Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 26 – July 1986
The Book Of Nature
Sermon by Rev. S. Cooper on Psalm 19 & Belgic Confession Article 2A.
Singing: 31; 30 (402); 208; 315; 488.
Halley's Comet has helped to put the heavens back on the map. Millions of people who seldom check out the heavens now crane their necks to look for the comet. Thousands from the northern hemisphere have planned special excursions to the southern hemisphere in order to get maximum viewing. Living in New Zealand has made it easier for us to check out the comet. My wife and I have seen the comet a number of times from our driveway in the middle of the night. Recently we took advantage of the invitation of the observatory staff right here in Palmerston North to see the comet through their telescopes. And all of this local viewing received a tremendous boost when satellite pictures of Halley's Comet were seen on our TV screens. Astronomers are ecstatic and say they have invaluable materials they will ponder for years to come. And this is only one small page of the book of nature!
Today we propose to look at the world around us as a book. Viewing the world as a book is an idea expressed in the Confession of Faith. Article 2 tells us that God may be known by us in two ways. First, we can know God "by the creation, preservation and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to see clearly the invisible things of God, even his everlasting power and divinity as the apostle Paul says (Rom.1:20). All which things are sufficient to convince men and leave them without excuse" (end of the quotation).
The Belgic Confession sees all of nature as a book, filled with characters great and small written as it were by the very hand of God. Halley's Comet is just one page from God's book. And by their own admission there is more on this one page than we have been able to read.
The revelation of God in the book of nature seems to be boundless and never ending. There are limits to what a man can know and comprehend, but there seem to be no limits to the book of nature that God has written.
The purpose of this message is to sensitize our hearts to the revelation of God that fills the earth. It is to raise our consciousness level to take in the glory of the Lord that surrounds us on every side. It is to become more aware of the works of the Lord in all the world. It is to read better what God has written in the book of nature. Of course, as the confession goes on to say in Article 2, God makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, that is to say, as far as is necessary for us to know in this life, to His glory and our salvation.
For now, we just want to say that there is the Word of God written, which is the Bible; there is the Word of God incarnate, who is Christ, God's only Son, and there is the Word of God, unwritten, which is the world of creation. Or we can speak in terms of the Word of God and the Works of God. I invite you now to join me in seeing the world around us as ‘The Book of Nature’.
1) it is a holy book
2) it never contradicts the Bible
3) it is written in a universal language
4) it is a damaged book
5) it is a book with no saving message
1) It is a holy book
We speak of the Holy Bible which is right to do so. The Bible comes to us from God. He inspired men to write it; it is God's book.
All scripture is inspired of God, says Paul. Holy men spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. We have no problems accepting the Bible as holy, even though it was mediated to us through the hand of man, perfectly guided by the Spirit of God.
What we want to see now is this: the world around us also comes from God. He wrote and inspired this book of nature as well. The book of nature is also a holy book. It comes to us no less from God than the Bible. The Bible begins with that awesome and dramatic declaration: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In the Psalms we read: “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” And in our text, Psalm 19, verse 1, David writes: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." This world we live in is God's world. He made it; all of it. He spoke it into existence. That is precisely why this world is a holy world; it is a world that gets all its shape and meaning from God. To sever any part of creation from the Creator is to distort the world.
God used men to bring the written Word of God, the Bible, into existence. But God did not use anyone beside Himself to bring the world of God into existence. Every titbit, every square inch of terra firma, every molecule of water, every comet, everything has been produced by the Word and Spirit of God. In other words: nothing in this world is not sacred. It is all holy; it has all come from the mouth and from the hand and even from the heart of God. His mind has made this creation what it is. Everything that has been created owes its very existence, and its place in the world to God. The birds, the beasts, the flowers, the stars, all of it is a marvellous display of God's craftsmanship. Day and night keep telling us about God, says David. The sun and the moon and the stars and Halley's Comet are like itinerant preachers. They use a portable pulpit. No, they don't speak words like you and I do; they don't emit a sound. They are silent messengers, without sound or speech, and yet their messages about God reach all over the globe. They never speak about themselves; because their mission is to testify to the glory of God. Paul tells us that ever since the creation of the world, God's invisible nature, his eternal power and divinity, has been clearly seen in the things that have been made.
