Bird Watching for the Wise

Paul gives us a sanctified perspective on the most redundant, repetitive chores of life that you have to repeat over and over again. In 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 31, whether then you eat or drink, I mean the most common thing that you've got to do, you can do that to the glory of God. Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 9 verse 10, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

Give it everything you've got. Have you discovered the spiritual truth that following God often means doing the same thing over and over and over again? It's true. Most of the time, obeying God means being faithful in the mundane things of life. As we continue looking at God's creation and what we can learn from it, we have a lesson today called Birdwatching for the Wise. Birds teach us valuable lessons about our Creator. Throughout scripture, birds are used as an example of God's love, protection, and provision for us.

They even serve as a biblical metaphor for repentance. Here's Stephen to teach you more. If you're new around here, we're doing a little bit of a different kind of series.

In fact, it seems a little different for me. We have been encouraging you to take your binoculars along with your Bibles and to look around the natural world. We're going to pick an animal or an element of creation each Lord's Day.

We're going to learn to not just look, but see, and not just taste, but savor, not just hear, but truly listen. If you're older in the faith, you know the Bible is filled with analogies of creation to the glory of God. If you've read through your Bible a few times, we have a chronological Bible study guide, by the way, you can pick up at the Welcome Desk. This is a little commercial, but you can read through the books of the Bible chronologically. If you've done that a few times by now, you know that one of the animals that keeps showing up in Scripture are our birds.

I want to mention them in our study today. They blanket the earth with their presence. In fact, the estimated number of living birds today is somewhere around 300 billion. If you can imagine it, we're told in the Old Testament, in fact, this rather amazing reference to the omniscience of God, the all-knowingness of God, we're told that he knows all the birds of the air. Now, we already know probably from the prophecies of Isaiah that he knows all of the millions of trillions of stars.

He's named them all and he knows where they are in their orbits. He knows where 300 billion birds are as well, and by the way, that's another lesson that he can keep track of about 7 billion people. In fact, in the New Testament, Jesus makes this significant announcement about the care and knowledge of God over even the tiniest of birds. Jesus says, Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and yet not a single sparrow falls to the ground, that is, dies without your Father's knowledge. You think about that for a moment and you come away reassured, because as we learned in our last study, you're worth much more to God than them.

Any of his creatures pale in comparison to the value and worth of the climax of his created acts, making male and female in his image, image bearers of God. I read recently another incident in the testimony of Joni Eareckson Tada, who, as you may know, broke her neck as a teenager in a diving accident in the Chesapeake Bay and has been paralyzed from the neck down, still living. Twenty-five years after that accident, she's now a bestselling author and artist. She developed some health problems and had to stay in bed and hoping to cheer her up. Her husband, Ken, bought a bird feeder and hung it outside her window where she could watch the birds. And she wrote that at first it only made her more miserable because she envied their freedom and their mobility.

Then she remembered this text that is on the screen. And she wrote of her change of heart, she said this, I can understand Jesus giving attention to an eagle, but a scrappy sparrow? There are a dime a dozen, Jesus said to himself. Yet from thousands of bird species, the Lord chooses the most insignificant, least noticed, scruffiest bird of all, a pint-sized little thing that even dedicated bird watchers tend to ignore.

And that thought calmed my fears. If the great God of heaven concerns himself with a ragtag little sparrow clinging to the bird feeder outside my window, he cares about you and me. Now what I find fascinating in the preaching of Jesus is that he actually commands us to study these animals. In fact, the Lord was preaching and in Matthew 6.26 he says to his audience, look at the birds of the air.

And he's not saying, you know, just take a little casual glance if you don't mind. Look at how they're cared for by their father, their heavenly father, your heavenly father, he says. Now when he says this, he's using, in fact he uses a verb, that verb translated look at them is an imperative verb in the Greek New Testament, which means you can put an exclamation point after it.

