Last week we finished the nine week series on Knowing and Overcoming Sin. The purpose of the series was twofold.
First, it should help us realize how everyone in the whole world is tangled up in the ravages of sin. Fred shared statistics about each of the seven deadly sins last week. As I started to overlap the statistics for different sin areas in my mind: this many affected by abuse or sexually transmitted disease, that many affected by addictions motivated by greed, sloth, and gluttony. The realization began to grow in my mind that no one is untouched by these sins. The conclusion is the same as it was as 2000 years ago.
“There is no one righteous, not even one.” Romans 3:10 (as Paul quoted from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes, Ps 14:1-3, 53:1-3, Ecc 7:20)
The other purpose was to serve as a warning to us to guard ourselves “so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness” (Heb 3:13) and to challenge us to excel still more in pursuing righteousness. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians,
“Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more… It is God's will that you should be sanctified … that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable.” I Thessalonians 4:1b, 3b, 4
Fred has a phase that he uses to describe how to approach decision-making situations. He says we should always look for the Royal Way. The Royal Way is the path that is beyond reproach and gives us a clear conscience before God and men. Often when I face a difficult decision and I come down to a conclusion that is not above reproach, I can hear Fred’s voice saying, “It’s not the royal way. It’s not the royal way.”
I don’t know how you felt after the whole series on the seven deadly sins. Fred mentioned several times last week that the weight of all the statistics “broke his heart.” I felt some of that as well. I felt somewhat numb, somewhat brokenhearted, and a bit overwhelmed.
And that’s okay. There is a time for every activity under heaven, including a time to mourn and a time to repent. And, Thank God, there are also times of refreshing (Acts 3:19).
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.” Philippians 4:6-8
That brings me to the King of Glory, and the King looks on us with favor. You can find the phrase “King of Glory” in Psalm 24, and I want to turn there now.
“The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.” Psalm 24:1-2
I’ve been rereading a book called More Than Meets the Eye by Richard Swenson. It is a great overview of God’s sovereignty in creation. Not only does the scientific evidence point to a creator, it resoundingly testifies that there is an active sustainer. God did not just wind up the clock of the universe and let it go only to watch from a distance. He is actively and intimately involved in how the universe ticks, day by day, moment by moment.
Just take God’s design for the whole Earth for example:
- We are moving around the sun at 72,000 mph to make the circuit of the sun in one year.
- A change in the distance of the earth to the sun by 2% would wipe out all life.
- If the moon did not exist, the earth would rotate 3 times faster and we would have continuous gale force winds.
- Without the moon, the Earth’s axis would be influenced by Jupiter and seasons would be much more severe.
The earth is the Lord's, not only the planet but also everything in it, the world, and all who live in it:
I could talk about this stuff all day. What about us, the ones who live in the world. Psalm 100 says, “Know that the LORD Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.”
One of the keys to life on Earth is the element carbon. Carbon is vital to life processes. The most notable groups of carbon-based chemicals used in the processes of living organisms include: Proteins, which are the building blocks from which the structures of living organisms are constructed ; Nucleic acids, which carry genetic information, enzymes; which catalyze organic chemical reactions; carbohydrates, which store energy in a form that can be used by living cells; fats, which also store energy, but in a more concentrated form, and which may be stored for extended periods in the body.
None of these chemicals are possible without carbon. Fortunately for us, carbon happens to be the fourth most common element in the universe. So where does all this carbon come from? How do you get carbon in the universe?
To get carbon, two other elements must be combined. Helium and beryllium. Okay, helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, so there is lots of it around. But what about beryllium? I wouldn’t know it if I met it. I don’t know what it looks like or what it’s good for. There’s not very much of it around. For every 100 billion atoms of helium in the universe, there is one atom of beryllium. (For reference, there are 2.5 million atoms of carbon for every atom of beryllium.) But we have to go beyond the regular beryllium you might meet walking down the street, to get Carbon you need a radioactive isotope of beryllium with a mean life of 0.0000000000000001 sec. 0.1 femtosecond. For carbon even to exist in our universe, there are other nuclear phenomena (three different nuclear resonances) that must be present, must be “designed in” to the universe to make the existence of the carbon element even possible.
Harvard astronomer Robert Kirshner said, “Without this process, we would not be here.” And, British astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle, a nonbeliever, complained that “the universe looks like a ‘put up’ job.” He went on to say, “a common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as the chemistry.”
