For our scripture reading tonight, I invite you to turn with me to Acts 17. Acts 17, we read verses 22 through 34. We read this in connection with Belgic Confession, Article 12, found on page 74 in the back of the Psalter Hymnal. page 74, article 12, which has the title, The Creation of All Things, Especially the Angels. The section of Scripture that we read is Paul's ministry in Athens. We begin at verse 22 as we hear now the Word of God. Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription, To an unknown God. Now what you worship as something unknown, I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth. And he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are His offspring. Therefore, since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead. When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered. But others said, we want to hear you again on this subject. At that, Paul left the council. A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus. Also a woman named Damaris. and a number of others. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, if I were to ask for a show of hands from those of you who have ever fantasized about being able to speak the words of something or think the thoughts of something and snap, it would be there, I would suspect that everyone here, including myself, would have to be honest and raise their hand. That would be kind of neat, wouldn't it? To be able to just think the thought or say the word and our food would be ready. Our rooms would be clean. It would sure save a lot of time and a lot of headaches. Maybe a lot of nagging from mom and dad for the young people. We could just do that. And of course, Hollywood has always given throughout the years in different television programs, has given the illusion about this very thing, hasn't it? And boys and girls, most of you, if not all of you, no doubt, like chocolate chip cookies, especially freshly baked, warm chocolate chip cookies. You might even wait patiently as your mom mixes up the dough and bakes them and then waits for them to cool just enough so that you can eat them. Wouldn't it be great if she could simply say, let there be cookies? Chocolate chip cookies? And they would be there? That'd be pretty cool, wouldn't it? but mom can't do that only God can and he did that's how God created the world in the beginning as Genesis 1 verse 1 says there was no big bang there was no pre-existent material that evolved over time there was no other wild sort of theory he just said it and there it was he said let there be light and it was there he said let there be a tree and there was a tree. God made the world and everything in it, as Paul says. And He made the world out of nothing, as the Bible teaches. You see, beloved, what we believe about creation and that we believe that the Bible tells the truth about creation makes all the difference in the world. As believers by God's grace, we know that we have a redemptive relationship with God. But we must never forget that we also have a created or a creative relationship with Him. We know, as Psalm 24 verse 1 says, the earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. We know that this is our Father's world as we sing. And to know this and to believe this makes all the difference in the world to us because if we do believe that the Lord is our Creator, then we will live a certain way before His face and before the eyes of a watching world. It's not survival of the fittest, as the evolutionist says, where the strong overpowers the weak and survives and moves forward. The Bible teaches over and over again, as Paul makes clear in Acts 17, that God is the creator, the sustainer, and the ordainer of all that He has made, including you and me. Lord willing, in Article 13, with that article, we will deal with the providence of God and His government of all things and the comfort of what that means. But Article 12, you see, takes the full teaching of Scripture with regard to God's work of creating. And the author, Guido de Bray, compressed it into and summarized that full teaching of Scripture with this one paragraph. It's a summarization. And we must pay attention to the teaching of Scripture as we have it here. Follow along, if you will, as I read it. Article 12, page 74, the creation of all things, especially the angels. We believe that the Father, by the Word that is by His Son, has created of nothing the heaven, the earth, and all creatures, when it seemed good unto Him, giving unto every creature its being, shape, form, and several offices to serve its Creator, that He also still upholds and governs them by His eternal providence and infinite power for the service of mankind to the end that man may serve his God. He also created the angels good to be His messengers and to serve His elect, some of whom are fallen from that excellency in which God created them into everlasting perdition, and the others have, by the grace of God, remained steadfast and continue in their first state. The devils and evil spirits are so depraved that they are enemies of God and every good thing to the utmost of their power as murderers watching to ruin the church and every member thereof and by their wicked stratagems to destroy all and are therefore by their own wickedness adjudged to eternal damnation daily expecting