How did the devil ruin God's creation?

Series: Growing Together in God's Grace

January 27, 2013

Dear friends in Christ.

Have you ever broken something or ruined something that was valuable to another person?  Sadly, I think it’s safe to say that at one time or another in our lives, we have done this very thing; we have ruined or broken something that belonged to someone else.  For me, the thing that sticks out most clearly in my mind today is a matchbox car that belonged to my sister.  It was a simple blue hatch back with an orange plastic trunk that actually opened.  I remember receiving her permission to take it with me to school and play with it there.  I remember playing with it at recess, and I remember the trunk being broken.  To this day I don’t know how it broke, though I’m sure I’m the one who broke it, because I was the only person playing with it.  To this day I can still remember the feelings of horror and sorrow, guilt and shame that washed over me because I knew I had let my sister down.  I had broken her favorite and only matchbox car.  I remember wishing I could take it back and do it over; wishing that I had a second chance to get it right.  But it was broken, there was no second chance.  There wasn’t even the opportunity to buy a new one because that model of matchbox car simply could no longer be found. 

Well, in many ways this is a picture of what happened with God’s creation!  Though it was perfect when God was finished with all his creating work, as we know, the entirety of God’s creation was ruined by one simple action; one simple mistake, by one single sin.  And, of course, we know exactly who was behind it all, orchestrating the ruin of God’s creation.  We know that it was our enemy, the devil.  Though in the last two weeks we’ve looked at the importance of God’s creation and how he provides for us through his creation, this morning we want to take a closer look at how the devil ruined God’s creation.

So, to understand more fully how the devil ruined God’s creation, we want to take a look at the Scriptures and learn exactly who the devil really is.  We look first of all at Matthew 25:41 where Jesus say, “‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." (Matthew 25:41, NIV84)

As I’m sure you remember these words were spoken by Jesus in answer to the disciple’s question of what it will be like on the Last Day and what will be the signs of his return.  Jesus answered them with many parables and finally he spoke to them with the parable of the sheep and the goats.  When Jesus comes to judge the world he will separate believers from unbelievers as easily as a shepherd separates sheep from goats.  Those who believed in him would be given the inheritance of eternal life, but those who did not believe in Jesus would be condemned.  They would be told to depart from Jesus.  They would be sent to the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and all his evil angels who sinned against the Lord after and who are being held for the day of God’s judgment, as Peter tells us, “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;" (2 Peter 2:4, NIV84)

Though the devil was one of God’s angels, created in perfect holiness so that he might serve the Lord and care for his creation, satan sinned against the Lord by seeking to overthrow the Lord and set himself up in God’s place.  But not only did he sin by seeking to take over heaven, he also sinned by convincing a number of angels to rebel with him.  Though he raised his mutiny, he was defeated and cast out of heaven, and now he, an evil angel and ruler of a finite number of evil angels seeks to destroy all that God has created and all who believe in him.

This is what our enemy, the devil, really is!  He is a very powerful, evil angel, who is also the ruler of many other evil angels.  Yet, how often doesn’t it happen that he is portrayed as a benign powerless force in the world.  How often isn’t he portrayed as cute, or innocent, or even cool rather than what he truly is, as Peter tells us, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." (1 Peter 5:8, NIV84) or as Jesus tells us, “[The devil] was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies." (John 8:44, NIV84) or as John tells us, “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him." (Revelation 12:9, NIV84)

This is who our enemy, the devil, truly is and this is how he accomplishes his evil work today!  He is not a cute, or innocent, or cool, or benign force in the world.  He is a roaring lion who is prowling around, looking to devour us by leading us into sin.  He is an ancient serpent, a great dragon who seeks to lead us astray with his lies.  He is a liar and a murder who seeks to murder us by separating us form God’s truth through his lies; who seeks to destroy us and God’s creation through his lies still today, just as he did with Adam and Eve.  For the truth is, satan is still destroying God’s creation today with the very first lies he spoke to Adam and Eve: “Did God really say?”  “You will not die!  You will be like God!”  These are the very lies that our enemy, the devil, continues to use today!  These are the very lies that he uses to eat away at our faith in God’s creation of the heavens and the earth.  These are the very lies that lead people to the seemingly glorious truths of the theory of evolution, because in the theory of Evolution what God really said is replaced by what we really say, and what God really is, is replaced by who we really are as we seek to take his place and be like God ruling over heaven and earth by our declaration of God’s non existence through the “proof” of scientific fact.

