Christmas Card From God Series

OPEN: How many of you send out Christmas cards?

There was a woman who had waited until the last minute to send Christmas cards. She knew she had 49 folks on her list. So she rushed into a store and bought a package of 50 cards without really looking at them.

Still in a big hurry, she addressed the 49 and signed them without reading the message inside.

On Christmas Day when things had quieted down somewhat, she happened to come across the leftover card and finally read the message she had sent to 49 of her friends. Much to her dismay, it read like this: "This card is just to say a little gift is on the way."

Suddenly she realized that 49 of her friends were expecting a gift from her they were never going to get.

APPLY: Unlike that unfortunate woman … God HAS sent us gifts.

As James 1:17 says: "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

I. Psalm 104 describes for us one of the 1st gifts God gave to us - Creation

"God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Genesis 1:26-28

God created the world for us. It was given to us to take care of.

That woman who had sent out Christmas cards had sent them as a message of her love for her friends.

And, that’s how David viewed creation.

When he wrote Psalm 104 – he was marveling at God’s gift of creation and it spoke to him of just how much God cared for him.

ILLUS: I can picture David up on a hillside with the family sheep feeling the wind on his face, watching the trees blow in the wind. Sitting up on a hillside looking down the Mediterranean ocean. Maybe seeing some mountains off in the distance and streams flowing down through the valley below.

And it strikes David - as he sees all of this - just how wondrous a God he has and just how much God cares him.

Romans 1:20 tells us that "since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities— his eternal power and divine nature— have been clearly seen…"

One the great concerns of people is that they want to feel close to God they want a sign that He’s there and that He cares…

ILLUS: The comic strip BC once had one of their characters praying to God “Send me a sign that you are there!”

And out of the sky drops a marquee with the words “I’m here!”

David understood that it was in creation that God gave that very sign. Our problem is that we often don’t take the time to pay attention.

ILLUS: But those people who DO pay attention see God in all that surrounds them.

Dr. Werner Von Braun (the scientist who helped our nation launch its space program) once wrote: "One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all… The better we understand the intricacies of the universe and all it harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based.”

Dr. Von Braun concluded that this all pointed to a marvelous creator. He said that it was in “the law and order of the universe” that he saw God’s handiwork.

Now, you don’t have to be a scientist to see (and marvel) at that order of creation.

NEXT TIME YOU GO TO THE GROCERY STORE AND BUY FRUIT

Look at the watermelons: Each watermelon has an even number of stripes on its rind.

Buy an orange and cut it open: Each orange has an even number of segments.

Or next summer walk thru a field of wheat, pluck a stalk and count the number of grains:

Each stalk of wheat has an even number of grains.

Everything in creation is orderly, methodical and intricately organized.

ILLUS: So much so that an Astronomer by the name of Allan Sandage said he was “almost a practicing atheist as a boy,” but was nagged by mysteries whose answers were not to be found in the glittering panoply of supernovas. Among them: Why is there something rather than nothing? Sandage began to despair of answering such question through reason alone, and so, at 50, he willed himself to accept God.

“It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science,” he says. “It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.”