21Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 23who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. 24Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 25To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. 26Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. 27Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”? 28Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Why, do you suppose, men question the existence of God? And why do they act as if His sovereignty – that He alone is in charge – is irrelevant? And why do you suppose they do that when they are most in need of God?
Despite the rampant unbelief and impunity with which many treat God, it does not change the fact of God’s existence or His sovereign will. Eternal truth never changes based upon the approval or disapproval of men; God is God, and we are not!
I suspect most unbelief comes from two sources:
1. the arrogance of men who just can’t settle for a God they can’t see or control.
(Frankly, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to depend upon a God which you control, because the first time you need this “god” for something bigger than you, well, you are kind of out of luck. If you control him, how is he going to handle something you can’t? Personally, I need a God who is bigger than my finite mind and abilities, and my problems!)
A second source of unbelief is…
2. the extreme pain of men who are in such dire circumstances they cannot think straight.
In the movie “Man On Fire” John Creasy (played by Denzel Washington) was just such a man.
John Creasy, former CIA operative, has taken an assignment as bodyguard to a rich Mexican family to protect their daughter Pita. On his first day on the job, he must take her to school. Creasy has wrestled with suicide as he tries to face the guilt from some of the terrible things he did in his previous job.
In the film clip Creasy’s conversation with a nun at Pita’s school ends with him declaring his knowledge of God, but his unbelief in God’s willingness to have someone like him: “I am the sheep that got lost, Madre” is a powerful condemnation. For someone who knows the Word, Creasy doesn’t know the Father’s heart. [1]
Unbelief arrives in thousands of different packages and scenarios. It shows up in different lifestyles and is expressed in so many different ways it is difficult just to catalogue them. Today let’s assume the funnel narrows it down to the uneasy sense of betrayal one feels at being “left all alone in this great big world to fend for oneself”; in short, unbelief is a form of fear, an anger that the Creator doesn’t love me or care for me.
The nation of Israel felt that way (8th Century BC). They had been conquered and the city of Jerusalem was in ruins; the most capable citizens had been carried off to slavery. Their collective whining found its way into Isaiah’s words. Their defeat and shame turned to unbelief which expressed its anger towards a God they figured had abandoned them:
“GOD has lost track of me. He doesn’t care what happens to me” -- Isaiah 40:27b (TMSG)
There is a modern echo of this kind of thinking. It is found in the kind of argumentative questioning in which (so-called) sophisticated people want to engage. Well good…let’s engage! What kind of questions are the stuff of unbelief?
Question #1. If God is good and He is all-powerful, why does he let bad stuff happen?
This question came when Hitler murdered six million Jews; it came when the World Trade Center towers were reduced to ashes. The question comes from children and those who do not know God. It seems a reasonable question, but it really is not our question to ask.
The Bible makes it quite clear that questioning God in His ways is not the place to begin. A loose translation of Romans 9 would ask the question: Just who does the clay think it is when it demands the Potter explain Himself.
Again, God’s answer after Job stuck his foot in his mouth trying to put God on the witness stand: Where were you, little man, when I formed the heavens and earth? You think you have a right to question Me?
Yet, in His graciousness, God has already given us the answer to our question for tragedy – God lets bad stuff happen because He is good. Without the goodness of God there would not be any free choice for you and me. We would be like robots, serving God by His will alone, and not our choice. The fact that a good God, who owns the patent on “free will,” has created and gifted man with that same free will, means that we have the capacity to choose between good and evil. And we do…and we always gravitate towards evil.
Rabbi Kushner in his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, came to the conclusion that God is not all-powerful. The Rabbi’s young son had died, and the grief was too great. He came to the conclusion that God was either not good, or He could not control everything; some things were out of God’s hands. To his credit, Kushner chose to believe that God is good, but not all-powerful. The problem with the Rabbi’s thinking (and the title of his book) is that there is no such thing as “good” people. The Bible declares it,
There is none righteous, no not one. – Romans 3.10
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. -- Romans 3.23
Jesus put an exclamation on it:
17As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. -- Mark 10:17 - 18
If we change the title of Rabbi Kushner’s book to agree with the theology of Scripture, it becomes, When Bad Things Happen to Bad People; most of us then don’t even bother to pick up the book out of curiosity. We already know the answer to that one.
Most of us agree that we are not perfect – we have all sinned. However, it is hard to accept the name “sinner”. Before we begin to make Job’s mistake and begin to question the goodness of God, we need to measure our own “goodness”. The question more becomes, why do WE let bad things happen without doing something?
Boston City Councilman Felix Arroyo, who oppose[d] war in Iraq, announced in January [2003] that he was going on a hunger strike to protest U.S. policy. Arroyo said he would begin a liquid-only regimen, but then limited that to daylight hours (thus allowing himself dinner and, theoretically, breakfast), and later qualified that to mean that he would only adhere to this hardship diet on the second and fourth Fridays of each month. [2] That’s not exactly suffering for the cause.
In the same way, humans can’t simply put on a show about caring over the bad stuff that happens if we’re not prepared to share in that suffering by helping.
…a cartoon of two turtles. One says, "Sometimes I’d like to ask why [God] allows poverty, famine, and injustice when he could do something about it."
The other turtle says, "I’m afraid God might ask me the same question." [3]
Bad stuff is our human lot, and our human choice, and people get hurt. God has chosen us to help tend the hurt, and do something about the bad stuff. He will help, but we must be ready to join with Him.
The second question also has many faces; but again, call it by its rightful name, unbelief. It comes from skeptics:
Question #2. Can God make a rock bigger than He can lift?
