Made to Know God (Job 13:2; 23:3-7; 38:4-7, 34-41)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, January 8, 2017

         I began 2017 by inviting the church to join me on a quest.  We seek to see God.  Just as an iceberg looks impressive, and yet we only see above the surface all the while knowing there is much more beneath, so then, God is that much more amazing.  Yet for all the wonders we know of God, there is much more we do not know. 

Together, we go into this year seeking to know more of God.  We are made to know God.  Each one of us was created by God intentionally.  God made us to be in relationship with him.  Our quest, this morning, brings us to a man who got to know more of God than he bargained for.  In fact, he wasn’t even looking as we are and yet he saw more of God than most ever do.

Turn with me to the book of Job.

Job 13:3

³ But I would speak to the Almighty,^[a]
    and I desire to argue my case with God.

Job 23:3-7New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

³ Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
    that I might come even to his dwelling!
⁴ I would lay my case before him,
    and fill my mouth with arguments.
⁵ I would learn what he would answer me,
    and understand what he would say to me.
⁶ Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?
    No; but he would give heed to me.
⁷ There an upright person could reason with him,
    and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.

Job 38:4-7New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

⁴ “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
⁵ Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
⁶ On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone
⁷ when the morning stars sang together
    and all the heavenly beings^[a] shouted for joy?

³⁴ “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
    so that a flood of waters may cover you?
³⁵ Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go
    and say to you, ‘Here we are’?
³⁶ Who has put wisdom in the inward parts,^[a]
    or given understanding to the mind?^[b]
37 Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?
    Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,
³⁸ when the dust runs into a mass
    and the clods cling together?

³⁹ “Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
    or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
⁴⁰ when they crouch in their dens,
    or lie in wait in their covert?
⁴¹ Who provides for the raven its prey,
    when its young ones cry to God,
    and wander about for lack of food?

There is a gorilla named Koko who learned signed language.[i]  She was able to communicate complicated concepts.  Think about how remarkable this is: an animal, not human, having a real conversation with humans. 

However, an earthquake hit scaring the poor primate half to death.  She had never been taught the word for earthquake.  All she could say, that is ‘sign’, is “Floor.  Big bite.”  I think Koko the gorilla is to be appreciated and even admired.  Using what vocabulary and concepts she did have, she tried to say what happened and how it made her feel; obviously terrified.  She couldn’t possibly know things about tectonic plates or seismographs.  She gets high marks for saying what she knew even though we know an earth quake is more than the floor taking a bite out of us, however apt the metaphor may be.

We are like Koko when we try to describe God.  We lack the words and the experience.  Still, we try.  With our insufficient vocabulary, we speak about God and attempt to know God because God created us for relationship with Him.  From my reading of scripture to my study of the history of Christian theology to my own logical conclusions to longings deep within my soul, I am thoroughly convinced that God wants relationship with us and wants us to reach to Him. 

Even pronouns are insufficient.  God is Him.  Some might be upset if I said God was “her,” but either pronoun fits and at the same time falls short.  For tradition’s sake, when pronouns are necessary, I will use the male, but rest assured.  I don’t think God is male.

As I have talked to others about this launch into 2017 – a quest to see more of God that we might be drawn closer to God and also grow in our ability to speak about God and for God in the world – I appreciated counsel I have received.  More than one person has reminded me – we only see of God what God chooses to reveal.  One book in the Bible is called “Revelation,” but the content of the entire Bible is what God chose to reveal.  Jesus is God revealed in human flesh.  In upcoming weeks, we’ll look at bits from Jesus’ life and see what we can learn about God.  We’ll probe, inch by inch, beneath the iceberg’s surface.  This morning we do the same following what is revealed in the book of Job.

In the beginning of the book, Job’s life is ideal.  His 10 children – 7 sons and 3 daughters are young adults who all get along with each other.  They dine in one another’s homes.  And Job oversees it all.  Chapter 1 verse 5 says Job makes a point of sacrificing on behalf of his children in case they have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.

