Sunday Sermon

Creator

Isaiah 48:13

I made the earth with my own hands. With my right hand I spread out the skies. When I call them, they come together before me.”

I like that God gets angry. Because God gets angry, I think I have a better grasp of who God is. Yes, God does not get angry like us most of the time because God’s anger is both righteous and loving but it does give me insight into my faith in God. The anger God feels is righteous anger which is not what we feel most of the time but there is this moment that we get a glimpse of the anger of God. When we get angry because we see other people being treated wrongly that can be an anger that is justified. Part of what anger was meant to do was to motivate us to take action when we see something wrong. Another anger is when we see our kids doing something stupid that we know they will get hurt from. More then once I have yelled at one of my kids because they did something the put them at risk and it made me angry. Of course I am angry with my child and at their actions but I do not hate my child, it is my love for my child that makes me angry. These two circumstances are the kind of righteous anger God has and I like those kinds of anger. So often we are afraid of being angry and there are times when our anger is out of control or it stems from our selfishness and that is wrong but righteous loving anger is a good thing because God gets angry. It cannot be underestimated how much God hates when innocent people are hurt by others selfish actions and it makes God angry. This is the time and place of anger and I am glad the God gets angry. My faith is helped to know that God gets angry about people doing the wrong things. We also need to know as angry as God gets at us when we are in sin God does not hate us but calls to us to change. Let it also be known that God hates evil and when we choose evil and let it control us God gets angry with us and we need to know that. Why God gets angry is an important part of that is going on. Sin and the resulting evil are not harmless to us and sin wreaks destruction on us and our God hates that we are suffering because of our sin. Every human is loved by God more then we can even imagine. Jesus enters into our world as both God and human so that He can die to deal our sin. God knows how terrible sin is and is willing to pay the price for it so watching us be harmed by our sin makes God angry and I like this about God. A God who loves us enough to get angry over what sin does to us is a God who I want to worship and serve. Seeking a God who gets angry because He loves us and wants to save us is the kind of God that makes sense to me. Let us look to this God to teach us how to be the people who He longs for us to be.

Developing the whole anger thing with God was critical to my really grasping a sense of who God is. For the longest time my thinking about God and the faith that came with it was this muddle of rules I needed to follow and this God who I was afraid of. Thinking about God more deeply then that just seemed more complicated then I was able to deal with. But the more I spent time in scripture the more things did not seem to work like I expected. This God I was reading about seemed different then the God I had imagined in my mind from the things I learned in as a child in Sunday school. It was finally the anger of God that got me wanting to think more deeply about God and to know Him better. In truth the anger of God frightened me and always drove me to operate in certain ways that did not always work right. This thinking about God brought me to see God in a new light and it make my faith work better. After working through God’s anger I began to examine other areas about who God is and how I thought He worked only to find those areas also were much deeper and compelling then I had guessed. Learning about God begin to make my faith more real and it changed how I thought about my faith. That is the amazing thing about getting to know God it alters us in some very good ways. We as people who say we believe in God should spend time really getting to know God because the more we know God the more our faith and trust in that God will grow. Things like God’s commands are interesting because they are not just some commands but they also reveal the God who states them. By learning God’s commands we will learn about God Himself. Our faith is not about obeying rules but it is about trusting in a God who loves us and is willing to die for us and to do that we need to know this God and explore who He is. Knowing this and doing it are two different things but if we will take the effort we will find blessings and wonders that will fill our lives with joy and hope.

Have you ever considered the napkin? Where does the napkin come from and why do we have them? Families with kids could not live without napkins and in our house to run out of napkins is a terrible disaster. Napkins arise from the use of a rag or towel to wipe things down but they soon moved to things used at the table and even to the heights of fashion. As usable as napkins are, they are just a simple tool but they also tell us a lot about who we are as humans. The napkin by definition is something used to take care of messes. If we as people were not messy we would never have made napkins. From the napkin we can then learn that humans are messy and they need to make the choice to clean up after themselves. This messiness should also direct us to God because as messy as we are our God is not messy. There will be no need for napkins in eternity because we will be in the presence of an orderly God and that is a good thing. Our verse speaks of God as creator and I think we should consider what that means and how it affects our faith. God is an orderly God and that is so wonderful. We have science because we can study God’s handy work and understand it. The words that are used here are words that tell us so much of who our God is. In the verse the first phrase says that God made the world with His own hands. Science and the orderliness of the universe has to point to God and nothing else. Those who claim that God did not make the universe and that all things are random first have to explain why the universe is so systematic. There are math equations that explain how things in the vast reaches of deep space work and math does not do random well. If you want to build your faith then study science and realize how the physical universe works because the first proof that there is a God is the universe itself. The laws of the universe tell us that the universe runs on an explainable system and that points us to faith. If the laws of the universe work then the laws God teaches us in scripture also work. We have a rational God who we can understand and be guided by. Humans maybe messy but our God is not and that is a reason to develop the faith we need to get through life with. Each day will be messy and chaotic but we have hope in a God who is the maker of all things and is not messy about anything. I want all people to know this rational God of creation because it makes the world better.

A question that many people ask including people of faith is where is God and is God really in control. If God is the maker of the universe then where is He? This verse points us to this question and suggests that God is in control. What we need to know is “how” is God in control. In our verse God speaks about how He made the skies and how He calls them together. As people of faith and trust in God our hope is that God is in control like He says He is. Knowing that God is in control and trusting that God is in control are two different things though. We as people need to think about what God being in control means. Just because we want God to do things like we demand and when they don’t happen it does not mean that God is not in control it just means we are not god. If nothing else happens the proof that God is at work is the cross. The one thing that changes all things is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Our sin has separated us from God and if God does nothing there is no hope for us and we only face destruction. But that is not the God we have and that is not how God works. God is proven to be in control because He solves the only problem that really matters our sin issue. When we think about things in the big picture most of the things we suffer do not matter and though there is discomfort what God wants is for us to become the people He longs for us to be. God never promises we will not suffer but that He will be with us as we suffer. In short, suffering does not disprove that God is in control and we need to face that because our faith will never be what it should be until we trust God even when we are suffering. The whole book of Job is all about a man who wants to talk to God about his pain and when God answers Job is silenced. God is in control and God is at work. We have a God who has made us and He calls to us to come to Him just like the skies He made. Do we have that it takes to trust God and to count on the cross as proof that God knows what He is doing.

A central concept about our faith is that we do not trust in what God does but we trust in who God is. This thinking is so important to building the faith we need to be the people God wants us to be. At the same time what God does helps us understand and trust in who God is. That God is the God of creation is very helpful to building a faith in this God. All the things of creation tell us about our God. When we see beautiful things they point to the beauty of God and when we see the orderliness of God we know that our God is not random and we can trust what God says because of this. As we see God in creation it makes us want to know God better and to look deeper into Him. God’s creation invites us to get to know the God who made all this wonderful stuff and that is what God really wants. Let us seek to know God and to find in Him the hope our hearts desire because we long for the God who made creation.