God of Creation

Supreme Court has a very busy term ahead of it. We’ve all read in the papers, the decisions they make in the next six months could help shape this country for years to come. And some of the decisions are already coming down. We’ve been focusing so much on the weather. You might’ve missed the decision you just announced Friday evening. It was the Supreme Court decision on cannibalism. It was eight one. Think about it. Still don’t get it. Ask your neighbor. It’s coming through. Why does the Supreme Court have such authority over us? It was granted by the Constitution, but it’s a first assembly. Wasn’t even until 1790. For most of human history, it didn’t even exist. And even today, 95% of the world has to pay no attention to Supreme Court has no authority in China, in Ghana, in South Africa, in Brazil. And that’s why we think that.

Well, it, it seems like it’s so powerful, but its authority is is rather limited. The only authority it has is the authority that we, the governed granted. And we can change it if we want or if you don’t like it, you just move to 95% of the world where it’s not relevant and you are free from it. So though its authority seems so impactful with this today, it’s completely different from the authority of God, which is eternal. Always has been and always will be. And extends not just over the United States, but over the world. But where does that authority come from? Why do we think God has authority? A primitive view of God’s authority might be that, well, he’s more powerful than us and and he could send us to hell if we don’t do what he wants us to do. And that’s true, but that’s a human view of authority where Mike makes right that somebody’s more powerful than you and they can force you to do what they want you to do.

That’s not someone you worship. ’cause Authority based on power can be abused. Most walked out stories from Christmas was told to me by my son of a father who got a bunch of boxes. This is right before Christmas. And he wrapped ’em up. They were empty, but he wrapped them up with Christmas wrapping and he put ’em under the tree. And whenever his kids would misbehave, he’d say, all right, you’re gonna do that. And he’d pick up one of those empty bucks and he would throw it into the fire. <Laugh>. And the kids were appalled. They thought their Christmas gifts were getting burnt up. I thought it was pathetic, but also a little bit funny. I also thought that’s where therapists will start with those kids. When they turn 30 <laugh>, they’re gonna say, yeah, when I misbehave, my dad threw my Christmas presents into the fire. The therapist is gonna say, that’s all I need to know about your dad. I got his number figured out. But that’s authority based on power. Where does the Bible rest God’s authority?

In the very first sentence of scripture, Genesis one, one tells us this, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The first thing the Bible would have us know about God is that he created the world. He set it in motion. Everything we know and experience is true only because he set it in motion and just as powerfully. The Bible is really framed around God as creator because he enters scripture creating. And the last image of the Bible is in Revelation 25, where God is creating the new heavens and the new earth I am making. That’s present tense in the Greek, everything new. So God enters the Bible creating the heavens and earth as we know it. He will exit the Bible creating the new heavens and the new Earth. Who is God? Bible is strong. He is the creator. And it roots his authority in that in a beautiful Psalm 33, it expresses this in poetic form by the word of the Lord, the heavens were 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. Let all the people of the world revere him. Why do we fear him? Why do we revere him? For he spoke and it came to be he commanded and it stood firm. God’s authority rest on the fact that everything we know was created by him and for him. And we use the word creation loosely. We talk about creative people, which is a topic that fascinates me. I’ve read, I don’t know how many biographies on creative people or even nonfiction studies on the creative process. But every act of human creation has to conform to the original creation as God designed it. The principles, the laws that God has set into place. None of us create eclo out of nothing like God does.

We all have to just use what God has already created and and and turn it to our use means one of my favorite creations as an example, I love music. I have my whole life. And of course by music I mean it was probably recorded in the 1970s except for a few exceptions. Clearly the best decade ever for music. I’m not musical and that I don’t play a lot of music on my own, but I love to listen to music. And I’m amazed at the creative ways now that we can listen to music. That wasn’t true. Even 20 years ago when I was born, the only way you could carry music with you was with a transistor radio. So you couldn’t choose what you listened to. Somebody else made the choice for you. But the year after I was born, they created something called the cassette tape.

