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August 01, 2004
God’s View and Our View
God’s View and Our View
I Samuel 16: 1-13 / I Corinthians 1: 26-31
August 1, 2004
The theme before us this morning is very familiar. How often have you said, “You can’t judge a book by its cover?” Or, “Beauty is more than skin deep.”
The deceitfulness of appearances injects neuro-toxins into every sphere of life. Qualified people lose job opportunities to less qualified people who are more physically attractive. Glamorous people infect society with life-styles that undermine decency. A pretty face much publicized makes doing drugs look appealing, and loose sex and infidelity chic. And in religion, keeping up appearances has hollowed out Christianity for very many. You could add to the list of problems that result from the deceitfulness of what we see.
So deep is this delusion that we judge not only others falsely but we judge ourselves falsely by appearances. Some people see themselves as unattractive or unintelligent, so low on society’s totem pole so that they crawl into a cave of self-rejection, assuming other people will reject them, and that even God thinks they are worthless. How deceptive may be what we see in the mirror.
A third way we suffer from being deceived by appearances is that we are suspicious of those who see beyond appearances. What a waste of time it must have seemed to the disciples Jesus had already chosen when he next chose Levi, a tax collector. Tax collectors were legalized thieves and everyone knew it, and they knew that everyone knew it. But Jesus said to this tax collector, “Follow me,” and look, the first book in our New Testament bears his name. Matthew was this Levi. How foolish Jesus must have seemed at first to see beyond Levi’s shell to the saint beneath.
The two texts of Scripture before us today impress on us that there is a difference between God’s view and our view. I don’t mean that God plays favorites according to a different level of seeing. At issue here is not value to God or personal salvation, but availability for use to God. God will save very many people that are not available for usefulness because they live on the surface, mesmerized by appearances.
God loves all people equally. We sang as little children in Sunday School: “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”
God not only loves all little children equally, He also loves equally all kinds of adults. Jesus died on the cross because He loved Judas Iscariot as well as Mother Teresa. God loves people we praise for high virtue and people we love to hate for highly visible sins. But the matter before us this morning is usefulness to God, not whether God loves all people. We would not choose many whom God chose in the past. We set high standards of education and the reputation for character for those who will serve as deacons, elders, and pastors. But God seems to ignore our expectations. Because God finds usefulness in places we’d never think to look.
The Old Testament story of how God chose Israel’s second king fascinates us. When Samuel chose Saul as the first king of Israel he and everyone else saw how tall and good looking he was. He stood head and shoulders above everyone. He had a modest bearing. How wonderful to have a demure king. Saul looked like the perfect king.
But neither Samuel nor anyone else saw Saul’s impulsiveness, a hidden weakness beneath his regal bearing. He had the tendency to make snap decisions that were not wise. We have noted some of King Saul’s unwise snap decisions the last few Sundays. What made him choose badly, time after time? It was an inner flaw of character he hadn’t the courage to overcome. So God rejected Saul as king and as circumstances played out, God’s rejection was confirmed.
God told Samuel to go to the little village of Bethlehem to choose Saul’s replacement. King Saul must have watched Samuel like a hawk since he told him that God had rejected as king. He had seen the older sons of Jesse who were among his finest soldiers, and maybe knew they were from Bethlehem. Samuel knew he would look suspicious if he went to Bethlehem with a horn of oil, a piece of equipment that everyone knew had high significance. Word would get to the king. So the Lord gave Samuel a diversionary tactic. Take a young heifer to sacrifice in Bethlehem.
But this diversion frightened folk in Bethlehem. Why is the great prophet picking us out? What have we done that a sacrifice needs to be offered here? So they came to him as word got to them that Samuel was approaching with a sacrificial animal. “Are you coming peaceably?” they asked. Samuel reassured them that he came peaceably, but let them know this was a solemn occasion. “Consecrate yourselves,” he told them. That is, “Get ready to be in the special presence of God.” Probably this meant they were to bathe, wear their best clothing, and remove their shoes. Samuel got word to Jesse’s family in particular to prepare for worship.
Samuel surveyed the crowd that gathered to watch the sacrifice. Looking around, he saw Jesse’s tall, handsome sons and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed stands before me.” Perhaps the occasion called for the people of Bethlehem to come to stand before Samuel, one by one. One family after another stood before him and he blessed them, and they went home feeling uplifted. Then came Jesse’s sons. First there was Eliab, tall, well-built, good-looking. He was a great figure on the battlefield. But a voice inside said, “No, don’t look on how tall and well-built he is, for the Lord does not see as man sees. The Lord looks on the heart.”
