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How Big Is Your God?

March 6, 2005                                                                                       Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

A story is told about three guys who went on a fishing trip out on the ocean and their boat was wrecked in a storm. But they managed to get to the proverbial desert island. After a week, one of the three, a cattle baron, became despondent. He missed his ranch. A second longed for his native Manhattan where he was a cab driver. The third man was a sort of a happy-go-lucky type who was actually enjoying himself. One day as they were walking along the beach, the carefree fellow happened to see an ancient lamp, which he promptly picked up. He rubbed it and a genie sprang out. “For freeing me from my prison,” the genie said, “each of you shall receive one wish.” “I’d like to go back to my ranch,” said the cattle baron. Poof, there he went. “I’d like to be back driving my cab again,” said the cabbie. Poof, he was gone. “And what is your wish,” asked the genie, of the third man, who by then was looking a little forlorn. “Well,” he said, “I’m kind of lonely now without the other guys. I wish they were back.” Poof, poof. And they may have killed him when they got back.

Doesn’t it seem like that sometimes? Just when you think you’ve got it together, poof. Something happens to bring us back to reality. We look at the world and it seems to be out of control sometimes. Poof. People try to make peace…poof. People try to get well…poof. People try to raise their kids right…poof, poof. All kinds of things.

This morning I’m continuing a series of sermons, which you well know, in which I’m talking about the names of God or I would more appropriately say the titles of God as they’re found in the Bible. And this morning I want to talk about one that only really appears a couple of times – it is El-Elyon which means God, the Most High. One author said, “Of all the names of God, there is no other which means more to me than this one. It is a name which has sustained me through every trial of my life. It is the name which has enabled me to live with my past. It is the name that empowers me to face whatever lies in the future. It is the strongest of towers.” Why does this person say that? Well, it’s because this name means that God is in control. This name means that God is the Lord, this means that God is sovereign. It means that nothing whatsoever can come to pass without His permission. It means that if we give our love and put our trust in Him, ultimately ours is the victory. Every trouble, hardship, and pain is in His hands.

This morning I want to read you two scriptures in which the name appears. And they really are a study in contrasts. One is about a great and powerful king the other, a young peasant woman, a nobody. The king was like Alexander the Great, like Augustus Caesar. He had a genius for organization, he was a mighty conqueror, he was a great builder. He was a ruler of much of the known world at the time, and in his society, he was the ruler of absolutely everyone and everything. His name was Nebuchadnezzar. We find him in Daniel; he is the king of Babylon, or what is now Iraq. And actually from Iraq, a good bit of the known world at the time. And because of his great power, he was tempted to regard himself as like a god. He had a dream which was interpreted by a young Hebrew, named Daniel, the gist of which said Nebuchadnezzar would be stricken with a form of insanity. It was God’s judgment of him because of his pride and arrogance. And this is how this scripture goes; it comes from Daniel chapter 4.

Twelve months later, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, he said, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” the words were still on his lips when a voice came from heaven, “This is what is decreed for you King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like the cattle. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes.” Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like cattle. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird. At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?”

The second scripture, as you may have guessed, is about Mary, the mother of Jesus. Listen to the difference after Mary had been told what would happen to her. This is what it says:

The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.” “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.

This is the word of the Lord.

Let us pray together…

Well, it happened again, as has happened to me many times in my life, as it happens to many Presbyterian pastors. I was doing a little Army duty this past week. I was with some fellow Army chaplains and we went out to dinner. Of course one of them happened to say, “We were just predestined to be with you, Chris” (ha ha ha). You see as a Presbyterian, people always say something about predestination because part of being a Presbyterian is believing in that kind of thing, though I have found that many Presbyterians don’t these days. And so it’s always that kind of thing, making a joke about it and sort of yukking it up to everyone again. But, you know, I find that when people talk about this thing called predestination, what they’re really talking about is this idea that God fore-ordains things. Technically speaking, predestination is part of this larger idea called fore-ordination. To fore-ordain means that God makes things happen. A lot of us sort of try to explain predestination away by saying that God looks into the future and sees what’s going to happen. That’s not what being said. God is not subject to time, He doesn’t have a crystal ball and looks into the future, He is not in time like you and me. No, God fore-ordains, as our confessions say, whatever comes to pass.

Now, when you get into a discussion about fore-ordaining things, at the very least, many people get very perplexed. And I have found that many get downright angry. Because the usual idea that folks have about this is that God is like, oh, a computer programmer. God has programmed everything that is going to happen, down to you scratching your nose. Or God has made the world like a machine and everything happens mechanically with no deviation whatsoever. Or, even more distasteful, God is like a puppet-master and we are like puppets on a string. And of course the major objections come to this idea: What about free choice? Well, I’m here to say to you this morning that God is not a puppet-master and we’re not puppets. God is not a computer programmer and we are not his program. And the universe is not a machine which God has built and controls every detail. If anything, it is much bigger than that. It’s much more mysterious than that.

