The Link Isn t Missing Lesson 3: September 18, 2014 God Is

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1 Women & More Lesson 3: September 18, 2014 God Is If we Google missing link we ll be linked to some very outlandish articles. For example, Richard Gray, in an April 3, 2010, article in The Telegraph announced that a missing link between humans and their ape-like ancestors has been discovered, and he displayed the very dubious fragments of indistinguishable bones noting that pre-human skeletons offer evolutionary clues. And on September 26, 2012, John Long in The Conversation reported that the extraordinary missing link between dinosaurs and birds is the 419- million-year-old armored fossil fish located in China with pictures as well. Leaving more questions than answers, Wikipedia tried to enlighten us: The phrase missing link has been used extensively in popular writings on human evolution to refer to any new transitional fossil finds. Scientists, however, do not use the term, as it refers to a pre-evolutional view of nature. Just what is a pre-evolutional view? In 1859 when Charles Darwin published his work, On the Origin of Species, he had admitted the lack of transitional fossils evidently there are many missing links. No surprise there! 1 Corinthians 15:39 stomach-punches evolution: All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. This tells us that man and monkey have different kinds of flesh! And back in the third book of the Bible God warned in Leviticus 19:19 Do not mate different kinds of animals. We know from Scripture God said don t do it! In 2014, there was a report of a donkey and a zebra mated. What God s reason was for us not to mate different kinds of animals remains safely with Him; we are to obey. Well, the link is not missing the link to everything it is God Himself! Scripture states: You are God and there is none else no other god! The Bible has the answer! And if we in our ignorance failed to recognize Him in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ the Truth revealed Him fully in the New. John 1:18 says: No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father s side, has made him known. Christ revealed God in Truth! Truth is older than error. The truth concerning Christ that was first delivered to the saints is not to be exchanged for novelties, said Matthew Henry. So it would seem to be, Christ or chance: Someone has said that believing in chance is like believing a tornado could pass through a junkyard and randomly put together a functioning Boeing 747. God is an Intelligent Designer, Who designs intelligently, and chance doesn t have a chance! Making the connection from biblical times and places, cultures and ours is God The Link.

2 2 When Jesus was still calling His disciples, He found Philip and said to him, Follow me and Philip followed. In John 1:45 Scripture says, Philip found Nathanael and told him, We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Notice that this verse referred to Moses and the Law of God and Jesus of Nazareth. In essence, Philip was telling Nathanael we have found The Link and He isn t missing! The find goes on in John 1:46 Nazareth! Can anything good come from there? Nathanael asked. Come and see, said Philip. 47 When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false. 48 How do you know me? Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you. 49 Then Nathanael declared, Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel. Nathanael was only one of four recorded in the New Testament who made this bold statement about Jesus being the Son of God along with Peter, Martha and doubting, but not forever, Thomas. 50 Jesus said, You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that. 51He then added, I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Knowing God author, J. I. Packer, said, From the Old Testament to the New, from the Kingdom of God references for the Jew to the New Life in Christ references to the Christian; from the gospel of deliverance to the gospel of peace when we hear anyone say: That portion of Scripture does not apply to us today, or that part of Scripture cannot be identified with the 21 st Century believer, then we re hearing misrepresentation; we re hearing distortion; we re hearing someone try to box some in and box some out: We are hearing a lie! It is astounding that men will accuse the Bible of being archaic and therefore they will not read it, but they will allow an ancient scientific fossil to rake them into examining remains from dubious things and talk them into believing that somewhere in the piles of ruble lies the link which will prove we evolved. Left to ourselves, we seem to beg the lie and shun the truth at every turn. Those who listen to lies lose the ability to hear the truth (ODB). I m so glad that our memory verse this year in Women & More is Genesis 1:1-5. When God spoke heaven and the earth into being in the first day that we hear Him, He strategically linked what would be needed to support the next day s creation He didn t call the light Day and the darkness Night in Genesis 1:4 before He created light with His word in verse 3. God linked His creation!

