Category Archives: Life College

Creation, General Principles

Biblical Creativity: Day 3a Motion

1 Comment

9 Then God said, “Let the waters beneath the sky flow together into one place, so dry ground may appear.” And that is what happened. 10 God called the dry ground “land” and the waters “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:9-10

On Day 3 God introduces us to flow or motion for the first time.  This has the very significant effect of enabling the materials that were in suspension in the water from the beginning to separate out and so the dry land appears.

I’m loving this.  The elegance, comprehensiveness and beauty of the creation account is staggering:

In the beginning God creates all the materials (elements) that He wants to work with.  They exist in an amorphous watery mess suspended on nothing in darkness.  The Spirit is pregnant with ideas and the Word then is spoken.

On Day 1 the framework of time and space is spoken into being and light is the measuring tool that constrains and simultaneously illuminates everything.

On Day 2 space is created and so now objects can be made.  The first distinguishable objects are the heavens and the earth.

On the first part of Day 3 God introduces the idea of motion.  The earth (and everything else) spins and (just like in a centrifuge) dry land appears.

Now God has the base on which He can start making beautiful things.

Creation, General Principles

Biblical Creativity: Day 2 Space

1 Comment

6 Then God said, “Let there be a space between the waters, to separate the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.” 7 And that is what happened. God made this space to separate the waters of the earth from the waters of the heavens. 8 God called the space “sky.”

And evening passed and morning came, marking the second day.

Genesis 1:6-8

The concept of space is so fundamental we can easily miss its significance.  If there was no space there could be no objects.  You, I, trees, rocks and any of the myriad objects that exist can only exist in the context of their being a thing called space between them.

So the second day’s creation of this simple thing called space is as fundamental as the concept of light to all creation.  Without light we can neither see nor understand anything.  Without space we cannot even be defined.

The first thing God defines using space is the difference between the heavens and the earth.  These are the two fundamental objects of God’s project of creation.

In the world of programming where I work, man has also understood the fundamental importance of objects.  Object oriented programming is a way of understanding how to create anything in software and is based on this concept of defined entities with space between them.  The creation of space enables the creation of objects.

So you’ve taken space for granted but what an astonishing idea!

What are the fundamental objects of your project?

Creation, General Principles

Biblical Creativity Day 1: The EM Spectrum

1 Comment

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.[a] 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.”

And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.

Genesis 1:1-3

In my last post on this subject I looked at the raw materials God had to work with when creating everything.  Quite surprisingly the only raw material is water which somehow seems to have been there without God having yet said or done anything.

Peter says this about how it all happened:

5 They deliberately forget that God made the heavens long ago by the word of his command, and he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water. 6 Then he used the water to destroy the ancient world with a mighty flood. 7 And by the same word, the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire. They are being kept for the day of judgment, when ungodly people will be destroyed.

2 Peter 3: 5-7

In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth and somehow there is water there from which the earth was brought out.

Back in Genesis 1:3 we see the creation proper starting with “And God said: Let there be light.”  We know from John’s gospel that the Word that was spoken with all that creative power is actually Jesus (John 1).  When God speaks He manifests His image and in a sense – from our point of view at least – begets His Son.  Of course Jesus was always there but He is not manifested to us until God speaks.  And the first thing God speaks is “Let there be light.”

Light is also a synonym for understanding – without Jesus we would have no understanding of God so that is the first gift God gives us all.

It should be noted that this light has nothing to do with the sun which isn’t created until the fourth day.  This seems counter intuitive – everyone knows that the day starts when the light from the sun appears above the horizon.

However light is fundamentally something different from what we see.  Light is part of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum which consists of everything from gamma rays, through x rays, ultraviolet, visible, infrared and all the radio waves (HF, VHF, UHF, microwaves, etc.)  It is only in the last 150 years that we have been able to use a lot of these waves to communicate, heat our food and see bones under flesh.

These waves all obey the same God given laws.  They fundamentally frame everything we do.  Space and time are constrained by the speed of light (which is the same as the speed of all the EM waves in a vacuum).  Nothing can go faster than it.  As you approach the speed of light it always looks to you like it is travelling at the same speed.  Eventually time stops when you go that fast.   So it is fitting that light frames the first idea of time, that of the day (with no sun involved).

So this first day light is more fundamental than the sun or any other source of light.

