back to indexA Theology of Creation in 12 Points
Chapters
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0:57 A Biblical Theology of Creation
2:33 God Comes First
3:55 Two God Speaks He Is a Talking God
5:48 How Does God Stand Behind Good and Evil
8:50 Hints of God's Complexity
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This is a special episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast 00:00:11.280 |
and it comes to you in partnership with our friends 00:00:15.060 |
Dr. Carson is the co-founder and the president 00:00:17.840 |
of the Gospel Coalition and he is also the editor 00:00:29.840 |
And that's something of what we're doing on Fridays. 00:00:33.880 |
we pick up one of these themes for discussion 00:00:48.000 |
And today we need to focus in on one of the implications 00:00:51.540 |
that we touched on last time which is creation, 00:00:57.120 |
Can you explain to us a biblical theology of creation? 00:01:03.720 |
Today when Christians talk about the doctrine of creation, 00:01:16.080 |
to claims of evolutionists, old earth, young earth 00:01:25.740 |
but it's not the place where the Bible itself lays 00:01:33.360 |
About 50 years ago, Francis Schaeffer wrote a book 00:01:39.120 |
And in it, he asked a question that I've increasingly come 00:01:45.120 |
What is the least, he asks, that we must make 00:01:54.600 |
Now he is not asking what is the most that you can draw 00:01:58.180 |
from Genesis 1 to 11 and Genesis 1 to 3 in particular 00:02:01.940 |
but what is the least that we must be certain about, 00:02:09.360 |
That's a very shrewd question because it's a way of saying 00:02:12.600 |
those are the things that we must most emphasize 00:02:17.260 |
So let me outline some of those kinds of things. 00:02:22.420 |
Each of the points I'm about to mention could easily 00:02:29.100 |
And instead, I'm gonna go through a handful of them 00:02:36.400 |
This is such an elementary point but it needs 00:02:40.260 |
Before anything else was, before there was a universe 00:02:46.280 |
And that is teased out in other scriptures to show 00:02:48.460 |
that God in eternity past was not dependent upon us. 00:02:56.520 |
Eventually, the Bible fleshes out the notion of God 00:02:59.700 |
in all kinds of ways to show that in the past, 00:03:05.960 |
So there was a perfection of love in eternity past. 00:03:12.560 |
the vision of Islam where Islam is slow to speak of God 00:03:16.140 |
being a God of love because that assumes the importance 00:03:19.740 |
of other and in their insistence on God's uniqueness 00:03:29.540 |
but it is hard for them to stress God's love. 00:03:35.360 |
But the Bible as a whole insists that God is love 00:03:38.380 |
because in the one God, miraculously, strangely, 00:03:49.700 |
The son loves the father, even in eternity past 00:04:12.380 |
Now, that becomes paradigmatic of God disclosing himself 00:04:18.740 |
God is a talking God and he dares to speak in words 00:04:34.220 |
God and the universe cannot be distinguished. 00:04:49.700 |
apart from everything that is made in the universe. 00:05:00.680 |
It is against any sort of ontological dualism 00:05:04.900 |
that is a kind of dualism in which there is a good force 00:05:08.800 |
and a bad force or one force with a good side 00:05:14.500 |
The Bible is not concocting a world akin to Star Wars. 00:05:25.700 |
And so the origin of evil is not intrinsically 00:05:28.360 |
some combination of a good principle and a bad principle 00:05:35.440 |
he is introduced as the most subtle of the creatures 00:05:47.220 |
Of course, that raises all kinds of questions. 00:05:51.740 |
Well, on the long haul, the Bible lays a lot of emphasis 00:05:54.900 |
on God standing behind good and evil asymmetrically. 00:05:58.640 |
That is, he stands behind good and evil in different ways. 00:06:07.660 |
And the evil is always creditable to secondary causalities, 00:06:18.380 |
So when Paul finds himself evangelizing pagans 00:06:24.440 |
one of the things that he stresses is that God is so sovereign 00:06:36.800 |
their psychological lusts, their joys, their sorrows, 00:06:41.700 |
So a lot of pagan religion is just an attempt 00:06:45.220 |
A lot of pagan religion is, you scratch my back, 00:06:58.780 |
But if God made everything and needs nothing, 00:07:06.940 |
for the doctrine of grace is established by the storyline 00:07:41.500 |
Within this framework, then, when people say today, 00:07:45.440 |
listen, I don't mind if you have your religion, 00:07:49.040 |
your Jesus, and your Bible, but I'm a spiritual person too. 00:07:55.060 |
I have my own approach to the divine and the spiritual. 00:07:58.880 |
Don't keep cramming your Jesus down my throat. 00:08:02.000 |
Then sooner or later, although it might be the part 00:08:08.140 |
to back off a little and have a go another day, 00:08:12.960 |
is going to have to say, very gently and over coffee, 00:08:16.880 |
and within the framework of trusted relationships, 00:08:25.000 |
because God made you and therefore you owe him 00:08:31.560 |
So the grounding of our accountability to God, 00:08:40.000 |
of our reactions to him, are all laid in principle 00:08:43.800 |
in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. 00:08:50.000 |