This is one of those foolish questions that people like me ask; I really did – back in my college days when I knew everything. I was a backslidden Christian skeptic. The theory goes that if God can make a rock big enough so it is too heavy for Him to lift, then, if He can’t lift it He can’t do everything. And, if He CAN make a rock bigger than He can lift He still can’t lift it, and therefore can’t do everything. What idiocy!
Here is how we answer such idiocy:
"….omnipotence does not mean that God can do anything, but it means that He can do with power anything that power can do. He has all the power that is or could be."
"Can God make two plus two equal six? This is a question which is frequently asked by skeptics and by children. We reply by asking how much power it would take to bring about this result. The absurdity of the question is not too difficult to see. Would the power of a ton of dynamite make two plus two equal six? or the power of an atom bomb? Or of a hydrogen bomb? When these questions are asked it is readily seen that the truth of the multiplication tables is not in the realm of power. [4]
And that’s the point; the question about impossibilities applied to God’s sovereignty is a display of foolish unbelief. A lady brought her husband to the psychiatrist as a last ditch effort; the man thought he was dead. The shrink did everything he could to convince the man otherwise, but the crazy husband still imagined he was a corpse. In one final attempt to reach the fruitcake the psychiatrist asked him if dead men bleed. The man replied, “don’t be silly; dead men don’t bleed”. With that the doctor took a pin and pricked the man’s arm, which immediately began to bleed. The man looked at it in disbelief. “So,” said the doctor rather smugly, “what do you say to the sight of that blood?” “Well I’ll be darned,” he wondered, dead men really do bleed”.
Now that’s a rather silly picture of what happens theologically when we begin to imagine that what we can see is all there is, and that somehow our little world of our own ideas and theories constitute all of wisdom and reality.
Rather, there is this leap of faith that says I will trust God for Whom He has said He is – the sovereign, omnipotent God of all.
What is it like to experience the sovereign, omnipotent God?
There are many Scriptures which refer to God’s infinite power. I would like to take David’s description of what is like to know and experience the touch of the Almighty hand. David pictures for us the created being, man – addressing the omnipotent Creator:
I will give thanks to Thee,
For I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Thy works, And my soul knows it very well.
Psalms 139.14
It is Fearful
The highest and lowest points of our lives bring thoughts of God. The birth of a child, marriage, tragedies and death…these things cause most people to ponder our own mortality – they are times to be fearful, or reverent. How are we to be fearful and reverent? One of the hymns of our faith is expresses it well:
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
…Perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity. [5]
Knowing that we worship the awesome God who holds creation, eternity, time and space in the hollow of his hand evokes in me reverence – even fear.
If you have never stood in the presence of God and trembled with fear, you have no sense of Who it is you stand before – or else you’ve never recognized that you always stand in His presence. We are fearfully made, and…
It is Wonderful
The “fearful” and “wonderful” go together with our God. A preacher shared this illustration: Let’s suppose that one day as you are walking down the street, you see a huge man coming toward you. Let’s suppose he’s really big-say 35 feet tall. Let’s say he weighs in at about 1500 pounds, all muscle. And he’s bearing down on you. As you consider the situation, only one question comes into your mind: Do I know this man? If you don’t, it’s time to start running in the opposite direction.
But if you know him, you wait till he comes up to you; you smile, he smiles and greets you, and together you walk side by side down the street. If you know that man, you’re going to stay close by his side and fear nothing at all. That’s why Psalm 23:4 says, "I will fear no evil … for you are with me." If God is walking by your side, you have nothing to fear.
The omnipotence of God is thus a doctrine of wonderful comfort to the believer. The all-powerful God is with me. He exercises his power on my behalf. Whenever I need him, and even when I think I don’t, he is there. He never fails. All his plans for me will come to pass. I can trust him completely. [6]
I can trust Him like Jeremiah when I am fearful of what life brings:
Ah Lord God! Behold, Thou hast made the heavens and the earth
by Thy great power and by Thine outstretched arm!
Nothing is too difficult for Thee,
Jeremiah 32.17 (NASB)
I can trust Him like Habakkuk when I am weak and feel about to give in:
The Lord God is my strength…
Habakkuk 3.19a (NASB)
I can trust Him like Mary when I am confused over the things that happen, and I wonder if God understands that life is going to swallow me up if He doesn’t show up to take care of things:
For nothing will be impossible with God.
Luke 1.37 (NASB)
The Psalmist said I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and…
My Soul Knows It VERY WELL
There are many things in life I do not know. But this one thing I cannot deny, my Creator is the Lord of the universe, and this my soul knows – He is the Lord God, Omnipotent Who Reigneth for ever and ever! There is nothing too hard, nothing too impossible for Him.
My mentor, Pat Giffen is home with the Lord now. He used to have a favorite sermon he liked to preach, Three Things God Doesn’t Know. The points were simple:
God doesn’t know a sinner He can’t love.
God doesn’t know a sin He can’t forgive.
God doesn’t know a single thing that repenting can’t solve.
That’s the truth about the All-Powerful One, and the Less-than powerful ones seated in this building today. The universe can make us feel rather small. God, says Isaiah, has it all in the hollow of his hand. That’s power!
Do you think you’d like to have a God like that for the times when you know you’re not God?
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ENDNOTES
1] © 2008 WingClips, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
2] Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird, 3/9/03, [quoting the Boston Globe, 1/30/03]
3] Peter John Kreeft, quoted in Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Zondervan, 2001), p. 50
4] James Oliver Buswell, Jr., Ph. D.; A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion, Vol I
5] Holy, Holy, Holy, Words Reginald Heber, 1783-1826, Music John B.Dykes, 1823-1876
Isaiah 40.12
6] Ray Prichard, Is Anything Too Hard For God?, Jeremiah 32:17, SermonCentral.com
