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Men, the title of my sermon this evening is Apparent Age, Apparent Age. Now what do I mean by this phrase, apparent age? Well the idea here is that things in this world tend to actually look older than they really are and that is because of the fact that when God created this world and the things that are in this world, he created them in the midst of their lives or in the prime of their lives or not from, let me put it this way, he didn't create a newborn baby when he created Adam, he created a grown man. So the idea here with apparent age is that if you were to look at Adam the day after he was created, you might guess that he was 25 years old or 30 years old or 35 years old because you're just looking at a fully developed man in the prime of life. But in reality, Adam was just created one day ago, so in that sense he's one day old but he has an apparent age older than what he actually is because God created a mature human. But it's not only human beings that were created as being mature, everything that God created is mature. The whole earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, everything that's out there, everything on earth, mountains, rivers, trees, animals, everything God created is mature. So therefore, you can't necessarily determine its true age just by looking at it because it looks much older than it really is, just like Adam looked much older than he really is. That's the idea of apparent age in a nutshell. Now there are a lot of people who disagree with this. There are a lot of people who criticize me for teaching this and preaching this, which to me I think this stuff should be obvious. Pastor Jimenez and I were talking about this and he said, well, once you've explained it to people, they should just immediately see it because it's just so obvious, it's so clear. But I think that the reason why a lot of people don't like this teaching, even though it's so easy to grasp and it does seem to be kind of obvious, is that there are a lot of people out there who really want there to be absolute proof for a young earth because they want to be able to say that science proves that the Bible is true. And this is a misguided philosophy because God has not called us to believe in him because of something that we found in science, but rather faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. And when I see people who are obsessed with trying to find proof of God or proof that the earth is only less than 7,000 years old, sometimes I wonder, are they trying to convince the atheists or are they trying to convince themselves? Because I'm already satisfied. Just from reading the Bible, in the beginning, God created heaven and the earth, I'm satisfied. I believe it. And the Bible tells us in Hebrews 11, verse 3, through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear, meaning that the things which we see right now, they were not made from visible, preexisting materials. Rather God created the universe from nothing, ex nihilo creation is what this is often called. The Bible doesn't exactly spell out ex nihilo, but everything in the Bible indicates that God created this world from scratch, that he basically created the earth, the heavens, everything that is in them, he created them from scratch. And look, I believe in a literal creation account. I believe that God literally created this world with spoken word. I believe he created the world in six literal days. And I believe that, you know, that 7,000 years ago, I'll put it this way, 7,000 years ago, none of this was here, nothing was here, nothing existed. But at the same time, I would say that God created an old earth less than 7,000 years ago. Okay. So I don't think, oh, there's all this evidence for a younger, that'd be like saying, there's all this evidence that Adam is only one day old. Really? Because I'm looking at Adam and to me, all the evidence is pointing toward him being an older man, like 30 years old. I don't think that there was any evidence in Adam's body that you could have used to prove this guy's only one day old. I don't believe that. And I also don't believe that there is any evidence that this world is less than 7,000 years old, other than the most important evidence of all, the Bible. The Bible says that God created the earth. The Bible says he did it in six days. The Bible says that on that sixth day, God created a man named Adam. And the Bible tells us how old Adam was when he died. It tells us how old he was when he had his son, how old his son was when he begat his son. And there's an unbroken chain of men begetting other men all the way from Adam to the Lord Jesus Christ generation. And so if you do all that math and add up all those numbers, obviously you could quibble about the details, but you end up with the fact that the earth is about 6,300 years old, according to scripture. And I believe that, but at the same time, I don't believe that you can prove that with science, because I believe that God created a mature creation on old earth less than 7,000 years ago. I'm not out to find scientific proof for the Bible, because I think that's a fool's errand and that the Bible's proof for the Bible. You say, that's circular argument. You got it right. The Bible proves the Bible. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. How do you know the Bible is true? Because the Bible. Well, that just doesn't make any sense. I don't care, okay? It's called faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please God, because he that cometh to God must believe that God exists. You have to believe that God exists and that he's a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. And so we need to make sure that we don't get too caught up in these oppositions of science falsely so-called. The Bible says, oh Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so-called. So the Bible tells us to avoid oppositions of science falsely so-called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith. And so we need to avoid those, but I don't believe that we necessarily need to spend all of our time engaging in some kind of a scientific debate about these things, because at the end of the day, these things are unprovable. Because first of all, how can we prove that God created a mature earth 6,300 some odd years ago if it looks totally old and mature? And then another scientist is going to come along and say, well, I don't believe the Bible. Everything looks old, so therefore it's old. We can't really prove him wrong either. At the end of the day, it's a heart matter whether someone chooses to believe the record that God has given in the Word of God versus just believing that we came from nothing and that it's all just a cosmic accident and all of these things that don't make any sense. So I would say the Bible is compatible with science. True science is always going to be compatible with the Bible. True history is always going to be compatible with the Bible. If something in history contradicts the Bible, the Bible is right and history is wrong. If something in so-called science contradicts the Bible, we're either misunderstanding the science or we're misunderstanding the Bible, but true science is going to line up with what the Word of God says, because the Bible and science are both supposed to be truth about reality, and so they both should agree. But that's different than saying history proves the Bible. Science proves the Bible. But historians and archaeologists, they used to think that the Hittites didn't exist, and they thought that that was a group of people that the Bible had made up. But then ultimately, they not only discovered the Hittite civilization, they even found writings of the Hittites and even deciphered their language, which it turns out is an Indo-European language, and so that vindicated somewhat the Bible. But can you say, well, you know what? Now that the Hittites have been shown to exist, now I know the Bible's true. That doesn't make any sense. Okay? Now look, the Bible is true. How do you know the Bible's true? By faith. Why? Because the Bible is powerful. The