God’s Order and Design: A Call to Reflect His Light

"God's Order and Design: A Call to Reflect His Light"

This evening, I'd like to turn to Romans chapter 1. I want to read one verse there, specifically verse number 20, and then we'll turn over to Ephesians chapter 2. In Romans 1:20, we read, "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse."

Turning to Ephesians chapter 2, verse number 1, we read these familiar words: "And you hath he quickened, or made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved); and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." We'll conclude the reading there in verse number 10.

I know I have to temper some of my observations about the world around me with the understanding that I've been an adult for about 19 years now, since the age of 18. Some of my observations might have a little recency bias because you're coming to a greater consciousness of things going on around you with time. But I think I can safely say that even in the last 20 years, I've seen a rapid push, a lot of it coming through the power of technology, a rapidly changing scene as far as man's hopes and aspirations against God. These aspirations, which have existed for years, are coming into fruition, into realization, in his hopes to eliminate the need for God in our lives. We've seen that push all the way back from early civilizations trying to solve the problems of sin without God, coming up with all kinds of devices, and yet ultimately, where does that civilization go without God? It went to the flood, to the Tower of Babel, eastward, which has always been the direction of moving away from God's presence, as we saw with Cain who went out from the presence of the Lord.

We are living at a time in history where we are seeing the culmination of this hatred for God's natural order of things, a desire to manipulate DNA, the genome, to pervert the understanding of genders, to redefine family and marriage. Even the way we grow things, the technology in food production—I've seen videos about printing meat in Israel, and figures like Bill Gates pushing technologies that genetically modify the way things ought to be, changing what should be natural. Yet, we are on a planet, living in God's universe, dominated by the very fact that we live, move, and have our being because God has specifically ordained the laws of nature to operate in such a way that life can be sustained.

It is very true that when we give names to the laws of nature, we are discovering what God has already put into His creation, into His natural order of things. We can see these effects, so we give them names, come up with formulas and equations that God has already placed there. We're just harvesting the data out of what we're observing. When we see those things, everyone has to realize the complexity and yet the order of all this working together. If that's not evidence of design, what is? We've spent the last 500 years or more decoding and discovering all that God has put into His creation, and we've just begun to scratch the surface of all there is to know about it. The more we know, the more we realize we don't know. The bigger the telescopes get, the more we realize there's more out there than we thought, and it just goes on and on.

So, all of that being said, I think about the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:14, where he asks, "Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?" What is he saying here? He's saying that if you just look at nature, you can see that male and female are not the same, that there is a clear distinction between a male and a female. Even those who don't know the Lord are scratching their heads, wondering if we've lost our minds, not knowing the difference between male and female. As Christians, we understand because of the sinful heart and rebellion against God why people go to these extremes. We understand the depth and depravity of the human heart, how it's capable of such things, not just in others, but in our own hearts apart from God.

I like this statement, "Does not nature itself teach you?" Nature teaches us a lot of things about God. Now, natural revelation is not the same as special or divine revelation. We can't know all we need to know about God through nature alone. We can know that He's almighty, an orderly God, that He has great care for His creation, taking into account all the different parts and processes and making them work together in an orderly way. Yet, we are limited in our understanding of God just through the study of nature and its laws. Still, we are beneficiaries of an orderly planet, an orderly universe that God has created.

I wanted to read you something from a cosmologist named Sean Carroll, who, at the time of this comment, was at the California Institute of Technology. He said, "A law of physics is a pattern that nature obeys without exception." He used the term "obeys." We even hear the term "intelligent design," which means there was a designer, right? If nature obeys the laws, as I alluded to earlier, sometimes my thoughts from one message spill over into another. I recently watched a long interview with Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson. Elon Musk made it very clear that he's not a Christian, saying he believes in evolution and respects others' views, but he has a religion of curiosity. Yet, he said one thing for certain: physics are physics, and they're unchanged. The laws of physics will always operate consistently. If we tried to send a rocket up and something didn't work correctly, it wasn't that some law of physics changed; we just didn't account for something we should have, and we have to go back and study it to figure out what failed.

As Wallace Waddles points out, you can act in accordance with these laws or disregard them, but you can in no way alter them. The laws forever operate and hold you to strict accountability, and there is not the slightest allowance for ignorance. Once a person learns and obeys these laws, he will get rich with mathematical certainty. Dr. Wernher von Braun, the father of the space program, said the natural laws of the universe are so precise that we do not have any difficulties building a spaceship, sending a person to the moon, and timing the landing with the precision of a fraction of a second because the laws of nature operate uniformly. Physics are dependable; they are going to be what they are going to be.

