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Archives For Creation

Ascension Sunday: 1 Cor. 15:12-28

May 13, 2013 — Leave a comment

In the days of the prophet Elisha, the King of Syria was at war with the northern tribes of Israel. But Elisha frequently knew ahead of time the movements of the armies of Syria, and he would warn the king of Israel. This happened a number of times before the king of Syria became convinced that there was a traitor among his cabinet of advisors or generals. But even they knew what was going on, and they told their master that Elisha was a prophet who might even know what you said in the privacy of your own bedroom. So the king found out where Elisha was staying and sent a great army of horses and chariots and surrounded the city where Elisha and his servant were. When Elisha’s servant woke up in the morning, he saw the great army surrounding the city, and he said, ‘Alas, my master – what shall we do?’ But Elisha answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And he prayed and said, “Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha (2 Kgs. 6:8-17).

Where is heaven? Where is heaven? We often ask what heaven is like. What is it like in heaven? What will it be like when we die? But perhaps an equally or more important question is: Where is heaven? And actually, I think answer the question where, goes a good ways toward answering the what.

The answer of the Bible, as illustrated in stories like this one with Elisha and his servant and the armies of Syria, is that heaven is here. Heaven is not far away, on the other side of the galaxies. Heaven is close by, nearby, all around us. But we can’t normally see it. The problem isn’t that heaven is far away. The problem is that we are like the servant of Elisha, and we can’t see it though the heavenly presence of God is all around us.

When Jesus ascended into heaven, fire didn’t shoot out of the soles of his feet. He didn’t blast off like a human rocket into outer space (as cool as that might sound). Luke says He was taken up, but He also says that a cloud received Him and He was taken from their sight. Remember other events like this: Enoch walked with God, and then he was not for God took him. Or God’s heavenly presence in the burning bush and the cloud and fire leading Israel out of Egypt, coming to rest on Mt. Sinai, and then later the glory of the Lord filling the tabernacle and temple. Or Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind. Or Stephen who gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. We gesture upwards, we look up, we lift up our hands and hearts, but the heavenly presence of God seems to break out in various places at various times all around us. Heaven is above us and all around us. Heaven seems to overlap with earth in some sense. Continue Reading…

In Ascension, Bible - 1 Corinthians, Church Calendar, Creation, Culture, History, Sermon Outlines, Theology - Eschatology, TRC

Made to Hunt Treasure

May 4, 2013 — 1 Comment

The Bible teaches that God made man for this world. God created this world for man. He invented this place for people. God made all things and called them good. Then He created man and woman, and He called it all very good. But God didn’t create the world finished. He didn’t create the world like a piece of art meant only to hang in a gallery somewhere. He created the world as a work in progress. He created the world good and very good, and He rested from His work on the seventh day, the first Sabbath. But in the work of creation, God established a pattern, a picture, an example and told Adam to follow it. Which is to say that God created the world good but not finished. He completed His work and rested, but God made Adam for work also. God made Adam for real work. God made Adam to be fruitful, to create, to invent, to discover, to rule creation with wisdom. And God created the woman to work with him, alongside him, to help him.

When God planted the Garden of Eden and placed Adam and Eve in it, He explained to them that the river flowing out through the middle of the garden actually split into four different river heads. God said, down the first river Pishon, you will find the land of Havilah which is full of gold. It’s good gold and there is bdellium and onyx stones there as well. Adam didn’t even know what gold was. He didn’t know where Havilah was. He didn’t know what bdellium and onyx stones were either. But God gave him these descriptions and pointed into the distance and said, You’re gonna want to go that way. What God did was give Adam the very first treasure map.

But God wasn’t done. He pointed to the other rivers: Gihon goes down to Ethiopia. Hiddekel goes toward Assyria. And the fourth river is called Euphrates, and I’m not even telling you where that one goes. This is glorious. God created the universe and the first man and the first woman, and He set them down in this lovely garden and immediately points out the world to them. But He doesn’t tell them everything. He just points and gives clues. But the point is clear. This world is loaded with glory. It’s loaded with goodness, and it was made for us. And God wants us to find it.

Solomon says that it’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, and it’s the glory of kings to search it out (Pr. 25:2). That’s what this world is for. That’s what people are for. They are for hard work. They are for late nights and early mornings. They are for digging in the dirt: inventing and discovering and uncovering and planting and building and birthing. They are for trial and error. They are for learning. They are for uncovering the glory of God in this world. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Bible - Genesis, Bible - Proverbs, Creation, Family, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Wedding Exhortation, Wisdom

What is a Christian?

