Original URL Wednesday, March 5, 2025
Transcript
so so bird watching in the Bible the the idea this this week will be to survey a collection of scriptures that that invoke bird life um now I imagine just saying this there are several scriptures that that pop into your mind already um others will be more obscure hopefully and we'll we'll pause to have some meditation on each um but this was actually inspired by uh brother Steve hotton of the Cranston Ecclesia who joined us in January uh he he provided an entire exert on Deuteronomy uh 32 the verse that's on the screen there which describes God as guiding Israel like an eagle that stirs up its nest that flutters over its young spreading its its wings catching them bearing them on its pinions um so we won't dwell on that that scripture but uh brother Steve's talk it definitely showed an example of of how um language of bird life uh can be a source of inspiration and F ForThought So before we get into all that I wonder if anybody on the call knows who these folks
are anybody at
all maybe not well this is uh brother Leonard sister Pearl Hines uh their their brother and sister from the South Ozone Park Ecclesia uh you can see their brother Paul on the left and there circled in yellow is is Paul's brother Phil Philip who married my sister Linette um on October 10th
2021 uh so so nearly four years ago so you may wonder why I'm showing you this photo if the wedding was two years ago or four years ago really um why May second through fourth well I couldn't uh speak tonight without doing a plug for the brothers weekend uh my dear brother-in-law Phil is going to be our speaker at the brothers weekend this year uh it's May 2nd to 4th I would encourage any of the men who are online tonight to come and join us at this wonderful event uh Phil is a very thoughtful brother
um Phil exudes sort of a warmth and quiet confidence um and calmness that you wouldn't know until you met him uh so I I'd encourage everybody to get out and and meet Phil uh it's there's always Great Fellowship um so so send me an email later tonight let me know if your intentions to come if you need a pickup from the airport or anything at all like that uh we'll make it happen so apologies for the plug I do promise there's a connection because during Phil and Linette's wedding uh this photo of my parents Bill and Carol link was also taken the same day so so my dad many of you will know uh he he spent over 30 years working at The tuin Wildlife Research Center um and his experience working with ornithologists uh those are scientists that study birds uh really instilled a lifelong passion for for bird watching I can remember countless hikes in the woods with my mom and dad and the kids would be pressing forward you know ready to stay active and keep moving and and they're out there looking with their fuel glasses at at these birds up in the Treetops and I didn't really understand it when I was a kid um at some point my dad stopped taking out the binoculars and he started taking out uh one of those cameras with the huge telephoto lenses and he uh he's a real shutter bug he takes a lot pictures um over the years he's amassed I think 2500 or more images on his his flicker page which is sort of a website for sharing photos uh if you're not on Facebook if you want something professional so he's got a flicker page um I know those 2500 probably represents less than 1% of the total number he takes and a lot of them are of birds right um coming from his passion for for
Ornithology um and and my mom's no slouch either in fact she's very good like she can hear the calls and identify the birds uh just by their
sound
um so I'm going to show you a second picture
here
um if you take a look at at this photo what you should be seeing at this moment is the same image but now it's become a little more pixelated it's a little fuzzier than before and on closer examination you'll see that the image has actually become a composite of thousands of those pictures my dad took um I was able to do like a bulk download and create this Mosaic that that color matches and organizes um the individual images to make up uh sort of the original image um and just to illustrate this point if people are having a hard time following what I'm describing um here's a closeup and if you kind of squint put your eyes out of focus a little bit you can see the area denoted by the yellow box in the bottom left um and and just how that original photo has now been recreated as a mosaic of the uh thousands thousands of of bird photos my dad takes so put this together as a little tribute to my parents um but but I guess the question why am i showing this to you um each of these pictures kind of captures a moment in time where these living creatures that are healthy and flourishing and they're often splendidly beautiful to behold and they exist in the world apart from human beings without us needing to care for them or doing they just live in the wild and countless generations of these Birds um they live they have young uh they die and the Next Generation comes up after them they have ways of avoiding Predators uh they survive bad weather they navigate perilous Journeys they're just really incredible um just to think of of of these Birds um and all living creatures really um they don't need us um so so I mentioned that that some of these birds uh you know they they navigate perilous Journeys there's no better example of this than the Arctic turn uh so this species of of seabird is is particularly remarkable example of traveling um Arctic turns have the longest known migration in the animal kingdom um by a significant measure they travel over 50,000 miles every year and that's just a mindboggling number 50,000 miles in a year uh just to put put that in perspective that's twice the circumference of the globe and you may Wonder well you know if they're if they're flying from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back well how do how do you get two circumferences out of that well it's it's not a direct route you can kind of see from this GPS data that's that's shown here they sort of meander their way um basically as the winds um allow they they are taking advantage of a
