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What is a Family? (King’s Cross)
Christ Church on May 14, 2025
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Creationism vs. Theistic Evolution (Practical Christianity #2) (King’s Cross)

Christ Church on

INTRODUCTION

One of the most virulent viruses to infect modern Christianity is Darwinism. On the one hand, many academics have been cool-shamed into compromise, and on the other hand, even many young earth creationists are functional Darwinists. But you cannot build any house on the sand of human whims and hubris. Scientific theories come and go, but the Word of God stands forever.

The Text: “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…” (Gen. 1:1-2:3)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The whole Bible opens with this record of God’s intentional, personal creation of all that exists from nothing by the power of His word. The Bible records this work of God as occurring over the course of six ordinary days, marked by “evening and morning” culminating in the seventh day of rest, and all “very good.” There is a clear structure to the work and text, the first three days “forming,” the second three days “filling.” God created light and separated day and night on the first day (Gen. 1:1-5). He separated the waters above and below and created the heaven or sky on the second day (Gen. 1:6-8). He gathered the waters into one place and caused dry ground to appear and the first plants on the third day (Gen. 1:9-13). He set the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament as signs and for keeping time and ruling the day and night (Gen. 1:14-18). On day five, God filled the sea with creatures and the sky with winged, flying creatures (Gen. 1:19-23). And God created every land animal on the sixth day and finally man and woman in His image to rule the world (Gen. 1:24-30). And God saw all that He had made and pronounced it very good, and rested on the seventh day and blessed it (Gen. 1:31-2:3).

EVIDENCE OF HISTORY

Some Christians try to avoid the straightforward meaning of this text by arguing that it is symbolic or poetic. But that merely betrays a very modern prejudice against poetry, as though if something is poetic, it’s meaning is unclear or not historical. But the Song at the Sea celebrates the crossing of the Red Sea (Ex. 15) and the Song of Deborah celebrates the defeat of Sisera (Jdg. 5): and those poems are historical. Genesis 1 is poetic, but it is also historical.

While some like to connive by pointing out that God is outside of time and time is different for God, the Bible repeatedly invites us to believe that God condescended to our ordinary time. A “day” ordinarily means 24 hours, an evening and a morning, and that is exactly what is presented in Genesis 1. The Sabbath command says that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, and that is why we work for six days and rest for one day (Ex. 20:11). Likewise, Jesus says that Adam and Eve were created at the “beginning of creation” (Mk. 10:6). To posit millions (or billions) of years of “creation” before Adam and Eve (or the first male and female creatures) contradicts Jesus.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION

While there several different ways Christians sometimes try to dodge Genesis 1, the most common and popular is called “theistic evolution,” or sometimes “evolutionary creation,” which generally accepts Darwin’s model of gradual evolution from pre-existent matter into simple organisms all the way down to the present complexity and intelligence of human beings, which really is one of the dumbest things moderns have come to believe.

And theistic evolutionists try to salvage the folly by insisting that God actively used and guided the evolutionary process.

The problem is that this means God used random mutations (deformities), survival of the fittest (strong destroying the weak), violence, suffering, and death for billions of years to create the present state of the world. But this does deadly damage to central doctrines of the Christian faith: First, the Bible says that creation groans for redemption, having been subject to corruption (Rom. 8:19-22). Creation was created “good” and pronounced “very good,” and it was Adam’s sin that subjected it to corruption. Theistic evolution essentially says that creation has always groaned, always been subject to corruption, and somehow that was “good.”

Second, the Bible teaches that death did not enter the world until Adam sinned: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). This guts the Fall of any real significance (there had been dying for millennia?). What really changed?

And this brings us to the biggest problem: Third, theistic evolution undermines the point of Christ and His death. Why did Jesus have to die if a sinless man could be evolved from a humanoid ape? Couldn’t God have just re-evolved man for salvation? The Bible teaches that Christ is a “new Adam” come to restore what the first Adam lost (Rom. 5, 1 Cor. 15).

POLITICAL RAMIFICATIONS 

The Declaration of Independence famously says: “… that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…”

You cannot have life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness or the kind of limited governments that actually secure those rights, unless you have a Creator who has created men endowed unalienably with those rights. You cannot have that freedom apart from that Creator. And the more muddled you are about that Creator and His creation, the more muddled you will be about those rights and how civil governments secure them. When the doctrine of Creation is considered non-essential, soon your churches, your businesses, and your unalienable rights will also be considered non-essential.

CONCLUSIONS 

The personal, intentional creation of all things by the Word of God in six days is the foundational expression of God’s kindness, and grace. It is what theologians often call “common grace,” but it is not really common at all. It is exotic and mind-blowing love.

And that it is why it is not merely enough to reject Darwinism as a scientific theory, you must also reject it in every form. And what I mean is the kind of functional Darwinism that imagines that you can trick God’s blessing out of disobedience, that presumptuously lies about the goodness of God’s providence, and no matter what, “God will work it all out for good.”

Sometimes some of the most hardcore creationist families are some of the harshest and ugly in their words. God’s word spoke the universe into existence. God’s word upholds it all with supreme kindness. What kind of world are you making with your words?

