Thought for the Week - 21st October
Pastor Gareth WatkinsPsalm 8: 3-8
3 When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—
the moon and the stars you set in place—
4 what are mere mortals that you should think about them,
human beings that you should care for them?
5 Yet you made them only a little lower than God
and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You gave them charge of everything you made,
putting all things under their authority—
7 the flocks and the herds
and all the wild animals,
8 the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea,
and everything that swims the ocean currents.
I‘ve been reading the Psalms this week about God’s relationship with us. David talks about the subject of what is mankind that God is mindful of him? What is mankind that God thinks anything towards him at all? Why is God mindful of you and I today?
The Psalmist says that He is mindful of us. Both the Old and New Testaments proclaim that He thinks of us and He has good thoughts to us. And yet, in some ways, we’re a tiny, tiny speck of the whole of the creation that He’s made.
For example, we learned in our Alpha Course this week that the earth, as big as we are, fits into the sun 1.3 million times! And how many suns are there? According to Washington State University, there are more than 200 billion suns or stars. Too many for people to count. 1.3 million earths in a star, and more than 200 billion stars in the universe!
And yet God thinks of mankind. He cares for mankind. He cares for each person within that mankind. That includes you and me. That is the God we serve!
In the Psalm above we read that God, who made the night sky and set each star into place, gave thoughts towards men. He gave men charge over everything that was made. He put all things under man’s authority. David knew and could right of the attitudes and thoughts of God towards us as men. He made man over all these things, a little lower only than God Himself. He made them to be over the birds, fish and the seas, the animals and the herds. God meant us to rule over all of creation that He Himself had made.
It’s interesting, considering the mess that mankind makes of things. The position that God would have had for man. It’s interesting what God thinks of man and cares for in a man. Mankind is desperate to rule over everything. He wants to tame everything. He wants to overcome everything, and conquer everything. Yet, the paradox is, man is making a mess of himself. Mankind makes a terrible mess of himself. He cannot rule himself. Look at the wars and the famines that mankind creates. Look at the mistrust and sin. Look at the way that mankind destroys the earth. We’re polluting the sky, the seas and even space.
In a way, God has made mankind to look after His creation, and yet man can’t even look after himself. That’s you and me.
Where can mankind turn for the answers for his problems?
First, he needs to see what the problem is. Then he can turn to the bible! The bible shows us the condition of mankind. It’s like a mirror. In a natural sense, if you have a pain on your forehead but can’t see what’s causing it, you can look in a mirror and see what’s causing that itch or that hurt. The bible does a similar sort of thing. But inwardly, it looks at the condition of mankind. The bible is like a mirror. You look through it and it shows what’s happening on the inside of a person.
In James 1: 23 the bible talks of seeing your face in a mirror. The bible in Hebrews 4:12 talks about the Word of God discerning even the thoughts of the heart. Your being, your inner man and the thoughts of your heart. Like an X-ray machine!
Mankind, who’s making a mess of everything, in some ways needs to look for help somewhere. He can’t help himself. But he can turn to the word of God. That Word of God will show mankind the details of what’s going on inside.
It’s interesting that God has made man a tri human being. You have a body, soul and a spirit. You’re not just outward man. There’s an inner part – a soul and a spirit. And God has given us the bible to discern the heart and the soul, and the things tht are going on inside us, so that we can be more useful in terms of the creation that God Himself has made. He wants us to be the human beings that He describes in this passage.
He wants us, for example, to be the humans that would be enabled to have charge over the things that He has made. But so many people just haven’t got any hope. All they’re looking for s their selfish benefit and gain. The things of God are somewhere else. We don’t hear the world leaders talk about what they must do in the light of God. We hear them talking about what they must do in the light of their own country, own power or own politics. We never hear them talking about what they must do because of what God wants us to do on His behalf as part of His plan.
And yet, God has set things for man to do under the authority that He has given him. He wants us to rule in the way that He’s set before us.
How do we it? We can’t do it ourselves. How do we change and find out what we are to do? We come into the Word. And as we come into the Word, we start to see what we have to do as individuals to change the wrongs in our lives and around us. We can see what help we need. We can read the bible and find the condition that you’re in before God Himself. We can find the condition we’re in and know what the problem is. Then God takes us one step further when He says that Christ is the one who will bring us unto salvation, into that right place with God, in the light of all creation.
Jesus will take us into the right place before God. That right place with God, will enable us to live rightly in the whole of creation that God has set before us. In Hebrews 2:10 we read:
God, for whom and through whom everything was made,
chose to bring many children into glory.
And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering,
a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation.
Why would He need to bring us into His salvation? If we’re able to do it ourselves, then surely we can do it ourselves? We’re so very full of ourselves. We’re full of our own strength, education, self, etc. We think we can do this life ourselves. The answer is no, we cannot. We need Jesus to take us into His salvation, that we might be saved and that we might live the life under His creation under the plan God has for me.
If we’re going to do this ourselves, then we are going to do it wrongly. We’re going to make a mess. If we’re do it ourselves, it’ll be in a selfish, sinful and backward kind of way. But if I come through Christ, who God sent, then we can live rightly as part of His creation, as part of God, as part of God’s plan, and part of God’s ideas for us to live within this world. We hear no world leaders talk like this. Where leaders are living under the authority of God and the plans that God has for their lives.
Yet this scripture says that it’s by Jesus that God has made a way for us, to bring us ongoing, into a place of salvation that makes us fit to inhabit this earth, as rulers over this earth, in the way God has for us.
Is it a wonder that people feel like square pegs in round holes? They don’t how to live. They don’t know why they live. They don’t know what they should do. They don’t know what their finances should be engaged in. They don’t know. But here we read there’s a place that God wants us to live, and a way that God wants us to live. God has used Jesus to bring us into that very place.
If you’re not feeling right, or feeling that you’re not walking right, if you’re feeling lost or outside of God’s plans, then this is for you. Jesus was sent to make this life fit for you by bringing you into God’s salvation. By doing that, we fit into this creation that God has for us. There’s no other way we can do it.
How are you going to fit into God’s plan for your life if it’s not by the way of Jesus? You can’t do it.
God has made this world. Men are like little specks. We’re meant to fit into this creation in the way God wants us to fit us into this creation. He sent Jesus Christ, a perfect leader fit to bring us into His salvation. There’s no other way.
In Hebrews 2:11 we read:
So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father.
Jesus makes us holy. Holy in a way that we can fit in with this creation, that we’re not without use, that we are fit for this creation. He makes us the ones who have the same Father. He makes us holy. So as Christ had His Father, we too would have access to the Father.
Do you feel Holy before the Father? Or is that a place you haven’t got to where you’re right with God? There’s a place where you should come to where you’re right with God. If you’re right with God, then you’re right in life. There’s a rightness. There’s a place where you can live where you’re made holy by Christ, and he’s taking you unto that salvation that belongs to eternity with God. You’re not lost.
Are you living rightly with God? Are you being brought into your salvation as an ongoing thing? Because it is ongoing, unto that day that we see Him. Are you being made holy by Christ?
Feel part of God’s creation. You don’t have to feel outsiders in God’s company.
God has made a creation for us to be a part of it. He’s used Christ to bring us constantly back to that place of rightness and holiness before Him.
Amen.