April 17, 2013 — Leave a comment

A Christian is someone who believes that the answer to all the brokenness, pain, and evil in this world is the death of a man named Jesus two thousand years ago.

How could the death of one man be the answer to terrorism, abuse, betrayal, cancer, or crime?

The answer is that this man Jesus was not like any other man who has ever lived or ever will live. This man was actually the One who made this world.

Despite the horror, despite the pain, despite the senseless evil that has filled this world, this world is still filled with unexplainable, astounding glory and beauty. From sunsets to galaxies, from laughter to love, from music to dance to ice cream — this world is gut-wrenchingly good.

Christians believe that God made this world and loaded it with glory. He invented this place. He imagined this place. And He filled it with treasures and wonders and pleasure and beauty. But men and women have not listened to His voice. We wanted to go our own way. We wanted to be our own bosses, our own gods. Instead of listening to the words of the Inventor of the universe, we decided to listen to other words, to make up our own words.

This rejection of the Good God who made this good world is called sin. And since God invented life, and His word is what gives life to all things, to turn away from His word, to turn away from His life, is ultimately to embrace death. The wages of sin is death. Sin is asking for death. Therefore sin deserves death. Of course people don’t think that they are begging for death when they sin, when they disobey the voice of God, but still we sin and still death comes again and again and again. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Creation, Evangelism, Grace, Justice & Mercy, Preaching, Theology - Christology, TRC

A Party in Here

March 22, 2013 — Leave a comment

Is God good?

That’s not just a question about intentions or absence of evil. I mean is God good? And if it’s God we’re talking about, He doesn’t get His attributes from the thrift store. He didn’t pick His goodness up at a garage sale. His attributes are not two sizes too small or something He has to grow into. God’s attributes are God-like, divine, perfect, ultimate. In other words the goodness of God is not a hat He puts on occasionally. God’s goodness is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, unsurpassed. To say that God is good is necessarily to claim that God is the Highest Good, the Greatest Good.

So, is God good? Is He explosively good? Overflowingly good? Everlastingly good? Uncontrollably good?

The answer to this question is the difference between light and darkness, the difference between joy and despair, the difference between true repentance and forgiveness on the one hand, and wallowing around in guilt and regrets and fear on the other.

Romans 1 says that the difference between light and darkness is the difference between thankfulness and ingratitude. Because God’s attributes — His glory, His goodness, His love, His mercy are all clearly seen in the world. You can’t miss them. The world is fully loaded with His goodness. But some people insist on not seeing, insist on not worshiping the God who makes it Christmas every day. These people refuse to give Him thanks, and Romans says that when they do this, their hearts are darkened. But it doesn’t stop there. When their hearts are dark, they begin to profess themselves to be very wise. They write books, publish articles, and have quite a lot to say about things, but they are actually fools. And you can tell because they start worshipping inanimate objects and animals and pretty much anything in creation other than the Awesome God who made it all. And God gives them over to their folly, and pretty soon men in suits are explaining in calm voices how sex with animals is probably a natural urge. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Romans, Creation, Grace, Misc, Wisdom, Worship

Jesus is Enough

January 25, 2013 — Leave a comment

One of the key themes in Paul’s letters to the fledgling churches of the first century is the insistence that Jesus is enough. In Jesus, they have been granted all that is needed. Everything that the Old Covenant foreshadowed is found in Jesus. Everything that the pagan nations ached for and groped toward, has now been revealed in Jesus. All goodness, all pleasure, all wisdom, all blessing is found in Jesus because Jesus is God’s Eternal Son. Jesus is the Executor of God’s estate. He runs the whole show. He has access to everything, and therefore in Him, we have access to everything.

One of the greatest threats to the early church’s grasp of this came specifically from the Jews, the nearest relatives of the Christian Church. The book of Acts clearly shows that the Jews were the center of the persecution of the first Christians (witness Saul/Paul), and in every city Paul proclaims the gospel to the Jews first and then when they have had enough, Paul turns to the Gentiles and this tends to enrage the Jews and before long they have stirred up mobs and riots and chased the apostles out of town. Surely other pagans had their own axes to grind, but the pressure is coming in its most virolent forms from the synagogues.