Bible is unlike any book. No man could write the Bible. It's too magnificent. It's written by the finger of God, and you can tell when something is written by the finger of God versus something that is just simply man-made. The fact that the Bible is historically accurate doesn't make it true, because, you know, I could go down to the bookstore and get a history book that's totally historically accurate. Does that make it the Word of God? Does that mean everything in it is true? No. My friend, you are going to have to come to grips with the fact that you have to believe that the Bible is true. You have to have faith in the God of the Bible. You have to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Through faith we understand that the world is reframed by the Word of God, and we must believe that God exists. We cannot prove using science that God exists. And again, this is not very popular with a lot of people, even amongst independent fundamental Baptists. You know, they don't like the things that I'm going to be saying in my sermon tonight, but at the end of the day, you know, this is backed by the Bible. Now let me, let me show you from the Bible some evidence for this idea of apparent age, and that it's not just about Adam, but that rather, you know, everything has apparent age. Okay. Let's just start out here in Genesis chapter two. Genesis chapter two is a very interesting passage of scripture, and it has a lot of very enigmatic statements that a lot of people just read over and just don't even deal with them. Like they don't even talk about them. They don't even address them. But if you stop and address these things, I think you're going to see how they actually end up supporting what I'm saying about apparent age. For example, the Bible starts out there in verse four, 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 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. Now it's easy to just get lost in all the words there and not really slow down and think about what that actually said, but I'm going to break this down for you grammatically so that you can see what's going on here. Because we have to understand that in the English language, sentences, they need a subject and a verb in English, right? And when we have a sentence in English, it has to be what's called an independent clause. Now don't zone out on me when I start talking about grammar, okay? You need to get some smarts, okay, if you're scared by this. It's not scary. This is like stuff that you literally learn. What grade? Homeschoolers out there. Independent clause, dependent clause. What grade? Fourth grade? Yeah, okay. Can I get a witness? I got multiple people tell me. Yeah, this is like fourth grade stuff. So if you're an adult here and you're like, I'm not interested, you probably should have a fourth grade understanding of grammar just to function in our society, okay? So this is probably good for you, okay? So there's an independent clause and a dependent clause, okay? Let me explain to you the difference. And you fourth graders, you know, I'm prepping you for tomorrow's schoolwork. I'm saving you some trouble. But here's the deal. Here's an independent clause. I went to the house, right? I mean, it stands alone. It's independent. I went to the house. It's a complete thought. You got your subject. You got your verb. I went to the house, okay? Here's a dependent clause. Here's something that's not dependent, that cannot stand alone. When I went to the house. When I went to the house. Is that a complete sentence? When I went to the house. Because think about it, even when you just hear that, even if you don't know anything about grammar, you're kind of like, okay, keep going. If I say, I went to the house, okay, great. But if it's like, when I went to the house, everybody's waiting for the rest of the sentence because that doesn't make sense by itself. That cannot stand alone. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? Okay, let me show you something in the Bible that cannot stand alone, that cannot be its own thought or independent clause. Look at verse five. Let's start on verse five. And tell me if this is a complete sentence. And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew. Is that a complete thought? Let's read it again. And every plant of the field before it was in the earth. Every plant of the field, what, before it was in the earth, right? There's something missing there. And every plant of the field before, it'd be like, you know what, every vehicle when I went to my house. Is that a sentence? No, it isn't. So this is not a complete thought. And every plant of the field before it was in the earth. Tell me if this is a complete thought. And every herb of the field before it grew. Every herb of the field before it grew. Is that a complete thought? These are dependent clauses. They cannot be understood without being a part of something larger. That something larger is verse four, okay? So the Bible, now let's incorporate them into verse four. It says, these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created. Okay, that's a complete thought. Now we have this next part of the verse. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens and every plant of the field before it was in the earth. You can see how this works now because the Bible says the Lord God made the earth and the heavens and every plant. Is everybody seeing how this is working? I know I'm spending a long time on this but I want to make sure we get this. God made the earth and the heavens and every plant. Is everybody seeing how that grammar functions? So now we understand what the plant is doing. It's the object of God's creation. So it's God created every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew. Then we have the colon and then we start a new thought explaining that, saying why this is the way it is for or because the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth and there was not a man to till the ground. Of course, those are both independent clauses. So you say, what are you trying to prove here? What's your point? This is kind of a strange statement if you actually slow down and read it and understand the grammar. Isn't there something odd about this statement? God created every plant of the field before it was in the earth? Isn't that a little surprising that God created these things before they were in the earth? And this is why a lot of people just don't talk about this or maybe just blow past this or gloss over or just skip because of the fact that our brains tend to just see things that we don't quite understand or don't like and just kind of, nah, don't care, move on. And then they just want to talk about how God didn't, you know, cause it to rain yet. Let's stop and think about this. What does this mean that God created every herb of the field before it grew? God created every herb of the field before it grew. What does that mean? Well, there are a couple of possible ways to interpret this. I mean, you know, we're here that this is the text we're faced with. We're reading the creation story and this is what's staring us in the face. We got to do something with it. We can't just wish it away, okay? It's God's word. It's profitable for doctrine. God's not just writing a bunch of stuff to confuse us here. This is information that we're supposed to read and know and understand. It's supposed to mean something. So how can we understand this? Well, there are a couple of different ways we can understand it. Number one, we could say, well, God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, meaning that God made the plant somewhere else and then brought it to the earth. Does everybody understand that? Because he made the plant before it was in the earth. He made the herb before it grew. That's one possible explanation. Another explanation you could make is say like, well, when it says that, you know, he made them before they grew or he made them before they were in the earth, you know, that he kind of maybe just designed them in his mind or something. You know, he kind of just dreamed them up or devised them or made