For Certain

We, who think we understand God, and particularly we, who attempt to speak for God, must be careful what we say about God and what we speak in God’s behalf.  It is likely that we understand less than we think and that sometimes, maybe often, the words we speak are less God’s words and more our own.

Reading of Scripture should be enough to caution us.  When Samuel was sent to anoint a king for Israel, he was sure he knew the man God had chosen.  In the end, he anointed a kid after being told by God that those who appeared kingly were not God’s choice: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look to the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (I Samuel 16:7 NRSV).  Paul, at the end of that beautiful passage on love, wrote: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (I Corinthians 13:12 NRSV).  Our text for today provides the same caution: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9 NRSV).

I have always had my critics who warned that I am often less than clear about what God said or says.  I applaud the critics who understand me.  I am often unclear about what God said and says.  My hearing of God’s voice is less than perfect . . . my seeing of God’s will less than 20/20.  It has always been so and so shall it always be.  Being able to acknowledge this and proclaim it is one of the things of which I am most proud.  I know enough about God to know I am not God.  My hat is off to those who understand more about God than do I; but I remain cautious about those who think they always know what the word from God is about any given subject.  You should be, too.

For those who want certainty about God and what God says, here is that of which I am certain:

 

1.     I know in part and I see as in a mirror, dimly.
2.     God sees through our outward appearance to the heart of who and whose we are.
3.     God’s ways are not our ways.  God’s ways and thoughts are higher—better than ours.
4.     Sin is costly.
5.     Sinners—all sinners—are redeemable.  NO ONE is beyond redemption.

I do not fully understand God.  How could I?  I do not even fully understand myself.  I do understand enough.  God is God and I am not.  God is gracious, forgiving, and redeeming.  In God, sinners—all of us—can be and are made whole!