I get a sense that from the outset, the book of Job presents God as a distant, punishing deity Job appeases both for himself (by not sinning) and for his children (by offering sacrifices on their behalf).  God holds Job in high esteem, but I don’t get the sense that Job has a prayer relationship with God.  God is impersonal. 

Then things fall apart.  Satan and God talk and God allows Satan to harm Job and wreck Job’s life in order to prove Job’s righteousness.  After Satan kills Job’s children and afflict Job’s health, chapters 3-37 are commentary.  Job talks about his plight with his three friends.  The friends think Job’s problems are God’s punishments for sins Job must have committed.  Job insists he is innocent and repeatedly demands an audience with God. 

We see in the opening verses a comfortable Job who is happy with life and happy with keeping God distant and appeased.  That placid Job is contrasted with the agitated Job who occupies the central portion of the book.  The agitated Job is much more motivated to have a personal encounter with God.  The agitated Job wants to have a face-to-face with God and to give God a piece of mind.

Various theological perspectives led me to think of Job in terms of contrast – placid, comfortable Job v. agitated, insistent Job.   First, the great reformer John Calvin from whom we get the term ‘Calvinism.’  Calvin believed that God directs everything in life – even our misery.  In his most famous work, ‘Calvin’s Institutes,’ he writes, “Whether poverty or exile or prison or insult or disease or bereavement, or anything like [these things] torture us, we must think that none of these things happen by the will and providence of God.”[ii]  This view accord with the theology of Job.  Job would need to sacrifice to a God like this because he would fear this God’s discipline upon his children.  Job’s friends appeal to this retributive theology when they urge Job to confess his sin and thereby alleviate, or at least understand his suffering. 

Against is a 20^th century theology that has appeared at various times in church history.  The 20^th century version, represented by Clark Pinnock is called open theism.[iii]  Open theists believe that God, as an act of supreme love, has created beings – humans – who are capable of choosing to love God.  God is affected, we might even say changed, by the way his created being act toward him.  Open theists believe that God knows all that can be known.  However, since the future hasn’t happened yet, it cannot yet be known.  Thus God doesn’t know the future.

Calvin severely limited human free will.  What happens is predetermined by a sovereign God.  Pinnock and other open theists limit God’s sovereignty.  I don’t believe either position can be defended with certainty.  I don’t know all that God knows.  I don’t know if it is possible that there are things God doesn’t know.  I find both positions uncomfortable.  I am uneasy about the thought that my very words and ideas were predetermined by a sovereign God who micromanages the universe.  And I am equally unsettled by the thought that there are limits on God’s power and knowledge. 

Job dealt with the tension between a distant punishing God and the frustrated desire to get up close and personal with that God.  Calvin presented an all-knowing, all-controlling God and open theists respond with a God who is in process and experiences new things.  A third contrast I found comes between a wholly other God v. a familiar and close God. 

In the book Reaching for the invisible God, Philip Yancey shares his experience in Russia shortly after communism fell in the early 90’s.  He went with a Russian Orthodox priest to visit prisoners.[iv]  One of the others in their party requested that the Orthodox priest have prayer with the inmates.  The priest brought out an icon.  He donned an elaborate prayer outfit involving gold crosses and other vestments.  He went through a complex ritual.  I have visited people in prison.  When it’s time for prayer, I and the inmate each bowed our heads and prayed.  That’s too simple and too cozy for the Orthodox priest Yancey described.  For that priest, God is ‘wholly other.’  Conversation with God is not like conversation with another person and it should not be approached that way.

Contrast this with the way many popular American praise songs approach God.  Yancey quotes from Chris Tomlin’s song “In the Secret.”  “I want to know you more/I want to touch you/I want to see your face.”  It is a very intimate reaching for God.  Yancey observes and I have observed this too, that some praise songs are indistinguishable from teen-aged romance songs.   Just insert God’s name for the name of the intended lover.[v]  One of my seminary friends often joked that these are “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” songs.  Yancey goes on to remark, “Nowhere in the Bible do I find a promise that we will touch God or see his face.”[vi]

Which is true?  Is God so removed that like Job the best we can do is offer sacrifices?  Or find a priest who will don gold crosses and kiss them in elaborate rituals as he prays on our behalf because God is unapproachable?  Or is the relationship to which God invites us so intimate, we dare to liken it to romance? 

