How Glorious Is Glorious?

God lays waste to the great city of the Antichrist, bringing it and its people to utter and eternal ruin.  His holy servants rejoice at the everlasting punishment to visited upon those wretched adherents:  "Hallelujah!  Her smoke rises up forever and ever." (Rev. 19:3b)

Christ and the disciples see a man blind from birth.  Jesus explains that this man was made blind (by God - Ex. 4:11) "so that the works of God might be displayed in him." (John 9:3b) This long-established plan could not have happened without sin in the world to blight our race. 

God Himself declared, "I am the Lord, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these." (Is. 45:6b-7)

These snapshots from scripture, and many others like them, give us to believe that God is perhaps closer to everything than we might have guessed.  We begin to see, put plainly, that God's plan from eternity past willfully included a sin-soaked world.  While we absolutely cannot, and never should, suggest that God is the author of evil, or the agent of its introduction into our midst, neither can we suppose that God was taken by surprise in Genesis 3, or that He had to change His plan after sin came in.  No; what man means for evil, God means for good (Gen. 50:20).  Not a single purpose of the Lord's goes unaccomplished (Is. 46:10), so we may say that sin surely did not turn the least of His plans aside.  If God is absolutely certain to accomplish all of His intended purposes, we must acknowledge that this means He leaves nothing, absolutely nothing, to chance, so His plans necessarily include sin.

This is tremendously comforting.  If God is sovereign over evil, but is Himself holy, then He has the upper hand in all things, and we may rest securely in His promises.  If, on the other hand, we are sovereign over evil, or perhaps Satan, then this inordinate hole in God's absolute control constitutes a terrifying, and probably condemning, idea.  Evil can best us, but more frightening yet, evil can best God Himself.  Praise Him that this is not so!

But if indeed God is sovereign over evil, as is easily demonstrated by scripture, why should there be evil at all?  We cannot content ourselves with the commonly-held thought that He desires the exercise of human free will, and so evil must be suffered to exist.  We have already made mention of Isaiah 46:10 - God accomplishes all of His purposes, so He must necessarily have created this world, and everything in it, for the fulfillment of His purposes.  There is no room, then, for the preeminence of man's will alongside God's:  only one can reign supreme, and scripture declares that it is God's that does so.  And even if this were not so, if God were reluctant to allow evil into the world, He would not have orchestrated things such that a single sin devastated all things as it did.  God would not have allowed sin to propagate by default into every descendent of Adam and Eve.  He would not have cursed the entire world.  He would not have allowed Job to endure such demonic hardships for no fault of his own.  He certainly would not have chosen to direct a demon to entice Ahab to go into a losing battle in 1 Kings 22, and so forth.  The effect of sin upon the world and upon humanity were decided solely by the Creator, and His decision casts much light on His intentions.

There must be another reason besides that of man's presumed free will.  Paul reminds us of a piece of Old Testament truth:  "For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.'" (Rom. 9:17) Pharaoh, that great opposer of God's purposes and God's people, was raised up, and indeed allowed to live (Ex. 9:16) expressly so that, in dealing with his treachery, God could show Himself to be mighty and so spread His fame across the world. 

This is simply astonishing.  As we reel from the implications, Paul goes further:  "What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?" (Rom. 9:22)  So the display of God's wrath enters the equation, as well as that of His patience.  Yet again, and most tremendously:  " And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory." (Rom. 9:23)

Glory!  As believers, can our hearts help but quicken at the mere mention of this word in connection with our Lord?  This is the heart of the matter, friend.  How can God show His merciful disposition?  In the forgiveness of sinners; mercy has no more immediate value in a sinless world than a candle in the hot sun.  It would be admirable, but not necessary, and certainly not understood.  How can He display perfect patience?  In not destroying us inherently wicked humans where we stand!  And what of His justice?  He must hold all of this world of evil to His just standards, and pour out His just wrath for His children upon His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to see that justice satiated.  And would we know the strength of His power without His conquest of evil, even the very evil in our own hearts? 

