God of Creation: A New Creature

God doesn’t only show up in rainbows and orchids. We argue He’s present in the places we avoid, the messy corners of life, and even the “garbage can” moments that feel too ugly to matter. Brother James uses a striking chain of stories from creation to challenge the idea that faith is for the uneducated, and to make a simple claim: the universe is crowded with clues that point to the God of creation.

From a worm no scientist can truly “make,” to the stunning reality of regeneration in nature, we follow a theme that hits hard for anyone who feels weak, ashamed, or stuck: God helps those who cannot help themselves. That biological picture turns into a spiritual one as we move to the gospel, the problem of sin, and why rules and religion can’t pay a sin debt. Only Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, suffers, dies, and rises again to offer eternal life.

Then we take an unexpected turn into chemistry and the new birth. A mixture keeps the old parts intact, but a compound becomes something genuinely new and different. That becomes our picture of conversion and being born again: not self-improvement by willpower, but a new heart and new desires through the Holy Spirit. If you’ve ever wondered how anyone can truly change, this message makes the case that new affection drives new living.

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Transcript

Why Creation Points To God

Beauty Found In Ugliness

The Worm That Regenerates

God Helps Those Who Cannot

Regeneration Across Living Things

From Nature To The Gospel

Chemistry As A New Birth Picture

What Real Conversion Changes

New Affections Replace Old Habits

How To Be Born Again

SPEAKER_01 0:54

All right, thank you so much for tuning in today. I'm Brother James. We greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. And I'm so very glad that you've tuned in today to the preaching of the cross radio broadcast. You know the Bible says the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. And the truth of the matter is that no church, no religion, no organization, no group of laws, no set of rules or regulations died on Calvary's cross to pay your sin debt. Truth of the matter is there was a person hanging upon the cross, and that was the person of the only begotten Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. He suffered and bled and died to pay the penalty for all iniquity, all transgression, all violation of the will of a holy and righteous God. And the Lord Jesus Christ, by virtue of his atoning sacrificial death, stands to this very day as the way, the truth, and the life. And no man cometh unto the Father but by him. You know the fool that said in his heart, There is no God, and we are warned in the Bible about the oppositions of science falsely so called. We are warned about the uh philosophies of men. And so many times in our world today, uh people who have a heart conviction that there is a God, a heart condition that that God must be knowable, are oftentimes uh ridiculed in their belief. Oftentimes they are uh forced to be ashamed or afraid of that belief, or at least to express it, because of the educated class of people in our world, in our society today, which make them feel as though somehow they were stupid or ignorant or unlearned because uh they don't have a perhaps a scientific education. Well, what we've been doing on the uh broadcast for the last uh several sessions together, in fact uh ten, this will be our eleventh in a series of programs entitled The God of Creation, and we are simply looking at some random and yet some uh very important facts and uh things about our uh creation, the universe that we live in, and we are discussing with you these things for the purpose of showing you that a man who does not believe in God has absolutely no explanation for his own life, much less for the life that he sees round about him. The uh sun, moon, stars, the plants, the animals, the birds, the bees, the fishes, all of these things are uh manifestations of the wisdom, the power, the might, the goodness of our great God. I want to talk to you today about uh beauty out of ugliness, and then what might sound as a kind of a strange uh thought to you, but uh chemistry and the new birth. Now, there's a story of uh about Dr. Lyman Abbott's granddaughter. Uh she had been told that God was everywhere and in everything, and that nothing could escape his presence. And one day she asked uh her grandfather, said uh, Is God in the garbage can? Now, you might not look for him there, but he's to be found. Even in the most unsightly places, a worm may become attractive when you begin to know it, for the body of a worm is one of the precincts of God. We prefer the beautiful but do not always recognize it. An artist sat in an alley and painted. He was working on a garbage can. He closed his eyes to the offensive. I don't know if he was able to close his nose or not, but he brought out only the pleasing. There is nothing that is wholly displeasing. The artist's chief interest was in the two empty halves of a grapefruit and the banana skin over them lying on top of the can. He brought out his idea of the beautiful so well that the piece sold at a good price and now hangs on the walls of one of New York City's mansions. The true artist can see beauty everywhere, and the lover of God and truth can find wonders in the most extraordinary places. God is in the rainbow, the fawn's eye and the orchid, men will tell you, but they don't like to think of God being in the so called ugly places. But those who have eyes to see can behold him. What a strange thought, God and garbage. But let's