Where Isn’t God?

 

Have you ever heard someone begin a question with the words “where is God”? When someone is sick and it doesn’t seem like their healing is going to happen, some scoffer might look at you and say, “Where is your God? You always pray to Him. Well where is He?” After a tragedy like a hurricane or tornado, critics will loudly ponder, “Where was God when this storm destroyed everything?”

 

As Christians, we realize that God is everywhere. We refer to this as God’s omnipresence. Nobody expressed this doctrine better than David when he rhetorically asked, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me (Psalm 139:7-10).”

 

Did you notice how David covered all his bases? If David could somehow ascend to the highest heights, or descend to the deepest hell, he would find God in either location. Not only did David find God by going north and south, he also found Him by going east and west. The “wings of the morning” is a reference to the sun, which rises in the east, and unless “the sea” is otherwise designated in the Old Covenant, it always refers to the Mediterranean Sea, which was west of Israel. North, south, east, or west, David placed God at the four points of the compass. This is a poetic way of saying that God isn’t just in those four places, but He is everywhere in between. 

 

People like to ask where is God, but a better question would be where isn’t God? If God is truly everywhere at once, then He was present when the storm hit, and when our loved ones didn’t recover. Those things may be hard for us to understand, or even to accept, but we must rule out the option of God not being there. He has a perfect plan, and sometimes we are not going to like it, but God is right there with us, whether we are on a mountain top, or making our bed in the depths. 

 

This fact of God’s omnipresence is both comforting and convicting. It is comforting to know that God is always with us, even on days when it might not feel like He is. It is comforting to pray to the God of heaven, realizing He is also on earth. It is comforting to know the eyes of the Lord are in every place, and nothing escapes His notice. His eye is on the sparrow, and I’m glad He watches me. 

 

But it is also convicting to the one who hopes to keep secrets from God. It is convicting to the person who is trying to successfully live a double life. It is convicting to the person who says all the right things on Sundays, then lives like the devil on every other day that ends in y. 

 

Where isn’t God? He is in your Sunday school class and sanctuary on Sunday morning, but He is also in your car and at your office. He sees what you watch, He hears what you listen to, and He observes your conduct. Does that thought comfort you or convict you?

 

East to West

 

Last week I wrote about David instructing his soul to worship God. Now I would like to point out a different thought from that same psalm (103). I absolutely love that David wrote, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us (v.12).” 

 

This is a wonderful thought about God’s forgiveness. He has removed our sin from us if we have put our trust in Him. The idea of removing sin was borrowed from levitical language. In Leviticus 16 Aaron was instructed to take a young goat and symbolically transfer the sins of the nation to the kid by laying his hands upon its head. The goat was then bearing the sins of Israel, as it was sent off into the wilderness, never to be seen again. That gesture was God’s way of demonstrating that the people would not have to bear their own sin if they called upon Him. 

 

David only had an elementary understanding of forgiveness, however. The king was grateful that God would remove his sin and send it off into the wilderness, but that didn’t fully satisfy sin’s demands. It was not until Jesus went to the cross as the Lamb of God that sin could finally be once and for all dealt with. Instead of symbolically putting our sin on the scapegoat, God put our sin on His Son. In this way, our sin can be forever removed from us.

 

How far away is our sin sent? David said it is as far away as the east is from the west. According to author Max Lucado, east and west become farther away from each other as one travels. If you leave your house and head east, you can spend the rest of your life going east, and with every step, west becomes farther away from your starting point. The same is true for the person heading west. However, that is not true for the person heading north or south. If you leave your house and head north, you will eventually reach the North Pole, and then you are automatically going south; if you head south, you will eventually reach the South Pole and then be heading north. 

 

North and south are only separated by just over 12,440 miles; that is the distance between the Poles. But east and west have no such dimensions. If they did, Satan could pack a lunch and a GPS, track down our sin, and bring it back to us. That is now impossible because God put our sin on the back of Jesus, and He has carried it away as far as the east is from the west.    

 

Who Do You Worship?

