Sunday Sermon

 

Life

Isaiah 49:1

All of you people in faraway places, listen to me. Listen, all you nations far away. Before I was born, the Lord called me to serve him. The Lord named me while I was still in my mother’s womb.

A foundational part of my faith is based in the idea that God is the source of life and without God we are just dead people walking. The reason God wants to save us from our sin is because our sin has separated us from God who is the author of life. How can we live if we have cut ourselves off from the God who is life itself? Over and over God calls to us and tells us that following Him brings life and to not follow God is just suffering and death. When I talk with people who reject God they often question me about how can God be the origin of life if He kills people. For me this just proves how serious God is about life because when you study why God does the things He does it is to protect life. A good place to talk about this is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yes, God destroys those two cities but the question we have to ask is why does God do it and what process does God go through. When Abraham and God talk, God promises to save the cities if just ten righteous men can be found. We also get a picture of how evil the people are in those two cities. The evil that is in those two cities is dangerous to all the people around them and if not dealt with it will pollute all the surrounding areas and bring untold harm to all the people in the area. By destroying those cities God is promoting life. Think of those two cities as a case of gangrene. If the part of the body that is dead is not cut off the rest of the body is at risk of dying too. If that is not enough explanation then go to the book of Acts chapter five. In the chapter a husband and wife are killed because they lied to God. The problem is not the lie in its self but the fact that they are in the middle of the greatest spiritual revival the world has ever known and instead of being honest they lied. They may have been alive in their bodies but they were spiritually dead already. Here again God is at work promoting life by showing people they cannot pretend to be people of faith but they need to be growing and developing in their faith. Our God is very serious about life and we need to know that. The last proof that God will do whatever it takes to promote life is the cross. On the cross Jesus dies not for himself but for us. Jesus takes all the death of our sin on Himself because God does not want one person to die because of their sin. The final act of life is then Jesus walking out of the tomb telling us that God is the one who brings life. The faith we have is not about obeying some rules but it is in trusting the God who gives life and longs for us to know that life. We are invited by God to know life but God also wants us to know the cost of rejecting the life He offers not because God punishes us but because when we cut ourselves off from the God who gives life there is only death. Let us look to God on how to live the lives He gives us and to trust in Him for our hope of life.

The greatness of God and His desire to give life to us is found in the ideas, concepts and commands that God gives. God knew that we could not figure out life and what it is all about so He gives us all these teachings that are aimed at helping us live our lives. We trust not in the rules God gives but in the God who gives the rules because the teaching God gives us reveals that God who is life itself. The things God hates are the things that do not give life or take it away. In all of this, the idea is the we learn about God and then trust in the God who teaches us these things. What God teaches us does us no good unless we hope in the God who gives the teachings. There is controversy of people wanting the Ten Commandments in school because they are thought to be religious but the in truth they are just the facts about the moral universe that underpins all things. God gives these commands because they teach us about how to live life and what it means to have real life. Seeking to know God means we will learn about the commands of God because they tell us about our God and that God is all about life. In the New Testament Jesus brings people back to life but the most power thing He does is He tells people to stop sinning. Humans need to be connected to the God who made them if they are to be what they were meant to be and God instead of punishing us because of our rejection of Him calls to us to find healing in Him. This is the God we can have hope in. There is this God who cares about us enough to teach us and to offer life when we have chosen death because of our sin. In the choice between life and death God calls to us to make the choice of life and that is where we need to put our faith.

There are lots of ways to describe the God we serve and worship but one of the best ways is to know that God is all seeing, all knowing and ever present. When you first hear those words they don’t seem like much. How can we even imagine those concepts with our limited human scope of understanding. But those words have real power when we take some time to think about them. It means that God cannot be fooled and that He knows who we are what we are doing. Often we think of God as just looking down on us and not really knowing about us in any detail but those words belie that idea and allow us to realize how intimately God knows us. In our verse we have another concept that is repeated more then once and it is the idea that God knows us the moment we are conceived. The writer tells us God named him while he was still in his mothers womb. This is a wonderful expression of the God we have and the kind of relationship God wants to have with us. God knows us and He grasp how hard it is to be human with the pain and struggles we as humans have. If we don’t believe this then we don’t believe that God has given us the Holy Spirit to come and live with us. Yes, that is right God comes and lives with us and not just some times but at every moment. We have a God who does not just give us life but we have a God who wants to shape our individual lives. It is not God’s fault that we miss out on a lot of what God has to give us because God has done all he can but we have to let God in and allow Him to work in our lives. The living God wants to speak to us about our sin and He wants to teach us how to be real people that find hope and joy in our lives but we have to open ourselves to God and learn what God is all about. The nice thing is that God does not hide Himself from us nor is God ever silent. God already knows we are in pain and we are battling things in our lives and God has the answers to those things if we will just let Him tell us. I know that trusting what God has to say can be hard. But when we trust what God has to say we then learn to trust in the God who says those things. Faith is all about trusting a God who gives life and wants to teach us how to live that life in the way it was meant to be. Will we have the courage and the strength to let the all knowing God into our lives and let Him work at bringing healing and peace to us.

What we find in this verse is an insight into how God works. Often we over look the first phrases of this verse as just an opening prelude to what is really going on but that is not how God works. God does not use empty words and useless phrases. In this verse God is calling to the world to listen and to pay attention and what is going on and it is not some major announcement about God’s rule but a simple statement about God calling one man. It cannot be missed that God says “listen to me” and then He repeats the call to listen. God is calling people to understand who God is and to think about this God who loves people. This God who calls people wants to give them life and wants to be part of their lives from the very beginning. Learning to listen to God and then echoing God’s call to people is part of what we as people of faith should be doing. We know the God who gives life and who wants to pour out grace, mercy and forgiveness and so ware given the task of telling people about this God. There is this God who wants to heal broken lives and how can we not speak to the world about this amazing God. The question comes to us to listen to God and to know what God wants to teach us and to then teach others about this God. It is one of things that astounds me about God that He wants to speak to all people and not just some general word about sin but God wants to speak to each of us about what is going on in our lives and the conflicts that we are facing each day. God knows our pain and God wants to deal with it and this is what makes God who God is. Our faith is not about some God who is far away and who does not know us but it is about a God who knows us before we are born and longs to be with us as we live our lives. I want other people to know this God and to find in God the hope and peace God longs for us to have.

In a world that does not care about people and is mostly indifferent to the pain and suffering of others there is this God who is very interested in our lives and in the struggles we have. The God of creation does not just know we are sinners but that God knows all about who we are and cares very deeply about our lives. Our faith is based on the concept that we have a loving God who interferes in our lives because He cares about us. Trusting in God is all about knowing that He loves us like He does and that gives us hope in a world that does not really care about us. Learning to trust God comes from knowing who God is and what God is all about and we need to know that we worship the God who gives life. Calling out to us each day God wants us to know He loves us enough to deal with our sin and that God can fix what is broken in us.