Published: August 13, 2023 | Speaker: Tim Freitag | Series: God as Creator - Part 14 | Scripture: Genesis 1-2
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I think that's reasonable the thing that I want to track here as we go through this and we are going to use the analogy of human creativity we are a reflection we are a created in
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the image of the Creator we have a desire to reflect those things I want to be careful because there is very much truth in that and there is
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in our Salvation there is a way to reflect creativity back to God those outside of the church have a tendency to deify creativity in and of itself to make it its own God
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as Creator is not an attribute it is not of his Essence because if it was creation would be eternal Holiness is an attribute love is an attribute right
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creationism of choice it's an act it's not God is Creator yes
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but I would say you can't make that part of his Essence because he kind of like what Dave was saying he did not need to create it would be no less God had he created nothing
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you can't say that if his Holiness is justice is love his immutability right his his omnipresence his his omniscience
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is more an act of God than an attribute it is and I think the term that you used earlier I I do I appreciate that and I want to circumscribe it as
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it is made to express his attributes it is fundamentally is fundamentally you know an expression of will
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it is in some ways a mysterious part of God because of that tension that exists there that difficulty would it be splitting hairs but then say that an Ambit of God would be that
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maybe that he's not that Creator isn't calling him creative and putting hairs or would it be another
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one I wouldn't object other than it would be hard to state it explicitly that way from what is written is written his attributes can exist in himself
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so there are sure that that's kind of how they parse that is his attributes consist of that which he inside certainly love nap holiness but even Justice
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flows out of holiness
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extrinsic yes that's a good good way so I'm going to read a quote here it's slightly dense but hopefully intelligible
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it says to God as godhead as godhead appertain neither will nor knowledge nor manifestation nor anything that we can name or say or conceive but to God as God
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it belongs to express himself and to know and love himself and to reveal himself to himself to himself all of this without any creature
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kind of goes to what we were talking about he can love himself he can express these attributes internally as the godhead without any reference to creature or created thing
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and without the creature this would lie in his own self as a substance or Wellspring but would not be manifested or wrought out into Deeds now God will have it to be exercised and
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clothed in a form and this cannot come to pass without the creature from the from the 13th century
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basically God must be able to exist without reference to creature he cannot need his creation it's what we've been striving at this
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morning he can do all of these expression of attribute internal to the godhead the persons of the godhead eternally existing can communicate can express those
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attributes in love and in knowledge and in all of those things that are the Perfections of God
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but there's not really a way to express not a way that we can understand that would Express that indeed he's not he's not doing something without reference to
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Creation what they're saying in that second half is it would remain internal to him as a source as a resource as a but he has willed
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that it should be manifested in Deeds that it should take on form and purpose and that in so doing it must needs then
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have a target a creature that the way we read it in scripture I'm looking at Isaiah 43 and the verse that is coming to mind was
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he says everyone who is called by my name and whom I have created for my glory so he created people for his own Glory but later on verse 13 He says even
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from eternity I am he and he could have stopped there but he says and there is none who can deliver out of my hand I act and who can reverse it it's like
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he's he's saying I'm from eternity but again the expression to man of what that means that only he can deliver only his acts
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are irreversible he there is an ungrader so when we read in scripture we don't often just often just look at God
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just an attribute out there we how does that and he does that for us he connects it to us I think that's what they're saying I may
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be wrong but this verse seems to indicate that I think it's a good reference you had your hand there to me the remarkable thing is as soon as God Wills to create he creates
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for himself a need and that is the need that his creation be protected be protected because it cannot just be I created the
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dias I let it run on its own whatever I don't care right I'm curious he can't reject it as he could not reject Israel how can I though a mother
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might forsake her child I will not forsake you he puts upon himself an obligation
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that he did not have to take but as soon as he willed to create he willed to need and to me that's that's phenomenal that's such Grace it is profound because