examine a worm. No worm was ever made by man. It is too complex and too wonderful for the greatest geniuses of our day. They can't even make a worm. If there were nothing in scale of in the scale of life above a worm, the thing would challenge the admiration of some superior intelligence. There is enough in the movements of this living thing to keep a student busy for long months. The digestive apparatus is more remarkable than any human machine ever invented. It has a nervous system and a little brain. More than that, the worm shows a power of regeneration that is amazing. By regeneration I mean that adaptation, there's that word again, by which it can replace lost parts by processes that resemble birth more nearly than methods of repair. In seventeen forty one, the scientist Bonet made observations that have been repeatedly confirmed since. He cut a common earthworm in two, and the anterior or forward half grew a completed body with a tail, and the posterior half grew a completed body with a head. After that he cut the worms into four, eight, up to fourteen pieces, and each division developed all the lacking parts, that is each part reproduced all the lost segments. And this was always in respect to the law of polarity. A section taken from the middle of the worm always grew a head on the anterior end and a tail on the posterior end. The segment never makes a mistake. Such regeneration takes place only in the lower orders of life. Higher orders are provided with equivalents or substitutes more or less dependent on the more highly organized nervous system, where volition affords a means of self help. Worms are helpless, and God comes to the rescue with special defenses. The worm is cared for because it cannot care for itself. A parallelism is found in the spiritual world. It seems that God makes a special effort in the interests of the helpless. The invalid often outlives the robust. In an automobile wreck, the baby is often the only one not hurt. The man who is not qualified to earn a large amount of money does not require so much to satisfy him or has a philosophy that makes him contented with what he has. The old lady who complains of her cough would die without the exercise the cough compels. The law of compensation is broad and deep. God withholds one thing to behold a better. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb is a common proverb of an earlier day. There's a sense in which it is not true that God helps those who helps themselves. It is better biology to say that God helps those who cannot help themselves. If it were not so, think about the poor worm or the poor baby, or the poor mediocre man. Ordinarily you hear people stress the human element because we're naturally egotistic. It seems that the world depends on us, and that if help comes, it must come through our human efforts. But egotism, which is a necessary element in human life and progress, must know its limitations. There is a God that shapes our ends. The provision of God runs through all living things. The race is not always to the swift, the writer of Ecclesiastes told us. God is not always on the side of the heaviest battalions, and if he only helps those who help themselves, he ordained an oligarchy of power. He will make the healthy healthier, the rich richer, the happy happier. There's no faith about that, there's no true religion in that. The devil will get the most of us, no matter what you do or say. So what's the use? Wouldn't that be the common thing to say? The devil's stronger than I am, uh the uh hosts of evil are stronger and more powerful than I am. What's the use? Well, fortunately, God has shown us in nature an example of what the Bible teaches, the Bible promises actually state. For example, He giveth power to the faint, to them that have no might, he increaseth strength. The Lord Jesus Christ said, Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. It would be a different world if God did not help the helpless. It would spell the final extinction of the great mass of humanity. But the Bible says of Jesus, the bruised reed will he not break, the smoking flax will he not quench, until he bring forth judgment unto victory. You see, biologically and spiritually speaking, it would seem that God helps those who cannot help themselves, that he provides for emergencies and makes up for deficiencies. The doctrine is writ large over the face of all the creation of God. If it were not so there would be no worms. This is the philosophy of the garbage can. Now listen. Regeneration runs a long course. If the tail and four legs of a salamander are detached, the animal will grow a new tail and four new legs, but if the leg of another salamander be grafted on one of the joints, the quadruped will accept the member provided and grow it on with no attempt to regenerate it. Nature does not waste its energy. Its tendency is to conserve, distributing energy where it is needed. Now, if God has given man abundant brains for his task, he wastes no special gifts on him. Where one has natural endowment, let him use it. What nature does is to help out the weak places. What God does is to supplement his original blessings. But the ability is nonetheless borrowed because one is born with it. A man does not make his own brains. If he has them, let him acknowledge the source, God, and do his best with them. In a case like that we can say that God has already helped those, making them able to help themselves. Now, if a living sponge is taken from the sea and torn in pieces and strained through a cloth, the pieces will fall together in a plasmodium, and the particles of protoplasm attach themselves to others and organize