It is the Word of God which sheds light on what we see And it is the word of God which tells us about things that we have not seen, which we have not seen yet, which we could not have seen in the past, all of this, we can know from the word of God. And so we'll be thinking about God as a creator. And if you would turn with me first to page 210, For Lord's Day 9, question and answer 26. Where did everything come from? Lord's Day 9, question and answer 26. I'll read both the question and the answer this evening, a little bit longer answer. I'll read both the question and the answer. Page 210, question and answer 26. What do you believe when you say, I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, that the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them, who still rules and upholds them by his eternal counsel and providence is my God and father for the sake of Christ his son. I trust God so much that I do not doubt he will provide whatever I need for body and soul and will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends upon me in this veil of tears. He is able to do this because he is almighty God. he desires to do this because he is a faithful father. It is the confession, the faithful summary of the truths of God's word. Let us turn now to that word, that pure word, Hebrews chapter 11. And we'll be looking especially at verse three, but we'll consider some words from the context and we'll read verses one through seven of Hebrews chapter 11. Page 1,283 in most of the few Bibles. Hebrews, James, and then the general epistles and then revelation. Hebrews chapter 11. Let us read the first seven verses together. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation by faith. We understand that the universe was created by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death. And he was not found because God had taken him. Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God. And without faith, it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. By faith, Noah. being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith." So far, the reading of the holy, inspired, infallible word of God. Dear congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, how can we answer hard questions, hard questions about things we cannot see, things we could not know in ourselves, questions like this, does heaven exist? If heaven exists, who is there? Can anyone go up to heaven or come down? And what about wind? Where does the wind come from? Did wind come about by chance? And does it continue to roam by chance? Or was wind created by one creator who still continues to control it and move it? And if there is a creator who made all the earth, what is the name of the creator? And what is the name of the son of that creator if he exists? How could we answer these questions? How could it be possible to answer questions like this, questions about the biggest things, about things that we cannot see, about the spiritual realm, about God who is spirit, about things in the past that no person was there to see, about things that may come to pass in the future. How could we ever come to such questions and find any kinds of answers. Well, it is only by starting with God. It is only by faith in God. It's only with a true worldview that depends upon God. We cannot come to a true answer for questions like this on our own. We must depend upon a higher authority. We must depend upon the authority of God himself, and that's our theme then this evening, to understand, we can only understand the true worldview by faith, by faith. And so we'll look first at understanding the creation, and then even as the second point will bleed, or the first point will bleed into the second point, we'll then look at understanding the creator understanding the creation. There have been and continue to be many false understandings of creation. Many used to say that this world came about in some form of chaos. Quite often that was gods warring against each other or gods warring against some forces of this world and then somehow those battles created things in this earth and people and plants and all these kinds of things. And now many have a different explanation, but there's actually many points in common with many of those old views, especially this, the word chaos. Everything came out of chaos, except now it's a chaos of nothingness. It's a chaos of chance. It's a chaos of exploding things into existence out of nothing and then progressing slowly, supposedly into what we see today. From nothing to boom to goo to you. And if anything, these more common views of our day are less believable than the views of old. And they all must be accepted by blind faith. by blind faith that something can come from nothing, by blind faith that life could come from non-life, or in the case of the older views, by blind faith that false gods who have never spoken somehow exist and did all these things. But the modern, the modern false understanding, it, It takes its own forms and it takes its own alters. It doesn't worship false gods as many of the common views of old did. But now it has its own idols. Many times that's the idol of one's own chemical explosion. And in that worldview, in that way of viewing the world, we might say that makes sense. If we all just came from chemical explosions in the first place, then whoever can have the most pleasure, whoever can have the most chemical explosions in their brain, well, we might as well just go after that, right? It's a way of viewing the world. It's a way of saying how we came here. And there's even a certain sad, depressing logic to it. We came from chemical explosions. Well, let's just make as many fun chemical explosions in our brain as we can. That's all we can do. Many, because we are made in the image of God, realize how pointless and hopeless this way of viewing the world is, that it cannot satisfy. And so, without the myth of a false god who created out of chaos, they'll turn to worship the earth itself, so that becomes another popular alternative. And so Earth Day, Earth Day has become the highest day on the priestly calendar of the religion of evolution. Other false understandings exist, but they all have this in common. They deny the one creator God. and they will not find God unless they come in dependent faith. I mentioned some questions in our introduction. Those questions came from one of the least well-known authors of scripture. They came from Augur. If you would turn with me to Proverbs chapter 30, Proverbs chapter 30. We're going to look at the first handful of verses. Solomon writes most of the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 31 is written by Lemuel. Proverbs 30 is written by Augur, son of Jacob. And we'll be looking at some of the first words he says in verses 2, 3, 4, and 5. He begins in verse 2 by speaking about where he stands on his own. And he speaks in 30 verse 2 with words that perhaps we have not included in our Sunday school and catechism memory sections too often. He says this in Proverbs 30 verse 2, surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. This is Augur speaking about where he stands by himself. And then he asks those questions in verse four, which we basically expanded on those questions in our introduction. