New Year: A Divine Imperative

First of all, Let me wish you all a very happy and blessed new year ahead.

Well: Here we are. Yet another New year, yet another opportunity to look at the blessings of the previous year and give thanks. Yet another opportunity for us to look back at all the numerous mistakes that we have committed knowingly and unknowingly in the last 12 months and make a resolution to never repeat those mistakes again ; only to go back and repeat them soon after. Yet another opportunity to make all those wonderful new year resolutions knowing very well that we are going to break each one of them sooner than later.

All said and done, New year is a time to celebrate. It is a time to try and put all the bad things of the past year ahead . It is a time to look ahead for better things. It is a time for hope. It is a time to decide to move on. It is a time for us to look forward to new beginnings.

Talking of new beginnings, what is THE most important new beginning that one can think about? It is the creation story, isn’t it? That is what I was thinking about, from the time I started thinking about the New Year Message.

So let us go back to the Creation story. Our Bibles simply state, “ In the beginning God….” Then Bible makes it clear that God created the universe out of “nothing”. I repeat, Out of “Nothing”. What comes to your mind when you think of “nothing”? Is it possible for you think about nothing? If I ask you to think about nothing, I am sure you will start thinking about something. R C Sproul, in his book “The Holiness of God” says he gets a headache, when he thinks about nothing. It is virtually impossible for us to imagine “nothing” because the moment, we imagine it , it becomes “something” or “somewhere” or “sometime”. We might think of empty sir, we might think of outer space, we might think about a lonely place etc etc. But none of them are really “nothing”. Perhaps it is only the college going teenagers who can define “nothing”. When Neville was in college for the first time and he did not like the college, if I asked him what happened at college, he would have said “Nothing”. It is important for us to understand how difficult a topic is the topic of “nothing” so that we can comprehend the awesomeness of creation. Bible teaches us that “In the Beginning God…” created our entire world from this “nothing” that you and I cannot even fathom. And God created this universe just by saying “Let there be….”. This is what St Augustine calls the “Divine Imperative”. The dictionary defines Imperative as “ an authoritative command”. That was what created the universe, a Divine imperative. Let us just think about it for a moment. There was “nothing” at the beginning and just by Gods command, the universe was created, God spoke again and there was light, then came the skies and the heavens, then came the water and land. Then God started adorning His own creation. By His command, the land sprouted grass and trees and fruits and vegetables. The Sun, the Moon and the stars were created to adorn the skies. Then the waters abounded with living creatures of all kinds from the smallest bacteria to beautiful clown fish to the largest Blue Whale. Beautiful birds started to fly around in the skies. Animals of all sorts appeared on the earth, from the crawling insects, to the colourful chameleon to the roaring lions to the mammoth elephants. And then God decided to create Man in His own image and gave the man authority over all His previous Creation. All this from “nothing” all this just by his Divine Imperative, His divine command. Just by saying “Let there be…” (except for man, where he breathed life into him). Creation by a Divine Imperative. The great new beginning by Divine Imperative.

What does this act of Divine Imperative tell us about our God? What is the characteristic of this God who created this universe with (according to Matthew Henry) “Great Variety, Great Beauty, Great Exactness and Accuracy, Great Power, Great Order and yet a Great Mystery”. To me the creation story is a pointer to His power, His sovereignty, His absolute control on our lives, His grace His mercy, and His holiness. This morning, we have to acknowledge that we exist just by Divine Imperative, we are saved only by the Divine Imperative, and we are here only by the Divine Imperative. Not by what we have done, not by our works or riches or efforts, just by the Divine Imperative of the Sovereign God who loves us and who has given us an opportunity to redeem ourselves through Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity.