God sustains His creatures – the ravens, sparrows, lilies, and cattle on a thousand hills – by providing for them according to their needs through the elaborate and wonderful buffet found in the natural world. He does this in accordance with His good and perfect will.
The natural world extols the glory of the immortal God when it receives food in the wilderness or the scraps which fall from a master’s table.
There was harmony, beauty, and order in creation and among the living creatures God designed and equipped for life in the world.
The amazing systems of balancing needs and the widespread provision of prey for predators in cycles of abundance and greater scarcity all evidence a remarkable fine-tuning in spite of the growing impact of human activity in the world on these natural systems.
For example, the carbon cycle, a recycling system extraordinaire, is inclusive of animal life and death and our earth would collapse without the vitality it brings to all created things.
Surely the LORD’s wisdom is revealed in what He has made!
In Genesis 8, the LORD assured Noah that “while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease." This promise has a direct bearing on the lives and fortunes of the creatures which God made to populate and flourish upon the earth. Some creatures live for long lifespans while others live for days.
Their days are numbered.
The calculation of population statistics in the natural world reveals that the earth would struggle to accommodate the voracious appetites of many bugs and ocean creatures if they lived any longer lives than they currently do. Yet the African elephant, with its slow maturation and lengthy gestation periods, would be extinct and vast swathes of African habitat would suffer environmental collapse were it not for the LORD’s provision of long life to these magnificent keystone species.
Praise the Lord!
One highlight of the creation narrative in Genesis 1-2 is the repetition of the phrase “each according to its kind.” Each part of God’s creation was marked by an ordered diversity of creatures and every one of them was made ‘according’ to its kind. This testifies that each creature had a purpose and a function.
We continue to see this in the world around us – creatures of greater size playing a more prominent role in stabilizing ecosystems while creatures of lesser size are seen playing a more supportive role in food chains and ecosystems. These functional creatures serve one another – for example, the African rhinoceros provides the African ox-pecker with a ready food source of ticks (and a ride) while the ox-pecker rids the rhinoceros of parasitic pests and alerts the shortsighted rhinoceros to the approach of enemies.
Quick thought: The City of Vancouver (and cities more broadly) is grappling with the problem of loneliness and isolation. Perhaps you're experiencing this problem in a very personal way - if so, you're not alone in feeling awfully alone. Some call it a "loneliness crisis" and it's worth exploring the reasons why this is happening.
Our sermon series through the letters to Thessalonian church have been prompting me to think a lot about the way that the love experienced within a Christian church represents such a wonderful expression of God's love to us. When you come to worship services and join us for Bible studies and make a point of devoting some of your time to the gatherings we initiate, you will discover this rich gift of Christian fellowship.
One Great Article to Get You Started: https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/06/why-a-city-block-can-be-one-of-the-loneliest-places-on-earth/531852/
““One guy said the worst invention there ever was the garage door opener,” Ms. Wightman said over lunch recently. “It allowed people to go into their homes without having to talk to their neighbours.”
Vancouver has had a reputation as one of the most aloof, least friendly cities in Canada for years now. That beyond the superficial smiles a visitor or newcomer to town will get, there isn’t much.”
Looking at Loneliness in Vancouver:
A 2012 Study by the Vancouver Foundation: https://www.vancouverfoundation.ca/about-us/publications/connections-and-engagement-reports/connections-engagement-closer-look
A 2012 Article in the Georgia Straight: http://www.straight.com/news/vancouver-study-city-loneliness-and-unfriendliness
A 2017 Article in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/vancouver-loneliness-engaged-city-taskforce-canada
A 2013 Article in The Globe and Mail: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/life-of-solitude-a-loneliness-crisis-is-looming/article15573187/?page=all
A great Article by Gary Mason from 2011: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/alone-so-alone-in-vancouver/article4201039/
And finally, an article in the WestEnder about building relationships: http://www.westender.com/news-issues/vancouver-shakedown/lonely-vancouver-just-say-hello-1.2261772
Carl Trueman, Professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, writes...
"in our church practice, we need to take the Old Testament more seriously. It astounds me, given the overwhelming use of psalms as central to gathered worship in the first four centuries, the absolute importance given to psalmody for the first two centuries of the post-Reformation Reformed churches, and the fact that the Book of Psalms is the only hymn book which can claim to be universal in its acceptance by the whole of Christendom and utterly inspired in all of its statements - it astounds me, I say, that so few psalms are sung in our worship services today.
Moreover, often nothing seems to earn the scorn and derision of others more than the suggestion that more psalms should be sung in worship. Indeed, the last few years have seen a number of writers strike out against exclusive psalmody. Given that life is too short to engage in pointless polemics, I am left wondering which parallel universe these guys come from, where the most pressing and dangerous worship issue is clearly that people sing too much of the Bible in their services. How terrifying a prospect that would be.
