Answers In Genesis - Sunday School - Week 24

Hey, let's, do a couple of announcements here and, Then we're gonna jump into things. I wanna remind you guys that we have a geologist, Matthew McLean, that is coming to Cornerstone March 20th and he's gonna be here at the 9 o'clock hour talking about dinosaurs. That's his expertise. he is getting his, finishing up his PhD at Loma Linda.

And so his expertise is dinosaurs and then he'll be preaching at 10:30. So I encourage you guys to come on out. we are gonna have the high school and junior high join us for the Sunday school hour and so it's gonna be a real good time. also I want to remind you guys about the creation symposium that's out at the Master's College.

this is February 27th, so that's next Saturday. Doctor John Whitmore, you can go on the Master's College website, just Google Master's College, And then creation symposium and that should, that should pop up. So that's that's that. So this is our Sunday equipment school.

We're running through a 3 year turn through the Bible chronologically. Everything that we're doing in this class, just by way of reminder is also being covered in the kids' classes and so that way parents and kids can talk about the material together. this is part of our para-family ministry really just coming alongside families in their journey. and then we're in a particular quarter called God is, Creator and Redeemer.

Dan last week, did Sin Enters the world. Thanks to Dan for doing an excellent job. And then this morning we're gonna be talking about the effects of the fall. And so with that, let's open up with this question.

How much of God's creation was affected by the fall? That's the big question that we're trying to ask and trying to answer is how much of God's creation was affected. By the fall This has really profound implications for, Our worldview, how we even approach things like geology, anthropology. and let me just use an analogy to start things off and then we'll, we'll, we'll roll with that.

Imagine that, a scientist. Came upon Adam. 10 minutes after he was created. And began to conduct a scientific survey of this man.

what types of things would he determine? He, he wasn't there for the creation moment. We're assuming that's just some random scientist pops out of somewhere, maybe takes a time machine in the past, pops out of his little telephone booth, right, and then walks up and here's Adam. And he begins to look at him and, and, and do a physical and determines that Adam is 21 years of age based upon the observation.

And then he goes over to a tree and he cuts down a tree. He, he's probably not a very good ecologist, but he cuts down the tree, looks and he sees hundreds of years of rings inside of the tree. And based upon his observation, he would correctly observe that this tree was several hundreds of years old and that Adam was 21 years old. The thing that he doesn't know is he's arrived at a point in history that was only 10 minutes after the creation of Adam and only a couple of days after the creation of the tree.

His eyes would give him certain information that if all things being equal, if everything was exactly the way we see it today, he'd be correct, but without the proper information, he would be dead wrong. Now imagine that same scientist coming upon our world just a few days or a week after the fall. He would walk, and he, he takes his little telephone booth, comes out of the telephone booth. He gets out and one of the first things he sees perhaps is a lion chasing down some gazelle, clawing the gazelle, killing it.

And eating it, and blood's everywhere. And based upon pure observation, he would just assume that this has been going on. who knows how long, for a long time, but, but without the proper revelation, without the proper information, he would be dead wrong. If we exclude what God has revealed to us in His word about creation, about the fall, about the reasons for these things, it affects so many other items.

And so that's, that's part of what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna do this a real short review and then we're gonna look at a number of scripture passages and just try to answer this big question, how much was affected by the fall and why is that important? And so from last week, the lesson that Dan brought us through, we talked about sin enters the world. Adam rebelled against God's command and ate the fruit.

Satan deceived Eve because God is just, he must punish sin. However, he showed mercy to Adam and Eve, covering their sin with the skins of an animal. so that's, that's just a huge theme throughout the Bible is we deserve death. Death did occur, but God is the one that brought the first death of an animal.

this was a foreshadowing of the blood sacrifice used to cover mankind's sin until the perfect lamb would come to take away the sins of the world offered Himself on the cross. we talked about Adam and Eve tried to cover up their sin and shame with leaves, but their efforts were insufficient, so God stepped in to cover their sin. And then we often act the same way. We try to make up for our sins by praying more or serving more or trying to please God more.

But as we look at the Bible, God is the only one that can provide for sin. we have to remember that Christ was the perfect sacrifice for sin once for all and that we cannot add to that work. God's grace and mercy are the basis of our standing before Him. And then we also said that he planned to redeem us before he even created us, and we can find great comfort in knowing that Christ has covered our sins.

So with that, let's open up to Genesis 3. We're going to go to the primary fall passage. Genesis 3, we're gonna read verse 8 to 19. Together And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool.

Of the day. That must have been just amazing. To be in the garden, hearing God, obviously revealing Himself in some physical form, preincarnate physical form, walking in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. So they hid themselves obviously because why?

OK, they knew they were naked. And they also knew that God Probably, he had said that they were gonna die. but verse 9, then the Lord God called and said, Where are you? So he said, Adam says, I heard your voice in the garden.

I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? Then the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate.