Grace, power, justness, wrath, patience, and so on - these are mere words until we see them come alive in the glorious deeds of our great God.  We should not understand them at all, but for our fallen, wretched existence.  The working of evil, although loathsome to God in every respect, is the backdrop against which the manifold triumphs of His perfect and unchanging character are thrown into brilliant and razor-sharp relief.  The Lord has actively included evil in His all-encompassing purposes, not because He loves it, but because He hates it with a prostrating, vengeful, eternal vigor, and He desires that His creation understand Him in this way - there is immense anger and immense power, but from this fearsome understanding we survey also the vastness of His mercy and love.

In a sentence, He makes His glory the most important thing in the universe.  Being perfectly righteous, God does this because it is wholly fitting that we should cherish and worship the unimaginable perfections which reside, solely and eternally, in Him.  Who could be more worthy of our attention, our devotion, and our allegiance than He?  Thus He does great things, things that muzzle human pride and arrest human strength, because He seeks to unveil "the riches of His glory." 

Evil exists because God, in His glorious wisdom, has decided that He may work against it and so show His glory.  Some may balk at such a thought, apparent though it is in His book.  They say, "Are you telling me that all the pain and all the death and all the cruelty that have ever existed in this age have their existence simply so that God can show who He is?"  To this, a simple "Yes!" will do.

It is dangerous, friend, to question God's omniscient prerogatives.  Such an attitude as this reveals that we have already formed an opinion, altogether too low, about the importance of God's glory, and have in fact allowed this opinion to shape our philosophy.  We say, in effect, "God's glory is not great enough for this world of evil in which we live."  How sadly backwards is this thinking!  We must come at things from the opposite standpoint:  the Bible says that God has suffered evil to propagate into this world, according to His longstanding decree, in order that He might be far more strongly glorified.  Rather than looking about us and scoffing the sheer impossibility of this, we must look about us and conclude that God's glory must simply be far, far more glorious than we had ever imagined, and far, far stronger than we had ever considered.  What effect might this realization have upon our perception of the Lord, or upon our attitude toward our own lives and hardships? 


Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped.  He said,

"Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
And naked I shall return there.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord."

- Job 1:20-21

Fitted for Wonder

Long decades and many miles after the Israelites had been led from Egypt by God's omnipotent hand, they finally stood poised to begin their conquest of the Promised Land.  God's hand had not left them, and the wayfaring nation stood ready.  Now the surging Jordan River lay between them and Jericho, and God was about to work a wonder. 

The next day, His might would see this flooded, coursing river utterly stopped, its torrents piled in an inexplicable heap miles away, until the Israelites, stepping out onto the soft bed before them, would find naught but dry ground beneath their sandals.  God in His limitless power would once again prove unencumbered by the very natural laws which He had laid down at creation, and Israel would soon have a home. 

Joshua said to his people, "Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you." (Josh. 3:5b) This is an interesting sort of imperative for him to issue on the verge of the parting of the Jordan.  Why should they consecrate themselves?  What bearing might it have?  Indeed; Joshua did not say, "Consecrate yourselves, so that tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you."  Indeed, there is no cause and effect suggested here at all.  What, then, is the purpose of this command?

1.  The worthiness of God.  God deserves, richly and in every way, to be attended by holiness as He works His wonders.  He Himself is the Sun of holiness; it radiates from His very being just as light and heat issue from our central star, and He commands His people, "Be holy, for I am holy." (Lev. 11:44, etc.) Is it not wholly fitting that the Israelites, being made aware that greatness, unspeakable and divine, would soon be upon them once more, should seek to clothe themselves in a humble and pure godliness?  What could be a more appropriate response to the miraculous and gracious working of a holy God on behalf of an often wayward people?  Our God deserves holiness from His people, and indeed has laid works of holiness before them (Eph. 2:10). 

2.  The gladness of His people.  The Israelites could not rely upon the pure wonder of the God's work to stir their very human hearts.  If they wanted to savor the undiluted glory of it, if they wanted to rejoice in the Lord at the sight of it, they needed to prepare themselves beforehand.  We see this in our own lives at times, do we not?  In those moments when pride has free course in our hearts, we are unmoved by the moving hand of God.  God's provision in difficulty, His resolution of a demanding situation, even His salvation of a previously unyielding and dead heart do not move us, but leave us only with a vague sense of scorn, skepticism, or indifference.  By God's grace, sometimes this spiritual apathy is enough to startle and to stir us into repentance, but oh!  It is a far, far greater thing to see His work with holy eyes and to come unencumbered to His throne in humble adoration.  It is an exquisite and lingering shame when the sounds of God's matchless glory fall upon the deaf ears of His very own children!

