Colossians 1 verses 15 to 29

Paul’s letter to the Colossians was partly written in order to combat false teaching. The church at Colossae had been infiltrated by what is called syncretism which is the combining of different, often contradictory beliefs, and seeking to mix together the practices of various schools of thought.

Some at Colossae were trying to combine ideas from Greek philosophy, paganism and Judaism with Christian truth.

So the Colossian Christians desperately needed direction and guidance as to what was actually true and reliable. They needed to know the truth about Jesus and the gospel - and so God inspired Paul to write this letter partly as a response to this confusion of beliefs.

And of course this is very relevant for us today because numerous ideas about God and spirituality abound, and there are thousands of books claiming to offer spiritual truth and guidance.

But there is only one book on which we can rely totally - and in which we can we find the absolute truth about God, life, and the world we live in – and this of course is the bible – God’s written word.

The bible is God’s revealed truth for mankind and as such we can place our faith and trust in it and believe it. We can take it to heart because it is the inspired word of the living God.

And if we do this, we’ll actually find that it leads us to God – because His Spirit and presence - inhabits and rests upon its pages.

We speak about the Canon of scripture – the books which go to make up the bible and are considered the authoritative Word of God. The word "canon" comes from a Greek word meaning a "rule" or "measuring stick".

In the ancient world a canon was used by builders to check and see if the walls they were building were straight. This rule or measuring stick had a perfectly straight edge and builders would lay it alongside what they were building to make sure they weren’t straying off course.

A modern equivalent would be something like a plumb line. And scripture – the bible - is our canon – our plumb line – our reference point for what is true and reliable about God and life and death and the world we live in.

If we’re unsure about whether some teaching we’ve heard is correct, we need to lay it alongside scripture – and if it is in line with what the bible teaches – then we can place our faith and trust in it.

Let me give you an example. Before I became a Christian I used to believe in re-incarnation. But is this a valid belief? What does the bible say? Well the writer to the Hebrews tells us that people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.

This tells me that re-incarnation is a false belief. Of course I then have the choice to believe or reject what the bible says - but as a Christian I choose to place my faith in the inspired word of God.

So, getting back to Colossians – God through Paul was adding to the Canon of scripture. He was countering false beliefs and setting believers straight on what was true and reliable about God and Jesus.

And in today’s passage Paul specifically addresses some of these false beliefs. The first false belief was that spirit was good but that matter was evil and therefore God would not have come to earth as a true human being in bodily form.

However Paul asserts in these verses that Jesus is both human and divine. Jesus he says is the image of the invisible God and in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell – verses 5 and 19.

And he tells us that Jesus died on the cross as a human being – in his fleshly body verse 22 – to provide a way for us to be reconciled to God.

In short Paul tells us plainly that Jesus is God made flesh – God with skin on.

Another false belief was that God did not create the world because he would not have created evil. And there is a similar type of belief around today.

Lots of people - like Stephen Fry for instance - say they don’t believe in God or reject Him, because they see evil and suffering in the world – and blame Him for it.

However Paul tells us that Jesus is the creator of all things – both in heaven and on earth – things visible and invisible.

This includes not just human beings and all the plant and animal life we see around us - but also the invisible angelic and demonic beings who inhabit the spiritual realm – the thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers listed here in verse 16

But what we need to understand is that although God created the world and everything in it – He didn’t create it as evil. When God first created both human and angelic beings – they weren’t evil.

The evil that we see in the world originated with Satan. In the books of Isaiah and Ezekiel we read about how – before the world was created – Satan became corrupted by pride and conceived sin – and became the source of all the evil.

And then in Revelation chapter 12 we read about a battle in heaven – between the angels who remained loyal to God and those who rebelled with Satan.

We are told – “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”

And just as the angelic beings weren’t created evil, God didn’t create mankind to be evil.

On the contrary when He first created Adam and Eve – they lived in perfect harmony with Him and each other and the world around them. As we are told in the first chapter of Genesis – God saw everything that He had made and it was very good.

It was only after Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan that sin and death entered the world and God’s perfect creation was spoiled.

So yes, God allows evil and suffering in the world but He didn’t initially create the world to be like this. His perfect creation was spoilt by Satan who spread the rebellion he’d lead in heaven – to earth – and corrupted mankind.

And of course the reason for Jesus coming – was to start to put right everything that had gone wrong with the world. So Jesus came to make it possible for humans to be reconciled to God.

