What Is God For?

Texts:  Isaiah 40:18-31; Ephesians 1:3-14

I'M SURE YOU'D HEARD that tornados hit the Oklahoma City area again Friday night.  We prayed for the victims during our prayers this morning, for those who were hurt, for those who lost property, for those who lost loved ones.  But we know that as sure as this world turns there are going to be tornados in the Midwest in the spring, and sure as that world is fallen and sinful, there will be those who use that fact as an excuse to insult and mock God and those who believe in Him.

If you ever want to get totally fed up with that, go online and read the comments after any news article about any natural disaster. You'll have people writing that tornados and floods and hurricanes prove that God could not exist.  If the disaster takes place in the Bible Belt, they'll say with great glee that God must be punishing those stupid Christians, or insist that the disaster shows God can't be relied on, since He didn't come through as expected and protect His believers from loss and harm.

What can you say to such people?  Assuming they'd even begin to listen?  As believers in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we can say that if that's the kind of god they believe in, these scoffers and mockers are right, because that kind of God doesn't exist.  If they think God is the Great Vending Machine in the Sky that's there to make sure our lives remain prosperous and comfortable, providing we drop in a few dollars worth of good works from time to time, that's a figment of the human imagination and it should be made fun of.

Atheists and people who believe in other religions have a distorted view of what we Christians think about who God is and what He is for.  No surprise.  The real problem is that too many Christians-- or people who call themselves Christians-- carry around the same false ideas about God and live their lives according to those false ideas.

It's gotten so bad that studies have shown that the majority of Christian teenagers-- and many, many Christian adults as well, don't really believe in classic Christianity; they hold to a religion that's been called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.  This modern faith says yes, there's a god, of some sort: that's the Deism part.  What this god is really like in him or itself doesn't really matter, the thing that matters is that he or it is benevolent and kind and well-meaning towards human beings and wants them to be happy, however they define happiness.  If I'm a believer in Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, I'd tell you this deity expects people to be nice and fair to other people, but he pretty much leaves it up to each person to decide what niceness and fairness is.  And so when I'm nice and do nice things, I can expect to be rewarded with this god's protection and favor.  That's Moralism.  And the most desirable way for him to reward and protect me is for him to solve all my problems, get rid of all the trouble, turmoil, and stress in my life, and make my sojourn here on earth comfortable and uncomplicated.  That's the Therapeutic part.  This god-- this false god-- makes no demands for his own sake; what he's for is to make me feel good about myself.  Otherwise, what good is he?

Brothers and sisters, is that what God is for?  Is that the deity we should be raising our children to pray to and depend upon?  Does the god of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism bear any resemblance to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?  What do the Scriptures say?

The Lord God had a lot to say about Himself in chapter 40 of the prophecy of Isaiah.  We read that God is incomparable and unique.  He is high and holy.  To Him, people are like grasshoppers and the whole expanse of heaven is like a tent you might live in on a camping trip.  Governments and rulers reign only as long as He allows them; the mere breath from His mouth sweeps them away like chaff.  He marshals the stars and maintains them in their courses; nothing is outside His rulership or beyond His control-- and that would include tornados, floods, and hurricanes.

Does that sound like the spineless god of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, that deity who is at our beck and call, that we obligate and control by our good works?  Not in the least.  However, the Lord certainly is benevolent and merciful towards His people Israel.  He assures them that their trouble is known to Him.  He reminds them that He is the God who gives strength to the weary, even when the young and the strong are collapsing by the roadside.  He tells them that those who hope in the Lord will

. . . renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

Is this like the therapeutic relief so many expect from God these days?

No, not really.  For as we've seen, the modern expectation is that God is supposed to be good to me for my good.  The eternal reality is that God is good for His own glory.  And it is not our good, moralistic works He wants, it's putting our hope in Him; that is, our total dependence on His greatness and power.

But maybe that's just the Old Testament talking.  Many people will tell you that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are two different beings.  Or maybe that the Old Testament writers got God wrong, and all this business about His holiness and majesty can be discarded; what we really want to concern ourselves with is His love and affection and how wonderful it makes us feel.

And the New Testament does tell us how much God loves  us.  But so does the Old.  And the Old Testament does tell us about God's glory and majesty.  But so does the New.  Both parts of God's holy Scriptures tell us who God is and what He is for.  And what it all says together might be a surprise to the self-satisfied atheists who comment on news websites and YouTube videos, and to many Christians as well.

