‘A Drop in the Bucket’

There are times when we encounter a real financial need, not for ourselves, but for others. It may be that the church we belong to is raising funds for some venture or other, or we are being persuaded to send money to someone we know is in deep trouble and we have very little money to spare ourselves. Perhaps it I some huge fund-raising campaign, like Children In Need, and we may feel it is not worth giving anything at all – after all, our small contribution will only be ‘a drop in the bucket’. Where does that expression originate? ‘Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; [God] weighs the islands as though they were fine dust’, Isaiah 40.15, NIV.

The expression really does mean an insignificant amount. And this is the way the Bible presents God and the Nations. He is, after all, the Creator of everything. He made the world and all that is within it, Psalm 89.11. He not only made inanimate creation, but also the animate – all living creatures and mankind too. ‘From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands’, Acts 17.26. A pagan king once declared, ‘I praised the Most High; I honoured and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?” Daniel 4.34-35. There you have it again: All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing’; they are just ‘a drop in the bucket’ to the Almighty.

And we see what God thinks of the nations, not just as individual ones, but as a collective whole. They are nothing to Him. ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves,and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill,” Psalm 2, ESV. And when Armageddon comes, there will be no contest. There kings of the earth will be gathered by, ‘demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty. (“Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!”). And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. And . . . from the throne, [came a loud voice] saying, “It is done!” And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake.  The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath’, Revelation 16.14f.

God is sovereign and all the nations are just a drop in the bucket to Him. Let us be careful to worship Him. ‘Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish’, Psalm 2.