05/31/2026
Genesis 1:1-2:3 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. 6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. 9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. 14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day. 20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. 24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. (NIV® 84)
Why are we here? Is it just the result of some chance random occurrence? Something that was bound to happen if enough space and time were involved? Or was it part of a plan? Do we have a purpose? Does this life have any meaning? Or does it just have the meaning that people chose to give it? Does it in the end have no universal, objective meaning whatsoever? What about right and wrong? Is there truly an objective right and wrong, or is it just what we as people decide is right and wrong?
Well, in our text, we see the Bible tell us that everything we see from the rocks to the trees to the birds and fish, to human beings like you and me are all here because of a plan, a plan that God made. Look at the orderly way it tells us he created, having six days where he created or did something new each day, where he first created the environment and space his creatures would live in and then created the creatures to live in it.
Where on day one he created light, day and night, and then 3 days later he created the sun, moon, and stars that would govern the light, the day and the night, the seasons and the years. Where on day 2, he separated the waters above from the waters below, created the sky, and then 3 days later created the creatures that would live in the water and in the sky. Where on day 3, he separated the land from the water, and then three days later created the creatures who would live on the land.
This whole world is here because of a plan and a purpose of our loving, wise, all-powerful, and eternal God, but think about the special things it tells us as human beings. It tells us that God created us in his own image. Elsewhere, the Bible makes it clear that this means originally we human beings were made holy like God. The image could also include and at the very least assumes that we were made as rational, moral beings like God in a way the animals and plants weren’t.
Here God told us to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over his whole creation. It appears that he made everything we see around us for us, for our benefit, our enjoyment, that at the very least we were given the high honor of taking care of and ruling over his whole creation, that we were made special amongst all of God’s creation. He created us male and female and commanded us to be fruitful and multiply and set up marriage and the family as the Bible makes even more clear as it continues beyond our text. After our text, we also see that God put Adam in the garden to work it and take care of it.
We begin to see an amazing purpose that we have. We were made to be the crown of God’s creation, to be the beneficiaries of his great love and power on our behalf, to be in a father-child relationship with him, where we trust in him and receive his help in all things, and where we show our love and thanks to him by serving him and bringing glory to him in all we do.
That service entails us using the great abilities he has given us to manage the world around us, likely to preserve it in good shape, but also to use it for the benefit of people, to carry out what God considers good as we manage the creation he has put us over, to love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. It also entails, generally speaking, us enjoying the great blessing of having a spouse we can share our life with, be close to physically and emotionally in a way that we aren’t with anyone else, and have that be the way we can bring new life, new people into this world. The rest of the Bible lets us know it involves God giving us many blessings that can help us find enjoyment in life as we serve him and bring glory to him in all we do.
But think about how different that is from the theory of evolution. One of the main reasons, we have that theory in the first place, is the desire and guiding principle of many people being to find an explanation for how this world and the life around us came to be apart from supernatural causes, apart from an explanation that involves activity from some sort of god. That sort of thinking from the start would almost by definition always arrive at a conclusion that there was no plan, and that there is no real objective purpose for this world, for human beings in general, or for us as individuals.
The theory of evolution teaches that some big bang happened billions of years ago, and then somehow at some point single-celled organisms that could self-replicate all of a sudden came into existence. Over time, the struggle to compete led certain organisms to survive and others to not survive and over millions and millions of years it led to all the variety of life we have today.
If God did not create us, if we are here just because of some random process, because enough time and space led to our current existence, then there is no real objective meaning to life. We aren’t special as the crown of God’s creation, but just some accident. There is no universal moral right and wrong, but rather you could say might makes right. There isn’t a God who tells us what is good and bad, but rather we as people get to decide.
We get to choose if it’s ok to take the life of a child in the womb, or even after it is born for a certain amount of time, as some cultures in history have allowed, if that truly is life worthy of being protected. We get to choose if a man can declare he is a woman and live like one, or if a man can have s*xual relations with another man like they were married, or even if a man and woman should wait until they are married to partake of that sort of activity. We can make the purpose of our life whatever we want it to be whether its money or s*x or power or pleasure or whatever other self-serving thing we want it to be.
There are some Christians who try to have it both ways, to believe both in the theory of evolution and God as the Creator, some suggesting that each day of creation took millions or billions of years and that God used the evolutionary process to do his creating. There are problems with that. The Bible says there was morning and evening on each of the six days of creation. These weren’t long periods of time lasting millions or billions of years, but normal days. The Bible tells us there was light, day and night, on day 1, but that the sun wasn’t created until day 4. It tells us there were plants on day 3, but no sun shining on them until day 4. This is no problem for an almighty God. He can make light appear and shine on the earth just by speaking. He doesn’t need a sun to do it, but a theory trying to explain the world apart from supernatural causes would have trouble with it.