Colossians 1:16-17 says, “For by Him all things were created, {both} in the heavens and on earth, …visible and invisible, … all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
But we are far more than elemental carbon. The human body is unbelievable in its complexity, capability, and its beauty.
Last weekend, we were hiking up near the Stumphouse tunnel. Melissa had the camera with her and she’s enjoying taking pictures of the first blooms of spring up in the foothills. We see some trees in the distance, covered in purple blossoms. I point them out, and she says, “It’s not worth taking a picture of them at this distance because the camera can’t pick up the color the same way your eye can.” How many times have you taken a picture and looked at it later and said, that just didn’t do it justice?
The eye is unbelievable. It can perceive as few as one to two photons on a single cell. One million nerve fibers extend from each eye to the visual cortex. That part of your brain that tells you what you’re seeing only takes up 1% of your brain.
To simulate for 10 milliseconds what is happening in one nerve cell in your eye requires the simultaneous solution of 500 nonlinear differential equations 100 times. To simulate what your eye does many times per second would take more than a week on a supercomputer that fills an entire room!
Okay, I’ve got an illustration for you. If you’re interested, raise your hand over your head and just hold it there. Don’t take it down, just keep it raised. I’ll come back to your arm in a minute.
I’ve always been amazed by the eye. It seems to get most of the attention. After all, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” But Swenson’s book really turned me on to the miracle of the ear. You can hear a wider range of sounds (1 trillion times) than the range of light intensity seen by the eye (10 billion times). And, the ear detects the smallest amounts of energy. We can find the direction of a sound by the 30 nanosecond difference between sound occurring in each ear.
We had to shuffle our office around at work. So I was walking down the hall one afternoon carrying some odds and ends. Among other things, I happened to be carrying a washer that was about half the size of the end of my pinkie. This thing was so small, and I dropped it. I wouldn’t have even known that I dropped it, except I heard it hit the floor. I immediately knew which direction it went. I also had a good idea of how far it went. And sure enough, even though the washer was nearly the same color as the floor, I found it with almost no effort. Then, it really hit me. The size and mass of that washer was so small, it had no real capacity to create much energy, and yet I heard it clearly. The ear is a phenomenal design.
Like I said before, I could talk about this stuff all day. Did you ever try to hold up a stick or a broom by balancing one end on your hand? Could you do it if I gave you two sticks tied together end to end with a string?
Is your arm tired? Why is it tired?
Who can stand on one leg? The force on your knee is many times your own weight because the muscles are pulling against one another to balance your body weight above your knee. Eyes, ears, arms and legs. All of them work with no real thought on our part. I don’t know how they work, not really. But, I depend on them every day with very little gratitude to the One who gave me such marvelous capabilities.
Psalm 139:14 – “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Amen.
God demonstrates his power, his creativity, and his sovereignty in all of Creation. We belong to Him and it should be our desire to know our Creator and worship Him.
“Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?” Psalm 24:3
The Psalmist questions, “Who is going to get to heaven?”
“He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. He will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God his Savior. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob.” Psalm 24:4-6
Based on our study of sin and its effects, who has clean hands and a pure heart? Who can get to heaven by their own strength or good works? No one is righteous, not one. Praise God that’s not the end of the story.
“Lift up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.” Psalm 24:7
Good news. Wake up! Lift up your head. The King of Glory is here, and he wants to come in. We have a hope. We have a future. The King of Glory wants to come into our lives. He will come into our hearts, if we will but open the door and let him in.
“Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” Psalm 24:8
Zephaniah 3:17 says, “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”
“Lift up your heads, O you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is he, this King of glory? The Lord Almighty-- he is the King of glory.” Psalm 24:9-10
Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, stands at the door and knocks. He is waiting patiently to come in and have fellowship with us. We cannot go to Him on our own terms. God is holy and righteous, perfect and pure. We are not righteous. Our hands are not clean.
And yet. And yet, there is hope. Our hope is in the blood of the Lamb. Jesus died on the cross and gave his life as a ransom for many. He is the Lord Almighty. He is the Lord mighty in battle. He is the Lord Mighty to Save.
Let us take this communion time to thank God. Thank God in your own way. For who He is, for what He’s done, for what He is going to do. “The arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.” Praise God.