their horrible torments. Therefore we reject and abhor the error of the Sadducees who deny the existence of spirits and angels and also that of the Manichees who assert that the devils have their origin of themselves and that they are wicked of their own nature without having been corrupted. Beloved, the triune God, our Creator. Now if you think back so far to our study of the Belgian Confession, recall that in Article 2 we confess that God is made known to us in the two books, of creation and His Word. Through the world book of general revelation and the word book of special revelation. And of course, through the Word of God, through the word book, He is made more clearly and fully known to us than through creation. And then with Articles 3-7, we confess what we believe about God's Word, about that special revelation. And then Articles 8-11 deal with what the Word of God, what that special revelation says about the triune God. And now we complete the circle, if you will, with Articles 12 and 13 dealing with what we can learn about God in the book of creation and in providence. Scripture teaches of the Creator God and issues the call from the Creator God. Those are the two points that you find in your outline that we want to consider. And we find that very thing in Paul's sermon to the men of Athens. He teaches the men of Athens the truth that the Lord God is the Creator and then he calls them to account. He calls them to respond. Now as Paul teaches of the Creator God, he teaches that this God is sovereign. We considered the sovereignty of God when we considered some of the attributes of God. He is sovereign. He answers to no one. He is dependent upon no one. His existence doesn't depend upon whether or not man acknowledges Him. But all things depend upon Him for their existence. Verse 28, For in Him we live and move and have our being. As well He is supreme over all things. Gold and silver and stone images could never do justice to the majesty of this Creator God. Creatures and creaturely things designed by man and made by the skill of man do not do justice to the God who designed and created man. Now the heathen world we know for the most part has always been polytheistic. Believing in many gods with many different purposes and functions. We know that from Old Testament history, as you think back to the gods of the nations that surrounded Israel, even some of the gods that Israel looked to. Solomon himself set up all these altars for the different gods of his wives. We know that from Old Testament history. And the heathen thought that the same was true of Israel. You may remember that in the days of Elijah and Ahab, Ben-Hadad, king of Aram, was told by his officials that Israel's gods, plural, were gods of the hills. That's why Aram was defeated on the hills, you see. But Israel's God, singular, proved that he is also God of the valleys. In Paul's day, the Greeks also worshipped many gods with many different purposes and functions. and in their fear of the supernatural world, and so that they didn't leave any God out for fear of coming under some sort of unknown judgment, they had an altar to an unknown God. And Paul takes advantage of this opportunity to teach that this unknown God is none other than the true God, the Creator God, the Maker of the heavens and the earth. You see, beloved, this God makes Himself known to every eye through His world book of general revelation. Creation itself testifies, bears witness to the truth of God. Just look around. Just look around. But Paul makes it clear, doesn't he, in Romans 1, as we considered a little bit this morning, that this God is unknown because man chooses to not know Him. Because of sin, man is godless and wicked, And He suppresses the truth by His wickedness. But you see, man's sinful rejection of God doesn't change the truth about God. Just as we said this morning, man's rejection of Jesus Christ, of that cornerstone, doesn't change the truth. That He is a cornerstone, He is the cornerstone of His church, doesn't take away from His dignity at all. Man's sinful rejection of God doesn't change the truth that, as Paul says in verse 24, the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. See, Paul says it so simply, yet he also says it so confidently because he has the Word of God. Again, the Old Testament, at that time, the Old Testament Scriptures, He has the Word of God, which, believe me, he knew well based on his education. He knew the Old Testament Scriptures, we might say, from front to back, backwards and forwards. And he had that as the foundation of his claim. And again, it begins with Genesis 1, verse 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And this includes, as we confess in the Nicene Creed, all things visible and invisible, which includes the angels, which we'll talk about a little bit more in a moment. But the Hebrew word translated as created in Genesis 1, verse 1, is only used for the work that God performs, not for man's work. Man can make things, we know, with the help of materials that already exist, the flour, the butter, the chocolate chips, whatever else is needed for the chocolate chip cookies. or the wood, the nails, the shingles, the concrete, to build a house. But only God can create, which means calling something into being or existence out of nothing. Now