Show Notes
Westminster Shorter Catechism Q/A 9 and 10
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] And pray now and ask for God to bless the reading preaching of his word.
[00:00:06] Our heavenly Father, we thank you and we praise you for the strength of you.
[00:00:15] We thank you that as we consider the works of your hands, as we consider ourselves as your workmanship, reborn by the Holy Spirit, we wonder at the goodness, at the majesty, at the beauty, at the truth that belongs to you.
[00:00:37] We ask, Lord, that you would help us not to put our hearts, our hopes, in foolish things that come and go, that vanish and turn after themselves in the wind.
[00:00:51] But, Lord, let us learn to put our hope and faith in you alone, who are eternal and self existing and wonderful in all of your ways.
[00:01:03] Lord, help us to understand these things not merely by knowing the work of your hands and the things that have been made in the creation, but help us to know these things more deeply and to trust you for them, to love you for them, to serve you for them through Christ, the word of God, who has come, a final word to speak and to bring into being a new creation, glorified humanity, heavens and earth, bless us as we consider your word this evening. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:47] Linear hymnals.
[00:01:49] If you go and find the shorter catechism, which I'll do with you now, on page 968, we find a few questions, which we'll consider next.
[00:02:07] Eight, which we touched on a little bit last time, and we'll touch on a little bit this time, which serves as an introduction for the next couple questions, but also a nine. And we'll see how things go, perhaps some of ten in question eight of the Westminster shorter catechism, one of the doctrinal standards of our church.
[00:02:33] The catechism transitions from talking about the decrees of Goddess to asking how God executes his decrees. Let's read the answer together.
[00:02:44] God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence.
[00:02:50] And question nine says, what is the work of creation? Let's read this together.
[00:02:55] The work of creation is God's making all things of nothing by the word of his power in the space of six days and all. Very good.
[00:03:07] Question ten. How did God create man?
[00:03:11] God created man, male and female, after his own image in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.
[00:03:22] And we'll read one more question. Question eleven.
[00:03:26] What are God's works of providence?
[00:03:29] God's works of Providence are his most holy, wise, and powerful, preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions.
[00:03:41] All right, so the catechism talks about these two ways in which God executes or brings to pass his decrees in creation and providence. You can think of creation as the work of beginning things, and Providence is the work of sustaining and governing and continuing things.
[00:04:03] What I'd like to do tonight is read a number of passages of scripture with you. So this will be a reading heavy service this evening, but it's really just a taste of the passages that we have in scripture that touch on this amazing theme of the creation, the creative and providential work of our lord, throughout the scriptures, in many, many books, in various ways, in prose, in poetry, in history, in doctrinal statements, in confessional statements, all kinds of different ways. These doctrines are present, and they're important because they lay a foundation for so many things that we believe about goddess, we believe about ourselves and how we understand everything, the world that we live in and the one who rules it.
[00:05:03] A lot of stories, fictional stories, involve some sort of origin story, especially big stories, right? Superheroes, legends, these kind of things. And origin stories often tell you something about the character, right? The hero.
[00:05:23] This isn't just true of fictional stories, right? Well, but it's true of history, right? Where does the american republic come from? That origin story gives meaning and helps us to understand our lives.
[00:05:38] Where do you come from? Perhaps when your family meets, or maybe you have memories of this, of meeting and hearing stories of grandparents and maybe even great grandparents. If you're super blessed to talk about where you're from, where your family is from, who are you in this way? How did you end up in the places that you are, what that means for you and your life?
[00:06:07] There's all kinds of examples we can give, and the scripture does this as well. Not in a fictional way, not in a false way or I, or a way that is meant to just evoke good feelings in us, but in a way that tells us the truth about who we all are.
[00:06:26] By hearing the story that we have, the stories that we have in scripture, of our origin, of the beginning of all things, many, many, many things are accomplished doctrinally, practically. It's hard, really, to. For me to know where to start and to stop. But I'm going to do my best to give us some wonderful things to reflect on this evening. While not being comprehensive.
[00:06:56] One of the things that we see in the stories of creation, this history that God gives to us, about himself, about the creation of the world, is that God, most amazingly, does not have an origin story.
