Overview
This Montana Christian Festival teaching considers the witness of the land and seas as part of the witness of God’s creation. Ian Thigpen considers biblical images of wilderness, land, seas, boundaries, stability, and the forces that shape the earth. The speaker connects observable features of the created world with Scripture, emphasizing design, order, provision, interdependence, and the Creator’s care.
Transcript
Approaching the Land and Seas
Well, we're not done because we do have a witness of the land and sea. And for our next teacher, he is a resident of Helena, Montana. So please welcome Mr. Ian Thigpen.
Oh, how do I start this thing? Julie, last night we were enjoying some fellowship and a topic came up. Ian has three things that he'll ramble on, whiskey, cigars, and the word. So I kind of need this guy to keep me in check.
Land and sea, let's talk about that. Something completely different. So in the beginning of my planning for this segment, I struggled with how to approach the topic.
There's a lot of good ways to talk about this topic. There's a couple bad ways that I kind of want to knock off the top. First, how many of you are enjoying your time here in the wilderness? I moved to Montana from Atlanta, Georgia, about six years ago.
And I came out here and I just wanted to recreate. I wanted to ski the mountains in the winter. I wanted to have a real winter.
Don't have those in Atlanta. And I was talking to my best friend over here, Eric, about this. And he loves to take his family with his wife down to the sea.
I don't really like going to the beach. But I get sunburned and sand everywhere and just don't really like it too much. But they love going down there with the kids and watching them play in the waves as they lap against the shore and enjoy the sunlight.
I'm not sure that that's how the land and sea, the wilderness and the sea are explained and how it's used in the scripture. It's a relatively recent development where places like the austerity of the wilderness becomes a place of recreation. It's only been like that for maybe about 100 years.
And we're very thankful that God gave us an intelligent brain. We invented things like technologies and cars and firearms and all kinds of things to keep us safe from the wild animals. But most of the time in the Bible, the wilderness does not mean recreation.
So we want to kind of get that perspective out. The other thing is, if I was to say the term heaven and earth, what's the image that pops in your brain? Is it the globe of the earth with oceans and land? And you can see the deserts and the forests and the clouds rolling around on the surface of it, hanging in the blackness of space. Is that the image that you have in your head? Because that is not the image that they had in biblical times.
That image started with a picture that was taken in the 1970s by some astronauts. It's called the blue marble. And ever since then, it's kind of dominated our Western cultural thinking on what heaven and earth is.
But that is not what heaven and earth is in the Bible. So let's explore what it is. Here's a couple of ways that we're not going to get into very much that is a good way of approaching this, but a little bit different than what we're going to get into.
One way is how Israel is the crossroads of the Middle East. It's actually the crossroads of that entire landmass. To get from Italy and Greece to Babylon, Persia, and Egypt, you have to go through a crossroads in the Valley of Megiddo.
And at that crossroads sits a small mountain. And on that mountain, there's a town you might have heard of, Nazareth. And because it is the migration path for all trade and animals, Israel is one of the few places where you have all of the flora and fauna from Europe, Asia, and Africa.
So trees that are prominent in Africa, you're going to find in Israel. Trees that are prominent all the way up in Germany today, you're going to find in Israel. It's got everything.
It's the crossroads of the world, literally. But we're not going to talk about that. We could talk about the climate and topography.
How the land was mostly arid and how all of the farming and the pastures were dependent upon rainfall for production. How the dry valleys were very hot. And how the farmers and herdsmen would plant their fields and move their sheep on mountain ridges and high plains.
And how in the covenant law, God says to Israel, I will provide the rain if you keep my covenant. But if you don't keep my covenant, I will hold the rain in reserve. But we're not going to talk about that.
There are many things like this that we could talk about. However, I believe that God would prefer that we talk about something a little less provocative, maybe. Rather, I want to look at some things that can help expand our understanding of how the whole Bible fits together.
