January 26, 2011
The Only God
Isaiah 40:1-48:22
"His Sovereignty"
I. God is Greater than Our Circumstances 40:1-31
II. God is Greater than Our Fears 41:1-44:28
III. God is Greater Than Our Enemies 45:1-48:22
There is a man who gave his professional business to the Lord. He had hassled over over it for many years. He had wrestled with it and fought for and over it, for more than 2 decades. One day he decided, "I've had it; that's enough!" He had heard from his pastor, that Sunday morning, about the value of turning his entire business over to God. It was when he drove away from church that he decided that he had worried enough about. By the time he got home, he had totally and unequivocally committed his business to the Lord.
That very same night, his place of business caught on fire. He got an emergency call and then he drove down to the building, that housed his business. He just stood, calmly the street and watched it go up in flames. But, the whole time, he had a small, secretive smile on his face, which prompted one of his colleagues to run up to him and question his relaxed attitude, in spite of what was happening. "Man, don't you understand what is happening to you----everything you have worked for all these years, is going up in smoke!"
The man's reply was classic, "Fred, I know exactly what is happening, but it is ok, because this morning, I gave this company to God, it belongs to him, lock, stock and barrel-----and if He wants to burn it up, then that is His business.
Understanding and accepting God's sovereignty, happens, when we are able to take from God's hand, absolutely anything, that He chooses to give us, all the while, looking up, into His face, in love and trust----even in thanksgiving---- knowing that the confines of the hedge, that He has placed us in the middle of, are good, even perfect, no matter how painful they might be, simply because God himself, is the one who placed us there.
His Sovereignty:
The next 26 chapters of Isaiah, which we're going to study, are going to bless our hearts! We are going to bask in the love and blessing and protection and mercy and glory and goodness and provision and hope and holiness and the fulfilled promises of God. But before we can really appreciate the reality, of the truth of these passages and the relevancy of them, to our modern-day lives, and the assurance, that the same promises that God spoke then, have not changed in all the generations since, and the beauty of His words etched into our hearts and minds permanently, in the same way a tattoo artist etches insoluble ink into a person's skin-----I think we need a lesson on the sovereignty and the supremacy, of God.
Because the truth is, if we don't recognize that God is greater than our circumstances and greater than our fears and greater than our enemies and greater than our joys and greater than anything this world has to offer, good or bad-----then we will never be able to know Him, in the way that He wants us to, and we will fall, way short, of the blessings of His kingdom, which, He desires so fervently, to give us, right now.
In one of his letters to Erasmus (the great, scholarly priest who wanted to reform the Catholic Church from within, rather than breaking away from it………) Martin Luther said, "Your thoughts of God are too human…" Erasmus, the great, learned man, that he was, probably resented that kind of rebuke coming from Martin Luther, who was just a miner's son. But it was the truth, then, and its is the truth now! Those men lived in the 15 century, so you would think, that, with all our modern technology and all the millions of books that have been written to explain the scripture and all the "wisdom" that we think our education has broadened our minds to, that we would be smart enough to know and understand and embrace the truth, that God is God and that we are not-------and that He, alone, is beyond anything that has ever been created, especially human beings. Unfortunately, we seem to prefer the vast majority of our preachers and teachers, today, to be like Erasmus------instead of being blinded by the glory of God and falling down on our faces to worship him, we sit back and accept teaching that places Him in the pew beside us. (Last week, I was here at church, in the Family Life Center, at my nephew, Oliver's, 4th birthday-----it was time to go, so everybody was filing single file out the door------I was the last person, because I had the key to lock up------I was in silly mood, (after just being with 16--- 4 and 5 year olds) so I was saying good-bye to everything------"bye lights, bye bikes, by walls, bye tables,------and the last thing I said, with a wave, was, bye God." I wasn't really even thinking, I was just being silly. The daddy in front of me, turned around and laughingly said, "I thought He was going with us!" We laughed but you know, it startled me---it bothered me that I had said it and I didn't know why it bothered me (because I was just playing) until I did this lesson and I realized 2 things about what it was that bothered me, about my behavior: 1.)that I had placed God on the same level, as those inanimate objects. 2.) that I had treated God with such a casual disrespect, in front of a group of parents and small children, that I don't really know and that I have no clue, of where any them stand spiritually).