not more than that, there are hints of God's complexity 00:08:53.200 |
in an expression like, let us make mankind in our own image. 00:08:58.000 |
Some people have tried to understand that to be a royal we, 00:09:06.760 |
or something like that, but there's no real hint 00:09:12.000 |
chapters one, two, and three, there are many, many themes 00:09:16.420 |
that are introduced without making them clear. 00:09:33.360 |
There's an adumbration that God is not simply one-ish. 00:09:38.360 |
He is one God, and yet there is in God complexity 00:09:51.760 |
when you find, oh, let's say a passage like John 5, 00:09:54.480 |
God is determined that all should honor the Son 00:09:58.140 |
before, in the beginning, John's Gospel says, 00:10:03.480 |
God's own fellow, and the word was God, God's own self. 00:10:06.600 |
And so you have more and more and more adumbrations 00:10:15.460 |
But although the New Testament is much clearer 00:10:17.760 |
on such things, you have seedlings planted already 00:10:22.280 |
And I would argue that you have other seedlings. 00:10:31.880 |
whether there is a covenant, a covenant of works, 00:10:35.280 |
it's often called, with Adam in chapters two and three. 00:10:50.320 |
But nevertheless, there is a kind of established agreement 00:10:54.760 |
imposed by a sovereign God that demands obedience 00:10:58.420 |
with threat of judgment unless there is obedience 00:11:01.820 |
Many of the elements of what goes into covenantal thinking 00:11:05.920 |
are already there in Genesis one, two, and three. 00:11:08.540 |
Or again, you don't get mention of the tabernacle 00:11:13.960 |
And then temple, not until the time of David and Solomon. 00:11:17.920 |
And yet many have pointed out that the tabernacle, 00:11:24.960 |
And now the Garden of Eden is the kind of meeting place 00:11:33.520 |
many, many adumbrations of kind of temple theology 00:11:37.720 |
that's already beginning to take place in the garden. 00:11:49.880 |
are already built right into the Genesis one, two, three 00:11:59.680 |
that are already built right into the structure of things. 00:12:19.720 |
human beings are introduced made in the image of God. 00:12:28.400 |
God makes human beings in his own image and likeness. 00:12:34.560 |
the rest of creation made by God out of the dust. 00:12:40.080 |
And it would be, it would well be worth our while 00:12:44.480 |
to tease out some of the things that are bound up 00:12:51.440 |
One of the reasons why Christians have such a hard job 00:12:54.240 |
agreeing on exactly what goes into this notion 00:13:00.520 |
It's an expression that adumbrates what will be filled out 00:13:09.040 |
subsequent books that run right through the entire scripture 00:13:16.360 |
On the one hand, we're supposed to reflect God, 00:13:22.620 |
we too belong to the dust, we're made from the dust, 00:13:28.560 |
So this sort of created order is extraordinarily important. 00:13:55.760 |
So men and women are both made equally in the image of God, 00:14:04.760 |
and both of them are made in the image of God. 00:14:12.240 |
so that one is made first and the other is made for the one. 00:14:17.020 |
That is, Adam is made first and she is made from him, 00:14:25.760 |
It's not a reciprocal relationship at that point. 00:14:28.720 |
So men and women gets teased out in a variety of ways, 00:14:44.520 |
First Corinthians 11, First Timothy 2, and elsewhere. 00:14:51.520 |
There is eschatology that is anticipated by all of this. 00:14:55.720 |
It's not for nothing that the prophet Isaiah, 00:15:29.520 |
as it does in Revelation 21 or 2 Peter and so forth, 00:15:40.060 |
The whole created order is subjected to death and decay 00:15:44.780 |
by God's decree because of sin and rebellion, 00:15:48.220 |
and it groans, waiting for the adoption of sons. 00:15:51.340 |
That is the culmination of the glorification of believers. 00:15:56.100 |
So that anticipates the Bible storyline in huge ways. 00:16:08.100 |
The text does not say that Sabbath is imposed at this point. 00:16:15.360 |
but when the Sabbath is instituted legally in the Decalogue, 00:16:20.360 |
the text self-consciously looks back to creation. 00:16:24.520 |
You are to remember the seventh day and keep it holy 00:16:27.080 |
for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth 00:16:35.420 |
even in Revelation 4 to build a whole theology of rest 00:16:42.500 |
but it begins in the opening chapters of Genesis. 00:16:54.500 |
There is a huge emphasis in the rest of the Bible 00:17:00.540 |
on the greatness of God testified by his creation. 00:17:04.260 |
You think of passages like Psalm 8 or Psalm 19 00:17:18.020 |
or some of the spectacular texts in Isaiah 40 to 45. 00:17:43.140 |
Isaiah 43, 15, chunks of Isaiah 44, verses 2 and 24, 00:17:52.980 |
These are texts that call us back to worship God 00:18:01.700 |
which is a point that is also found in Romans 1. 00:18:06.580 |
because his existence and glory are already displayed 00:18:15.400 |
I haven't even mentioned much about the fall, 00:18:17.640 |
but Genesis 1 and 2 and the focus on creation 00:18:55.380 |
you can find us online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. 00:19:02.080 |
and John Piper will return on Monday to answer, 00:19:05.000 |
how do I know if my dating relationship is idolatrous?