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

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

All right, this evening I'd like to turn to Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1, I want to read one verse there, and then I want us to turn over to Ephesians chapter 2. Romans chapter 1, I'd like to look in verse number 20 this evening. Romans chapter 1, verse number 20, and it's in this verse that 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.

And then in Ephesians chapter 2, let's turn over there, Ephesians chapter 2 and verse number 1. Ephesians chapter 2 and Ephesians. In verse number 1 this evening, it's there, 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. 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 and 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 us. Good works, which God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them. And we'll conclude the reading there in verse number 10.

I know I have to temper some of my observations that I make about the world around me with the understanding that if you go by the age 18, I guess I've been an adult for what, 19 years now? So, you know, some of my observations are, I might have a little recency bias, if you could say it that way, 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, and a lot of it coming through the power of technology. But a rapid… I mean, a rapidly changing scene as far as man is… Maybe hopes and aspirations that man against God has had for years and years have been coming into fruition, have been coming into realization in his hopes to eliminate the need for God in our lives. We've seen that push all the way back from the Garden of… Well, not the Garden of Eden, but you think about even the Cainite civilization. Trying to… Trying to solve the problems of sin without God, and trying to come up with all kinds of devices and things, and yet ultimately, where does that civilization go without God? It went to the flood. It went to the Tower of Babel. It went eastward, has always been, the direction of moving away from God's presence. And we saw that that was the trend. Even with Cain… Cain went out from the presence of the Lord.

But we are living at a time in history where we are seeing the culmination of this hatred for God's natural order of things. We're seeing the culmination of a desire to even do things like, you know, how can I put it? Manipulate DNA, the genome. Manipulate and pervert the understanding of the genders. What is a family? How do you define a marriage? Even the way we grow things. I see that there's a lot of food, if we can call it that, now that the technology has come to the point where I even saw a video. Maybe I mentioned this to you. But, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu was so excited about this fact that they're printing meat over there in Israel. They have the ability, at least it's coming into being, it's coming into reality. You have someone like Bill Gates. I mean, I know his name gets thrown around a lot, but he's able to, you know, pushing a lot of technologies that are genetically modifying the way things ought to be. And, you know… It's changing the way that it just naturally should be. I guess we can put it that way.

Yet, we are in a, we're on a planet, we're living in God's universe that is dominated by, the very, it is, we are surrounded by, we are controlled by, we are dominated by. The fact that we're even here, that we live and we move and we have our being is because God has specifically ordained the laws of nature to, to operate in such a way that life can be sustained, that, that it is very true. You know, we, when we, when we, when we give names to the laws of nature, you know, the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry and mathematics and all these things, we, we have to come up with, you know, names for them and we are discovering what God has already put into his creation, into his natural order of things. We can see these things. We can see the effects these things have and so we give them names and we, we come up with formulas and equations that God has already just put right there and we're just harvesting the data out of what we're observing.

And, and when we see those things, we realize everyone, anyone has to realize, wow, look at the complexity and yet the order of all of this that is working together. If that's not the evidence of design… What is, we've spent the last, I mean, maybe longer than that, but really the last 500 years decoding and discovering all that God has put into, into his creation and we've just begun to scratch the surface of all that there is to know about it. The more we know, the more we realize that we don't know what they, the bigger the telescopes get, the more we realize there's more out there than we thought there was before. And it just goes on and on and on. And we, we just have touched the surface. We're just seeing the part of the iceberg that's above the water and not the, not the great massive part that's underneath.

So all of that being said, I think about the words of, of even Paul when he says in second, in first Corinthians, we just saw this not too long ago, a couple of months ago in chapter 11, verse 14, he makes this statement there in second. Let's turn to first Corinthians 11, verse 14. Let's read it. Let's look at it together. First Corinthians 11, verse number 14. It's there in verse number 14. We read that he makes this. He asked this question. He says, Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him. What's he saying here? What is he saying? What he's saying is that nature. If you just, 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. I think those that even those that don't know the Lord, they're scratching their heads going, what have we have lost our minds when we don't know the difference between a male and a female.

