Kootenai Church Morning Worship

Well there's a challenge that I'm facing as I'm preaching through Hebrews 11. I shouldn't say that I'm facing it; actually all of you are facing it because though I'm preaching, you're along for the ride, so whatever's challenging me is going to be a challenge to you as well. But the challenge is this. It is knowing how far to trace the Old Testament references that we find in Hebrews 11, and going back to those references, how deep do we dive down that rabbit hole, as it were?
You may have noticed as we've gone through Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, that every time that there is a citation from the Old Testament, we've taken the time to go back to that Old Testament citation and see how the original author and the original audience would have understood that, and then to transport that forward into the New Testament context so that we can see what the New Testament author was meaning when he made reference to those Old Testament texts, trying to be faithful to the author's intended meaning and the original audience's understanding of that text in its context. That's a very essential element of what we have been doing, and we've done it with some frequency in the book of Hebrews because Hebrews, of course, is loaded with Old Testament references. When you get to Hebrews 11, it is just one long list of Old Testament characters and events and places and things and allusions that are going to draw us back into the Old Testament.
So the challenge is, as we go back and look at some of those characters—which we have to understand some of the things going around those characters to understand what the author of Hebrews is trying to teach us through them. The challenge is going to be how far down that rabbit hole do we go? Because I could take Abel and Enoch and Noah and do a little biographical sermon series on each one of those men. And so at what point would this cease to be a study of Hebrews 11 and become just a series of biographical messages about Old Testament characters who happen to be mentioned in Hebrews 11? Do you know what I mean? So it's going to be very difficult for me to keep my foot in both of those worlds, as it were, and I don't even know exactly what this is going to look like in the weeks ahead. I'm hoping to figure out what this is going to look like in the weeks ahead really soon. But as of right now, I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to try and strike that balance, and we'll just maybe figure it out as we go.
But this dilemma is something that we face even as we get to the very first example of faith that we have in Hebrews 11:3: “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” Now you may not realize it at first, but there is a little miniseries of sermons, a little miniseries of issues there that we can unpack in those verses. You may not realize it at first glance, but there is an apologetic argument that's being offered there, particularly—and by apologetic we're talking about the defense of the Christian faith. There is a philosophy of apologetics that is presented in verse 3. It is actually presupposed—that's why we call it presuppositional apologetics—but there's a whole methodology there that's sort of packed into that verse. It would take a good lengthy sermon to unpack that. It is by faith that we understand these things. That's a presuppositional approach to truth. That presupposes certain things are true.
There's also something in those verses about epistemology. Do you know what epistemology is? Epistemology is the study of knowledge, particularly how we know what we know. How do we know what is true? Can truth be known? And how do we know truth? Is truth discovered by the human intellect? Is truth something that exists outside of us? Is truth something that we make up? How do we know that what we know we know, we actually know? Do you know that? Or what you know, do you simply presume it? Do you assume it? Is it an opinion or is it fact? Is there anything that is actually true? And what makes something true? And what makes us able to know that we know what is true?
A hundred years ago, we knew certain things were true. And in the last hundred years, there's dozens and dozens of those things that we now know were not true. And we know now that what they knew, they didn't really know. So that's what epistemology is. How is it that I know that all of creation came into being? Was I there? How can I know what is true? Am I justified in what I think that I know? That's the study of epistemology.
There's also here a lot of detail about the doctrine of creation itself that would be worthy of an entire series of messages. Those are just the various rabbit holes that I'm tempted to chase this morning. I'm not going to chase any one of them very far. We're really going to focus this morning—and we're not returning back to verse 3, but we're really going to focus this morning just on what verse 3 teaches about faith itself, the role that faith plays in helping us to know things that we have not seen. And we're going to unpack here this morning what we understand by faith about the agent of creation and His agency, namely God and His power. That is the agent of creation. The one who created it and how He created it by the word of His power. We're going to look at that, and then we're going to look at the nature of creation itself, that what we see, that which we see in creation, was not made out of things which already appeared. By faith we understand these things. So that's our outline this morning.
Before we get to that, I'm going to chase a couple of these other rabbit holes just to sort of set the table for when we actually get into this verse. It's very interesting how the author introduces the list of examples of faith. He starts in verse 3 not by pointing to an Old Testament example. He takes us back to the Old Testament to creation, but the illustration or example that he gives is actually an illustration or example of faith that you and I have. It's we who have this faith. We understand that by the word of God, all of creation, all of the worlds, all of the universe and the cosmos, all of it was formed and prepared. It's God's word that did that. We understand this. We know this by faith.
