So hello, good to see you, and welcome to this place that we call DCC. We want to give a special shout and welcome to anyone who is back from Easter last week and any brand new friends here checking us out for the very first time today too. If you are new you need to know that all of your story is safe and welcome here regardless of how it reads, you belong with us regardless of what you believe,and that you are in a room today full of people who have all made mistakes, people who struggle with hurt, pain, guilt, and shame, people who have parts of their lives and stories that they wish they could erase, delete, change and do-over, people who really are just like you. We hope that you have already experienced that and that you want to come back and do this again with us real soon.
So, we are starting a brand new series today called Distortion, a series designed to help all of us clear up all the confusion that we tend to have about God. In my almost 54 years in church now, what I have discovered is this. There may be just as much confusion or distortion about who God really is inside as there is outside the church. I hear comments all the time that leave me scratching my head, comments from people who have been Jesus followers for years, from pastors, where I just walk away and go, nope God’s not like that. About 7 or 8 year ago a pretty major voice in the Christian world publicly offered his opinion that God steered a tornado directly toward a Lutheran Church because of their various beliefs. I just shook my head, nope God’s not like that. Okay, so if that’s not true, what is God really like? We are doing this series to try to help all of us with that question. So, we are going to talk about how God is not political, he’s not Republican or Democrat, He is not stoic or uncaring, He’s not boring or lame, He’s not checked out or disengaged, and He’s not homophobic. That’s where we are headed over the next six weeks starting today with this image we have of God as the punisher.
ILLUST> If you are not familiar with “the punisher” let me help you with that. When we mention the punisher today a specific image comes to mind for many of us, here it is, an image that has become a real popular over the past several years, it’s on hats, and shirts, it is hard to drive around for any length of time and not see it show up as a decal on a car. It was in the book and the movie American Sniper, the story of Navy Seal Sniper Chris Kyle. His unit called themselves the punishers, labeled all their gear with the image and took the image with them to the battlefield in Iraq. It’s an image that originally appeared on the chest of the original punisher in 1974 in a Spider-Man comic book. The original punisher was a character whose mission was fighting evil by all means necessary. He was extremely angry, raging, totally ticked off and ready to use pain, violence, destruction and murder to stomp out evil and make things right.
See, I am not so sure that in one way or another that’s too far off how a lot of us see God. I get it. It’s really not too hard for any of us to get there or land there, especially when we spend any time at all in the first two thirds of this book. The truth is that if we start at the beginning of this book it doesn’t take any of us very long to begin to see God as somewhat of a punisher who is angry about evil and sin. Standing on that alone it’s not too difficult to jump to this conclusion. I’m a sinner, God is angry with me, and determined to punish me. I lived in that space for the vast majority of my life. My guess is that I am not alone. So let’s just jump into this, talk about it and see.
If you brought a Bible we are going to be three different places today Isaiah, Hosea, and landing the plane toward the end of the Bible in 1 John. We are going to start in Isaiah today. If you would like a Bible to follow along in but don’t have one, they are on the back tables. Or you can just hit our app, the YouVersion app, or you can just read along with me off of the screens. It might be easiest to follow on the screens or on our app today because we are going to jump around quite a bit. Okay, so here we go, Isaiah chapter 55 starting with verse 8…
“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.”
So yes, we are made in the image of God, but there are still things about God that are beyond our minds ability to comprehend and that even the most brilliant of us with our very best efforts will not clearly understand. So God is telling us that there is a bit of distortion that will always remain. We need to know that, but we shouldn’t be discouraged by that. The vast majority of the distortion that exists in our lives really can become crystal clear. So let’s get after doing that. Skip back to Isaiah chapter 19. We are going to pick it up in verse 1…
A prophecy against Egypt: See, the Lord rides on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt. The idols of Egypt tremble before him, and the hearts of the Egyptians melt with fear. 2 “I will stir up Egyptian against Egyptian—brother will fight against brother, neighbor against neighbor, city against city, kingdom against kingdom. 3 The Egyptians will lose heart, and I will bring their plans to nothing; they will consult the idols and the spirits of the dead, the mediums and the spiritists. 4 I will hand the Egyptians over to the power of a cruel master, and a fierce king will rule over them,” declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty. 5 The waters of the river will dry up, and the riverbed will be parched and dry. 6 The canals will stink; the streams of Egypt will dwindle and dry up.
So to us, this God riding on a cloud thing is kind of cool, he’s cloud surfing, to someone in this day in the Ancient Near Eastern world that would be terrifying. In that day, gods riding clouds were Warrior gods bringing war and destruction and throwing lightning bolts down at people. So here comes this God raging with raging with anger, look out here I come, this is not going to go well for you. As we read this today it is easy to say well, that can be expected. After all, Egypt is not God’s chosen people, they once even held God’s people Israel in captivity so I would expect him to be angry with them, to come after them and to give them what they deserve. Okay, that’s reasonable, not we’re not too concerned about that. Now, let’s pause that and flip over to the book of Hosea chapter 13…
“But I have been the Lord your God ever since you came out of Egypt. You shall acknowledge no God but me, no Savior except me. 5 I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of burning heat. 6 When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me. 7 So I will be like a lion to them, like a leopard I will lurk by the path. 8 Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open; like a lion I will devour them— a wild animal will tear them apart. 9 “You are destroyed, Israel, because you are against me, against your helper.