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it makes people uncomfortable sometimes because we talk about God I mean we talked about this the idea that he is self-contained we often the the term is transcendent
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and yet he has tethered himself to his creation irrevocably more than once actually because he the whole purpose of Salvation the whole
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plan of those things he says we read was it a week ago or two weeks ago his reference to reference to um you know all right will will I abandon David's house and he said if I
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haven't made the Earth if I haven't set the foundations of the universe if I haven't done all of these things then I'll let David's line die out but I have so it's not going to happen you you look at those things but also
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the second person of the trinity now is incarnated in flesh that is an irrevocable connection to his
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creation that is astonishing but sorry you had your hand up did I miss your oh okay
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God does desire to be glorified I appreciate dad's reference there in Isaiah you know he created man for his glory and we read similar phrases in the prophets and in the Psalms
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he has made Man In His Image he has made man very peculiar um and he has made man for his glory and one of the things that sometimes makes people uncomfortable about this whole conversation of you know why are some saved and why are some not
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vessels of mercy and vessels of Destruction that some are purposed for the display of this and some our purpose for the display of this
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I had the Misfortune perhaps of hearing I think about a year ago or so I don't know how to describe him other than an apostate Jew
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making reference to having attended Temple Services as they call them for the first time in a long time and being struck how odd it was that they were sitting there singing These
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Hebrew praises Hebrew praises and he said it just seems weird you know why would God want us to praise him like what if what if you as a dad said to your kid oh you know tell me how great I
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am all the time well that's that's abusing your analogy he is father but he is not father the same way we are father he is the father he has created to be glorified to
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display his glory and to have it magnified because the tendency as human is to start from a man and reason up right not start from God and reason down
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we said we Center everything around ourselves we very much do we very much
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that's awesome well it is and it isn't because in the imitation of our heavenly father we desire that our behavior for our children be something that they emulate
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something good that they desire to walk in and it's the whole sort of Paradigm of of parenting we even read um Jesus is phrasing to them you know when
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asked for bread does he give his child a serpent you who are evil know how to be good parents how much more your father in Heaven in that whole argument it is so narrow
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because God also commands us to love one another to honor our father and mother to love Justice to seek Mercy seek Mercy you know it's as if they're saying all
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God wants us to do is love him and honor him and praise him and they just forget everything else God commands us to do which flows
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him yes him yes very much so so coming back to this though
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I appreciate your point because we when we look around and we see the way that Fallen man Reasons from himself it leads to many many pitfalls
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but if we start with God I mean what's the other the other psalm there's only 150 odd what's the other phrase that comes up there what is man
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that you are mindful of him well what is man man is an expression of God's will okay we talk about this everything when you think about this in the big picture
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scale we talked about creation we talked about Genesis 1 and God putting all of these things into into creation the vastness of the universe the heavens all that
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they contain the way that they are telling the glory of God as we read in another Psalm all of those things and yet he has made Man In His Image
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man is an expression of his will those of us who are saved we are an expression of his Mercy his immutable attribute of Mercy we are an expression of his
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of his purpose and his being now as Savior we walking around in the world we are not just one of a number we are an expression of God's will to be
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glorified in US if you can't start at the top and look at that I mean to be an expression of God's will for his glory
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if there's not a reason to him praises to Him I don't know what else you guys want from me um when he purposed to create
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this is what he created we said you know this didn't have to be the reality that God created God had the power to create any
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reality that he so choose we live in the one that he did create we both as individuals and as the collective church and that's where I'm trying to go before we you know run out
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of um sessions to talk about it is is the church as that expression of of creative action of God
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this is why salvation will not fail because it is a display of God's glorious attribute he will not allow it to be broken God will not allow his power as Savior