What has been your own experience?  How have you experienced God as all-knowing, all-powerful ‘wholly other’ who inspires and awe and fear? How have you experienced God as close, personal relation?  What would the word be?  Father?  Friend?  Disembodied Spirit that dwells within? 

“Oh that I might find him,” Job lamented in chapter 23.  “That I might even come to his dwelling.”  He knew the theology that ran through the Old Testament beginning with Moses.  Anyone who sees God will die.  Job knew this.  His wife, as a wrought with grief as him, told him to “curse God and die” (2:9).  She spoke out of her pain, not out of malice.  But Job wouldn’t take that easy route.  He would accept death, but he wanted a word with God first.  Though he lived in an era dominated by the Calvinist-type of Sovereignty of God theology which the Orthodox priest would also appreciate, Job broke the paradigm by demanding an appointment with God.  Only the select few – Abraham, Moses, the real heavyweights – came that close to God.  Job did not care.  He would not rest until he had his audience.

God gave Job what he asked for but it didn’t happen as Job thought it might.  Remember his self-assurance?  He said, “An upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.”

When God came to Job, it says God spoke out of a whirlwind.  Have you ever been in a tornado?  I haven’t and don’t want to be.  And yet, I propose that we do what Job tried to do – see God and speak directly to God.  I don’t know if we are like the Orthodox priest or like one of today’s praise song writers.  God came to Job in the whirlwind, but never ever answered a single one of Job’s questions.  Remember, as hard as we look, we only get to see what God chooses to reveal. 

“Where were you, when I laid the foundation of the earth?”  God asks Job, and us.  Yes, God is wholly other.  No, we weren’t there when God, with tender care, formed every creature, made the earth in a way that it truly is good.  But in the end, Job was found to be righteous.  It wasn’t because of his sacrifices.  He was, I believe, because he sought God. 

If out of our brokenness, out of our confusion, out of our pain, out of our curiosity we seek God, here is what we will find.  We will find that God will not give us everything we ask for.  God will not fix everything the way we think it ought to be fixed.  God will give us what God gave Job; not in the way it was given to Job.  Each person’s encounter with God is unique.  But God will do for each person who seeks Him, what He did for Job.  God will give us God’s very self. 

“Would God contend with me in the greatness of his power?  No.  But God would listen to me.”

When we explore beneath the surface and begin to see a bit more of God we discover that God created us to be in relationship with Him.  And when we call out Him, God hears us.

AMEN

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[i] Student’s Life Application Bible (1997), Tyndale House Publishers, p.984.

[ii] John Calvin, Institutes, Book 3, Chapter VIII, section II.

[iii] C. Pinnock (2003), chapter 6 in the book Alister E. McGrath & Evangelical Theology, edited by Sung Wook Chung, Paternoster Press (UK), p.147-164.

[iv] P. Yancey (2000), Reaching for the Invisible God, Zondervan books (Grand Rapids), p.26.

[v] Ibid, p.31.

[vi] Ibid, p.32.

Inhabiting Two Worlds (Philippians 3:18-21)

Inhabiting Two Worlds (Philippians 3:18-21)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

“Facebook Live Post” – Sunday we got Snowed Out – 1/8/17

Good Morning.  We here in North Carolina have been totally thrown off by weather that people in Michigan or Wisconsin might describe as a normal January day.  In those Northern states, this is no big deal; some snow, some sleet.  Whatever!  But, for us in the Tar Heel state, everything closes, including church.  The roads are covered and in my neighborhood, kids are sledding down the middle of the street.  Nobody wants to drive out to worship services when temperatures are barely in the 20’s.