Tailwind um so this is really incredible thing the fact that these creatures exist is just phenomenal and and I believe that that for some a person of Faith like like us when we read about these things when we see these things when we study biology the science of living creatures we we can actually study God's glory in creation and I think think this can bring us to worship um and there's there's all sorts of sort of naturalistic worship sort of uh new age ecospirituality that worships the creature rather than the Creator that's not what I'm talking about at all because we don't worship these Arctic turns we don't worship animals this is all sort of pagan ideas
um what we see when we examine these these wonderful creatures is the handiwork of our our Lord
these are creatures that he has created and who he sustains um apart from any intervention on it and really despite humankind's uh worst efforts um so that brings us to Psalm
104 oh Lord how manifold are your Works in wisdom you have made them the Earth is full of your
creatures the these all look to you to give them their food in due season when you give it to them they gather it up when you open your hand they are filled with good things when you hide your face they are dismayed and when you take away their breath they die and return to their
dust last week brother Steve stoin spoke about the the Golem of of Jewish folklore and how it's become a metaphor for artificial intelligence um and I was thinking about this as I Was preparing the class just the way that we find ourselves immersed in a world of our own making a a metaverse of technological systems that really are inseparable from our daily lives we're constantly navigating these digital Landscapes we're Tethered to screens networks and conveniences that demand our constant attention uh but sometimes the best thing for us is just to step away from it all a step outside uh we can go out and breathe in fresh air we can walk walk amongst the trees uh and just be reminded that there's there's a world beyond the artificial one that man's builts a world that God has created um Untouched by the algorithms and and
notifications so in that world if you're paying attention you might even spot a Scarlet tager now these striking birds are fairly common in the summer months of New England you can see them in the Treetops splitting about going after caterpillars and insects and other
and and God has designed them to thrive in this environment U every every one of their needs is provided now Scarlet Tanger doesn't need an iPhone doesn't need online banking or Netflix or Minecraft it already has everything it needs and I'm not trying to put down anything that man's created uh specifically there's there's many things that are benign or even beneficial to our lives that man has created
but we do need to reenter our focus on God from time to time I think the outdoors and the study of God's wonderful creation can help us refocus on the Lord and away from sort of the the inventions of mankind that uh distract and and often bewilder us
so um we don't have to go far in our Bibles uh in verse 16 of the same Psalm uh that is Psalm
104 we read the Trees of the Lord are watered abundantly The Cedars of Lebanon that he planted in them the birds build their nests the stor has her home in the fur trees so here's a reference to bird life in the Bible um I I was actually having some difficulty imag Imaging uh a stor in a fur tree there something seems in congruous with those two species for for whatever reason I I just was having a hard time imagining it so I did a little bit of research um and it turns out that there is in fact a a species of stor that would have been known to ancient Israelites and does in fact nest in coniferous trees um here's a picture of a black stor and and two nestlings and a large Nest arched on some pioner fur trees
um black STS today are often seen migrating through Lebanon and it's possible that in the time of the pist their breeding range also included this region so this might be a a match here this might be the species that the the psalmist was thinking of um I think it's worth a bit of a disclaimer at this point to say that it's very difficult to translate taxonomical terms um we don't know if the the species that the the ancient biblical authors were referring to always the species that we think of um so it's it's difficult to translate those terms um but I I thought it was interesting that there are in fact STS that are in the area and do build their nests in fur trees go
figure um now the real significance of this passage probably doesn't doesn't depend on exactly what the species is uh the message of this verse this passage is that the ecosystem that God provides for these WI creatur
