March Sermon of the Month
IS YOUR GOD TOO SMALL?
Text: Isaiah 40:21-31
21 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to live in;
23 who brings princes to naught,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
25 To whom then will you compare me,
or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high and see:
Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
mighty in power,
not one is missing.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
"My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God"?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
30 Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
IS YOUR GOD TOO SMALL?
I recall in one of my early years in ministry hearing another newly-minted pastor preaching in a service at a presbytery meeting. He was analyzing an issue of the day that was particularly controversial in the life of the church, and did a fine job presenting several differing perspectives on the issue that were being heard in the discussion. Then he attempted to turn the corner in his sermon with these words, "Now, on the other hand, from God's point of view..." And I think I almost laughed out loud...and may have said a little prayer asking God to "keep me bold in my preaching, Lord, but to avoid the arrogance of assuming I might be speaking from Thy point of view."
"This saith the Lord," thunder the prophets in the Scriptures, and we might well echo their boldness in proclaiming God's Word, as from other places in the Bible where the Lord makes known his authoritative decrees. But to presume to know God intimately enough to speak from the divine point of view seems to verge on the idolatry that Paul speaks about in Romans 1: confusing the truth about God with creaturely versions of truth. When I read a passage such as Isaiah 40, I am reminded of a little book that someone gave me in the late 1950's, when I was a teenager trying to figure out God. The book was by J.B. Phillips, who also wrote a wonderful paraphrase of the New Testament, and was titled Your God Is Too Small.
How easy it is to believe that because "the one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word of God Incarnate..."(Confession of 1967) and because Jesus was fully one of us and accessible to us - God with a human face, as theologian Karl Barth put it - that therefore we sort of have God in our back pocket, so to speak, to pull out at our convenience and for our own purposes. God created more in our image than we in God's. The problem with thinking we know God too well is that we miss all those redemptive surprises and transforming reversals that God uses to save us from our subtle idolatries...and also from ourselves. The Confession of 1967 declares:
"Human thought ascribes to God superlatives of power, wisdom, and goodness. But God reveals divine love in Jesus Christ by showing power in the form of a servant, wisdom in the folly of the cross, and goodness in receiving sinful men and women."
The exact reversal of all that one would most likely assume about "God's point of view."
Isaiah 40 was likely written to correct two easily misunderstood assumptions about God's relation to Israel, misunderstandings that we as well all-too-easily fall into and stand in need of correction.
+ One is that since God chose the Hebrew people to be in a special relationship with him, they occupy such a central position in God's heart that the other peoples and nations must be content with a secondary place. Not quite the apple of God's eye.
+ The other is that since God's people have experienced the crisis of disaster resulting in spiritual weariness and emptiness, they must have done something to provoke God's disfavor and a reversal of his providential care...that they (or, to bring it close to home, we) have induced a "divine disregard" for their (our) plight.
To these assumptions, the prophet says boldly: "Your God is too small."
* * * * * *
First, the Creator God, El Shaddai, the Almighty One, is no national or local deity; he chooses a particular people to be a light for all people, but he has the whole world on his heart as well as in his hands. No one faith, no one race, no one nation, no one viewpoint can claim to capture the Lord. Expand your vision, says the prophet. "Have you not know or heard? Haven't you not understood? This God sits far above the earth and sees all the people - grasshopper-size - going about their daily life. The earthly powers, the nations and their armies, the emperors and superpowers think they are determining the destiny of the world, the directing of the events of history - but God brings their machinations to naught and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing, just as easily as his dry winds wither the wildflowers and blow them away (Isa. 40:24)." This God is the Holy One who stretched out the heavens, created the stars and planets, knows then all by number and name." Try that, little man... little woman. And you think this God cares only about one little congregation called Israel in this vast universe? You think the Lord loves God-fearing Americans more than Allah-worshiping Muslims or Buddhist Asians or those of no faith at all? This is the kind of idolatry Israel was prone to fall into because God did have a special purpose for them; Isaiah had to warn them of this danger and remind them that to be chosen is not to be elevated but to be elected for a servant vocation.
The problem with thinking that we've got God captive is that then we have to carry God, manage God, defend God, rather than being carried by God from youth to old age and serving God in grace rather than anxious striving. The prophet writing in Isaiah is one of the great satirists of all time, a 6th century B.C. Jonathan Swift or John Stewart; all through these chapters 40-46 he pokes fun at those who think they have their god contained in idols made of precious metals or woods. Just prior to our text today he speaks of the folly of idols - a workman casts it, a goldsmith overlays it with gold or silver...or one chooses a strong hardwood - mulberry wood, maybe cedar or oak - and hires a woodcarver to plane it and carve it and make it look like a god but also like us. Then, he says in chapter 46, they have to carry these heavy objects around, on their shoulders or on their beasts and cattle, these gods who don't carry the people but just stand there unmoving, burdens needing to hauled around from place to place. You can almost hear one of these folks saying, "Marge, we've got to get a lighter god before I get laid up with a hernia." Sharp satire all through the 40's of Isaiah.
But if we laugh at them, we do well to ponder our own faith as well. Is our God too small? too provincial? too burdensome? too heavy? Then we'd do well to recall the God who stretched out the heavens like a tent, threw up all the stars and named them, who sits above the circle of the earth and sees it all and loves all the grasshopper folks of all colors, races, languages and nations. The God who says, "I'll do the carrying" - and finally proves it once and for all by sending Jesus Christ through whom God did for us what we could not do for ourselves.
But there is another sad outcome of idolatry - a God too small - that plagued Israel and can cause us great heartache too. "Why do you say, O Jacob, O Israel, 'my plight is hidden from the Lord...God disregards my predicament.'" It's the idolatry of thinking that we're at the controls of God's caring, and that if we are moving through hard times, it's a sign that we have provoked God into turning off that lovingkindness and providential care. It still attributes God's response to our determination - and that God is much too small, and we become much too miserable, thinking that God has withdrawn because of our lack of faith or obedience. Hard times are hard enough, but how much harder when we believe that God has abandoned us to hard times without a caring thought for our well-being. That would be the ultimate spiritual weariness: bad times...and no God to get us through them; it would indeed be like carrying around on our shoulders a several hundred pound idol, weighting us down and sapping us of all spiritual and physical energy.
God is there for us; "he does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable." I love the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases this section of Isaiah 40:
Why would you ever complain, O Jacob,
or whine, O Israel, saying,
"God has lost track of me.
He doesn't care what happens to me"?
Don't you know anything? Haven't you been listening?
God doesn't come and go. God lasts.
He's creator of all you can see or imagine.
He doesn't get tired out, doesn't pause to catch his breath.
And he knows everything, inside and out.
He energizes those who get tired,
gives fresh strength to dropouts.
Even young people tire and drop out,
young folk in their prime stumble and fall.
But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.
They spread out their wings and soar like eagles,
They run and don't get tired,
they walk and don't lag behind."
Yes, of course... sometimes it is enough to walk and not faint, let alone run and not be weary or mount up with wings like eagles. Whatever we need...God provides; not always what we want or desire. Sometimes we get that...we get what we pray for...and our misery is compounded. God knows what we need...the Lord knows our true heart's desire.
Trust this God. Don't try to cut him down to size or to think he's given up on you. For this great God loves you much better than you love yourself. Amen
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