Sunday Sermon

 

God the Teacher

Isaiah 51:4

“My people, listen to me; my nation, pay attention to me. I will give the people my teachings, and my decisions will be like a light to all people.

Have you ever had a bad experience dealing with a store or restaurant? If you have not experienced that then you are one of the most blessed people. There are a lot of reasons for bad interactions with people that have been employed to serve the public. All most all those issues boil down to the simple fact that people lack an understanding of what their purpose for being there is. Many people think they are being paid to be some place and do some work but they are wrong and this leads to the problems we have. All work is actually about serving other people. We are employed because another person wants part of our labor and the result is that they trade their money for our service, whatever that maybe. If we do not treat the person who is trading their money for our labor well we have missed the point of what we are supposed to be doing. Recently this idea has come to me as an actual spiritual concept that God wants us to know about. The concept we need to get into our heads has to do with our relationship with God and what that means. The starting point of this idea is that we do not obey God’s laws because we fear punishment. In fact punishment is that starting point because we all have broken God’s laws. What God wants to do is rescue us from that punishment. In order to save us from the punishment we deserve God offers to trade His righteousness for our sin and all He wants in return is that we build a relationship with Him. This is where the above concept comes in. Do we treat God like He deserves. God is the one who saves us from our sin but all to often we treat God as if we are doing Him a favor by worshiping Him. How often do we demand things from God but make no effort to serve the God who saves us from the destruction our sin bring on us. We obey God’s laws and principles not because we want to avoid punishment but because God loves us and teaches those things to us to help us learn how the universe works. Our purpose should be to be the best servants of God because we love God and want to treat Him as He deserves. Giving God our attention is not some problem we have to deal with but it is the very function of our being. The question we need to always ask is what can we do better as servants of the living God. Our God does not hide what we need to know and wants to teach us all we need to know about serving Him. Focusing on learning to love the God who saves us will lead us to want to be people who obey those things God teaches us. If we are not serious about knowing God and trusting in Him, doing the things He tells us don’t do us any good. We as believers in the living God need to grasp the importance of making God the center of our lives and giving God all of ourselves to Him.

Faith is such a curious thing because we are called to trust in something we cannot see and we have no control over yet most people want to believe and even trust in God. What a lot of people struggle with is what faith means. Often we just want God’s attention when something is broken and that is a natural human thing because we can read about it in scripture. Many people come to faith because they find their lives are a mess and they want God to fix things. None of that is sinful or even wrong but we need to be clear that real faith is not about getting God’s attention but us giving God the attention He deserves. From the very beginning of the universe we have God paying attention to us and we are told that God knows about each of us from the moment we are created in the womb. We have God’s attention on us and that could be a bad thing because God also knows how sinful and broken we are. Building real faith is about giving God attention. Paying attention to God is not really that hard either. Over and over God offers ways to listen to Him and to learn from Him. All of scripture is put there so we can know God and spend time with Him. Part of what Jesus does is make it possible to have the spirit of God be with us as we live each day. But it is not enough to just know what God has to say we need to live by what He says. To be righteous people means we do the right thing every time and that means we have to give God our attention because God is the righteous God. Things like forgiveness and generosity direct ourselves away from attention on us and to the proper attention to God. Centering our lives on God is the best things we can do and it will change us and the world we live in.

An effect of loving the living God that is under appreciated but culture changing is the generosity that develops in people’s lives. Every time data is collected about generosity and how people feel about it people of faith always seem to be the most generous. When we take a close look at God I think we can understand why people of faith act this way. The God we find in the Bible is a generous God who loves to give and who will die to bring healing to all humans. The verse we are looking at touches on this concept is a very real way. God wants to give His teachings to us and that is no small thing. Our God takes the time and effort to explain to us how the universe works. How can we not love a God like that and respond to His generosity by being generous ourselves. We so often underestimate how critical the teachings God gives us are to our well-being. When we treat God’s teaching as not important or of low value we miss out on the wonder and glory of God. The teachings of God are a gift of unbelievable value and we need to treat it that way. Just obeying what God teaches us is not enough because those ideas and concepts God teaches are world changing. Because we cannot physically touch God the best things we have to know about God is the teachings God gives and we need to treat them as holy not because they in themselves are holy but they are holy because God gives them to us. God gives us these rules because we need them and so God gives us this wonderful gift and what do we do with it? Most of the time we try and ignore what God teaches or we try and avoid the ideas God hands us because they get in our way. Best of all is that God’s teachings revel who He is. Again we cannot know God because He is so far from who we are but God wants us to know Him so He gives us this teachings so we can lean about who God is. To have real faith can only come when we spend time in God’s teachings because that is where we find out who God is and how He thinks. Learning how God thinks is another gift from God because without it we would never know how sinful we are or how much God is willing to do to save us from our sin. Jesus only makes sense if we know what God has to teach us. There is this wonderful thing God has done for us and so often we treat it as if it is a burden when in reality it is a gift given to us by the God who created the universe.

The strength of God’s teaching is very powerful and has a far reaching impact on everyone that is even close to it. It is known that even if a person does not believe in God but they begin to practice the concepts that God lays out they will find that blessing will flow. Recently even some atheist have begun to advocate for the return of “traditional wisdom”(replace that with the Bible) because they have seen that there is something about what God has given to us. There is just something about God’s word that changes things for the better. In our verse it is put in such a great way, “my decisions will be like a light.” Think about that for a second. We sit in darkness and we lack the knowledge to really understand the world. Just some basic insight and wisdom would make our lives and the world a better place but God goes above and beyond and gives us such teachings that it lights the world. From this we have God pointing to Jesus who is the light of the world. The idea is that Jesus is all of the teachings of God in one person and so Jesus radiates this light that exposes both our sin and the glory of God who wants to save us from our sin. It should astound us that we hold in our hands the greatest truth ever told and that truth lights up not just our lives but the very world. It needs to be made plain the urgency in this message. People everywhere sit in darkness and feel the despair that sin brings and we as people who know the God whose teaching brings light and we sit on it as if it had no power. God has done His part and we now need to let the teachings of God light our lives and then shine that light out into a dark desperate world. There is such joy in the word of God and it tells us about a God who loves us and wants to save us from our sin. Let us live by the decisions God teaches because to do other wise is foolish and disastrous.

This verse revels the nature of God in such a clear and fantastic way that it is hard to appropriately digest it in so few words. I have talked about how when God repeats something we need to pay attention to what is being said so when God calls to us and says listen to me twice we need to stop and hear what God has to say. But the real power of this verse and our faith in God is in the last three words, “to all people.” All the teachings and the light it produces are not meant by God for a select few but it is the desire of God for everyone to know the hope and peace God gives. No one is excluded from the salvation that God offers to give us from the destruction of the sin we have been part of. Anyone who chooses to accept the teaching of God will find the same light that billions of people over the millennia have found. In these words is reveled the glory of God and the hope that Jesus Christ brings to every human heart. How can anyone turn down what God gives us for free. And what tells us so much about God is that the teachings He gives us are not hidden in some deep place. There is a reason that the Bible is the best selling book in all the world and that it has been translated into so many languages. God gives us this because He loves us and wants us to know how to get through this world and that is why so many people seek God and a lot of people fear the teachings of God.