“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world,” Psalm 19:1-4.
Before Charles Darwin, or any of his unwise predecessors, opened his mouth to spout the utter folly of the notion of ‘evolution’ — the idea that there was a spontaneous coming into existence of the basic elements of all life and matter and their development by stages over countless millions of years to what we may observe today — there was the clear and universal testimony of the silent lips of that created of their origins at the hands of the Lord.
Psalm 19, quoted above, has long declared this truth, even before the creation of man.
Evolution, in whatever form it is presented, for there are as many variations of this ever ‘evolving’ notion as there are fish in the sea, is essentially nothing more than another attempt by fallen man to deny the existence of the Lord, his Creator! “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God . . . ,” Psalm 14:1. It is man’s attempt to contradict the testimony of the skies above and the earth beneath of the handiwork of God.
Such attempts at denial are indeed, as David says, the actions of the fool. So foolish is the ’theory’ of evolution that it has to be altered and corrected and updated almost as soon as it is articulated! It has more varieties than the famous ‘Heinz 57 Varieties’ of food products! The superfluity of variations of man’s notions of the origin of all things is testimony to the simple fact that man does not know the truth of how this world and the immensity of the heavens came about.
It is a self-inflicted ignorance for there is ever before his eyes the glorious witness of which our text speaks. But man is a creature in rebellion against God. He is the disciple of sin and will not admit the existence of the God of the Bible. I say, ‘the God of the Bible’, for man is not in truth an ‘atheist’! He happily invents for himself a ‘god’ of his own liking. Even those who profess Christianity are in truth in this camp. That is why the pulpits and the pews of most churches are occupied by those who reject the testimony of the Holy Scriptures given us of God and seek to amend and edit them to present a ‘god’ with whom they are content! Thus today’s ‘Bible’ bookshops are filled with a large variety of so-called ‘versions’ of the Word of God. They are in truth, ‘perversions’.
Please consider the testimony as old as time itself and projecting its witness since that first day spoken of in Genesis 1.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day,” Genesis 1:1-5.
I. CREATION’S TESTIMONY IS UNIVERSAL
It is “known and read of all men”! That is because, “day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”
1. Man has no excuse for his ignorance. His is a wilful deafness and blindness to the most prominent feature set before his eyes — the handiwork of God. In the ignorance of the wisest of men regarding the origins of creation there is an acknowledgement that its source has to be ’supernatural’. It has to be of a power above the capabilities of humanity. So wondrous is God’s creation that man, after some six thousand years of looking and examining and exploring, he is still uncovering wonders heretofore unknown. Some recent headlines bear testimony to this simple fact. “New Species of Snake Found in Peru’s Andes Mountains” declares one news agency. “Researchers discovered a new species of feather stars with 20 arms” says another. We could fill the page with such headlines by going back over only a few years of such announcements!
Yet, none of these things bring home to man Who the true Creator is.!
2. The language in which this testimony is carried forth is one known to all men. “There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard . . .”
Men, by and large, are ignorant of the tongue in which their neighbour speaks. That is the result of God’s judgment falling upon rebellious man in the land of Shinar, or present day Iraq, some one hundred years after Noah’s flood (Ussher’s Chronology). It is stated in Genesis 10, “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech,” Genesis 11:1. In their unity, early man was intent on defying God’s purpose for them. “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,” Genesis 9:1. Instead they said in defiance of God, “And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth,” Genesis 11:2-4. The ‘tower, whose top may reach unto heaven’ was not an attempt at building a means of ‘physically’ reaching heaven, but rather a place of worship, an alternative to the means of worship that was ordained of God. Man is still attempting to build such a ’tower’ with his modernistic and liberal theology and his innate rejection of the truth of the Bible!
The Lord however has set forth a witness to His power, His wisdom and to His glory in a language understood by all.
3. The testimony is a constant ever present one. It is a ‘day and night’ witness. “Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.” Gospel-preaching churches closed at times, the most faithful pulpits become silent periodically for a season and the most fervent Christian most take his rest and lay aside the holy practice of speaking a word for His Master. However, God’s witness in the skies above and on the earth around us NEVER ceases. When clouds block out the sun and the moon and the stars, they themselves take up the story of God’s wonderful creation! How is it that billions of tons of water float above our heads and supply the needs of thirsty men and beasts! I understand that it is estimated that up to 100 billion tons of water vapour hang above our heads. A glorious and immense reservoir in the sky!
That alone speaks much of God’s wondrous power!
II. THE UNDENIABLE WITNESS OF CREATION IS THAT IT IS ‘HIS HANDYWORK’!
“The firmament sheweth his handywork.” The word ’sheweth’ means ‘conspicuously declares.” Despite the plain and evident testimony of the heavens, man blindly rejects that immeasurable testimony and dares to promote his own utterly insane explanation for the magnificent creation that surrounds us.
1. The denials of the unbelieving ‘evolutionist’. One ‘scientific’ writer, an evolutionist, sets forth the problem that man faces when trying to substitute his notion that the Biblical account of creation in Genesis is mere myth and fancy.
