There is a God—(And we are not Him)
Jonathan Edwards preached a message in 1741 entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” If you have never read it, I encourage you to find it on the web and read this message that gives a view unlike most depictions of God today. Today we place our human expectations on the Creator, Savior and Judge of the universe expecting Him to relate to us from our own experiences. It isn’t often we hear of the holiness of God; instead it is about the ways God should help me with the problems in my life. We don’t hear about the hatred God has for sin; instead we expect God to turn a blind eye to our “slip ups, mistakes and outright selfishness.”
After all, we are human aren’t we? We have come to expect a God of love who tolerates anything and everything because isn’t that what love is — support for me in my life? I must scream NO because this isn’t the definition of the love of God. The love of God meets us where our need for Him is and provides and pays for the redemption (purchasing us out of sin) and establishment of a relationship with Him that we desperately need because it is the purpose for which we were first created.
This relationship can be established only if there is an unconditional surrender on our part to God. We are bankrupt and have nothing to offer an all-sufficient, all-powerful, all-knowing God who is holy. It actually amazes me that He would want anything to do with me. Yet because of His love He still meets us where we are, but in that meeting we are never to be the same again. There is absolutely no way we surrender to God, that God saves us and yet we remain the same. Otherwise, what and why are we coming in unconditional surrender to a holy God?
Acts 26:20 says “Repent and do works which give evidence of repentance.” Repentance is defined as turning from one direction to the opposite. Coming to God in repentance means I am turning from living my life for me and my desires, and now living my life for God and His desires for me. Over and over in Scripture, meeting God and following God always result in changes in life.
The sermon by Jonathan Edwards is a clarion call for us to remember there is a God, and we are not Him. God is not like us, nor He is to be thought of or related to as you do anyone else. This is the reason we can be close to Him in relationship yet have a healthy fear of His majesty, power and holiness. Make sure you have the complete picture of God, His love and holiness, His kindness and His wrath for sin.
Don’t buy the lies of the culture that wants to reduce God to a caricature of who He really is; instead, live out Romans 12:2: “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
Pressing on…
Ron Tipton, Senior Pastor