That sounds like something I did when I was A child, I remember this is, I'm not proud of this, but when I was, a younger person, I predetermined that I was going to go to Alpha Beta and shoplift chips and pins. I don't know why it was chips and pins. And so I shoplifted these items. And then I got caught and my knees were literally shaking like the cartoons.

And then when they were questioning me about it, somehow something in my heart said I'm not going down by myself. And so when my mom picked me up, I said, my sister does this all the time and she never gets caught. I don't know how that was supposed to justify my behavior. But I was taking somebody down with me and that's what Adam's doing here.

Adam is trying to take Eve down. She's the one who is to be blamed. And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.

So she passes the buck. So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, more than even the beasts of the field. On your belly, you shall go and you shall eat the dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.

He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

to Adam, he said, because you have heeded the voice of your wife and heeded and eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying you shall not eat curses the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life with thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. And you shall eat of the herb of the field in the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, and, and dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

Several items there that we want to draw attention to, in this piece of, of history, of Earth history.

first of all, I'd say that the curse of the serpent included parts aimed at the serpent crawling and eating dust and parts aimed at Satan, hatred between the offspring of Satan and the woman and a savior who would eventually crush Satan. It's, it, it's a very interesting passage. Cause on the one hand, you see a talking snake. And right away when you see animals talking, you think, OK, this is a story.

This is some story meant to teach a lesson, right? if I, if I go and see a Disney tale, we just saw Kung Fu Panda 3, right? I don't watch Kung Fu Panda 3 and say, oh, there's talking pandas in the world. I assume that this is just a story that's been created to teach some lessons and so on.

And so your first inclination when you see a talking serpent would be to think that now we're, now we're dealing with some apocalyptic literature or something like that. The problem is, is that God actually deals out a curse to the serpent. And so God, by the curses that he gives out, he gives a curse to Adam, He gives a curse to Eve, and he gives a curse to the snake, and there's an apparent power behind the snake because, God says in this passage, there's what we call the proto-evangelion, like the first preaching of the gospel that there's gonna be a seed that's gonna come out of the, the woman.

And his heels going to be bruised, but he's going to crush the head of the serpent.

And so this is some future prophecy. We're not talking about that actual serpent, but there's some future serpent. And so there's what we call a prophecy, a, a short and far fulfillment or a both and type of prophecy. There's something that's happening here, right with the literal snake, but there's something beyond the snake that's being addressed and we find out in later parts of scripture that it's the devil himself.

I'm gonna I'm gonna send you guys an article this week on the literal nature of the serpent. And with some more information on that. There's the punishment of Eve which includes increased pain in childbirth and a desire to rule over her husband. When we look at some of these particular curses, we have to make sure that we distinguish between what we would call, a decree and a command, a decree.

And a command. and so when God is saying that Eve's, That Eve would have more pain in childbirth. This is a decree as a result of the fall. God is saying, because of the fall, because of your sin, here's gonna be a consequence.

I'm gonna institute a world that now will involve pain for all of humanity, but for the woman particularly, there's gonna be pain involved in the childbirth process. Not only that, God is determining, he's decreeing that now there's gonna be this problem between husband and wife, where the, the wife is going to actually now have this desire. When the Bible indicates this decree, there's, there's two different things going on. It seems as God looks at the woman, he says, you're now, your desire is now going to be to rule over your husband.

This isn't necessarily something that God is saying, and that's a good thing. He's just saying this is now a consequence of the choices that you have made. And because God is sovereign, he's clearly the one that is decreeing that these things would take place, but these do not fall within what we would call his moral will, where God is willing this for good reasons. This is more he's decreeing this as a consequence of sin.

So, for example, God had warned people that if they eat word Adam and Eve, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely what? Die. Is death a good thing? No, death is not a good thing, but it's a and it's a consequence of a bad thing.

And yet, who activated death? Is death something that just happened? No, death is something that was activated, decreed by God as a result of sin. If you do this, I'm going to decree death.

And so what we see is that within one of the attributes of God within his sovereignty is God will decree things in his world as a consequence of other actions. And that so, so God can decree things that may in the long run have good results or they may just be punitive for bad choices. Does that make sense? And so, so some of these, these things that are happening, God is the one that's activating them.

But they're being activated as a consequence of other actions on the part of men and women. we see with Adam, the sentence included hard labor to produce food from the ground and his eventual death returning to the dust. The ground will be cursed. It's now gonna bear thorns and thistles.

So the assumption is, is that up until this time and with Adam's what we would call his conditional, holiness, that Adam and Eve had not sinned yet. Theoretically, if they would not have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would have continued on in these very parasite, paradise, not parasite, paradise-like circumstances, right? So Adam, who was commissioned to till the ground, theoretically as he would have tilled the ground, everything would have come up daisies, right?

No thorns, no thistles.

it's not, he's still, he's working, but everything in nature would have been working in his favor. Now, nature is actually working against him. There's gonna be both evidences of beauty and creation that are remaining after the fall, but also evidences of fightback, evidences of this groaning that Paul talks about later in Romans 8. And so this becomes one of the, the consequences.

