Wings of Love

[Music] we've been talking about this creation story how in the beginning god created a perfect and beautiful world with his own hand forming this ball this ball that we call our home filling it with air water land and then forming the beautiful lights and the firmament of the heaven he's already created life he's already created life in the forms of the of the plants and the trees that are growing and filling the ground but now as we enter this fifth day of creation he takes life to another level so we see god taking life to another level to a higher level of existence not life that is rooted down as beautiful as it is in the plants and the trees but the glorious life is free to move in the seas below and in the heavens above the fish the birds we will see as he creates this life the purpose that he has in creating our own lives and setting us free but before we go any further i want to invite you to bow your heads with me on a word of prayer kind and loving father in heaven lord as you have spoken life into this world lord as we study this beauty of your creation guide our hearts and our minds to you and help us to know that you have set us free we thank you lord in jesus name [Music] amen [Music] do [Music] as we continue with the creation account found in genesis chapter 1 starting in verse 20 for today's message you read these words then god said let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens so god created great sea creatures every living thing that moves with which the waters abound according to their kind and every winged bird according to its kind and god saw that it was good and god blessed them saying be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas and let birds multiply on the earth and the evening and the morning were the fifth day god had already created life he had created this world and he had filled the land with the grasses the herbs the trees bearing fruit but now now as he fills the sky and as he fills the seas he fills them not with simply inanimate plant life but with an array a gorgeous array of life and color in movement life that is fruitful life that multiplies and life that illustrates to us some of the important principles of his love and of his care for his creatures i've come today not to the woods but to a beautiful farm here that some friends of ours are operating it's actually a place where they rescue animals and take in animals that have been hurt or injured and care for them and so you will see some of these beautiful creatures the peacocks the turkey and the other beautiful creatures here and i'm thankful for their hospitality today but i want to take you on a little journey in your mind but i want to take you on a little journey i want to tell you a story a story that has to do with these beautiful and magnificent flying creatures that god has given to us so much fun to be here with these bees it reminds me of a time when i was young some of my friends my playmates family had rescued a little fluffy little bird a little duckling that was tumbling tumbling down the interstate i have no idea how it got there obviously it had gotten lost mother was nowhere to be found so they rescued it off the freeway brought it home and naturally called him ducky i i didn't see ducky on the freeway but when ducky came home and started drinking out of a little dish of water they fed him some food and he started to grow and i got to see ducky and i would go and pet ducky and my friends would hold them in their hands and it was so much fun to see this this little duck grow and he grew and he grew quickly and he grew and grew and until he was the size of a duck and he kept growing and started to grow in these long feathers not like duck feathers but long gray and black feathers and he kept growing a long neck and pretty soon we realized that there's no way that ducky was a duck ducky turned into a full-grown canada goose but you know even though we didn't know ducky was a goose ducky didn't know that he was a goose either because ducky had never seen a goose all he had seen was other people so he thought he was a person he followed us around like a puppy dog we called him a duck but he was really a goose and every day we would go for a walk ducky would waddle along behind us with his webbed feet just running down the road i'd say he had more calluses on those webbed feet than probably any goose in the country but he kept waddling along and waddling along and he would he would just we didn't have to put him on a leash he followed close behind us everywhere that we went and we had so much fun we would feed ducky we would hold him and if we sat down he would come over to us he was just just one of our friends i'd never had made friends with a bird before but it was quite something special but one day as ducky was clearly old enough to be a almost full grown canada goose we'd never seen ducky fly because after all uh ducky didn't know he was a bird he thought he was a person and he'd never seen a person fly but we knew that ducky needed to fly so there was a steep hill on the campus of the school where my dad had taught and it's actually right next to the ball field and so we we would walk up to the top of this hill me and my friends and we would start running down the hill of course ducky followed us to the up to the top of the hill and he started falling and his he would run as fast as his little webbed feet could carry him and we would stretch out our arms and he would stretch out his wings and of course he had to use his wings to balance himself he started flapping his wings and we went back to the top of the hill and started running even faster and pretty soon ducky got the idea and and that those instincts within him those instincts to fly he started flapping his wings and pretty soon he was airborne i remember we would do this we would run to the top of the hill or walk to the top of the hill and run down the hill but we didn't have enough energy we were running as fast as our legs could carry us as soon as we got to the bottom of the hill we would stop running and here would come ducky flying down the hill just smacking us in the back of the head with his wings as he flew over us and landed in front of us and just the the feeling of the that bird's wings uh and seeing that bird that bird who was our friend flying gracefully in the skies above it was something wonderful something special i always look back and remember ducky and how he learned to fly i think about god creating these beautiful and magnificent creatures on the fifth day of creation god had perhaps a sense of humor certainly a creative imagination to come up with so many different colorful and wonderful creatures creatures that serve us