them in the sense of design. You know, and I think that, you know, that could be a possibility that, you know, you could say, okay, that's what it means. He didn't actually make them somewhere else and bring them here. Okay. The only other way that I've seen anyone try to interpret this or heard of anyone interpreting this is basically that it's just saying that, you know, that these things didn't come about on their own. They didn't just come into existence on their own, but that God made them before they were like already in the earth just kind of growing of their own accord. God made them specifically and that God made these things before they grew, meaning that they didn't grow on their own, but that God made them as finished products before they grew of their own accord like they would later. And I think all three of those could be legitimate possibilities here. If you wanted to say that he made them somewhere else, you could say, well, you know, God has the paradise of God in heaven and we know in the heaven there's the tree of life and there are plants and animals in heaven and so, you know, maybe God's bringing them from there or whatever. No matter how you want to interpret this, at the end of the day, you come to one conclusion that God is making adult plants in the earth before they grow on their own out of the ground. Okay. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? So now that we understand that, let's keep moving, okay? It says, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth and there was not a man to till the ground, but there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. Verse 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. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and there he put the man whom he had formed and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow and we'll come back to that in just a moment. But what do we see here? Let's get the order right, okay? First God creates the man, okay? He forms man from the dust of the ground. He breathes into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. Then in verse 8 it says, the Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden. So get the order, first God creates the man, then God plants the garden and then he places the man whom he had previously formed into the garden. Does everybody see how that works? Because this is a narrative that's going, this happened and then this happened and then this happened and the fact that it says that he had created that man, that's who he puts in the garden, makes it clear that he plants the garden after he creates the man. He creates the man, plants the garden and then puts the man in the garden that he created. Does everybody understand that? Now when God created the garden, it's obviously ready made for Adam. He didn't bring Adam to a dirt field and say, you know, I have sown seeds in this garden and this is going to be a really cool garden someday. If you wait a few years, the trees are going to grow and you know, it's going to be great. First of all, the Bible says he planted a garden. Now the word planted is different than sowed. Sowing is what you do with seeds. Planting is what you do with a plant that already exists, right? We have the word transplant. But if you plant a tree, you're not putting a seed in the ground. If I said I'm planting a tree in my yard, you don't put a seed in the ground. You have a little sapling or you have a tree of whatever size and you put that tree that already exists into the ground, which kind of goes back to what we were saying about verses 4 and 5, that God is planting a garden from his personal collection or he's just, if you will, just creating these plants but he's creating them fully grown and planting them into the garden. So that the garden is already ready-made with mature plants immediately, he creates the man, he plants the garden, he puts the man in the garden and the garden's ready to roll. That means not only do humans have a parent age but the plants had a parent age too because if you would have walked in that garden, that garden would have looked like it had been there for a long time. When you see a bunch of mature trees all around the garden, it would look like it had been there for a long time and yet it was created the same day that the man was created. Does everybody understand that? And then it says in verse number 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 the knowledge of good and evil. Now I believe that what this is saying here is that basically once he plants them, already existing, already mature, then they continue to grow, they grow out of the ground, they keep growing. But let's say that you don't like my interpretation and let's say that you say, no Pastor Anderson, I think that he actually put seeds in the ground and he did not plant mature trees, he did not plant a mature garden but that rather he put seeds in the ground, then you'd have to believe that he did some kind of an acceleration of the growth process, right? Like you could picture that maybe God could just snap his fingers and all of a sudden things are just growing really fast and it just all just fills in and grows. But either way, what do you end up with? Apparent age because if he planted mature trees in the garden or if he just accelerated the process and just made everything just grow, you know, like a time-lapse, like wooooo. Now again, the temptation is for you to think that I'm just making these things up or just coming up with these wild ideas but yet these things are found in scripture. For example, if you would, flip over to Numbers chapter 17. And while you're turning to Numbers chapter 17, I'm going to remind you about the story of Jonah. Jonah, when he preaches against Nineveh, he really wants Nineveh to get destroyed but God decides that he's going to spare Nineveh. Jonah doesn't like that. So in Jonah chapter 4, Jonah goes and finds a high place on the east side of the city where he can sit there and watch because he wants to see the city get destroyed. He basically sits there and says, okay God, you said you were going to destroy this city. I'm going to sit here and watch until you do it because he's upset about the fact that God's going to spare the city. So Jonah's watching and the Bible tells us in Jonah chapter 4 that Jonah made himself a booth because he needed some shade and so he builds himself a booth but apparently the booth that he made was not really providing great shade or it wasn't really sufficient because the Bible says that God made a gourd to grow up and actually provide shade for Jonah, you know, to actually provide superior shade. Now when the Bible says God made a gourd grow, when we think of a gourd we're thinking of the actual product of the gourd like the fruit of the gourd like some kind of a squash or something that would be, you know, at the front of Trader Joe's like around October. There's all kinds of weird squash that they're selling for decorations. Now that's the product but when the Bible says he made a gourd to grow he's talking about the plant that produces gourds, okay. And that plant that produces gourds has big green leaves. And so God made this plant to grow that has a lot of thick foliage so this thing would grow and provide a nice place for Jonah to sit while he watches for Nineveh to be destroyed. And the Bible says that Jonah was exceeding glad for the gourd. He's really thankful that one day he's got his stupid little booth, God makes his gourd to grow up overnight and then the next day he's got way better shade and he's like man this is great. But then God destroys the gourd. And then Jonah's really mad like what in the world, you know, my gourd. And then here's what God says to Jonah. He says in verse 10 of Jonah 4, then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd for the which thou hast not labored neither mayest it grow which came up in the night and perished in the night. And he's saying, you know, but yet you won't have pity on the people of Nineveh. You care more about a plant, you tree-huggin' idiot, you know, than you care about people. Now what is that