I hope you have taken time this morning to pray and worship God.  Our family sang some worship songs and shared Bible readings that are on our minds.  We prayed together.

If we were at HillSong, in the sermon, time, I would continue what I began the year discussing – the quest to see more of God.  As part of my study for these messages that have opened 2017, I have revisited a couple of my favorite Philip Yancey books – Reaching for the Invisible God and Rumors of Another World.  In Rumors, Yancey touches on the notion that we live in two realities – the Heavenly realm inhabited by God and unseen by human eyes, and the earthly realm which we experience everyday with our five senses.  In his treatment of this peculiar dynamic – us living two realities concurrently – he refers to two other authors who also saw things this way: C.S. Lewis and Augustine of Hippo.

Augustine’s great work City of God shows how we are residents of two cities – the one, the city of man, is where find ourselves now.  But in Christ, we are oriented toward something more permanent – the eternal city of God.  I picked up an e-version of City of God on Google play for under $2.  I am just a few pages into the 800-page work, so I will have to report back on that later. 

C.S. Lewis deals with the two worlds with his brilliant creativity in the Chronicles of Narnia series.  In another of his novels, the Great Divorce, Lewis depicts the Heavenly realm as decidedly more real.  The physicality, the vibrancy, and tangibility in the Heavenly realm are all more than we in this earthly realm can tolerate.  However, if we have in our lives grown in our knowledge of God and our relationship with God, then we gradually change.  The theological term is ‘transformation.’  We become prepared to divorce this fallen life and move into eternity – eternity spent in resurrection in God’s presence. 

All three writers – Philip Yancey, C.S. Lewis, and St. Augustine – have helped me understand that what we see around us is not all there is.  The reality I cannot see with my eyes but that God reveals to our spirits is more permanent and real than what I know by sight and sound, taste, touch, and smell.    Another Christian thinker who elaborated on the two levels of living is Biblical author Paul the Apostle.

Paul was a Jew from Tarsus.  He also went by the name Saul.  He was an expert in the scriptures, a Pharisee.  First century Pharisees, one group among many in that era of Judaism, were the ones who preceded the group now known as Rabbis.  Pharisee Paul felt that the new group, the followers of Jesus, were blasphemers.  He had arrest orders from Jerusalem to bring Christians into custody on blasphemy charges.  However, the resurrected Jesus met him in a blinding flash of light on the road to Damascus.  Saul the Christian-persecuting Pharisee became Paul, church-planting follower of Jesus.  He began traveling the Mediterranean world, starting churches.  One of those churches was the city of Philippi.  After starting that church, he writes a letter back to them and that letter is in our New Testament: Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

He writes in chapter 3 of that letter,

¹⁸ For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. ¹⁹ Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. ²⁰ But our citizenship^[l] is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. ²¹ He will transform the body of our humiliation^[m] that it may be conformed to the body of his glory,^[n] by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

Paul’s two levels of understanding are clear.  He knows he is a citizen of the world.  He even sounds a bit arrogant in describing how he fits in the world.  In verse 5 of chapter three he writes,

⁵ circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶ as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Paul wasn’t just an average Joe.  He had a privileged status in Jewish society as a Pharisee and before deciding to follow Jesus, he used that status.  He also used his position when became a disciple.  In addition to being a Jewish Pharisee, Paul was a citizen of the Roman Empire.  And in the book of Acts, when he gets arrested on false charges, he uses his citizenship in order to appeal to the Emperor.  He does this in order to preach salvation in Jesus in the capital – Rome itself.

Paul exhibited an extraordinary intellect.  He was adept in using earthly systems in Israel, Greece, and Rome for the Heavenly goal of helping people come to faith in Jesus. 

Yet as we read, he tells the Philippian believers as well as future readers of the leader, people like you and me, “our citizenship is in Heaven.”  When he returns, he transforms each of us so that we conform to his glory.  What exactly does that mean?  It means after death, our bodies are resurrected as Jesus’ body was.  It means at his return – the Second Coming – he calls us to Himself and live in loving fellowship with God and with one another forever.

