The God Who Created All Things

Revelation 4:11, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

Colossians 1:16, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”

John 1:3, “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”

Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Genesis 2:4, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.”

The issue of origins is of immense importance. Charles Darwin, the father of modern evolutionary theory, said man was a highly evolved ape.  If a person believes that their forefathers were gorillas, then they will tend to live like the offspring of an animal. Their morals will be barnyard, their manner of living will be that of the survival of the fittest – a dog-eat-dog approach to life. If a person believes that they are made in the image and likeness of the living, personal, sovereign, self-sufficient, supreme God of the Bible, then they will believe that life can be meaningful and purposeful by becoming rightly related to Him through Christ.

Convinced of the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God, I believe the first chapters of Genesis to be an accurate and true record of how and why God created the universe, and the earth in particular, to be a home for the first man and woman.

Genesis is an introduction to the Creator with relational, redemptive explanations – not scientific and technical. It was written by Moses and told to former slaves on their way to the land that God had promised to give them. It tied their identity, destiny, history, security, and ministry to the roots of worship, work, warfare, and witness to and for the one true and living God.

Genesis lays the doctrinal foundation for everything that follows. The Gospel has its foundation in the literal history of Genesis. So our understanding of creation will affect our proclamation and defense of the Gospel. A correct and full understanding of the Gospel requires a correct understanding of creation and the fall of man.  The apostle Paul considered Genesis so important to his defense of the Gospel, that he began with creation in explaining the Gospel to the Greeks in Athens (Acts 17:24, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,”).

As T.M. Moore writes, “One of the central teachings of Scripture is that the natural world is not at all natural. It is the creation of a supernatural God. What we routinely call “nature” is in fact “creation.” Nothing we encounter is purposeless, or gloryless, or truly “natural.”

The God we worship is a creative and creating God. We’re literally surrounded with the work of his hands. Because he wants us to see and savor him, he not only speaks; he also creates — and he speaks through his creating. So, first, God creates and then God delights in his creation. We read in Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,25 – God saw that it was “good. Then in 1:31, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”

1. Creation or Evolution - Which is the Most Reasonable Explanation for the Universe’s Existence?

Option 1:  It’s All a Product of Blind Chance – Evolutionists teach that around 13.7 billion years ago, with no Creator, no intelligence, no design, no purpose, no plan, there emerges from this mindless, lifeless, random matter and energy not only irreducible complexities of interdependent biological structures, but also this glorious thing called living personhood — you and me. Is it “possible” that the fine tuning of the universe, the solar system, our planet, and human beings are all the product of blind evolutionary chance processes? NO! Not a chance!

Option 2:  We Just Happen to Be Living in the Right Universe of a Multiverse - This explanation requires that we have a vast number of universes (a multiverse), and that the odds are that a life-permitting universe will exist among this myriad of universes. NO! Not a chance!

Option 3:  The Universe is Designed for Life by an All-Powerful Designer – The most logical option is that the universe is as it is because it was designed that way by an all-powerful Creator. And this is precisely what the Bible declares in Ps. 19:1-2: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” 

Contrast of Naturalists/materialistic/evolutionists world view versus a Biblical/Christian Worldview:

Materialist - “Ultimate reality is impersonal matter. No God exists.”

Christian view says, “Ultimate reality is an infinite, personal, loving God.”

The materialistic view says, “The universe was created by chance, without any ultimate purpose.”

The Christian view says, “The universe was lovingly created by God for a specific purpose.”

The materialistic view says, “Man is the product of impersonal time, plus chance, plus matter. As a result, no man has eternal value or dignity nor any meaning other than that which is subjectively derived.

The Christian view says, “Man was created by God in His image, and is loved by God. Because of this, all men are endowed with eternal value and dignity. Their value is not derived ultimately from themselves, but from the source transcending themselves, God Himself.”

The materialistic view of morality says, “Morality is defined by every individual according to his own views and interests. Morality is ultimately relative because every person is the final authority for his own views.”

The Christian view says, “Morality is defined by God and immutable because it is based on God’s unchanging, holy character.”

The materialistic view says about the afterlife, “The afterlife brings eternal annihilation, or personal extinction, for everyone.”

The Christian view says, “The afterlife involves either eternal life with God, or eternal separation from Him; either the glories of heaven, or the terrors of hell.”

The opening verse of the Apostle’s Creed states: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” 

To believe that God the Father is the Creator of heaven and earth is to believe that God is ultimate reality. It is to believe that the rock-bottom truth is God’s self-revelation as “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14), the self-existent One “from whom are all things and for whom we exist” (1 Corinthians 8:6).

2. Creation Reveals Something of the Nature of God

Self-existing: not caused by another; the foundation of all being.

Simple: undivided in being; is not made up of parts.

Immaterial: spirit; not made of matter.

Spaceless: transcends space.

Timeless: transcends time; eternal; had no beginning and will have no end.

Omnipotent: all powerful; can do whatever is logically possible.

Omnipresent: everywhere present.

Omniscient: all knowing; knows all actual and possible states of affairs.

Immutable: changeless; the anchor and standard by which everything else is measured.

Personal: has mind, emotion, and will; makes choices. These attributes and others are coexistent, infinite, and unified in the Creator and Sustainer of all things!

3. Creation Reveals Something of the Glory of God

Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”

Isaiah 43:7, “…everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” 

God created us to know him and love him, glorify him, and show him. And then he gave us a snapshot of His wonder and worth in the creation of the universe.

Someone stated that there are more stars in the universe than there are words and sounds that all humans of all time have ever spoken. Why are there so many? So large? So bright? At such unimaginable distances? The Bible is crystal clear about this: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).

If someone asks, “If earth is the only inhabited planet and man the only rational inhabitant among the stars, why such a large and empty universe?” The answer is: It’s not about us. It’s about God. And it’s an understatement. He is more glorious. Greater in power. Greater in scope. Greater brightness than all the galaxies combined.

God's signature is not just in the cell, it's in all of creation. God is as necessary to the universe as a band is to music. Once the band stops playing, the music is over.

1. The Mighty Things of His Creation

According to Tim Keller in his book “The Reason for God”, it’s as if God had rolled a “Cosmic Welcome Mat” for the earth to begin and prosper.  Francis Collins, a well-respected scientist who led work to map the human genome, there are a set of cosmological constants that are set to exactly the right value to allow complex life to form in the universe. If ANY of these values had been off by a tiny margin, no life could have developed at all in the universe! Matter would not have coalesced, and there would have been no galaxies, no stars, no planets, and no people.

The massiveness of God’s universe is not about us but about Him. It’s size and power are declaring that all the galaxies and stars are like the flickering of the sparks off handheld sparklers compared to the might, majesty, and mystery of their Creator!

By scientific definition it takes 240 million solar systems to form one galaxy. There are approximately 40 billion (now estimated at 2 trillion) galaxies in our universe. The center of our universe is a star we call the sun. If you could hollow out our sun you could put 1.2 million earths inside and have room left for 4.3 million moons. Our sun is 865,000 miles in diameter. The energy given off by our sun is the equivalent of 1 billion hydrogen bombs being detonated every second. To replace the gravitational pull of the moon on the earth would require a cable 8,000 miles in diameter!

Other amazing aspects of the earth, and of the human creature (and other life forms, for that matter), testify to a “master engineer” or designer of all life.  The amazing properties of water, for example.  And the complexity of the human brain, and the design of the human eye, to name a few examples.

The Fine-tuning of the Earth - The Earth is perfectly sized to sustain complex life. The Earth’s size and corresponding gravity holds a thin layer of mostly nitrogen and oxygen gases, only extending about 50 miles above the Earth’s surface. Earth is the only known planet equipped with an atmosphere of the right mixture of gases to sustain plant, animal and human life.

The Earth is located the right distance from the sun. Consider the temperature swings we encounter, roughly -30 degrees to +120 degrees. If the Earth were any further away from the sun, we would all freeze. Any closer and we would burn up. Even a fractional variance in the Earth’s position to the sun would make life on Earth impossible. The Earth remains this perfect distance from the sun while it rotates around the sun at a speed of nearly 67,000 mph. It is also rotating on its axis, allowing the entire surface of the Earth to be properly warmed and cooled every day.

And our moon is the perfect size and distance from the Earth for its gravitational pull. The moon creates important ocean tides and movement so ocean waters do not stagnate, and yet our massive oceans are restrained from spilling over across the continents.