many ancient philosophies, some that are still around in modern dress today, for example, Mormonism, deny that God created out of nothing. And instead teach, for example, that matter is eternal. And God took this eternal matter like a big ball of Play-Doh and made the world. But as someone has rightly said, God needed nothing to make everything. Hebrews 11 verse 3 says, By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. And Psalm 33 verse 6 supports the truth that God simply spoke and it came to be when it says, By the word of the Lord were the heavens made their starry host by the breath of His mouth. See, beloved, over and over again, Scripture testifies to the fact that God is the Creator. The psalmist says in Psalm 19, The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of His hands. Psalm 121, My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 100, Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are His. Isaiah in chapter 40 testifies to the truth that God made the starry host. He calls each one by name. And that by the power of God, not one single star of all the billions out there, however many there are, not one single star is missing. Amos says the Lord God is the Creator. To Job, after listening to, we might say, his three friends speak nonsense, and after listening to Job himself try to defend himself, to Job, the Lord says, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? In fact, take some time this week to read Job chapters 38 to 41, to hear what God says about himself and his creation and his relationship to it. Jeremiah 10, verse 12, and I suspect the second graders, at least some of them I know, can say this by memory because they had to learn it this past week in school. We worked on it at home. I memorized it too. But God made the earth by His power. He founded the world by His wisdom. And He stretched out the heavens by His understanding. Revelation 4, verse 11, there the 24 elders who worship before the throne say, You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being. You see, all of this is simply just a sample of the teaching of Scripture that the triune God is our Creator, including man, the crown of His creating work, whom God made in His own image, in true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, as the Catechism says, with the ability to think and reason and worship and glorify and serve God. And as the psalmist says, creation reveals the glory of God which is seen by the order and the detail found in creation. It's seen in the laws of nature. It's seen in the dependence of the component parts upon each other. For example, the soil, the seed, the sun, and the rain. God's glory is seen in the amazing detail with which He knit each one of us together in our mother's wombs. Again, Paul simply summarizes the teaching of Scripture with regard to the doctrine of creation by saying God made the world and everything in it. And as Article 12 says, He gave unto every creature its being, shape, and form. Really, that's what Paul says in verse 25. He Himself gave all men life and breath and everything else. And again, as we think of providence, God also sustains, cares for, and provides for all that He has made. The psalmist, especially in Psalm 104, talks about God's providence over the earth and over the animals. Paul, in Colossians 1, verse 17, speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ and says, He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And God ordains all that happens, even the affairs of you and me. Verse 26 says, For from one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth, and He determined the times set for them, and the exact places where they should live. And the Lord says through Isaiah, No one can deliver out of My hand. When I act, who can reverse it? And of course, the expected answer is no one. And then in Proverbs 16, verse 9, we read that man plans the course of his heart, but the Lord determines his steps. You see, God's creating work was perfect, detailed, with tasks and functions. He didn't just create some kind of matter and step away from it, and from that matter everything else just developed or evolved, but He gave to each creature its own being and shape and form and specific task. God gave all creatures their place, their purpose, their position, so that there would be order and harmony all for the glory of God. And this includes the spirit world. The Confession again talks about angels. God created them and like everything else, they were good. The Confession says He also created the angels good to be His messengers and to serve His elect. And that's the teaching of Hebrews 1, verse 14 about their task. And we see that played out throughout Scripture, don't we? The angels that appeared to Abraham and to Lot, Elisha, Mary and Joseph, and Peter in prison to name a few instances. But some of the hosts of angels fell from their place of excellency into everlasting perdition, as the confession says. Now, if we're honest, we will have to admit that we don't really understand why or how this could happen. But we know it's true. Scripture teaches, as we see, for example, in 2 Peter 2, verse 4, and in Jude, verse 6, from these passages and others, we learn that the sin of these angels included pride and the fact that they were no longer