Reformed Church Box Hill

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Glory to God Alone

29 November 2020

We’re not entitled to anything! (The Spirituality of God – 5).

Think about all the good things you have in your life.  To start with, you’ve got air to breathe.  I presume it would be a most unpleasant experience to be deprived of air.  But not only do you have air, you have wonderful lungs capable of breathing that air.  Without them, the air would be useless.  And a body!  What an amazing mechanism!  Your lungs would do poorly without a body in which to house them.  And your body itself is nothing to sneeze at either.  You have legs for mobility, arms and hands that give you strength to accomplish your plans, and you have that organ of unfathomable wonder – the brain!  

What about the faculty of taste?  God could have made food a matter of pure expediency if He wanted.  Every meal could have been a bowl of tasteless gruel, and you wouldn’t know any better because you had never tasted anything better to compare it with.  Never would the juicy sweetness of mango have passed your lips, nor the gravy-laden goodness of creamy-on-the-inside-crunchy-on-the-outside roast potatoes together with a tender slathering of succulent roast lamb.  You would know nothing of fresh warm scones lathered in home-made raspberry jam topped with a generous dollop of fresh, thick, sweetened cream.  And – wonder of wonders – the experience of sampling a thick, goey, moist, caramelly mouthful of stick-date pudding (of which bliss words fail even to express), would be a thing entirely foreign to you.  And yet, in His goodness, God has furnished you with tastebuds!  And not only tastebuds, but a world full of countless tasty wonders to be enjoyed with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:4).

There are other good things in your life as well.  Imagine if you were the only person here on the planet.  What a destitute existence it would be!  We would probably be hard-pressed to escape depression, anxiety, and perhaps insanity.  And yet there are people in your life!  God has given the gift of companionship.  Spouses for us to love, the laughter of children to brighten and enliven us, the strength of co-labourers to multiply what we can accomplish and make the labour sweet with good conversation.  We have mentors to encourage and help us, friends to walk through difficulty with us.  And even if we have none of these, the gift of love and community is there for us if we would but pour ourselves in to the lives of others (which is how community is in fact designed to function).

In our folly we have spoiled much of this of course.  In our selfishness we bring misery and pain upon each other in our relationships.  We abuse God’s good gifts, glutting ourselves upon them without thankfulness, demanding more as though there is a human right of entitlement.  We complain and argue when we don’t get what we want (Jsaiah 4:2), as if we have any claim whatsoever upon any good thing at all!  To the contrary, the only thing that we truly deserve for our abuse of God’s gifts is the instantaneous commencement of eternal judgment, pain and misery.  And yet even this just punishment God withholds for a season that we might repent and escape such a fate (Romans 2:4).  No, we have no grounds on which to object to our misery, for we have no one to blame but ourselves, and we have no right in ourselves to hope for a better outcome.  Anything we get that is better than the sufferings of eternal torment is far more than we deserve.  The goodness of creation was given as a gift of grace, and so too is the gift of forgiveness and salvation.  And so, whichever way you look at, your life is an existence filled with innumerable blessings and abounding with goodness.

Now tell me, do you think you deserve any of this?  Is there some cosmic entitlement which is due to you?  That marvellous body that you have received, that marvellous creation that houses your mind and soul, those magnificent eyes that are enabling you to read these very words, why is it that you should not have been given the body of a slug instead?  Is there any reason?  Are you somehow elevated above that slug?  More deserving that you should receive the stamp of God’s image rather than the 6-18 month lifespan of that slimy, legless invertebrate?

There is in fact one singular but most excellent reason why you have been spared the fate of being a slug, and that reason is simply this: the goodness of God.  You are alive, and that life is not something that you have provided for yourself.  It is the sheer, total, complete and utter gift of God.  Suppose someone walked up to your right now and gave you $50 million dollars.  How would you feel?  I imagine it would take a few days to begin to process the magnitude of such a gift, but I think it’s at least fair to say that I would be excited.  And yet the value of what God has given you is inestimably greater.  Would you trade your two hands for $50 million dollars?  I certainly wouldn’t.  How about your tastebuds?  Hmmmm…. Maybe, but probably not.  I’d want a good $1 trillion for that (if such a thing were possible).  What would you trade for your two hands?  Probably no amount of money in the world would be enough.  The point I’m making is that our eyes would go wide at a $50 million gift, and yet somehow we’ve got the impertinence to complain when our meal is not tasty enough.

Life is a gift from our Creator.  Pure and simple.  Totally unmerited, and we have no entitlement to it whatsoever.  We deserve nothing, we have been blessed abundantly and out of sheer grace on God’s part.  Now you tell me, what sort of response does this gift of life merit ?  What kind of return does God deserve for what He has given to us?  A thank you card?  It’s not quite going to cut it is it?  Maybe we should aim a bit higher and buy Him an expensive bottle of wine and some flowers.  No, that’s not good enough either.  Maybe we could buy Him an all-expenses paid holiday somewhere nice?   Hmmm. It’s still not cutting it is it?  But we’ve got a problem now, because if we aim to give more, it’s going to start hurting.  Maybe we could get a loan and buy Him a really nice car.  Sure, we’d have to pay it off for a few years, but – after all – He has given us tastebuds, brains, eyes, ears, etc. right?  

I trust you can see the folly of such thinking.  What God actually deserves in return for what He gives us very simple.  He deserves absolutely everything we have to give and more.   Let me be clear: at the very least, God deserves your total, utter, and perfect devotion and service.  There is nothing we could give that would approach even a fraction of what we have received.  In Luke 17:7 we read: “Will any one of you who has a servant ploughing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”

We are unworthy servants.  That’s all, that’s it.  No entitlements, no rights or claim upon anything good.  And yet God abundantly furnishes us with innumerable good things!  You see, that’s who He is.  Now in one sense, we as Christians certainly are now children of the king.  He is our Father, and we have been adopted through Christ.  But in another sense, we simply remain unworthy servants of the Lord (1 Corinthians 3:5).  We don’t deserve what He’s given us, and there’s nothing we can do to repay Him for His goodness to us.  We could give all that we have, and yet He owes us nothing.  On the contrary, in so doing, “we have only done what was our duty.”  As His servants, we must do away with any sense of expectation for ourselves.  Anything we get that is not eternal damnation is far better than we deserve.  Rather, we ought in everything to give thanks for God’s goodness, and as we truly perceive all the blessings of life that He gives, our hearts will be fitted for a life of thankful service.

Q.  How does God’s self-existence motivate us to serve Him thankfully with the trust of life that we have received?

A.  By showing us that because all the abundant blessings of life flow from Him, He is thus rightly deserving of our thankful praise and total devotion.

Soli Deo Gloria!