As we continue our sermon series on Creation the focus today is on the Wonder …
Sir Isaac Newton had a perfectly scaled down replica of the then known solar system built for his studies. A large golden ball represented the sun at the centre, and the known planets revolved around it through a series of cogs, belts, and rods. It was an incredible machine. One day while Newton was studying his model, an agnostic friend stopped by for a visit. The man marvelled at the machinery and asked, "Who made this exquisite thing?" Without looking up, Newton replied, "Nobody." "Nobody?" his friend asked. "That's right," said Newton, "all of these balls and cogs and belts and gears just happened to come together, and wonder of wonders, by chance they began revolving in their set orbits with perfect timing."
Can we actually imagine ‘Nothing’?
No Earth, no Universe just an unimaginable ‘Nothing’. The nothing that existed before the Creation. As described in the second verse of Genesis: ‘…now the Earth was formless and empty’..
…it didn’t exist…and then, to paraphrase Bill Bryson’s book – A Short History of Nearly Everything,
‘In a single, blinding pulse, a moment of glory much too swift and expansive for any form of words – from nothing our universe begins – it is a place of the most wondrous and gratifying possibilities and beautiful too.’
In the six ‘days’ described in Genesis from the absolute of nothing there was the creation of the wonder of our universe…
‘…God saw all that He had made, and it was very good…’
To quote from Psalm 33
‘By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
their starry host by the breath of his mouth.’
So, from nothing, we get to the wonder described in Psalm 19 …
‘The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world…’
The wonder of all this, God’s creation, declares His glory. God has always been glorious. But when God created the heavens and the earth, there was, amazingly, a whole new way of seeing and declaring the eternal glory of God.
Although all of creation declares God’s glory, in Psalm 19 David focuses on the heavens, because the heavens are the most universally visible of all God’s works. David describes the skies as “the work of God’s hands.”
When we speak about creation, it is not just anyone’s creation. It is God’s creation. It is the work of His hands. Just as you can always see something of the artist in their creative works, so you can see something of God in all His creative works. The heavens acclaim and praise God through their beauty, through their complexity, through their incredible balance and order, even through their sheer size.
They also help to increase the knowledge of God in man. Look at verse two of Psalm 19: “Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.”
But in these verses David says even more. Not only is there a revelation of God in creation, but God’s testimony to himself in creation is unmistakable. First of all, it is a continuous testimony. We can see some of this in the tenses of the verbs David uses in verse one. We really miss it in our English translations, but in the original Hebrew they are all participles, expressing continuous action: “The heavens are declaring the glory of God; the skies are proclaiming the work of his hands.” In other words, this is something they are doing unceasingly.
Look also at how he describes this testimony in verse two. He says this testimony takes place “day after day, night after night.” Whether the sun is shining by day or the moon and the stars by night, whether we are enjoying a beautiful, calm, peaceful day or we are in the middle of a powerful thunderstorm, there is never any time of day or night when God’s creation is not declaring his glory. It is a continuous testimony.
Not only that, it is also an abundant testimony. It would be one thing if this revelation of God was happening all the time, but as just a small trickle of testimony to God’s glory. But look at the lavish words David uses to describe this testimony. He says, “The skies pour forth speech.” This word translated as “pour forth” is a word that means “to bubble up and overflow,” literally “to gush forth” in an uncontrolled and uncontrollable manner. God was not stingy in creation. God has created colours and sounds and variety and wonders everywhere we look…
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.
Whether we look deep into the heavens with a telescope or deep into the inner workings of the cell of a plant with a microscope, whether we look up, down or all around, God’s fingerprints are all over what we see. God has provided an abundant testimony to himself and the wonder of His Creation.
Paul says in his letter to the Romans:
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
God may be invisible to our eyes, but the creation does reveal some of God’s qualities to us. The size and complexity of creation, especially as seen in the heavens containing the sun, the planets, the moon and the stars, show us God’s eternal power. The beauty and order and design of creation show us God’s divine nature.
Just to take one example – the basic unit of construction in a honeycomb is the hexagon which enables the best use of space with the least amount of material used in construction. This is important as a gram of wax needs up to 8 grams of honey to be produced. A wonderful creation.
There is so much we can learn about God from just observing the intricate wonder of his creation… and so it is important that we spend time with God in his creation: watching the sun rise or set and the seasons turn, staring up in awe at the stars in the heavens, walking in nature away from the hustle and bustle of human activity, resting in the fields and the streams, delighting in God’s plants, flowers, animals and creatures. All of these things teach us more about God and draw us to praise and to worship him in deeper and better ways.
…and in the midst of all this wonder…from
Psalm 8:
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
What is mankind that you are mindful of them…
human beings that you care for them?
From Genesis:
‘The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.’
– the Creation of Man…in God’s image…
From Psalm 139:
‘For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful…”
God, in his love for us has made man a special creation…a creature to whom God can speak and who can respond to God. Human dignity is based on this likeness to God.
Think about our bodies – how wonderfully they are made – do we just accept everything they can do or do we stop every now and then and thank God for what he has created in us?
Reading a magazine – differentiating one page thickness from two pages – fine motor control etc etc - the wonder of all our senses – smell, touch, sight, hearing, taste…
Our bodies are an intrinsic part of the wonder of creation.
…and as we ponder on the wonderful miracle of Creation we need to reflect on the role of Jesus…
It's not hard to picture Jesus as we've seen him in countless Bible studies, church Easter plays, and in several motion pictures. It's even possible for us to picture Jesus as our resurrected Lord, and our glorified Saviour in heaven. But as we "fix our eyes upon Jesus," what of the prelude to it all? What about the Jesus of the very beginning? What about the Jesus who was intimately involved in the very creative process of all things? Have we thought recently how all of Creation bears witness to Jesus?
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.’
Recall the words at the beginning of John’s Gospel about the Word of God,
‘What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people.’ and Jesus words, ‘I am come that you might have life, and have it abundantly.’ ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’
The more we focus on Jesus, the more there is to see, and the more we realize we'll never see it all and that applies to the wonder of Creation.
…and don’t forget us in terms of creation…as Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthians:
‘Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone; the new has come.’
God, in His love for us, sent His Son to give mankind a fresh start…
From our gospel reading today :
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Christian songwriter Graham Kendrick commented when writing his popular song The Servant King (From Heaven you came) which was written to reflect the theme for the 1984 Spring Harvest Bible teaching event:
'It was a challenge to explore the vision of Christ as the servant who would wash the disciples' feet but who was also the Creator of the universe.'
The song starts from an incarnational root - 'From heav'n you came, helpless babe' - and progresses to one of Graham's most poignant lines: 'Hands that flung stars into space to cruel nails surrendered'. What an image for us to think about.
…and as we consider the amazing wonder of all creation we should not forget the emphasis on the importance of Humankind….
Pope Francis reflected that:
Saint Irenaeus of Lyons in the second century [taught] that the glory of God is seen in a living human being. Let the light of that glory shine so brightly that everyone may come to recognize the inestimable value of all human life. Even the weakest and most vulnerable, the sick, the old, the unborn and the poor, are masterpieces of God’s creation, made in his own image, destined to live forever, and deserving of the utmost reverence and respect.
Roger Lee, 10 September 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment