John Newton once wrote, “If you think you see the Ark of the Lord falling, you can be quite sure that it is due to a swimming in your own head.” (Gerald Kennedy, Fresh Every Morning p. 8).
Now I don’t expect you to understand the richness of that statement at this point —- but I hope it gets your attention. If you think you see the Ark of the Lord falling, you can be quite sure that it is due to a swimming in your head.”
Today, I’m going to talk about God. No what’s new about that, you ask. There’s nothing new about it, because we talk about God every Sunday - but I mean, we’re going to really talk about God, We’re forced to talk about him in a very specific way, because we’re continuing to deal with the five chapters of Exodus - Chapters 7 - 12 - which is the story of the plague came upon Pharaoh and Egypt.
The bottom line of what those plagues are all about is the call of the sermon title - LET GOD BE GOD! As If It Could Be Otherwise. Pharaoh and the Egyptians thought it could be otherwise — and while we might not admit it so explicitly, we think it can be otherwise, and that’s the reason we’re giving specific focus to God today.
With tongue in cheek, a poet expressed sort of where we are today or where some of us are.
Of old our fathers’ God was real
Something they almost saw
That kept them to stern ideal
And scourged them into awe
They walked the narrow paths of right
Most vigilantly well
Because they feared eternal night
And the burning depths of hell
Now hell has holy boiled away
And God become a shade
There is no room for him to live
In all the world He made
I sometimes wish that God were back
In this dark world and wide
For though some virtues He might lack
He had his pleasant side.
Of course, it’s tongue in cheek - now Hell has holy boiled away. It’s true isn’t it? How long has it been since you gave any thought to the reality of hell?
I sometimes wish that God were back - we do, now and then, don’t we — wish that he were more explicitly alive in the world. Yes, it is tongue in cheek — but the truth is there.
I sometimes wish that God were back
In this dark world and wide
For though some virtues He might lack
He had his pleasant side
But, back to the plagues, for that is our bottom line the plagues called Pharaoh and the Egyptians and us to let God be God - and someday we’ll realize as the Egyptians did eventually, and as the wandering Jews did, finally, that it can’t be otherwise.
The plagues present a horrible picture of Judgment. Do we need to remind ourselves of these plagues, since we don’t have time-to read these five chapters as a part of the sermon? In the experience of too many of us, God is vague, shadowy thought or being. The Nile River turns to blood and becomes foul, and the fish of the river die. Swarms of frogs overrun the land, filling the houses, even the bed-chambers. Then there came the plagues of gnats and flies, the death of the cattle, then boils and sores breaking out over everyone’s bodies, then a deluge of hail, then came the locusts, literally covering the face of the land, eating all the vegetation that had survived the hail. Then there was darkness that covered the earth. The final plague was the death angel, coming to claim the firstborn of all the land.
It’s a horrible picture, a picture of judgment.
What are the big lessons here?
First, God is God. Redundant though it sounds, it’s the only way to state it. God is God. Our problem is that we give ourselves to gods, instead of giving ourselves to God and life won’t work that way. It can’t. Mister Echart knew the problem. Said he, “I pray God (capital G) deliver me from god (small g). God is God!
That is what the plagues are all about. Not only was God seeking to subdue Pharaoh’s obstinate heart to free his people from bondage, at an even larger level, he was exposing the gods of Egypt as false.
A couple of examples will illustrate. In the first plague, the Nile River is turned to blood. The fertility of the land of Egypt depended upon the overflow of the Nile River to bring it both fertilizer and water. Therefore this river was sacred to the god, Osiris, whose all-seeing eye is found in many Egyptian paintings. Religious rites were held every Spring, when the river brought life out of death.
So, the Nile River was the life-blood of Egypt. But the water was turned to blood. It brought death instead of life. So, what had been a blessing in Egypt was now a curse. This was God’s judgment, and He was saying, I AM God.
The ninth plague was that of darkness covering the earth, and in this plague, God moved against the chief god that was worshiped in Egypt, the sun god, Ra. The sundisk was a symbol dedicated to this Sun god and is the most familiar symbol found in Egyptian ruins. The Egyptians worshipped him ardently. But the plague of darkness brought on by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, showed the utter helplessness of Ra.
We could go on with each plague. Many Bible scholars feel that every plague was addressed to overthrowing the idolatry of a particular god and showing the impotence of that God.