This pressure included direct political/physical threat and force (beatings, imprisonment, trials), but it also included multiple layers of social force and threat below this: threat of excommunication from the synagogues, being cut off from friends, family, and inheritance, as well as enduring the frowns, the disappointment, the implicit and explicit signs of betrayal, disappointment, let down. And these pressures and tensions aren’t usually just theological or abstract. God made the world such that battles are usually pitched in particular places, on particular dirt. There is usually much more going on than what can be seen in a particular flash of conflict, but the location and occasion for the conflict are relavent. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Colossians, Bible - Galatians, Creation, Culture, Education, ethics, Food, Grace, Jesus is Enough, Pastoral Theology, Politics, Wisdom

The Gospel According to Water

January 15, 2013 — 2 Comments

The story of the Bible is the story of a river. It’s the story of the Spirit hovering over the waters, causing it to flow, making it surge, making it splash, making it live.

Adam and Eve were supposed to build boats and ride the river down the mountain. They would have had great adventures. Which river would they have gone down first? The Pishon? Looking for the gold in Havilah? Or try the Gihon going down to Ethiopia, or the Euphrates perhaps? Four rivers going out to the ends of the earth, the ends of the compass. The whole world was theirs because the whole world was their Father’s and they were safe in His love. But instead they plodded down that eastern hill in sadness, dust clouds licking their feet.

Grace was when they walked in the garden, when springs of water came up from the face of the ground to water the flowers and plants. Grace was the river that ran out of the garden, out of the presence of God, and down the mountain to the ends of the earth. Grace was drinking that living water, splashing in those streams, riding them, walking in them with the God of the Universe. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Creation, Culture, Epiphany, Grace, Misc, Sermon Outlines, Sola Scriptura, TRC, Wisdom

Looking for Jesus: Part 6

January 7, 2013 — 1 Comment

[Note the first part of this sermon was The Gospel According to the Rocks.]

What does the Bible say about the world?

1. When we consider all these themes (trees, lights, rocks, etc.), the Bible is telling us that there is a deep goodness embedded in the world (Gen. 1:31). All of creation has experienced the curse of sin and death and now groans, waiting for the redemption of the sons of men (Gen. 3:17-19, Rom. 8:19-22), but the world is also constantly talking about the glory of God (Ps. 19:1-4, 97:6). The world makes it manifestly clear that it was created, that we were created by an all-powerful, glorious, orderly, good God (Acts 17:24-29, Rom. 1:19-21). But even more explicitly, after we have read and studied the Bible, the World is constantly talking about Jesus, about God’s love for His people, His mission to share that glory with the world. The world proclaims the majesty of the Triune God and all men are without excuse, but the astounding claim of the New Testament is that it was created by and has the fingerprints of Jesus all over it (Jn. 1:3, Col. 1:16, Heb. 1:2-3). Creation, flood, Exodus, miracles, resurrection, trees, rocks, stars – all proclaim the obedience of creation to its Good Lord. In other words, the world proclaims that Jesus is Lord.

2. The Bible tells us that because of sin, the world has a certain kind of gravity to folly, a logic to evil, and therefore there are clearly established patterns to sin and evil. Sin tends to grow up in a particular direction (Rom. 6:19). Paul says that ingratitude gives way to hollowness that descends to folly that finally becomes darkness (Rom. 1:21). In layman’s terms, a little bitterness gives birth to a biting sarcasm that grows into full blown lies that grows up into men trying to have sex with other men. In Ps. 19, David confesses that sin is mysterious and therefore prays that God would cleanse him from secret faults (Ps. 19:12), followed by a prayer against presumptuous sins – that they would not have dominion over him (Ps. 19:13). Then David says he will be “upright” and “innocent from the great transgressions.” Psalm 1 describes a similar logical progression: walking, standing, sitting with ungodly, sinners, and scornful (Ps. 1:1). He who walks with the wise will become wise, but he who is a companion of fools will be destroyed – whether actual flesh and blood people, books, music, movies, heroes we look up to (Pr. 13:20). Apart from the miraculous and gracious intervention of God’s grace (e.g. Lk. 15:17), this progression always happens (Ps. 6:16, Pr. 26:27, Gal. 6:7) and fools never learn (Pr. 26:11, 2 Pet. 2:22). Molehills of sin always tend to grow up into mountains of evil. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Church Calendar, Creation, Epiphany, Sermon Outlines, Sola Scriptura, TRC

The Gospel According to the Rocks

January 7, 2013 — Leave a comment

People are instinctively drawn to rocks, stones, and metals. Chances are many of the women in this room are wearing a small decorative rock on one or more of their fingers, perhaps on an ear, or hung on a chain around their neck.