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to fail to fail because it is the display of his glory of his immutable attribute
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there's your assurance because it doesn't depend on you it doesn't depend on your ins and outs in daily life it depends on God expressing his will God expressing his being and putting in into reality
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we talked a little bit about our reflection of his image and creativity and we should not allow the corruption of of the world around us uh and and their deification of creativity as an
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idea to to vilify our rejoicing in in mirroring God I don't know I keep gesturing over there because I didn't actually put creativity up here
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you know the desire of man to create to express in material form whether that's music or visual art or construction or raising your children all of these things are acts of creation everybody
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has some thing they are doing that is an expression of of in the image of God
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Sayers in her book I'm going to read the quote so I don't mess it up I guess
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using the analogy of human creativity she uses the image of a writer because she was a writer I happen to be married to a writer so it makes sense to me hopefully it makes sense to you she's one of the writer's idea is
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revealed or incarnate as in it's made Solid by his energy then and only then can his power work in the world
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more briefly and obviously a book has no influence until somebody can read it
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impact and a response to Creation and the correct response the response that is demanded of man you can go back to to Romans again if we want and discuss you know man Dishonored God by not acknowledging him
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the correct response to God's manifest power in creation is to glorify
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no I don't think so because we have I mean Dad just read out of Isaiah man whom I created for my glory we have a phrasing we have expression of
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of God through his word and and sometimes very directly he desired he wanted to do it and he did create if we talk about God as Creator and we
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can find ourselves strictly to Genesis 1 and the Tabernacle in the temple and and and the end times you know the the Heavenly Temple that sends I think we've we've missed
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what undergirds all of that which is God desired to express God desired to have his will
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I think we're a man have gone wrong is trying to figure out why God will to create is a slightly different question than why God created created because he willed to but beyond
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that what in the mind of God and the godhead and perhaps that's what you mean is is we would be wrong because that is not
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oh we're trying to do to see what what is the goal to which God has willed to create it's under the rubric of his glory then it plays out in the whole history
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of creation both of man and of the cosmos ultimately culminating in Jesus Christ
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so the the two I'm going to erase a little bit here
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yes and I appreciate the admonition that I don't want to go beyond what is written yeah
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we live in a very significant manifestation of manifestation of this and we've put up the timeline before of before of you know sort of Genesis 1 2
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as best as I can understand everything that we have for time exists between these two junctures
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everybody okay with that those are our bookends um we exist we exist and Chuck was getting at this on Thursday and I think it's probably going to be more next week that we can talk
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we live in the age of the church we live now in the light of Jesus Christ who is the Incarnate Word again incarnate the word the Eternal
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and there is significant language and I may run out of sessions before we get through it all but there is significant language relating back to Temple construction some of the physical aspects that we have seen God patterning
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through the Tabernacle in the temple and those things
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we live in a spiritual reality of this as Chuck pointed out the phrase here is not so much his coming as his appearing we live
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within touch almost of that Temple that we see there and I'm going to argue before we're done hopefully that Pentecost The Descent of the spirit in tongues of fire is meant to invoke
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The Descent of the temple out of the heavenlies onto the Physical Realm that that is a manifestation of the church inaugurated in the same way that we see
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this the glory of God inaugurating the Tabernacle we see the glory of God inaugurating the temple but what I want to get at is this um
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what can we understand having been made in the image of God because where I want to go in the next session is is talking about the image of God now being redeemed the image of God as
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um as it is being reclaimed rebuilt remade the new creation as we read it we're told in no uncertain terms that we are a new creation
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I'ma read another quote before I come back to this one again borrowing the reference the frame of reference of a human writer
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in thought in thought the sense of the setting and one's knowledge of the characters are all present simultaneously present simultaneously in writing something of these elements
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has to be conveyed in sequence God exists outside of time he can hold
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we can't we are moving through it
