"The eyes of all look to You,
And You give them their food in due time."
Psalm 145:15 NASB
There are some verses in this psalm which speak to the grand design of God's Creation, His providence, and power. Others speak more to God's character and our response. In doing this psalm verse by verse, we are able to concentrate on each truth in due time, but reading the context is always necessary. If you have been following this study, I urge you to once again read the entirety of Psalm 145, just 21 verses, and see the beauty of the flow of this song of praise. I encourage everyone to meditate on the psalm as a whole, but not to lose the details either.
Here we see David speaking of Almighty God, Yahweh, the one true God who he has known and learned about from a child, speaking as if to a personal friend yet in humility and reverence. I believe it is this balance we often see lacking in churches today. Some enjoy singing modern songs, others like older songs. I like both, but detest bad doctrine which is becoming more and more prominent in the advent of professional musicians in the church and in a realm of entertainment that sells albums, concert tickets, and merchandise. I know these things firsthand having put on quite a few Christian concerts and spending time with bands who write, perform, and sell their music. Many are honoring to God, others appeal to the flesh and are man-centered. Sadly, the discernment that should be the hallmark of the well-versed Bible student, especially those designated to choose and lead songs in worship is often lacking, giving way to the myriad heresies that exist among certain groups of song writers.
I won't get into the specifics on this issue, except to say that the Word of God is to be our standard in all things, especially in the church where people are coming to be trained, encouraged, challenged, to worship God in spirit and in truth. Sadly, it is the culture of tolerance that seems to be leading the way in what people sing about and exposes what they believe, or even what they sing about and yet don't understand.
Here, though, David is an instrumentalist, a singer, a song writer, a king, the psalmist of Israel, and realizes that music, while a blessing in many ways, is ultimately a tool given to us by God with which He expects us to honor Him and place ourselves humbly before Him, in reverence because of who God is, and in appreciation because of what God does. We are and have nothing without Him!
We don't often sing about things like food, but should we? I suppose it depends upon what our purpose is, what our theology (knowledge about God) is, and what our ecclesiology (study of what God designed the Church to be) is. David's beliefs about Creation and the providence of God led him to write and lead Israel in a song that speaks of God providing food. See also Matthew 6.
It has often been said by those seeking more donations to the church that you can tell where someone's heart is by how they handle their finances. Giving to the Lord faithfully, cheerfully, and in recognition that all we have was given to us, this is the Biblical pattern. But what about food? Should we consider our food as part of the provision for which God deserves praise? Absolutely! What about our time? Certainly! I suppose the question that is really at the heart of this is "Is there anything in which we should not give, share, and serve as stewards of all that we have, as they are all gifts of God for our benefit and for His glory.
I always find it interesting the false dichotomies people concoct in their minds about such things. They say "Do you believe God can heal, or do you trust in doctors and medicine?" How about I pray that God would be glorified in my life, whether through trials and suffering, or through miraculous healing, and even if the wisdom God has given through science and medicine comes through an unbeliever, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ Jesus, which means that in sickness, in health, and in every situation, God is shaping the lives of His people to bring glory to Himself. If God heals me, I will praise Him. If God uses the means of medicine and doctors to heal me, I will praise Him. If God allows me to suffer great malady and difficulty for the rest of my days on Earth, He is there with me still, and I will praise Him. This is how David saw things, praising God and asking God to intervene in his life for God's glory alone.
Does the verse we are considering today tell us where food comes from? If you ask the naturalistic scientist (an inconsistency in itself) they will say that "Mother Nature" just does what "she" does, and giving praise to a deity for such things is foolish and worthless, even as they do the same, only to another deity named Mother Nature, a false god whose praises are sung all over the Earth, another idol to worship instead of the true God. Nonetheless, the professing atheist, agnostic, Satanist, Buddhist, and all of us willingly accept food grown by sunshine, bearing fruit after its kind as if that were not a base challenge to their entire worldview, but indeed it is. If you think that nature is all there is, then you must consider its origins and realize the folly of such a view. Life does not come from non-life, and the exquisitely intricate workings of the seed from planting conditions to germination to growth all the way to harvest of fruit all demand uniformity in nature, which is not rationally defensible nor provable by the naturalistic materialist. The worldview which denies David's claim that everyone looks to God for their food is internally inconsistent and in fact idolatrous, giving praise and honor to the created things rather than the Creator and Sustainer of all things.
For the Biblical Christian, we must agree with David and join the chorus to proclaim the wisdom and power of God's incredibly complex creation from the smallest particle to the largest living animal and beyond. But David here is saying something more, I believe. I see here David challenging Israel to place their faith and trust in God, to call them to worship Yahweh for who He is and what He does every moment which allows us to have life at all on this planet. David is reminding Israel to live and think and speak as if the provision for the just and the unjust all come from God because of His choice to give so many good things to those who don't deserve anything but condemnation. God could let those who hate Him starve to death and live in misery without any happiness at all until their final judgement and sentence to eternal conscious punishment in Hell. But herein lies the mercy and grace of our God, that He provides for not only those whom He has rescued and redeemed by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ in His bearing the wrath of the Father due to us as sinners, who He has called to Himself and adopted into His family. God also provides these things for those who hate Him, who mock Him, who trample underfoot the blood of Jesus and proclaim their own autonomy and ability to provide for themselves.
How many of us would, when opening our homes in hospitality, feed our friends only and let strangers go without? How many of us would share the Gospel with only those we deemed willing to receive it? Sadly, I know the answer to that as I have heard hundreds of times, "This person wouldn't accept the Gospel" and then give me an excuse for why they refuse to speak to this person. Folks, we are not God. We don't know the hearts of those around us, and even the worst offender is no closer to righteousness in God's sight than the seemingly moral and community minded person. Ours is not to pick and choose those worthy of sharing the Gospel with them, but to obey our Lord and Master who told us to go everywhere and tell everyone. How dare we think we are wiser than God? How dare we think that there is any human on Earth which could or would choose Jesus Christ as Savior on their own, especially due to the perceived morality of that person! Those who are without Christ are dead. DEAD!!! They aren't sick, they aren't close to coming to Jesus, they are either dead or they have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit by means of the preaching of the Gospel. Since God feeds every person and animal on the planet by His great grace and wisdom, we ought to take those things given to us by Him and use them for His glory. It keeps coming back to God's glory and obeying God's commands which lead to more glory for Him.
Every decision, every gift, every breath, every thought, every plan, every idea that is designed for the acceptance of those who are dead in their sins is faulty and will fail in God's eyes, no matter how others may understand the results. Every one of these things that is gleaned from the wisdom of God's Word, acted upon in faith for the sole purpose of bringing glory to God in the Gospel, no matter how many mock or reject it, is immeasurably profitable. Just as many churches have succumbed to the outward appearance of being popular or thinking more about preferences than truth, we can just as easily take the food and sustenance God provides for all of His creatures and make it about what we do, something primarily about us, or even believe falsehoods about our responsibility in light of the commands of our Redeemer, Savior, and the only Head of the Church, Jesus Christ.
May we go into all the world and proclaim the God who everyone knows exists, the God who feeds not only the people but the birds and bugs, whales and wombats, because of His great grace and in demonstration of His character. However, just because God feeds everyone doesn't mean He saves everyone. More on that at a later date as this is getting long. Go share your food with someone in need today and tell them how it is the God who created all things good, the Holy One against whom we have sinned, that saved us from our sin when we were His enemies. He is worthy!
