Understanding God’s Ways
Series: Where’s God When You Need Him
August 20, 2006
Last week, I gave you a list of things that don’t make any sense and really can’t be understood. Today I want to add to that list. For example…
1. Why can’t women put on mascara with their mouths closed?
2. Why don’t you ever see the headline “Psychic Wins Lottery”?
3. Why is ‘abbreviated’ such a long word?
5. Why is it that doctors call what they do ‘practice’ ?
6. Why is the man who invests all your money called a ‘broker’?
7. Why is the third hand on the watch called a ‘second hand’?
8. Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called ‘rush hour’?
9. Why isn’t there a special name for the tops of your feet?
10. Why is it called ‘tourist season’, but we can’t shoot at them?
11. Why isn’t ‘phonetic’ spelled the way it sounds?
12. Why are there flotation devices in the seats of planes instead of
parachutes?
13. Why didn’t Noah swat those 2 mosquitoes?
14. Why are they called ‘apart-ments’ when they’re all stuck together?
15. If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport ‘the terminal’?
Those are all humorous things we’ll probably never understand. But there are some less humorous, more serious things in this life that know one seems to have a good answer for either...
Questions like…
1. Why are some people healed of cancer after much prayer, while other people die of cancer after much prayer?
2. Why are some people born with perfect health, while others are
born with physical deformities and diseases?
3. Why do some people attempt suicide and survive, while others
attempt to squeeze every moment out of every minute of life and die?
After 9-11, I heard a story of a man, who through a series of events missed his flight.
Later he found out that the flight he was scheduled to be on, was crashed into one of the twin towers. For some unknown reason, He was miraculously spared. We hear about that and think, “Wow! God was watching out for him”. Then I heard another story about a man who through a series of miraculous events made it onto a flight. As he and his wife were waving a quick goodbye to each other, they were amazed at how God had orchestrated the timing perfectly, allowing him to make the flight. His wife later wrote an article about how his plane had crashed and he was killed. So who was God really looking out for? Was God working in one man’s life and not another?
Those are situations that don’t seem to make any sense. We can’t understand them, and after scratching our heads for awhile, we’re even tempted to wonder if God’s really out there after all. As we’ve been asking the question, “Where’s God when you need Him?” the past few weeks, we’ve been attempting to draw close to God and get to know Him better. We’ve talked about how you can experience God’s glory and hear his voice…and this morning we’re going to talk about “Understanding His Ways”…As an object lesson, we’re going to go back to the life of Moses. Last week we found him being confronted by God from a burning bush. God told Him to go into Egypt and free His people. And not to worry, because the “I AM”… the “God Who Makes Things Happen”, “Yahweh”, would go with him.
Fast-forward a few months, and now Moses is sitting in his tent… moping! He’s complaining about the people and frustrated at God, even though God had done exactly what He said He would do. Through a series of incredible plagues and natural disasters He’d humbled the mightiest nation in the world. Reluctantly Pharoah finally said, “Uncle!” and freed God’s people from their slavery. In the ‘greatest escape’ ever engineered, Moses had led millions of Jews out of Egypt, and now they were poised to take the land God had promised them and their forefathers for centuries.
But before that happened, God wanted Moses to come up on Mt. Sinai and receive the ground rules for living a prosperous life in the promised land. So Moses goes up the mountain and is gone for 40 days. During that time, the Israelites decided to ‘chuck’ the God who’d delivered them, and worship a golden calf instead. When Moses returns & discovers this, in a fit of righteous rage, He throws down the sacred stone tablets, smashing them into a million pieces! Now, he sits in his private tent at the foot of Mt. Sinai. depressed, discouraged and alone. He’d moved it outside the camp in order to be with God, but not so far that he couldn’t keep an eye on the mischievous Israelites. Many times, sitting there all alone, he sensed the presence of God close to him…and it was during one of those times that He just let it all hang out! He poured out his frustrations to God. (Have you ever come to that point? If you haven’t, you need to! Honesty is good for any relationship, esp. your relationship with God!) ****READ Ex.33:12-33
He says, “God, you’ve been telling me over and over to lead these people… but you’re going to have to give me some help here! This is harder than it looks! I can’t do it by myself! You say You’re pleased with me… and that I’m doing everything you want me to do… so why don’t you give me a helping hand here?” Moses was at the end of his rope! His heart was telling him to believe, but his mind was full of questions and doubts. He needed some kind of sign that God was involved in this whole situation! Do you ever go through periods like that? Where you‘re doing all you know how to do for God…but you still need a little sign? Some kind of indicator that He’s on the job! Something… anything… to let you know you’re still on track! “God, I know you’re there… but honestly I just need a little more proof right now! I believe… help my unbelief.”
