God, the Supernatural Creator

 

    I’ve been preaching on some difficult and contentious issues the past couple of Sundays. I thought it might be helpful to present this in writing so you can see what I believe.

    First, I believe God created the heavens and the earth in six days. This seems simple enough, but I believe they were six days to Him – we weren’t there yet (Job 40). In our time reckoning, this may have been 14 billion years, but for him it was six days. Psalm 90:4 says, “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” (Peter reiterates this in 2 Peter 3:8).  We are limiting God’s power and awesomeness when we fail to realize that He is timeless and, in fact, lives outside of time. The Bible teaches, by the way, that God is still resting in his seventh day (Hebrews 4:1-7).

    So, when an astrophysicist says that it took billions of years for the universe to reach the size it is, I believe that. (The universe has to be the size and age it is for life to exist on earth). When geologists say the rocks and strata are millions of years old, I believe that too. When a paleontologist says a dinosaur’s bones are 65 million years old, I say, “Wow! Look how creative God is!” (God used the bodies of ancient plants and animals to create oil, gas and coal which we now use to spread the gospel. He probably destroyed those ancient creatures before He created us because he knew the world isn’t big enough for me and tyrannosauruses to walk around at the same time.)

    I believe God created the whole universe by fiat miracle. He is supernatural and spoke it into existence out of nothing – ex nihilo. But he uses the elements that He created to fashion cells and organisms, and to create rocks, dirt, water and the atmosphere.

    I do not believe the universe is a happy accident. I believe we were supernaturally created by the God of the Bible. I believe, in fact, that Jesus himself was the creator of all things. John 1, Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1 attest to this.

    Further, I believe that the Bible is God’s infallible, perfect Word. Written to show us how to find and trust Him.

    Here is where it gets really interesting and more difficult: Genesis 1 states that the earth had three evenings and mornings before the sun and moon were created. This is impossible, right? This is where science and faith diverge. This is where we find out that having faith in God means we can’t always understand what is right before our eyes. When I first began to study this, it upset me. I thought, didn’t Moses realize what he was writing? Didn’t he see the issue here?

    But I now believe he knew exactly what he was writing – and that God inspired him to do so. I believe God is showing us that this is a book of miracles, not science.

    Creation is just the first of many miracles in this book. It will have animals on an ark, a man swallowed by a great fish, impossible victories, people coming back to life, a virgin birth, a man walking on the water, calming storms, feeding multitudes with a small lunch, restoring sight, and even rising from the dead himself. None of this is possible scientifically. But with God, nothing is impossible. He can fix the unfixable, heal the terminal, move the unmovable, and love the unlovable. God is asking us to believe the unbelievable because everything, it turns out, is a miracle.

    We must hold two truths in tension: that the heavens declare the glory of God, and that God is supernatural, so miracles will defy the natural from time to time.

    As I stated, I believe the heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19). When we study the earth and the cosmos, we can be assured that what we are observing is, in fact, true. Light really does take millions of years to travel from distant stars. Plate tectonic activity really does take a long time to push mountains and continents around. Predators really were designed to hunt and eat other animals, and always have been. Death came to man, not animals, through sin.

    God wants us to study, explore, and observe. God wants us to see how awesome He is. The immense size of the universe is a reminder to us how long eternity is. And God can and will break his own natural laws if he chooses.

    Life is a miracle. We’ll never fully understand the mysteries of creation. But we can trust that God is the creator, and he wants us to love and trust Him.

Trust and Obey

Deuteronomy 6: 1-9 (NIV): These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you. Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates.

    The hymn says, “trust and obey, there is no other way to be happy in Jesus.” This passage is saying something very similar. Moses was instructing the Israelites how to be happy and live long lives in the Promised Land that they were about to enter. He told them to know God’s Word and to obey it. This is the key to everything.

    How can we know what God wants from us if we don’t read his Word? How can we know what promises he has for us if we don’t read or hear about it? God has always been clear: if his people obey and honor him, he will bless them; but if we don’t, we will not only miss out on his blessings, but we will be punished.