I want to talk about the motifs of land and sea as they are symbolic setting for all of the activities in the biblical narrative. And other segments here in the Montana wilderness, we have learned about plants and animals are often used symbolically in the scripture to represent human behavior. One example is in Psalm 1, we see an analogy directly between a man and the tree of life.
In Daniel chapter 4, we find Nebuchadnezzar analogized as a wild beast. We've also talked about the human body and how the brain works. And in Robin's teaching, she talked about how marvelous and magnificent our brain is and how different it is between all of the other animals.
We're the only ones that can perceive God. Well, two of the things that we can do that is also unique is we can identify what symbols are. I don't think my dog can tell the difference between which bathroom he needs to go into.
And we also identify patterns, which is why we recognize music. And it's so important to us because the pattern in the music is like harmony to us. And that harmony and that pattern is one way that God communicates to us.
He shows us the patterns. That's how we see in the wilderness. Here we're surrounded by relative, I guess you could say disorder.
But if you look at how all of these things in the world around us move and communicate together, we see patterns. And that's where we see God. Animals can't do that.
So let's start going to the scripture by looking at the end to reframe our understanding of the beginning. Let's turn in our Bibles to Revelation chapter 21. Revelation 21.
We're going to read verses one and two. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. And there was no more sea.
The Wilderness in Scripture
And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. How does that mirror the marble floating in space? Heaven and earth is a figure of speech called a merism. It's also called in some, if you were to Anglicanize, I guess you could say, distribution or merism.
And what it means is a summary of parts representing a whole. So if I said lock, stock and barrel, what am I talking about? Does a lock work by itself? Is it the intended purpose for it to be separated? You need all of the parts to come together for it to work completely. And that's what heaven and earth is.
God did not design the earth to be separate from heaven. He designed the earth and heaven to work together in harmony. For he works with man.
Man tills the soil. He takes care of the plants. He gardens.
And he works with man to show him how to do it. The marriage illusion here is representative of God's eternal cosmic plan to marry heaven and earth. God living on earth in the body of Christ who is married to the righteous of Israel.
Israel is identified as God's bride throughout the entire Bible. And that's what the covenant is about. It's about the marriage relationship between God and Israel.
And the end state sounds a lot like the Garden of Eden. But as opposed to trees, it's a city on a low hill where heaven and earth are close together. Let's go take a look at Genesis chapter 2 and parallel these scriptures.
We'll read verses 4 through 6. These are the generations or the records of the heavens and the earth when they were created and the day the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, but there was not a man to till the soil.
But there went up a mist or a fog from the earth. There went up a mist or a fog from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. How does a fog go up on the earth? We'll talk about that.
Water is not included in this concept. Remember how it says, and there was no more sea? It doesn't say anything about the seas here. And a fog, a cloud, where do clouds belong? In the sky.
Where is this cloud at? And what does it do? Everything the cloud touches is water. And here we also see a poetic turn of phrase. It says, heaven and earth and earth and heaven.
This is a figure of speech called anti-metabolism or counter-change, which is an emphatic expression of that heaven and earth, meresmos. So let's go back one more page. Genesis chapter one.
We've already gone to this for so many times, but can't talk about this topic without talking about this verse. Genesis 1, 1 and 2. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was or became without form and void. And darkness fell upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Water is not included in the concept of heaven and earth in verse one. Rather, it is something that is merely an origin point for God's labors. And it's clearly not his instate desire.
The word spirit for the spirit of God is the Hebrew word ruach. And it literally also means wind and breath. So if I am talking to you right now, wind is coming out of my lungs that God gave me through the throat that God gave me across the lips that God gave me.
And God gave me also the power to shape the wind with the muscles in my tongue and my throat and with my jaw and my lips. So that you can discern something, that you can hear something. When God does this, it's creative power.
God's creative power moves and hovers like the turtle dove on the face of the waters. I want to do a quick overview of the events of Genesis chapter one. During my teaching, there's going to be a couple of places where I do a quick little detour.