If you would have happened upon the world. prob even just minutes after the fall, it's conceivable, we don't really know for sure, it's conceivable that you would have found perhaps immediately all kinds of thorns and thistles and evidences of the fall in nature, or was it that, that this just developed slowly, within weeks or months or years that it gets harder and harder for Adam and Eve as they're trying to eke out their existence, we don't really know. What we do know is that if you would have observed Adam and Eve post fall in the world that they lived in.

and tried to make scientific determinations on that without any knowledge of their pre-fall life, you would have come to very wrong conclusions.

Just imagine there, there's a comics, a comic book called After Eden. Has anybody ever seen it? Any of the, any of the After Eden cartoons? I should have pulled some up for you guys today.

After Eden, it it, it, it catalogs the types of things that Adam and Eve would have experienced both before the fall and after the fall. And one of the cartoons shows Eve is running one direction and Adam's running the other direction and as they pass each other, Eve says, don't touch skunks. And he says, don't touch beehives and they're running in the complete opposite direction. It's like before the fall, there was no problem with stuff like that and now they're just like by process of elimination, learning all the things that they're not supposed to touch and things that are going to sting them and so on and so forth.

There's a bunch of cartoons like that, but you can just imagine, maybe the Lord warned them of certain things so that they didn't like just incur death immediately. but there's probably a lot of things they just figured out the hard way after the fall. we don't really know. so the ground was cursed and would now bear thorns and thistles.

God cast the couple out of the garden and so you have broken fellowship. with the Lord. yeah, do we, are we able to pull the video up or no? Do you want me to give it a try or I, I can skip it if you want.

Yeah, just give it a shot. OK. let's see if this works. We're having a couple of technical issues earlier.

OK, that's fine. No problemo. Let's see where we're at here. OK, wait, this is where I was, right?

Alright, so let's, let's go ahead and turn over to back to Genesis 1:29. 129 and 31. Or 2:31. And God said, see, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed to you, it shall be for food.

Also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food, and it was so. Then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the 6th day. Let's make some observations of this particular text.

what did God command Adam and Eve to eat after he had created them and called them to rule over the earth? Yeah. OK, so what did he, what are they not eating at this point? Yeah, they're not eating meat, what did God command the animals to eat?

Yes. So we've got animals being vegetarian as well. how does God describe the conditions of his creation immediately after giving this command? Yeah, it's good.

It's very good. And so you've got Adam and Eve aren't killing and eating animals. Animals, you don't have the food chain yet. so you don't have a bigger fish eating the smaller fish, it seems.

all the animals, especially the land animals are commanded to eat herbs, and everything's called very good. So how would you summarize the diet of those that God had created? Vegetarian, right? So, at least by a straightforward reading of the text, it seems like at the very least, the land animals and human beings have a vegetarian diet after day 6.

if we accept evolutionary thinking that animals evolved, were animals and man vegetarian as they were evolving. So do any evolutionists that would argue that human beings and animals, particularly animals with meat eating teeth and so on, that, that they were vegetarian at some point in their evolutionary history. Yeah, no, Yeah, is this question, it's probably not worded very well. from an evolution from an evolutionary viewpoint.

were Homo sapiens at some point vegetarian. No. What about, and then just the animal kingdom, you would not see an exclusively vegetarian animal kingdom. You definitely have some animals that are and some animals that aren't, but you wouldn't see an exclusively vegetarian animal kingdom at some point in history from an evolutionary worldview.

So this creates, this creates an interesting conflict. So assuming that God's used evolution to create the world as some of our believing friends would argue, with animals eating one another and man eating animals, would they have been obeying God's command to eat only plants? So we're talking about pre-fall. If God's commanding them to eat only plants, would people be obeying this if they're eating animals?

Or would they be disobeying God's command? They'd be disobeying God's command. would God have called this very good if the animals and man were disobeying his commands? So if animals were eating each other, And human beings were killing and eating animals before the fall, would God have said, this is very good.

Our supposition is no, he would not. If God had said, commanded all the animals and human beings to only eat a vegetarian diet, and they were disobeying that command, it seems like it would be, it's very difficult to understand how God would call it very good. In fact, it would seem like that the first sin would not be Adam and Eve taking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It'd be them disobeying the command to eat only herbs or to have more of a vegetarian diet, only a vegetarian diet.

the fossil record, however, contains much evidence of death, suffering disease, things like cancer and animals eating one another. Would God call these things very good? So when we look at the fossil record, which is allegedly, we've got stuff that's thousands and millions of years old. you have clear evidence of animals eating, tearing.

when Matthew McLean comes, his expertise is dinosaurs, and one of his real interests is, cannibalism between T. rex dinosaurs. they have evidence of T. rexes attacking each other and eating each other.

