CYPRESSWOOD CHURCH OF CHRIST

October 23, 2005

KEEP PRAYING FOR:

Our congregation                                                                 David and James in the military

Our students                                                                         Various friends, relatives and co-workers

Our nation, leaders and military                                         Mel is having test run

Anita is also having tests run                           

DINNER: We have all been invited to the King’s new house in Magnolia on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 6, after our assembly.  Details to come.

MAKING GOD IN OUR IMAGE

“Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him” (Psalm 115:3).

In the past, I have referred to how people make Jesus into what they want Him to be; a revolutionary, an environmentalist, a social reformer, everything but Savior.  We too need to be careful not to mold Jesus into our way of thinking as well.  We have also done the same with God.  We have made God in our image, that is, in our way of thinking or how we think God is or should act.  Some have gone so far as to think that they have God all figured out. 

Many years ago, J. B. Phillips wrote a book entitled Your God Is Too Small.  In it he wrote that we put God in a box we call a church building.  We unlock it on Sunday, check in and up on God, then lock Him back in for the rest of the week.  He goes on to say that some see God in various ways.  He might be the grandfather in the sky, rocking back and forth in His old age.  He might be the policeman, or what I like from the old television series, The Commish, just waiting to catch us and say “Gotch ya.”  Some view Him as Santa Claus, giving us our lists of wants and angry with Him if He doesn’t. 

These ideas and others then give people a distorted picture of God.  We have all heard people say that the God of the Hebrew scriptures is a God of wrath and that the God of the New Covenant is a God of love.  A closer look would reveal how misguided that is.  God has always loved His creation, and humankind in particular.  He provided for Israel for forty years in the wilderness with food and water and clothes that did not wear out, even though they had angered Him.  In the midst of a falling nation, Jeremiah quotes God who is saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness” (31:3).  Even when He told them time and again that He would cast Israel out of the land, He also promised to bring back a remnant, which He did.  Is there wrath in the Old Covenant scriptures?  Yes, but there is also love if we look at them closely. 

Under the New Covenant, and through Jesus, we often see love, and rightly so.  Yet there are texts that deal with judgment or wrath.  Romans One lists sins and 2:16 speaks of judgment.  The book of Hebrews has several texts about God as “a consuming fire” (12:29) and “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31).  A number of Jesus’ parables were judgment parables.  And no matter how you view Revelation, judgment is involved.  The ultimate is the cross, where Jesus became a sacrifice of propitiation which means, He appeased the wrath of God because of our sins.  Again, carefully reading the texts reveal that the distinction between the Old and New isn’t there.

How we view God affects how we read scripture and live life.  We want God to be kind and loving and we certainly don’t want Him to be blamed for horrible things.  This leads to ideas such as God being all loving but not all powerful or all knowing.  Otherwise He is seen as some hateful God and we know He isn’t.  In fact, we will defend God against what some consider “acts of God.”  How do we do this?  One way has been in what we call nature.  God has set the world in motion and there are things that normally occur in nature.  For instance, in the summer we have hurricanes and in the winter snow storms.  Tornados and earthquakes occur because that is nature.  Then to say that God brings famine and war and that innocent people die as well as the guilty is considered heresy.  To say that God brought this or that about causes Christians to cringe.  I was told once not even to go there with this idea.  But consider this. “In defending the image we intellectually construct we think we’re defending the God of scripture.  For example, a God that a God should be like wouldn’t order the killing of children -- but the God of the Bible did!  A God that a God should be like wouldn’t bring famine on a nation (a famine that would kill the innocent as well as the guilty) but the God of the Bible did!  A God that a God should be like would distance himself altogether from war but the God of the Bible didn’t -- he said he sent armies to war!” (Jim McGuiggan, Justifying God (2), www.jimmcguiggan.com/perplexed/lesson.asp?id+54).  If the texts are not familiar to you, then read the following: Amos 4, Deuteronomy 32:22-27; Matthew 5:43-48).  In the Deuteronomy text, God is concern that Israel and other nations would think that He did not bring the destruction that would come.  God wants it perfectly clear; He did it and no one else.