Please understand something… Moses was a great man of faith…but not because he never had any doubts. He’s considered a great man of faith because of what he DID with his doubts and questions. Most of the time, instead of taking our frustrations honestly to God, we get mad at Him and stomp off in a huff! Listen, God wants you to come to Him! He wants you to talk to Him! Let your frustrations and anger come to the surface…lay it on the line! Just make sure after you’ve vented, that you stick around long enough for His answer! Moses wasn’t beating around the bush! In vs.18 He’s had it, and so he blurts out in anguish… “Now! Let me see your glory! Show me your glorious presence!”
Whether you realize it or not, THAT is the cry and desire of every person here this morning. The desire to have God ‘SHOW UP’ in our desperate situation. We want Him to show up in our marriage issues, in our problems at work, in our medical emergencies, in our financial crises. We want Him to reveal Himself to us in some clear, tangible, unmistakable way. Whether our prayer is for health, help, faith, guidance or comfort… we need God to make Himself known! And you know what?… God responds to that kind of prayer! And I want to show you how! So, this morning, I want to give you 3 things you can
understand about God… when you don’t understand…
The 1st thing you can know about God when you’re confused is this…
1. I can trust God’s CHARACTER, even though I can’t understand His actions.
The 1st thing the Lord assured Moses of, is found in vs. 19… “The LORD replied, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will call out my name, Yahweh, before you. For I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose” –Ex.33:19
Moses was confused. Moses was depressed. Moses was discouraged and despondent… but He knew what He needed to deal with all those problems… more of God! This morning you may not know all there is to know about God, and you never will. There are some questions that’ll never be answered until we all stand before Him in heaven… but you can know some things, and they’ll help you until you get there! God will reveal enough of Himself to get you through it! In response to Moses’ confusion and pain… He promises to show Moses His glory. To show him His nature. Moses sought God’s face instead of His hand… and that was enough to clear up the confusion.
And did you notice that God wasn’t offended at Moses’ boldness? He didn’t punish him for his insolence… He rewarded him! That’s because, people who really want to see God… who really have a thirst to know Him… are always rewarded! The heart of Moses’ prayer wasn’t for position or wealth or a new miracle… it was to know God! To experience His unmistakable presence… to see His glory! Moses knew enough about God that to spend on minute in His presence was worth a lifetime of seeking. One author put it this way… “Little men ask for trivial trinkets, but great men of faith hold out for the ultimate gift… God Himself!” Is that you? Do you really want to know God? Or are you just hanging around Him because of the good things you think you’ll get?
God wanted to assure Moses that even though He couldn’t know all the details of why He did what He did… He could know for sure, that He was a good, a merciful, a compassionate God. No matter what happens in your life, if you’re convinced that God is a good God… you can learn to trust Him no matter what! You don’t have to know all the ‘whys’… because you know the WHO!
The song Davin sang earlier is called, “My Savior, My God”….
It’s author is Aaron Shust. Aaron was reading a book entitled, “One Year Book of Hymns”… when he stumbled across a old hymn entitled, “I Am Not Skilled to Understand”. The words blew him away so much that He didn’t even bother looking for the melody, instead, he started from scratch and wrote his own…
“I am not skilled to understand
What God has willed what God has planned,
I only know at His right hand
Stands one who is my Savior…
Aaron realized that even though he doesn’t understand everything about God… He does understand one thing… God is a God of love. In fact, He loves us so much that Jesus was willing to die to prove that love. When things happen to me that I don’t understand… I can trust in the character of a God that would die for me. He’s shown me with His own lifeblood that He’s willing to sacrifice everything… for me! Can I trust a God like that? You better believe it! What that means is…no matter what…I know He wouldn’t allow anything in my life that will ultimately harm or destroy me. Sure, it may hurt now, but eventually I’ll see it for the ultimate good it brought me. I may not understand His actions…but I can know His character. When I was a teenager, it was beyond my comprehension to believe that taking subjects as boring as typing and English could ever be of any use whatsoever! Little did I realize I’d use both of those courses to write and prepare messages every week. They’re a large part God’s purpose for my life.
My problem is that I think God should operate under my rules, not His. I think I understand better than He does! He should do things that I think will make my life better. I want God to ‘bless me’…according to ME! According to my limited and self-serving knowledge…“God help my business to do well… help me to get that pay raise, help me to get that car.” Listen, one of the reasons His name is ‘GOD’, (and mine isn’t)… is because He is smarter, wiser, and infinitely better than I am in every conceivable area! Suppose you were starting a company and Donald Trump or Bill Gates offered to give you free business advise… would you take it? You better! Now, if Donald Trump offered to give you free ‘hair care’ advise, or Bill Gates wanted to give you tips on how to ‘dress for success’ I wouldn’t recommend them…but you gotta admit, they know how to make money!
