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Yesterday’s message in the God’s Good Creation Series was called Knowing God through His Creation, taken from Psalm 19:1-6.

Psalm 19:1-6: The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat. (NIV)

The main idea of the message was that all of creation testifies to God’s goodness and glory. Here is the outline of the message:

I. God’s creation declares his glory. (1-2)
    A. The heavens speak forth the praises of God.
    B. The heavens reveal knowledge of God to man.
    C. God’s testimony to himself in creation is unmistakable.
        1) It is continuous.
        2) It is abundant.
        3) It is universal.

II. God’s creation speaks to all people everywhere. (3-4)
    A. There is no language barrier – it is understood by all.
    B. There is no volume barrier – it is heard by all.
    C. There is no distance barrier – it is given to all.

III. The sun is an example of God’s revelation in creation. (5-6)
    A. The sun is seen by all on earth.
        1) The sun is like a groom coming out of his chamber.
        2) The sun is like a champion running his race.

    B. The sun serves all who live on earth.
        1) It provides light and heat for everyone.
        2) It testifies to a good and powerful and gracious God.

Two warnings, one reminder, one action point:
    1) Do not mistake nature for God.
    2) Do not mistake nature for Christ.
    3) Remember that the present creation is distorted by sin.
    4) Learn to know and enjoy God through his creation.

Note: To read the complete message, go to the Sermons tab at the top of the blog.

Name that tune. A song is playing on the radio, and you wish you knew what it was. Call (866) 411-SONG, wait for the beep and hold your cell phone near the music for 15 seconds. 411-SONG will identify the song and send you a text message with the artist and song name and a link to get it if you are interested. The cost? First song ID is free. Subsequent ID’s are $0.99 each.

Steve Mathewson offers pastors good advice on what to do when the Bible contradicts your idea for a sermon. “The tension between ‘what you thought going in’ and ‘what you realize after further study’ causes the truth to make an even greater impression on you than if you had understood it going into your study process. Also, this tension can make the sermon idea more ‘sticky’ for your listeners. There’s something memorable about a sermon in which the preacher says, ‘The Bible surprised me this week.'”

Jim Martin offers encouraging words to those who may be feeling insecure about life or ministry: What You Do Really Matters. “I want to believe that if my work is offered up to the Lord, then it is significant ministry. I want to always believe that God does not measure things the way we do. Rather, he is the God who is able to make much out of little. He feeds thousands with five loaves of bread and two fish. He is the God who blesses the most unassuming ministry and turns it into a powerful force for his purposes.”

Albert Mohler responds to a column in the New York Times where the writer insists that she has no need for marriage, and that her private commitment to the man she loves is sufficient. “Marriage is not primarily about what we as individuals think we want or need. It is about a central public commitment that the society needs, that couples need, that children need, and yes, that the spouses need. Marriage is a public institution, not merely a private commitment. It identifies the couple as a pair committed to lifelong marriage and thus to be respected in this commitment.”

John Piper shares about the prayer responsibility that was handed down to him when his father passed away last year. “Now that he is with Jesus, I feel the weight of being the patriarch in the Piper family … There is no great-grandfather anymore, only grandfather, and it feels like a wonderful opportunity for me to love my grandchildren and my kids. I do that mainly through daily prayer. I name before God every day all of my children and all of my grandchildren the way Job did. Scripture says that Job got up and sacrificed for his children every day, if perchance they had sinned. I pray rather to try and keep them from sinning. Nonetheless, there is a prayer cover that I feel like I owe this Piper clan which my dad once kept up.”

Justin Taylor interviews Scott Klusendorf about his upcoming book: Equipped to Engage: Pro-Life Christians in the Brave New World. “The pro-life position has more explanatory power than the abortion-choice and pro-embryonic research ones. For example, advocates of elective abortion and embryonic stem cell research cannot account for basic human equality. If humans have value only because of some acquired property like consciousness, it follows that since this acquired property comes in varying degrees, basic human rights come in varying degrees. It’s far more reasonable to argue that although humans differ immensely in their respective degrees of development, they are nonetheless equal because they share a common human nature.”

I was surprised to read that CCM will be stopping the print version of its magazine. Although I have not read CCM in decades, I grew up on this magazine, and when I was a teen it played an important part in informing my faith through Christian music and artists that I enjoyed.

The April 2008 issue of the Christian music magazine CCM will be its last, Salem Communications announced late yesterday.