Joshua's words serve as a warning and a challenge to believers in all ages.  Are we honoring a dserving God with consecrated spirits?  Are our hearts so cleansed as to desire to see His glory?  Do the manifestations of His amazing grace find a glad welcome in us?  If we do not see much of God's work around us, miraculous or otherwise, should we not consider that perhaps we are not cultivating holiness in our hearts, and so are not looking for or desiring His glory as it comes down?  Friends, let us fight the spiritual decay that can lead only to spiritual apathy!

Perfect Patience

Our infinitely holy God, by sheer virtue of His infinite holiness, is possessing of an infinite hatred of sin.  He cannot help but be so.  Holiness cannot choose but to oppose sin, or it is not holiness at all.  God removed of holiness is an impossibility, a horrible bit of paradoxical double-talk, so we conclude that He hates sin as steadily and as comprehensively as a thing could ever be hated (cf. Prov. 6:16-19). 

The utter repugnance of sin which resides within the Divine leads us to conclude that the barest shadow of patience within God in the face of sin must also be of infinite weight.  As God has righteously and immutably chosen to be the omniscient, incorruptible Judge of all the world (Acts 17:31), He cannot merely turn His back on sin.  He thus has every reason to hate sin and every motive to punish it, as well.

What happens, then, when infinite and holy justice collide with infinite and holy grace?  A window of incredible value is opened up:  a window of divine patience.  It is only this window that affords us any sort of chance at all to be saved by His grace.  The sword remains in its sheath; the Rider has not mounted His war horse, and we are incredibly extended the offer of salvation.  "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance." (2 Pet. 3:9) Dear, divine patience!

There are those who would reckon this patience as weakness in our avenging Lord, or as proof of His fictitious origins (2 Pet. 3:3-4), but we know and rejoice that "He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed." (Acts 17:31b) So God's patience with sinners, my friends, is of infinite quality, but not of eternal quality (an interesting combination in our Lord).  It will reach its end on the day that God chose long ages ago.

Mark this well, brothers and sisters.  There is immeasurable glory in God's patience, just as there is incredible glory in His grace.  This divine forbearance floods the humble soul with a very tangible proof of God's incredible love, does it not?  However, there is no glory whatsoever for God to display through an eternal patience.  An eternity in which hell stands empty and unused demonstrates not patience, but apathy.  We see no justice here; only accommodation for sinners at the expense of God's holiness and biblical assertions.  Similarly, an incredibly long patience as God waits until all sinners repent reveals not a sovereign, loving God, but a weak sort of god who is enslaved to his own creation, who cannot move until they have, and whose words of warning are fodder for the scorn of depravity.  See how Christ's teaching about the narrow way (Matt. 7:13-14) is thus turned on its head. 

No, there lies in store for the unrepentant a fixed day in which the vast ocean of God's just wrath will confound its present bounds and break loose upon the world of God's enemies, roller upon everlasting roller.  The unsaved will by eternally drowned in the fury of the great Judge, immovably secured to an existence in which darkness, anguish, and loneliness are their only and just lot.  This is true because God's holiness and righteousness require it, but note too how well it shows us the strength of His present forbearance.  Let our lifelong brush with the immense patience of God prompt us to honor Him by making the greatest use of it - by obtaining so great a salvation, by growing in that salvation, and by proclaiming that salvation to others!

Faith in the Divine Filter

"Why is this happening to me?"

This is not so bad a question for Christians to ask, so long as we are prepared for the answer - so long as we seek the truth, rather than conclude that there is none to be had.  There is always a true answer to this question, truth that is long-standing and settled in the mind of the Lord. 

