1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word, as we continue our summer sermon series on, Defending the Christian Faith, is taken from Romans 8:18-23, it’s entitled, “Fallen, but Created…and Redeemed,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. It figures that a sermon series on defending the Christian faith would take up evolution. For over 150 years, Darwinian evolution has kept some people from even listening to the claims of Christ. It has also pulled some Christians away from their faith. So, today we turn to the subject of evolution. Charles Darwin had not been the first to propose a theory of evolution. What he did was propose a mechanism for evolution that people found believable. He claimed that biological differences arose accidentally between various humans, dogs, or horses or whatever other organisms. Certain characteristics gave the organisms possessing them a greater ability to survive than others. An organism survived because it had better equipment for survival. Survival of the fittest—all by chance. None of it required the intervention of God.
3. People used to think that God must be behind the intricacies of nature, but Darwin assured them that no supernatural designer was necessary. Since his theory of natural selection could explain any life form, a Creator could be dispensed with. Many jumped on the bandwagon and said that the world—as they now saw it—was no longer big enough for God. It could get to be the way it was all by itself. People still think so. Evolution, someone once said, enables a person to be both intellectually fulfilled and an atheist at the same time.
4. But, evolution is a religion, even when it’s embraced by atheists. Evolutionist Michael Ruse once debated creationist Duane Gish. He objected strongly when Gish said that evolution is a religion. But, upon later reflection, Ruse admitted that Gish had a point. At the end of his book Darwin’s God, Cornelius Hunter observes that evolution ultimately is about God. It’s about God’s presence or absence in the world. Darwin might even have been trying to do God a favor and forgive him for a cruel world where parasites feed on the bodies of other organisms and cats play with mice. Evolution is a religion. It’s about God, or the lack of God. This has given evolution enormous popularity, even among people who have no understanding of science. For suffering takes place in this world. The world is far from perfect, so they doubt that God could be in charge of all this.
5. But, consider this. Would you look at a car that stands in need of repair—letting out smoke when it starts and conclude that this vehicle is so defective that it must have come about by accident? No, people would admit that someone designed and built the car. But now something seems to be wrong with it. That was the way John Henry Newman in the 1800s reacted to the suffering & evil in the world. As Darwinism was growing in popularity, Newman didn’t close his eyes to any signs of design and reject the thought of a Creator. Newman concluded from what he saw that some massive calamity must have put humanity out of joint with the Creator’s purposes. Evolution doesn’t see this. It takes all that is wrong in the world as part of the way things are. It regards death as natural. Not so! The universe was made by God. It is created, but fallen. The human race is fallen. Death isn’t natural. It is the wages of our sins (Rom 6:23). Evolution misses the point. The world is fallen. That’s the reason for suffering. But the world was still created by God. God doesn’t need anyone’s help to deal with suffering. This world is fallen, but created . . . and redeemed.
6. The apostle Paul knew all too well about suffering in this world. He wrote in Romans 8:18-23, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:18–23). Hinging on God’s redemption is everything that this world can be.
7. It’s like a little boy who built himself a model sailboat. When his boat was finished, he tied a long string to it and carried it to the lake for its maiden voyage. He put his boat on the water and slowly let it out. Then the string broke. The boy watched as the waves began to take the boat away. He ran along the lake to try to get it, but he found himself helpless as his boat disappeared. He went home crying. The next day he saw in a store window . . . his boat. So, he hurried home, broke open his piggy bank, then ran back to the store. He wanted his boat. Emerging from the store after paying the price, he looked down at his boat and said, “Now you’re twice mine: once because I made you, and once because I bought you back.”
8. The Lord who made the world is the Lord who bought it back at the highest of prices. Our Creator became our Redeemer in the person of Jesus Christ. He redeemed us not with gold or silver, but with his holy precious blood and his innocent suffering and death. Even the physical bodies of us Christians will be “redeemed” in the end because of the great redemption price that Jesus paid for us. And now our Redeemer lives. Risen from the dead, he promises the faithful, “Because I live, you also will live” (Jn 14:19). When God shows his children in glory at the Last Day, he will set creation free from its bondage to decay. Right now, something is wrong with the world. It is fallen. But it is redeemed. For the Lord redeems what he created. “His mercy is over all that he has made” (Ps 145:9). Evolution runs counter to all of this, counter to the Christian faith as God has revealed it.
9. At the same time, evolution does not explain the world even in a scientific understanding, especially as science learns how complex things really are. This point can be made to people who aren’t Christians, as we seek to tell them the Good News about redemption in Christ. For example, consider two great scientific steps from the middle of the twentieth century. One is the development of information theory, and the other is the discovery of DNA.
10. Information theory says that the universe contains matter, energy, and information. Information is information. It doesn’t arise spontaneously, no matter how much matter or energy there may be. Information has to be “built in” to begin with. And when information is transmitted, randomness never helps. Randomness always nibbles away at information. If information is sensible, it makes sense despite randomness, not because of it.
11. Since the 1950s and the discovery of DNA, we now know that life rests on a vast information system. Cells store, process, and replicate enormous amounts of information. This information didn’t get there by itself. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the British scientist Sir Fred Hoyle made a memorable observation about organisms with the huge DNA information content that humans and higher mammals have. He said that for these organisms to have emerged through an evolutionary process would be about as likely as a tornado striking a junkyard, and the tornado winds picking up various raw materials lying around and putting a 747 jet together.
12. Bear this in mind whenever anyone tries to tell you that organisms gradually got better by way of one favorable mutation after another. That’s not the way information works. Mistakes in the typing of the genetic code do not promise to make organisms better. In fact, as Allen Quist writes, the number of negative genetic mutations is so much higher than the number of positive mutations that it is clear human genes are becoming worse, not better. The human genome deteriorates, which is exactly what you would expect in a creation in bondage to decay. The existence of the genome information in the first place indicates design by our Creator, while the presence of deterioration reflects corruption. This world didn’t evolve, it was created. And although fallen, it’s redeemed. A scientific movement called Intelligent Design has called attention to the complexity of nature. This complexity shows more and more as instruments like microscopes and telescopes become increasingly sophisticated. It becomes more difficult all the time to regard this complexity as accidental. The greater the complexity, the more probable design becomes.
13. Much of the complexity in the world is irreducible. For example, an eye is composed of many delicate parts such as a lens, a retina, and an optic nerve. For these components to have come about gradually would not have helped. Even with fully functioning eye lenses and retinas, a person or animal lacking operational optic nerves still could not see. Partially formed eyes would not have assisted survival at all. Darwin heard this objection in his day. It has even greater force in ours. If your eyes do not work as well as they might, you have no proof for absence of design. You have something that adds to the present groaning of creation.
14. Rev. Dr. Harry Huth was a Lutheran Professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, IN. Near the end of his life, Dr. Huth suffered a series of heart attacks. But during these years, he still served as a parish pastor and seminary professor. He continued his teaching up to the time of his death. In many ways, this turned out to be his most productive period. Dr Huth remained aware that he could pass into life with the Lord at any moment. He spoke openly about his death, not because he was resigned to it as natural but because he rejoiced over Christ and his defeat of death. He wanted to be with the Lord. Eagerly did he await the redemption of his body. He kept telling his students what a privilege he had in teaching them, although his students could tell on some days that the effort was quite a strain. Harry Huth knew how to look ahead with the eyes of faith. With the Holy Spirit, he lived by faith. He lived in hope, as a son of his heavenly Father, in a world that is fallen yet created and redeemed. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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