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borrowing the the idea of the writer the analogy of the writer Sayers offers these points these ideas in expressing in expressing the nature of creativity in relation to
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the trinity every work or Act of Creation is threefold an Earthly Trinity to match the heavenly
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the heavenly first there is the creative idea passionless Timeless beholding the whole work complete at once the end in the beginning this is the image of the
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second there is the creative and energy or activity begotten of that idea working in time from the beginning to the end with sweat and passion being
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incarnate in the bonds of matter this is the image of the word
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third there is the creative power the meaning of the work and its response in the Lively Soul this is the image of the indwelling spirit and these three are one each equally in itself the whole
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work whereof none can exist without the other and this is the image of the
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in the analogy of the writer and this is what she frames it with I noticed this myself in uh referring sometimes people ask me you
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know what is what does Jenny do she's a writer well how many books has she written in my my immediate impulse is to say many say many because I live
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here with her the actual number that have made it through here through here is about three or four I think it is
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but in actual ideation I think it's about a dozen ideas that exist more or less end to end so what do we mean by this ideation in one sense
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one sense somebody pick a book name a work of fiction pick Shakespeare if you want Lord of the Rings all right if you say Lord of the Rings most of you have a concept
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of what that means you you're thinking of a book maybe you've read it or you've seen the movie you have some frame of the story some reference to the
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beginning to the end but in conceit of it in the ideation of it the making of it when it
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became an idea it did not progress linearly from here to there
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um the idea being we can say the Lord of the Rings the Rings we have an idea of what it means the author had an idea of what that story was what the story is
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in which we dwell but until the author has written it plotted it out it's kind of a running joke among writers has been apparently for a couple hundred years because I
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found reference to it quite a ways back the phrase is my book's all finished I just have to write it because the ideation is complete the story exists the setting the characters
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the nature and being of that concept that story exists but it must be taken through the
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sequential creative activity but that story then exists only even if it is written and published if nobody reads the book
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it effectively has remained here do you understand why these three this is part of where we're getting at it the expression of God's will
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these two and this is please ignore the actual persons of the Trinity first second just hold that for a second and don't jump at me without the physical manifestation of create creation
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God's attributes his purposes all of those things is is here because it was not expressed in activity and it was not experienced by creatures
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do you understand you follow that logic why God chose to do that I don't know but that he chose to do these things is
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evident and manifest the point that she gets at is this I'm running out of time here but she makes reference to this idea of
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to separate any of these points out from the other the other it is effectively impossible none of them exist on their own
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she says if you were to ask a writer which is the real book his idea of it his activity in writing it or it's returned to himself in power he would be at a loss to tell you because these things are essentially inseparable
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each of them is The Complete Book separately yet in The Complete Book all of them exist together
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he can by an act of the intellect distinguish the persons but he cannot by any means divide the substance how could he he cannot know the idea except by the power interpreting his own activity to
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him he knows the activity only as it reveals the idea in power he knows the power only as the revelation of the idea Ian activity all he can say is that these three are
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equally and eternally present in his own Act of Creation and at every moment of it whether or not the act ever becomes manifest in the form of a written and printed book these things are not
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confined by the material manifestation they exist in and they are the creative mind in and of itself and so it is the expression of it it is the return of it and where I'm trying to
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get us to is to think of this the impact the power the response of creation because we now live
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as Christians as Christians in the light of the Incarnate Word indwelt by the spirit able now to access the father
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to come before him in Pentecost we see very visible manifestation of the power and the response that it elicits in the
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people that man must respond what is the primary sin or trespass that they commit at
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Babel you cast your mind back to Genesis 12 11 11.