Now his reason for referring to our faith, his purpose in doing that, is not to suggest that you and I have earned our place amongst the list of heroes that we find in Hebrews 11 by virtue of our faith in the God of creation. His point is simply to say that the type of faith that he is describing with all of these other characters from Hebrews 11—Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc.—that kind of faith is not some unique faith. It's not some special faith, granted, given, empowered just to a super select group of spiritual people. You look at those heroes, you think, Those men are heroic men—Abraham, Moses, Noah, Enoch, Abel. Those are great men. They must have had some super, special, secret faith that the rest of us do not have. They must have achieved some extra level, some next plane that the rest of us are excluded from. And the author's answer is no. The faith that these men had, it's the very same faith that allows you to begin reading at Genesis 1:1 and say, “I believe that.” That's the faith. It's the same faith.
If you can read Genesis 1:1 and say, “I believe that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth just as He has described it in the first verse of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible,” if you have faith to believe that, that kind of faith, the trust in that kind of unseen thing, is a faith of the same quality, the same nature, the same substance as the faith of Moses, who said, “I'm willing to turn my back on all the treasures of Egypt for the sake that I might have Christ or the messianic hope that is to come.” It's the same faith that Abraham had when God said to him, “Leave your family, leave your land, and go to a land that I'm going to give to you and your descendants.” It's the same faith.
So the point in looping us into this is to remind us that these men do not have a certain special level of faith. It's the same faith. It's the same faith. Your faith may be stronger, your faith may be weaker, your faith may be equal to these men, but it is the same kind of faith. He's not appealing to us to have some extra special level of trust in God that is available only to a select few.
He's taking us back to the beginning because this really is a perfect example of what faith is. He is asking us, or he is actually telling us, that when we believe, when we accept and embrace the doctrine of creation, the first chapter in Genesis, we're going right back and that faith that is required at the very beginning is the same faith that saves us. It's the same faith that sustains us. It's the same faith that pleases God. It's that faith. If you have that kind of faith, the kind of faith that accepts God at His word regarding things that you have never seen and you were not present for and you do not witness and cannot be repeated and cannot be tested in the laboratory, if you will believe what God says concerning those things, that is the kind of faith that pleases God. The type of faith we're talking about, you cannot even begin reading your Bible and understanding it and knowing it and embracing it unless you have it. That make sense? It goes right back to the very beginning. It's verse 1. This is foundational. This is elemental. We believe and accept the testimony of Scripture concerning the creation of the world, and this is the very kind of faith that he is talking about.
The one who does not believe this, by the way, does not have that kind of faith, but he does have a firm conviction or a faith of sorts in another thing. There is a difference between the creationist and the naturalist, the creationist and the evolutionist. You see, both of us are convinced of things that we have never seen. I'm convinced of something that I have never seen. I'm convinced that the God who is described in Scripture spoke the entire universe and all of the cosmos into existence roughly six thousand years ago, and He did all of this in six literal twenty-four-hour days and then rested on the seventh, and that everything following that is literal history, just as it is laid out and spelled out in the book of Genesis. That I am convinced of. Have I seen that? No. Can I test that? No. Can I repeat that? No. I mean, I can't repeat the experiment or the act. I can repeat what I just said, but I can't repeat the experiment or the act. So it's unrepeatable. And I've never seen it. I wasn't a witness to those things, but I am absolutely convinced that that is true.
The naturalist, the atheist, the evolutionist is utterly convinced of things he has never seen. He has never seen an ape turn into a man, but he is convinced that it happened. He has never been able to repeat that process, but he is convinced that it happened. He is not able to duplicate it and make it again. He was not there to witness it. He is accepting at face value the word or testimony of other things, be it a scientist or Darwin or a science paper or a science teacher or whatever it is. He is embracing and accepting all of that on the basis of faith. He believes the testimony or word of another concerning things that he has not seen. That is what our faith in the creation or the Creator is—it is a belief in something that we have not seen. But we are believing and trusting in the word of One who is reliable, who was there, who did witness it, who could repeat it, who in some sense in the future will repeat that very thing. And we're trusting His testimony.
We're both accepting these things at face value. See, the creationist and the naturalist, we don't have different sets of evidence. We have presuppositions that we bring to the table. In other words, there's not a bucket of evolutionary evidence and a bucket of creationary evidence, and the goal is to just fill those buckets up with as much evidence as we can. There's no such thing. There's just evidence. You see, we all live in the same creation, don't we? The atheist, the evolutionist, the creationist, the naturalist, the materialist, the supernaturalist, and the immaterialist, we all live in the same creation. We all observe the same things, the same stars, the same dirt, the same fossils, the same processes, the same natural laws, the same laws of logic. We all have access to the same things. We just bring different presuppositions to the table.