Who is that written to, the people that God has chosen, His own people. Is he happy with them? No. He’s angry with them. Why? They have steered off course and forgotten him. Does that feel familiar? You ever find yourself doing that, yeah me too. What’s God’s promise here? Brace yourself, I am going to go lion, leopard, and momma bear and devour them and tear them a part. God the warrior punisher is leaving the clouds. So, what are we supposed to do with this? Great question. Let’s start with this…
IT OFTEN SEEMS EASIER TO FEAR GOD THAN TO LOVE HIM.
ILLUST> I know that this is going to be hard to believe but I got in trouble quite a bit as a kid. I received my share of spankings. I have to be honest, I don’t remember a single time when I was being spanked that I thought you know what, I don’t know that I have ever felt more loved than this. Thank you mom, thank you dad, thank you for loving me like you do. Son, this hurts me more than it hurts you. Sometimes I heard those words. They really didn’t register. Call me stupid if you want, but it didn’t feel like love as I was experiencing it. The too emotions I remember were hurt and fear.
So, there are over 300 references in the Bible that tell us that we need to fear God. Now it is talking about fear in a different sense. The Bible describes fear as being in awe of, reverence, and respecting God for who he is. That’s great, but the practical reality for me growing up, probably for lots of us then and now is this. Fear is fear in the sense of being afraid. We read these stories and go wow, obviously that’s how God treats people who screw up. I screw up. I’m in big trouble.
ILLUST> Greg Boyd is a pastor in Minnesota who like many buddies of mine grew up in the Catholic Church. He also happened to have a tough relationship with his stepmother and was a kid who got in trouble quite a bit. Because of all of that, because of his story, he grew up with this understanding that authority figures in his life were constantly ticked off with him and could strike at any moment. He says he naturally projected that on to God too. He said that most of the artwork and statues in the church confirmed his belief, except for one. It was a statue of Mary holding baby Jesus. She had a smile on her face, she had joy in her eyes, she seemed very kind. He looked at that statue and concluded this. She is the only one who really likes me. He found himself praying to Mary the most. He figured if nothing else she is Jesus’ mom, and he has to listen to his mother. As he got a little older and understood more about Jesus, Jesus seemed nice too. Jesus became his protection against God as he understood him to be. He saw God as father as someone that he had to be protected from.
His conclusion was one that I once reached, it’s easy to fear him but hard to love him. I mean I can say I love him because if I don’t he will crush me. See, I don’t know that it is possible for us to love a God that we believe can and will strike us at any moment. So, fear God or love God, which comes more naturally for you? Let’s keep reading. First back to Egypt. Isaiah 19 verse 21…
21 So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the Lord and keep them. 22 The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the Lord, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.
Is the goal punishment or is God up to something else here? Think about it God is willing to do that with people who are far from him, who are not really his people, who don’t really even know him. There’s so much hope for all of us in that. Let’s go back to his chosen people Israel. What is this lion, leopard, momma bear ready to go off all about? What is God really after here? Hosea chapter 14 verse 4…
“I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily. Like a cedar of Lebanon he will send down his roots.”
When we dig a little bit deeper in both of these stories here is what we see. This warrior God who is ready to wreak havoc, rip open, and destroy is actually after something far different. This is not about punishment, settling the score, getting even, or teaching any of these people a lesson. It’s so important that we see this…
THE END GAME IS NOT PUNISHMENT, IT’S REDEMPTION AND RESTORATION. Here’s one thing that I want us to realize before we get to far into this. God often says here is what I am going to do, but when we read the stories he doesn’t actually do it. He allows it to happen. I mean I get it. That doesn’t make it one bit easier when we are going through it. Whether God causes it or allows it we need to pay attention to this. His end game is not punishment, it’s not getting even, or making us pay. In both of these stories with Egypt and with Israel what does he say? My purpose is healing them, it is healing my relationship with them.
ILLUST> Here’s a question. Aren’t there other ways, easier ways to accomplish that? Here is a part of this that is so difficult for us to get our minds around. If God allows me to be struck it is because he wants to bring healing in my life. You know why that is so difficult for us to believe? Because not one single bit of it feels like healing as we are experiencing it. It’s hard to get there in the midst of the pain, the circumstances, and the consequences. When I was in the desert out of ministry God felt distant, I questioned. God are you still there? Do you even care? There was lots of distortion in the midst of all the pain. We have to hold on to Isaiah 55 and that there may be things that we don’t understand. We have to be careful not to put things on God that are simply a part of a broken world with free will. But, even if we do that this truth remains. It is hard to see any healing, redemption, and restoration in the moment. All we tend to see and feel is the pain. Have you ever been there? Me too. I get it. Some of us are sitting in the middle of it even as we sit here today.
