Readings
- Matthew 28:16–20 All Authority … Go and make Disciples
- Isaiah 40:12–17, 27–31 Behold your God
- 2 Corinthians 13:11–14 Grace, Love & Fellowship
Introduction – Behold your God
The Old Testament speaks of a time when:
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Isa 11:9
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Hab 2:14
And in the coming of Jesus, the fullness of that blessing is revealed
And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
Jn 17:3
On the Sunday in which, above all Sundays, our focus is on the fullness of God in his glorious Trinity and Unity, we ought to reflect on the God that we know.
Behold Your God
Our Isaiah reading begins, before the section we have in the lectionary, with this:
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God … Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”
Isa 40:1,9
Behold your God. How well do you know him? The riches of his glory in Jesus Christ are unfathomable. But to know him is eternal life. And we should know him.
Good News
The Gospel is Good News; good news concerning Jesus Christ. But in its Old Testament roots (as we see in these verses) it is expressed as the heralds’ cry of good news – Behold your God. God, himself, in all his glorious trinity-unity, is the Good News. To speak of him, to see him and know him, is comfort and strength to God’s people.
By his grace we have been given eyes to see and hearts to know this God. His Glory has been made to shine in our hearts in seeing the face of Jesus Christ – the image of the invisible God (2 Cor 4:6).
He is the Good News. He alone is the comfort that we need. Anything else is fake news, comfortless, “a broken reed of a staff, which pierces the hand of the one that leans on it” (Isa 36:6)
Your God
The heralds of Good News proclaim, “Behold your God”. Yet, I wonder how many Christians see and know him as they should. From the beginning, Satan’s weapon of deceit has been aimed at the nature of God and his word. In the garden he says to Eve and Adam, “did God say?”, and he questions not only God’s word, but also his character.
Today, I wonder how many Christians have been deceived into seeing God as something less than he truly is. We may think that idolatry has to do with statues and carved images, but as A W Tozer says, it is much deeper than that:
“Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes God is other than He is—in itself a monstrous sin—and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness …
Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place. “When they knew God,” wrote Paul, “they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”[1]
Only the word of God and the grace of the Holy Spirit can truly enlighten our darkened hearts.
Go … and make Disciples
Our Gospel is familiar as the ‘Great Commission’ to go and make disciples. But it is founded on an awesome statement that Jesus makes:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
One God, over All
This is the one who is THE Way, THE Truth and THE Life, and he has authority over ALL things. We dare not present Jesus as other than he truly is. He is full of grace and truth, and we must not so emphasise the grace that the truth is lost, or so emphasize the truth that his grace is lost. Sometimes that will be hard, especially when the Truth is challenging, but we must seek always to proclaim Jesus in the fullness of his grace and truth.
And, as this Sunday should remind us, we must present Jesus as he is in the fullness of the Godhead. There is no place for setting the Father against the Son, or some idea of the Old Testament God of wrath against a New Testament idea of the God of love. Jesus tells us to baptise these new disciples,
“in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.
One Name, one God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – throughout eternity; revealed in his one word (both old and new testaments).
Disciples of the Word
And this one God, over all, calls us to be disciples of his word – “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”.
The word ‘observe’ (gk. τηρέω tēreō) has its roots in a word for guarding, keeping watch over, or preserving. So, it speaks not only of obeying, or believing, but holding closely to, and passing on with care.
If we call ourselves disciples of Christ, we must cherish his word, being careful to keep it, to hear it, live it and pass it on, just as he has given it to us. Throughout history there have been those who sought to accommodate his word to their circumstances, their feelings, their group, or institution. But God has kept his word remarkably unchanged and available to us.
Every generation is charged to keep this word. And we must faithfully put this word at the centre of our discipleship, testing every tradition and new thought against its challenging plumb line.
Our Comfort in His Glory
Isaiah keeps this focus on God as the good news and our comfort in troubling times.
Is God Impotent or Uncaring
In the second part of our reading, we see the issue from the people’s point of view. The people are troubled and wondering about God:
- Can he not see the trouble we are in – “My way is hidden from the Lord”
- Does he not care about the trouble we are in – “my right is disregarded by my God”.
These two questions have worried Christians over centuries, when they are facing troubles; either God is not powerful, or he doesn’t care. You may have faced them, yourself. Certainly, they have been at the heart of philosophers’ criticisms of God, faced with the problem of suffering
So, what is the answer?
Who is Like God?
In our modern view of things, you might be quick to assert that God does care. You might point to the suffering of Christ for us? But this is not the answer that God gives. Whether you look at this reading, or in that great treatise on suffering, in Job. Again, and again, God does not tell us that he loves us (though he does). His first answer seems always to be to point us to his glorious fullness. ‘Who is like me?’, he says. Who has made all this, who understands and measures it, who taught him the wisdom?
We might look for God to affirm his love for us, to say that we are valuable to him and that he cares for us. But instead he says, “the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales”. If all were offered as worship to him, they would still come to “less than nothing and emptiness”.
Our Comfort is in His Glory
It is not that he does not care. God is love, faithful love. But when we see God’s love as a reflection of some value in us, we are on shaky ground. So, God establishes his love on the solid ground of who he is, not who we are.
He is the everlasting one, the creator of everything, the unfainting, unwearying one. There is no limit to his knowledge or understanding. And, from this limitless fountain, those who wait on him receive strength. Those who see Gods love as a reflection of their own worth or value are doomed to faint and fall, but those who wait on God will fly – They
“shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint”
He works for those who wait
Is this your God? Too many Christians seem to have a view of God as the one who loves them, but when troubles come, they have no answer to them. In times of trouble the cant see that God loves them. They ask, does he not see, does he not care?
When we are like this, we may not realise, but it is as if we have made everything – including God – revolve around us and our cares. But the truth is that everything revolves around God. He is the centre; he has to be for our sakes. And for us to learn this, he may bring us to troubles, and to the pit of Ps 40, where we learn to wait patiently for him.
That may seem hard, but it is glorious and liberating. Every other god, every other religion seems to depend on us; we serve and look for blessings. But as Isaiah tells us elsewhere, this God is the one who works for those who wait for him:
“From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.”
Isa 64:4
So, let us put God at the centre and look to him to be God amongst us, as he wills.
Let God be God amongst us
And, finally, our short reading from Corinthians, speaks of what it looks like when we let God be the centre, when we let God be God amongst us.
When it is no longer about us, or our group but about him, we can begin to experience what it is like when his grace, his love and his fellowship is the reality of our being church. Rejoicing in him, we can pursue restoration and peace.
- His Grace – a faithful mercy that is founded in truth, freed to us through the sacrifice of Christ.
- His Love – a love that reflects who he is more than who we are, faithful and full of wisdom that flows from his holiness to meet our real need
- His Fellowship – bringing us to be with him in the mysterious fellowship of the eternal trinity, where we find our place, identity and meaning in him.
Going back full circle, we are those who are baptised, together, into his name and his word.
Behold your God
Now we see, dimly and imperfectly as in a mirror (1 Cor 13:12), but as be we see we are changed by what we see (2 Cor 3:18), from glory to glory. Now we see imperfectly, but one day we will see and know, just as truly as we are seen now by him. And when we see him, out transformation will be perfected (1 Jn 3:2).
So, let us take care how we see. Let us not let our own desire, or any tradition, replace the one who IS, with any idol. To see him truly is comfort and strength in our troubles. To know him is eternal life. Accept nothing less.
[1] AW Tozer, The Essence of Idolatry from ‘The Knowledge of the Holy’ 1961 Harper Collins