an example of? That's an example of God making something grow at an abnormally fast rate. Because that's a concrete example of God making a giant plant spring up in a single day overnight big enough to shelter and shade an adult man. So is it possible for God to accelerate the growth of plants according to the Bible? Absolutely. It's something he's done before in the book of Jonah. Another place where we find something similar is Numbers chapter 17. Numbers chapter 17 verse 5, this is where other people are challenging Aaron's authority. God has made Aaron the high priest, Aaron's of the tribe of Levi, and they're saying well you take too much upon you, you sons of Levi. And so God decides that they're all going to provide a rod. And let's look at verse 5. It says it shall come to pass that the man's rod whom I shall choose shall blossom and I will make you to cease from me the murmurings of the children of Israel whereby they murmur against you. And Moses spake unto the children of Israel and every one of their princes gave him a rod of peace for each prince won according to their father's houses even twelve rods and the rod of Aaron was among their rods. And Moses laid up the rods before the Lord in the tabernacle of witness and it came to pass that on the morrow Moses went into the tabernacle of witness and behold the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded and brought forth buds and bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds. Now look, again, God has miraculously caused plant life to grow at an incredible rate because, you know, last night it's just a stick and then overnight the thing grows foliage, buds, flowers and even produces almonds. It actually produces a ripe fruit. So of course we have two different scriptures at a minimum where God is accelerating the growth of plant life. So if you wanted to read Genesis chapter 2 that way and really focus in on God making stuff grow out of the ground and if you want to picture God making it all grow out of the ground you still have to acknowledge the fact that God made it grow out of the ground in a single day because he planted the garden after he created the man and then placed the man that he had already made into that garden. And so either he planted mature plants into the Garden of Eden or he accelerated their growth either way they looked much older than they actually were. Does everybody see the point? The point is Adam looks older than he really is. The plants look older than they really are. They have a parent age. A parent comes to the word appear. They appear older than they are. They have an apparent age and a real age. Real age is, you know, 25 minutes. Apparent age is, you know, well this tree looks 80 years old, 90 years old. I mean you could have chopped down the trees in the Garden of Eden and counted the rings and said well I'm an expert, I'm a scientist, I'm an arborist and I chopped down this tree and I counted 120 rings. This tree is 120 years old. But did it really exist 120 years ago or did God just create it today? Does everybody understand this concept of apparent age? So now let's go back to Genesis 2 with that in mind. Genesis chapter 2, so we see that the plants clearly have apparent age. Either God has created them and designed them in his mind and then just formed and fashioned them mature and planted them in the garden or he has formed and fashioned them in heaven or something and then transplanted them into the garden from his personal botanical garden. The paradise of God and he transplants them because we know the tree of life is growing in heaven, you know. So did he transplant them from his garden in heaven, the paradise of God? It doesn't matter any way you slice it, no matter how you interpret these verses you have to come away with the fact that these are mature plants, mature trees, mature Adam, God formed the man, not the baby, not the toddler, not the teenager but the man. But then as we move forward we find out that God did the same thing with the animals. So let's jump down if you would to verse number 18. It says, the Lord God said, it's not good that the man should be alone. I will make him and help meet for him and out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field. So notice God didn't just form the man out of the ground, he's forming from the dust of the earth, he's forming out of the ground animals. He's actually forming and fashioning animals. He 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 Adam's not looking at a baby. He's not looking at a cub, or a kid, or whatever other words for young animals are out there. Does anybody help me? A chick? He's not looking at a puppy. He's not looking at a foal. He's not looking at a filly. He's not looking at a joey. He's looking at adult creatures, he's looking at adult animals that are formed as adults just like him and they're shown unto him in that way. And he calls their names and whatever Adam calls them, that's the name thereof. Now some people would try to say, well, hey, this is a contradiction from the creation account given in chapter one. Because in chapter one we have a totally different creation account, don't we? And just to refresh your memory on chapter one, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. So God creates the heaven and the earth. The heaven there is specifically referring to the place where God lives, which is why heaven is a better translation than heavens. You know, the heavens and the earth like a lot of the newer verses will do. It's better to translate it as the heaven and the earth because that implies more the place where God lives. Because the heavens aren't really created for a few more days, you know, depending on how you look at it as far as what goes into that. The heaven, meaning the firmament, is created, for example, on day two. But in the beginning God creates the heaven and the earth. And when God creates the heaven and the earth, the earth is without form and void. So when God creates the earth, he doesn't just create it totally finished, but when he creates the earth, it appears to be dark and it appears to be completely covered in water. No dry land. It's just darkness and water. It's like a water world, okay? So in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth is 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. So on day one God creates the heaven, he creates the earth, the earth is without form and void. It doesn't have features. What does that mean without form? It doesn't have any features. It's plain. It's basic, right? He creates it without form and it's void, meaning it's empty, meaning it's not filled with plants, it's not filled with animals, it's not filled with humans. It's void. It's empty, and it's without form, meaning it doesn't have features. See if we looked at the earth now from space or something, we're going to see features. We're going to see continents, mountains, rivers, there are all these things that we could point, hey, look at these glaciers, look at, you know, whereas the original creation on day one is just without form and void, God creates the light, he separates the light from the darkness, and now you have this cycle between day and night caused by the light being present or absent. Then on day two, God separates the waters which are under the firmament from the waters which are above the firmament. And don't get weird about the word firmament. There's nothing firm about the firmament. It's just a word, okay? The firmament is referring to just the sky. That's all that, it's just the expanse, that's why birds fly in the firmament. You know, birds fly in the sky, right? Also the Bible will talk about the sun, moon, and stars being in the firmament simply because of the fact that firmament can also refer to the greater expanse of the universe itself. So we have three heavens, okay? We have the first heaven which would be where the birds are flying around which is the atmosphere of the earth, and then we have the second heaven which would be the greater universe in which our sun, moon, stars, all the way out, that's a bigger expanse, right? And then