It's a command. And it means not just casually glance at them, but study them, observe them, research them. Martin Luther, the reformer writing several hundred years ago on this particular verse, said the Lord is making the birds our schoolmasters. In the gospel, a helpless sparrow becomes a theologian to the wisest of men. So let's take a closer look and find how they illustrate theological truths to those among us who would be wise. As part of my preparation for this series and as I sort of scavenged around for books and all sorts of resources, but I came across a book written by a pastor well respected by his peers, certainly by me, in fact I have his commentaries in my library.

His name is John Stott. He passed away just a few years ago, part of the Anglican Church, but a conservative evangelical and follower of Christ. He coined a term for his lifelong passion of bird watching, coined a term from the scientific word ornithology, which is the study of birds, and he said now it is ornithology. And then he kept journals, took photographs, and late in life, published just a few years before his death, he published a book of his photographs of birds and commentary where he made analogy between these birds and scripture. And I have devoured this book.

It's been really fascinating to me. And I came across, in fact, one photograph of him. He's in his study. He's surrounded by books, floor to ceiling, a man after my own heart.

He's standing by a window, smiling at the camera, holding a pair of binoculars. So let's combine them together. In fact, he says in his book this, many Christians have a good doctrine of redemption but need a better doctrine of creation. We ought to pursue at least one aspect of natural history. The study of nature and the scriptures can go hand in hand.

So let's just apply that literally as we follow the command even of Christ. Let me give you four lessons fairly quickly, four lessons for the wise believer from birds. And I hope it will whet your appetite to do more study on your own. First of all, birds provide, number one, an example of persistence in our assignments from God, an example of persistence.

And maybe you arrived here this morning tired, a long list of things to do, so little time, so much work. One author, what creationist wrote, he said, you know, if evolution was true, by now mothers would have more than two hands. One of the birds that's captured my attention are hummingbirds. We have a pair this year that are just flying around and without even putting the feeder out, they're just going from flower to flower and it's really amazing to watch them. I've had them fly within just a few inches of my face and just look at me. It's obvious, by the way, you study them or any bird that God loves color and design.

Why? This intricate design in a wing and the coloring. But these are sort of, you know, they're fun to watch. They're like miniature helicopters on steroids. They can fly up and down, sideways, backward, of course forward. They can loop flying upside down as they speed along in mid-air. But one author wrote that their wings beat on average 25 times a second. If they're showing off for you about 80 times a second, if they're chasing down a prospective mate 200 times a second, that's the same rate, by the way, as the house fly.

It's that fast. Hummingbirds, one author added, have the highest energy output per unit of weight than any other living warm-blooded animal, which means they eat a lot and they eat all day long. For instance, this author said a normal person eats two and a half pounds of food daily. If your consumption based on comparative size matched the hummingbird, you would be eating 370 pounds of food every single day, which sounds like Thanksgiving. The hummingbird will consume half its weight in sugar every day. Now, that's where I'd like to be, a hummingbird, live right next to Krispy Kreme, settle that whole thing.

Now, all of the above facts simply mean that gathering food, working for food, being on the lookout, always moving is their lot in life. In fact, they rarely stop moving. They'll perch a while and rest, but you'll never see them hopping on the ground.

You'll never see a hummingbird walk. They're just flying back and forth. In fact, they eat in flight. They drink in flight.

They even bathe in flight. Diligent, hardworking, alert. Paul gives us a sanctified perspective on the most redundant, definitive, difficult chores of life that you have to repeat over and over again. In 1 Corinthians 10 and verse 31, whether then you eat or drink, I mean the most common thing that you've got to do, you can do that to the glory of God, honoring him, thanking him for the way that he has designed you, and thanking him for the food that you eat. Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 9 verse 10, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Give it everything you've got. You watch the persistent activity of that little helicopter out there, and then you get off your chair and you go tackle the next thing on your list to the glory of your Creator.

