[0:00] The following message is given by Walt Alexander, lead pastor of Trinity Grace Church in Athens, Tennessee.! For more information about Trinity Grace, please visit us at TrinityGraceAthens.com.
[0:15] ! Psalm 8, just a wonderful psalm.
[0:32] So our series is Psalms to Pray in the Mess of Life. We are in a mess in so many ways, and the psalms are here to help us.
[0:44] Psalm chapter 8. I'm going to begin reading in verse 1. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
[0:57] You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes to steal the enemy and the avenger.
[1:13] When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars which you have set in place, what is man that you're mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him?
[1:29] Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You've given him dominion over the works of your hands.
[1:40] You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beast of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the pass of the sea.
[1:55] O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! May God bless the preaching of his word.
[2:10] Well, I agree with Martin Luther, who once said, I, Dr. Martin Luther, wish all lovers of the unshackled art of music, grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
[2:26] I truly desire that all Christians would love and regard as worthy the lovely gift of music, which is a precious, worthy, and costly treasure given to mankind by God, which we celebrate this morning.
[2:43] But Dr. Luther continues, A person who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God must be a clodhopper and does not deserve to be called a human being.
[2:56] He should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs. Now, while we may not imitate his attitude, we should imitate Dr. Martin Luther's passion for music.
[3:12] Music has been a part of my life since, as long as I can remember. I remember humming and singing to whatever was on my heart, whatever I heard. The first thing I got in trouble for in school was singing in class.
[3:24] In the first grade, that wasn't the last time I got in trouble in school. I picked up piano very early on before setting aside lesser instruments and began to play the guitar, which I haven't moved beyond an amateur status as you saw last week.
[3:38] I sang in the choir when it was cool, and then I sang in jam bands all throughout high school and college. But after becoming a Christian 19 years ago this month, my love for music changed because I saw it as a gift from God.
[3:54] God. I began to love God. God caused me to be born again suddenly, and I began to love God, but I didn't love music less. In fact, I began to love it more. I began to love music not as a way to find my identity, but to express my new identity that I found in Jesus Christ.
[4:11] I'll never forget, all throughout high school, I had longed to see the band Radiohead. I don't know if anybody knows who Radiohead is. I was a huge Radiohead fan, believe it or not. It's kind of shameful to admit.
[4:21] I was a part of the fan club, the official fan club on the website, but I was never able to see this band perform because their tickets were too hard to get. They're from England.
[4:32] They would come over to the stage. They'd stop in like eight cities, and it was never close to my home. In the summer of 2001, one of my friends got tickets to this Radiohead show and gave me one.
[4:43] Well, in God's mysterious providence, I was saved the week before. And I went to this show that was meant, in so many ways, it was going to be the pinnacle of my musical life.
[4:56] And I loved the show. Radiohead in Grant Park was amazing. Maybe not amazing. That's overstated. That's an overstated word or overused word in general. It was a very good show.
[5:07] But I realized that night that wasn't my favorite music anymore. My favorite music was praise music, for like a better way to say it. It was worshiping God.
[5:19] Well, so too with David. All throughout the Psalms, David says, I rejoice when they said, let us go to the sanctuary and worship the Lord. He says, how lovely is your dwelling place. And each of the Psalms are written to help us praise God.
[5:33] But Psalm 8, this Psalm this morning, is the first hymn of praise that we find in the book of Psalms. You see that right from the outset, because he's just praising God. How majestic is his name in all the earth.
[5:46] It's different. It doesn't begin with a cry, as we saw the past seven weeks. It didn't begin with a plea or a prayer. It includes no invitation, no reasons for praise. It is all praise.
[5:59] It never shifts. It is praising God. It begins and ends, as you probably noticed, with this refrain. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name upon all the earth.
[6:10] Majestic there. It's just a word for the power of God. So the psalmist is just praising God for his majesty, for his unrivaled power. He's impressive.
[6:21] He's the Grand Canyon making millions of galaxies, galaxies stringing God, Lord of all. And he's proclaiming it with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, because his glory is over all the earth.