A practical application when you are creating anything is to start with making it clear what you are doing.  Communication is everything.  Unless there is first understanding (light) between all the parties involved nothing else can happen.

God spoke and so must we if we are to create anything.

Creation, General Principles

Biblical Creativity

Leave a comment

There can’t be a better way of being creative than the way God is creative.

So let’s look at His creative ways.  And no better place to start than with the Creation.

The Account of Creation

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.[a] 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.”

And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.

6 Then God said, “Let there be a space between the waters, to separate the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.” 7 And that is what happened. God made this space to separate the waters of the earth from the waters of the heavens. 8 God called the space “sky.”

And evening passed and morning came, marking the second day.

9 Then God said, “Let the waters beneath the sky flow together into one place, so dry ground may appear.” And that is what happened. 10 God called the dry ground “land” and the waters “seas.” And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the land sprout with vegetation—every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.” And that is what happened. 12 The land produced vegetation—all sorts of seed-bearing plants, and trees with seed-bearing fruit. Their seeds produced plants and trees of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.

13 And evening passed and morning came, marking the third day.

14 Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. 15 Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. 16 God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, 18 to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

19 And evening passed and morning came, marking the fourth day.

20 Then God said, “Let the waters swarm with fish and other life. Let the skies be filled with birds of every kind.” 21 So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird—each producing offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 Then God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply. Let the fish fill the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.”

23 And evening passed and morning came, marking the fifth day.

24 Then God said, “Let the earth produce every sort of animal, each producing offspring of the same kind—livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and wild animals.” And that is what happened. 25 God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let us make human beings[b] in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth,[c] and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”

27 So God created human beings[d] in his own image.
    In the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”

29 Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. 30 And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—everything that has life.” And that is what happened.

31 Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!

And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.

Footnotes

  1. 1:1 Or In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, . . . Or When God began to create the heavens and the earth, . . .
  2. 1:26a Or man; Hebrew reads adam.
  3. 1:26b As in Syriac version; Hebrew reads all the earth.
  4. 1:27 Or the man; Hebrew reads ha-adam.

In the beginning God

So in the beginning means at the start of something which by definition introduces space -time for the first time in space.  All the theories and observations to date indicate that space and time are related by a constant called “c” which is the speed of light.  Nothing can go faster than the speed of light.  The closer you get to the speed of light the slower time goes until it eventually stops (which is why you can’t go any faster).  My favourite experiment that shows this is in this video.

So that was the first thing God put in place – a frame of measurement and constraints.

Likewise, when we are creating anything the first things we need to consider are where we are going to do it and when.  And we also need to take into account the fact that we are constrained – we don’t have infinite time or space available to us.  We need to know how much of each we have and the relationship between the two.  How much space do I have to do this in and how much time.

The heavens and the earth

God then made the base context of all the future creativity, the heavens and the earth.  Heavens and earth are the fundamental context in which He was going to do everything else.

Likewise when we are being creative we need to start with the fundamentals of what we are working with.   The heavens represent abstract things which we are not able to put our hands on, ideas mainly.  The earth represents the material things we have to work with.  Abstract ideas and material things are the context in which we all work.

The earth was formless and empty

Raw materials are always this way at the beginning of any creation.

And darkness covered the deep waters

No matter where we have been in the universe to date we have discovered water.  NASA even says that the universe is awash with water which keeps turning up in surprising places.  It seems that the formless and empty universe was a ball of water initially.  I imagine God with a ball of water in His hands in the beginning.

God didn’t need to see it (he knows his creation without light) but He somehow conceived that His creation would need to “see” it.  So the concept of darkness is introduced, i.e. the absence of something. Something is missing, e.g. understanding, light.

Likewise at the beginning of a creative project we have raw materials and some ideas but we need to understand better what we are going to create – we need to be able to see it.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters

And to see something creatively we need inspiration, a spark of creative genius.  Call it what you will, none of us can create without the inspiration of a spirit.  We see this all around us.  People talk about man’s spirit, devils, angels and the Holy Spirit inspiring all sorts of things.  Ultimately nothing happens without the consideration, the brooding of a spirit on the ideas and the materials.  Understanding starts here.

When you are being creative, what inspires you?

