He makes His works to be remembered: Meditation on Psalm 111

It seems to me a point not pondered enough, that we know what we know about God.  It is common in our age to be skeptical, and with a post-modern mindset, to doubt that we ever actually know anything well.  However, setting the self-delusional and prideful philosophies of skepticism and post-modernism aside, consider what it is that we have, regarding God, and how marvelous it is that we have it.

Regardless of how old you may think the earth and stars happen to be, I don’t think anyone doubts that human beings have been on this planet a long time.  And regardless of exactly how long you think people have been on this earth, I don’t think anyone doubts that these people have been leaving a written history of what they thought, did, and encountered, for over 4000 years.  Whether we trace the cultures of China, or Africa, or India, or the Middle East, or many others, we find written histories going back a very long way.  In these written histories, we find mention of verbal histories—stories—told by one generation to the next, preserving histories even before the advent of the written word.  And this shouldn’t really surprise us in our day, either.  We have voluminous written histories in our hands or at our finger tips, some pulled together or culled by modern historians from both ancient and modern accounts, which tell us of the Romans and the Greeks, of the Chinese emperors and the Mongols, of the Huns, Visigoths, and Vandals… and countless others.  And yet, for all our written histories, we also have storytellers, often in our own families, who regale us of tales unwritten, but of importance or significance in our family history.  Just like the ancients, we have in our time both written and oral histories, books and storytellers.

But books and storytellers can be inaccurate, or even lost.  How many tales of heroism and woe, from how many families, across time and distance, have been lost to the mists of history?  Do you know what your great-grandmother did when she was only 10, or your great-great-grandfather pondered when he was 32?  Most likely not, because the stories have been lost, and the storytellers have forgotten them.  But if your great-great-great-aunt happened to write down her wondrous and dangerous travels in a book, there’s a chance the story could be found again.  Of course, there’s also the very real chance, that this book is lost, destroyed, or buried somewhere, never to be found again.  Even if she engraved her story on the face of a stone tablet, years of rain and wind, war and plunder, could very easily see it lost or broken.  If you doubt the power of nature to wash away the words even written in stone, walk through an old cemetery, and see how many names you can still read from the fallen of the Civil War, or the American Revolution.  Left unprotected, many of these names are lost, washed even from the face of the stone marker placed there a mere 100, 150, 200 years or more ago.

Given the nature of stories and history, consider what a marvel it is, that we have God’s story with us to this day.  To be sure, we have many contrary accounts of who God is, and what He’s done—or what He intends to do yet in the future.  The Muslims have their writings, from the time of Muhammad, around the 7^th century AD, with his inspiration to conquer, enslave and subjugate the whole world under Muslim political and religious rule, still sending Jihadists and Taliban off to blow up cities, wage wars, and topple governments in our very day.  The Hindu Vedas, likely much older visions of ancient mystics and committed to writing somewhere around 300 BC, still inspire the culture of India, with its philosophy, polytheism and caste system.  The I Ching and Tao Te Ching, composed somewhere between 1000 and 400 BC, still have a great deal of influence on Chinese culture, with its divination, animism, and personal piety, even under the modern hands of the ruling Communist atheists.  Other religious stories and texts, from all over the world, with greater or lesser antiquity or authenticity, have shaped people’s understanding of God (or the gods, spirits, forces, etc.,) and the cultures within which they have lived.  And it is certainly true, that an honest appraisal of the stories or texts of Islam, cannot be made harmonious with the Hindu Vedas, or the Chinese Tao Te Ching, or other world religions’ stories about God.  In the end, if the stories conflict, some or most of them must be at fault, if any of them can be true.  And if so, how is one to understand who God actually is, what He has done, and what He intends yet to do?  How is one to sift the conflicting accounts?

While there are certainly other religious texts around the world, some purporting great antiquity, there is a religious text that is very different from the rest.  The Muslim Koran, with a text that dates within a century or so of their prophet, is a fairly recent revelation, dating back only to the 7^th century AD—and due to the actions of an early Muslim ruler, all the competing and confusing textual variants of the Koran in his day, were burned, leaving only a single text to attempt to understand the mind of Muhammad… a text that continues to drive bloody conflict, conquest, and enslavement.  The older Hindu and Chinese texts are written down long after the visionaries are said to have received them, putting centuries if not millennia between the original idea and its initial writing… and many questions that naturally arise, whether the final written form has proper continuity with the original (perhaps mythical) seer.  And bundled together, the religious texts of the world seem to describe a variety of paths to satisfy God, or gods, or spirits, or ancestors, or the universe in general, through human acts, sacrifices, or meditations.  Each of these ancient texts describes some way to appease, mediate, avoid, or employ the gods for the practitioner’s interests in this world or the next.  There is, however, one ancient account of God that is very different.

