God Created - Confirmation @PoP

Confirmation Study & Review Sheet

PoP Lutheran Church & School

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Week presented: 09/23 & 09/30/03

Pastor Ken

Topic: God Created

To say that God has created us isn’t just to restate a radical truth; it also is a way of saying that we’re valuable and precious to God.

They say “Evolution – not creation”
(The following summary is intended for 7^th &8^th grade students in an informal discussion format. It is not intended to capture all the presuppositions and assertions of the Theory of Evolution.)

4 Evolution assumes (or presupposes) that the world and universe are billions of years old; yet scientists have argued over how many billions of years—sometimes differing by 1.5 billion years.

4 Evolution tends to assume that matter began as simple, disorganized particles, and over time those pieces of matter became better organized and more complex. (Question – do the “particles” in a teenager’s bedroom become better organized or more complex over time, if left to themselves? Or even if “energy” is added? This may suggest that a Divine Creator was needed to bring order to the universe.)

4 Evolutionary theory (as most teach it) doesn’t allow for the plan for a divine, master creator. Instead, evolution makes assumptions based on natural selection (the weak are weeded out, the strong and more adaptable survive and their offspring survive).

4 Evolution takes away from how special we are in God’s eyes, and it does not fully appreciate the intricacies of how we have been created.

4 God created the world out of nothing in 6 days. This assumes (or presupposes) that God (1) existed in the beginning; (2) God has power to make or do whatever He wanted; (3) and if this is true of God, what reason do we have to say that He couldn’t do it all in 6 days (“there was evening, and there was morning—the [1^st, second, etc.] day”)

4 The things God created reflected God’s character. It was all “good.” That means that it was perfect, without flaw, just as God had intended it.

4 The order in which God created things:
day 1 – light; separated from the darkness; day and night
day 2 – the sky
day 3 – land (dry ground) and sea; vegetation
day 4 – sun, moon, stars to give light
day 5 – creatures that lived in water, birds
day 6 – land-dwelling creatures; man & woman

4 Genesis 1:31 – all this was “exceedingly good” [totally, Dude!]; almost as if to say “beyond perfection,” with absolutely no flaw in anything that God had made

4 Man and woman (Adam and Eve) were created in God’s own image (Genesis 1:27) – that means that they were without sin (1) perfectly knowing God’s will, (2) perfectly able to carry God’s will for their lives out

4 Adam and Eve were made for each other, in order to be a mutual support to one another (see Genesis 2:20-25). They were the 1^st married couple.

4 If God is the one who created you, it also means that He knows you (inside-out).

4 What we do with our lives, the world around us (“creation”), and how we treat others is all important to God. All the attitudes and actions we have towards these things say something about our relationship with God.

TO SUMMARIZE: It really does take faith to believe that God has created the world, and to acknowledge that God has created me. But, then again, it takes faith for people to in evolution, since none of what the evolutionists teach can really be proven scientifically. (They have their basic assumptions, just like we do.)

But, to believe that God has created us is to say something very special about who we are—special to Him. To say that God has created the world says something about how precious His creation is.

Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and School
8304 Old Keene Mill Road; Springfield, VA 22152
703.451.5855 - church; 703.451.6177 - school
703.569.0978 - FAX
www.poplc.org