As Paul says in verse 20 – through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things whether things on earth or in heaven by making peace through the blood of his cross.

And Jesus came to establish peace. He came to teach us to love God and to love each other - so that we could start to live again as the humans He originally intended us to be.

You see in the Garden of Eden before the Fall, when Adam and Eve were first created, they loved God and each other perfectly. They weren’t selfish or cruel or bullying. They didn’t fight or lie or cheat. 

They were kind and generous and loving. They were humans as God intended humans to be.

And in the Lords prayer we pray “thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In Heaven where God’s will is perfectly established there is no suffering or pain or strife.

In an imperfect world where evil exists there is bound to be suffering and although this side of heaven we will never fully understand why God allows it – we can be sure that He takes no pleasure in it. On the contrary He works to alleviate it.

So rather than blaming or rejecting God for all that is wrong with the world   - it is far more constructive to acknowledge our own sin and rebellion against Him and then seek with His help to extend His kingdom on earth.

Another false teaching in the Colossian church was that Jesus was not the unique son of God – but rather one of many intermediaries between God and man.

And today many people share a similar belief and think that there are many intermediaries between God and man and many paths to God.

I used to believe that all the major world religions were paths to God and that God had raised up various great religious teachers around the world at various times – whose teachings about love and peace were essentially the same.

In my mind all these religious teachers were sons or representatives of God.

But Paul affirms in verse 15 that Jesus is the unique Son of God. He is not only the creator of all things but he is also the “firstborn over all creation.”

The phrase “firstborn” means “heir or owner.” Firstborn is a title of honour or position.

It means that no one comes before Jesus or indeed anywhere near him -and that he is the exalted one over all creation because He is the Creator.

And as Luke tells us in the book of Acts – “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved."

Jesus is the only one who can reconcile us to God – because he is the only person ever to have led a perfect life  – and to have offered his perfect life on the cross for us.

He is the only one to carry our sins in his body on the cross and to shed his blood on our behalf – so that we could be forgiven and restored to a relationship with God.

Another false teaching in the Colossian church was that people could only find God through special or secret knowledge – rather than through faith in Jesus

Again I held a similar sort of view. I used to believe that the more loving and kind we became the higher we ascended spiritually and the closer to God we’d get.

But what I’d completely failed to understand is that the main problem for all human beings is our sinfulness – that however kind or loving we may sometimes be – there is always a part of us that is capable of malice and hatred and evil.

As Paul says in verse 21 - you were once estranged and hostile in mind – doing evil deeds – or as another translation puts it - You used to be far from God. Your thoughts made you his enemies, and you did evil things.

Every human however nice or seemingly good they may be, has within them the capacity to sin – to think and do evil things.

And this is our fundamental problem because it separates and cuts us off from relationship with God.

If we are to be restored to a relationship with God – our sin needs to be atoned for – and this of course is why Jesus died for us on the cross.

Because he loves us – he took responsibility for our sin himself and was punished and died in our place. And by doing this, as Paul says in verse 21 he has made it possible for us to be reconciled to God.

But in order to avail ourselves of everything that Jesus has done for us we need to make a choice.

Like Stephen Fry we can decide to reject God and blame Him for the mess in the world - or alternately we can decide to invite God into our lives and allow Him to direct and guide us – and then with His help - work to make the world a better place.

 And this is what repentance means. It means choosing to cease rebellion against God and choosing instead to co-operate with him – and to seek to live in obedience to Him.

But our repentance must be genuine. Some people assent mentally to Christian beliefs and believe that Jesus has died for them - but then continue to live to please themselves. They don’t truly surrender their lives to God and seek to live under His direction and guidance.

They want to be forgiven but they don’t want a God who will make any demands on them.

But  if we truly repent Jesus will – at our invitation - come into our lives and make his home with us. His spirit will come to live in us. 

This is what Paul is referring to in verse 27 when he talks of Christ in you – the hope of glory.

And then with God’s help we can start to use the gifts and talents 

He’s given us to play our part in extending his kingdom and helping the world to become a better place.

In the name of the living God. Amen.

