Sunday Sermon

 

 God Knows

Isaiah 48:4
I knew you were stubborn; your neck was like an iron muscle, and your head was like bronze.

    In Isaiah chapter forty five verse twenty-three God tells us that one day everyone will bow before God.  This is then repeated in Paul’s letter to the Romans in chapter fourteen verse eleven.  Often we take the authority of God as no more then mere suggestions and we can if we want take or leave what God has to say as we please.  I understand how this happens because God does not force Himself on us.  Over and over God warns us about sin and offers a different path but God never forces us to obey Him.  We can choose the destruction that sin brings and as much as it breaks God’s heart He will not stop us from making that choice.  But if we are serious about that fact that God is King of Kings then we need to know that bowing before God means we subject ourselves to God’s power and authority and we need to begin to live like we are subjects of a King.  The choice to obey God is our choice but once we make that choice we have to begin to live by the ideas and commands God lays out.  Either God is in charge of our lives or He is not and we have to decide what we are doing.  Yes, it is hard to trust a God we cannot see and we have no control over but when we make that step we are changed into people of grace and mercy.  The fact is that God is in control and we don’t have any real control except the choices we make.  What makes our faith great is that God’s commands are there to make our lives what they were meant to be.  Obeying God is not easy but the results of that obedience on our lives and the world around us are amazing.  God’s ideas and principles make sense and teach us about how the universe really works.  Our faith is based on the idea that God really is in control and the fact is that we can test what God says and see if what He tells us is true.  Learning to seek God and know that God is at work in all things is hard because life is not comfortable and we want God to make things easy for us and that is not how God works.  Bowing to God means we accept God’s ideas but the fact is that God’s ideas are true even if we do not believe them.  God wants us to choose Him not because we are forced to but because when we encounter Him we find that His power and authority bring real meaning to us and so we bow because it is good for us to bow and obey the living God.  We are offered by God life and death and if we choose death that is on us but God longs for us to choose Him and to live under His rule.
    It needs to be stated that being under the authority of God is not easy and God never says it is.  God calls us to be righteous and to be loving and those are hard things.  To be righteous means we do the right thing every time.  When God calls Himself righteous it is not a small thing.  What it means is that God always does the right thing.  Every judgement is right and how God deals with us is always right.  The power of God’s righteousness is critical because God is also loving.  Our God cares about us and wants the best for us.  That is why God spends so much time teaching us.  But to really be the loving God He is, God must do the right thing and so being righteous is so fundamental to a loving God.  This means that if we want to be loving we need to be people who do the right thing every time and guess what we have, a God who teaches us what is right and wrong so we can do the right thing.  Doing the right thing will cost us though and we need to know that.  Jesus went to the cross because it was the right thing not because it was the easy thing.  One of the reasons God gives us a choice instead of forcing us to obey is because it is the right thing to do even though God hates when we choose the sin that destroys us.  Next in our work to be under the authority of God is the fact that God is the source of truth.  It may not seem hard that God is the source of truth until that truth goes in a direction we don’t want to deal with.  If God is the source of truth then all other choices other then what God says are not truth.  When we sin we choose not truth which we call lies and lies lead to evil.  So if we don’t bow to God we will end up in evil things and that truth is hard to face.  I think one of the hardest issues about God is that He is loving.  That might sound odd but think about it.  God loves us enough to tell us the truth about righteousness and evil and the effect of our choices in that.  We don’t like that God calls us sinners because it makes us guilty but God does that not to condemn us but to set us free and being guilty is that starting point of that.  God loves us enough to tell us about our guilt to set us free from that guilt.  This is the God that calls to us and invites us to come and bow before Him and we should worship this God.
    I have talked before about my struggle with Christmas and the celebration that happens because I see things a little differently.  Yes, all of eternity celebrates and does it so loudly that it bleeds into our earthly space.  And I get the idea that God is intervening in the human condition that will change the very fabric of the universe so celebration is warranted but I still battle the guilt that because of my sin God has to come and save me from me.  The whole point of Jesus becoming human is to go to the cross to pay for my sin.  I am broken by what God has to do and yet I am also so grateful that my God knows that I need to be save and is willing to do it.  Speaking to that point is our verse.  In this verse we find that God knows we are sinners and the magnitude of our sinful status.  God is not confused by our sinful lives and God understands our situation better then we will ever get close to realizing.  This verse is so great because it describes our spiritual standing with God and best of all is tells us that God grasps that state of affairs that we are in.  We cannot fool God and as much as we would like to avoid the quilt of our sin we have to admit what we are.  Because God knows our sin we actually have real hope.  It breaks God’s heart that we have chosen death instead of life and God will not stop till He has done all He can to fix things.  How can we not fall before a God like that and worship Him.   But things get better because God knows the broken things in our lives and He invites us to come and let Him fix them.  Our verse tells us that God knows what is going on and it makes such a point that we have to admit who we are also.  And that is the idea here.  It is God’s desire to have us know how bad things are and that we need help.  The concept here is God knows what is wrong but in this verse we get the idea that God also knows how to make things right.  That this verse starts with “I knew” is such a powerful detail about our God and what He is all about.  To be people of faith we need to comprehend who God is and what He is doing in relationship to us.  Understanding that God knows everything and we can count on God wanting to save us and not destroy us makes our faith such a wonderful thing.  Facing our guilt is not easy but when we know that God is not fooled by our stubborn nature it should be easier to confess that we need Jesus to save us.
    In our verse God confronts us with our guilt and it is easy to blame God for being mean and speaking to us in a harsh way but this verse tell us how much God cares about us and understands the human circumstance.  Our sin is destroying us and God knows the damage our sin is doing to us and so wants us to know that we are in trouble.  The natural reaction to God speaking to us about what is wrong in our lives is for us to refuse to admit we are wrong.  This is why God speaks to us about being stubborn.  What God wants us to know is that we are rejecting the only help we have in getting our lives in line and it saddens God that this is going on.  We need to know that this problem of being stubborn is not limited to those who do not believe in God.  The book of Jonah is all about a man who knows God well and yet when God speaks to him Jonah does not want to hear what God has to say and he even runs away from God.  To those of us who believe need to be willing to obey God not when what He asks is easy but when what He asks is hard.  God wants to deal with the problems and issues that we as humans have but we must accept the authority of God in our lives.  The two images that God uses here are central to what God is seeking from us.  When God refers to how hard our neck muscle is it is not a complement but a statement that we are resisting bowing to God because we don’t want to submit to what God is speaking to us about.  Again this is not God telling us how bad we are but God speaking the truth to us.  Once we know the truth we can make the choice to submit to God.  Next is the idea that our heads are like bronze and the idea here is that we are not willing to let God’s ideas into our heads because they might be inconvenient.  God says this to us because He loves us and wants us to know He is there it help us but we must let Him into our lives.
    The hope of all human kind is not that we can avoid God or that God does not care about us but that we have a God who knows how dire our circumstances are and invites us to come to Him because He can knows how to make things right.  This verse tells us that God knows what is going on and also wants to be involved in the problems of humans.  We as people can build a faith on this kind of God but it does mean we have to admit we need God and then submit to God’s authority in our lives.  Faith in God does not mean we have all the answers but it does mean we trust in the God who does and who wants to teach us how the universe works.  Let us bow to this kind of God because we have real hope in a God who knows the issues of humans and cares what happens to us.