways. As we understand things more complex. We'll see we all grow up. But the problem is if understanding the key components of our faith, as we grow up, our faith doesn't and that creates a problem. See, instead of growing up with our faith, we can grow out of our faith. Maybe it was a science teacher or YouTube clip or a book something where a flannel graph faith just couldn't hold up to the questions to the objections to the challenges of life. Science was not my favorite subject as a child. And I remember sitting in a middle school science class with a teacher who found it completely preposterous, that I didn't believe in an evolutionary understanding of the origins of humanity. Maybe right now even as I say that you find it preposterous that I didn't believe that, but the thing is this like flannel graph faith, it's all that I had. No one had ever explained any of the rest of it for me, it injected this huge amount of tension into my faith. How could I take my faith and seriously understand the scientific world at the same time that was being taught to me? How can I understand what the Bible said? And what, my teacher said? For some people, this is when faith starts to fade, when it feels like a choice between science or faith. Faith often loses when we're faced with that choice. But that doesn't have to be our choice. As a matter of fact, when it comes to the origins of the world, here's what I hope you hear; who matters more than how, and why, the purpose matters more than when. We can have all of these conversations and we should, but if we lose out on the priority of who did it, and why he did it, we have lost the plot of creation. Now, I'm well aware of the fact that for many of you, there is no tension between science and faith at all for you. There are faith based questions that have faith based answers. And there are science based questions that have science based answers. But here's the thing. I'm not sure it's quite that simple. But the good news is, we don't actually all have to agree on all of this. I've heard it said this way, you're gonna hear me say this throughout the series, Unity does not mean uniformity. We can agree to disagree on some things, on parts, that we agree, the essentials, the core of our faith. But see, the thing is, if our foundation of faith, if the non negotiable has to be a narrow understanding of Genesis 1, that is going to paint us into a very dangerous corner, spiritually. The Bible is the authority of our faith. But it's actually Jesus' life, death and resurrection for you, that is the foundation of our faith. And that difference matters a lot. So before we get into the ways that people disagree, let's start with where we agree, as a matter of fact, not just us as Christians, maybe for you if you're not a Christian at all, I bet we all agree on this stuff. The first thing that we agree on, which is actually something we agree on, that we have not agreed that long on is that the universe has a beginning. Believe it or not, that's a pretty new concept. The apostle Paul told us that this would be observable a couple 1000 years ago, he said, For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power, His divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse that we would see God in the creation of the world. But like I said, this is a pretty new development in the scheme of history. As a matter of fact, until less than 100 years ago, if you wanted to deny the existence of God, what you did is you just denied the creation of the world, you would go to Genesis 1, you say how preposterous that you would think that the world ever didn't exist. That doesn't make any sense. Until this guy named Edwin Hubble, he was awesome. We made him a sweet telescope, as an astronomer discovered the fact that the universe was constantly expanding. And so he kind of reversed the timeline and came to the conclusion that the text already told us, which is that the world had a beginning. See, for flannel graph faith, that doesn't sound like a problem, right? That's exactly what you were taught. But in a scientific world that was built on the assumption of no beginning. It had to pivot quickly. And it did after some resistance, including somebody you may have heard of named Albert Einstein. So we all agree that the universe has a beginning now. And it means that we all have to at least point to the legitimacy of this need for something called the unmoved mover, whether you're a Christian or not. For Christians, we believe that that unmoved mover is God himself. But for you know, kind of this idea of I don't, I don't believe in God, it points to a singularity that created the universe in a theory called the Big Bang. I like to say that we actually all agree on the Big Bang, regardless of what end of the spectrum, just my perspective on it is that God said it and bang, it happened. But we all think there was a bang, right? See, we're more similar on this stuff than we think we are. We also all agree on something called the Goldilocks zone. Now, claims of extraterrestrials aside, Earth is pretty unique as its ability to hold all of us for life to exist as it does. There are a few things that make it so unique. First is our distance from the Sun that provides just the amount of heat and energy to help life survive. Second is water. And because of our distance to the sun, we have enough water that it's not ice cold, and we can use it and it's not so hot that the water all evaporates. In addition, we have things like tectonic plates and a magnetic field and ways were uniquely as a planet, they were all sort of fine tuned as language for life to exist on our planet. I don't believe that that's an accident. So with all that in common, if we agree on all of what I just said, we should be fine, right? Like, what is there to even disagree with? See, I think that there's plenty we know we disagree with. But let me remind you of something. Who matters more than how. If God Himself, that I believe did it, and why, for his ultimate glory, and you're good, that matters more than when that is so important. So with that in mind, I want to give you four views of origins of how Christians manage this tension between science and faith. Now, let's agree that we're going to do some stuff here, we are not going to assume that everyone that holds to a view that's different than mine, someone that disagrees with me that they're ignorant, that they're arrogant, that they're liberal, we are going to resist the urge to name call. Okay, good. I'll take some claps for that. Especially if you've never had this conversation before, it can be easy to forget that if you're a follower of Jesus, you're in a family together. And there are some really great parts of being in a family. But there can also be some sibling rivalry when we have conversations like this. I'm the youngest of four. And I'm also the father of four. And I can tell you kids just love to argue, right? We all understand that families love to argue, sometimes on road trips, when I was young, if I was bored, I would have been willing to argue about the color of the sky with my sister just to make her angry and watch.