satisfied with the position to which they had been appointed by God. We also know the fall to be true and we are reminded of Satan and his work each and every time we sin against and we offend God. And Satan's goal, we must understand, along with all of his wicked hosts, is to destroy the church of Jesus Christ. And his goal is our destruction and that we should suffer with him and the wicked angels in hell for all eternity. Beloved, we know that sin has affected all of creation. Paul says in Romans 8 that creation groans and one day will be liberated from its bondage to decay. And sin has especially affected the crown of God's creation, man created in his image. The image of God in man we know has been severely tarnished, messed up because of sin. But God has elected some to bring into that redemptive relationship with Himself. You see, in the second place, the call from the Creator God goes out to all mankind. Paul says in verse 30, In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. The call to repent goes out to all mankind, But those who respond to that call are only those whom God has chosen to bring out of darkness into His marvelous light. Those for whom Jesus died to save them from the curse of their sin. You see, by nature, lost in sin, man does not see the handiwork of God. Man can look out at this beautiful creation, whether it's the majestic mountains or the vast expanse of the ocean, and really see nothing. Really see nothing. Lost in sin, man doesn't recognize the glory of God that is sung, for example, by the beauty of the sun shining in the blue sky or in the refreshing rain upon dry ground or in the beauty of a beach-view sunset or in the detail of each individual fingerprint or leaf of a tree or the joy of a newborn baby's cry. Sin blinds one in darkness and in shades of doubt and locks out the light of God's truth. But Jesus Christ, the light of the world through the Holy Spirit, illumines our hearts and our minds of those born again who turn to Him in repentance and faith. And beloved believers are called to recognize that this is our Father's world. And we are called to respond to the truth that all nature sings around us that indeed our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. We are to know that all people live in a created relationship with God, although many deny it. Yet by the grace of God as believers, we also live in a redemptive relationship with Him. And we can humbly boast of His work of recreation in our hearts and lives. The work of the Holy Spirit in restoring God's people to His image in true righteousness, knowledge, and holiness, which we will enjoy one day perfectly in glory. And He brings us to recognize once again that as the crown of His creation, we are called to rule and take care of His world. He's given it to us for our use. And we are accountable to Him for what we do with it. Now that doesn't mean that we should all become tree huggers or ozone people or something like that. There's nothing sadder, beloved, than when society makes spotted owls and whales more important than human life in the womb. But we are called to use creation responsibly. We are called to confess that the God who created the world and everything in it is the one and only God. There is no other. He is sovereign over all things. He is supreme in His being. And all things must give an account to Him. The confession speaks of the Manichees who taught that devils, demons, and Satan were eternally evil. The idea being that there was this principle of evil that was eternal from which all sin and evil comes from, and this eternal principle of good from which all good flows, and the two are eternally in conflict with each other. But you see, that would mean that sin and evil is eternal. And as one commentator says, evil would then forever stand beside God and not under Him. And we may not understand it, but we see this in many of the Disney movies, don't we? Many of the cartoons, that force of evil constantly taking on the force of good. And indeed, in the movies, the good always conquers over the evil, but yet the truth isn't being told about God and about the cosmos and about good and evil. But our comfort, beloved, is that Satan's doom is sure. Our comfort is that one day our Lord will put all His enemies under His feet and He will present His bride to His Heavenly Father and that as Scripture teaches, Satan, his hosts, sin and evil will forever be shut up in hell. See, beloved, just like a product reveals the person or the company that made it, the kind of care that they took and the quality control that was included in making that product, creation reveals the awesomeness of God who made the world and everything in it. And we are called to see and confess that our God who made us and all things, who provides for us and controls all things, is also the only God who can save us. Because we stand in a special relationship to God who made us, the only way to personal salvation and happiness is to know this God. You see, in His work of creation, God has revealed that He is God. Paul says that in Romans 1. It's plain to see. Yet again, we know that the Word book, the Scriptures, by the illumination of the Spirit, more clearly and fully reveals God to us and reveals that the only way to come to salvation is to know Him. And that's