Miracles of Creation
Series: CREATIO | Bible text: Psalm 26:2 and Psalm 9:2
Heart and kidneys are two ingenious wonders of creation! They are also crucial for our spiritual life!
I want to announce one thing right at the beginning of the sermon: This sermon will get under your skin! It is essentially based on two biblical passages from the Psalms:
«Lord, put me to the test and put me through my paces!»(Psalm 26:2 NLB)
«Lord, I will thank you with all my heart and tell you of your wonders»(Psalm 9:2 NLB)
Particularly in the OT, we occasionally come across the phrase as we read it in Psalm 26. It sounds like a check-up at the doctor’s, who examines everything about me and checks whether everything is still in order – under the skin!
The frequent mention of the heart and kidneys in the OT shows how much the heart and the other internal organs were considered the centre of the personality and our being at that time. Heart and kidneys are two ingenious wonders of creation!
That is why I put Psalm 9 at the beginning: «Lord, I will thank you with all my heart and tell you of your wonders»(Psalm 9:2 NLB)
Our two kidneys are the most ingenious sewage treatment plants I know! They don’t stink and they do an excellent job! They are about 12 cm long and weigh 150 g. They are well protected by a fat pad to the right and left of the spine – at about waist level. While we sit here comfortably in the service, the entire blood volume of the body – a good 5 l – flows through the kidneys about 10 times. Converted, that means: every day, over 1000 litres of blood are filtered in you. I call them purification plants because it is their crucial task to purify the blood.
Substances that are harmful to the body are caught and drained through the renal pelvis and ureter so that they leave the body in the urine. Now you might think that what goes out through the urine is pure poison, but this is a mistake! When urine leaves a healthy body, it is completely germ-free – you could even drink it.
Urine is also used to diagnose diseases. Diabetes, for example, can be detected by a simple urine test. If the urine has a reddish colour, it indicates a kidney or urinary tract haemorrhage; if it looks cloudy or even whitish-creamy, there is an infection somewhere, the excess of white blood cells must be removed. It is also interesting that the urine can even be used to determine whether a pregnancy is present or not.
The job of the kidneys is done by around 2 million renal corpuscles, which are located in the renal cortex. These tiny vascular clusters are the kidneys» filters. Like a fine-pored sieve, they hold back all the good and indispensable substances such as glucose, salts and other minerals and return them to the bloodstream. The bad, on the other hand, they let slip. If their ability to function is restricted, the body becomes poisoned.
The kidneys also ensure the correct composition of the blood by draining excess water and keeping the total amount of fluid in the body constant.
Our two kidneys are two ingenious wonders of creation!
What about our hearts? There are ingenious pumps in this world, but the heart puts all pumps in the shade.
Without our regular heartbeat, oxygen and many nutrients could not be distributed properly in the body, because every single cell in the body must be supplied with what it needs to live and function. These include above all oxygen, certain hormones, the substances that the immune system needs and the energy-rich fuels that we consume with our food. The blood also transports away via the vessels all metabolic waste and residual gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2).
The actual heartbeat occurs when the strong ventricular walls contract abruptly. With each contraction, they literally wring the blood out of the heart – in a first wave out of the right ventricle to the lungs, from where it returns enriched with fresh oxygen; the left distributes it, along with the charged oxygen and nutrients, to the last corners of the body. The wall of the left ventricle has to generate the enormous pressure that sends the blood down to the tips of our fingers and toes. That the blood flows down to the toe we understand well, but how does it get back up? Four strong hard-wearing valves, the heart valves, open and close as needed and ensure that the blood always flows on in the right direction. Over 500 litres of blood flow through your heart every day!
If you were to connect all the blood-transporting vessels of your body, there would be a path of 100,000 km. That is a length of more than twice around the earth! These vessels split into finer and finer vessels until every muscle fibre is reached by a capillary. Corresponding venous vessels transport the used blood back again.
Two figures best illustrate how enormously efficient our heart is: The heart of a healthy person beats around three billion times during his or her lifetime. In the process, it pumps a total of around 250 million litres of blood into the body’s circulation.
How does a heart do that? It can regenerate itself – after every single beat, even in the middle of the hardest work. From this finely tuned balance of effort and rest it draws the strength for its lifelong continuous performance.
The heart and kidneys are truly ingenious wonders that we can only marvel at.
Feel your heartbeat for a moment and thank God for it!
The common mention of heart and kidneys in the OT is the most comprehensive meaning of the centre of our life with all that we are and have: Personality, character and inner life, seat of emotional impulses, source of spiritual activities, will and intention.