John Mark Hicks made some comments about how we view God as well (see “Theodices in the Stone-Campbell Movement, http://professingprofessor.blogspot.com/2005/08/theodices-in-the-stone-campbell-movement.htm).  He stated that we in churches of Christ are deists, that is, we see God creating the world, sending Jesus and crucifying Him (and some do not even see God doing this), and sending His Holy Spirit to deliver the word of scripture, then returning to wait until the end.  So we live as all we need is the word.  How does this play out?  We open our “business meetings” with a prayer, make decisions because God has given us a mind to reason with, close our meeting with a prayer, having made all the decisions necessary to function.  And because of the prayers, we think we have God’s approval.  We do not talk about “waiting on the Lord” because in our view, God isn’t active in our lives that way.  When we pray for the sick, we often ask that God would guide the hands of the doctors in helping those we are praying for (and rightly so), but how about praying directly to God for healing as a brother of mine often states, going directly to the Source of healing. 

We want to make God in our image, just like the ancient Israelites did with the golden calf, because of several reasons.  One, we have difficulty accepting that God does what He wants and that we do not understand the reasoning behind it all (see Psalm 115:3).  Some have a difficult time saying that even though they do not understand why this or that happens, we will trust that God knows what is best.  “You are always righteous, Lord, when I bring a case before you.  Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper?  Why do all the faithless live at ease?” (Jeremiah 12:1).  Answers do not come easily, or at all, from God; we trust that in our grief and suffering God knows what is best.  See Job for one example of this.

Second, we have difficulty recognizing that God is King of the universe and we are not.  That means He rules, not you or me.  We do not want to give up control.  We want control, so if God has just left us with His word, then we are in control, unaccountable to anyone but Him, but only in the day of judgment.  Where does this lead us?  It leads to a legalism that few, if any, can live under.  One stated this way: if you are driving down the highway, lose control of the car, and just before you crash into the concrete, you cuss; and because you did not repent, you are lost and going to hell.  That person sees God as an unmerciful judge rather than what God Himself says about Himself (see Exodus 34:6-7).  Another view comes from an old argument against dancing.  One of the “reasoned” argument against dancing many years ago was to say, “what if you were at a dance and God came?”  The problem is that God already knows one is at the dance.  This view attempts to separate God from us, and we think we can do things and God doesn’t really know we are doing them.  How foolish have we become.  God is King and as King is all knowing.

Third, we have run past the cross to baptism.  We have not grasped many of the implications of the death of Jesus, one of which is that God did it.  “This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23; see also 1 Peter 1:20).  God made Jesus a sin offering (see 2 Corinthians 5:21, especially the footnote), not a sinner, but a sin offering, pure, innocent, and holy.  God did this!  We often speak that we cause it by our sins, and that is true, but that is not the complete picture.  Our sins are the cause for the crucifixion of Jesus because we needed our sins dealt with, and all sin will be dealt with one way or another.  But God was behind this; He was the one who did it.  He took an innocent person and had Him crucified for us.  An innocent man!  There is just no way around that.  God did it.  I’m emphasizing this because it needs to be.  This is our God and Father, the all loving, all powerful, all knowing God, who killed Jesus.  He had legions of angels available to prevent this, nevertheless, He did it. 

Ultimately, when hurricanes, earthquakes, famines, and wars occur, God is behind it for reasons that we do not fully understand (see Daniel 2:21ff).  We can reject this, making God in a more acceptable image to our intellect, or we can accept what God has said about Himself and what He does, and someday all of this will come together.  And even if it doesn’t we will praise Him as King.  Will all accept this?  No.  Will this be easy to accept?  No.  But if we are going to be honest seekers of God, then we will have to take another look at a number of texts that we will have difficulty with because God claims to be doing this things.  In Deuteronomy 8:10-18, God told Israel what He has done for them to bless them.  In other texts, He told them what He will do in cursing them.  God is King!

                                                                                                                                                George B. Mearns

A couple of sources that you will find helpful:

John Mark Hicks, Yet Will I Trust Him, College Press.

Jim McGuiggan, Celebrating the Wrath of God, Waterbrook.

Their web sites from above also have valuable material.