The atheist evolutionist brings the presupposition that there is no God and that everything leapt into existence out of nothing, that there was nothing, and then suddenly there was everything, exploding and expanding, and that all of that, according to natural laws and processes, organized itself, and information came from nothing, order and design came from nothing, and that there's really no purpose or telos in any of this, but that it all exists and it all functions as it does, and it is going nowhere, and eventually it's all going to burn out, we're all going to suffer and die from ultimate heat and motion death at the end of time, the sun's going to burn out, everything's going to cease to exist and suck back down into one principle point of nothingness, and then the whole process will start itself all over again. That's the presupposition. So then they take that—I mean, that was a long presupposition, wasn't it?—but they take that, that's their framework, and then all of the evidence, they plug it into that, and they say, “Here’s how we interpret all the evidence in light of that.”
I begin with different presuppositions. The atheist evolutionists have their presuppositions—that is, things that they presuppose, bringing it to the table. You do too. Everybody has presuppositions. It cannot be avoided. Everybody has them. You have to acknowledge them, identify them, and examine the presuppositions to see if they're justified. So as a creationist, I have a certain set of presuppositions. I presuppose that God exists and that He has spoken and that He was there and that He created everything and that it bears His mark and that He has a purpose and intelligence and that all of these things exist because God has a purpose for all of them and that you and I are created in the image of God. That's my presupposition. Now I take all the evidence that we have, the same evidence that the evolutionist has, and I dump it into my presuppositional paradigm, and I can evaluate it in those terms. That's how the game is played, and there's no way of avoiding that.
And I'm not going to belabor the point here, but I just want to point out there is nothing in science that contradicts creation. Nothing. That should be patently obvious to us since we've had two spring conferences, one with Paul Taylor and one with Jason Lisle. There is nothing in science that contradicts creation. It cannot. Now, scientism contradicts creation. Scientism is different. See, scientism is a religion. It's a faith. It's a presuppositional approach to evidence that has certain presuppositions, materialistically speaking, that begins with God doesn't exist and all the other things I just spelled out for you a few minutes ago. That's scientism. Scientism is a rationalistic approach to truth. It is part of the progressive, atheistic, secular, God-hating philosophy of the age, the spirit of the age that now dominates everything.
And some scientists are scientismists. I could say that some scientists are materialists, but scientismists is a lot funner to say. Try it—not now, but later on. Scientismists. Some scientists are scientismists—that is, that they have adopted the religion of scientism. And one of the challenging things in our age particularly is knowing how it is that we distinguish, when somebody is speaking to us, how it is that we distinguish between what is science and what is scientism. There are certain things that science can say and tell us. Scientism is a whole philosophy that is often grouped with that.
And so then they will say things like, “We just need to believe the science” or “The science is settled.” Believe the science. The word science is used as a dog whistle, a trap, a trap door to the belly of Hell itself, I would say. That word comes loaded with all this baggage that is attached to it by which they sneak into us all of the presuppositions of the spirit of the age and all the atheistic, secularistic, God-hating, man-denying truths of creation that we know to be true. Science becomes the Trojan horse by which all of that is snuck into us. And they say, “Believe the science. Just believe the science.” Well, that's usually something that's screeched by the high priests and priestesses of the secular, progressive religion and spirit of the age. And they say that, and what they mean by that is embrace whatever God-hating, secular, progressive, atheistic narrative that is currently being belched up out of the bowels of Hell, whatever that is. And it'll change tomorrow. You need to believe it. You need to accept it because that's the narrative. That's what they mean by that. Distinguish between science and scientism. There's nothing in creation that is contradictory to science. I said I wasn't going to belabor that. I guess that's what it looks like when I don't belabor something.
Now in a sense, these are all connected to the list of heroes that we have in Hebrews 11. The kind of faith that we have in a God who created things, even though we have not seen that event or—we see the effects of it, but we have not seen the event. We did not watch it happen, we did not see His power, we did not hear those words, but we believe the testimony that He has handed down to us because He was there and He wrote and communicated to us exactly how He did it. We must rely upon Scripture to tell us those things and by faith we understand that those things are true because human philosophy cannot tell me anything about creation. Human philosophy cannot tell me why I exist. Human philosophy cannot tell me how everything came to be. Human philosophy cannot tell me how everything is supposed to work together, what the purpose of it is, what the end result of it is, where it's going, where it came from, or even why we're here.
Then we wonder, Why would anybody even listen to a philosopher if they can't answer any of those questions? But they can't. Philosophy can't tell me anything about the God who created it. It can't tell me anything about how I am not related to that God who created it or how I can be related to that God who created it. It can't tell me anything about how God created anything. Philosophy is unable to do any of that.