I find it interesting that with the recent solar eclipse in the United States, articles and videos from as far back as 1980 predicted that in 2024, there would be a great American eclipse running from one state to another at a specific time of day. Isn't that amazing? Almost half a century ago, and even centuries ahead, they can tell you what day and general location an eclipse will occur because the laws of nature are so consistent. I'm beating a dead horse here, I know, but all these laws being consistent, even our very DNA—recently, I heard a farmer say they did a sample on a McDonald's cheeseburger and found 1300 strands of different DNA in that burger. The only way you get that is when you have different cows mixed together, but isn't it amazing that all that information is there? Scientists call it teleonomy, information stored within a living thing. Who put that information there? God did. God stored that information in the cells of every living being. You can go to a crime scene, find DNA, and say that person used that weapon because their DNA is on it.

God has an amazing design for all these things, and yet what we notice is that everything in the universe—every plant, every animal, every rock, every particle—obeys the laws that God has put in place. The reason scientists and inventors have gotten to the point they have is because of this order. Think about the folks building the Tower of Babel. How were they even able to build such a tower? They didn't finish it, but how did they begin to think of building a tower to reach into heaven? They had to follow certain laws, certain building practices they had learned and discovered. That tower represented man in his collective knowledge, using that knowledge against the Creator, not for Him, but against Him, unifying against the God that had created him. Are we not doing the same thing today?

I know I've shared this quote before by Max Planck, who asked, "Where is science going?" He said this is one of man's oldest riddles: How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe subject to the rigid order of nature's laws? How can man's will be harmonized with this rigid order? There's only one explanation for that: the God who created us in His image gave us the ability, the freedom to choose to either worship Him, to hear wisdom or refuse it, to receive Him or reject Him. We can't fully decide in the sense that we can become God; we're not going to become God, though people think they will. We get to choose whether we believe God or refuse to believe and rebel against Him. Man goes one way or the other.

We might ask, after all that God has done for us, creating us and putting us in the midst of all this order, beauty, and design, why would we not believe Him? Why would we not trust Him? Why would we not say, as David did, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?" When I consider the stars, all this grandeur and yet intricacy, it's amazing that You have done all this for us. It's very clear this planet is unique. Man, in his evolutionary mindset, has been working tirelessly, building telescopes not to glorify God but to look for life on another planet to disprove God, to say we're not unique, just some evolutionary life form. They keep finding order, but they have to admit this is a unique place that God has made, specifically designed for us to realize how great God is, and yet life is really not even about us—it's about the God who created it all and about the glory of God.

We notice that men are professing themselves to be wise today. Look back in Romans chapter 1 with me for a moment. The more the human race, and many leading figures within it, pervert God's design and purpose for humanity and nature, the more they boast themselves to be wise, saying, "Look at what we are doing, look at how great we are, look at how we're going to solve all the problems of the planet by 2030 or 2050." We notice here in Romans 1:20 that the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. But notice, because when they knew God, when they saw this design and were intellectually honest with the facts, instead of giving glory to the Creator, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful. That's one of the characteristics of the perilous times Paul told Timothy about—they will be unthankful, becoming vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. They don't even realize it, but they have become mentally warped and deficient in their thinking because they've rejected the key to knowledge. They've become blinded, going darker and deeper in that blindness. They are blinded to obvious things they should see because they have rejected the Lord in creation, the visible things that point to Him. They changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, birds, four-footed beasts, and creeping things. My point is not to go through the whole passage tonight, but what we see is that there is no excuse because God has put these things clearly, evidently, in manifest ways, right out there, so that even a child can see it, can say, "Wow, there's evidence here, the fingerprints of a Creator."

Turning to Ephesians chapter 2, which we have already read, I alluded this morning to the fact that we were dead in trespasses and sins. We walked according to the course or age of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. We notice that the spirit of this world, the prince of the power of the air, energizes the children of disobedience in their disobedience against God. We used to live in that realm, yet God in His great and rich mercy has quickened us, made us alive. His intention in doing that is that we would show forth His praises, that our lives would reflect His order, that as His workmanship, our lives would be on display.

We talk about a composer's great works or an artist's great painting. Well, God, through Jesus Christ in redeeming us, has accomplished the greatest thing that could ever be accomplished in the life of His creation, in the life of a human being. Not only did He make us, but now, redeeming that soul, taking that life and changing it 180 degrees from a life of sin to a life of righteousness—that is a miracle, a sub-miracle. We can't perform that in our own strength, but as we said this morning, it's a natural law: if you hear and believe what this Book says, there's a spiritual law that you will be converted if you believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. As many as received Him, to them gave He power.

