Good Morning!
For today’s worship and prayer help I want to expand on something mentioned in the sermon from Sunday. One of the benefits of going back to the Book of Genesis on the Lord’s Day is seeing with fresh eyes the power of God. The magnificence of our Creator changes how we see the world and understand our place in it. There is so much beauty in the order of the world as He has designed it that any attempt to minimize or change it effects the whole thing. As I pointed out on Day Three as He makes the flowers of the field and the grain and the fruit trees is that each of them are made for one another and for the glory of the LORD. It is especially out of the later that we receive such peace and tranquility. Seeing that everything has its place and purpose allows us to enjoy our own reason for existing in God’s good creation.
Paul for instance teaches in 1 Corinthians 12 that we all are an important part of supporting each member of the Church. While his illustration can seem a bit clunky it is so helpful in bringing all this into focus. In showing that every knee, toe, tongue, and eye is made to reinforce one another it necessarily tells us the consequences of not obeying God’s purpose for each part. Obviously if God made you to be a liver and you try and be a foot trouble is going to follow. Fighting against the Lord’s plan is not just foolhardy, but dangerous. What happens to an internal organ that attempts to live outside the carefully organized internal structure of the human anatomy? Can it survive? Of course not! So why do we try and be something other than who and what we are? To live in a way that is contrary to what Christ has revealed in His word doesn’t just harm us, but hurts all of society as well as the church. And while sin is an obvious answer as to why we do it, and it would be correct, it is not sufficient to give a full picture of the problem.
We do it because we are not satisfied with God’s decision to be where we are and to be who we are. We also aren’t interested in playing by His rules, or waiting on His time. Our attempts to find a shortcut to felicity always lead to the derailing of what we wanted. So why do we continue to try and act like we can have our cake and eat it to when we know what the end will be? It all goes back to Creation, and what happened when Adam decided he didn’t want to tend the garden anymore. Dissatisfied with the Lord’s purpose in his life the first man not only failed to help his helpmeet, but he heeded the lies of Satan. How did that turn out?
Central to Christian joy and happiness is contentment. When we talk about contentment we don’t mean a stiff upper lip, grinding through it and don’t complain kind of contentment. That’s not really what the Lord Jesus is shooting for when He calls us to be satisfied in Him and His plan for our life. No, what we are to be is thankful. That is what true Christian contentment looks like. This is what marks out Job’s patience. It is not about his making it through, but his refusal to curse God in the midst of it. He knew that the Lord was good, and that His providence, while sometimes hard and difficult is never wrong. So as the Apostle writes in 2 Corinthians 4 when we are suffering what is our joy? Hear him:
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”
The explanation for why the Christian can rejoice in the midst of sorrow is because the power is not of us, but of God. This simple truth is profound and wonderful, and it has lots of applications outside just sadness. In my ideal world I’d be a professional soccer player, but this was not the Lord’s plan for me. It took me a while to submit to the Lord’s purpose in my own life. I wrecked myself quite a bit in my late teens and early twenty’s searching for something that didn’t exist. It wasn’t until I admitted to the reality that my way wasn’t God’s way that a solution appeared, and it wasn’t of my own making.
It is this way because it is the manner of the one who is Light, and who shines that light on our hearts without the help of the sun and the moon. As I noted Sunday morning that is one of the messages of the brightness coming for the plants from the very presence of God. We saw that their growing is not due to photosynthesis, but from the command of the one who made them. It is an illustration for us to see that when we think of our own salvation we know that our being made new creatures in Christ is because we are born, not of the flesh, or the will of man, but from above and through the inward work of the Holy Spirit. It is to God’s declarative power that this is so. Just as the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth, so too did He make us to bear His image for His glory. We didn’t make ourselves the first time and we certainly didn’t do it the second time. That is why the only proper response that we can give is worship. It is by throwing ourselves at the feet of Christ and lifting up His name that we show to the world, and to God, that we are done wrestling, and admit to the peace we strive so hard to avoid.
So as we close this today if you are struggling with contentment in your place in the world or are unsure of where God would have you to be, or if you are openly trying to find a way to run away from the Lord’s plan take a second and look back at Genesis 1. See the order God has placed in the world and see the goodness of it, and rest in it.
For extra reading today here is a good piece that you might find helpful.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/gods-will-life-obvious-think/
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church