um if you just notice look at verse 16 it talks about the Cedars of Lebanon they're described as being planted by God the Trees of the Lord are are watered abundantly they flourish they came become available as suitable Nest sites so this this place that the stor builds their nest has been in preparation uh by the Lord before they even think to to set down and Nest there uh you can imagine a particularly Godless stor perhaps saying well what has God ever done for me and not realizing God has gone to the trouble of preparing this tree uh there was a scientific study um cited on the slide there that found that these black STS typically choose trees that are over 90 years old um so what that suggest to me is that God is involved in the preparations from the the Divine point of view he's getting things in motion almost a century in advance so that this bird can have a home for their nestlings um and just understanding how these ecological systems with their complex interdependencies and relationships it's all so finally tuned this all points us to the Creator this all points us us to worship
god um I
remember yeah I remember sister Jan Dixon um she used this expression to Blossom where you're planted and it it makes me think that you know we often complain about environmental factors you know we we wish things that were different in our lives we were in different situations but For Better or Worse we're in the environment we are and we've all been exposed to God's word we've all been given the opportunity to know God and that's a heck of a lot more than a lot of folks can say and so God has create before we ever became aware of it God has created environments for each of us um where we could come to know him and to have a hope and so uh blossom where you you are planted I I like
that I think that's the lesson of the black
St so let's let's move
along the next scripture comes from the book of Deuteronomy excuse me Deuteronomy um chapter 22 and we read if you come across a bird's nest in any tree or on the ground with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs you shall not take the mother with the young you shall let the mother go but the young you may take for yourself that it may go well with you and that you may live
long this is another one that puzzled me you know finding a bird's nest in a tree seemed pretty logical to me always struck me as odd that the law talks about finding nests on the ground the only bird's nest I ever found on the ground had very obviously fallen from a tree I didn't know that there were birds that that nested on the ground and it turns out there's actually a species of of quail in Israel that makes its nest on the ground um this is the the European Quail
um you can see an example here of a a quail nesting in this Tusk of long grasses um so likely this is a creature the Israelites would have stumbled across from from time to time um you can see that their range uh does indeed extend into the holy land so a little bit on the reproductive cycle of qu they're quick to reach maturity and begin laying eggs at an age of s to eight weeks they typically lay 8 to 13 eggs per clutch which hatch 19 to 20 days later so they're they're very productive little birds they can produce uh two or three Broods per year um so so there's there's a lot of Offspring and in God's wisdom he's instructed the Israelites to manage the population judiciously they can take the young because the Israelites need to eat too right
um they were permitted to hunt but they they weren't to take the mother with the young um that would allow the mother to reproduce and we have the same concept today with with catch limits to manage fisheries and bag limits to limit the amount of of wild game that's caught or hunted the whole idea is to manage populations in a sustainable way so we don't overly deplete a natural resource and this is a great example of Godly wisdom um being demonstrated very ancient times so I think there's like a pra there's practical wisdom in the law of Moses here um but but that's not everything
right um you recall how Paul the Apostle Paul interprets the law in 1 Corinthians 9 uh he says it it is written in the law of Moses you shall not muzzle an ox when it Treads out the Grain and Paul quotes and and and he he asks well is it because of the oxin that God is concerned does he not certainly speak for our sake and then he says yes it was it was written for our sake because the plowman should PL plow in hope the thresher thresh in Hope of sharing in the crop the ox involved in this productive activity don't limit its access to the the fruits of its labor in a way um so we have musling the ox really becomes a metaphor for uh for for human beings being vented from from benefiting from their their work from working without
compensation uh so there's a spiritual lesson in a natural
prohibition so kind of taking that principle and applying it to the nesting bird I think this this passage we have on our screen here it it's a parable against wantan and destruction and plunder unfortunately there's a a spirit in mankind that that takes and takes and wants more and more and if you get an inch they'll take a mile that sort of thinking um and I believe that the the lesson we we're meant to take from this is to to suppress that urge to take everything um to to not take more than we need to leave some for others to leave some for the future so great godly wisdom uh coming from the law of
Moses all right this is a a free response can anybody identify this common bird species I'm sure many of you recognize it anybody want to name it