Human reason cannot tell you anything about how God created anything or about the God who created it. Human reason can demonstrate to me—according to Romans 1, human reason can tell me that there is a God because we know that from nothing, nothing comes. So human reason can tell me that there is a God. Human reason can tell me that every effect has a cause and that whatever caused this effect known as the universe must be greater than the universe, outside of the universe, and more powerful than the universe and older than the universe. Human reason can tell me all of that. But human reason cannot tell me that that God who created all of those things, that Being, that His name is Yahweh and that He loves me and that He sent His Son to die on a cross and that I am a sinner and that I violated His law. Human reason can't give me any of that information.
So philosophy is unable to answer any of those questions. Human reason is unable to answer any of those questions. Science cannot tell me how things were created. Science can tell me what exists. Science can tell me how the things that exist relate to one another. Science can tell me what will happen to the things that exist if I want to make them not exist. Science can tell me all of those things, but science cannot tell me how it came into existence.
By faith, we know all of this. By faith, we know how God created, we know why He created, we know what our role is in creation, what He expects of us, why we were created, we know our destiny. We can understand creation. We can understand its fallen state. We can look at creation now and by faith, because we accept God's Word, Genesis 1, 2, and 3—3 being the fall of creation after it was created perfect—because we understand that, we know exactly why it is that there is sin, disease, death, destruction, and deterioration in the world that exists. We know why everything that we read about in Genesis 1, which God said is good and very good, why we look around now and we say “This doesn't look good or very good.” We know those truths because we have embraced by faith the testimony of Scripture, which describes to us exactly why it is that these things are so, why they are the way that they are. By faith we understand who this Creator is and how we can be related to Him.
These truths, these are the most important truths in all of creation, and these truths are inaccessible to those who rely upon philosophy, human reason or human intellect, or science. Because none of those disciplines can tell me the ultimate meaning of any of these things. You and I, we, because we embrace by faith the testimony of Scripture, we stand in the light of truth of these things. Those who reject the testimony of Scripture and begin with human reason, philosophy, or science, they stand in darkness and they do not understand these things.
To us who are in Jesus Christ, who embrace God's Word by faith, to us the mysteries of creation have been revealed. The ultimate purpose, the ultimate design, the ultimate aim, what happened in the past, what is going on now in the present, and what will ultimately happen in the future, all of that has been revealed to us. We know these things. We know things that the most intelligent and educated philosophers on the planet have never hoped to be able to understand. They admit that they cannot understand. You and I understand and know these things. Why? Because we're smarter? Because we have a better education? You have more degrees on the shelf than the other guy? Is it your staggering intellect? Is it your good looks? What is it that allows you to know these things that philosophers and scientists and kings have never understood? It's because it's been revealed to you. And when you embrace by faith what has been revealed to you, then you know and understand truths that they cannot even begin to apprehend.
Stephen Hawking, brilliant man, I think we would all say, but he lived and he died in moral, intellectual, spiritual, ethical darkness. There are ten-year-olds in this congregation who know more about the important issues of life than Stephen Hawking could ever grasp. Ten-year-olds. Now, I'm not saying there are ten-year-olds in this congregation who know more than Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking knows more about the functioning of an atom or a ray of light than all of us put together in this room. He knows more about all of those things. There's no ten-year-old in here whose training, whose knowledge base, is equal to Stephen Hawking. But Stephen Hawking can tell you how an atom works, a ten-year-old can tell you why the atom exists—because God created it. I need to know what the ten-year-old knows and not what Stephen Hawking knows. It's not that what he knows is not valuable to us. It's not that what he knows does not advance human condition or human flourishing or any of that. But it's that by faith, we understand things that the mightiest intellects amongst our entire society cannot understand.
Now, when we say by faith—and I'm getting to the text itself, but still chasing a couple of rabbit holes. Be patient with me because each of these could be whole sermons, but they're not. These are just like snippets or reviews of sermons that I had in my mind all week long. Faith doesn't make these things true. Understand that. When we say, “By faith we understand it,” what we're not saying is that by faith these things become true for me in some subjective sense. Because that's how the culture would understand this. “Well, you believe that by faith? Well, then that's true for you. But that's not what's true for me. What's true for me is something different. So you believe that by faith, therefore it becomes true for you.” No, we're saying that these things are objectively true. And the only way that we can understand them is by accepting and embracing divine revelation. And my faith does not make something that is untrue true. My faith allows me to know and understand as true that which is true. Do you understand the difference between those two things? My faith doesn't make it true.
There's this whole philosophy now that says that you embrace something by faith and it becomes your own lived experience, or your own lived experience becomes what you know as true. And right, if you have lived this experience, then that's true. I was listening to a podcast this last week where it was an unbeliever who was being interviewed, and she twice mentioned the lived experience. First, this is my lived experience. And the second, this is the lived experience of someone else. Lived experience. Is there a stupider phrase ever invented in the course of human history than the phrase “lived experience”? You're hearing it more and more. And you know why? Because our culture is getting dumber and dumber. That's why.
