PT-1 "Jesus Christ in Relation to the Universe" (Col. 1:16-17)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/18/2017 11:42 PM

My Worship Time                                    Focus:  PT-1 “Jesus Christ in Relation to the Universe”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                             Reference:  Colossians 1:16-17

            Message of the verses:  “16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

            Now remember why Paul was writing the letter to the Colossian church.  They were beginning to believe wrongly about who Jesus Christ was, as they thought he was created by God and one of many prominent beings that God had created, one of the emanations (out growths) from God.  They did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God having all the attributes of God along with the Holy Spirit also having all the attributes of God.  So as we begin to look at these two verses the first thing that we see that Paul writes is that Jesus Christ is the Creator.  Paul rejects that blasphemy as he insists that it was by Him that all things were created.  Other verses are similar in telling this truth of Jesus Christ:  “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being (John 1:3).”  “In these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world (Heb. 1:2).”  Now remember that those in Colossae believed that matter was evil as they believed that neither the good God nor a good emanation could have created all that is seen.  

            John MacArthur writes “By studying the creation, one can gain a glimpse of the power, knowledge, and wisdom of the Creator.  The sheer size of the universe is staggering.  The sun, for example, as a diameter of 864,000 miles (one hundred times that of earth) and could hold 1.3 million planets the size of earth inside it.  The star Betelgeuse, however, has the diameter of 100 million miles, which is larger than the earth’s orbit around the sun.  It takes sunlight, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, about 8.5 minutes to reach earth.  Yet that same light would take more than four years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, some 24 trillion miles from earth.  The galaxy to which our sun belongs, the Milky Way, contains hundreds of billions of stars.  And astronomers estimate there are millions, or even billions of galaxies.  What they can see leads them to estimate the number of stars in the universe at 10 twenty-five.  That is roughly the number of all the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches.”  Now as we look at the creation story from the book of Genesis and the day in which God created the stars it is as if it was kind of an afterthought for we read “He made the starts too.”  “God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also (Genesis 1:16).”

            We also see God’s wisdom in making the universe, which is the second reason for Jesus’ primacy over creation.  Donald B. DeYoung writes”  “A change in the rate of Earth’s rotation around the sun or on its axis would be catastrophic.  The Earth would become either too hot or too cold to support life.  If the moon were much near the Earth, huge tides would inundate the continents.  A change in the composition of the gases that make up our atmosphere would also be fatal to life.  A slight change in the mass of the proton would result in the dissolution of hydrogen atoms.  That would result in the destruction of the universe, because hydrogen is its dominant element.”

            We will continue looking at this second item in our next SD.

1/19/2017 12:11 AM