 

The famous nineteenth century preacher Henry Ward Beecher was scheduled to speak at a church, but an unforeseen circumstance caused him to cancel last minute. Instead of calling off the service, Beecher asked if his brother Thomas, who was not famous at all, would stand in the pulpit in his place. When the church assembled that night to hear the renowned pastor, they were disappointed to see someone who wasn’t famous get up to preach. Many people began to head for the door until Thomas Beecher shouted, “All those who came here to worship Henry Ward Beecher may head home. All those who came to worship the Lord may stay.” With those words the church members made their way back to their seats. 

 

I have had a similar experience. Several years ago I was asked to speak at a church in the county, and the bulletin announced that Tommy McManus—the retired pastor of Philippi (whom I greatly admire)—was going to be the guest preacher. Fortunately for me no one headed for the doors, but I know there were some disappointed people that morning!

 

It’s great when a church loves its pastor, but they should never worship him. We do not worship personalities or people, but our precious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. While “Christian celebrities” can use their platform for the kingdom of God, we should never elevate the messengers. Whether they are authors like Max Lucado, or athletes like Tim Tebow, their goal is to lift up Christ, not themselves. In Psalm 103:1 David wrote, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name!” To bless means to worship, give thanks, or to magnify. David wrote a psalm addressed to his own soul, encouraging himself to bless the Lord. 

 

To what extent did David say to bless the Lord? With “all that is within me.” With his entire being. David wanted to worship God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. At the tail end of that same psalm David wrote, “Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, you ministers of His, who do His pleasure (v.21).” His hosts refers to the angels of heaven, and the ministers refers to the human ministers who served in the tabernacle. 

 

David instructed his own soul to worship the Lord with all that was within him, and from reading his other psalms, we know he did. David instructed the angels to worship the Lord, and from reading other Scriptures, we know they do. David instructed the human ministers to worship the Lord. You and I can only account for ourselves. Are you a true worshipper of God? The angels are doing their job. The rest is up to us. May we never worship the one who brings the message, but the One who the messengers proclaim.   

God Can’t Learn

  

Did you know that God cannot learn? He does not have the ability. 

 

That may sound like blasphemy. When we speak of a person’s inability to learn, it is usually an offensive, even if honest, assessment. When a person is unable to learn, there is usually some mental explanation as to why. Some people cannot learn, period. Some people cannot grasp certain subjects (like me and algebra. OK, like me and math in general). We throw up our hands in desperation when someone cannot learn. 

 

And yet God cannot learn. Many times we say things like “God can do anything,” or “There is nothing that God cannot do.” In reality, there are several things that God cannot do. He cannot die or lie, for example. It is also true that God cannot learn. 

 

God cannot learn because there is nothing He does not already know. Learning implies a person is lacking in some knowledge, but that cannot be said of God. As A.W. Tozer so simply put it in his classic work The Knowledge of the Holy, “To think of a God who must sit at the feet of a teacher, even though that teacher be an archangel or a seraph, is to think of someone other than the Most Hight God, maker of heaven and earth.” Tozer continued, “He never discovers anything. He is never surprised, never amazed. He never wonders about anything, nor…does He seek information or ask questions.” 

 

Even when God asks questions of people, it is for the benefit of the one He is asking (“Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”), not so that God can learn. 

 

We refer to this attribute of God as His divine omniscience. Isaiah posed this rhetorical question: “Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, or as His counselor has taught Him? With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him, and taught Him in the path of justice? Who taught Him knowledge, and showed Him the way of understanding (40:13-14)?” The answer is nobody.

 

David once wrote, “Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You (Psalm 139:12).” God is never in the dark about anything, because to God, the dark is the same as the light. Teachers often speak about that lightbulb coming on in the minds of their students when they finally catch on to a new concept, but for God, that light has been on even before He said “Let there be light.”  

 

Every time we learn something, it should be a comfort to remember that God never has.  

 

 

The Pain of Rejection

Emotional pain is real. As children we were taught that, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” I don’t know who wrote that little jingle, be he shouldn’t quit his day job. We have all lived long enough to know that words can hurt us. In the same way, we can experience emotional pain when people betray us, lie about us, walk out on us, and let us down. 

Dr. Dean Ornish, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, conducted a fascinating study on emotional pain. Participants in the study played a video game in which they simply tossed a ball to other players. They were told there were people in other rooms controlling the other players, but that wasn’t true. The video game was programmed to slowly exclude the person being studied. In other words, the ball was being thrown to everyone except the person holding the controller, which made that person feel rejected and left out. 