In the NT, for example, we notice in Jesus that he already speaks in a more differentiated way about the centre of the human being when he formulates the most important commandment as follows: «And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength». (Mark 12:30 NLB)
Now let us ask ourselves: What do these two miracle organs, heart and kidneys, have to tell us for our spiritual life?
I have the impression that somewhere in or around our heart, there is a connection to God in all people.
I agree with Paul when he writes in the first chapter of Romans: All in creation can recognise God! But they do not want to worship and glorify him. Many people have turned their wire to God into an appendix. They don’t really know what this wire is for. And when it causes problems, it is cut away like the appendix.
Yet God created us for a relationship with him! Our connection with him meant so much to him that Jesus Christ, his Son, died for us on the cross so that we can bring our lives into connection with God. Then Christ lives in us through the Holy Spirit and we may call ourselves God’s children. «Yes, the Spirit himself testifies to us in our innermost being that we are God’s children». (Romans 8:16 NGÜ)
This Christ in us is now our spiritual kidney within us, the spiritual purification plant of our lives!
The apostle John describes it this way in his first letter:
«But if we live in the light, as God is in the light, we are bound together, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and close ourselves off from the truth. But if we confess our sins, God proves himself faithful and just: he forgives us our sins and cleanses us from all the wrong we have committed.» (1 John 1:7–9 NGÜ)
I need this spiritual «blood washing» again and again, pastors are no exception!
Earthly and spiritual pollutants must be cleared. This is a spiritual clearing out!
I am responsible for waste disposal in our household and I love it! Throwing everything that accumulates, waste paper, glass, aluminium into the appropriate containers – I love these movements!
Listening to the bottles shatter into a thousand pieces in the container – wonderful.
And when everything is gone and tidied up at home again, it gives such a satisfied feeling! But it is much nicer and more wonderful to know: He forgives our sins and cleanses us from all the wrongs we have committed.
Our kidney can uniquely separate the bad from the good so that our body is not poisoned. The Spirit of God can teach you just as uniquely to distinguish between good and bad.
We desperately need this wisdom from God in this day and age, in a world where we no longer really know what is truth and what is lies; what comes from God and what is «Satan’s whisper»! The blood brings the life-giving nourishment into the body. In the same way, our faith in God needs spiritual nourishment. People go to so much trouble to feed their pets properly and, above all, in a manner appropriate to their species. Do we take the trouble to feed our faith in the same healthy and species-appropriate way? Jesus has a few things to say about this:
«I am the bread of life!» (John 6:48 NLB) We do not find this bread in the supermarket, but in the Bible. Jesus gave this bread to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. «Living water» offered.
In these hot days we must not forget to drink enough! Believing in the Bible and God is quite a hot business these days – let’s not forget to drink enough at the source of life. My wife and I once went on a hike and didn’t think to take anything to drink. How we suffered! That was an unforgettable lesson for us! Usually we do not forget our physical needs. While we often forget the spiritual needs. What can we do about it? We can train ourselves to be spiritually hungry and thirsty through regularity. It’s the same with food: if we don’t keep to our regular meal times, the stomach rebels and announces hunger.
It is the same with spiritual food. When you have your regular time with God and one day it just doesn’t fit into your programme, you realise that something is missing! Sometimes it is good for body and soul to fast. Afterwards you appreciate the food more and are grateful for it again!
Before, I said about the heart that it constantly regenerates itself. This is the only way it can withstand decades of strain. It is the same in the spiritual life. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians: «That is why I do not lose heart. The life forces that I have by nature are worn out; but the life that God gives me is renewed every day». (2 Corinthians 4:16 GNB)
I also take the last sentences of the sermon from the Bible, from the Letter to the Hebrews:
«Therefore, let us enter into the presence of God with a sincere heart and trust Him completely. For our hearts have been sprinkled with the blood of Christ to cleanse our consciences from guilt, and our bodies have been washed with pure water!» (Hebrews 10:22 NLB)
Amen.
Possible questions for the small groups
- Besides the examples in the sermon, how can one relate other «matters of the heart» to the spiritual life?
- Are there other organs or body parts whose meaning can be applied to our faith?
- How can we awaken spiritual hunger and thirst?
- How can we sustain spiritual hunger and thirst?
- Tell each other how you quench spiritual hunger and thirst!
- Take plenty of time for an extended time of thanks and praise!
- Pray for a spiritual hunger and thirst in loved ones and throughout our nation.
