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Sunday, November 13, 2005
Rev. Dr. Harold E Kidd
Psalm 24
Matthew 25: 14 - 30 -
YOU CAN'T BEAT
GOD GIVING
"The
earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell
therein." Psalm 24:1
Theology is the study of
God. Contemplation of the divine. Coming to understand the nature of God as
best we can. When I was in seminary and even today when we consider some of the
great theologians, those whom God has given to the church to help us understand
and interpret more deeply the meaning of scripture, there is Karl Barth, Paul
Tillich, Howard Thurman, Rudolph Bultmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Soren
Kierkegaard, James Cone, Gayraud Wilmore, Karl Rahner, just to name a few.
And in all honesty some of
these brothers and sisters were so deep that I couldn't understand what they
were saying. Professor would ask a question about something one of these
theologians had written, hands would shot up, and I’d be sitting there saying,
why couldn't they have kept it simple? And one of the lessons I learned from my
personal struggles in trying to understand what these theologians were saying
is: keep it simple. No matter how true it is, it does little good if people
can't understand what you've written or said.
But long before the word
theologian was ever discovered, David was a theologian par excellence. We can
learn a lot about God by reading the writings of David. His writings are filled
with his search to understand the nature of God. Theology. The study of God.
David loved to study God. "The Lord
is my shepherd." That's a theological statement about God. "The Lord is my light and my
salvation"; that's another.
When theologians like Paul
Tillich were using language to describe God as the Ground of all Being, David
simply said, "He's my refuge and my
fortress." When some in
theological circles were seeking to describe God in language as the Uncaused Cause, Moses in the 90th
Psalm simply declares, "From
everlasting to everlasting thou art God."
It’s interesting that what
man and woman seek to describe in high and lofty language that often times is
unintelligible, the Bible declares many of these same theological statements in
plain and simple language.
When you read the entirety
of Psalm 24, it is a theological statement about God. God is Creator. God is
Owner. God is Sovereign. God is the giver of all blessings. God is King. All of
these theological statements about God can be found in the verses of this psalm.
But let's just work with
verse 1, "The earth is the Lord's
and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein." Have
you ever considered the fact that truth does not depend upon whether or not we
accept it or agree with it? Truth is truth. Sometimes when we hear certain truths
about our faith declared or taught, we say, "I don't know if I believe
that" or "I disagree with that." But truth is truth whether or
not we like it, agree with it, or choose to live by it. Truth is not decided by
popular opinion, consensus, or majority vote. Truth is truth all by itself.
Psalm 24 is a theological
statement of truth about God and all creation. “The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and they that
dwell therein." Have you ever pondered the truth in this one little
verse? God is Creator of all things. And ultimately everything belongs to Him.
Amen.
Try as some will, we cannot
legislate God out of existence or his Creation just by taking prayer out of
schools or taking God language out of constitutional documents. We ought to be
disturbed that some would seek to take holy language out of our sense of being
One Nation under God, but even if they succeed, God is still going to be God.
This is truth.
God is. He just is. … He
said to Moses, "I am that I am."
You know that you must be a bad somebody, when all you have to say to
describe yourself, to affirm yourself, to introduce yourself, or to justify
your behavior and actions is to just say, "I AM". No further
description, explanation is necessary. "I AM."
God is. God is real. God's
word is true. God's promises are sure. God's purposes will come to perfect
completion.
When people would suggest,
or when some “ism” believes, or when some philosophy or government says that
God is dead or that God doesn't exist or that God is not concerned about his
people, saying it, believing it, legislating it cannot change the reality that
God is still God. And that God is Love. When we say that God doesn't exist we
only exemplify the ancient truth expressed by the psalmist when he declared,
"The fool has said in his/her heart, there is no God." (Psalm 14:1)
God has ways of showing this
world that He is not dependent upon us for His existence, but we are surely
dependent on God for ours. It may not be in your lifetime or in my lifetime,
but there will come a day when every knee shall bow and every tongue shall
confess that God is God.
One day the atheist must
stand before Him and confess, "Behold, I refused to believe it, but Thou
art God." Yes, one day as well the agnostic will also stand before God and
confess, "I couldn't find any tangible proof to encourage me to believe in
your existence while I lived upon the earth, but now that I have come
before my Creator, I must confess, "Behold, Thou art God." Which is a
word of warning to us all, don't wait until it is too late to make a public
confession that God is God.