The study showed that once the person began to feel rejection, it activated the anterior cingulate and insula parts of the brain where pain is registered. Ornish concluded, “Subjects’ brains responded the same way as if they experienced physical pain. Rejection doesn’t just hurt like a broken heart; your brain feels it like a broken leg.”  

We’ve all been there. We have all felt the pain of rejection. In Psalm 27 King David prayed, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me (v.10).” We don’t have any reason to believe that David’s parents ever forsook him; his mother’s name is not found in the Bible, but in Psalm 86:16 David said he served God just as his mother did, and in I Samuel 22 David asks Saul for permission to let his parents come stay with him. It is believed that “When my father and my mother forsake me” was a common expression to refer to the hardships of life. 

David felt his share of rejection, even to the point where his own son led a mutiny against him, and many people chose Absalom over David. That had to hurt. I’m sure anyone reading this has also felt the sting of pain from rejection. That is why I love how David finished verse ten, saying it was the Lord who helped him through the pain of rejection. Let that be the same for you. If you are experiencing a broken heart that feels more like a broken leg, call out to God, that Friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Lip-Syncing to God

The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing produced several stories about the Chinese government’s propaganda campaign, making their country look as nice as possible for the cameras. But the worst example of this was when it was discovered that they used a young girl for their image. Nine-year-old Lin Miaoke sang a beautiful rendition of “Ode to the Motherland,” which led to an outburst of applause from an impressed audience. Later the truth came out: Miaoke was only lip-syncing. Seven-year-old Yang Peiyi pre-recorded the song so that Miaoke could act as if she were the one singing. The truth is awful: Peiyi had the better voice, but Miaoke had the better face. A Communist Party official made the decision to pull the fast one because Peiyi had lost her front teeth, and they had not fully grown back in.

Think about what a terrible message that sent to those young girls about their image. Miaoke was made to believe that her looks are so important that, even if she did not possess the talent needed, she would still get to go on stage and hear the applause. Peiyi was made to believe that, no matter how talented she may be, her looks are more important. If you aren’t pretty enough, according to the opinion of someone else, then nothing else matters.

That superficial evaluation is a bad message, but there is another point that should not be overlooked. We tell people it is not what is on the outside that matters, but what is on the inside. That is also true of spiritual matters. Just as the Chinese government tried to impress the world with what was on the outside, people today try to impress God and others by the outward appearance. They think that going to church and dressing their best, saying things like, “God bless you” to everyone, or sounding like Shakespeare when they pray will give the appearance that they are better Christians or closer to God. But if those things do not come from a pure heart, they are nothing more than propaganda pieces for others’ benefit.

God cannot be fooled, so just be yourself. If you are doing things to make yourself look more spiritual, you are just lip-syncing to someone else’s voice. When Samuel was looking to anoint the future king of Israel, he was looking for someone big and strong, someone who looked the part. But the Lord told the prophet, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature…for the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).” God sees your heart already, so there is no point in pretending.      

Rejecting the Gift

There is an interesting story in 1 Chronicles 19. Following the death of the king of the Ammonites, King David wanted to send some of his men to comfort the crown prince. The deceased king had been a friend to David, and David wanted to show kindness after his death. Today the President may reach out and offer condolences after the passing of another world leader, and David’s gesture may have been something similar to that. They may have been bearing some kind of gift, but they were certainly bearing the well wishes of the Israelite king.

Hanun, the new Ammonite king, was skeptical of the gesture. David was motivated by the love of God, and this kind of love-thy-neighbor mentality would have been completely foreign to a pagan king. Hanun’s advisors gave bad advice, suggesting that David’s messengers were actually spies sent to get a lay of the land. The new king, possibly wanting to send a strong message, opted to humiliate David’s men. He shaved their beards (a huge disgrace in that culture) and cut their robes in such a way as to expose their backsides; they would have to make the trip home essentially with no pants. The text says, “the Ammonites had become a stench to David,” and a war ensued; the battle was started by the Ammonites, but easily won by the Israelites.