Sparrow Y what kind of sparrow house sparrow the house sparrow yes richon thank you you're very welcome Ben so this is one of the the most common birds in the world um you see the the map there the green indicates locations where it resides natively um it was introduced in many places and and has thrived in North and South America and other places um and it's called a house spare because they're so sort of ubiquitous among human settlements and dwellings um they're very bold gregarious Little Creatures um they're I always thought of them as being kind of City Birds you just see them on the sidewalk you see them flying around on power lines um they're not afraid to visit feeders or scavenge from garbage pales or outdoor diners um
and you've probably heard their Simple Song it sounds something like
this enough for
that
um and so these are these are birds that would have been familiar to the uh scripture
authors um even the sons of Kora would have observed these sparrows making their nests in the temple um in the cluts of the altar um see in Psalm
84 how lovely is your dwelling place oh lord of hosts my soul Longs yes faints for the courts of the Lord my heart and flesh Sing For Joy to the Living God even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young at your altars oh lord of hosts my king and my God
blessed are those who dwell in your house ever singing your praise
seea so what I'm imagining here is the sons of Kora and they're working in in the house of the Lord in the Tabernacle and they see The Spar is kind of shooting around the way they do making their nests in the cfts of the Altar and instead of Shing them away they call them blessed uh he's saying that they're blessed because they find a home in the alt they dwell in God's house right and they're singing his praise uh so these simple creatures teach us a lesson like like Paul asking about the is is it for the oxin that God's concerned it's it's similar here in that yes God is is famously concerned about sparas and we'll we'll look at that famous passage in a moment but but the real blessing is for creatures who are made in God's image and chose to dwell in his home and sing his praises and I love the thought of God spiling at The Sparrows uh flitting about the temple courts and and hearing their songs as if they were praises to Him and maybe in some sense they really are praises to him but kind of thinking about that it makes me uh so much happier to think about the The Joy it must give our heavenly father when we're all singing your hearts out in the meeting Hall on a Sunday morning I mean it's it's really
beautiful so our next passage is probably the most famous bible verse about
sparrows um coming from the teachings of the master Matthew 10 are not Two Sparrows sold for a penny not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father even the hairs of your head are all numbered fear not therefore you are of more value than many
sparrows and I think for human beings this is very difficult for us drra our heads about um our capacity to care about anything is essentially a zero so game there's only so much caring that we're able to do but God In His Infinite capacity as as as as God um he cares about every Sparrow he he he knows the number of hairs on her head you know why is that information important God just knows he is able to know all of these things he he cares about us because we're made in His image of course we're comparatively of greater value Than The Sparrows but God has this enormous capacity to care for all of his creation such that it doesn't matter he just knows and cares for all of us and so God is able to provide for his
Creation in in The Sermon on the Mount Jesus says I tell you do not be anxious about your life what you'll eat what you will drink or about your body what you will put on is not life more than food and the body more than clothing look at the birds of the air they neither sorrow so excuse me they neither sew nor reap nor gather into Barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them are you not of more value than
they the same idea comes from the psalmist ASA who was a keen Observer of birds uh as we'll see from a late later in another Psalm in Psalm 50 Asaf speaks on God's behalf saying I know all the birds of the hills and all that moves in the field is mine God knows them all he has an enormous capacity to care for his creation
so while we're on the sparrow I just thought you'd be interested to know there there's another species within the same genus as the house sparrow um it takes its name from the geography of the Holy Land it's the the Dead Sea Sparrow um the spe species was initially recorded um only in the restricted range around the Dead Sea they later discovered it inhabits the corridor of the Jordan um and also the Euphrates rivers and some points farther east um but they have very limited range I think this is a a bird that any any B would be happy to see on a visit to the Holy Land but possibly another species that that Jesus might have been thinking about um in his
teachings no no verses to go with this one just thought it was
interesting one of the bird related themes we'll find in Scripture um quite often relates to the snares that would be rigged to hunt wild birds Proverbs 7:23 describes a man trapped by adultery describes him as a bird rushes into a snare he does not know that it will cost him his
life so you can imagine a bird if it doesn't see the net it's it's flying full speed and then in a moment it's caught right and it can't get out I think this is an app description for a man who isn't using his head to think he just mindlessly pursues destruction know in an instant the adulterer is in snared he blunders past the point of getting away and now he's trapped in the