Most of us, along with the majority of the people in the world, both believers and non-believers, do not really understand who God is-----we think we have a real appreciation for His majesty and His supremacy and His sovereignty, but it is hard for us-------because we live in the United States of America--the greatest democracy in the world--------a country that is ruled for the people, by the people----a country that offers the American Dream and the promise of success to anyone who will work hard----- and we are proud of that fact---as we should be-------but it gives us a false sense of who we are and who God is.
It is right that we see God, as our heavenly Father, who is available for us to talk to 24/7------and it is right for us to see the Holy Spirit as our comforter and our teacher and our guide, who is available, for us to turn to 24/7 and it is right that we see Jesus, as our Savior and our Redeemer and brother and our friend, who is available for us to rely on 24/7-but it is not ok, for us to ever forget, that all 3 of them were present and accounted for and the sole force behind it all, when the world was spoken into reality and when Adam and Eve were formed with God's own hands and were given life with His own breath and were granted a soul in His own image, all by His divine will.
Unfortunately, way too often, we just a catch a glimpse of who God is, so that we can't fully appreciate the privilege and blessing that we have been given, to know our God, because we allow our focus to be taken off of Him and we put it on ourselves----- we don't realize that every word of scripture and every pause between the words, gives an accounting, of our Almighty God. We need to search the scripture and get to know our God. I love what 2 Samuel 7:22 says --and I love the poetry of how it is is written in the King James version----- "Wherefore, thou art great, O Lord God; for there is none like Thee, neither is there any God beside Thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears."
In Psalm 50:21 God says, "these things you have done and I kept silent; you thought that I was altogether like you, but I will rebuke you and accuse you to your face." He was talking to the Israelites, but God could say the same thing about us-----because we don't really know Him like we should. We think that the Lord is moved by sentiment and feelings instead of righteous principle. I'm afraid that we don't really trust His omnipotency and His omniscience and His omnipresence( even though we say we do and we want to), so we find ourselves living in fear, that satan can usurp God's authority anytime that he wants to. My friend Cathy, was talking the other day, about how our plans sometimes are like moving targets, they're subject to change, at a moments notice. Too many of us see God's plan, in that same way, we think that it is subject to change. God's plan is God's plan---and it will happen in the exact way that He has designed for it to happen, when He has decided that it will and it is perfect and it will always bring blessing to those who believe and wrath to those who don't. We also think, that if we acknowledge the power of God, that we will lose our free will and that God will be able to use us, just like a puppet-master uses his dolls. But that is just pride on our part-------God designed us with free-will, from the very beginning----so that we would freely choose to get to know Him, so that we could live in a face-to-face relationship with Him. He doesn't want to have to make us do His will-----He wants us to want to do it. He is a gentleman, He never forces us to do anything.
How much sweeter is it when someone lets us know that they love us by words or actions, without us having to ask them, if they love us or without us having to to bribe them or guilt them, into doing something for us. And the worst thing of all, that we do, is, that we cheapen the Lord's sacrifice on the cross, by treating it like it is a remedy for a cold that we can use if we want to---rather than the great gift to mankind that it is. If we don't know and trust and desire to obey the God that is described to us and made real to us, in the scripture, then we don't know God at all. If we learn the attributes of God and we read the scripture and we start looking for Him, we will find HIm----1st Chronicles 28:9 says "…if you seek Him, He will be found by you…"
The absolute and and universal supremacy and sovereignty of God is plainly spelled out in the scriptures, this is just a few of them:
******************************
1st Chronicles 29:11-12 "Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O Lord is the kingdom; You are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; You are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all." (Notice that this verse is in the present tense------which means that God rules over all things now----not just in the future when He will rule over the new heaven and the new earth)
2nd Chronicles 20:6 "O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hand and no one can withstand you." (Before God, emperors and kings and presidents and popes are nothing more than grasshoppers.)
Job 23:13 "But He stands alone, and who can oppose Him." (God is not a make-believe fairy godfather------made up somewhere in the mind of man to explain the ways of nature--He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords.)
Job 38:1-41:34 (I want you to go back and read this passage, I don't have time to read it to you----but it is an incredible message from God, to Job, describing who He is----- and when we read this passage we discover, just like Job did, that the greatness of God and the privilege of trusting Him, makes the search for answers to life's problems insignificant and unnecessary.)
