FINDING GOD
A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind. Or is it a disturbed mind? A twisted mind?
I am a strong believer in messy desks. It is not so much clutter to me as leaving things where they are so that I can find them again and continue working on them. A messy desk tells me that something is going on. A clean desk tells me you are lazy. Then I get a strong impulse to go on a cleaning spree and purge the garbage that is really meaningless.
My mother used to come into my room and being a clean freak she would organize and clean my desk. This was so frustrating as I would come home from school and couldn’t find anything. I mean really, you know how us men are, if it doesn’t fall out of the sky and land in our hands we will never find the thing we are looking for. Clean desks are an abomination; messy desks are comfortable.
Finding God is difficult at the best of times. We have talked a lot about salvation in the past few messages, a good reminder for us who are saved, an invitation for those who are not. Finding God is not just about salvation though. Finding God is a daily quest for the godly who want to know the mind of God, or the will of God for a situation they are facing.
Charlie Brown said, “Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’” The same is true for a discussion on finding God. This is going to take more than a short sermon.
Isaiah invited the people of God to search for the LORD and discover his ways. I invite you to follow this prescription for yourself and find satisfaction for your souls. What we will find perhaps, is that we will find God in the messy situations rather than the ordered and clean ones. It is the messy situations that remind us to look for God. Here in Isaiah 55 Israel faced a messy situation and here they found God.
1. Come and seek the LORD
The invitation to find God is really intense. In v. 6 we find the second such invitation: “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near” (55:6). This was Isaiah’s additional invitation to God’s original. The LORD made this invitation earlier in the passage: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost” (55:1).
Isaiah’s invitation suggests that there will be a time when the LORD may not be easily found, he will not always be near. And it is not that the LORD is hiding now but he is waiting to be found, inviting us to seek him. The Bible tells us that we will find the LORD if we search for him with all our heart and soul (Dt 4:29).
We are not in exile like the Israelites were. We may be experiencing an exile of the heart in some ways. God may feel far off as you struggle with mental or physical health, rebellious children or a difficult work environment. It is difficult to feel God’s presence in those heart-wrenching times. Honestly, we don’t always go looking for God in those times but try instead to solve our own problems. How do we find God at times like that?
Isaiah tells us, “Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon” (55:7). The search for God takes us into a valley of despair, a place of darkness at times, and we wonder where he is. I read somewhere that our problem in this fruitless search is that we need to turn around. All the time we were looking for God he was right behind us. All the time we were searching for him he was following us, seeking us out. If we turn around we will find him.
Isaiah essentially tells us to repent. The “wicked” we may conclude, are the really vile sinners, the murderers and abusers. But the OT understanding of the “wicked” is simply those who disobey the LORD’s word. We need to turn away from our present wickedness – that is, our disobedience, our supposed right to go about life on our own strength. We must leave behind our thoughts, our philosophy which dictates our life and actions. In short, we must admit that we have chosen our own wisdom over God’s.
You may not realize you are walking away from the LORD. Your way may seem right to you, biblical even. It’s possible you have not strayed that far but you are presuming that you know the mind of God.
2. Why we need to seek the LORD
What’s wrong with the way we are going? The question jumps off the page, “How are the LORD’s thoughts and ways different than ours?”
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (55:8-9).
You can see the contrast Isaiah is making: the wicked person’s ways and thoughts in v. 7 versus the LORD’s ways and thoughts in vv. 8-9. The LORD’s ways and thoughts cannot be unrighteous or wicked for he his holy. When we come to glimpse just a fraction of his holiness we understand that we are so unrighteous.
Think of Peter when Jesus told him to fish on the other side of the boat and he caught an enormous amount of fish. Peter’s response to Jesus was, “Go away from me Lord; I am a sinful man” (Lk 5:8). Saul thought he was doing the Lord’s work by persecuting Christians. He was zealously serving God – according to his own understanding. Then he met Jesus on the road to Damascus and discovered how wrong he was (Acts 9).
A church like ours can easily think that we are following the Lord’s will. Then the Spirit comes and shows us we have been disobedient to God’s true commands. God’s thoughts are so far above our thoughts how can we presume to know them?
Joni Erickson Tada once received a letter from an angry young man that had been in an accident. He was bitter at God for allowing him to suffer. He had written to Joni asking the big question: WHY? After relating some of her own feelings of bitterness and questioning, Joni wrote:
If God decided to explain all His ways to me, what makes me think I would be able to understand them? It would be like pouring million-gallon truths into my one-ounce brain. Didn’t one Old Testament author write, “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things” (Ecclesiastes 11:5)? In fact, the whole book of Ecclesiastes was written to convince people like me that only God holds the keys to unlocking the mysteries of life and that He’s not loaning them all out! If God’s mind was small enough for me to understand, He wouldn’t be God! Yet, in spite of this, He has chosen to have a personal relationship with me–that’s the greatest mystery of all! (A Step Further, p. 173)
While I was praying this week I received a vision much like Joni’s. Here’s your brain (a shot glass) and here’s the mind of Einstein (a pitcher of water). Can I pour this water in this little glass? No, absolutely not. Now consider this glass in comparison to Niagara Falls – That is the mind of God attempting to pour into our little minds.
Can we understand the suffering of our souls like God can? Can we fathom God’s plans for his church? Can we see the big picture like he can? Can we begin to grasp our own existence from beginning to end? If this is how it is, then how can we even begin to find God? Why bother seeking him?
3. Help in seeking the LORD
The truth remains that the LORD wants to be found. He wants us to seek him with all our heart and soul. To illustrate this he uses the analogy of heaven and earth:
“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (55:10-11).
God makes the comparison that his word is like rain in that it falls from heaven and never fails to do what it is meant for. As rain waters the earth and is powerful and effective in the growth of crops, the word of God powerfully and effectively quenches the thirst of those who seek God. His word aids us in coming to know his mind.
What is his word to us? We could say scripture of course. This is true to a limited extent. However, it is not enough to read the Bible all the way through to know God. No, he sent his word to us that we might understand him. “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14).
The Bible as a book is only a testimony to the Word of God. It is the best testimony we have and is the authority of the Church. But ultimately we look to Jesus to know God’s ways and thoughts. We look to Jesus as the way back to God, relationship with the Father. Jesus came from God and he did not return empty, he accomplished the purpose God sent him for. Read the Bible and look for Jesus, listen to the voice of God calling you back to him.
Then… “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (55:12). This closing verse tells us the benefits of seeking the LORD…there is joy in repentance, in returning to God, in finding God. There is joy in obedience. When we admit we have drifted from God and gone our own way in our own wisdom and that we need God’s truth, then we will know this joy and peace.
I want to know the mystery of God. And I want you to experience the mystery of God too. So I encourage you to write a list this week, today preferably, of questions about God, about the world, about suffering or whatever bothers you about your faith. Make no attempt to answer those questions. Simply observe your questions and recognize that God dwells there in those questions – that you don’t have to have the answers. Pray over this list and ask him for help in trusting him with what you don’t know or understand.
I pray that you will turn and find God.
AMEN