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name? And what is his son's name? Surely, You know? And so the end of verse four is getting us to the answer. It's not any kind of dependence upon myself, verses two and three. No, it's someone else knows. You know. Who is you? It is God. And verse five, every word of God proves true. That's it. That's the only way to answer. these questions. The only way to come to a true answer to these questions, the only way we can have any wisdom, as Proverbs 1 says it, as Solomon said it there, we must begin by fearing God for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. We cannot reason to this ourselves. You know, why is it that we have such a better understanding of the world than we did? 300 years ago. It's true, we do. We had no idea what the cell was 300 years ago. Now we know it's a factory in microscopic form and it's incredible. Well, why is it that those who pretended that the world was relatively simple 300 years ago and denied God then, Why is it that people do the same thing now when we have a better understanding of how incredibly complex this world is? Why is that? Why is that made no difference? It's because we cannot reason to God by ourselves. It doesn't matter what God shows us. Remember from 1st Samuel, it doesn't matter if God strikes a lightning bolt at our feet. If we are starting by ourselves, we will not get there. We must start by faith and we must hear the word of God by faith. This and only this is the way that we can have a true view of the world. This and only this is a way that we can answer the hardest questions, questions about the past unseen, questions about the future unknown, questions about the spiritual realm and our very purpose upon this earth only by faith, only by hearing the Word of God which proves true. Not even Adam was there when God created. He was not made until the sixth day, but God was there and God has spoken and God has told us what this creation is. It is what he made out of nothing. And so it says in the answer to question answer 26, what do you mean when you say, I believe in God, the father creator of heaven and earth, I believe in the one who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them. And we start from there. We start from Genesis 1.1 and we go to the end of Revelation and there in the Word of God we see answers. And it's the only place we see true answers to these questions. And they can only be understood by faith. But by faith they are Understood? Think of the language of the first verses of Hebrews. Assurance, verse 1. Conviction, verse 1. Understand, verse 3. The believer does not have blind faith. The believer is depending upon the very authority of God who was there, who did make it, who does control and continue to control all things and will through the end of time. And so when God speaks about the past, and that's the focus of 11 verse three, Hebrews 11 verse three is focusing on the past, right? Because it's focusing on what God did at the moment of creation and where things came from and how they got here. But most of Hebrews 11 is focused on the future. So for example, Noah trusted in what God said about what would happen in the future, what would happen when the flood would come, and he acted by faith upon that. And Abraham acted by faith in the future, if we were to read on, in the receiving of the inheritance. And so it is that much of faith is the future. It's about what God will do in the future. But faith also gives us an understanding of what God has done in the past. Things about the past, things about the future that we could not ever answer on our own. We can not only answer, but we answer not blindly, but with assurance, with conviction, with understanding, because by faith. We know this word is true. There's illustrations of this. There's illustrations that we sang about from Psalm 19 about how the word of God is what shines light into darkness. That's one illustration. We live in darkness. We cannot understand these things until the light of God's word comes in. Another illustration, and I appreciate this illustration. I'm not the first to use it, because it brings faith into the equation. And the illustration is this, that faith is the righteous reflex to revelation. It's a righteous reflex. What's a reflex? You go, maybe you've gone to the doctor in your life, and the doctor tests your reflexes. And the one on the the knee, I just thought it was kind of fun because you know the doctor pulls out the little, oh my brother's gonna tell me, why can't you remember what that's called? The little reflex hammer or whatever it's actually called, pulls out the little reflex hammer and hits the right spot on the knee and you don't even have control over it. Your knee just kicks out, right? It's just a reflex. You don't even have control over it. Well, faith is the righteous reflex to revelation, especially to special revelation to the Word of God. And so we read Genesis 1.1, in the beginning God created and we don't sit there and we don't say, I wonder if God created. I don't know. Is that true? What's going on here? Faith says God created in the beginning. He did. And you know what? That is the only way to answer these questions. It's the only one. As Augur said, I can't do it on my own. But the fear of the Lord, believing in the Lord, by faith that word comes and it speaks and I believe it. And in so doing, by dependent faith, I now have true understanding of the world. I have a true understanding of the world, of how I got here, what my purpose is, who God is. That takes us to our second point. Of course, to even use the word creation, we've already been speaking about the creator, but now we'll come properly to our second point, understanding the creator. As it says in Hebrews 11 verse 6, whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him. Remember some of those questions from Proverbs 30? Well, by faith, we know not only that God is created, that he is the creator who in the beginning made all things in the space of six days. We know his name. We know that his name is Yahweh, Lord, the covenant God who is. Yahweh, Lord, in all caps is a variation on I am. So Jesus says, I am who I am. Before Abraham was, I am. God is the existent one. the faithful covenant one. And so he again and again uses that name especially when he's emphasizing his covenant faithfulness. And then there are many more names for God which help us to understand God. All of them teaching us something about who God is. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's the God of all those who believe. so we can know his name and we can know that God made everything good but that mankind quickly fell in to sin and so now ever since we have been sinners, lost in our sin, in need of repentance. One of the other questions is what is the name of the son of the creator? Well his name is Jesus and that tells us something about who he is just in his name because his name means Savior and he is the one who saves us from our sins even as he is the one who works the faith in us. Even as the Holy Spirit seals it, we can also speak about Jesus being the founder and perfecter of our faith. And so, that is the language of Hebrews 12, verse 2. People of God, we can understand the Creator. And therefore, we know not only about creation, We understand not only the creation, but we understand who God is and what God has done. And we understand that God has the power not only to create the world, but also to recreate our souls. If you would turn back with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. It's not too many pages back from Hebrews through the shorter letters of Paul back to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. and then we'll read a couple verses from 2 Corinthians 5 as well. God who has the power to create all things out of nothing, what else can God do and how does the Apostle Paul draw parallels between creation and salvation as the recreation of us in 2 Corinthians. Let's begin at 2 Corinthians 4 verse 6. For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And then moving into 2 Corinthians 5, verses 17 through 19. 2 Corinthians 5, 17 to 19. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself. and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. You see, by faith, we understand that God can create the universe in a moment. We understand that God says, let the stars be, and it is so, and it is simply the work of his fingers as the psalmist says. And then we understand that, again, this is our place in this world. It is created. We are creatures. We do have an obligation to the creator, but we fall short. We're sinners because we're all lost in sin. But the same God who said, let there be light, can surely bring light. to our souls and recreate us to be his servants who love him. By faith we understand creation and the recreation of salvation. I am a new creation in Christ. So we see that faith, true faith, not only impacts what we could know about the past and the future, but it impacts who we are in the present. There is no God like our God, and there is no book like the Bible, the revelation that He has given to us so that our faith is informed. Our faith is a faith of understanding. Our faith is a faith of knowing who God is and what God has done. Our faith is a faith which has the answers to the biggest questions in life, the answers God gives in his word from Genesis to Revelation. By faith, we understand that the creator is not only able to make things and then to recreate our own souls, but we also understand that this world was made by someone orderly. Remember, the false understandings of creation have chaos in common. That's almost across the board. No matter which kind of false religion, no matter where you find it, whether it's false gods or seeking to be totally materialistic and get rid of the spiritual realm entirely. Really, the word chaos is a common denominator for almost all of the false understandings. But we understand how this creation came to be. We understand who the creator is by faith. That takes us into what's summarized in question answer 26 as it continues. We believe in God, who not only created, but who still upholds and rules. who is able to provide what we need for body and soul, who's able to turn into our good whatever adversity he sends upon us. We do not live in a chance world, a chaos world. We live in God's world. And God can do in this world whatever he wants and God will. God will give strength to His people through the adversity of this world. He's able to do this because He is Almighty God. He desires to do this because He is faithful Father. There is no chaos. There is order. There is love. Now the only way that we might use the word chaos is to acknowledge that because of sin, the very good creation has been thrown into some measure of disorder by sin. And so it's a veil of tears, but God continues to rule over it. And by faith, we know who he is and we know his character and what he will do. People of God, a true worldview is a great comfort. We are not accidents from chemical explosions. We are not the product of false gods warring against each other in pride and somehow their power just makes things pop into existence. This is none of this. We serve the true Creator God and by faith in depending upon Him we have the true and proper worldview because in his revelation he has told us what it is. Now this cannot lead us to arrogance. We put the theme of tonight together with the theme of this morning. We can't just go our own way. We don't pretend that having the right starting point means that we'll always have the of the right understanding of every single little thing that comes into our life, but people of God, depending upon God, we do have the answers to the biggest questions. And they are true because God's word is true. And so we can say, I'm not gonna get every little detail right, but I have the proper starting point. And God has told me the answers. to the biggest questions in life. And by faith, I understand, I know that what he has said is true. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, God Almighty, bring us to depend upon your authority and the authority of your word. May we receive your word in