Now, we can read this “heavenly thing” and even if we don’t quite understand it, we can accept it and trust the Lord. But Nick is a Pharisee, a “teacher of Israel”. His cohorts condemned Jesus to death. For him to ‘hang in there’ with Christ was more challenging than it was for the disciples. So when he accompanied Joseph of Arimathea to bury the body of Jesus in the garden tomb when all the disciples were hiding in fear, you can’t help but sense that the change he went through was stunningly profound.

So, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

In one moment, He Who is perfect unleashed the truly cosmic destruction of darkness and establishment of the perfection of God’s light and life into the tainted creation.

Check it out – the foolish, weak, base, despised and the NOT - these are God’s elite, His chosen.

As I cautiously approached the car, the rear window on the passenger side came down and a man in the back of the limo asked me in English if I needed help. It was about another half hour or so into Rome where we were headed so I reluctantly said, “Si, grazie Signore,” and we climbed into the limo.

This is the big war. This is the war in each individual with God. And the only way for there to be peace is with our surrender, surrender to God’s grace through Jesus Christ. Each of us individually can make peace with God this way. It is, in fact, the only way to make peace with Him.

These blessed believers deeply, deeply desire rightness, for all things to be made right. They know that no man, no agency in this world can provide that or even come close. Everything and everyone in this world is drowning in sin. Only God the Son, Jesus Christ can fill our lives, our hearts with rightness. And for those who “hunger and thirst” for it, He will.

The most famous, perhaps the most important sermon of all time. He saw multitudes and went up higher. We don’t know how many, if any, of the multitudes followed but we do know that His disciples drew near.

You see, in verse 16 we read “Then God made two great lights:” and the Hebrew action is indeed “made” not “created” – it uses the word pronounced “aw-saw” which means to make from existing materials versus “bara” which means to create out of nothing.

If we are ‘paying attention’, we notice something ominous about the second day. It was the only day out of the six days of creation that did not mention that “God saw that it was good.” Recall that on that day, He separated the waters above and below by an expanse He called Heaven. Now, I’ll suggest for your consideration that this may have been for at least two reasons.