And So from an evolutionary viewpoint or even those that would argue for theistic evolution and so on, it's clear that we have in the fossil record cancer, disease, death. cannibalism. Is that fit a very good world that we seem to be, that seems to be described in Genesis 1 and 2 before the fall. It doesn't seem like it fits.

and so Because of that, it seems to lead us to a couple, couple of necessary conclusions. Either We need to look at those portions of scripture. And interpret them differently from a straightforward reading. or perhaps the way that we're reading the world.

The way that we're looking at the data that's clearly in nature is being misinterpreted. Those are a couple of possibilities. We're not looking at the data properly. We're fitting it into the wrong hole in history.

or perhaps we're just reading Genesis wrongly, that we need to go back to Genesis and instead of taking it as, as a historical narrative, we need to see it more in a metaphorical way. Let's look at Genesis 9. verse 1 to 3. So God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth.

So we got a, this is a, a reissue of the command that had been given to Adam and Eve pre-fall. Then we have the fall, then we have this, this general decline where the world gets so wicked that approximately if we take the chronic genealogies, literally, we're talking about 1650 years after the creation of Adam and Eve, the whole world gets flooded. And destroyed. Now Noah's coming out of the ark.

He's being commanded to multiply and fill the earth. Verse 2, and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, every bird of the air., all that move on the earth and on the fish of the sea, they are given into your hand. So God gives every animal into the hand of human beings. Verse 3, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.

I have given you all things even as the green herbs. OK, so this is the first time. In the narrative of Genesis, and, and from what we can tell in the history of the world, where God says, eat meat. up until this point, they're very well could have been meat eating people, obviously, the generation before the flood was a very wicked world.

They were given to violence. it wouldn't be surprising at all if there were people that were eating meat in disobedience to God's command to humankind. But this is the first time that God commands it and says it's fine. And so that's, that would be the fill-in.

this is the first time that man was allowed to eat meat. God said very clearly that he had given them herbs before. what sense would this command make if there was no previous command to eat only herbs? This command is nonsense if human beings had been eating meat underneath God's direction beforehand.

Does that make sense? Why would God allow for human beings to eat meat? And then suddenly command them to eat meat if there hadn't been a, a prohibitive direction beforehand. So this is the first time that God, comes along and says, go ahead and eat meat.

So here's the question. If everything was perfectly peaceful in the garden as Genesis wanted to indicate, then why are so many animals designed with features and structures that seem suited for attacking, tearing, killing, and eating? Scripture tells us that animals were originally vegetarian. So how did they acquire their ability to kill?

Where did these defense attack structures come from? So this is, this question is raised by several different camps. One camp, we'll call it just the materialistic Darwinian evolutionists who doesn't believe in the Bible, doesn't necessarily believe in God. They just say, here you guys arguing from the Bible for creation.

And so the Bible, they would, they would agree that you read the Bible and you've got animals living at peace with one another. They're vegetarian. Your Bible says that it's a peaceful world, that there's no death, and yet we look at the fossil record and we see death and chaos and cancer and all kinds of stuff everywhere. Not only that, when we look at animals, animals, even in the fossil record are given attributes to protect themselves and to attack other animals.

So why in the world would you have attacking and defense structures in animals if you have a basically peaceful environment? What purpose does a lion have for meat eating teeth? If he's, if the lion's not eating meat before the fall. Does that make sense?

Why does an armadillo need all of this, this armor on its body if not to protect it from predators? And so, so, so the materialist evolution asked that question, but not only that, Christians asked this question who are in the camp of more of like the theistic evolution. Maybe day age theorists and so on. They say your approach, taking a literal approach to Genesis breaks down right here.

Because you've got animals that are clearly designed for death and meat eating and so on and so forth, and yet you guys are arguing that they're all vegetarians. So how would we respond to this? I guess other ways to ask the question, why did T. rex have giant teeth?

Why do snakes have venom? Why do armadillos need protective plates? OK, a couple of suggested answers to this question. First of all, originally, one possible answer is these features had a good purpose, but as the environment changed, the purpose of these features had to change as well.

So that's, that's one pos possibility. Is that, is that those particular mechanisms were in place but they had a different purpose pre-fall. an example that's offered up by creation scientists is the panda. if you look at the panda's teeth, And if you had no idea what stuff went into a stomach, you would think that the panda was a meat eater, by its teeth.

it has teeth that are very similar to a lion. and yet, if you were to study pandas and then look at what goes into their stomachs, what do they eat, you look at fossils of pandas, they're vegetarian, right? they are not meat eaters. And, so it's a modern example of perhaps what, all these animals were doing pre-fall.

Secondly, another possible answer is God added new features to creatures at the curse, so they would be able to withstand the onslaught of violence provoked by sin, changes that happen to the serpent. So we know that God pronounces a curse on the serpent, and the serpent seems to have been a, a different type of creature before the fall because God says now you're gonna go around on your belly. And so This could have been instantaneous. Did God cause this to happen after a generation or two?

