God has a way about Him
Joshua 10:12-14
Series: Light Pollution
(12) Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
(13) And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. [Is] not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. (14) And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel.
I. As ministers and even as Christians we feel the need to explain God to ourselves and to unbelievers. We have almost made sharing our faith into a “sales pitch”, we try to hard sale God. We try to have an answer for everything. When the questions start off with “How did God do ____” we try to give an explanation.
A. We have been trying to explain God for centuries, but it seems within the last few hundred years we really try to “help” explain God. This goes all the way back to Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Once Charles Darwin challenged God’s creation with his theory of evolution. Christians have tried to explain how we all came to be.
1. In this first verse we are given a statement that in the beginning God created heaven and earth. And the following verses as a detailed layout of the creation process. This first statement in the Bible lays the groundwork for all that God is doing to have fellowship with mankind. It is here in the beginning that God created all that we know, taking His very nature and placing it into a created format that we may know Him, have fellowship with Him, and enjoy being with Him.
2. Genesis 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Many believe what is commonly called the “gap theory” where God had created the earth, and all things; and that somewhere in the fabric of time a tragedy struck possibly in the form of Satan’s fall that caused this former planet and possibly the dinosaurs and another race of mankind due to the use of God telling Adam and Eve to replenish the earth which many believe were created for Satan to rule over were all destroyed thus resulting in God to create again over a 7 day period. Giving way to 5 theories to explain how God did it. Emphasis on “theories” which means this is man inspired and not God inspired.
a. View 1: Historic Creationism: The word used for “beginning” in Genesis 1:1 is re’shit in Hebrew, which marks a starting point for what comes afterwards. There is no gap between verses 1 and 2. Rather verse 1 begins the Genesis story telling us that the God who created everything is the same God who creates His image bearers and the Promised Land where He will live with them. What God created in the first verse existed for an undefined period (which could be anywhere from a moment to billions of years) before God began the work of preparing the uninhabitable land for the habitation of mankind.
b. View 2: Young-earth Creationism: In this view, God created the entire universe, including Adam and Eve, in six literal twenty-four-hour days. As it seeks to be faithful to its reading of the biblical text, this view affirms that the entire universe is less than ten thousand years old. It interprets the data of science in terms of inspired Scripture, refusing to compromise God’s teaching about the date and divine methods of creation with naturalistic scientific theories.
c. View 3: Old Earth Creation or Intelligent Design (no evolution involved). The “days” of Genesis 1 are analogies of God’s workdays, setting a pattern for our rhythm of work and rest. They are understood in the same sense as “in that day” of Isaiah 11:10-11. They represent periods of God’s historical supernatural activity in preparing and populating the earth as a place for humans to live, love, work, and worship. These days are broadly consecutive periods of unspecified length.
d. View 4: Literary Framework View: In this view, Genesis 1 and 2 are intended to be read as a figurative framework explaining creation in a topical, not sequential, order. The six days of creation listed in Genesis 1 are also to be interpreted metaphorically, not as literal twenty-four-hour days. The literary framework view is outlined as Days 1 -3 are the Forming Days and Days 4-6 are the Filling Days.
e. View 5: Evolutionary Creation: In this view, to combat Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution Christians say that God used the planned and purpose driven natural process of evolution to do His creative work of universe and life. The universe is a creation that is completely dependent for its continued existence on the sustaining power of the triune God of the Bible. God’s design is shown in the finely-tuned physical laws and the biological processes necessary for life to evolve through transitions which would be impossible without God’s involvement, culminating in humans with their incredibly complex brains and minds paired together in full image of God personhood. Humans evolved from pre-human ancestors and over a period of time the image of God and human sin were gradually and mysteriously manifested.
B. Genesis 1:1 isn’t just the only place that we have spent countless hours writing papers, thesis, and theories of how God does. My opening text has been placed into the debate as well, along with the entirety of the Bible.
1. We put this awesome display of God under a microscope and say that this was achieved by the earth’s rotation around the sun being slowed down. Some have said that it is was an unusual refracting of the sun’s rays that gave way to the additional light. Some have said that it was an eclipse that took place on October 30, 1207 BCE.
2. There have been stories circulating about reports of a "missing day" in ancient Egyptian, Chinese, and Hindu sources. There is also the story of a Yale astronomer who found that the earth was twenty-four hours out of schedule.
a. When he came to the account of the long day of Joshua, the astronomer rechecked the figures and found that at the time of Joshua there were only twenty-three hours and twenty minutes lost. On reading farther the astronomer found that God, through the prophet Isaiah and in answer to Hezekiah’s prayer, promised to add fifteen years to his life (II Kings 20:1-11; Isaiah 38:1-21). To confirm this promise, the shadow of the sundial was turned back ten degrees. Ten degrees on a sundial is forty minutes on the face of a clock giving proof that there was a day missing.
