In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the Last Sunday of the Church Year. The whole focus of this morning’s service is on the End Times and, specifically, the return of Jesus in glory. In order that we would be prepared for that event when it happens, our Lord tells us a parable about it in Matthew chapter 25, the so-called parable of the ten virgins. So, in this morning’s, I’m going to do something a little bit different than what I usually do and simply walk through this text verse by verse and explain what each part means. If you want to, you can follow along in the bulletin, or if you have your own Bible or you want to use one of the pew Bibles, you can that too.

Verse 1: Jesus said, “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.”

Here our Lord shows us that this is a parable about the visible Church on earth. It isn’t about the differences between atheists and Christians, or Buddhists and Lutherans, but about all those who have outwardly attached themselves to God’s Word and Sacraments. It’s a parable about you and me, and all of the people sitting here in this room today; everyone throughout the whole world who identifies as a follower of Christ. All ten of the virgins went out to meet the bridegroom. All ten of them acknowledged that eventually he was going to show up, and, at least for a moment, they all expected it to happen.

Verse 2: “Five of them were foolish and five were wise.”

According to God’s Word, not everyone who is connected with the visible Church will be prepared for the return of Christ. Not everyone who shows us on Sunday, or calls himself a Christian will necessarily be ready when Jesus comes again in glory. Some people are wise and some people are foolish. That doesn’t mean that some people have a high IQ and others have a lower one. It means that some people take God’s Word seriously and others don’t. As we read in Proverbs chapter 1, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, fools despise wisdom and instruction.” True wisdom, in the Biblical sense of the word, doesn’t have anything to do with how good you are at math or whether or not you know quantum physics. It has everything to do with whether or not you listen to the Scriptures and take them to heart; whether or not you have a living and active faith that firmly clings to the Word of God.

Verses 3 and 4: For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.

The main way that the wise virgins showed that they actually took the return of the bridegroom seriously was by making preparations for it. They weren’t content simply to be ready at just one time, they knew that they had to be ready all of the time. That’s why they brought along extra oil for their lamps. They recognized that without constant replenishment, the oil of their lamps would run out.

This passage, and this whole parable for that matter, strikes a crushing blow to the false teaching of “once saved, always saved.” Nowhere in the Bible are we taught that just because a person believed in Jesus at one point in their life, they’re automatically “good to go” at every other point of their life too. 

The foolish virgins did not think that they could ever fall away from the faith. They weren’t trusting in God’s promises to preserve them in the faith, they were abusing those promises so that they didn’t have to keep the faith at all. This is sort of like when people today who refuse to come to church, or are living in unrepentant sin, act as if just because they got baptized as a baby, or confirmed when they were a teenager, or that their name is still on the roles, there’s no possible way that they could ever go to hell. They act as if just because they had faith in the past, that faith will still save them even if they don’t have faith in the present. Well, are you saved because you used to have faith, or are you saved because you have faith when you die? Will you go to heaven because you used to live a life of repentance, or do you still have to live a life of repentance now? We all know the answer. 

In order for us to remain in the faith until we die, our faith needs to be fed all of the time. Just like how a person will starve to death unless they eat food, we need to eat the spiritual food of God’s Word over and over again so that our souls don’t starve. We need to hear the Law and Gospel and receive the forgiveness that comes from Jesus on an ongoing basis so that we will have enough oil to keep our lamps burning to the end.

Verse 5: “As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept.”

In this part of the parable, Jesus reminds us that even though there are differences between the wise and foolish virgins, there is one way in which all of them are the same. They all got tired and fell asleep. In the Bible, sometimes sleep is a euphemism for when a Christian dies in the faith. But since one of the main points of this parable is that the foolish virgins lost their faith and didn’t go to heaven, we know it doesn’t mean that here. The other option is that becoming drowsy and falling asleep has to do with falling into sin. Remember what happened in the garden of Gethsemane? Jesus asked the disciples to stay awake and pray with Him, but none of them could keep their eyes open. Then Jesus said, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

All of us, believers and unbelievers alike, have the same sinful nature. Even after our conversion we continue to carry around with us a fallen flesh. That means that we still sin. The difference is with what we do with our sin. Do we repent of our sin, or do we indulge our sin? Do we turn away from our sin, or do we defend our sin? Do we look to Jesus to forgive our sin, or are we content to keep on living in our sin?