The confession views this creation as a most elegant book. It's a book with taste, a fine book, an excellent book, that leaves nothing to be desired. It means in a word that God has made a most beautiful world. It's been one of our delights to be able to see some of the grandeur of God's handiwork in Europe, in Canada and the United States, and down under. The amazing thing about New Zealand, unlike many other places, is that you don't have to travel far to see something special. You only have to turn around and look around. There is beauty everywhere. And there is holiness everywhere.
We sometimes hear talk about the Holy Land, by which people mean to refer to Palestine. It would be far more correct to include other lands as well. Why not include Australia and New Zealand? Can we rightly exclude any part of this world when all of it has come to us from the mouth of the Lord? All of creation is a revelation of God. Flowers reveal God. Animals reveal God. Showers and sunshine reveal God. Man reveals God. The psalmist says that the trees of the Lord are full of sap. He tells us that the Lord makes the night. "How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.” (Ps.104:24). These are the simple facts: the world comes from God and every bit of this creation belongs to God. He made it. He has written every word on every page of the book of nature. Is it any wonder that we say this is a holy book?
And what kind of response should be forthcoming from us? We must be more reverent. We must be more in awe of the Lord's glory in all the earth. We treat the Bible with reverence and this is right. Should we not also treat the book of nature with reverence, a book that is filled with characters great and small, all written by the Lord Himself? We are all far too irreverent in our reading of God's unwritten word; we are far too insensitive to the glory of the Lord that fills the earth. We must learn to take our shoes off for we are standing on holy ground.
2) The book of nature never contradicts the Bible
It is a great pity that you always seem to hear talk about the contradictions between science and the Bible. Let me say this and be as plain as I can be. There certainly are many contradictions between what scientists may claim, and what some people say the Bible teaches. We grant this readily. There may indeed be conflicts between what we perceive the Bible to say and what we perceive science to teach. But I repeat: there are no contradictions whatsoever between the book of nature, and the book of grace. This is a sheer impossibility. If it is true that the book of nature is a holy book, because it has been authored by God Himself, then nothing that has come from the hand of God in creation, can ever contradict anything that has come from the Spirit of God in the Bible. Both the unwritten word of God and the written Word of God have come from the same author. Both the world of God and the Word of God have the very same source, the one mouth and hand and heart of God. If we go back far enough, all the way back to the very beginnings of time and space and matter and man, then we realize that everything has its beginning in the Lord. His Spirit and His will are behind it all. The world finds its origin in the Word of God. He spoke and it was so, he commanded, and it stood fast. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:1,3). Word and deed go together. They are inseparable. Can God's Son contradict God's written Word? Can God's written Word contradict the world that God spoke into existence? For various reasons we see conflicts and contradictions, but the bottom line is that there are none. Nothing God is can ever contradict anything that God does. Nothing God says in the Bible contradicts any of the ordinances of the Lord in the creation.
If you ask, which comes first, the Word of God written, or the world of God, the book of nature, then we all know that the book of nature predates the book of grace by a long, long time. No one can say how much time elapsed between the writing of both books. What is essential for us now is to affirm our holy faith that both books come to us from one and the same author. Only a careless reading of either book will have us suggest that the one book contradicts the other. The book of nature is a book with a far longer history than the book of grace. Nature is the foundation for the written Word which follows. God's works precede his written interpretation of His acts.
We know that the world has been framed by the Word of God. And we know that someday there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Some day God's Work and God's Word will be united in perfect harmony for all to see and revel in. Until that day we will just go on believing what the church of Christ has always taught: this world belongs to God and nothing in it as it once came from the hand of God can compromise anything in the Bible. And nothing in the Bible can compromise any of the glory of the Lord that fills the earth.