Don't tell her I told you that right. And I think sometimes that can be the tone we bring to conversations not just like this one, but the conversations we'll have all summer together. That is not an information problem. That is a spiritual formation problem. We talked a little bit about that last week. As I talk about these, there are four views that we're going to talk about. And there's a series of books with the same title, the four views that I'm going to recommend. This book that I'm recommending today, here's what it does, it takes four different understandings of the origins of the world. And the authors of these essays are the authorities or in authority in that conversation. And then the other authors respond to that essay. It's a very readable book, very helpful, if you've never been exposed to other ideas, as it relates to these conversations, it's a great place to start. And some of you, you may never want to think about this, again, you have no tension about this, you're gonna leave, you're gonna I don't know why we wasted all that time. But for others of you, this is going to unlock and reinvigorate your faith. Because for you somewhere along the way, you thought if I'm going to continue to follow Jesus, I have to turn off my brain. So that's why you stopped. And I hope that what you discover is that God wants you to love him with all of you, including your brain. The first view that we'll look at together is where a lot of people end up with a flannel graph faith, and that's called a young earth creationism. I have immense respect for people who hold to the view of young earth creationism in our moment, it's the one that seems the easiest to read the text to hear the story, and to just build our understanding off of. This view largely believes that the world and the universe are about a few 1000 years old, and it's championed by organizations like answers in Genesis. As Darwinian evolution became more and more common, more and more understood more and more accepted in our culture. This view of young earth creationism also became much more articulated, that as the answers to those questions were found in other places, they sought to find those same answers in Genesis. Now there are a few challenges that those who hold this view may have great answers to, and if this is you, or you know someone in a conversation, these are great topics to talk about. Things like the fact that with the age of the earth, when we carbon date the Earth, it shows up as far more than a few 1000 years old. And until somewhat recently, the young earth conversation with that was, well there was a global flood in the book of Genesis that would have disrupted the carbon dating on planet earth. The problem is, we also have carbon dated the surface of the moon, which is also not just a few 1000 years old. The other challenge worth considering is the measurement of starlight to Earth, which we calculate in light years, and those things have taken far more than 1000s of years to get to us, in turn communicating the idea that the universe is more than just a few 1000 years old, now rigorous young earth creationist have thoughtful answers to both of those objections. I'm just giving you topics to read about topics to talk about, as you have conversations, whether you hold those views or you know someone who does. The next view is old earth creationism. And to a certain extent, this idea is kind of a category that we'll talk about for a few minutes. It seeks to harmonize scientific discovery and the biblical record together, how do we take both seriously, generally, those who hold this view, they believe that the world and the universe are billions of years old, but that God directly and specifically intervene throughout the course of time. There are many different ways that those who hold this view get to this place, including something called the day age theory, in which when we read about the seven days in Genesis, those days are not literal 24 hour periods so they can get to that billions of years conversation. The third view, which is actually kind of a subset of the old earth idea, is actually the one that I hold to. So if you've been waiting to send me an email, maybe this is the first time you'll get right. This view is called historic creationism. It's a little bit more complicated than this. But basically, the first verse of Genesis is seen as a distinct and descriptor of the time before God's intervention and creation that's found in the rest of the chapter. So when we read this verse, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Here's the thing. This verse, In the view of a historic creationist isn't a summary. It's a precursor