We pave roads and sidewalks and pathways with rocks and stones. We dig into the ground to find beautiful rocks. And some rocks simply demand our reverence by their sheer size. Mt. McKinley in Alaska is over 20,000 feet of pluton rock, what scientists call intrusive igneous rock, believed to have been shoved up from beneath the earth’s surface, where it cooled and crystalized. McKinley is the tallest mountain on land in the world considered just from base to summit. But over a hundred other mountains many in the Himalayas are actually far higher in altitude. But they get running starts. For example, Mt. Everest, the highest point on planet earth is actually riding piggyback on top of 15,000 feet of other rocks.

The world is full of rocks. We throw rocks into lakes, we skip them across ponds, we pile them up and build houses and buildings. We decorate, adorn, glorify with rocks. Some gigantic rocks are full of lava, rumbling, stewing, steaming, exploding.

I remember shortly after moving to Alaska when I was nine years old, Mt. Redoubt, a rock of about 10,000 feet at the very top of the Aleutian island chain, began exploding. Scientists say that beginning on December 14, 1989 until around April 1990, the mountain exploded around 23 times, spitting lava and shooting ash for thousands of miles. On the day of the first explosion, a Boeing 747 enroute from Amsterdam flew right into the ash plume and had a complete engine failure. The crew was able to successfully restart the engines and make an emergency landing in Anchorage. Ash disrupted airspace as far away as Texas during those months. I vividly remember seeing the ash falling on cars and parking lots, thin layers of gray dust everywhere. It was common to see people walking around with facemasks.

Volcanoes are living rocks, alive with fire and smoke, and when they burp, they disrupt our world. Smoke is rock breath. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Creation, Epiphany, Sermon Outlines, Wisdom

The Gospel According to the Lights

December 17, 2012 — 1 Comment

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Once upon a time, God created light. God spoke light. His first word was literally light. And it shone in the darkness. You could see because God had spoken. The Triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, eternally, forever bound in an indescribable glory, an unapproachable light, created a visible glory, a visible light, a robe for His glory. And there was evening and morning.

And God created rulers for this dance: the sun, moon, and stars to divide the day from night, to be for days, seasons, and years, to rule the day and the night. First God made day and night, a 24 hour span, and then came the sun, moon, and stars, to orchestrate the dance, to divide between the day and the night. First came the tick, tick, ticking of the clock and then came the hands and the face, the signs for seasons, days, and years.

And then God created more rulers. God created man in His own image: He caused His face to shine upon them. And He told them to rule, to have dominion over the whole earth, like the stars. So God brought the animals unto Adam to see what he would call them. Adam’s eyes were full of light, God’s created light, and so Adam’s words named like God’s words.

But there was no helper found suitable for Adam, so God caused a deep sleep to come upon Adam, and Adam’s Day became Night. And during that Night, God built another light to shine next to Adam. So there at the top of the world on a mountain in Eden, God shared His glory robe with His children, clothing them in His light and love and grace, two stars created to grow up into greater glory, Kings and Queens of all creation, signs and rulers and time keepers.

In Advent, Bible, Christmas, Creation, Evangelism, Grace, Sermon Outlines, Sola Scriptura, TRC, Wisdom

The Gospel According to the Trees

December 3, 2012 — 2 Comments

Once upon a time, the universe was born, and on the third day, still wet and wriggling, a Wind blew over the surface of the waters and dry ground emerged. But the wind was singing a song that said green and grow and millions of tiny grains and seeds cracked, and vibrant, verdant blades pushed up through the drying mud. Supple saplings, leafy bushes, crawling vines. The ground inhaled the light and warm air and exhaled plants and trees and grasses.

Some of these arched up into the sky with vehemence and enthusiasm, ever expanding broad and hard, full of pith and rings, rough, knobby skins, armored with deeply creased bark. And these same wooden bodies shot out arms, flexing in the sunlight, full of more branches, fingers spreading, flayed toward heaven, holding up glorious canopies of green, leafy long hair swaying in the breezes.

Buds broke out like fists and opened like fingers in orange and red and pink and purple flowers. And some of those blossoms closed again, molting, shaking off youthful nectar for mounds slowly inflating with juice and juicy fibers: fruits red and green and orange and purple and yellow: apples, oranges, pineapples, grapes, coconuts.

Three days later, the Wind blew over the ground again, and wriggling, crawling, roaring, howling beasts pushed up out of the mud. And finally, with special care, a man stood up tall and glorious with laughter in his eyes and a song in his chest. He raised strong arms into the wind, extending fingers to heaven. Hours later, another like him stood at his pierced side, even more glorious, a canopy of hair blowing in the breeze, a flower made to become fruitful, a woman. Continue Reading…

In Advent, Bible, Christmas, Creation, Sermon Outlines, Sola Scriptura, TRC