I believe with all my heart that God does fore-ordain whatever comes to pass. It is a biblical idea. But at the same time, we do have free choice. In fact, I like to say (I’m sure I stole it from someone) that God has fore-ordained free choice. That within His scheme of things, free choice is included. The point is this, that God is El-Elyon, God Most High, in such a way that even my 100 or 1000 free choices I make every day, that neither of those things, nor your 100 or 1000 free choices everyday, nor the billions which are made by all human beings in this earth, nor the uncounted choices made by human beings down through the centuries, either for good or for ill, none of these choices are going to change the outcome of what God has purposed and planned and written.

Many times I’ve shared with you that I like to tell stories. I like to say, again I’m sure I got this from someone, that history is God’s story or “His story.” And there is an analogy between God writing His story and the author of a book. I like to read Tom Clancy novels, I don’t know about you, but his style is to have one big story, and yet it’s made up of twenty different stories going on at the same time. Sometimes you get a little confused when you read Tom Clancy because he’ll go from one to other to the other to the other and you’re kind of going “Well, what’s going on here?” God is similar…except that you have to multiply all the little stories by billions and billions and billions. And somehow God is going to bring it all together in the end. The end that God has planned for the whole world and for each individual, planned long ago. And that’s what fore-ordination means; God’s writing a story. Within that story, there are billions of stories, yours and mine. And like any good author, He has an end in mind for His stories. Except for one important difference and you need to hear this. Tom Clancy’s characters and any other author’s characters are just characters on paper. Every word and detail of their stories is determined. Nothing can change that. But God’s characters are real and we all have freedom to choose and we do choose.

Picture in your mind: children playing beside a tiny stream. I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I loved to play in creeks. We had one behind my house; it was a little too big to dam up but I sure wanted to do it a couple of times. But little children do that. They divert a stream and get great fun out of damming it up with stones and earth but not one of them ever succeeds in preventing the water from reaching the river that it finally gets to at last. In the same way, we are like little children. We may divert and hinder God’s purposes, but we never finally defeat them. And in fact, God is such a God that often the bad that we do is incorporated to become good; a strange sort of thing. The primary example of that, of course, is the cross. Mystery of mysteries…that was in one sense, God’s will and yet human beings, Roman and Jew, did a great evil. And yet God incorporates that great evil into great good. It is incredible if you think about it. In the end it is all a big mystery, but I also think it is true.

The big issue is: How do we react to all this? Well, I’ve said many times over the last few weeks, in talking about God and human beings, that deep inside you and I are ego-centric, as psychologists say. We all want to be little gods of our own lives. My chief example of that is just look at your own children. Again, what’s the first word out a child’s mouth after “mama” and “daddy?” “No!” I was in the airport going from one place to another this past week and a little kid, couldn’t have been more than a year and a half, [said] “No.” “Would you like to have this?” and he went, “No.” No, no, no, and on he went. I just laughed, it was funny. Anyway, we’ve all been there…I wasn’t making fun of the person or wishing them ill, I was just kind of going, “Well, I’ve been there, I’ve seen that.” And I’ve been there. When I was little kid, I had a habit of doing something. I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you or not. I would get so mad, I couldn’t have been more than two, I would throw a fit and hit my head on the floor. And that’s what’s wrong with me… Until one day, I ran into a concrete floor and that was the end of that. When I say these things, I’m talking about myself.

We all want to do what we want to do. And I haven’t become convinced that half of what God has to teach us in this life is “Who is God? Who is El-Elyon? Who is God Most High? Who is in control?” I was talking with someone last week, I won’t mention any names so you will never know who this person is, but this person shared with me two things that are so consistent with Christian spirituality. A story I’ve heard, in some ways, many many times. Growing up, this person either did not have it preached to them or they didn’t hear about a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. It didn’t quite register with them. And finally later in life, it sort of did. But it only did when they came to a place in their lives when they felt like they had been backed up against a precipice. When they had been backed up against the wall and they had to surrender their lives to God and then suddenly God became real to them. You see, mere belief is not enough. And I’m not saying that we aren’t Christians if we just believe. We are, but to really know God and to really have closeness with God, a real relationship with God, you’ve got to surrender. You’ve got to say “I’m Yours, I’m not mine.” And I’ve become convinced that at least half of what we suffer in life, the struggles we go through, the pains we have, have some way or another the goal of teaching us “who is God.”

Kind of reminds me of another story. A pastor was sitting out on his porch thinking about the unpredictability of life, at any moment one’s life could change, and so one should live every moment looking to God. As the preacher sat there, his neighbor went past leading a horse. The preacher called out, “What are you going to do with your horse?” The man yelled back, “I’m going to town to sell it.” The pastor said, “You ought to say, you’re going to sell it if it is the Lord’s will.” The man said, “What does this have to do with the Lord’s will, this is a good healthy horse and it will be sold before you know it.” The pastor said, “Have you forgotten that God is watching you. You need to put everything in God’s hands in order for it to work out. You should say ‘if it be the Lord’s will.’” The man said, “This is my horse and I’ve raised it specifically to be sold. I’ve even gotten a buyer for it, the Lord’s will won’t change anything.” Later that day the neighbor passed by the preacher’s house again. He was covered with dirt, his clothes were ripped in shreds, and he was sore from one end to the other. The astonished preacher asked what happened. “Well, I talked to you for so long that I was late for my appointment. To get there on time, I took a shortcut across a cornfield owned by a cross old buzzard. Well, he saw me tramping through his field and he started shooting at my horse. The horse panicked and he fell on top of me. The horse kicked me in the eye and kicked me all over. Trying to get out from under the horse, I tore my clothes all to pieces. I ran from the old man and his gun and ran smack-dab into a barbed wire fence. That’s what happened to me.” The pastor said, “Well, where are you going now?” The man answered, “Well, I’m going home now, if it be the Lord’s will.”