“CCM Magazine readers tell us they want more information and want it faster than can be delivered in a monthly printed magazine,” Jim Cumbee, Publisher and President of Non-Broadcast Media said in a press release. “Accordingly, we will discontinue the printed version of CCM Magazine to put increased energies toward the continued growth and enhancement of our comprehensive Christian music and entertainment online network.”

In the May 2007 issue of the magazine, editor Jay Swartzendruber announced that CCM no longer stood for “Contemporary Christian Music.” The acronym, he said, stood for “Christ • Community • Music,” and the magazine would shift away from covering Christian music by its label or distribution in an effort “to raise the profile of independent and general market artists of faith.”

So, do you know of other print magazines that have moved to online only? Is this the beginning of a trend for print media in general?

Well, I am not a big fan of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s politics (as you can see by the results of my MPR Select a Candidate Quiz), but she got a good laugh out of me with these “in-flight announcements” she made to the guests and reporters on her new campaign plane as it made its first journey on Wednesday.

“My name is Hillary, and I’m so pleased to have most of you on board.”

“FAA regulations prohibit the use of cell phones, blackberries or other wireless devices that may be used to transmit negative stories about me.”

She warned her guests — a couple of dozen reporters, members of her Secret Service detail and several aides — to keep their seatbelts on even after the light had been turned off. “Things can get awfully bumpy when you least expect it.”

“In the event of an unexpected drop in poll numbers this plane will be diverted to New Hampshire.”

Clinton then promised to deliver her “stump speech, in its many variations,” as in-flight entertainment. “We know you have choices when you fly, so we are grateful you chose the plane with the most experienced candidate.”

Related posts:

• The Hillary Clinton Cookie Attack Ad
• The MPR Select a Candidate Quiz

Albert Einstein’s response when asked by an interviewer if he was an atheist:

“I’m not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.” (First published as “What Life Means to Einstein,” Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929. Quoted in Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe; New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007, p. 386.)

Source: Kairos Journal (subscription required)

The Economist recently ran an article on the Bible versus the Koran. The article focused mostly on the business side of marketing the two books but had some interesting things to say along the way. Here are some excerpts from the article.

CHRISTIANS and Muslims have one striking thing in common: they are both “people of the book”. And they both have an obligation to spread the Word—to get those Holy Books into the hands and hearts of as many people as they can …

Spreading the Word is hard. The Bible is almost 800,000 words long [while] … the Koran is a mere four-fifths of the length of the New Testament … Yet over 100m copies of the Bible are sold or given away every year. Annual Bible sales in America are worth between $425m and $650m; Gideon’s International gives away a Bible every second. The Bible is available all or in part in 2,426 languages, covering 95% of the world’s population.

The Koran is not only the most widely read book in the Islamic world but also the most widely recited (“Koran” means “recitation”). There is no higher goal in Muslim life than to become a human repository of the Holy Book; there is no more common sound in the Muslim world than the sound of Koranic recitation.

Reciting the Koran is the backbone of Muslim education. One of the most prized honorifics in Islamic society is “hafiz” or “one who has the entire scripture off by heart”. Do so in Iran and you get an automatic university degree. The great recitors compete in tournaments that can attract audiences in the hundreds of thousands—the world cups of the Islamic world. The winners’ CDs become instant bestsellers …

There is a difference, however, between getting and understanding a Holy Book. Here both Christianity and Islam suffer from serious problems. Americans buy more than 20m new Bibles every year to add to the four that the average American has at home. Yet the state of American biblical knowledge is abysmal. A Gallup survey found that less than half of Americans can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis), only a third know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount (Billy Graham is a popular answer) and a quarter do not know what is celebrated at Easter (the resurrection, the foundational event of Christianity). Sixty per cent cannot name half the ten commandments; 12% think Noah was married to Joan of Arc. George Gallup, a leading Evangelical as well as a premier pollster, describes America as “a nation of biblical illiterates”.

Muslims greatly prefer to read the Koran in the original Arabic. Yet the archaic language and high-flown verse, while inspiring, can also be difficult to understand even for educated Arabic speakers. And only 20% of Muslims speak Arabic as their first language. Illiteracy rates are high across the Muslim world. Many students of the Holy Book do not understand much of what they are memorizing.

What are your thoughts on the article?

HT: Evangelical Outpost

Mean mom. An Iowa mom sold her 19-year-old son’s car after she discovered alcohol in the vehicle. The newspaper ad read as follows: “OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don’t love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.”

Stuck in bed. A Mexican boy glued his hand to his bed in order to avoid going back to school after Christmas vacation. When he didn’t get up in the morning, his mother found him lying in bed watching TV with his hand glued to the bed. She called the paramedics who were able to get him unstuck in time for class. “I didn’t want to go to school because vacation was so much fun,” the ten-year-old boy told the newspaper.