This truth is situated in the heart of Romans 8:28:  "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."  This is doubtlessly one of the most beloved verses in Christendom, but let us take care that our regard springs from good and true reasons.  This verse appoints us not, as some suppose, to a life of ease (i.e. everything will go well), but to one of purpose.  A cursory run through the biblical narratives suffices to reveal teh prodigious hardships that have been endured by God's chosen, even the most formidable and earnest of His saints, even when none of their actions would merit such trial. 

Beyond this, James urges his readers to "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials" (James 1:2), certain that it is not a question of "if," but "when."  Joseph delivers this wisdom to his traitorous brothers:  "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good..." (Gen. 50:20a)  Evil is directed toward us, but God means it for good. 

Returning to Romans 8:28, we see the absoluteness of this divine work:  "God causes all things."  This means that every one of the events and circumstances which find their way into our lives are intentional, and that intention is laid down by none other than our loving, omnipotent God Himself.  There is, in effect, a divine filter that assures that those trials which actually reach us are designed for our good.  Consider how this same filter was seen in full force in Job 1 - God turned aside barb after satanic barb before allowing a very specific trial to visit its devastating impact upon His servant Job. 

With this in mind, the astonishing thing is not that we believers labor under difficulty, but that we labor under such small difficulty.  Indeed, the care that our Lord demonstrates through Romans 8:28 means that we should meet trials with something approaching curiosity:  why, indeed, has this particular trial made its way to me?  How will God use this for good?  This neither blunts the force of the trial nor softens its difficulty, but it frames it in the appropriate context of God's selective, sovereign purposes.  It invites a righteous response from the heart of faith that is assured both of the Father's changeless, loving motivation, and of the Father's faithfulness to lavish the needed grace to endure upon our humble frames. 

Does the tragedy of the present hardship crush my very heart?  My God has good and loving purposes behind this circumstance that will far oustrip and outweigh the immediate anguish.  Is this trial immense in its power upon me?  The power which God communicates to my soul is stronger yet, is stronger beyond my feeble reckoning. 

Any number of difficult things might have come about today, but this is the one that did, by God's will, for His glory, and yes, for my good.  Praise Him in all things!

The Adoption Bonus

This incredible declaration by our Lord was cited in a recent sermon by John Cox in connection with the cross of Christ:

"For thus says the high and exalted One
Who lives forever, whose name is Holy,
'I dwell on a high and holy place,
And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit
In order to revive the spirit of the lowly
And to revive the heart of the contrite.'"

- Isaiah 57:15

It is a simple pronouncement, but let us not overlook the amazing implications contained therein. The Lord crafted this statement before time began; He delivered it in an age of antiquity, and He has taken omnipotent care to preserve it up to this very day and through time. Let us look again, then. The holy, eternal High King of all things, who dwells in a place of exaltation, nevertheless does not hesitate to dwell with those who are indescribably lower than Himself - people like us.

He tell us this in His Word because there is glory in it for us to survey. In fact, this verse points to the central glory of all the universe. We may make what seems a simple case that the Lord could easily have divined a way to save us without drawing near to us and revealing that wonderful nearness. The fact that our purposeful, deliberate, careful God did not choose to execute things in this manner is very telling: if asked what the aim of redemptive history truly is, we cannot answer simply, "Salvation, of course." There is more to it than this. Salvation lies at the core of redemptive history - hence the name - but what it accomplishes is the illumination of the unspeakable glory of God. Mark this well. He draws near to the lowly not because He must, but because as He draws near, His glory looms incredibly larger and clearer. The aim of redemptive history is the glory of God.

This is clearly expressed in Ephesians 1:4b-6: "In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." Do you marvel at the glory? We are lovingly grafted into a place we dare not presume to insinuate ourselves: the very family of the Almighty. He comes to dwell in our midst according to His own predetermined plan, and this occurs not "to the salvation of His people," but "to the praise of the glory of His grace."

Our salvation both demonstrates God's glory and gives us eyes to perceive it, until our hearts are saturated and overflowing with an unprecedented, unexpected gladness. Yet atop this glittering and lofty mountain of grace, the Lord has still more to pile and to heap, until we are blinded and staggered again at the renewed brilliance before us. The divine arm that extends to save us is the selfsame arm which draws us irrevocably into the eternal and holy family of God, there to remain forever. We see His eternal, infinite glory in His salvation and His adoption, and we will rightfully praise Him forever for the glory that we see.

