Sunday Sermon

 

Evil
Isaiah 50:1
This is what the Lord says: “People of Israel, you say I divorced your mother. Then where is the paper that proves it? Or do you think I sold you to pay a debt? Because of the evil things you did, I sold you. Because of the times she turned against me, your mother was sent away.
A central part of our hope and faith in Jesus is that we are joyful people. I have to confess that I have not always thought about joy in that way but over the years as I have spent time in scripture I have found that our God is profoundly joyful. What that means as believers in the living God is that we should be by our very nature joyful people. On more then one occasion I have talked about how the joy of Jesus’ birth seems contrary to what Jesus was coming into the world to do. Jesus was born to take on the sin of the world and yes He would be victorious in that but at a high cost. For me Christmas should be a somber time as we remember the cost of our sin is that God has to become human and pay the price for our sin. And yet that is not what happens at Jesus birth. All of heaven is celebrating so loudly and powerfully that it bleeds down into our world and some shepherds find themselves in the middle of the most joyful event anyone will ever experience. Joy should shape how we live each day and it should be the thing that makes us stand out to the rest of the world. The real power of joy is that it is counter to anger so the more joyful we become the harder it is to be angry. When we as people are fearful and anxious it is so easy to let that frustration turn into anger but real joy in the living God drives out fear and worry and replaces it with hope. Learning from God I have found that we cannot have the hope we long for unless we have joy. The two concepts of hope and joy are linked in ways I have yet to fully understand but they are linked non the less. To find a hope that will keep us going has to start with the joy of the Lord. Knowing about joy does not mean we have joy. The idea of joy is not being happy but being deeply positive about the truths God gives us. It is from this point we move from joy to hope. I relate this to you not because I fully grasp all that is involved but because joy and hope are a brilliant way to live and it is God who teaches us that. If we want to deal with the evil of the world we have to first start to be the joyful people God calls us to be. There is so much hate and evil in the world that we as believers must stand in the joy God gives us and light the dark places that evil hides. Being people who trust in the living God there should be this sense of intense joy that runs through all parts of our lives. When we step away from the joy that God gives us we become susceptible to the lies of the enemy and we can surrender our joy for the worry and fear God drove out of us with his spirit. Seeking joy is not some optional part of our faith but it is a big part of it and when we miss that we also miss much of what God wants us to know about ourselves and the world.
Because I have spent some time thinking about joy and the joy that fills God, I have begun to wonder why we as humans are so prone to not let the joy God longs for us to have a larger part of our lives. What makes joy such a problem that we as humans almost askew the whole concept of joy as something that is not possible to have in our lives all the time. On this subject I think I have an idea about what is going on. The answer is that the human heart is very broken. Our hearts are so broken God says they are like stone and that God offers to give us a new heart because our hearts or so broken. It is in this broken heart that we begin to see why we are people who are not able to find the joy God longs for us to have. That also explains why God wants to give us a new heart, a heart that can feel the joy of the Lord. One of the things that I love about God and what makes my faith so great is God knows the answer to the issues in our lives and God goes straight to the truth of the answer we need to know. God knows our hearts are damaged beyond repair and God also knows if we are to find the joy of God we need new hearts and so God hands out new hearts. Our part of this transaction is that we have to admit we are sinners in need of a new heart that will give us the joy we want but don’t believe is possible. Understanding how wicked and evil our heart is and how it has been damaged by the lies of the enemy we have believed is the starting point to joy. Yes, to get real joy we have to humble ourselves and ask God to do what we cannot. What is great is that part of our joy is that God wants to fix our hearts. How can we not find joy in a God who does not hate us for our sin but wants to make us into what we were meant to be. Learning about our God will lead us into a wonderful place of joy and that is worth any cost.
Lately I have begun to think about how powerful a tape measure is. Without a tape measure the world gets a lot harder. Building a house without that simple device would take more work. Just the other day a friend of mine used a tape measure to make sure a table would fit into his van. The power of the tape measure is that it produces truth about reality. As much as you want that board to fit it is three inches to short. Or because of the information from a tape measure the table fits in the van and no other plans have to be made. Because of the truth that tape measure gives the world is better and that is even more relevant when it comes to the great truth of God. We need to know that truth is not something God gives us but God is the truth and we benefit from that. Our verse points us to the reason we need God to be truth and that we find hope in that. The people of Israel have left God for other god’s and in doing so they have begun to act in evil ways. When people start acting like nothing good happens and a lot of bad starts going on. This evil is a problem and God’s solution to the evil is to simply step in and point out the truth about what is going on. God is not afraid to tell people the truth about what is going on and the effect that it will have on their lives. In this verse God is confronting the evil of the Israelites not because He hates them but He loves them and hates the evil that is going to destroy them. Speaking the truth is not about being mean but it is about not hiding the fact that sin is a problem and if it is not dealt with it will destroy us. The truth God gives shines a light on who we are so we can get things right and that is a God I want to serve. Even with all the sin that the Israelite people have done God does not want them to die but instead to know that truth about what is going on and the cost of their sin. We have a God who gives us hope even when we are doing evil because He speaks the truth to us. If God hated us God would have to do nothing and let our lives be wrecked by sin but that is not the God we have. Our God tells us the truth so we can choose a better way to go in our lives. What God hates is the evil we do because it damages our lives. Truth has the power to save us from the evil we are involved in but we must choose the truth God gives us.
A great part of our faith is that God does not put up with evil and He calls it out both in our lives and the lives of others. In our verse God is making a point that the Israelites have done evil things and so they are going to pay the cost of those evil acts. There is such hope in God that He will not let us get away with the evil in our lives but instead tells us the truth about that evil. God is speaking to the Israelite people not because He hates them but because He loves them and wants them to change. After God had called on the Israelites over and over to change and warned them of the cost of their evil God now tells them they are going to have to pay the cost of their evil. What this tells us about our God and why we trust in God is that God is letting this pain happen not to punish but to redeem. When the Israelites return from captivity they will be more serous about living by the law God has given them. Thus because of a little pain the evil is driven out and righteousness come in. Over all these millennia how God works has not changed. God wants to teach us and train us to be the people of truth we need to be but if we let evil into our lives God is not going to be silent about it. The evil that sin brings into our lives is to corrosive and brings harm to us and to other people and God is not going to let that happen. Our hope in God is just this. God cares about us to much not to confront us about our sin and to point us to a new direction. But it is up to us to either listen to God and change or to let the evil of sin continue in our lives. Let it be clear God desperately wants us to choose life over evil but we are the one who chooses.
An interesting thing about this verse is that God is having a conversation with the Israelite people. People are asking what is going on and rather then God being silent He tells people what is going on. Our God does not hide things from us and wants us to know what is true and right. The question to each of us is what is God talking with us about right now. What sin or evil are we involved in that God wants to speak to us about? It is important to know that God is not a quiet God who sits on His throne in heaven and does not care about us. We have a God that loves us enough to tell us when we are off track. Best of all is that once we know we are in trouble God does not leave us alone but He wants to teach us how to be the people He made us to be. Let us learn to trust in the true and living God enough to hear God speak to us about our sin and give glory to that God.

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