And you could make a mix tape or something, you could put your own music on there and carry that around. And that led to the invention of the boombox, which was a scourge on the beach and in the neighborhood because it meant everybody listened to your music, not just you. And then in 1982, the first CD was created and it allowed for the use of a Walkman, which you could kind of carry it around. It would always skip. And it was limited to just one cd, but you could listen to it. But when it first came out, it was ridiculously expensive. The first CD player in 1982 cost $900 in today’s value, that’s $2,900. But it certainly seemed like it was better than cassette tapes that would get all warbled and stretched out and whatnot. Apple changed everything in 2001 when it created the first iPod.

And you could put that on your belt. You could listen to hundreds of hours of music of your own choosing. And we all thought, okay, we’ve reached the apex, this is it. But really it’s heyday lasted less than a decade because now almost all of us listen to music on our phone. And I can’t believe that virtually anything. I have an Apple subscription. Any song I wanna listen to you mention a song, I can bring it up and listen to it. And I’m so grateful because music is such a big part of my life. I’m thrilled to be alive in this decade when I can listen to music all the time. But as much as I love music and as much as I’m grateful for the creative scientists and those who work through the technology to make music so accessible, it would be all irrelevant if God had not first created our ears.

And when you look at what our ears are, it is amazing the design behind them. Each ear has three sections. It’s got the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. The outer ear just collects sound waves. That’s what it’s designed to do. It sends them into that curved passageway called the ear canal. The ear canal leads to the eardrum which vibrates when sound hits it. It passes those vibrations into the middle ear, which is an empty space. You can see that. But it has three bones. And these three bones collect the vibrations and it sends it into the inner ear, which is filled with fluid and has the main organ of hearing a coiled tube called the cochlea. And those coil, the coiled tubes in the fluid make waves that our brains process as harmony, melody beats and silence. Now just looking at the engineering behind this, it is so precise, so amazing that our brains can take these vibrations and then waves and turn ’em into.

Sound screams out to me, and I bet to you someone created this. The thought that this was just an accident or gradually through time developed to me becomes intellectually bankrupt to assume that that could happen by accident. It’s why I believe that evolution as the primary cause of life, not talking about the process of life, but as the cause of life. It is really without reason and goes against every form of reason that we have micro evolution, that there is evolution within species demonstrated science. We can see it. There are no gaps. And some brilliant Christian thinkers like William Lang Craig would say that macro evolution is the process that God used to bring things along. I, I’m not a scientist, you don’t come to me for biology, but what the Bible stakes its claim at is that whatever process God used, God used it. God was behind it.

This isn’t an accident. We people say it takes faith to believe in God. To me, it takes far more faith and it goes more against reason to assume that something that intricate just developed from a few chemicals over a long period of time. And then where do the chemicals come from? If it seems absurd to me and to you, it also seemed absurd to Charles Darwin who wrote the book that got it going, the Origin of Species. He says in his book this to suppose that the eye with so many parts all working together could have been formed by natural selection. Seems I freely confess absurd. Now he goes on to say, but over time, little bit by little bit, it starts to seem less absurd. Not to me I don’t see it. I bet most of you don’t as well. For us, it’s not just science, it’s it’s about worship.

Because God, as the cause of creation is fundamental to his authority. We go to the book of Revelation, worthy, are you our Lord and God to receive glory and to honor and power, why for you created all things and by your will, they existed and were created. Kurt started us last week on a series called The Bible Project. Every day we’re getting text messages that help us understand how to read the Bible. In our series, Kurt and I wanna summarize the main messages of scripture. And the first one in the Old Testament I’m talking about now answers the fundamental question, who is God? He’s a creator. Why does he have authority? Because he created everything. He knows how he set it up. That’s the first and main question. There’s a second fundamental question. Okay? We know God’s creator. He has the authority. Who are we?

