"The God Who Cares"

I came across a testimony of sorts this week that was written by a woman named Briana Bell and was published to a news outlet called The Globe and Mail. The following is an excerpt of what she writes:

I was 8 when the weight of my father’s absence hit my heart full force.

I was attending our annual street party and an impromptu dance session had erupted on a neighbour’s driveway. Dancing with some friends, swaying my little-girl hips, I felt the cool breeze on my tanned bare legs.

I closed my eyes, singing the latest 1998 pop hit. When I opened them the song was over, and a slow song started to play. My friends ran off to their respective homes, and I was left standing alone, overcome by emotion as I watched a picture-perfect scene before me.

A young girl of about 4 was dancing with her mom and dad, sandwiched between their embrace. I could feel the love between the two parents like an electric shock through my little body. The girl didn’t look much different than me. As Whitney Houston sang When You Believe, I stood immobile, entranced by this endearing moment of a young family.

In an instant, I felt a cloud of grief wash over me. Tears began streaming down my cheeks. I remember running as fast as I could, my feet pounding on the pavement as my heart beat wildly in my chest. I found my mom on our porch and hugged her around the waist, sobbing.

(Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/coping-with-the-absence-of-a-dad-who-wasnt-there/article28532977/)

Briana titled that piece “The Invisible Father” and she goes on to describe the effects on her life with a father who left her mother while her mother carried her in pregnancy, only to hear stories about the man her father was.

Tension

Now, I don’t want you to assume that I’ve shared some of Briana’s story with you to beat up on dads with a twisted goal of elevating moms on Mother’s Day. That’s not my intention at all. I could have taken Briana’s story and just as easily told you a version of it that recast her mother and father in opposite roles. Rather, I shared her story with you because in some small way, it communicates the sense of incompleteness in our lives that we carry when we believe that the ones who should love and care for us are absent from the scene. Briana’s dad walked away from his responsibilities to her mother. Her dad missed out on the joy of sharing himself and his life with his baby girl. And he was denied the reward of watching her grow into womanhood and motherhood herself.

And in the same way that Briana has lived a life with an invisible dad, there are many who would assume the same to be true of God. It’s a line of thought that goes something like acknowledging that there is a god who at some point initiated what we know as creation and brought all things in to existence. He created our solar system, set things up so the planets revolve around the sun. In other words, their picture is of a god who gave a cosmic push of a domino that started a series of chain reactions in a similar way that Briana’s dad participated in her conception, but beyond that, like Briana’s dad, every domino that has fallen since the first one was pushed has happened without his presence and without his concern.

It begs the question, is God an absentee father? Is the human race nothing more than a countless number of illegitimate children? Have we been left no inheritance?

Text

We can begin to search for the answers to these questions as we turn to our Bibles, where the God of Heaven and Earth has chosen to reveal himself to us.

And it is the Bible that I hope you have committed to read above all else this year. If you’ve been able to stay with reading the Bible with the Chronological reading plan this week, you’ll remember that the folks who have ordered this particular plan gave us Psalm 8 among a series of other psalms immediately following the death of King David. The reason for this is that unlike the psalms we have studied in the last few weeks, Psalm 8 is not a psalm of response to some events that are occuring in the life of David.

God protects (vv. 1b-2)

Rather, this is a psalm as we read in Psalm 8:1 that is a worship song because David begins by speaking of God’s glory. David says that God has set his own glory above the heavens. I want to explain to you first what David means by heavens so we can then wrap our heads around God’s glory and where it has been set.

Going back to the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible that Pastor Carlos read from, the word heavens is used to refer to realms like the sky or space. So it is above the skies and above the space where David says that God has set his glory. Well, what is the significance of God having to do that? Why couldn’t God just set his glory over where the Independent Grocery was right here in Devine, Texas? God couldn’t do that for the same reason that U-haul gives you an estimate on how big a moving truck you need based on the number of bedrooms in your house. A 10’ truck covers 1 bedroom, 15’ covers 2, but if you wanna move your 4 bedroom house, you need the big 26’ truck from U-Haul. You don’t rent a 1 bedroom truck for a 4 bedroom house.