What did we read in Paul's letter to the Ephesians?  Who is God, and what is He for?

First of all, He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom all praise is due.  Jesus Christ the Son of God is the One who died to take away our sins by the express purpose and will of His Father in heaven.  No concept of God that leaves out Jesus Christ the God-Man can claim any kind of reality.  Beside the triune God of the Scriptures there is no God.

This same God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.  No, we are not promised an easy life on this earth.  God never says He will divert tornados to keep His people out of their path, or always let us have the job we want, or grant us continual good health and prosperity on this earth.  What He does promise, what He is for, is our sharing in His very nature through Jesus Christ our Lord.  He's for us knowing union with Him: tasting a little of it now in this life, but enjoying it perfectly in the life to come.

We who believe in Jesus were chosen for this.  Before the creation of the world, St. Paul writes, God chose us-- not to be privileged, not to be perpetually safe and secure, not even to be serene and without turmoil in our minds-- but to be holy and blameless in His sight.  I don't know about you, but I know that in myself I am not holy and blameless in the sight of God.  I suspect you know the same about yourself.  So has God's choice failed, or are we outside His choice?  Not at all, for it is in Christ and Christ alone that we lose our guilt before God and deserve to stand in His holy presence, and God has ordained, He has predestined us to be in Christ, to be adopted as His very sons and Jesus' own siblings.  Being in Christ!  Sharing in His nature and His union with the Father!  You can't get more holy and blameless than that.

And what for?  God does it all for and according to His good pleasure and will.  Just think, God is pleased when His elect people are joined in union with His Son Jesus Christ!  But see, it is God's will and pleasure that come first, not ours.  If the it were left us to us to determine what would be the highest good for ourselves and the universe, how shabby and shallow that good would be!  But God has done everything according to His will, not ours, that His glorious grace might be praised as it deserves.

This grace is not some vague benevolence, it is that salvation He has granted us in Jesus Christ, His beloved Son.  It is the redemption we have in Christ's blood and the forgiveness of our sins.  The modern world isn't too big on the concept of sin: if people talk about sin at all, they define it as things like eating chocolate or not approving of any and all sexual relationships or praying in a public school.  But according to the riches of God's grace lavished on us in His wisdom and understanding, the blood of Christ purchased for us forgiveness of real sins, the ones that had us under God's righteous wrath and kept us from fellowship with Him.

What is God for?  God is for working out the mystery of His will-- again, according to His good pleasure.  Not just His will to save us but more than that, His will to exalt His Son Jesus Christ to the highest place, bringing all heaven and earth together under the sole headship of Christ.

And yes, God is for us.  He is for us in Christ.  He is for us because He is first and foremost for Himself, for the purpose of His will.  God's purpose for us is that we might be for the praise of His glory.  By birth, by sin, by our natural bent we were not for God and we did not want to serve Him.  We were for our own glory, and we expected Him, if He existed, to serve us.

But by the power of the gospel preached to us God changed our hearts and turned them away from our own purposes and raised them up to love and appreciate His.  God gave us His Holy Spirit so we can know by fellowship with Him that the spiritual blessings promised to us are faithful and secure.  God has promised us an inheritance in Christ, and the Spirit is our guarantee that it surely will be ours.  When?  When all God's chosen possession, His predestined saints, shall have been redeemed.

That day surely will come, and as it does, what is God for?  Again, He is for the praise of His glory.  If God were an ordinary human like you or me, this would be obnoxious.  Insufferable.  How full of himself that person is! we'd say.  But God is God:  High, majestic, holy and incomparable.  He is no vague deity whose sole purpose is to tell us what good children we are and make things all better for us.  He is worthy of all praise, honor, and glory; He acts and operates according to the highest wisdom, understanding, and might. He has not left the welfare of the universe up to us and our sinful wills; rather, His good and gracious will works everything out to His good pleasure, and we can know that in His good pleasure we will receive everything we need for hope, purpose, and fulfillment in Him.

What is God for?  God is for Himself, and therefore in Christ God is for you.  Even in the worst of times, even when your life has been flattened and the mockers of God and the mockers of His people are shouting their insults and lies at full volume, you can have faith that the true God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is your Help and Redeemer.  What He chooses nothing can discard; what He predestines nothing can change; what He wills, nothing can sway from His purpose.  Trust in Him, for He who is the Creator of the world also raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and He will do for you all His has promised, to the praise of His glory.  Amen.