The most important effect of that promise of eternal love and fellowship with God is the way it forms how we live today, in the here and now as we await Jesus’ return.  Anticipating the final act of salvation and paying attention to the way God speaks to our hearts, we begin practicing the loving fellowship of Heaven in our lives on earth.  Because we know God is real and is present, we forgive instead of holding grudges.  Because we feel the touch of the Holy Spirit, we are motivated by love, not by selfish desire. 

Paul contrasts citizens of Heaven, followers of Jesus, with those he calls enemies of the cross.  He has certain Christian-persecutors in mind, but we can extend his definition to anyone who is apart from God and has no relationship with Jesus and has not receive forgiveness of sin.  Paul writes that their end is their destruction and their God is their belly.  People apart from God are driven by what satisfies them in life.  Followers of Jesus are convinced that God knows better how to fulfill than we do.  We trust that God’s grace is what we need more than anything else.  This is why Jesus says we “die to self.”  We know God will give life, so we give ourselves to God.

Paul was so convinced of this that he writes in Philippians 1:21,

²¹ For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. ²² If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. ²³ I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; ²⁴ but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. ²⁵ Since I am convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in faith, ²⁶ so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus when I come to you again.

Paul was so acutely aware of the blessings of Heaven, he considered himself a citizen there – not here on earth – and he wanted to depart from here in order to be there.  That was his honest desire.  But that God-awareness also made it crystal clear to Paul what his calling was.  God wanted Paul to plant churches, help people become Christians, and build up the way of Christ in the Roman Empire.  Because he knew of another world, the Heavenly realm, and because his certainty of the reality and goodness of God was unshakable, he devoted his life to establishing communities of love on earth.

When we inhabit two worlds, we always have hope because we know God is with us, because we know are part of a greater community, and because we know our future is resurrection.

When we inhabit two worlds, we try to do as much good here as we can because we have been and are being transformed into the image of Christ who is the supreme example of perfect compassion, complete forgiveness and mercy, and total love. 

If you are unaware of two world and your life is spent only this one, which is snowy in North Carolina today, I pray that you would come to know Jesus as your Savior.  Ask God to come into your heart, forgive your sins, and open your mind to His presence and love.  When the snow clear, drive to a church and meet the people there.  Find out what they are all about and what it means to have life in Christ.

If you are aware of two worlds – Heaven and Earth – I pray that today your citizenship in the Heavenly world will form how you live in the earthly one.  Let Christ speak in you.  Be a person of compassion.  Be patient with the world around you.  The world is fallen and is falling away from God.  We in the church are his agents.  Through us He speaks his promise of salvation and redemption.  If you know of the Heavenly realm, let your life speak.  Maybe someone you know is hurting and the healing will begin when they meet Jesus in you.

Thanks for listening everyone.  Wherever you are, I pray you feel God’s blessing today.  

The Voice of God

The Voice of God

            When I looked at this weekend’s weather report and saw a forecast of possible snow Saturday night, my first thought was, “Come on God, seriously?”  I mean, God knows it’s the night before we – His Church – worships. Why wouldn’t God do a little divine intervention and hold the snow off a bit, so there’s no possibility of missing church?

            Yes, that was my first thought.  No, I don’t think God micromanages the weather.  I think God created the world and the universe in such a way that there are systems.  The weather is part of a larger system, a system not at all concerned about whether or not snow will cancel school or church, or rain will cancel a big baseball game.  Do I believe God intervenes within natural order of things, within the natural functioning of weather and waves and animals and plants?  Yes, I do believe God steps into the physical world.

            Here’s the maddening thing.  God does it on God’s timetable for God’s purposes.  We may have reasons that we want God to act in this way or that way.  And God loves us.  But, God trusts his own thinking more than ours.  So, God will allow it to snow or not, but whatever God does, intervene or not, God acts according to God’s own counsel.  We can’t predict God’s actions and often we don’t know the reason for them.

            It is one aspect of the mystery of God.  God will speak to us, but we can’t predict or control when or how God will do this.  My own belief is that God speaks far more often than we realize, but we miss God’s voice because don’t listen closely.  It is crucial to shut out the noise that fills our heads and blocks our hearts and our perception.  But even doing that, praying consistently and listening earnestly, still we do not have one iota of control over when and how God will act. 

            The novelist and ordained Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner writes of a time in his own life that he expected a miracle.  He was laying on a grassy hillside on a sunny day.  He writes, “Because of a variety of circumstance, I had a very real, strong feeling that the time was ripe for a miracle, my life was ripe for a miracle.”[i]  He lay there a while and watched the wind blow the leaves of the nearby apple tree.  No miracle happened.  Was God in the wind? 

            Last week (1/1/17) in the sermon, I talked about the way modern day western culture, generally speaking, ignores God.  That’s a serious spiritual condition that warrants attention.  Just as interesting is the phenomenon of Christians, like Buechner, earnestly seeking a sign from God, only to hear wind in the tree branches and nothing more.  Why does the world around the church ignore the voice of God even when that voice shouts?  Why does it appear that God ignores those in his church, individual Christians, who strain to hear Him?

            How do we hear the voice of God?

            There is no secret answer.  There is no technique.  There is nothing we can do to compel God to speak.  I have a friend who literally fasted from all food for the 40 days of Lent one year.  In the middle of his fast, he was hungry and getting impatient.  On a prayer walk, he insisted that God speak to him, and he actually did hear the voice of God.  God said to him, clearly and audibly, “Just because you fast doesn’t compel me to speak.”  My friend was humbled, but when he told me the story, I was furious.  Come on God, what’s up with that?

            How do we hear the voice of God?

            We listen.  We cultivate a prayer life in which we spend our lives attentively listening.  This comes in a context of worship and participation in ministry.  Those things must be constants in our lives.  We must live as disciples in our thoughts and the perfect, selfless love of God must drive our actions.  We may never hear God audibly, but if we live this way, I believe God will speak and we’ll feel the blessing and presence even if we don’t know it is God who is at work in us. 

            I’ll address this further in a blog post coming early next week.

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[i] Buechner is quoted by Philip Yancey in his book Reaching for the Invisible God (Zondervan Books: Grand Rapids, 2000), p.32.

“Seeking the Unknowable God” (Isaiah 55:6-9)

New Year’s Day, January 1, 2017

            My New Year’s goal: I am going to go up to Greenland or somewhere north of there, and I am going to swim under an iceberg.  If above the water is 50 feet high and 200 or 300 hundred feet in width and length, then under the water it is much, much bigger, running hundreds of feet deep.  Swimming under that, what will kill me first, the hypothermia, or the drowning? 

            Before we think about getting a pastor search committee ready, I have already thought this out and I’ve decided to tackle something bigger than this, but less fatal.   And you’re coming with me. 

            I actually Googled it and found a guy who does explore icebergs by swimming under them.  So, yes, I know it can be done.  I also know I would die in under a minute if I tried.  What I am attempting – what we will attempt – in 2017 is more unreachable than the iceberg-swim, but the attempt itself, is life-changing.  In a good way.

            I think God is like an iceberg.  In photos of icebergs – photos that show both above and below the water’s surface, it is clear how much more is under the water; this is what we don’t see – except in those special photos.  There literally is a lot more than meets the eye.  We see less of the iceberg than the submerged portion we can’t see.  And there is more of God we do not know and cannot know than what we do know – immeasurably more. 

            That word, ‘immeasurable,’ is often used as hyperbole, to express how big something is.  In this case, I am using the word literally.  God’s expanse goes beyond our physical universe and when God so pleases, he occupies space in our universe.  God operates within the bounds of the laws of nature, but God can at times, God can defy the laws of nature.  Furthermore, God cannot be measured.

We want to try to see more God knowing that we can never see all of God and in all likelihood there will always be more of God that we cannot see than what we can see.  There will always be more of God we do not know.  In our quest we will use logic and rational thought.  We will appeal to experience – the experience of people in the Bible, of the great theologians in history, and the experience of everyday believers.  Our quest is rooted scripture, yet our individual stories are extremely important as we try to grow our God knowledge.  Your sense of God and your understanding within the arc of your own life matters in this quest to see God because the Bible repeatedly shows that God revealed God’s self to everyday people at least as often as to religious scholars.  Moses was a shepherd.  Joseph, the son of Jacob, was a slave.  The prophet Amos was a farmer.  Mary was a peasant.  Matthew a tax collector.  The experiences everyday people have with God have a privileged place at the table of theological discussion.  However, even as we seek God by way study of scripture, by prayer, by means of sophisticated inquiry, and by hearing one another’s stories, even as we together attempt to swim under the iceberg just to see what it’s like down there, we accept at the beginning that God cannot be known.

            So why do it at all?  Our scripture reading for this morning might discourage us.  The latter two verses, Isaiah 55:8-9, say,

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Additional scripture passages deepen this sense of Holiness and otherness of God. 

Romans 11:33 says, “O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.  How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways.”

And in Deuteronomy, the people of Israel were so aware of God’s holiness, they felt themselves unworthy to even exist in God’s presence.  The text of Deuteronomy is a recounting of the journey of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land.  Moses reiterates the entire law for the people before they prepare to crossover into the land and live as God’s people.  In Deuteronomy 5, the people tell Moses, “If the Lord our God speaks to us again, we will certainly die and be consumed by his awesome fire.”  Then they tell Moses, you be the one to risk death by continuing to speak to God.  Then you come out and tell us what God says.  They had no desire to get any closer to God.  They wanted a safe distance.

Those Israelites on the banks of the Jordan River had experiences with God we never will.  They saw the Red Sea parted and walked through it.  They saw the ground open up and swallow groups of people.  They saw these and many other works of wonder, and they wanted no part of God.  Moses, you be the one who knows God more deeply, sees more of God.  We’ll keep our distance.  Would we be wiser to follow their lead and keep our distance?  Why seek the one whose judgments are unsearchable?  Why try to know the God whose ways are higher than ours, whose own chosen people feared Him? 

The reason seeking God is of enormous importance to us is our context - America, Chapel Hill, the year 2017.  Many – I believe – most people have lost a sense of the fear of God.  We feel free to be casual when we talk about.  On a popular TV show, one of the characters rejected the idea that God is all powerful and that God has authority over our lives.  Instead, using her own ideas as her source of authority, she said, “I like to think that God is love and that all who love are close to God.”  Of course she had no real sense of the Biblical understanding of love, and she had no interest in the Bible as an authority.  But in the show, she was the hero and her view was the one celebrated: a vague notion that love, undefined, is the supreme value, so God, whatever God is, must be love.  I have heard that sentiment from that TV show over and over in casual conversation. 

In our cultural landscape, I sense a lack of real knowledge of God, and a lack of reverence.  People don’t really know God and don’t feel the strong need to know God.  God is a luxury or an interest, but not a necessity.  Why, in our worship, would we try to do what our Hebrew ancestors in faith feared to do and what the prophet said was impossible?  Why try to know God? 

First, we reach to the unreachable God because we claim to be his church.  We claim this God is the only God and we claim to know this God by way of His revelation in Jesus Christ.  If we are going to be emissaries of God and if we want to show the world that worshiping this God matters, we have to know the God we’re representing.  We have to be able to talk about God knowledgeably and convincingly in a cultural climate where a lot of people think knowledge of God is impossible and unnecessary.  We have to be able to tell what we know and why knowing it is important.  We develop knowledge and articulation as we seek God.