Lived experience. Is there any other kind of experience other than lived experience? Did you experience World War I or II? Did you experience the Civil War? “Well, I didn’t live through it, but I experienced it.” No, you see, the phrase “lived experience” is supposed to put whatever they belch up as true as unassailable. So it becomes sola experientia. Nothing else matters. Not sola scriptura, not sola fide, nothing else. It's sola experientia. And they can say, “This is my experience.” You say, “Well, this is my experience. I had this happen to me.” “Oh, well, this is my lived experience.” Oh, if it's your lived experience, then I'm supposed to just genuflect before you and I can't question anything you say because that’s your lived experience and therefore it is above critique or above analysis or whatever it is.
No, we're not saying that by faith these things become our lived experience or our unlived experience or any other stupid colloquialism that people want to drum up. We're saying that by faith we understand that these things are true because they are true. And they would be true if I never existed and if I never had faith. They would be true even if nobody had ever heard the name Jim Osman. These things would be true if I had never been dreamed up. They would still be true because that truth is true regardless of me, the subject. It is objectively true. Therefore, it is outside of me. These things are true. We don't make them true by our faith. We understand the truthfulness of them by faith. That's different. Faith becomes the eyes through which I see that which is unseen, and I don't make it true, I understand that it's true.
So that is why he says in verse 3—finally back to the text—“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” Yes, that is a philosophical, apologetic, presuppositional, scientific statement that's being made there, a statement about the agent of creation as well as the nature of creation. So now let's dive into verse 3. And we will get through all of verse 3 today, I promise. I have to tell you that at the beginning because you might be thinking, well, there's two things there. That's going to be next week. No, we're going to get through all of verse 3 today.
“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God” (v. 3). The word translated “worlds” is the Greek word aion, and it encompasses far more than just this world. It's far more actually than just a collection of worlds or a collection of planets or even our galaxy or even just the universe. It's far more than just matter itself. In fact, the ESV and the NIV translate that as “universe.” By faith the universe was prepared or made by the word of God. So they translate that word aion as “universe,” and that's getting closer to it because it does involve not just all that is matter, all that is physical, and all that exists, but it involves actually far more than that. The word doesn't describe just physical matter but all the things that relate to physical matter.
So for instance, sometimes this word is translated in Scripture as “time,” as “era,” “duration,” “eternity,” “beginning of time,” “ancient time,” “forever,” “forever and ever.” I had three forevers there. It was hard to keep—I had a comma between them. “Forever” and “forever and ever.” Sometimes this word is translated in that way. It is referring not just to what exists that we see, but aion refers to everything that exists and everything that goes on with what exists. It is an all-encompassing word. So in Hebrews 1:2 when the author says, “In these last days [God] has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world,” that's the word that's used there, “the world.” He's not just referring to this planet, He's referring to everything. This then is the universe, it is space, it is time itself, it is everything in time. It's not just the world or all the world, but it is the galaxies, and not just our galaxy but every galaxy. It is the entire universe, the space in which it is hung.
See, God didn't just create things to fill space that was there forever. He stretched out the space and created the space and then put everything in that space. Can you even comprehend how magnificent that is? You know how many light years it is from here to the nearest galaxy? I don't know off the top of my head, but it's lots. It's a big number. Light years. Not traveling miles per hour, but miles per second. Hundreds of thousands of miles per second. It's an enormous accomplishment. It's the space and everything in it.
He created the laws of logic, time itself, the laws of nature, and the physical laws, the scientific laws, the laws of physics. These are all derived from Him. It is impossible to understand why any of these things exist and why anything exists rather than nothing existing, it's impossible to understand any of that or even begin to comprehend it or even begin to discuss it without presupposing that this God exists and that He created it according to Scripture. You have to begin with that presupposition.
This word describes not just the physical universe but the operation of the physical universe. It is the idea of what he communicated back in Hebrews 1:3 when he says Christ “upholds all things by the word of His power.” And upholding all things by the word of His power doesn't mean that He just keeps everything intact so that it doesn't just go out of existence. But the idea is that He carries along, He upholds, all things.
And that word has to do with carrying something along from point A to point Z to its appointed goal. He created it all and He carries it all along, bears it all so that He carries it to its appointed end. There is a goal that is in view in everything He has created, and He is faithfully, by the word of His power, carrying us toward that ultimate goal. That's the idea. So that everything then will glorify Him and display His nature and will bless and benefit those who are His.