In so many subtle ways, our enemy, the devil, does his evil work among us as he seeks to destroy us with his lies and deceits, just as he did with Adam and Eve, as Moses tells us, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” 4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it." (Genesis 3:1–6, NIV84)

One little lie!  That’s all it took to get Adam and Eve to forget all about God’s goodness in creating them and giving them a perfect place to live in the Garden of Eden.  But before we criticize Adam and Eve for being so foolish, think of how easily satan gets us to lie, to speak angry words, or to covet some little thing that another person has.  Why do we do these things?  Only because Satan’s lies tempt us to think that it’s better or easier or more profitable to do these things than to follow God’s will.  But when we do these things, all we wind up doing is bringing more frustration and hardship and even suffering into our lives, just as Adam and Eve brought these things into the world when their sin ruined God’s creation.

When Adam and Eve listened to satan instead of the Lord, they ruined God’s creation through their sin.  They brought sin and death into this world together with pain and suffering.  For these were the very consequences bestowed upon them and all creation because of their sin, as Moses tells us in Genesis 3, “To the woman [the Lord] said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” 17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:16–19, NIV84)

Because of that one sin, we are now sinful.  Because of that one sin, creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth until this present time (Romans 8:22) Because of that one sin we face suffering in this life; suffering that comes to us through sicknesses inflicted upon us or our loved ones.  Suffering that comes to us through the frustrations of weakening limbs, joints, hearing, abilities, eyesight, or other physical ways.  Suffering that comes to us through family and friends who turn away from us or turn against us.  Suffering that comes from financial issues.  Suffering that comes to us because of the curse of death.  Though God created this world and everything in it to be perfect, satan successfully ruined God’s creation when he tempted Adam and Eve into sin and brought sin and death, pain and suffering into the world for us and for all who follow after us.  But even though satan was so successful at so thoroughly ruining God’s creation, our God enacted his solution only a short time after Adam and Eve became his enemies.  For it was on that very day in the cool of the evening when the Lord spoke to them and said, “I will put enmity between [satan] and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15, NIV84)

In that moment the Lord enacted his solution of salvation by promising to send his Son to be the Savior.  From that time forward the Lord continued to reiterate his promise that the Savior would come to free his people from their sins.  All who put their faith in the Savior who was to come found that their sins had been forgiven, lived in a right relationship with the Lord their God, and looked forward to the inheritance of eternal life by their Savior’s side forever in heaven.  Though satan had ruined God’s creation, in his love the Lord God provided all people with a second chance to once again be made perfect through faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior.  In his great love, the Lord our God sent his Son to be the sacrifice of atonement to make us righteous in his sight so that through faith in Jesus, we too can look forward to the gift of eternal life.  Though we will still face frustration and hardship, pain and suffering in this life, because we know Jesus, our Savior, we can see these things as blessings from the Lord, designed to help us keep our eyes focused on him and our faith securely founded in him.  Though we will face difficulties in this life, these are also things that are designed to make us lean on the Lord all the more for help in this life.  Though we will see friends and family suffer with sickness and hardships and even face the death of family and loved ones, we have our Savior’s promise that whoever is faithful to him, even to the point of death, each one will receive the crown of life in his heavenly kingdom (Revelation 2:10) when he calls us home to the place that he, himself, has prepared for us. (John 14:2-3)

What an incredible solution that the Lord bestows upon us.  Even though our enemy, the devil sought to ruin God’s creation and murder our first parents by enticing them into sin, the Lord saved them and us through Jesus our Savior.  Though our enemy, the devil, still prowls around like a roaring lion seeking to devour us, it is our Savior who defends us, protects us, and forgives us, because he has made us his own through faith.  Though the devil ruined God’s creation by using his lives to bring sin, death and suffering into the world, in his great grace the Lord has given us a second chance through faith in Jesus.  He has given us the promise that he will be with us in this life as well as the promise that he will take us to be with him forever.  For all of this let us thank and praise the Lord our God!  Let us serve him and obey him.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

GraceEvangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN

Why Is Creation so Important?

Series: Growing Together in God's Grace

January 13, 2013

Dear friends in Christ.

A couple of weeks ago, we took a look at who the true God is and how the God of the Bible in whom we believe is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 3 persons, yet only one God.  Last week we learned that believing in God the Father, Almighty, means that we know who he is because he has revealed himself to us in the Bible, which we accept is his Word, and through which we have come to trust that all his promises are true.  Now, today, as we dive deeper into his word, we take a look at the very beginning of all things.  We take a look at the foundation of all creation and the foundation of everything that we believe and teach!  We take a look at the account of creation in Genesis 1 and as we do, we will learn, once again, “Why the account of Creation is so very important!” 