Do you know what all of this is pointing to? This is huge. It points to the danger of just reading random parts of this book, not reading in the proper context, and not understanding the whole story. If any of us were to stop after the first verses we read today it would hard not to conclude that God is mean, raging, set out to punish and destroy.
ILLUST> As I was thinking about that I couldn’t help but think about a moment when Stacy and I were watching the Greatest Showman 2 weeks ago. There was that part of the movie where he is on the road with the Opera singer and things seem to be stirring between them. Finally, she kisses him. If that was the only scene that we watched, if we were to stop there we would reach certain conclusions about P.T. Barnum, conclusions that were not true. We have to let the whole story play out.
It is so easy to stop in the middle of the story, to highlight a specific moment or moments of anyone’s story and go you know what…I don’t really like this guy much less love him. That guy is not a good guy. Is that true? No. It is often not until we get to the end of the story that the real nature, the full picture of who the character really is, is completely revealed. I don’t know that that has ever been more true than it is with this story, God’s story. The writer of the book of Hebrews suggests that all of these moments in the story are building to something, that each of them are glimpses. As we read through the Old Testament we don’t get the full image, we get a glimpse of who God really is. We get glimpses of an angry warrior God whose heart is to heal, redeem, and restore until finally we get this, the full picture, no distortion, the ultimate image of who God is. I John 4 beginning with verse 7…
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
If you haven’t been here before that may not sound that familiar, for the rest of us it should have a familiar ring to it. It is a summary statement of the series that we just wrapped up and everything that we talked about for the past 5 weeks. Everything in this book builds to this moment. Are you ready, here it is…
THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL OF THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD IS LOVE. God is love. God=Love. We just get glimpses of who God the Father really is until we get to Jesus. It is when he is lifted up on that cross that we finally get an undistorted view of who God really is. This warrior punisher God who appears to be on the war path crushing people and dead set on crushing his enemies can now be seen as a God who would rather die for his enemies. In the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross we get a crystal clear image of the Father, a God whose very essence is perfect, unqualified, unconditional, unwavering, self-sacrificial, non-violent, enemy embracing love. Self-sacrificing love is not a verb that God does. It is who and what He is.
So, what do we do with God’s anger and wrath that we read about in this book? We understand it to be an expression of his love. See we have a benefit that Isaiah, Hosea, and the people of their day didn’t have. We have the cross. If we want to clear up the distortion our understanding of God has to be solidly anchored in the sacrifice of his son Jesus on the cross. That is why we take communion that thing that we just did in this place every single week. To remember what Jesus has done for us, to clear up the distortion, to remind us all of the Father’s unconditional love for us.
We are not alone in the distorted view we tend to have of the Father. The disciples themselves didn’t even get it. They walked life with Jesus every day for 3 years and still asked him to show them the Father. Why did they do that? They like us had a distorted image of the Father. Who Jesus was and what he taught seemed to be inconsistent with the stories of old that they had been told. They like us, just had distorted glimpses until they met Jesus. Jesus says let me make this easy for you, if you have seen me you have seen the Father.
ILLUST> I’ve talked about this before. One of my favorite moments on my trip to Israel was the very first moment of the first day. We got off of the bus at the top of the Mount of Olives walked about 100 yards and there it was, an unobstructed view of the city of Jerusalem. I immediately thought of Luke chapter 19 when Jesus gets to this very spot. He looks to the city of Jerusalem and cries. Why? Because he knows that destruction is coming. Total devastation and destruction is coming when the city is destroyed about 30 years or so later. It points the heart of God, not as the raging punisher, but as the one who loves us deeply. He is a God who brings and allows out of love and with a redemptive intent. He is a God who brings and allows with a grieving heart.
There is so much more to talk about but for today, would you understand that your joy, your hope, and the beauty of your life really does depend on you seeing God in an undistorted way, seeing him for who he really is. Despite what we have read, studied, or heard we must understand that everything in life hangs on this. Everything we get before Jesus is just a glimpse of who the Father really is. God looks exactly like Jesus. So, I want to encourage you to do two things. Spend time with that God, get to know that Father. We have been told that finding the life that we all came in here looking for today requires us to take our thoughts captive. If there were ever thoughts that we need to take captive as much as any other thoughts it is our thoughts about God. God is not the Punisher, he’s not political, stoic, uncaring, boring, lame, checked out, disengaged or homophobic. We need to clear up the distortion, anything and everything that contradicts or distorts this, God is love. As you sit here today, He couldn’t love you more. Let me pray for us.
