Encouragement

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  Based on Gen. 1:6-8

 The Bible consistently represents God as male.  This is true for all 3 Persons of the Trinity. When the Son became flesh He became a man.  The Holy Spirit is always called He.  The male was also the first to be created.  All of this in no way means that the Bible depreciates the female, for we will see that woman was the crown of creation.  She put the finishing touch on it all, and history reveals that the Bible has done more to advance the status of women than any other force.  The Bible is not anti-female, but it is anti-goddess.  All through the ages men have worshipped mother goddesses.  Archaeologists are constantly digging up figures of these goddesses from ancient civilizations.  It even crept into Christianity when Mary was proclaimed the Mother of God, and many in ignorance began to worship her. Many worship Mother Nature, and for all practical purposes they consider nature as God. 

       Goethe in his Hymn To Nature says, "She placed me in it; she will also lead me forth.  I trust myself to her."  The advantages of this commitment to Mother Nature are that you can be extremely religious, for your goddess is everywhere.  At the same time you have no obligation to do anything but what comes naturally.  In other words, you combine pantheism, which says all is God, and atheism, which says nothing is God.  You get, as a result, religious atheism.  This permits you to have a sensible explanation of the world, for all that happens is according to the laws of Mother Nature. 

       The Bible, however, says that the laws of nature are not eternal, but that they began in time, and they were put into operation by the Word of God.  God is the Father of all nature, and He is the Father of all the wisdom and order that men attribute to nature.  Those who think they can explain anything by reference to the laws of nature fail because they can find no source for the energy of these laws.   None would be so foolish as to think that it is the laws of architecture that builds buildings, or that the laws of navigation sail our ships.  They recognize that these laws must be put into operation by persons.  Persons must supply the energy.  You can have a law on the books that will find you for breaking a parking meter, but a man can break one and drive away with nothing happening.  The law is powerless without persons to enforce it.  Laws do not punish or protect anyone.  It is only as persons give them energy that they operate.

       The Bible says that this is true also of the laws of nature.  It is not the laws that keep order, but it is the energy behind them, and that energy has its source in God.  The laws of nature are the impersonal means put into operation by a personal God to accomplish His goals.  We who believe this reserve our praise for the wonders of the universe for God, and not for impersonal laws. With Alfred Tennyson we say, "Hallowed be thy name-Hallelujah, Infinite Identity, Immeasurable Reality, Infinite Personality!  Hallowed be thy name-Hallelujah!" 

      As we continue our study of creation we see how God gives birth to all that men attribute to the wisdom of Mother Nature.  God began with the raw materials of land and water, and on the first day He called forth light.  This, of course, is another basic factor needed to produce and sustain life.  But as we continue into the second day we see that God has much to do yet to prepare this planet for life.  Walking into you attic and turning on the light does not change the mess.  It is only as you exert energy that you can put it in order.  So God by His Word begins on the second day to bring order into the chaos.  In verses 6 through 8 we have the creation of the atmosphere.

       In verse 6 God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters to separate them."  The word firmament comes from the Latin word, which carries the idea of firmness. A better word might be expanse since firmament has led critics of the Bible to say that the Hebrews thought that heaven was hard and had holes in it through which the rain came down.  This is completely unfair to judge Moses by the meaning of a Latin word when the original Hebrew doesn't mean any such thing.   Critics also say that they probably thought the sky was blue because there was an ocean up there.  All of the ignorance that men try to impose on the Bible is the result of their own ignorance.  The Hebrews were not so foolish as to believe what the critics try and make them appear to believe.  Critics twist the poetic language and try and make them literal statements.

        Dr. Albertus Pieters says that by this same method you can make the modern American look ignorant and gullible.  You would be offended if a Russian publication described us as so scientifically immature that we think the sky is solid, and only a few hundred feet high. Yet what else are they to think if we persist in calling our tallest building skyscrapers? Wooden literalism gives the critics much to mock at in the Bible, but it is completely dishonest.  God's inspiration did not reveal to the Hebrews any modern science, but it kept them from all the false science and speculation of the heathen, which would have discredited the Bible.

       It is important to keep in mind that it is just as dishonest for us to claim that the Bible teaches modern science as it is for the critics to impose ignorance on the Bible writers.  Both arise from the same source, which is an over zealous search to find evidence for a pre-conceived idea without trying to see what the Bible is really saying.  In other words, the Bible does not predict cars, airplanes, radio, TV, and the atom bomb.  To say this leaves you just as guilty as perversion of God's Word as the critic who reads ignorance into it.

       Getting back to the firmament, we see that Moses says God created it to separate two bodies of water.  That sounds like it would support the critic who says the Hebrews thought there was an ocean in the sky.  As a matter of fact, that is exactly what they did believe, and so do we.  Delitzsch says, "The upper waters are the mists and clouds which move above us." It is estimated that the average quantity of vapor in the air is 54,460,000, 000,000 tons.  In other words, it is scientifically accurate to believe there is a ocean in the sky.  If all of the water in the atmosphere fell at once it would be as it was in the day of Noah.  There would be a universal flood.

