Based On Creation Series

The Big Picture -

Based On Creation

Bible Reading:

Genesis 1: 1

PREPARED BY

KEN GEHRELS

PASTOR

CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH

NEPEAN, ONTARIO

If I wanted to get under your skin,

If I wanted to see blood pressure rise in a whole chunk of folk here, ears go red, and run a serious risk of a barrage of rotten fruit..... or worse,

all I’d need to do is show and begin to extol the virtues of a chart something like this:

For those of you who can’t make it out, it’s a chart depicting evolutionary theory about the development of primates, including humans.

"Arrrrrrrr.... " would be the response.

And, quite rightly, many of you would react to an understanding of the development of the earth and its inhabitants in a way that cuts God out of the picture; that sees everything develop in a come by chance manner. You’d roar to the Bible and head straight to the beginning - Genesis, and the account of Creation.

"Don’t ascribe to chance what was deliberately made by the holy, powerful Creator!" you’d say. Virtually all of Christianity would join with you in saying this.

And I’m glad that this is what you’d say.

On the other hand, if I’d find myself preaching to a typical cross-section of Canadian Christians, present company excepted of course,

and if I wanted to watch their eyes glaze over rather quickly, their feet begin to shuffle, glances at the watch increase, and minds wander to how to spend the rest of Canada Day, I’d choose to show a slide something like this:

Recognize it?

It is, of course, the universal symbol for recycling.

And based on where most energy is expended, time is consumed, and efforts concentrated, the typical Canadian Christian response to flipping up a slide of this recycling symbol would be -

"Why would you ever want to display or talk about something like this in church?"

The answer to that question forms the heart of this, the second in our series on Christian worldview.

Last week we said that when you begin to talk about what matters most, what is of value and what is not, where our priorities ought to lie and what is disposable - what you are talking about is Worldview

The worldview of a community works as a sort of filter that directs and affects what the eyes see, how the heart responds, and what the mind processes.

- quietly at work, shaping and directing everything.

The way you build relationships and form family units

How you provide health care

Loyalty to the state, and politics

Art

Education

As I mention "worldview", how about an overview; a big picture look at things?

Like this, perhaps:

It’s a shot taken from Apollo 17 - big picture of the little blue planet. And there we live - puts things in a bit of perspective

I want to suggest that when we consider a Christian worldview, here’s where we need to begin. And, at the end of the day, here is where we need to end up.

A Christian worldview, I’d like to suggest, is NOT, first of all, about prayer.

A Christian worldview does NOT have as its ultimate objective escaping away from earthly experience in order to strum harps and sing alto in a heavenly choir.

And it doesn’t revolve around a central focus on bible study, or worship.

A Christian worldview begins and ends on earth;

living on earth, concerned for earth.

To understand such a statement, please read with me the very opening words of God’s great Word, His letter of direction and revelation to us - Genesis 1.

See where it all starts?

"In the beginning God created......."

That’s ground zero.

What follows are the very familiar words about creating the outer heavens and space, the atmosphere and oceans, the dry lands in days 1,2, and 3 and then populating these spaces in days 4,5 and 6.

Careful, artful creation.

Psalm 33 celebrates it:

by the word of the Lord were the heavens made,

their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

He gathers the waters of the sea into jars;

He puts the deep into storehouses.

And Psalm 95:

In His hand are the depths of the earth,

and the mountain peaks belong to him.

This is the starting gate, the foundation for all that follows in God’s revelation.

It forms the opening words of John’s gospel -

John 1: 1-4 - "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been mad. In him was life, and that life was the light of men."

And what is it that we confess here, week after week?