Sunday Sermon

People

Isaiah 57:21

“There is no peace for evil people,” says my God.

There are some things in my walk of faith that have troubled me over the years. One of the most crushing problems I had was dealing with God’s anger. As a young man I feared God and worried about His anger a lot. When you read through scripture you find that though God is slow to anger when He does get angry it is a terrible thing. This was a frightening thing to me and it colored much of my faith as a youth. It is interesting that certain times of life help explain who God is and what He is doing. That is what happened to me when I had children. Very quickly I understood God’s anger with such clarity that it moved my faith in a very radical way. God calls us His children and there is a reason for that. It explains how God acts and what God does and when I had children I began to understand some things about God that I had no grounding to do so until then. Parents often get angry with their children when their children act in ways that are harmful to themselves or to others. This is a normal reaction and it reflects how God works. When my son put my car deep into the woods I was angry with him because he damaged property but more importantly I was angry because what he did put himself in danger. I was angry that my son made such s stupid choice and because those choices did not help him but did damage and put him at risk. God feels that same way about us and the choices we make. It is not that God is angry because of what we did but God is angry with us because our choices hurt us and humans are a most cherished thing to God. The anger stems not from hate but love and concern for us. When we grasp this concept, the anger of God changes how our faith works and how we think of God. Humans are so loved by God that God gets angry when we do stuff that is harmful to us and to the people around us. For me this is a God I want in my life and it gives me great hope in that God instead of being afraid of God. Before I had kids my fear of God keep me at a distance from Him because I did not want to feel God’s anger but now that I get what that anger means I long to draw closer to God. It is important to not diminish God’s anger and to know that it is real but that anger is in part what drives God to teach us what is right and wrong and to even go to the cross. Our choices have grave consequences and God knows this more than anyone else and so we need to know that the anger God has is not because we are hated by God but because God loves us and knows the cost of making the wrong choices. I do not want to worship and serve a God who does not care about me and who is indifferent to the choices I make. Thankfully we have a God who loves us enough to get angry when we make choices that harm us and others. To be loved like that is to be loved more deeply and more profoundly then we will ever really understand but being children of the living God means we have a God that loves us like that.

Another part of faith that caused considerable trouble for me was the concept of my guilt. Humans don’t like being guilty because it marks that they have done something wrong and humans hate being told they are wrong. It is easier to avoid the guilt if we just pretend we are not as bad as other people but that is not what God says. From the very beginning God makes it clear that we as humans are guilty and God never lets that concept go. I have to confess that I struggled with my guilt and I think it did limit my faith for a period of time. Guilt is not fun and it feels bad and I only really began to understand how important guilt was to our relationship with God when I spent time studying the book of Romans. As I learned that God’s judgement of our guilt is a precursor to God dealing with our sin it began to open up a deeper understanding of who God is. It is not God’s plan to tell us we are guilty and to leave us alone with that problem but we do need to know our guilt if we are to then change things for the better. Guilt for God is not a permeant state but it is a starting point that God uses to teach us and to help us grasp what is really true and what is not true. Again this guilt is not a form of hate but an expression of God’s love for us. God could just leave us alone and let us die in our sin but that is not the God we have and that is not how God works. To apprehend the level of guilt we have has to be a starting point and it is also a place where God can communicate just how bad things really are. Accepting our guilt is good because it then leads us to come to God and let God save us from our sinful choices. Guilt is an important teaching tool and one of the reason it works is because it has an emotional reaction that helps us face the level of evil we have lived in. God never intends that guilt be a place we live but it is a place we need to begin with so we can then take what God has to teach us with the depth of seriousness it needs. To be loved by God like this is amazing and wonderful and scary all at once.

As believers we spend a lot of time focusing on the joy, hope and peace of God but there is another side of God I want us to know about. In the book of Isaiah in chapter fifty-three verse three there is a phrase in the King James version that speaks to another side of who God is. The phrase is “acquainted with grief” and it speaks to Jesus suffering but I think it also speaks to a whole part of God that we do not consider very often. Our God is aggrieved by our sin and that speaks about the feelings God has about us and our sin. Every so often we get a glimpse of the sadness God feels about the fact that we have chosen to reject Him and life and have embraced sin and death. In the verse that we are considering we get that feeling. This verse is not about God being angry but it is a statement about the sadness of God. We have a God who longs to bring hope, joy and peace into our lives but those who chose evil instead of God will not find any peace and that saddens God more then we can really realize. There is a deep and terrible grief that God feels for every person that decides that they don’t want the God who gives life in their lives. In this one statement we find a God who loves us and who cares about us and who also knows the cost of rejecting God. This verse is not an expression of God’s judgement about people but it is God making it clear the price of those who will not accept the life God gives. If anyone thinks that this makes God happy then they have not spent time getting to know God because God would rather die on a cross then anyone not have the peace that God wants people to have. The terribleness of the cross and of God willing to die there tells us how far God is willing to go to give us life instead of death and peace instead of fear. To be loved so much that God grieves when we choose evil over Him and the peace He gives is such a powerful part of our faith and what makes God who He is. When God gets angry and or God speaks to us of our guilt it is because He loves us and wants us to have peace. I find real faith in a God who feels sorrow for lost people.

One of the first points we need to address when thinking through this verse is that God is making this statement to a small group of people but that is not what is going on here. God is making a general statement about a central principle of how the world works. It is stated here to remind certain people about this concept but it is a general idea that flows from God at the very start of creation. Often people see this statement from God and they believe it does not apply to them because they are not evil but that is not what God says. Because of sin every heart is filled with evil and no one is exempt from this basic rule. God is not condemning anyone here He is just making a statement about reality and how the universe works. What I really like is that is why God makes this statement. There is not reason for God to tell us this truth about His creation but God takes that time and effort to tell us because God wants us to know why we don’t have peace and seeks to direct us to the place where we can find peace. We have a God who loves enough us to tell us the truth which is some of the most exciting information we can have. Yes, we are evil but God knows that and so He does not leave us in that state but proposes a change of state that only He can do. This statement is the starting place of God’s salvation from our sin and I find such hope in this statement. Instead of recoiling from God we should step into the grace, mercy and forgiveness of God and let God remake us into what we should be. Our hope is that God knows the evil in our hearts and has a solution and that is what God is trying to do here. To be loved like we are by God enough to have Him tell us what is true and then to help us move forward is why we are people of faith. Look to God and learn from Him because He is the one who can change us and He is the one who seeks to bring peace to us. Our peace is found in who God is and that leads us to faith in God.

When you think about it what God is really saying is that He wants the opposite of this statement. All of scripture is aimed at us making peace with God because when we do that we will find peace in our lives but is takes being willing to face the evil in our heart and admit we need God’s peace. God longs to fill our lives with peace and what is great is we can have peace in our hearts even when there is no peace anyplace else. The power of this simple statement tells us so much about God and teaches us what is true and what is false. It is up to us, do we have the strength to embrace to truth or will we fool ourselves into believing we are okay and this evil speaks to someone else. The God of creation wants to save us from our own evil which tells us about who we are and is goes a long way to explaining the God who wants to give us peace.