We have no idea. But there does seem to be an indication of a change in the serpent which sets a paradigm for the perhaps that right after the fall, that, that God had allowed for mutation for animals to be able to protect themselves and also to survive in a post-fall environment. the Bible says in Romans 8 that all creation groans and it's longing for the liberty of the sons of men. a third possible answer is God placed designs for these features in the genes of the original creatures, but they did not become active until after the curse.

So, for, for example, like we know. And it doesn't matter of your viewpoint, everybody basically agrees that human beings, Homo sapiens, that all of the ethnic variety that we see on the earth today is right there in the genes of the first human beings. we have no idea what Adam and Eve look like being there in the Mesopotamian area. We could assume.

That they were darker skinned, we don't really know for sure. perhaps they looked more Middle Eastern, but everything necessary for all of the, the variety, ethnic variety that develops over the thousands of years after creation was right there in Adam and Eve. So the blueprint was there. And so post fall, this argument says that, that there were animals that maybe didn't perhaps didn't have defensive structures before the fall, but after the fall they developed.

So that's one possible answer. Fourth, although unnecessary in a perfect world, God designed the original creatures with the features they would need to live in the fallen world God knew was coming. This is actually more my, well, I think there can be truth to all of these. My leaning is this position, is that because of God's sovereignty and the way that he controls his decrees, it's not like God after he created Adam and Eve was wondering what was gonna happen.

It's not like God, there was any time where there was this gap in his knowledge, where God was just like, man, I, I wonder if Adam and Eve are gonna obey me or not. I don't know. We'll see what happens. from the very get-go, before God even said, let there be light, he knew what Adam and Eve were gonna do.

He knew the fall was coming. And so, while we don't really know the answers for sure, it would not be outside of God's character to create. the whole animal realm already with the features that they were going to need post fall. so, so if we're going to take the Bible straight forward, it seems like we've, we've got to just allow for the fact that God created a peaceful pre-fall existence.

And that post fall that we have exactly what we see in our world today, both chaos and order. Before the fall, we have order, after the fall, we have chaos and order. And so this would not be surprising at all to me. The 3rd and 4th views seem to align well with what we would call the decrees of God.

we've just said that. First Peter 1:18 says this, knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish, without spot, he indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world because he was manifest in these last times for you. It's a very interesting passage that Jesus Christ, him coming to the earth. to die as a lamb.

This was, foreordained before the foundation of the world. So in the mind, in the decrees of the Trinity, before the world was even created, The Trinity had already worked out the plan of Jesus Christ to come and die on the cross for the sins of the world. It's very difficult to talk about a creator that is timeless, right? It, it's just hard for us to imagine., the way I've described this to some of our, our theology students is, if a fish, if there's something, a fish that would not notice, it's the, it's the water in its own fish bowl, right?

You just, the fish is swimming around the water and just never even notices its own environment. We live inside of time and it's hard for us to think outside of time, to think outside of our own fishbowl, but God lives outside of the fishbowl. In fact, he's created the fishbowl of time. And so when we start talking about things like God for ordaining the death of Jesus Christ and the cross before he even created, that just makes my circuits burn.

Right? It's just hard to contemplate, but we're dealing with someone who's the creator and we're creatures and so there should be significant differences in the way that we, think and the way that we process. And so God, who knows everything that's coming, is already foreordained that Jesus Christ would come down on the cross. So is it ridiculous to think that he would foreordain meat eating animals before they even ate meat or protective structures before the fall?

I don't think so at all. I think it's very consistent with scripture. Moreover, and this is the really the kicker argument for me. from a, from a biblical worldview looking at the Bible.

While we do not know exactly how the animals acquired these defense attack structures, and we need to just frankly admit that we don't know. The Bible doesn't tell us exactly what the animals look like pre and post fall, other than some hints with the snake and so on and so forth. We just have to say we really don't know. According to God's word, our final authority, animals were originally vegetarian and they will once again get along with each other and with men.

As it states in Isaiah 11:6-7. Let's turn to Isaiah. What we have in the Bible. is a, a book-ended story is we start off with a perfect creation where God says everything is very good.

And then when we get to the end of the story, God is saying everything is very good. But in the middle, there is a lot of chaos. And so look at Isaiah 11:6-7. this is a passage of prophecy speaking of the future kingdom.

So we're, throughout the Old Testament, many parts of the New Testament, there's this longing for God to come and restore order, both politically and spiritually back to our world. And this is describing that future time. Verse 6, the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and the little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze.

Their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play with the cobra's hole, and the wean child shall put his hand in the viper's den. That is a very different world that we're looking at in the future. I used to do a lot of backpacking with juvenile delinquent teenagers, and it was a very interesting job.

We go up into this High Sierras called Pile's Boys Camp. We'd select, we like do this little selection process, take our kids. The very first group I had, every kid was taller than me. And you take them on this backpacking trip in the backcountry, 1012 miles out and, and most of these kids have only been in the city, South Central LA, different places, East LA and they've never been into the forest.