St. Paul’s letter to the Christians at Colossae – Sunday 18th Jan 2015

St. Paul’s letter to the Christians at Colossae – Sunday 18^th Jan 2015         

The letter to the Colossians answers many of the questions people have today about the Christian faith and how to live it. Indeed the principal reason why Paul wrote to the Colossians was because he wanted them to become mature Christians – to be able to know, to understand, and then to put into practise confidently but humbly, unashamedly but lovingly, their calling by God to be salt and light in His world, servants, witnesses, His instruments and channels of His Truth and His love, which are for all people that they might be saved and become His people. Colossians answers many of the questions people have about what it means to be a faithful Christian.

Some of these questions, I know, are very much on the minds of people here; either because they’ve raised them or because they have been too afraid or embarrassed to raise them: you can tell a great deal from what people don’t ask you or don’t say to you. And of course the answers that the Gospel of the kingdom of Jesus gives to people are not always what they want to hear: I do find lots of people, both outside the Church and even inside the Church, holding views on Christianity – often quite tenaciously – that are clearly at odds with the teaching of Jesus and his apostles. 

Sometimes I struggle to know where on earth they got them from; but more often than not their views are very obviously the result of that person accepting as authoritative a higher authority than that of Jesus and the Apostles: sometimes that authority claims to be sympathetic to or even supportive of Christianity; at other times it actually takes pleasure in saying that it is plainly at odds with Jesus and the apostles. And sometimes, let’s be honest, it’s just because the answer treads on the eggshell of our most cherished likes and prejudices; or else, well, it’s just plain inconvenient – what Jesus and the apostles say - for what I want to be or what I want to do. No wonder then people often find the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, for a number of reasons - social, intellectual, emotional and practical, really very hard; and so go off somewhere where they will hear what they want to hear or else just give up on Christianity altogether.

Over the years I have come to value three particular signs of Christian maturity. We’ll find Paul talking about them or touching on them as we study this letter; but they are to be found pretty much everywhere in his letters and in the teaching of Jesus. I say ‘Christian’ maturity because these three are often – not always, but often – at odds with popular ideas about what constitutes human maturity. The first is this: accepting the ‘Lordship’ of Jesus Christ in our lives and evaluating the truth and the worth of all other claims to authority for our lives by His authority – and not vice versa. 

And this covers all, every, area of our living and thinking – whatever the cost to ourselves socially, politically, financially, or whatever else. But if we do genuinely accept and apply His authority in our lives we will find that he will never let us down, whatever the world says or does that is at odds with him or in some way persecutes us. 

Why? Well because ‘the One who is in you’, as the apostle John tells us, ‘is greater than the one who is in the world’ (I John 4:4)  

The second sign is this: desiring to know and to grow within the local family of Christ. Desiring to know Christ more (through prayer, bible study, fellowship and service) and to grow in our lives the fruit that changes not only our lives but the lives of those around us. God chooses, says Paul, to bring others to know His truth and His love chiefly through you and me: this is how God has chosen to spread the good news: it is just as Jesus commanded. It is when others see in far from perfect us changes for the better in attitude and behaviour that are out of character for the people they thought they knew, that Jesus is able to knock on the door of their lives. Whereas all the time we are content to stay as we are, to keep Christ at arm’s length, to bow to the social authority that says that talking about one’s faith is taboo, or to invest our time in things other than the nurture and growth of our faith, we are at best remaining as spiritual babies in need of wrap around care, at worst actively, by our inactivity, preventing others from coming to know the saving and life-giving truth and love of Jesus.

Thirdly, not being ashamed to confess that ‘Jesus is Lord’ of our lives – however feebly or failingly we manage to get it right. Over the years I have come to realise that fear of what others might think of us is, at heart, for most people, the greatest barrier to their growth to Christian maturity.

Well, just for the next few weeks, on Sundays, we shall be looking at this letter to the Colossians expressing Paul’s great desire that his readers should grow to maturity in faith. It is a letter in which I very much hope that you will find some of the answers to some of your questions about the Christian faith. You can prayerfully study these through the Study Notes accompanying the sermon: better still, join the Ladies’ Monday afternoon Study Group or come to the Lent Study Group on Monday evenings at 8pm in the church starting on 27^th Feb. Put it in your diaries now and let me know if you’d like to come. The topic will be ‘How to grow in Christian maturity’, using Colossians as our primary text; an eminently suitable topic for the season of Lent. Well I hope you agree!

I just want to say a few more things about the letter and in particular about these introductory verses that we had for our reading this morning.

