A Sermon Based Upon Psalm 104: 24-32
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
January 15th, 2017 Series:
Apostles Creed 3/15)
Recently, the CBS News program 60 Minutes
interviewed JT Holmes, an extreme athlete.
They filmed this daredevil as he landed by helicopter on top of the
Eiger, a high, pointed, ice covered mountain in the Swiss Alps. Then, they filmed him jumping off with skis
and chute, hang gliding toward a cliff, then releasing his skis, dropping his
glider chute, free falling in a wind suit, soaring like a bird until finally,
he opened a parachute, to land safely at the bottom of the mountain. One slip up and he would have been killed. He had three good chances for that to happen. The CBS News crew who had seen most
everything and not easily surprised or shaken, said they were ‘biting their
nails’ the whole time. It looked as if
there was no way to do what he did and come out alive, but he did it, not once,
but twice, and it was all captured on film. (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-films-jt-holmes-terrifying-run/.)
When the Bible begins with the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth,” (Gen. 1:1), it makes a claim as tall as Mt Everest and just
about as risky as jumping off a mountain.
Surely, no statement of belief can be more audacious or as pivotal, or
even risky, as saying that a personal, loving, caring, Creator made this
world. This is a daring statement of
faith. Life is a wonderful gift, but it
is also filled with many dangers, with overwhelming
human suffering, with unrelenting natural catastrophes, with major disasters
and deadly diseases, and worst of all, with horrendous evil.
But, in spite of all this, which was
just as true then as it is now, that is exactly what the Bible claims. In the Bible and in life, then or today, there
is no statement or claim that is more basic to the biblical or Christian Faith
than when we affirm that this God, who is the ‘Father Almighty’ is also ‘maker of heaven and earth.”
IN
WISDOM YOU HAVE MADE THEM ALL
In Psalm 104 the Psalmist echoes and
elaborates on the opening lines of the Bible, when he sings, “LORD,
how manifold (many) are works… In wisdom you have made them all” (v. 24).
Here the Psalmist praises “God from whom all blessings flow”
because he is amazed at the complexity and the wisdom behind everything. To him, everything seemed ‘well-designed’,
‘intentional’, ‘thought out’ and ‘organized’.
In other words, as some might say today, there appears to be some very
wise organization in everything that is organic. .
But of course, this is still a statement
of faith, because it can’t be proven nor disproven. The Psalmist makes this statement based on own
his observation, but it is still faith.
There is no modern scientific way to prove what he says. This was an observation from his heart, which
was how humanity came to conclusions long before ‘science’ came to dominate. In
fact, observations of the heart and mind, enabled by faith, is what paved the
way for Science to develop in the first place.
When I was a missionary in former
communist East Germany, just after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, a biology
teacher, who was also my neighbor, once approached me, asking if I would be
willing to come and speak to her class about my ‘faith’ and how it applies to
the first chapter of Genesis. She told
me that she had students in her class who ‘believed’ that Science had the
answer to everything, which ruled out Faith.
She explained that she knew this wasn’t true. She did not claim to be a Christian, or a
believer, but the one thing she had learned from being a teacher is that
Science, nor her students, knew everything.
She wanted me to come and share with them what I believed.
She did not intend it, but I knew that
this was a set up. She was not setting
me up for failure, but I knew that there would be students in that class who
would not listen to a single word I had to say about my ‘faith’ in the “God”
who was ‘maker of heaven and earth’. I
knew that I had to approach my faith in a ‘broader’ way than just telling them,
this is what I believed. Somehow, I had
to connect them to ‘why’ I believed it, and ‘how’ it could be possible for
them, at least to ‘understand’ the ‘wisdom’ in my faith.
So, in my approach to sharing about my
faith with that very secular, if not still communist class, I started with a comparison from 4 statements I proceeded to write on the
board. The statements were:(1) I love
you. (2) 2+2= 4. (3) It’s about 500 kilometers from Berlin to Munich,
and ,(4) I love you too. After writing
this I asked the class, which of these statements can be proven, a matter of
fact or a matter of faith? After this,
I followed up: If love is a matter of faith, which is more meaningful or maybe
even more important? Of course, one
smart fellow answered that both are important.
