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.