The Center of the Universe

This morning I read from Psalm 50. Verses 7-15 are some of my favorite of the Psalms. In them God rebukes the Israelites for something they had been doing wrong in their sacrifices. It was not because they were holding sacrifices from him and were greedy like it may have been other places in the Old Testament. Here it says that “your burnt offerings are continually before me.” They had been giving plenty! 


The real problem with their sacrifices was that they were treating God as someone dependent upon them. They thought that God was essentially eating these sacrifices, and perhaps needed them to survive. 


How does God respond to this preposterous assumption? He says essentially, “Look, I own EVERYTHING!! If I were hungry, I would not come to YOU.” [emphasis added] Then he tells them what he wants them to do. He says, be thankful and do what you promised me; and when trouble comes, “call upon ME and I will deliver YOU and YOU shall glorify ME.” [emphasis added] 


The point is that they had made themselves the benefactor in this God-man relationship. They had come to believe that they were the givers, and God was the receiver. This is the essence of pride, to assume that God needs man, and not the other way around. It starts with a misconception about the nature of God and an exalted understanding of man. This misunderstanding taints all the ‘good‘ actions the Israelites had been doing. All their worship had been in vain because it ultimately made themselves the center, and not God. This should be challenging to us. It should cause us to ask some difficult questions. 


The tendency to place ourselves at the center of the universe, I believe is the most common mistake among Christians of this century, and perhaps of all time. You can attend Church every week, sign an evangelical doctrinal statement, believe the Bible is true, love the poor, be a good father or mother, be a follower of Jesus, and still get this wrong. We should all ask ourselves if our worldview places God at its starting point. Does God need us to love him, to worship him, to give him money? If not, then why do we do it? 


 To be clear I absolutely affirm that loving God, worshiping him, caring for the poor and giving money are things we should do. But we don’t do it because God’s work will fail if we don’t, or that God will be lonely if we don’t love him. No, we do these things because WE GET SOMETHING OUT OF IT. God is endlessly rich, fulfilled, and happy. He needs nothing, including us. 


 In actuality our existence is a result of his desire to be the giver. He desires to give us HIS VERY OWN inter-trinitarian satisfaction, love, knowledge, wealth, and happiness to us. God is overflowing with everything we need and is eager to give it to us. We worship God TO RECIEVE! Again, to be clear, do not mistake what I am saying for a health, wealth gospel which places material objects at the center of our worship. 


How is this not self-centered on our part? The things which God gives magnify/glorify/make known the One who gives them AND they are the things which we truly want the most. We get something INCREDIBLE, and God, the giver, is demonstrated and shown to be the all-superior and good Being. This is why the message of the gospel glorifies him so much. God’s granting of mercy highlights our weakness and his greatness... AND we get something out of this relationship, namely we get rescued! He rescues, we are recipients of his rescuing, and this glorifies him. It demonstrates his endless worthiness of receiving worship and honor. It shows that he is strong and we are weak AND we get something incredible. God is the giver, we are eternal receivers.