Jeffrey C. Long

Open: Donald Drusky took God to court. The one-time employee of USX Corporation blamed God for failing to rectify the wrong done to him when he was fired in 1968. Drusky waged a 30-year battle with the steelmaker, before deciding to take legal action against God. The suit reads:

The defendant, God, is the sovereign ruler of the universe and took no corrective action against the leaders of his church and his nation for their extremely serious wrongs, which ruined the life of Donald S. Drusky.

For damages, Drusky asked for the return of his youth, the skill of a great guitarist, and the resurrections of his mother and pet pigeon. Drusky hoped that God would fail to appear in court, allowing him to win the case by default.

Drusky’s case was declared frivolous and thrown out by a Syracuse court.

Servant, a publication of Prairie Bible Institute (Issue 70, 2004), p. 9; submitted by Ed Rotz, Topeka, Kansas

Things happen in life that don’t seem to make sense.

In the case of Donald Drusky it was the Loss of a job.

When I was in middle school it was the death of a youth pastor in a drowning accident.

This past year it was witnessing the destruction of hurricane katrina and the devastation in people’s lives that resulted.

Is God really in control? Because if He is, why would He let something painful like this happen? Maybe He isn’t in control… then we wouldn’t be forced to ask why He lets bad things happen

Because if He had the power, then He could have prevented these tragedies from occurring.

Explain: Omniscience and omnipotence.

His omniscience and omnipotence create a paradox. Either He is all powerful and all knowing and thus responsible for everything that happens, or He is not and He is not responsible.

Key text: Colossians 1:16, 17 16 For by him were all things created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things are held together

By him all things were created. There is not a thing that He didn’t create. Not just visible, but invisible. Molecules, DNA, Atoms, Angels, heaven.

Thrones, or dominions, or principalities: Kingdoms, governments. Governors, Judges

These things were all created through him and for him.

He is before all things.

And in him all things are held together.

God is in control, even when bad things happen.

I believe that the first core conviction of the Christian life is that

We believe in a sovereign, loving, holy God. It is more true to the scripture and healthier to live with God as He is and has described Himself in the Bible then to attempt to craft a theology that safely answers the paradoxes His omnipotence and omniscience creates. He is in charge of life.

I choose to believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient _and_ that He is holy. I would rather live with the paradox of a good God being responsible for bad things then to live as though He does not have all power and all knowledge.

His awesomeness means that we aren’t going to understand Him. But this doesn’t feel very good.

I want God to make sense. I demand that God make sense. Don’t you?

Isaiah 40:13 Who has understood the mind [ a] of the LORD, 
       or instructed him as his counselor?

What I have come to realize is that I do not have to understand Him in order for Him to be holy. I think that this is a very key conclusion that all Christians need to come to eventually.

Hans Denk: Paradoxa: How blessed we would be were we to recognize how little we actually have. We would then bemoan our poverty and hunger after the bread of life, namely, the Christ of God, our Father. He has sufficient for all wants, but tends to give to the hungry only.

So… two things we are going to look at.

First, He is Lord of His creation. Second, He is Lord of me.

Lord of creation

New Orleans. Coast of Gulf of Mexico.

Walmart looked like it was built on stilts.

Homes hit like a wrecking ball.

Casino barges stripped of their sides. The rubble of one casino barge that had been carried up over the highway and landed on a building.

What does it mean? Was this the hand of God?

Ancient people believed Cataclysms, plagues and drought were either a judgement of the gods, or a conflict between warring gods. These tragedies struck both the just and the unjust.

It was the job of the prophets to tell them what it meant. Sometimes false prophets told them what they _wanted to hear_. While true prophets usually said the things that people _didn’t_ want to hear.

These types of events take place today. Do they still have meaning as they did in Old Testament times? Yes. A biblical prophet probably would have attached meaning to the destruction of the twin towers. To the hurricanes, to the tsunami

What I think we lack is prophets to interpret their meaning.

These events raise a big question in our mind.

Was God in control when the hurricane hit taking lives and destroying homes?

