Biblical Text: Psalm 104
Introduction
Blame my going to a Presbyterian associated school. The Calvinists have a distinction that I do think is helpful that Lutherans tend to look askance at. They make a distinction between common grace and saving grace. This is roughly what they mean by it. Common grace is what it called providence. “You given them their food in due season.” It is more than food. You can call it any good thing that happens to this body and life. This is what Luther talks about in the first article. “He daily and richly provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.” Saving grace is the creation of faith. “When you send forth your Spirit, they are created and, and you renew the face of the ground.” The Calvinists make this distinction because they will teach that while common grace is – common- given to everyone; saving grace is only given to the elect. Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated. This is something that Lutherans disagree with them about. God does not withhold his grace – common or saving. It is just that it is easy to receive common grace. When good things are given us for this body and life, nobody rejects them. Saving grace is tougher. For it is universally offered, but few accept it. And the reasons for their rejection might be as many as there are human hearts. Although at the base of all of them is pride.
Common Grace
This is one of the reasons why Thanksgiving – even thought it isn’t a church calendar day – is the best American holiday. It forces us to consider exactly what Psalm 104 puts forth in its fullness. Sometime between the Turkey and the Dallas Cowboys it is worth reading the entire Psalm. It is first and foremost a meditation on the common grace of creation. The great and mighty LORD – “clothed with Splendor and majesty” – the one who “makes the clouds his chariot and ride on the wings of the wind.” – has “set the earth on its foundations, so that is should never be moved.” That LORD “makes the springs to gush in the valleys…they give drink to every beast of the field.” He “causes the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate.” Including, “wine to gladden the heart of man and oil to make is face shine, and bread to strengthen man’s heart.”
And the psalm continues how everything in this creation is made to provide for man and beast alike. “The moon to mark the seasons, the sun knows it’s time for setting.” The rhythms of life of labor and rest. It has all been given by God. “O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all.” And it as that the Psalmist ponders the sea and all her creatures. The ships that plow the waves and leviathan who plays in it. The immensity of all of it. And it is all for the creatures that God has made. That we might “receive our food in due season.”
The common grace of God is anything but common. It should cause us to quake at how the one who made us all had provided it all. And being humbled, we should give thanks for that common grace.
But we tend not to. We tend to take it for granted. Or even worse, far from grace it is an entitlement. We deserve all that has been given to us. From the Sun and Moon and Stars to our daily bread. Only 1 of the 10 lepers – and that one a foreigner – returned to thank Jesus for healing. The Psalmist I think gets a bit of this. When God ‘opens his hand, we are filled with good things.” We are happy to receive. But when God “hides his face, we are dismayed.” What the heck are you doing God? Where is my daily bread that I deserve. I can’t believe you would treat me this way.
But even the common grace – the providence – is not an entitlement. It is grace. We are receiving that which we don’t deserve. And we are receiving it from God who desires to give it to us. So much that his bow marks the sky that seedtime and harvest will never again be done away with. That the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.
Saving Grace
The distinction is in how we receive it.
If we receive it as our due. We have already received our reward. The 9 lepers were healed and supposedly lived out their lives. But these lives are eventually called back. “when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.”
But God does not desire the death of man. He “sends forth his Spirit.” To create and renew the ground. God send his Spirit with the invitation not to receive our due, but to accept the Grace of almighty God. We will certainly get out daily bread, but God wants to and has given us more. He has given us His son. And in Christ we are invited to the eternal feast day.
But it comes by grace. We don’t deserve any of it. Which is tough for pride.
Conclusion
The Psalmist, if you read the rest of Psalm 104, concludes with what our Introit brought to the beginning. “I will sing to the LORD as long as I live, I will sing praise to my God while I have being.”
In this common grace I will return thanks. For I have not deserved it, yet the LORD has provided.
But even more, I have not deserved salvation, yet God has given it to us. “While I have being” the psalmist intoned. And he does not presume, but even in the Old Testament there is hope. The Spirit creates and renews. And we are the heir of that promise. Not just of common grace. Of a land flowing with milk and honey. But we are the heirs of an eternal kingdom. Of a being that will not end.
For which we rightly give thanks and praise.