Job 42:2 "I know that you can do all things, no plan of yours can be thwarted." ( All that He has designed, He does. All that He has commanded, He perfects. All that He has promised He performs.)
Isaiah 40:12-14 "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, or with the breadth of His hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance." (God holds the world in the palm of His hand.)
Isaiah 40: 25-26 "'To whom will you compare Me? or who is my equal?' says the Holy One. Lift your eyes up and look at the heavens: who created all of these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing." (If God named each star, how can we not believe that He has named each one of us with names, infinitely more precious?)
Isaiah 40: 28-29 "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding, no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak." (Our weakest moments can be turned into our greatest feats of strength when the Lord is in control.)
Isaiah 45:5-7 "I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting, there is none besides me. I am the Lord and there is no other, I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I the Lord, do all these things." (There is nothing that is not in God's control.)
Isaiah 46: 9-10 "… I am God and there is no other, I am God and there is none like me I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please." (We can trust that God will keep His promises.)
Psalm 115:3 "Our God is in heaven, He does whatever pleases Him." (He is sovereign over everything because He created all things).
Proverbs 21:30 "There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan, that can succeed against the Lord." (He is wisdom-James 1:5 says "…if anyone lacks wisdom, ask God…"
John 5:17 "Jesus said to them, My Father is always at His work, to this very day and I too, am working." (again this in the present tense-God is still continuing His creative and sustaining work of His creation-the world and everything in it).
John 10:29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, no one can snatch them out of My Father's hand. And I and My Father are one." (Once we are saved, we are always saved-we are secure in the hand of the one and only God.)
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him would not perish but would have eternal life." (only the God of Creation would and could do this, to satisfy Himself, for the penalty of sin, so that we wouldn't have to and He has made it available to every person who has ever been born or who will ever be born.)
John 16:33 "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world." (Only God can make this promise and only God can provide this peace.)
God's supremacy and His sovereignty over the works of His hands is vividly depicted in scripture:
Animals, inanimate objects and human beings all bend to the will of their maker,----- and at His pleasure: the Red Sea parted and the waters stood up like they were walls; the battlements and the towers and the thick walls of Jericho tumbled down in an instant; the sun stood still so a battle, Joshua was leading, could be finished; time was turned back to affirm to Hezekiah, that God was in control; 185,000 Assyrian men were killed in one night without a single word; lions mouths were closed, so that Daniel wouldn't be eaten; fire didn't burn them, when Shadrach, Meshack and Obednigo were thrown into the furnace; a virgin gave birth to the son of God, Jesus chose to come to this earth in the form of a man and He chose to stay on the cross to take the full force of our sin, onto His human body and He chose to die in our place and then God chose to raise Him from the dead so that we will be able to live forever; and finally, miracle of all miracles, the Holy Spirit lives in the heart of every believer and through the work of sanctification changes our hearts to be like God's.
J.I Packer once said that "Knowing God, is a relationship that is calculated, to thrill a man's heart." But our hearts can't be thrilled if we don't Him and if we don't trust His absolute , supreme sovereignty. And the truth is--------the more we know Him, the more we will love Him and the more we love Him, the more we will trust Him, the more that we trust Him, the more we will know HIm. So……..
*Do we know that God is merciful? The Lord is compassionate and gracious; He is slow to anger; and He is abounding in love and faithfulness. His great mercy and love, spares us, from the punishment and death that we deserve. Realizing that we are the beloved beneficiaries of God's mercy, is a very humbling place, for us to be in, because when we have a deep awareness of God's mercy, it will strip away all our selfish pride. It is good for us to understand that God's mercy and human pride cannot coexist. God's mercy is greater than all our needs and all our fears and all our doubts and all our pain.
*Do we know that God is our Father? Psalm 27:10 says, "For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up." It is hard to imagine a parent ever forsaking a child, but it does happen sometimes, because there is hatred and evil in the world--------and even those of us who are cherished by our parents, have to come to the realization that every parent forsakes his child at one time or another------ because nobody is perfect and because everybody fails sometimes and there will always be some situation where we will be let down or we will let our child down. And then, there is the worst forsaking of all, losing a parent to death. God says that when we start to realize that our fathers can't perfectly father us, that's when He will speak to our hearts to tell us what has been waiting all of our lives to tell us-------that He can take us up and can hold our hand perfectly, and will never let us go.