    He wants his commandments to be on our hearts. This means we memorize them, know what they mean, and think about them. They are part of who we are, and part of our decision-making.

    And the thing God wants most from us is to love him. This is a real, sacrificial, unconditional love. This is a verb, not a fond feeling. This is real love, where we place him in first place in our lives, and live to please him. Jesus said this was the most important commandment (Matthew 22:37). Jesus knew a truth – that if we truly love God, we will want to obey him.

    But God knows we must pass our love for him down to our children or they will forget about him. So Moses told the Israelites to tell their children about God when they were sitting at home, when they walked along the road, when they went to bed, and first thing in the morning. Faith was to be in integral part of their day. Our children will see how important our faith is, and they will follow our lead. They know if we love God most of all. They know if our faith is genuine. They can tell by our words and actions.

    This passage is called the Shema. It tells us how to be happy and blessed. It instructs us how to pass our faith to our children.

Contend for the Faith

Jude 3-7 (NIV): Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

    Jude was Jesus’ little brother (Matthew 13:55). He was not a believer until after he saw Jesus resurrected from the dead. But, after seeing Jesus back alive, he and his brother, James, believed that Jesus was who he said he was, and both became leaders in the church.

    He wanted to write this letter to celebrate the salvation that Jesus offers. That is what he was excited about. He was eager to discuss it, but felt compelled, instead, to encourage the readers to contend for the faith. To contend for the faith is to fight for it – to stand up for and defend it.

    False teaching was already creeping into the church, and Jude knew it had to be nipped in the bud. The Gnostics were teaching that all flesh was bad and so it didn’t matter if they used their bodies for illicit sexual pleasure because of this. Others may have been teaching that, since we are saved, it doesn’t matter how we behave. Jude knew that type of teaching could ruin Christianity in its infancy. He knew it would be up to the church to stand against such bad teaching. And it still is. God is holy and demands holiness from his children. Yes, we can be forgiven of any sin, but we must never teach that sin is okay with God.

    And Jesus must be preached as God in the flesh, the Messiah, the only way to heaven. Anything short of this is heresy.

    God destroyed whole cities for sexual perversion, and God is punishing angels who disobeyed him. We must understand that God takes sin seriously and does not leave it unpunished.

    Jude reminds us that, even though God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, he let them die in the desert because they didn’t trust him. The majority of Israelites (except for Joshua and Caleb…) stated that God could not see them through to the Promised Land. God could see unbelief in their hearts and he let them die because of it. Only belief in Jesus for salvation saves us, and the church must continue to teach this until he returns.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Psalm 139: 5-16 (NIV): You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

    God doesn’t micro-manage our every move, but he goes before us and follows behind us as we go through our lives. He is in ultimate control. Somehow his sovereignty overrides our free will. We do have a free will, yet he has ordained all of our days for us. Only God is wise enough to understand this, but somehow he does.

    God sees our first day and our last day, and every day in between. He also saw us as we were being formed in the womb. God knows how many days we will live and how many hairs we have on our heads. (Matthew 10:30). He knows everything about us. This is why we need not fear. He’s got this!

    When something happens to us, it is only with his permission, and God is always up to something good. We may not understand it at the time, and it may not be pleasant or seem fair at the time, but God has a plan. Paul said all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28). God said he knows the plans he has for us, to prosper us and not to harm us. (Jeremiah 29:11). It’s important to remember that when Jeremiah wrote this Word from God, Israel had 80 more years of captivity to go. But God had plans and was encouraging them to trust his timing. It is also important to remember that Romans 8:29 tells us that what is good is something that makes us more like Christ. That is God’s ultimate goal for us.

    God is outside of time. He sees all of History before him, and nothing is a surprise to him. He knows what has happened to us, what is happening to us, and what will happen to us. He is watching as we live our lives. He is guiding us toward his purpose for us. When we follow him, our lives are so much smoother and less painful. We are fearfully and wonderfully made; we are created to heal and to thrive. We can’t escape from God’s presence and we can’t escape his ultimate will. We may run, but we can’t hide. Trust God – he knows you better than you know yourself, and yet he loves you completely.