the third heaven is the place where God lives, okay? So heaven can sometimes refer to just the sky, sometimes it can refer to the universe, and then it can also refer to the place where God lives. And part of the reason why we say that the sky is the heavens plural is because obviously when you look up at the sky you're looking at both the place where the birds are flying and you're seeing the place where the heavenly bodies are because the first heaven is transparent. Does everybody understand? So the second day when it says that God separated the wires which are above the firmament from the wires which are below the firmament, it's basically God creating the atmosphere of the earth so that there's an atmosphere with moisture, with water in it because obviously there's water in the air that we're breathing right now, right? H2O is in the air. I know Arizona is dry but believe me there's still H2O in the air no matter how dry it gets here. It's that humidity. So the earth not only has water on the ground, you know covering the face of the ground, but it also has a sky with water in the sky. Clouds are water, right? Clouds in the sky, that's water, right? So you got the water that's under the firmament, you got the water that's above the firmament, you know there's a separation there between what's connected to the planet and that which is surrounding the planet, okay? Then on day three, God causes the waters to be gathered together into one place so that the dry land might appear, okay? And notice it's not the land that's all together in one place, it's the waters that are all together in one place. And we talk about there being a Pacific Ocean, an Atlantic Ocean, an Indian Ocean and an Arctic Ocean but here's the thing about that, they're all connected. It's really just one big giant body of water. They're really just separating it into regions but it's not like they're separated from one another, they're all connected. You know whales, they'll hit all four of them, they swim all over the place. And so on that third day, God causes the dry land to appear. Now stop and think about that. If God's going to make the dry land appear, then he has to create a topography on the earth where things are no longer the same level where it's just kind of a formless deal but rather now certain places are lifted up, other places are lower, right? So that places can exist where the ground is sticking out and other places can exist where the ocean dominates because of course we know that underneath the ocean there's dry land down there. It's just covered in water. The whole earth is covered in land, it's just that some of it's underwater. And so when God caused the dry land to appear, he's creating a certain topography of mountains and features and valleys and all different lower and higher elements. Everybody understand that? On that same third day, he causes the plants to begin to grow. Now stop and think about this. Plants existed on the third day and yet the sun is not created until day four. How does that work? Well here's how it works because the light is already created on day one. Plants don't need the sun. They just need the light. They just need sunlight, right? They don't need the source. And you say, well how can that be? How can that exist? Because obviously God is creating the world by speaking it into existence. He's creating the world in a supernatural way. The creation of the world is not a natural process. God's creating it in a supernatural way and I think the best way to understand this is to think of an artist with a paintbrush making a painting, okay? I mean think about it, an artist with a paintbrush, he just starts painting stuff and he doesn't have to paint things in the order in which they're actually going to appear. I mean he could paint a building and he hasn't even painted the ground yet. He could literally paint the building and then be like, okay, now I'm going to put the ground under the building. Can a painter do that? Of course because he's just an artist. He's creating however and that's how it is with God. It's not in necessarily the logical order in which things would need to exist because number one, no such order exists because everything needs everything else. Everything in this world is symbiotic. If God creates the plants on day three but then he doesn't create the animals until day five, well here's the thing, plants need animals and animals need plants. Everything works together. God is specifically creating things out of order because he's showing that this is not a natural process. He doesn't want us to read it as a parable of some natural process where everything just kind of came into existence on its own over the course of billions of years but rather it is God just creating it from scratch like a painter just paints a mountain, paints a river, paints a building, paints ground under the building and so forth. And so then on the fourth day after, because so far what has he created? He created dry land, plants, the sky, right? Then on the fourth day he creates the heavenly bodies, the sun, moon and stars, okay? Fifth day he creates the fishes of the sea and the fowl of the air and on the sixth day he creates the land animals and then he creates man after he creates the animals, right? Then he creates man. Man is the final crowning achievement, everybody understand? And then on the seventh day he rests from all his work that he's labored and made. That takes us to Genesis chapter 2 verse 4 where we started reading. Now let me point out a few things about this. The first thing I want to point out is that some people have brought up the so-called starlight problem, okay? And this is the starlight problem. People will say this, well if we know that there are stars that are, you know, let's say millions of light years away or, you know, 100,000 light years away, we know that these stars are super far away, well then how can the earth only be 6,300 years old or something? The light from the stars wouldn't have even had time to get here yet. Who's heard this objection before known as the starlight problem saying, well how did that happen, how can that be? But again, here's what we have to understand is that God created the light before he created the emitter of the light. So if God already created the light, then that means that God could have easily just created those beams of light stretching over the course of whatever the distance, even though the speed of light, you know, it would take, you know, to start at that point and get to us might take 100,000 years or 100 million years, okay? The point is though that the light was already there. And you know what we would call that? Apparent age. Apparent age. So basically when God put the stars in the sky, basically Adam didn't just look up at a blank sky, kind of just waiting for light to start showing up. So the closest star is like four light years away, meaning that at the speed of light it's going to take the light from that star four years to get here. So when we look at that star up in the sky, the closest star, we're basically seeing what it was like four years ago. Does everybody understand? Because it took four years for that image to get to us, so there's like a delay of four years. If something's 100 light years away, there's a delay of like 100, we're seeing what it looked like 100 years ago. Does that make sense? So basically it's not like Adam's just looking up in the night sky and it's like this is going to be cool someday, you know? And then four years go by, boom, one star pops. No, he looks up and he sees a sky filled with stars because the same God who can speak the world into existence and speak the universe into existence has no issue not only creating the stars but creating their paths of light already there. And in fact, God already created the light before he even created the sun, moon or stars. Before he created the sun, there's already light, daylight, daytime, how? Because he's God, okay? And so we don't want to get hung up on those type of oppositions of science falsely so called, you know, saying well there's no way the light could have