And I remember one time we're walking along a pretty narrow trail. with not a lot of room on the left before there's a big drop off and, one of our kids was walking along. All of a sudden there's a rattlesnake in front of him and he was not taking precautions. He actually started walking towards the rattlesnake and I just grabbed this kid and threw him backwards and almost threw him over the cliff.

And it was just a crazy, crazy event. one thing I didn't do is I said, hey, why don't you go ahead and let's go ahead and pick them up. That should be fun to play with. But there's coming a day where in, in the future state, where we'll be able to pick up cobras, snakes, lions gonna lay down with the lamb.

you're not gonna be in fear for your life. I don't know if any of you guys have run across bears in the, in the backcountry or when you've been camping, but you just don't go running up to bears and pet them. You see people like try to do that on YouTube and they get their arms ripped off, right? but there's a day coming.

When there's going to be peaceful circumstances, as we look at this bookend of God's history, if God is ending things where lions will be vegetarian and lions will not kill lambs and they will still be lions, is it ridiculous to think that before the fall, there were lions and lambs cohabitating, living in the same area and not killing each other? Our lions weren't killing lambs that That there was a vegetarian diet. Yes, it's very, very likely. And so to me this, this is the ultimate answer to the question that's raised of what do you do with animals that have defense attack structures built into them before the fall.

I, if, if somebody just asked me that question and I've got 10 seconds to answer, I say, what will, I just basically ask a question, what will animals be like after the kingdom is inaugurated? Once we move into the eternal state, the lion will lay down with the lamb. And a lot of people, even non-believers in our culture, have heard that statement, the lion will lay down with the lamb. So what does that mean?

It means there's coming a time when lions will no longer eat meat. They're not gonna kill the lamb, they're gonna dwell peacefully. And so if it's gonna be that way in the future, it's not unsurprising it was like that in the past. And so that's, that's my response to that question.

Oh, we could have read it right there. let's also look at Romans 19. Or I'm sorry, 8, 8:19. Does anybody like to backpack?

Are there any people that like to go in the background and do backpacking? Not too many people. I got a few people. I haven't done it for a long time.

I need to get my kids out and do it again. I don't, I don't know if I could make it up the hills anymore. But boy, it's a lot of fun. Although when you're out there with a bunch of delinquents, you're kinda like, man, I sure wish I was out here with people I liked.

The Lord, the Lord uses you and you minister. But if you, if you've ever been involved in that ministry, you get tired after a week or two. Romans 8:19-22. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits.

So let's start that again. The earnest expectation of the creation. eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. So we've got this creation.

And there could be some personification going on here, but there's something within our world, the animal kingdom, the forest, our world in general, is waiting for this revealing of the sons of God, this future day when all God's children will be finally revealed. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. So not willingly means this creation didn't subject itself. God is the one that subjected the creation, i.e.

at the fall, but as he subjected it, there was a hope. That hope was, remember, The serpent's head's gonna be crushed. The, the seed is gonna bruise his heel, and the serpent's head's gonna be crushed right from the very beginning when the fall occurs, God's giving out the hope of the gospel. It's gonna bruise your heel, it's gonna crush his head, and so the fall happens, but it's subjective in hope.

Because the creation itself, verse 21, also will be delivered from the glorious liberty or into the glorious liberty of the children of God. So we have the symbience from a Christian worldview, there is a symbience between us, particularly believers, and the creation. that there's a connection between us that as we get liberty at Christ's return, the bondage of this world will also be freed. This world is not the way the Bible views our current world is it's not just part of the natural processes.

We look at, we see natural processes and chaos and tear down and stuff like that, but the Bible looks at it and says there's bondage that's revealed here. And that bondage is going to be released. Creation will be released when the children of God are released. Verse 22.

For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pings together until now. And so all of creation is being described with this metaphor of a woman giving birth or going through birth pains. so that's a very interesting analogy. It seems like the idea is, is before the fall.

You have a woman who is not in labor and who is breathing normally and enjoying life, right? After the fall, the creation is like a woman in labor, in the throes of labor. The young people may not understand this, but if you've been by your wife's side as the contractions are coming before they do any epidural or anything like that and It's just insane. Right, and I, I can't, I have no idea of what that's like.

I just know that my wife was in labor with our son Joshua for about 28 hours and it was hard labor for about 8 hours, pushing for 4 to 5 hours and, and he just wasn't coming and finally they had to do a C-section and. Just the intensity of the experience and that's the way this world is being described. Is, is the whole world is in birth pains, but there's coming a point in which the baby is going to be delivered. And when the baby is delivered, as it were, the sons and the, the children of God are brought at liberty, then, the whole creation, this groaning will be over.

The labor will be over and there'll be this, this sense of rejoicing with what God has accomplished in the history of redemption. so who is the creation waiting for? The creation is waiting for. The children of liberty, right?

