Last week we explored predestination, foreknowledge, and free will, actually we scratched the surface. But just scratching the surface of these kinds of issues can be a bit unsettling. There are many many books that have been written on these subjects by many people who try to explain both sides of the issue in a way that settles all the arguments and satisfies all the questions. Personally I don’t think you can explain away all the problems simply because we don’t have all the information we need. We tend to forget that we don’t experience all of reality yet. This week I thought it would be interesting to look at God’s heart attitude toward believers and non-believers.

One of the best things that I learned in college was from Prof. Needham. He told us once that if you come across something in the bible or in someone’s teaching that starts to shake your beliefs, the best thing to do is to head for the basement. Go down and examine the foundation. Is Jesus still God? Did He die for my sins? Did He rise from the dead? Do I trust Him to save me? Once you check out what really matters and find that it is all still solid, then you can head back up and deal with whatever is shaking the siding. I think we will all be surprised in many ways when we are living on the new Earth with God. I think there will be many people wishing they could take back a great many opinions. Thankfully, at that point it won’t be nearly as important as it seems to be now.

I find it interesting how important it is for us to try to explain God. People who don’t care about God or don’t want anything to do with God, still end up doing something with God, even if they only try to lock Him away in a forgotten closet. But for someone who is interested in Him there is a great desire to put God into terms that we can handle, to take Him apart so to speak, and examine the pieces like we were going to make a copy of Him. The funny thing is that as soon as we have satisfied ourselves we scoop up the pieces and dump them into our God box and store it out in the garage somewhere. When we do that, when we finish our exam and store Him away, we are out of our minds if we think we have Him figured out. Our God is so big that we can spend eternity exploring who He is and still be learning new things. Really if you stop to think about it, it is a ridiculous goal, the created trying to explain the Creator, but I think it is one we are stuck with. It is part of our nature to try to explain and understand our surroundings and influences. When we try to explain God we need to remember how much greater He is than us, how uncontainable He truly is. God’s abilities, His thoughts, His deeds, everything that He is and everything that He does is so far above and beyond us that we are lucky we can comprehend any part of Him at all. You definitely can’t store Him in a box in your mental garage.

Isaiah 55:8: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

All I can say is that I am very glad that He gave us His word. The bible is one of God’s greatest gifts to us because in it He has revealed Himself to us. He shows us His power, His might, His love, His long suffering, and His sacrifice in how He deals with Israel and the church, and most of all in the life of His son Jesus. Did He reveal everything about Himself to us, no, we wouldn’t be able to handle that. It says in Ex 33:20 that we can’t even see His face and live. But we can rest in the fact that He has given us everything that we need to know about Him at this point in our relationship. This is a good thing considering what Christianity really boils down to.

Christianity isn’t about going to church, it isn’t about the guy up front, and it’s not about how involved you are. Now if you have been coming to this church for very long those statements are nothing new, but for some of you in this room they may be a little shocking. I can remember when I first trusted God to save my soul. I was in high school at the time and had started attending a youth group at a local church because a girl I thought was pretty cute had invited me to come. I didn’t get the girl, but I did begin to accumulate knowledge about God. It wasn’t until a winter retreat that the knowledge I had gained resonated with my soul. At that point I knew God was real and I knew I needed to make a choice about my eternal destination. At that moment all that mattered was God, the truth, and my response to it. The moment of salvation doesn’t last forever though, and it wasn’t long before other things started to matter. Soon, who I was as a christian was directly tied to my church attendance, how many times I had read the bible, how free I was when I worshiped, who I associated with, and a whole score of other things that were hard to keep track of. And the really scary part was that I tied how God felt about me to what these other Christians felt about me. Why do we do that? Why are we so quick to compare ourselves to others and see ourselves as falling short? Why do we judge and criticize when we don’t have all the information? And why in the world do we think that God views us the same way that all these broken people around us do? Whenever I have one of those moments when my flesh is starting to get concerned about where I am in the pecking order of the people around me, I try to remember this, Christianity is about two things, my God and myself. That’s it. It doesn’t matter what so and so is doing or if I’m better than what’s his name. Pecking orders are for chickens to worry about, I don’t want to be like the chickens.

So walking with God is exactly that, you and God walking through this life together. God is the gentle leader and we, hopefully, are the willing follower. God is the teacher and we are the learner. Sounds great doesn’t it? Nice and tranquil, like a stroll through a Japanese garden. Well, it isn’t always so smooth. Life can be downright terrible at times. Sometimes I don’t feel like God is with me. Sometimes I feel like I have been thrown into a battlefield and even though I am told God is with me it sure seems like I’m alone out here. I keep trying the radio, but I just don’t seem to get a reply. This is normal, it’s a lie, but it’s normal. How can we expect to emotionally respond in a correct manner to the events in our life when what we see and experience is only maybe half of what is actually going on? The truth is God is with us every second of every day. He experiences every battle, every victory, every loss. When we buy into the lie that we are all alone we are playing into the enemy’s hand, but the truth is

Matthew 28:20: I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

Hebrews 13:5: for He himself hath said, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”

In our walk with God we will do as we always do and accumulate information that we can add to the ongoing effort to explain and make sense of who God is. As we journey with God we experience different aspects of who He is, we have moments of discovery, we have periods of emotional distance, and we have the day to day companionship. We relate to God in many different ways. Our knowledge of God has many different facets. I’m an aircraft inspector so let me give you an illustration from my world. I work on little airplanes, but relating to God is like relating to a 747. Initially there is the shock and awe aspect. The thing is just a monster, even the tires easily weigh more than you do. The asphalt at the airport must meet certain specifications for a 747 to land there or it will destroy runways and taxiways by its shear weight alone. When a person walks up to a 747 they are usually amazed that the thing can get off the ground, let alone carry hundreds of tons of cargo. But if you were to spend every day with a 747, soon the shock and awe would fade to a respect. You would focus on smaller and smaller parts of the plane simply because you can’t take in the whole thing at once and make sense of anything. In fact when they do inspections on aircraft that large it is broken down into hundreds of cards that are divided among many mechanics. Each mechanic is responsible for some section or system of the plane. We do the some sort of thing with God. We start with the wide angle focus taking in the big picture and then slowly start zooming in over time on one quality or another. After awhile we lose sight of the big picture until we see some new aspect of God or He reveals an old truth in a new way and instantly we zoom all the way out and we are right back to shock and awe.