[00:07:11] This is one of the things that distinguishes him from us, right? I can name my parents and my grandparents and great grandparents, right? We can talk about the travels that they went on and how they went from this place to this place and how it is I ended up in Tucson. These kind of things, if we were really, really, if we had really great records, we could all trace our family lines back, even together, to this single point in Adam and Eve. One of the things that the scriptures testify to us is the ways in which we have so much in common, though from different families and different places. At the root of it all, we're all made in the image of God and descend from the same parents.
[00:07:57] This has a lot of implications for how we think about ourselves and one another.
[00:08:03] But interestingly, when it comes to God, interesting is not the right word, but it is interesting.
[00:08:10] He does not have an origin story.
[00:08:13] There is no, okay, and then these are the parents of God, and these are the gods that gave birth and gave birth to other gods and other gods. And this long history or something like that. No, we come to know something different about our lord and our king.
[00:08:32] So let's begin by turning to Genesis, chapter one.
[00:08:42] Genesis, chapter one. I'm going to read the first two chapters this evening, and I want you to listen with fresh ears.
[00:08:52] For some of you, perhaps these passages are very new. Perhaps you've heard them referenced. You'll recognize for sure echoes as these are so famous that they have been incorporated into all kinds of aspects of human history.
[00:09:13] So you will likely find something familiar here, even if this is brand new.
[00:09:19] But for all of us, there's something always when we come to these passages, to reappreciate, to hear fresh, to think about who it is our God is. And what is it he's telling us about himself?
[00:09:35] What is it he's telling us about us? As he narrates to us our own history, as the one who made us tells us where we're from, the kind of world that we were put in.
[00:09:48] Let's reflect on these things and give glory to God in our hearts as we hear.
[00:09:53] So, Genesis, chapter one and two.
[00:09:58] In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
[00:10:03] The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
[00:10:12] And God said, let there be light. And there was light.
[00:10:17] And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning the first day.
[00:10:33] And God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.
[00:10:49] And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening. And there was morning the second day.
[00:10:57] And God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so. God called the dry land earth. And the waters that were gathered together he called seas. And God saw that it was good.
[00:11:13] And God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit, trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth. And it was so.
[00:11:26] The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds. And trees bearing fruit in which is their seed according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening. And there was morning, the third day.
[00:11:42] And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. And let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth. And it was so.
[00:11:58] And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and the stars.
[00:12:10] And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth to rule over the day and over the night and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening. And there was morning, the fourth day.
[00:12:25] And God said, let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures. And let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens. So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves with which the waters swarm according to their kinds. And every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters and the seas. And let the birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning, the fifth day.
[00:13:01] And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so.
[00:13:13] And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
[00:13:24] Then God said, let us make man in our own image or in our image after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth. And over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens. And over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth. And every tree with seed and its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth. And to every bird of the heavens. And to everything that creeps on the earth. Everything that has the breath of life. I have given every green plant for food. And it was so.
[00:14:28] And God saw everything that he had made. And behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the 6th day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished. And all the host of them. And on the 7th day, God finished his work that he had done. And he rested on the 7th day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the 7th day and made it holy. Because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
[00:15:01] These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
[00:15:09] When no bush of the field was yet in the land. And no small plant of the field had yet sprung up. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land. And there was no man to work the ground. And amidst was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground. And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living creature.
[00:15:37] And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east. And there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
[00:15:52] The tree of life was in the midst of the garden. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
[00:15:58] And a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. And there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon.
[00:16:09] It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah. Where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Delium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of cush.
[00:16:25] And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
[00:16:33] The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, you may surely eat of every tree in the garden. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.
[00:16:51] Then the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him.
[00:16:58] Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the mandev. Then the man said, this at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
[00:17:48] Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
[00:18:00] Amen.
[00:18:09] There's a lot to reflect on.
[00:18:13] You see the beauty of the Lord, his goodness, his awesome power.
[00:18:19] You see the relationships that he makes between himself and between man.
[00:18:25] You see the relationships that he establishes between man and woman, between humans and creation.
[00:18:33] We see the task that he gives to mankind to do the work and to serve him. We see the patterns that God sets for man. A pattern of work and rest, a pattern of obedience, a pattern of fellowship and drawing near to the Lord.