The sons to be revealed. Why is it waiting for this event? So that it can be released as well? How did the creation come to be futile?

It was subjected in hope. how is the creation acting in light of its curse? It's groaning, it's waiting. There's birth pains.

And so on. And so in light of this passage, how much of creation is suffering under the curse? All of it. Yeah, the whole thing.

And so I wanna ask you guys a question then. If the Bible, the Bible's special revelation, we acknowledge that the Bible is not science in the pure definition of science. The Bible gives us revelatory information, right? It gives us metaphysical information about creation.

And so in light of this passage, So we've got special revelation given to us about creation. If we ignore this information in our science, particularly our historical sciences like geology, anthropology, and so on. Can we possibly hope to come to the right conclusions? My answer is no.

If we don't listen to what the creator has revealed about his creation as information that cannot be determined through the scientific method, can we determine the fall through the scientific method? No. Can we determine this groaning and labor paying thing through the scientific method? We can't.

We need special revelation in order to be able to properly interpret this world. And this is why so many scientists get things dead wrong when they're observing things accurately. They're making accurate observations about the world, but then what the problem comes is when they try to give the solution. They, they're making the right diagnosis they're, they're looking at all the right symptoms and then they say, OK, based on these symptoms, here's the problem and they come to the exact wrong conclusion.

let's see, I'm not sure we're gonna do the Berkoff. We might do the Berkoff thing and so So, so, so this is, this is a really big deal. What happens a lot of times, I remember I used to teach, I wasn't a science teacher, I taught English at the junior high level, but we do a lot of collaboration with the different disciplines, the science and all that stuff and In history And just engaging with my colleagues about some of these issues. It's just interesting how that people can observe stuff like say there's the observation in the animal kingdom.

That you have, the animal kingdom is very violent. And the animal kingdom. does not. You don't see very many animals that just look out for the best interests of other animals, right?

They look out for the interests of themselves. And that's why Darwin looks out at the world and he finds this principle, especially his protege finds the principle of survival of the fittest. And then philosophers take that data and then try to project it on the human animal. They're making right observations that when you look at the animal kingdom, it's violent, it's bloody, it's tooth and claw.

But if we suddenly think that we're just evolved animals, And now we start to apply the philosophy of survival of the fittest to the human animal. What do you get? Well, you get Joseph Stalin, who is a committed Darwinian. You get Hitler, who is a committed Darwinian.

These guys were just simply trying to put into practice what they were seeing in the animal kingdom, and that is the strong survive, the weak need to die. Weak things dying actually helps the species. you also see this in the sexual revolution. Margaret Mead goes out and she's observing animals, realizes that the animal kingdom, there's very few species that have monogamy.

There's actually examples even in the animal kingdom of homosexual behavior and things like that, although it's very minor. but she goes out and then she goes and, and begins to observe Samoa, American Samoa, and she's observing a lot of immorality in their culture. But she basically writes her thesis and convinces a whole generation that the, that the Samoans were happy in their immorality and it's really us in the Christian West that are the problem that we've, we're trying to do something that's against our evolution.

And so she convinces millions of people that we just need to let go and be like the animals and be happy like the Samoans, which eventually leads to the sexual revolution of the 60s.

She wasn't the only one, but she's one of the ones that influences Kinsey and other people who began to establish this whole idea of just evolutionary sex, approach to sex. the problem is, is they're, they're observing nature totally outside of a Christian worldview without the understanding of the fall and chaos and so on and what God's purpose is and subjecting it. And not only that, we find out decades later that Margaret Mead basically lied in her research that she exaggerated a lot of the claims in American Samoa, and these were not people that were happy in their immorality.

They were miserable in their immorality.

And yet she tried to portray it as if this was a very happy culture like the noble savage. They just go around and sleep with everybody and everybody's just happy and we need to be more free in our sexuality as well. Just a total lie. And so that's some of the impact of this doctrine.

let's see. I think I'm gonna just send you guys the Berkoff quote. And let's look at one more passage. We got one minute.

Maybe I'll just send you a revelation. If you go back and look at revelation on your own, you basically see the curse being reversed, specific parts of the curse are specifically mentioned in Revelation. And so. death and disease.

Let me read this right here. I'm sorry. Death and disease. If death, disease, and suffering have always been part of God's creation from an evolutionary perspective, does it make sense that this would be reversed as part of the result of Adam's sin?

So what you have in Revelation 21 is death, disease, and suffering are reversed. If death and disease and suffering are just part of the evolutionary process, why would you need to reverse it? as many Christian scientists would argue, those that are theistic evolutionists, those are the age theorists, they're gonna argue that there's death, suffering before the fall, but that death and suffering should not be equated with the same type of death as a result of Adam's sin. So then why don't you have the same type of thing?

Why don't you have Jesus Christ comes back, we go into the kingdom, and you still have death, suffering, and disease, but it's just not of the same nature. No, it's totally reversed in Revelation. There's a return back to Eden. And so, Yeah, so the, that future state, a new heaven, new earth as compared to the past condition.

