Copernicus

It is easy to think that the sun goes around the earth as the Greek philosopher Ptolemy taught but the truth is, as the Polish astronomer Copernicus discovered that the earth goes round the sun. The sun in fact is at the centre of the solar system and we need a Copernican revolution in our lives and thinking so that we see that God is at the centre of everything. He is the one to whom all the glory should be given. 

Is God great?

In 2007, the late Christopher Hitchens published a book called God is not great in which he attempts to rubbish religion. In fact, God is great. I don't know if Hitchins was responding to Chris Tomlin's 2004 song. He put it like this

The splendour of a King, clothed in majesty, Let all the Earth rejoice. All the Earth rejoice,

He wraps himself in light And darkness tries to hide And trembles at His voice, Trembles at His voice

How great is our God, sing with me, How great is our God, and all will see How great, how great is our God

Or to quote an older hymn

O Lord my God When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works Thy hands have made,
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy pow’r throughout The universe displayed!

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee;

How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

Hitchens is wrong and Tomlin and Carl Boberg are right

Go faster stripes

Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything but only God, who is making things grow. (1 Cor 3:6). I have never been very much interested in cars but a friend I grew up with, he was much more of a boy racer than I have ever been. He learned to drive pretty soon after his seventeenth birthday and got use of the family car – a Morris Minor, if that means anything to you. It was a green colour and he proceeded to stick a yellow trim all around it to jazz it up a bit and get it into the nineteen-seventies somehow. I remember him saying they were “go faster” stripes. Now, I am a little bit thick and so he thought it was worth trying to see if I would believe that the car would go faster with these yellow strips stuck on it. I was quite drawn but even I can see that it is the engine that makes the difference in a car not some yellow decals that you bought at Halford's.

Now, in a similar way, though not in exactly the same way it should be said, what counts in the end is God. He is the one who makes things grow. A farmer may boast about his bumper crop but he should be careful to remember that it is God who makes things grow. Someone who wants to have a large family may talk merrily about having six kids, three of each, but they need to remember that it is God who decides all that. And church planters and pastors must work very hard indeed in evangelism and in building the people up but they must also remember that it is God who makes things grow. He is the one who converts and sustains his own. It all depends on him.

From everlasting to everlastig God

Psalm 90:2 and 4 Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. ... A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.

Think of mountains. Some of you have been up Snowdon or Ben Nevis. You have heard of Scafell Pike or the Alps or Kilimanjaro and K2 and Mount Everest. They have just always been there. You know that silly joke about Mount Everest. What was the world’s highest mountain before the discovery of Mount Everest? It was still Mount Everest (it doesn’t matter whether it had been discovered or not!). It's like the world itself. It feels like it has always been around. Of course, as Moses shows us in Genesis, the mountains and the earth had a beginning. Now before all that, he says, God was there. From everlasting to everlasting you are God which means that God has no beginning and he has no end. He is eternal. He is the God of the ages. And because he is eternal, for him a thousand years is just like a day gone by or a watch in the night. Moses records the ages of the early men. Before the flood some reached quite amazing ages. Methusaleh was famously 969. None lived a thousand years though. But for God it is like a day gone by. If you are up at night, the hours can seem to drag but when you sleep a watch or two can appear to go by very quickly. For God that is like a thousand years or more slipping by.

One way to think of it is if you think of the long years like a long line of cars. Say each car in the jam represents 10 years. Then a thousand years would be represented by a hundred cars. If you are in car 50 then you can only see so far back and so far forward but if you are up in a helicopter you can see all the way to the front and all the way to the back. That is something like how it must be for God. He can see it all in one moment.

Don't look at the sun - You cannot look on God

I had a lovely book on astronomy for Christmas which I have very much enjoyed. It's a Dorling Kindersley book designed really with children in mind and so every few pages, there are warnings "Remember: never, ever look directly at the Sun - it is so bright it will damage your eyes." In a similar way we have warnings in Scripture such as when God tells Moses (Exodus 33) You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live. This explains the amazement of Jacob in Genesis 32:30 when he says I saw God face to face yet was spared and the fear of Isaiah (Isaiah 6:5) when he says Woe to me! ... I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty. As 1 Timothy 6:16 makes clear God is the only immortal one and he lives in unapproachable light, and so no one has seen or can see him. He is hidden from our eyes - and that for our good. How could we bear his look even for a moment?