God is my No.1 God the Creator

Well, good evening, glad to have you with us tonight. And we're looking forward to a sense of the Spirit of God helping us to understand His Word and to make intelligible what we're going to be concentrating on, which is actually the subject of God Himself. Such a great subject to have in mind.

I was just praying a little while ago, how on earth can a speaker talk about God, because God is greater than our comprehension. And any words that we use, really, while they're too low a currency, they have too limited a value to fully understand God. But that's for us fully to comprehend.

But something of God has been revealed, and it's taught in His Word. And we're looking these Sunday evenings at the general heading, Behold Your God. I've got a book here on philosophy.

It's about four or five hundred pages long. I read it some years ago. And actually, it's put together by Bertrand Russell, who wasn't exactly a Christian by any means.

And the way that he died seemed to me to show something of the bankruptcy of his faith. But in this particular book, he's dealing with philosophers and their understanding of God. And there was one philosopher who said that actually nothing can exist unless God is around.

Something to exist has to have something to look at it. And so a limerick was written about this philosopher's ideas. There was a young man who said, God must think it exceedingly odd if he finds that this tree continues to be when there's no one about in the quad.

And the reply was this, Dear sir, your astonishment's odd. I am always about in the quad. And that's why the tree will continue to be, since observed by, yours faithfully, God.

Well, the Bible teaches that God is everywhere. And as I'll try to show you this evening, God is behind the phenomenon of creation. You can't really understand life as a whole, or your life in particular, without a recognition of who God is.

He is our fortune, we will never be shaken. He is our fortune, we will never be shaken. He is our fortune, we will never be shaken.

We will put our trust in him. He's in the Lord, He's found in Him alone. We will put our trust in God.

Let's hear a psalm being read. Psalm 8 is going to be read to us. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies. To silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him. You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands and put everything under his feet. All flocks and herds and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. All that swims in the piles of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. My Jesus, my Savior, Lord, there is none like you. That's quite a statement, isn't it? There's no one like Jesus.

There's no one who's ever been before or after that is like Jesus. And it says in the chorus, shout to the Lord, all the earth, let us sing power and majesty, praise to the King. Let's stand up.

We're already standing up. Let's continue standing and we'll sing this together. My Jesus, my Savior, Lord, there is none like you.

Let the future stay, let every pray. All that I am, let us be to worship you. Shout to the Lord, all the earth, let us sing power and majesty, praise to the King.

Mountains bow down and the seas roar on and the stars Oh, I sing for joy at the work of your hands. It's my heart. Shout to the Lord, all the earth, let us sing.

Power and magic speak praise to the King. Mountains bow down and the sea is my home. I sing for joy at the work of your hands.

So God's always around in the quad. Dear sir, your astonishments are that I'm always about in the quad, and that's why the tree will continue to be. Since observed by yours faithfully, God.

You know, there is a sense in which that's not just philosophers playing clever with one another. It surprisingly underlines the teaching of the Bible in regard to what we might call the imminence of God. God is distant from us in as much as he inhabits eternity, and yet he's present.

He can relate to us. He can come very close to us. A.W. Tozer says that you can know God in a way that is more intimate than you can know anybody else.

All these seem to be very strange and very staggering assertions, but I want to try to unpack them this evening. We're going to be looking, and this is the second in our series, but we're going to be looking at this is our God, and I'm concentrating on God as the creator. And you'll follow through overhead that will keep pace with what I have to say.

Tozer, I reminded you last week, made this comment that there is a sense in which the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is the word for God. We looked at a statement in the Psalms last week which has God critical of man. It says this, Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself.

Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as yourself. You see, the psalmist's error was not that he thought God was like him. There is a sense in which I've tried to demonstrate to you, or I did last week, that God is like us.

Where the psalmist went wrong is that he suggested God was altogether like us. There are things that God can do that you cannot do, but there are aspects of God that you share, because you are born in His image. You know, there's a word that's not often used in the English language, but I like it.

It's an old-fashioned word. It's the word creatureliness. What it means is this.

A sense of your inadequacy over against a sense of the awesome splendor of God. I want to speak just for a little while about the inner sense of God, and the outer evidence that we have for the existence of God, and the utter nonsense about denying God. The inner sense? Well, the Bible will tell you this.