[6:37] The refrain, though, captures his nearness, too. He says, Oh, Lord, our Lord. You remember several weeks ago. He's saying, Oh, Lord, Yahweh, the one who came, who's with us, the one before whom all things are, and without whom nothing exists.
[6:52] You are our Lord. You are our leader, our rulers. To you belong all glory and honor and praise. So we're going to learn how to praise today in so many ways.
[7:04] This psalm is going to help us learn how to praise. So the main point, where are we going? Let our all-powerful God be exalted, and let us bow in heartfelt awe.
[7:15] Let our all-powerful God be exalted, and let us bow in heartfelt awe. And our points are trying to capture the tension of this text. The first one is the power of your weakness.
[7:28] The power of your weakness. Because this psalm begins and ends with this refrain, and then packed into the middle are these incredible statements about who we are as man and woman in this world.
[7:46] So David, he seems to have written this psalm underneath the stars, and you almost get that sense of it. But the first place he turns is not in wonder of what God has worked, but in awe of how God works.
[8:00] Now, if you remember, if you've been with us throughout this study, the psalms, after five straight psalms cataloging, evildoers roaming around this fallen world, the psalmist announces that evil is overcome, not by strength, but by weakness.
[8:16] Look down in verse 2. He says, Out of the mouth of babies and infants you have established strength because of your foes to steal the enemy and the avenger.
[8:28] Now, every commentary I read this week says this is a difficult verse. It's translated in different ways and different... Hebrews translated in different ways and different English translation.
[8:40] But let's take a little look at this verse. And it obviously, as you can see, it revolves around babies and infants, the babbling of babies and infants. Babies and infants are so cute, so cuddly.
[8:53] It's when grown men start talking in baby cuddly terms like that. But no one listens to babies coo except their mom. No one really listens to them.
[9:05] And yet the Lord says their words stand up against and still the enemy. That's what's going on here, if you see. You've established strength to still the enemy.
[9:17] The contrast is meant to startle us a little bit. It's kind of like the power and your weakness. There's this startling combination here. The babies whose mouths are dependent upon other people to fill them day in, day out, are the mouths that sound the words that still the enemy.
[9:36] Now, if you've read your Bible or if you're raised in church, you probably remember this verse was quoted on Palm Sunday. You remember our Lord Jesus, He went into Jerusalem.
[9:47] He went during the season of Passover. And Jerusalem was not a huge town. And during the time of Passover, it just filled with Jewish people coming for this festival to celebrate Passover.
[9:59] And Jesus entered riding on a donkey, symbolizing that He was the new King. And when He entered, it created quite a stir. If you remember, He was on that donkey. And the crowds fell before Him saying, Hosanna to the Son of David.
[10:14] Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Everyone was excited. Everyone was ecstatic. Now, we know the story of what happened, or tells us so much about Jesus Christ between what happened to the crowds and their response to Him from Sunday to the following Friday.
[10:30] But Jesus, the next day, went into the temple. He overturned the tables. He ran out the money changers. And then He began to heal the blind and the lame.
[10:41] You remember that? Jesus came, and essentially what He's saying, I didn't come to kind of massage the political elite, I mean the religious elite. I came to heal the sick and the lame, the forgotten and passed by.
[10:56] And the religious leaders came out and were furious with Him. But the children cried out continually, Hosanna to the Son of David. And Jesus said, Out of the mouth of babies and infants you have prepared praise.
[11:13] What He means is, it's not those in power who see Jesus for who He is. It's those who aren't. That's why Jesus said, I came not for the righteous, but for the unrighteous.
[11:25] Not for the well, but for the sick. All this underlines a powerful biblical principle. God uses human weakness to display divine power.
[11:38] The Lord doesn't work the way we work. If you study the scriptures, you see that His strongest defense is not political power or popular prominence. His greatest asset is not earthly wealth or worldly wisdom.
[11:52] His most fit ambassadors are not those without a past or those who stay in the lines. The Lord chooses to work with the weak and the lowly and the despised.
[12:02] And this has been the story all throughout the scriptures. That's why the Lord chose Rahab for the spies. To protect them before He took the people into the promised land.