Just as with a plane, you have the laws of aerodynamics. There might be a law of gravity keeping that plane on the ground unless there's a greater law that enables it to lift off. In the same way, we as Christians are what we are because of God's grace. We couldn't have jumped off the ground by ourselves, let alone mount up with wings as eagles and soar, not living down in the mire and muck of sin. We would still be in the gutter if it wasn't for God's grace. As Paul says, "I am what I am by the grace of God." It's not me, and yet it's simply my response of my own heart. I have chosen to believe the Son of God, Jesus Christ. I have chosen to believe the record that God has given of His Son. I believe the love that He has for me. I believe that by His grace, He has made me a son of God. By His grace, I am His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. The good works that I do are not originating with me, just like the moon has no ability to shine unless it reflects the light of the sun. We are to show the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

Our lives are on display for men to look upon and say, "There's something different about that person, something orderly." We know that people marveled when they saw the maniac of Gadara sitting, clothed, in his right mind. We see the man at the gate of the temple called Beautiful; when he was healed, people said, "Something has changed. We've seen this man laying out here for years, and now he's different." Of course, a physical healing, like the man born blind, was not only physical but spiritual. He was asked, "Will you believe in Him also?" There's a visible change. Why doesn't the Lord just take us to heaven the moment we get saved? We're called to be the light and salt. Light and salt on this planet have a purpose—preservation, flavoring. Look at the periodic table, the orderliness of the elements and compounds God designed. All of this shows us a picture as Christians of how, whereas we were children of disobedience saying, "I'm going to do it my way," now we trust in the Lord with all our heart.

Be like Moses, who said, "I'm not going to go up unless You go with us." We must be careful about sins of omission. Have I omitted to read my Bible? Have I omitted prayer? If I am not following God's prescribed laws and way, and try to do it my way, I'm going to fail. I'm going to bring shame to His name. My life will actually bring shame to the name of the Lord if I don't follow God's will and way. I don't want to do that. I think, to varying degrees, we've all been involved in or aware of politics. Years ago, Pastor Peacock was involved a lot in the political realm, and that's all well and good, but the greatest way your life can be used is to live for the Lord Jesus Christ every day. Thank God there are some in politics showing forth the light of Christ, but they are few and far between. We need to show the light of Christ, the order of Christ, the change that is wrought in a life when the Lord comes in and takes control. We used to be energized by the prince of the power of the air; now we're energized by the Son of God, the Holy Spirit.

We are His handiwork, His workmanship, a branch in the vine, a plant that's growing, like the moon reflecting the light of the sun. He says, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may behold your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." As we look around us, it frustrates us to see that God's design is being mocked, and men think they are wiser than God. What's the greatest thing we can do in a world filled with so many perversions of God's design and order? If we have a family, love my wife, love my children, pray with them, sing with them, teach them in down-sitting, uprising, out and about, wherever you go. Be the example we should be. Brighten the corner where we are. If you have children, grandchildren, a spouse, neighbors, shine the light of Christ where you are, in your place. I think the devil would have us become so overwhelmed by all the things going on in the world at large that we're just ineffective for the Lord right where we are.

Yet, God's design and purposes for us, as in Ephesians 2:10 tonight, are that we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them every day. I pray that though we are living in a world that, from scripture and the signs of the times, is pretty clearly in the last days, in the final hour of the last days, we would realize that just as intensely as those who profess themselves to be wise (though they are actually fools) are working against God, may we, with just as much energy by the Spirit of God, work and do what He would have us to do in the right way. Regardless of what the devil does, though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, as Martin Luther would say, we will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us. So, let's be about the Lord's business. Let's hold the fort, not just leaning up against the door to keep it shut, but being about the Lord's business. Let us be confident that we serve the God who is in control, who has put all these laws and design into place, but most of all, the greater thing is that He has saved us from the power of Satan, from our own sinful selves and disorderly lives. May we not harbor anything in our lives that would bring shame to those looking on, because that's why we're here, as His workmanship, to show forth His praise.

Heavenly Father, we know that one of the words given for sin is lawlessness, sometimes translated as iniquity. I think of that word tonight; these are lawless days in which we're living. Man is rebelling against Your laws, order, and the governing principles that You have put in place. It is something to behold that You do not force man to believe or receive Your truth. We see that as a result, many are suppressing that truth, holding it down in unrighteous living, trying to put out the light. But we're glad to know that light will never be put out, and You've chosen to use even us, little us, little me, called to be and created to be Your workmanship in Christ Jesus for the purpose of good works. We pray, Lord, that You'd help each one of us in the place that You've put us. We know You've brought us together in this local congregation, Lord, but even as we walk day by day in our lives, that our lives individually would become the visible testimony in what we say, what we do, how we act, and how we respond. May it be the visible testimony, a witness before men, that there is a God that changes lives, a God that saves souls, a God in heaven that is still on the throne, and the change can be theirs as well. It doesn't have to be, because God doesn't force anyone, and yet He desires, He does not desire that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Lord, help us just to be faithful salt, faithful light in this world. Help us to do what we're supposed to do. Help us not to try to change the things which we cannot change, but help us to give our attention to those things that You've called us to give our attention to. Help us not to take any thought regarding the morrow or the things that are outside of our grasp, but help us to respond to You daily in the way that is obedient and glorifying to Thy name. We pray and ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.