Sermon Central
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The Creator Series
Contributed by Antonio Silveira on Jan 21, 2012 (message contributor)
Summary: As Christians we are called to be Christ-like. If we decide to worship The Creator instead of creation something supernatural happens in us and God’s Spirit will produce fruits in our life.
1 1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
There are two aspects that I would like to talk about today.
1. Creation
2. The Creator
When we go to School we learn about things of this world. We learn about creation. We are living creatures so we can study different aspects of creation. We learn about what can perceive through our senses and we study shapes, colors, then numbers and letters and words. We do our basic learning and we study about biology and physics we learn history and literature. Learning is a great thing and as human beings we deposit all these things in our memory banks and exercise our intellect through learning and learning about the world around us. We mainly learn about Creation and things that other humans created. We learn about art and Science, computers and we also add some social learning and we know about entertainment and movies and TV series.
Eventually we come across the subject of God and we try to learn all the historical aspects of God and religion, culture and superstition. We learn that there are so many religions and we get into anthropology sociology and we try to use knowledge to try to figure out God.
Romans 1:25 (NLT)
They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.
1. WHO DO YOU WORSHIP?
One of the reasons I do not like to study philosophy is because you don’t really study much about the philosophical ideas but the main focus is to learn about the philosophers and their lives. Though this can be interesting for some people I don’t see a point in having a degree because I know everything about the life of a big thinker.
Well this said let me tell you that God is not to be studied, but instead we are to worship Him. This doesn’t mean that we will not learn about God but if we approach the things of God in the perspective of accumulating knowledge we can completely miss the point. Some people go to Church to analyze the preacher or the preaching and they fail to understand that the Word of God is not a text book but that God wants to speak to us individually even today through the preaching of the Scriptures. Don’t trade worship by knowledge!
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever, Amen!
1. First we see that these people “Knew God” or “About God”
2. Second instead of Worship they decided to apply Wisdom and logical thinking by using the same methods of Creation Study to place God at the same level of Creation. This is like saying that mankind created God as a figure of their imagination.
3. Doing this they Worshiped Creation rather than the Creator
Let me tell you that our text on Genesis 1:1 is not about Creation but about the Creator. Yes we can analyze the Creative process and there is nothing wrong with studying the Bible but if we fail to see the Creator and worship Him for who he is and not for what he did we miss the point and this can have disastrous consequences.
2. CHARACTER IS SHAPED BY OUR WORSHIP
Failing to Worship the Creator produces all kinds of character flaws. Our society and even our Churches have people as the ones described by Paul in the book of Romans. This passage specifically mentions gay/lesbian relationships and then goes on to describe what we can identify as a perfect picture of our society.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