net very vivid imagery now I mentioned that my dad worked with ornithologists and one of the things they were interested in doing was studying bird populations and and it's it's very difficult to estimate you can't go out and count all the birds right it's just an impossible task so what they would do is they would catch the birds and these these great big Nets they'd set up nuts that would basically go the span across the field um they'd catch the birds they'd put these little bands they call them bird banding they' put bands on the legs and then they'd release them um the idea being if they could catch the same bird with a band multiple times they can tell how many times it's been caught compared to the number of birds that were being caught for the first time and then they could make estimates about how many birds were not being caught based on on those numbers it's a lot of statistics and math that my dad would love to to explain uh but he's not here so I'm not going to get into that part but the part that stuck with me was going uh with him to work as a little kid and catching these birds watching the scientists with their calipers taking the measurements putting the bands on and then getting this bird that was that was rolled up in a cloth having it on my palm and unrolling it and then at some point it was free to go and it's just sitting there on your on your palm and eventually it realizes itself and just flies away um but that was that was a really neat experience um they they're such gentle and delicate creatures and under normal circumstances You' never have that kind of encounter with these Birds um that being said in scripture times I I don't think they were letting the Birds Go um and the snare is it's it's once again used as a metaphor for for sudden disaster in Ecclesiastes
9 for man does not know his time like fish that are taken in an evil net and like birds that are caught in a snare so the children of man are snared at an evil time when it suddenly falls upon
them so definitely a warning to uh to keep our wits about us to uh be mindful of the Trap of
sin our next scripture bird is the turtle dove and these are one of the most famous birds in all scripture right they're not unusual Birds they're quite common they're they're well known on account of their their distinctive cing sound uh that they're very gentle Birds um I often watch the birds in the backyard uh kind of vying for position at the theater and the house spars are are some of the worst the junos are very aggressive uh they're sort of fighting each other off to get to the the bird feed and the doves will sort of stay at the periphery they're not asserting themselves they're getting Falls they're uh a little bit marginalized in a way because they're not as aggressive
um they're about the same size as a blue jay but you think about anybody that's watched a blue jay kind of maneuver uh knows that they don't behave at all the same and so this this gentleness that characterizes the dove that that may be why Asaf uses the dove to contrast God's people to the wicked who who are characterized as wild beasts in Psalm 74 I mentioned Asaf was a bird watcher he invokes the birds in Psalm 50 and now again in 74 do not deliver the soul of your Dove to the wild
beasts um now the doves I see on my back porch are mourning doves they're not uh European turtle doves um but both species are are members of the family uh
colid um the morning doves are naed to North America so it's it's the European turtle dove that would have been familiar to ASF um because its range extends into the mle East their name is a source of enduring infusion and to be clear Turtle does have nothing to do with the the reptile um one etymologist describes it so uh the world word turtle has nothing to do with turtles in the slightest comes from Middle English um I'm not going to try to pronounce all these things but basically it's composed out of tur the name of the genus and the Middle English word for dove that word traces back to Latin and is in fact anomic for the bird's
call um so so interestingly uh so he's he's giving us the atmology of the English word Turtle do and tracing it back to Latin if you look at your Strong's Concordance the the um transliteration for the Hebrew word is is tor something that sounds like T and and maybe there's a little roll to the r and and maybe if you hear the uh the sound of the turtle dove and this recording is actually I couldn't find one from Israel but this is from the island of Cyprus
so you can hear there there's some similarity to the morning dove um but you can imagine before they had a name for the bird they' simply refer to as as the bird that sounds like and and so that became its name um so if you're ever confused about why Turtles has nothing to do with Turtles um more significant from a spiritual perspective one of the most well-known traits of turtle doves are that they're um known for for being monogamous they mate for life and are loyal to to their mate they work together to build nests and they take turns incubating the eggs um and as such they're they're symbols of romantic love in scripture and they're used that way in Song of
Solomon PSAL 2:12 the flowers appear on the earth the time of singing has come and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land
the voice of the turle dove is used in conjunction with symbols for fruitfulness and fertility big tree ripening the vins are blossoming they give forth their fragrance all these things suggest um reproduction basically uh Arise My Love My Beautiful One and come away oh my dove in the cffs of the Rock in the crannies of the cliff let me see your face let me hear your voice for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely
so the the smitten poet here is describing taking his lover to to secret hideaways on the cliffs side um much the way you can imagine the rock pigeons of ancient Israel would have made their homes up on the cliff side nasted away from
predators um so that there's definitely a connotation of love and affection and and kindliness with the turtle
do what else do we know about Turtle does in the Bible
uh perhaps most famously the account of baby Jesus being presented at the temple includes Mary and Joseph offering a pair of turtle does or pigeons uh this was to fulfill the law of purification after a woman gave birth um now customarily a lamb and a dove would be offered but a second bird to be substituted for the lamb if the family was poor uh this comes from Leviticus 12 where we see the the law describing the purification rituals um says if she cannot afford a lamb then she shall take two Turtle does or two pigeons uh one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering now the there was always one turtle dove or pigeon for the sin offering it's the lamb that gets substituted for a second
um that for a second um thr
sorry so this gives us a little bit of insight into the economic environment that that Jesus was brought up into that they were poor they could afford the
lamb um so Turtle does and pigeons were evidently considered to be clean Birds um we can contrast that to the laundry list of unclean Birds found in Leviticus
11 uh these you shall detest among the birds they shall not be eaten they are detestable the eagle the bearded vulture the black vulture the kite the falcon of any kind every Raven of any kind ostrich the Nighthawk the seagull the hawk of any kind The Little Owl the corant the short-eared owl the barn owl the tonny owl the caran vulture the stor the Heron of any kind the hoop and the bat well bats aren't Birds but maybe this is the uh challenge of uh of translating taxonomical terms showing up again um my question was okay we've got this extensive list and why were these particular species considered to be unclean whereas the the turtle dove and the pigeon weren't um if you look at the unclean mammals you've got the detailed regulations about does it have a Clen hoof or not uh does it chew the cut or not but there aren't really parameters to Define which of the birds are clean and which are unclean it just gives you this this extensive
list um I I don't think the selection was arbitrary uh many of these species feed on the carcasses of dead animals and eating these birds could have exposed people to disease or parasites um or or toxins that were accumulated in their bodies
um and so the Israelites without the the knowledge of modern food safety they would have benefited from avoiding these
species so again there's there's sort of a practical reason not to eat these animals consider them unclean I think from sort of a spiritual perspective there there's even in our modern culture uh there's stigma associated with caring Birds right the vultures are hovering right um other birds in this list are nocturnal right so there's an aspect which Lings these birds to to Darkness and mystery uh perhaps somewhat suggestive the maab the occult um you could think of Edgar Allen Po's famous poem The Raven where the cry in Shakespeare's MC Beth it's the herald it's sort of an omen of death in that play um some of you may have heard uh that a group of crows is called a murder and I don't know why that is but it's it's a little bit
ominous uh so there's sort of these these overtones of of spiritual wickedness and darkness associated with some of these birds as well um get this from The Book of Proverbs the I that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the Ravens of the valley and eaten by the
vultures that's pretty
dark it just goes to show how important um respecting one's parents was in Jewish culture and certainly should be under any
culture all this to say these birds carried overtones of spiritual wickedness um certainly in in today
in today's language but I I imagine also in the time of of Moses uh through their association with Darkness with dead animals these sorts of
things and I've highlighted the word Ravens here because Ravens make several notable appearances in
scripture um and we're just kind of drawing to the end here so I if if people have had comments or questions um we're going to have plenty of time to discuss afterwards um and I'd appreciate to hear your thoughts as well so so Ravens are unclean Birds
um but it's it's quite interesting to me that Elijah is fed by Ravens in First Kings
17 so in this chapter Elijah tells Ahab it won't rain God directly sends him to the Wilderness he says go to the brook of kth verse five he went and lived by the Brook carth that is east of the Jordan and the Ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening and he drank from the brook so the Book of James gives us that extra detail that the drought was lasting actually three years and six months uh we don't we don't get that detail in the Old Testament but James go to us and we're not sure how long Elijah stayed at the the brook of cherith you can see in this painting um painted by early 19th century American Artist Washington Alon uh who who lived in New England I think died in Boston actually um in this painting the water is still running you can see a little waterfall on the back it's kind of set of right um and there appears to be a pool um but at some point there you can see an enlargement of the The Raven feeding Elijah um at some point the water stopped flowing and Elijah relocated to zapat but for those early days of the famine it was Ravens that provided his bread he depended on these clean creatures to give him his food every morning and every night so why would God command an unclean bird to bring him