a new life, so that another sponge is formed of the living parts of the old. Thus the sponge gets itself together, we might say. After its mishap, a sponge, one of the simplest organisms, so much so that about all there is of it is life in bulk, and yet what a marvelous thing takes place within that sponge. Now the lily toils not, neither does it spin, it worries not, yet it's arrayed in such a way that Solomon in all his splendor couldn't match it for beauty and glory, Jesus taught. Life implies more than human power. The sponge cannot do what man can, however. It cannot keep God out. The consequence is that it lets God in, and its regeneration is complete. Now when you and I get into places where we are mentally or socially mutilated, perhaps to the degree that we seem to be torn in pieces, maybe if we gave up more to God in his way, instead of trying so hard to put ourselves together again, we would find the truth that God is woven in his creation to be an absolute reality. The Bible says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The wages of sin is death, and there's no discharge in that war. No man, no mere mortal man, no sinful man has the power to lay down his life and take it up again. But the only begotten Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, came into this world and proved that he was God manifest in the flesh. He said, I have power to lay down my life, and he did it. He said, I have power to take it up again, and he did it. He laid down his life on the cross at Calvary and paid for your sin. He rose from the dead three days and three nights later and is alive right now, and you cannot give yourself eternal life. You cannot give yourself everlasting life. And so God Almighty has made provision for your weakness. He offers a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will re that is again, generate, that is to give life to, who will regenerate you, he will give you a new life, a second life, he will born you again, if you will, according to the Bible term, and out of the ugliness of sin and death may come the beauty of a brand new child of God. Now, one of the greatest of the many miracles taught in the Word of God goes far beyond giving sight to the blind as Jesus did, raising the dead as Jesus did, cleansing lepers as Jesus did. But the greatest would have to be the genuine change of heart that Almighty God is able to work in a life. This trite phrase has lost much of its meaning because the mystery of it has been left out. Perhaps the most powerful element in true religion is the mystic element. If you squeeze that out, all the juices are gone, and the fact is that mysticism has done as much for man as science. An exact age has its limits. A mystical age knows no limits, building the seen into the unseen and opening vistas to the future. Man has always lived in the world to be, using the present as a crutch to hobble on or as a ladder to climb up to an inheritance yet to be attained. The Apostle Paul wrote in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new. What is a what is a new thing? A suit of clothes is new when it has not been worn, but the material was old before it was put together. You say your house is new, but the lumber has been sawed two years, maybe, and it took fifty years to grow it. Even man's theories are old, for they are made of the fragments of theories that have run their course in former times. It is necessary to refer to God's creation, to learn when the thing is really new. Man makes combinations and mixtures. Nature makes compounds, things actually different and without a trace of former characteristics. Put white sand and white sugar together and the result is a mixture, for the sugar is still sweet and the sand is still gritty, no matter how much they look alike. But on the other hand, nature takes two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, both colorless, odorless, tasteless gases, the one capable of burning and the other supporting combustion, two great high priests at the altar of the god of fire, and the compound becomes something different, something that appears and behaves quite in contrast with either of its components. This compound is water, a liquid that can be seen and felt, and that becomes the enemy of fire, the destroyer of what the two elements once ministered to. A transformation has been wrought. The former elements have passed away, all is become new. Now there are about ninety-two, as we said in an earlier program, there are about ninety-two simple chemical elements that are thus far known, as they are now known, they well, what how do I say this? The combination of all the tens of thousands of substances in the world are formed, whether liquids, gases, solids, whether organic or inorganic, whether terrestrial or celestial, they're all formed by these ninety-two chemical elements. The whole material world is spelled out in them, just as all the half million words in English are spelled with twenty-six letters and very in very much the same way from the point of view of illustration. For example, the change of a letter makes a different and a new word. H A T. Now when you hear that, you put it together and you get the impression of something covering the head. But if I substitute the I for the A, then you get the impression of activity. Out goes the hat, in comes the hit. L I V E means one thing, and L O V E means an entirely different thing, all by the change of a letter. Now, when the gentleman said to the lady whose name he could not remember, do you spell it with an E or with an I? She answered hotly, Sir, my name is Hill. And so on we could go with the illustration. The