General Principles, Law & Grace, Prophetic Writings

Scarlet Yarn

Leave a comment

There was a lot of Old Testament ritual going on around the time of Jesus’ death on the cross.  One of these rituals was that of the Red Heifer found in Numbers 19.  There is a man involved in that ritual who was neither a priest nor a Levite but who yet had a very significant role.  Some of the following is speculation.  It presumes that the Red Heifer ritual was occurring at the same time as Jesus’ crucifixion and that the man involved saw both things happening.  By putting the two events together like this we can see how this picture in the Old Testament points to Christ like so many pictures do.

The red heifer lowed and complained as it was brought outside the city walls.  Unlike the lambs that were sacrificed in the temple it wasn’t silent as it was led to the slaughter.  It was just like any other animal in that sense.  Otherwise it wasn’t a normal animal.  It had to be specially bred.  It was chosen from birth and reared for this day of its death.

I slaughtered the red heifer in the place chosen.  I could see the man from there, hanging on the cross.  The soldiers had even taken some of the sacred hyssop from the priest as he was coming out with it and used it when offering him a sedative.  Which he refused.  Why anyone would refuse that when going through such pain I couldn’t understand.

As I had been instructed and as my predecessors had done for the last 1500 years I burnt up the red heifer’s carcass, dung and all.   The priest then added the cedar wood, the scarlet yarn and the hyssop he had brought.  The wood reminded me of the cross on which that man was hanging.

I saw the soldiers gamble for his tunic.  It was full of scarlet yarn like the piece the priest had thrown in the fire.  Scarlet from blood.  Isaiah’s words come to my mind as I watch them:

“Though your sins are like scarlet they shall be as white as snow.”

The ashes of the red heifer were mixed with the ashes of the cedar wood, the scarlet yarn and the hyssop and mixed with water to make the water of purification.  This was the whole point of that red heifer’s sacrifice.  That water would then be used if anyone was in contact with dead bodies, had a skin disease or was accused of adultery.

(The featured picture is from the blog https://freedailybiblestudy.com/)

General Principles, Law & Grace

Leviticus! The Totality of His Forgiveness

Leave a comment

Jesus’ death on the cross changed the ground rules of what it means to sin forever.  Before His death the Law reigned and sin produced spiritual death through the knowledge of the Law (read Paul’s letter to the Romans chapters 6-8).  This started when a commandment was given to Adam and Eve which they broke and therefore sinned and death entered the world through that sin.

However, Paul says that when Christ died, the Law (and we also) died with Him so that there is no longer any such thing as transgression (Romans 7).

13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

Colossians 2:13-15

So really now it doesn’t matter what you do right?  Actually that is right in theory but in practice the law of sin and death has been replaced by the new law of love.

If you really believe that God so loved you as to give His only Son to die for your sins there is no way that you should want to do anything that wouldn’t please Him.  Like any one in love with another person the ideal is that you couldn’t do anything to hurt them.  You want to follow them to the end of the earth.

However in practice people don’t always act consistently over their whole lives with the ideal.  So what then?  Well then it is a question of your will.

So you decide.  Things are tough.  Jesus perhaps hasn’t come through for you in the way you expected Him to.  Where do you turn to now?  Do you turn to someone else?  Do you expect them to save you from the predicament you find yourself in?  Will they?

The answer is no.  Expecting anyone to fill the gap in your life that only God can fill is idolatry.  The first commandment is, like all the commandments now, not a law but a promise.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.

Exodus 20:2-3

If you have been born from above, you have experienced the good things of heaven and shared in the Holy Spirit and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come (Hebrews 6:4-6).  From now on nothing else will do.

So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you! Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.

 “For in just a little while,
    the Coming One will come and not delay.

And my righteous ones will live by faith.
    But I will take no pleasure in anyone who turns away.” (Habakkuk 2:3-4)

We are not like those who turn away from God to their own destruction. We are the faithful ones, whose souls will be saved.

Hebrews 10:35-39 (NLT)

Dear friends, even though I am talking this way, I really don’t believe it applies to you. I am confident that you are meant for better things, things that come with salvation. For God is not unjust. He will not forget how hard you have worked for him and how you have shown your love to him by caring for other believers as you still do. My great desire is that you will keep on loving others as long as life lasts, in order to make certain that what you hope for will come true.

Hebrews 6:9-11 (NLT)

Yes the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews puts it better than ever I could. Please read chapters 6 and 10 of Hebrews to see the context in which I write these blogs.