The Bible answers that as well. Genesis 1 27, we are creatures made in the image of God. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God, image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. So a male on his own doesn’t fully capture the image of God. A woman on her own doesn’t fully capture the image of God. God is too big. He’s too glorious. Not one gender can describe him. It’s man and woman together that reveals to the world. And as a family reveals to the children who God is. Now, what does this mean to you personally? This is Soaky. I wanna make it very personal today that you are created by God. And the image of God means you are not an accident. You are not a bother. You are designed by God. You are created in the glory of being created in the image of God.

That’s what defines you. Not whether your parents accept you, whether your peer group thinks you’re valuable, whether your children appreciate you or whether your spouse still wants you. The defining truth of your life. You are created in the image of God. You’re not an accident and you’re created by God. And he called his creation good. Why is it so important to understand this? Because life is about a cruel world that tries to rip you away from that understanding, that tries to discount you, that tries to dismiss you. And this is a theological truth that will lift you back up. It did that for a friend of mine named Dan Carroll. He’s a pastor of a large church in Southern California, and he grew up with a mentally ill mother who had tried to kill herself twice. She didn’t like being around Dan. She cycled him through all these schools.

Finally sent him away to a very strict military school. His dad didn’t like the thought of sending his son away so young to a military school, but he thought it’s gonna get him away from his mom. He knew there were issues there. Maybe that’s best. And Dan’s mom, just in a cruel way, kept reminding Dan what a bother he was that she wishes he had never been born. She conceived him when she was 40 years old. She resented him in utero. I just would’ve been better off I I never should have had you. What does that do to a boy rejected by your own mom so directly? Well, you can guess. He started sniffing glue by the time he was 12, just trying to escape. By the time he was 13, he was stealing, even stealing cars to support a drug habit. He just wanted to escape from this world.

In fact, he had been jailed five times before he, while he was still a minor. It’s important to point out Dan hated living this way. He didn’t like being driven by anger. He didn’t like what he was doing to others. But the rejection was so strong he didn’t know what else to do until he got into high school. And he really liked this girl who was giving him a bible, a good news for modern man. It’s an easy translation to read. And just because he liked the girl, Dan said, I would sit there and spend my day smoking dope and reading the New Testament after a couple weeks, it intrigued him so much. He dropped the dope and was just reading the New Testament when he had a real spiritual experience and he knew it was legitimate ’cause he wasn’t high. The dope is in the past.

This was different. He felt his heart warmed and he asked his friend, what, what? What’s going on? He said, the God who created you wants to be in a relationship with you. And so Dan offered his first prayer. And here’s how it went. God, I don’t know who you are, but I know you are here. I can feel it. I also don’t know if I’ve ever felt love, but if you will love me, I’ll yield my life to you. Dan was 17 when he prayed that prayer. Now he’s been shaped by his mom’s rejection his whole life. He tells me now he’s in his late sixties now that even when his wife is away shopping and she’s not back, when she says he’ll call her up, are you ever coming home? And she’ll just laugh. She knows him and loves him. Dan, I’m not abandoning you.

I’m coming home. I just had another store to stop at. And he’s had to work hard working with counselors to get through his anger. But the one thing that set him free to do what he does now, which is to speak to thousands of people every weekend, even though he came from a background of rejection, was working through his anger toward his mom. Here’s what he said in prayer. God, my mom told me, I never wanted you to be born. My mom rejected me from the time I was conceived. I’m trying to find my way out of anger and rejection. But how do I do that knowing that even my own mom didn’t want me. Now, Dan, Southern California likes to take hikes with his dog in the desert, has this real intimate relationship with God. And on this occasion, he sensed God responding as clear as day.

Dan told me, God spoken to my spirit. You’re right, Dan. Your mom didn’t want you, but you were my idea. Is that good enough for you? I always wanted you. So God didn’t deny the cruelty of Dan’s mom, but he said, but I created you and I call my creation good. So Dan’s anger was gone and he was able to get out there and give himself to others. And people have asked him, well, how do you come from that and still give yourself and put yourself in a vulnerable situation? And this is the life changing truth. Dan said this, I figured something out that set me free from the opinions of others. If I’m good enough for Jesus, I’m good enough for humans.