This is one of them. Before I get into this, I want to talk about good and evil. The Hebrew words for good and evil are tov and ra.
Tov sounds a lot like that turtle dove. And when I say it, it has kind of a soothing tone. Tov.
Just imagine being touched by the cloud. Tov. Versus ra.
What does that sound like? Sounds like that war voice that everybody's trying to tell me to do in the army. On day one, God created light. Why did he create light? For the discernment between tov and ra.
So that you can see it. On the second day, he separated the waters. He separated the sea, which covered the entire earth by lifting waters to heaven.
On the third day, he divided the sea and brought forth dry ground. He cut it right down the middle and brought forth dry ground. And he populated his land with trees and plants, which produce good fruit.
On the fourth day, he established the light of the world. On the fifth day, he populated the heaven and the sea. On the sixth day, he populated his land with wild beasts and livestock and locusts.
And then he established a man on his land in his image. A bride and a bridegroom in the image of God. And then on the seventh day, God rested.
But where did he rest? He rested on a throne reigning as king and the mountain garden, which he had created. The Bible divides the land three ways. The mountain garden, the field, and the wilderness.
And we'll walk through these. The mountain garden represents the harmony of God's divine authority and partnership with man. It is the iconic, idyllic state.
God Establishes Boundaries
In Eden, man was to trim the bushes and the trees, tell the animals what to do, and eat of the fruit. The amount of labor involved is relatively minimal in comparison to the other forms of labor that we'll see. The garden also represents God's great abundance.
It's also the place where the relationship between heaven and earth is blended in the concept of the mountain, where God's dominion and man's dominion are blended together in a partnership with God as the head and a garden in the clouds. In Ezekiel 28 verses 13 and 14, Eden is revealed to be on a mountain in the context of a temple. In 2 Chronicles 5, 13, and 14, the presence of God was like that of a cloud, which moved from the inside of the tabernacle out to the congregation.
And it's referred to as the glory of the Lord and the presence of Israel. And that relates directly back to Genesis 2 verses 4 and 6, 4 through 6. The mountains and the gardens were not only symbolically representative of God's divine authority, Yahweh's divine authority. The symbolic representation was also used by all ancient Near Eastern cultures to include the Canaanites, the Mesopotamians, and the Egyptians.
The Bible identifies those paradises and mountains as bad kings, false gods, false authorities. And the mountains and the gardens of the Gentile kingdoms are often used in a biblical narrative to reflect God's persistent work towards his future paradise, a shining city on a hill. God also uses false mountains and false gardens to reflect the corruption events that took place in Eden.
In Genesis 13, 10, we see a correlation between the Jordan River Valley and the Promised Land and the Nile River Basin in Egypt with the garden of God. In Genesis 3, 17 through 19, we find out what happens when things go wrong in the garden after Adam and Eve are bitten by sin, bitten by the snake. God sends them away from his presence and into the field for labor, guarding the way back to the tree of life or to cherubim with a flaming sword.
So when things go south, you leave the top of the garden, you leave the mountaintop, and you head down into a field. The field represents the domain of man's penitent labor. Where a man in the garden, when man was in the garden, he simply kept the trees, kept the animals, and ate the fruit.
However, in the field, man needs to plow the earth, plant the seed, harvest the crops, process the grain, work through the cooking processes. Or if he's a herdsman, he has to tend the sheep, move them from place to place, tend their wounds, milking, calving, shearing, wrangling strays, butchering. Men share access to the field for mutual benefit.
After one man clears the grain off the field during the harvest season, the sheep are brought into the field by the herdsmen to eat up the husks and fertilize the field. There's a partnership among men. The amount of work, though, is sevenfold that of what you have in the garden.
In the field, men behave like the beasts of the field. They plow the earth and eat the grain that they plant. They chase after greener pastures.