Now here’s God… and He knows everything there is to know about everything! Relationships, attitudes, psychology. He knows everything there is to know about YOU, (what makes you tick, what ticks you off)… He knows how the human mind works…how life is supposed to work…Because He made and designed us! Beyond that, He knows the future and how it’s all going to work out. And get this… He’s offering you & me… free “LIFE” advise! Should you take it? You’d be a fool not to! So He asks you to take all your plans and dreams, all of your future, all of your decisions and give them to Him to manage. Now, there are going to be times when you question and wonder if He’s doing the right thing, but then… because of His incredible character, and His amazing track record of success…you trust Him to handle it all… even when you don’t understand the details of the moment.
I can’t trust myself to know what’s best for me, because I’m looking at one stitch on the back of a huge oriental rug… but God sees the whole huge rug from the front! I have a POINT of view… God has the WHOLE view! Bottom line: I’m not smart enough, or wise enough, or skilled enough… to grasp all that God has planned for me. And the only way I can be okay with that is through trust. This morning even though you may not be able to understand His actions… God is asking you to trust His intentions…His character!
The 2nd thing I can understand about God, when I don’t understand, is that…
2. I can trust in the DARK, what God told me in the light.
I shared this concept with you last week, but I want you to see it in action in the life of Moses. The next thing God tells Moses is…“Look, stand near me on this rock. 22 As my glorious presence passes by, I will hide you in the crevice of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by.” –Ex.33:21,22 Did you hear what God told Moses to do? He told Him to stand and wait. Now, we don’t know how long He stood there and waited...but it could have been days! I don’t know about you, but being an impatient person by nature… one of the most difficult things I find to do is wait! It seems like such a waste of time! As you can imagine, I have a real hard time with check-out lines and stop lights!
I remember as a kid… the absolute worst punishment my parents could deal me was…”Go over and stand in that corner!” (Do parents do that one anymore? How many of you ever had to stand in a corner?) It was horrible! “NOOOOO! Not the corner!” I’d do anything to get out of standing in the corner… “Tell you what I’ll do Mom & Dad… I’ll trade you 5 spankings for 1 minute in the corner! How’s that for a deal?” It never worked! Standing… with my nose in a corner…(sometimes for days at a time! …at least it felt that way!) I’d get so bored, to pass the time…I made up a game. I called it… “Spit Racing”. I’d spit in the corner, and as I watched it take off down the crevice, I’d spit again and see if the 2nd ‘loogie’ could catch up and pass the 1st one! It was actually pretty exciting! (Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!) It made time fly! Years later I confessed my crime to my Mom, and she said she always wondered why there was this black mold growing in the corners of the carpet! Anyway…
Has the Lord ever told you to stand and wait? Nothing is happening, your prayers don’t seem like they’re being heard. It feels like punishment doesn’t I? Like you’re standing in the corner waiting for an eternity! But it’s not punishment...it could be that God is testing your faith, or your obedience. He might be working out the perfect timing, putting some other pieces in place… you don’t know…
Moses was experiencing what I call the “Cave Experience”. Have you been there? God says, “I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and cover you with my hand!” The lights flicker and then go out. You feel isolated, alone… like God’s abandoned you. You cry out… “God! It’s dark in this cave! I’m scared!” And instead of it getting lighter… it gets darker! You try with all your might to move that big boulder, that obstacle in your path. But it won’t budge! And then exhausted from the exertion, you come to the quiet realization that the obstacle in your path… is God’s hand!
· I fret and worry not realizing that God was trying to teach me to trust Him to provide.
· I get angry at Him for not doing what I want Him to do…while He’s trying to work on my weaknesses.
· I want success not realizing that for it to come too soon would destroy me.
If Moses would have moved out from behind that rock prematurely… He would have been fried! The brilliance of God’s presence, a million times brighter than the sun would have destroyed him. See, God wasn’t punishing him…He was protecting him! The same is true for you and me! To move out from under God’s hand, and start taking things into our own hands would be disastrous! Life is full of examples of people who managed to escape the ‘cave’ only to regret it! Their impatience ruined their lives!
· They got married to soon to the wrong person.
· They bought the wrong house at the wrong time.
· They jumped into a get rich quick scheme and it bankrupted them.
Remember this… the safest place to be when you don’t know what God wants you to do… is right where you are! I had to realize that He wasn’t wasting my time… He was watching out for me! Fanny Crosby, the great hymn writer of the 19th century, wrote a song about Moses’ experience (and ours)…she called it,
“He Hideth My Soul”
“A wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord, A wonderful Savior to me, He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock, where rivers of pleasure I see. He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock, that shadows a dry, thirsty land. He hideth my life in the depths of His love and covers me there with His hand… and covers me there with His hand.”