God's Right to Choose

Texts:    Isaiah 41:8-14; John 6:28-51

     SERMON TITLES ARE TRICKY things.  For awhile I thought I'd call this message, "Whose Right to Choose?"  But that might've been a distraction.  Some of you might've spent first two-thirds of the service thinking, "Oh, goodness, is she going to preach on That subject?" and I wouldn't have blamed you one bit.  Even if you thought I might be upholding the position you take yourself, you still might've wondered why on earth I'd march in here and raise such a controversial matter.

    So instead, the sermon title is "God's Right to Choose."  And even though this message won't tackle the subject of abortion, we will be exploring another subject that's been just as controversial in the history of the Church.  And that's the doctrine of God's sovereign right to choose who shall be saved.

    But with all the issues facing the Church these days, especially with all the divisions and troubles facing us in the PC(USA), why bring up a matter nobody cares about any more?  Ask any average Christian about how we get saved, and they'll say you have to make a decision for Christ.  That God gives us evidence about who Jesus is, but it's up to our own free wills whether we come to him or not.  Only those hyper-intellectual folks in the Reformed camp keep pushing the idea that salvation is all up to God.  Right?  Isn't that the popular opinion?  So why should I rake up the matter?  Why not just let sleeping dogs lie?

    First of all, dear friends, because our Gospel reading from St. John clearly teaches that we made our decision for Christ because God the Father first made His decision for us.  Second, because if we take the credit for bringing ourselves to faith we rob God of His rightful glory.  And third, if we go around thinking it was up to us to get ourselves saved, we might well worry about whether we can keep ourselves saved.  No, we need more assurance than that, and it is only the doctrine of God's sovereign choice that is faithful to Scripture, that gives Him the glory, and can keep us happy and secure through the temptations and perils of this earthly life.

    Our text from John 6 is a portion of Jesus' Bread of Life discourse.  You remember that He fed the 5,000 on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and how the crowds chased after Him.  They wanted to make Him king so He could keep on feeding them with miraculous physical bread the rest of their lives.  He must be the Messiah! they think, and that's what the Messiah should do.  Jesus is no politician.  He bluntly tells them they're wrong.  No, He tells them rather to work for the food of eternal life, which He, the Son of Man will give them.  For He is the Son of Man who has God the Father's approval.

    The people conclude that to have eternal life, you must have the Father's approval.  This is true.  And to get God's approval, they assume, you have to do some kind of work to please Him. Well, we'll see about that.

    So at the beginning of our reading the spokesmen ask, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"  Another way to putting this is, "What must I do to be saved?" or "How can I earn eternal life."  Jesus' answer is, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

    Did you notice how our Lord put that?  It wasn't, "The work God requires from you is to believe in Me."  No, it's "the work of God."  Right here we see that belief in Christ is the only way to eternal life, but that belief is not something we do for ourselves, it's all God's sovereign work and grace.

    The crowd wasn't comfortable with that.  They understood that Jesus was referring to Himself.  But if they were going to accept Him as the bringer of eternal life, they weren't going to be hornswoggled, no, not them!  Hey, Jesus, you gave us earthly bread, can you give us some physical bread from heaven?  Let's have some manna and see you outdo Moses, if you can!

    Jesus teaches them, and us, that the true bread from heaven is not the manna God gave through Moses in the wilderness long ago.  The true bread of heaven is Jesus Himself, whom the Father has given.

    We need to remember that and take it to heart.  Too often people see Christianity merely as something that'll make life better for us in this world, and then, oh yes, fire insurance when we die.  And when Christians suffer in this life, unbelievers jeer that our religion "doesn't work."  Or we ourselves wonder if God doesn't love us any more.  No!  No matter how much we may lack the bread of this world, no matter how much we may suffer from grief or want or trouble, God Himself gives us Jesus Christ, the Bread of Heaven, and Jesus has given us life that can never be diminished and never be taken away.  As our Lord says in verse 35, "He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty."

    We must come to Him if we are to have eternal satisfaction and eternal life.  Again, in verse 40 Jesus says, "For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life."  But how can we come?  How can we look to Him and believe?  It's our sinful human nature to reject Him!  Jesus says to the people, "You have seen me and still you do not believe."  In verses 41 and 42 they grumble and complain that He dared to claim He was the Bread from heaven.  Wasn't He just the son of Joseph the carpenter?  Never mind the multitude He fed yesterday with a few loaves and fishes.  Never mind all His healings and exorcisms and the dead people He'd raised!  They were too clever to believe He was able to give them eternal life!