You know how freeing that is when nobody else gets to define you except for the God who created you. Have you been rejected by a parent, someone that you really respect? Maybe a romantic partner? Find your identity. Never forget this is practical. You were created by God in the image of God. May maybe you don’t like the way you look. Maybe you wish you were taller, shorter, faster, or stronger. I really miss at this time of year having hair. I, I do. And it’s, I worked in college ministry and they could be idealistic with people and somebody would say, man, Gary, you seem so close to God. Have you ever done any miracles? And I’d laugh. I said, if I could do miracles, you think I’d look like this, I’d be all like in the name of Jesus, grow, grow, grow. But how do I face that God made me this way?

I have limitations. You have limitations. I’m not everything I wish I could be, but I could even turn around and say, well, for about 80% of the population, God said, you know what? When he created them, let’s just keep that hair covered up. All right? That that head covered up. We no, nobody needs to see that forever. Whatever reason mine is going to shine. And so we look at who we are. Please be careful When you slam yourself your limitations, who are you criticizing? You didn’t create yourself. God did worshiping him is learning to accept yourself as created in his image. Two big questions are answered with God as creator, who he is and his authority. Second question, who we are and why we have value. The third thing that comes out of that is just as important. God as creator teaches me to value others created in his image.

It defines how I treat everybody on this planet. For instance, God, his creator completely undercuts any form of racism, prejudice against people because they look differently. They have a different background than I do. And I’ve said this before and I’ll, I’ll say it again. It may be the most inappropriate sin for a Christian racism. Why? The only reason there are different races is because God created them. It was God’s design that people whose ancestors, ancient ancestors come from a part of the world that we call China, would look very differently from people whose ancestors come from a part of the world that we call Ireland red hair and freckles, anyone. And they would look very different from somebody who was born in Africa. God doesn’t want us to look the same. He wants to have varied colors in the way he creates this. Because to him it’s most beautiful.

And that’s how heaven will be populated. If we don’t as worshipers release this racist spirit that someone who looks different than me is inferior than me or I’m threatened by them, the reality is we would hate heaven. Look at how God’s word describes heaven in Revelation chapter seven. After this I looked and therefo me was a great multitude that no one could count from what nation, every nation, tribe, people, and language standing before the throne. And in front of the lamb, God will show his glory and his power by saying, every race that I’ve created will be represented in heaven for eternity. Singing the same songs worshiping their creator. God, it’s a beautiful picture. Tomorrow our country will be celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a Christian pastor who rooted his protest in God as our creator and us as his creation, who called us out of the racism of the time. And today, as we remember that holiday, we should be challenged as Christian worshipers. What vestige of that prejudice might still exist within me and Martin Luther King Jr. Not only rooted that we get rid of it because of God, but that God will accomplish this work in our world and in our society. Listen to this portion of one of his speeches.

I know you asking today, how long will it take? Somebody’s asking, how long will prejudice blind divisions of men? I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, yes, sir. However frustrating the hour, it will not be long because truth crush the earth will rise again. Yes. How long? Not long. Yes sir. Because no lie can live forever. Yes sir. How long? Not long. Long. Because you shall reap what you saw. How long? How long? Not long. How long? Forever. On the scaffold wrong. Forever on the throne. Just that scaffold. Sways the future behind the di unknown standard God, within the shadow keeping him watched above his own. How long? Not long because the A of the moral universe is long. But it been toward justice. Yes sir. How long? Not long. Not long. Because my eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

What will bring an end to racism? The coming of the glory of the Lord. God didn’t just create this world. He’s still operating within it and calling us to worship him and to change the way we treat others. The undercuts, not just racism, it completely undercuts sexism. Guys, when we get together and we say That’s women for you, it better be a compliment. God created women to be different than us. They might be mysterious. We may not understand it, but God didn’t create ’em to be just like us. And when women, you get together and somebody says, men, it really should be men. <Laugh> again. They may frustrate you, they may be a mystery. You may never understand them. But this notion that the world will be better if women were more like men or men were more like women, goes against everything. That the Creator, God decided that it takes both of us together to represent who he is.