Imagine: people actually singing songs that express the full range of human emotion in their worship using words of which God has explicitly said, 'These are mine.'
The whole article (here: https://www.monergism.com/marcions-have-landed-warning-evangelicals) is worthwhile reading as it deals with the broader concern that we should have for the way in which much of the contemporary church has succumbed to the basic tendencies of a Marcionite theology. Check it out!
I want to give attention to the simple beauty of the liturgy of Reformed churches. This plainness is not because of a cultural aversion to beauty or sentiment. The popular art and music of Reformed communities express beauty and sentiment in equal measure. Nonetheless the sacred worship services of the Reformed are intentionally limited to the prescribed elements of worship contained in the Scriptures.
These elements of the worship service are divinely ordained in the pattern of the covenant renewal ceremony between God and his people in which he “promises to make the new creation a reality among his people.” This covenantal ceremony includes all the congregants as “the story of divine creation and faithfulness is followed by the unfaithfulness of the covenant partner, which in turn is met with divine solidarity to overcome the sin and unbelief of his people through his messiah.” I rehearse these crucial components of Reformed worship to emphasize that the liturgy of Reformed churches is simple because there is so much contained within it. It does not need embellishment or dramatization to be improved upon. In a rightly constituted worship service, the following profound encounter occurs after the votum and singing of the congregation:
"Representing God once more, the minister intercedes on behalf of the covenant people who have thus experienced the drama of the exodus again for themselves. They too have passed from death to life in this liturgical drama, from alienation and despair to the assurance of reconciliation and the response of praise from their side of the covenant – and on that basis they enter the Holy of Holies in this semirealized eschatology. With their covenant mediator and advocate representing their case in heaven, the community's intercession is effective, and the people are prepared to hear God's word in the sermon."
Finally, the last word of the service is “reserved for God, and his parting word is once more the word of Gospel, as God's blessing is laid upon the covenant people in the benediction.” The structure of this divine service is predicated on the principle that worship occurs in a dialogue between God and his people. The dialogical principle serves several purposes: it simplifies the service by removing any extraneous human inventions, it clarifies the service by assigning a clear role to each partner, and it affirms a covenantal relationship which God makes with his church.
Hughes Oliphant Old characterizes Reformed convictions about worship as convictions which arise from the first four commandments. The first commandment directs that “our worship, our deepest devotion, our most ardent love is to be directed to God rather than to ourselves.” John Calvin drew on the first commandment the Christian's obligation “with true and zealous godliness... to contemplate, fear, and worship, his majesty; to participate in his blessings; to seek his help at all times; to recognize, and by praises to celebrate, the greatness of his works – as the only goal of all the activities of this life.” The abundance of the Christian's desire to serve and praise God is particularly expressed in the worship which takes place on the Lord's Day in the house of God. Old comments that the “single greatest contribution that the Reformed liturgical heritage can make to contemporary American Protestantism is its sense of the majesty and sovereignty of God, its sense of reverence and simple dignity, its conviction that worship must above all serve the praise of God.” I also want to draw attention to a commandment that does not receive much recognition in the context of worship, namely the third commandment. Old writes, “the third commandment tells us that were are not to use the Lord's name in vain. Vain means “empty.” The commandment teaches us to worship God sincerely and honestly, to worship God “in spirit and in truth,” to use the words of Jesus.” Worship is of first importance in the Reformed churches. It occupies the entirety of the corporate, public worship service.
(Resources cited: Edmund P. Clowney, The Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995); Michael Horton, Covenant and Eschatology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002); Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship: Reformed According to Scripture (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002); John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 2, 2 vols., The Library of Christian Classics 21 (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960)
“Did Jesus make salvation possible for all or did he actually save his people from their sins?”
That is the profoundly important question that Dr. Michael Horton took up in his plenary session at the 2019 Westminster Seminary Faculty Conference in Escondido, CA on January 19, 2019.
Watch Dr. Michael Horton's plenary session from the 2019 Faculty Conference here: https://wscal.edu/resourc…/a-real-atonement-for-real-sinners
I (Pastor Norm), was in attendance at this conference and was tremendously blessed in my heart and soul by Dr. Horton’s message. We were richly fed from the Word of God concerning the Lord’s eternal plan of salvation for his people and the indispensable nature of the doctrine of the definite atonement.
This doctrine, contained in the teachings of the Christian church throughout the centuries and featured in our Reformed and Presbyterian confessions, is also known as the doctrine of the limited atonement (focusing on the actual # of the redeemed who have been bought with a price by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ).
May the LORD nourish your heart and soul through His glorious ministry of grace and kindness to you in Jesus Christ our Good Shepherd who has laid down his life for his sheep.
Thank you to Westminster Seminary California for making this video available for the building up of Christ’s Church!
Thank you to Mingheras Cosmin on Unsplash for the most appropriate photo!