3) The book of nature is written in a universal language
We are told that the Bible or parts of it have been translated into over 1500 languages and dialects; and we know that there are still many dialects to go. The people who do such work in this area are of course the Wycliffe Bible Translators, for whom our churches rightly take offerings from time to time. In sharp contrast to the Bible that needs to be very painstakingly translated word for word, page for page, the book of nature does not need to be translated at all. It is already written in a universal language. It is written in every man's own tongue. It is a language of all the people, a language all people can read for themselves. The changing of seasons, the appearance of Halley's Comet, the flight of the birds, the fertility of the soil, the light of each new day, and the dark of every night, all of this speaks to everyone in his own native tongue. No one anywhere is beyond the reach of the glory of the Lord in all the earth. David tells us in Ps.19: "Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world."
This means that every person can be held accountable for the amount of revelation of God given in the book of nature. No one can ever make any excuse and say the book was not translated into his own tongue. The book is already in everybody's own language. Paul says in Romans 1 that God's eternal power and divine nature are clearly visible to all, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Everyone can know God from the book of nature. No one can claim that he can't read. No person is a block of wood. God's nature in the book of nature is clear for all to read. People can and even do know God. But although they knew God, says Paul, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, says the apostle.
For now what we want to confess is this: there is no man, woman or child on earth who is beyond the glory of the Lord that fills the entire creation. All of us are within earshot of His voice. All of us are being reached by this revelation of God. No one can claim any ignorance. Some people do not have God's special revelation in the Bible, but all of us have God's general revelation in the book of nature. “How majestic is your name, O Lord, in all the earth.” Yes, the book of nature is written in a universal language.
4) The book of nature is a damaged book
And here we reach a very crucial difference between the book of grace and the book of nature. The Bible is perfect and pure without any blemishes or imperfections. Unfortunately this cannot be said of the book of nature. There are no blemishes in the Bible, but there are blemishes in creation. Some of the pages of the book of nature have been smeared. And the message is not crystal clear. If the message of the Bible is clear, then we may say in comparison that the message of the book of nature is not clear.
And here we have need of Christian teachers and Christian teaching to enable our children to read aright the glory of the Lord in all the earth. Some of our members teach lessons from the Bible in our state schools. That is good as far as it goes. But what about the rest of the curriculum? It is necessary for all our youth to read the Bible aright, but it is also necessary for our boys and girls to read the book of nature aright. And who is there to teach our children to do this? It is not enough to point out Halley's Comet in the starry heavens, we must also read the comet aright and hear it telling us about the glory of the Lord. And this is true of everything in the book of nature. A truly Christian education wil1 not first of all teach the youth to read the book of grace, but to read the book of nature. Not only to see the first book as the book of God but also to see the second book as the book of God no less. To see the creation, preservation and government of the world, as a book that God is writing. And to confess that this book has been somewhat damaged; its message is a bit blurry.
Here we must acknowledge the effect of sin upon the creation. Man's rebellion against God has had a damaging effect upon all of nature. In fact, we may even say, a devastating effect. Nothing has remained the same after sin entered the world. How do we know this? Paul writes that the whole creation groans and travails in pain up until now. (Rom.8:22) We are not always able to point out all the incursions of sin into the creation. Who can really say how the stars have been affected by man's rebellion? There is something about the entire world order that needs to be redeemed. The world needs restoration. There is a ‘sin smog’ that now shrouds the world. The world we see today is not exactly the same world as it once came from the hand of God. It's a damaged world, a world that sin has shaken to its foundations.
There are indeed some awesomely beautiful places in the world. I have seen many spectacular sights right here in New Zealand. More glory and beauty than one soul can absorb. But we must still say that this world is no more Paradise. It is Paradise lost. And it must be Paradise regained. We're on the way. Paradise is coming back again. And the next time it will be even better than the first time. Much better. Because the next Paradise will be unlosable. It will be here forever. And that's already a big difference from the first one. Not only is the glory of this world tarnished in some way by the presence of sin, but you and I no longer have the 20-20 vision of our first parents. We all have cataracts. We cannot see all the glory of the Lord that is there to see. Not only is there a curse over the creation, but there is also a veil over our eyes. Theologians speak of the noetic effects of sin. This refers to the fact that sin has also darkened man's mind. We squint at the book of nature. Its pages appear blurry to us. Paul even speaks about our minds being blinded, so that we do not see and we do not understand. Even if the book of nature was perfect, which it is no longer, you and I would not be able to take in all the glory of the Lord that fills its pages. The reason for this is simply because our minds and hearts have also been damaged so that we can't read the book of nature aright.