Christ the sovereign Creator didn't just show up on the scene one day and see a bunch of unorganized matter in a big space and say, “You know what, I think I can do something with that. I'll put a bunch of this together and make a star here, put a bunch of this together and make a galaxy there, put a bunch of this together and make a nebula. And if I do this right, maybe I can create some living beings.” That's not how it worked. He created the space, and then He filled the space with all of His creation, and He did all of this by the word of His power, just spoke it into existence.
Before the moment described in Genesis 1:1, there was nothing. Now, nothing is not everything made really small. Nothing is nothing. As someone once said, nothing is the stuff that rocks dream about. It's nothing. Before Genesis 1:1, there were no molecules, there was no water, there was no dust, there was not an atom, there was not a particle, there was not an electron. There was not even space, and there was no time. And He spoke it all into existence.
He prepared the universe and the ages and the administration of all of His creation, all of it ordained by His word, the orchestration of it, the purpose of it, the administration of it, the laws that govern it, matter itself, all material processes, the timing of it, the end, the beginning. He has appointed everything that is in between, and He upholds it all and carries it all along by His word. The word prepared means to make something orderly or to set it in order. By faith we understand that the worlds, the universe, all that exists and everything in it, as well as the processes that organize it and structure it and direct it, all of that was prepared. And that word prepared means to make something orderly, to set something in order for a purpose so that that purpose would accomplish something, to make it adequate, to equip it, or to furnish it for a purpose.
So we're describing here not just a God who decided He was going to speak a bunch of matter into existence and then see where this would take us, as if He had no idea what the directed process was going to be. He didn't speak everything into existence and then say, “I think I'll see if I can do My best with this creation that I'm making.” That was not it at all. He spoke all of it into creation, having a purpose and end, a telos, in mind, so that the goal was already predetermined and established by Him. He's not guessing and learning and figuring out what the end is going to be. He's not doing the best that He can with all of creation. It has a goal and an end.
This I know not because I'm smarter than anybody else, but because I accept and embrace by faith the testimony of Scripture. And so therefore I know this. I know what Stephen Hawking never knew. He died not knowing this. Why do I know it? Am I smarter than Hawking? No. Oh no, not even close. But it's been revealed to us, hasn't it, in the pages of Scripture. And so by faith we understand this.
By faith we know that we're not just accepting the existence of some nebulous, nondescript higher power that exists above all of us, that may or may not have accomplished everything in Scripture that He says He did, which may or may not have happened according to Genesis 1, 2 and 3, that may or may not be ruling over it today, may or may not be able to be known. It's just a higher power, whatever you want to embrace that makes you feel good—that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about believing the testimony of Scripture and the God who wrote it.
Those without faith do not see anything of human progress or anything of purpose in what has been created because they can't. You and I can look at the design and the intellect and the wisdom and the skill of what has been wrought and put together in front of us. You and I can sit and we can look out at all of nature and we can honor and glorify God and give Him thanks and rejoice in who He is because of what He has made, knowing that what exists today is not even hardly a shadow of what existed in the original creation before it was ruined by sin and destroyed by the flood, but you and I can sit and we can acknowledge the design, the beauty, the wisdom, the intellect behind all of this creation. And we can see, as we look at human history, the order of events, and we can see God unfolding His plan and His purposes. We can look at the lives of Abraham and Noah and Moses and the judges and the events surrounding the crucifixion and the expansion of the church throughout church history. We can look at all of human history and we can see telos, design, intellect, intentionality behind all of it. And we can see where it is going because He has told us where it's going. We see that it is all falling apart on schedule, all unfolding on schedule just as He has determined that it should. It's all falling apart on schedule.
We can see all of that, but the unbeliever without faith understands none of that. The unbeliever looks at the news and says, “Man, I wish I could explain this.” The unbeliever looks at human history and to them it is just a collection of random meat muscles in motion colliding off one another in history. There's no purpose. There's no plan. There's no story. There's nothing to accept or embrace. There's nothing honorable. All of it is just a random collection of chemical reactions and molecules in motion. That's all that they can see. We can see things that Stephen Hawking was never able to see. And I would argue to you, I'd postulate to you, that they are the most important things that there is for anybody to see. And we understand them, and we understand them by faith.
He describes to us here the agency of this creation, the power behind all of it. It is the word of God. This is the reason why anything exists and nothing does not exist. Let me say that in a better way. This is the reason why something exists rather than nothing. Can the philosopher tell you why something exists rather than nothing? Can't tell you that. Scientists can't tell you that. But we know why something exists rather than nothing. Because God spoke it into existence just by His power, just as described in Genesis 1. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). Then God said, “Let the waters be separated,” and it was so. Then God said, “Let the stars fill the heavens,” and it was so. Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living plants,” and it was so. God created animals. “Let there be this,” and it was so. This is what we read. Ten times in Genesis 1, we read of God saying this. God said, then God said, and it was so. Why? Because all of creation and everything that He speaks into existence must come into existence. And so just matter of factly, Moses, the author of Genesis, just says, “God said this, and it happened exactly as God said, and He said it was good. And then this happened just exactly as God said, and then God said this, and it came to be.” That's the true account of the origin of all things in the creation of the universe.