[00:18:52] In these things, we see that man is made good.
[00:18:56] He's made in a place that is beautiful and holy, a place that tastes good and is enjoyable. A place that is marked by fellowship and obedience.
[00:19:08] In these things, we see that God is supreme.
[00:19:12] Man is honored in God's supremacy. We see that he brought all things out of nothing. When the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deepest, there was God. The spirit hovering over the face of the waters, even as he hovered over Mary before the Lord was incarnated.
[00:19:37] The Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son as well. We know from other passages of scripture that tell us that through him all things were made. He is the word that was spoken.
[00:19:50] He is the word that was spoken.
[00:19:53] And all things were made.
[00:19:56] Our self existing, eternal Lord is worthy of all of our praise.
[00:20:03] Romans 417 tells us that he calls into existence the things that do not exist.
[00:20:10] Can you imagine having the ability to call into existence the things that do not exist?
[00:20:18] How awfully we would use such a power. How terrible we would put it to use. And this is what the Lord does. And he does it with such elegance, with such excellence.
[00:20:32] Let there be light. And there was light. We see in the work of his hands order, dignity and beauty.
[00:20:41] In all these things, the Lord establishes a relationship with Mandev in which we owe him our worship and owe it to him alone.
[00:20:51] As the scriptures move on into history, the Lord warns us and tells us not to make images and to worship things that are creeping on the ground or the lights in the skies or anything in all of creation. Not to exchange the glory of God for things that are mortal.
[00:21:12] Not to exchange the glory of God for the things that he himself created.
[00:21:20] Here in Genesis one and two, right from the beginning of God's word, we have a call to worship him, to give him everything.
[00:21:29] For from him and to him are everything.
[00:21:36] This work that God did, he continued to preserve.
[00:21:42] As we turn to a passage, Nehemiah chapter nine, verses six and seven, one of the many passages of scripture that address these important doctrines of the Bible.
[00:21:54] In Nehemiah nine, six, seven, we hear, you are the Lord. You alone.
[00:22:03] You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth and all that is in it, the seas and all that is in them. And you preserve all of them. And the host of heaven worships you.
[00:22:17] Excuse me. He goes on. You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name of Abraham. You found his heart faithful before you and made a covenant with him to give his offspring to the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the amoritehead. And it goes on from here.
[00:22:37] You see what the Lord is doing. He is establishing himself through these words that he is God alone.
[00:22:45] He's the one who made all things, and he is the one who perseveres all things.
[00:22:50] There are so many false views of the history of the world, the history of our lives, the doctrine of God that are clearly shut out in these passages. Views which say that God created the world and then walked away are shut out because God created the world and he sustains the world. He works in the world even to the level of individual people and individual moments all the time.
[00:23:21] We see that God is supreme over everything. Views that say that God is supreme over this part of creation or that part of creation are entirely shut out. He is above all things because by him all things were made.
[00:23:40] The preservation of God we see is built in, even right here at the beginning of Genesis one and two. Some things you see he creates instantly in a moment, and others he uses means as things are produced according to their kind, seeds in the trees themselves that come up.
[00:24:00] The Lord, we see is great and sovereign, is able to call things out of nothing, to cause things to exist that never existed before.
[00:24:11] And he also is able and does use means.
[00:24:15] He uses a birth and be fruitful and multiply. He says to the creatures, be fruitful and multiply, he says to the humans, the seasons that are given for days and years. These things are the work of his hands. This reminds us not to separate the Lord away from secondary causes, not to separate the Lord and take him out of the things that he does when he uses means. It's a God thing when a bird is born, not just when a bird comes into existence out of nothing.
[00:24:51] It's a God thing when the trees yield their fruit and bear forth seed and get planted in the ground. It's a God thing when the storms come in and the sun comes up and goes down and comes up and goes down, comes up and goes down.
[00:25:06] He's intimately actively involved in all of it in such a way that if he weren't, things would cease to exist.
[00:25:15] They are upheld by his power, governed by. By his power, not just at the beginning, but in this very moment. Every breath we take, every particle of light that hits our eyes, it's all from him and through him and ultimately to his glory.