And then it affects our acts. Mistreating someone, the whole thing of sexual harassment because you have power over them. That’s the way that the world works. I can coerce you to do that. But that denies just because you can doesn’t mean you should. That person is created in the image of God financially cheating someone because you’re their boss or you’re smarter than them and you can trick them. Again, that completely undercuts the notion that they’re created in the image of God. Now, an evolutionary mindset, the survival of the fittest might makes right, would actually endorse that. Why not? Maybe you’re helping humanity improve by weeding out the stupid and and taking care of your advantage. I’ve just seen this fast or listening to this fascinating podcast. It talks about how the new atheism movement that was particularly popular 20 years ago has just been imploding because of the activities of its adherence.

A valueless philosophy that we’re all just an accident. And so let’s just make the most it. It doesn’t really help the way we treat each other. But a Christian mindset that a personal God designed each one of us and made us in his image means that we take care of the weakest. We take care of. The most vulnerable to worship God is to respect those made in his image. So to be a Christian is to recognize God as creator. It’s to look at myself as created in his image, to stop criticizing how God made me. And then to treat others as they’re created in the image of God. It just leads to a much better life. It means I will love instead of hate. I will create instead of destroy, I will build others up instead of tearing others down or exploiting them or taking advantage of them.

It means that beso, I will worship the God who created because he deserves it and who loves me rather than rebel against him. Think, well, you might’ve created the world, but I know better how to run it and make a mess. Now, let me end with this because all of us fall short of looking at ourselves this way. We don’t give God the worship he deserves. And we really don’t treat others always as if they’re made in the image of God. It’s so easy for parents to just treat kids a certain way ’cause they can employers to do that, stronger people to do that. How do we address this? I think the best image we have here at Cherry Hills, recognizing God is our creator and treating others accordingly. Takes us back to John chapter eight. Most of you know this passage where a woman is caught in the act of adultery and they bring her to Jesus.

Now, one thing we need to point out, if she’s caught in the act of adultery, there was a man involved, right? You don’t commit adultery with yourself for whatever reason, they’re not grabbing the man. They just grabbed the woman and they are so angry. Maybe they’re led by the man whose wife it was that cheated him. They literally have rocks in their hand to throw and kill this woman maid in God’s image. They think they have God’s word on their side. They present her to Jesus and they say She did what she wasn’t created to do. And how does Jesus respond? He kneels down and he writes something in the dirt.

Then he stands up and he looks at these men and he says, whoever is without sin, let him cast the first stone. Now, that’s it’s taken a risk, but he kneels down again and he writes some more. What did Jesus write? I don’t know. I wish I knew it’ll be one of the first questions I asked Jesus, it must have been powerful. Jesus. What did you write in the dirt? Maybe it wasn’t just what he wrote. Maybe it’s just his presence. Maybe it was looking at him. Something happened because from the oldest to the youngest, every man, every man dropped his rocks, plop, plop, plop. They all walked away and she’s Jesus. And the woman even looks at her, where are those who condemn you? And she said, they’re gone. And Jesus said to her, neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on sin no more.

This is the way we handle God is creator. When we fall short of it, we don’t use it as a club. We wanna use it as a hug. We don’t use it as a condemnation. We use it as an invitation to treat ourselves and others in a different way. See, some churches say this, we don’t condemn you, but they don’t go on to say, go and send no more. And what happens when a church does that? It recognizes Jesus is a forgiver. It denies God as the creator. You can live any way you want. That’s not how you worship God who created us. You can treat people any way you want. Well, that’s not what Jesus is saying. Other churches, turn it around. We condemn you because you’re not living like God created you to live. She’s not living like God created her to live.