gotten here. No, God created a mature universe, a mature earth, mature stars that already have light beams already on their way. And if you stop and think about it, let's say that we look up at the sky and, you know, we see some kind of a supernova or something, you know, where a star is exploding or something, you know, and basically being destroyed in a sense. If we look up and see that supernova, you know, that supernova is not, if it's happening right now as we're looking at it, it's not really happening right now. It really happened like a really long time ago and we're just now seeing it because of the delay there, okay? And so God created all these process like in the middle of a story, in the middle of a lifespan, and so it shouldn't bother us to think that oh these things are, you know, a million light years away, how could that get here, there's no such thing as a million years because we've only been around, no my friend, it doesn't matter because God created it already in process. Does that make sense? Now look, if God created the sun, moon, and stars in process, if God created the plants, the animals, Adam, wouldn't it make sense that God just created everything mature? Why would he create a mature man, a mature animals, mature trees, mature plants, mature starlight, mature, and then it's just oh but everything else is young. Here's the proof, it's only 7,000 years old. Really? Because I think everything's mature, everything looks old, and I have no issue with that. And the problem is that because there are some things that science has lied to us about because, you know, they kind of just make things up or come up with crazy ideas and things that they can't really prove, that then we end up going too far and just rejecting all of science. And you get this mentality that everything the scientists are telling us is lies, and this leads to a flat earth type mentality, right? I mean this flat earth mentality, it's all a lie, everything is lies, you know, none of it's true. Folks, the vast majority of what science tells us is actually true. You know, I would say when it comes to astronomy, it's probably like 99% true, you know, because that's one of the most developed sciences, it's pretty much the first major science. You know, when you think about the scientific revolution, when you think about modern science, what do we think of? We think of guys like Galileo and Copernicus and people who are saying, hey, the earth is not at the center of the universe, hey, the earth goes around the sun, and they're studying astronomy, and that was kind of the big revolution was a revolution in astronomy, and that revolution in astronomy kind of spread to other sciences, and look at the modern world that we're living in with all the amazing technology that we enjoy because of all the tremendous advances in science. Now look, that doesn't mean that scientists haven't said and taught some stupid things along the way, they've taught all kinds of stupid things, if you look at the teachings in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, 20th century, you could point to all kinds of dumb things that scientists used to think and now they've realized they were wrong and things that have been debunked and so forth. But does that mean we should just completely just throw out science and just say it's all lies, it's all a conspiracy, it's all a scam, you know, that leads to a flat earth mentality. And you know what? It falls right into the atheist's hands, it falls right into the devil's hands because then they put it as, well, Christians just don't accept science. And the sad thing is that when atheists say Christians don't accept science, in many ways they're right. It's true because a lot of Christians do just reject all science and it's throwing out the baby with the bath water. We should oppose or reject or avoid oppositions of science falsely so called but we should not just have an idea that science in general is bad or that all science is false because let me just say this to you, the teachings of chemistry, you know what, they're pretty much all true and your medicine cabinet is a great testament to that. You know, physics are true, that's why we have satellites giving us GPS coordinates. I mean there's an amazing amount of science that goes into that. And by the way, the satellites that are controlling your GPS, when you just pull out your phone and just push a few buttons and get directions to your house and the thing knows exactly where you are is way more complicated than you think. That's produced by satellites that are orbiting the earth and those things are so precise. I mean do you guys remember when smartphones first came out, like the directions weren't that great and it would kind of get you on the block where you need to go but it didn't really know exactly where you were because I remember when the iPhone started being able to like track you exactly where you were and it was like wow, this is pretty incredible. I mean if I go to my house and turn on my location, it shows me like in my house and you might not think about the fact that the earth is spinning and that the satellites are moving like at 18,000 miles an hour and that they're telling you from a satellite in orbit that's going 18,000 miles an hour, you're sitting on a planet that's spinning at 1,000 miles an hour and it's telling you exactly where you are practically to your living room. You can go on Google Earth and zoom in on your house and you're like there's my car, there's my yard, there's the tree. I mean it's pretty incredible folks. Do you realize the calculations and the physics and the math that goes into that? It's incredible. It's amazing. But no, no, no. It's all lies. It's all garbage. It's all a NASA scam. Why aren't the satellites just falling out of the sky then? These flat earth idiots can't explain why satellites aren't falling out of the sky. Well, you just believe in satellites. Go outside and look. You can literally go outside and look at satellites. You can literally go outside and get a pair of binoculars and if you stand outside long enough you will see a satellite go over. Let me help you. There's a little light and it's just moving slowly across the sky. Stars aren't moving that fast in the sky. That's a satellite. You see little objects. What about when they say oh the International Space Station's coming overhead and everybody goes outside and everybody's looking up and they're looking at the International Space Station, right? But I guess that's all fake, right? I mean you don't want to just throw out the baby with the bathwater and get this bizarre view where we just have to reject astronomy, we reject physics, we reject everything. Now look, there are five major branches of science, okay? You got astronomy, you got physics, you got chemistry. Look, those are all really cut and dried. There's no reason to question those things or to try to bring them in conflict with the Bible. There's not a conflict there. Now what about when the astronomers say that, you know, this star is 50 million years old? Well then you know what? All you have to say is just it looks 50 million years old. Just like Adam looked 30 years old. You don't have to say like he's a liar. It's a lie. They're lying to you. No, maybe they're just going on appearance and we walk by faith not by sight and we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God and we understand that God created a mature creation. But hypothetically being that old is no problem because of the fact that God created things to be old. God created a 30-year-old man five minutes ago. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? Why create conflict where conflict doesn't exist? Why try to pit religion against science? This is falling right into the devil's plan to try to pit religion against science to try to make it seem like the Bible is unscientific or stupid or foolish when in reality the Bible is filled with truth and it is filled with great scientific knowledge that is totally compatible with what we see in the natural world. There's no reason to force there to be a conflict. Now where there is a legitimate conflict is obviously when biology comes along. So I mean astronomy is cool. You picture them as like people like you're cool astronomy. You're cool physics. You're cool chemistry. The problem is obviously biology comes along and tries to claim that every single plant and animal on this planet comes from a common ancestor. That is not a scientific claim. There is no proof of that. There's no way that that can be proven or demonstrated. That is not real science my friend. Now does that mean that everything biology teaches is false? Does that mean that everything about evolution is false? No it doesn't because things are always constantly evolving because evolution just means the change in allele frequency over time. So everything's changing and adapting. Think about how the virus of the cold or the flu or whatever is different next year than it was last year. You could call that evolution right? It's changing. It's adapting. It's getting around our defenses. It's finding a way to nail us even though we beat it last year. It's back with the vengeance. Okay but here's the thing. There's a lot of truth there but then the devil mixes in this lie that says oh life came into existence on its own. That's a lie. God created life. God created the basic kinds of plants and animals. They did not evolve into these different kinds of plants and animals. God created the basic kinds of animals meaning that an elephant and a corn on the cob don't share a common ancestor. Now look but let's say we looked at all the dogs in the world or even everything that's even kind of like a dog right? And if let's say we just took everything that's remotely canine is it possible that those all came from a common ancestor? Absolutely. If we took all the different kind of deer kind of elk looking stag looking whatever if we took all those and kind of said hey these have adapted and changed and evolved over time but they all kind of go back to a primordial thing. I mean look how many animals did Noah really have on that ark? You know when the Bible says he took two of every animal he's not like all right I got two Boston Terriers, I got two English Bulldogs, I got two Great Danes, I got two wolves, I got no two coyotes, no it's just he just had two dogs. And every dog on this planet came from those two dogs. Even things that we might not even consider a dog that are similar to a dog came from those two dogs. Does everybody understand? So God through special creation created the basic kinds of animals. I didn't say species because everything's a species. You know oh this bird's brown this one's yellow everything else about them is identical. Two species. That's what they'll say. But then all the humans are one species? All the dogs? All domesticated dogs they'll say a Great Dane and a teacup poodle is the same species. But then Darwin's finches are 13 different species even though they can all mate with one another. All 13 of them can mate with one another. It's the same stinking bird. And at the end of the day a bird is a bird. You know an earthworm didn't become a bird. So the point is God created the basic kinds of animals and then they've kind of split off and evolved and speciated from there but God created the basic kinds of animals. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? And you know what if you walk out of here and say that I'm an evolutionist and that I believe that you know that the Bible creation account isn't literal you're just a liar because I've made it very clear what I believe I'm just not taking it to the extremes that some people take it. Let me tell you something. When biologists say that every plant and animal shares a common ancestor they can't prove that. When biologists tell you that life came into existence on its own they can't prove that. That's not true science. That is science falsely so called. And if you ask a scientist if you ask a real biologist or real scientist and you ask them how do we know that life came into existence on its own because I'm looking at the biology textbook and in page one it says life begets life and that life can't come from non-living material. So how do we know that the first life form supposedly came from non-living material that it came into existence on its own? And then this is what they'll say they'll say well because it's here. That's what they'll tell you. I'm serious I mean you could go ask ten biologists who are atheists or agnostics they're not going to tell you oh because we've done it in the laboratory because we've observed it because we've seen it because we've simulated on the computer because we know exactly out of it. Here's what they'll say well it had to come from somewhere it's here except we have another answer for where it came from. God created it. God created it okay. And so here's the thing. Biology gets out of its lane and starts trying to tell us where life came from something that they cannot explain. Any real biologist will admit to you not only can we not explain where life came from we don't even know what life even is. We don't know what life even is let alone where it came from. We can't describe how the first life form came into existence. Even an atheist or agnostic biologist would be glad to admit that to you if he's actually being honest. So we don't need to throw out everything biology is teaching. Look 99% of what so-called evolutionists are actually dealing with on a daily basis is stuff that can actually be tested and proven like hey this herd of animals changing a little bit. Of course they are. Okay that's life. Things change. Plants change. Animals change. Everything's changing. But there's a pretty big jump from the micro evolution that we can actually observe to this big leap of fish turning into a horse or something. That's just crazy. It's not real. It never happened. It could never happen. It doesn't matter how many billions of years you have it's not going to happen. The other thing that is false is to say that humans evolved from apes. No they did not. Humans are not like apes at all. Oh we have two eyes and a mouth and a nose. Folks that's the same designer. Look there are a lot of cars in the parking lot that all have two headlights in the front. Is that because they all evolved from a common ancestor or is it because the same designer knew hey four wheels two headlights this is a good idea. Every once in a while some turkey comes along and puts a third headlight in the middle or something. Nobody wants that. They want two headlights. They want four wheels. It's a basic design my friend. And so the animals and the plants in this world were created by a special creation of God. The basic kinds. But then after he created them then they kind of are going and changing and whatever. Look if they didn't change if micro evolution didn't exist then basically here's what would happen. If one species is a little stronger than the other he'll just wipe out the other species. Things would just be going extinct left and right. So God has built in a defense mechanism where things can adapt and fend for themselves and get stronger and better and faster and whatever so that there can be this kind of back and forth between predator and prey so that nobody gets too powerful and takes over. I'm running out of time but I hope that the sermon is making sense to you tonight. You know and the same thing with geology. Obviously there are a lot of legitimate things about geology but when geology gets weird is when they start trying to tell you what happened millions and billions of years ago. You know it's impossible to know those things for sure and here's the thing. Even if the geologist is like well look at it look it's clearly hundreds of thousands of years old. It's clearly millions of years old. I would just say it just looks old. Look if I walk into a cavern right and I'm touring cavern and there are some pretty cool caverns in Arizona my friend. I'm talking about stalactites and stalagmites that are you know you're looking up at them like this. You know what I mean? There are some pretty incredible. What's that really cool Kerchner