what Jesus said in John 17. He prayed, now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God. Paul's point to the men of Athens is that this unknown God is knowable, truly knowable, unlike false gods which can only be known insofar as man has devised them and made them. God can be truly known. He is near to His people. In fact, He takes up residence in them by His Holy Spirit. Beloved, knowing Him is to be our only claim to fame. It's to be our only claim to fame. We look around in society and we know that so many like to have certain claims to fame, whether it be wealth, whether it be musical or athletic ability, whether it be all the good they've done in the world. Many have different kinds of claim to fame. But knowing Him is to be our only claim to fame. In Jeremiah 9, 23 and 24, we read, This is what the Lord says, Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, or the strong man boast of his strength, or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts, boast about this, that he understands and knows me. See, our firm foundation is that we know where the world and where we came from, not by chance, but planned by God, made by God. And therefore, we are also called to resist the devil and his lies. His lies may be direct like evolution with its many theories, or his lies may be subtle like causing us to question the origin of all things, including evil, because we can't always make perfect sense out of it. We are called to trust the Word of God and to resist the devil, that roaring lion who is prowling around seeking our destruction. See, our battle is against wicked spiritual hosts, as Paul says. Satan and his hosts are out to no good. If you knew that a murderer or a child molester was running around your neighborhood, what would you do? I'll tell you what you would do. Like me, you would take certain steps to protect your family, to protect yourself, to protect your children. We see the murderer, the child molester, the liar, the thief is running around. He's prowling around. His name is Satan. But our Lord has promised, the one who is in control even of Satan, has promised that whoever comes to Him, He will not turn away. and no one and nothing shall snatch his sheep out of his hand. We are called, beloved, to resist the devil, to resist his temptations. That means to hide God's Word in our hearts that we might be able to tell the difference. That we might be discerning. That when we are faced with compromise, that we can read right through it. Resist the temptations of the devil and fight error by standing up for the truth and by teaching our children the truth that biology and chemistry and history and language and physical education and all of life makes sense only because God is the author and giver of life. That's why Christian education is not an option for God's people. God has given man dominion over the earth and her creatures to use for God's glory and for the benefit of mankind. And as believers, may we indeed use creation as God intended it, and may we see His handiwork in nature from the vastness of the universe down to the detail of the smallest creature. Now if you think about it, to the world, to the wicked world of mankind, Creation is an altar to an unknown God. Although, of course, wicked mankind would not even admit that there is an unknown God. But still, creation is out there. It's an altar to an unknown God. And as God's people, we are called to take advantage, like Paul, and make God known. Of course, again, the word book makes him more clearly known. But may God be pleased through His people, through us, to use His world book to introduce some to His word book, to introduce some to Him. We've said this before that in our conversations we might take advantage of the opportunity to talk about the beauty of the day. It's not Mother Nature, but it's our Father God, our Creator. Those who do not understand the truth of creation and its Creator don't know any different but to live for themselves. They're ignorant to anything but survival of the fittest. But to those who know the triune God, our Creator by faith, we understand that our lives and our times are in His hand. We are safe. And we are called to live for Him and to glorify Him along with the heavens that declare His glory. Those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ own the comfort that God, our Creator, not only made our earthly, temporary home, but He also made our heavenly, eternal home. And therefore, beloved, may we rejoice in God, our Creator. And may we see every day His hand in all of creation and may our confession be with the psalmist in Psalm 104. Oh Lord, how manifold are Your works. In wisdom You have made them all. May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in His works. Amen. Shall we pray? Father, we do pray that You would rejoice in Your works, in all that You have made, that You would rejoice in Your work of recreation, in Your people, those who believe on you by your grace. That indeed we might be living sacrifices of praise and honor to you. We thank you again in this evening hour for your word. May it be ever so precious to us, Heavenly Father. May we never even have to think about being without it. But may we grow by feasting on your word day by day. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.