God is not only infinitely wise and great, He is also infinitely good. He is boundless in His mercy and patience toward the children of men. In His loving kindness God watches over us, and cares for us with a solicitude which never grows wearied or impatient. Assuredly we owe Him something for all this. We can make Him no adequate, no material, return. We can never pay God the debt we owe Him. But there is something He wants, something we can give Him. It is our purpose to consider today what it is that God requires of us in return for His goodness toward us. In other words, man’s obligation to God.
The root of the secret of God’s care for us is found in one word of the First Article of the Creed, — the word Father. We here confess that God is not only a creator, not only a governor; He is not only a being before whose wisdom and power we are called to prostrate ourselves: God is a father, our Father, in the full, rich, sweet meaning of the word.
In answer to man’s cry of need, God gives abundant assurance of His fatherly love and care for each one of us. He assures us that He is not a God far removed from our perplexities and struggles. He is a God at hand. He thoroughly understands our needs. His name is Father. This is the pledge of His love and His help. Come, let us draw near the Father’s knee and devoutly listen to His words of cheer, and take them to heart.
The origin of evil is a problem all men have pondered. The heathen nations, from earliest times, were forced to recognize the presence of a destructive power, and tried to account for its origin, and continued activity. Their efforts, naturally, were not satisfactory. The theory most plausible to them was that of dualism, the doctrine that there are two rival powers, a good and an evil, in perpetual struggle for the control of the world. Some of them held that the material world was the product of the energy of the evil power. But their conclusions did little either to enlighten the minds, or comfort the hearts, of the children of men.
One of the truths we all need to learn more fully, more realistically, is that this is God’s world. In theory all Christians hold this to be true, but it is not as living a faith as it ought to be. It does not affect our lives, our conduct, as vitally as it should. In fact, we associate God with this world and its affairs but little more, probably in many instances not as much, as we do the architect and the house for which, ten or twenty years ago, he drew the plans, and supervised the construction. Like St. Paul and Luther we need to learn to see God more clearly everywhere in His world. He is still the owner of it. His autograph is written all over it. He still keeps it by the constant going forth into all its parts of His almightiness.
The Word of God teaches us very clearly that the angels are real beings, having, each of them, a separate personal existence. This is shown by the names given to them, and by the works performed by them. But in thinking of the angels we must get away from all material modes of thinking. The angels, as our text tells us, are spiritual personalities. They have no material bodies at all, though they have often assumed a bodily form for the purpose of better impressing mankind, or to facilitate interaction with them.
At the period which marks the beginning of time, God created, brought forth from the absolutely non-existent, the heavens and the earth. None of these things had any previous existence, save in the thought of God. He spoke, and the things spoken took on form and substance as facts of material existence. The fiat words were spoken, and there stretched out the wide spreading plains, and the great deeps, with their finny tribes, and grazing cattle; the mountains reared their heads heavenward, and the streams murmured their way down from the highlands; the superterrestrial beings winged their unfettered way amid the celestial glories, and man walked as the Divinely appointed sovereign of the earth.
Russel Wells writes: Fanny Crosby is one of the greatest of the world’s [English-speaking] hymn writers; perhaps only Watts and Wesley would rank above her. She is great in the number of her hymns — more than three thousand, and in the large number of them that have found favor with Christians and seem destined to live forever. To name only a few, what immortal glory belongs to the author of:
How can thinking people say otherwise than, I believe in God. Not to hold this faith throws everything into confusion worse confounded. Without belief in God human life, all life, becomes an insoluble riddle. And the nice adjustments, marvelous and invariable movements and functions of the universe add to the enigma.
“The Roman concept of the Church is easily understood when we remember what was said above, namely, that primarily the Church is an institution and an authority, a government. If this is the case then there must be those who are obligated to submit and obey, whether they do it willingly or unwillingly.”
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