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um Genesis 12 starts Abraham Genesis 11. what is their primary trespass they say we will build a tower we'll reach up to heaven and do what make a name for ourselves it is self-glorification it is
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creativity it is exercise of of construction and of engineering and of of creative activity
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I'm going to mess up my own notes when I'm gonna do it anyways this is the trespass is to cross out God into creative
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activity in the Endeavor of these things in the reflection of them and say behold what I have wrought
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God confuses them God disperses them God says I won't permit this man must respond to the creative action of God and I frankly think as Aaron pointed out right at the beginning
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living breathing Humanity has no choice but to reflect to express that same it is a response to God's glorification and we have to deal with the power of
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the word the word um before we we leave this morning I want to do this in the kind of five minutes that we have left
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but the word the word itself the word made manifest made manifest we have we have in Scripture in Scripture use of the word both in terms of the Incarnate the Sun but also in terms of
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of the written revelation of God self-revelation in his word and it in and of itself has power
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but word in the general sense of the communication of ideas also by the nature that God has created in the world I think last week about the laws that he has written in the universe
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word and communication has power in and of itself
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foreign power of word is released for communication we use it to express ideas to express will and I've erased it to express thought ideation the word is the the
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manifestation The Vessel the tool that we use for this purpose
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when we communicate with other men that word elicits a response unless your comatose or asleep or not paying attention but it elicits a response the danger of word the power inherent in
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human communication is that it dwells in your fellow man it works in their mind it has its own Creative Energy once released they think about how many times recently
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in the last I mean this has been going on for for years and years I can point you back to Sayers writing in 1942 talking about the power of word looking at what's happening with Nazi
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Germany saying look at the outcome of words but you can also look at our recent past how many times have you heard people say it was a joke it's just words
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yeah they're words therein lies the problem those words Lodge in people's heads those words may only manifest themselves in the short term in terms of more
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speeches more YouTube videos more memes but eventually those words become actions every word Every Idle Word
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will be taken into account in the judgment but words also have their own consequence in the Here and Now they have an outcome they have an out
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working think about this what is the congregation's role in
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what are we doing there when we are being preached to are we receiving word is it working on our minds and our hearts with creative action
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there is no preaching without the congregation to hear can't think of any examples off the top of my head although I'm sure it's happened of preachers standing up and preaching to an empty room the preaching is happening in the
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context of communication to fellow men the idea the purpose is that it ought to be this word delivered to man
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but it still depends according to God's Providence according to his Good Will and pleasure on the creative activity of the preacher in delivering it of communicating it
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communicating it of using words to deliver it the word itself is timeless but preaching ought to be time we shouldn't it
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those words have existed in some cases for many thousands of years and yet God has appointed God has ordained that they ought to be preached
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Anew I mean have you ever wondered about this we have the scripture some of it was written down by Moses many thousands of years ago some of it only a few thousand years ago okay
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there have been a lot of preachers in between a lot of it's been written down heck a lot of it's been recorded now why do we still assemble as a body those
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churches that still do assemble as a body to hear the word preached is because that direct communication of the word depends on the reflection of
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creative action in the image of God it is for those people at that time mediated through
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mediated through the image of God in the preacher the congregation has a responsibility has a role in receiving and responding to it
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of Sayers uses this concept in her her description of a human writer but the idea that once read and digested there are there are
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secular philosophers who talk about this idea that a work no longer belongs to its creator its author once people have read it but the point being what you and I think of The Lord of the
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Rings is guaranteed to not be what J.R.R Tolkien thought of The Lord of the Rings but we still know that we're talking about the same idea right that there's there is a fundament
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underneath there that we are discussing in this case it is all of this that we've wrestled with this morning the self-expression of God's will
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undergirds the creative action of preaching and we as the congregation are meant to receive and return it in the same Spirit of which it is given and I don't mean like we used to do here the sharing time
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of well this is what it means to me no I mean in the receipt of that communication in your mind in your heart in the outworking of it in your actions remember what what
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are we reading in scripture don't be merely hearers of the word be doers be doers one complainer said that the uh the
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world today is perishing for want of good hearing good hearing not of good preaching both things are necessary both things
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are required are required the preacher and the hearers and they are necessary and both of them reflect creative action of the image of God
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I'm going to stop there for this morning so there's any immediate question or comment right
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it is and next week Lord willing we will talk about Pentecost and unity and diversity because we have one spirit and yet God by his Good Will and
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pleasure has chosen from every tongue tribe and Nation to make one people so I appreciate that we're gonna we're gonna close in prayer and turn our attention to the worship service this morning
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father we do thank you for your word for expressing yourself to us in a way that is intelligible in language that we can understand that we can read and comprehend by the ministering spirit that you have put within us
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father as we go now to worship you in song and in prayer and in the hearing of the word preached we ask that you would strengthen us that you would pour out
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your spirit on us not only your preacher but also your people that we would receive the word and respond as you have ordained that we
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ought that we would return that word Faithfully to your preacher with power in the spirit that you would bless this service this morning that it would redown to your
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glory that we would go from here equipped to glorify you through the weak ready to assemble again next time father we ask all of these things in Jesus name and for his glory