So, as we begin, I invite you to open your Bibles to Genesis 1, which can be found on page 1 of your Bibles.  Now, as you turn to Genesis Chapter 1, what I would normally do is give you a brief introduction of the context, but today there really isn’t any introduction or context that I can give you because before creation, there was only God.  Time and history as we know it did not begin until the Lord our God began his creating work.  Take a look with me at Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1, NIV84)

If these aren’t some very familiar words!  After all, these are words that we have known by heart since we were little children.  These are words that made our parents smile when we first learned them in Sunday School or Christian Day School.  These are words that we have cherished as we’ve grown from Children to Teens and from Teens to Adults.  But sadly, these are also words that have sometimes been drown out by the cacophony of worldly ideas that bombard us on a daily basis.  Since we were little children Television has been assuring us that the world in which we live is billions of years old and that life evolved from the simplest organisms to the complex organisms that we are today.  Not only that, but since the mid 1960’s our public school system has taught more and more boldly and more and more factually that according to science all life began when the first amino acids formed the first proteins in a puddle of primordial soup somewhere around 3.5 billion years ago.

Yet, while science teaches us that life spontaneously came into being around 3.5 billion years ago, if we compare the timeline of world history with the timeline of the Bible, we find: that Jesus was born on this earth roughly 2,000 years ago, that the flood took place roughly 2,500 years before Jesus was born, and that roughly 1,500 years before the flood our God created the heavens and the earth.  In short, according to the timeline of the Bible, it was roughly 6,000 years ago that the Lord our God called everything into existence by his almighty word.  As Genesis 1:1 tells us in the Hebrew, (spelled Phonetically) “beraysheet barah Elohim”.  Now, this is something I taught you a little more than a year ago when we went through the Stained Glass Window Series.  Beraysheet means “beginning” or as we translate, “in the beginning.” (In Latin it would be translated as Genesis, which is why the name of the first book of the Bible is, Genesis.)  Barah means, “he created” with an emphasis on calling something into existence out of nothing. “Elohim, which is the subject of this sentence, means “God”.  So, in three short words Moses establishes the fact that until Elohim (God) created (barah) the heavens and the earth, there was no time, no space, no matter; in fact, there was nothing in existence except for the Lord our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!  There was nothing but God until the very beginning of time (Beraysheet) when he, Elohim, Barah(ed) began his creating work, creating time and space, light and dark, matter and energy out of nothing; calling it all into existence as a formless and empty lump of clay, so to speak, from which he would spend the next five, literal, twenty-four hour days, forming the universe and all things.  Just as Moses tells us in verse 3-5 “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day." (Genesis 1:3–5, NIV84)

That was the first day!  From there the Lord went on to separate the waters on the earth from the waters in the sky.  He called forth the dry ground and produced vegetation on it—never planting seeds, but simply calling it forth by his almighty word.  He set the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens for the purpose of giving us light and helping us to tell time in weeks, months, and years.  He filled the skies with birds and the waters with fish.  Then, finally, on day six, after creating all the land animals, he formed Adam from the dust of the ground, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and later that day formed Eve from one of Adam’s ribs.  This is the work that the Lord God did in creating the world and all that exists.  In six days, six, literal, twenty-four hour days the Lord created all that exists, creating living creatures as well as the human race.  He created a perfect world in which for us to live and work and thrive, but sadly, as you know, our first parents ruined God’s creation when they fell into sin.  Yet, even then the Lord promised to send his Son to be our Savior.  We know how Jesus came to the earth, how he was born, how he lived, and how he died in our place to free us from our sins and to give us the gift eternal life by his side, in heaven, forever.

It is because of all of these things that creation is so important!  For the truth is the account of creation is the foundation of our faith in God.  It is the foundation of our knowledge of who the true God really is.  It is the foundation of our acceptance of his Word—the Bible.  It is the foundation of our trust in his promises.  Yes!  Creation is that important! 

