Sunday Sermon

 

Helping God

Isaiah 50:7

The Lord God helps me, so I will not be ashamed. I will be determined, and I know I will not be disgraced.

Five years ago I lost my mother and in those five years there has not been a day I did not think about her. My mother was a remarkable woman. A lot of people say that about their mothers but it is true for me. First and foremost children loved her. To my memory I think she was happiest when she was in the middle of teaching little children about the living God. Next is the fact that whatever my mother put her hand to she did it well. But the thing that stands out to me as I have gotten older is how generous she was. This is a big deal because my mother grew up poor and could have been stingy but that was not her nature. Thinking about this it now makes me think about how my mother taught me to be a man who is generous. To be truthful I have not always been a generous man but the legacy of my mother has had an effect on me. My mother was a woman of deep faith and she was filed with the spirit of the living God so I am pretty sure that part of the nature of generosity that flowed from her was because of her faith and how it formed how she lived. I relate the story of my mother because it reflects one of the things that shapes the history of people of faith. Over and over we find that people who have taken the time to build a faith in the living God end up being “good people.” In our modern culture we are often told that to be people of faith means that we are hateful and even evil but history tells us a different story. When people work to be what God calls them to be we find individuals, societies and even whole cultures become better. If we want more generosity, more mercy and more peace the place to go is to God and what He teaches about how to live our lives. That great big book called the Bible is not some rule book but it is a guide that God gives us so we know how to live the lives we were meant to live. Seeking to know what God teaches will not make us bad people but will make us better people and I want that for my life and for all people everywhere. God wants us to know how to be people who do the right thing and how to care about others. We do need to know that the standards God sets are high and it will take a life time of work to learn all God has to teach us but God has made all the things we need to know available to us. Learning to be people who trust in the living God and to then live by the ideas and concepts God teaches us is not easy but if we work at it our lives will be filled with a hope and a joy that few people can even consider as a possibility. We need to speak to a world that is struggling and communicate the power of learning to trust in the living God.

In the forty years of ministry one of the things I have learn about how faith works is that until someone realizes how terribly broken they are they are never going to seek God with the fervor that really changes them. From my own experience to conversations with dozens of people to reading how faith changed people in history it is only when people know how broken they are that they know how much they need God. Most people spend their lives pretending they are okay because they have never grasped how damaged their lives are and that is a really sad thing. The greatest event that has ever happened to me is when God showed me the extent of my brokenness. At the moment it was a terrible thing but in that single instant I was driven to understand that my life was not what it should be and I needed God. What we need to know more than anything is that God knows how broken we are and God longs to fix what is broken in us. Often we are confused and we believe that we can deal with the broken things in our lives. Or we push the ugly and damaged parts of our lives so deep we don’t even know we are in trouble. What makes our faith so great is we have a God who is not confused about the state of our being. One of the powerful things God does is speak honestly to us and calls to us to tell us how bad things are in our lives. It is not that God wants us to feel bad for how broken we are but if we cannot face what our problems are we will never deal with what is wrong. If we are looking for hope in this world it should be found in the amount of time and effort God puts in to telling us the truth and inviting us to come and find the answers we need. We should sing with joy because we have a God who knows what is going on and is able to show us the way to the healing God longs for us to have. Building a real faith has to start with knowing just how broken we are but also knowing there is a God who wants to restore to us the healthy life we were meant to have.

There are few things that I can say that have been a real help in my life but I have one that has proven over and over to be the best help ever to come my way. When I speak about help and I think about what it means there can only be one thing that stands as the mot consistent location of help. No one can be more blessed then I am to have the help that flows to me on a regular basis. People say a lot of things have helped them in their lives and I could count numbers of people and things that have helped me but the biggest help by far is the wife I married. The relationship with my wife is the most significant source of help with the one exception of God. But that should not be a surprise because both of those sources of help are built on the concept of an ongoing relationship. We have a God who wants to offer real help to us and all He ask is that we build a relationship with Him. Our verse gives a wonderful insight into what faith means in that the writer sees that God is the one who gives us help and that help is not small or insignificant. God wants to pour out unbelievable amounts of strength into our lives and God offers to teach us and guide us so we can know how to best live our lives. Grasping the magnitude of what God offers can only be seen in how much material God offers by way of wisdom and knowledge. There is a reason the Bible is so large and it is because God has crammed it full of all the help we can ever imagine. But things don’t stop there. The God who created all things also choose to come and live and die so we could be set free from our sin. What kind of God wants to help us that much? And finally God then sends His Spirit into our lives so that our God can be with us and help us live as we need. To have such a God who cares about us and longs to help us is such a wonderful thing. To know that God wants to help us that much should drive us to our knees in humble worship. Learning from the God who is the truth and who is righteous will mean we will have answers to questions that other people will not even think of. We will seek to be holy and we will know what that means. Knowing what and where real evil is will give those who trust in God a real advantage in building a life of peace and joy. Letting God help us is not a weakness but the beginning of real strength.

The real power of this verse though is the reaction of God’s care and help in our lives. When we learn to trust God and learn what God has to say about how we should live there is this positive and exciting effect in our lives. The verse describes the effects of our faith in God in three great terms. To live as God calls us will mean we will not be ashamed and we will be determined with the final word telling us we will not be disgraced. What great words and what hope we have in the God who gives us those words. First is the word ashamed and that gives us an idea that we are part of something that is deeply true and transformative. Living as God tells us will lead us in a way that means we will never be embarrassed about the things we do and the activities we are engaged in. Think about what a powerful life we would have is we follow what God says. We would never have to hide what we think or do and we can count on what we do as positive for everyone who comes in contact with us. Again this not because of our ideas but because we have learned to live by the ideas and concepts God teaches us. Next the word determined is used and this is such a great word. To be determined means we will keep moving forward when things are not easy. What that means for those who trust in God is that we will have hope and peace as we struggle each day to cope with all the troubles and problems we face. And then there is the word disgraced and I like that word because it taps into the idea that how we live our lives effects the world around us. No one will be able to accuse us of wrong or say evil things about us that are not true because of what God has done in our lives. We will not be disgraced by the people around us nor by the God who loves us. These are words that I want us all to begin to have in our lives.

When I was a volunteer tutor for our local schools one of the things that I had to work my kids through is the issue of testing. Because these kids were not the top of the class they did not do so well on test. So each year I would my help students face their test by explaining that test are there not for them but the teacher. The test was to measure what the student had learned and what need to be worked on. As adults in our real lives we face test about how we are living based on what God has taught us. Those test of our lifestyle are there not to condemn us but to help us see what is still lacking in our lives and what we need to work on. We have such hope that we have a God who wants us to know what is going on so we can go to Him and let God show us how to help us work on what we need. How much God longs to help us and the measures that God will go to in order to have us be what we should be cannot be underestimated. God wants to help us and we so need take help God offers let us and trust in the living God.