May 27: ACCORDING TO HIS PROMISE

“You are worthy, O Lord, To receive glory and honor and power: For You created all things, And by Your will they exist and were created.” Revelation 4:11

There it is again! The recurring theme of our God as the Creator is not only in Revelation, but throughout the Scriptures. It is for our good that we are reminded of the facts of creation, and the Who of creation. Our world, created in six days, was crowned with a temple in time: a seventh day created for rest. Was God tired? Not on your life! “The Sabbath was made for man…” (Mark 2:27). The reminders of this weekly seventh-day Sabbath serve as confirmation of the vital importance of resting in the Lord on His chosen holy day (Isaiah 58:13), the day that He blessed and sanctified (Genesis 2:3).

Satan’s attacks upon God as Creator—and specifically against the Sabbath—began with religious leaders adding countless man-made rules about Sabbath keeping. This made keeping the Sabbath very legalistic, stressful, and burdensome, leaving God’s people feeling defeated and downtrodden: the exact opposite of its purpose, which is to refresh and uplift! Jesus was often accused of breaking the Sabbath, but He was actually demonstrating how to keep it. He stood against the man-made rules which had been added as oral tradition (and later written in the Talmud), for these things sabotaged the purpose of God’s holy Sabbath day.

Christians, both Jews and Greeks, honored the Sabbath in the early church, just as they were taught. It was hundreds of years later that the day was changed—by man—to “the day of the sun”. This was just another angle of attack; Satan led the followers of Christ to adopt a different day (see Daniel 7:25) as a way of undermining God’s authority.

At the close of the 2300-year prophecy (Daniel 8:14) another attack came to the forefront: the theory of evolution. This theory portrays death as a normal part of development and removes God as the power behind creation. Some misguided Christians, swayed by this idea, have attempted to amalgamate evolutionary theory with the Biblical creation account. In this way, God is portrayed as deliberately engineering death into His perfect creation. But God called His creation “very good” (Genesis 1:31) and the Bible teaches that the tragedy of death came as the result of sin (Romans 5:12). These two things—sin and death—are inextricably related. We are given opportunity in this life to receive forgiveness of sin and begin living a new life whereby we actively participate—under the grace of the Lord—in doing away with sin. Death is a horrible enemy. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:26).

Yes, it is by [God’s] will [we] exist and were created. He is worthy of our total trust and obedience. It is His will to save each of us from sin and its devastation, and He has the power to do it! As we continue to examine the “already” and the “not yet” of Biblical prophecy, let us give Him glory and honor for what He has already done. And let us joyfully submit to His gracious power to rule over the glorious, endless future which begins today. There are still things to come in the “not yet” portion of His will….

Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. 2 Peter 3:13