Isaiah 40.12-31 John 10.1-17
A Sermon preached in Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 21st February 2021
Last Sunday we asked the question, Is God real, and gave some reasons for believing he is. Today I wish to ask two more questions: Which god is the true God, and what is he like?
Lorraine and I lived for some time in India, up from Bombay. For the midterm break we took an overnight train to Bangalore and visited some of the surrounding sights. Our bus stopped at a famous Hindu temple and we were encouraged to go in. It was like an underground cavern. Entry was by a long stone passage lit by burning torches. Our son, Daniel, was three and went everywhere on my shoulders, so he and I ventured in. At the end of the passageway was a large room with a statue of the god: a giant black bull. The priests wore loincloths and nothing else. But before we reached the inner shrine, Daniel pulled at my hair and said, “Daddy this is an evil place; take me out!” I did. I sensed God was at work in him, and his spiritual perceptiveness was sound. That place had been designed to instill fear in people.
India is full of gods; some are kind and some are cruel. You can choose which suits you best. The favourite in the region where we lived, is Ganesh, the elephant god. Hindu thinkers will tell you they are all manifestations of the great Oneness. No one minds which god you choose. It only becomes offensive when someone—a Muslim perhaps, or a Christian—claims that their God is the only true God and all others are false.
The Bible tells us there was a time when people knew the one creator God. When Abraham came to Canaan about 2000BC there were still some who believed in the one they called “God Most High.” Abraham acknowledged the priest-king of Jerusalem, Melchizedek. When the Israelites came back to the land 400 years later idolatry had taken over. This was the culture of the ancient near east from which Hinduism developed.
Idolatry is a very natural thing. An atheist may tell you humans invent gods; they do! Most people in the world have a sense that there is a supernatural power or powers. It is natural then to give them names and faces—or to construct a mental image. Have you ever heard someone say, “I like to think God is …” “My God would never hurt anyone,” a Jewish girl told me once. She had obviously never read her Bible; she was making god to be what she wanted. I grew up believing in God, but he was a plasticine god: what I liked he liked; what I didn’t like he didn’t like. I had made him up; he was an idol. St John in his first letter says, “Little children, keep yourself from idols.”
One problem about a false god is that they can’t help you when you most need them. Karl Heim was a physicist, doctor, theologian, who lived through the Hitler era. People made Hitler into a god. They called him “the Leader”— loved him, trusted him, obeyed him. He held the power of life and death; he could do no wrong. While everyone was following him, it seemed like he had enormous power. But Karl Heim observed that the power was actually coming from the worshippers themselves. When men were dying in the snow around Stalingrad there was no one to help.
The question we should ask, then, is, Which god is God? When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush and sent him back to Egypt to demand the release of the Hebrew slaves, Moses’ very natural question was, “Who shall I say sent me?” His people had lived for four hundred years in a land of many gods, just like India. Which of them was speaking now, and sending him on his mission? God then said a strange thing. “I am who I am,” he said. “Tell them ‘I AM,’ sent you,”— if they want a name, tell them my name is YAHWEH, which in Hebrew sounds a bit like “I AM”. He also said, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” In this way he made it clear that he had also revealed himself to these men. The promises he made to these men were his indeed.
So, what I said last week I say again. Faith in God is only possible because God has made himself known, and made promises about the future that are good. Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism, Marxism and big S. Secularism, Christianity is what it is because the living God has made himself known. This is one reason we cannot just change things to suit the changing culture, as people want us to do.
So, if God has made himself known, what has he said about himself: that is the next question we come to. I am sure some of you feel uncomfortable when I repeatedly referred to God as “he.” That is because “I believe in one God, the Father, Almighty …” That is what the Nicene Creed says. It specifies that there is only one God, because that is what he revealed about himself to Israel over a two thousand year period. He has also made himself known as Father and speaks of himself as “he”. I do not know all that is meant by that, but if that is how God refers to himself, it would not be right to think of him otherwise.
Jesus told his disciples, “When you pray, say, ‘Abba (Father) …’” This is a remarkable thing. If you go to the beach at Tel Aviv, two words will rise above all the noise of Hebrew-speakers having a good time: “Imma” and “Abba”—“Mummy” and “Daddy.” Jesus spoke of God as his Abba, and he invited his disciples to do the same.
People will tell you all religions are the same; they are not. Muslims, for example, do not call God “Father.” Allah is distant, majestic, unknowable. Muslims do not believe you can have a personal relationship with God. They see that as part of the Christian heresy—it is offensive to them. But it comes straight from Jesus, and is consistent through every strand of the New Testament. In the reading from John 10, Jesus speaks over and over of “his Father.” “The Father knows me and I know the Father,” “the Father loves me because I lay down my life for his sheep,” “the Father has entrusted me with a mission,” “the work I do, I do in my Father’s name,” “no one will ever snatch my sheep from my Father’s hand.”