First, it should help us realize how everyone in the whole world is tangled up in the ravages of sin. Fred shared statistics about each of the seven deadly sins last week. As I started to overlap the statistics for different sin areas in my mind: this many affected by abuse or sexually transmitted disease, that many affected by addictions motivated by greed, sloth, and gluttony. The realization began to grow in my mind that no one is untouched by these sins. The conclusion is the same as it was as 2000 years ago.
“There is no one righteous, not even one.” Romans 3:10 (as Paul quoted from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes, Ps 14:1-3, 53:1-3, Ecc 7:20)
The other purpose was to serve as a warning to us to guard ourselves “so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness” (Heb 3:13) and to challenge us to excel still more in pursuing righteousness. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians,
“Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more… It is God's will that you should be sanctified … that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable.” I Thessalonians 4:1b, 3b, 4
Fred has a phase that he uses to describe how to approach decision-making situations. He says we should always look for the Royal Way. The Royal Way is the path that is beyond reproach and gives us a clear conscience before God and men. Often when I face a difficult decision and I come down to a conclusion that is not above reproach, I can hear Fred’s voice saying, “It’s not the royal way. It’s not the royal way.”
I don’t know how you felt after the whole series on the seven deadly sins. Fred mentioned several times last week that the weight of all the statistics “broke his heart.” I felt some of that as well. I felt somewhat numb, somewhat brokenhearted, and a bit overwhelmed.
And that’s okay. There is a time for every activity under heaven, including a time to mourn and a time to repent. And, Thank God, there are also times of refreshing (Acts 3:19).
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.” Philippians 4:6-8
That brings me to the King of Glory, and the King looks on us with favor. You can find the phrase “King of Glory” in Psalm 24, and I want to turn there now.
“The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.” Psalm 24:1-2
I’ve been rereading a book called More Than Meets the Eye by Richard Swenson. It is a great overview of God’s sovereignty in creation. Not only does the scientific evidence point to a creator, it resoundingly testifies that there is an active sustainer. God did not just wind up the clock of the universe and let it go only to watch from a distance. He is actively and intimately involved in how the universe ticks, day by day, moment by moment.
Just take God’s design for the whole Earth for example:
- We are moving around the sun at 72,000 mph to make the circuit of the sun in one year.
- A change in the distance of the earth to the sun by 2% would wipe out all life.
- If the moon did not exist, the earth would rotate 3 times faster and we would have continuous gale force winds.
- Without the moon, the Earth’s axis would be influenced by Jupiter and seasons would be much more severe.
The earth is the Lord's, not only the planet but also everything in it, the world, and all who live in it:
I could talk about this stuff all day. What about us, the ones who live in the world. Psalm 100 says, “Know that the LORD Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.”
One of the keys to life on Earth is the element carbon. Carbon is vital to life processes. The most notable groups of carbon-based chemicals used in the processes of living organisms include: Proteins, which are the building blocks from which the structures of living organisms are constructed ; Nucleic acids, which carry genetic information, enzymes; which catalyze organic chemical reactions; carbohydrates, which store energy in a form that can be used by living cells; fats, which also store energy, but in a more concentrated form, and which may be stored for extended periods in the body.
None of these chemicals are possible without carbon. Fortunately for us, carbon happens to be the fourth most common element in the universe. So where does all this carbon come from? How do you get carbon in the universe?
To get carbon, two other elements must be combined. Helium and beryllium. Okay, helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, so there is lots of it around. But what about beryllium? I wouldn’t know it if I met it. I don’t know what it looks like or what it’s good for. There’s not very much of it around. For every 100 billion atoms of helium in the universe, there is one atom of beryllium. (For reference, there are 2.5 million atoms of carbon for every atom of beryllium.) But we have to go beyond the regular beryllium you might meet walking down the street, to get Carbon you need a radioactive isotope of beryllium with a mean life of 0.0000000000000001 sec. 0.1 femtosecond. For carbon even to exist in our universe, there are other nuclear phenomena (three different nuclear resonances) that must be present, must be “designed in” to the universe to make the existence of the carbon element even possible.
Harvard astronomer Robert Kirshner said, “Without this process, we would not be here.” And, British astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle, a nonbeliever, complained that “the universe looks like a ‘put up’ job.” He went on to say, “a common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as the chemistry.”