       God on the second day established the atmosphere, which would be essential for the whole program of maintaining life on all levels through the power of evaporation and rainfall.  We see the logical order of God's plan.  First there is the provision for life, and then the plants for food, and then animals, and finally man.  Science and Scripture agree on this order.  The Bible only states the fact of what God did on each day.  It does not go into detail except on the creation of man.  Chapter two goes back and gives a more detail account of what was just briefly stated about man in chapter one.  The details of these other days we can learn from science.  The Christian says that science can be used to glorify God in that it spells out for us just what God did when He set in motion the laws of nature. 

        Water, for example, is 773 times heavier than air, yet through the process of evaporation tons of it are silently lifted into the sky.  God was the author of automation that makes man's machines very small in comparison. The whole world is watered by this process.  The rivers carry the water back to the ocean, and the cycle begins again.  The unbeliever can say what luck that it all worked out like this, for life would perish without this process.  The believer, however, says this is my Father's world, and he has made it livable. The unbeliever is not so ignorant as to look at a water tower and say, "What luck that there is such provision of water."  But they can look at the reservoirs in the sky and call it chance, or they call it the work of Mother Nature, but those who have seen the light of God's Word say with Jer. 10:12-13, "It is He who made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom, and by His understanding stretched out the heavens.  When He utters His voice there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and He makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth.  He makes lightening for the rain, and He brings forth the wind from His storehouses."  Personally is behind all the wonders we see in the universe. 

       Someone might say that it seems strange that God would take a whole day just to make the atmosphere.  It is essential, but it is only air, and air is nothing.  According to Roy Laurin there is in the space the size of a small pinhead 31 quadrillion molecules of nitrogen, 8 quadrillion molecules of oxygen, 16 trillion molecules of carbon dioxide, 400 trillion molecules of agon, 400 billion molecules of neon, and 2 to 40 billion molecules of helium.  I know there are those who believe nothing but what they can see.  They must reject the truth of science as well as Scripture then.  For it is the unseen that makes life on every level possible.  If the balance of these unseen molecules were not maintained, there would be universal death.  We see here the marvelous wisdom of God again.  Plants were made not only for food, but also because they set oxygen free for animals were breathe oxygen, and in turn the animals set carbon dioxide for use by plants.  It was on this second day that God made the environment for life. 

      The reality of the unseen is basis to science and faith.  God made us with 5 senses that we might we aware of far more than what we could be by sight alone.  If you put sugar in water it disappears from sight, but none argue from this fact that it is gone, for their taste buds tell them it is still there.  All of us have known the presence of a skunk without ever seeing it, and so everyone believes in the unseen to some degree.  Science devices ways to go deeper and find much more in the unseen world that our senses can detect, but faith goes even beyond this.  Faith is not ignorance, but it is the greatest intelligence, for it rises to the awareness of the highest and ultimate unseen reality, which is the reality of God.  So we read in Heb. 11:3, "By faith we understand that the world was created by the Word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear." 

       The Bible makes it clear that not only is the visible a product of God's creative power, but also the invisible, which still does not appear.  Col. 1:16 says, "For by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers.  All things were created by Him and for Him."  God forbid then that we praise Mother Nature for the marvels which science reveals.  All of our praise belongs to Christ, or more comprehensively to the Triune God of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We reject those poets who put Mother Nature in the place of God, and who write like Spenser in this poem:

Through knowledge we behold the world's creation,
How in His cradle first He fostered was,
And judge of Nature's cunning operation
How things she formed of a formless mass.

       He agrees with a Genesis account of how by wisdom the formless mass of chaos became an ordered cosmos, but refuses to accept God as its author.  Though science and the Bible agree as to the basic pattern, yet many scientist refuse to accept the revelation that a personal God is the source of all the energy needed to produce this pattern.  They are like a group of men who find a complex instrument in the desert.  They begin a study to figure out where it came from and what it is.  As they speculate and offer up their learned guesses, a man comes along and says I made that to measure the intensity of the light during and eclipse.  Now this has spoiled the whole thing, for he has shattered all their speculation and research in an instant.  They wanted to discover the origin and purpose of it.  They didn't want anyone to tell them right out, for that ends the search.  Many happy debates are cut short and ruined by someone who comes along with the answer.  This is the basic reason why many do not want to listen to the Bible.  If they admit that God was the cause of all, and is the sustaining power of all, it stifles the whole search for the answer. 

       The believer, however, says we are satisfied to accept the answer, and to pursue other problems far more crucial to man's well being.  Believing scientists also recognize there is much for science to do after accepting the answer of revelation.  Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest of early scientists, said, "He must be blind who from the most wise and excellent contrivances of things cannot see the infinite Wisdom and Goodness of their Almighty Creator, and he must be mad and senseless who refuses to acknowledge them."  The believer sees both the glory of the world and the God it glorifies, and they accept the poetry of men like Addison who wrote, The spacious firmament on high, With all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame Their great Original proclaim. Forever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine. 

       A pastor in England once preached a sermon on astronomy.  Someone came up after and asked, "What practical value is there in such a sermon?"  He answered, "None at all, but it greatly enlarges my concept of God."  I would go even further and say that nothing is more practical than that which enlarges your concept of God.  It is a fallacy to think that the study of creation, and of the great wonders of what God has made is not spiritual, and of no food for the spirit for everyday living.  What can be more encouraging than to know that the order, beauty, and marvelous mystery of all about you is the handiwork of one you can know and pray to as your heavenly Father? 
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