There are occasions in the life of, I think, probably every person, when he or she experiences what the Latins would call the mysterium tremendens. That means a sense of awe, a sense of wonderment. Interesting, isn't it, that the press, in the last few months, did an analysis of the religious inclinations of young people.

And by young people, I mean boys and girls. The vast majority in this help, the conclusions that were made in this report, acknowledged that there were times when they were lost in a sort of stupor, not quite understanding why they were here, and believing that outside the criteria of their understanding, there is something else. Something undefinable, but something nonetheless real.

We saw a manifestation of this at a popular level. I made reference to this last week, too, did we not, when Diana died. And there was such an outpouring of grief, and the various descriptions on the thousands and thousands of bunches of flowers that were laid outside Kensington Palace, the vast majority of them had some sort of religious intonation, some religious aspect to them.

Here is a nation not known for its church attendance, nine percent, ten percent, regularly going once every month, that's to say regularly, that's the definition. And yet that vast 90% of people, it's not that they don't believe, it's that they have not focused their belief, as far as traditional Christianity is concerned, in what some of us believe are the essentials of the faith. Here is Abraham.

You find him in Genesis in chapter 15, and those of you who want an outline of this address, there are some on the welcome desk table as you leave, if you want to have the references by you. Here's Abraham. One day he has a curious, a curious experience.

There at night, and suddenly he sees a flashing light. The light actually is a mysterious representation of the presence of God. Next Sunday morning, and for some of you, you'll have to get up early if you're going to come, because Sunday morning is your lie-in morning.

I'm going to be talking about seances, the validity of what goes on in so-called spiritist circles. That on one side, there is a very healthy recognition in the Bible, and Abraham is a man who has an experience of this, of otherness, of something being there that he doesn't really understand, but it is true. In three weeks' time, I'll be on the Doulos, the ship of Operation Mobilization.

I've sailed a night ship on the Indian Ocean. I've gone on deck at night, two o'clock in the morning, and I've looked up into the Asian sky and seen something of the stillness, just the lapping of the water, seen the moon and the stars. I've been overwhelmed with a sense of creatureliness.

The Bible says in one of the Psalms that talks about sailors, 107 and verse 23, they that go down to the sea in ships, they know. It's not often that you come across an unbelieving sailor. He may not formulate his faith in the way that I would preach it, but nonetheless, you find that men and women who often are encountering the forces of nature will tell you that they believe that there is a great, a supreme, a superior power that at times terrifies them, and at times holds them in awe.

The inner sense. The Bible tells us that man is born with a knowledge of God. You can kill it.

Oh yes, you can exchange that knowledge. You can snuff it out. But the Bible declares that everyone born into this world has an innate intuition that God is.

And wherever you go in the world, and however intimately you study anthropology, the history of man, you will find that wherever man is in community, however primitive, he has a knowledge of the mysterious, tremendous. He knows that there is something beyond himself. But not just the inner sense.

There is an outer evidence. And again, you find this in Abraham's experience in Genesis chapter 5, because on one occasion, Abraham has, at the invitation of the Lord, the experience that I had on the doulos. He looks up to the skies at night.

God took him outside and said, Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you can count them. And says God to Abraham, The profusion of the stars is just indicative of what I'm going to do in your life. But the point that I'm trying to emphasize is this, that God showed Abraham that in the majesty of the heavens, God was able to communicate a message to him.

And here is a psalmist, you heard it read so beautifully, When I consider the heavens, the work of thy finger, the sun, the moon, which thy hands have made, what is man that you are mindful of him? I'm so creature-like. I'm filled with a sense of creatureliness. You see, it's there, the outer evidence.

Here is Job, and this man has a depression. And what does God do to help curb the spiritual malaise of Job? Well, he takes him a walk. He takes him on a safari tour of the world that he has made.

And he reminds Job of the greatness of God's handiwork and the perfection with which he has brought things into being. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand, who marked off its dimensions? And he goes on to speak about the tempest coming from its chamber, the cold from the driving winds, the breath of God produces ice, and the broad waters become frozen. And in the passage that I love, he takes Job to the animals, and he speaks about the joy that there is in the realm of nature.