God has set his glory above the known existence, beyond what we can see, because the glory of God is the totality of God himself. The glory of God is his essence, it’s all that makes God, God. It’s all the ways we try to describe God’s attributes with human words - personal, holy, merciful, just, jealous, faithful, truthful, eternal, unchangeable, gracious and so on and so forth - the glory of God is all of God summed up. Glory is the closest word we have that comes to describing God in one word. God’s glory is set in the place we know as Heaven itself, the place that is beyond the known existence.

And if we haven’t checked out by looking at the Mother’s Day brunch menu from where ever you’re going today, then you must be thinking to yourself, “This sounds like God is distant. Maybe even absent.” And if all we did was consider a part of one verse, then that may be a logical conclusion, however we read on to Psalm 8:2, taking notice of where David has come to see God in his life. Last week I made mention of the stability that Israel enjoyed under David as her king, but the cost for that stability meant that David knew war or the threat of war most of the forty years that he was king. War for David and Israel always meant adversity and suffering for those caught in its midst and worst of all, it meant the loss of lives.

And it’s the case that when you see Old Testament authors like David refer to babies and infants, they’re usually talking about the victims of oppression, war, and death. David has seen many come and go that would seek to abuse the power that God has given to humanity and to even oppose God’s will, but in this psalm David is declaring that God has set limits on humanity’s capacity to destroy itself. Is God absent? No, furthest from that and in Psalm 8:2 David is praising the Lord who is actively working to protect us from ourselves.

Think of it like this… Part of parenting is teaching your children limits. When Bethany was a toddler, we lived in San Antonio and I remember one of the constant things we taught her was what the street was and how we don’t go into or across the street. We’d play in the front yard and a ball would roll away and what’s a kid’s instinct? To chase the ball. And what’s an attentive and present parent doing in the moments as they watch their kid give chase? SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS, running after the child, reminding the child of the boundary so no one is hurt.

God has set a boundary to how far we can go. In essence, God has said, “thus far and no further.” God isn’t absent from our lives. God is protecting us from ourselves. And there’s beauty to boundaries, even if we seem to be in a free fall in our lives. There’s a bottom that many of us need to hit to finally knock some sense into us that going our own way is pointless. God can be praised when we hit rock bottom because he’s given a bottom to everything to catch us when we fall.

God is mindful and cares (vv. 3-4)

David’s seen the depths to which humanity can reach. He’s been there himself. And it’s by going to those depths that he’s enabled to look to the heights and see the beauty of all that God has created. When David looks upwards towards the skies and stars of the heavens God has created, he can see the beauty of creation as the blue sky is painted by white, fluffy clouds. David can see the renewing power that gray skies bring to the land. He marvels at the intricacy with which God has placed every star that hangs in the sky. The ordering of stars that gives us constellations by which we can navigate and identify the seasons of the year.

You get a sense that David could as easily be looking out from the safety of the porch of his royal suite in Jerusalem as he could be peering out of a tent erected in the danger-filled desert lands which surrounded the holy city and in both instances just look upon the starry skies and relish in the wonder and awesomeness of who God is. If there’s one thing that David knows as he stares out upon the beauty of God’s creation, it’s that none of what he or we look at has come about accidentally. All that we see has been created and in order for something to have been created, it must be by the work of a Creator.

In a debate between a scientist who denied the existence of God and a pastor, the scientist suggested that in a universe that contains millions of planets, it would be inevitable that life would appear by chance on one of them. The pastor responded to the scientist, “Sir, if the police found a body in the trunk of your car, would you tell them, ‘there are millions of car trunks, it is inevitable that a body would show up in one.’?” The pastor then added, “I think the police would want to know who put the body in your trunk.”

David knows that there is a Creator and he is Yahweh. If earth were to be the center of the universe and we were to go to one edge of the universe that God has created in one direction and to the other edge in the opposite direction, the distance between the boundaries of the known universe is estimated to be 93 billion light years. Uncountable planets, moons, and stars in addition to all the celestial bodies in the universe and God has created it all and has set it all in place.

