17th February 2025

17th February 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Genesis 1-2:3 and Hebrews 11:3)


Message (Alan Burke) 


As we think of creation think of building a house, hopefully you’ll see where I’m going with this soon enough. If you begin to build a house, we have to use the materials at hand, a hundred years ago houses were built with things that were immediately available to them. Some time ago I read a book called ‘Studies in Folk life’ and in it there is a chapter that details Sod and Turf houses in Ireland and there was a picture of a turf house near ballymoney taken in 1940 and a sod cabin in Toome. The were homes that were built with what was immediately available to hand, turf or sod with thatch roofs. Now a-days we head down to somewhere like MacBlair in order what we need, the bricks, cement, sand, timber, plaster, everything in a one stop shop. We may build the house but we do not create the house, for what we build is not a creation in the same sense as God creating all things out of nothing. For God spoke, ‘let there be’ and by the power of his word there was. 


Whereas when we create we use materials that are already at hand, that already exist, we may change them from one form to another, we may though heat or a chemical process cause a change in them at the molecular level but the they still existed, we do not or indeed have not ever created in the same sense as God. This is why when many of you were at school Studying English when you did an assignment it was called a ‘composition’. As people of the Word, we must be aware of the implications of the words we choose to use. The widespread use of the word “create” as a human activity is not necessarily wrong. However, God’s creative acts should be clearly differentiated from the activity of human beings.


In the work of creation we are told how God created all things in the space of six days. Here we are left with a quandary, after all science tells us that the world was created by some kind of big bang, then over billions the process evolution took place and this is how the world and universe as we see it and understand now came into existence. And as most of you are probably aware if anyone dare disagree or say ’ah, but the Lord created the world in six days by the power of his word’ is considered at the very best just an ignorant fool but more often than not seen as a dangerous threat to society and must be dealt with. 


We try to evaluate the scriptures on our own tangible experiences, and when we do this what we do is limit God. But God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. As we though about how God is infinite we were confronted with how as human beings that we cannot acquire a full knowledge of God because God by his very nature is infinite whereas we are finite and as a result note even the greatest minds can probe very far into the depths of God or reach his limits, there is always more to learn there is always more to understand. 


To make the point we thought about how as accomplished as we think the human race is, we are also hugely limited. We have scaled Mount Everest which has the highest elevation of any mountain above sea level 29,035 feet, yet the depts of the seas are beyond our reach and understanding, the furthest any man has delved the depths of the deep unaided by machines is Ahmed Gabr who dove over 1,000 feet below the Red Sea. Yet the deepest part of the ocean called the Challenger Deep, southwest of the U.S. territorial island of Guam, it is approximately 36,200 feet deep. Beyond our reach and beyond our understanding, if we cannot reach the extremities of the natural world never how much less can we hope to attain the incomprehensibly of God, his infinite nature.


Hebrews 11:3 reminds us how; “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” By faith we understand that the universe has been created by God’s divine power though his word the Lord Jesus Christ, fashioned by Him, not like how a potter fashions a piece of pottery out of clay but fashioned by his word out of nothing. Knowing that God created us and the world around us is basic to true religion. God is to be praised as the Creator, known from the marvellous order and beauty of His works. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q9 What is the work of creation?
The work of creation is, God’ s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good.
​