Sermon on Lord’s Day 10b⤒🔗

27. Q. What do you understand by the providence of God?
A. God's providence is His almighty and ever present power,[1] whereby, as with His hand, He still upholds heaven and earth and all creatures,[2] and so governs them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty,[3] indeed, all things, come not by chance[4] but by His fatherly hand.[5] [1] Jer. 23:23,24; Acts 17:24-28. [2] Heb. 1:3. [3] Jer. 5:24; Acts 14:15-17; John 9:3; Prov. 22:2. [4] Prov. 16:33. [5] Matt. 10:29.

28. Q. What does it benefit us to know that God has created all things and still upholds them by His providence?
A. We can be patient in adversity,[1] thankful in prosperity,[2] and with a view to the future we can have a firm confidence in our faithful God and Father that no creature shall separate us from His love;[3] for all creatures are so completely in His hand that without His will they cannot so much as move.[4]
[1] Job. 1:21, 22; Ps. 39:10; James 1:3. [2] Deut. 8:10; I Thess. 5:18. [3] Ps. 55:22; Rom. 5:3-5; 8:38, 39. [4] Job 1:12; 2:6; Prov. 21:1; Acts 17:24-28.

Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 8, II Corinthians 8:1-15

Singing: (Psalms and Hymns are from the "Book of Praise" Anglo Genevan Psalter)
Psalm 67:3
Psalm 147:4
Psalm 37:9,10
Psalm 112:1,2,3,4
Hymn 63:1,2

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ!

This afternoon I ask your attention, again, for Lord’s Day 10. Last week I showed to you from Scripture that "leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come not by chance but by [God’s] fatherly hand." When I worked out the implication of that reality for us today, I laid the finger specifically on the fact that we need to be patient in adversity. In the brokenness of the life, I said, things repeatedly do not go as we’d like, but we are responsible for how we react to what God in wisdom puts on our path. So, instead of getting angry or bitter or cynical in the face of life’s adversities, God would have us be patient. That was last week’s material.

Thankfully, there is more to life than adversity. Besides drought or sickness or poverty, there is also fruitful years, food and drink, health, riches, etc – prosperity. These things too, say the Scriptures, come not by change but by God’s fatherly hand. So: how should respond to the prosperity God gives? In our Lord’s Day we say: in prosperity we need to be thankful. That’s the element I want to draw out today.

You may wonder why I make a point of asking your attention for this aspect of Lord’s Day 10, given that I dealt with the same Lord’s Day last week. I have a couple of reasons. The first is this: which, do you think, is harder – being patient in adversity or being thankful in prosperity? I realize well that being patient in adversity can be a real trial. But it seems to me, congregation, that being thankful in prosperity can be harder still. I say that simply because it is in us to think in terms of being self-sufficient, independent of God; that’s fallen human nature. So when things go well, we find ourselves praying less than when we’re faced with adversity. Show God that we’re thankful for the prosperity He gives? That’s hard….

I have a second reason. We live in a very prosperous society, a society that does not acknowledge God as the source of "life and breath and everything". Our society encourages us to be earth-centered, even self-centered in the way we respond to the abundance we have. We live in this culture, are influenced by this culture, and so need to have it impressed upon us that Yes, we need to make a point of being thankful to God for the prosperity He gives. And make no mistake, brothers and sisters: we are prosperous. Australia is the envy of billions around the world. Think of the poverty in the townships of South Africa (you may have seen the video shown in this building last month), think of the unrest in Afghanistan, think of the countless children in Kenya whose parents have died of AIDS. Prosperous? The abundance of food we have, the warm, dry homes we live in, the cars and telecommunications we possess, the extensive medical assistance available to us, the education available to us: we’re the envy of billions. Add on top of that the stability and love that characterizes the average Free Reformed home, and compare that to what is found in the average Australian home with its single parent, broken marriage, strained relations, etc. On top of that still add the hope of faith that God gives to His children in Jesus Christ…. Prosperous? Absolutely, we are. So the big question: how are we to respond to the abundance God has given?

The Catechism catches the answer in one word: we are to be thankful.

I summarize the sermon with this theme:

God requires us to show our thankfulness for the prosperity he gives. 

1. Why we are to show thankfulness.
2. How we are to show thankfulness.

Why we are to show thankfulness←⤒🔗

The question of why we are to show thankfulness, brothers and sisters, flows directly out of the material we confessed last week. The point is that "leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come not by chance but by [God’s] fatherly hand." So: prosperity comes from God also. We need to reflect that reality in our response to God’s blessings.

