Home
Up

“Would You Recognize God When You See Him?”

March 20, 2005                                                                  Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

Jesus had come to his final journey. For three years he had preached and healed. He was known all over Judea. He was known, yet most did not know who he was. Was he the Messiah? Some said “yes”. Others scoffed at the idea that a carpenter from Nazareth could be the Messiah. “Where is the proof?” they asked. “Why does he not declare himself?” Even those who followed him wondered about this. They wondered that maybe when he got through with all this preaching stuff, he would finally say, “I’m it.” Finally, Jesus arrived at the home of Mary and Martha near Jerusalem. His disciples were excited because Jesus had just done the most spectacular ministry of miracles. He had raised Lazarus from the dead. So now would he finally show himself? They spent the night wondering what the next day would bring.

The next day the crowd saw him going to Jerusalem and wondered. The excitement grew. On his way, he sent two of the disciples ahead of him to the next village saying, “Go to that village, there you will find a donkey’s colt which has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it to me. If anyone says anything to you, just tell them that the Master has need of it.” And they went and found it, just as he had said. As Jesus began to do all of this, the excitement grew around him. For everyone knew the scriptures and the prophet Zechariah said that Israel’s Messiah would come on a donkey’s colt. And here was Jesus doing exactly that. Word ran ahead of him. “Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming, riding on a donkey’s colt.” Crowds began to appear in the roadside; some went and got branches from the trees and laid them on the road. Others took their cloaks and put them in front of Jesus. Many began to shout, “Hosanna. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna to the Son of David. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” And the crowd, especially the children, began to dance and sing and shout “Hosanna, Hosanna.”

When Jesus went into the city through the eastern gate, many asked, “Who is this?” And the answer came, “Jesus of Nazareth, the prophet from Galilee.” And the whole city was aroused. Jesus too was aroused, but in a different way. It was strange for those around him. Instead of rejoicing with the crowds, instead of being happy – he was coming to Jerusalem as the king – he had a strange look on his face, one that bordered between anger and deep sadness. He began to weep saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you, even you, would just realize what this day means to you. If you would but repent and come to me, but the meaning of this day is hidden from your eyes. The day is coming, soon, when you will be destroyed. Not one stone will be left upon another because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” And, as if to prove Jesus’ words, right on the spot, the Pharisees came to Jesus and said, “Stop the people from saying these things. They are offensive to us and to God.” But Jesus replied, “If they were silent, so the ground would shout. And these children shouting ‘Hosanna’ have you not read in the scripture that God has ordained praise from the lips of children? Yes, they shall lift their voices and praise especially when those who should be praising are not.” And Jesus went up into the temple and surprised everyone by turning over the tables of the moneychangers and shouting, “This is the House of God, meant for worship and not for this.” And then he taught and just left, just left, leaving everyone wondering what in the world was going on.

I read to you the Scripture this morning in a little bit different way, I told you a story. The familiar story of Jesus coming into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday. And I have a question about these times. I wonder why people didn’t recognize Him. I also wonder if we would recognize Him if we were there? And maybe an even deeper question, do we now recognize God when we see him? And that is my question for today: would we recognize God if we saw him today? Or do we recognize him in our lives? Because I believe that God is all around us and is working in and about us. Sometimes I think we don’t and today I want to talk about that.

First, let us pray…

A little over a year ago I moved up here in January and I was given a gracious invitation to stay with the Bracke’s for a few weeks while we settled in and had to go back and get Cindy and all that sort of thing. It was fairly cold, for me it was, that winter and I was talking to Jim and he was telling me about the wonders of Minnesota. And I remember him even describing how when it was 25 degrees below, how beautiful it was because he said something like, “Even when you breathe and the breath turns into ice crystals, it’s beautiful.” And I remember thinking – no offense, Jim – this man has lived here way too long. But you know, I’ve lived here a year and he’s right, it’s a beautiful place. I walked out of this door about three or four weeks ago and I remember it being a cold night and looking up into the sky and not a cloud in the sky and seeing the stars. Not for the first time, but in a way I maybe hadn’t before because when it’s really cold and there’s no pollution in the air or haze as we have in the South, you see the sky in a way maybe you haven’t before.