What set apart the wise virgins from the foolish was not that they didn’t have any sin. It was that they didn’t take their sin lightly. They didn’t act as if their sin was “no big deal.” On the contrary, they knew that the corruption of their sin ran so deep that they never stopped needing the mercy and forgiveness of Christ. They never stopped needing to listen to God’s Word and receive His Holy Sacraments. They never stopped needing to go to Church.

When people make a habit of skipping church, or not go to church on a regular basis, they are doing what the foolish virgins did in the parable. They are not making any provisions against their sinful flesh. They are proving by their actions that, to a certain degree, they don’t really take their sin that seriously. And that’s a very dangerous thing to do. Because even though we all get drowsy and fall asleep sometimes, even though we all sin, if we give into our sin, we risk the possibility of not waking up from it on time. We risk the possibility of not being able to receive forgiveness for it before it’s too late.

Verses 6 and 7: “But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps.

Eventually, Jesus Christ will make good on His Word and come back in the same way that He left. Just like we confess in the Creeds, He will return to judge the living and the dead. The reason why our Lord says in this parable that the bridegroom came at midnight is not because He wants us to try and figure out, or predict, the exact date and time that it will happen. As God Word tells us in multiple places, including at the end of this text, “No one knows the day or the hour.” Rather, Jesus uses the language of midnight to remind us of how it will happen very suddenly, even when many people are secure and complacent in their sins.

As our mother’s often warned us, nothing good happens after midnight. And as Saint Paul says in our Epistle lesson, “those who get drunk get drunk at night.” People do shameful things under the cover of darkness because they think that it’ll be easier to get away with. They think that no one is watching. What they are forgetting about, though, is that there’s Someone who’s always watching. God never slumbers nor sleeps. He sees everything that we do and He knows every thought that crosses our mind. Even the things that are hidden to others, like our deepest and darkest secrets that we’ve never shared with anyone else, we can’t keep secret from Him. And soon, everything will be exposed. That’s why we expose our sins now by confessing them and receiving forgiveness for them. It’s so that we don’t have to be ashamed for them later.

Verses 8 through 9: “And the foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.”

Just like it’s not enough to have believed in Jesus in the past, it’s not enough to have other people believe in Jesus for you either. Everyone must believe in Jesus for himself.

Yes, it’s a wonderful thing, and a true blessing from God, to have faithful friends and family that look out for you and encourage you in your walk with Christ. Thank the Lord for parents who make their kids go to Confirmation Class and wives that keep on inviting their husbands to church. Praise God for grandparents who pray with their grandkids, and neighbors who witness to those who live next to them. But eventually, each one of us will be responsible for ourselves. We won’t get to fall back on the fact that we have relatives who were really pious Lutherans, or that we can trace our blood line all the way back to father Abraham himself. None of that will matter. All that will matter is whether or not our lamps are burning. All that will matter is if we have faith. The foolish virgins had to leave and try buy oil because they didn’t have enough of it for themselves when they actually needed it. They tried to repent and get some after the fact, but then, they found out just how impossible that was.

Verse 10: “And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut.

There are no second chances when it comes to Judgment Day. That’s why we call it the “Last Day.” The moment that the trumpet sounds and our Lord appears in the sky, our eternal state will be fixed, and there won’t be any changing it. Just like the door was shut in the parable, the door to heaven will be closed. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s only a bad thing for those who aren’t inside. Think about another time that God closed a door on someone. He did that for Noah right before the flood. In that case, God closing the door was the very thing that kept Noah safe. It was His way of protecting Noah and his family from the destruction that He was about to bring upon the earth.

And that’s the attitude that we should have about Judgment Day as members of the household of God. It’s not something that we’re supposed to dread. It’s something we’re supposed us to look forward too. They only reason why Judgment Day should scare us is if are sinning on purpose and not looking to Jesus for His forgiveness. But if we are repenting of our sins and trusting in Christ, regardless of what how terrible our sins have been, we don’t have anything to worry about. We can have confidence that the sins that our Lord died for, He won’t make us suffer for in entirety. When He shuts the door on us, it won’t be to condemn us, but to protect us. It will be to guard us from even the possibility of ever falling away from Him again.