Now, as Christians, we understand because of the sinful heart and the rebellion against God, why people will go to these extremes. We understand it. It still doesn't make sense in a way, but we understand the depth and the depravity of the human heart and how it's capable and not just somebody else's human heart. But our hearts are just as capable of that apart from God as any of these that we may speak of. And we put a name to it. But I like this statement here. Does not nature itself teach you? You know, nature teaches us a lot of things. Now, God, now, nature is not the same. Natural revelation is not the same as special revelation, divine revelation. It's not the same. We we we can't know all that we need to know about God. We can know that he's almighty and he's he's an orderly God. We can see that he he has great care for his creation. He takes into account all the different parts and processes of that creation and makes them work. Together in a way that is orderly.

And yet it were limited in our understanding of God just through the study of nature and its laws, the laws of of of nature. Yet we're living with the beneficiaries of an orderly, an orderly planet, an orderly universe that God has created. I wanted to read you something. And there's a cosmologist by the name of Sean Carroll, at least at the time of this comment. He was at the California Institute of Technology. He said a law of physics is a pattern that nature obeys without exception. A law of physics is a pattern that nature obeys without exception. He used the term obeys, obeys.

Well, we even we even hear the term. What is that term? We hear intelligent design. That means there was a designer, right? If nature obeys the laws, you know, and I alluded to this, you know, sometimes my thoughts from one message spill over into another.

But Elon Musk, I watched, I don't normally watch long interviews, but I watched that interview with him and Justin Peterson, Jordan Peterson recently. And now that's that was that'll that'll make your head spin. But anyway, he in that conversation, they were having. Elon Musk made it very clear that he's not a Christian. He said, I believe in evolution. And, you know, I have respect if you want to have your view and all of that. But he in that conversation said, I know in so many words, I have a religion of curiosity. He said, but one thing I do know for certain is that physics are physics and they're unchanged. The laws of physics, physics will always. Operate consistently,

you know, that as I alluded to this morning when I made that comment about, you know, if we tried to send the rocket up and something didn't work correctly, then it wasn't that some law of physics change. We just didn't account for something that we should have accounted for. And so we got to go back and get the team to study it and figure out, OK, why did what fail? What there might have been one little nut or bolt or there might have been something there that did not do what it was supposed to do. And it caused a massive. Failure of the whole system. But it was not inconsistent with the laws of physics.

As Wallace Waddles points out, he says, you can act in accordance with these laws or you can 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. Done. Dr. Warner 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 we can time the landing with the precision of a fraction of a second because the laws of nature operate uniformly. They physics are dependable. You know, they are going to be what they're going to be.

I find it interesting that they're, you know, with the recent eclipse that we had in the United States, the solar eclipse, you know, anytime something like that happens, a lot of articles and things get put out about that particular event. And there was a video from, what was it, 1980 or something. It was 40, 50 years ago. And on that broadcast, they were saying, you know, in the year 2024, if any of us are still alive. Then there's going to be a great American eclipse, you know, on this date. And it's going to, it's going to be running from this state across down, down to this state. And it will happen about this time of the day. And I thought, you know, isn't that amazing that almost half a century ago. And, and even there's evidence that even into the centuries and centuries ahead of time, they can tell you what day and what general location there's going to be an eclipse. Because the laws of nature are so precise. The laws of nature are so consistent.

I'm beating a horse dead, I know. I'm really driving this in here. But all of these things being said, all of these laws being consistent, even our very DNA. You know, I read something recently, or I was listening to, it was a farmer talking. He said they did a sample on, they did a sample on a McDonald's cheeseburger. And it had 1300 strands of DNA or different DNA in that burger. And he says, the only way that you get that is when you have all these different, you know, beef from different cows mixed together in the same thing. But isn't it amazing that even in a, all that information is there. That's something that scientists call teleonomy. When you have information stored within a living thing that, who put that information there? Who put that information in there? God did. God stored that information in there. God stored that information in the cells of every living being.

And you could say, go to a crime scene and find that DNA and say, that was, that person used that weapon. Because we have their DNA on this and on that. God has an amazing design. He 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, every, everything obeys the laws that God has put in place.