There’s beauty everywhere. And my question today is do we recognize God? And I think the first way we see God is just look around. The Bible says, “The heavens declare the glory of God. Night after night they pour forth speech, day after day proclaiming His handiwork.” And yet, we are distracted. We have all kinds of noise going on in our lives, don’t we? From the radio to the computer to the TV to all the thoughts in our head and the worries and we are distracted and we don’t see God. So my first thing to say for all of us is to look around; stop and see what’s around you. But of course that’s not enough. We have to do more than that. You see, I really do believe that we live our lives and God is all around us but we don’t see Him very well. And so we have to do more than the creation, but that’s a good place to start. We simply have to get to know God personally.

As Christians we believe that God is infinite, that is to say He’s beyond our understanding, and yet, He’s also knowable. Like many things in Christian theology, we hold two seemingly opposite things together in tension, that God is bigger than us, infinite, greater than us, beyond our understanding and yet, He helps us understand Him. He lets us know Him. In Jesus’ time, religion had become rather simple. It had become a religion of rules and you sort of knew where you stood pretty easily. If you drew a line down the middle of a piece of paper and wrote all the things you were supposed to do and not do and you did them or didn’t do them, you were good. And then if you had on the other side all the things you were not supposed to do or think or whatever and you did them or thought them or failed to do them, you were bad. And it became a religion of simply knowing the rules. And they forgot that first and foremost it was about knowing God.

The rules were okay. The laws were fine. But they just got their priorities out of whack. And so when God comes in the flesh, they have no clue, they didn’t see Him. He was teaching the rules, He was teaching the good things, they just didn’t see God. And we can’t say that we wouldn’t have done the same thing. Matter of fact, I think, in our own lives today, we do the same things in other ways. We don’t see God. You know, I’ve been fascinated over the years in talking to parents. We seem to go through a similar thing; it doesn’t happen all the time this way, but a lot of people when they go to college, you don’t go to church that much, you sort of do your thing and we forget about God a little bit. Maybe we go to church, maybe we don’t and then we lead a single life maybe but then we get married and suddenly its baby time. And we go, “Oh, hmm, I’m responsible for this. What do I do? Well, I need some help.” We’ll go to church. A lot of people wind back up at church when they have a kid. It really happens that way. But you know what’s fascinating to me, is that often parents do bring their children to church but they come to church for the children, not necessarily for themselves. And in some cases, will drop their kids off.

Now I’m really not trying to knock parents and I know that some of you are here today because your kids are singing and waving things. I understand. I also understand the emotions here. You see, when I had kids I had the same emotions. I had this desire that my kids wouldn’t do the stupid things that I did when they got older. I worked very hard for that. And so we believe that coming to church is a better environment to raise our kids so perhaps, we hope, they won’t do the stupid things that we did or the stupid things we see everybody else doing out there. There are dangerous things out there, we’re very much afraid of that and rightly so. But it becomes the idea of making our lives work better. It becomes the idea of learning the rules to make our lives work better to protect our children. It is not necessarily about God in a lot of cases. And that’s true not just for parents…it’s true for all of us. We come seeking ways to do better in our lives, to be more successful. But it’s not about God and we wonder why we miss God. Why God is not as close as we would like Him to be. Why God seems so mysterious some times. And it’s because we forget that all those things are good, but it’s not about that first, it’s about knowing God. And knowing anyone takes work. It takes work so we have to read the Bible, we have to come to worship, we have to be in a place, whether it’s this church or another church for many years before we begin to know God better and better and better. It takes a long time and those of you who that have been married a long time know exactly what I’m talking about. You know we learn about spouses and we know them after a long period of time and we still don’t know them as well as we’d like. It takes a long time.

So the first thing is to get to know God personally. The second is to get on board with what God is doing. Now in Jesus’ time they had this idea that the Messiah would be a certain kind of person; the Messiah was going to be like the Gladiator. He was going to come in on a big white horse with a big long sword and he was going to kill all the Romans. He was going to get this army and conquer the world and Jerusalem was going to be the seat of the king. Somehow, they missed it. Now it does say in the Bible that God is going to set up His kingdom and the Messiah would be the son of David and there are hints of this glory but it’s right there that the Messiah would do other things, that God had a bigger plan than just to set up a kingdom so that these folks could be happy. And that plan had to do with the whole world; they missed the fact that God loved the whole world and not just them. And you and I sit here today because of that bigger plan, by the way. God had it in mind to tackle bigger issues than simply running the Romans out of the Mediterranean…issues of forgiveness of sin, issues of redemption, issues of healing for generations to come, issues of eternal life, bigger things.

