Saturday, September 27, 2014

O, Lord, Our Sovereign

O Lord Our Sovereign How majestic is your name in all the earth. Sovereign is not a word that we use much now a days.

It’s a term that deals basically with Kings and Queens and somehow or other the United of America when it was founded chose not to have one although I'm sure that a few times presidents have not tried to be Kings. But it does have to do with ruling, reigning supreme, to whom we owe allegiance, or to whom we pay homage. In American society perhaps that’s ourselves.

We are an individualistic society… a me first society, an egocentric society. And it is hard for any of us to grant sovereignty to anyone. But in the process we have become slaves. We are slaves to things… slaves to ideas… slaves to lusts and to passions and maybe we are even slaves to work or golf or fishing, and some of us maybe even slaves to doing nothing.

Some thing or some one or group reigns it over us and we say that they Lord’s it over us.

Sovereign means Lord. Lord of All. God is sovereign; He is Lord over us all. Maybe it is hard to imagine but it is vital to Christian Living.

Psalm 8 says, “Out of the mouths of babes and infants.” God is where we least expect God. Notice it is not from power but from innocence, the innocence of children of babies.

Can you imagine babies, the fortress against enemies. Babies, the silencer of avengers.

Look whose talking here. What about the Gulf war that took place more than a decade ago when the sorties were flying out of Iraq against Israel and hitting babies. Perhaps, babies were being used as fortresses.

I guess I still need to discover the How To: How To Let God Be Sovereign in My Life.

Do you still have that problem. I’ve been trying for over a decade and a half to let God be Sovereign in my life, and don’t you think that I have arrived. I have only been working at it for a short time, many of you have been trying much longer. Maybe I’ll get it right in a few decades.

But every once in a while I can feel the smile of God. When we let God be the Lord of our living while we live differently. Different things become important. We can even find that people, our enemies are different than they used to be. And often people that we thought of as enemies become brothers and sisters. It is hard to be an enemy of someone who allows God to be Lord.

Then the Psalmist compares himself to other creatures God has created.  Why human beings, why they are certainly not to be compared with the creation of the sun and the moon and the stars. But the Psalmist says, God is mindful of mortals.

The Eternal creator of the universe cares for them, cares for people. Now that is mind boggling. Do you feel important to God.

You should. God is quite mindful of you. The Psalmist says so in his prayer.

Don’t you wish you could pray with the psalmist. Let’s eavesdrop… get inside his soul and see how he puts God in his life… as Lord.  Do you put God in your life as Lord – as Sovereign?

How is it that I am just a little lower than God himself? And that I as a mortal would receive any honor or glory. Even so much as to have dominion over all other creatures of creation.   That’s what the Psalmist says. Everything else is less than humanity. Everything else is under your feet… which means weare sovereign over all other creation and we have dominion over all creatures, birds and fish or whatever.

I like the Killer Wales - to think that I could have dominion over a Killer Whale. Do you know why there called Killer Wales? Because for 10,000 years human beings have been afraid of them. It has only been in the last few decades that we got over it. And now we have them to entertain us in parks and persons are willing to put their head in the mouth of a Killer Whale.

We have sovereignty over the creation.

I think the Psalmist understood something about the deep meaning of God. God the Father makes and creates and sustains. In the Trinity we add to the understanding. God the Son redeems and makes right, God the Holy Spirit dwells within, and will never forsake… will be with us throughout the end of time.

It is the understanding of God as one that is so important. When we receive the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit and then we can worship. Then we can believe we have received authority and power from God - the Sovereign Lord. And when we receive that power and authority. Then we can do what the great commission says, to go into all of the world into all of the nations and to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

When we receive the authority and power from God…then we can learn how a nation should govern itself. What should be separated from religion, Christian or otherwise, and what should not. But all under the Sovereign Lord God. One God Forever!

Remember, God is always with you to the end of creation.

It matters not if you happen to be guilty of the theological heresy of patra passionism – You only love the Father.

It doesn’t matter if you happen to be a Christologist like a denomination up in the Appalachian Mountains that calls themselves the Jesus Only Church and they only worship Christ… Not the Father and not the Spirit. It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter if you happen to be a Charismatic. Place all of your emphasis in the Holy Spirit instead of on the rest of the Trinity.

It really doesn’t matter.

It is the same God that is worshipped. Do you let God be sovereign in your life? I suppose that’s the real question.

Christ is Lord. The word for Lord in the Greek is Serve. Christ is your sovereign. Yahweh Elohim, The Lord Magnificant Reigns.

O Lord, Our Sovereign, How Majestic Is Your Name In All They Earth!