to the seven days of creation that would follow, which then are understood literally, if you're interested in more about this specific view, you can find out more in a book called Genesis Unbound, written by an author named John Sailhamer. Very, very helpful. The final view that will surface is very common, which is called theistic evolution. Theistic evolution, this view is pretty straightforward, and largely hold on to the Darwinian theory of evolution. And most people who hold this view, here's what they would do, they would argue that the biblical account that we read in the book of Genesis is designed to be poetic, it's on purpose. And then when we think about theistic evolution, that's the scientific description of the poetry we read about in Genesis. It doesn't mean that people that hold that are liberal, it doesn't mean that young earth creationists are stupid. Remember, we're not going to name call, we're going to have the conversation. These are all perfectly valid views for faithful followers of Jesus to hold and there are even more of them. But I do want to give you an important caution in this conversation and the other conversations that we're going to have this summer, when I was a teenager, I loved driving, I actually still do today. It's fun, can I just say that I just enjoy it. But before I turned 16, I had to get a certain number of driving hours in order to qualify to get my full license. And I would find a way in our family no matter what the problem was, I knew the solution was going to be me driving. If we needed something cool, let's drive need to check on somebody calling is impersonal, let's drive let's make sure they're okay. You know, you're feeling bored, TV's gonna rot your brain, let's drive for a while I'm you know. Every answer finished or every problem finished with the answer that we could drive that I could get my hours in. See, I think sometimes the presuppositions that we bring to the Bible are like that are what we would call them in 2023, which is individual intellectually prideful bias, we would say I have an idea about what the answer to these questions, objections/challenges need to be. And so I'm working backwards for what those answers are. And when we think about the origin of the world, it's kind of like that we go, well, I definitely know that this idea I've learned about in school, or this thing that I watched online, that has to be the answer. So I will definitely reinterpret this in view of that specifically, we do this around this idea where we have a view that God can't do supernatural things. And so we work backwards from saying, hey, how do we find a way where the Bible isn't describing a supernatural God? If that's your presupposition that you bring to the Bible of what God can't do, or what he must be allowed to do or not do? Because we're smart, and the world has moved on? How could we possibly believe that? And we asked God to shape us rather than are we asked to shape God rather, rather than the other way around? We are in trouble. I've used this quote before, but the late great Tim Keller says it this way. If your God never disagrees with you, you might just be worshipping an idealized version of yourself. And so as we study these passages this summer, there is a way for all of them, for you to come up with a dignified, respectable, impressive interpretation of all of them that everyone in your life will think you are so smart for. But if in all of it, you are denying the scale, size and supernatural reality of an all knowing, all powerful present, God, I'm just warning you. That may not be the gift that God wants to give you through his word. But no matter which one of these, no matter which one of these views you hold to today, or how God may reshape your understanding of them in the season ahead, remember that who matters more than how. It's God who did it no matter what, or how he did it. And it's why that matters more than when, regardless of the age of the Earth, it's the eternality of the relationship that God desires with you and me, that ultimately makes all of it make sense. And I know that this is different than a lot of messages that you've heard before. And in some ways, this is setting the stage for the rest of the series, because we are going to see a lot of things in these stories that we weren't ready for as kids. They weren't described to us when we were learning flannel graph faith, it was hard to comprehend them at that age. But again, there's nothing wrong with the way that we learned about it as kids, it's simple. It's, it's where we could do it developmentally. But over time, if our faith doesn't grow up with depth, it will grow out with doubt.

