"The Fixed Order of Things"

Jeremiah 31.35-36 NASB [1]

“Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; the Lord of hosts is His name: 

‘If this fixed order departs from before Me,’ declares the Lord, ‘Then the offspring of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever.’”

A rattlesnake appeared in the back yard of a family with small children in a mid-western farming town. Dad killed the snake with a shovel and lamented what might been had one of his children been bitten. Concerned citizens decided to locate and eradicate the snakes’ den. This they did. Hundreds of rattlesnakes were discovered and destroyed. All was well, for a time. Farmers began to notice an increase in the rodent population. Soon their crops were being eaten and ruined by creatures whose natural predators no longer kept their numbers in check. Well-intending people upset “the fixed order” of things and suffered the natural consequences.

There is a “fixed order” of things in the universe. God designed it that way. “The worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible” (Hebrews 11.3). “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1.1) and everything held together by His master plan. Our very existence depends on the continuation of His “fixed order” of things.

I recently woke up to a beautiful full moon in a black morning sky. Our family room, normally dark at that early hour during this time of year, was evenly lit by “the moon and the stars for light by night.” I was struck by the thought of God’s power. If the Creator blinked and abolished the sun, we would cease to exist in a nanosecond.[2] Our existence depends entirely on God’s power to create “the fixed order” and His love to maintain it.

“If the fixed order departs from before Me,”

declared the Lord, “then… [we] also shall cease from being…”

Of Jesus Christ, the Bible says, “…all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1.16-17). Christ and His “fixed order” of things are the reason I can take my next breath. With that breath I will gladly proclaim, “Thank you Jesus.”

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[1] See also Jeremiah 33.25-26.

The rattlesnake photograph above is by Chris Johns from wallpapers at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/.

[2] Abbreviated as ns or nsec, a nanosecond is a unit of time representing .000000001 or 1 billionth of a second.