Let me give you a second lesson. Number two, birds provide a picture of the protecting care of God. This is a little more well-known and yet worthy of mention. The great song of Moses recorded in Deuteronomy chapter 32, the Lord is like an eagle that stirs up its nest that hovers over its young, spreading its wings over them. Isaiah the prophet used the same analogy when he delivered the promise to the nation fearful of an invading army, and he said, no, listen, God is hovering over you, watching everything that's going on below.

Isaiah 31 verse 5. I've watched in the backyard those bluebirds swooping down at the squirrels when they get too close to their nest. They know exactly where they are.

They're always watching them. I've listened to the arguing and the complaining and the fighting in the sky between those blackbirds and those hawks as they keep each other away from their hovering or watching. I've read of an eider duck who will sit on her duckling so dedicated to protecting her young that even when she sees predators coming around, she'll not move.

In fact, she won't move until that predator touches her. Duck is, in fact, other birds for that matter shield her young from the heat, from the bitter cold. Several times in the Psalms, David uses this kind of analogy to refer to the care of God. He writes in Psalm 61, 4, I long to take shelter in your wings.

But then he adds a verse that says, you know, there's some responsibility I've got to take on my own. As he writes in Psalm 57 verse 1, my soul takes refuge in you. And in the shadow of your wings, I will, I will take refuge. At one point when David is desperate, he's in peril, he's in the wilderness of Judah, he writes a song that reads, get this, for you have been my help. And in the shadow of your wings, I sing for joy. He wrote that in the wilderness. Let me give you another theological analogy of birds to the wise Christian.

Birds provide an illustration of the mysterious ways of God. When God finally comes to Job, I referenced this last Lord's Day. Let me dig a little deeper to redeem him from despair. Job doesn't answer Job's questions. He never enters into dialogue about Job's suffering. He never explains the death of Job's 10 children, the death of all of his hired staff and field hands, the marauding invaders that cruelly killed them and then stole essentially his, his well-being financially. He never explains Job's horrendous physical suffering, at least 20 to 25 different ailments are specifically mentioned. He lives in constant pain. He's moved out to the ash heap.

That's where the beggars live, but it also provides some little bit of cushion and solitude as he sits there in the ashes. God shows up to speak and what he does is he takes Job simply on a tour of creation. He describes for him among other things one particular bird. And by the way, it would be a bird that I would skip if I were giving the tour. It's a strange bird. It's the ostrich.

And in chapter 39, God says in verse 13, the ostrich's wings flap joyously with opinion and plumage of love. She abandons her eggs to the earth and warms them in the dust. She forgets that a foot may crush them or that a wild beast may trample them. She treats her young cruelly, that is as if they were not hers. She simply deposits her eggs in a little shallow dusty hole and then moves on. Though her labor be in vain, she appears unconcerned.

Why? Well, because God has made her that way. He's made her forget wisdom and has not given her a share of understanding. In other words, he's made her an idiot bird. She's not the brightest bird on the planet. She's odd.

So you do a little digging as I did. You find out that an ostrich will grow to about eight feet tall, weighing in at about 450 pounds. The ostrich has wings, but they can't fly, which is why her nest is in the sand. She can't fly to the top of the tree or a craggy cliff to build a nest. God mentioned she appears unconcerned, probably due to her limited intelligence.

Pliny, the first century Roman naturalist during the days of our Lord, wrote that seems to be the first one to write this fact about them. They hide their heads in the bushes when a dangerous predator is nearby, assuming they're safe because they can't see the predator. Exactly the move of a valedictorian, the bird species. This is how you play hide and seek with your kids, right? Your grandkids. See, they cover their eyes and they assume you're not there because they can't see you anymore. The brain cells are not united entirely yet.

Then later on, you cover your eyes and they're still standing there asking you for money, but at any rate, that's another story. For all her strange ways and ignorance, here's what God's going to talk about. They're amazing to watch run. Verse 18, when she lifts herself on a high, that is a run, she laughs at the horse and the rider.