And as David looks out into that expanse of the universe, knowing that the totality of God cannot be contained between the 93 billion light years of the universe, and that God has placed and provided for everything between the boundaries of the universe, David also comes to this realization: in comparison to the big picture of all of God’s creation, we humans are insignificant. And let me be clear, we are insignificant as a human race, let alone as individuals. I know that may be alarming to some this morning who believe themselves to be something more than the specks of dust across time and space that we are, but whatever gives you some sense that the world revolves around you, take a seat and consider what David’s song here is teaching. We each are incredibly small in comparison to all that God rules over, but despite our insignificance, we are not illegitimate. When David asks, Psalm 8:4 “4 what is man that you are mindful of him?”, the word he uses for man carries with it a sense of the frailty of human life.

Do you see the beauty of God as David does? When David asks Psalm 8:4 “4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” he doesn’t intend to do anything but shine light even more directly on the Creator who has made an awesome world and and offers a relationship with him. God is mindful of humans, he cares for you and for me.

The best way we can live between the tension of our insignificance and God’s care that this song is highlighting is that we should maybe each carry two stones in our pockets. On one stone should be inscribed, “I am but dust and ashes.” On the other, “For my sake was the world created.” And you and I should pull each stone out and ponder them as we need them.

The glorious, majestic, praise-worthy God who has created all things and set all things in their place across the expanse of the full breadth of the universe cares for each of us. God isn’t too busy for us nor has he disregarded us.

God empowers and gives responsibility (vv. 5-8)

In fact, the Lord has such regard for his human creation, God has made man Psalm 8:5 “a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.” Here the ESV uses the term “heavenly beings”, the NASB uses “God”, and the NIV uses “angels.” I want to clarify what David is declaring in this prayer about the created nature of humans, and that’s this - we have been each created in the image of God. That means we each are a reflection of God’s character. There’s this major tension going on here with all of this… On the one hand, humanity is so great that it alone is picked out and identified as being in the image of God and on the other hand, uniquely among all of creation, we are radically fallen. Though we were originally made with a human nature of goodness, humanity then fell and now our nature is bad. We cannot help but sin because that is our nature. And in between our goodness and our wretchedness is God who is mindful of us in spite of what we are.

Beyond that, the Lord has given humanity Psalm 8:6 “dominion over the works of your [his] hands...” This idea of dominion means that God has granted to humans rule over creation by virtue of being made in his image. Now, I know that when I use the word rule, that word brings about some negative sentiments within us. We are Americans and beyond that, we’re Texans. A’int nobody gonna rule us. A’int nobody gonna tell us what to do. And in the same way, that independent spirit may raise some question within us about what does it mean to rule over God’s creation?

Here’s a picture of how this works. In the United States, we have ambassadors to nearly every other country in the world. When they speak to the leaders of the country that they’re assigned to, the ambassador speaks with the authority of the government who sent them. Though they are individuals, they represent the entire nation when they speak. They represent our rule of law, our ethics and our understanding of justice.

It’s in this similar way that as created beings who bear the image of God, that the Lord has given to each of us a sense of royal status within his kingdom. As God is the ruler over all creation, we humans are to exercise dominion over the creation as his representatives. And here’s the amazing thing - we are each entrusted with this grand responsibility. God does not see any of us the way we see each other. He doesn’t look at us as tall or short, fat or slender, rich or poor, black or white, but he sees us as each man and woman who he has created, made to be a reflection of his character, and responsible for his creation. Our responsibility is to care for creation, steward it, having love and concern for its welfare. God has given us the inheritance of ruling over his creation with the love and care and standards he himself has established.

Application

So we return to the questions we raised at the outset.

Is God an absentee father? No. God protects us.

Are we God’s illegitimate children? No. God is mindful of us and cares for us.

Have we been left no inheritance? No. God empowers us to rule over the world on his behalf.

And the realization of this love that God has causes David to declare twice, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” The amazing thing about God is that he loves to share the joy that he has in his own majesty. God’s majesty is magnified when human beings are satisfied to glory in his majesty. That God would share the joy he has in his majesty with us is mind-blowing. And though it caused God great pain to make it possible, God is equally joyed when sinners come to Christ in repentance and faith because God cares for and loves us so much that he would send his Son Jesus to atone for our sin against him. God is joyed when we are transformed from death and raised to new life as Jesus himself was raised from the dead.