Now go back to John Newton’s word with which we began: “If you think you see the Ark of the Lord falling, you can be quite sure that it is due to a swimming of your head.” Let me share a Biblical story which will enhance the richness of that statement. From the book of Samuel, it’s one of the most difficult yet I think one of the most significant stories in the Old Testament.
“David had been made king and had captured Jerusalem. He sought to bring the Ark of the Covenant up to the Holy City. We’re going to be speaking about the Ark of the Covenant later on in this sermon series, but for now, let me remind you that the Ark was a chest in which the Law God gave to Moses was kept. So David and his men placed the sacred chest on a cart drawn by oxen. As the cart moved along carrying the sacred ark, it was accompanied by host of people singing and dancing as they journeyed to Jerusalem the Holy City. It was a joyous occasion, a triumphal profession.
At one place on the journey, the oxen drawing the cart stumbled. That upset the cart, and it looked as if the Ark was going to fall off. A man named Uzzah was moving alongside the cart, and seeing what was about to happen, he put out his hand to steady the ark and to keep it from falling he immediately fell dead. That tragedy made a great impression on the people; they believed that Uzzah was stricken by the Lord for putting his hand on this holy object.
There are many ways to interpret the story, but I like the way my friend, Bishop Kennedy, was able to cut through stereotypical efforts to explain away mystery and to solve the problem of the sovereignty of God. He said the story was saying that there are some things “which are not to be manipulated or interfered with by human beings.” There are some things in life which are not for us to adjust and not for us to arrange to suit our wishes.
Surely (in this story) we are being told that not every reality is amenable to our desires, and that if a generation assumes it has the right to arrange everything to its convenience that generation will die. There are eternal truths which cannot be amended. (Gerald Kennedy, Fresh Every Morning, p. 2).
Now do you see why I began with Newton’s word: “If you think you see the Ark of the Lord falling, you can be quite sure that it is due to a swimming in your head.” You see God’s Ark does not fall. God is God. God’s sovereignty cannot be violated. God has an ultimate and an unchanging will which we humans cannot manipulate. So, that’s the first big lesson of today. God is God.
When we refuse to recognize that, sooner or later some plague will do us in. And that leads us to the second big lesson.
II
SIN AND SUFFERING
The connection between sin and suffering.
Some years ago, there was a cartoon in The New Yorker that showed two obviously successful men visiting at a cocktail party. One of them says, “I’ve learned a lot in 63 years. Unfortunately, most all of it has been about aluminum.”
We may have learned a lot in our life, even a lot of doctrine and theology, but unfortunately most of us have never learned that there is a connection between sin and suffering. If we’ve learned it, we don’t act as though we know it. We continue blithely on our way, living life as we please to live it, giving in- to the passions and desires of our lives, forgetting that there is a day of reckoning not in terms of judgment on some final day - though that is certain but even now.
There is a connection between sin and suffering.
When John Birkbeck was our houseguest a couple of weeks ago, he shared a story out of his own ministry which expresses the throbbing reality of this truth. He was in his study one day when a young woman burst through the door unannounced. You could tell that the weight of the world was upon her. She began to share with John, wanting to hear from John the promise of God’s forgiveness. John shared with young wisp of a woman at length, was as loving a pastor as he could be, and the heavy burden of guilt and condemnation was lifted from that young woman’s heart. She felt herself forgiven - felt that if she were the only person in the world, Christ would have died for her sins.
When that kind of catharsis had taken place, and the forgiveness of God was a reality in her life, she expressed her relief and her joy, then she said, “Does that mean I won’t have the baby.” And John had to reckon with her about the effect of her sin. She was not asking the question if she could have an abortion that was not even a possibility it was a more naïve question. Did the forgiveness of God annul the result of her sin?
And she had to deal with the connection between sin and suffering.
In our modern day, another factor has entered the situation. Some refuse to have their babies – in fact abortion on demand allows nearly a million of unwanted children aborted each year. By far the majority of these abortions have nothing to do with physical health, with rape or incest. The pregnancy is the result of sin and immorality run rampant. Sex has become the plaything of selfish people bent on satisfaction and pleasure, the symbol of a world that has lost any sense of the sacredness of sexuality and the preciousness of persons. People use each other, then cast each other aside almost as casually as throwing away the wrapper of a candy bar that has temporarily satisfied our appetite. Then the lives that are conceived as a result of our selfish passions don’t fit into our lives; they interrupt our plans; they would be a constant bother, a burdensome responsibility - so we abort new life.