[00:25:38] The preservation of man becomes particularly important as we come to genesis, chapter three. I won't read it to you now, but I'll tell you it's sad story.
[00:25:49] Despite the goodness of the garden, despite the goodness of the commands that had been given, despite all that had been done, all that was very good in the goodness of God on the serpent, as we read in verse one of chapter three, who is more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. This serpent, who we learn later is the devil himself.
[00:26:11] He lies, tricks and deceives. And through those deceptions, man disobeys and he falls.
[00:26:21] And that promise that you shall surely die comes upon his head.
[00:26:27] But because of God's grace, he preserves them. Because of his love, he preserves us.
[00:26:35] His love for us and his love for a son that would one day be born, a son of man, a son of Adam, who would be born and would be the one that Adam failed to be, would be the human being to rule us, to govern us, to bring into existence the glories of creation.
[00:27:02] This, of course, God ultimately does. In Jesus Christ.
[00:27:06] In second Corinthians, we read that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. What an awesome thing to say, to be a new creation.
[00:27:17] There's like a second order creation that the Bible talks about, something new that is going on even now in our world.
[00:27:27] It's like there are these two creations and two ages that are simultaneously overlapping a world in which we belong to. The scriptures tell us when we belong to Christ because Christ came to bring about this new world because of the awesome, preserving power of God coupled with his grace. We all are here.
[00:27:52] We all live another day, and we all have an opportunity to trust the Lord and the salvation that he promises to us in Christ.
[00:28:02] If you would turn with me to Isaiah, chapter 65.
[00:28:11] Isaiah 60 517 25.
[00:28:16] Here this new creation is prophesied, a creation that points back to the old and holds forth a lot of hope for us.
[00:28:25] A creation that's similar to the old in that it's sovereignly overseen by the Lord, generated by his awesome power, all these kinds of things, but different in that it's fixed, healed and perfected.
[00:28:42] I'm going to read 1725 of Isaiah 65. Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.
[00:28:55] But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create. For, behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy and her people to be a gladness.
[00:29:05] I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people. No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.
[00:29:15] No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days. For the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.
[00:29:30] They shall build houses and inhabit them they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit they shall not build, and another inhabit they shall not plant, and another eat. For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord and their descendants with them before they call, I will answer while they are yet speaking, I will hear the wolf and the lamb shall graze together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox. The dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountainous, says the Lord, this is an awesome thing, right? That he promises to us a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth, where the former things are remembered no more, where justice is done and where there is hope and blessing and work. We see the undoing of the curse, don't we? Here, where no more is there a suffering, no more calamity in children laboring in vain, no more working under the curse. It's glorious and wonderful, these fantastic pictures of wolves and lambs grazing together.
[00:30:56] What an amazing sight.
[00:30:59] And here the Lord uses these earthly, familiar pictures, but pushes them together in a way that makes us wonder at what kind of place this might be, how peaceful and wonderful it might be, how true and glorious it will be. And it gives us reason to worship God alone even more, to give him all the reverence that he's due and to spend time worshiping him, looking forward to those heavens and that new earth that he has promised to us in Christ the Lord, raised from the dead, victorious over death, and promises to come again.
[00:31:42] James Fisher, in his catechism, on the shorter catechism, finishes the section by reminding us to trust the Lord, remembering that that same power of creation that brought things into the world is the same power that preserves the church today.
[00:32:00] It's a wonderful thought. And when we look at the things of creation, when you go home tonight and you see the clouds, perhaps the rain or the sunset, when you look at the mountains and see their great strength, when you see the birds flying around and animals give glory to God, knowing that the same power by which he created this world is the same power in which he is keeping you, preserving you, ruling over all things so supremely that he would send his only son to come and to die, so that all who believe on him would be saved.
[00:32:43] Let's pray.
[00:32:45] Our heavenly Father, we thank you for your mighty works in creation and in Providence, and we ask that you would bless us this evening as we consider the works of your hands, as we marvel at what you have done, as we consider the where we are from and that we are from you, lord, we ask that you would bless us and our understanding of these things and that you would help us to glorify you and you alone as the one true God who is forever and ever. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
