GOD’S WISTFULNESS Parts III & IV

III. THE WONDERFUL THOUGHTS OF GOD

As I have intimated, our periscope is an exclamation of disappointment, of thwarted love. The good which God purposed for his people has been missed. And it is all our fault! We will simply not follow His commandments! “Oh Jerusalem,” God cries. “How often would I have gathered you. . . If you would have known. . . ”

But we do not know. We cannot know. We do not see the bigger picture. In Tolstoy’s epic WAR AND PEACE, the protagonist–Pierre–loves a young woman named Natasha. . . but he take 1500 pages to tell her! And it takes Natasha the same 1500 pages to realize that she loves Pierre! But God told us that He loved us since Creation . . . but we forget.

And, in a sense, we do not enjoy His pleasure because we disobey. We do not follow His commandments–which after all are here to help us–not to hurt us. to set us free, not to bind us up. As the preacher Alexander MaClaren writes, “It is not our only act contrary to God’s Law, but the source of that act in our antagonistic will, which fatally bars out the possibility of God’s intended good from us.” That possibility of lifting up our puny wills against Almighty God is the mystery of mysteries! Dr. James Dobson told a humorous story last week about the New Age leader and actress Shirley Maclain. Maclain advises her followers to “stand at the edge of the ocean and yell as loudly as possible across the waves– ‘I am God! I am God! I am God!'” Dobson chuckled, “Can you imagine what God thinks?”

But, in a way, we tell God in a hundred different ways that we are God. When we disobey His Word. When we decide to do what we want–like taking revenge on someone who wronged us–rather than do what He wants.

The mystery of Isa. 48, however, is that the mysterious possibility become an actuality in us (as MaClaren says). In other words, in Isaiah’s words, a river of peace and waves of righteousness can still be ours. Shalom can be ours because God loves us to send His only Son to die for those sins. And we can know His shalom as we obey His Word and accept His Son as our Lord and Savior. This is the lost good regained.

IV. THE LOST GOOD REGAINED

Almost thirty years ago I woke up one Saturday morning to the screams of my neighbor. Mrs. Morphis, a tiny, Godly woman, had gone out to retrieve the morning paper and found instead her 18 year old son slumped over the wheel of his car dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Johnny Morphis, my friend, had committed suicide.

His reasons are unimportant but Johnny left a note that told us that somewhere along the way he had lost hope. That he had lost a reason to live. He had lost the bigger picture.

But God is reaching out to us today. There is a River of Living Water flowing today. And it is for us. We are the generation coming home from Babylon . . . let us go back now to Zion.

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This sermon was preached at First Presbyterian Church by Jim Stobaugh on December 12, 1993. References include: SERMONS, by Alexander MaClaren; FROM DESPAIR TO HOPE, by Walter Brueggemann; WAR AND PEACE, by Leo Tolstoy.

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