in so many ways creatures the so often we take for granted we use the the term perhaps a bird brain to insult a person and yet how intelligent these creatures are capable of uh building social structures capable of forming relationships and perhaps more than any other creatures capable of processing the visual information that comes in the capable of doing the calculations necessary to fly there are birds that have accomplished amazing and incredible feats in the days of elijah when there was a famine in the land god sent the ravens to feed elijah there are birds such as the as the geese will leave the domesticated east but the canada geese can travel for thousands of miles on their migratory routes they will travel thousands of miles to find food and summer grounds but then they will travel back those same distances back to the very same nesting site where the where they were hatched god guides those birds in the heavens and god cares for you and for me too [Music] do [Music] do the sea and the sky water and air both fluid mediums but so incredibly different in their properties and characteristics and yet on the same day god filled both with an almost infinite variety of living creatures of varied sizes shapes and colors creatures not rooted to the ground but creatures free to swim and to fly to move to fill and then to multiply to regenerate to continue to fill the sea and the sky i'm looking out here at this beautiful pond and i can see the koi swimming gracefully through the water it's so amazing to watch flight flight through this fluid medium gentle graceful and beautiful isn't it interesting that two very very different creatures use the principles of flight whether it be the buoyancy of the fish the fins and the scales to propel them through the water or the wings and the feathers of a bird what's interesting is to see the birds like the penguins that can fly down under the water or perhaps even more interesting the few varieties of fish who can jump out of the water and glide through the air using their fins to glide the ones that are made for swimming and still gliding through the air i almost think god must have had a sense of humor is he created these creatures just smiling as he imagined the enjoyment we would have in studying and discovering the beauties and glories of his creation i spoke about the geese migrating thousands of miles well in the waters of the rivers and ocean there are fish that migrate hundreds and yes thousands of miles i think of the salmon who are hatched far ups upstream in the freshwater rivers in canada and western western united states those baby salmon are washed down the streams into the ocean and go out into the ocean perhaps a thousand miles to feed and then through some instinct through god's leading and guiding of those little fish they managed to find their way back to the very river that they came from they go up that river and find their way up the very tributary up to the little stream to the very spot where they were hatched a spot that we could couldn't imagine how they could even remember much less find their way there again and there in that very spot they will spawn and bring about the next generation of salmon the great creatures it says god created those great creatures the whales the dolphins my wife and i a few years back went on vacation in south carolina and while we were there we had the opportunity to go out on a boat and to see these dolphins swimming and playing in the water it's so incredible to see these great sea creatures coming up poking their eye up above the water just to get a look at the people on the boat i have to believe that god created them to be our companions and yet have you ever considered have you ever considered the incredible miracle that it took to make these creatures not only swim but fly in the skies above [Music] in job chapter 39 and verse 26 god asks job this question does the hawk fly by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the south does the eagle mount up at your command and make its nest on high who taught the birds to fly how is it that birds can fly for hundreds yes perhaps thousands of years mankind has longed to fly like the birds but it wasn't until mankind began observing the birds closely until they were able to develop the technology that was light enough and powerful enough that mankind was able to take to the air not by himself but with the aid of machines that we have built and only for a little over a hundred years now we have been able in a clumsy sort of way to get into the air for the birds flying it has taken scientists engineers many years to perfect the designs of the aircraft that fly in the skies today and yet in one day on that fifth day of creation god spoke into existence a myriad of creatures who fly as though the air was their very home if you look at the structure of a bird's wing if you look at the arrangement of the muscles if you look at the speed of the metabolism of the bird if you look at their bones even their bones are hollow to make them light and strong exactly the recipe needed for flight take a look at a bird's feather look at how light and yet how strong it is even looking at it under a microscope you see what can be none other than an incredible marvel of engineering stuff like this does not happen by accident this is not the result of millions of years of accidental changes in dna every anyone looking at the marvels of flight i'll have to tell you this was created by a designer by an engineer who understood the fluid mechanics who understood the principles of weight and balance of thrust and drag and the principles not only of biology but the principles of physics required for flight some birds soar in the heavens others like the tiny hummingbird are able to beat their wings fast enough to hover in one place to fly forwards backwards and sideways and do it like it's second nature you know scientists still are studying the flight of the birds i think of this of the stories of uh orville and wilbur wright as their they were developing the first powered aircraft how they would go out and watch the soaring of the hawks and they would learn lessons that they would then come and apply those to their ability to fly scientists are studying for instance how woodpecker can peck into a tree with its head and not damage its brain they're developing better materials to absorb shock some of the most advanced materials and technology being developed today it's not being invented it's being copied from the birds scientists have wondered for a long time how can owls fly almost silently our aircraft make a tremendous amount of noise whenever they come close and so they begin studying the owls and the feathers and the little almost downy feathers that come down even over the feet of the owl and they're developing technology now to make aircraft quieter not by inventing it but by copying it from the birds people try to tell me sometimes that this world is without a designer it is all a big accident but when i look at the birds when i look at the fish of the sea i can tell you it's the result of a loving creator a creator who not only wanted to create life but who wanted to create life to fill the sea in the sky who wanted to create life and has set us free birds were simply meant to fly they were created with all of the equipment needed to escape the confines of gravity to fly above the earth the skies above i think about that little gosling who was rescued there on the freeway little ducky we called him he didn't know he was a bird he didn't know he was meant to fly he was born into a terrible world a terrible place doomed to death and destruction but but he was rescued from that freeway and taken into a home but there in that home surrounded by creatures that to his kind were strange creatures human beings he didn't understand who he was i think about so many people in this world today who don't know who they truly are like a bird who doesn't realize he's a bird how many people in this world today don't realize that they were meant they were created to fly and like that little goose go walking along through life on webbed feet that were meant to swim using those wings that were meant to fly just as arms to keep their balance and frustrated that life doesn't seem to offer more and yet when we took that little goose up to the top of the hill and began running away from the goose the goose thought thought we were forsaking him but in that moment of trial he lifted he stretched out his wings and the wind caught in his wings and he realized that truly he could fly the same way friends i believe that god is teaching each and every one of us that we were meant to fly we were meant in this world to accomplish far more than what we may be doing we were meant to have relationship not just with the things of this earth but to have fellowship a communion with god through his son jesus christ the one who came to this world who showed us how to live and died so that he could open the way open the door to set us free and yes god does set us free he sets us free by teaching us to fly you know an ego when she builds her nest builds this huge and beautiful nest to raise her young and for for many weeks the young there stay in the nest as they grow stronger as they are fed everything is provided for them but there comes a time when that mother ego begins to tear out the lining of the nest begins to encourage her young to stand up to go to the edge of the nest and finally to jump from that nest they had everything they needed why would they want to to leave and yet that mother knows that the only way for that little eaglet to become an eagle is for that eaglet to learn to fly but of course the mother eagle does not forsake her eagle that eaglet is falling to the ground spreading its wings and trying to fly no she swoops down under him rescues him and time after time teaches that eaglet to fly i love that verse in isaiah chapter 40 verse 31 but those who wait on the lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings like eagles they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not faint and as god teaches us to fly he sets us free free to go where we long to go where the deepest desires of our hearts yearn for he does not control us he does not set a track in front of us he opens the door sets us free to go you know there's another type of bird that i love the pigeon perhaps it's a common bird perhaps a nuisance in some of the urban areas but but the pigeon is very intelligent in fact if you take a pigeon close it up in a box and take it perhaps hundreds of miles perhaps even thousands of miles from its home and set it free that pigeon will begin to fly and as it flies higher as it gains its bearings figures out where it is it will shot a course directly back to its home and pigeons have been known even to cross the ocean returning back to their native land so as god sets us free he sets us free in the hope and longing within his heart that as we fly we will find our true home [Music] god created the birds and set them free in the skies above i think of the psalmist david as he writes there in psalms chapter 84 of it occurrence which i believe he saw with his own eyes he says speaking of this tabernacle the special place of worship to god how lovely is there a tabernacle o lord of hosts my soul longs yes even faints for the courts of the lord my heart and my flesh cry out for the living god the psalmist just like each of us longs to come to god and as he comes into the house of god he sees something something perhaps very common and ordinary but something that has such a special lesson he says even the sparrow has found a home and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young even your altars o lord of hosts my king and my god there in this most sacred of places the humble sparrow has come and has built a nest there in the altar of god returning back to the place of worship of her creator and so as god makes you and me places us in this world like the birds he sets us free he sets us free to rome to explore to study to build yes to discover the secrets of flight from the birds to discover the glories of the world under the lakes and the oceans he sets us free but what he longs for the most is for us to long for him for us with that freedom to return back to his courts and to build our nest in his presence so i want to appeal to you today as we think of our loving creator as you think of the glorious and magnificent creation that he has made of the almost unbelievable miracle of flight god longs to set us free he has come to give us wings and as he sets us free we can go where we choose what he longs for the most is for us to choose to come back to him to make our nest to make our abode in his courts for one day soon he is coming in the clouds of heaven and when he comes he will take us to be forever with him let us pray father in heaven lord thank you for your love as we see your care even over the sparrow you have said that not one sparrow falls to the ground with the answer notice yet how much more valuable are we than sparrows lord teach us to care for one another and teach us to spread our wings and to fly to your courts above we pray in jesus name amen [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Daniel McFeeters

Views: 77

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Id: C_5gDFJN_ZQ

Length: 34min 26sec (2066 seconds)

Published: Sat May 15 2021