Verses 11 and 12: “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.” But He answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’

This is one of the most terrifying verses in the whole Bible. Sometimes God’s Word tells us things in order to comfort us, and other times it’s tells us things to warn us. This one is obviously the latter. We can get a lot of bad news in our life, but nothing is worse than hearing from Jesus that He doesn’t even know you. But that is what will happen to those who don’t want to know Him. That’s what will happen to those who reject God’s grace when it’s offered to them and try and stand before Him on the basis of anything other than the blood of Christ. It won’t go well for them. And the reason why Jesus warns us about it is, of course, because He doesn’t want it to happen to us. He wants us to seek His grace while it may be found, so that we’ll be found in Him, covered in His righteousness, and secure in our identity as God’s children.

Verse 13: “Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

The whole point of the parable of the ten virgins is that Jesus doesn’t want us to miss out on heaven. There is nothing that He desires more than for us to spend eternity with Him in paradise. Not only does Jesus desperately want that for each and every one of us, but He has provided all of the means for that to take place. He did that, in the first place, by dying for all of our sins on the cross. That’s where Jesus bought us the oil that we need to keep our lamps burning. That’s where He purchased for us the forgiveness of our sins. But not only did He purchase that forgiveness for us, He actually gives it to us in His Word and Sacraments. He uses the Word, Water, Bread and Wine, as instruments to fill up our lamps with His saving forgiveness until they are overflowing. And through the work of His Holy Spirit, He assure us that He will use those things in order to give us faith, strengthen our faith, and keep our faith living until He comes again. Jesus provides us with everything that we need to be saved.

So, may we make use of the gifts that He has given us. May we stay as close as possible to the place where He promises to fill our lamps. May we keep coming to the feast that we get in Church so that when the Bridegroom returns we can see clearly to enter with Him into the Feast that has no end. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The main point of the parable of the unforgiving servant is that we should forgive other people because God has forgiven us. When Jesus told Saint Peter that he should forgive his repentant brother not seven times, but seventy times seven, obviously our Lord was not just picking a new limit that was higher than Saint Peter’s limit. He was showing us that our forgiveness is supposed to have no limits. Whatever amount we might think is too many times to forgive someone when they come to us asking for it, we should multiply it again. In other words, just as God does not stop forgiving us, we should never stop forgiving other people.

Now, even though this is very clear from our text today, and from the rest of the Bible for that matter, our sinful nature constantly fights against it and always tries to come up with different reasons why we don’t have to do it. So, in this morning’s sermon, in light of what Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 18, I’m simply going to respond to some of the most common objections that we hear against forgiving other people. And to clarify things before we get started, because every time this topic comes up I always get the same kind of questions, this text is not about how governments should stop punishing criminals or how there shouldn’t be any boundaries put in place for things like abuse or adultery. Sometimes there are temporal consequences for sins, even though the eternal consequences have been completely removed by Christ. For example, an individual can be forgiven before God in heaven for committing literal murder, but that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have to go to jail. A bank robber can be forgiven for robbing banks, but that doesn’t mean we should make him the treasurer of the church. It’s possible for forgiveness to be given at the same time that other steps are put in place in order to guard against temptation and to teach others who may be watching to take sin seriously. The issue that Jesus is dealing with in our text has to do with things like holding grudges, harboring hatred toward others in our hearts, or trying to even with them for doing us wrong. That’s the kind of forgiveness that He’s talking about. 

And so, here are the most common objections there are against forgiving others. The first one is “I don’t have to forgive them because they don’t deserve my forgiveness.” But statements like that completely miss the point. Not deserving forgiveness is the exact thing that makes it forgiveness in the first place. If we deserved forgiveness, then it wouldn’t be forgiveness at all. It would be restitution. The man in the parable that Jesus told obviously did not deserve to have his debt taken away.  He couldn’t do anything to get out of his debt and what he did was the exact thing that put him into all of that debt to begin with. The master had to forgive him out of his own pity.

And the same is true for us. When we ask God for the forgiveness of our sins, we are not asking Him for something that we deserve. We are asking Him for the exact opposite of what we deserve.  And when we receive God’s forgiveness, we are not getting something that we earned, we are getting something that we could never earn. Remember how Saint Paul describes it in Romans chapter 5. He says, “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That’s how God’s forgiveness come to us. It’s a gift, and as Saint Paul adds for emphasis, a free gift at that.