I’m hoping that last week was one of those moments. We looked at several verses that showed God as a powerful choreographer who answers to no one. We saw that with His amazing foreknowledge He even wrote down all the days ordained for each of our lives. We like to focus on the parts of God that make us feel good, the parts that tell about the happy ending. There is much more to God than the feel good stuff. I came away from what I shared with you last week feeling like I left you with a big, heavy, uncaring, unfeeling sort of God, sort of like a giant, greasy cheeseburger in your gut. It sounds good, but doesn’t sit very well. So I wanted to to kind of cut away all the unnecessary baggage this week and get down to the basics. Yes, God is powerful, in control, and oddly enough, He wants us to be with Him. Yes He is huge and mighty, but thankfully He is also a gentle shepherd.

Isaiah 40:11: He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and will gently lead those that have their young.

Isaiah 42:1-4: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope.”

John 10:27: My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

So we can see that our all powerful, planet forming God definitely has a gentle side when it comes to the flock under His care. We also know that His desire is that everyone would choose to accept His gift of eternal life. But what about people that don’t want God’s input in their life?

Mark 3:1: Then Jesus entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched Jesus closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they could accuse him. So he said to the man who had the withered hand, "Stand up among all these people." Then he said to them, "Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or evil, to save a life or destroy it?" But they were silent. After looking around at them in anger, grieved by the hardness of their hearts, he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. So the Pharisees went out immediately and began plotting with the Herodians, as to how they could assassinate him.

In this passage we have our typical head to head confrontation of Jesus and the religious leaders of the day. Remember, these were supposed to be the folks that had devoted their lives to serving God and ministering to His people. We don’t know much about the guy with the withered hand, all we know is that he was there. It’s very possible that the Pharisees had brought him hoping that Jesus would do this very thing. What is interesting about this passage is Jesus’ response to the Pharisees. Jesus is on to these guys from the beginning. What is God’s response to law getting in the way of love? Anger. Jesus is angry at these guys because their hearts are so hard that they think helping someone on the Sabbath is a criminal offense. Their hearts are hard towards God, God’s heart is heart toward them. It is important to note that there were very few people that Jesus ever got angry at while He was here on the earth. Your heart attitude toward God has everything to do with His attitude toward you.

Mark 5:21-34: When Jesus had crossed again in a boat to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him, and he was by the sea. Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came up, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He asked him urgently, "My little daughter is near death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be healed and live." Jesus went with him, and a large crowd followed and pressed around him.

Now a woman was there who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years. She had endured a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet instead of getting better, she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she kept saying, "If only I touch his clothes, I will be healed." At once the bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Jesus knew at once that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" His disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing against you and you say, 'Who touched me?'" But he looked around to see who had done it. Then the woman, with fear and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

There are many things going on here, Jesus just got off the ferry, an important synagogue ruler needs His help, there is a large crowd that they are trying to wade through, and all of the sudden Jesus wants to know who touched Him? I chose this passage because of all the interactions that Jesus has with people that want something from Him, which is all of us by the way, this is the one where I could see Him legitimately getting a bit frustrated with this lady. You know what I mean. It’s a hot day, we’re in a bit of a rush trying to save a little girl from dying, there’s a big crowd to deal with. The crowd alone should have had his fuse down to about the one or two second mark. So then this poor lady who is at the end of her rope, sneaks up behind Him and steals a healing. Really? Who in the world thinks that they can steal a blessing from God? This could have been a two chapter lecture from Jesus easy, but look at what happens. This woman, who has been suffering not only the embarrassment of bleeding for twelve years, but also the mental anguish of not being able to find a cure, and the spiritual ramifications of being unclean, this woman places her faith not just in Jesus, but in the clothes that He is wearing. Her heart is about as tender towards God as you can get. She believes that Jesus can change her life if only she can touch His coat. She does, He does, and everything stops. Do you really think that Jesus needed to ask who had touched Him? When God asks you an open ended question it is best to be completely straightforward and honest with Him. The question isn’t for Him, it’s for her. Terrified, which is the normal response to the miraculous in our lives, terrified she tells Him the whole story and then waits for the hammer to fall. Listen to the response of God to a heart that trusts in Him.

He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

Again, this would have been an ideal spot for Jesus to give His guidance on stealing, or how to deal with the unclean, or male and female interactions in public places, or even prioritizing your schedule. No, He stops everything for her and after she bares her soul to Him, He says the most loving word she needed to hear. Daughter. Then He confirms her faith and blesses her life. Look at how soft and tender the heart of God is towards someone who heart is trusting in Him.

I don’t know where your heart is today, but I think it is safe to say that with this many people there are going to be both soft, tender hearts, and hard, crusty ones. We’ve seen that God’s heart attitude towards you tends to mirror your heart attitude towards Him. If you are the kind of person that needs to be scared into changing your attitude towards God, there are plenty of stories in the old testament that show what happens when the patience of God runs out. The flood, Sodom and Gamorrah, a whole generation of Israel that dies in the desert due to their hard hearts. If, on the other hand, you are at the end of your rope and all you have left is God, He knows. He can do the impossible, and He wants you to know that He hasn’t forgotten about you.