This week’s text is Ephesians 4:17-19,
being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;
and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.
As we have previously discussed, if you walked on the beach one morning and found a brand new Mercedes complete with manuals, keys, and gas in the tank, what would you think of the person who told you that the ocean produced that car by thousands of random accidents? You would question their insanity. That is just how ridiculous the naturalistic philosophy is that many scientists try to impose on us. As one honest scientist put it, the odds are greater for a tornado to hit a junkyard and leave behind a perfectly built Boeing 747 than for life to have just evolved the way many claim that it did.
The sequential knowledge stored in the DNA of a single living cell is estimated to be more than that contained in four entire sets of encyclopedias! The odds are actually greater that the ocean could produce complex automobiles or even jet planes, than they are to produce a single living cell. If you add to that what is required for cells to join and interrelate to form the most simple organisms, even if you gave zillions and zillions of years for this to happen, the odds would still compute to be zero. If you carry it on until millions of other random accidents happen to form the more complex organisms such as fish or birds, much less human beings, it becomes an even more futile argument.
For anyone with even a basic knowledge of the facts to still believe the naturalist philosophy of evolution would require such delusion that they have without question been “darkened in their understanding.” Yet, almost every rendition of this argument in textbooks, movies, or television makes believers in God appear to be buffoons or simpletons. Those who have been duped by this ultimate foolishness also have the audacity to project that everyone who does not agree with them is not just wrong, but is a simpleton.
Every honest scientist cannot help but see and admit that there is a Creator responsible for the creation whose intelligence is far beyond what even the best human minds can yet fathom. To observe and consider the intricacy and wonders of the creation is a marvel that should invoke the deepest worship and adoration of the One who created it. Instead, the delusions and pride of man have used it to draw glory to the ones who “discover” it. This is certainly the ways of darkened and futile minds.
Discovering the marvels of creation is wonderful, but even more marvelous is the fact that the Creator actually loves us and wants to have a relationship with us! In fact, He created us for that purpose. Any knowledge, wisdom, or philosophy that does not lead us closer to God is working contrary to the very purpose for which man was created, and can never satisfy the deepest longing of our soul.
Of course, the issue of the Creator has obviously been settled for those of you who are reading this. So what can we do to help those who are in the grip of a “darkened” understanding? The most effective thing we can do is to walk in what we have been called to—fellowship with the Son. Let us persevere and encourage one another to excel more and more in doing that which gives our awesome God His greatest pleasure. As Paul wrote in I Corinthians 1:4-9:
Christ Jesus,
that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge,
even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you,
so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord
Jesus Christ,
who shall also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus
Christ our Lord.