And so, if God’s forgiveness comes to us freely for Christ’s sake, then how can we turn around and act as if other people need to deserve forgiveness from us when we don’t deserve it from God? How can we say that our brothers and sisters in Christ need to earn our forgiveness before we can give it to them, when the very forgiveness we have from the Lord isn’t something that we earned, but something that was given to us by grace? The reason why the unforgiving servant in the parable was condemned by Jesus at the end of the story was because in refusing to forgive others, he showed that he did not really believe in God’s forgiveness at all. In acting as if forgiveness needed to be deserved, he not only showed that he did not understand how forgiveness works, but he was rejecting the undeserved forgiveness of God. We never deserve forgiveness! Forgiveness is always for the underserving. And that’s why we should still give it to other people even if they don’t deserve it from us either.

Another objection that we often hear to forgiving people is that “what they did is too sinful to be forgiven.” But again, the parable that Jesus tells us shows us very clearly why that is never a valid reason to withhold forgiveness. Consider again the details of the story. One conservative estimate is that in ancient times a single talent could have been valued at more than a year’s worth of wages. The man in the parable owed ten thousand talents. He owed ten thousand years’ worth of wages. In our day and age, that would be the equivalent of someone owing something like 500 million dollars. It was a preposterous sum. It went well beyond carelessness and into the realm of purposeful evil. How on earth does a person even go about racking up that kind of debt? You almost have to be trying to do it. But Jesus uses this large sum of money to drive home the point that the servant obviously could never repay what he owed. It was too much. He didn’t have the means, nor did he have the time. In fact, more time would have probably made things even worse. His plea to the master to “have patience with me, and I will pay you everything,” was just as ridiculous as the amount of money that he owed.

And yet, the master forgave him. The master forgave the man’s debt by paying the debt himself. We all know that despite how some people often act these days, debt doesn’t just go away. Eventually someone always has to pay for it. Whether that is you, or your children, or your children’s children, or the people who lent you the money, somebody is still on the hook for it. And while it is certainly possible to argue that other people who have sinned against us have done things so bad that they cannot pay for them themselves, it is impossible to argue that they have done things so bad that not even God can pay for it Himself. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” It tells us in 1 John chapter 2 that Jesus is the “propitiation [or the payment] for our sins; and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” When Jesus died on the cross, He really did pay for all of the sins of all of the sinners who ever lived. His life was given as a ransom not just for some, but as He Himself says elsewhere, for many, as in, for everyone. Therefore, since there is no sin that Jesus did not take upon Himself and bear as His own when He died for all of our sins on the cross, there is no sin that is too bad to be forgiven. Whenever we are tempted to think that someone else has done something that is too sinful to be forgiven, we shouldn’t just look at them and what they did, we should look at Jesus and what He did for us all.

The next objection that we often hear to forgiving others is that “I don’t have to forgive them because they aren’t actually sorry for what they did.” Now, it’s true that no one who is not sorry for their sins receives forgiveness for them. The Bible teaches us all over the place that forgiveness is only received by those who regret their sins and want to do better. As King David says in Psalm 51, “For when I was silent, my bones wasted away…” and, “I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” Or as it says in 1 John 1, “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And as we read in the book of Acts, “Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.” It’s impossible for a person to receive forgiveness who isn’t sorry for his or her sins and won’t stop doing them.

However, we should be very careful not to give the impression that our repentance is what causes God to forgive us, or that the repentance of others is what should cause us to forgive them either. Repentance does not cause forgiveness. Repentance receives forgiveness. Repentance does not remove sin for our souls. God removes sin for our souls. His forgiveness comes not from the suffering of our guilty conscience, but from the suffering of Jesus’ on the cross. Our guilty conscience does not bring God’s forgiveness to us, our guiltily conscience receives the forgiveness that God gives to us on His own. Did the master in the parable forgive the man’s debts because of how sorry he was, or did he do it because of how gracious he himself was? It was the second one. God does not forgive us because of how sorry we are, but because of how merciful He is.

