Christ's Busiest Week: Part 1

Allen Webster

Topic(s): Evidences, God, Jesus, Science

Links to this entire series:

• Christ's Busiest Week: Part 1
• Christ's Busiest Week: Part 2
• Christ's Busiest Week: Part 3
• Christ's Busiest Week: Part 4

When Jesus came to earth He was a carpenter. He built things. Houses, for instance.¹ Jesus’ first house was not His first construction site, though. It must have had a familiar feel to it. In a way, it must have had a “small potatoes” air. The feeling an NBA player must get when he joins a pick-up game at the city park. The feeling a big game hunter might have if he took his son squirrel hunting. The feeling a former president might have taking minutes at a city council meeting.

You see, Jesus’ first construction project folder had been labeled “universe.” He took His almighty hand and formed this 13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pound ball² we call earth and tossed it into space. And that was only a small part of the job. His fingers pressed the clay of the moon and set fire to the sun. He made planets ten times as big, and stars a thousand times bigger than that. (The star Betelgeuse, for example, has a diameter of 100 million miles, which is larger than the earth’s orbit around the sun.) He put the rings around Saturn and the “milk” in the Milky Way. He made oceans, rivers, and dew. He created mountains and molehills. He mixed the nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide in just the right amounts to make usable air.³

Christ was the world's builder

After house plans are completed, a builder must be employed. He studies the blue-prints, gathers materials, and constructs the house. After God finished His architecture, He handed the plans over to His Son who had the most creative week in history.

The Bible is clear on Christ’s role in creation:

• “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).
• “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not” (John 1:10).
• “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16–17).

How can we reconcile “God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) with “without [Christ] was not any thing made”? (John 1:3). It is simply a metonymy⁴ of instrumentality, a figure of speech whereby the originator is credited with doing something he used an instrument to complete. Paul subtly contrasts the roles of the Father and Son in 1 Corinthians 8:6: “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” “God . . . created all things by Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 3:9). God “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:2).

A builder first “dries it in.” Then he proceeds logically. He does not, for instance, hang the sheetrock before he puts on the roof. It could be done that way, and might even be easier to use a lift to bring the heavy sheetrock in from above, but one rain shower would ruin all his work. He runs the wiring after he puts up the frame but before he hangs the siding. Why? The wires run through the walls and are much more difficult to run after the walls are covered.

Jesus first “dried in” the world. He created the dry land before He made the vegetation and animals that would go on it. He made the plants before the animals because the animals would need to eat the plants. He made the firmament before He made the birds that would fly in it; He made the seas before He made the creatures that would swim in them.

Consider with wonder what Jesus accomplished on those six days of creation:

Day 1: Jesus created the heavens and the earth, light, day, and night (Genesis 1:1–5).

The Bible speaks of three heavens:

• The first is the atmosphere—where the birds fly (Genesis 1:20).
• The second is outer space—where the stars are (Psalm 19).
• The third is the headquarters of the universe—where God is (2 Corinthians 12:2–4; Psalm 123:1).

Although covered in one phrase—“heaven and the earth”—consider how much was done. The heavens are immeasurably vast. Our solar system is said to be about 26,000 light-years from the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy.⁵ To put this in perspective, it takes sunlight, traveling at 186,000 miles per second, only about 8.5 minutes to travel the 93 million miles to the earth. Yet light takes more than four years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, some 24 trillion miles from earth! Truly we should “behold the height of the stars, how high they are!” (Job 22:12).

Scientists have yet to discover the edges of the universe. A new camera aboard Hubble Space Telescope has observed 3,000 visible galaxies, which is twice as many as observed before with the old camera. “Visible” galaxies do not include observations made with radio telescopes, infrared cameras, and x-ray cameras which detect other “invisible” galaxies. As astronomers explore more of our universe, the number of galaxies detected increases. In 1999 it was estimated that there were 125 billion galaxies in the universe. Recently, a German supercomputer simulation estimated that the number may be as high as 500 billion!

Endnotes:

¹ The word tekton (used of Jesus, translated “carpenter”) could be used of any artisan or craftsman, but normally denoted a worker with wood, a carpenter, joiner, or builder. William Barclay said the carpenter (tekton) could “build you anything from a chicken-coop to a house.” In other words, he was a handyman. At the same time, Professor Martin Hengel emphasizes that ‘Jesus himself did not come from the proletariat of day-labourers and landless tenants, but from the middle class of Galilee, the skilled workers.’ He adds that tekton meant ‘mason, carpenter, cartwright and joiner all rolled into one.’ Justin Martyr, at about the middle of the second century, affirmed in his Dialogue with Trypho a Jew, that Jesus ‘used to make ploughs and yokes.’ In addition to farm implements, it seems probable that he would have learned to make and repair household furniture like tables, chairs, beds, and cupboards. John Stott, The Incomparable Christ.

² http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_kids/AskKids/earthweight.shtml.

³ Nitrogen (78.09%), oxygen (20.95%), argon (0.93%), carbon dioxide (0.03%). There are other gases (neon, helium, methane, krypton, hydrogen, and xenon) in trace amounts (0.003% put together). Water vapor is also present in air in varying amounts.

⁴ A figure of speech called metonymy is often used. One name or noun is used instead of another, to which it stands in certain relation. For instance, a news reporter may say, “The White House stated,” which stands for “the President said.” It is not founded upon resemblance, but on relation (http://petersmythe.typepad.com/the_real_faith/bible_inerrancy/ index.html).

⁵ A light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one year (approximately 5.88 trillion miles).