39. Owns the Earth

God in the Psalms No.39  – God who owns the earth

Psa 24:1,2 The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters

When I was young I used to make model aeroplanes. Mostly they were plastic and they would hand by threads from the ceiling of my bedroom. They were mine and I took great joy in them. I eventually made a large span glider. It took hours and hours to make. Every piece pinned on a board and then glued together, covered in tissue that was then shrunk and ‘doped’ to make it hard. That was a special plane. Hours of effort had gone into that one. One of my sons and his wife recently just moved and were sorting out things to get rid of. There was an old video player. “Oh, we don’t want that any longer,” he says. “We can’t throw that away,” she says, I saved up months to buy that,” and recounted how she had saved and saved to get it when she was younger. It held memories and had lots of sentimental value. It was hers and she’d earned it. It meant something.

David understood ownership; he understood that the world belongs to God because He made it. Scientists can jump up and down in excitement over their latest speculation, but they can never know. What ever the mechanics of the world coming into being, the Bible again and again, unashamedly declares that the Lord made it. Listen to this echo from Proverbs: “I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.” (Prov 8:27-31). What an amazing picture of the Son working alongside the Father as together they brought the world into being. It’s theirs; it belongs to them because they made it!

Again, when I was a child I bred beautiful black and white Dutch rabbits. I started out with two and ended up with a lot more. Nobody disputed by ownership of all of them. Whether or not God has a hand in making each individual person (and there are Scriptural suggestions that He does) this is His world and everything and everyone on it belongs to Him. Because He is God He has absolute rights over it. If He wanted to He could wipe out every foolish little person who thinks too much of themselves and denies Him, but He doesn’t. He loves this world and wants to give every such person (and we were all like that) a chance of understanding He’s there for us, and sometimes it seems it takes a lot to get the creature to realize the Creator is for them and loves them – and sometimes they leave the earth still not realizing it, despite all He’s said and done for them. I recently came across a well-known writer commenting about a very famous atheist-philosopher (who will remain nameless) and who is dead now: “For 70 years he entertained us….. but as for conveying wisdom he might never have lived.” What a terrible indictment. This so-called philosopher had written volumes but now all consigned to this condemnation and why? Because he had never allowed the evidence of this wonderful world permeate his pride and so he never met the Creator. This is God’s world and how we respond to that truth determines how we will be assessed eternally (Rom 1:18-20). If we worship the Creator and His co-creating Son, we become elevated to sonship and greatness. If we refuse we are consigned to the scrap heap of fading memories.