February 18, 2007
Scripture:
I had a brief thought from Genesis 40; this, as you may remember, is the chapter about Joseph in prison, interpreting the dreams of the butler and baker. It’s the last verse I want to look at; the butler was restored to his butlership, and Joseph, in v. 14, asked him to remember him. “Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him,” (v. 23). We have remembered the Lord this morning; we have not forgotten his act so extreme. He has lifted us from the dunghill to glory. But let us remember I Corinthians 11, where it says we will do this only, “till he come,” (v. 26). Then we will be in Revelation 5, praising the “Lamb as it had been slain,” (v. 6). And Oh, can you imagine what that will be like, to sing praises to our Saviour! Let us continue to be faithful to Him who is so faithful.
EG Hymn 82 – Ere God had built the mountains, Prayer • I want to begin to look at the phrase “God is ____”; and we’ll fill that blank in with different things and see what we can learn about God. Let’s start with “God is the Creator.” Notice that I said, the, not a. I heard a story in which the religious leaders met with God for a contest. They were going to make some glass. Each of the men brought along a bucket of sand to make their glass. But God said, “You can’t use anything, you have to make your own sand. I made that sand, so you can’t use it.” He is the only Creator. First, read Genesis 1:1; this affirms that God created everything. V. 3 shows us that he made it all by simply speaking. According to v. 31, it was all good. Now read Job 42:2. If we can know God as the one who can do everything, shouldn’t we ask Him for help when we need it? If course; there is nothing He can’t do. He has the power of creation. Now read Ephesians 1:11, and 3:11. In this we see the purpose of creation. God had a plan; he didn’t just want something to do. Read Revelation 4:11. Here we have the pleasure of creation. You might ask, when sin came in, did that please God? It didn’t but remember how we read in Isaiah this morning, that “he shall see of the fruit of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied.” God is pleased with the Lord’s redemptive work. Now I want to look at Creation in two aspects. The first is the Macrocosm, which means creation on a large scale. Before we go on, I want to explain what a light year is: light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second. If we multiply that out, it comes to 5,865,696,000,000 miles per year, which is a light year. As an example of the macrocosm, let’s consider the Sombrero Galaxy, so named because of its shape. This galaxy is 28 million light years away. And it is 50,000 light years across. Our solar system revolves around our sun; in the Sombrero Galaxy, there are 8 million suns! Doesn’t this show us what an amazing creator God is? Yet when Russians first went into space and circled the earth, they claimed that they found no evidence of God, and therefore He did not exist. Yet they forgot the rest of the universe. As Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” Even the earth is evidence of a Creator. Now let’s look at God in the Microcosm, the small things. Read Proverbs 6:6. God points us to the ant, a very small creature. They gather food all summer to prepare for the winter; they build their tunnels by removing one grain of sand at a time. Job 8:14 and Proverbs 30:28 make reference to the spider, another amazing creature God created. Think of fruit flies, and other small insects, and how complex they are. Think of how small and complicated their organs are, and yet how they do exactly what they are made to. God has made everything. I hope by considering creation, we will have a deeper appreciation for the creatorial power of God.
Hebrews 13:10–12 • These exhortations, all very important, are clothed in a language that the Jewish people would understand. They are either comparisons or contrasts, showing how the Christian position is better than Judaism. This is what we have in v. 10. When this was written, they still had the altars of the temple. We have seen how in the offerings, sometimes people had to eat a portion at the altar; and they realized that no Gentile was allowed to eat at the Brazen Altar. Now the apostle says that we have an altar, we being those who belong to the Lord. Do we really have an altar? The sacrifice that perfected forever them that are sanctified in the cross of Calvary is our altar. This is interesting: when we were took up the tabernacle, we looked at the altar of burnt offering and the altar of incense. What we saw was that in type, the altars speak of Christ. The wood speaks of the Lord’s humanity. The brass of the brazen altar speaks of God’s judgement. In the middle of that altar, there was a grate which the fire burnt on. On the cross, the fires of God’s judgement burned in the Lord. In all this, we can see the Lord as the offerer, giving himself as the offering and the altar. So He is our altar. Now what we read is the opposite of what we said before. If the Gentiles could not come to the Jewish altar, no one outside of those who have accepted the Lord as their own Saviour can come to this altar. Yet there were those who tried to bring Judaism to this altar, another strange doctrine. But there is no place for that; it is only by faith that we can be saved. It is made plain here that although the Jewish system is a type, it is not the substance. V. 11 shows this typification: when the priest was burning a sin offering, he would go outside the camp, Leviticus 4:21. This is interesting, though: we have the substance of this. The sacrifice which the Lord has done for us, as our sin offering, was outside the gate of Jerusalem. But His blood went into heaven as an atonement for us. What we will see, Lord willing, is that these two extremes—outside the camp and inside the veil—will include us EG Hymn 102– O Lord! ‘Tis joy to look above, Prayer