If that past state included death, suffering, and earthquakes and tsunamis, we can expect the future state to include those too. And that's actually one of the arguments I would make. Those of our friends that are on the theistic evolutionist side, the Da theory side, is if they want to argue for death and suffering and tsunamis and, and chaos before the fall, then, then we need to preach that there's gonna be death, suffering, and chaos and tornadoes and stuff. After the eternal state.

That once we move into the kingdom that the same conditions are probably gonna be there. It seems to me that you can't have both. You can't say there's death, suffering, and chaos before the fall, and when the same type of language is picked up and talking about the future state and suddenly say no, but the future is gonna be, we're not going to have the natural processes after the fall. I don't know if that makes sense.

Any questions you guys have? This is, this is a, a pretty big deal. So effects of the fall in summary, the earth groans, people die, animals die, we have sickness, we have pain, and that's all gonna be reversed. Post fall.

Questions, comments, criticisms, concerns. Yeah, Joe. Yeah. Yes, that's a good question.

The question is, is how do you get from the idea of God cursing Adam and Eve and then the snake and then the ground to what Paul says in Romans 8 that you have all of creation, perhaps even including the stars and the whole universe. I think it's a real good question. I, I would argue that the ground is a metonym for all of nature, metonym meaning like it's a part of the whole. So, we, we, we use this type of terminology, a lot in all languages.

I'm trying to think of an example in English real quick. like I might say, boy, my son fell in the mud and he's dirty from head to toe. when I say head to toe, I'm talking about his whole body, even though I'm just saying head and I'm saying toe. And so when God, I would argue that when God's talking about the ground and the thorns and thistles in Genesis 3, that those are metonyms for all of creation.

It's a part to represent the whole. Yeah, assumedly, yeah. And, and, and as we look at the universe, we do see chaos everywhere. So, and that's, so from a biblical worldview, the, the, the problem that the evolutionist has, the evolutionist has no problem with chaos.

Chaos makes sense in their worldview. everything should be absolutely chaotic. What they have trouble with is why is there any order at all. There's just, there's no reason for order in a, in an evolutionary viewpoint.

From our viewpoint, there's a great explanation for order, God creates, but then what they always say is, how do you explain chaos? And our response is the fall. The fall, so creation explains order, the fall explains chaos. And so right now we live in a period of order slash chaos.

but when Jesus Christ returns and all the judgments are done, then we'll go back to order. So the all of world history from a biblical world viewpoint can be understood as order. Order chaos. Order.

It's a great question. Anything? Yeah, Charles. Dynamic Yeah, so the question is, couldn't we say that part of the curse is the laws of thermodynamics applied to the whole system?

I think so. Yeah, we, we can clearly see the laws of thermodynamics operative in the world today, but it would seem, if we're gonna live forever and ever and ever and there's gonna be no death, it would seem like, I don't know all the laws of thermodynamics, but at least the second law is not operative in the future kingdom, right? And it seems like the second law of thermodynamics is not operative before the fall, and so, yeah, that seems to be part of, part of the curse., scientists are gonna say that's just part of nature, that's just death is just natural.

This is just who we are.

Things were born, things die, and, and that's just the way it is. And then people try to, they try to philosophize based upon that, that death is natural, so let's just treat death as a natural thing. Let's all celebrate life and When you look at the Bible, Paul, Paul says death is unnatural, that it's, it's something that's, it, it's a, is a result of a bad thing. We don't want to put off this body.

it's an unnatural thing. We don't desire it, but because we'll be with Christ, we're willing to go through this unnatural event. But our ultimate state is not separation from the body. Paul argues our ultimate state is unification with our resurrected body.

And so he makes a big deal about death being unnatural, but we're willing to go through it to get to Christ, but ultimately we'll be back in our bodies, living, living forever without this decline. Which I'm looking forward to. I'm only 47, but Man, there's aches and pains every morning now. My grandma is 92.

And I, I'm just amazed. I don't think I'm gonna get there. I don't know. We'll see what the Lord does.

Any other questions? I, I've taken us over time. Questions, comments, criticisms, or concerns? All right, I'll be up here.

If you guys have other stuff. Let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we do thank you for your word. Where would we be if you had not told us?

About creation, about the fall, about what's coming in the future. we are like little children dependent upon you for this type of, information. we ask that by your spirit, that we would, as Christ says, that we would be able to come as little children to be born again. And to, to remain in faith as little children trusting in you.

Yet we know that doesn't mean that. somehow we're just walking around blindly to the things around us. We just want to observe the universe. We want to observe your word through the eyes of faith and trust in our Heavenly Father and Creator.

we ask God that you just help us to grow in humility. It's always dangerous. Anytime we're introduced to knowledge that can help us, it can also harm us if it's not mixed with humility. And so we pray that you'd apply that to our hearts this morning.

Christ's name we pray. Amen.