FOURTH QUARTER 2020
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #4
OCTOBER 24, 2020
“THE EYES OF THE LORD: THE BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW”

 

“The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good” Proverbs 15:3, NKJV.

This week’s lesson calls our attention to the biblical account of creation in contrast to other worldviews which teach that we came to be by some other means than by “the word of the Lord” (Psalm 33:6).

What we believe about earth’s origins matters. Too often, discussions devolve into arguments over the relative merit of various scientific findings.

The Bible is clear. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). The days of creation were not stretched out over long periods of time in a nod to evolutionary development, else Adam, who lived 930 years, would have died before the first Sabbath ended.

We are not smarter than God. We do not know more than Moses. It is a sad reality that the wisdom of this world teaches such foolishness. Doubt in the plain meaning of God’s word is but an expression of the original seduction of Eve. It tempts us to think that we know better than God Himself how He created our world.

What we need to discover is the gospel in creation! When we welcome this truth with a believing heart, many other truths will come into focus. Let’s begin our search in Genesis 1:1. The story of creation begins with God. Where am I? Where are you? Where is Adam?

Nowhere. Why? Because we are not self existent. In the beginning we were nothing but an idea in the mind of God.

There exists a community of “believers” who subscribe to a religious system called I AM (meaning they are God).

The Bible, in contrast, teaches that Jesus is the great I AM, and that I am nothing.

Many people try to boost their self-esteem by proclaiming that they are something. What does the Bible say?

“For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself” (Galatians 6:3, KJV).

Expounding on this text, A. T. Jones writes, “It is bad enough for a man to be deceived by another; but it is worse to be deceived by himself. But this verse gives the true corrective and preventive of self-deception—and it is found in a man’s thinking himself truly what he is; that is, nothing.

“But this is not natural. The natural thing is for each one to think himself something; and then continue so to think until he becomes more and more something, and the chiefest of all. That is simply the secret and spirit of self-exaltation.

“But the truth is that of himself man is nothing; and the true way for any man to find this truth is to confess that he is nothing. That is simply the way of self-abnegation. . . .

“Now there is a way out of this nothingness into that which is something, and in which each one shall be truly something. And this was in the way of Christ—the way of the cross. Christ is the example: He has led the way; for He ‘emptied Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’ Thus He gave himself up to be, and to become, lost and nothing, that He might redeem those who are lost and nothing.” (Studies on Galatians, p. 182, 183)

“Thus, it being strictly true, in the nature of things, that, without God, any creature is nothing; man, being without God, is truly nothing. Then, when, in this condition, man thinks himself something, in that very thing he asserts self-existence—equality with God. . .

“But self-existence is not true of any creature . . .

“Thus the self-deception of a man in his thinking himself to be something, when, in absolute truth, he is nothing, is the worst and most destructive of all deceptions, because it is the deception of asserting of himself self-existence,—divinity; ‘showing himself that he is God,’—the only end of which is to become, indeed, absolutely nothing, in the awful consummation that is declared. ‘For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.’” (ibid., p. 184)

From the foregoing exposition, we can see how it is true that “self-idolatry . . . lies at the foundation of all sin.” (Gospel Workers, p. 114)

This year a strange and rapidly spreading disease has brought our world to its knees. Unprecedented measures have been taken to stop its spread. Men’s hearts are failing them for fear.

Yet the original sin of self exaltation—indulging the lie that I exist, therefore I Am—though it is 100 percent fatal, is feared by few and embraced by many.

To unmask this deception, God initiated the work of creation with a revelation of Jesus Christ on day one: “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3).

“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4).

“That was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world” (John 1:9).

Yet how few, even among the realms of fallen and unfallen angels alike, could have fathomed what was in the future. Who among them could have imagined the depths of humiliation to which our Creator would plunge in order to rescue a race of rebels from the lie that each of them was an “I Am.” Thus, our world was birthed in water. Darkness was upon the face of the deep.

It was to divide the light from the darkness, to distinguish between the self-emptying character of God, the self-existent One, and the self-exalting deceiver, that God “commanded light to shine out of darkness.” Into the limitless realms of space and before the onlooking heavenly universe, Jesus was revealed “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 4:6).

Adam was but a lifeless form of dust when the Creator breathed into him the breath of life (in the original Hebrew, “lives”).

This temporary probationary life is granted to us in mercy. Before us are two choices. Who is our leader? Do we choose to follow Jesus, Who emptied Himself of all but love? Or do we follow the natural inclination of our heart, to live for self and follow the self-exalting one?

This is the essence of the appeal of the first angel to “worship Him Who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water” (Revelation 14:7).

May the love of Christ as revealed in creation and at the cross constrain us to live “no longer for [ourselves], but for Him Who died for [us] and rose again” (2 Corinthians 5:14).

 

~Patti Guthrie