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| Rev. Brian Wilkie |
Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario
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PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, November 19th, 2017:
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Broadcast Notes:
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financially. And now, here is today’s presentation.
Good morning! I’m your host today Brian Wilkie from St. Andrew’s Christian
Church in Rockland. As we begin today, my prayers of the good news of our Lord
Jesus Christ will encourage and strengthen you today.
Who are we, O
Lord, that you care for us?
I’m very much looking forward to the message we can share together in
from God’s holy word, and hope that in every way God will touch you and bless
you. The theme of today is, Why does God Care for us. It’s from a passage in
Psalm 8, and the key phrase is, what is man that you are mindful of him, and
the son of man, that you care for him. But I’ll read you the whole Psalm now
and you’ll see the context in which the psalmist is amazed that God could love
us.
Psalm 8
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.
From the lips of
children and infants you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider
your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful
of him, the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a
little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with
glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the
works of your hands; you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds, and the
beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that
swim the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
I find that to be a beautiful
psalm considering the glory of God revealed in all his creation. In the worship
of his church. In the heavens and in the stars. And in the beasts of the field,
the fish in the sea, and the birds in the air and all the creatures of the
earth. God has made a marvelous, marvelous creation and yet he has given us a
special place within that creation, which causes us to pause and wonder. How do
we receive such honour from God?
Well, I think that’s a theme very
much worth exploring and so we’re going to take a look at that in a few
moments.
But here’s a song which focuses
on the majesty of God, titled simply, Majesty sung in this case by Marantha
from their Decade of Praise album. Would you listen to it with me, and consider
the glory and majesty of our Lord.
1)Majesty, Marantha Music, Decade of Praise,
God is so majestic. so glorious.
There are scenes of worship in the old testament and the new, where the glory
of God that is so great, that people are overcome. They can’t
speak, and there are times, even
when preaching, believe it or not, when I sometimes find myself at a complete
loss for words in consideration of the amazing glory and majesty of God.
That brings forward the question,
who are we? Who are we in this universe? We are now perhaps more than ever,
aware of our smallness in the universe. The scope of even our planet is so much
larger than it seemed in the early days in which scripture was written and the New
Testament was formed. God revealed himself to people without revealing all the
secrets of the universe, without having to first train them in Cosmology. But
we may think we’re the first to recognize how small we are in a universe that’s
billions of light-years across. But in Psalm 8 we have a psalmist, a poet,
perhaps even David himself who is expressing that wonder at how magnificent
creation is. How immense creation is! How tiny we are on this planet earth! And
yet, even in recognition of this tininess, we have this revelation from God
that he cares for us.
We have the intervention of God,
over and over again to help and save people. We shouldn’t be troubled by the
question of why God doesn’t hear our prayers. We should be more interested in
the question of why he does. Why over all the glory and wonder of the universe
does he tune his ear to us on this planet?
Now less we think too little of
ourselves, we do need to recognize that God has made amazing creatures in
humanity. He has made us amazing in so many ways.
I was interested to note from a
scientist who pointed out that for anybody who understands logarithmic scales,
we’re about the mid size of the universe. For instance, as a body, your body is
probably composed of something in the order of 10 to the 27th atoms. That’s
actually in this case 7 times 10 to the 27th . Seven with 27 zeros after it.
But there are 10 to the 24th stars in the observable universe. That means you
are made up of a complexity, that consists of more atoms in your body, then
there are stars in the observable universe. You are wonderfully and marvelously made. It’s amazing that God has created human beings and all
living things to be so immensely complex.
I read that in terms of the
synapses in our brain, the connections in your brain, the complexity of the
organ of thought that God has given you.
There are 10 to the 13th
synapses, which is more than the number of stars in our galaxy. There’s a
thousand trillion, synapses in the human brain. Connections that give
complexity to our thought and our ability to do so many wonderful thoughts and
speculation, to make decisions and to act with our bodies through the impulses
of our brain.
So we are marvelously made. It’s
interesting that when we describe ourselves, we describe ourselves in some very
lofty terms. Of course we call ourselves humanity. In Latin call our species “homo sapiens sapiens” which means wise,
wise man. Homo sapiens-sapiens. We
thinks a lot of ourselves - as the smartest creatures ever to live, and who
knows, in terms of created beings in the material universe – perhaps we are. We
haven’t plumbed the depths of that yet.
However. God, when he made Adam,
gave him a very interesting name 'Adam.' Because it’s derived from the
word for what Adam is made of. He’s made
of earth. He’s made of dirt. He’s made of dust. And so his name reflects his
origin. And if you have a science fiction bent, you might
translate Adam as literally, Earthling. Or creature of dust. And so there's a
sense of our identity within the created order. Within the order around us. I
find it amusing sometimes that we use the word 'stardust' so poetically. I’m
remembering a song from the sixties, I think, which described us as a stardust,
"we are golden" as though being made of star dust set us apart from
the rest of creation. But from a cosmological point, God formed earth out of
star dust. That every element that exists, every atom that exists, is formed
out of the waste materials of stars. We are star dust, but star dust is earth
dust. We are part of ordinary creation. And that should humble us a little bit,
but should also help us to recognize the glory of all that God has made.