[12:16] This prostitute and not the powerful. The Lord uses the weak to display His power. I have a new hero. Last month, you probably saw a story about a six-year-old boy named Bridger went viral.
[12:35] Bridger was walking, this six-year-old boy, was walking with his little sister when a dog charged his sister. Bridger stood in front of her and was attacked instead.
[12:49] After being bit on his head and down the side of his face, he grabbed his sister's hand to, quote, keep her safe as they ran away.
[13:03] Bridger received 91 stitches and hours of plastic surgery, but his honor was intact. So many people applauded Bridger.
[13:13] That's one thing about our culture. It's nice in these moments. It's a weird culture, but that's a long story. I won't go into that. But it's nice at these moments, because even Captain America called him up, said, you are the real hero.
[13:28] I find it striking. Bridger's sister was delivered not by the long club of her father, or the louder bark of her dog, but by the weak courage of her older brother.
[13:42] That's the way the Lord works. The Lord does his best work when the church is out of power and out of popularity. That's why we will not fear if America falls apart.
[13:56] Not that I think it will, but it could be the church's greatest moment. The Lord does his best work when we don't put him in a box and decide what he can or cannot do.
[14:06] In so many ways, the Lord does his best work when we don't have the answers and don't have the strength. That's the power of our weakness. That's the power of your weakness.
[14:17] That's what's going on here. In so many ways, I felt like the Lord was laying this on my heart as we were singing this morning. If you notice, we sang numerous songs. It just talked about God being risen, the risen Son of God.
[14:28] He rose, he died, and he rose. You died, you rose. And defeated death and sin and Satan. And so we base our lives not on a dead Messiah, but on a living one.
[14:42] We make our decisions and our schedules and our commitments not on the basis of our strength or on a dead Messiah's strength, or a crucified Messiah's strength, but on a risen one and on the power of God.
[14:56] But there seems to be another point here. I think the reason it's kind of couched in here is that we must bow low like children to see the power of God.
[15:09] The power of our weakness is we must bow low like children to see the power of God. Another place, Jesus says again and again, you must become like little children in order to be welcomed into the kingdom of God. And I think that this verse in many ways functions like an invitation for what we're about to see in this passage, that if you'll humble yourself, you'll see.
[15:28] If you'll humble yourself, you'll gain true knowledge and insight. If you humble yourself, you'll walk in true power. Everyone must duck their head to get into the wardrobe.
[15:38] Luther says, everyone must go through the low door of humility. Point two, the wonder of your significance.
[15:49] So we're going to respond to this invitation to get low, and we're going to wonder at these things. The wonder of your significance. And in so many ways, David is tracing the consolation in the skies as he writes these words.
[16:03] Look down in verse three, he says, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you're mindful of? Or the son of man that you care for him?
[16:18] If you've noticed, after the sun sets and the hustle of the day stops, a hush falls over the earth as the sun, I mean, as the stars shine and speak. Nations come and go.
[16:30] Kingdoms rise and fall. Generations come and pass. But all that the Lord has set in place stands and shines. He says, you have set your glory above the heavens, and yet you set the heavens in place so that we might see it.
[16:48] I think that's what's going on between 1b and verse 2. When I look at your heavens, you've set your glory above it, and when I look at the heavens, I see it.
[16:58] You know, the heavens are yours, he says. You see those possessive words there. The moon and the stars, which you have set in place.
[17:10] The moon is yours. The stars and the planets of yours, they're all the work of your fingers. The idea is it's just child play. God's just playing in the sandbox and throwing the big dipper into the sky and endless galaxies after that.
[17:27] Go study astronomy. That's the only science class I took at the University of Tennessee was astronomy. Because I hate science. But just the Lord's trying to change me.
[17:39] And it was to see these things and to stand and wonder. On Friday morning, my wife and I hiked up to the second highest point in the Smokies, Mount Leconte, and spent the night in a lodge up there.
[17:53] You know, we needed it. We commented on how quiet it became up there. Except for the wind. We went to Myrtle Point, which is kind of the east side of Leconte, and we traced the ridges.
