Burden or Blessing

          One of the best places in the entire Bible about God’s Sovereignty is Psalm 139, an Israelite hymn of four stanzas: the first (verses 1-6), is  about God’s omniscience, the fact that God knows everything, the second (verses 7-12), his omnipresence, the fact that he is in all places at all times, the third (verses 13-18) his omnipotence, the fact that he is all powerful, and finally (verses 19-24) his “omni-justice

Predestination:  Burden or Blessing?

First Reading:  Isaiah 55.8-11

Second Reading:  Psalm 139

Introduction:  If you were given the choice to include or not include in your Christian belief the idea of Predestination, considering, for the moment, that it is one of those things that our church considers a “non-essential”, which would you choose?  Would you choose to believe in Predestination, or take a pass?  Most of us probably know of some believers who are uncomfortable with the idea of Predestination, and at the same time, also those who enthusiastically embrace it!

          Now I must make a confession:  This sermon is not only about Predestination, but more broadly about the Sovereignty of God.  I just threw in the idea of Predestination to get your attention.  Now that I have either gotten you attention, or made you angry, let’s get on to the subject of God and his Sovereignty.

” (I had to make that word up), the fact that his justice applies to all of mankind, and I might add, most especially to his own people!

I.     First, David, the author of this psalm, marvels at the fact that God knows all things, even including his inner-most thoughts, the words he is about to say, his comings and goings:   “You hem me in – behind and before!”  Or as the Jerusalem Bible has it, “You fence me around.”

A.  Now that may be a clue as to why some folks don’t like this idea.  Not everybody likes to be “fenced in” or “hemmed in” by anybody. Their theme song is “Don’t Fence Me In!”  Or, the poem by William Henley, “Invictus” which ends with the words, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”   Let’s face it, we Americans like our freedom, and that idea of even God hemming us in, in front and behind, cramps our style.

      Let me read the first and last verses of that poem, “Invictus” by Henley:

                Out of the night that covers me;            It matters not how straight the gate,

          Black as the pit from pole to pole;                   how charged with punishment the Scroll,

          I thank whatever gods may be              I am the master of my fate’

          for my unconquerable soul.                   I am the captain of my soul.

[That poem, although not familiar to many Americans, came into national attention when Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was executed.  He had a portion of this poem read at his execution moments before he met the real Captain of his soul!]  Now let me read that again:

Now, on a brighter note, the Christian antidote for that pessimistic poem is the hymn that we just finished singing:  “Make Me a Captive, Lord, and then I Shall be Free”.

                               

B. Then, there is another phrase that David uses that may cause us problems, when David says, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”  Or as the living Bible says, “…too wonderful to believe.” Too Wonderful to Believe?!  Does that mean we cannot believe that God is sovereign enough to know and guide our lives in a way that escapes our miserably limited brains?

No, it means that such knowledge is beyond human comprehension, and the wonder of it all is too much for our limited minds.  David is dumfounded by the grandeur and majesty of God’s sovereignty.  Do you have trouble wrapping your brain around God’s majesty and sovereignty?  Well, join the club! King David seems to be a charter member.  And the fact that God’s majesty is so great is not a burden to David, but a blessing!

Listen again to what David sings:

“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me, o LORD, are your thoughts.”  -    A blessing and not a burden.

Why do we feel uncomfortable about God’s power to exercise his sovereignty over our lives?  Because we cannot conceive how anyone of us could do that!  And, by some strange manipulation of our reasoning, if we cannot do it, therefore God cannot!

Brothers and sisters, that is nothing more or less than creating God in our own human image, when the Scripture tells us that God created us in His image!  Not the other way around.  And listen to what he tells us through his servant Isaiah:

“…. My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, declares the LORD.  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

If you think God cannot do something just because you think it is humanly impossible, or you cannot imagine how it could conceivably be done, Your god is too small!  Remember, God is infinite and we are finite!    

II. Now, let us look at God’s omnipresence , the fact that he is in all places at all times.  This is what David writes:  “Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your Presence?....If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me….even the darkness will not be dark to you….”

          Well, now if you are trying to hide from the LORD, that may be a problem.   And after all is said and done, that may be why some folks don’t like the idea that God can be found everywhere. 

