Sunday Sermon

 

Good God

Psalm 118:1

Thank the Lord because he is good. His love continues forever.

A friend of our family lost her husband this year and the grief she feels is over whelming. When I think about the grief, she is suffering with I wonder why anyone would get that close to another person that they would have to deal with the pain of that loss. If you ask her why she would willingly endure such a fate, she would tell you the price of losing the man she loved was worth it because of the love she experienced for forty years. One of the side effects of love is sorrow and there is no avoiding it. Because of sin there can never be real love without the down side of heartache. That is what makes our God so amazing. God loves us and cares deeply for us. We are so blessed to have a God who loves us like He does. The lengths that our God will go to should make us weep with hope and joy. We need wisdom so God fills pages and pages of wisdom for us to learn from. But the most powerful thing God does is grieve over us. Because of sin we have broken our relationship with God and God knows the only result of that is destruction and it hurts God heart to even think about that. Understanding the magnitude of God’s love and the corresponding grief that comes from it will help us grasp what wonderful God we have and it will help us understand the things God does. Why would God love us that much that he would suffer the sadness that flows from us breaking our relationship with Him. It would make much more sense if God just left us on our own and let us suffer the results of our sin but that is not the God we have. God’s grief drives Him to do all He can to save us from our sin and He calls out to us wanting us to know that He is the solution to the issues in our lives. Knowing how much God endures will help us develop a love for God that will reshape us and the world around us. That God chooses to love us and suffers because He wants to spare us from the results of our sin should help us see God in a new light. Our God chooses us and fights for us even though we reject Him. Let it be clear, even though it grieves Him God is going to let us choose between sin and Him and He will honor the choice we make. If we reject Him God will not alter that but God will do everything He can to have us change our minds. The God that made the universe is not silent nor inactive and because he loves us He will do all He can to have use choose Him because He knows any other result is to terrible to consider. Seeking God with all of our hearts should be the natural thing for us because we have this God who will grieve over us and who wants to help us and to teach us how to live with meaning and purpose. This is the God we worship.

There is a verse in chapter four of the book of Jonah that has captured my thinking about God. In verse two of that chapter Jonah complains to God about the nature of God. Jonah explains the reason he ran away when God called him to go and preach the destruction of Nineveh is that Jonah knows God is merciful. Think about that, Jonah is angry that God is merciful and Jonah doesn’t want God to be have mercy on the city of Nineveh. It is so intriguing that Jonah knows the nature of God so well and that God would choose mercy over destruction if God has a choice. At the core of God is this desire to give mercy and to save people from the devastation of sin and that is something what should cause us to fall on our knees and worship God. Mercy is not some small part of God but a fundamental part of the nature of God. Often we talk about God being merciful and treat it like it is just one more thing we know about God but that is so far from what is true. God’s love for us starts with His mercy because mercy means we don’t get what we deserve but we get what we need. Humans deserve death but God in his mercy offers life instead. Despite the lies the enemy has told us God does not want us to die but He wants us to live and it starts with God’s mercy. And now we come back to the book of Jonah. Nineveh was a terrible city that had done evil things and it deserved to be destroyed. But even that evil city was given mercy and Nineveh chooses to accept the mercy of God and to confess their sin and take the forgiveness of God. So because of the mercy of God that the city was not destroyed but allowed to continue for another one hundred years. The mercy of God made Jonah angry and I can see why but I am glad God is merciful because we need mercy from God. That mercy that is part of the very nature of God tells us about who our God is and what He is like and we should give thinks that we have this kind of God. David sings of the mercy of God and I think we can learn something from that.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving, I am struck by the Thanksgiving proclamation by Abraham Lincoln in the fall of 1863. Think about this, war has been ravaging the country for over three years and many people have empty seats at their tables because of this war. For Lincoln it was a terrible time and he carried the weight of all the death and destruction as if he had personally been part of it. It weighted down his soul. Thus in the fall of 1863 Lincoln calls not for a time of sorrow and morning but a time of acknowledging God and thanking Him. The faith that Lincoln had in God humbles me. The verse we have makes it clear that we should be giving God thanks but there is more to that verse. In the chapter of Psalms that we take this verse from it is repeated in the last verse of the Psalm and in verse nineteen we have another statement of thanks to God. The idea that we are to give God thanks is not just something we say because we should but because this verse tells us what is true. We don’t just have a good God we have a very good God because He is righteous always does the right thing and because He is loving cares about us more then we will ever know. As we have celebrated this week of Thanksgiving I hope we have given God the thanks that He truly deserves. Giving thanks because God is good should be a natural thing. The idea that God is good is not some superficial part of who God is but it is at the very core of who God is. All the things God does is because He is a good God. How can we not give God such honor and thank Him for who He is. When I want to honor God for the good God He is I bow down and I fall on my knees and I sing of God’s glory and greatness. Taking time to honor God and to express real thanks to God is such a great part of our faith. And the Lincoln proclamation does not happen in times of peace and plenty but in the third year of a war that still has more loss and pain to give and yet Lincoln calls to the American people to give God thanks. We are called to humble ourselves and to honor God not because things are going great but because God merits an expression of thanks. Thanking God is all about moving away from being centered on ourselves and seeing the God who rules the universe.

The family friend that lost her husband was loved by that man and that is why the loss is so great. To be loved is the thing that every heart desires. One of the saddest things I have ever heard is that someone thinks they are unlovable or that they are not worthy of being loved. The best part of this verse and that greatest reason to give thanks to God is that He loves every human being. Jesus goes to the cross to prove how much God loves us and to give God thanks because He loves us is a tremendous thing. It needs to be clear though that just because God loves us does not mean we are exempt from the price of sin. Being loved by God means that God wants to save us from our sin but we must except that we are sinners and in need of God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness. Now the good news is that God’s love continues forever so the idea is that God will never withdraw His offer of forgiveness until we stand in judgement. When we reject God’s love and His offer to save us from our own sin it breaks God’s heart. Humans are so loved by God that God has given us a manual that explains everything we need to know about how to live our lives. If that is not love, I don’t know what is. God calls to us and invites us to come to Him even though we have rejected Him and have chosen sin. There is nothing that says God has to explain the universe to us. God could leave us alone and let us try and figure out the world but that is not what God does. In that Bible we are told that God thinks of us as His children and I like that idea because I know how I feel about my children. I love my children and worked to make sure they had all they needed to get through life. When they did stupid things we stood by them and helped them deal with the consequences of their actions. This is what God does. Things like God’s grace tells us how much we are loved. Instead of making us pay for our choices God gives us grace and we do not pay the full price for our sin because God knows it would destroy us. If there is any reason to give thanks to God it is because we are loved by God and that love never stops. Let us sing and praise God and express how grateful we are to the God who loves us.

Gratitude is a character trait that has effects deep into or personal lives. There are studies after study that tells us that people who are grateful are more positive, joyful and likable. Learning to be grateful is the starting point for building a life of meaning and purpose. Being grateful starts with appreciating the things around us and knowing the blessings in our everyday lives. But the real power in life is found when we express gratitude to God and tell Him how thankful we are for who He is and what He does. We really start to develop the faith God longs for us to have when we can convey the deep thankfulness we have to the God who loves us and saves us. Speaking words of gratitude for our loving God out loud has an effect on our lives that is hard to describe unless we have done it. It makes us more aware of the God who is in control of the universe and it makes us more willing to live by the ideas and concepts’ God teaches. Give thanks for all things but make it a point to be thankful to God and not just when things are good but like Lincoln in the middle of a war.