But human nature is otherwise inclined. King Nebuchadnezzar was once walking about the royal palace of Babylon and uttered these boastful words: "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built … by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty?" (Dan 4:30). This is precisely the attitude that God warned Israel against in Dt 8. Beware, said God in vs 17, that "you say in your heart, ‘My power and the mighty of my hand have gained me this wealth.’"

The warning, beloved, is so up-to-date. Who got the glory for Brazil’s win in the World Cup? Sure, after the game there was a prayer to God (whoever that god may be – given Brazil’s paganism), but when it came to the celebrations there was one name only on everybody’s lips, and it wasn’t God’s! Steve Fossett had his media conference after his successful solo balloon circumnavigation of the globe, and who gets the praise? Not the Lord God! Yet Rinaldo and Fossett once did not exist. Who was it that wove their beings together in their mother’s womb? Both were once babies, and who gave them the life and health to grow to maturity? There was a time Rinaldo couldn’t walk. Who gave him the ability to use his feet, let alone the skill to kick the goals? Who directed the winds so that Fossett could actually get around the globe? What Nebuchadnezzar once said captures exactly what is so acceptable in today’s world: I did, so I get the praise. In as much as that man-centered attitude characterizes major-league sports, a Christian cannot be comfortable in that environment. This is idolatry, trusting in persons and praising people for what belongs to God.

The Lord God knew that this selfishness and this self-praise lived deep in the hearts of fallen man. So, when He took out of Egypt the people He claimed for Himself, He determined to teach them their dependence on Him before He brought them into the Promised Land with its prosperity. From Egypt to Canaan was a highway that followed the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and traders could travel the distance from Egypt to Canaan in a couple of weeks. But the Lord God did not lead His people along that route, took them instead through the desert –why?- so that He might teach them their dependence on Him. That’s Dt 8: the Lord God led Israel these forty years in the wilderness to humble and to test Israel, to see whether they would learn their dependence on Him (cf vss 2f).

How He taught them this dependence? When the people left Egypt they presumably had enough food with them to last the distance to Canaan along the Coastal Highway. But because the Lord led them instead into the desert, the day came when the mothers of Israel had nothing to feed their children. So the Lord promised manna; each day He’d rain manna upon the camp, and the mothers could collect whatever they needed for breakfast, lunch and tea. But, God commanded, nothing was to be left for the next day (except on Friday); whatever the people would save for tomorrow would breed worms.

Do you see, brothers and sisters, the practical implication of God’s instruction about the manna? The implication was this: each night every pantry in Israel was empty! It’s a thought we can’t fathom, because none of us can recall an empty pantry in the last thirty, forty years. But that was the way God deliberately organized things for Israel; for forty years the mothers never had a thing in their pantries, except on the night before the Sabbath. Similarly, the mothers never had to go shopping for new clothes, for the Lord led things in such a way that Israel’s "garments did not wear out" (vs 4). The lesson of the desert, the reason why God led them through the desert, was this: God’s people by covenant should learn their total dependence on Him. That is: "food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come not by chance but by His fatherly hand."

And this God was completely reliable in supplying their needs not only because He was the almighty Creator who once made and still upholds and governs heaven and earth; this God was completely reliable in supplying their needs because of the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed in the sacrifices commanded at Mt Sinai. Those sacrifices preached the good news that sins were forgiven through the blood of Another; Christ would die in their place so that God’s blessings might fall upon them. Well, if God loved them so much as to supply so fully such a fundamental need as the forgiveness of sins, then surely this Father in Jesus Christ would supply their daily needs, bread and clothes included. In their sojourn through the desert Israel literally experienced the truth of that glorious confession!

But the forty years come to an end. Moses preached the sermon known to us as the book of Deuteronomy just before Israel crossed the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land. That is: God instructed Moses to remind Israel at this point in their history about the nature of His care in the past years and so instruct Israel about their complete dependence on Him. They had to know this because of the nature of the land they were entering. Unlike the desert, the Promised Land was fertile, productive; it grew an abundance of "wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing." Even such luxuries as iron and copper would be readily available to the people. The temptation? The temptation was real, beloved, for Israel to think they could manage without God, to forget their complete dependence on Him. That’s why God gives that prohibition of vs 11: they may not forget that they live by God’s grace alone, may never say –vs 17- "My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth."