shifting of letters always makes something different. The principle obtains throughout the chemical world. Take some combinations of oxygen. The air we breathe is largely made up of oxygen and nitrogen in free parts, mixed, not compounded. But when something takes place in God's laboratory and the two are brought together in the proportion of one to two, the result is that neither oxygen nor hydrogen or nitrogen is left but a new thing, laughing gas. Or combine oxygen with carbon in proportion of two to one, and we have carbon dioxide that is the life of plants, or in proportion of one of each we have carbon monoxide, the fumes of which from the rear of an automobile are deadly. Or combine oxygen with iron, and we have ferrous or ferric oxide according to the proportion of iron, or combine it with sulfur, and we have sulfurous or sulfuric acid or oxide, and so on. Nature spells everything with simple elements, and every change of atom makes something new and different. Sodium is a white, shiny, slippery metal. Chlorine is a green, poisonous gas. When nature combines them, we have not a trace of poison or greenness or slipperiness, if that's a word, but white crystals of table salt to season our French fries with. Now, if you took a cotton rag and dipped it in a mixture of sulfuric and nitric acid, dried the rag, you would have the deadliest of known explosives, gun cotton. Or again, if you took cellulose, the essential of cotton, and add a little hydrogen and oxygen, and you have sugar. All our sugars, fats, alcohols, glycerides, and soaps are compounded of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, and these four elements are the main constituents of the protoplasm of the living cell. The point of all this is the difference between God's way of doing things in nature and man's way. Man pounds and sows and splices. He says he makes things, but when he is through building his house, wood is still wood, iron is still iron, stone is still stone. But when nature works, the old is gone. No element of a compound remains with its original qualities. The new is really new. The former things have passed away. Now the same thing obtains in the spiritual laboratory of God. Conversion, the new birth, if it is what it claims to be, should result in a mysterious change. Some mystic influence has converted traits of human nature into something else. The emotions are transformed so that one now loves what he once hated. For example, the Bible, Christian fellowship, Jesus Christ, and hates what he once loved. Alcohol, drugs, adultery, fornication, these things. The individual does not understand himself because he has changed. He says, I'm a new man, and he's right. For the union of the Holy Spirit of God in the human being brings about a new thing in the world. Howard Begby and twice born men treated this change as something extra human, a thing not understood and not to be accounted for on known psychological grounds. Of course, the behaviorist will dispose of it all with a blanket explanation reaction. Complexes and reflexes are made to cover a multitude of ignorances. But behaviorism has run its course and leaves some mystery still in human conduct. Why does a man addicted to drink suddenly stop? Why does a man who has held hate for years soften to an attitude of forgiveness and look with kindly eyes on his one time enemy? Why does the grouch become polite? Why does the thief become an honest man? It all belongs to the change that takes place, when the new heart replaces the old, when the Holy Spirit of God comes to live within a man and born him again, regenerate him, and make him a child of God instead of what he was by nature, a child of wrath. Jesus, it is said, was not the first to propound the doctrine of the new birth. It is said that it was old and pagan before he came, but you know what Jesus did? Jesus came and brought with him the power to grant the new birth. Now I'm not going to argue with you about whether or not some philosophers and uh some humanists and socialists before Jesus came into this world might have discussed the possibility of a new birth or a change of heart, a change of nature, but only the Lord Jesus Christ is able to bring that change about. This is not to affirm against the witness of the senses that nothing in the old remains in the new. The physicist would say that the electrons that were in the hydrogen and oxygen are present in the resultant water. Perhaps the change is due to new motions set up among the old electrons. Just so the new creature employs the eyes, ears, reasonings, temperament, and culture of the man that was, but something different has been set up to make them function to a different end. There's a waterfall in the southern United States which is confined to a steel tube. The water Water dropping six hundred feet is converted into two hundred and fifty thousand horsepower. The water is the same so far as the elements are concerned, but it has developed a power not there before. Men often ask, and their attention is directed to the new life, how can I give up the old? How can I break these old habits and vices? I I just don't think I can live it. It appears to them as if Christianity is a matter of elimination by force of will. But you know something the truth of the matter is God will give you a new affection. He will give you a new heart. Uh willpower might have its place, but you've got to remember that we are still governed by our affections, by our our loves and our desires. And you know something the Lord Jesus Christ, when he comes to live within you, will so fill you with a with a divine love and a righteous love that you won't have