Isaiah 40:26
Lift Your Eyes and Look to the Heavens
26 Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.
38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
I think many people think that in the past and in the olden days things were simpler...I also think that in today's world we are less surprised and shocked by fewer things than we were in Jesus' times...I think technology and science have much to do with that type of thinking...For instance, I would be little impressed to see a gold pocket watch...And this particular watch is a beautiful complex instrument ..But what if someone showed you a watch that could tell time, be a radio, be a music player, and be a cell phone?...Is this more complex than the first watch?...In fact, I have recently read where this new complex instrument has already happened, or about to happen...Now whether this new watch is a good thing or bad thing is for another discussion, but the technology of today increases so quickly...Change happens so quickly today we have less and fewer surprises...We seem to be less surprised by the advances of our times...As technology moves us toward more progress, and more connectivity with each other and the world, each of us must decide whether this is good or bad or just a neutral in our lives...Technology seems to make us look to the future, and keeps our minds off of the past and simpler times...And the more and more that science and technology moves us along the less surprised and shocked it seems we have become as we read the science and technology headlines...Will technology become such a part of our lives that it will become all so common and only ho-hum?...
For the believer, the question that comes up with all the last thirty year changes is "With all the new science and technology explosions, are we moving closer to God and the heavens, and are we closer to His Son?"...I do not know the answer to that question...Two thousand years ago, technology as we know it today, really did not exist...And in that respect, I do think all today's technology makes us feel further away from our ancestors, and our ancient history of man...
Years ago, and in simpler times, William Paley wrote in his statement about the watch argument -In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer...But suppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had given-that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there...Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone?...Why is it not as admissible in the second case as in the first?...For this reason, and for no other; viz., that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, if a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it....To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one result:—We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavor to relax itself, turns round the box...We next observe a flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure) communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee...We then find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in, and apply to, each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and from the balance to the pointer, and, at the same time, by the size and shape of those wheels, so regulating that motion as to terminate in causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a given space in a given time...We take notice that the wheels are made of brass, in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work, but in the room of which, if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not be seen without opening the case...This mechanism being observed, (it requires indeed an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed and understood,) the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use...
Paley believes this -that the artificer or designer of Paley's watch, designed a complex instrument...And because I have found this complex instrument, I might have questions...How old might the watch be, and did some designer at some time designed this watch and just to leave it here, where I happened to find it?...Or did someone else leave the watch for me to find?...Why is the watch here?...But I really do not know who designed watch or who left it for that matter...But I would believe that there was a designer to the watch...
When we look at watches, cellphones, or cars, or buildings, we naturally (for some reason) think of a designer...It comes to my mind that, as William Paley says, that the watch has to be designed...But what about that stone?...Was it designed and how did it get here on earth?...If we see the pictures (or these actual things) of a pencil, a watch, a cellphone, a car, a building, and a picture of the outdoors with the grass, trees around, the sun in the blue sky -many people see design in the pencil, the watch, the cellphone, the car, the building, but not so much of the picture of the grass or trees or sun...In the pencil and watch and the other things, we even just assume a designer...In nature and the stars some people only see nature and stars...Paley suggests, and I think rightfully so, that what we see and exists in nature, the heavens, and the universe are much more greater in degree and much more complex in design than the pencil, the watch, the car, or the building...And yet people see and assume design in all these things, yet cannot see or imagine the Designer in nature and universe, when we look up to the sky and heavens...Imagine all the complexities of nature and in the universe...God is our Watchmaker...
We are two thousand years removed from Jesus, yet He is the most shocking Man ever to walk the earth...He shocked Mary and Martha, His Disciples, and the crowd as He raised Lazarus from the dead...It was not technology and modernization that shocked those watching Him...Jesus says, it is the glory of God that shocked and surprised everyone there... We want to be surprised by the good things in life, and we want hope in a good future...And the glory of God is what can do that for us...God and God's glory give meaning to life, and often we do not see it...Sometimes as I read the headlines, I seem to think that we have left Him, and that He has never left us...I wonder in the far off and distant future, as everything continues to advance and advance, will our only surprises come from Jesus and the Glory of God...