“We know God by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: God’s eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20. All these things are enough to convict humans and to leave them without excuse. Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly by His holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for God’s glory and for our salvation.”
“I think God is like the president of a giant corporation, and Buddha, Muhammad, and Jesus are his sales guys, and they all have different territories.” That’s Steve Peek’s thoughts on God. Here’s Harold Kushner’s, “God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everyone who looks at it sees something different.”
You have your thoughts on God. Steve Peek and Harold Kushner have theirs. Why would you think that your thoughts are more accurate that than theirs? Peek thinks God is like the president of a giant corporation, David thinks God is like a shepherd, Kushner thinks God is like a mirror. Is there any way to know who is right?
Belgic Confession, Article 2 says that there is a way to know who’s right. Article 2 is all about how we know reliable information about God. It tells us that we know about God by means of His world and word. That’s the claim of this sermon: we know about God by means of His world and word.
We will study this in two points. First: God is revealed in His world. Second: God is revealed in His word.
First: God is revealed in His world. The trees tell you something about God. The stars tell you something about God. God’s creation tells you something about God. It tells you that God is glorious. Imagine walking into a member of this church’s home and seeing the most exquisite painting. You ask who made it and your fellow church member tells you that they did. You would have a proper sense of awe at this person’s skill. Looking at the night sky or at a hunting dog in action is to give you that same sense of awe at God’s skill. As David put it, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.” Everything that God has created is a perpetual argument for His glory.
Producing something glorious is lasting proof of talent. The lead singer of the band The Police said that about their 1983 smash hit Every Breath You Take. I can’t find his exact words, but he said something like, “no matter what any critics thought about us now, I knew we had this song. We made this.” He is saying that the song speaks for itself. David is saying that creation speaks for itself. It tells you that God has talent. It tells you that God is glorious. That’s part of what Article 2 means when it says that “the universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: God’s eternal power and divinity.”
This sense of God’s glory leaves us with responsibility. If you entered that fellow church member’s house and saw that painting, you would be left with a sense of responsibility—you must not harm that painting and you must give credit for that painting to where credit is due. You would intuitively feel that responsibility. The same goes for everyone when we encounter creation. We have a sense that we must not harm the glory of a newborn baby. We also have the sense that we must give credit where credit is due. We must give glory to God.
The problem is that we often don’t. That’s Romans 1:20-21, “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. For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
We humans have the perverse ability to miss the obvious. We live every day of our lives in a perpetual argument for God’s glory and all the while deny the great majority of it and think much more highly of ourselves than we think of Him. We have no excuse for that. Just living in creation leaves us no excuse; that’s why Paul said, “people are without excuse.”
There is no excuse for seeing the Grand Canyon and not sensing some sort of admiration for God and some sense of obligation to God. The same goes for watching a grandchild learn to count or watching a sunset at the beach. In other words, the Grand Canyon, a grandchild learning to count, and sunsets place an obligation on you. Oscar Wilde was a nineteenth century playwright well-known for his pride and perverse lifestyle. He once said that sunsets were not valued because we couldn’t pay for them. GK Chesterton responded that, “we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.” Sunsets like everything else in creation tell you that there is a God and that you owe Him something.
So, we can see God’s glory in creation. What else can we learn about Him from creation? We learn that He is creative. He crafts falcons in such a way that they can reach speeds of 240 miles per hour. He makes us in such a way that we can create works of art and say, “that is good,” just like He did when He created. He makes bears in such a way that they can hibernate until food is plentiful again. You can’t help but see that God’s creativity when you look at creation. As God asked Job, “Do you give the horse its strength or clothe its neck with a flowing mane? Do you make it leap like a locust, striking terror with its proud snorting? It paws fiercely, rejoicing in its strength, and charges into the fray. It laughs at fear, afraid of nothing…” God chose to make horses that way because He thought it would be wonderful.
Looking at God’s creation also tells you that what you have comes from God. As Paul told the people of Lystra, “[God] has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; He provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” We’ve got a whole holiday that revolves around this provision—Thanksgiving. We give thanks for what we have in this creation because it all comes from Someone.
Looking at God’s creation also tells you that God is powerful. We humans create tools and tech, but we use God’s materials to do it. We just repurpose His iron ore and water and lithium. The best we can do is rearrange God’s stuff. We can’t create something out of nothing. As God asked Job, “What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!”
Looking at God’s creation also tells us that He doesn’t need anything. As Paul walked between the different altars to the different gods in Athens, he told the people, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And He is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.”
The pagans thought that the gods needed something. They thought that the gods needed food. That’s the logic behind their sacrifices; they offered the gods what they needed—grain, meat—in return for what they wanted—a good harvest, a child, you name it. Paul thought that was insane and that just looking at creation should be enough to demonstrate that. God made everything, which means He doesn’t need anything. This shows humanity that we can’t offer God anything that He doesn’t already have.