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Directives for Women (CC Troy)

Lindsey Gardner on

SERMON TEXT: GENESIS 2:18-25

18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

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Directives for Men (CC Troy)

Lindsey Gardner on

Sermon Text: Genesis 2:4-18

4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,

5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

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Reformational Family (What is “Reformed” Anyway? #5) (King’s Cross)

Grace Sensing on

INTRODUCTION

We live in a world that says you can be anything you want, anything at all – the more bizarre and perverse the better, just don’t be an ordinary, faithful man who marries an ordinary faithful woman, and have a pile of happy, ordinary kids and love and serve the Lord together. Anything but that. And the mischievous Tom Sawyer inside you should grin and say, “Well, now I’m going to normal even harder.”

A significant part of the Protestant Reformation was a recovering of the Bible’s teaching concerning the goodness and power of marriage, children, and family. Celibacy had come to be seen as the “higher calling,” and the duties and responsibilities of family as therefore lower and menial. The devil has always sought to lure people away from the glory of marriage and family precisely because when God’s blessing is upon it, it is such potent goodness. 

The Text: “And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him…” (Gen. 2:18-25)

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

In a striking contrast to all the “good” that God has made/seen before, God says it is “not good” for man to be alone (Gen. 2:18). This is not merely a statement about bachelors, it is also a statement about the goodness of family and community. The process of naming the animals was educational: Adam was naming their attributes and learning about how God made the world, concluding in part that other creatures had mates, which he lacked (Gen. 2:19-20). So God put Adam in a coma, removed a rib, and constructed the woman from the rib and brought her to Adam (Gen. 2:21-22). Using a Hebrew superlative, Adam spoke the first recorded poem, calling her the best version of his flesh and bones (Gen. 2:23). He also names the woman “eeshah” which is related to the word for “fire,” suggesting glory, and he simultaneously renames himself “eesh,” a glorified-man. For this reason, a man leaves his father and mother and becomes one flesh with his wife, and this union has no shame (Gen. 2:24-25). 

NUCLEAR MARRIAGE

It is perilously easy to take some ordinary things for granted. But one of the ways God tries to get our attention is through death penalties. Modern Christians are sometimes tempted to be embarrassed of the death penalties in Scripture for rebellious sons, adultery, or homosexuality, but even Jesus cited the death penalty for a certain high-handed dishonor of parents (Mk. 7). If you met the CEO of a nuclear power plant, and he told you they just “wing it,” you would be understandably concerned. If your neighbors announced one day that they bought some uranium and plutonium off the internet and they were going to be doing some experiments in their basement, you would be very concerned. And it should not give you any pause, when they ask why you care so much about what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home. 

We are living in the nuclear fallout of the sexual revolution. Skyrocketing crime, mass incarceration, substance abuse, suicide, sexual abuse, and 65 million dead babies and counting is our Chernobyl. It is not whether there will be death penalties. The only question is who will be executed. We have not actually repudiated capital punishment; we have simply reassigned it to the most innocent. While the death penalty is only mandatory for murder, other crimes do approach that harm to the image of God and therefore allow for death as a possible maximum sentence. And many of those crimes center on the destruction of marriage and family because that is where people are being made: immortal souls, images of God, that will live forever. 

REFORMED MARRIAGE

A reformed view of marriage understands the gift of marriage to be a great “good,” not an accommodation to human sin or weakness (Gen. 1-2). Sin certainly adds many difficulties, but marriage, sexual intimacy, and the fruitfulness of children were gifts given before the Fall. A reformed view of marriage also affirms the creational good of the original structure of marriage: the woman was made from the man and for the man, and she is therefore, the glory of man (1 Cor. 11:1-12). Closely related is the sacrificial leadership of the husband and the respectful submission of the wife to her own husband (cf. Eph. 5:22-25). All of this is bound by a covenant, enacted by public vows and sealed with sexual union, recognized by God and blessed by Him (Gen. 1:28, Mal. 2:14). This is why a man must love his wife as his own body. God really does make the two into one covenant body, and therefore what a husband/father does impacts everything. The covenant is a multiplier for good or evil. While each member certainly is responsible before God individually, the head is also responsible for the whole body. 

APPLICATIONS

One of the “doctrines of devils” is “forbidding to marry” (1 Tim. 4:3). And sometimes this happens through a kind of hardening that simply rejects the natural use of men/women (Rom. 1:26-27). Therefore, beware of celibacy movements. Nevertheless, encourage singles in chastity and faithfulness even as they bear this hardship. Related, generally aim for earlier marriage, but don’t overshoot. Just because early 20s is good, doesn’t mean that 17 is better. It is not buying into worldly feminism to want your sons and daughters actually prepared for marriage. 

To the married: do not deprive one another sexually (1 Cor. 7:3). There are relatively few warnings about Satan’s attacks, but regular intimacy is one way to guard against them (1 Cor. 7:5). The marriage bed is honorable and undefiled (Heb. 13:4). The Song of Songs is in the Bible.

Children are reinforcements (Ps. 127). Welcome and celebrate children. But a man with five kids and a wife who has had three miscarriages in a row is not necessarily becoming worldly to decide (humanly speaking) to be done having kids. But this is a private decision. So mind your own business, and husbands love your wives as you consider your resources (Lk. 14:31).

Every covenant brings with it blessings and curses. The central thing that God blesses is faith, but this faith is alive and it obeys. And therefore the instructions to family members are not arbitrary. Husbands love and lead like Christ. Wives respect and obey in the Lord. Parents teach and discipline. Children obey. The stakes are very high, but the blessings are very rich. 

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