God Is God, And We Are Not
October 18, 2019 2 Chronicles 16:1-4 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12
Let’s suppose for a moment that you are the star NBA player on your basketball team. You have scored more points, gotten more rebounds, had more assists, and hit more winning shots than anybody in the history of the game. When you speak about basketball, people listen. Everybody wants you to come to their basketball clinic to train their players.
Suppose it’s the finals in the NBA, and your team is ahead by one point. The other team has the ball with less than two seconds left. They have a player who has come in off the bench into the game. The ball is passed to the player who shoots and the ball is headed for the basket, but you jump up and you slap the ball into the stands and the fans go wild at your action as the buzzer sounds.
But then a referee is blowing his whistle and charges you with goal tending. You get into an argument with the Referee and explain to him “that no way was that goal tending”. You say to him, “it was never my intention to even try to goal tend.”
You also say “goal tending is a stupid rule to begin with, and it never should apply to a top rated player like myself, especially in the last two minutes of the game.” You demand to the referee that, You either take back the call or I will not play basketball again.”
What do you think is going to happen? The reality is, it does not matter who you are, what your intentions were, what you think the rule ought to be, the referee is the referee and you are not. The referee gets to determine what is allowed and what is not. When it comes to setting the rules for the game of life, we have to remember God is God and We are not.
Today we were introduced to a young man who became king at age 16, who ruled as a king for 52 years. If he were a presidential candidate in the United states, that would mean he won the election 13 times in a row. This king started out his job with some great words “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as father Amaziah had done. He sought God during the days of Zechariah who instructed him in the fear of God.”
One of the things that is lacking in the church today is the concept of “the fear of the Lord.” I’m not talking about walking around with an image of God as this angry person in heaven waiting to punish everybody the moment they disobey so that He can cast them into hell. No, I am talking about a respectful kind of fear that lets me know, I am not God’s equal and God is far smarter, more powerful and much wiser than I will ever be. A healthy fear of God makes us consider, I cannot control what my future is going to be, especially when I choose to ignore the commands of God.
King Uzziah became everything I talked about it when I asked you to imagine being the world’s greatest basketball player only his game was being king instead of playing basketball. As long as he was seeking after God, he kept moving up. He defeated the nations around him and they had to pay him money every year from their nations treasuries. That money made him super rich. He built up the cities and fortified their defenses throughout the country.
He built some huge decorative homes with beautiful gardens. He built up an incredibly powerful army. His Department of Defense invented some powerful new weapons. His fame spread all the way to the borders of Egypt. This little country had an army ¼ the size of the United States standing army today. With over 306,500 men skilled in battle and equipped with the latest technology, King Uzziah was the baddest dude in town.
He started to believe the reports everybody was saying,” King Uzziah, you da man. Look at all you have done. You have success written all over you.” One of the worst things that can happen to us is to become successful. It does not matter where the success comes from or what age we are when it happens, or where the success happens.
God knows that it can cause us to think, we are like God. Do you remember one of the promises that Satan gave to Adam and Eve, was that if they ate the fruit that was forbidden, they would become like God.
God know all too well the dangers of success. He told Moses: 10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
The very things we spend our time in prayer over can take us away from the Lord, because our pride slips in. It’s my house, my car, my family, by bank account, my company, my team, my ability, my career, my accomplishments, my degrees, my voice and so forth. Not what the Lord has given me.
The thing with success is that it never brings us the complete satisfaction that we desire, because it can’t replace the part of us that God created for himself. We will it either admit it or we will think we are entitled to more. Why do we expect our successful singers and actors and musicians to have the drug culture as a part of their lives?
The Scriptures tell us, 6 But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the LORD his God, and entered the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the altar of incense. Success can cause us to want more than we are entitled to.
God had built the nation of Israel on three pillars. There were the prophet who spoke for God, the priests who served in the temple for God on behalf of God’s people, and the king who ruled the people for God. King Uzziah thought to himself, the only way for me to go even higher, was to show the people he could be both a king and a priest. After all, with all that he had done, why should he have to go through a priest anyways to get to God.
What could it possibly hurt to rewrite the law of God for just this one exception. There is always going to be the temptation to rewrite the law of God for our one exception. What’s your exception today that you are writing. Where is it that God is trying to tell you, that He is God, and you are not? The funny thing about King Uzziah is that although he no longer feared the Lord, he still wanted to have a relationship with God. He just wanted it on his own terms. When we seek to bargain with God about our disobedience, we think God is our equal.
Imagine for a moment that you are in boat that had overturned out in the middle of Lake Erie in November with cold waters and rising waves hitting against you. The Coast Guard comes by and you’re telling your would be rescuers that if they could not guarantee the safety of your boat while you came on board, you will not go with them.
King Uzziah decided to take the censer in to offer incense before God. Azariah and 80 other courageous priests stood up to challenge his actions before he got to the altar of incense. They knew the king could have their heads cut off, but they were going to stand for the truth of God’s word. King Uzziah got angrier than he had been in a long time. How dare these people him from doing what he wanted to do for God? The nerve of them, telling him the king, to leave the temple.
When he got near the incense altar, he was making all kinds of threats against the priests. He probably let them know “As soon as he finished offering the incense, he was going to fire all 80 of them and throw them in prison and…..”
It was about that time that priests all got big eyes and looks of horror on their faces. At first Uzziah thought they were afraid of him, but then he recognized something was happening to his body. His head was not feeling right with a huge burning sensation on his forehead. Somebody must have yelled out, “let’s get him out of here. God has struck the king’s head with leprosy.”