The problem is that our world is filled with the ideas and the concepts that flow out from the Theory of Evolution; a theory that works very quietly and at the same time very blatantly at undermining the truths of Creation and the Bible.  Just think about how the teachings of evolution have been at work in our lives.  How many times haven’t we been tempted to try to harmonize our God’s work of Creation with Science’s ideas of Evolution?  How many times haven’t your children come home from school openly questioning the truth of creation and favoring the “facts” of evolution because it is “scientific”?  How many times haven’t you found yourself in a conversation with someone who says that they believe the Bible and call themselves a Christian yet, they simply can’t accept that the six days of creation were actually six, literal, twenty-four hour days?  How many times haven’t you heard someone talk about the creation account in Genesis as God setting creation into motion and then allowing it to evolve over time so that when things had evolved sufficiently, God would step in on the next “day” and spark the next step in creation which he would allow to evolve again until the time was right for him to step in again? 

These are but a few of the evolutionary termites, so to speak, that seek to burrow in and seek to destroy the foundation of our faith in the Lord by destroying the founding doctrine of the Bible—creation.  For if we begin to doubt creation, we begin to doubt the Lord our God.  If we begin to doubt that our God has the power to create all that exists, out of nothing, by the power of his word alone, then we begin to doubt who our God really is.  If we begin to doubt that the six days of creation are six literal twenty-four hour days, then we begin to doubt his word.  If we begin to doubt God’s Word, then we begin to doubt his promises.  If we begin to doubt his promises, then we begin to doubt anything that our God tells us in his word.  If we begin to doubt anything that God tells us in his word, before we know it, we have set creation aside as a myth, Adam and Eve as a make believe story about our struggles to delay our gratification and seek to work for the common good of humanity, the promise of the Savior as a story to be reserved for Christmas, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of santa clause, and the doctrine of heaven and hell as nothing more than something to scare children into being good. For the truth is, if we doubt that our God created the heavens and the earth and all that exists by his almighty power, through his word, then it won’t be long before we doubt our own sinfulness, our need for a Savior, the miracle of the Savior’s birth, or the gift of salvation that is ours through faith in Jesus Christ.  In short we will begin to believe that there can’t possibly be a hell, because a loving God would never send anyone to hell.  Nor would a loving God keep anyone out of heaven because a loving God would accept everyone just as they are, and that should be good enough to get into heaven.

This is why creation is so important.  It is so important because it is the foundation of everything that we know and believe about the Lord our God.  It is the beginning of his word which was written for our salvation, and it sets the stage and the purpose for the Lord’s activity in our life.

Now, even though I am seeking to clearly emphasize how important the teachings of creation are for us as Christians, please understand that I am not seeking to set Creation and Science as enemies!  For the truth is, in so many ways, science is really about trying to understand God’s creation.  Science is about using all the gifts that the Lord has given us in our intellect and creativity to seek to utilize his creation in a way that is beneficial for God’s people.  In our world there are scientists who are Christians, who approach science from a God fearing point of view rather than an evolutionary point of view.  There are chemists, biologists, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, vets, and all sorts of others who work in any of the scientific fields in our world, who are Christians and who believe the Bible is God’s Word.  The problem, however, stems from the fact that in so many of the world’s colleges and universities, science is taught from an evolutionary point of view.  So often science teaches the theory of evolution as a fact and ridicules the faith of those who believe in a God who created the world in six, twenty-four hour days.  Because of this young Christians in college can feel very isolated, and made to feel that they must choose between their faith and their grade or even their future career.  Because of this, young Christians can begin to doubt their faith, doubt their God, and wonder if God can even exist, because science has basically proven the non-existence of God by not being able to prove that he exists.  (Interestingly enough, it seems that the theory of evolution has basically been proven by the fact that it can’t be disproven.  I’m sure it goes deeper than that but that is how it seems on the surface.)

This is why creation is so important!  It is so important because it is the foundation of everything else that we believe.  Just like the sturdiness of any building becomes questionable when the foundation becomes weak or even crumbles, so also when the foundation of our faith begins to crumble, our faith quickly weakens and is in danger of collapsing.  So, as we close, dear friends, let me encourage you to make use of the tools that God has given you so that you can continue to grow in your faith and your trust in him.  Make use of all of the opportunities you have to worship the Lord.  Strengthen your faith by reading and studying his Word on your own and with other Christians.  Take advantage of things like the Meditations devotions and the Forward in Christ magazine; devotions designed to help strengthen your faith, and the magazine designed to offer encouragement, strategies, and to let you know others are going through the same struggles.  But on top of that let me give you one incredibly valuable resource to help answer your questions and prepare your children.  That resource is Answers in Genesis.  This is the group that runs the creation museum in Petersburg, KY.  They are an independent organization and they are not affiliated with our synod.  They are an independent organization and they are an amazing resource of biblical truth and scientific knowledge, especially when it comes down to questions that deal with creation, science, and many, many other issues.  The easiest way to find them is through their website, which is the same as their name, AnswersInGenesis.org.  If you don’t use the internet and would like more information about them, I would be happy to provide it to you.