But Jesus said he didn’t condemn them. Why would we say that? There has to be a third way? And that’s what we’re looking at. Cherry Hills. We don’t condemn you, but because God is creator, we also say from now on sin, no more let’s live like God created us to live. So what’s the purpose of this church? To gather together, worship God as creator, be reminded of who we are, and then encourage each other. So let’s treat each other that way. Read in a book, a powerful image of somebody stealing into a church on a Wednesday evening in the basement as an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and they acted like it was some big revelation. Ha, you’re all alcoholics. What? And what did the participants do? They laughed. Yeah. You know what? Life’s been a lot easier when we’ve admitted that because we’re finding power in the God who created us and would you like to join us?

And that’s the attitude of us at Cherry Hills. We wanna look into the face of Jesus, not just, look, we wanna worship Jesus. We wanna look at everything he’s written and being convicted. We drop our stones of condemnation and we say, we wanna live the way he wanted to live, but we need help. We can’t do it alone. And so the church is set up not just for Sunday morning. This is one of the smallest parts of what we do. For instance, are you still struggling with the fact that God created you? Maybe I’m talking about micro macro evolution. You still have some questions. We’ve got a great group called Alpha. You can ask any question you want. You’ll get an intellectual, satisfying, intellectually satisfying response. Maybe you just need to get other questions. We’ve got Trailhead where they will help answer that. Maybe it’s not hard for you to accept God as your creator, but it’s hard because of what you’ve done or how you’ve been hurt to recognize yourself, created in the image of God.

You need spiritual healing. We have here, I call ’em the killer bees. Brett and Brian, they’re so gifted in pastoral care. I was just seeing them in action yesterday. I was just, I’m just so thankful to be in a church with those guys. They’ll help provide care. Maybe they refer you to a counselor, but they’ll help you deal with those issues. Or maybe you’re struggling. You’re saying your addictions that you have, you’re not treating yourself or others the way God designed you. So that’s why we have regeneration. It helps us look at like Dan did. What is, what is the touch point? What has been the trigger of your sin and your addiction? What is it serving in your life? How can you learn and process to identify that and to stop being a slave to that sin or that addiction? Maybe it’s not that you have a problem understanding God is creator or yourself created in the image of God.

Maybe you realize it’s the way you’re treating others. For instance, God created marriage to be lifelong. Sometimes it’s hard. That’s why we have re-engage. We know that marriage isn’t easy, so we’re not just gonna say, go and don’t get that divorce. Is that what you’re gonna say? Let’s help you. Let’s look at the issues in your marriage. Let’s see what’s going on. How can you have a healthy marriage? We also have men’s huddles. We have women’s groups. That’s why we have connect groups. It’s a group of people saying that in essence, we are a giant Christ-centered, alcoholics anonymous group. It may not be alcohol, it could be any of a number of things. But what defines us and what shapes us is how the Bible is framed. God is creator us, created in his image and treating others the same way. I wanna end with a powerful clip that kind of ties in everything we’ve said. I’ve mentioned my love of music, the miracle of our hearing. God created that. And then how we reject racism because of it, because we’re celebrating nationally. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday tomorrow wanna have a clip from one of those marches where Mahalia Jackson rooting this protest and celebration in the words of the gospel, how God used music that he created in such a powerful way to address in our world where we’ve fallen short, treating others is created in the image of God. Let’s watch her

Look like you wonder how we over, tell me how we got over, how did make it over soon as I,

This isn’t political. It’s about worship. The God who created us in his image. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for creating us. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for your creativity. Lord, I just pray that we would give you the worship you are due. I pray that you would heal those who don’t honor themselves the way they should. And Father, correct us when we don’t treat others as made in your image. Thank you for the power of your word, to redirect us, to heal us, and to comfort us. In Jesus’ name, amen.