Jesus once told the religious leaders that if they believed Moses they’d believe him, because Moses wrote about him. Now what does this have to do with interpreting Genesis?

Well, Jesus clearly believed Moses! And Moses wrote Genesis, along with the other four books of the Pentateuch. And he thought Moses’ writings were so clear that the religious leaders should’ve recognized Jesus from them, if only they’d believe!

But if those first chapters of Genesis don’t really mean what they say then Genesis isn’t clear—it’s confusing and we need modern “science” to understand it!

No, Moses was clear—God created in just six days.

This week we’re looking at what Jesus said in the New Testament about creation. Well, when speaking to the religious leaders Jesus makes a parallel statement that compares the foundation of the world and the shedding of the blood of Abel, the son of Adam and Eve, who was murdered by his brother.

Now this parallel of creation and the time of Abel makes no sense if the foundations of the world were laid billions of years before Abel ever lived! But if Abel lived very close to creation, like Genesis teaches, Jesus’ statement makes perfect sense!

Yes, Abel lived right at the beginning of creation, just like Genesis teaches.

How should we understand Genesis? Now some Christians try to add millions of years into Genesis, but that contradicts not only Genesis, but also Jesus’ words in the New Testament!

You see, in the context of marriage, Jesus said, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.” Not only is Jesus defining marriage here, but notice he said from the beginning of creation. In the evolutionary view, humans didn’t arrive until very lately—billions of years after the beginning. But Jesus said we’ve been here since the beginning. That’s only possible if we start with the Bible’s account of just six days of creation!

When people think of fossils, they usually think of “millions of years” too. But fossils can actually form quickly. For example, a petrified hat, a clock, and spark plugs have been found in rocks! Those obviously didn’t take millions of years to form!

And, well, fossils actually must form quickly. If a plant or animal dies, it will quickly decay, unless it’s quickly buried deep enough to protect it.

Around the world are billions and billions of fossils. What could rapidly bury so many creatures? Well, it didn’t happen slowly over millions of years. It’s all a result of the worldwide flood, described in Genesis.

I’m going to tell you two stories. In one, a fisherman catches an odd-looking fish that turns out to be a coelacanth, thought to be extinct for seventy million years.

In the second story, a park officer finds a Wollemi pine tree, thought to have gone extinct two hundred million years ago.

These stories remind us that, if evolution and millions of years are true, then surely the coelacanth or the Wollemi pine would’ve evolved—or gone extinct—over tens of millions of years. Yet we still find them today, virtually unchanged. And that’s because life didn’t evolve, and earth is only thousands of years old.

Why would a toothed whale and a marsupial possum be buried together in Tasmania? Well, these creatures from vastly different habitats are part of a massive fossil graveyard of thousands of creatures all buried together.

And actually we find these graveyards all over the world. One is made up of trillions of microscopic marine creatures. It stretches through Europe into the Middle East—and even into the Midwest of the US! You would probably recognize a small part of these chalk beds as, well, the famous White Cliffs of Dover in England.

Now, what could bury creatures on such a massive scale? The global flood of Noah’s day.

Most people believe fossils form slowly over millions of years. But the Bible’s history of a global flood actually explains what we see much better!

Consider that in my home country of Australia they’ve found fossils of jellyfish. Now, when a jellyfish washes up on a beach it quickly turns into a blob in the sun. But these fossil jellyfish are clearly and easily identifiable as jellyfish. They had to be buried very quickly before the sun could destroy them.

Fossils that are exquisitely preserved, even with soft parts, like these jellyfish support the biblical account of a catastrophic global flood of Noah’s day.

If you ask how old fossils are, most people will say “millions of years.” You see, there’s this idea that fossils are the result of slow and gradual processes over long periods of time. But the Bible’s history actually gives a much better explanation!

In Genesis we read about the global flood of Noah’s day. A catastrophe like that would’ve ripped up all the sediment and re-deposited it in layers. Billions of organisms would’ve been buried in this sediment, becoming the fossils we dig up today. This didn’t take millions of years. It took just a few short months during the flood.

The Bible’s history—it explains the fossils!

Most kids learn in their school textbooks that they’re just animals and they evolved from some kind of apelike creature millions of years ago.

But according to God’s Word, we were created by him as the crown of his creation on day six of creation week. We aren’t just animals, and we aren’t related to the animals!

Adam and Eve lived in a “very good” world until their sin marred creation, and brought with it the penalty of death. But Jesus came as the Last Adam, perfectly obeyed God, died in our place, rose from the grave, and now offers the free gift of eternal life to all who will turn from their sin and trust in him.

We’ve seen this week that human evolution is impossible when we start with Genesis. So what about all the supposed apemen?

Well, all the “apemen” ever found fit into three categories:

One. A mistake or fraud. We can ignore those!

Two. Apes with certain variations that are emphasized to make the creatures appear more human. But variety within the ape kind doesn’t mean apes and humans are related!

And three. Humans that are treated more like apes. But the more research done on these fossils, the more it’s obvious—they were humans, just like us!

No, humans didn’t evolve. We were specially created by God. There are no apemen!