The Message

We are continuing our message series on Creation, so hear these words from Genesis 1:9-12. "And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place; and let the dry ground appear; and it was so. God called the dry ground land; and the gathered water He called seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let the land produce vegetation; seed bearing plants and trees and the land that bear fruit with seed in it according to their various kinds; and it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with the seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day."
You know I have to ask the question, why did God choose the sequence that He did for each particular day and why did it happen the way that it happened? You know when I look at the creation according to Robert Anthony Schuller, it doesn’t look like that at all. But the interesting thing is God didn’t consult me as to how He should create the world. In my mind the logical process and steps would be to first start with the universe, then put an atmosphere around the sphere called earth. Then I would separate the dry lands from the waters, then I’d put the vegetation on, then I’d put the animals and the plants and then I'd make man. And there would be my six days. But, God’s six days are quite different. He begins spiritually with the light and the darkness, day one. Then He continues day two with the waters, the atmosphere around the globe and then day three, separates the waters from the land and plants. Day four, the lights in the sky, the universe, etc., etc.

I was recently recalling a memory, actually I was remembering the street I grew up on which was called Memory Lane. I remembered when I was in high school, my responsibilities included the gardening. I was my parent's free gardener! The nice thing was that my father designed the front yard to be basically maintenance free all I had to do was prune all the bushes and the trees and make sure they were cleaned up pretty good. Also in the front yard we had decorative strawberries. Now, decorative strawberries are really boring because there are no strawberries. The plant looks like a strawberry plant and you expect strawberries, but the strawberry season comes and there are never any strawberries. They are just decorative strawberry plants; the nice thing about it is all you have to do is pull the weeds out, so that was one of my jobs to make sure there were no weeds in the decorative strawberry plants. Then in the backyard, my father planted a dichondra lawn. Dichondra is like a little one leaf clover and it will grow a couple of inches tall, so I had to mow it and of course we had a push mower! I would mow it every other week and then around the perimeter of the dichondria lawn was the bare ground, which was to remain bare ground with no weeds! So in taking care of this yard, mowing and pulling weeds for several years, I developed a distinct distaste for pulling weeds. To this day I do not pull weeds any more! So, while I have been thinking about creation and taking this trip down memory lane, I wondered: "Why did God plant the earth immediately?" Then I realized that He hates to pull weeds too!

He didn't want a single moment to pass to let any of those weeds get in there and penetrate because He knew the laws of nature. He created them and one of the laws of nature that we know for a fact is that nature abhors a vacuum. God created this incredible planet with this unbelievably fertile soil and He could not wait a moment to allow even the slightest little inkling of a weed to creep into this beautiful creation. So He immediately gave it all the vegetation. That is the end of the third day.

Now what does this mean to us as individuals and people? When nature abhors a vacuum it means we fill it with something. Maslow's hierarchy of need is: physiological and safety, love, esteem and self actualization.

Physiological and safety, I put those two together because they're pretty much tied together. You have to feel secure and part of feeling secure is having your physical needs met. We look at the world today and there are many places in society in our world where these two entities are still the primary concern. How do I feed my family?

Yesterday I went and saw the movie, "Cinderella Man." "Cinderella Man" is about the true story of Jim Braddock, a boxer. It's 1935 and his family is starving, they don't have any money, they don't have any means to buy food. He is sitting at breakfast and he has one piece of bologna or ham. His daughter is eating her breakfast and he says to her, "you know honey, just last night I had this dream. I dreamed I had a steak and a huge pile of potatoes and I am so full I couldn’t possibly eat this, do you think you could help me?" The daughter gives him a big smile and says, "okay daddy I'll help you." So he gives his breakfast to his daughter. In another scene, he comes home to find his son sitting in the corner being punished. On the kitchen table sits a great big piece of sausage. It was stolen from the butcher. Jim picks up the piece of meat and he takes his son’s hand and he walks down to the butcher shop and they return it and they go out of the store and he says, "Son, we don’t steal. Understand me? We don’t steal."

When we look at the hierarchy of needs, we are tempted to revert back to the human entities of our need for existence instead of relying on God and realizing that somehow, someway God will bring us above that. God will supply our physical and our safety needs. It is His promise. He will provide for all of our needs, including our esteem needs our self actualization needs and our love needs.

Christ comes to fulfill all our needs. He comes with the promises from the Bible that we are loved.

I want you to read the following which comes from the Bible and realize you can rise above the feelings of selflessness and succeed the way God wants you to.

"I am God’s child, I am Christ's friend, I have been justified. I am united with the Lord, one sprit, I am free from condemnation. I am sure all works together for good, I am free from any charge against me. I am the salt and light of the earth, I am a branch of the true vine, I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit. I am a personal witness of Christ. I am God’s Temple. We hold on to these bible verses and we realize that in Christ we can overcome all of the needs that we could ever want; the needs of physiology, safety, love, esteem, and self actualization. The emptiness and the void are filled with the truth and the reality of Christ. God separated the dry lands from the water and set the vegetation upon the earth and it was morning, and it was evening, the third day.

Dear Heavenly Father we thank you that you are real, that you are here that you are our God. So continue to fill our hearts and our minds with your presence and your reality. Amen.