And besides all that, we don’t always know how sorry a person even is. Yes, sometimes we can see their outward actions, which can be revealing, but only God can see what is going on on the inside. It’s entirely possible that the reason why someone hasn’t said sorry to us is not because they aren’t sorry, but because they’re too embarrassed to say it. What if they haven’t apologized for what they’ve done because they are afraid of us? What if it’s not because they aren’t sorry, but because they’re worried about what we’ll say to them, or how we’ll treat them? If we cannot even examine our own hearts well enough to gage the level of our own sincerity and contrition, why would we think we can do that for someone else? Even when we confess our sins, we confess along with them that not even our confession is completely perfect. And yet, we trust that God forgives us not because of the merits of our confession, but because of the merits of His Son. And that’s why we don’t refuse to forgive other people just because we suspect that they might secretively be not sorry for what they’ve done. We stand ready to forgive. We reach out to them for the purpose of forgiving, and we do our best to bring them the forgiveness that they need even if they end up rejecting it. We forgive as Jesus forgave us. We pray for others, as Jesus Himself prayed for us on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

Now the last and the most dangerous objection that we often to hear to why we shouldn’t have to forgive other people is because “forgiving them will only encourage them to do it again.” This is the most dangerous objection that there is because it isn’t just an argument against our forgiving of others, but worst of all, it’s an argument against God’s forgiving of us. It’s an argument against the Christian Gospel. Some churches teach that if we tell repentant individuals, that is, those who are already sorry for their sins and want to do better, that their sins are freely forgiven for Christ’s sake and that it’s unnecessary and impossible for them to do any kind of special penance to make up for them to God, that we are encouraging them to sin even more in the future. They maintain that if we offer God’s forgiveness for free that it will only make people take advantage of it. But that’s not true.  The Gospel does not encourage people to sin. The Gospel is the exact thing that frees us from our sins and give us the strength to fight it. It is the rejection of the Gospel leads to more sin. It is the neglect of the Gospel, and a misapplication and misrepresentation of the Gospel, that leads to more sin. The problem, though, is never with the actual Gospel. The problem is with those who do not believe the Gospel. Remember what Saint Paul tells us in Romans chapter 1 that our attitude should be toward the Gospel. He writes, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes.”

No one who actually believes the Gospel despises it. Nobody who has actually received the forgiveness of their sins in faith abuses it on purpose. No one who actually trusts that God has really taken away their sins in Christ sees it as an encouragement to keep on sinning. Yes, there are those who pretend to believe the Gospel, and twist it in order to defend their own sinful behavior, but they prove by their actions that they don’t really believe the Gospel at all. And yet, none of that means that we should stop preaching the Gospel.

There is nothing in this world that is capable of making us fight off our sin like the knowledge that Christ has already removed the punishment for our sin when He suffered for it on the cross. When we forgive others for their sins, because Jesus has forgiven us for ours, we are doing the best thing that can be done about sin.  We are pointing people to where sin has lost its power. It’s not true that forgiving other people who are sorry for what they’ve done and tell us that they want to do better will only encourage them to do it again. In fact, it is the very thing that will help them stop doing it more in future.

Jesus teaches us in the parable of the unforgiving servant that we should forgive other people just as God has forgiven us. We should forgive them freely, and we should forgive them without any limits. Just because someone doesn’t deserve our forgiveness, that is not a reason not to forgive them. We didn’t deserve forgiveness either, but God still gave it to us by His grace. Just because someone’s sin is really bad, and maybe it is, that doesn’t mean that we should not forgive them either. Our sins are bad too. And Jesus died for every sin on the cross, even the bad ones. Just because we suspect that someone might not be actually sorry, that is not a reason to withhold forgiveness from them either. We can’t always tell if someone is sorry, and our sorrow isn’t the cause of our forgiveness anyway, our sorrowful heart receives it. And just because it’s possible that someone might have trouble with sinning against us again later on, that is not a reason not to forgive them either. It is one of main reasons why we should forgive them. Our forgiveness will help them look to Christ, and learn from Him how to love their neighbor. It will give them the strength to fight their sin in the future.

