Sunday Sermon
Teaching of the Lord
Isaiah 54:13
All your children will be taught by the Lord, and they will have much peace.
Words fascinate me and they always have. Maybe that is what I am a sesquipedalian(a person who likes long words) but despite my love for words I sometimes struggle with words related to God. One of the hardest words that I deal is the word joy which seems like such a simple word but I find it one of the hardest things to really understand. Most people think of joy as happiness or at least a form of happiness but when I look at scripture I don’t find that to be true. In Nehemiah chapter eight verse ten we are told that the joy of the Lord will make us strong and that phase happens when people are weeping because they know the extent of their disobedience. Then there is Hebrews twelve verse two that tells us Jesus suffered on the cross because of the joy of the Lord. Some people say that joy is a gift from God but I am not sure about that. I can say that joy is a product that comes from a relationship with God. In short the closer we get to God the more joy we find in our lives. We will also find that joy is part of the nature of God because we find it at the throne of God so it is not something that passes away when we move to stand in the presence of God. When I was growing up, I was taught a formula for joy that went this way, Jesus, others and then you. I don’t want to disparage that formula because I do think it holds some ideas that are worthy of considering but I also don’t think a formula answers the basic questions about what joy is and how it works in our faith. If you have gotten this far I need to tell you I don’t have a definitive definition for joy yet but I do know that it results from us being connected to God and it is not something that we make happen but it occurs naturally as we build trust in the God who loves us. In short we should not be chasing joy we should be seeking God and from that joy will automatically arise. Going back to that verse in Nehemiah I want us to see that Nehemiah believes that finding joy in the Lord builds our faith and helps us become the people God wants us to be. It is clear that all humans seem to feel the need for joy and that it is built into each and every person to want joy but joy seems to be an elusive thing and that is because it is so closely related to who God is and so without God real joy is hard to find and even more hard to sustain. Out of all of this if we get just one thing it should be that if we want real joy that stays with us we need to seek God with all of our strength. What I love about God is that He has not left us without information about Himself nor do we have to guess about who and what God is all about. Part of our joy is that God tells us about Himself and invites us to come to Him and to know Him. This is all I need to know about joy at this time in my life.
Part of the work of our faith is that connecting to God seems so easy and yet also hard at the same time. Human hearts long for God, there is not a culture that we know of that has not worshiped a god of some kind. We as humans know that the universe is bigger then us and that it seems like things are not just random but there is a force at work in the world. The problem with all of that is we don’t know who that is or what that force is. For a lot of people therefore it is just easier to ignore God and pretend we don’t need God in our lives then to have to figure out God. Our problem with this is that when things go wrong and we are in pain we look to God and want answers from Him. The book of Job speaks to the human condition because Job asks the questions we all have. Job knows without a doubt that if he can just talk with God everything will be okay but the question is how we speak to a God we cannot see and we have no control over. That is where God steps in because God knows we have questions and we want answers to the pain and suffering of life. In the Bible God speaks to us and tells us about Himself and about life and how life works. God does not hide from us and wants us to know about how to live our lives. If we want life to work God has to be at the center and so God tells us about Himself and He gives us a path way that will help answer the questions we have about life. What is really great is that God tells us why life is so hard and does not hide how terrible things are because of our sin. This is another reason people want to avoid God because to accept that God is real means we have to take responsibility for our sin and what we have done wrong. Thus our hearts long for God and we want God to deal with the broken things in our lives but we don’t want to answer for how we have lived and so faith is both easy and hard. What a joy it is that we have a God who loves us and seeks to help us build the faith we need in the living God.
I have to admit I hated my eighth grade science teacher. Not because he was a bad teacher but because he was a good teacher. To say I was a good student would be an understatement. Not that I was stupid but learning always came easy to me and so whenever learning got hard I would just skip it and move onto something else. This teacher saw what I was like and worked with my parents to push me harder then I had ever been and I hated it. It also must be said that I thank this teacher for what he did and the lessons I learned from him about how education takes work if I want to grow in knowledge I have to do the work it takes. Believe it or not this has had its greatest effect on my faith in the living God. To build the trust in Jesus that I need for my faith to work right it takes learning about who God is and how God works. This education sometimes requires effort on my part that is not always easy. That is why the verse we have means so much to me. The opening phrase is such a wonderful thing to consider. We are told that the Lord Himself will teach us and when I think about that I get excited. Our God does not want us to live our lives ignorant of what our faith means and so God has worked to provide material to teach us. But wait there is more, Jesus tells us that one of the purposes of the Holy Spirit is to teach us everything we need to know. God has committed considerable resources to teaching us about Himself and how the world works. The purpose of all those laws and rules are not to force obedience but to teach us how to live. What I like about what God is doing is He explains the cost of sin and tells us how bad it is not to destroy us but to bring healing to us. None of those teachings are meant to harm us because if God wanted to harm us He would just leave us alone and let us destroy ourselves. What God wants to do by teaching us is to bring healing into our lives and equip us to live lives of meaning and purpose. Just like school teaches us to understand the world around us and to help us operate in it so is the Bible there to make our lives better. That people hate God is the same reason I hated my teacher, they both ask of us things that we need to learn but we don’t like to do. It is hard to be honest and it requires strength to fight back the evil temptations of our hearts and God knows that so He offers to teach us. This is the God I want to worship and serve and I want others to trust God enough to learn from Him and to know how good and right what God has to say is.
The teaching God gives is powerful and it is also hard. God does not hide the fact that what He teaches has real struggle with it. Humans are broken people and God asks us to fight the evil inclinations of our hearts because they only lead to destruction. In the second phrase of the verse we find a little secret that will help us begin to live as God teaches and that is that God offers peace to those who live by what God teaches. Scripture makes it clear that God does not want pointless obedience to some arbitrary rules. God gives us principles, ideas and concepts not for obedience but by living by those things we will find a deep sense of peace in our lives. When Jesus speaks about loving people. He does it so we will find peace and joy in our lives. Rules about being generous to the poor are not to take wealth from us but to make us richer in ways that are healthy. For me the Ten Commandments are a marvel to the human condition because God explains to us the fundamentals of how to live as people who are good and righteous. All of this teaching from God is to bring peace to our lives. The price for that peace though is that we have to give up our evil desires and adopt what God has to teach us. If trading my evil heart for a heart that is filled with peace I am all for that. There are going to be times where we will have to trust that what God says it true because it is hard to overcome our selfish concerns to live by what God teaches. Knowing what God has to say only works if we are willing to then live as we are called to do and so we need to choose what we will follow, either our evil hearts or a righteous loving God.
A central idea behind the Bible is that though it was written by men what was given to those men was from God and that is so important. The desire of God to teach us is a critical part of what our faith is all about. Our trust is not in obeying some rules but in trusting in the God who tells us those rules. God does not make up some rules just to test us but He gives us those things because God wants us to know how the universe works and by living with the idea’s God teaches we have a peace in our lives we cannot get any other way. The peace is not in what God teaches but in God Himself. What God teaches us tells us about the God who gives us that peace. Spend time letting God teach us so we will know the God who loves us and we will then develop the trust we need to have in this God. Seek God by learning what He teaches and we will be people of real faith and peace.
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