Second, the Bible bids us invitation to seek God.  Our text for today is Isaiah 55.   We’ve already seen that this passage declares God’s ways are higher than our ways.  And yet, here is what it says in verses 6 & 7.

Seek the Lord while he may be found,
    call upon him while he is near;
⁷ let the wicked forsake their way,
    and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

God wants us to seek him because God is relational.  “Seek the Lord,” Isaiah says.  “Call upon him.”  The next instruction has to do with how we live and think.  “Let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts.”  We proceed in life, in the decisions we make, based on our thoughts, on our view of the world.  We act out of our perception of reality.  What if our perception of reality is based on a sense that God is always present, all powerful, and all loving?  In Isaiah’s view, to intentionally, proactively seek God is to change one’s outlook.  The Biblical word is repent.  Turn around, away from immorality and sin, turn away from destructive thoughts and harmful activities and life-destroying words, and turn toward God. 

Isaiah says this is possible because God is merciful and will abundantly pardon.  Even as we talk about seeking God, we learn something about God.  It’s not something we can weigh or describe in visual terms or affix to a law.  Rather we learn that God is relational and is willing to forgive for the sake of relationship.  

A third reason to attempt to know God is preparation.  A major piece of our Christian belief is that when we die if we are in relationship with God in Jesus Christ, we will spend eternity as a son or daughter of God, in God’s presence, and in resurrected bodies.  That eternity is spent in God’s kingdom.  We prepare for life in God’s presence by growing in knowledge of and relationship with God now.  Dallas Williard has suggested that some believers never grow in their lives as Jesus-followers.  They never grow spiritually, so when they enter resurrection, they find the Kingdom of God very unfamiliar.  Conversely, if we spend our lives seeking God, expanding our knowledge of God, and growing in relationship with God, when we enter the Kingdom in resurrection, it will feel like going home.  It will be entirely new and entirely familiar.  It will be both. 

We seek God to know God because as Christians we need to be prepared to talk about God.

We seek God because Isaiah tells us to and tells us God will welcome us. 

We seek God in order to prepare to spend eternity with God. 

As we enter 2017, our worship at HillSong will be about the quest.  We’re exploring the portion of the iceberg that’s beneath the surface.  I read an article in which the author was eager to bid farewell to 2016.  She cited all the beloved celebrities who died this past year – and many more died in the week after she wrote that article.  She cited the acrimony over the election.  It is hard to find people who are happy with the direction of our nation.  She cited the rise in shootings, often leading to heightened racial tension.  She pointed to the seemingly endless war in Syria that has created a refugee crisis felt all across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.  For these and numerous other reasons, she was eager to bid 2016 adieu.

I see her points, but I don’t want to overlook the positives.  We saw new life – new babies born in 2016.  We had new members come into our church family.  We participated in some beautiful ministries, the mission trip to Kombolcha and the Vacation Bible School in June to mention a few.  Our church welcomed a new youth pastor onto our staff.  While I acknowledge the rough patches in 2016, there were things to celebrate too.

However, I also know that a lot people feel the way author of the article feels.  It was a rough year. That feeling and the malaise that comes with it, is a final reason I want us to begin 2017 earnestly seeking God.  Our ability to talk about God will increase.  We will meet the God Isaiah introduces, a merciful, forgiving, loving God.  We will grow in relationship and thus be prepared to spend eternity in the resurrection in God’s presence.  And, we can shift our focus from the pain and tension in our own lives and in the world around us.  We are all small before the Holy God.  In that way, all people are the same.  And all need God.  We can unite in our quest to meet this God.  In Him, we can be one people. 

So, we enter 2017 with the words of Isaiah.

Seek the Lord while he may be found,
    call upon him while he is near;
⁷ let the wicked forsake their way,
    and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

It’s something we do together. 

This morning we close with the promise that comes at the end of the chapter – the end goal of seeking God.

[We] shall go out in joy,
    and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before [us]
    shall burst into song,
    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

AMEN