What Happens When God Speaks

THIS WEEK I finished going through the last chapter of "The Purple Book" by Rice Broocks and Steve Murrell. Over the last few months this book has been a very useful little guide to understanding various aspects of Christian living based on solid Scripture references. I recommend it. It's helpful for really getting into the Word that really gets into you.

Speaking of the Word, this week I've decided to begin reading the entire Old Testament. I've read a few Old Testament books but not nearly the whole thing, and I think it will be really good if I learn about the whole Bible. After all, God's characteristics and personality are absolutely everywhere through the whole thing, and I'd love to find as much of that as I can.

I made this decision to read the entire Old Testament after I revisited the very beginning of the Word of God. Starting at Genesis 1:1 I read again about the very beginning of the world. And I noticed more wonderful things about those words than I ever had before.

I know there's controversy about how the world got going, but that's not what I'm going to write about today. I say that what the Bible says goes, and either way it's not the story of the beginning of the world that saves souls. What I'm going to write about is God's amazing ability to just SPEAK things into truth, into existence, into goodness and solidity and perfection. He just SPEAKS and it's wonderful!

Go ahead and read Genesis 1 and 2 really quickly. No - read it slowly. Read it so that you can remember what He did every day, and so that you'll notice the care He put into every single thing.

He didn't leave anything out, did He? He didn't just put it together either. He made it out of nothing! God begins by saying, "Let there be light." In just the first 5 verses we see the whole universe turning from a big, vague nothing into a bright, promising something, full of light.

Then He makes the Heavens by dividing them from the waters. God says, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and and let it divide the waters from the waters." It's lovely, isn't it? First you see all blackness becoming light, all of a sudden, then you see the sky dividing from the water along the horizon.

Then it's the third day, and God says, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." He gathers up the water so that dry Earth can arise out of it, and He lets plants grow on the ground. Not just any plants, either. They are plants which can reproduce other plants of the same kinds! Such foresight. So you have the sky divided from water along the horizon, and then the rich, rocky dry land begins to rise up out of the vast water, and then it bursts forth with vibrant, dynamic green life of all shapes and sizes and functions.

Now it's the fourth day. Today God will make sure we always have a light shining, day and night. He says, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth." And then it happens! There's a sun and a moon, an eleborate and useful timepiece in the sky. They are bright and beautiful, regular and faithful, hanging in the well-lit firmament to keep us from ever living in the dark. He put such care into putting this world together, surrounding it with everything it needs to exist safely.

And the fifth day: God says, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens." We've never seen anything like it before. As soon as He says it, great fish and whales with glimmering fins and scales fill the vast oceans with life, and there are birds of every color and size soaring across the colorful sky. God is making something very beautiful. Then He tells the sea creatures and the birds, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." Just as He has done for the plants, He has done for the animals. He has made them so that there will be more of them in the future. Remember that next time you see any animal. It's the descendant of the first one God ever made.

For anybody who is wondering, 'What about me? Where are the people?' Don't worry. It's the sixth day. Time for people and land creatures. God says, "Let the earth brings forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind." And there are the animals! Elephants and horses and goats and snakes and frogs and cats. Every creature you can name is now here on the earth - except for man. So He says "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps over the earth." So He made the first people (details in Genesis 2:7 and 18-25) and He told them to be fruiful and multiply, and that they were in charge over the earth and that they could eat any green herb they wanted for food. He gave them only one limitation: "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

I think that one reason God saved people for last is so that we could see all of this amazingness at once. He put it all together and then made people so that we could see and be amazed at what He is giving us. Imagine being Adam for a moment. You look up and God is everywhere. No sin has yet entered the world and separated you from God. There are birds racing in the sky and all the fruit you can eat growing everywhere. Every color is visible in the plants and sky and earth, and fish are jumping in the water, and all kinds of animals are happy to see you. The beauty of this place is very greatly enhanced by the joy of new arrivals and the presence of the Lord. Then God gives Adam a wife who was quite literally made for him, because as He said, "It is not good that man should be alone." And everything was truly perfect and wonderful. It was good. Very, very good.

All of this happened when God spoke. He spoke into the darkness, and light came out. He spoke into the creation, and creatures came out. He speaks into our lives, and all kinds of wonder and goodness and renewal comes out as His wisdom and righteousness transorms us. There is nobody else who can simply speak and cause things to exist. Nobody else whose words can both create life and sustain life.

Immediately after I read Genesis 1 and 2, I went over to Luke 4 and read about Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. He was very hungry, for He had not eaten in 40 days. So the devil, the same one who tempted Eve to eat that fruit and mess up the perfect world, tempted Jesus to command a rock to become bread for Him. We know He definitely could have made bread if He wanted to. He produced enough bread to feed thousands of people (plus leftovers) from just a few loaves on several occasions. But Jesus said to the devil, (verse 4) "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.'" Jesus knew He was there to be tempted. He resisted the temptation both by quoting God's word and by living on God's word. He says that people won't live on only bread. We couldn't live on only bread! Even if we had all the food we needed it would never be enough without God. He sustains our lives by feeding our souls. Jesus understood the need to set the example of valuing the soul-sustaining 'food' that is God's word as more important than the food the body needs.

The very last question in "The Purple Book" was this: "Why is God worthy of our crowns? Revelation 4:11" That verse says what the twenty-four elders are saying in heaven as they cast their crowns of glory before God's throne, "You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created." God is truly worthy of all the glory. Think for a moment about how He made everything. He spoke, and there it was. Think for a moment about How He holds our lives together. His Holy Spirit of truth speaks into our lives. He talks to us all the time and tells us what is right, what He wants us each to do. It's just astounding what God does with His words, because He has the authority to command everything to work how it does, and to set what is right or wrong. When we live by His words, His commands and His guidance, for His glory, only then do we live a life worth living.