The foolishness of not accepting the free gift from the king resulted in disaster. I’m afraid this same scene continues to play out all around the world. The King of Kings has offered a free gift of salvation to sinners, but like Hanun, many have a hard time believing such an offer is really true. Some flat out reject Christ Himself, thinking they are just fine as they are and not in need of forgiveness. Others believe they can handle their plight themselves, believing behavior modification or good deeds will be enough to earn their place in heaven. These thought processes are essentially a rejection of the kind gift of God.

The foolishness of not accepting the free gift from the King results in destruction. Don’t repeat the mistake of Hanun. See God’s offer for what it is: a chance to have your sins forgiven and be in a relationship with the King of the Universe.  

Jesus is my Rock

I often hear people use the expression that “Jesus is my rock.” Please allow me to point out a few ways from Scripture where we see Jesus as our rock.

First, we are safe behind the rock. In Psalm 18 David says, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I will trust (v.2).” In verse 31 he asks, “Who is a rock, but God?” And in verse 46 he says, “The Lord lives! Blessed be the rock, and let the God of my salvation be exalted!”

David wrote these poetic words after God delivered the future king from the current king who was trying to kill him. With Saul hot on his trail, David hid in a cave, which was an opening in the side of a mountain. That was the image David had in mind when he called the Lord his rock, his fortress, and his strength. David was safe behind the rock, and we can find refuge from God in times of trouble.

Second, we are satisfied by the rock. In 1 Corinthians 10:4 Paul wrote of the Israelites in the wilderness that they “all drank from that spiritual rock, and that rock was Christ.” Paul was referring to the rock Moses struck in order to provide water when there was nothing to drink. Paul saw that rock as a picture of Jesus who satisfies us when the things of this world leave us unfulfilled. The concept of drinking from Christ also reminds us of the words spoken by Jesus in the Upper Room: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. As often as you drink of it, do this in remembrance of me (1 Corinthians 11:25).” There is nothing we can do to satisfy the wrath of God apart from drinking from Jesus, the rock.  

Finally, we stand on top of the rock. In a familiar passage, Jesus said to the disciples, “Upon this rock I will build my church (Matthew 16:18).” Some say the rock to which He referred was Peter, but the original Greek language does not allow for that. Jesus was either pointing to Himself or was referencing Peter’s statement that Jesus was the Christ sent from God. Either way, Jesus said the church is built upon the rock of His Messiahship.

Jesus concluded the Sermon on the Mount by speaking of the wise and foolish builders; the wise man builds his house on the rock, which gives it a firm foundation. When we base our lives on the foundation of Jesus Christ we build lives that can withstand any storm. If your life is not what it should be, try building it upon the Rock of Jesus.

David's Harp

The events recorded in the first part of I Samuel 16 are familiar to most people who have spent time in church. Even though Saul was the king of Israel, this chapter explains how God used the prophet Samuel to anoint the future king. Samuel was told he would find the next king in the house of Jesse in Bethlehem, but he wasn’t given a name. Jesse proudly paraded his firstborn son Eliab by the prophet, but God made it clear that Eliab had not been chosen. Jesse continued with his second son, down to his sixth son, but each time the prophet rejected the candidate.

Samuel asked if there were any other sons, and Jesse told him about his youngest son who was tending to the sheep. That seventh son, David, would go on to become Israel’s greatest king. An important lesson is demonstrated here, that “the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart (v.7).”

But that is not the end of the story. Before the chapter ends we read that God sent a “troubling spirit” to Saul so that the only thing that could soothe him was music. The king wanted the best harpist in the kingdom to be brought to him, and someone in the court knew that a young shepherd in Bethlehem happened to play a pretty mean harp. David, the future king, was brought to the palace to play, but he would no doubt get a good education on the life of a king while he was there. Saul couldn’t know David was his replacement or he would have killed him, and David couldn’t be trained otherwise. God used a harp to put David in the place where he needed to be.

I can imagine young David trying to learn his instrument; I’m sure he got frustrated over wrong chords, or had to push through with painful callouses on his fingers. Because he stuck it out he allowed himself to be in position for God to use him. God took something as mundane as a harp and used it to change David’s life. Maybe there is something in your life that God is going to use to bring about something good; you won’t know if you don’t stick it out even when it gets hard. Be faithful in all the small things, and God just might use them to do something great.