What does that mean for you and me? Again, so often we are simply worried about our own worlds. And I’m not here to tell you to not worry about your own life. God wants you to pray about your life and to solve your problems. But sometimes we are so focused on those things that we forget about the bigger picture. I want you to try something for me, when you pray, don’t just pray for what you want, pray for what’s right. Don’t just pray for what you want, pray for what is right in your life. It’ll make a difference in seeing God, I guarantee you it will. Try to get on board with what God is doing; God wants us all to be part of the family business instead of just taking care of our own business. The family business is about redemption and forgiveness and healing and doing what God wants us to do. And we are a part of His family.

A third thing that might help us know God when he walks by or appears in our life is just plain old confession. We forget about confession, we do it in the first service, we have a confession, but I’m really talking about just deep down inside being honest with God, confessing persistent sin in our lives, confessing maybe some of the things I just talked about. And you know that God doesn’t need actually to hear you say anything, He already knows all about you. It’s a little bit scary, you know, to some degree. We like to think we can hide things from others, and we can, but we can’t from God. God knows every detail of your life, every wonderful thing about you and every sordid detail…everything. He knows all about your warts as well as your halos. So God doesn’t necessarily need to hear about them but you need to say them. It’s kind of like when your kids do something. If they do something bad, you’re not going to say, “Okay, you’ve done something bad, get out of the house.” Well maybe for some of them…I’m only kidding, of course. Sometimes we feel that way. They don’t cease to be our children when they do bad things and neither do we cease to be God’s child when we do bad things. But in order for the relationship to be restored, we require honesty. You see when we do things or we think certain things, brick by brick we build a wall in between ourselves and God. And confession is that sledgehammer which continually knocks it down and we have to continually do it because we’re always on this edge of doing right and doing wrong, always.

Last but not least, I would encourage you to develop a more child-like faith. Jesus is always saying how wonderful children are. “Become like them,” he says. Now Jesus is not saying become childish and he’s also not saying check your brain at the door when you walk into church. We are to be thinking people, about our faith and about everything. But you know the problem with being an adult is we become very cynical, we become very suspicious, sometimes rightly so. But with God, we need to put those things away and it’s okay to believe simply that God is here and what he says is true. Do you know what I found out about children? I found out that children love to be found by adults. In a couple of churches I have served, I have started something called Lagos, it’s a mid-week program, it’s the same as we have here, essentially. I started a couple of those things; in the smaller churches the pastor has to do everything so I found that in these programs, I was doing everything. One church in Tennessee I was serving, I wound up in charge of recreation for the little kids, you know ages 5, 6, 7, 8, that sort of thing. And so I would do something occasionally. We would play hide and go seek in the sanctuary, I just made sure they didn’t break anything. So these little kids, you know, “Go hide” and they would hide behind the pulpit and sometimes underneath it, they’d hide behind the organ or the baptismal font. They weren’t very good at hiding but they wanted to be found. I would be walking along and I would hear this, “Te, he, he” and that kind of stuff. They wanted me to find them. They loved to be found by adults.

We all want to be found deep inside but we grow as adults, we get hurt and we grow a little gun-shy. Or people lie to us and we grow suspicious and doubting. God wants us to think but God wants us to believe as well. Or maybe its better the other way around…believe and then think. Try an experiment for me, in closing. If you were to close your eyes and imagine God’s face, what kind of expression would he have to you? A lot of people I talk to it’s usually a frown. But I want to say to you that in Christ, in the gospel, we’re forgiven and we’re God’s people and the Bible says very clearly God delights in His children. Have you ever been delighted in? I think few of us have had that experience and if we have it’s only been a couple of times in our lives, for someone to look at you in just pure delight. That’s how God looks at us and if we imagine it that way, because it’s true, I think we’ll get a sense of God’s presence more, being children as we are, and knowing that we have a God that’s our Father who loves us so much. And that’s what this week is about. God’s love coming to us in Jesus Christ, taking care of something we can’t take care of – our sins – and giving us promises of forgiveness and everlasting life. Dwell on these things this week, know them. Seek God in your life because He’s always there. He’s always there. Let us pray.