The field also represents the place of the consequence of sin and death. The man must till the soil, which resists him. He has to fight against the rocks and the ground and soils, which do not want to bend the plow.
He has to fight against briars, which prick him in his labor. Ultimately, the field comes to represent gravedom because it is in the field where blood is spilt, offerings are made, and bones are buried. In Genesis 23, verses 6 to 20, we see pieces of silver used to buy a field to bury the bones of Sarah, Abraham's wife.
So what happens when things go south in the field? In Genesis 4, verses 7 through 16, Cain, upset that his offering was not respected, ends up killing his brother like a wild animal. And then God sends him into the wilderness to be a nomad and a vagabond, which brings us to the next stage, the wilderness. It represents nomadic wandering in a place of desolate austerity and the danger of violence.
The land is untameable, obstinate, irretractable, and the indigenous are also. And the wild men behave like wild beasts, killing and tyrannizing, and pride in sex-driven dominance hierarchies. However, if people follow after God's wisdom, then God will show them the way in the wilderness, for a time even teach them to clear field or perhaps even plant a garden amidst the wilderness.
Let's turn to Leviticus chapter 16. So when we think about the foundational scriptures of Christianity, we typically think about the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts. When Jesus thought about the foundational scriptures, he thought about the Torah or the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Leviticus is the hinge of those books. And chapter 16 is the hinge of Leviticus. We are at the fulcrum of the original given word on Mount Sinai.
Genesis 16, verses 21 and 22. And Aaron, the high priest, shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over him, the live goat, all the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their transgressions and all their sins, putting upon the head of the goat and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto the land not inhabited.
And he shall let go the goat in the wilderness. The context here is that the goat was going to be killed by the wild animals. It was going to be killed by the adversary.
You think this had an impact on how Christ saw himself, the Lamb of God? We talked yesterday about how, or I think it was yesterday, it might have been two days ago, it was two days ago, how the goats go to the left hand, but the lamb of God the sheep go to the right hand. So the righteous on the right is used in the context of the one that is supposed to be on the left. There's a fulfillment metaphor in that.
Isaiah 51, verse 3 says, God will turn all of the wilderness into Eden. And Genesis 6, verses 1 through 8, and in Genesis 7, verses 16 through 22, we find out what happens when you go even farther past the wilderness. Mankind's heart is only evil.
It's only raw continually. So what happens? The sea covers the entire earth. Sounds a lot like the beginning.
Verse 2, this mirrors the state which God had there, but God saved a remnant, Noah and his family and animals by twos and by sevens. The sea, along with wide flat rivers and big lakes, represents chaos and the ultimate worldly consequence of unbridled sin. Open water is the iconic symbol of welter and waste, the exaltation of violence and death.
Although not everything in the sea is a contributor to the chaos, the sea serpent is the symbolic potentate of the sea. The chaos king. And the sea monster moves through the sea, devouring and consuming everything in its path.
Reminds me of Jonah. And he turns the face of the waters to war, foam, and weltering violence. Consequently, the sea represents imminent death and the threat for those who belong on the land.
But the metaphor expands beyond just the water context. In Isaiah 17, 12 through 13 reads, woe to the multitude of many people, which make a noise like the sea. Isaiah 23, 11 reads, he stretched out his hand over the sea.
He shook the kingdoms. Psalm 69, one through four says, save me from the flood. They that hate me are as the hairs of my head.
And Psalm 69, 14 and 15, we see deep waters are the people that hate the Psalmist. So what happens when things get this bad? Genesis eight, verses one through three, give us an insight. A wind passes over the waters.
Stability, Change, and Natural Forces
Sound familiar? And dry land appears. Harkens back to Genesis chapter one, verses two and Genesis one, nine. So what does this all mean? Well, Job is a good example.
You've got the behemoth, the iconic wild beast of all of the different things that can go wild and in the world or in the wilderness. And you have the Leviathan, who can draw it up? Who's got the hook? Who can pull it up to the surface? No man can do that, but God can take care of it. It's nothing to God.