In considering the happy pinnacle of utmost blessing on which we now permanently stand, let us not stop short by considering only the grace that we receive, but also the glory that the one true God receives. The grace points to the glory; the salvation points to the Savior. If our thinking allows us to divorce the glory from the grace, the grace begins to mutate into entitlement, and the vacuum created will inevitably replace God's glory with our own - a poor and transient substitute at any time.

"Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen."

-Ephesians 3:20-21

What to Do with the President

The presidential election has come and gone once more here in America, and the Christian community has mixed feelings.  Some believers are ecstatic, when they certainly should not be.  Some are downcast for purely wrong reasons.  Some have good call for concern and sadness. 

It becomes every believer living in a democracy to cherish a uniquely Christian conviction when scrutinizing political candidates.  Dr. MacArthur said it well recently:  "You’re not voting for a pastor, you’re not voting for a spiritual leader, you’re voting for someone who has some sense of morality. Since the Bible says that the role of government is to punish evil doers and protect the good, you better have somebody in power who understands what is good and what is evil."  This is good perspective to bear in mind - let us spend our passions upon those things regarding which the Lord has spoken clearly and loudly in His Word:  the sanctity of unborn life, the narrow definition of marriage, the call to earn one's bread, the relationship we are to have with Israel, and so forth.

Much may be said about these matters, and indeed much has been said in the months leading up to the election, so I will not belabor this any further.  However, I would like to address the question of what we do from here as believers.  We have made our choices and cast our votes, and I would hazard to assert that any believer that loves God and His timeless truth is not pleased about Obama's re-election.  However, what do we do from here?  Three brief suggestions:

1.  Prayer.  "First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.  This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." (1 Tim. 2:1-4) We are to pray for our leaders, that they may be saved, for two reasons.  Not only is this attitude pleasing to our God, who loves to save people, but it will help us to conduct ourselves as believers in peace as we strive to carry out God's call to make disciples.  Consider for a moment if our nation were largely governed by people of true godliness and Christlike integrity - how might the Lord use such conditions for the furthering of His kingdom?  A direct question, now - do you pray for President Obama's salvation?

2.  Obedience.  The unsavory aftermath of this election does not arm believers with any sort of license to disobey their government.  Do we fear that injustices against God's established moral system will be redoubled?  Certainly.  Will we be disappointed, distraught, and dissatisfied with many of the choices made?  Without question.  However, this objections can hardly surmount the decree of the Lord concerning authorities, delivered by Paul to the believers living in the capital city of Caesar, of all rulers:  "Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.  Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves." (Rom. 13:1-2) These are strong words that brook no excuses. 

An example close to home may illuminate.  I am a gun owner, both for personal enjoyment and for personal defense.  I believe firmly in the right to own firearms, and adamantly oppose modern gun control efforts for law-abiding citizens.  This being said, what should be my response if, say, the 2nd Amendment were repealed, and the government required all citizens to turn in their firearms?  Quite simply, my response needs to be to take my entire firearms collection to the appropriate collection point and turn it over without a joyful heart.  God's Word makes no provisions for my hiding guns under the floorboards, or burying them in the desert, or marching on Washington with a gun in my hand.  Such a response conveys a greater trust in metallurgy and smokeless powder than in the sovereign God of Romans 13. 

3.  Patience.  We Christians tend to not be dull and passionless.  Let us take care, though, that our passions are not misspent or poorly focused.  You discuss abortion with a staunch pro-choicer, for instance.  Are you consumed with a defense of pro-life philosophy, or with concern for this person's soul?  If they are saved, they need loving correction.  If they are not, the gospel is the first priority.  Rallying to a pro-life banner will not, in itself, alter an unbeliever's trajectory one hundredth of a degree away from eternal hell.

The same applies on a larger scale.  We can rant and rail about the poor decisions that the present administration is making, but do our just concerns prompt us to become embittered worriers, or praying, zealous workers within God's eternal kingdom?  Treating the symptoms of unbelief without addressing the unbelief itself does not breed salvation, only hypocrisy, and as a side note, will not save this nation.  This thrusts us, quite appropriately, into the realm of evangelism, and evangelism requires patience and compassion.