Not only does our neighbor need ongoing forgiveness, but we need it too. And Jesus gives it to us by grace. To quote again the words of Saint Paul, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” Jesus set aside our sin by nailing it to cross. May we see our neighbors sin their too, and may we forgive them just as Jesus has forgiven us. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The widely accepted position in our society today, so much so that it is taught as scientific fact even to the littlest of children in many of our tax-payer funded schools, is that the world that we live in has come into existence through a long process of transformation and change, and that you and I, if we followed our family history back far enough, could trace our origins to fish swimming in the ocean, and chimpanzees swinging from the trees. In fact, here is a quote from the popular children’s book, Grandmother Fish: “This is our grandmother fish. She lived a long, long, long, long, long time ago. She could wiggle and swim fast. Can you wiggle?... Grandmother Fish had many kinds of grandchildren.” What is being described, of course, in this text geared towards toddlers is none other than the so-called theory of evolution.

Of all the teachings which the Devil has used to lure people away from the Christian Faith, few, if any, have been as successful as this one. How many confirmands have we known who were doing so well in class, only to stop listening, or maybe even quit coming as soon as the pastor brought up the topic of creation? How many college students have gone away to some secular university, only to return home after a single semester renouncing the Bible as mythology and the Catechism as propaganda, because some liberal professor “showed them the evidence” and opened their eyes to the “data.”

Some people, even within our own church body, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, still publicly argue that we should allow space for those who hold to a different belief in this matter than the one give to us by God’s Word. Recently, I was reading a conversation on a website called “Reddit,” which is where you can solicit for advice on all kinds of questions, and the discussion between supposed members of LCMS congregations was whether or not it is necessary to hold to a literal six-day creation. The overwhelming opinion was that, at the very least, it should be an open question. In their minds, everyone should be able to decide for him or herself, and as long as you don’t force your views on someone else, that’s what really matters the most.

People talk and talk and talk about how this world came into existence, but there’s just one problem with all of their talking. None of them were there to see it actually happen. But God was. And this morning, in Church, we get to hear from Him exactly how it took place. So, on the basis of our Old Testament lesson from Genesis chapters 1 and 2 allow me to explain to you all in today’s sermon why it is absolutely necessary for our Faith that we reject the theory of evolution.

The first, and most obvious reason, why we must reject the theory of evolution is because it undermines the clear Word of God. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That’s what the Bible says. That’s what the Scriptures plainly teach us. There wasn’t some big bang. There wasn’t some giant collision that started a process where things formed together over long periods of time. Not only did God create everything that exists out of nothing, but He did all of it in six literal days.  On the first day, He created light. On the second day, He created the sky. On the third day He created the land, the seas, and the plants. On the fourth day, He created the stars. On the fifth day, He created the birds and the fish. On the sixth day, He created other animals, as well as His most important creation, humanity. And on the seventh day, when all of His work of creating was done, God rested.

Even though Genesis chapters 1 and 2 give us a very straightforward account of how this world came into existence, there are many people today who do everything that they can to try and justify why they don’t have to believe it. Obviously, non-religious individuals simply dismiss this account as a fairytale, like they do with everything else in the Bible. Even though there are many things that they cannot explain about their theories, and plenty of things that they accept as true without having seen it for themselves, they won’t accept this thing. But, within the Church there are some who try and get around what we hear in Genesis, not by saying that we should dismiss the text entirely, but that we should not read it literally. I still remember how one of my professors when I was in seminary in England told me that the beginning of Genesis was a liturgical text, not a historical one. Well, what exactly does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. It means that you don’t have to believe what it says. 

And certainly, that interpretation would make sense if other parts of the Bible taught us to do it. Obviously, there are some passages in God’s Word that we shouldn’t take literally, but the question is whether or not this is one of them. And all throughout the Scriptures we are taught that it isn’t. First off, the entire book of Genesis is recorded as literal history. This isn’t like the book of Revelation where we are told by the human author that God inspired to write it that it was a vision. Just like Noah really did build an Ark, Abraham really did have a son in old age, Jacob actually did fight with his twin brother Esau, and Joseph really did get sold into slavery, the account of creation is a historical account too. When Moses gave the 10 Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, the reason why the people weren’t supposed to work on the Sabbath day was because that’s when God rested. Moses writes, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” It sounds like Moses wants us to take the creation account literally. Or what about what Jesus Himself says in Mark chapter 10. There our Lord argues against divorce by saying, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” It sounds like Jesus wants us to take the text literally too.

