“The Lord made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that in them is.”

(Exodus 20:11)

“I believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth.”

(Apostle’s Creed)

“Just who do you think you are, anyway?” There’s a question we may sometime be tempted to ask in spontaneous outrage of a pushy person as he or she crowds in ahead of us at the waiting line before the checker in the supermarket, or takes the seat in the theatre we had our eyes on and were about to be seated in. “Well, just who do you think you are, anyway?”

But here is a question, not only to be asked by us in scorn of a presumptuous person to put him in his place; here is a serious question also to be put to ourselves to orient each one of us successfully in society and in our own self-consciousness, in time and in eternity: “Just who do I think I am?”

The great creed of Christendom suggests that straight thinking about who you and I are begins with straight thinking about who God is. Every Sunday as we begin our worship we stand and say: “I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” The Apostle’s Creed begins, just like the Bible begins, not with the self, but with God, the Creator of all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath, including you and me.

The Book of Genesis begins with the creation story. In majestic, oriental simplicity it tells of how night and day, sun and moon and stars, continents and oceans, plants and animals, men and women came into existence from the fashioning hand of the Creator.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth . . . And God created man in his own image . . . Male and female, created He them. . . And God gave man dominion over every living thing that moved upon the face of the earth . . . And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.”

“This doctrine of creation is in direct opposition to many man-made philosophies about the origin and the nature of the world. The statement that God created the heavens and the earth denies the view that matter is eternal and the whole of reality (as the Marxists believe); and also it contradicts the view that the universe came about by a purely mechanistic process (as some scientists believe).” (Layman’s Commentary on Genesis)

To think of God as Creator, the maker of heaven and earth and people and all things, is the Biblically correct way to begin to think about all reality. Before we can begin to think about all reality, before we can begin to think about just who we are, we must first think straight about who God is. That is where the Apostle’s Creed and the Holy Scriptures begin.

So, belief in God as Creator involves belief in human beings as creatures; straight thinking about reality, which begins with God as Creator and maker of men and women, then moves logically, relentlessly on to the proposition that we are all God’s creatures, fashioned and brought into being by the idea and will and purpose of One other than ourselves.

To profess with the Creed: “I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” then, is not only to subscribe to the proposition that our vast cosmos was planned by a master-mind and structured by a celestial architect, but it is also to profess our faith about who we are, acknowledging our subordinate place in God’s universe, accepting in the same breath not only God’s creatorship, but our creature-hood.

It is in effect to say: “I BELIEVE that the Eternal God is my maker. It is HE that has made me and not me, myself. He has determined the day of my birth and the allotted span of my years. I confess that I am not a self-made man. I am not the master of my fate, nor the captain of my soul. My creator has made me and breathed into my body and soul the breath of life and I acknowledge my creature-hood.”

The most persistent temptation we human beings encounter is that of thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. Fashioned in the image of God and placed in a position of authority over all the rest of creation, we are tempted to think ourselves equal with God and to act as if we were God.

To Adam and Eve, in the Garden, the Tempter dangled the devilish suggestion that man and woman may become as gods. Our Lord’s parable of the cruel renters of the vineyard pictures mankind as placed on earth in the subordinate position of renters, or leasers of property, but refusing to think of themselves as such. As soon as they are settled in the vineyard they begin to think and act as the owners of the vineyard. They refuse the owner his portion of the harvest. They stone and beat the owner’s messengers who come to remind the men of their obligation. At long last, the owner sends his only well-loved son to press his claims, and claim his rights, thinking the renters would reverence his son. But instead, the willful men saw this as their opportunity to destroy the last obstacle to their undisputed proprietorship, so they killed the owner’s son.

“We, who are not the center of the universe,” said Meister Eckert, “nevertheless seek to make ourselves the center of the universe.” We who are creatures of the Creator get horribly out of our rightful places and presume to take God’s place.

“Don’t we all have this ‘master of the house’ attitude, we people who enjoy a little success? We speak of my position, my job, my practice — and if we are not treated just so, as we require to be treated, we think of how we will quit and how the world will come tumbling in for those ungrateful people who didn’t appreciate us! Where is the executive celebrating his anniversary and deluged with eulogies; where is the doctor whose cured patient expresses his gratitude to him; where is the worker who by dint of faithfulness has succeeded in buying his own home and is now celebrating the housewarming; where is the preacher whose parishioners thank him at the door for the words he has spoken; where is the man who does not think in his heart — or at least, is tempted to think: ‘What a fine fellow I am! See what wonders I have performed.’” (Thielke — The Waiting Father — p. 108)

A professor once said to one of his pupils: “You are a gifted boy.” Whereupon the boy blushed and hardly knew which way to look. He was embarrassed and self-conscious because he had the feeling that he was being praised because of his greatness. But of course the professor was doing no such thing. On the contrary, the teacher was saying to him that he was a gifted boy, which meant that his gifts were entrusted to him by someone else.

