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Text: Daniel 2:20-22 (Ephesians 1:3-14; John An Infinite Number of Variables and One Constant In the name
of Jesus, dear friends in Christ: The
last few remaining moments of the year of our Lord 2003 are rapidly ticking
away, and very soon it will be just another year for the books. Before it passes away entirely – or at least
within the next few days or weeks while the memories are still fresh – it would
be good for each one of us to pause for a bit and reflect upon its high (and
its low) points. It’s appropriate that we do this. The Lord God, who made the world we live in, designed it for us with a number of self-contained time keeping mechanisms. He is the original clockmaker as it were, giving us the rotation of the earth to mark hours and days, the first seven days of Creation to give us weeks, the cyclic phases of the moon to give us months, and the annual orbit of the earth in it’s path around the sun to give us seasons and years. He did this so that we would have natural means to measure the passage of time – and also so that our lives would be governed by a recurring and predictable pattern of beginnings and ends … beginnings and ends that more or less force us to periodically stop, consider, evaluate, and plan how best to start again. We Christians of the Lutheran
tradition are (hopefully) somewhat accustomed to applying this concept to our
spiritual lives. When studying the
Catechism, we learned to make the daily cycle of lying down to rest and rising
again in the morning an opportunity to remember our Baptisms – when, through
the Sacrament, we died with Christ, were buried with him in the water, and rose
with him to live a new life. As such, we
were taught to begin each day by confessing our sins, remembering the grace and
forgiveness we have in Christ, and to go forward into the day’s tasks in his
righteousness and determined to live accordingly. Similarly, after five or six days of thus
resting, rising, and confessing, we were taught to take the seventh day for
physical and spiritual recovery and growth in the Christian faith. And just as each day we do a quick inventory
of the previous day’s failures that need to be confessed, when we take that
silent pause in the weekly divine service for reflecting upon our sins, what
we’re thinking about are those that seemed to stand out above the rest of the
whole week’s failures that are still nagging at our consciences or that we know
we really want to work on overcoming and avoiding in the future. In the same way, it’s good to do
this on annual basis: to look over a
longer period of time and evaluate a year’s worth of trends, tendencies,
recurrent problems, and long term habits – as well as those really major
“single event” moral catastrophes that still so easily come to mind. These need to be confessed so that receiving
God’s grace and word of pardon, we can move forward into 2004 with the Lord’s
own strength, his encouragement, and his guidance to do better. And that’s a big part of the reason we’re
here this evening. That having been said, I’d like to
delve a little more deeply into this whole concept of God’s control of the
universe he created. We’ve seen that he
has actually designed the movement of the celestial bodies of the universe for
the express purpose of regulating and ordering our lives according to his
divine will. But how much farther does
it go? A lot of people think that after
the work of Creation, God just sort of wound up the clock, set everything in
motion, and now sits back and watches it run to see what we will make of the
situation we’re in. The idea is that he
doesn’t get too terribly involved with what goes on now. The future is open. Who knows what will happen? God has provided us everything we
need; now it’s up to us to make the most of it. “God helps those who help themselves.” We call that view “Deism”. It was popular among many of the founding
fathers of our country, and has heavily influenced American thought ever
since. Obviously, it doesn’t fit well
with our understanding of Scripture because it pretty much excludes the
Lord’s ongoing interaction and “interference” with the affairs of mankind –
which is what the Bible is all about. Nevertheless, parts of this notion
are now encroaching in some conservative Christian circles with an idea called
“Open Theism” (perhaps you’ve heard of it).
According to this view, God does indeed prod and poke things along here
and there on Earth to spin things the way he’d like to see them go; but he
still doesn’t know for sure what the final results will be. He’s doing the best he can for us – which is
really very good—he is God, after all – still, the future is an open book and
anything might happen in the end. More
specifically, your future is still an open book, and not even the Lord
knows what will become of you. You’ve
still got to do the best you can with what he’s given you – oh, yes, and with
the little bit of help he gives you now and then – and maybe, if you play the
hand you’ve been dealt properly, you’ll win the game and make it to heaven one
day – or, maybe not. Who knows? Certainly not God.
