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Introduction
Do you believe in God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth?
Do you believe that all creation had a beginning, exists in total dependence upon God, and operates under His complete sovereign rule every moment?
Do you confess your obligation to honor and obey, to worship and serve, to give thanks and glory to the God of all creation?
And do you also confess your comprehensive, repetitive, and horrendous failure to live up to those obligations?
Well, today we are going to explore the meaning and the implications of the very first stanza of the Apostles’ Creed.
Christians may confess together, “We believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth...” But what do we mean when we say that?
In what sense is God the “Father” of all humanity?
And is God’s relationship with Christians some other kind of fatherhood?
How does creation (including you and me) interact with and depend upon its Creator?
And what are we to do with the idea that God is “almighty” or sovereign over whatsoever comes to pass?
Lord willing, we will gain a clearer understanding of all this and more as we consider the Bible’s teaching on the subject of God.
Today, we’re going to study theology… but we think and speak in theological terms all day, everyday.
R.C. Sproul was fond of saying, “Everyone’s a theologian.
Some are just better than others.”
The word theology is the combination of two Greek words: θεος (God) and λογος (word).
So, theology is the word about God, the discipline of learning what God has revealed about Himself… in His word, Scripture.
Technically, theology is the discipline of learning and knowing what God has revealed generally - about creation, man, sin, the Messiah, salvation - and theology proper is the particular focus on what God has revealed about Himself.
As any good theologian will know, theology proper is where all theology begins and ends.
God Himself is the starting point, the regulating rule as we travel, and He is the final destination.
As the Apostle Paul says at the end of Romans 11, “from him [that is God] and through him and to him are all things.
To him be glory forever” (Rom.
11:36).
Let’s begin by reading Isaiah 40, a passage intended to be a comfort and to provide hope for the people of God who were presently headed for suffering under His judgment because of their sin and rebellion.
Amid all of Isaiah’s warnings of judgment, God also made promises of blessing.
But why should the people of God believe God’s promises?
How could they know He would be trustworthy?
What is the basis for reasoning, “God has said it, and no matter what obstacles we see to His promise, we know God will do it!”
Ah, it is because God is the Maker of heaven and earth… it is because He is the almighty God… and it is because He is the gracious and loving Father of His people.
Let’s read together…
Scripture Reading
Isaiah 40:1–31 (ESV)
1 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.
5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
6 A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
9 Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”
10 Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.
11 He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.
12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?
13 Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel?
14 Whom did he consult, and who made him understand?
Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?
15 Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.
16 Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
17 All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
18 To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?
19 An idol!
A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains.
20 He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot; he seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move.
21 Do you not know?
Do you not hear?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; 23 who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
25 To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?
He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
Main Point
God is the Maker of all created things, the absolute sovereign over all, and the gracious Father of those He loves.
I’m simply going to explain and argue positively for the claim of the opening stanza of the Apostles’ Creed… “We believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”
But I’m going to walk through it in reverse order… God is Maker; God is Sovereign (i.e., Almighty); and God is Father of all those He loves and draws to Himself through the person and work of Christ.
Message
1) God is Maker
A. Sea and sky and land
In the lengthy passage we just read (Isaiah 40) there are several places and ways wherein God’s nature and role of “Maker” or “Creator” are on display.
God is the origin or source of all “justice” and “knowledge” and “understanding” (v14), because no one “taught” Him or “showed” Him such things.
God “sits above the circle of the earth” (v22), He “stretches out the heavens… and spreads them like a tent” (v22), and He “brings out” all the stars (the implication is that He does this night after night, as it were), even “calling them by name” (v26).
All of this is to say that God is the one above, beyond, and outside of creation.
v12 in particular points to three elements - sea, sky, and land - to claim that God is the source of all things.
Isaiah says, “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure…?”
This passage echoes the same themes of God’s long-awaited response to Job in Job 38.
After all of Job’s sorrow, and after he’d been questioning God’s purposes in all of the pain he was experiencing, God finally spoke:
“1 the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: ‘2 Who is this that darkens my counsel by words without knowledge?
…4 Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
…5 Who determined its measurements - surely you know!”
“8 who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, 9 when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, 10 and prescribed limits for it… 11 and said… ‘here shall your proud waves be stayed’?”
To the ancient Hebrew, the sea represented total chaos and irresistible power.
The man who ventured out into the sea exposed himself to overwhelming dangers.
And even still today, mankind has hardly explored the heavens at all… much less conquered or tamed them.
The point God was making to Job is (I believe) the same point Isaiah is making to God’s people in Isaiah 40: God is the Creator, the Maker of all things… He is something altogether different - in power, in capacity, and in kind - than everything and everyone else you know!
Now, the implications of that truth are also similar in Job and in Isaiah… God is to be revered, because He is wiser, grander, and stronger than our wildest imagination; and God is to be trusted, because He is the Creator and Sustainer of all things - He is utterly sovereign… but I’m getting ahead of myself.
We’ve read in Isaiah and in Job that God has revealed Himself as the Creator of sea and sky and land (i.e., all things), but these are not the first place in the Bible where we encounter the doctrine of creation and God’s origination of it.
The first place we see it is in the very first verse of the Bible… Genesis 1:1.
B. The heavens and the earth
Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
And this statement sets the foundation for all that comes after it in the Bible.
Indeed, Al Mohler says (in his book The Apostles’ Creed) that “The entire Christian worldview [i.e., the biblical worldview] hangs on the Creator/creature distinction” (Mohler, 15), which is established in Genesis 1:1.
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