“According to modern science, the origin of the universe is part of cosmology. In trying to describe a creation process through scientific language we encounter a serious challenge: if every effect results from a cause, we can follow the chain of causation backwards in time until we arrive at the First Cause. But what caused this cause? Aristotle, for one, used some kind of divine entity to solve this conundrum, the Unmoved Mover, the one that can cause without having been caused. Very convenient, but not scientifically satisfying.”
Yes, the ‘scientific mind’ is not satisfied with Aristotle’s ‘educated guess’, forced upon him by the fact that there had to be a ‘first cause’. What this ancient Greek said was too near the truth for unbelieving man to accept it.
There has to be a ‘first cause’, an eternal BEING, Who is the origin of all things. Everything around us testifies to ‘decay’ — matter is not eternal. Such decay evidences DEVOLUTION, the exact opposite to EVOLUTION!
There was a time when material matter did not exist therefore its visible presence now indicates an ETERNAL CREATOR! The Evolutionist would have us believe that there is something that is eternal that is not God. The Bible’s account is dismissed as a mere religious ‘notion’! But in truth, no one can KNOW how everything began by scientific research for there was no one there OTHER THAN GOD to record data for man’s perusal today.
We have but God’s Word for what happened and we can either believe it or reject it. The latter is the most common response of men.
However, I believe that the earth around us has yielded up information that clearly testifies to the accuracy of God’s testimony in the Bible. Websites such as ‘Answers in Genesis’ and ‘Creation Ministries International’, (despite their sometimes sad use of modern versions) constantly provide articles setting forth the testimony of the earth and the heavens to God being the Creator and the Bible’s record of creation and such events as the flood in Noah’s day, are absolutely accurate.
2. Evolutionary ‘theory’ is but part of the ongoing rebellion of man against God and His truth. Man in his spiritual blindness will not, cannot accept the testimony of the Bible regarding God. I have often emphasised that many will admit to believing there is a God BUT they will not accept the God of the Bible!
In the days of the Saviour’s ministry, He provided abundant proof of His deity and Godhead by the innumerable miracles He wrought. His miracles were all the more astounding because they were of a character never seen before. The blind man healed by Christ in John chapter 9, summed the matter up wonderfully. “Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing,” John 9:32-33. Despite that glorious truth, the enemies of Christ chose to reject it. “They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out,” John 9:34. They ‘excommunicated’ him, the ultimate censure amongst the Jews.
The Christian who believes the Bible today suffers a social ‘excommunication’ because of his or her faith. Indeed, it has led to the loss of employment and worse.
3. Despite the best efforts of man to extinguish God’s testimony it has continued still. It has “gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”
When I was a boy I recall hearing an amusing incident involving my maternal grandfather. This was back in the days of the big open hearth with the old ‘crane and crook’ for hanging pots etc from for cooking food. Apparently, my grandfather spotted up the chimney what he thought was a burning section of soot. In those days of thatched houses, every care had to be taken against a chimney fire. He began poking at this ‘fire’ in the chimney soot with a long stick in order to dislodge it and extinguish it. After many attempts and much complaining, others in the house investigated and much to my grandfather’s exasperation it was discovered that what he saw was a star visible though the top of the chimney. That story became ‘celebrated’ in our family circle!
However, his futile efforts at dislodging the ‘star’ were about as successful as man’s ongoing efforts to deny God as the Creator as declared by the ‘unpokeable’ (to coin a word) stars above us all!
III. WHAT IS PARTICULARLY OFFENSIVE TO THE UNBELIEVER IS THAT CREATION SETS FORTH THE GLORY OF GOD
“The heavens declare the glory of God.”
The word ‘glory’ refers to the ‘honour, the riches, the splendour’ of God. No artist or architect ever left behind a work that set forth his skill and ability and wisdom as does creation set forth the ‘glory of God’.
1. The ‘glories’ of man’s works are limited. You can examine them and come to an end of discovering any further ‘glory’. Not so with God’s creation. Man has long ago conceded that the universe is without end! It is limitless! Man has continually invented ever more power telescopes with which to examine the universe. He has even, in recent times, launched them into space and has surveyed the universe in a manner never before possible.
But each new advance in technology merely tells him that there is yet more that lies beyond his vision. Man will never be able to grasp all that there is to be known about God’s creation. Even here on earth, much easier to reach and examine than space, there are regions unexplored and species uncovered that were not known to have existed until now!
2. It is this undeniable setting forth of God’s glory which so infuriates the unbeliever. I am reminded of how the testimony of Stephen was received by his Jewish enemies. “Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these things? Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it,” Acts 7:48-53.
In his testimony to Christ being the Messiah, Stephen refers to Him as the Creator of all things. That brought forth an incensed and furious response. “When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep,” Acts 7:54-60.
Thus the first Christian martyr died and set forth a picture of the hatred mankind has to the testimony of the ‘glory of God’, whether set forth in the Bible, spoken by His servants or set forth in the creation all around!
3. There is a day coming when the Lord will give further evidence of His Creatorship! “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind,” Isaiah 65:17. “Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless,” 2 Peter 3:12-14. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea,” Revelation 21:1.
The unbelieving words of the evolutionist and his ilk will fall eternally silent one day. The faithful and much mocked believers in God’s Word will be vindicated and honoured by the Lord for their faith.
Oh happy day! Its prospect will comfort us much amidst the sneering ignorance of men until that day of vindication and honour dawns!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
18th August 2023