Now, the other fancy way that some people try and hold on to this text at the same time that they also hold onto the theory of evolution, is by arguing that the word “day” in Genesis doesn’t mean a literal “24-hour day,” but that it represents a different understanding of the word which means “millions and millions of years.” But not only is the Hebrew word for “day” used all throughout the Old Testament to mean a literal 24-hour period, but God apparently anticipated this objection and clarified within the creation account itself that He wanted it to be understood in the normal way. What does the Holy Spirit tell us happened at the end of each day of creation, “there was evening and there was morning.” That’s what kind of day it was. It wasn’t a symbolic day. It wasn’t a figurative day. It was a plain old regular day, just like the days we have now where the sun goes up and then the sun goes down.

If we are going to accept the theory of evolution, that means that we are going to have to throw out the Bible. It means that we would be allowed to dismiss the parts of the Bible that we don’t like, until eventually there would be barely anything left in the Bible at all. And sadly, that is exactly how it usually goes. As soon as an individual or a Church body begins to question Genesis 1 and 2, it leads them down the path of rejecting the authority of the Scriptures. And when you belittle the very thing that God uses to give us the gift of saving faith, then faith doesn’t have much of a chance to survive.

The second reason why we Christians must reject the theory of evolution is because it undermines the dignity of man. Besides going against the clear Word of God, evolution also gives us a totally different understanding of who we are as people. According to evolutionary theory, we humans have the same origin as other animals do. We are the result of fish changing into lizards, who changed into squirls, who changed into monkeys, who eventually changed into people. As one popular podcast host frequently says, “We’re all just a bunch of gorillas.”

But that, of course, is not the way that God teaches us to look at one another, and not the way that He teaches us to think about ourselves. God doesn’t just teach us in Genesis 1 and 2 that He made everything that there is, and carefully designed all of it, but that there is one thing that He made even more special than everything else. And that something is you and me. Unlike everything else in creation, the Bible tells us that God made the first man and woman in His own image and likeness. As our text says, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” If we would continue on in Genesis, where God zooms in on the creation account giving even more details of how it happened, we would also learn how He carefully formed the man from the dust of the ground, breathed into His nostrils the breath of life, and took out one of his ribs in order to make the woman from it. 

And God didn’t just make the first man and woman special, He made all of us special too. As we read in Psalm 139, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

When you teach people that, in essence, we are just the same as animals, except we’ve evolved more than they have, it shouldn’t surprise you when they start behaving like animals and don’t apologize for it. When you tell people that they have the same moral accountability as a rat or a tiger, then obviously what’s going to stop them from taking zero responsibility for anything that they do wrong? How do you even know what’s right and wrong? If the entire universe is really built upon the premise of the “survival of the fittest,” then morality is just a myth. But we know that that isn’t true. You don’t need a science book to tell you that when a baby and dog are both trapped in a burning building, you save the baby. Human life matters more than animal life. They aren’t the same.

Isn’t it interesting that the theory of evolution argues for the gradual change of species overtime to perpetuate their existence, when there are many kinds of animals that we supposedly evolved from in the past that are still around today? If we humans came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys? And if monkeys came from frogs, then why are there still frogs? It doesn’t make any sense. What does make sense though is that each and every individual person that we meet is the unique creation of God in heaven, and that they bear special dignity, just by virtue of their existence. You and I are actually important.

And finally, the last reason why we Christians must reject the theory of evolution is because it undermines the goodness of God, the origin of sin, and whole work of our redemption. The only way that the theory of evolution works is if from the very beginning there was a possibility for the world to decay and change. Evolution requires death. It demands that things be able to die off, so that other, better things, can take their place. The entire premise of this theory is founded upon the idea that death is just the way that it’s supposed to be, and that death is built into the very fabric of the universe.

But, again, when we look at Genesis chapters 1 and 2, we see something completely different. We learn that death was not a part of God’s original design for the world. What was God’s attitude toward every single thing that He made? At the end of each day, our text tells us that He saw that it was good. And how did God feel about all of creation when He was finally done making it? At the conclusion of the sixth day, “God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” That’s what creation was like in the very beginning. It wasn’t just okay. It wasn’t just pretty good. It was very good. Things didn’t need to evolve to get better. Things we’re just right the way that they were. Who can look at something like death and say that it’s a good thing? Who can watch a loved one die, and say that it’s very good? That’s insane. But that’s what evolution requires.

