Ecc. 11:5–Thank God You Don't Know

Ecclesiastes 11:5–"As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything."

Praise God for miracles!  Praise God for babies!  Praise God for His endless, amazing creativity in creation!

If I have uttered it a million times, it has not been enough.

Humanity is brilliant in its creativity and intellect, clever in its category and thought, and beautiful in its poetry and language.  But with all this genius and grandeur we still must bow in humility before the God who creates by the power of His voice, the strength of His Word, and can still the storm or swell the wave with but a whisper.

To all of this we can only say:

Praise be to God!

Job 37:5–God's Mighty Voice

Job 37:5–"God thunders wondrously with His voice; He does great things that we cannot comprehend."

This is a great verse.  It speaks of God's majesty and His holiness.  It talks about His great and mighty voice and the sheer incomprehensibility of His deeds.  This is not to say that we cannot assess what God does, only that we are unable to truly understand all the vastness of His works.  He creates by the power of His Word, and He sustains us from moment-to-moment by that same method.  This is a profound truth and mystery.  And it deserves our reverence, our interest, and our investigation, all wrapped up[ in the sincerest faith and devotion.  Let us then meditate on the reality of this verse today!

Col. 1:16–All Things Through and For Him

Colossians 1:16–"For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through Him and for Him."

This is one of those 'knot' statements in that it ties a whole host of Scripture passages and theological ideas together.  It can be condensed into a simple phrase: by Him through Him and for Him.  In other words, everything in existence has been created purposely, with specific intent.  That purpose is His, the intent is for Him.  All things, everything is meant for His glory, to His praise and to magnify His holy name.   Additionally, this is a tie that connects the creation of the universe to Christ, as it was always, before the foundations of the earth, for Him.  I find great peace and comfort in this truth.

Praise be to His name!
Amen.

Psalm 33:9–He Spoke and He Commanded

Psalm 33:9–"For He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded and it stood firm."

This is, in many ways, one of the most profound truths that Scripture means to convey about who God is and His relationship to the creation.  He didn't create the universe and all therein with extra effort or as if He was going to try His best, NO!  He created it with the power of His Word, commanding it to stand firm and, because of who He is, all  creation obeyed.

I cannot think of another way of saying this: God is amazing.  It is verses like this, truth of this weight that continue to cause me to bow in awe at who He is.  Thank You, Lord!

New Year: New Creation

Paul writes this: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." (2 Cor 5:17).

2013 is here.  At this transitional time, people around the world look back at the past with a critical eye.  We all want to make this year progressively better than the last.  We want to lose weight while earning more cash, and be, generally, greater than this year compared to years past.  But, beyond that, all of want this year to be at the very least a good year.

For this, I want to make a proposal to Christians to claim our identity in Christ, to stop dwelling on who we were apart from Jesus and live as we are in Him.  Claiming this identity is key.  It means that we will no longer think of ourselves, but we will earnestly set our sights on discovering who we are in Christ Jesus.

"The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."  Christians run the risk of forgetting this basic fundamental reality.  We are creations in Christ.  Our task now is to discover who we are, not in ourselves or based on what we have been, but in Christ.  This requires a good deal of personal flexibility and a certain level of selflessness.  For God wishes to surprise us by challenging our preconceptions of ourselves.

Who we think we are is nothing compared to who we actually are in Christ.  This year my prayer is to continually be impressed by God's imprint upon my life as a new creation to Him.  To be sure, this is not a passive process but is an active endeavor; a pursuit of devotion as God reveals who we are as new creations in Christ.  With this as our focus, 2013 will be a great year.

Psalm 19 and the Revelation of Creation

Psalm 19: 1-4a:

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork.  Day to day it pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.  There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.  Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the earth."

This passage of Scripture came up today in my Bible study and it seemed appropriate to bring it to light.  The essence of this passage is referred to by Paul in Rom. 1:19-20.  At the heart of it, and of our understanding of nature in general, is that God has revealed Himself in nature and nature continually reveals the character of God, declaring His glory and proclaiming His handiwork.

How we respond to this speaks of our devotion as well as the depth of our theology.  If, when we look at the majesty of creation, we are not drawn into awe and worship, then, we are not receiving the message that God has intended us to receive.

Instead, the appropriate response to the wonderful beauty of creation should be humility and reverence  before a mighty God.  In needs to be stated that the purpose of this has been neither doctrinal nor conviction.  Rather, God desires us to look for Him where He has left His imprint and the whole of creation is one of those sure places.  Let us then praise His name because of the revelation of creation!

Praising the Lord

Loving God is a beautiful gift.  And although it is done through faith in His Son Christ Jesus, literally praising Him is an important expression of our sincere love for God.  As God's creation, we have such a distinct pleasure in offering up sincere praises to the Holy Lord Almighty.  We get to join with creation's choir in lifting up a sacred song of worship.  In fact, as the Psalms indicates, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork (Psa. 19:1)."

Or consider the four living creatures that sit around the throne and continually say, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is to come (Rev. 4:8)!"  And the twenty-four elders cry out in response, "Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they existed and were created (Rev. 4:11)."

Heaven is a continual and constant worship service of praise and adoration for the Holy Lord.  In reality,  God has no need of our praise and worship; He does not need it.  He does, however, command us to praise Him (1 Chron. 16:8; 1 Thess. 5:18; Heb. 13:15, et al).  Therefore, it stands to reason that God asks us to praise Him for our sake.

This should both convict and challenge us to rethink our preconceptions of worship.  Truthfully, if we can assert that God does not need our worship, we must conclude that we do and that worship serves us in loving Him, but how?  God wants us to worship Him because in worshiping Him, in loving Him through praise, we ascribe to Him what He deserves while simultaneously denying self-praise.

Additionally, and much more importantly, worshiping God through sincerely offering praises and exaltations, positions us into performing the exact role that each of us was made to.  In a sense, for us not to worship is like trying to drive a fishing boat along railroad tracks.  Not only will it damage the boat, but it will never be as effective as putting the boat into the lake to do what it was made to do.

One of the challenges to this is our limited understandings of what constitutes worship.  The scope of this dialogue does not allow much more than an in-exhaustive list of what constitutes worship--school, work, chores, music, prayer, Bible study--all of these can be worship when done to the glory of God.  The intent of our heart is the important part of worship.  Let us then pursue worshiping God so as to be the people He has made us to be and to love Him with thanksgiving and devotion!