This is how important creation truly is!  How amazing and how humbling that the Lord begins our faith with such a solid foundation of fact!  “Beraysheet barah Elohim, ate ha shamaim, ve ate ha aretz.” In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.   

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN

How Can We Know who our God really Is?

Series: Growing Together in God's Grace 

December 2, 2012

Dear friends in Christ.

I know for a fact that not one of us here today ever had the pleasure of meeting George Washington.  Though it was only a little more than 200 years ago when George Washington lived, we have been completely separated from ever having the pleasure of knowing him personally by those 200 years.  And yet, even though none of us has ever met him, we do know quite a lot about him because of all of the things that have been revealed to us through books, encyclopedias, magazines, television shows, movies, and yes through all the information posted today on the internet.  Even though we have never met him personally we can still know who he was and what he was like.  Well, the same thing can be said about the Lord our God.  Even though we have never met the Lord face to face, like we meet each other every day, we can still know exactly who the Lord our God really is.  We can know exactly who the Lord our God really is from the ways in which he has revealed himself to us.  For example, in the Bible, in Psalm 19 we learn, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. 3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." (Psalm 19:1–4a, NIV84)

Now this is truly an amazing thing!  The Lord our God reveals himself to us as the master creator by revealing himself through the very things he created!  For in the same way that we can look at things like: the Pyramids in Egypt, Skyscrapers throughout the world, even the International Space Station, and know that these things had to be conceived, planned, and built by someone, so also, when we look at the beauties of our God’s creation, we come to realize that there must have been someone who made all that we see around us.  There must have been someone who had great power and might to create such a beautiful place for us to live.  In fact, as we scan the pages of God’s book of creation, we begin to recognize that this great and powerful someone who created all these things must, at the very least be filled with divine powers, because there is no human being on earth who could make anything like the world we see around us.  This divine being must be at the very least, long lived, if not eternal, because in order for him to create the universe and everything in it, he would have had to have been around long before creation took place.  In fact, in the book of Romans, Paul reminds us, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." (Romans 1:20, NIV)

In such a simple way, Paul reminds us of our Lord’s amazing wisdom in revealing himself as he does!  For in the same way the wisdom of the builders is clear from the ways they built the Pyramids, Skyscrapers and the International Space Station, so also our God reveals his wisdom, his strength, his eternal power and his divine nature through the very things he has created for us!

Yet, these are not the only things that the Lord has revealed about himself, nor is this the only way the Lord our God reveals himself to us so that we can know him.  For the truth is, the Lord has also revealed himself by writing his will, his law upon our very hearts, which is something that Paul also reminds us of in chapter two of his letter to the Romans.  “There is no favoritism with God. 12 All those who sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all those who sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be declared righteous. 14 So, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, instinctively do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their consciences confirm this. Their competing thoughts will either accuse or excuse them 16 on the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my gospel through Christ Jesus." (Romans 2:11–16, HCSB)

In short, Paul is telling us what we already know.  It doesn’t matter if we’ve been taught the Law of God or not.  The Lord our God has revealed himself to each and every person, by writing, branding if you will, his Law upon our hearts.  He has given each and every one of us a conscience—a conscience, which gives us a moral compass; a moral compass that helps us to know the difference between right and wrong.  For in the same way that the gauges in the cockpit of an airplane monitor the status of the flight and alert the pilot of something has gone wrong, so also our conscience monitors or watches over our conduct and alerts us when something is wrong.  It’s that little voice inside of us that condemns us for our sinful actions.  It’s that little voice that accuses us of doing wrong when we do not follow or live up to God’s commands.  It’s that feeling of shame that floods over us when we know we haven’t acted honorably.  It is that knowledge that just as our parents punished us when we were naughty, so also our righteous God will punish us for breaking his Law.