Psalm 33:6: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.”
Psalm 148:4–5: “Praise Him, highest heavens, and the waters that are above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created.”
It is simply the voice of God, the power of His word. He created and it happened and it appeared and it came out of nothing and it stood fast. By faith we understand this. And by faith we must embrace this because this is the true account of the origin of the heavens and the earth.
I'm always disturbed when I hear people talking about how things came into being and rather than going back to Genesis 1, 2, 3, actually Genesis 1–11, the creation account, what they will do instead is say, “Well, you know, everything exists, but I kind of think that God might have done it this way,” or “I kind of think that it's possible for God to have done this,” or “It seems reasonable to me that God would have probably done this.” And it seems reasonable to you, but here's what we don't do. Faith does not take the Word of God and subject it to our fallen intellect and our darkened minds and say, “This is how I think God might have done it.” God has not left that up to us to determine. Our job is to shut our mouths and let God describe to us how He did it, and embrace that or reject it. Those are your options. Those are your only two options. God has revealed to us how He did it. So it doesn't matter what you think about how He did it. Not at all. It doesn't matter how you might think He might have done a better job of it. It's irrelevant. He has described to us exactly how He did it. We weren't there. Nobody was there.
Faith is embracing the things that we cannot see. And this is the theme of the very next phrase. Now listen, if you have embraced and understood that certain things are true, even though you have never seen them in the past, by that same faith you can embrace and understand that certain things are true and will be true regarding things unseen in the future. This is the connection I want you to see. He is taking us back to those things which are past and he's saying, “You embrace this, you understand this by faith. By faith you have insight into all these things. We're taking the same faith and we're just, rather than looking back here, we're just turning around with the same faith and we're looking to what God has already said regarding things that are future.”
God has said things that are regarding things past and God has said things and made promises regarding things future. And the faith that embraces that simply turns around and embraces the other and says, “If I can believe that a God who spoke all of the universe into existence did it once, I can believe that at some point God is going to recreate a new heavens and a New Earth and He's going to do it all over again.” The same faith that allows me to embrace one unseen thing in my past allows me to put my hope and my faith in an unseen thing that is yet in the future. I was not there for the one in the past and I have not yet lived the experience of the one in the future, but I believe both of them by faith and embrace both of them, and I am as convinced of the one as I am of the other. Utterly and totally convinced.
I was not there to see God create Adam out of dust, but I do know by faith that that happened exactly as it is recorded in Genesis 2. I believe that and I know that. Further, I can look forward and realize that from dust I came, to dust I will return, and there will come a point when, by His word, He simply says, “Come forth,” and everybody comes forth in resurrected bodies out of the dust. From dust He made Adam, to dust we shall return, and ultimately we shall be resurrected out of the dust. The faith that looks back and says, “I embrace the testimony of God creating man out of dust,” looks forward and says, “I can embrace the testimony that says that God is going to re-create a new heavens and a New Earth and that I am going to occupy that in a resurrected body which He is going to raise out of the dust.” It's the same faith that looks both directions.
I was not there for the flood. I didn't see the flood. I see all the evidence of the flood all the way around us. But I embraced it by a matter of faith. I understand the truth about what happened in Genesis 6, 7, 8, and 9. I embrace that by faith, and I know that God judged the world by water. I also then turn around, I look the other direction, and I say, “By faith I know that in the future there's coming a judgment by fire, and it will happen.” We're going to see all of the things that are yet future. We're going to experience all of that. Those will become our lived experience. That's the last time I'm using that phrase. Those are going to become our lived experience at some point. But right now, everything that I know happened in the past by faith, I can turn with that same faith, it's that same trust, accepting God at His word, and I can embrace what I know is going to happen and come in the future. And what we are looking for in the future is yet to us unseen, just like the things in the past are unseen.
Look at the second phrase. This takes us to the nature of creation. “So that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible” (Heb. 11:3). The phrase tells us something here about the nature of creation. There are two ways that the phrase is going to be understood. Because I talked about lived experiences, now I have to speed it up a little bit. There are two ways that this phrase has been understood.
First, some have suggested that what the author is describing there is the fact that everything that we see which is visible is really composed of things that we cannot see that are invisible to the naked eye. And by that, we're talking about molecules, cells, atoms, electrons, neutrons, protons, all of that good stuff that makes up who you are. Right? Have you seen any of those? You don't see those looking out here. You don't see a collection of atoms, electrons. Nobody is seeing that. Your eyesight is not that good. But you understand that everything that has been created that you do see is composed of things, particles, that you cannot see.