Nebuchadnezzar was such a man. Now, I’m not saying that we have a kingdom like Nebuchadnezzar but you know, we all have our little kingdoms and to one degree or another there’s always that sin of pride waiting for us out there. To say that we’re in control, to say that something is ours. And it is something we all fall into – it seems like for me, everyday – but it’s just there. And we have to be constantly on guard on this. And like Nebuchadnezzar, to look up and say “You are El-Elyon. You are God.” And contrast that with Mary. Mary is an interesting person. Some people in some churches have elevated Mary beyond even where she would hardly recognize herself, were she to come back and live among us today. Some have treated her like a miracle worker, at best, and at worst some have made her almost into a god. She’s not God. She was not sinless or fault-free. She was an ordinary woman and this is what I like about her actually, she was an ordinary woman who did remarkable things. And she is an example to us, just an incredible person. And here are some things that she had that I think we need to have. First and foremost, she had this incredible confidence in God’s power and we need to have the same thing, to have an incredible confidence in God’s power. And that’s hard to do sometimes, when life goes sour. Or when we think God asks us to do something that “Hey, don’t ask me to do that. I haven’t got time. Or I’m not well or I don’t have talent.” When the angel told Mary she would give birth to the Messiah, she knew the score. It takes two to make a child and no one had ever given birth without help before. So she simply asked the question, “How can this be?” And the angel explains to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Lord Most High will overshadow you.” And she was not a young peasant woman who had an IQ of 50. She wasn’t stupid. She knew the score. She asked an intellectual question, one that needed an answer. And yet when she was given the answer she said that was enough for her. Why? Because she believed in a big God. A lot of people have trouble with the virgin birth these days. And I can understand that and you know, sometimes, we say “I don’t need to believe in the virgin birth to be a Christian.” And that’s technically true; you don’t have to necessarily believe in that miracle to be a Christian. But it says a whole lot about what you believe about God. It says a whole lot about what you believe about God. Another thing she did was that she trusted in God’s love and character. We need to do the same. We need to trust in God’s love and character. Later on, Mary will say, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.”

You know, the older I get, I can go in my library and someone asks “Have you read all these books?” I’m not bragging, but I’ve at least looked through many of them. And some of them are there just for reference and if I have to look them up, I will, but after all of the books I’ve read on who God is and what God has done, I’ve come down to the child’s prayer about who God is. “God is great and God is good.” These are profound statements actually. God is great; He has absolute power, majesty, and love. And God is good. It’s the age-old question: “How can a good God allow bad things?” But He does. And we confess that God is good and God is great and yes, it is a mystery about why these things happen. And Mary knew that she was going be accused of adultery. She knew she was going to get the stares, she knew a lot of bad things were going to happen to her. But she clung to God, her God, who was a big God. And we have to remember to do that. She also had a vision for God’s story, and particularly her part in His story and she surrendered to it. Now not everybody is asked to do the amazing thing that Mary was asked to do and yet all of us are asked by God to surrender to Him and His will for our lives. All of us are asked to do that.

I’ll say something that may be hard – I have come to believe that unless we surrender to God, we’ll never experience God in a real personal way. We’ll never know who God is in the powerful way that He intends for us to know Him. God loves us, I’m not saying that God doesn’t love you. I’m not saying that God won’t use you. I’m just simply saying that your life will not be as rich as God means it to be, unless you surrender and sometimes that surrendering, we have to continue you to do it. I just want to ask you a question today: “Is there some thing or some things in your life now that you need to surrender?” It may just be yourself; maybe you’ve never surrendered to God. But maybe it’s something you’re holding on to. I know what that is, I have stuff like that that I have to regularly surrender. So it’s not as though I’m saying to you, I’m better than you because I’m not. I’m not. It’s a pattern of Christian spirituality for us all. It is what life is about, being a Christian. It is about continually surrendering to the God who is Most High. And so I ask you today, “Is there something that you are dealing with now that you need to surrender?” What better time to do it than as we come to the table, because in the table we have a picture of God’s grace and love. Jesus says, “Come and eat with me.” And, in doing so, He is saying, “Come and eat with the God who is Most High. Come and have dinner. Come and sit a spell and experience my love.” Because in this Supper, we see God’s grace, His broken body and shed blood. God loves you so much. Let it go…whatever it is, let it go. Let us pray together.