Who let the wild donkey go free? Who untied his ropes? I gave him the wasteland as his home, the salt flats as his habitat. He laughs at the commotion in the town. He does not hear a driver shout.

He ranges the hills for his pasture and searches for any green thing. Job, you want to know that I am? Take a safari tour around the realm of nature. My handiwork is there in the storm, in the ice, in the wind, amongst the animals that I have created.

And in a sense, the mysterion tremendens, the outer evidence that dictates to the thinking person that God is the utter nonsense. What is nonsensical? Well, you know the Bible tells us that the whole school of thought that is categorized under the term of atheism is stupid. The fool has said in his heart, Psalm 14, 1, and in case you didn't read it, Psalm 53, in case you didn't catch on, Psalm 53, 1, the fool has said in his heart there is no God.

The Bible has only one explanation for folks denying what is obvious, and that is that wickedness can so cloak their judgment. When I was a student and had to toy with some of the issues that some of you youngsters are trying to cope with today, I came to read the writings of a philosopher by the name of C.E. Jod. And Jod had great problems with the doctrine of God.

And he started to read the writings of a man called Huxley, who was a great atheist, or so-called atheist, and also his son. And Huxley, in a very honest passage quoted by Job, said, I did not want my life to conform to the ethics of the Bible, therefore I sought for a reason to deny the existence of God. Let me put that to you in another way so you'll understand what I'm saying.

And again, going back to my days just after being a student, I took a campaign at the University of Kent, at Canterbury. And I can still see him now. There's a young fellow who came from Ghana.

And he said to me, you know, he said, I've listened to you. I was speaking on the deity of Christ. I've come and I've listened to your lectures for five consecutive evenings, and I am convinced about what you have to say in terms of the historical truth behind Christianity.

So I said, well, why won't you believe? Why won't you act on it? He said, if I did, I'd have to change the way I live. And one of the reasons why people adopt an atheistic position is because if you recognize that God is, and if you go somewhat more personal, you recognize that God can relate to you and to me. It means that we'll put a brake on your life and smuggle into your convictions a thought that you are accountable to this God who is and is personal.

Someone has said the world is still waiting for the first wise atheist. Another person has said atheist is the death of hope and the suicide of the soul. And more cryptically, for an atheist to find God is as difficult as for a thief to find a policeman, and for the same reason.

The best reply to an atheist, says Luis Niza, is to give him a good dinner and ask him if he believes in the cook. There is an inner sense of God born into the heart of all of us. There are outer evidences given of God's creative handiwork.

The concept that God is not is sorted out by scripture. It's reckoned to be an utter nonsense. So let's move on a little bit.

If God is as scripture declares him to be the creator, how did he create? And secondly, why did he create? And thirdly and lastly, what is the purpose of the creation? How did he create? Well, the Bible opens with the most significant statement that it contains. In fact, there is a sense in which if you understand the opening words of the book of Genesis, you have actually comprehended all that is to follow. In the beginning, God.

In the beginning, God created. How did he create? He created as the Latins would put it, ex nihilo. He created out of nothing.

Man will never create life. I say that without qualification at all. Man will never create life.

Oh, he can clone a sheep. And it may be within the providence of God, though. God help us if we get to the state in science that he can clone himself.

But he cannot create. What he can do is to take what is and develop something from it. He can take an animal and he can genetically change the animal.

But if he leaves it, the animal returned to its original form in terms of the generations of animal life. He can interfere, but actually he cannot create. Only God can create.

Breeding reverts back to what it originally was. Man may adjust. He may clone.

He may engage in genetic engineering. And there is a sense in which that might be beneficial. But one thing man cannot do is what God does.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And you get a parallel statement in John's Gospel, which identifies the role of creator and says that actually Jesus Christ is responsible. Through him all things were made.

Without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life. And that life was the light of man.

How did God create? He created by his own spoken word because he has the power to bring things which are not into being. So listen to the psalmist. By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

He gathers the waters of the sea into jars, he puts the deep into storehouses, let all the earth fear the Lord. You'll notice this evening I'm not dealing with the finer points of creation. I'm not engaging in the controversy as to whether the earth is young or old.