So, God doesn’t need anything. He provides everything. He is powerful. He is creative. He is glorious. You, as one of works of art, are obligated to treat Him with the respect that He is due. You don’t a Bible to tell you any of that. You just need to take a walk in the woods. You just need to sit on a porch while it’s raining. You just need to dig in your garden. “If every gnat that flies were an archangel, all that could but tell me that there is a God, and the poorest worm that creeps tells me that,” as John Donne put it.
You can learn a lot about God by just looking at creation, but there is a great deal that creation can’t tell you. Creation can’t tell you what God is moving history toward. The sky can’t tell you what God is moving your life toward. The speed of a falcon can’t tell you whether God has any real interest in you. Knowing any of that would require God to reveal Himself in a more conversational way. That’s our second point: God is revealed in His word.
So, creation can tell us a lot about God, but there is a lot that it can’t tell us. As Article 2 puts it, “God makes himself known to us more clearly by His holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for God’s glory and for our salvation.”
David wrote about knowing God through His world in Psalm 19, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.” After talking about God’s world, He talked about God’s word. Just let David’s descriptions of God’s word flow over you to remind you what a gift you have in the Scriptures. “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.” You have something that refreshes your soul, that makes you wise, that gives joy to the heart, that is more precious than gold, and that is sweeter than honey.
The word of God is so because it is about God; it is of God—“the law of the Lord”, “the statutes of the Lord”, “the precepts of the Lord.” The Bible is God opening up to you. He opens up about His plans and purposes. As God said through Amos, “Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing His plan to His servants the prophets.” The stars won’t tell you anything about God’s plans or purposes. Astrology won’t tell you that, “all things work together for the good of those who love God.” You need God’s word to tell you that. The tiny fingers of a newborn baby don’t tell you that nothing can separate you from God’s love. You need Scripture to be, “convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Studying the furthest edges of the universe will not tell you that history will end with neither a bang nor a whimper but with a white throne. It takes revelation—both God revealing His plan and the book of Revelation—that tells you, “I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them.” So, if you want to know what God will do and why, don’t try to figure it out on your own. Just open His word.
In His word God opens also up about His morality. Creation is fallen and so it gives you mixed signals about whether God is good. The joy of holding someone’s hand will tell you that He must be good to create you to enjoy such intimacy. Cancer will send you thinking in other directions. Watching a mother lion with her cub might lead you to believe that God is kind, but what will watching that same mother lion kill a baby giraffe tell you about the creator God? Creation isn’t sufficient to tell us about God’s morality. For us to learn what God is like, we need to go to the source and hear from Him. Watching animals won’t tell you that the Lord is a, “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” You need Exodus 34 for that. A trip to Mexico in the winter might legitimately do quite a bit for you but it can’t tell you that God is like shepherd who cares for His little sheep. You need Psalm 23 to tell you that, “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” That’s not a slam on Mexico. It’s just saying that Mexico wasn’t created to tell you about God’s morality just like Psalm 23 doesn’t offer beaches and beautiful sunsets.
In His word God opens up about who He is. No amount of walks in the woods will tell you that God is relationship—meaning that He is proud Father, dutiful Son, and Spirit who will even enter humans to form relationship. No one would guess that. God has to reveal it. It takes the Son of God to teach us humans, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!” No one would ever guess that God the Father is that crazy generous unless they were told it by God’s Son. It took God the Father to get the point across to the men who spent three years living with Jesus that, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” We wouldn’t know the persons in the Godhead were it not for Scripture.
We wouldn’t know the specifics of what God expects from us without the word. While the glory of creation gives us a sense that we owe God something, it is the word of God that tells us that what we owe is love. ‘“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself”’ has never been written in the sky. It is only written in this word from God which reveals what He expects. We wouldn’t know that without the word.
We wouldn’t know who we are without this word. Are we advanced monkeys? Are we cosmic accidents? Are we consumers who have the right to find everything in life to our taste? Are we cogs in a machine who have value while and only while we function? What are we? We need to be told who we are. We are made in the image of God. “So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” Only Genesis will tell you about your exalted position. Only Jesus’ words as recorded in Matthew tell people who identify as weary and burdened that they aren’t used up but rather that they have reason to come; “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
You need the word of God for all of that. Now the word of God doesn’t tell us everything. It tells us, “As much as we need in this life, for God’s glory and for our salvation,” as Article 2 puts it. That means that we shouldn’t expect God’s word to fix cancer or drug addiction or your truck’s transmission. That’s not what it it’s for. It tells us as much as we need to know in this life for God’s glory and for your salvation.
Don’t expect anything out of the word that it wasn’t written to offer but do receive everything the word does offer. Don’t expect anything out of creation that it wasn’t created to offer but do receive everything creation does offer.
These offer you information about God. You can know Him. It’s not guess work. It’s not Steve Peek’s idea that, “God is like a president of a corporation and Buddha, Muhammad, and Jesus are his sales guys, and they all have different territories.” It’s not Harold Kushner’s idea that, “God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everyone who looks at it sees something different.”
God has made Himself known. Steve Peek and Harold Kushner weren’t looking in the right places. You will think something about God. Everyone does and it informs everything about them. The question you need to ask is whether you are going to think rightly about God. You know where and how to look for information to think rightly. Amen.