The biggest problem though has to do with the way the theory of evolution is completely contrary to the gospel message about Jesus. The Bible tells us that God made a perfect world, with no sin, no pain, no problems, no death. In the book of Romans, it clearly tells us there was no human death before the fall into sin, but it along with the rest of the Bible appears to be saying there was no animal death either. The animal world was not in a struggle for survival against each other where animals had to kill and eat each other, but it appears that it was in harmony.
Human sin brough the curse upon this world, filled in with pain and problems and death. God sent Jesus to pay for our sins, to not only redeem humanity but also to bring about the restoration of this world, to bring about the new heavens and earth we have to look forward to in the resurrection, where there will be no pain or problems or death once again, where the wolf will lie down with the lamb and nature will be in complete harmony.
But think about how the theory of evolution works. The idea is that simpler life evolved into more complex life because organisms of a species that were less suited to survive died off not passing their genes on, while the more well-suited organisms of a species lived to pass their genes on. If they all lived to pass their genes on there wouldn’t be any change.
If a person thinks God used the evolutionary process to bring about the ultimate forms of life in the world he called very good on the sixth day, they would be saying that God used death to bring about his perfect world. Death would not be an evil brought upon this world by human sin, but a good tool God used in his creative process. The idea of Jesus coming to defeat death wouldn’t make any sense.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we can’t believe that animal populations can change over time. God created “kinds” of animals, a kind appearing to be a class of animals amongst whom reproduction can take place. You could start with some wolves, interbreed them and their descendants over many generations and get every kind of dog breed we have today from a Shih Tzu to a Saint Bernard. But no matter how much creative breeding you do, what are you never going to end up with? A cat. That’s because a cat and a dog are different kinds of animals.
You could see a similar change in an animal population in the wild or like we do when bacteria become resistant to antibiotics or have their populations change in other ways, something called natural selection in scientific circles, but you aren’t going to see one kind of organism change into a completely different kind of organism no matter how much time passes or how many generations are tracked.
It’s important for us to stick to what the Bible teaches us, that God created the world and everything we see in six days, that he created each kind of animal individually, that one kind of animal did not evolve over time into another one, that we humans aren’t just another animal, here by time and chance and circumstance, but that God created us special to be the crown of his creation, to be in a special father-child relationship with him, to rule over his creation and enjoy the world he has made for us, and to serve and bring glory to him in all we do. Not only can believing otherwise attack our faith in Jesus, undermine it, and threaten to kill it, but it can also rob us of knowing how special we are not only collectively as the human race, but also individually as people God specially created, cares about, and has a unique purpose for.
Of course, this world has fallen and become cursed because of human sin. That fact does add something to the purpose we have right now. Because this world in its present form is passing away, because it is set to perish by fire, because Jesus died for our sins and won us eternal life in heaven, because we are now strangers in this sin-cursed world, waiting to go to our eternal home, because God wants all people to be saved and enjoy these same blessings as us through faith in Jesus as our Savior, there is an extra aspect to the way God wants us to serve him with our life.
These facts I just stated no doubt emphasize how important our own faith in Jesus is, because it is what connects us to those blessings. They certainly underscore how important it is for us to feed that faith with God’s Word so he can work through it to keep it healthy. But they also mean that a big part of our service to God is that God wants us to be concerned about making sure that other people can join us in heaven, that we are working in our individual lives and with our fellow Christians to do what we can to help lead other people to believe in Jesus as their Savior.
What a wonderful life we have! Being made special by God to be his own sons and daughters, to live under his love and care and protection, to receive all sorts of blessings from his hand, to carry out a special purpose in life as we use the abilities he has given us to rule over his creation, to do things that benefit humanity, that help other people, to enjoy his blessings of marriage and companionship and s*x and family according to his plan, to love him above all things and our neighbor as ourselves in all we do according to what he says is good and right and just, to bring glory to him in all we do.
What a blessing it is that even after the fall into sin, even after we ourselves have become guilty before God by our own sin, we can enjoy the great blessing of being his forgiven sons and daughters, of having eternal life, a good relationship with him now and into eternity through faith in Jesus, that we can have the great purpose of helping lead other people to believe in him and enjoy all those blessings through faith as well. What a blessing we have to know that someday we will be able to leave the pain and problems of this sin-cursed, fallen world behind and enjoy the new and perfect world God has in store for us, where we will get to enjoy the relationship God wants us to have with him in the perfect way he wants us to.