*Do we know that God is Transcendent? Knowing that God is in "heaven" assures us of His transcendence. Just like we can't imagine how far above us the heavens reach, we can't comprehend how far beyond us, that God exists. God said, in Isaiah 55:9, "….as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts"------ and in Acts 17, Paul preached that God is not confined to a particular time and space----that He isn't limited in any way and that He isn't dependent on anything for His existence. He transcends the world as we know it.
*Do we know that God is Just? God couldn't allow sin to go unpunished. He couldn't just forgive our sins and let His justice go unsatisfied. With the death of Jesus God had devised a plan where both His justice could be satisfied and His mercy and love expressed. We like to say that God loved us so much that He was willing to sacrifice His son for us--which is true! And, that love should lead us to worship and adore Him and then to obey and serve Him-but there is anther side to the cross that we have to keep in mind----God guards His justice so much, that in saving us, it was necessary for Him to sacrifice His son, to satisfy it. If we want to really know God, we have to believe that every aspect of His character is perfect. We have to know Him as holy and righteous and just, as well as loving, compassionate and merciful. This is the marvelous wonder of the Gospel. God's greatest act of love was also His greatest act of justice and they met on the cross. When Jesus said, "It is finished…" He was saying that God's justice had been completely and perfectly satisfied.
*Do we know that God is Loving? As a woman, I love Ocean Isle Beach, Pachabells's Canon in D, chocolate covered oreos, my husband Dale, our 3 children and their 2 spouses historical fiction and my passed-away dog, Freckle. I love someone or something because of what I find in them or what it does for me. God isn't like that though. God loves us, for what He finds of Himself, in us. He doesn't love us because we're good--------He loves us, because He is so unimaginably good, that He loves us even in our sin. He doesn't love us because He detects something appealing in our behavior or in our attitude and it prompts Him to respond to us with love. He is the source of love----so He acts---He doesn't react. He is love, without any motive. Does God love us because we spend time with alcoholics and AIDS patients or go on Mission trips or feed the homeless and the hungry or because we spend an hour in prayer every day? or because we are faithful to our husbands or our boyfriends? The answer is no!
If we believe doing good works is a motive for God to love us, then we don't understand who He is. God's grace tells us that we are only loved for one reason and that reason is….that God loves us, period! Every page of scripture, tells us, that God loves us in a way, that defies human logic and human comprehension and human limitations. That is why we can say, with theological certainty, that God loves us unconditionally, just as we are, not as we should be, because, this side of heaven, we are never going to be what we should be. God loves us in the morning sun and in the evening rain; He loves us in broad daylight and in darkest night; He loves us when we mess up and when we get it right; He loves us without caution or regret. If God stopped loving us, then He would not longer be God.
*Do we know that God is Redeemer? When God created the world, He called it "good". He mourns the evil that is destroying it-----and He plans to restore it to its original "goodness" in His time. God, more importantly though, is the redeemer of mankind-he wants to redeem us so that His image, as it is reflected by Jesus, is restored in us, the way it was originally created to be, in the Garden.
*Do we know that God is Vulnerable by Choice? Jesus could have called 10,000 angels to His rescue rather than go to the cross. He chose to die purposely. The heart of the miracle of Jesus' vulnerability is because it was chosen. As much as we try to deny our vulnerability we can't escape it. No matter what we do, there will always be a certain amount of pain that we will have to endure because we are imperfect human beings living in a fallen world. But Jesus, is a different story. All power in heaven and on earth is His. At every point, He had a real choice. He could have chosen an easier path; He could have chosen any option that would have been less painful. We should be moved to incredulous awe, when we let ourselves believe the love that was revealed by His chosen powerlessness.
*Do we know that God is Mysterious? God is unsearchable, unfathomable, ungraspable, untraceable, uncontainable and indescribable! Trying to grasp Him is like trying to wire a mini flashlight bulb, to a lightening bolt. But, at the same time, when we read David's word in the Psalms-----as He tried to ponder the imponderable mind of God------we can see all of God's infinite intellect directed toward us and it should swell our hearts with joy------just like it did David's. Psalm 139:17-18 says, "How precious are your thoughts about me, O God!, they are innumerable! I can't even count them, they outnumber the grains of sand! and when I wake up in the morning, You are still with me."
