It has been said that the Bible is the greatest book in the world for understatement. For instance, when one reads the familiar line “…And God said let there be light and there was light” it is easy to gloss over these words and move on without giving them much thought. However, if you begin to unpack this simple statement you immediately find yourself getting lost in its complexity. Science is still learning about amazing qualities of light such as the fact that it travels at 186,000 miles per second and possesses the property of being both a particle and a wave. And God's creation of light was merely the beginning. When you consider the enormity of the entire universe and the properties that hold the planets within their orbits it truly boggles the mind.
These types of wonders are not only found in outer space but also exist within our natural world even down to the DNA in our bodies. One doesn’t have to look very long at creation in order to realize that its creator is a God of order.
Genesis tells us that immediately after creation the Earth was formless and void. From that point forward the author paints a picture of God gradually establishing order as he placed the sun and the moon in the sky and proceeded to create plants and animals that would reproduce after their “kind”. Later, in the New Testament we are told that church services should be conducted “decently and in order” Throughout Scripture we find that God employs his creative genius in a systematic and methodical way.
Although God created man in his image and provided him with an immortal body and a perfect environment in which to live, he also granted him free will. For men to be free was essential so that God could enjoy a meaningful relationship with his special creation, after all, a love that is mandatory is not really love at all. But this gift carried with it the risk that man would abuse his ability to make choices concerning good and evil. Ever since Adam indulged in the forbidden fruit, fallen man has been vulnerable to Satan’s temptations. And as time has gone by, evil and dysfunction have taken their toll.
Unlike God, who creates, Satan destroys. In a sense he is like a criminal defense attorney who doesn’t bear a burden of proof but merely has to create confusion in the minds of the jurors in order to achieve success.
The result of the enemy’s tactics are paraded before us every day on the television and internet as culture wars over race, gender, and sex rage like out of control forest fires. One of these major points of conflict centers around the concept of "equality". While all humans carry God's image and are loved by him, government cannot impose a man-made equality on the members of a society because no two people totally agree on what equality looks like in any given situation. The never-ending strife caused by arguments such as these is a major tool of the enemy.
To get a taste of God’s love for symmetry and order one merely needs to consider the Holy Bible. A book that was written by 40 men over 1500 years and yet never contradicts itself and maintains an incredible amount of internal consistency. When you see forces at work in our society whose main goal seems to be the abolition of law and order, the breakdown of civility, and contempt for the Judeo-Christian code of morality you are witnessing the thinly veiled agenda of the enemy.
As Christians we must always be mindful of Scriptures teaching that he who lives in us is greater than he who is in the world. Let all who have the Holy Spirit living inside of us be vessels of the Spirit in order to reach others in this fallen world.
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