    Let's not deceive ourselves.  If we'd witnessed for ourselves what Jesus did we wouldn't automatically believe.  It takes more than great information about Jesus to bring us to faith in Him.  Even some atheists are willing to look at the historical evidence and admit that Jesus really did do miracles and He really did rise from the dead.  But those facts aren't enough to compel them to believe in Him and be saved.

    No.  Salvation is the singlehanded work of God the Father.  "All that the Father gives me will come to me," says Jesus.  To be saved, we must be given to Christ by the Father.  In verse 44 Jesus states, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him."  And the word translated "draw" doesn't mean to attract or to woo, it means to drag a dead weight, like hauling a wrecked car out of a ditch, or even to pull someone against their will, like dragging a lawbreaker off the jail.  Because when it comes to Jesus and salvation, we are dead weights.  We are criminal offenders against the holy law of God.  We cannot help ourselves into salvation.  Until God's saving grace comes upon us, we don't really want to be saved.  Eternal life in Christ is the gift of God and comes from Him alone.  Moreover, the choice of  who will inherit eternal life belongs to God and God alone.  He alone has the right to choose.

    But why does the Father choose to save some and passes others by?  The exact choice of who shall be elect and who not is hidden in the mind of God.  But in various places in Scripture, such as Romans 9, we read that His purpose is to make the riches of His glory known to the objects of His mercy, even us, whom He has called.  God works out His purpose in the mystery of election, and it will bring Him the praise and glory that is His due.

    Some preachers can be heavy-handed with this doctrine. Believe me, I know. I sat under a preacher like that for several months just after I graduated from college.  He probably didn't mean to, but I and a lot of other members of the congregation got the idea that the world was full of people just yearning for a chance to believe in Jesus Christ and be saved, but God arbitrarily chose some for heaven and purposely sent the rest to hell, even if they were seeking for heaven with all their might.  And this was supposed to bring God glory.

    The fact is, we don't start out good, or even neutral.  St. Paul says in Ephesians 2 that all of us were born dead in trespasses and sins; like everyone else, we were the proper objects of God's righteous wrath.  Jesus Himself in John 3 tells Nicodemus that "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed."

    Brothers and sisters, God does not need to choose for anybody to go to Hell!  The Scripture says nothing about God electing anyone to be lost.  Why?  Because tragically, it would be redundant.  God doesn't need to condemn us; we condemn ourselves by our sinfulness and our sins.  The people of this world demand justice.  O, let me never demand justice, for if God exercised His justice on us not one of us could be saved. Our entire salvation depends on the injustice of the sinless Son of God dying in our place!

    No, the thorny question is not, "How could a loving God choose some to be condemned?" but "How could a holy God choose any to be saved?"  As Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn,  "Amazing love! How can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?"

    But some will worry, "If salvation all depends on God and there's nothing I can do about it, how how can I know if I'm chosen?  How do I know if I'm saved?"  To you I say, "Do you want to be saved?  Do you believe not merely that Jesus died and rose again, but that He died and rose again for you?  Do you look at your past attitudes and actions, especially those things you thought were going to put God in your debt, and see how foolish and wrong they were?  Do you want to do better, not because God will punish you if you don't, but to show how thankful you are for Jesus and what He's done for you?  That is the Father drawing you, dragging you from death to your new life in Christ."

    And because your salvation had nothing to do with your goodness or anything you deserved, the Father worked it according to His sovereign choice, you how can relax and be confident in His love.  Jesus says in verse 37, "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away."  God is not going to change His mind tomorrow about giving you to Christ!  In verse 39 our Savior says, "And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all he has given me, but raise them up at the last day."   Our Lord repeats this promise in verse 40 and 44. God's choice of you is forever!  By His choice He saves us, He keeps us, and one day, by His unchanging choice He will raise us up in glory in His heavenly kingdom, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

    We have this sure and certain hope of the resurrection, because God chose Jesus Christ to be the living bread who came down from heaven.  For the bread of life is His flesh, which He gave for the life of the world.  Whoever comes to Him will not hunger, and whoever believes in Him will not thirst.  God has exercised His right to choose, and all satisfaction, all joy, all fulfillment of life and bliss of heaven are found in Jesus Christ our crucified and risen Lord.  In Him we are chosen, in Him we are saved, in Him we find eternal life.  Be at peace, for by God's gracious choice He will keep you in Jesus His Son, and Jesus  will surely raise you up at the last day.