Well, speaking against both such views, the Scripture readings we heard
this evening stress the Lord God’s direct and ongoing “hands-on control” of
what transpires in this world. He is
very much in the driver’s seat, and he knows exactly where he is going. He’s leaving nothing to chance. So, for example, we hear that not only does
he order the changing times and seasons, he also raises up kings and deposes
them. The rise and fall of nations and
empires is all according to his good pleasure and will. His authority over the world of people is
exercised through human governments that he himself ordains and directs. Now, someone might object, “But some of these
governments are evil and do terrible things to people. How can you say God is in control of
that?” Well, think about it: having said that God operates through human
governments, how could anyone possibly imagine that any of them could be
free from evil to begin with? If God
chooses to work through sinful humans, as Scripture declares that he does, we
should rather expect that the evil done by sinful humans will be apparent in
the results. The point is that even
their sinful acts ultimately serve God’s good purposes. We have only to consider the trial and
crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, the worst act of men ever, to see that this is
true. If the best thing that could have
happened for us came about by the worst sin, it seems rather clear that the
Lord could be accomplishing his purposes in less egregious cases of sin – as
we’re told that he is. Nor does the Lord allow man’s evil
to go unchecked indefinitely. Just this
last year we saw the Lord’s sense of justice executed in the bringing down of
the cruel dictator, Saddam Hussein – just as we saw also his sense of humor in
raising up Arnold “the Terminator” Schwarzenegger to be Governor of California
(or maybe that’s his justice again, giving people what they deserve). The point remains that God is in control of
all things, and that we can trust him because he knows what he’s doing. In fact, we are to see his control
of every facet of what goes on in this world.
His governance extends well beyond appointing the leaders of kingdoms
and empires; Scripture tells us that not a sparrow falls to earth without the
Lord’s knowledge and approval. All
things are in his control. But we want
to be careful not to fall into the ditch on the other side of the road. Someone may say, “Well, if God is really in
control of everything, then I’m not responsible for what I do. And if God goals are being done even through
my sin – then I serve him and his purposes no matter what I do. So, what difference does it make what
I do? Or, take it a step further: if God is in control, is it even me that’s
doing it? Or am I simply fulfilling what
I’ve been preprogrammed to do by him?” This is called “Fatalism”, and it
too is a false understanding of how God works in the world. We are not simply characters in a play acting
out unchangeable roles that have been assigned to us. Though God is in control of all things, it
happens that at the same time you and I have a large measure of freedom to do
whatever we want. In fact, the Christian
person is freer than anyone else to do what he pleases. Those outside the faith have only a sinful
nature. No matter what they choose to
do, it will be wrong in the sight of God.
We who have the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ have been freed from
sin’s influence to some degree. We can
succumb to our sinful natures, or we can choose to do what is right in God’s
sight. But whatever it is people do,
God’s control takes into account all their variable decisions and actions and
still accomplishes his good purposes. You see, the problem with both the
views of the Deists and Open Theists on one hand, and the view of the Fatalists
on the other is that their God is too small.
They think that it has to be either that God isn’t completely in control
and doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen, or that he is responsible for
making everything happen to include each and every choice of man. They think it has to be one way or the other
– and in terms of human logic, that makes sense. But our infinitely wise and powerful God
isn’t confined to the very small container we call human wisdom and
knowledge. He’s a whole lot bigger and
smarter than that, so that it’s possible for him to be fully in charge of all
things at all times that involve the decisions and actions of all people doing
whatever it is they want to do. And here’s the important
part: all these variables together that
are driving world history and the events that transpire on this globe serve
God’s one constant purpose; that is to bring those he loves in his Son through
to their final goal. That’s the one
constant in this infinitely complicated and ever changing equation: the Lord’s care and his unshakable love for
his children in Christ – those whom he chose from before the foundation of the
earth to be holy and blameless in his sight through the redemption purchased by
the blood of his Son. As we now move into the year of
our Lord 2004, wondering what uncertain joys and sorrows it may bring, I would
ask you to keep that one constant part of the equation – the thing we can
always rely on – first and foremost in you mind. And knowing that God’s good and gracious will
for you is being accomplished in everything that transpires, I’d ask you to
make it your goal to conform your will to his – to let his grace, his
forgiveness, his truth, and his love govern your daily and weekly cycles of
resting and rising again so that his work is done by your positive choices to
serve him and others in love. May he
give to each of us the grace to do it, so that no matter what happens in the
future that lies ahead, we will be always found safely within the hands of our
loving God, from which no one can take us away.
In the name of Jesus our Savior.
Amen. Soli Deo
Gloria! |