There is a fashion in which I'm not really interested. It seems to me that you can stack the evidence on either side. What the Bible declares, what it is endeavoring to answer is not how so much as who and why.

Why did God make? Well, God made the heavens and the earth and placed man in the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose. So I move from how did he create to why did he create. He created because he wanted to.

You see, as I tried to show you last week, God is self-sufficient. He has no need outside of himself, I do. I need breath, I need food, I need fellowship.

I can't really exist just on my own. I am dependent upon others, not God, eternally existent from everlasting before time was to everlasting after time will be. He remains God.

Think of God in terms of eternity, in terms of a circle. Think of life as just a line within that circle. The line has a beginning, the line has an end.

Man has a beginning, man will have an end, but not God. He goes on forever. He is the everlasting one.

You say you don't understand it? Join the club. Neither do I. But if God is God, infinitely greater than you and I, then surely it's a logical conclusion that all a preacher can do is to give you some semblance of an idea, to declare the doctrine of God finally and clearly, I would have to be God myself. God creates.

Why does he create? He creates for his own good pleasure. That's what the last book of the Bible has to say. God has created and he's willed to create.

And when you look at God in relationship to his creation, yes, he is always about in the quad. He's a present reality. He rejoices in the world that he's made.

He talks about the whales frolicking, as though he chuckles. He speaks to you about the wild donkey that you cannot see. In the book of Job, references made to the primroses and the wild flowers in Palestine, in Israel, which no one else can see.

Because a man, generally speaking, lives in towns and villages. He doesn't spend his time in the wilderness. But God is there.

And God enjoys the world that he has made. You see, if some of you think that I place too great an emphasis on the cosmos and our responsibility, my argument is this. That by and large the evangelical church has failed to do this.

It's failed to recognize the responsibility that is ours as tenants in the world that God has made. And made with such ecstasy that every period in creation he says, it is good, it is good, it is good, it is good. And then at the end, when he makes man, he says, it's very good.

God enjoys this world. And when we pollute our world, when we are unnecessarily cruel, when we interfere with creative ordinances, we insult the Creator. And we are responsible.

Why does God create? He creates because he wills to. He creates for his glory. And have you noticed, friends, those of you who read your Bible regularly, how often when the Bible writers refer to God, they use an analogy from nature.

So they tell you, God is compared to a lion. Isaiah 31, verse 4. An eagle, Deuteronomy 32, 11. A lamb, Isaiah 53, 7. A hen, Matthew 23, 37.

The sun, Psalm 84, verse 11. The morning star, Revelation 22, 16. I go on, God is a light.

He is a torch. He is a fire. He is a fountain.

He is a rock. He is a hiding place. He is a tower.

He is a shadow. He is a shield. He is a temple.

All these are common characteristics of life, the animal life, the world of nature. And the Bible plunders these terms for metaphors to describe who this God is, so related to his handiwork, so related as the creator to the creation. But the peak of God's creative activity is man.

And now one thing the Bible will not allow you to believe, even though it might leave room for understanding in terms of the age of the earth and so on and so forth, one thing it will not allow is the concept that man came about by accident. Man comes as the deliberate choice of God. He brings man into the world, a special creation, and a partner for man, equally remarkably made.

And in the province of these two, Adam and Eve, as they live and relate together, is a possibility of them offering God fellowship and him having fellowship with them. So you'll find before sin enters the world that God unannounced comes down onto the world that he has made and he has fellowship with his creatures. That's how it was at the beginning.

God in his glory, having willed the world and the universe into being, manifests himself and enjoys fellowship with his creation. How did he create? From nothing. Why did he create? Because it was his will and for his glory.

But then what about the future? The future of creation. I graduated to the Independent yesterday and not the Guardian simply because I bought the newspaper and not Rowena. And the Independent told me, and I was gratified to know, that this world and this universe is continually expanding and we should be okay for another billion years.

But things are going to get quite cold and the human species may not survive. But the universe goes on, so that was very satisfying indeed. The future of creation.

The Bible does have a position. It tells you that this world will not be eliminated. It tells you that this universe will not come to an end, although it had a beginning.