See the creation account, no matter your personal view, it highlights our purpose for living, and for our true identity, our real identity in Jesus. You have been created by a God who loves you, and made you in His image with infinite dignity, value and worth no matter what you believe about him. And here's the craziest part, God knew that we would mess it up, he knew that you would mess it up, even before the world began. He knew what would be necessary to win you back and he did it anyway. In a letter to the early church, the apostle Paul puts it this way. He says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in Him before the flannel graph foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless, before him. Before any of this, God knew you and loved you, and had a plan to win you back. Even if you aren't a Christian, today, you are invited into a relationship with God, because of Jesus, God's Son, who lived a perfect life on your behalf that we couldn't, who died the death that we deserved, and who came back from the grave to address the mistakes that we made what the Bible calls sin, for the purpose of our relationship forever, no matter what view of creation you have. That's why.

Maybe you feel that you just aren't a faith person. You're a fact person.

But can I just challenge you with one thing? We all have faith. The question is, where, what or who is our faith in?

Are we making the best most informed choice? When we put it plainly, modern atheistic scientism is a faith, believe me. I'm just asking you to consider maybe moving our faith from something to someone. To someone who loves you enough to not just save you, but he made you in the first place, in his image for His glory and for your good, for forever.

And if you're a Christian, maybe for you the invitation is to let this account of creation, call us back to a call that is bigger than our comfort. To a purpose that is bigger than just avoiding pain, that this God who made all of this from nothing did it with you in mind. I know that for some of you, faith is just a tradition. It's just something that you do in your life, because it's something that you've done in your life for a while. Some of you are here on Father's Day, because your wife or a family member has sort of just told you this is a non negotiable you have to be in church today.

I touched a nerve, right? I felt it.

Here's my encouragement. I can't make faith irresistible to you only God can do that. But I hope when we have conversations like this, it shows you that faith is reasonable. That if you thought turning off your brain was necessary to turn on your faith. That that is not, that is not true. God wants you and me to love Him with everything. Our heart, soul, mind, and strength. God can handle your questions. He can handle your objections. The conversations from brilliant men and women who have thought about this for century after century after century have something to say that might just help you. In just a second, I'm going to pray for us. And over the course of this series, we're going to pray using sort of a specific spiritual practice you may have never been introduced to before. The spiritual practice is called Lectio Divina. And it's a spiritual practice that allows prayer to hopefully actually take you to a place. It's not just information transmission to God, it's actually about sort of teleporting you to the moment to the passage to the place that you might see or understand God more deeply. If you've never done this, or maybe you want to do this through some specific guided passages, you can learn more at menlo.church/therestofthestory. And you'll find passages for every talk that we do over the course of the entire summer. And each teacher may handle this a little bit different over the course of the summer. But as we finish, I want to lead you through one of these experiences, as we think about it. In Genesis chapter 1, would you pray with me?

God, would you teleport us from this place, from this day, from the challenges that we left behind, when we walked in, or logged on. To the challenges that are waiting for us. Would you transport us before the foundations of the world, when the only community was the tri unity of you? When God you said, Let there be light. And there was. Take us to the moment where the world was formless and void.

Take us to the moment where you made the heavens and the earth and you said it is good. Let us hear those words. Let us see you in this all knowing all powerful, all present reality. That when you created the animals you said it is good and we watched creation explode with creatures that had never existed before that moment. And God bring us back to that moment. To Adam and Eve when you said it is very good.

Would you give us an awareness God of just how big you are? Bigger than our mind, bigger than our intellect, bigger than our capacity and yet created for relationship. No matter what we walk into the rest of this week God would you remind us of this place you have teleported us. God we don't want prayer to simply be a transactional conversation. God let it be teleportation, to the character and presence that you provide. As we remember creation, God challenge us to have greater belief, greater confidence in you, even as we explore what that looks like. We love you. We give all this to you. In Jesus name. Amen.

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