2. The Miniature Things of His Creation

The DNA, i.e., genetic blueprint, for one cell contains enough information to fill a library with 4,000, 1,000-page books! Our bodies contain about 50 trillion cells. A French geneticists named Lejune, states that if one could gather all the DNA needed to create the world population when it stood at 6 billion, it could be contained in two regular size aspirin tablets!

A drop of dirty water from a ditch can hold 500 million microscopic creatures so small that a half a billion infusoria can live comfortably in a single drop. They appear in a thousand species, some are herbivorous, some are carnivorous, and some have shells, and some have none. They possess mouths, teeth, muscles, nerves, and glands. Some of them have between one to two hundred sacks or stomachs connected by an intestinal canal. The thickness of the membranes that line those stomachs has been estimated to be only fifty-millionth part of an inch!

Listen to Jeremiah 32:17, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Thy great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too difficult for Thee."

3. Mankind - The Main Thing of His Creation

Your DNA is an information-rich text that is a genetic message. In other words, your genome is a message like your name and address, except its written in DNA and it’s over three billion characters long! All those letters, save a rare error, must be in the right order for you to survive.

And so-called "simple life" has a code much longer than that. Indeed, Richard Dawkins admits that the amount of information in a one-celled life (like an amoeba) has as much information in its DNA as 1,000 Encyclopedia Britannica’s.

You Are More Amazing Than You Thought!

Let me take you all the way back to when your father and your mother got together... got together to make you. During the process of ovulation, your mother unconsciously perfumed her egg with a special chemical attractant to lure the sperm of your father. And just to make sure that at least one got there, your father sent the entire population of the United States—340 million—of his little spermatozoa toward your mother's egg! Then there was a race . . . and you won!

Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you're not special, you beat out somewhere between 50 to 340 million others! You have blown away anything the fastest swimmer in the world has done. In fact, "you” were such an amazing swimmer, that at your size today you would have to swim at 34,000 mph to equal proportionally, the speed at which your sperm cell exited your father. Even though the head of your sperm cell was thirty times smaller than a grain of salt, it contained half of all the genetic code you have right now. The other half was in mother’s egg, which was about the size of the period at the end of a sentence. In fact, the information storage capacity of DNA is so dense that if we transcribed all the books in all the world’s libraries into the language of DNA, their content would fit within a volume equivalent to one percent of the head of a pin!

Upon fertilization, a biological construction project of astonishing intricacy and precision began without any conscious direction from you or your mother. Hundreds of biological procedures took place automatically and simultaneously involving, among other things, chromosomes, amino acids, proteins, DNA, cell division, tissue development, organs, etc.

As if they had minds of their own, your new cells - some of them eventually reproducing in the womb at a rate of more than 100,000 per second - knew where to go and what to do in order to become each of your major organs. How did certain cells "know to become heart cells, while others "knew" to become brain cells? There is no known material explanation for their goal-directedness. As an aside, your body is producing 25 million cells every second to replace the dying cells.

Wherever you turn on this planet and see a living person, you see an image of absolute reality - absolute, eternal, ultimate, original reality – Yahweh – the one, true God. When you look at another person, they aren’t ordinary. All people are extraordinary. I don’t care how degenerate they have become. When you look upon a human being, you see something staggeringly extraordinary in the image of life: an echo, a reflection of infinite, ultimate reality - God.

Do you know the Creator, the Lord of the universe?  If you do, then you have everything to look forward to – in this life, and in the life to come.  You were made for a purpose, and receiving the Lord into your heart and walking daily with Him will help you come to realize His purpose in your life and fulfill it.  If you don’t have a relationship with the Lord, you can!  He has reached down to our time-space reality and become one of us, so we could understand who He is, and become one with Him. We had all gone astray, but He “so loved us that He sent His one and only Son”.  Jesus became one of us. He showed us what God the Father was like. He lived the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died (in our place) and three days later he rose from the dead proving that he was who he claimed to be – God in the flesh - and offers the gift of salvation to those who repent and believe in him. Then our Maker becomes our Father.

Our Creator doesn’t want sacrifices or offerings, or good works.  He wants you to know him, personally, intimately, eternally.

Then sings my soul my Savior God to Thee, how Great Thou Art!