Colossians, one of the shortest of Paul’s letters – did I hear one or two sighs of relief? – was written from Ephesus somewhere between AD 53 – 55. Paul was writing to a young church discovering what it was like to believe in Jesus Christ and to follow him. 

He wants to encourage them to explore this new reality and to frame their lives accordingly.  It seems that some of them were being strongly influenced by the local mystery religions or by Judaism, and tempted by others or themselves to bring in additional requirements for what it meant to be a Christian and to follow Christ. This of course can be true of any age, with different ‘churchmanships’ preferring or even insisting that Christ is worshipped more faithfully in their particular tradition or style. 

But Paul will have nothing of this and urges them to be content with the Gospel and with what they already are ‘in Christ’, in belonging to Him and simply ‘taking up their cross’ and following Him. So, knowing what the Gospel, the ‘good news’ about Jesus, is and then walking ‘in Christ’, i.e. genuinely accepting His ‘lordship’ in our lives, is all that is needed. And the truth, says Paul, us that you Colossians already have this: so don’t look elsewhere for more.

After his initial greeting in verses 1 and 3, the next 6 verses are Paul’s prayer of thanksgiving for the Church at Colossae, for what God has done for them and in them. 

And here we learn a vitally important principle to apply in our own lives: we will find what we seek and desire in the Christian life if we begin not with questions, not with complaints, not with excuses, but with thanks – thanks for what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ and what He will do for us as we are prepared to give up our independence and rebellion and accept His lordship in our lives. It is a heart full of thankfulness and a voice full of praise that will lead us into greater understanding, greater confidence, greater peace, greater joy, greater courage, and greater effectiveness as Christians. People have said to Joe and to me, ‘Why is it in your sermons you keep on about the cross and repentance?’ Well, because that is where all of us need to keep returning in order to remind ourselves of why we are here and to inspire us to greater self-sacrifice, which is the only way to Christian maturity. 

It is when we look at the cross and see the love that God has for us that our thankfulness can flow again and our lives become more effective channels of the grace of God – which is our calling.

Paul v1 is not writing as just some private individual but as ‘an apostle of Jesus Christ’, his God-given task - and refers to the Colossians as ‘saints and faithful brothers and sisters’. Three things are very important to note here: first, the authority with which Paul writes; secondly, that the early Church understood itself from the very start to be a family, a family intimately related in Christ; and, thirdly, that he describes them, as elsewhere, as saints – not because they are especially advanced in holiness but purely to describe their calling, which is to be ‘set apart’ for God’s work. And the word ‘faithful’ here means not so much ‘having faith’ but being ‘firmly committed’ to Christ. It begs the question, does it not? Is there any other kind of genuine Christian than a ‘committed’ one? How often do we hear people described in sneering terms as ‘committed Christians’. Next time you hear that phrase, ask the person what they mean by it; and what on earth the opposite is!

In verses 4&5 Paul tells them that he thanks God for their faith, their love, and their hope; all these the result of what? Of hearing ‘the word of truth’ v5, and ‘comprehending God’s grace within it’ v6,  allowing it to produce the faith, love, and hope for which he thanks God. What we learn here is how God has chosen to bring the Gospel of Christ’s redeeming and life-changing love to  people: it is through us, through ordinary Christians. Where its truth is recognised and its command obeyed it will produce the fruit God requires.  And what we must understand is this: that the ‘Gospel’ is not primarily an invitation or a technique for changing people’s lives, or a ‘lifestyle choice’ (as I head on the radio the other day): it is a command to be obeyed and a power let loose in the world. And this is why it encounters so much opposition.

But as these verses clearly show us, God’s grace works primarily through the proclamation of the Gospel: and the proof that God’s grace has indeed taken hold, by the working of His spirit (v8), is in the presence and practise of faith, love, and hope in the local church family, one desiring to grow to maturity. 

Genesis 1 verses 1 to 5

When I was doing my Reader Training we were told to view the first 10 chapters of Genesis – including this morning’s reading - as myth.

Our teacher told us that the stories of Creation, Adam and Eve and Noah were somehow less reliable than the rest of God’s word and were simply attempts by early man to account for the world they found themselves in.

I however fundamentally disagree with this view and this morning I want to try and explain to you why I disagree – from both a spiritual and a scientific viewpoint.

Firstly the teaching about Adam and Noah runs through the whole bible. For 

instance Luke traces Jesus’ ancestry back to Adam, and Jesus himself makes reference to the first two chapters of Genesis in Matthew and Mark’s gospels, when he is talking about divorce.