Caverns? Who knows what I'm talking about? Who here has been to Kerchner Caverns? Like you guys need to get out a little bit because there's only like five people out of hundreds that have been there. It's awesome. Am I lying about how high these things are? I mean we're talking about you're looking up like whoa this thing's huge. So if the tour guide tells me hey see that giant stalactite you know that took so many hundreds of thousands of years to form. Here's what I'm thinking to myself is that you know what if God would have created the earth just without form and void and just left it that way and he just created like a smooth orb then yeah that would have taken that long to slowly develop on its own. But here's what I believe. I believe that when God created this earth everything had apparent age meaning that God created not just a smooth orb but he created mountains, valleys, rocks, caverns. I mean look did a cavern exist on this planet when Adam walked the earth? It's hard to think about it. I mean when Noah and Noah's sons got off the ark were there just no caverns? Folks caverns already existed and if you walked into a cavern let's say the day after Adam was created Adam decided to go spelunking. Let's just say Adam's like hey man you know I know I just met you and you know and here we are but let's go spelunking Eve. You know but here's the thing about that is that if he did if he went into a cavern you know what Adam would have found on day one? Caverns with stalactites and stalagmites and it's not like every stalactites like one millimeter in size like like he goes into a cavern spelunking was super lame back then because the caverns were just everything was just plain smooth. He would have seen stalactites and stalagmites. Why? Because if I walk into Karstner caverns and they tell me this thing took 50,000 years to form I just think to myself well if it would have formed by itself through a natural process then yeah it would have taken 50,000 years. The guy's not even really necessarily wrong it's just that he doesn't understand that God created a mature creation. He created stalactites that were already big. And by the way you know obviously we could look at a lot of features and say oh well that probably formed during the Noahic flood but again everything doesn't have to have formed during the Noahic flood. What if I told you that before the Noahic flood caverns already existed? What if I told you that canyons already existed before the flood? What if I told you that mountains already existed before the flood? How? How'd they get there? God just created them. And by the way the moon you look at the moon and it's covered in craters. How did those craters all get there? When God created the moon he didn't just start out with just a smooth ball. Like when Adam looked up in the sky it's not like he didn't see the man in the moon. You think Adam just looked up and it's just a white glowing ball and then it was like it you know the first meteor hits it and it has one pockmark. Or do you think rather when Adam looked up in the sky at the moon it already looked like the moon that we see right now minus like a couple craters. You know the moon has over 5,000 craters on it that are 12 miles or greater in diameter? And again you don't have to trust NASA you can just buy a pair of binoculars. You don't even need a telescope. You can literally just look at the moon with binoculars and see the craters. My eyesight is not as good as it used to be. I just don't wear glasses because I'm in denial. But like I look up at the sky and even I can see craters with my naked eye sometimes and if I use binoculars I can see them even with my poor eyesight. So therefore you know you have no excuse for saying that the moon isn't real or that the moon doesn't have craters or that all the stupid stuff that people say. OK. And all those craters did not come into existence in the last 7,000 years. They just didn't. It's impossible. That's another I could explain that another time. I'm not going to explain it right now. So look do geology and biology say some goofy things sometimes? Yeah but you know what we love them anyway. You know every once in a while they say some dumb crap. But does that mean we should just completely reject everything biology teaches and everything geology teaches? No. Because a lot of it is just that they don't understand this concept of apparent age. They just don't have the faith to believe the creation account that's found in the Bible. And let me just make this crystal clear. I absolutely believe the creation account in the Bible. I believe that it's a literal six day creation. And I believe that 7,000 years ago none of this whole universe, none of it existed. But I have no issue with saying that the sun looks like it's 4.6 billion years old or that the earth looks like it's 4.6 billion years old or that this thing over here looks millions of years old or this thing over here looks 20,000 years old or 100,000 years. I have no issue with any of that because I believe that God created a mature universe, mature earth, mature. And so we can't just say everything's false, everything's a conspiracy. Do the scientists get a little out of their lane a little bit sometimes? Yeah, they do. But we're not just going to throw out the baby with the bathwater. And at the end of the day, if you're looking for science to prove the Bible, then all I have to say to you is that you are of little faith. Because for me, I'm already satisfied. I'm already satisfied that God created the earth. I'm already satisfied that it happened the way it says in Genesis. I don't need to go dig up a fossil to prove that. And you say, well, what about all these creation science ministries that have all this evidence that the earth is less than 7,000 years old? Most of it's just fake and made up. You want to talk about fake evidence, fake science? You know who comes up with a lot of fake science too? It's not just the atheists. Sadly, you've got some creationists peddling some fake science too. Because anybody who's trying to prove how the world was created is on a fool's errand. Because at the end of the day, we just need to believe what the Bible says. And understand that there's tons of evidence in the Bible that God, A, creates mature things that are already adults. So if Adam's an adult, the whole universe is an adult. The sun's an adult. Is that some baby star out there? The sun is a grown man. It's an adult. And not only that, we've also seen that God has the ability to speed up processes because he made Aaron's rod bud overnight and he made a giant gourd grow overnight. So God can speed up those processes to make a creation and do it that way. So however you want to take it, at the end of the day, no one, I don't care what science says, we've proven that the Bible says. They can't prove. How can they prove that we entered, that we did not enter the story 6,300 years ago? A story of millions or billions of years in their mind and we just entered it from nothing 6,300 years ago. That house in Bob Ross's painting, that house would take at least a year to build. No, it took Bob Ross a couple of minutes to put it on that canvas. It's power, it's not worth a prayer. Lord, we thank you so much for your word, Lord. Help your people, Lord, to just have the faith to believe in your word, to believe in creation, not to get sucked into the lies of science, falsely so-called. But Lord God, I also pray that your people would not be deceived into thinking that all of science is bad or to reject the majority of science when really it's just a few false teachings of science that we need to watch out for, Lord. Help us not to throw out the baby with the bathwater and help us not to get too distracted with the science and all of the oppositions that it produces. Rather, Lord, help us to focus on the spiritual things. And Lord, when it comes to winning the world to Christ, Lord, we know it's going to be the gospel of Jesus that does that, not a science lesson. And so, Lord, help us to be faithful to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it's in his name we pray, amen.