Those who claim that God could have used something like evolution to bring creation into existence, end up blaming God for evil without knowing it. If God always worked through evolution, which requires death, then He would be responsible for death. God would be the very reason why death exists. But God is not the reason why death exists. Death exists because of sin. As the Bible tells us elsewhere, “death is the wages of sin.” The reason why people die, is not because death is natural, but because we bring death upon ourselves through our sin. Adam and Eve brought death into the world when they disobeyed God, and we keep the death right on going when we join them in disobey Him too.

Evolution is not just one false teaching that we can put into a corner and leave all by itself. Eventually that teaching will spread into every other part of Christian doctrine. Why would we need a Savior from sin, if there is no such thing as sin, because sin is just a social construct? Why would we need God to deliver us from death, if He is the cause of death, and death is just another part of life? Why would we need Jesus to heal this world of its brokenness, if it’s not broken, and this is the way that it’s always worked? Evolution takes away our hope. It robs us of our dignity and it undercuts our need for Christ. It makes the cross of Jesus into just another random and meaningless act, which is part of a long, long line of other random and meaningless acts.

No Christian in good conscience can accept the theory of evolution without completely undermining the Gospel. Yes, there are some questions which can be asked in good faith, some of them we can use our sanctified reason to answer, and others we may have to simply be content with the knowledge that God has given us. For example, I’ve often heard the comment from well-meaning Christians, “If the world isn’t as old as the scientists say, then why does it appear so old when we look at?” Certainly, we can recognize that God made a mature earth. He made a livable earth. Even in the creation account we hear about God making trees fully grown and rivers already flowing. When we look at the mountains and the canyons, we are seeing things that God may have made exactly that way from the beginning. Another question has to do with fossils and the existence of certain animals that we don’t see walking around anymore. As for the fossils, perhaps they could have arrived at their unique destination buried under layers of rock through some kind of catastrophic event. One time in the Bible, God flooded the entire world for 150 days. He opened up the vaults of heaven and allowed water to burst forth from the deep places of the earth. My guess is that something like that event probably led to some animals dying and being buried in some strange places. As for the animals that no longer exist, such as the so-called dinosaurs, there are plenty of animals that don’t exist anymore, some of which have died off even in our own lifetime. I heard a statistic the other day that there are more tigers in captivity in the state of Texas, then currently alive in the wild. Certain kinds of animals not being around anymore should bother us in the slightest.

These are reasonable responses to some of the questions that we might get asked as Christians who believe in Genesis 1 and 2. And yet, we should not be so naïve as to think that they will satisfy our opponents. Not matter what we say, some people are still going to think that we are simpletons and idiots for believing what the Bible says. We need to be okay with that. As Saint Paul says in Romans 3, “Let God be true though everyone were a liar.” What do we care about what other people say? We know what God’s says, and that’s all that matters. On the other hand, I don’t think that we should so quickly give into the accusation that what we believe about creation is unreasonable. What’s easy to believe, that we humans came from apes or that we are the unique creation of a loving God? If you were driving down the street and you saw an abandoned house on the side of the road, how would you assume that it got there? Is it more probable that it just popped up spontaneously, or that it morphed into a house from a tree? Or does it make more sense that someone built it? It’s the same when we look at creation. When we behold this beautiful and intricate world that we live in, how could we not believe that somebody made it?

In Genesis chapters 1 and 2 we get God’s own account of how He did it. There is so much meaning for our lives packed into these few verses. We aren’t governed by chance and everything isn’t simply utilitarian. Our existence actually matters. You and I aren’t just a clump of cells, which when broken down are no different than any other clump of cells. We have value. We have purpose. We are precious in the sight of God our Creator.

God proved how important we are to Him not only in the way that He made us, but also in the way that He redeemed us. When the second person of the Trinity entered into our world, He didn’t take on the form of a butterfly or a tree. He became a Man. The author of creation, stepped into His creation in order to heal it of its brokenness. He took on our flesh, to make up for our failures. He was born, lived, suffered, and died, to forgive us of our sins and put us back together. 

That’s how much God cares about this world. That’s how much He is involved in this world. That’s how much He loves it. And that’s how much He loves you. He made you. It didn’t happen by accident. He redeemed you. That didn’t happen by accident either. So don’t let yourself be troubled by demonic and dumb teachings like evolution. Trust in God’s Word. It isn’t just right. It’s better. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.