I told him that he was right, but not to tell this to his girl friend. But still, everyone got my point, not
deciding which was more important, but understanding that matters of faith are
as important as matters of fact. This
leads us to even bigger questions about what are the facts and what is faith.
My 9th grade physics teacher
tried to explain to us how the chair we were setting in was not as solid as we
might think from looking at it. Even in
a scientific way, he was teaching us that there was more to the facts than we could
see. He continued to explain that a
chair, like anything else with physical matter, is made up of molecules we
can't see. These molecules are made up
of atoms that have protons and neutrons in their center. Surrounding the atom’s nucleus, he said, are electrons
circling like earth circles the sun. Millions
of these unseen atoms that make up this
chair, are bonded and held together by
positive and negative charges; forces that are attracted to each other and
will not let go, unless tampered with.
As my physics teacher taught us about
the facts and fundamentals of the physical world, I could not help but recall a verse I had
learned in Sunday School, “By faith we
understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is
seen was made from things that are not visible” (Heb. 11:3). Interestingly, the writer penned that long
before there were microscopes. He told
us that knowing the facts also required faith enough to believe there was, as
the saying goes, “more than meets the eye” .
How does faith help us in discovering
the truth in and beyond the facts?
Consider another story from as chemistry class, where the lesson
enlarged on the basic lessons of
physical science. In that class, the professor
asked a student how many different kinds of naturally occurring “things” are in
this world? The student, unsure of the
answer, admitted he didn't know, but guessed
there must be millions and millions of different types of “substances” in the world,
because the world, he said, is a very big place. Hearing his answer, the professor went on to
inform the student, that there are not
millions and millions naturally occurring substances, but there are less than a
100 most basic “elements” in all of nature. The professor went on to clarify that
everything in this world, probably also in the whole universe, is made from
only 100 to 200 elements, 98 of which occur naturally on earth. Then
he gave an example: If you take 2 parts Hydrogen and add just one part Oxygen , you get water. If you take one part nitrogen and add three
parts hydrogen, you get ammonia. Two
parts oxygen and one part carbon, makes carbon dioxide. Everything needed to sustain life is made
from just a few basic elements. The trick
is, he added, is getting everything to come together and keep coming together
in the just the right way to create just the right conditions to sustain life. In
other words, as one renowned scientist has said: “the universe seems to have known we were coming.” (Freeman Dyson)
THESE
ALL LOOK TO YOU…
While it is certainly reasonable to say
with Scripture that we are ‘fearfully
and wonderfully made,” it is the “fearful” part of life that causes
threatens faith. Interestingly, even in
this song of praise, the Psalmist did not leave out the ‘difficult’ or ‘dark
side’ of life as we know it. He affirmed
that not only do we live in a world where life flourishes, he also affirmed
that we not only live with ‘good things’
(v. 28) but we also ‘die and return
to…dust’ (vs 29). Perhaps the most disturbing part of this is how the
Psalmist describes how ‘dismay’
comes ‘when (God) hides (his) face’ or ‘when
(God) takes away…breath’ (v. 29).
This Jewish, biblical, ancient
understanding that ‘bad things’ happen when God hides his face, or ‘takes away’
the breath of life, is difficult for ‘moderns’ to understand or accept. It even seems to go against the grain of our
Christian perspective of God’s constant, faithful love and our understanding of
God’s nature , as all-knowing, all-powerful, and always present. Even the Psalmist confirmed this understanding
of God, when he wrote:: “Where can I go
from your Spirit? Or where can I hide
from your presence? If I ascend to
heaven, you are there; if my bed in Sheol (Death), you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle
in the farthest limits of the sea, even there your right hand shall lead me,
and your sour right hand shall hold me fast…” (139: 7-10). Then he adds, “I
praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works: that I know very
well. My frame was not hidden from you. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance….(139:
14-15a). None of us, at anytime, he
said, are ever hidden from God’s eyes, but as Scripture also informs in many
places, God can ‘hide his face’ from us. This very graphic concept means that even
though God sees, knows, and is Almighty, we will not always know or feel God’s
presence or know God’s power as evident in our lives. In other words, sometimes, in life,
especially during the hard times, we may not even feel as if God cares.