Yet, even as our conscience reveals our God to be a righteous God who punishes sins, it also assures us and comforts us when we do the right thing.  It is also that little voice of congratulations when we follow the will of our God.  It is that feeling of pride when we know we did the right thing.  The problem, however, is that even our conscience can become clouded and confused.  They can be taught to believe that innocent things like card playing and dancing are absolutely sinful.  (How many of your parents or even grand-parents were conscience bound by ideas like this?)  Not only that, but our consciences can even come to terms with sinful actions, accepting them as good things, and even going so far as to approve of and encourage those who practice the same things, if we continue to ignore our conscience or fill them with the idea that what we’re doing isn’t all that bad anyway.  This is exactly what Paul is talking about when he writes in another place in his letter to the Romans, “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." (Romans 1:32, NIV84)

These are but two of the ways that the Lord our God has revealed himself to us so that we might know who he is.  But if truth be told, if these two ways, through nature and through our conscience, if these two revelations had been all that we knew about the Lord our God, then we would be very miserable indeed!  Even though we would know about his eternal power, his divine nature, and his glorious wisdom from the very things he had created; from the Law that the Lord had written on our hearts, we would also know that we did not measure up to his standards.  Even though we might be able to cloud our consciences and sooth them into believing that our sinful actions were actually God pleasing, deep down we would still know that we deserved nothing but God’s punishment.  We would never be able to know if we had done enough to please him or if he even loved us, or if he even remotely cared about us.  If all we knew about our God came to us from his creation and our consciences, then the guilt we felt over all the things we had done wrong would continue to fester and bubble in our hearts until it finally boiled over and filled our hearts and our lives with despair.  Despair from which there could be no escape except for us to completely turn away from the Lord and seek salvation from ourselves and from the world around us.  For in the same way that a dashboard light can only tell you that something is wrong with your car and not how to fix it, so also our conscience can only tell us that something is wrong with us.  Neither our knowledge of creation nor the pangs of our conscience can ever tell us how we can fix it.

But thanks be to God that he has not only revealed himself through the dashboard lights of creation and conscience, but he has also revealed himself to us through the instruction manual of his Word.  For in the same way that instruction manuals help mechanics find and fix the problem when a dashboard light comes on, so also it is through the instruction manual of his Word that our God has reveals himself to us and shows us exactly how he fixes our problems with sin.  Just as we sang this morning, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31, NIV84)

Though we can truly learn a great deal about our God from the things he reveals to us through his creation and our conscience, neither of these can ever teach us about Jesus Christ our Savior.  For it is only through the work the Holy Spirit accomplishes in our hearts Holy Scriptures, that we come to faith in Jesus.  It is only through the Holy Scriptures, which many of us have known since we were infants that we have been made wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior! (see 2 Timothy 3:15)  It is only through the Holy Scriptures that we know how the Lord our God revealed his plan to save the human race already back in creation when he promised Adam and Eve, “And I will put enmity (hostility) between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15, NIV84)  It is only through the Scriptures that God revealed how and where the Savior would be born when he promised, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14, NIV84)  and “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2, NIV84)

It is only in the pages of the Scriptures that we have the account of Jesus’ birth, announced in Luke 1 and completely revealed in Luke 2.  It is only in the pages of the Scriptures where we have the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John telling us all about Jesus, how he was born and how he lived a perfect and holy life, how he preached and taught the message of salvation wherever he went, and how he willingly gave up his life in our place and rose again from the dead, just as the Prophets of old that foretold.  It is in the Bible where we have the records of the Apostles going out and preaching and teaching the saving truth of salvation to all people.  We have the records of those who taught the word to assure us that when Jesus went to his death he went in our place.  When Jesus went to the cross he took every one of our sins with him and paid the price that God demanded.  Now, because of what the Lord our God has revealed to us in the pages of the Holy Scriptures, we have the assurance that through faith in Jesus all our sins and wrongdoings have been forgiven.  We have the assurance that eternal life is waiting for us in heaven.  In short, it is through the Bible that the Lord our God completely reveals himself to us through his Son, our Savior, in whom we believe because the Holy Spirit has worked through that word and created faith in our hearts; faith which knows exactly who the Lord our God truly is.

Now, because of this, we know who our God truly is.  We know that he is the all powerful Lord who created all that exists by his eternal power and divine nature.  We know that he is our glorious Savior because “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14, NIV84) We know that we are in a right relationship with him because through faith in his Son our Savior, we now know the Lord who “blots out our transgressions for his own sake and remembers our sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25, NIV84) 

We know all these things about the Lord our God, and even more than that, because these are the things that the Lord our God has revealed about himself in the pages of the Scriptures.  He has revealed them to us so that we might know him, even as he knows us and loves us.  Though we have not yet met the Lord our God face to face, we know him just as well as we know each other, if not better than that, because through faith in Jesus—faith created in our hearts by the Holy Spirit—we have a personal relationship with the Lord our God.  We have a personal relationship with the Lord our God, and we know exactly who our God is because he has completely revealed himself to us so that we can know him.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN