The Heavens & the Earth (continued)		Genesis 1:1c  	 Tape 118b	   3-3-2002 

So far we have examined the Who? the What? and the When? of creation, and last week we began discussing the Why?  

Why did God create everything?

First and foremost, God made what He made for His pleasure.  He did it for the same reason He does everything else – because He wanted to.

Heb.2:10 In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Col.1:15   He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.

Ever wonder why God made so many beautiful things that no one sees?  The waterfalls run all night.  There are spectacular sunsets out at sea where no one is, etc.  Spectacular beautiful scenes in outer space that no one has ever seen.  It is for Him.

It is so easy for us to forget that - we constantly slip into thinking that it was all created for us.  We complain about the weather or some part of creation as if it were made to please us.  It is for His pleasure, not ours.

And if everything that was made was for His pleasure, then we have just answered the question of why we exist.  

Ever wonder why you were made?  Why someone else wasn’t made instead of you?  It was for God’s pleasure.

What a thought!  The rest of the billions that God created weren’t enough - He had to have you too!

* It follows that we should devote ourselves to pleasing Him.

It’s an amazing thing when we understand that God made everything for His pleasure, and then we read in Eph.4:30 of the possibility of us grieving Him.

It’s even more startling when we read ahead just a little bit in Genesis itself in 6:6 where the sin of humanity is described and it says The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

Everything else pleases God automatically.  But the beings He made with a moral will and the capacity to love and to have a personal relationship with Him, for those beings to bring Him glory & fulfill their purpose for existence they must choose to do so.

We know that ultimately God delights in His own justice in judging unbelievers, but that is a delight mixed with pain.  But when we glorify Him through obedience, that is sheer joy for Him.

So when we understand that the reason we are here is to bring God pleasure, but He has left it up to us to a large degree to choose to do so, what a responsibility that places on us!

What a motivation that is to do what is right.  

It’s a responsibility and it’s a privilege.   If the greatest good is to bring God pleasure, what in all creation could be more important than human beings, who have the ability to intentionally, purposefully choose to bring God glory out of love for Him!

The heavens have no choice but to declare the glory of God.  The skies don’t have the option not to proclaim the works of His hands. 

And God enjoys the glory those things bring Him.  But what it must mean to Him when He gives us the ability to chose to serve Him or reject Him, and even though we can’t see Him we love Him – what that must mean to Him!

Who has a greater capacity to bring joy to the heart of a father than his own children?
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So God made everything for His own pleasure.  He also made everything in such a way as to reveal some things about Himself.  

The creation does so clearly.  

In fact, it is so obvious that men can’t even ignore it - they have to suppress it (Ro.1:20).  

That’s why when you watch the nature specials they go so far out of their way to cram the evolutionary explanation down your throat.  They bring it up even when it has nothing to do with what they are talking about.  They are desperate to believe that.

It’s not that they can’t see the obvious truth.  They see it and suppress it.  It’s a cover-up.

Ro.1:18-20
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For 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. 

Notice the two things that Romans 1 mentions specifically: His eternal power, and His divine nature.

GOD’S ETERNAL POWER

Cosmologists generally have a very high level of confidence in the big bang theory.  They claim to have observational evidence of what took place as early as 3 minutes after the big bang.

And using mathematical formulas, they can even predict what took place in most of those first 3 minutes – all the way back to 10^-43 seconds after the big bang.

Dr. Gary Felder is a cosmologist who is not a Christian and who believes there was a big bang billions of years ago.  He said this:
“No serious current theory can explain the moment of the big bang itself.  When you try to describe the universe very close to the big bang you have to deal with temperatures and densities so large that our current physical theories break down. In short we have no theory that can possibly describe what happened in the first fraction of a second of the universe.”

 (To be more specific, our current theories break down at the Planck scale, about seconds after the purported moment of the big bang.) 
Gary Felder got his Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford this past summer working with one of the world's leading cosmologists (Prof. Andrei Linde). He is now at U. of Toronto doing a post-doc research appointment with another leading cosmologist. 

I don’t fully understand that, but I do know you have to be dealing with some pretty extreme numbers for a cosmologist to admit it’s too big to calculate.  To them, billions and trillions are just chump change.

I don’t know if God used an explosion at some point or not.  But it stands to reason that all that energy and all that mass and all that heat that is too much for them to even theorize about, could not have come from a lesser source.  

The source of all this energy had to have come from Someone who has at least that amount – that amount that pegs all the cosmologists’ theories.

He had to have that power, and it had to be eternal (obviously – otherwise it would have to have come from some greater source and that source would be God).

GOD’S DIVINE NATURE

This refers to the fact that He is God-like.  He must be a supreme being in every sense of the word.

We found last week that that includes infinite intelligence (which is the impression you get anyway from observing things like the information encoded in DNA, or the complexity of the systems He created).

The chemicals in the DNA don’t explain the information that is there any more than the properties of ink and paper explain the message of the Bible.  

Coded language structures are non-material in nature and cannot be explained without an intelligent source. 

You can explain naturalistically how the movement of a pen (or printer) and the distribution of ink formed the words in a book, but that doesn’t explain anything about the ideas communicated by those words.

Both the Bible and DNA had to have a divine intelligence that produced the information – the Bible with it’s very simple message, and the DNA with its staggeringly complex information.

What other aspects of God’s nature can we observe in the creation?
The Existence of God
A third attribute of God we see in the creation is the fact that God is real.  He possesses the attribute of existence.  

And there is much more to that than meets the eye.  It goes beyond the abstract philosophical statement that God exists.

The thing I noticed as I looked up all the references to the phrase “heavens and earth” is that very often God uses them as an example of something we know for sure exists.  

God uses the physical creation as a tool to heighten our understanding of what the word “real” means.

Something is true if it corresponds to reality.  The physical world gives us an example of something we can be absolutely sure is real.

It’s hard for us to accept that the things in the spiritual realm are real.  The material world just dominates our attention. 

If we just sit down for a minute and apply reason, it becomes clear that there must be a spiritual world, but in our moment-by-moment existence, it’s just hard for us to remember.

We never forget about the law of gravity, and just walk off a cliff.  But how many times do we just seem to forget the law of sowing and reaping? 

We don’t ever forget about the fact that a body in motion tends to stay in motion – we never have any trouble believing that when something is headed our way at a high rate of speed.  

But how many times do we forget that the pure in heart are blessed because they will see God?

God created the heavens and the earth in such a way as to give us something we can experience that we know for sure is real – He gave us a material world that tends to function in a consistent way.  

Ro.1:20
since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen 

The purpose of the physical world is to make the things about God that are real but invisible, visible to us.

There is nothing that is easier to believe in than matter.  And matter serves as a crutch for us to lean on when we have trouble believing in that which is real but cannot be seen.  

God uses it to assure us of the reality of spiritual things.  He creates an object we can see and touch and then says, “You see that object that is right in front of your face?  The things I’m promising are as real as that.”

So when God wants to emphatically state that something is really true, He will often compare the certainty of it to that of the existence of the heavens and earth.

Dt.4:26
I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. 

“As real as the world around you that you can see and touch – that’s how real this judgment will be if you disobey.”

Dt.30:19-20
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 

Dt.31:28
Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes and all your officials, so that I can speak these words in their hearing and call heaven and earth to testify against them.

Jer.31:37
"Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel 

Jesus took it a step further.  Not only is His Word just as certain as the existence of the heavens and earth; it is even more certain.
Mt.24:35
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. 

Mt.5:18
I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Those of you who are physicists will be interested to know there is a reference to the laws of physics in Jer.33. Jeremiah calls them the fixed laws of heaven and earth. 

If you want to build a biblical theology for the importance of what you do, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

Jer.33:25-26
This is what the LORD says: `If I have not established my covenant with day and night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth, 26 then I will reject the descendants of Jacob and David my servant 

God’s promises are more reliable and real than the law of physics.  In fact, the very reason why the law of physics themselves are so reliable is because of God’s faithfulness.

If you think those laws exist all by themselves, and just happen automatically, think again.  

They happen because God makes them happen.  And if God fell asleep for one second there would be no laws of physics.  An object in motion would not tend to do anything.  You couldn’t even count on entropy!

There would be no gravity, no electricity, no magnetism, no nuclear energy, no movement, no radiation, no processes, no energy.

Those things carry on consistently so that God can show us how certain His decrees actually are.

The heavens and the earth are obviously real.  And the laws of the heavens and the earth are real.  And so even a child should be able to understand that whoever made those things must be at least as real as what He has made and maintains.

Heb.1:10-12 
"In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. 11They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. 12You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end."  

When the Bible gives a spiritual law like “The soul who sins is the one who will die” (Ez.18:4) or "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. (Jn.14:23), one reason why you can know for sure that will always be true without fail is because E always = MC2

God promised that it’s a consistent, inviolable law that all things work together for good for me (Ro.8:28).  When I am surrounded by impossible circumstances and I’m struggling to believe that promise, I can just drop a pencil over and over and watch and see how consistent God’s other laws are.  

Next time you are tempted to doubt God’s love or faithfulness just remember, His Word is at least as certain as His world.