There is a lot more that could be said picture
of God’s hiding his face., but whenever the ‘picture’ occurs, it most often means
that sin has dulled our spiritual senses and our awareness of God. But we need to also realize that being a
‘sinner’ does not always mean that we have specifically done something wrong or
sinful. In the Biblical understanding,
even in the New Testament understanding, when the Apostle Paul says that ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory
of God’, it not only means the
‘wrong’ we may do, but ‘falling short’ can also refer to our most basic human condition
as limited, fallible, and finite human beings.
In other words, as the Psalmist declares, when the ‘good things’ don’t
come, when God’s face and favor toward
us seems hidden, and especially, when we become aware of our impending death, we may become ‘dismayed’ to the point that
our faith in God as ‘creator’ becomes threatened.
Can we still believe in the ‘goodness’
of the Creator, even when bad things happen in this world? Or perhaps to put it more pointedly, can we
still believe, trust, and have faith in God when the good things don’t happen,
when the miracles don’t comes, when our
prayers are not answered, or when when life doesn’t make sense, and we might also
become ‘dismayed’ that God’s presence, God’s power, or God’s goodness are no
longer visible to us?
This was exactly what happened to Job,
wasn’t it? Part of the protest in the
book of Job was that Job was indeed an upright, good person, who had done
nothing wrong, and had even lived the best righteous life possible, but he
still experienced the ‘dark-side’, if not the worst side of life. The book even dared to suggest that God hid
his face by allowing Satan to ‘test’ Job, allowing him to tragically lose his
children, his wealth and his health.
When Job’s know-it-all-friends came to Job, informing him that he should
confess his sin, or when his wife said, “Curse
God and die”, Job answered that he had done nothing to deserve all this, he
continued to live by faith anyway and he took his ‘dismay’ directly to God. The
‘answer’ that finally came to Job out of the whirlwind was not an answer, but
more questions. God puts question after
question to Job, reminding him that even if God did ‘answer’ why these bad
things happened or did explain why the world is the way it is, Job would not be
able to understand it (See Job 38-42) because it is ‘too wonderful’ (42:3)
which basically means, the knowledge of ‘why’ is too much for Job to fully grasp. Thus, the only kind of ‘answer’ the book of
Job gives to our great questions is the ‘faith’ Job lived, even against the all
odds and all logic:”The LORD gives and
the LORD takes away. Blessed be the Name
of the LORD”.
Jesus taught us to live our lives
exactly in this same way as Job. When
life becomes questionable, when we can’t seem to sense God’s presence, or the ‘reality’
of life does not seem to point to the care of God or encourage trust in God,
this creed, which names “God as Father,
Almighty, who is the Maker of Heaven and Earth”, is the God whom Jesus
trusted as his Heavenly Father, even as he was dying on the cross. Jesus also told his disciples that when worry
came to them that they should then put the simplest thoughts into their minds so
their faith in life and faith in God could be restored:“Look at the birds…the Heavenly Father feeds them…Are you not of more
value than they?....Consider the lilies of the field…If God so clothes the
grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the
fire---O, you of little faith?...The Father knows your needs, so…Seek the
Kingdom, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as
well (Matt. 6: 25-33).
I wound never go as far to say that
Jesus was an ‘optimist’ about everything that happens in this world, but I
would say, beyond any doubt, that Jesus ‘trusted’ in both the ‘goodness’ and
‘faithfulness’ of God, the Father, Almighty, no matter what happened in this
world. But Jesus also said that we need ‘faith’, and
not just ‘little faith’ to keep on trusting that God is good, that live is
worth living, or to believe that God is our Maker and Creator, especially when
life is not going ‘great’ for us. Jesus
taught us to trust that God will give us what we need, even when we don’t have
seem to have it in the moment. Jesus went
on to explain that our greatness need is God and His Spirit, which is the one
‘good gift’ God will always give, if we will only ask.
