The ancient Greeks believed that there were only four elements that made up everything: earth, water, air, and fire. When I was in school, our microscopic world consisted of cells, molecules, atoms, neutrons and protons. Today scientists have discovered neutrinos and bosons, leptons and quarks. What will be discovered tomorrow? Every time man makes a new discovery he gets puffed up with pride but God just sits back and says, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”
We turn our eyes to the sky to see moons, comets, planets, stars, black holes and galaxies. The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed an area of the sky less than 10% the size of the moon and discovered over 6,000 galaxies. Imagine if our eyes were opened to the entire sphere of the heavens. Our mind staggers before the complexity and enormity of creation yet man declares there is no God. What a joke!
A single fertilized human egg divides and divides again until, from only the blueprint in that single cell, every muscle, every nerve, every organ is formed. Under a microscope we could probably not distinguish it from the first cell of any other animal. And yet never once has a human egg produced a canary or an alligator. Only a human with every blood vessel and gland duplicated to such perfection that my doctor knows exactly where to find every bone and how my body will react to a catalog of medications. Bacteria may try to invade my body, but it will automatically fight to repel them. If I am injured, this body has mechanisms that begin the healing process. There are seven billion people on this planet each with unique fingerprints, unique DNA profile and unique facial characteristics. I think to hold there is no creator defies logic. It’s a hypocritical choice to ignore the evidence of nature. Hold a newborn baby and tell me that life is not a miracle.
All of Psalm 139 is excellent, but let’s focus on verses 13-16 (NIV), “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” These are probably the strongest verses in the Bible on the evil of abortion but that is not the point here. The world may say I am an accident; God says I am special to Him.
My sin separated me from Father God. Nothing I could do would satisfy the righteous justice of a holy God. Yet, the One who speaks stars into existence, who breathes and galaxies appear, the creator of it all came down to earth to suffer and die as a substitutionary sacrifice for me so that I can stand before God’s throne forgiven and justified.
“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11, NKJV) What is my response? If I don’t stand in absolute awe of the majesty of God, I simply haven’t understood His nature and power.
An earthly king depends on pomp and fancy clothes to impress those that come before him, because underneath he is just another man. Jesus didn’t need any of those trappings because He knew who He was. Do I know who I am? I am a carpenter. I am a nurse. I am an engineer. I am a housewife. Strip away the job and the doing, who am I on the inside? I am a child of the King. Apart from Christ, the world clings to the doing and the title because they have nothing else. They are afraid to look at the emptiness apart from the job. I have read that many will die shortly after retirement because they no longer find meaning in their lives. In Christ I am loved, forgiven, victorious and chosen. I have an eternal destiny plus my life here has meaning in Christ.
The prodigal son (Luke 15) returned from the pig pen with a servant mindset but his father still saw a son. A servant mindset says I need to earn approval and love. A son relationship is not based on performance but on position. Even the servant mindset was a step up for him. He was stuck in the pigpen until he made a change. The change didn’t happen when he changed his clothes or changed his job. No, he changed his mind, his thinking. Verse 17 says, “He came to his senses.” As long as I hold onto the old thinking, I will stay in the pigpen. To experience a new destiny I need new thinking.
Deep down I know I am a sinner unable to stand before the creator. Since the beginning of history, man has created religious rituals and rules to placate the justice we inherently know is demanded. Baal worship, Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism all have one thing in common: How can I do enough good things to counter the sin and tip the scales of justice in my favor? The simple truth is I can’t. No amount of prayer or fasting or feeding the poor or killing the infidel is enough. Only one thing can satisfy God’s justice: the blood of Jesus.
The Everlasting God is supreme over the past, the present and the future. By Jesus’ substitutionary sacrifice 2000 years ago, we were redeemed from slavery to sin. Medicines have expiration dates; medical isotopes have half-lives; milk will sour if kept too long. The Blood of Jesus never loses its power.
The Old Testament prescribed animal sacrifices for sin. These offerings were made over and over. Jesus once and for all entered the heavenly Holy of Holies to place His own blood on the mercy seat for our justification (Hebrews 9:12). God’s people in the Old Testament brought their offerings to the priest. The priest examined the animal sacrifice to ensure that it was without blemish. The priest did not examine the sinner. If the animal was without blemish, God accepted the animal sacrifice as well as the one bringing it. When I approach God, it is not based on my good works, but on the sacrifice Jesus made in my place. His sacrifice was without blemish.
Early in my Christian walk I prayed to better understand the Father’s heart. In reply God showed me a picture of my mother. My older brother Gene died of polio before I was born. This was an insidious killer that brought tragedy to many families in the first half of the twentieth century. When I was in 5th grade the Salk polio vaccine was released. Since we lived in a rural area all the children in our school were bussed to a central location for the vaccine. The picture I saw was returning on the bus after the injections, my mother went done the aisle of the bus checking on each child. What was going through her mind? I think it was something like, “Thank God these children are protected, but why couldn’t it have come soon enough to save Gene?” In that picture I saw Father God. I think the Father looked down with tears in His eyes on Calvary, at the broken body of His Son and thought, “My children are redeemed, but at such a great price!”
The spotless Lamb of God, the One who created the galaxies and set the stars in place, the one who created atoms and electrons and quarks, took my sin to the cross. Now because of the divine exchange, I can stand before the Father accepted and forgiven. Jesus is the One who came down to this infinitesimal dot in the vast universe. He died a shameful death in my place to pay a debt I could not. To the world it looked like the end, a promise that fell short. But three days later He shook the foundations of hell. He ripped the keys to death and the grave out of the devil’s hands and strode triumphant out of the tomb. Today, Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father (Mark 16:19). He is our eternal intercessor (Romans 8:34). Because of Jesus’ victory we now declare Him Lord of all. From quarks to galaxies, Lord of all.
