Gleanings From The Word

Tag: Bible reading

  • Creation is a Signpost: Why You Can’t Say You Didn’t Know

    Heavenly signposts,creation is a signpost

    Our all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-faithful, loving God has made it impossible for people not to know about Him. His creation is a living signpost that says God is here and He cares.

    Step outside almost any morning and creation is already preaching. A bird calls. Leaves move. The seasons turn on schedule, not because they must, but because the One who set them in motion has not stopped paying attention. Creation points us to God.

    Luke 12:24 makes the logic plain. If God feeds the ravens, birds that neither plant nor harvest, what does that say about how He thinks of us? We were made for eternal fellowship with Him. The ravens were not.

    The problem is that most of us are not looking. We move through days full of evidence and miss the sermon entirely. Creation does not require our understanding. It only asks for our attention. And when we give it, the message is the same every time: God is near, and nothing in His creation falls outside His care.

    The word makes it clear that creation is a signpost telling us God is and that we should seek Him.

    The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
    And the expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
    Day to day pours forth speech,
    And night to night reveals knowledge.
    Psalm 19:1-2

    “But now ask the beasts, and let them instruct you;
    And the birds of the sky, and let them tell you.
    Or muse to the earth, and let it instruct you;
    And let the fish of the sea recount it to you.
    Who among all these does not know
    That the hand of Yahweh has done this,
    In whose hand is the life of every living thing,
    And the breath of all the flesh of man?     Job 12:7-10

    We can’t escape the signposts that God has given us. From the tiniest particle yet to be discovered to the ever-expanding expanse of space, God is proclaimed. The smaller we look and the further we search, the less likely we are to believe God is who He claims to be. All of creation is a signpost.

    To not see the LORD is to willfully choose ignorance and rebellion over truth and redemption. Romans 1:18-31 is very clear on that point.

    Some Judgment Day, no one will be able to say to the LORD, “But I didn’t know!” 

    What will you do with that knowledge?

    Hallelu Yah (Praise God) 

    Be blessed 

    Kevin 

    You might also like: God loves ravens.

    SUMMARY

    Creation is a constant, unmissable signpost pointing to God’s existence and His care for us, from the rhythm of seasons to the provision He gives the ravens. Scripture makes clear that no one will be able to claim ignorance on Judgment Day, because the evidence has been there all along for those willing to look.

    KEY POINTS

    General revelation through creation (Psalm 19:1-2, Job 12:7-10) makes God’s existence and care evident to everyone, without exception. 

    Luke 12:24’s ravens illustrate that if God provides for creatures with no eternal purpose, His care for humanity (made for fellowship with Him) is even greater. 

    Romans 1:18-31 establishes that willful blindness to this evidence is not innocence but rebellion, leaving no excuse on Judgment Day.

    General Revelation. The reason no one can say they didn’t know the truth

  • Every Member Is Necessary — 1 Corinthians 12

    THE BODY NEEDS EVERY PART — INCLUDING YOURS

    I have a friend who has not been to church in three years. He has his reasons, and some of them are legitimate. He was hurt, and the people who hurt him should have known better. But somewhere along the way, staying home became a habit, and the habit became a conviction, and now he will tell you he does not need the church to follow Jesus.

    I love him. And I think he is wrong.

    Not because church attendance is a rule to follow. Because he is a member of a body that is missing a part, and so is he.

    Paul does not leave us much wiggle room on this. Just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12). He is not describing a meeting you go to. He is describing an organism you belong to. Those are not the same thing, and the difference matters more than we usually let ourselves admit.

    Here is the part that should stop you if you have ever felt like your contribution to the church was minor. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary (1 Corinthians 12:21-22). Not helpful. Not appreciated. Necessary. That is Paul’s word, not mine.

    If someone has told you, by their words or just by the way they treated you, that you do not have much to bring — that your gifts are small, your role is replaceable, your absence would barely be noticed — Scripture is flatly contradicting them. The parts that look weaker are the ones Paul calls necessary. The ones that feel least visible are not optional.

    But let me say the harder thing too.

    Some of us are physically present and functionally absent. We show up, we sit, we leave, and we have arranged things carefully so that nobody really needs us and we do not really need anybody. We have been hurt before, or we are private people, or we just never got around to going deeper, and now the habit of distance has hardened into something we have started calling preference.

    The body feels that absence too, even if nobody says so.

    God does not tend to grow us in the quiet of our own company. He grows us through each other. Through the person who says the thing we did not want to hear. Through the one whose need shows up at an inconvenient time and asks something of us we did not plan to give. Through the Sunday morning conversation that turns out to be exactly what we needed and had no idea we were walking toward.

    That is not an accident of community. That is the body working the way it was designed to work.

    If the church has wounded you, I am not asking you to pretend it did not happen. Wounds in the church are real, and they leave marks. But the answer to a broken expression of the body is not to live permanently outside the body. It is to find your place in it again, imperfect people and all, because imperfect people are the only kind there are, and God has chosen to do His work through them anyway.

    You are not a guest in this body. You are a member of it. And somewhere in it, there is a function that belongs specifically to you, that nobody else can fill in the same way, and that the rest of the body is waiting on whether they realize it yet or not.

    My friend knows all of this. We have talked about it more than once.

    I am still praying he comes back.

    Kevin

    You might be interested in this – Read the Word. Read the Word. Read the Word.

    Some thoughts on finding a good church

    Find a good church

    Live in Abbotsford? There are many good churches. This is where I attend.