In the last chapter of Genesis, it is recorded that Joseph died. Just think of it — the Prime Minister of Egypt, the favored of God, the savior of his people, died. And yet the world went right on. “This is humiliating to some people. Here is, for example, a man who has never been absent from his business for twenty years. You ask him to take a day’s holiday, to go to church, to a religious meeting. He says: ‘My dear sir, you don’t know what you are asking. The very idea. This place would go to wreck and ruin if I were to be away from it for 24 hours.’ Yet it comes to pass that a most grievous disease comes upon him, imprisons him in a darkened room for six months. When he gets up at the end of six months, he finds that the business has gone on pretty much as well as if he had been wearing out his body and soul for it all the time. It is very humiliating to go and find things getting on without us. Who are we? The preacher may die, but the truth will be preached still. The minister perishes, but the ministry is immortal. This ought to teach us that we are not so important after all — that our business is to work all the little hours we have and remember that we are not indispensable. God is Creator. We are only His creatures.” (Joseph Parker — People’s Bible — on text)

Our creature-hood inevitably involves us, therefore, in what might well be called our responsibility. There are two ideas in this word responsibility. First, there is duty. As God’s creature, created by his wisdom and power, redeemed by his blood, governed by his providence, I should respond to all that which is bestowed upon me with my love, gratitude, and obedience. It is my duty.

But there is also this idea in responsibility — not only the duty to respond, but also the implied ability to respond. Responsibility means the ability to respond. Is this not, at least in part, what the Bible means when it states that men and women have been created by the Creator “in the image of God”? The creature has been fashioned by the Creator with the capacity for fellowship with its Maker — to think God’s thoughts after Him, to cooperate joyfully in the work and redemptive mission of God.

That brings us to the third swing of the pendulum on the time clock of Christendom: One, God is the Creator; Two, Man is God’s creature; Three, God, the Creator, is even yet creating. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Human history, as well as the physical universe, is the realm of God’s activity.

The Master Architect of the universe has His own blueprints. There may be delays because of work stoppages occasioned by unwilling workmen on strike, or by necessary tearing down and rebuilding because of the use of inferior materials or the refusal to follow specifications, but the work goes on and the plan will be put into effect, and God’s Kingdom will come.

Emil Brunner, the Swiss theologian, said: “We know because God has spoken to us, that although the great powers (of this world) would like to do whatever they please, God has control of all of them, that even when they think they are making world history, they are still nothing else than small chess men who must move as God shifts them, that still in spite of all sorts of catastrophes God’s world plan still goes on . . . The great godless powers of our time can no more hinder God’s purposes than could Judas and Pilate and Caiaphas. Even they must unwittingly serve Him.” (Brunner — I Believe in the Living God)

For three long generations the Christian world was alarmed by the rapid advance of communism across the map of the world. Many Christian people during those years were terrified into hysterical behavior and suspicious distrust of the very bulwarks of our Christian faith and order.

During those frightening years, I remember hearing Dr. Marshall Pradervand, the Executive Secretary of the Presbyterian World Alliance from Geneva, Switzerland, say on a visit to the Idlewild congregation: “Communist progress has been remarkable, not only in Russia, but in China as well. You can’t argue with the fact that there are 12 million new Chinese born into the world every year. China’s economy is more stable every month. Everywhere communism is gaining ground and the Western Capitalistic world is losing ground.”

And when someone of us back then asked Dr. Pradervand: “Well, what do you think of the future for us — with communism gaining and the Christian Church so undisciplined and un-awakened and unconcerned and soft?”

“Well,” shrugged Dr. Pradervand, “I am not afraid. God has plans for His church, His people, His world. God can be trusted to work it out. I am not afraid, but I must be very diligent to do my part as God’s man.”

Pearl Buck lived to tell about a dreadful time of decision for her family in China when her mother and younger sister were ill with cholera and the doctor in Shanghai said to her father: “You must decide which one is to be saved. I cannot save them both. Your wife or your daughter.”

“My father chose his wife,” said Pearl Buck, “but sometimes I wondered if my mother ever forgave him for it. It would have been like her to have insisted on saving both, and somehow getting it done, but she was unconscious and had no say.”

But the will of God as revealed in Christ is that not one of his little ones should perish. It is God’s will that His unconverted children all should be saved, whether they be in Memphis and Shelby County or Moscow and Russia. But some of God’s children do perish, and some are perishing because they will not choose God and life while there is opportunity. We must choose, each one of us must, either life or death. God will not force us. In the crisis of each soul’s salvation, in the crisis of the life and death struggle of our time, we each one must decide.

“Who do you think you are, anyway?” Do you think of God as the Creator of heaven and earth? Do you think of yourself as His creature, limited by His power, and subject for salvation only by His love and redemption? Do you think of yourself as having a place of responsibility as His servant in the flux of contemporary history when God is creating anew His Kingdom out of chaos and confusion? Who do we think we are, anyway? Well, why don’t we act like it!