[18:10] We're just talking about all these ridges and just tracing the ridges with our eyes. And much like Smokies always are, they're nestled up to the clouds. And then you just see the gray ridges of more and more mountains that seem to go on endlessly out there.
[18:25] And we began to be taken up into the greatness of it all. I just began to pray to the Lord and cry out to the Lord. It was like the Lord was unmasking His glory. And He was unmasking how great and how awesome He is.
[18:39] And I was just caught up by the endless array of mountains and planets. And in so many ways, that's what David is doing here. David is just caught up in the theater of glory that is the creation.
[18:51] That's what Calvin calls it. It's a theater of glory. It has one movie playing, day in, day out. And what he's saying, it's not about you. It's all about God. The Lord could have easily put us into a cubicle and said, live out your world here.
[19:06] But He placed us in this unspeakably beautiful world so that we would be called up and amazed, not at us, but at Him, at how great He is.
[19:16] So no wonder David responds, what is man? If you created all this, what is man? If you truly see the way David sees, you'll realize how insignificant, unimportant, and unnecessary you are.
[19:37] I realize that's not going to sell any books, but it's the truth. David does not say, I must be so beautiful for God to make me this. David does not say, I must be so worthy for God to make me this.
[19:53] David says, if this is who you are, then why are you hanging out with me? The word here underlines the deep sense of unworthiness and insignificant.
[20:04] He feels there's two words for man in Hebrew, Adam, and this one. And it's chosen carefully to emphasize human frailty, weakness, and mortality.
[20:15] The stars stand forever and ever and ever, and you're just a mist. But it's so hard in our man-centered culture to see this way. In a recent book, David Brooks tells a story of driving home from work one evening.
[20:29] He was listening to a radio broadcast from August 15, 1945. It was the day after VJ Day, Victory in Japan Day, after Victory in Europe Day, after the Allies secured victory over Japan in one of the most brutal wars.
[20:47] The broadcast included all the hip of the day. It included Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Bette Davis, humbly expressing their gratefulness that this war was over.
[21:00] Bing Crosby opens the broadcast saying, well, it looks like this is it. What can you say in a time like this? What can you say on VJ Day?
[21:11] Today, celebrate! Celebrate! All anybody can do is thank God it's over. Bing Crosby concludes, today, our deep down feeling is one of humility.
[21:33] The whole nation seemed to agree there were celebrations. Sailors partied down and San Francisco, New York, was littered with confetti, but the joy was marked by a deep sense of humility.
[21:47] This victory was one of the greatest war victories ever, and yet no one walked around talking about how great they were.
[21:58] No one printed up bumper stickers telling of their awesomeness or their awesome child. No one beat their chest. No one announced that they were better than Japan or something like that.
[22:08] They were just thankful to be alive and thankful for this to be over. And then David Brooks continues. He says, I arrived home before the program was over and listened in my driveway for a while.
[22:20] Then I went inside and turned on a football game. A quarterback threw a short pass to a wide receiver who was tackled almost immediately for a two-yard game. The defense did what all professional athletes do these days in moments of personal accomplishment.
[22:36] They did a victory dance. It occurred to me, now listen, that I had just watched more self-celebration after a two-yard game than I had heard after the United States had won World War II.
[22:52] He continues and describes how our culture has shifted from a culture of humility to self-promotion. from a culture that says, I'm no better than anyone else to a culture that says, look at me, look how special I am.
[23:08] The first thing we need to see in order to see God is not how beautiful or worthy or special we are, but how insignificant, unimportant, and unnecessary we are before God.
[23:22] yet, as insignificant as we are, David doesn't stop there. Humankind is created in God's image and crowned with glory.
[23:37] If you see how this continues, you're stunned because David is caught in this quandary, he's caught in this kind of spiritual conflict. Lord, if you made all the stars and all the heavens, I mean, what am I that you would care for me, that you would regard me, that you would love me, and then he suddenly realizes, yet you, look at verse 5, you've made him, you've made man a little lower than the heavenly believers and crowned him with glory and honor.