What else do we see about God’s nature in the creation? 

TT Acts 17
The Lordship of God

When Paul preached a sermon designed to introduce the idolaters of Athens to the true God, the very first thing he said was "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth (Acts 17:24)

“I’m going to tell you about a God who is different from all these other gods you worship.  He is unique because he’s the creator God who made everything.  And therefore, He owns everything.”

The word “Lord” means “owner.”  

What could be more self-evident than the fact that the God who made everything owns everything?  By definition, a person has authority over that which he has authored.  You are lord over what you make.

Rembrandt can use one of his masterpieces for a doormat if he wants.

Ps.24:1 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it,  the world, and all who live in it;

You drive to work in HIS car, you use a brain and a body that rightfully belongs to Him to do your work, and when you break for lunch you eat some of HIS food and HIS drink.  

We are all wearing borrowed clothes this morning.

Ps.50:10 for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. 11 I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine.12 If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it.

This should give us a perspective on giving our offerings.  Some people think they are literally giving to God!  

When you give offering, here is what you do:

You go to a bank that ultimately belongs to God, walk across HIS lobby (wearing HIS shoes and HIS socks), you lean on HIS counter and begin writing with HIS pen on one of HIS withdrawal slips.  

Then you get some of HIS money, take a portion of it, go to HIS church, sit on one of HIS pews, inhale a breath of HIS air, and drop some of HIS money into HIS plate.  Then you put HIS wallet back in HIS pocket and think, “What a sacrifice I have made!”

It’s helpful to think about this in times when lose something precious.  “How could you take that away?”  We think God doesn’t have the right to take certain things - How could he take it away?  It’s HIS!

This is a good reminder.  When you look down at that precious little baby in your arms, realize that it isn’t yours - it’s God’s.

the world, and all who live in it

HE OWNS YOU
This is a major issue for man.  IF WE WERE MADE, THEN WE ARE OWNED.  

That’s why the world is so desperate to explain away creation.

When other scientific theories turn out to be incorrect, scientists generally abandon them.  But the scientists who are naturalists cling for dear life to the debunked theory of evolutionism, because it’s their only refuge against the otherwise inescapable fact that God owns them and they are therefore answerable to Him.

They know intuitively the obvious truth of Isa.45:9 Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker.  You don’t have to be a world-class theologian or logician to figure out that if you have a Maker, it would be a bad idea to get on His bad side or quarrel with Him.

God made your body, so He owns your body – and it’s the same with your heart

Lk.11:40 Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?
Isa.45:9-13 "Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, `What are you making?' Does your work say, `He has no hands'?  10Woe to him who says to his father, `What have you begotten?' or to his mother, `What have you brought to birth?'   11"This is what the LORD says-- the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: Concerning things to come, do you question me about my children, or give me orders about the work of my hands?  12It is I who made the earth and created mankind upon it. My own hands stretched out the heavens; I marshaled their starry hosts. 

People have become confused about this, because they think that lordship is something we as humans grant to God.  People talk about “making Jesus Lord of your life.”  

The result of that kind of thinking has been what has become known as the “Lordship salvation” debate.

There is a teaching that says that when you come to Christ, you have the option of accepting him as Savior but not as Lord.  Obedience is optional.

They say that if you require people to recognize God’s lordship, that is salvation by works.

On page 1950 of the Ryrie Study Bible, Ryrie lists surrender to the lordship of Christ as something that is not required for salvation (along with repentance & confession). 

Zane Hodges says that the one thing that separates the true Gospel from everything else is the fact that being saved requires “no spiritual commitment whatsoever.” (The Gospel Under Siege)

Bob George goes so far as to teach that Christ legalized sin!  

Do you have to make him Lord of your life?  You can’t make him Lord - you can’t make him anything.  He is Lord, and if you accept a Jesus that isn’t Lord, you have accepted a different Jesus.

The lordship of God is not something we grant Him.  It comes from the fact that He made everything.

People talk about lordship as if it were an optional add-on to salvation – like an insurance rider or an extended warranty.  But the fact that God owns what He has made is an essential truth about His nature.

If He is the King of kings then certainly he is the King of ordinary citizens.

God is the Lord of everything, which means He is Lord of believers.

“What about unbelievers?”

Some say that he is not really Lord of unbelievers.  People think, “God can’t really expect those people to be righteous - sinners will be sinners”

I’ve heard a famous evangelical pastor say: “Don’t get uptight when sinners sin, sinners are supposed to sin.”  

NO THEY ARE NOT!  No one is supposed to sin.  No one is supposed to get drunk, no one is supposed to commit adultery or fornication.  No one is supposed to use the Lord’s name in vain - it is forbidden!

Sin is forbidden for Christians, and it’s forbidden for non-Christians.

Look back at Acts 17.  Paul pointed out that since God made everything He owns everything, and so the logical conclusion comes in v.30  - he commands all men everywhere to repent.

God is Lord of unbelievers.  The main reason why unbelievers ought to become Christians isn’t just so that they can go to heaven.  That’s a wonderful benefit, but the biggest reason why they should become Christians is because God owns them and requires them to repent.

God does not have a different set of requirements for unbelievers.

Jesus was clear about this - he didn’t tell people “Become a Christian, then we will worry about your sin”  When Jesus was leading someone to salvation He just simply said stop sinning (Jn.5:14)

So we see that God is powerful and wise, that He is perfect and eternal, that he is real and that He is Lord…

What else do we see?  One things that really stands out in the Genesis account is…
His Gentleness 

God is so Gentle in Genesis 1&2, to Israelites’ pagan neighbors who might read it, it must have sounded like God wasn’t behaving like a god at all. 

According to Tablet VI of Enuma elish, (the Mesopotamian creation myth), the way man came into being is when the good gods got the better of Kingu, who was a bad god, tied him up.  They then cut his blood vessels and as he was bleeding out, they used his blood to make mankind as their slaves.

Contrast that with the way Yahweh created man in Gn.1&2.  God spends 6 days fixing up the earth so it’s suitable for man, making a wonderful home for him.  He breathes a soul into the man with His own breath.

He places the man in a garden paradise and gives him a wonderful companion ideally suited to him.  He walks with the man in the cool of the day.

Such tenderness.  Not even a hint of the kind of behavior those people thought to be the behavior of the gods.

Man is animated by the very breath of God – not the spilled blood of a defeated, renegade God.  Man is created primarily as a companion of God, not primarily as a slave.

Another interesting contrast is in the 7th day.  The Jews’ neighbors didn’t work on the 7th day either, but for them there was a much different reason.  According to Humberto Cassuto, the people in Mesopotamia didn’t work on the 7th day because it was a day of bad luck.

It was an unlucky day on which a man should afflict himself, forgo pleasures, and refrain from performing important work because it wouldn’t prosper.

It was an accursed day.

Against it’s this environment and background that one can appreciate the fact that the truth is God blessed the 7th day (Gn.2:3).  We wasn’t cursed, it was blessed.

And the Jews refrained from work not because it was unlucky, but because it was a time of rest and refreshment and worship provided for them by God.

In stark contrast to Marduk and Ea and the gang, Yahweh is a God of kindness and grace.
His Greatness

The naturalists’ equation, nobody + nothing = everything doesn’t add up.   The Creator is by definition greater than His creation.

And if God was great to Israel which had a limited view of the universe, how much greater He ought to be to modern man. 

The heavens and the earth are the largest, most awesome realities we can conceive of.  In fact, we really can’t even conceive of how large they are.

But to God they are some puny that Ps.113:6 says God stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth

He must be ordered and a complex, structured and beautiful being.

Beauty can’t come from ugliness.  It must have a source.  We will consider this in detail when we get to the phrase “It is good.”  

As the Author of life He must Himself be living.  
He must be a God of new beginnings. 
He must be glorious.

He must be just.  In fact, He must be not only the standard but the author of every virtue and possess them in the highest possible degree – otherwise how would we explain where they came from?

He must be a God of variety.
He must be infinitely perceptive.
Ps.94:9 Does he who implanted the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see?
That’s obvious enough.  We are part of creation.  Do you think a deaf god created hearing people?  Could a blind creator make an eye?  God must be greater than man. (abilities, intellect, emotions)

He is obviously a God who loves everyone – even His enemies.  You can tell that by how generous He is with the sunshine and rain (Mt.5:44)

He must be a God who cares about His creation.  You can tell that by the way He takes care of the smallest things.

Lk.12:24-28  Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. "Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 28 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!,

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and he left his fingerprints all over everything.
You want to hear from God?  Want him to talk to you?  Pick up a rock and look at it, and think about where it came from.  Watch an anthill, think about the clouds, examine a leaf.

Do you want to know God?  Take a look around, because the heavens declare the glory of God...
Spend some time in meditation.  Pick out something that God made, and ask yourself what you can learn about God from that thing.

Science can’t do everything, but one thing science can do is give us a taste of the power and wisdom of God.  It can clue us in to the certainty of God’s promises and the reality of the spiritual world.

And by pointing to God as creator and therefore owner it can remind us of our responsibility to bow our knees in humble submission to the one who owns our lives.