Dear Church family,
I enjoyed praising our Creator with you yesterday. I hope and pray that the praise continues throughout this week.
(1) Preaching through Genesis 1 was a special privilege & blessing to me because my favorite title & characteristic of God is “Creator.” Everything makes sense to me when I remember God as Creator. Giving Him glory and praise in all things makes sense (Rev. 4:11) because He holds the patten on everything on earth, including my life. He deserves my praise because He made it all. And He deserves my obedience because He deigned me. Certainly, He knows how I’m built to function because He’s my builder.
Hebrews 3:3 says “…as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (for every house is build by someone, but the builder of all things is God.)”
God is the builder of all things including us, therefore, we should obey Him, praise Him, and recognize that He is more glorious than even the beauty in creation.
However, the fundamental flaw of sin is that we naturally praise the creation instead of the Creator. Romans 1 outlines that pattern of sin in humanity.
Romans 1:18-23 says this: “18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”
While God’s pleasure rested on all of creation when He made it, because it was very good, now God’s righteous anger rests on mankind because instead of praising their Creator, they praise His creation.
This is a temptation for Christians too. We can get caught up in the beauty of this world and idolize it, obsess over it, and pay more attention to it than the Creator of it.
God help us to praise our Maker rather than praising creation, and that includes us. The reason that boasting in self is wrong is because we are creatures who owe credit to our Creator. Therefore, the response that our faith in God as Creator should produce is, “no boasting in self but rather boasting in God” (1 Cor. 1:29-30, Eph. 2:9-10).
In other words, let’s praise the Lord!
(2) Another reason to praise the Lord as Creator is because He is good and He still creates good things (1 Tim. 4:4-5!).
James 1:16-18 gets at this: “16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”
We are told not to be deceived because it can be easy to think that God gives bad things instead of good things, especially in a world that does not look like Genesis 1 & 2. We see so much bad in the world and experience it in our lives.
But God tells us, ‘don’t be deceived!’ In other words, God as our Good Creator Who created good things in the beginning of time, is still creating good things in our lives now! He is still good and He is still Creator. He doesn’t change (“with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”)
And notice how James 1:16-18 uses creation language from Genesis 1 to explain God & His present-day activity–“good…Father of lights…word…firstfruits of His creatures”—all of these words come from Genesis 1 and how God created the world back then because James is telling us that the same God Who created the world through His Word, said let there be light, and made everything good, is the same God that continues to create these things in our life currently!
The key is to believe this, “do not be deceived” because it’s a temptation to give God the credit for bad things, and not give him the credit for good things, or perhaps not to see them at all.
This past week, God encouraged me with that truth. God is still creating new things in my life that are gifts. And it will never end. This of course does not negate the trials. James begins his book by telling us that we can count it all joy when God produces trials in our life, and that’s because even in the midst of trials, God is creating a good outcome in our life. He’s giving a good gift in the midst of bad things. That’s how God creates! Darkness comes before light. But God will say, “let there be light” in our life, and accomplish things, still, in the 21st century.
(3) You can also see from that James Text another reason we can praise the Lord: because He saves us the way that He creates.
In James 1:18, we’re told: “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”
This is saying that the same Word of God that created the earth and all that exists long ago, is using His Word to make us born again into His family so that we are kind of “firstfruits” of His creatures. When God said “be fruitful and multiply” in Genesis 1, He is doing that in our life by creating new humans who need born again by His Spirit.
2 Corinthians 4:6 & 5:17 also attribute our Christian existence to God’s creative power as He says, “let there be light” into our dark souls and makes us “new creations in Christ.” And the result of God creating new life in us and others, is that we praise Him and have no reason to boast.
Ephesians 2:8-10 puts it this way: “8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.10 For we arehis workmanship,created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (notice all the creation language!).
(4) Finally, we can praise the Lord as our Creator because He gives us hope!
I’ve tried to make it clear that we can expect God to still work in our life today, as a surprising Creator Who makes things that we could never expect. He calls things into existence that formally did not exist (Rom. 4:17)! And this should breath life into our faith by granting us hope.
We know that this world is badly broken and it needs fixed. It’s actually beyond repair in some ways. We’re told in 2 Peter 3:7 that “by the same Word (that God used to create the world) the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgement and destruction of the ungodly.”
But fortunately we’re told in 2 Peter 3:13, “According to His promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth is which righteousness dwells.”
Revelation 21:1 & 5 says “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and no place was found for them…v5 And He Who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new'”
God as our Creator, still has more creating to do. The same God who made the world out of nothing and made it good, can do it again, and He will. This fills us with hope. I pray that you would life with this faith and hope in our Creator, knowing that there is never a circumstance too dark for the Lord to intervene. He intervenes by creating something new and good.
And we know, most of all, that the goodness that God has produced in us, was the result of God’s work for us on the Cross. His work in creation is magnificent, but fallen. Yet God’s work on the Cross through Jesus, is what we’ll be praising God forever for…becasue how could we enjoy God’s good creation forever if we’re not good? And it was Jesus and His goodness and His righteousness imputed onto us that now allows us to enjoy God and His creation, and Him enjoy us as His creatures forever! (Gen. 2:1-3).
I pray that the Holy Spirit would give you a burst of faith, joy, and hope in light of our powerful Creator!
With love in Christ,
Aaron
PS, here is a song meant to help you praise God as our Creator, and a movie trailer meant to stimulate praise to our Creator.
Psalm 148 Song
Supernatural documentary-