And the reason that scientists have gotten to the point that they have, and inventors have gotten to the point that they have. I think about even the folks building the Tower of Babel. How are they even able to build such a tower? They didn't finish it, but how were they able to build a tower? How would they even begin to think of building a tower that was going to reach into heaven? There were certain laws that they had to follow. There were certain building practices that they had to have learned and discovered to be able to even think about building such a tower. There's been certain drawings and depictions of what it might have looked like. That tower represented man in his collective knowledge, using that knowledge against the Creator, against the God that made it. Not for him, but against him. In unifying against the God that had created him. And are we not doing the same thing today?

I know I've shared this. I've quoted with you before by a man by the name of Max Planck. He asked, where is science going? He said, this is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized, that's man's will, be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws? Let me say that again. How can the independence of man's, will, basically, be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order, that's what we've been talking about, of nature's laws? Like the laws of the Medes and Persians, they don't change. They're the same. How can you harmonize those two things? We have a free will, as it were, and yet there's this rigid order. How can that be?

Well, there's only one explanation for that. And that is that the God who created us in His image gave us the ability, the freedom, to choose to either worship Him, we saw this morning, to hear wisdom, or to refuse it, right? To receive Him or to reject Him. There's really the choice to do either. We can't fully decide in the sense that we can become gods. We're not going to become gods. People think they're going to become gods, but we don't get to decide that. We get to choose whether we believe God or we refuse to believe God, and we rebel against Him. Man goes one way or the other.

We might ask the question that after all that God has done for us and that He created us, and He put us in the midst of all this order, this beauty and design, why would we not? Why would we not believe Him? Why would we not trust Him? Why would we not say, you know what? What is man that thou art mindful of Him? Or the son of man that thou visitest Him, like David said, when I consider the stars, when I look at all this grandeur and yet intricacy, it's amazing that you even have done all of this for us, Lord.

And it's very clear this planet is unique. Man and his evolutionary, every mindset has been working tirelessly. He doesn't build those telescopes. I shouldn't say there aren't Christians involved in that field, but I'm just saying that a lot of the people involved in astronomy are not trying to look for ways to glorify God. They're looking for life on another planet because they want to disprove God. They want to disprove the Bible. They want to say that we're not unique. We're not necessarily, we're just some evolutionary life form and there might be people, there might be people, there might be people on other planets that are more evolved than we are and all of that kind of thing. No. They keep finding order, but they don't. They have to admit this is a unique place that God has made. This is a unique place. In fact, it almost seems like everything that's been created is specifically designed for us to realize how great God is and yet that He would fix His thoughts, His thoughts on such a lowly one as myself, right? That seems like the whole point of this thing. Like we are in the center of the universe, so to speak, and yet life is really not even about us. It's about the God that 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 we pervert, I say we, the human race and many of the leading figures within that race are perverting God's design and purpose for humanity and nature. The more they are doing that, the more they boast themselves to be wise and say, 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. Look at how we're going to fix everything by the year. You know, what is it? 2030 or 2050 or all these different numbers they put out there. Sustainable development goals. We're going to be there in six years. Everything's a mess right now, but we're going to have it fixed.

We notice here in Romans that we just, when we read verse 20, we read verse 20 where it says that the invisible things of Him, of God from the creation of the world, are clearly seen. How can we see the invisible things? Well, we can understand them by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. But notice this, that because that when they knew God, because that when they saw this design and they were just intellectually honest with the facts, we would have to say, this is, if this was a, if we were treating it like we would treat it, we would treat it like we would treat it. This is a crime scene investigation. Well, obviously there was a murder here. Now, if we look at the creation, we would say it's not a murder. We would say there's a designer. We would say that there is a very wise and a very capable designer that put all of this together. And we're just beginning to scratch the surface of all that intelligence that's there.