General Principles, Law & Grace

Leviticus! The Greatest Challenge

Leave a comment

Willful Sin after you are born again is not covered by the Sacrifice of Jesus!

If you have read the Letter to the Hebrews you will have come across some very hard passages.  After having explained at length the removal of the need for animal sacrifices by the one great sacrifice of Jesus (Hebrews 7:26 – 10:25), the writer then goes on to say what that Sacrifice does not cover – willful sin:

“For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain terrifying expectation of judgement.” (Hebrews 10:26-27a).

And it doesn’t get any better from there.

In saying this the writer is only being consistent with what Moses wrote in Leviticus.  The animal sacrifices there also do not cover willful sin.  There are a litany of sins the Sacrifice does cover but the ones covered by sacrifice alone are the unintentional ones (see Leviticus 4:2, 13, 22, 27).

I think if we are honest we know this.  No where in the Great News of Jesus’ death for us on Calvary as declared in the Scriptures is there any indication that it enables us to do what we want.  Quite the opposite.  In these days where so many worship songs and the atmosphere of the country we live in all pours out “Freedom” as the untouchable mantra, the idea of being a slave to either sin or righteousness can get quite unpopular.

If you think that only the writer to the Hebrews deals with this then you haven’t read much of the New Testament.  Have a look at 1 John 5:16 for instance:

16 If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask, and He will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death. There is sin leading to death. I do not say that he should pray about that.

If you take a simplistic view of sin and make no distinctions between willful and unintentional sins then you are bound to be confused.

I believe that a careful reading of Leviticus will clear up that confusion.

Jesus’ sacrifice does cover a lot of the sins we commit after we are born again.

Sacrifice also plays a role in some intentional sins but even then the sins have an unwitting or unintentional part to them.  Examples are not testifying about some crime you have witnessed (Leviticus 5:1), touching unclean things (5:2,3) or saying you will do something and not doing it (5:4,5).  However, in each of the above cases confession is also required.  Jesus’ Sacrifice on its own is not enough even though without it we are lost.  Confession is not enough either, you have to have both.  As it says in the apostle John’s first letter:

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

If you are not born again all this could appear to be foolishness.

I hope to continue this series by looking at what Leviticus says is and isn’t covered by the Sacrifice.  That doesn’t mean that you should go around analysing everything you do to see if it fits into one category or another.  If you are born again you know in your heart when you are out of sync with the Holy Spirit.  A lot of the things mentioned in Leviticus such as confession, restitution, willful sin and restoration you will do without needing to know the chapter and verses that apply to them.

But if you are like me and love the way the Scriptures, Old and New Testament, consistently reveal the nature of God then you might want to follow along.

General Principles, Law & Grace

Leviticus! Yes, but the Letter to the Hebrews is better.

Leave a comment
If you are reading my posts on Leviticus up to now please also read the Letter to the Hebrews. It explains much better than I can what Leviticus is all about. The foundations of understanding all of Leviticus are there especially from Chap. 7 v. 26 through to the end of Chap. 10.
These foundations are:
1. There is no need for the sacrifices of Leviticus now since Jesus has offered up Himself as the perfect sacrifice once for all (Hebrews 7:27; 9:11-15, 24-28; 10:10-18)
2. The place of most significance where the blood of Jesus was sprinkled was not the physical place outside the old walls of Jerusalem.  The significant real place that Jesus’ blood was sprinkled was the true tabernacle in heaven of which the one described in Exodus and Leviticus is but a copy (Hebrews 8:2, 5; 9:11, 23, 24).
General Principles, Law & Grace, Worship & Song

Leviticus! Chap. 3: Peace

Leave a comment

So far we have seen that:

  • Leviticus 1 deals with the need for everyone to have a saviour – a sacrifice that is perfect – before we can come to God.  From the New Testament we learn that that Sacrifice is Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for us (Hebrews 8 & 9).
  • Leviticus 2 deals with our words in the presence of God.  These can be words in song, worship, prayer, preaching or writing such as I am doing now.  In order to please God with our words they should be refined (not coarse), anointed, directed to Him in prayer with no sin and not sensual – inappropriate.

In Leviticus 3 we are introduced to the peace offering and a new type: Fat.