[24:06] And this tension just comes out here. He's saying, everything is for you, God. Everything is for your glory. It's all for you. It's all about you. You are great and I am insignificant, unimportant, and unnecessary.
[24:20] Yet you take care of me. You're mindful of me. You've made me in your image. And David seems to be stumbling into staggering truths here.
[24:30] He says, you're mindful of me. The idea there is just, you remember me. You know, we say, out of sight, out of mind, and then we just forget things, you know, whatever, wherever our keys are or something like that. Jesus, God the Father, never forgets you for a moment.
[24:44] That's what he stumbles into. What is it that you're mindful of me? I'm a man and yet all my days are before you.
[24:56] He keeps going. What is it that you care for me? It takes it further. Literally, you visit me. You remember me so much that you come to me. You stay with me.
[25:07] You never leave me. You see all that's going on and as if all that weren't enough, he says, you've set, you made me a little lower than the heavenly beings. You've crowned me with glory and honor.
[25:18] What he's saying is, you created me in the image of God. After remembering the first five days of creation at the opening of this psalm, he remembers the six that God created man and woman in his image.
[25:31] They were not just another animal. They're not just another thing alongside dogs or something like that. They were another class of species. They were created in his image. The idea is, you took frail, finite flesh and then you stamped it with something unbelievable, with your glory and your honor.
[25:52] You made me a little lower. Do you see the tension there? Just a little bit lower. It's almost blasphemous. Just a little bit lower from the Lord. You see?
[26:04] And you said, it's good. Genesis 1.
[26:15] So God made man in his own image and the image of God. He created him. Male and female, he created them. So you crowned him.
[26:27] What's going on here? I mean, is this that we're like God because we talk? Dogs don't talk, so we talk and that's how we're like God. Is that what it means? Or no, I don't think so. Does it mean that we have a mind, that we have a mind to think like God, to think God's thought after him?
[26:41] Maybe that's what it means, but I don't think that's really what it means. Or maybe just the capacity to love and trust and worship. Is that what the image of God means? I don't think it means any of those things. It means something more foundational.
[26:54] And the reference to crowning kind of points to what it means. You know, Genesis was written in an ancient Near East context. The context helps us understand what it means.
[27:05] In the late 70s, and I won't go on too long in this, a Syrian farmer unearthed a life-sized statue of an Assyrian governor, which I'm going to mispronounce the name Hadassi, because I can't say what's on my paper.
[27:19] You know, I don't know what it is, but this Syrian farmer found this statue in a remote area of the Assyrian kingdom, and on the statue it said, made in the image of the king.
[27:38] Now this is important because this is the only place where image, or made in the image and likeness of the king, it's the only place outside of Scripture where image and likeness are brought together in the ancient Near East world.
[27:52] Apparently, statues like this one in the image and likeness of the king were set all over the empire as a visible representation that this land belongs to a distant, yet essentially invisible king.
[28:06] And the same thing is going on here in Psalm 8. The idea is not merely that you have an intellect, not merely that you have the capacity to love and trust God, not merely that you have the ability to seek, but that God has placed humankind, made them in His image, and placed them all throughout the world to announce that this world is His.
[28:24] So why is God mindful of you? Why does God care for you? Why does He care for us? Because all humankind, He's created us in His image and He wants His image bearers to bear glory throughout the earth.
[28:39] That's the wonder of your insignificance. The wonder of your insignificance is that God did not need to create you or me. He was fine. He didn't need a friend. He wasn't bored. But He did.
[28:53] So that you would be called up and wonder about who He is. But it means something very important for us. This means that every person on planet Earth, regardless of their race, background, police record, mental capacity, political party, or contribution to society is valuable.
[29:08] They should be loved, defended, and protected. You know, 2020 has been a doozy in so many ways, and it seems to be asking me one question. Will we capture this wonder?
[29:20] Will we humble ourselves to those unlike us? Will we defend those unlike us? Will we humble ourselves before those of another race? Will we humble ourselves or be humbled towards those of another political party?
[29:34] Will we be humbled towards someone who sees police brutality or systemic racism in a way different than us? Will we be humbled towards someone who doesn't have the same position on coronavirus or something like that, or masked as us?
