“For God is the King of all the earth. Sing praises with understanding.” (Psalm 47:7)
If there is any truth that is clear and indisputable, equal to the comprehension of all humanity, or irresistible in the authority it asserts over the human heart, such is the great truth contained in the text, that God is the King of all the earth, and that it is the duty of human beings to show forth our praise with understanding.
Superior intellect, extraordinary sensibility, or any strained efforts of the mind, are not required for the apprehension or the intimate conviction of it.
Under certain circumstances, the sense of it grows up in every human being; and it is believed and felt at the heart with a force it were vainly attempted to destroy—which cannot be impaired or weakened. There it necessarily lives, with all the power of the greatest of realities.
Earth, heaven, air, ocean, proclaim it to us. Myriads of moving, living creatures, beyond the utmost powers of finite computation to number, evidence it.
The highly favored, wonderfully endowed race of human beings, the lord of the lower creatures – yet weak, dependent, mortal, who at his best estate is but vanity, whose days are as grass, and whose goodness is but as the flower of the field—the human race affords the last complete and most striking confirmation of it.
The innumerable series of wonders around us, and all the marvels within ourselves; the structure, faculties, affections, and passions of our nature, present to our very sight and view creating, preserving, restraining, and governing power; show us that God is King over all the earth, and call us to give our due homage to the great Potentate, to Whom we belong, by Whose will and for Whose pleasure all things are and were created,—to Whom be all lowly duty and service fitly paid.
Yes, God is absolutely our King. We look upon a vast assemblage of what we term secondary causes; but Nature itself, with all its laws and processes, is but the continual operation of His power.
All intelligent natures are subject to His sway, and the government He exercises over them has unalterably for its basis holiness, equity, clemency, and faithfulness. The whole world of being, of matter, life, and thought, is His—administered by Him.
He of whom it is said that “whatsoever He pleased that has He done, (that He does,) in heaven, in the earth, in the seas, and in all deep places:” He has also the hearts of all men in his hands, considers their works, proves their ways, disposes their lot, and finally awards their doom, in accordance with those righteous principles which direct all his Fatherly proceedings and counsels,
God is King over all the earth. Our being, condition, and that of all around us, is not an inexplicable accident, causeless, precarious, unconnected with anything more exalted, with other and higher interests, or vaster relations. And the Being from whom all has sprung, upon whom all depends, must be the object of our highest praise with the faculties of our understanding.
(Adapted from a sermon by Rev. Joseph Ashton, preached Aug 23, 1829)
No comments:
Post a Comment