Calvary Baptist Church

The largest object visible to the naked eye is a small patch of light in the night sky, known as the Andromeda nebula. If you can find it in the night sky, it will appear to be a single rather bright star. It is actually, however, an entire galaxy, quite close by as galaxies go: about 10 quintillion or 2.5 million light years away, and something like 600 quadrillion miles across or 220,000 light years in diameter. You get the idea.

No you don’t, and neither do I, because these sizes are just too large for our minds to grasp. The Andromeda Galaxy contains on trillion stars. You look up at the night sky and see a single shining dot in the sky, but that dot is actually a trillion stars clustered together in a single universe of such mass and proportion that our minds can scarcely conceive. Today, we can enjoy photographs of such astronomical wonders simply by googling ‘nebulae’ or ‘stars’ or ‘galaxies’ or ‘hubble.’ We can see pictures of size and proportion and beauty that will boggle your mind.

And it is by faith that we understand that the universe was created by the word of God (Hebrews 11.3). Furthermore, the universe remains; it is upheld by the power of the word of God. Our God made the Andromeda nebula. He made it beautiful, breathtakingly so. And He made it big. He threw out galaxies into the universe like grains of sand, as far out as the Hubble telescope can see. Today we can contemplate the immensity of God’s power in a way that people of previous centuries could not have imagined.

Our great God fashioned and formed galaxies so vast our minds can not comprehend them and he did so in order to demonstrate the glory of his own power, to give us reason to stand in awe of his own immensity, far greater than any observation science can make.

Andromeda exists; it is there, because our God made it. Our God keeps it there. And it is but a grain of sand in his hand. It is a piece of pottery he has made and placed on the table of the universe simply as a testimony to his creative power. This God is our God and he is a greater wonder than any nebulae our eyes will ever see. Our God exists and what’s more he speaks and he saves. God must not be taken for granted. God speaking to us must not be taken for granted. God saving sinners who trust in his son must not be taken for granted. Read the rest of this entry »

Who made you? That is the first question in the catechism for boys and girls, which is a teaching took that I highly, highly recommend for use in your home. The answer is simple and yet profound. It is an answer that all too many adults may have forgotten. Who made you? The catechism asks. God made me, is the given answer.

The simply truth is that each one of us are beings uniquely created by the All-Mighty God in his image and for his glory. This is a truth we desperately need to recover for it has nearly been forgotten in our day. The scientific establishment has developed intricate theories in order to deny this truth, for Darwinian Evolution to the Big Bang. The educational establishment resists this truth ruthlessly, involving court battles to keep God out of the public classroom.

Perhaps even more urgently the majority of people in our culture haven’t investigated the various theories of the origins of the universe with any real interest. It seems most of our friends and neighbors simply give very little thought to God as our Maker. Even those of us who profess Christ can navigate our way through a given day with little or no consideration of our Compassionate Creator. It is as if we’ve simply forgotten our Maker.

This was precisely the cultural climate 800 years before Christ was born in ancient Israel. The prophet Hosea pointed this out and called the Israelites to remember that Yahweh is the Creator. We can see this in Hosea 8:14 For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds.

It seems that in Hosea’s day the people were busy building bigger and bigger houses and developing more impressive cities and yet in the process had forgotten the One Who had made them. Because of their neglect God was threatening cultural destruction as a judgment for their forgetfulness. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most wonderful titles is given to our Lord, is the title of Redeemer. The Lord is our redeemer and Jeremiah writes, [Our] Redeemer is strong (Jeremiah 50:34). And yet this title, this word redeemer, is a bit foreign to our ears isn’t it? What does it mean for Christ to be our Redeemer?

The book of Hosea provides one of the clearest pictures of God as Redeemer in all of Scripture. To summarize what we find in chapter 3 again, Hosea’s wife Gomer has abandoned him for other lovers. Hosea finds her being sold as a slave. He buys her back for 15 shekels of silver, and a homer, and a lethech of barley. Hosea says, “Come home with me, now, and give yourself to adultery no more.”

This is a picture of redemption. The word carries the idea of paying a price to buy something back. This is exactly what Christ did buy bleeding and dying on the cross nearly 2,000 years ago. He bought back, with his own blood, sinners held in bondage to sin. Christ redeemed sinners like us from the power and penalty of sin bringing us back to God.

This is a marvelous demonstration of the mercy and love of God! When God by grace opens our minds to understand and our hearts to embrace Christ as Redeemer, we must be brought to melt before Him with overwhelming joy and praise. How can it but soften and melt your heart to realize that Christ, with his own blood, bought you, though you were destitute and undeserving?

Yet, it seems, that apart from some special work of God’s grace, sinners would not be melted by this truth. We find God’s desire to redeem in Hosea 7.13 which says Woe to them, for they have strayed from me! Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me! I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me. Read the rest of this entry »

What we have before us this morning is in many ways a rescue mission. I think that describing what we find in Hosea 3-5 as a rescue mission is faithful to the truth. Something of great cost and value has gone astray, is lost, and is in danger of complete destruction. This valuable treasure is incapable of finding its own way or saving itself, so at great cost another is compelled to go, seek, and find that which is lost and recover it, save it, and bring it back.

Some of the most amazing pictures I’ve ever seen were taken by the Hubble Space telescope. Unbelievable pictures of outer space, dying planets, galaxies, and pillars are now easily accessible because of the Hubble Telescope. The Hubble Telescope weighs 12-tons and originally cost $1.5 billion! The Hubble has been in orbit for about 16 years and has been serviced by Space Shuttle flights several times over those years.

For the past several years, however, the scientific community has been lobbying for more money from the government to complete one final Space Shuttle flight to ‘rescue’ the Hubble Telescope. Apart from a final rescue mission, the telescope will be lost in outer space, having lost its ability to communicate back to earth forever. Plans are still being made to actually attempt a final rescue mission.

I think that gets at the idea we find in Hosea 3-5. In Old Testament, God created his people, Israel. The people are a treasure immensely valuable to him. Yet, the people have lost their way and are in desperate need of the rescue only God can provide. Yet, strangely enough in this story, the people of God resist being rescued and prefer to drift away from God indefinitely to their own destruction. Read the rest of this entry »