5) The book of nature is without a saving message
And now we come to the most serious flaw in the book of nature. It tells us a lot, but it is woefully incomplete. It doesn't tell us all we need to know. The book of nature is a great book, a wonderful book, a holy book, a book all about God, but if this is the only book you and I have, then we are in trouble, in serious trouble. In fact, if we have nothing else to go by, if the only book we read is the book of nature, then we cannot be saved. There is much more for us to learn than the book of nature could ever teach us. The book of nature must be supplemented by the book of grace. The book of nature is inadequate and falls far short of what we really need.
Let me say this first of all: have you been aware of the fact that everything that has been said about the book of nature has been derived from the Bible? Already this tells us that the book of nature cannot be read on its own. We must read the book of nature in the light of the book of grace. The Bible provides a very indispensable window on the world. The Bible does not talk about itself. It is God's perfect Word for life; it is a lamp to our feet and a light to our pathway. The book of grace illumines the book of nature. The Bible casts light upon Halley's Comet. The Bible casts light upon everything in the creation, which the Bible is meant to illumine.
The Bible is the book for life, the book for all of life. It is the book for marriage, the book for education, the book for work, the book for recreation, the book for economics, the book for commerce and industry. Nothing lights up our life like the book of grace. Without it even the world of creation stays in the shadows, and our hearts and minds remain unenlightened. The Bible is essential to alert us to the Presence of the Lord in all the earth. The Bible like no other book will help us see the world as God's world. The Bible helps us read the book of nature for what it truly is.
We confess as Christians that the book of nature cannot save one soul. There is no salvation in the moon or stars. The world has been filled with the glory of God since day one, and for all these millennia not one soul has been brought any closer to God. No one reading the book of nature can ever be saved. Even though the world has been shouting God's praises endlessly, it has not helped to bring us any closer to God. What we all need is a Saviour. You and I desperately need Jesus Christ.
The good news we bring you now is this: Jesus Christ has come, and He is here to minister to you. The Son of God is the Word incarnate, enfleshed by the virgin Mary. Help from heaven has arrived.
Only God in Christ can reconcile all things to Himself.
No book of nature can deliver us from sin; no pages from that book can rescue us from Satan. Nothing in the book of nature can deliver us from death. It is a wonderful book, but there is not one single word in that book about Calvary. Nothing about the saving blood of the Lamb. Nothing about the sanctifying Presence of the Holy Spirit. Not a word about Christmas. Not a word about Good Friday. Not a word about Easter.
How can we be saved without hearing the gospel as it is portrayed to us in the pages of Holy Writ? You will never read a single word in the book of nature regarding God's love. John tells us that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Even though this entire created world is a work of the Holy Spirit, you and I need to be born again by the Spirit of God. We need the Spirit to write upon our own hearts. The book of nature is a great book, but it is not good enough. It cannot do the job we all need done.
It is a most elegant book, even holy and sacred; a book all of us can read in our own tongue, but it is flawed. Its edges are frayed, and its message is insufficient. Even for a fuller understanding of its message, we need the Bible. Calvin liked to speak of the Bible as a pair of spectacles through which we look at the world. Yes, it is a glorious book, a "most elegant book", to quote the Belgic Confession. But where would we be without the Word of God written? And where would we be without the Word of God made flesh? He is the one through Whom all things have been made and He is the one who this very moment holds everything together by the Word of his power.
He who wrote the book of nature now wants to write on your heart and mine. He wants you and me to be his living letters, sent out into all our communities, to be read by our neighbours. It's not enough to say nice things about the book of nature. Or even nice things about the Bible. Now that Christ has come into our world, and into our hearts, you and I must show that we are letters from Christ, written with the Spirit of the living God. God has sent us a message in the book of nature and God has spoken unto us in these last days in His Son. Have we gotten the message? And is God now reaching out through us to others around us with the message of His love and grace in Jesus Christ? We who have received his book of nature, and his book of grace, have more reason than before to live lives to God's praise.
AMEN.