You see, beloved, both the rain in the Promised Land and the drought Israel experienced in the desert came from God’s fatherly hand. So would the fruitful years in the Promised Land and the barren years they experienced in the desert. The food and drink they received in the desert came directly from their Father in heaven, and so would the grain and wine in the Promised Land. The only difference between the desert and the Promised Land was that in the desert the Lord gave food and drink in an unusual manner –the food came in the form of manna, and water came from hitting a rock- while in the Promised Land food came through men’s cultivation of the crops and water came from the rains of heaven and the flowing rivers. When people get used to seeing crops grow on the land and ripen at harvest time, it’s tempting to conclude that ‘my power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth,’ but that’s simply naïve; "leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come not by chance but by [God’s] fatherly hand." That He was pleased in the desert to give food via manna and drink from the rock, while in the Promised Land He gave food via human cultivation of crops and drink from the rivers is His good pleasure; either way it still all came from God. Hence God’s command to Israel in vs 10: "when you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you."

We live in an entirely different situation today. Few of us grow our own food; instead we buy in supermarkets food grown with the latest in technology. And if there is drought in our part of the world, the supermarkets simply import food for us from somewhere else. But none of those modern developments, congregation, alter the underlying principle we confess in our Lord’s Day, and that is that the food and drink on our tables comes from God’s fatherly hand. Sure, He supplies for us food today differently than He did for His people of old, but a different manner of supplying food does not mean there’s a different source to the food. Israel’s transport was by foot or maybe by donkey, whereas ours is by automobile or even airplane, but a different manner of transport does not mean that the ability to get about now comes from ourselves and our technology. The people of old engaged in distance communication by smoke signals while we today use telephones and internet. But a different manner of communication does not signify a different source of communication technology, as if we can praise ourselves for developing the latest technology. Not only has the Lord God created the technology we’ve discovered; He’s also given the human race the wherewithal to discover the possibilities He put in creation. The talent of Rinaldo’s foot, the financial strength of Steve Fassett to afford his balloon, the movement of electrons through our computers all comes from the Lord our God; "leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come not by chance but by [God’s] fatherly hand." Though years go by and we live in a culture so very different from Israel’s, this fundamental point has not changed. That is why we –like Israel of old- need to acknowledge our dependence on God for every detail of our very modern lives. And acknowledging dependence on God implies that we show our gratitude for His gifts.

That brings us to our second point:

How we are to show this thankfulness←⤒🔗

Built on the reality of Israel’s dependence on the Lord God was the instruction God gave about showing gratitude. Leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years came from the Lord, and so Israel, when they harvested the crop the Lord sovereignly gave, had to take the firstfruit of the harvest and bring it to the priest (Lev 23:9ff). So: the first basket of apples, the first sheaf of grain was not for the self; it had to be brought to the priest as a symbol of your awareness that the whole crop came from the Lord, and therefore at bottom belonged to Him. Similarly, at the end the year the people had to bring a tithe of their income to the priest. By bringing that tithe –10%- you were confessing that the whole crop came from the Lord and belonged to Him.

The point of it all? The Lord God taught Israel how to express their gratitude for the good gifts He in mercy had given to them. They showed their gratitude by acknowledging that all they had came from God and therefore all was for God. Not just the firstfruits and the tithe came from God and therefore was for God; no, all they had belonged to Him and was for Him. The 10% had to go to the Levites, and the other 90% you had to use not for yourself but for God.

The passage we read from II Cor 8 shows us how the Christians of Macedonia understood and applied this principle. Two circumstances in their midst came together to produce a peculiar result. The two circumstances were in the first place "the abundance of their joy" and in the second place "their deep poverty". The first one, "the abundance of their joy", is a reference to their faith in Jesus Christ; they knew how the Lord had emptied Himself of His heavenly glory in order to save unworthy sinners from the wrath of God, and they were deeply thankful for the spiritual prosperity the Lord had bestowed on them through Jesus Christ. The second is a reference to the material poverty that characterized the people of Macedonia; they were poor, had a hard time making ends meet. We would expect: their poverty compelled them to be very careful in their giving. But it’s not so! The gratitude the people felt for God’s profound grace upon them in Jesus Christ prompted them to dig deep into their nearly empty pockets so that they might be able to help the neighbor in distant Jerusalem. Vs 2: "the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded in the riches of their liberality." They had tasted the love of God for them in Jesus Christ, and so they knew that their heavenly Father would supply their every need; "leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come not by chance but by [God’s] fatherly hand." This confession of dependence on God gave these Macedonian Christians the freedom to dare to dig deeply into their pockets to share with others of the little they had. They understood: today there’s a need in Jerusalem, and tomorrow the Lord our Father will supply our needs again, and so their trust in God, their confession of dependence, led to them giving "according to their ability, yes, and beyond their ability" (vs 3).