Colossians 1:16-17 says, “For by Him all things were created, {both} in the heavens and on earth, …visible and invisible, … all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
But we are far more than elemental carbon. The human body is unbelievable in its complexity, capability, and its beauty.
Last weekend, we were hiking up near the Stumphouse tunnel. Melissa had the camera with her and she’s enjoying taking pictures of the first blooms of spring up in the foothills. We see some trees in the distance, covered in purple blossoms. I point them out, and she says, “It’s not worth taking a picture of them at this distance because the camera can’t pick up the color the same way your eye can.” How many times have you taken a picture and looked at it later and said, that just didn’t do it justice?
The eye is unbelievable. It can perceive as few as one to two photons on a single cell. One million nerve fibers extend from each eye to the visual cortex. That part of your brain that tells you what you’re seeing only takes up 1% of your brain.
To simulate for 10 milliseconds what is happening in one nerve cell in your eye requires the simultaneous solution of 500 nonlinear differential equations 100 times. To simulate what your eye does many times per second would take more than a week on a supercomputer that fills an entire room!
Okay, I’ve got an illustration for you. If you’re interested, raise your hand over your head and just hold it there. Don’t take it down, just keep it raised. I’ll come back to your arm in a minute.
I’ve always been amazed by the eye. It seems to get most of the attention. After all, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” But Swenson’s book really turned me on to the miracle of the ear. You can hear a wider range of sounds (1 trillion times) than the range of light intensity seen by the eye (10 billion times). And, the ear detects the smallest amounts of energy. We can find the direction of a sound by the 30 nanosecond difference between sound occurring in each ear.
We had to shuffle our office around at work. So I was walking down the hall one afternoon carrying some odds and ends. Among other things, I happened to be carrying a washer that was about half the size of the end of my pinkie. This thing was so small, and I dropped it. I wouldn’t have even known that I dropped it, except I heard it hit the floor. I immediately knew which direction it went. I also had a good idea of how far it went. And sure enough, even though the washer was nearly the same color as the floor, I found it with almost no effort. Then, it really hit me. The size and mass of that washer was so small, it had no real capacity to create much energy, and yet I heard it clearly. The ear is a phenomenal design.
Like I said before, I could talk about this stuff all day. Did you ever try to hold up a stick or a broom by balancing one end on your hand? Could you do it if I gave you two sticks tied together end to end with a string?
Is your arm tired? Why is it tired?
Who can stand on one leg? The force on your knee is many times your own weight because the muscles are pulling against one another to balance your body weight above your knee. Eyes, ears, arms and legs. All of them work with no real thought on our part. I don’t know how they work, not really. But, I depend on them every day with very little gratitude to the One who gave me such marvelous capabilities.
Psalm 139:14 – “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Amen.
God demonstrates his power, his creativity, and his sovereignty in all of Creation. We belong to Him and it should be our desire to know our Creator and worship Him.
“Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?” Psalm 24:3
The Psalmist questions, “Who is going to get to heaven?”
“He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. He will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God his Savior. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob.” Psalm 24:4-6
Based on our study of sin and its effects, who has clean hands and a pure heart? Who can get to heaven by their own strength or good works? No one is righteous, not one. Praise God that’s not the end of the story.
“Lift up your heads, O you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.” Psalm 24:7
Good news. Wake up! Lift up your head. The King of Glory is here, and he wants to come in. We have a hope. We have a future. The King of Glory wants to come into our lives. He will come into our hearts, if we will but open the door and let him in.
“Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” Psalm 24:8
Zephaniah 3:17 says, “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”
“Lift up your heads, O you gates; lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is he, this King of glory? The Lord Almighty-- he is the King of glory.” Psalm 24:9-10
Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, stands at the door and knocks. He is waiting patiently to come in and have fellowship with us. We cannot go to Him on our own terms. God is holy and righteous, perfect and pure. We are not righteous. Our hands are not clean.
And yet. And yet, there is hope. Our hope is in the blood of the Lamb. Jesus died on the cross and gave his life as a ransom for many. He is the Lord Almighty. He is the Lord mighty in battle. He is the Lord Mighty to Save.
Let us take this communion time to thank God. Thank God in your own way. For who He is, for what He’s done, for what He is going to do. “The arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.” Praise God.
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