He says to the Pharisees – have you not read that in the beginning God created them male and female.

Jesus also refers to Noah in Matthew and Luke’s gospel when talking about his second coming. He says; “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”

We’ve been looking at Paul’s letter to the Romans recently in which Paul bases some of his teaching on Adam. Adam is also mentioned in some of Paul’s other letters

And Peter in his letter, tells us that following his crucifixion, Jesus went and preached to the imprisoned spirits – to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.

And perhaps most famously in the ten commandments recorded in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, God tells us to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy, because in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day.

So, the problem with viewing the first few chapters of Genesis as myth is that these chapters also feature prominently throughout the bible - in both the Old and New Testaments – and if these chapters are somehow unreliable – how reliable then is the teaching of Jesus and Paul, not to mention Peter or indeed the ten commandments?

The bible is like a tapestry and the teaching in the early chapters of Genesis is like a thread that runs through the entire tapestry. If this teaching is somehow unreliable - then the whole tapestry starts to fall apart.

My own view is that all scripture - including the first 10 chapters of Genesis,  is God breathed and thoroughly reliable - and that Adam and Eve just like Noah - were most certainly actual historical characters.

But surely science disproves the early chapters of Genesis some of you will say. But does it?

I think not. On the contrary there is a lot of very good Creation science backed by numerous Professors and Doctors particularly in the United States - which not only supports the idea of Noah’s flood – but which also points towards the earth being much much younger than many evolutionary  scientists would have us believe.

The trouble for Christians – particularly in this country - is that such is the grip of Darwin’s theory of Evolution on the scientific community – that anyone who questions it is labelled as some sort of fruitcake – even if their evidence is very strong.

So what are some of the problems with Darwinian evolutionary science which is repeatedly presented to us as being factual when in fact much of it is theoretical?

Firstly the fossil record is a big problem – because it doesn’t show evolution occurring as Darwin envisaged it.

There are huge evolutionary gaps across all sorts of species - with dinosaurs for instance suddenly appearing in the fossil record with very little evidence for their forbears.

Likewise although some scientists confidently proclaim that some fragments of skull which they’ve just dug up are a missing link in the human evolutionary chain - frequently this is conjecture at best – and actually what they’re looking at is either a human or monkey skull.

Some of you may have heard of Piltdown man for instance which was supposed to be a "missing link" a mixture of human and ape with the noble brow of Homo sapiens and a primitive jaw.

However instead of being almost a million years old, the skull fragments were found to be 500 years old, and the jaw in fact belonged to an orangutan.

I mention this story as it demonstrates how desperate evolutionary fossil hunters are to find evidence for Darwin’s theory and how easily they can be duped.

Similarly, Coelacanths - a fish - were said by evolutionists to have become extinct 70 million years ago and to have been the forerunners of fish which supposedly turned into air breathing land animals. However one was caught off the coast of Africa in 1938 and others have been caught since- and they haven’t evolved at all.

And there are significant problems with the whole Geological Table which supposedly classifies the ages of various rock layers found around the world.

Starting with the Pre Cambrian rock strata and going all the way through various stages including Jurassic and Cretaceous – this table supposedly records the times and orders in which various rocks were laid down as the earth evolved over many millions of years.

However, in addition to missing strata in many places, and strata in the wrong order, with supposedly older strata on top of supposedly younger strata, sometimes the same rock sequence is repeated many times.

Moreover these rock strata in which fossils are found, have been dated by geologists in order to allow time for Darwinian evolution to occur – but there are huge problems with dating rocks.

Radiometric dating which is commonly used - relies on making various assumptions about constant decay rates and unknown original levels of argon, lead, potassium and thorium in rocks. But this is a very unreliable method.

For instance, two hundred year old rocks from well-documented Hawaiian volcanoes which erupted in 1800 and 1801 were radiometrically dated as being somewhere between 140 million and 2.96 billion years old.

In fact the whole notion of trying to date rocks – or parts of the universe - is a bit of a nonsense because when the world was first created the rocks and planetary systems would already have looked extremely old.

When Adam was first created – if you asked someone his age they’d have probably said early twenties. And when Jesus turned water into wine – the wine would have appeared to have been a good vintage - but was actually brand new.