There is one, where the writing begins about 1500 BC with a fellow named Moses, to whom God comes to reveal Himself, His Name, what He has done, and what He is going to do.  While Moses, born of a Hebrew slave in Egypt, and yet raised in Pharaoh’s household, would likely have known the oral histories of his people (both Hebrew and Egyptian,) God doesn’t leave him to remember the details of Abraham 500 years before his time, or of the events going back to creation.  Rather than leaving Moses to wonder if he had the story right, God gives him the pertinent details down to his time, and leaves him with prophecies of things yet to be done, some nearer in time, and some further.  After Moses, this same God speaks to Joshua, to tribal leaders and Judges, to kings and prophets.  This same God, ratifying what He has said previously, demonstrating His power through miracles and wonders, and then pointing forward to what He will do in the future through prophesy, leaves a trail of witnesses to His one message, from the dawn of time down to Moses in the oral histories, and in written form—by the authors themselves—from 1500 BC through the first century AD.  Even if we might wonder about the content of the oral histories before Moses, God still ensured that we had a written record of His Words and deeds, His plans and His intentions, knit together over 1500 years of authors, times, and places.  And all along, from the beginning to our very day, His people have been carrying forth these writings, the story of our God’s wondrous deeds both past and yet to come, faithfully preserving the witness God has left us of Himself.

This unique, ancient, and prophetic witness is no accident.  God has always wanted people to know who He is, what He has done, what He will yet do, and what He has to say to the people of every time and place.  He has always wanted them to know where they came from, that though they are now fallen and broken, they were originally created good and pure.  He wants everyone to know, that He is not the one who broke us, but that it was our own pride, and the whispered lies of evil spirits, that lured us into rejecting Him, and by rejecting Him, to reject life itself.  He calls to all, so that all may know His great love for mankind, and all the world—that while we were yet broken, dying, rebellious and prideful monstrosities, He brought forth a plan to save us, not only from our own corruption, but from the wicked spirits which hold broken people enslaved.  He sends us the message of His Messiah, His very Son, who in the power of His Spirit, would be born of the Virgin at precisely the right time and place, that in His very Person, having united human nature with His own blessed divinity, He would die for the sins of the world, that all who would believe in Him, might live in Him, forgiven and free. 

From the words Moses records God having spoken to our first parents, when they fell in the Garden, regarding a Seed of the woman who would crush the head of the lying devil who led them into death and captivity, to the words Jesus spoke as He hung dying on the Cross so many centuries later, declaring the work of redemption finished, the united witness of God is one of hope and life.  He shows us His holiness through His Law, that we might know, in every day and age, how far we have fallen from His wondrous creation, and how greatly we need to be saved from our own broken depravity.  And through His Gospel, He shows us just how far He has gone, through time, space, and eternity, to rescue every last one of us, by His marvelous grace, through simple faith, in His blessed Son.  Here is the message that distinguishes the truth from the lie—not that God would give us a mysterious and dubious path to find or appease or manipulate Him—but rather, that He has done all things to seek and to save us.  The message that God has maintained for all times, peoples, and places, is that He alone is God, and He alone can rescue dying mankind, giving life and forgiveness in the place of the death and destruction we each have earned.

These are the wondrous deeds God has ensured will not be forgotten, in this or any age to come.  The work of salvation in His Son, proclaimed by the Church of God, clung to by all the faithful in His Word given through His Prophets and Apostles, is the Everlasting Gospel which shall ring throughout eternity.  By this Gospel, God the Father calls to you, that you might live in His Son through the power of His Spirit, forgiven and free to live out your faith in a love that reflects His endless and boundless Love.  And His wondrous works continue every day, giving new life by grace through faith to dead and dying sinners who hear and believe in Him, until that Last Day when all evil is eternally imprisoned and the saints of God shine forth with the brightness of the sun in His Kingdom.

This message, this history, this story of our God, has been preserved by His grace, for you—and for all those who will come after you.  This unique, ancient, present and future Word of God calls to you, that you may live in His love and grace forever, for this is His revealed will in Jesus Christ His Son.  Lies, deceptions, false prophesies and faulty human philosophies will come and go, but this Eternal Gospel of Jesus Christ—the Word of the Lord—shall endure forever.  Hear Him.  Believe, and live.  Amen.