Bible Talks - Family Church (9:45am)
Series: From Darkness to Dawn · Talk No. 3
Do you know better than God?
Sunday, 02 October 2005
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What is your image of God?
Down through the ages there have been all sorts of popular images of God such as the benevolent Santa Claus, an old gentleman with a beard who hands out goodies to those who’ve been good. There’s the stern judge with a constant frown of disapproval; the angry God who like Jove hurls down thunderbolts on those who displease him; or the namby-pamby wishy-washy God who wouldn’t hurt a fly and definitely wouldn’t do nasty things like punish people or send them to hell.
Some people see that the Bible depicts two kinds of god. The God of the Old Testament who is full of judgment and condemnation and the God of the New Testament who is the loving kind father.
If you were asked to complete the sentence “I like to think of God as....” how would you do it? As Christians are often accused of doing, would you create a God in your own image, projecting your own needs and insecurities? Would you give one of those popular images? Or would you try to describe God as he is depicted in the Bible? In our series from Isaiah we will try to talk about God as he reveals himself in scripture, particularly in Isaiah but drawing from other parts of the Bible as well.
Several times in Isaiah 44 and 45 God declares that he is the only God. For example in Isaiah 44:24 we read:
“I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself”
and in 45:5&6:
“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 men may know there is none besides me. I am the LORD, and there is no other.”
This is a powerful theme. God alone is the creator. There were no other agents involved. No Mother Nature, not even the time plus chance of evolution or the blind chaos of the Big Bang, or some sort of cosmic battle between Good and Evil.
Modern relativism tries to say that all gods are really the same while actually believing in none. In Isaiah’s time the nations believed in many gods, but such idols were only creations, things made out of wood or stone. not the creator. There is a nonsense around today, that says that it doesn’t matter what you believe so long as you are sincere – as if sincerity imparted truth. The multi-faith push that tries to say we all worship the same God but in different ways is ignorant at best, but blasphemous at heart. There is only one God – the LORD. YAHWEH, our God, the God of Isaac. Abraham, Moses, and King David, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is the only God who made everything and he is The SOVEREIGN God. He is actually in charge of everything. In Isaiah 45 we see that he even raises up a pagan messiah! In Isaiah 45:1 & 2 Cyrus the Persian is called God’s anointed, that is Messiah. God keeps his promise to rescue Israel, by raising up a messiah, who is not the Davidic Messiah, not even a Jewish Messiah, but the Persian Cyrus. This causes no end of difficulty for Israelite theology, but shows that just as God can use his enemies to punish, can also use them save? This is Really only a problem for people who don’t believe that God rules over everything. Another example of this is in the trial and execution of Jesus. God used Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate and even Judas Iscariot, each acting sinfully, to bring about his purposes of salvation in the death of Jesus.
Our Sovereign God is Lord over all and brings both prosperity and disaster. He’s not just not just the God of the good and nice bits. God brought judgment on Israel before he acted to save them. One of the questions we need to ask ourselves is “Do I have too limited a view of God’s sovereignty? Do I limit it in some way? Are there some areas that I believe are No Go Zones for God?
Scripture shows that God can work through evil and suffering to achieve his good purposes. Yet, always his delight is in good, not in evil – evil grieves or breaks God’s heart. He is always working to overcome evil and create a perfect world.
Another aspect of God's sovereignty that we often get wrong is that God does as HE pleases. Isaiah says that we can’t tell God how he should do his job. He likens us to bits of discarded clay littering the potter’s floor. The clay doesn’t instruct the potter, telling the potter what to do and how to do it. He also uses the metaphor of the baby not being able to instruct its parents on the matter of its birth. God has the right to do as he pleases. He will save his people. You can depend on that but you can also depend on the fact that he will do it his way!
Our God is the SAVIOUR God. Cyrus the Persian is a ‘short-term’ messiah. He fades into the background and the Servant takes centre stage.
The Servant is going to bring Salvation to Israel. Just as God was the Saviour of Israel in the Exodus, so he will do again, but this time salvation will be everlasting. The salvation that Isaiah is talking about has a vision that extends beyond the immediate aspect of bringing the exiled Israelites back to Israel.
It is salvation for all time and salvation to the ends of the earth. There is hope for the nations if they will repent, so it is not just focused on the Jews. God is not racist. His plan of salvation always was and still is for the whole of mankind. This is great news for you and me
Historically, Cyrus didn’t achieve worldwide, eternal salvation. He made a brief appearance on the world’s stage and then faded into obscurity. So, Israel awaited another messiah. This Messiah would have more in common with the God himself, rather than being just another national leader like Cyrus.
We know now that Jesus is the future Saviour that Isaiah was alluding to:
In Acts 4:12, the Apostle Peter calls Jesus the only Saviour. God, in Jesus the Messiah, achieves the promised salvation by working good through evil. The New Testament writers attribute to Jesus the same sovereignty and Lordship that Isaiah uses of God himself.
So getting back to that question I asked at the beginning, what is your image of God? We are to know God as he really is – not as we’d like him to be.
We are to have confidence in God:
· That he will keep his promises.
· That God will save his people.
· That God will work all things for the good of those who love him, as the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8.
· That life is not random and meaningless, our God is working out his purposes.
· That evil is not outside the control of God.
· That God answers prayer.
We can utterly depend on God whatever circumstances we are going through in life.
And finally when we know God as he really is we must come to him with all humility.
God is the great and sole creator of the universe. We’ve just seen that the might of the most powerful nation on earth is helpless before even the weather.
God’s ways are beyond our comprehension. We don’t know how God is going to work out his purposes. He brought about the salvation of Israel from the most unlikely source.
No one would have expected that he would bring about the salvation of mankind by sending his own Son to die on the cross.
So we need to ease up on our arrogance. To stop telling God how he should do things. To stop trying to limit God to being like us. The Bible tells us that we were made in God's image, not the other way around. We must Humble ourselves before him, that he might lift us up.
Let us pray.