One after another Jesse’s attractive sons passed before Samuel, and the Lord said, “Not him.” It was the least likely son, David, the youngest, the shepherd boy that Jesse thought was beyond consideration, whom the Lord had chosen.
Now we know from what took place in David’s life as king that he was far from perfect. And when we see the kind of imperfection David suffered we wonder how in the world God chose him. President Clinton will be reminded of his dallying with Monica Lewinsky as long as he lives, and historians will remind future generations of this flaw in his presidency. But King David not only “dallied” with Bathshebah, he had her husband killed so he could have her for himself. But God didn’t reject David for this crime.
God saw that King David was not defined by what he did in this moment of greatest weakness. Probably the legacy of psalms King David left Israel reflect what God saw when he looked into his heart. God can and does choose and use very flawed people. The remorse David felt for his sin is reflected in the 51st Psalm. “My sin is ever before me. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Then I will teach transgressors your ways.” It was this attitude that made him useful to God. He knew that “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
There are some who have good reason to see themselves as David saw himself, needy and flawed, who defend themselves and posture before themselves as better than they are. A religion that emphasizes appearances will cultivate this outlook. God cannot use a person with an outlook like this. God can save such a person, but there will be little usefulness.
The Apostle Paul stood before the mottled mix of people in the church in Corinth that made up an important part of God’s spearhead in getting the Gospel into Europe. None of the city’s great people were in this number.
“Look around you,” he told them. “You don’t see many who are known for their wisdom, no politically powerful folk, none from prestigious families. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, the weak to shame the strong. He has chosen what is despised, in fact, things that seem nonexistent to bring to nothing things that exist.” Why? Because if anyone stands proudly before God he is useless. The church in Corinth knew well what a sorry crew they were. It was knowing their need that made them useful.
The shepherd boy, David, was useful because he saw himself as just a shepherd boy. He was surprised when the prophet poured oil on his head and told him quietly, “God has chosen you to lead his people.” He was filled with the sense of “Who am I that God would choose me?”
Somehow, despite the flaws that Paul had to address in the church at Corinth, flaws that may have derived from the very weaknesses he mentions in the passage we just read, it was their very weakness that they knew well that fitted them for great usefulness to God at this pivotal moment in history. As full of problems as they were, they apparently had the capacity of humility, a contrite heart.
Our excellences may do us in. We are a gifted congregation. We know it. But this very bounty of ability and intelligence and prosperity may keep us from much usefulness because the only kind of people God chooses to use are those with humble spirits, a contrite heart. So long as we have confidence in our endowment of ability, intelligence, prosperity, and good theology, we will have small sense of need for God. It is when we are acutely aware of our need that we will become useful.
Bishop Tom Wright of Durham, England, tells of browsing in a second-hand bookstore and finding a book called, The God I Want. The God you and I may want is one who will satisfy our intellectual expectations, who we can approve of rationally, morally, and theologically. But nobody is in awe of a homemade God. This kind of God allows us to stay at home with our feet up instead of going out to feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, teach the ignorant and clothe the naked. The worship offered to the God we want will have as its goal to have a keen “worship experience.”
The danger of well-endowed people is to create a God they want. By contrast, the God of a humble and contrite people will be the Holy God who poured out His love in Christ Jesus—who humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death on the cross.
God does not find gifted people of small use because of their great gifts. It all has to do with the state of the heart. It is remarkable how beside the point is our giftedness when it comes to usefulness to God.
The band of unillustrious folk who met to desecrate the Lord’s Supper in Corinth were somehow just the kind of humble folk God could use to launch the thrust of the Gospel into Europe.
The problem of judging by appearances kept creeping in, of course, as people forgot. Thus Jesus’ brother, James, had to remind Christians not to invite rich and well-clothed people to sit in the comfortable chairs, while telling poor and ill-clad folk to “just find a place somewhere.” We face the constant danger of reading a book by its cover.
Perhaps you wonder how it is possible to overcome this natural weakness in us all. There is nothing like praying often, as David did, “Search me, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me.” Pray this often and it will help to “keep your heart.”
Second, come to this holy Table hungry and thirsty, and you will find in Jesus Christ the satisfaction for your hungry soul. It is not until we reach the point that we see our need that we will find God’s supply. And we will not see our need until we get past the surface, past our respectability, past our good looks, past our good theology, our good politics, our good families, past all that we are proud of and recognize with David and the folk at Corinth that apart from the mercy of God, we are without hope.
Then God will lift us up and make us useful. And we will discover joy, gladness, and usefulness of a kind we could not imagine.
Let us pray: O Lord, you know everything about us and love us still. We thank you. Give us grace to see ourselves as you see us, and to live out our gratitude to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at August 1, 2004 09:30 AM