Psalm 135:6, 7 6 Whatever Yahweh pleased, that he has done,

In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps;

7 Who causes the clouds to rise from the ends of the earth;

Who makes lightnings with the rain;

Who brings forth the wind out of his treasuries;

Nahum 1:3 3 …Yahweh has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

He is still at work. He causes the clouds to rise, He makes lightnings with the rain. He brings forth the wind. He has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm. He did not leave the world alone to function out of the laws of physics. This is not as the meteorologists call simply a natural occurrence. He is Lord of the whirlwind and the storm.

How we are to approach storms is not to ask whether or not God is in it, because He is, but to ask “What do you want me to do?”

Billy Graham tells the story about the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew’s devastation. He writes about his grandson, Stephan-Nelson, who was working night and day helping the survivors to get water and food, and noticed a sign on the roof of one house which read: “Okay, God. You’ve got our attention. Now what?” I see storms of apocalyptic proportions on the horizon. God is beginning to get our attention. Now what?

Billy Graham in Storm Warning. Christianity Today, Vol. 37, no. 5.

OK, God. You’ve got our attention. Now what?

So, first, He is Lord over His creation.

Second, He is _my_ Lord.

Sometimes it isn’t nature that seems out of control, it is our life.

Zech is out of control. He’s been out of control since his conception. i’m ready to take steps to say that 6 children is enough. Too late.

Life is out of control. I’d like it if God weren’t so out of control. Can’t He just do what I want?

Graham Cook says “God is consistent, but he is also unpredictable. He is consistent in his nature. You always know where you are with God, but you seldom know what he is going to do next. You cannot find security in what God is doing. There is only security in who God is.”

Graham Cook, “Embracing Change,” Quiet Waters Compass (April 2003); submitted by Bill White, Paramount, California

Turn to Isaiah 29 and we will begin in verse 13

Isaiah tells the story of a time when God’s people were only serving Him externally, but not internally. They were following the outward rituals, but not with their heart. God had announced through the prophet that judgement was going to happen to them through the hand of a warring neighbor. In order to avoid this, Israel was attempting to build an alliance with Egypt to protect them from the coming siege. The funny part of this story is that they were keeping this plan from Isaiah… it looks like they thought they could keep their plans from God by keeping them from Isaiah.

So we find that God had a destiny for them… just not one that they wanted.

Let’s read:

Isaiah 29:13 13 The Lord said, Because this people draw near to me, and with their mouth and with their lips to honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men which has been taught them; 14 therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid. 15 Woe to those who hide deep their counsel from Yahweh, and whose works are in the dark, and who say, Who sees us? and who knows us? 16 You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be esteemed as clay; that the thing made should say of him who made it, He didn’t make me; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, He has no understanding?

God says “You’ve got it backwards.” I’m the potter, you’re the clay. You think that you can control your destiny. But I am the one who is in control.

We are not in a position to judge whether or not what God is doing in our lives is right.

Job 36:23 23 Says “who can say [to God], ‘You have committed unrighteousness?’

Missionary Gracia Burnham, who was held captive by terrorists in the Philippines for more than a year and whose husband was killed during the rescue, writes:

Sometimes I wonder, Why did Martin die when everyone was praying he wouldn’t? Why does Scripture lead you to believe that if you pray a certain way, you’ll get what you pray for? People all over the world were praying that we’d both get out alive, but we didn’t.

Her questions made her realize it isn’t always easy to comprehend God’s nature:

I used to have this concept of what God is like, and how life’s supposed to be because of that. But in the jungle, I learned I don’t know as much about God as I thought I did. I don’t have him in a theological box anymore. What I do know is that God is God—and I’m not. The world’s in a mess because of sin, not God. Some awful things may happen to me, but God does what is right. And he makes good out of bad situations.

Corrie Cutrer, "Soul Survivor," Today’s Christian Woman (July/Aug 2003), p. 50

God is God and I am not.

[emphatically] God is God and I am not.

When nature is out of control, when my life is out of control, God is God and I am not.

Close with this. Found in my devotions.

Habakkuk 3:17

though the fig tree doesn’t flourish,

Nor fruit be in the vines;

The labor of the olive fails,

The fields yield no food;

The flocks are cut off from the fold,

And there is no herd in the stalls:

18 Yet I will rejoice in Yahweh.

I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!

If everything fails around me. The crop fails. The creek rises. Everyone abandons me. Nations surround me. I have a terminal illness. A loved one dies.

I will rejoice in Yahweh. I will be joyful in the God of my salvation.