Grace to you and peace, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The first article, or first part, of the Apostles’ Creed is:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth.

In that short sentence there is a lot we should learn. Martin Luther explains this first article this way:

I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them.

He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.

He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil.

All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him.

This is most certainly true.¹

This article of the creed is an extension of the First Commandment. How does Martin Luther teach us the First Commandment?

You shall have no other gods.

What does this mean?
We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.²

There is only one God and He alone made and maintains all things. In the Bible the creation record begins with:

In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth.³

Notice that there is no explanation about which god or what god? It is simply God. It is simply God because there is only one. He created everything. Not just Heaven but sky, space, the inter-galactic-void and Heaven, as well as not just planet Earth, but earth as in all dirt, dust, rocks and sand. God created Heaven, Earth and everything in between. In other words:

Everything came into existence through Him.
Not one thing that exists
was made without Him.⁴

Why is that important? Because the first three chapters of the Bible are the most important in all of Scripture. They are the foundation stones upon which all else is built. If you throw out the first three chapters of the Bible the rest is meaningless.

It is important to understand these chapters are a real record of real events as they actually occurred. It was six literal 24-hour days and one additional day without work. Adam and Eve are real people who ate real fruit forbidden by God to eat. Satan is a real being that tempted them to rebel against God. Without a literal understanding of Genesis 1-3 the rest of the Bible has no real meaning or worth, and is no different than any other false religion.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Look at what Jesus said. Look at the tens of references to the beginning of Genesis found in the New Testament. Jesus and His disciples proclaimed Genesis to be fact.⁵ If Jesus thought Genesis was true, we would be foolish to think differently.

That is because without Genesis 1-3 being real the promise of your Savior is also not real, and in fact you have no need for a Savior because there is nothing from which to save you. If the Universe is now functioning as God created it to function then everything is just as God wants it to be, so why does God need to save us from it?

If however sin, brought into creation by Adam and Eve, corrupted all of it⁶ then there is something from which to save us and that something is called sin and sin’s effect. It is here, in the first three chapters of the Bible, that sin is defined. Without that definition we cannot fully understand what sin is, what sin does, or why we need to be saved from it.

Sin is not just the bad stuff we do. Sin is everything that falls short of God’s definition of perfection. Sin is not just the bad things we do. Sin is a stain that permeates every aspect of creation from the largest planet to the smallest grain of sand. It affects our heart and soul. It cuts us off from God and God’s love and care.

Sin makes us dead to God.⁷ Sin is a sickness from which we cannot escape. It is everywhere and in everything. Sin causes people to gossip and tell lies. Sin causes people to think and act like the Church is a joke. Sin causes every unpleasant thing on Earth. Sin even causes that stink in your rotting garbage. Sin causes all of the mess in the world. Sin causes pain. Sin causes sickness. Sin causes loneliness, and sin causes death. Death of bugs, death of birds, and death of people. Sin is the sickness from which none of us can escape.

So understanding what sin is, I’ll ask you two questions:

Did mankind bring sin into the world?
or
Did sin bring mankind into the world?

Only one of those can be true. If amoebas became humans through countless misfires and mistakes in the genetic code as cells divided, and those mistakes and misfire (which occur when the cell fail to operate perfectly the way God designed it) eventually brought people into existence then sin brought mankind into the world, and you are nothing more than a walking talking blob of amoeba cancer.

If that is true you need to ask some other more difficult questions, like:

• When did the soul evolve into existence?

• When did humans become human enough to have a soul that needs to be saved?

• Did: Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, or Neanderthal Man need to be saved?⁸

• When did humans become human enough that God would call them to worship Him?

• Where would we find the figurative-first Adam and Eve? The first male and female that were actually fully human and not just advanced soul-less apes?

• Do animals have souls, and did Jesus die for them and their sins, if so where does the Bible record that?

Perhaps you can see holding a view that people evolved from bugs to Bubba, from aphid to Adam, from earwig to Eve, becomes a very complex matter if you still believe in a heavenly Father who sent His Son to save the world from sin, and has sent His Holy Spirit to keep you in the one true Christian faith that leads to eternal life.

The truth is if you believe in macro-evolution (a creature turns into another creature over time) then you cannot believe Jesus has saved you. In fact there is nothing from which to save you. If you believe in a god at all it would have to be a god who made all that is, just the way it is now and it is all working the way He wants it to work.

If however mankind brought sin into the world, and all of creation is now corrupted, stained and broken because of sin and sin’s effect, like the Bible describes, then we do need a Savior who will come and make all things new.⁹ Then there really is a Heaven and a Hell and those who put their trust in God and God’s promises will alone be saved. All others will not.¹⁰

The first article of the Apostles’ Creed is short and it doesn’t appear to say much at first glance, but already it has forced you to take a stand. It has forced you to pick a side. To which religion do you hold? To the sides cannot coexist. This does not pit faith against science. Good science, that seeks to understand God’s creation, does not start with the assumption that God is fake, or that God does not exist. It starts with the assumption that God is real, God is right, and God makes the rules. Any hypothesis, proof or test that fails to accommodate those assumptions must be wrong because we confess and believe:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth.

That makes us God’s creation. In fact it makes us much more than that. God created all things: the dirt and water, then sky and space, planets and plants, animals, birds, fish and flowers. Then when everything was complete and just the way He wanted it He made us: people. Everything else was put in place for us to enjoy.

The entire Universe was made for us, for our pleasure and for our benefit. It is all ours to steward and enjoy. We are the pinnacle of God’s creation. We are the top, the most important. Nothing is more precious to God in all that He has made. Since everything was given to us, when we sinned we messed everything up. We brought the curse of sin onto everything. That is why the world is the mess that it is.

Jesus is the One who was promised to come and fix our mess.¹¹ Jesus did not come to save worms, wallabies or whales. He came to save us. The new heavens and new earth will be made for us too. Not earth­worms, emus or elephants. Jesus came to save you, because you are the reason for everything else in Heaven and on Earth.

More than that the First Article of the Apostles’ Creed teaches us all things come from God and nothing goes from us to God. We have nothing to give Him because He made all things for us. We are the receivers only. We are wholly dependent on God for all things. Sin is our attempt to become independent from God, and in that effort we attempt to take the place of God, even usurp God’s throne and try to unseat Him. Someone else tried to do that once and things did not go so well for him. His name is Lucifer and trust me you don’t want to take the same path he did.

The first article of the Apostles’ Creed teaches us God is God and we are His people. It teaches us what sin really is, and that God has saved us from sin and sin’s effect. How He did that is found in the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed which we will explore next week, but for right now understand God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth, saved you through Jesus Christ His Son.

So in Jesus’ name we give Him thanks and praise.

Amen.

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