The Scriptures said that, not only did the priest try to get him out of the temple as fast as they could, he himself was eager to leave because the Lord had struck him. King Uzziah, the man who had it all, lost it all. The leprosy not only kept him from entering the temple again, he couldn’t even go back home. He lived in a separate house.
His son had to step up take over the palace and to rule the people. When he died, he was buried in a separate area away from the other kings. He had no idea, that forgetting God was God and He was not, would cause him to end up with the future that he had.
I am thankful that God loves us so much, that it is God’s desire for us to repent and that God does not immediately send judgment when we choose to disobey or to defy Him. Yet the fear of the Lord, reminds us that God will have the last say in what happens in the future with our lives. Uzziah had a change of heart in trying to run out of the temple, but it came too late.
Just as success can make us want to walk away from God, disappointment can also do the same thing. We may think that because we have done all these things on God’s good check list, God should have done something for us that God has not done. We decide God has not kept his end of the bargain, so why should we keep ours.
We can at that point also forget that God is God and We are not. Our walking away from God does not diminish who God is in anyway, it simply cuts us off from blessings that could be ours. At the heart of the person walking away from God because of success or the person walking away because of disappointment, the issue at hand is pride. I’m going to do what I want to do, regardless of what God has said about it.
Many people want to know the will of God, but much fewer want to obey it. In our New testament reading we find the same certainty in what God’s will is as Uzziah did in his situation.
We find in I Thessalonians 4:3 It is God’s will that you be sanctified. This means that we should be in the process of becoming holy or in the process of becoming more dedicated to God. To be holy is to be set apart for God’s use. When we say, we are all created in the image of God, we often think that means we are all to treat each other the same and respect one another as fellow human beings.
I think it goes deeper than that. I think because we are created in the image of God, there is something in us that has some of the attributes of God inside of us. We know that God is holy and righteous.
If we are in his image, then there is a part of us that calls for holiness and righteousness. God is going to hold all of us accountable for how we do damage to that part of his image. God’s law has been set up to protect God’s image in us. The part of us that is most in the image of God is our spirit. That’s the part that longs after wanting to be with God.
Whether we are saved or not, God does not want us hurting his image in us because when we do, we are hurting ourselves. When we are the ones deciding what can hurt the image of God in us and what doesn’t, then once again we have forgotten that God is God and we are not.”
One of the major problems facing first century Christians that still plague us in the 21st century is the issue of sexual behavior. Some of the believers had been engaging in adultery. Some had engaged in homosexuality. Some had been prostitutes Some had gone to temples who had prostitutes to assist you in worshiping your god.
Some were saying as long as you loved each other, it didn’t matter because these bodies were going to pass away anyways. Some saw nothing wrong with incest. It was pretty much a free sex however you like it kind of mentality.
The word of God tells us that our bodies were created for the Lord. No-one has the right to simply use another person’s body for their own desire. God gave us the gift of sex between a husband and wife, to show us what it is to be like between Christ and the Church.
There is to be a bond of total commitment to each other and of sharing the same body so that the two become one. Christ is the head and the church is his body. They derive a mutual joy from each other. Sex between a husband and wife comes at the price of their total commitment to each other which is demonstrated in marriage.
God created us with the intention of filling us with His Spirit. We are created to be temples. Nothing should be done to our bodies that would cause grief to the Holy Spirit God wants to place within us.
The word of God teaches that sexual sin affects us in a way that no other sin does. It goes to the core of who we are. It rejects what God says about how sex is to be used. God’s word is even stronger in that it says when we are committing sexual sin, we are forcing Christ to engage in prostitution with another person.
Now I know there are those who say, if its consenting adults, I see nothing wrong with it. Uzziah saw nothing wrong with offering incense before God. If all that mattered was a choice between two people, then your point is well taken.
But what if God’s word is true and what if God is going to hold us to His standard when we stand before him. Let me ask you something, would we be better off without the 2.3 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases in 2018. Would we be better off without the millions of people now addicted to pornography?
Would we be better off without all the married couples who are having sex with someone else? Our government reports that the number of new Aids cases have remained stable over the period from 2012 to 2017. What they mean is, only 38,700 people are now infected each year. Would it matter if it was you or your child?
If so then maybe we should consider God’s word. It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body[a] in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister.[b] The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.
This is not a passage of Scripture that’s confusing or hard to understand. Yet it does attack our sense of pride. Who should get to set the standards for what it is right or wrong when it comes to living a holy life. We want to say, “I know what hurts me and what doesn’t.” I don’t need anyone telling me how to live my life.
Isn’t it strange that the one person who should not have needed anyone trying to tell him how to live his life was the one who was the most holiest of all, and he claimed he did need someone telling him how to live his life.
That person was Jesus. He kept letting us know, He did not come to change or to challenge the law of God. He came to fulfill it.
He insisted he was not living his life exactly as He wanted to, but instead He only did the things that He saw the Father was doing. He found that when it came to paying the penalty for our sin which would involve by beaten mercilessly, being nailed to the cross, being separated from the Father because our sins would be piled on top of him making him look horrific to his own Father, he prayed not my will, but yours be done.
To be a follower of Christ is in essence to follow in the footsteps of Jesus daily praying, not my will but yours be done. It is remembering that God is God and we are not. We can’t really decide to let God be God. God is God regardless of what we think.
We do have the option of accepting God as He is, or deceiving ourselves into thinking we can diminish God’s final authority over our future and our lives.
What changes are you seeking from God to excuse your reluctance to be obedient. What area of your life do you need to turn over to the Lord to restart the sanctification process? How are you making compromises instead of choosing to be sanctified, to be made holy in the Lord’s sight?
