Sunday Sermon

 

What Does God Want

Isaiah 58:5

This kind of special day is not what I want. This is not the way I want people to be sorry for what they have done. I don’t want people just to bow their heads like a plant and wear rough cloth and lie in ashes to show their sadness. This is what you do on your special days when you fast, but do you think this is what the Lord wants?

In the book of Genesis during the creation we find the making of mankind and the thing that always stands out to me is how God handles what He does with humans. All the other things that God makes God just speaks and they exist but God takes special time and attention when creating humans. We humans are created by the hands of God and that is something that we need to think about because it has profound effects on who we are in this world. But that is not even the best part of what God does. Not only are we created by God’s hands but then God breath’s his breath into us. There are thousands of books written on this single event and that is as it should be. From the very start humans are different then any other thing in creation and we need to grasp just how important that is. God made us differently then anything in creation which means God did that because we as humans have a special relationship with God that nothing else in creation has. Dealing with this simple fact should be a fundamental part of what it means to be human in a world that seems to be confused by who we are and what we are all about. Before we work though anything else we have to either recognize that humans are unique to the formation of the universe or we have to reject that and believe that we are just smarter animals. This basic question is where faith all begins. Either we are a God breathed and a hand made creation which means we as humans fill a peculiar role in the universe that is like no other or we are just some random event in a very large universe. Once we settle that issue how we deal with God becomes a lot simpler. What is interesting is that every human feels this uniqueness in the deepest part of who they are. The only way to over come this feeling is to have it taught out of us. Our relationship with God is not just something we have made up to make ourselves feel important in a vast cosmos that seems to not care about us. This concept of the creation of mankind sits as the beginning point of an exploration of what it means to be human. As we study who we are we find this basic idea that we are connected to something bigger then ourselves. We were built to have a relationship with the living God and when we ignore that or we don’t believe that we are left with no real hope of understanding anything about who we are as humans. God calls to us and speaks to us about what we are and wants us to know how cherished we are by Him. Being made in the image of God carries wonder and hope that will change us if we will accept the call of God on our lives.

The entire Old Testament is a work of God reaching out to people. Notice how God deals with people both individually and as a group. God speaks not about power and authority but about what humans need to get by in this world. The Ten Commandments is about God explaining to humans how the universe works. All of the prophets are God speaking to people because they are headed into problems and God wants them to know what is wrong. Then we jump to Jesus. God becomes human and lives with us and suffers as a human because humans need help. There is no need for God to do this except that God cares deeply about us as humans and wants to save us from ourselves. We have a God who intervenes in the work of humans and that tells us how much God thinks of us. Humans seem to want to destroy ourselves and God seeks to try and stop that at every point. I say all of this because I want us to comprehend the unfathomable love God has for His creation. Once we see how much God loves us and how far God has gone to prevent us from being wrecked by our choice to reject God’s teaching we build an understanding of who we are. Learning who we are by knowing God and what God has done for us should shape how we think about ourselves and God. Looking to God to know who we really are can set us on a path to a deeper appreciation of who we are. God wants us to know how special we are but we have to accept who God is and God’s role in our lives if we are to know what is real and true. Learning to trust God has to start with knowing how God thinks about us and what God longs for us to be. Being people who know this information will change how we live and what we think.

In chapter twenty one of the book of Revelation John, the writer of the book, describes the New Jerusalem and one of the things that has always struck me is that John describes what is not in heaven because what is in heaven is so beyond our understanding. There are lots of things about God that are so far out of our reference of our reality that we have a hard time dealing with. Thankfully God spends a considerable amount of time and effort telling us about Himself and how the universe He made works. This is so helpful because we don’t have to guess about who God is and what God is doing. That is the point the verse we are looking at is making. In our verse we have God telling us what He does not want and I like that about God. We as humans tend to want to do a little as possible and we want the world to center on us but this verse tells us that those ideas are wrong and dangerous. The people God is addressing in this verse are not thousands of years in the past but God is speaking to every human heart so they will get what God is doing. In this verse we have people pretending they are sorry for what they have done and God calls them out on it. What God is doing is speaking to people who are going through the motions of repentance but have not changed their hearts. Over and over God says He does not want people who just go through the acts as if that makes a difference. That God speaks about what He does not want is such a help to understand what God is doing here. The acts that these people are doing are not the problem it is that they are not serious about that fact that they have done wrong things and truly regret doing them. Doing acts of worship is not enough for God because God wants more then acts of worship and God knows that we need to do more. What I really like is we know what is being said here is true. People who just say they are sorry because they are caught doing wrong are not really sorry. Even doing extreme things are worth nothing to God because God wants more. This verse tells us what God does not want and we as humans know what God is saying is true. The question to us is, are we willing to seek to do what God really wants? We are blessed because God tells us what He really wants so we don’t have to guess. It is up to us and we can do the fake stuff and never deal with God but we need to know that is not what God wants.

Here is the issue we have to face, what does God want? We need to know that it is not the acts of worship that God has a problem with but the fact that the acts are empty of any real meaning and purpose. Worse still is when the acts are done because people want to put God in their debt. As humans we need to spend time worshiping God and going through acts that humble us and give glory to God but the purpose needs to be clear. We worship God because we need God and we long to be close to God and doing those acts help us draw closer to God by remembering we are sinners redeemed by God. This then tells us what God wants. Faith is not about us doing some acts, faith means we learn to love the God who saves us. There is nothing God wants more then to be with us and to teach us how to live and that is what God wants. All of this goes back to the garden where humans decided to ignore God and do as they pleased and it ends in the breaking of the relationship with God. The whole point of our creation was to be connected to God and to love him and to have God love us. What God wants is that relationship back. One of my favorite parables Jesus tells is the story of the prodical son. An interesting thing about this is that it is not about the son but about God. The son chooses to reject his father and he takes the wealth his father gave him and he wastes it. That is all we need to know about the son. It is the father who tries to persuade the son not to go. Just know how grieved the father is that his son left and that he knows his son will end up in trouble. When the son returns it is the father that goes out and welcomes the son home and has a feast. This tells us all we need to know about what God wants. We have a God who knows how broken we are and wants to save us from ourselves. God longs to have us choose Him and to find in Him the healing we need and want. To trust in God and to then live by that trust is what God wants. Seek God with all of our hearts because that is what God wants. When we learn to trust God we will than do what God wants and we will find hope and joy in God. God does not stop us from doing acts of worship but God wants acts of worship that reflect our relationship with God. Love God because that is what God wants.

Knowing what God wants helps us learn to love God and to be the people God calls us to be. God wants to deal with the sin that is destroying us. God wants to change the evil in our hearts to truth which will lead us to be loving and righteous people. Developing an understanding of what God wants will teach us about a God who is worthy of praise and worship and will drive us to be the people God wants us to be. Our faith is so filled with hope because we have a God who wants to save us. The Bible is filled with wisdom because God wants us to know how the universe works. We have a God who wants us to know the laws of the universe so we will not be hurt by what we don’t know. These are the things God wants and I am glad God wants those things. Humble ourselves and worship God not in a worthless way but with meaning and with the love God longs for us to have for Him. What a blessing when we know what God wants.