The same truth lies at the root of all of these points - the truth of Psalm 103:19: "The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, and His sovereignty rules over all."  We can follow a sovereign God in the program He has determined for His people because He is utterly sovereign, and His omniscience, compassion, wisdom, and omnipotence accompany Him through His sovereign work. 

Opposite Father, Inverse Child

Your dad unbuckles you from your car seat, and he rushes you into the house to keep you from getting soaked in the rain. Later, he makes sure you clean up your room and are learning to be organized.  He encourages you to keep trying on your math homework and gives you hints, and so on - saving money, kindness to peers, demonstrating responsibility, communicating well.  Most importantly, He gives you the gospel, that you might be saved, and then urges to read the Word and to pray to the Lord, that you might grow and remove yourself from the coattails of your parents' faith.  Over the span of your childhood, his mission, like your mom's, is to raise you and train you such that you are able to function (as a believer, he hopes) in all spheres of life without constant, intense reliance upon him. 

Your heavenly Father, on the other hand, lovingly drew you to Himself when you despised Him and wanted nothing to do with Him (Rom. 3:11, 1 John 4:10).  Having secured your justification from sins through the blood of His Son, He did not cease His work in you, but continued with you and does so even to this day.  Here, though, begins a key difference between your earthly father and your heavenly Father.  If the similarities between earthly fathers and our heavenly Father are richly instructive to our understanding of God, so also are the differences. 

The difference here is that while our earthly fathers rightly seek to decrease our reliance upon them, God is actively working in His children to teach us more and more that we incessantly need Him.  We are not resting upon the laurels of our own presumed goodness, as man-made religion does, but we are renouncing it as naught but filthy rags, even as God does.  Christ said, "Apart from Me, you can do nothing," (John 15:5b) and we believe Him.  What constitutes foolishness to the world is life and growth and joy to us. 

Hear what Paul, that great and mature apostle, says about our reliance upon the Father:

• Rom. 8:15 - "For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, 'Abba! Father!'"  The spirit within us leads us to cry, not, "I am able!", but "I need the Father who has adopted me!"
• Col. 3:17 - "Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father."  All that we do is to be done with a heart of proper thankfulness toward the Father.
• Eph. 3:14-16 - "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man..."  Here Paul professes his humble prayer to the Father that His Spirit would strengthen the people of the Ephesian church.  On display, then, is Paul's reliance upon the Father, and the Ephesian church's reliance as well. 
• Col. 1:29 - "For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me."  Paul labors, relying upon God's strength in him as he does so.

We see, then, just from these few examples, that the path to powerful and effective Christian living is only through God and His grace.  If we do not rely upon Him as we seek to work in righteousness, our hands are empty and our hearts are wayward. 

The temptation, though, is to consider that as we grow in our faith, we can contend with more on our own, apart from humble prayer or strengthening grace.  We see this at times with longtime Christians who judge that they can "handle" temptations which they could not in their younger days.  It is strange indeed to think that in the bud of one's Christian walk, "handling" temptation meant turning to the Father with urgency and fleeing temptation, while for the seasoned believer, it can come to mean demonstrating how one can entertain the temptation and remain (supposedly) unaffected by it.  So our nightstands become arrayed, rank and file, with spiritual books that may entertain on one hand, but play fast and loose with cherished spiritual truths on the other!  So also are our televisions allowed to show us things which should not be countenanced, because we think this is proof of our righteous integrity!  How came our hearts to be so beguiled?  Our years in the faith should prompt us only to turn to the Father with greater zeal and with greater urgency, as He leads us by His own righteous hand.  We mature by reliance upon the Father, and indeed we mature into reliance upon the Father.  There is no other way, my friend. 

Man the Creator vs. God the Creator

I happened upon an article recently, a sad little piece of scientific amour propre, the thrust of which was that the recent attainments of the scientific realm have drawn shockingly close to legitimately expunging God from our understanding of the universe's origins.  While in the past, says the article, people have made awkward attempts to graft science and creationism together, "a foremost goal of modern physics is to formulate a working theory that describes the entire universe, from subatomic to astronomical scales, within a single framework. Such a theory, called 'quantum gravity,' will necessarily account for what happened at the moment of the Big Bang."