[29:48] Will we be humble? I mean, it seems like 2020 is going to keep punching until we're humble. Seriously. I want to be humble.
[30:01] I want to capture the wonder of the significance. God is not celebrating me by creating me. He's celebrating Him. Point three, the potential of your work. The potential of your work.
[30:14] And so you capture some of this tension as well here. Humankind is given authority and called to work all that God has made. Look down at it in verse 6. He continues. This is going into the rest of day 6 of creation.
[30:26] He says, you've given Him dominion over the works of your hands. You put all things under His feet, all sheep and oxen, all beasts of the fields, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea. Every fisherman likes that verse.
[30:37] Whatever passes along the paths of the sea, they're all yours and you've entrusted them to men. This is referencing the creation mandate. Be fruitful and multiply.
[30:49] Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living creature, every living thing that moves upon the earth. The idea is that humankind is created in God's image. They're crowned with glory and honor and they're given authority to work what God's made.
[31:04] They're given the calling to make dominion. Not to conquer like the Crusades, but in a calling to steward what God's made. to steward what's been trusted to them.
[31:17] Look at the way. So all of creation is God's. All things are yours is what the psalm says in Psalm 19. But here he says, you've given him dominion over your works. You've put all things under his feet.
[31:30] So really, all of creation is under God's feet, but now he puts them under our feet. So you see, he transfers a temporary ownership to us. That's what's going on. The birds of the heavens, whatever passes along the sea, all these things have been entrusted to us to subdue and multiply.
[31:50] That's pretty amazing. There's two things this means at a minimum. A, I split this up into A's and B's so we wouldn't get confused.
[32:03] A is no work worth doing is bad work. No work worth doing is bad work. It's up. I'd rather say no work is bad work, but I want to make a little qualifier because there is such thing as work not worth doing, like making pornography.
[32:24] No work worth doing is bad work. The usual suspects, I'm dating myself with Radiohead in this movie, the usual suspects they had a line, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
[32:37] Now C.S. Lewis said something very similar to that too. I would like to add one of the greatest tricks the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that some work is sacred. One of the greatest tricks the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that some work is sacred.
[32:52] In Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 there's no distinction. All the earth is entrusted to humankind. All work is good work that's worth doing.
[33:04] and it's to be done unto God as an act of work. Now as an act of worship. Now it's entrenched in our thinking to think there's a dividing line between sacred and secular work.
[33:17] We consider some occupations as sacred as contributing to some greater good while other occupations as simply not sacred. My guess is somewhere in your thinking you believe that being a missionary or a pastor is more noble than selling insurance or stocking shelf or crunching numbers as CPA or providing security or teaching school.
[33:37] Now one can certainly do bad work selling drugs making pornography and one can do work badly selling bad insurance plans falsifying dividend reports on financial investments not reporting taxes appropriately but no work worth doing is bad work.
[33:58] You get what I'm trying to say here? Work wherever the Lord has placed you if it's an act of worship and it's worth doing is pleasing to God. Now Martin Luther who we quoted at the beginning who's very quotable he said he said desiring you so the Lord some man came to him said Mr. Luther he'd just been saved he said what should I do now?