any problem whatsoever living the Christian life. Few men are strong enough to keep forcing themselves to do what they do not want to do. But if you change the affection, and you'll come to find that you do without effort what you could not do before because of the expulsive power, the Holy Spirit that drives out automatically these desires towards sin and wickedness. Maybe some of you, when you were a child, loved to fly kites, and it became a passion for you, and then you're a you were ambitious to become a man, and you remembered one day that men didn't fly kites, and it pains you and it grieved you because you thought, well, I want to be a man someday, but I I don't want to give up flying kites. But you know, you look back upon that now and you say, What a silly thing that was. Why I have no interest today in spending all my time flying a kite. I have far better and far more important things to do. Now what happened? Well, when you were a child, you understood as a child, you thought as a child, you behave behaved as a child, but when you became a man you put away childish things, not through will, but through the law of new affection. Something changed. Your motives, your loves, your desires changed. Certain typical college student had the walls of his room adorned with pictures of uh half-dressed women and athletes and things of this nature. And one day a friend gave him a picture that which was supposed to represent Jesus Christ. I'm not going to argue with you today on the program about whether or not these pictures actually represent Jesus Christ, but the young man found a place for this and uh hung the picture up on the wall. You know, it wasn't long before the pictures of the half-dressed women came down, and it wasn't long until the uh picture of the athletes came down, and the young man was asked, he said, Well, what happened? He said, Well after I took a look at the two pictures side by side, I realized that they just didn't belong together. They just couldn't exist together. And I thought that Jesus Christ was far more deserving of a place on my wall. He was far more deserving of my attention and affection than were the other pictures that I had there. Now you know something? Before you let Satan talk you out of becoming a Christian and being born again by telling you you couldn't live it, you couldn't stand to do without the uh pleasures and the sins and the habits that you formed over the years. Uh please believe me. Take not just my word, but the Bible's word, God's word. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. They that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, uh but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I am telling you on the authority of the Word of God, and by my experience, if you want someone who can testify to the truth of these matters, if you will receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, and thereby allowing the Holy Spirit of God to come and regenerate, to born you again and live within you, you will find the things of the earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. The love that Jesus brings into your heart for himself, for holy things, for pure and righteous and decent and noble things will be so great that it won't be long, listen, I am telling the truth, it won't be long until you will wonder how you ever had any desire for those old sinful pleasures at all. You see, Jesus is so much better, so much greater. The Christian life is so much more wonderful than the life of sin and worldliness that you'll wonder how you could ever have lived without Jesus. You'll wonder how you ever could have lasted a single day without the blessed fellowship of the Son of God. Now, it's so very simple to be born again. The Bible says in the book of Isaiah, God was ready to save me. God's ready to save you. Not only that, but he has already done all that is necessary for salvation to be made available. It had to be purchased, eternal life had to be available, and God's own Son has eternal life within him. Sin had to be paid for so that the sinner could be forgiven, and that sin was paid for on Calvary's cross, the price that was paid was the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. There has to be a desire and a willingness on the part of God to save you or born you again, and God is recorded in his word that he is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. All that remains is your receiving of God's free gift, which is eternal life. The Bible says, if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, you believe Jesus Christ was the Lord, God manifest in the flesh, the only begotten Son of God, all right? And shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead. Do you believe that the same Lord Jesus Christ, who died to pay for your sins, rose from the dead and is living right now? Alright, the Bible says if you believe those two things, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. What God is waiting for right now is for you to introduce yourself to him. God, I am a sinner who needs to be saved. I want to receive your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as my personal Savior. If you will do that from the sincere depths of your heart, you will receive the gift of God, which is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Thanks for tuning in today. Join us every weekday for another episode of the Preaching of the Cross Radio Podcast. For hundreds of hours of Independence Expository Bible teaching.com. Our terminal audio page, Bible Baptistoland. Or our website, BibleBaptistoland.com. Until next time, throughout Eternity, the Christchurch.com.