3 Then he shall offer from the sacrifice of the peace offering an offering made by fire to the Lord. The fat that covers the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails, 4 the two kidneys and the fat that is on them by the flanks, and the fatty lobe attached to the liver above the kidneys, he shall remove; (Leviticus 3:3-4)

Now you don’t have to be a biblical scholar to realise that fat represents excess.

Another part of the peace offering is the blood of the sacrifices poured out on the altar:

And he shall lay his hand on the head of his offering, and kill it before the tabernacle of meeting; and Aaron’s sons shall sprinkle its blood all around on the altar.  (Leviticus 3:8)

Blood represents life – see Leviticus 17:11.

So the simple message of Leviticus 3 is that if you want to be at peace when you are before God offer Him your life and all your excess.  Just give it all to Him and you will have peace.  “All excess is the Lord’s” according to v. 16.

Bill Hybels has written a book called “Simplify” and others have recognised the stress we allow to accumulate with our excess.  Excess weight is an obvious one, but excess possessions including excess money also cause stress for a Christian.  Give your excess to the Lord, He will know what to do with it.

In the end it is all going to go up in smoke anyway (2 Peter 3:7).

General Principles, Worship & Song

Leviticus! Chap. 2: Worship Offerings

Leave a comment

In chapter 2 of Leviticus there are no animal sacrifices mentioned.  Whereas chapter 1 refers to offerings related to sin, chapter 2 refers to free will offerings or offerings that are made just because of who God is, not so much what He has done.

The elements of a freewill offering (or worship) as described in Leviticus 2 are the following, all of which stand for something:

‘When anyone offers a grain offering to the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour. And he shall pour oil on it, and put frankincense on it. (Leviticus 2:1)

Grain – represents words (see the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, Mark 4 and Luke 8; also Jeremiah 23:28).

Oil – represents anointing (see Exodus 30:23-24 and James 5:14)

Frankincense – represents prayer (see Revelation 5:8)

‘No grain offering which you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven, for you shall burn no leaven nor any honey in any offering to the Lord made by fire.  (Leviticus 2:11)

Leaven – represents sin (see Matthew 16:6 and 1 Cor. 5:7).

Honey – represents sensual pleasure (see Proverbs 24:13, Song of Solomon 4:11).

And every offering of your grain offering you shall season with salt; you shall not allow the salt of the covenant of your God to be lacking from your grain offering. With all your offerings you shall offer salt. (Leviticus 2:13)

Salt – represents preservation, truth (Matthew 5:13).

So we see that when we approach God with our words (spoken or sung) we need to do it in the context of anointing (represented by oil), truth (salt) and prayer (frankincense), without sin (leaven) and without sensuality (honey).  These are the basics of coming to God in prayer and worship in the Spirit (see John 4:23).

I should point out that there is nowhere in Scripture that says honey is a bad thing, quite the opposite (see e.g. Exodus 3:17) but you can have too much of it (Proverbs 25:27) and it is not relevant when you are approaching a consuming fire (Leviticus 2:11).

There is a school of thought that says that the ecstasies and obvious pleasure that many Pentecostals (in particular) experience during worship are not appropriate.  The music is too worldly these people say and the worship too sensual as a result.  As I’ve looked around the churches in Ireland over the last few years – and this applies elsewhere as well – I can see considerable division over this.

However Scripture should not be treated as a rule book. The answer to the question of whether there is too much pleasure (i.e. sensuality) in the worship songs we sing these days is not going to be answered by anyone to your satisfaction except by God.  All I would say is please don’t judge your brother or sister who takes part in these love festivals.  What they do, they do before God and He alone is judge.

I don’t believe that the type of music played can be defined as sensual in terms of the rhythms, notes or beats employed.  The fact that there is a lot of secular, sensual lyrics set to music that uses the same rhythms, notes, tones or beats is irrelevant.  There is nothing irredeemable in any type of music in my opinion.

The lyrics used on the other hand are far more important.  We could definitely argue about some of those if we wanted to.  It would seem strange though to throw out a complete genre simply because some young song writers alluded to some sensual sounding pleasures in their worship lyrics.  Perhaps it says more about the listener than the song writer if that is the approach you take.

Having said that, there is a lot of immorality around these days.  We do need to have God remove all forms of impure desires (uncleanness, fornication, adultery) from our hearts if we are truly to be of those who are pure in heart and can see God (Matt. 5:8, Ephesians 5:3-21).  And that is regardless of what songs we are listening to.