MAY
THE GLORY OF THE LORD ENDURE
What I’m sure of, is that having ‘faith’
and ‘trust’ in God is not what everyone will freely ask for. There is a freedom in our human hearts, just
like there is a freedom in this world of nature. As a great Christian scientist once wrote: “I
am certain that this God who created the world is not a puppet master who forces the world, nor
us, to do his will” (Polkinghorne). We are taught to pray for God’s will to be
done ‘on earth’, exactly because it is not always done ‘on earth’ as ‘ in
heaven’. God made “Heaven to be Heaven, and for now, and for our freedom, earth
to be earth. This is how it will be
until the kingdom comes, heaven comes down to earth, which in some mysterious
way, if we take this prayer seriously, depends on the partnership of our will with
God’s will.
And this is exactly where the Psalmist’s
final words take us, showing us what we should be praying for. In these final words, after reviewing the
‘goodness’ of God’s glory that is visible, but sometimes still invisible, both in creation
and in life, the Psalmist concludes with a blessing, a prayer: “May the glory of the LORD endure forever;
may the LORD rejoice in his works…Let sinners be consumed….Let the wicked be no
more. Bless the LORD, O my Soul…(v.
31-35).
At first glance, this prayer seems to
end in the negative, with a prayer for ‘sinners’
to be consumed’ or with the ‘wicked’ to be ‘no more’. But before we jump
to a negative conclusion, which is not the Bible’s final conclusion, let’s
remember that’God is not willing that any should perish’, but desires that ‘sinners’ be ‘consumed’ only by God’s purifying
and transforming love, so that ‘the wicked’ disappear in the goodness of God’s
grace and peace.
Just as this prayer should not be heard
negatively, we should not finally interpret the ‘negatives’ of life without
hope. Do you know why I say this? Because in this closing prayer the Psalmist prays for God’s glory to ‘endure’ and for God to continue to ‘rejoice in his works’ (v. 31).
This very ‘positive’ perspective of the world, is what Jesus seemed to
teach when he surprised the crowd, after he healed a crippled man on the
Sabbath, claiming: “The Father is still
working and also, I am still working! (John 5:17)
Do you realize what this kind of
statement means? It means that in this world
where both ‘good’ comes, but ‘limits’ are still very real, we need to realize God
is ‘still at work. The world we know,
which can still be dangerous and dismaying, is not yet finished. The Creation,
as Scripture declares, is good, but it never says that creation is something
God stopped doing. God is not only
‘maker of Heaven and Earth’, but God is still the Creator, and he is still
creating life, sustaining life, making, sustaining, and redeeming the world and
the universe, and he is still making heaven too. Didn’t Jesus say he is:“preparing a place
for us”?
Most of the time when we hear of or
experience evil in this world, we ask ‘why’. But as one American president once
challenged, we would be better and bigger people if we started asking ‘why
not’? In other words, ask what we can do
to partner with God in ‘making’ this world a better place. In other words, when the world or when life
is not what we want it to be, or not what it should be, we’re right. God is still at work. God is not finished. Life, the world, even the whole universe, is
a creative process, and still being created. Jesus said, “The
Father is still working and also, I am still working!”
While it might make some people sad to
think that God is not finished with us yet, but
it kind of makes me glad. God is
still at work. He still ‘rejoices in
his work’. So do I. So should you. You
should join with God in this good work,
too. Isn't this why Jesus taught us, not
just to watch and pray, but also to join with God in his creative, sustaining,
and redemptive work? Jesus said “the night is coming when no more work can
be done”. It's time now for our faith to get to work. Some, will try have faith
without works, “but I will show my faith
by my works” (Jm. 2:18). That's James,
but what about you? Does you faith work? I hope so. Amen.
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