The Uniqueness Of Mark's Gospel: John The Baptist In The Wilderness Series

Last night I was listening to some beautiful music. And I was just thinking, this music is a gift from God. It really is. Who is this creator who made everything? How are we to understand who he is? Of course, we know we understand from his word, but I was thinking, and I wondered: What can we understand about God from the world and from the various things in the world? Because all these things that are good, and are inspired by God.

The creation of music, on a guitar, on a piano is a gift from God. And a beautiful tree is a gift from God. It is something God made that belongs there. Grass on the ground, even structures, buildings, these are gifts from God and he inspired people to do these things. They're all reflections of who he is, in fact, God is a creative god, He's a God of beauty. He is a God who sets up systems as well, like law and government and policies and procedures. And those are good things, right? The fact that we have laws and police officers and, speed limits, and those are all things that tell us about who God is.

Do you know what else tells us about who God is? It's the blank slate. God is One who empowers us to create, you think of a woman playing her guitar, and the guitar is a blank slate. And God puts the guitar in their hands and says, "Make something beautiful." For Him. And it's the same thing with someone who carves wood. Or some someone who likes to paint or someone who does landscaping or gardening. God gives him a patch of dirt and says he says, "Make something beautiful out of it." That is who our God is. He empowers us to make beautiful things. And that's what we are as well. He wants us to be people who make beautiful things and bring peace. God will often give us just a blank canvas and says, do something with this. Be creative. That's who God is.

That's His love. That's his empowerment to us. And that's what makes us unique from angels and from other spiritual beings, from angels, and living creatures, is that we have that spark of creativity. We have that image of God, we're made in the image of God, where we want to create, we want to think beyond the bounds. We know that nothing in this world quite satisfies us. Because we're always reaching for something just a little beyond. Like when we look at a beautiful sunset or the stars at night. It's not enough for us to look at it, we want to become part of it, we want to jump into that canvas, that beautiful canvas and walk the streets. And I believe part of that is going to be the next life paradise, the new Jerusalem, Heaven will be a lot of that where we are jumping into the canvas, and walking the streets of the Starry Night by Van Gogh. And I know that sounds way out there, but it's gonna be beyond what we can imagine something very beautiful, something very special.

But it is fundamentally a perfect reality, where that longing that this world never quite meets this hunger that people try to fill with drugs and alcohol and pills and sex and various things will finally be filled by the presence of God. And that's really what we long for, I think is to search the Depths of God, that's what we really long for, is to search the depths of our Creator. And I think we get a little taste of that when we look up in the sky at night or at the sunset. But in that we are just scratching the surface of searching the Depths of our Creator. And if you want to know how deep the depths of our Creator are, then look at the scale of the universe compared to the planet Earth. That is how deep the depths of God are.

When you see photos taken by the Hubble telescope, of the beauty of the universe, that's just the beginning of our journey into searching the depths of God. I think in the next life the New Jerusalem is going to be like Moses at the top of the hill looking over the promised land. Like a new adventure just starting. As if we were to get in a spaceship and launch into the universe, that's how much is ahead of us when we enter the new city, of the new heavens and new earth.

But we can start that today, to search the depths of God. Immediately right now, we can begin to do that. That doesn't have to wait until the next life we can begin to search the depths of God today. I think that that's what we'll see in the Gospel of Mark. It's the gospel of not later, but right now!