Well, instead of giving glory to the creator, we notice that it says here that they glorified Him not as God, but as God. Neither were thankful. That's one of the characteristics of the perilous times Paul told Timothy about. They will be unthankful. Unthankful. But became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. Their foolish heart was darkened. Have you noticed how much even the news is dumbed down now? It's just dumb. It's just a collected ignorance. And it's, how do you feel, you know? It's kind of like a sports interview after the game. How do you feel about that, you know? And this is just, there's not, there's not thought-provoking questions to say, you know, and even when questions are asked, they're steered in such a way to make us think that, oh, we just know that evolution is true. We just know that this is the case. Well, maybe it's not. Have we thought about this design?

Well, look here. It says in verse 22, well, verse 21, let's finish that verse. They became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. In other words, they don't even realize it, but how can we put it? They have become even mentally warped and deficient in their thinking because they've rejected the key to not be wise. They've become blinded. And they've gone darker and deeper in that blindness. I mean, I know we're all blind, but they're even blind to some obvious things that they should see because they have rejected the Lord in creation, the visible things that point to Him. And they've changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds. And four-footed beasts and creeping things. And, of course, 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 a manifest way, He's put them right out there so that a child, a child can even see it. A child can say, wow, there's evidence here. There's the fingerprints of a creator.

Well, all of that being said, we go to Ephesians chapter 2. In Ephesians chapter 2, which we have already read, but I alluded to this morning in the message this morning that we were dead in trespasses and sins. We walked. Verse 2 says, according to the course or the age of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. And we notice that the spirit of this world, the prince power of the air, he works in, and that word is energeo. He energizes the children of disobedience. He energizes them in their disobedience against God. And we used to live in that realm. Yet God in his great and rich mercy has quickened us, made us alive. And his intention in doing that is that we would show forth his praises. That our lives would reflect his order. That our lives as his workmanship, we talk about a composer's great workmanship, works. This composer composed this great work for the piano. Or this artist drew this, or painted this great painting. This great work of art. 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 creature, in the life of one of his own human beings that he created on this earth. Not only did he make us, but now redeeming that soul and taking that life and changing it 180 degrees from a life of sin to a life of righteousness. And that is a miracle. That's a miracle we can't perform. That we can't do. That we can't do in our own strength.

But it's like we said this morning. It's a natural law. If you believe, if you hear and you 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. What does it say? To as many as received him, to them gave he power. Just in the same way that it is with a plane. You have the laws of aerodynamics. There might be a law of gravity that's going to keep that plane on the ground unless there's a greater law that enables that plane to lift off the ground. And so we see that that is a law in nature of lift. Thrust is necessary in order for that plane to get off the ground. And in the same way that we as Christians are what we are because of God's grace. We couldn't have even jumped off the ground by ourselves but nonetheless of mounting up with wings as eagles and flying and soaring and not living down in the mire and the muck and the gutter of sin.

We would still be in the gutter if it wasn't for God's grace and as Paul says, I am what I am by the grace of God. It's not me. It's him. And yet it's simply my responsibility and the 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 to me. I believe that by his grace he has made me a son of God. By his grace I am his workmanship. I am created in Christ Jesus unto good works. And the good works that I do are not originating with me. Just like the moon, if you go out and look tonight at the moon, I guess we're about at full moon now, somewhere in that range. If you look at the moon, it would have no ability to shine unless it was reflecting the light of the sun. It's just turned towards the sun in relation to us and we see that light being reflected off of it. And that's what we are to be as Christians. We are to show the praises of him that called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We, our lives are to our own display. Our lives are on display for men to look upon and say there's something different about that person. There's something orderly. We know that certainly people marveled when they saw the maniac of Gadara. He was sitting clothed in his right mind and he was, you know, not being eating things and tearing things and we see that the man that laid the gate of the temple the gate beautiful of the temple, when he was healed people said something has changed. We've seen this man laying out here for years and years and years and now he's of course a physical healing. You know, the man born blind but even the man born blind was not only physically healed but he was spiritually healed. He says will you believe in him also? There's a change. There's a change that's been wrought. There is something visible to see. We're visible. Why didn't the Lord just take us on to heaven the moment we get saved, right?

