GOD’S WORD FOR SEPTEMBER 30 ~ ~ Psalm 8:3-4 ~ ~ “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?
From the book, “We Shall See God”
“God as a Master Artist”
SPURGEON:
Concerning the joy to which we are called, we would say, it is a joy in creation: “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth….I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness” (Isaiah 65:17-18)
I must confess that I think it a most right and excellent thing that you and I should rejoice in the natural creation of God. I do not think that any man is altogether beyond hope who can take delight in the nightly heavens as he watches the stars and feel joy as he treads the meadows all adorned with buttercups and daisies.
The man who is altogether bad seldom delights in nature. He cares little enough for the fields unless he can hunt in them, little enough for lands unless he can raise rent from them, little enough for living things except for slaughter or for sale. He welcomes night only for the indulgence of his sins, but the stars are not one half as bright to him as the lights that men have kindled. For him indeed the constellations shine in vain.
One of the purest and most innocent of joys, apart from spiritual things, in which a man can indulge is a joy in the works of God. I confess I have no sympathy with the good man, who, when he went down the Rhine, dived into the cabin that he might not see the river and the mountains, lest he should be absorbed in them and forget his Savior. I like to see my Savior on the hills and by the shores of the sea. I hear my Father’s voice in the thunder and listen to the whispers of his love in the cadence of the sunlit waves. Here are my Father’s works, and therefore I admire them. I seem all the nearer to Him when I am among them.
If I were a great artist, I should think it a very small compliment if my son came into my house and said he would not notice the pictures I had painted because he only wanted to think of me.
In doing so He would condemn my paintings, for if they were good for anything, He would rejoice to see My hand in them. Oh, but surely everything that comes fro the hand of such a aster in his works. Shouldn’t His people do so? He said of what He had made, “It is very good.” If a man thinks that what God has made is not very good.,” If a man thinks that what God has made in not very good, He cannot be very good Himself. In this He contradicts His God. It is a beautiful world we live in.
There are lovely spots in this fair globe which ought to make even a blasphemer devout. I have said, among the mountains, “He who sees no God here is mad.” There are things that God has made which overwhelm with a sense of His omnipotence: how can men see them and doubt the existence of the Diety? Whether you consider the anatomy of the body or the arrangement of the mighty heavens, you wonder that the scorner does not bow his hand—at least in silence—and own up to the infinite supremacy of God.
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Ps 33:6
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.
Isaiah 40:22
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
Isaiah 40:26
Lift up your eyes on high,
And see who has created these things,
Who brings out their host by number;
He calls them all by name,
By the greatness of His might
And the strength of His power;
Not one is missing.
Ps 147:4
He counts the number of the stars;
He calls them all by name.
Even the sparrow has found a home, And the swallow a nest for herself, Where she may lay her young— Even Your altars, O Lord of hosts, My King and my God.
Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.