bread I mean there's there's a lesson here about trusting in God's provision right we touched on that at the beginning of the class that God provides for all of our needs gives us an environment where we can be sustained but surely God could have provided for Elijah without using an unclean animal
and I imagine this would have challenged Elijah's sensibilities much the way the command to rise Peter kill and eat right in in Acts chapter 10 that would have been very challenging for the Apostle in the New Testament times it would have been challenging for Elijah to accept food from an unclean
Raven and I wonder if that's part of the point remember how just a few chapters later
when Elijah flees for his life and he goes down to to the Mount uh of the Lord he hears the earthquake Wind Fire and the still Small
Voice he's
instructed to go and anoint juu king of Israel and he might have been inclined to think what have I got to do with those Godless Northerners I I've had enough of Ahab and Jezebel and and and one more isn't going to solve the situation they're they're unclean birds and not only J right who nominally could be considered you know a descendant of Abraham of the seed of Jacob right but he's also asked to anoint haziel king of Syria and the syrians are are their enemy they're oppressors haziel was an assassin he was an idolator he was a foreigner he was definitely a dirty bird
right so Elijah is going to be given these tasks to undertake that involved him relating to people that he might consider to be
unsavory so I think I think there's some concept of unclean things being redeemed for God's purpose uh that's Illustrated in this account of the Ravens um you can think in in Isaiah um remember how how how Isaiah refers to King Cyrus the me Cyrus the me is described in Isaiah 46 as a bird of prey from the East
these birds of prey were unclean and yet he's also called God's anointed in Isaiah
45:1 we even get a bit of a glimpse of this in Jesus right Galatians 4 tells us that he was born of a woman born under the law to redeem those who were under the law like
him we noted earlier the two dogs that were offered as part of the purification ritual now Mary didn't sin in childbearing
and Jesus didn't sin and being born and yet the law stipulated that there had to be a sin offering on the occasion of a birth and what I take from this is that that God's son was born into this broken system that he came to save and it almost sounds sacrilegious to say so but by his human nature he was unclean the way every one of us are and still God could use him for his purpose God didn't need to Incarnate himself as something separate from the unclean broken world to say he he used his creation he redeemed The Raven just the way that he redeemed them to feed
Elijah so that's that's one possible explanation of the significance of of the Ravens the brook carth perhaps there are others um the Ravens certainly had a important role we could explore the role of the The Raven and the dove in the time of Noah but I I didn't get to that so we'll just wrap here in conclusion we've got um the study of the natural word world which leads us to worship God is the Creator God prepares everything need we need and so he sustains his creation um we can't lose sight of that uh because we're surrounded by the inventions of mankind um that the real world is the one that God has
created uh he cra pass the environment in which we exist and because of that we should be content with the things that we have and we should suppress this this Instinct that we have to take more than we need um don't take the bird with her
young the the sparrow teaches that that God knows that each of us individually cares for
us um and we can become trapped when we go through life heedless of of his presence we should be thinking about him before we fly into a
net um the turtle do teaches us that his creatures are gentle and loving that they're loyal and faithful to one another and to their
creator and finally the raven that God can use even the unclean creatures for his purpose and we have just scratched the surface there were many scriptures many references to birds throughout script rure that we could have gone to um you know this has been fascinating for me I I love looking at the intersection of of the created World things that we can observe directly and the things we read about in scripture and the spiritual lessons we can drive from them I think that uh bird watching um which is is not a great hobby of mine it's one that I I would like to be more attentive to um and honestly yeah I I've gotten into the habit of taking the B populars when we go out on trips and going for nature walks and things like that um and it can be quite fun to you know spot new birds that you haven't seen before and things like that uh and there's a lot of appeal just in in seeing and seeing God's creation and and worshipping him through that but bird watching and gardening I think these are are qualities at um I should say Hobbies really that lend ourselves to spiritual contemplation um so you don't have to be a master gardener or expert ornithologist just get out there and and glorify and worship our lord for the wonderful things he's created