The Fingerprints of God
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Eugene Peterson The Message
But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse.
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Fingerprints of God
Weekly Bible study topic where we’ve been telling our stories of where we’ve seen God’s fingerprints in our lives. I have three ideas today. We see the fingerprints of God in:
Creation
No better expression of this than:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
The universe has the fingerprints of God upon it. It’s so obvious according to PS 19 (Ro says it’s plain to them because God made it that way.) The heavens, skies, all the earth, the ends of the earth. The work of God’s hands is literally everywhere. Even at night. Our ancestors looked at the sky a whole lot more than we do. That was their Netflix. They reflected quite a bit on the stars and what they where and what they mean. (Chumash rock with the big dipper reflected in it)
And many of our great poets have reflected on the beauty of nature and how it reveals God to us:
Thoreau: “Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.”
Emerson: “But if a man be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
Friends who live in the beautiful Pasadena area. Myself who gets to travel to stunning Malibu—don’t miss the beauty.
But some argue were people like T/E (or John Muir) really even Christian? Just because they talk in flowery language about nature and God? Some discussion (in the literature) about what we actually can know about God by looking at Creation. Do we really know the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Can we fully know God and “be saved” in that knowledge of God, e.g., is that the full knowledge of God?
(Leon Morris) There are things about God which cannot be made known in the natural order, but what can be made known God has made known. In other words what God wants us to know about him that is what he reveals in nature. *Well what does God want us to know? Ro says: 1) eternal power and 2) divine nature.
Paul’s word choices for eternal power and divine nature are rare in Ro 1:20. Think about the riches and the depths of these words.
Eternal Power: more common word “eternal life” has to do with the word for “age.” Paul is speaking about God’s essential nature and maybe wasn’t happy with a word with a connection to time. “Always-ness.”
Divine Nature: Only used here in the NT. Might be seen as a “summary term” for many attributes of God which make up his divinity.
This week can we reflect on what these mean? I can’t tell you. Nobody can.
In nature we see something of nature’s God.
Others
We see the fingerprints of God in no other person as completely and as fully as Jesus himself.
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
And Jesus not only reveals God to us, but he provides a model for how we ought to serve and live in the world. John provides us a definition of love. We know love isn’t a syrupy, sappy feeling. It’s not rainbows and unicorns. Christians use different definitions of love than the world does. Did a COVID “non religious” wedding so instead of saying “1 Cor 13 says . . .” I said “Love is hard work. It takes patience, kindness. I takes a husband to be not seeking his selfish interests, a wife not being easily angered.
They said, “oh Doug that was great.” Even non Christians know—we want to see in our spouse, in others a true commitment, a steadfastness, a loyalty—love and that only comes from God. We have to have that or life doesn’t work.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
When we lay down our lives for each other, we see the fingerprints of God. That’s who God is, a God who laid down his life. We show each other the nature of God when we serve each other, reach out to each other, take someone to the Dr. or bring over some food or rake leaves in their yard. In whatever ways we show those attributes of love we reveal God’s nature because God is love.
Ourselves (our circumstances)
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians: An Introduction and Commentary a. New Life from the Dead (2:1–10)
The noun used (poiēma) is from a different root to the ‘works’ (ergon) of the previous verse, and is found elsewhere in the New Testament only in Romans 1:20, where it is used of the works of God’s first creation. Humanity was his making at the first, and now, because that work of his was spoilt by sin, there is a new divine act of creation.
“handiwork” is also translated “workmanship.” A craftsman has been at work in his shop creating something intricate, useful, expensive. The word can mean “work of art” or “masterpiece.” What God has created is something to be looked at and admired. Can you imagine all of us standing around all day in the British museum or the Louvre having people come by and admire us? Groups on tours, groups with brochures, groups with audio in their ears telling about all the details of when we were made, the acts of service we’ve done, the love we shown and the sacrifices we’ve made.
Guess where the only other place in the NT the word “handiwork” or “workmanship” is used? Ro 1. Since the “creation of the world.” God worked the first time to create the world, it was spoiled by rebellion, and now he works to make a new creation in us-his handiwork. (2 Cor 5)
As we’ve gotten older we probably don’t struggle as much with body issues, self-esteem, peer pressure, but this is especially important for the young folks in we know who struggle with their identity, what they see in the mirror, their perception of self. If you’re around some younger folks this week. Tell them—God only makes the best. He only makes works of art. Only masterpieces. His fingerprints are all over us, his creation. He made us exactly how he wants us to be.
One commentator I read on this passage said when the president of his college retired there was one of those fancy paintings made of him and he paid a tremendous compliment to the artist. He said that he believed in the future when people looked at the painting they wouldn’t ask “who was that man?” but rather “who painted that portrait?”
That’s a great challenge: “who painted this portrait? I want to live in such a way that Christians / Non Christians alike don’t worry so much about what I’ve done or where I work or who I am but rather ask a more important question: “where did this guy com”? “who made this guy”?
So we see the finger prints of God in Creation, in others, in ourselves.