And incidentally, it doesn't matter who I have read, in the realm of secular philosophers and secular scientists, they all fall short on any secular theory of evolution by failing to produce a logical, comprehensible first cause. They always make some assumption on a basis of faith and then have the audacity to criticize the Christian church for asking us to have faith in God. And if it's faith in their theories over against faith in the Bible, then as Malcolm Muggeridge says, I'll go for Genesis 1 any time.

But the Bible tells you that even Moses, when he's speaking about the future of the earth, looks forward to a day. And it's repeated in the book of Habakkuk, in the second chapter of the 14th verse. He's looking for the day when the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.

That's poetry, what's it mean? He's looking for the time when the world will be returned to what it was like when it left the hands of God. Now when Jesus returns, when our Savior comes back, he who is the Lord of creation will flush out of this universe all those things which have been wrought as a result of man's sin and man's criminal behavior in this world. Whose is the world? The world belongs to the Lord.

He made it. He not only made it, he bought it again at the cross. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God.

There is an eternity coming, and this eternity will be rooted in the world, in the universe, in the universe of universes. God has a program for the creation which he brought into being eons ago. How all this will be fulfilled, I don't know.

Eye has not seen, ear has not heard the things that God hath in store for those that love him. You like Beethoven? I guess you'll have Beethoven in eternity. You like other forms of music? I imagine you'll have those, or some of the forms.

I hope I'm not in your corner of the universe. You enjoy reading, but you can't catch up with your reading? You'll have time to read. All the righteous, innocent pursuits, everything that is pleasurable, everything that brings satisfaction, now will be retained and heightened and made even more wonderful in the future that is yet to be.

And you say, but why doesn't everyone believe that? Why doesn't everyone accept what you say the Bible teaches? And the answer is this, my friend. I cannot convince a person who has determined to reject the notion that God is. Only God can step in by his Holy Spirit and open the eyes of men and women to the truth that there are in Scripture.

So the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 and verse 4 as he speaks about God revealing himself to ordinary people like you and me, that that revelation is as a result definitely of God's intervention. 2 Corinthians 4 and verse 4. The God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. Atheism is the cult of the blind.

But God in his grace can lift that blindness. God can give you spiritual sight. When you acknowledge your need, when you sense your creatureliness, when you turn your eye to Jesus Christ, consider his life, his birth, his death, his resurrection.

It fills you with a sense of that's who I would like to be like but I am not. He is not just an ordinary man. He is that but there is more to Jesus than being human.

When you analyze his life you realize that this God who created the world has actually stepped into time and space. I conclude. Robinson Crusoe.

The only man who lived who always got his work done by Friday. The island was inhabited. One day Crusoe saw the footprint in the sand and he knew that there was a fellow human being.

But he didn't know whether that human being was black or white, educated or uneducated, male or female. The day came when Robinson Crusoe met up with Man Friday. God has left his footprint in our world.

It's there in the realm of nature, amongst the animals, amongst the storm, in the sun, in the stars. But the footprint is not enough. One day into the world, step the creator, Jesus Christ, identifying himself with us, the human Jesus, but more than human, the divine.

And as you acknowledge him and accept the forgiveness for your sins that he proffers as a result of what he did at the cross of Calvary, then your eyes are opened. Then you understand the truth of scripture. Then you can appreciate why you are here.

Then you can recognize not only that God is, but God is the creator, but also that God is personal and God wishes to be your savior. May the eyes of your understanding be opened and may you respond to the gospel of Christ and acknowledge him as your Lord. Let's stand in prayer.

Yes, God is always around in the quad. His eyes are ever upon us. His presence is ever near.

You can know him as intimately as your nearest friend in some senses even more. But you have to acknowledge your creatureliness and his greatness. You have to be humble and to appreciate that you are a person of time.

All your questions will not be answered. God does not owe you an explanation. But when you kneel before the cross of Christ, when you confess that God is and confess that you are a sinner and deserve his punishment, he embraces you in his love, he reveals himself to you as Lord, and he commences a relationship which can become more and more intimate and more and more educative as you continue your years on this earth.

Embrace him now as creator and savior. Father, you are our God and you have given us the grace of life. You have not left us to stumble.

You have not left us in the dark. You have not just left an evidence of your handiwork. You've stepped into time and space through Jesus Christ.

Enable us to acknowledge that and to live for his glory on this earth until he returns. Amen.