Horses can gallop at top speed at about 40 miles an hour, ostriches can reach 50 miles an hour. Now wait a second. Did Job need to know that? He has suffered incredibly. He's lost everything. Does he really want to sit around on the ash heap and listen to God describe an ostrich?

God knows. And in fact, this is his way of implying to Job that he creates things we would never think of creating. He designs things we would never design. They're natural wonders we would never think of, even things that don't seem to make much sense. Lord, why have you allowed that to come running through my life?

What were you thinking when you designed that element for me? It doesn't make any sense. See, Job is getting the message by the description of this very odd bird that God's purposes and God's creative ways, there are times when they simply go under the categorical heading, you just kind of file them away and that file folder is marked unexpected. That file folder is marked impossible to understand. You've got a file folder that's marked there's no explanation for God on this one. There's no explanation from God for you. This is God's way of saying my ways are beyond your ways.

My thoughts are obviously not your thoughts. I've got a reason for everything that I've created. Let me give you one more, one more lesson birds provide a pattern of returning to walk with God. John Stott had an entire chapter in his journal entries marked repentance and a picture of a white stork on a nest and I thought, frankly, honestly, I thought, okay, you've gone way too far now.

I mean, this is beyond the pale and that's what I thought. Birds don't repent. In fact, birds don't sin. They don't morally violate the law of God. They've never once been overwhelmed with guilt over being selfish, you know, taking the food from another animal.

They've never felt badly when they've bitten you. So repentance. And then Stott included in his journal a text by Jeremiah that makes a direct analogy between the migration of birds and repentance.

And I have to admit I've never seen this before. So here's the text. God is being quoted by Jeremiah. I have listened attentively and they have spoken what is not right.

No man repented of his wickedness saying, what have I done? Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons. The turtledove, the swift and the thrush observe along with the stork the time of their migration. But my people do not know the ordinance of the Lord.

In other words, they don't get it. See, during the days of Jeremiah, in fact, to this day, the land of Israel happens to be a corridor for bird migration. Birds that live in Asia, all over Europe, they fly right through the Strait of Istanbul by the millions, many species. Spring arrives, they return.

They fan their way out across Europe and Asia. And Jeremiah mentions the stork probably because he's watched huge flocks of them winging their way south and then back home. It's estimated that even today, more than 500,000 storks fly over where Jeremiah lived. They call it the flyway, sort of a highway for birds, this migratory pattern.

And God is speaking through Jeremiah. He's essentially saying, look, you've watched all these birds migrating every year. A couple of times a year, they go and guess what they do? They come back. And the tragedy in this particular analogy is that God's people, represented by the stork, stray from their creator and they don't have the sense, the homing instinct to come back and fellowship with their creator.

In other words, what birds do by inbuilt, inherited, instinctive, God-created and implanted navigational skills which scientists to this day do not understand, all they can do is observe it. He's saying, look, God's people ought to do this by choice. Whenever self-centered and straying, they know where they need to come back to.

They need to come home. If today you are an unbeliever and you're not heading in the right direction, by the way, until you head for your creator who died for you on the cross, that's where your journey needs to go. If you're a believer, is it possible to stray?

How many times a day would you like to talk about? How's that instinct spiritually, that homing instinct? The smallest movement off the flight path brings you ultimately to repentance and confession and you fly back home. Maybe for you today, you need to stop postponing your trip back and get right with God. So, I guess the birds can teach us something about repentance. Here are the lessons.

Birds provide an example of persistence in our assignments from God, a picture of the protecting care of God, an illustration of the mysterious ways of God and a pattern of returning to walk and fellowship with God and you know as a believer, whenever you come back and fellowship with God, you have basically come back home where you need to be. That's a good reminder today as we continue studying God's creation in a series called, In Living Color. Stephen has turned it into a hardback book. That book is available during this series at a deeply discounted rate. Visit wisdomonline.org and the book is called, In Living Color. If you prefer to call, our number is 866-48-BIBLE and we'd be happy to help you over the phone. Join us again next time for more wisdom for the hearts.