We need to look at what it means
to be human in God’s eyes, in order to truly understand how much he cares for
us. And we’re going to take a little bit more look at that, but I want Carolyn
Arrends to have a word about who we are as she sings 'This Is Who You Are',
from her album 'Under the Grace'. Would you listen to it with me?
Who you are, Carolyn Arends, Under the Gaze,
This is who we are. We are made
of dust. But we’re also made in the image of God. And that’s a central teaching
of scripture that says so much about what God intends for us.
There’s another source of wonder
about why God loves us so much. Why he cares for us, and that’s expressed in
the psalm when it says, "You made us. You put everything under our feet.
The beasts of the land, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, all creatures."
One might ask in any day, in any age, why God has entrusted us with so much
responsibility? We don’t always seem to exercise that responsibility very well.
We act in selfishness and greed. We act in ignorance and irresponsibility. We
sometimes do things without considering the consequences, and what we do can
have great consequences in the world that has been entrusted to our care.
Why did God entrust us with so
much responsibility? These are great questions, and I’m actually as I prepared
this message, I was wishing that it was being broadcast before the November 3,
Dig and Delve Conference.
This is a conference that happens
annually now in Ottawa that really helps people to engage with the big
questions, and explanations, and understanding of the Christian faith, so that
we’re better able to understand it for our own benefit, and also better able to
explain and reason about the faith to people who have serious questions about
it. That Dig and Delve Conference is one that has a great deal of involvement
from George Sinclair, one of hosts on this radio show, and though it’s a little
bit late to be telling you about this year's conference, I do want to plant a
seed if you have an interest in knowing your Lord better and being able to talk
reasonably to others about your faith, that you keep your eye out for Dig and
Delve when it comes around next year. And look for resources on the Dig and
Delve website as well, because there are great answers to the great questions,
because God has provided so much in his Word and his revelation.
See, when God made us out of
dust, he also made us in his image. He made us capable of a relationship with
him, and he made us capable of the love which completely fills his being. He
made us to love one another. He made us to love him. He made us to walk and
talk with God. To know him intimately. He made us to express his love towards
the rest of his creation, to care for and manage and responsibly use the
creation that he has provided around us.
Creation isn’t intended to be
completely at its own direction, but instead is capable of, and it needs to be,
carefully watched over and stewarded. God set humans in that role. When he set
us in that role he was able to describe us as very good, but we wouldn’t always
describe ourselves that way today. He had an unbroken relationship with the
first humans starting with Adam and Eve. He had a wonderful and close
fellowship with them. And he could count on Adam and Eve to understand his
instructions and to do his will. And then, Adam and Eve decided to disobey.
They decided to go against the will of God to find their own meaning for what
was good and what was evil, and they choose very badly and broke that
relationship with God. They became filled with fear and shame, and they also sowed
the seeds of all the sin that has followed in the wake of that decision. And so
human beings have had a history of anger and rage, a history in fighting and a
history of consuming without any consideration of the world around them. And
that problem has been so strong in our history.
So we still have the question,
why does God care for us? Why does he still care for us after all this time.
And the answer to that question is the gospel itself; that God knows he’s able
to reach us in our need, and even in our sin, in our wickedness; that wherever
we stand in the spectrum of human good and evil, that God is able to lift us up
and bring us to new life.
God cares for us and continues to
care for us because he knows that he, by his power can redeem us. And he, by
working through his son Jesus Christ offering his life on the cross, has
offered everything that is necessary for our redemption. We can be restored! God
cares enough to give everything for us. And he cares with the full optimism of
a God who knows that this night of sorrow can turn into a morning of joy.
And that’s the message that we
are giving on Good News In The Morning week by week and through the internet
every day of the year.
We do pray that you will turn to
this God who cares for you; that you will receive Jesus Christ as your Saviour,
and that he will fulfill in you all that he has purposed for you.
Let me pray
with you right now.
“Almighty God, humanity is such a
mixed thing from our perspective. We have fallen so far. But you are the one who
made us. You are the one who can remake us for eternal life. Thank you, Jesus,
for all that you have given for our salvation and thank you for the promise and
the demonstration through the resurrection that you are able to accomplish all
that you intend to do. Accomplish it in us, through Jesus Christ we pray.
And now as we conclude this
program, here is another song focusing on the majesty and glory of God, which I
think is a great song of praise: 'How Majestic
Is Your Name' based on Psalm 8, and sung by Marantha Music, Decade of Praise.
Rev. Brian Wilkie
St.
Andrew's Christian Community, Rockland, Ontario
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above broadcast, click on the following link:
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May you come to know Jesus Christ personally and profoundly.
May the Holy Spirit reside deeply within your heart, and may you feel our
heavenly Father surrounding you with his constant, abiding and accompanying
love.Good News In The Morning is produced in the Studios of News Talk Radio 580
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