*Do we know that God is Good? When is God good? Contrary to what we might think, God is good when He convicts us of sin, because He wants to sanctify us. God is good when He disciplines us, because Hebrews 12:6 tells us that He disciplines those that He loves. He even sends testings our way, for our good. Deut. 8:16 says, "In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end." God is also good when He prunes us, when He cuts off what appears vibrant, so that we can be strengthened and will be able to bear more fruit. Instead of giving us what we want, God gives us what will change us into pure vessels for His glory. God's goodness is like the sun. There is never a moment when the sun isn't shining; it has to shine--that is why it was created. Its nature is to give off life and heat. From time to time, clouds can obstruct our view of the sun, and the rotation of the earth can keep us from seeing its light, and the seasons can keep us from feeling its warmth, but the sun itself doesn't move or change. Just like the sun doesn't stop shining, even when it is the darkest part of the night, on the darkest day of the year--God's goodness doesn't go away when we face hard times. Even when situations and disappointments cry out to us, that God couldn't possibly be good and still allow bad things to happen, the truth is------God is, has been and always will be, good! His character never changes. His goodness isn't subject to mood swings, favoritism or getting enough sleep. God is always and only------ good!
*Do we know that God is Holy? At the heart of God's Holiness is His unique distinctness. We could never invent the God of the Bible. He is perfect, pure and spotless. Day and night angels continually worship Him. He is called the Holy One, 58 times in scripture.Even the ground is made holy, by His presence.
*Do we know that God is Beautiful? Isaiah said in 53:2 that there wasn't anything beautiful about Jesus appearance--but when we know Him, we can see a new kind of beauty. We can see beauty, in the way that Jesus loved people and in the way that He listened to them. He is beautiful in the way that we can see Him, even today, reach people who are unreachable and touch people who are untouchable. There is an unexpected quality of surprise in beauty----when we come around a corner and are startled by a full moon hanging in the sky, we can be moved to tears by its beauty-----Jesus specializes in surprising us. His beauty, often, takes our breath away.
*Do we know that God is a Servant? We think that we are important and this makes us consciously or unconsciously, expect others, to serve our needs. But when we recognize that the Lord Jesus is a servant of men, ---that He, the King of Glory, humbled Himself, to wash the feet of his disciples, we should be prompted, to fall to our knees, speechless, to worship Him.
*Do we know that God is glorious? God's glory is His multifaceted perfection put on display for the whole world to see. It is His incomprehensible love, His infinite hatred of evil expressed in His wrath, His tender mercy, His amazing grace, His love of justice, His boundless wisdom, and His iridescent holiness. God glorifies Himself by exercising and displaying each one of His character traits. And, because we have been redeemed, bought with the price of God's love and Jesus' blood, we are the ultimate testimony to God's great glory.
God's Sovereignty and His Supremacy don't always answer the questions that we face, as we walk through our lives. But as we grow and mature in our walk with the Lord and the more we get to know Him------ why things happen or why they don't, stop being so important-----and the important question becomes---- Who!
Knowing that the words "chance and what-if" are not in God's vocabulary, becomes the chain, which anchors our faith in and to Him. That's when we will come to understand that He really does have "the whole world in His hands" and we will begin to Know Him by His character and the attributes that He reveals and we will begin to trust, that He is weaving our joys and our pains and our successes and our failures, into one beautiful and wonderful tapestry, as He works out His will, in our lives.
Author Unknown
"Man's life is laid in the loom of time
the pattern he does not see.
While the weavers work and shuttles fly
till the dawn of eternity.
Some shuttles are filled with silver threads
and some with threads of gold,
While often, all but the darker hues
are all that they may hold.
But the weaver watches with skillful eye
each shuttle fly to and fro,
and sees the pattern so deftly wrought
as the loom moves sure and slow.
God surely planned the pattern:
each thread, the dark and fair,
is chosen by His master's skill
and placed in the web with care.
My life is but a weaving
between my Lord and me
I cannot choose the colors
He works so steadily.
Oft times He weaves in sorrow,
and I, in foolish pride,
forget He sees the upper
and I , the underside.
He knows only its beauty,
and guides the shuttles which hold
the threads so unattractive
as well as the threads of gold.
Not until each loom is silent,
and the shuttles cease to fly,
shall God reveal the pattern
and explain the reason why.
The dark threads were needful
in the weaver's skillful hand
as the threads for gold and silver
for the pattern which He planned.
-
No comments:
Post a Comment