There are two sides to God’s fatherhood: he is Father to his eternal Son, and he becomes the Father of Jesus’ followers. J.I. Packer has a chapter about adoption in his book, Knowing God. The Bible teaches that God the Father adopts us when we trust in Jesus and makes us his own children. Packer says this is perhaps the greatest of all God’s blessings, greater even that the truth of justification. Justification teaches that because of Jesus’ death we are forgiven and made in God’s eyes as though we had never sinned. This is wonderful, but it is possible to think that we could be forgiven and then reinstated as God’s servants. That would be kindness enough. But God goes firther and takes us into his very family as his beloved sons and daughters. This is indeed a wonderful truth, and it is unique to Christianity. No human religion would dare to claim such a thing. Only because Jesus who is the eternal Son of God invites us to share sonship with him can we dare to think such a thing. As St John puts it: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” (1 John 3.1)
So, what kind of God do we have as our Father? To answer this we would need to explore the whole Bible. Today all we have time for is that one word, “almighty.”
It seems obvious that if God created the universe he must be very powerful. That is so, but when it comes to the ordinary things of life we become doubtful and confused. A chap once stood up when I was in the middle of preaching and said, “Can God heal my epilepsy?” It’s when faced with questions like that that we hesitate. What sort of Father do we have? Rabbi Kushner says there are many things that God would like to do, but he cannot: he is a loving God, but he is not all powerful. But this is not the Bible’s answer.
When God spoke to Abraham, he introduced himself as “El Shaddai”—”God Almighty,” “the possessor of heaven and earth.” As I said, if God created the universe, there is nothing beyond his power to do, is there? But Abraham thought there was. God had promised him and Sarah a son, which looked impossible back then when Sarah was seventy, and when she was nearing ninety, and God hadn’t spoken for fourteen years, it seemed impossible, so they had a surrogate son through Sarah’s maidservant. But that was not God’s plan and Sarah became pregnant at the age of 90. “Is anything too hard for God?” God said to her when she laughed at the impossibility. The same words were spoken to Mary when she was told her childless cousin had conceived: “With God nothing will be impossible.” We are happy that God created the galaxies, but when it comes to something close to us—can God cure my cancer, can God get me through this exam—we instinctively think it is impossible. But the Bible teaches that God is almighty. The only thing that restrains him is his own will.
“Ah! There is the catch,” we think. God may be almighty, but is he going to help me? Once again the Bible comes to our aid. There is a wonderful passage in Luke where Jesus talks to his disciples about fear: “I tell you my friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.” At that time Jesus was making many enemies—powerful enemies. John had been executed. His disciples were getting scared. They were also worrying about money—their future and the wellbeing of their families. Jesus ttold them not to worry on either score. God is in control and they can trust him: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Fear not, you are of more value than many sparrows.” Can it be true that God cares about every tiny bird and has its destiny in hand? That is a power we don’t so often think of. When I think of power, I think of the cyclone, the earthquake, the hydrogen bomb, the ocean stirred into turmoil by the power of the wind. But the Bible also sees God’s power in holding back the waves: “Thus far, and no further! Here shall your proud waves be stilled.” He protects the world from the destructive powers of earthquake, flood, fire and plague. As a child I loved bonfire night. Our neighbour had a dry cleaning business and would throw buckets of old dry cleaning fluid on the fire. It was spectacular. But far more impressive than that whoosh of flames going up into the sky is the motor car engine that can control the burning of the fuel and drive hundreds of kilometers on one bucket of petrol.
God’s power brought the universe into being. God’s intelligence designed the laws that would shape it and make the world a place we could live in. And God’s intelligence and power rules everything from the greatest to the least. “Even the hairs on your head are numbered,” Jesus goes on to say. He doesn’t tell his disciples they won’t come to any harm. They may kill you. God may not intervene at the last moment and rescue you; he didn’t for his own Son. But know, if you have to face death, or anything else you may dread, that the God who has determined the destiny of the sparrow has you in his hands and is working out his perfect plan for your life. “All the days ordained for me was written in your book, before one of them came to be,” said King David. St Paul says of God that he works everything according to his will and plan. He made the galaxies—all that energy, heat, and power—he also made our world a place of life, and he protects it. Never again will a flood destroy the whole earth. It could. All it would take is for an area of the earth’s surface under the sea to rise; it has happened before, but God has promised it won’t happen again. He also rules the chaos of human instability. He establishes rulers and puts them down, he rescued Israel from Egypt, and brought them home from Babylon—one day he will establish them with a home in a new world. He raised Jesus from the dead as stage one of that new world. And he will raise you up by the same power. In the meantime, he superintends every detail of your life. “All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” I am quoting Paul again. There is a lovely thing in that talk Jesus had with his disciples that is recorded in Luke 12. He encourages them not to fear in the face of human persecutors. He also addresses the natural fears they had because they had set out to follow a homeless wanderer. “Look at the birds,” he says. “God feeds them.” “Think about the flowers! God dresses them better than Solomon ever dressed, and decks the pasture with their beauty, though they are here today and gone tomorrow.” But when he turns from the animals and plants and addresses us, he is not God anymore, but our Father: “Your Father knows you need these things. Seek his kingdom and all this will be given to you as well.” God is real, my friends—the one living and true God, who is what he is— unknowable except as he has revealed himself. Powerful beyond our imagination—powerful to create a billion galaxies, power and intelligence to superintend the movement of every electron, wisdom to determine how to save a human race determined on self-destruction, power to create a healed world—a renewed universe. Power and wisdom to make a place for you—superintending every detail of your life to the point that Jesus can say of you: “This sheep of mine hears my voice and they follows me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” It is this last statement that we will begin to explore in two weeks’ time. Next Sunday we will explore more closely what it means to believe that God created the heavens and the earth.