3 3 Man was not created until the sixth day, but everything he would need to exist was already there so that he could! Randy Alcorn They have forgotten the very purpose of God s gifts and what he created to reveal his greatness to us! Psalm 89:11 The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it. Charles Spurgeon said, We should look for God in what he has made and praise him for it. Think for a moment about: The Bearing Sea where men and boats fight the extreme elements to catch King Crab for a living; An Alaskan Cruise that will take us through Arctic waters to view the awesome ice castles of the sea; The Great Barrier Reef affords us a vision of its astounding assortment of colorful dwellers; Lake Superior deepest and roughest of the Great Lakes plunges to more than 1,300 feet where countless ships of old and new are stored; Mountain peaks from Pikes to Everest and the fiery volcanoes of Fuji and Mt. Saint Helens, and the Desert plains of the Sahara, to the very Black Forest in Germany. We can really know so little of the Greatness of God this side of heaven, but it s amazing that that little we can know is so very great! Moses said in Deuteronomy 3:23-24 At that time I pleaded with the LORD: 24 O Sovereign LORD, you have begun to show to your servant your greatness and your strong hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works you do? Amos linked Jesus Christ and His Father in 9:5-6: The Lord (Adonai; Master), the LORD Almighty (Covenant Father), he who touches the earth and it melts, and all who live in it mourn the whole land rises like the Nile, then sinks like the river of Egypt 6he who builds his lofty palace in the heavens and sets its foundation on the earth, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out over the face of the land the LORD is his name. 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 However, as it is written: (ref Isaiah 64:4) No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him 10but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. Are the seeing, hearing and conceiving failing because their senses won t work or because they won t trust God s word? Scripture is so colorful in describing what the Lord is preparing for us in heaven. And we are told here that we will not see, hear or truly conceive just how extravagant and wonderful all heaven is until we get there. But God s created world is filled full of the eyeful and the earful when the mind is fully on it. My cousin s daughter, Donita, had made the decision to trust Jesus at age 10, but later, not sure where Jesus fit in her life, she drifted away and had many doubts.

4 4 As a chemistry bio-technology lab coordinator, one day while looking through her telescope at her favorite planet, Saturn, and its many moons, Donita was so humbled that she gazed up saying, There just has to be a God! Close on the heels of that Christmastime Stringer Nursery in Tulsa had an advertisement in the local paper about Jesus, explaining that either He was and is the Son of God and what He said is all truth, or He is the biggest liar ever: It s one or the other. Donita made the decision to follow Jesus as her Savior and make Him Lord in her life! Charles Spurgeon affirmed: Meditation and contemplation are often like windows of agate, and gates of carbuncle, through which we behold the Redeemer. Meditation puts the telescope to the eye, and enables us to see Jesus after a better sort than we could have seen Him if we had lived in the days of his flesh. We don t all own a telescope, or a microscope for that matter, but we can each one so meditate on God s word, while contemplating all that He has created and sustained in this world that we can see, hear and conceive with the naked senses that our confidence in God Almighty is sure and secure! He is Supreme He is Immutable He is Eternal He is King of Kings He is Lord of Lords He is God of gods He is self-existing He is love personified He is righteous He is all-knowing He is all-seeing He is all-hearing! Then there is the Link of links: The incarnation of Jesus Christ who became man while remaining fully God. This is the true meaning of personal religion: not merely that the faith and love and hope of the believer proceed from a personal source within themselves and are independent of all outward circumstances, but that they center in a personal Being, who has made us for himself and bestows himself upon us. And this truth finds its most perfect (and only) disclosure in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, said Henry van Dyke. The Christ of the Gospels is bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, mind of our mind, heart of our heart.

5 5 He grows to manhood. His character is unfolded by discipline. He labors for daily bread, and prays for divine grace. He hungers, and thirsts, and sleeps, and rejoices, and weeps. He is anointed with the Spirit for his ministry. He is tempted. He is lonely and disappointed. He asks for information. He confesses ignorance. He interprets the facts of nature and life with a prophetic insight. And van Dyke continues: Anything that a telescope could discover among the stars, anything that logic could define and explain, and fit into an exact philosophical system, would not be God. For it belongs to his very essence that he transcends our thought, and that his judgments are unsearchable and his ways past finding out. We do not know anything about God unless we know that we cannot know him perfectly. In Psalm 18:16-19, David said, He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. 17He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. 18They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the LORD was my support. 19He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me. When Solomon was made king, he pleased God by asking for wisdom and discernment. God gave him all that and more: He became a scientific expert in God s created things: 1 Kings 4:38 about Solomon He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds and reptiles and fish. James 1:5 tells us to ask for God s wisdom! The Word of God and its Author Jesus Christ is the Truth! And since there is an evil one who opposes the truth at every turn, truth will not come without a battle. In Daniel 10:12, Daniel had prayed and Michael, the archangel, was detained for 21 days in battle by the Prince of Persia the prince of the demons and then Michael speaks to Daniel in verse 21: but first I will tell you what is written in the Book of Truth. And in John 14:26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. ODB says The Father gave us the Spirit to make us like His Son. In the Old Testament, truth was Prophetic revealing our distance from Almighty God because of sin. But the Truth in the New is Apostolic linked by Jesus Christ Messiah where distance was made to give place to nearness! Anytime a person says, I do not believe the Bible is correct at this point, he is operating from the base or rationalism or human reasoning, said Martin Luther. The very fact that he regards the Bible as incorrect indicates in itself that he has some authority which transcends the Bible. We cannot correct something unless we have something which is more accurate, more nearly true, more authoritative, than the thing which we are correcting.