Well, we're called to be light and salt. Doesn't light and salt on this planet have a purpose? Yes, it does. Some of the purposes are the preservation, preserving meats and things like that, flavoring things. There's certain compounds. Look at the periodic table. Look at the periodic table. These elements and these compounds that you can make from those elements but you look at those elements and there's even an orderliness to the elemental table, the periodic table and how God has designed that. And all of this is just showing us a picture as Christians of how in our lives, whereas we were the children of God, disobedience. We said, I'm going to do it my way. I want to do what's right in my own eyes. I'm going to lean to my own understanding. No, now instead we trust in the Lord with all thy heart. Be like Moses who said, I'm not going to go up unless you go with us.

Like we said this morning in the message, we must we must even be careful about those sins of omission where we say you know, have I failed? Have I omitted something? Have I omitted to read my Bible? Have I omitted prayer? If I am not following God's prescribed laws, God's way and I try to do it my way, I'm going to fail. I'm going to bring shame to his name. I'm going to be you know, like maybe the first few experiments Wilbur and Orville Wright made on a plane. It's not going to get off the ground unless I follow God's will and God's way. My life will actually it will actually bring shame to the name of the Lord. So I don't want to do that. I don't want to bring shame to his name. So I need to follow and you know, I think to some degree varying degrees, we've all been involved in or at least aware of politics. I know Pastor Peacock was years ago was involved a lot in the political realm and that's all well and good.

But you know, the greatest way your life can be used is to live for the Lord Jesus Christ every day. Thank God for that. There are some in politics that are are showing forth the light of Christ, but they're few and far between that are actually doing that. We need we need to show the light of Christ, the order of Christ, the change that is wrought in the life when when the Lord comes in and takes control of our lives. We used to be energized by by the Prince power of the air and now we're energized by the son of God the Holy Spirit. We are his handiwork, his workmanship. We are a branch in the vine. We are a plant that's growing. We are maybe we can say the like the moon that's reflecting the light of the sun. We are in the in fact, he says, let your light shine before men that they may behold your good works and glorify your father, which is in heaven.

And so we can't as we look around us and it frustrates it certainly does. We see that that God's design is being mocked and men think that they're wiser than God. What's the what's the greatest thing that we can do in a world that's filled with with so many perversions of God's God's design and his order. The greatest thing we can do is well if we have a family, I 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 that we should be you know, brighten the corner where we are. If you have children, you have grandchildren, you have a spouse, you have neighbors. Shine the light of Christ where you are in your place.

We could I think the devil would have us to become so overwhelmed by all the things that are going on in the world at large that we're just ineffective for the Lord right where we are. And yet God's design and God's purpose is for us in verse 10 here tonight that we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them every day. That we should walk in these good works.

I pray that though we are though we are living in a world that is I think it's pretty clear from scripture and pretty clear from the signs of the times that we are in the last days and we're in the final hour of the last days according to scripture. We've been in the last days for some time but we're in the final hour. That we would we would realize that that just as intensely as these who profess themselves to be wise and are actually fools and we know that are working if we can say it that way 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 Martin Luther would say should threaten to undo us 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. That doesn't mean lean up against the door and keep it shut. That means be about the Lord's business. Let us be confident that we serve the God who is in control the God who has put all these orders, all these laws in his design but most of all the greater thing is that he has saved us from the power of Satan he saved us from our own sinful selves and our own disorderly life may we not harbor anything like we said this morning in our lives that would bring shame to those that are looking on our lives because that's why we're here we're his workmanship to show forth his praise may the Lord help us and let's pray.

Heavenly Father we we know that one of the words that is given for sin the word lawlessness or lawless sometimes translated iniquity I think of that word tonight and these are lawless days in which we're living. Man is rebelling against pure laws and orders and the governing principles that you have put in place is something to behold that you do not force man to believe or receive your truth.

We see that as a result of that many are suppressing that truth and holding it down in unrighteous living they are trying to trying to put out the light but we're glad to know that 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 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 and what we do how we act and how we respond would be the visible testimony witnessed before men that there is a God that changes lives there's a God that saves souls there's a God in heaven that is still on the throne and the change can be theirs as well 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 a way that is obedient and glorifying to thy name we pray and ask these things in Jesus name Amen