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Psalm 115:2-4  Why do the nations say, “Where is their God?”  Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.  But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands.  

The Hebrew word for nations is ‘goyim’, and it carries with it the connotation of people who don’t want to be identified with the ‘people of God’, ie with the people who do acknowledge the one true God who has revealed himself as ‘the LORD’ (‘Yahweh’, ‘I AM’ – Exodus 3:16), in Creation, and in the Jewish Scriptures, and who has entered into an everlasting Covenant Relationship with his Chosen People, the descendants of Abraham-Isaac-and-Jacob.  The worldview of God’s People is well expressed in Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of HIS hands. … … The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul.  The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart.  The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.  The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever.  The decrees of the LORD are firm, and all of them are righteous.”  The ‘nations’ reject all this, and their  worldview, by contrast, is ‘humanism’.

Humanism is a worldview that puts Man at the top of an impersonal evolutionary process and has no place for the concept of a higher ‘divine’ Being who is spirit.  It confines its definition of ‘science’ (Lat. ‘knowledge’) within the boundaries of the physical universe and therefore has no place for an ‘invisible’ Creator God in its deliberations.  Because humanism has arbitrarily limited its definition in this way, it feels free to ask us, in an arrogant, mocking way, ‘Where is your God?”  We, of course, can never give them an answer that will satisfy them, because they have pre-defined the limits of an ‘acceptable’ answer.

But, as the Psalmist points out, the problem is not with our inability to answer the humanists’ question in a way that is suitable for them, but with their failure to see the reality of the Big Picture wherein the true answer lies!  Sadly, for the humanist, when Jesus returns as God’s Anointed King (‘Messiah’ – see Psalm 2), everything in the Big Picture will be made undeniably clear. And sadder still, for the humanist, it will be clear that even before this event, there was sufficient evidence, even within his arbitrarily confined limits, to see the Big Picture, and he will be left ‘without excuse’, because he has ‘suppressed’ this truth by his ‘wickedness’ (Romans 1:18-20).  Those of us who, by God’s amazing grace, have had our eyes opened – eyes that had been blinded by the sin in our hearts – to see that ‘our God is in heaven’, and that ‘he does whatever pleases him’, should never lose sight of the fact of just how liberating and hope-instilling this is in the light of where things are heading in our world today!

The Creator God who does whatever he pleases is working to a Universal Plan that he has not kept hidden from us, a plan that is centred on the Redemption/Salvation he has provided through his Son whom he sent from heaven into time-and-space (the humanists’ pre-defined, restrictive realm) on earth to die on a cross in order to make his enemies (us) his friends (Romans 5:1-11).  As Paul says, this “hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Romans 5:5).  We may not know exactly what the future holds for our rapidly disintegrating planet and its socio-economic structures, but we do know the One who holds it all in his hands, and who is moving it inexorably to its predetermined conclusion and consummation in Christ.

In Psalm 115, the Psalmist reminds us that, although our God does not have ‘a mouth’ or ‘eyes’ or ‘ears’, or ‘hands’, etc, in the way the humanist would like to define (ie ‘confine’) things, he still speaks and sees and hears and acts very deliberately on behalf of his people.  This is our sure and certain hope –  Hallelujah!  And, as Paul declared to the Greek intellectual humanists at the Areopagus: “[God] has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the Man he has appointed.  He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).

– Bruce Christian