God is the one that's in charge. He's the one that has the power over everything. We walk through this pattern here from Genesis two to Genesis eight.
However, the pattern then reverses from Genesis eight to Genesis 50. From the sins of Noah, we end up going from what should have been a new paradise type setting to the Tower of Babel, where they're trying to recreate all of the destruction that led to the flood in the first place. And there God divided the tongues of men.
He split them up. So you're not going to be able to communicate effectively. Then Abraham is called out and he's promised this land, Canaanites.
It's like, we're going to give you this land. It's a land of goat milk and date honey. There's a lot of field imagery in there.
And then we end up in an Edenic or an Eden-like paradise at the end of the book, where Joseph brings in 12 patriarchs and says, we're going to take care of you. We've got plenty of food. You're going to be fine.
It sounds a lot like the paradise of God. And it harkens back to that Genesis 13, 10 verse we looked at, where it correlates the garden of God to the Nile River. So we went from Eden to the field, to the wilderness, to the sea.
And then we went back to straight from the sea, to the wilderness of Babylon, to the field of Canaan's land, to a paradise in Egypt. The relationship of these four symbolic settings is used throughout the biblical narrative in a pattern that is very clearly seen if you're looking for it. And it highlights the way of iniquity and the way of righteousness.
We see in this pattern, pick right back up at the very beginning in the next book, where we find out that garden of God that was taking place in Egypt, that's the sea. It's not the real garden. Exodus 2, 10, Moses is raised up in a false Edenic state.
He's raised in a house of Pharaoh and he's educated and he's educated on things like British literature and, you know, American led and gender studies. Now, what is knowledge in this time and era? It's theology. He's taught the theology of Egypt.
He's taught the theology of the Canaanites, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and how they all work and what's different between them. Moses is fully instructed in how all of these metaphors and symbols from all of these competing theological ideas. He learns how all these things work.
But where is he at? He's in the house of Pharaoh and Pharaoh is the incarnate son of a god. Not El, the most high. He's the creator god of the Egyptians and his name is Ra.
And on Pharaoh's diadem, on his crown, there's a serpent, a cobra with its wings furled. Ready to attack. Pharaoh is also frequently referred to as Egypt because he's the potentate of Egypt.
In Jeremiah 46 verses 7 to 8, we see Egypt, a reference to Pharaoh, rises up like a flood and his waters move like rivers. And he says, I will go up and I will cover the earth. The waters will cover the earth.
I will destroy the city and the inhabitants thereof. The term rises up is actually a design pattern in the Bible. It's used in many places in the scripture and it's a reference to a cobra rising up to strike.
So we see here that the flood narrative is what's going on in the first chapters of Genesis. In chapter 2, we find out there's a guy named this guy, Moses. He ends up slaying a guy in a field.
Sounds like Cain. And then Exodus 2.15, Moses flees to where? The wilderness of Midian. Sounds like the pattern is repeating.
Exodus 18.3, Moses names one of his sons. He names his son Gershom, which means I have been a vagabond and a sojourner in a strange territory, nomadic wilderness. However, instead of ending up in the sea, which is what the pattern would suggest, he comes across a mountain and in the middle of the wilderness and he meets God.
He meets El Shaddai. And God tells him through a burning branch, Egypt has become or that Pharaoh has become essentially the Leviathan. He's become the embodiment of chaos.
Subsequently, plagues happen. You might be familiar with them. And God takes this guy, Pharaoh, and he breaks him in the sea.
He takes the Leviathan and uses the sea to kill him. Psalm 74, Isaiah 27, and Isaiah 51 all associate Pharaoh with the Leviathan of the river. And God crushed him like a pot on a rock in the sea.
Exodus 19, Israel then travels through the wilderness to a plain at the foot of Mount Sinai in the wilderness. However, Israel doesn't listen to the word of God. So God provides ordinances, wisdom guidance, the law regarding proper behavior for maintaining his covenant relationship with him.
