The Hubble telescope was launched in 1990. It is currently locked in an orbit 353 miles above the earth where it circles the planet every 97 minutes. This position enables it to be free from the light distortions that ground based telescopes experience.
The Hubble’s technology has allowed researchers to do some amazing things. They have peered 14 billion light years into the universe. Through the telescope’s various instrumentations, hundreds of thousands of images have been transmitted to scientists on earth. Each week enough information is received from the Hubble to fill 18 DVD’s.
With this kind of technology and information flow, it’s not surprising that the Hubble has revolutionized deep space study. More than 6,000 scientific articles have been published from research using Hubble information. The data scientists have received has transformed their thinking about the cosmos. It has confirmed some things scientists postulated while showing other concepts and models to be erroneous. This much is clear: all future conjecture about the physical universe will have to square with what is seen through the lens of the Hubble.
When the Pharisees accused Jesus and His disciples of breaking God’s law by picking and eating heads of grain on the Sabbath, He told them “If you had known what these words mean,” and then quoted the prophet Hosea (6:6). His response suggested that their understanding of God’s law needed to be read through the lens of Hosea 6:6. Any interpretation of Sabbath law that didn’t take the principle of this verse into account was simply not looking at things in the correct manner, much like a scientific theory today that fails to take into account Hubble information.:1=
But of course, Jesus was dealing with far more than the Pharisees’ understanding of the Sabbath. He was speaking to their complete approach to God’s word. The Pharisees looked at the Torah through the lens of externalism. They were preoccupied with visible conformity to the law. Believing the Torah to be too vague, they went presumptuously forward on their own authority and created hundreds of regulations to eliminate any ambiguity so they could differentiate between the true keepers of the law and the rest of the people. Their judgments were superficial – made solely on the basis of appearances rather than taking everything into account (John 7:24). Their faith became superficial—concerned with measuring rather than meaning (Matthew 23:23-24) and the outward but not the inward (23:25-26). The results were predictable (23:27-28). They understood what the law said, but didn’t have a clue what it meant (the intent). Once again, they majored in the external (the written word) but were clueless concerning the substance (the true meaning of those words). They were so fixated on the word of God they were blinded to the God of the word (Collier).
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 