And rather than there being millions of years between each layer of rock strata as evolutionists suggest, there is lots of evidence for the strata being laid down very quickly, for instance as the result of a worldwide flood – just like Noah’s flood - with millions of creatures being rapidly buried under huge mud flows and then fossilised.

I mean if someone asked you to bury a dinosaur – even if you had a JCB digger - you’d be a bit put out.

What calamitous event could bury so many of these huge creatures rapidly and preserve their remains as fossils?

A flood fits the bill very well.

And furthermore floods leave the layers of strata that we see all over the world – with creatures being buried under the flood debris according to their ability to escape the rising waters.

As floods settle out – initially the heavy rocks fall to the bottom followed by smaller rocks – and the heavier soils – and then the lighter soils and then sand and silt – and you end up with the layers of strata which we see all over the world.

And far from being millions or even billions of years old as evolutionists would have us believe – looking at the evidence, it is more likely that these layers of earth formed rapidly as the flood waters started to recede.

This is why in some places you can find fossilised trees that penetrate several of the earth’s strata (see above) – and why in some places the rock layers are bent and folded over – although the rocks show no signs of cracking.

If the layers were still moist when they were laid down – of course there would be no cracking.

Now please don’t suppose that I’m saying that all evolutionary theory is untrue. Creationists believe in micro evolution but not in macro evolution.

Micro evolution is a single species evolving with small changes – as opposed to macro evolution which is one species evolving into another.

So for instance we can see how several breeds of dog have micro - evolved from early breeds of dog - but the point is they are still dogs.

They haven’t grown wings or feathers. In fact most animals seem to have a blueprint of what a healthy member of that species should be like – and the further away they get from that blueprint the less fertile they become.

Some dog breeds for instance have suffered with fertility problems as their breeding has become extreme.

And evolutionary scientists have done numerous experiments with fruit flies – bombarding them with various doses of radiation in order to get them to evolve.

The experiments have merely resulted in dead or deformed fruit flies and showed that fruit flies could not evolve.

Similarly, Michigan State University evolutionary biologists have searched for signs of evolution in bacteria for 20 years, tracking 40,000 generations. In the end, the only changes that had occurred were degenerative.

And in addition to the numerous problems evolutionists have with the fossil record, dating rocks and failed laboratory experiments – there are several other strong scientific reasons which Creationists point to, which suggest a young earth.

I haven’t got time to go into any detail but I’ll give you a brief overview of just a few of these.

According to evolutionary theory, comets, which are basically large chunks of dust, ice and rocks, are supposed to be the same age as the solar system - about 4.6 billion years old. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it starts to thaw and loses so much of its material. Most comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.

The total energy stored in the earth's magnetic field is decreasing. At the current rate of decrease this field could not be more than 20,000 years old.

DNA decays and cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA have been recovered from fossils allegedly many millions of years old - including dinosaur fossils.

The radioactive element carbon-14 breaks down quickly—within a few thousand years – but it is still found in fossils that are supposedly millions of years old.

I could go on but hopefully you’re starting to see that when David Attenborough tells you that such and such animal has evolved over millions of years – you need to take what he says with a large pinch of salt.

It is clear to me that bees for instance didn’t evolve their ability to make honey but that God created and designed them with that ability.

Furthermore he designed honey so that it would taste good.

It is clear to me that the world we live in is intelligently designed by God.

I mean if you blew up a million piles of random bits of metal, would you find anything as simple as a bicycle wheel in the debris? The answer is no – because a bicycle wheel is intelligently designed.

And as well as creating the Universe the writer to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus also sustains it. He says - The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

Jesus keeps the whole planetary system in order including the earth’s orbit round the sun.

What happens if you take your hands off your steering wheel? Your car will veer off course.

And it’s the same with our whole planetary system. If God didn’t sustain it planets would start careering off course.

There would be no order – there would be chaos and all life would end.

So to conclude I hope this morning that next time you read the early Chapters of Genesis – you’ll be able to see that perhaps the idea of God creating the world we live in in six days isn’t perhaps quite so ridiculous after all.

And that perhaps the evolutionary science we’re bombarded with – isn’t quite as conclusive as many would have us believe.

And perhaps there was indeed a catastrophic worldwide flood – and the fossils which are found all over the world bear testimony to that flood.

In the name of the living God. Amen

By the way if any of you would like to find out more about Creation science, I’d recommend looking at the website of the Institute for Creation Research which is very interesting.