It pleases the Lord God to give us a great abundance; our material prosperity in Australia makes us the envy of billions around the world, and our spiritual prosperity also –we need to know- gives us an enormous wealth before God – there is no wealth as great as being children of God. That reality prompts us to acknowledge that our abundance is God’s gift. For reasons we do not have to understand, our Father in Jesus Christ has given us in Australia so incredibly much more in financial wealth than He’s given to so many of His children in Brazil. For reasons we do not have to understand, our Father in Jesus Christ has given us in Australia so incredibly much more in freedom than He’s given to so many of His children in China. For reasons we do not have to understand, our Father in Jesus Christ has given us in Australia so incredibly much more in spiritual heritage than He’s given to so many of His children in South Africa. We need not understand the reasons, but God distinctly holds us responsible for how we respond to what He in wisdom has given to us. To treat our possessions, our freedom, our heritage as ours, to take it for granted, simply does not do justice to the fact that we are dependent on our Father in Jesus Christ for all we have. Israel had to acknowledge that all they had was God’s property, had come to them not through own sweat or merit but through His grace; we need to do the same. We express our gratitude not by sitting on the wealth we have (be it financial or spiritual), nor by using it for our enjoyment or development first of all; we express our gratitude by acknowledging in deed that our prosperity come from God and therefore is for God.

How we do that concretely? We show that thankfulness, beloved, by following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ. That’s Paul’s inspired instruction in II Cor 8: Christ emptied Himself of His eternal glory in heaven with the Father and the Spirit, set it all aside in order to help the unworthy – you and me (vs 9). As the Macedonians did, we show our thankfulness for the spiritual wealth the Lord has given us in Jesus Christ by giving freely of our material possessions – whether much or little- to others who have little.

As it is, we don’t know of any culture in the history of the world that’s been as affluent and prosperous as ours. That is God’s gift to us in Jesus Christ, and we enjoy this affluence, are thankful for it. The other side of this coin is: there has never been a culture in the history of the world that has as big a responsibility as we have to give. Around the world are innumerable millions who live in abject poverty, who don’t know where there next meal is to come from. There are innumerable millions who hunger for the wealth of the gospel, and don’t know where to look to find it. Because of the enormous wealth God has entrusted in our society, we have an awesome responsibility to help.

Where to start? The task looks overwhelming, and therefore the temptation great to leave our resources in our own bank accounts – and eventually spend it on our own needs. But thankfulness for the prosperity God gives won’t be satisfied with that. Thankfulness gives, not according to the needs of a church budget, but gives according to the measure of the blessings with which God has blessed you! That expresses gratitude! With great gratitude the consistory noted in May that the church collections had reached the amount budgeted for the Theological College in Hamilton, and so too the monies required for the support of needy theology students from Indonesia. The result was that the collections for last month of the financial year could be targeted for the support of the disenchanted in South Africa. Wonderful development, brothers and sisters; we thank the Lord for it. Keep it up! Give according to the measure of the blessings with which God has blessed you, so that consistory in turn has to look for ways and means to use these gifts responsibly in God’s kingdom.

It is said that a contributing factor to the tensions in certain parts of the world is the envy that the have-nots have toward those who have much. There may be truth in that. However it may be, let it never be that the church of Jesus Christ is associated with those who have much, in the sense that the church members of the world’s rich nations look after their own needs before those of others. Our Lord and Master emptied Himself for the poor, and so made us rich. In gratitude for the riches He gave, let us give much, and let us give freely – even if it means lowering our standard of living somewhat- and so setting an example for how our society as a whole should give to help others less fortunate as we. Causing the gospel to go out to those who live in heathendom, helping those who hunger for the true Word, giving support in mission posts: there you have the beginning of what we can. And, by the grace of the Lord, we are doing these things. Let us continue, and in gratitude do more and more, according to the measure of the blessings with which God has blessed us.

Does that mean that we’ll end up poor? Far, far from it, brothers and sisters! For the almighty Creator and Sustainer of heaven and earth is our Father for Jesus’ sake. "In Him I trust so completely as to have no doubt that He will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul" – as He did for the Macedonians of II Cor 8.

Not my bank reserves or my superannuation secure my future, but my Father in Jesus Christ. Amen.