The majestic name in all the earth is the name of Jesus Christ. There is no other name than the name of Jesus. Philippians 2:9 “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.” It is Jesus who David is expecting in this psalm and it is Jesus who we worship through this psalm. Jesus who reveals God’s concern for God’s supreme creation-the human being. And we find that God’s care compels our concern for other people.

Now, I hope you will agree from this psalm that the truth follows that you cannot worship and glory the majesty of God while treating other humans with disrespect or disregard or neglect.

One example of such disregard for God’s supreme creation that has been a focus in the news this week is the indication that the Supreme Court of the United States is soon to overturn its ruling on Roe vs. Wade which says that the Constitution protects a woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion. A subject like abortion is a divisive one, specifically because it is both a political hot-button issue as well as an ethical dilemma. I want you to be certain that I have no interest in entering into the political sphere because whether you like it or not, the Bible is not the rule of law in our nation. However, if you have been born of the Spirit, the law of Christ is the standard for your life. In saving us by grace through faith, God’s grace demands our obedience to his Word and it is my intention is to relate this text from God’s Word to our day and our present moral dilemmas.

So let me make this as plain as I can - we cannot dismember the unborn human and worship the majesty of God. We cannot treat pregnancy like a disease and worship the majesty of God. We cannot turn a blind eye to the need for children to have a place to call home and worship the majesty of God.

Action

What do I mean by that last one? I mean as of today, there are 117k American children awaiting adoption today. If the Supreme Court’s final ruling holds and Roe is over-turned, Christians in the United States should rejoice, however we should be convicted by the fact that caring on the order of care that God has empowered us to requires us to not only be pro-life through birth, but to be pro-life, period.

If the Lord doesn’t lead you to adopt, be open to his leading to foster children. I recently learned that on average, there are 70 Medina County children in the foster care system per month, but there aren’t any homes around here to place them. So these image-bearers of God, these frail and innocent children, they experience disruption by being ripped from their homes along with removal from all they know to go be placed in a completely different part of the state. Everything about life for these children changes.

Friends, we must do better. We have to.

Inspiration

We have to because God’s care compels our concern for other people. I can think of no better way to show the gospel than to open our homes to children. And the fears in your mind about being too old or what have you, remember that God has the final say and that God is bigger than all our fears. We can show the gospel by opening our homes to adopt or to foster children because it is the picture of what Jesus has done in delivering us from darkness and bringing us into the marvelous light of the gospel.

In the Summer of 1983 a woman conceived a child who would be her first born. The father of the child was a man who drank too much and hurt her every way imaginable. She wondered what was best for her baby. Keep the pregnancy? She did. She delivered the child, a baby boy, in the Spring of ‘84. She gave parenting a shot but her circumstances forced her to make the difficult decision to give her boy, her beautiful baby boy, up for adoption. He was given a new name by his new parents. He was spared from an abusive father and saved from the likelihood of learning to drink and hurt women like his daddy. That boy never missed a meal and never slept without a roof over his head. He is well-educated and has a family all his own now. He was born in the Spring of ‘84 and born of the Spirit in the Spring of 2003. When I tell you that there’s a God who cares, I know personally, because that baby boy is me.

How many futures can each of us affect? Don’t put a limit on God.

Friend, I don’t know each of your stories, maybe you don’t know your own. But whether you know where you come from 4 generations back or the best you know is today, I’ve got to ask… Have you been adopted by God? Is he calling you today? When we are born of the Spirit, our debts are cancelled, we are given a new name, and we are given all the rights that heirs of God possess. God adopts sinful men and women not because they are worthy, but he adopts on the basis of his grace. God’s protected you through today and has cared for you, even if you believe your world is collapsing around you.

When Brother Scott comes after we pray, would you come and collapse into the tender arms of Jesus? For it’s he who you will find when you hit bottom. He is who you will find who is ready to hear your confession and surrender. He is the one who is waiting for you to believe. Have you been adopted? Have you believed?

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