I looked up this verse in
different translations to see if there was a loop-hold. I was looking for a way
out. David, are you trying to tell us that everything that is belongs to God?
KJV: The earth is the Lord's and the
fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. NIV: The earth is the Lord's, and everything in
it, the world, and all who live in it. The Message: God claims
earth and everything in it; God claims the world and all who live on it.
Be careful, David, when you
start suggesting to people that what they own they really don't own. Be
careful, David, when you start messing with people's religion. Be careful,
David, when you start making implications that our bank accounts, CDs and
stocks, our jewelry, our health, our bodies, our cars, our monogrammed clothes
and cuff links, our families, our talents, our abilities really do not belong
to us but are owned by God.
The preacher was preaching
on this text, and a woman leaned over to her friend in the pew next to her and
quietly said, God may own it, but he lets me make the payments for it. She was
talking about her house note.
Work with me for a little
while to understand what David is saying in his theological statement, The earth is the Lord's and everything in it.
We work hard for the
privilege of possessing some things in this life and using some things for our
enjoyment or to make life easier for others.
Possession, however, and the privileges of use and enjoyment do not
constitute ownership. The stars are ours to behold, but we don't own them. The
warmth of the sun is ours to feel, but we don't own the sun. Music is ours to
hear, but we don't own it. Love is ours to give and receive, but we can't own
love. Freely it must be given, and freely it has to be received. Some of us may
have a companion, wife, husband, children, friends, but we don't own them. The
trouble with some relationships is that we forget that we don't own people.
Most of our jewelry comes
from that which is already in the earth -- diamonds, gold, silver, rubies.
Pearls come from oysters. Many of our medicines come from that which are part
of nature’s garden of herbs and plants. Our homes, planes, buildings come from
products and by-products of the earth's natural resources. Even those products
and materials that are synthetic, they come from the creativity of our minds.
So that either directly or
indirectly, the earth really is the Lord's and all that is in it.
Why, we don't even own
ourselves. We cannot wake ourselves up in the morning. We cannot determine our
health. We cannot stop ourselves from aging. We cannot stop death from someday
knocking at our door.
When our bodies decompose
they will return to their natural ingredients, all of which can be found in the
earth -- iron, zinc, water, potassium, etc.
In theological terms, Paul
puts it this way, Know ye not that your
body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and
ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price, the precious blood of
Jesus; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are
God's." (1 Cor. 6:19-20)
We cannot even make
ourselves do right. Even a deeply rooted saint like the Apostle Paul had to
admit, "I can will what is right,
but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want
is what I do." (Romans 7:18-19)
Research and science is
really like a treasure hunt -- humanity using God’s gifts of the mind, to
discover what God already knows exists. In human language we use the term invention, while in the biblical sense we
have not invented anything, we've only discovered what the Lord had already
hidden in the mysteries of science, physics, geology, economics, astronomy,
algebra, calculus, zoology, biology, and chemistry for our benefit.
So David does have a point that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. All that is in it. What
this says to us is that God has given us everything that we shall ever need
through his creation of the earth and her fullness. We must not pollute the
earth; she is God's blessing for our existence. We must not waste and abuse the
natural resources of the earth; they are God's
provision for our well being. We must not kill off every species of life that
gets in the way of our profit margins; they are God's provision for maintaining
environmental balance in the natural order of creation.
There's something wrong with
a theology that only asks but which is never glad to give. There's something
wrong with a theology that praises God for the gifts we have received but which
never praises God for the opportunities he gives us to give back. There's
something wrong with a theology that is always asking God for something but
never giving back to God anything in return.
And when you come right down
to it, you can't beat God giving.
Giving is the nature of God. Giving
is who He is and what He does. Giving
is an expression of his goodness. Giving
is demonstration of His love. The Bible says that 'every good and perfect gift comes from God.'
God gives us a lifetime and
asks of us only a few hours of return during the week. God blesses us with so
many different abilities and talents and asks only that we use them in ways
that give him the glory. God gives us the opportunities to make a living and
asks us for only a tenth or a pledge.
Since God has been so very
good to us, we ought to be good to God.