C. We are at a time when Christians are using science to prove God’s existence. They no longer wait until their book is published, they will take to social media to lay claim to the facts of the who, what, where, and how of God. Along with Christians the non-believers are using the same science to prove that there is no God, that God couldn’t have created that, done that, achieved this. There is just a constant debate where everyone is just holding their ground. Always trying to find evidence to prove their point of view.
1. As Christian’s we seem to be passionate about explaining and understanding God to the argument that it is necessary to do so for the unbeliever, to help their unbelief. Which makes me have to ask are you fighting this hard for the truth for others or because there is some shred of unbelief within you, is it more of I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
II. The vantage point of God is that He is not limited or constrained by His creation. Creation and the rules and laws that were put in place are not for Him but for us.
A. Jesus would use parables to explain the spiritual in a natural way. Mt 13:34 All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: Indulge me for a moment while I try and use this method of preaching.
1. How many of you play video games? Some people see video games as simple electronic toys that do not take long to produce and a total waste of time. Video games can take years to make!
2. Video games might have started out as chasing around a moving dot across a black screen, but today's modern games are interactive marvels that resemble movies and allow for complex game play across a wide variety of settings.
Every modern video game begins with a story. Writers, artists, designers, and programmers collaborate to create all the parts of the story, including the characters, the settings, the music and other sounds, and the possible paths the story can take. Unlike movies, which contain a single storyline, video games must account for all the potential paths intense gameplay can take.
3. Today's gamers expect life-like video games with the best graphics possible. Characters are expected to move like real people would and objects are usually expected to loosely follow the laws of physics. Settings must look like the real world…or whatever fake world exists in the video game.
4. Once all the elements of the video game have been designed, it's up to computer experts to put it all together to make it work effectively as a video game. All the characters, settings, sounds, and gameplay elements must be programmed to work together seamlessly.
5. Computer programmers must write millions of lines of computer language instructions — called code — that control all aspects of the game. The code is all the rules that the game must follow, it is the logic of the game, it establishes the physics of the game world, detecting the interactions and collisions between objects and controlling their movement. Even the lighting and shadows have governing code to mimic their real-world counterparts.
B. A video game must abide by the rules of its designer. When you are playing the game, you see what the designer wants you to see. You must abide by the rules that the designer put in place. The designer on the other hand is not bound by those rules. Since he has access to the source code he can go into the world and interreact with it any way he sees fit.
1. Let’s look at the screen here for a little visualization. As you can see this is a typical video game but watch as the designer moves beyond the world that was created. He isn’t bound by the rules. Since he wrote the rules for the game those rules for that world only apply to those that interact with it. He doesn’t have to because the designer wrote the code. He isn’t bound by the code because it’s his code. He can sit outside his creation.
2. That is where God is. He sits on the outside of creation. He designed the world, and everything must abide by the rules that He put in place. The world and our solar system must abide by the rules that God put in place. God on the other hand is not bound by those rules. Those rules were designed for the finite, for us. He is infinite and the creator of all. Only Jesus the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last; the one that All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made; He doesn’t have to follow the rules because He is the rule.
3. The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit are omnipresent, they are everywhere at once. They reside outside of time. They are in our yesterday, today, and tomorrow Col 1:17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. In Isaiah 66 He says The heaven [is] my throne, and the earth [is] my footstool: and again in Isa 40:28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, [that] the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? [there is] no searching of his understanding. When Solomon was dedicating the temple he said in 1Ki 8:27 But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?
a. The rules of the universe were written for us not Him. He made the rules for us to abide in. He sits outside the rules because when you write the code there is always a master key that allows you access outside the code and God is outside the code because it belongs to Him because He is the master key.
III. It’s not the “how He” that we need to be concerned about it’s the “He can” that we need to trust in.
A. We obsess over the “how”, we hear that The steps of a [good] man are ordered by the LORD: we never finish that verse which says and he delighteth in his way; The steps of a [good] man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. We get hung up on the steps and want to know how they will be ordered, what they will look like. The “how” is messing us up because it keeps us from seeing that He “can”. We don’t want to take the steps until we understand how we are going to get there. We can’t delight in his way while we are hung up on how He plans to order our steps.
1. Look at the Sea of Galilee a boat will float on water and fish swim beneath it, but only Jesus can walk on it, He take something that is a liquid and makes it a solid while it’s still a liquid. Look at water it just H2O, we use it in everything. We drink it as is or can change it to a soda or a cake with the right ingredients, we can have concentrated additives that can be expanded with water, but only Jesus can take water and turn it into wine without adding anything.
2. God makes scrapping the bottom of the barrel into the beginning of the miraculous, it’s the start of the blessing, at the bottom is when the blessing begins. A donkey doesn’t just fall over dead for no reason; God will place that donkey there so that He can weaponize the jawbone to defeat an army.
3. He will take the burn and heat out of the fire for three Hebrew boys but those same flames can still burn up those attending to the furnace. He will make an axe head defy physics and its molecule composition and swim in water whether He changed the molecular composition of either the iron or the water but either way He made something that was coded for one way change to another to fulfill His will.
4. God can make a donkey speak, He can make a man out run a chariot, He can use spit and clay to restore blinded eyes, He can part the Red Sea and the Jordan River, He can set a bush on fire but it never burn, He can lead by a pillar of fire at night and a cloud by day, He can make a rock into a water fountain, He can make bitter waters sweet, He can take elderly women and make them first time mothers, He can send a fish to pay your taxes for you, He can take a rod and make it a serpent and cause a rod to bud and bring forth fruit, walls don’t have a chance against God, He will make a whale into an ocean liner and get you back on track.
a. People have tried to explain how God did it. How Jonah ate and breathed and how he looked once he left the whales belly, He can have meals air lifted in during a famine, He can make lions lose their appetite, He can make the blind to see again, the lame to walk again, the deaf to hear again, He can make the dead to live, No sickness, No disease, No infirmity, No mental and emotional stronghold, No weapon has a chance against God. I don’t know how He did it, but I do know that God can, because He is God. 1Ti 1:4 Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: [so do].
B. 2Co 5:7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) Heb 11:6 But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. It is by Faith, By Faith, By Faith. It is all by Faith. It is explained simple by Faith in God.
1. Your shouting, your dancing, your praise, and your worship are meaningless without faith. It takes faith. In these last days we can only make it by faith in God. Faith is all you need. Heb 10:38 Now the just shall live by faith: but if [any man] draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. The reason you are still here is not because of man, its not because of legislatures, or bills, or amendments, it’s because of God.
2. Heb 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Heb 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. It is the total commitment and belief in God and His Word. Even when it doesn’t make since we must believe and have faith in God.
3. Heb 10:23 Let us hold fast the profession of [our] faith without wavering; (for he [is] faithful that promised;) I don’t have all the answers, I don’t know why some are healed and others are not. I don’t have answers, but I do have faith. Sometimes my faith feels strong and other times it can feel weak. Sometimes I want to give up and quit but faith in God and His word pushes me to keep going. I know that it’s better to walk with God than to walk away from God.
4. We need to understand that it is by faith, everything we do is by faith. The only way we're gonna make it is by faith. It takes faith to walk this Christian life. We must exercise our faith daily even when you don't feel like it. We walk in faith. It is faith that gets you through the storms, it is faith that gets you through the fights. Ga 3:26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
C. Pr 3:6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Hebrews 11 tells us that all the patriarchs, all the prophets, all the men and women of God that we hold to such high esteem did it all by faith and they all had faults. Being a child of God is not difficult. What He is asking of us is not difficult, what He has placed in His word is not difficult. Man has made it difficult because we over complicated what it means to be a child of God.
1. We tell people all that they must do is this and that, we place time limits on how long one should pray, fast, and read God’s Word. We present Christianity as being polished, we avoid giving our testimonies we tell people how great the blood of Jesus is but we leave out the word of our testimony.
2. Walking in faith is not hard, it’s overcoming the flesh that trips up our walk. It is by faith, that we resist the urges of the flesh, it is by faith we subject our bodies, our mind, our heart to God daily. In this world we will deal with loss, heartache, pain, suffering, setbacks, set ups, grief, etc. Jesus said in this world there is tribulation, God’s word says that it rains on the just and unjust and that we will suffer. Ro 8:17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with [him], that we may be also glorified together. (18) For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time [are] not worthy [to be compared] with the glory which shall be revealed in us. (24) For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? (25) But if we hope for that we see not, [then] do we with patience wait for [it].
3. It’s “by faith”, you can overcome by faith, you can be healed by faith, you can be delivered by faith, you can be set free by faith, by faith … It’s your flesh and the years of giving in to it that you must overcome but you can by faith, because God is able to deliver you, God sets above your problems not in them. He is the way maker.
4. Since 2021 I have had setbacks after setbacks, rejections, hurt, displacement, health issues, mental and emotional instability and though I am not through the storms by faith, by faith, by faith in the Living God, as a blood bought child of God, whose sins have been forgiving, whose name is in the Lambs Book of Life, I don’t know how He will do, I don’t know what method He will use, I don’t know if it will appear by the natural or God’s supernatural, all I know is that by faith I will overcome. By faith you will overcome, you will make it out. If you will just believe, trust, and obey God and His word, you will make it through. Delight in the steps that He is ordering for you because He is ordering them, He is your source code that can make the sun and moon stay in place until you get the victory.