And he gives him a tabernacle that has a lot of symbolic meaning. In Numbers 21, we see an event that is important enough to kind of highlight. As Israel's traveling through the wilderness, some snakes come out, fiery serpents, and they're latching onto people and they're dying.
And that makes us think of what happened in Eden. So what does he do? Well, we got the Ark of the Covenant and the tabernacle. All of these things are here.
But he doesn't say go to the tabernacle. Don't bring out the Ark of the Covenant. That's not what he said.
He says, do something pretty strange. He says, I want you to get a bunch of coins together. I'll bring all these fancy metals.
The Land and Sea as Biblical Images
I want you to melt it down and I want you to beat it into a serpent. And I want you to hang that metal serpent, shiny metal serpent on a branch, on a pole. And anybody that looks on that shiny snake on a stick, they're going to be like, oh, wait, oh, I'm healed completely just by looking on them.
So Numbers and Deuteronomy address the next 40 years of Israel traveling in the wilderness, where they learn in the wilderness, in austerity, how to live by God's covenant wisdom. And then they go into books of Jeremiah and Judges and Israel clears the land of giants. In other words, they clear the land of evil warrior kings who have armies which swarm like wild beasts.
They clear the field. And then Ruth, in the book of Ruth, the land and the Christ line are both associated with fields of grain. In the book of Kings, we see the temple is constructed where God's house becomes fixed on top of a mountain.
The design of the temple mirrors that of the tabernacle. The holy place, the temple building is littered with Edenic imagery. The Ark of the Covenant representing God's presence.
The golden lamp stand and tables of shoe bread representing the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. There are images of cherubim and many tapestries in the sanctuary and carvings on the building, all of which harken back to the Edenic setting. Outside of the temple, you have two courts that are married together.
The court of priests and all priests have to be what? Men. So you have the court of men and then you have the court of women. And in the court, they do sacrifices.
They bring domesticated animals and grains from farming in for sacrificing before God. Littered with field imagery. And then the outer court is a court of the Gentiles, which is accessible to the nations.
All the wild beasts of the world that want to worship God, they can come into. Well, then after this, Eden is reestablished on Earth. The Edenic state is broken when Solomon falls into the sin.
What does he do? He listens to his bad advice from his many wives from many nations. What does that remind us of? Adam and Eve. So after Solomon's death, northern Israel and Judah in the south, along with Benjamin, are divided into two kingdoms.
Northern Israel promptly becomes a wilderness. All of its kings are considered evil. They all behave like wild animals.
They worship foreign gods. They become just like everybody else. Isaiah 8-7 describes the Assyrian destruction of northern Israel, which comes relatively quickly.
To be like that of a flood, but it's a flood that will not reach or cross the boundary of Judah and Benjamin, the southern kingdom. God has set a partition, keeping the flood out. Judah and Benjamin in the south, in the meantime, are ruled by a mix of good and bad kings.
However, all of them sin in some capacity, and they continue to worship at the temple and therefore retain a relatively unstable field-like condition. But eventually they go too far, and Babylon comes upon them like wild beasts. And drags them into the wilderness in three waves.
Daniel 4-31-32 correlates King Nebuchadnezzar directly with a wild beast. We talked about that before. Then, after a long period of time, we have King Cyrus from Persia bringing his military in to overtake Babylon.
In Jeremiah 51-54-57, it is prophesied that the event will be like a flood. And then in Isaiah 51-42, it reads, The sea has come upon Babylon. She is covered with the multitudes of the waves thereof.
Then the Gospels take place. What's the first thing that Jesus did? Went into the wilderness for 40 days. The majority of his preaching and teaching in the first half of his ministry was at the Sea of Galilee, where he calms the storms with the words of his mouth, and he walks on weltering water.
He feeds the multitudes on fields of grass and preaches about the meaning of the fields of grain. Then he cleanses the temple. And finally, he's plucked up in the mountain garden of Gethsemane and dragged into the temple, which is run by men that behave like wild beasts.
People that Christ himself referred to as the son of the serpent. And the guards and the priests and the high priests all lay their hands on him violently. And the Lamb of God is sent out of the city where no man dwells by a fit man named Pontius Pilate to die for the sins of the world.
There the righteous branch of God was made to be sin hung on a tree for the redemption of mankind. So anyone who looks on him would not suffer from the bite of sin. The book of Acts opens in the presence of the resurrected Christ.
Then the day of Pentecost occurs amidst Edenic imagery in the temple on the mountain of God, Mount Tabor. And a strong wind fills the room where they were all sitting. The creative power of God's breath and the chaos which has ruled over Jerusalem is stilled by tongues of fire, a reversal of the division of tongues at the Tower of Babel.
And soon after, a man by the name of Saul oversees the murder of an innocent man, Stephen. It makes us think about Moses and Cain. Then Saul, in the way of the wilderness, meets the burning righteous branch of God.
And Saul is turned to the way of righteousness. Then Paul goes to the nations, the wild nations, and he plants gardens for the Lord. And the book of Acts ends with a shipwreck amid stormy seas.
Deserted on a wild, on a wilderness island, Paul is sitting by a fire. And a snake leaps out of the fire and latches on to him. And Paul is not harmed.
So what does this mean for Christians today? First, as a Christian, you cannot be kicked out of the garden. If you are bitten by the snake, if you're bitten by sin, you will not be harmed. You are not cast into the field or cast into the wilderness or cast into the sea.
Where you stand represents God's Edenic harmony. You are the holy ground made pure by the righteousness of Christ. Therefore, we should behave like what we are, gardeners in the wilderness.
Matthew 18, verse 8, Christ says, if one of your members offends you, prune it off. It doesn't say hack at the trunk because a twig is corrupt. Be a good gardener.
Do all things bearing that God in Christ is in you. And therefore, we should be in Christ as Christ is in God. In conclusion, always be a horticulturist of harmony and love.
Trusting the Creator’s Order
For no matter where you are, you are your father's child. And our will is always to do our father's will. Thank you.
Key Takeaways
- The the witness of the land and seas presents observable patterns that point to order, purpose, and design.
- Creation can be studied as a classroom that deepens respect for God when it is considered alongside Scripture.
- Natural systems display provision, boundaries, interdependence, and remarkable specialized abilities.
- Romans 1 supplies a biblical foundation for perceiving invisible qualities of God through what He made.
- The proper response is gratitude and worship of the Creator rather than worship of the created world.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the witness of the land and seas reveal about God?
The teaching presents the witness of the land and seas as evidence of purposeful design, ordered systems, provision, and care that direct attention to the Creator.
How does the teaching connect nature and Scripture?
The speaker compares observable features of creation with biblical passages, using the natural world as a classroom that illustrates spiritual truths.
What response does the teaching encourage?
It encourages attentive observation, gratitude, humility, stewardship, and worship of God rather than worship of the created world.
Scripture References
Romans 1:19–20; Psalm 19:1–4; Genesis 1; Psalm 1; Revelation 21; Ezekiel 28; 2 Chronicles 5; Genesis 2; Genesis 13; Genesis 3; Genesis 23; Genesis 4; Genesis 16; Isaiah 51; Genesis 6; Genesis 7; Isaiah 17; Isaiah 23; Psalm 69; Genesis 50; Exodus 2; Jeremiah 46; Exodus 18; Psalm 74; Isaiah 27; Exodus 19; Numbers 21; Isaiah 8; Daniel 4; Jeremiah 51; Matthew 18
Verification Note
Prepared from a recovered transcript. Verify proper names, technical terms, quotations, and verse wording against the original recording and a Bible before publication.