When you’re in that CAVE, you may not understand what or why certain things are happening to you, but you can be assured that God is covering you with His hand. Watching out for you, protecting you.
The best advise I can give you when you’re stuck in a cave & you don’t understand what’s going on, is to do the last thing God told you to do! Stand and wait, until He tells you something different. (Jared lost at 6 Flags illus…last instruction we gave him was to go to lost and found… across the park! ) In Jared’s case, obeying our last instructions only got him more lost! What we should have told him is…”If you can’t find us… stand where you are… we’ll find you!” That’s what God’s saying to you this morning! “Stand and wait! Until I tell you it’s safe to move forward.” So, when you don’t understand why things are turning out the way they are…trust in the dark, what God told you in the light. God told Moses to stand and wait… and that’s what He did, until God moved the boulder! Good advise! READ Isa.40:31…
The 3rd thing God wants me to understand when I don’t understand is…
3. I can see His BACK, even though I can’t see His face.
Look at vs. 23 (READ) God told Moses that when it was safe to come out, He would remove His hand, but that He would see His back, and not His face. According to vs. 20… “…no man can see God’s face and live.” Why not?
· It could be that He’s so perfect and we’re so imperfect that the sheer weight of His holiness would crush us.
· Maybe His full beauty would short-circuit our fragile nervous system.
· Maybe just the sheer joy of seeing Him ‘full-on’ would overload us and stop our heart.
I’m not sure why God says we can’t see His face… but I think I know why we CAN see his back. To ‘see God’s back’ means that I can never see God coming, but I can only see Him going. I never know what He’s going to do ahead of time… but I can figure out where He’s been, and what He’s done after the fact.
Someone once said that… “Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward”. How many of you know that “hindsight is 20/20”? Sure! Most of the time, when God is working, I’m totally unaware of it! It’s only AFTER I reflect on what happened that I realize that God was orchestrating events all along. When people say, “God spoke to me”, or “God told me”…most of the time they’re not saying they heard a lit. voice. What they’re really saying is…”When I look back and piece all the so called, ‘coincidences’ together… I realize that God was leading me. “
A couple weeks ago, the Strahlendorfs shared how Traci sensed that she was being pushed and prodded to sell her car… she didn’t know why. It was only after she met the car salesman and who bought her house that they realized that God was moving in their lives. They saw His BACK…they saw where He’d been… but they didn’t see Him coming. It’s only AFTERWARDS (as the poem goes) that we realize that the one set of footprints in the sand, weren’t ours… they were His! He was carrying us! And so as much as I want to see God’s face…for now, I’m going to have to be content to only see Him when His back is turned.
Of course that causes some confusion and misunderstanding along the way because when a persons back is turned, and they’re talking to me…I can’t see their facial expressions.
(Turn back to congregation) When I’ve got my back turned to you, you can’t see whether I’m smiling, frowning or sticking my tongue out at you! I could say something as simple as…”That’s great!” And because you can’t see my face, you don’t know if I’m serious, or if I’m mocking you…based on my facial expression.
Sometimes if I’ve got my back to you, you don’t even know if I’ve heard you. And that’s how we feel with God. “God did you hear my prayer? Do you care? Are you there?” It’s confusing and frustrating to always have to look at God’s back! If you’ve ever flown into San Francisco International Airport in the fog, you know how scary it is. You can’t see the ground, and what’s really scary is…neither can the pilot! But even though he can’t see the runway, he doesn’t switch off His radio transmitter and attempt to land on his own does he? No! That’s because there’s a man in the control tower… with a radar screen, who knows exactly where the plane is, how high it is, how fast it’s approaching and where the other planes are. Now, just because I can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not there. He’s faithfully directing and guiding the pilot to a safe landing.
In the same way, sometimes in the fog of life, I can’t see God. But just because I can’t see Him doesn’t mean He’s not there. To turn off my prayers and try live life on my own, would be suicide! So I keep praying and seeking, because the voice from the tower is God… and He’s saying, “I know you can’t see me… but don’t worry because… I can see you! I know where you are, and I know what you need. So keep the channels open… keep talking…keep listening… because I’m going to bring you in safely!” ****** READ I Cor. 13:12…
Someday I’m going to see God as clearly as He sees me. I’m going to see Him face to face. And the bible says that if I’m His follower… when I see Him… I’ll be like Him! These daily trials and problems are lessons that He’s using to transform me into His image. But until then, I’ll keep seeking and asking questions and trusting and striving to understand what I can.