Never tempt a hacker. Hoping to calm people’s fears over two missing discs containing personal information for over 25 million people, British TV host Jeremy Clarkson published his own bank account numbers in the newspaper. “All you’ll be able to do with them is put money into my account. Not take it out,” he told his readers. Imagine his surprise when his account was hacked later in the week. Clarkson wrote in his column, “I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account. The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again. I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.” The money taken from Clarkson’s account had been donated to charity.

Easter comes early this year, which means many churches are also preparing for an early Lenten season. (Ash Wednesday is on February 6, 2008, only several weeks away!) Unless you were around for Easter back in 1913, this will be the earliest Easter in your lifetime. This year Easter falls on March 23, which is the second earliest date possible. The last time Easter fell this early in the year was March 23, 1913; the next time won’t be until March 23, 2160.

Easter can take place as early as March 22 but no later than April 25. The last time Easter fell on the earliest possible date was March 22, 1818. That will not happen again until March 22, 2285. The most common date for Easter to occur is April 19. Here is a list of the nearest past and future occurrences of Easter falling on either March 22/23 or April 24/25:

• March 22, 1818
• April 24, 1859
• March 23, 1913
• April 25, 1943
• March 23, 2008
• April 24, 2011
• April 25, 2038
• March 22, 2285

Calculating the date of Easter is no simple task. The cycle of Easter dates does not repeat until after exactly 5,700,000 years! For more information on how the date of Easter is determined, see the brief article: Determining the Dates for Easter and Passover.

Related posts:

• Why Are Easter and Passover a Month Apart This Year?
• Determining the Dates for Easter and Passover
• Easter (A Poem)

“An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.” (Proverbs 24:26)

Okay, this TV ad featuring an honest referee is my new favorite football commercial, at least until the Super Bowl gets here! This is part of Subway’s “Fresh Moment” advertising campaign. And you have to admit, such honesty really is refreshing!

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“I totally blew that call. In fact, I wasn’t even close. But don’t worry. I’ll penalize the other team … for no good reason … in the second half … to even things up.”

Have you ever wondered why Easter and Passover do not always fall together on the calendar? Some years they happen in the same week, but then other years they are a whole month apart. For example, this year Easter is on March 23, 2008, but the Passover does not begin until April 20, 2008.

It all has to do with solar years, lunar months and the Jewish leap year! You can read all about it in the following article: Determining the Dates for Easter and Passover.

Related posts:

• The Earliest Easter in Your Lifetime
• Determining the Dates for Easter and Passover
• Easter (A Poem)

Here are some great pictures showing the size of the earth in comparison to other objects in space. I shared these in church yesterday as part of a sermon on Psalm 8. You can click on the pictures to see a larger version.

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4)

1. Earth compared to the smaller planets (Venus, Mars, Mercury and Pluto):

2. Earth compared to the larger planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune):

3. The larger planets compared to the Sun:

4. Our Sun compared to Sirius, Pollux and Arcturus:

5. Sirius, Pollux and Arcturus compared to Rigel, Aldebaran, Antares
    and Betelgeuse:

                     Recommended Books on Astronomy

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Related posts:

• Powers of 10 Video
• Relative Size and Distances of Planets in the Solar System
• Our Place in God’s Creation (Psalm 8:1-8)
• Sunday Morning SoundBytes – 1/13/2008

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Yesterday’s message in the God’s Good Creation Series was called Our Place in God’s Creation, taken from Psalm 8.

Psalm 8:1-8 – “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.

From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (NIV)

The main idea of the message was that we must first understand man’s place in the universe before we can understand our own individual place in the world. Here is the outline of the message:

What does Palm 8 teach us about our place in God’s creation?

I. God is greater than all (1-2)

    A. God’s name is majestic in all the earth.

    B. God has set his glory above the heavens.

    C. God can silence his enemies even through the praises of little children.

II. The universe is big; we are small (3-4)

    A. The beauty of God’s creation should cause us to worship the Creator.

    B. The vastness of God’s creation should cause us to consider our
        place in the universe.

    C. God’s gracious concern for tiny man in the universe should humble
        and amaze us.

III. God gave us a special place of honor in creation (5-9)

    A. God made man a little lower than the heavenly beings.

    B. God crowned man with glory and honor.

    C. God made man ruler over all creation.

Note: To read the complete message, go to the Sermons tab at the top of the blog.

Related post: The Size of the Earth Compared to Other Objects in Space