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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Nathan Hold

Nature and the Christian Life

Well, today we're gonna be talking about the importance of nature in the Christian life.

So we're gonna discuss how nature serves as a reminder of God's power, both as our creator and as our redeemer.

We'll talk about how nature is a tool by which God teaches us and a medium in which he educates us, and We'll talk about how nature is a tool by which God teaches us and a medium in which He educates us and we'll talk about how nature is a sanctuary for worship and soul recreation.

Dearly Father, Thank you for bringing us together today to worship you.

Send your spirit to be with us and help us to learn from your Word and the words that you have inspired and lead us to new conclusions.

Okay, So nature is a reminder of God's power as creator and redeemer.

Psalm 19, 1, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

It is God's creation that places us in awe of Him without ever actually seeing Him for ourselves.

It demands acknowledgement and no thinking person can really be satisfied without coming to a conclusion about how nature came to be.

And it forces us to either acknowledge the hand of design or deny the possibility of such.

He is the living God and everlasting King.

At His wrath, the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide His indignation.

Thus shall you say unto them, the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.

He has made the earth by His power and has established the world by His wisdom.

He has stretched out the heavens by His discretion." So here we could see that the characterizing mark of divinity that God possesses is his power as creator.

Nature is evidence of God's mark of divinity.

You can see here, but the Lord is the true God, dot, dot, dot.

He's established the world by his wisdom.

And you can see how it says, excuse me, the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, these are the gods that do not have the power of creation, they're not the true gods.

And so this is something that we could see in nature is actually visually seeing God's mark of divinity.

Wagner, in his book, the Gospel in creation, he writes, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

In this brief sentence, we have the whole of the truth of the Gospel summed up.

He who reads it or write may derive a world of comfort from it.

And this is very, a powerful quote to me because when God is the creator, we can have unbelievable faith that he is in control of every aspect of our lives and every aspect of the lives around us, the circumstances around us.

Wagner continues in this book, redemption is creation.

Redemption is the same power that was put forth in the beginning to create the world and all that is in it.

Now put forth to save men and earth from the curse of sin.

So let's look at some verses in this regard.

Psalm 5110, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

And 2 Corinthians 517, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

"'Old things have passed away "'and all things have become new.

"'For we are his workmanship, "'created in Christ Jesus under good works, "'which God has before ordained, "'that we should walk in them.'" We can see here that it's actually God's creative power that is responsible for recreating in us a pure heart.

We can see here in Psalms 33, By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth, all their host.

He gathers the water of the sea as a heap, and puts the deeps in storehouses.

Let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him, for he spoke, and it came to be.

So by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made.

Nature is evidence of what can come when the word of God is spoken, initiating his creative power.

It is the same power that is responsible for creating a new heart in us.

We can look at nature and be in awe of him, like it says in this verse, let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.

And when we comprehend that, this great power that was able to speak the universe into existence, it's the same power that is on our side to redeem us for eternity.

God's power exhibited at creation and exemplified in nature, It's the same power that is responsible for our redemption.

Thus nature, God's creation provides us with a visual manifestation of the power of redemption.

I went to high school at this academy in British Columbia called Fountainview Academy.

And we do a lot of camping stuff up there and we have a tradition called senior survival.

And this is where the senior class every year does like a survival thing.

So we go and do a couple days out in the wilderness.

We don't bring the normal things that you may want to bring camping, like a sleeping bag or mat or shelter or food.

And they don't tell us when it's going to happen, you just kind of have to be ready for it, like have your jacket and stuff ready, and then they sort your bag to make sure you're not smuggling any illegal food.

Anyways, I remember in my class we actually canoed to the other side of this lake to get to the place where we were doing our survival.

So we get there, we do all sorts of our stuff, build our survival shelters and everything.

And we had a great weekend, but obviously by the end, it had been I think 4 days, We were a little bit beleaguered, like we were tired.

And the morning we were going to be heading back to across the lake, we had to canoe back across.

Unfortunately, there was a substantial storm that had arisen on the lake.

And the thing about these Canadian lakes that I didn't really experience, like living in Georgia, the lakes are pretty calm there.

But these can become very tempestuous when the winds come in, you get quite a bit of like waves and stuff.

But we decided it was safe enough that we could go ahead and cross.

So most of our canoes, we just started crossing.

I crossed to the other side, no incident.

However, there was 1 canoe that was carrying like a lot of our stuff, and it was actually a catamaran-style like canoe, which is just 2 canoes connected with like a wooden plank in the middle, which allowed for more stuff to be piled on.

As you can imagine, this somewhat compromised the stability of the craft.

And as, And they were 1 of the last to leave, and they capsized about like 50 feet off the opposite shore.

And, you know, it's actually a very dramatic event because the water is so cold that being in there for any length of time could be life threatening.

So there was still 1 canoe left on the other side that came and started doing some rescuing.

This was the canoe that had our guy's dean.

He was there and they started doing some rescuing.

But it was about 30 minutes before everyone that had, there was 4 people in that catamaran canoe that capsized before all of them were rescued and taken back to shore.

And so that is, you know, we're obviously praising the Lord that everyone was okay and like, you know, we had all survived.

And I just remember we were waiting on the opposite shore, because most of us had already made it, for news from the other side.

And our men's dean came across in the canoe, and as soon as his canoe hit the shore, he just gets up and he starts preaching.

And he starts preaching about the conflict that's going on in our lives, and he's very passionate, he was a very passionate man, very passionate preacher.

And through this whole weekend, a lot of people were kind of having a spiritual awakening, And when he was done preaching, he asked for people to come forward for baptism.

And as soon as the first person was plunged in the icy lake there in Canada, the storm just a little bit on the other side of the lake broke and like a solitary beam of light came through the clouds and a little rainbow kind of showed up right there.

And you know, it may not mean much, but to me in that moment, there was no amount of doubt that Satan could possibly come up with that would have even made me come close to doubting that God was real, that God was powerful, that God was lovingly interested in his people.

And I know that, you know, I've been blessed with many experiences like this, and I know that as you spend more time contemplating God and nature, you will also have experiences like this if you have not already.

The heart is quickened and throbs with a new and deeper love, mingled with awe and reverence as we contemplate God in nature.

Nature and the Christian Life

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