In fact, scientists now tell us—and this is science, not scientism, just to make the distinction—scientists now tell us that probably 90 percent of the universe is composed of dark matter. Jason Lisle talked about this a little bit at his conference, I believe. Dark matter. I was just reading an article about dark matter by Dr. Danny R. Faulkner in Answers Magazine. Ninety percent of the matter that exists is invisible to us. We know that it's there. We see the effects of it. But only about 10 percent of what's been created is actually visible to our eye.
Is that what the author is describing here, that that which is seen and visible to us is made up of those things which are unseen? I don't think that that's what he's describing. And I'll tell you why. I do not believe that the author is describing the atomic structure of the universe because I don't think that the author was sitting there writing the book of Hebrews contemplating the atomic structure of the universe. It's not something he was privy to. It's not something he understood. The Holy Spirit understood it. The author did not. So did the Holy Spirit have that in His mind when He wrote that? I don't know that. I'll have to ask the Holy Spirit when I get there if that's what He was intending.
But I do think that it is the second interpretation of this verse that is most accurate. And that is that those things which do exist were not formed from some pre-existing material. He created it out of nothing. That's the point. Everything that we see came into being out of nothing. One of the ways in which we bear the image of God as His creatures is we like to create things, don't we? We like our efforts and our work to be creative. We like to invent. We like to create. We like to construct. We like to do things. We like to see the fruit of our hands, see things that we have done, the product of our labor and of our work. We enjoy that. We enjoy seeing that. Everything that you've ever created, you've created from something that already existed. When God created the universe, He created it out of nothing, ex nihilo. Nothing else existed. He spoke and it came into existence. That is the power of His word. That's what the author is saying.
Everything that we have seen, the things which are seen, were not made out of things which were visible. Again, God did not show up on the scene, take a bunch of preexisting matter that had always existed, and begin to form it into something else. His act of creation is described in Genesis 1. When God showed up on the scene, there was no scene. He had to create the scene and create the space around the scene and then create everything that made up the scene. There was nothing before that. That is impossible. That is impossible to comprehend, isn't it?
It's irrational to the pagan. It's unscientific to the pagan because the pagan would say, “Well, out of nothing, nothing comes.” Oh, yeah? Well, then where did everything come from? “Oh, nothing.” That's what they say. So all of this is irrational. It seems unscientific, counterintuitive, outside of our experience, and that is quite frankly the point. But we know that these things are true because of faith. Faith is the eyes by which we understand and know these things. We don't make them true by our faith. We understand them as true by our faith. Because they are true even if we didn't have faith and even if we didn't exist at all.
So what does it mean then? What is the author's point here in bringing up the creation of the world? He is simply saying to those to whom he is writing, the faith that he is going to describe with the rest of these Old Testament examples, that faith is the very same faith that you have when you look at Scripture and say, “I will embrace the testimony of this unseen God and accept what He has said even though I was not there, I do not see it. I believe Him.” Because you and I are confronted with things, decisions, uncertain futures, and promises regarding the future that we cannot see, we cannot embrace now, but these are the unseen things, these are the things yet to come. The same faith that embraces the one turns around and embraces the other. If we accept God's word in Scripture regarding things past, we can accept God's word in Scripture regarding things future.
And if we have accepted God's word in Scripture regarding things future, that is the faith by which we endure the hostilities of a hateful world. Remember, we are right on the heels of that warning passage. Don't get over that. What is it that allows me to endure a great conflict of sufferings, tribulations, temptations, trials, affliction, imprisonment, suffering with those who are afflicted, the seizure of my property? What kind of faith is it that allows me to endure that and to accept all of that joyfully and to face a hostile world that hates me, thinks I'm ridiculous, thinks that I'm insane for believing the things that I do, and wants me to not exist? How do we step into a world like that and testify to the glory of this Creator? It's by faith. A special, super, next-level faith? No. The same faith that says I can embrace what God says in His Word, even though I was not there, and I believe in a God I cannot see. And by faith I know that God. Because I have a firm conviction regarding things I have not seen, and that firm conviction is what enables us to live in a hostile world and to endure a great conflict of sufferings.
We are looking forward to a world ahead of us. The same faith that believes that God is powerful enough to speak everything into existence is able to believe Him that one day He is going to re-create the new heavens and the New Earth. See, if the word of God is powerful enough to create everything out of nothing, then the word of God is powerful enough to sustain me and to keep me and to preserve me through everything that is to come. That's the point. If I believe that, I can certainly believe Him for the future, whatever it may hold. I can believe Him for the future.