I believe the next few decades are going to reveal suffering we’ve never dreamed of - suffering of people who have taken this easy route of abortion to deal with what in its best light may be labeled an irresponsible life-style, and which, at its worst and probably in its most truthful description – must be labeled a life of sin. The mental, emotional, and relational suffering that is going to come from this is going to occupy psychiatrists, psychologists, and ministers for years to come.
Dr. Ray Sexton, a psychiatrist in our own church, has done studies which reveal this suffering already. In an article based on his research, Ray concluded: “No amount of rationalization, intellectualization, or humanity considerations can receive the overwhelming guilt is present at the unconscious level as the result of abortion.” I’m sure he would agree that it’s only the tip of the iceberg is touched by him and those who worked in this field. This rage continuous rampant, the suffering is going to be intensified.
This is only one area where the truth cannot be played with, much less denied. There is a connection between sin and suffering.
A dear person in my life confesses it almost every time we get together. His suffering from a divorce that was the result of selfishness and pride and lust gets worse almost every day because the pain of lost family love plagues his soul.
Another friend who had given himself to ordained ministry followed the distorted desires of his flesh, sinning to the point that he couldn’t live with himself, so he gave up ordination. His is a dynamic Christian now, but still bears the pain of that sin long ago and he is miserable not living with his ordinal call. I could go on, but you know, sure you know in your heart of hearts, because most of us have experienced it firsthand. We can’t sow to the wind without reaping the whirlwind. There is a connection between sin and suffering.
Thus you have the prophetic call throughout the Bible: Return to the Lord “Let justice run down like waters, and righteousness as an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24). And if that call of God through Amos doesn’t happen, what then? Listen to Amos:
“And on that day,” says the Lord God,
‘I will make the sun go down at noon,
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
I will turn your feasts into mourning,
and all your songs into lamentation;
I will bring sackcloth upon all loins,
and baldness on every head;
I will make it like the mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day. (Amos 8:9, 10)
(CONCLUSION)
We must not stop, however, though more often than not we kneed to hear the judgment, though more often than not we need to hear the word of judgment before we can respond to the word of grace. We must go back to where we began even to the title of the message: “LET GOD BE GOD! As If It Could Be Otherwise.”
The old and the New Testaments call for and celebrate God being God. “Who is a God like unto the cries Micah, challenging in the name of Jehovah all of the imperial pomp’s of the terrible deities of the nations, “Who is a God like unto thee?”
But the extraordinary significance of the prophetic jubilation lies in the words which immediately follow that question in Micah 7: 18. Those words give the characteristic action of Israel’s God within history and among men: Not “Who is a God like unto thee, that rideth on the wings of the wind and treadeth on the high places of the earth?”; not “Who is a God like unto thee, that confoundeth the devices of the sinner and holdeth the wicked in derision?”; but this Listen to Micah 7:18, 19:
Who is a God like thee, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever
because he delights in steadfast love.
He will again have compassion upon us,
he will tread our iniquities under foot.
Thou wilt cast all our sins,
into the depths of the sea. (Micah 7:18,19)
Ah, that’s it. “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by transgression, retaining not his anger forever, because he delighteth in mercy.” This declare the men of scripture unanimously; is his crowning glory; this is the final amazement.
Great God of wonders! all thy ways
Are worthy of Thyself Divine;
But the bright glories of thy grace
Beyond thine other wonders shine.
Who is a pardoning God like thee
Or who has grace so rich and free? (Samuel Davies)
(Note: This line of thought — “Who is a God like unto thee?” suggested by James Stewart in “A Faith To Proclaim,” p. 49)
In the New Testament, that grace so rich and free is pictured by Jesus Himself, describing himself really, as a good and faithful shepherd, risking his life to save the one lost sheep. Could we close by getting that picture in mind again, and making it very personal? (That’s what the Black poet did in the vernacular of the South:
“0 little black sheep that strayed away,
Done lost in the wind and the rain;
And the shepherd, he say, ‘0 hirelin’,
Go and find my sheep again.’
But the hirelin’ say, ‘0 shepherd,
That sheep am black and bad,’
But the shepherd, he smile like that little black sheep
Was the onliest lamb he had.
And the shepherd go out in the darkness
Where the night was cold and bleak,
And that little black sheep, he find it
And lay it against his cheek.
And the hirelin’ say, ‘0 shepherd,,
Don’t bring that lamb to me;
But the shepherd, he smile and he pulled it close,
And that little black sheep was me.”
(quoted by Edward Bauman)
Let God be God to you.
Let Christ be Christ to you now. For really, in the long run, it can’t be otherwise – so why not acknowledge it today?