In short, a central effort within the scientific community seeks to explain the universe without a divine Originator.  To this end, the article declares later that "[t]he Big Bang could've occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there. With the laws of physics, you can get universes."

As believers devoted to the truth of Scripture as fact, not fable or opinion, how do we answer this?  We respond with dismay and sadness, certainly, but there are two responses which are wholly inappropriate. 

1.  Surprise.  We know from Romans 3:11 and others that the world does not seek after God.  This is an ironclad principle; there are no exceptions.  It is only the gracious intervention of the Spirit which turns the eye of contempt into the eye of faith (cf. 1 Cor. 2:10). We do not, then, expect the world to seek the one true God as its Creator and Sustainer.

Nor do we suppose that this modern age represents a fundamental departure for unbelievers from the disbelief of the past.  In other words, this scientific trend does not augment their disbelieving hearts with another layer of armor which must somehow be penetrated.  There have always been unbelievers who do not believe that the earth is the Lord's creation; it matters but little that they are now attaching impressive-sounding names and theories to their suppositions.  Whether unbelievers cloister themselves within this scientific garrison or not, we know that it is only the power of God that can transplant life into their dead, motionless hearts.  The presence of a godless, scientific worldview within such people does not in the slightest tax the reach of God, or the compassion of God, or the wisdom of God.  We know that "He has mercy on whom He desires" (Rom. 9:18b), and God Himself says, "My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure." (Is. 46:10b) His arm of salvation will always move with insuperable purpose and indomitable love.

2.  Doubt.  If we survey the above quote from the article, we note a certain lexical consistency:  these are words of possibility, not of certainty.  Thus we are given "theories" about what "could've" happened, and so forth.  God, when He creates, creates the universe, while man, when he creates, creates theories to dismiss the creative work of God. 

The problem with these theories is that they attempt to explain scientifically that which is entirely unscientific.  It is the proverbial apple next to the orange.  It is like saying you are going to douse your campfire by playing an old 78 of Wagner.  If you scratch your head and re-read that sentence, you have captured the intent.  The idea is ludicrous.  And neither do we explain creation using science.  Consider what science tells us in no terms of uncertainty.  For instance, it declares that matter cannot be created or destroyed.  Much hinges upon this truth, and yet matter must have had its origin at some point and from some cause.  We might also consider the second law of thermodynamics, which says that entropy cannot decrease; that is, that disorder is always increasing (i.e. ice melts in a glass of water).  How then could a "Big Bang" furnish the initial order of the universe?  Can science disclose this without violating its own principles?  Never!

Let us go yet one step further.  If, as scientists posit, the laws of physics in themselves are sufficient to create the universe, do we suppose then that the laws of physics predate space, matter, and time?  Are we to attribute to them the eternal, transcendent, self-existent character which belongs to God?  From what root did these laws spring?  And how could they (or why would they) exist without the matter and the time and the space which, on one hand, regulate them, and, other the hand, are held in their grip, as it were?  The words of Romans 1:25 echo rather ominously through our hearts with these thoughts:  "For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."

I myself use science daily in my work; as an engineer, I apply it, but I do not investigate it.  As such, my knowledge is admittedly imperfect; howver, it seems clear that, for all the testing and dialog, science continues to fail with regard to the actual creation of all things.  Its theories cannot encompass this question. 

God does not labor under any such struggles.  Man may theorize, but God declares.  His Word begins, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  There is no ambiguity in this statement as to how the universe came into being.  Genesis 1 carefully records that God created it, and in six days.  Isaiah 44:24-25 records the magnificent and inimitable declaration of our preincarnate Savior:

"Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb,
'I, the Lord, am the maker of all things,
Stretching out the heavens by Myself
And spreading out the earth all alone,
Causing the omens of boasters to fail,
Making fools out of diviners,
Causing wise men to draw back
And turning their knowledge into foolishness…'”

Man's trifling theorizing cannot stand before God's omnipotent pronouncement.  Praise, praise Him!