[34:20] And Luther said well what is your work now? He said I'm a shoemaker he said then make a good shoe and sell it at a good price he didn't say quit everything and go to the mission field he didn't say be a revolutionary Martin Luther confronted revolutionaries in the Protestant Reformation this guy Jordan Groom says it well if God's called you to be a king don't stoop to be a missionary if God's called you to be a missionary don't stoop to be a king if God's called you to be a mechanic don't stoop to be a missionary if God's called you to be a teacher don't stoop to be a pastor don't stoop any lower the calling of God is what makes your work worth doing now that should fill us with joy Gerald Manley Hopskin says it well you can capture some of the old
[35:21] English in this I wanted to keep it because it's just a fun quote he says it is not only prayer that gives God glory but work so the idea I remember when I first became a Lord I just thought when I first became a Christian I thought the only thing I can do is just love God worship God that's the only thing worth doing and this just confronts me and helps me in so many ways it's not only prayer or singing or reading that gives God glory but work smithing on an anvil sawing a beam whitewashing a wall driving horses sweeping scouring everything gives God some glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty to go to communion worship that's what he's talking about to go to worship worthily gives God great glory obviously it gives God great glory but a man with a dung fork in his hand a woman with a slop pail give him glory too he is so great that all things give him glory if you mean that they should Martin Luther said that every time a wife changes a baby diaper the Lord smiles every time a husband changes it he laughs he delighted in everything being done oh it grieves the heart of God to separate some work into sacred work and secular work you think well dad's not a pastor so he can't be doing important work or dad's not a missionary or he came off the missionary field so he must be giving his life to something less value that's not true that's not what the
[36:54] Bible says the Bible says he's making all things new B all work can be done to love others now I don't quote Martin Luther every week but here's another good one he did say the Lord doesn't need your good works but your neighbor does the Lord doesn't he's not after him don't read your Bible for the Lord he loves you he loves you already but read it so you can be a better neighbor God all work can be done to love others you know God could have very easily provided for all of our needs in a moment in a divine fiat of some sort of way you know he could have just blessed us in a powerful way like that he only does that in certain points in redemptive history if you remember with the manna and when they complained about the manna he gave them quail too you remember that that's because the people were traveling they were on the wilderness they weren't able to farm their own land but God provides for us through the work of other people now we'll just take one aspect of our economy to see this the food supply chain now we could in light of covid talk about the toilet paper supply chain but we won't do that because we saw that one get backed up or even my dad has a medicine that he was taken before covid and they're literally a part of the drug they cannot get to make the medicine to compound the medicine because of that so we are globally connected and we see it but let's just talk about the food supply chain you know some restaurants boast in being farm to table and that's great you know but most of our food doesn't come that way the food supply chain breaks down into four different things farmers producers of some kind distributors and sellers and each of these these parts are dependent upon one another like farmers can't sell so they well I mean theoretically they could but farmers work with producers of some kind to help produce their crop then work with distributors of some kind and then with sellers the idea is that
[39:01] God has caused our work to be interconnected and dependent upon one another to make society a better and more healthy place and to put food on our table and in our bellies Cornelius Plantinga says it really well in this way God has ordered human society in such a way that we all depend on each other before we give thanks for our daily bread somebody has to have baked it in fact before a slice of honey oatmeal appears on your plate a number of farmers millers bakers distributors drivers grocers and others have had to work together in order to supply our need so there's no sense in saying some works better than others or something like that we're all dependent upon one another we're all just kind of throwing it into the into the pot and making what is a godly society that's what we're doing what's your part to play well play it with joy I mean sometimes I think about this finding a vocation is a lot like Christmas morning unwrapping something and realizing hey I get to use this to make this a happier place
[40:03] I mean what a vision it would be instead of working to try to make ourselves look great or to buy a car that people can be impressed by we work so that we could bless other people and make this world a better place it captures the potential of your work the potential of your work is something more than padding your bank account the potential of your work is something more than looking impressive the potential of your work really has less to do with you and your work has so much to do with God who loves to bless people and loves to provide for one another and loves for us to be dependent upon one another so let our all powerful God be exalted and let us bow in heartfelt awe this is who he made us I just love this song I don't think I did justice but in so many ways I love that tension I don't want to leave it the power of my weakness the wonder of my insignificance and the potential of my work man if we could lift our eyes and see what God has called us to we'd be a better people amen
[41:19] Father in heaven we cast ourselves before you and we thank you for this word and this song we pray you know Lord in so many ways it captures the wonder of being created in your image to follow you and love you and we pray that we'd capture it whether our days are filled with a job we don't enjoy our life we don't enjoy in so many ways that we would render it up to you as an act of worship to give to you our affections and our joy and our life Lord let us work unto you and to that which is pleasing in your sight Lord in Jesus name amen you've been listening to a message given by Walt Alexander lead pastor of Trinity
[42:20] Grace Church in Athens Tennessee for more information about Trinity Grace please visit us at trinitygraceathens.com B B