          However, when Jonah was prisoner in the gut of that great fish in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, do you think it was a blessing or a burden for him to cry out to the LORD?  Or, of those three gentlemen with those funny names, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, thrown into the fiery furnace.  Not only did the LORD know where they were. He was there, too, right alongside them, inside the fiery furnace!  What do you think?  Was that a burden to them, or was it a blessing?

          Or again, when Civilla Martin, the Canadian music teacher who wrote the hymn we sang a few weeks ago, “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” where the chorus goes, “I sing because I am happy; I sing because I am free.  His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.”  Does that sound like a burden, or a blessing?  Civilla Martin did not invent that phrase.  It came from friends of hers who lived in Elmira, NY.  The wife had been bedridden for 20 years with an incurable disease, and her husband was confined to a wheel chair.  Civilla asked them how they were able to remain cheerful and hopeful.  They answered with those words, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”  That was all Civilla Martin needed to pen the words of that beloved hymn.  Their health problems may have been a burden, but the LORD’s sovereign presence was a blessing.

III. The third stanza of this Israelite hymn celebrates God’s power through his creation, and especially in his creation of our bodies.  Way before ultrasound became the common practice in looking into the womb of our mothers to see how our bodies were being formed the LORD himself was present and privy to our formation, which David describes as “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

          In Richard Wurmbrand’s book, “Tortured for Christ”, which tells of his fourteen years in Rumanian Communist prisons, he relates the story of two Russian Communist sculptors, a  man and his wife, whose specialty was to create statues of important people.  One day when they were working on a statue of Stalin, the wife said to the husband, “If we didn’t have thumbs to oppose our fingers, we could never even hold a tool in our hand, or a book or a piece of bread.  Who could have invented the human thumb?  If we honor Edson for inventing the light bulb and Bell for inventing the telephone, why not honor the Creator for inventing the human thumb?   Her husband became angry with her, recalling to her that they both had been trained in Marxist schools to know that there was no such thing as heaven, and that there was nobody in heaven.  But she insisted, saying, “If in heaven there were an Almighty God in whom our forefathers believed, it would be only natural that we should have thumbs.  An Almighty God can do anything, so he can make a thumb too.  But if in heaven there is nobody, then as for me, I will worship with all my heart that “Nobody” in heaven, who has made the thumb.  Eventually, both husband and wife became believers in this “Nobody-God”, not unlike the few believers who came to follow the “Unknown God” that Paul announced to the Greeks in Athens (Acts 17.16-34).

          Do this little experiment with me:  Try turning the pages of your hymnal or Bible.  The sensitive nerve endings in your thumb and finger can tell you if you are turning one or several pages.  Who could have created such sensitive nerve endings in your fingers?  We have at our very fingertips impressive evidence that we are fearfully and wonderfully made by an all-powerful Creator!

IV. Finally, we come to perhaps the most challenging stanza of this hymn, the fact that God is the judge of all people. 

          The disturbing part of this last stanza is David’s “hate speech”:

                “If only you would slay the wicked, o God….your adversaries misuse your name….

          Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you?

          I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them as my enemies….”

What we need to understand here is that David is not asking for a personal vendetta against a personal enemy. He is not fighting his own personal war. He is siding with the LORD against the LORD’s enemies.  David is on the LORD’s side, showing his solidarity with God in this dark and dangerous world.

          But in addition to this (And this is important as we approach the table of the Lord’s Supper), David recognizes that with the same sense of Justice and Righteousness, this Sovereign LORD has the full right to apply the same standard of Justice and Righteousness to David himself. 

          “Search me, O God and know my heart.”

          Not only does David recognize that God already knows his inner-most thoughts, as in the beginning of this Psalm (“You have searched me and know me….”). but he voluntarily opens his life and heart to God’s examination and judgment.  It is no offense to David that God already knows his heart.  He willingly invites this Righteous and Just God to shine the light of his judgment on him,

          “…test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me.”

And finally………..  “Lead me in the way everlasting.”

          Now as we gather around this Communion Table, that is the recommendation of the Apostle Paul, in I Cor. 11.27-29:

                “Therefore, whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of  the Lord in an unwor-

          thy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body  and blood of  the Lord.   A  

          man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.  

          For anyone who eats and drinks  without  recognizing the  body of the Lord  eats  

          and drinks judgment on himself.” 

          We have the help of God’s Holy Spirit to aid us in this examination.  Now is the opportune time to do this around the Lord’s Table.