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Mighty God . . .
A Sermon Preached
by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Dec. 18, 2005
Scripture: Isaiah 9:6
Modern Artists in the 1960’s were known for their large
canvases and bold colors. Sometimes instead of using brushes they would take an
entire bucket of paint and splash it over a huge canvass set on an even bigger
canvas.
Isaiah was a painter of bold pictures as well. In four bold
strokes he splashes across the canvass of our minds what the coming Messiah will
be like:
Wonderful Counselor - speaks of
our need to be put back together.
Mighty God - the greatness of
God who creates outer space and transforms our inner space.
Everlasting Father – one who
welcomes us home as the waiting Father.
Prince of Peace – the One who
brings peace in the midst of fears and trust in the midst of our anxiety.
Michael Yaconelli wrote of his young nephew coming with his
parents to visit them when the snow started falling. It was one of those
snowfalls you never forget. Millions of white flakes falling quietly toward
earth. His young nephew stood in the living room at the opening to their deck.
Mama had maneuvered herself onto the deck’s two feet of snow to capture the
event on video. Dad was ready to man the sliding door. Uncle was to turn the
lights on to the deck. And Aunt was ready to lift her nephew through the sliding
doors into the mysterious new world of snowy softness.
The moment arrived. Perfectly timed the deck lights went
on, the camera started recording, the sliding door swept open, and a young child
was lifted from a world he knew into a world he had never seen. Wonder filled
the air. His little eyes stretched wide with wonder and astonishment as if the
only way for him to understand was for his eyes to get bigger. He twitched and
jerked each time a snowflake landed on his face.
Then he began to get bolder. His arms reached out to catch
some of the falling flakes. Then came a young child’s attempt to walk in two
feet of snow. And sure enough he fell backward, the snow tenderly embracing him.
Then he began to move his arms like you and I have done in much younger years,
making an angel-like figure in the snow. In those steps and then falling into
the snow, the young lad had made a crucial move from trying to understand the
snow to experiencing the snow.
I want to lead you this morning from trying to understand
the words, Mighty God, to experiencing the words Mighty God.
Look First at the Mighty God of the Universe.
Fall back into the snow first of all and seize the wonder
of the God who created our universe. Look at the stars in the sky. Could you
have created all of those? The trouble most of us have is that we keep trying to
bring God down to our size – or our size to the next level. God won’t fit. A
wise man once wrote, “When we bring God down to our size, we wind up with a God
not worth having.”
For instance, we think of the vastness of our Galaxy. And
rightly so. But we are but one amidst one billion galaxies. The universe, the
cosmos, is God size, not our size.
Some have sought to identify the Bethlehem star with a
supernova, which is the collapse and detonation of a star. The most recent in
modern times was in 1987 when light from the brightest stellar explosion in
modern times reached the earth. This was supernova SN1987A. The supernova lies
in the Magellian Cloud, a neighboring galaxy some 170,000 light years away. This
means that this supernova explosion happened 170,000 light years before we saw
it in 1987. This means that if the Bethlehem star was a supernova, it would have
been planned over 100,000 light years before it happened and arrived to be seen
on earth at just the right time. How about that for God-sized planning? Could
God do that? Sure. But not if your image of God is walking around heaven with a
wrist watch, a Day Timer and a PDA.
Mighty God is the God of Details and
Noticing
Fall again back into the snow and seize the wonder of the
God who pays attention to the details. Instead of looking at the stars, look at
the snow flakes. Millions of them yet not one identical to another. Jesus often
spoke of the attention God has for details. Said Jesus, God notices the sparrow
that falls. He even mentioned that God knows the number of hairs on our heads.
For some of us this is quite simple. For others we would need a calculator. What
Jesus is pointing out is that what we overlook in the busyness of our lives, God
notices. The tiny is often triumphant. Mighty can mean microscopic as well as
mega-universe.
Which one of us has not looked back and seen something that
happened at such and such a time. We saw it then with little life importance.
But now we look back and say, “God was leading in that all along.” I remember a
man who had lost his business some 20 years before. He would say on occasion, “I
thought my life had come to an end. I was ruined. Looking back it was the best
thing that ever happened to me. God got my attention and got me back on the
right track. Nothing has been quite the same since.”
Sometimes Mighty God is a Correction
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe of C.S.
Lewis, the four children, Edmund, Peter, Susan, and Lucy find themselves in a
fantasy land called Narnia. Narnia is under the control of the wicked Witch. But
Aslan is coming. Aslan is a lion, the Christ lion, the Savior and the Redeemer.
In the story, one of the children, Edmund, has come under
the influence of the evil Witch who has enticed him with sweets. She gets him to
reveal where Peter, Susan, and Lucy are hiding. Having secured the information
she needs, the wicked Witch quickly ties Edmund up and makes him a captive. It
is a telling picture of what evil does to us.
Now, in Narnia, where all of the animals can talk, Mr. and
Mrs. Beaver find Susan, Lucy, and Peter and hide them in their little home.
Eventually the talk turns to Aslan.
Lucy has never heard of Aslan. Mr. Beaver quotes a poem:
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no
more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its
death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have
spring again.
“Is – is he a man?” asks Lucy.
“Aslan a man?” said Mr. Beaver sternly, “Certainly not. I
tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great
Emperor-beyond-the-sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a
lion – the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Is he quite safe?” asks Lucy.
Mrs. Beaver replied, “Safe? Of course not. If there’s
anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either
braver than most or else just silly. But he’s good and that is what matters.”
How long has it been since your knees were knocking when
you stood in the presence of the Mighty God? I think of that image when we try
to make our Lord a baby-sitter of our immaturity and a groundskeeper of our
selfish desires. Listen again to Isaiah’s bold picture: And his name shall be
called, Mighty God.
The Mighty God’s Greatest Power
Fall back, one more time into the snow and experience the
greatest truth of all. The greatness of God is not best seen in the vastness of
his creation. Nor is it seen in the intricacy of the Atom. Nor can it be caught
in the beauty of the rose or the celebrative red of the poinsettia. No, his
greatest power is the power to enter our hearts with his presence and make a
transforming difference.
It is the power to turn the chaos of the cross into the
crucible of hope.
It is the power to turn a makeshift manger into the
birthplace of the Messiah;
It is the power to make sins a part of the drama of
salvation;
It is the power to make ruin into the adventure of
resurrection;
It is the power to take disappointment and give it a
purpose.
They came to meet him on that day. The two sisters had
suffered family loss. Their brother Lazarus had been dead now for four days.
Jesus had not showed up. Finally he arrived and the two sisters could not shield
their disappointment. “If you had been here our brother would still be alive.”
They were right – and they were wrong. Jesus could have healed him. That was
true. But something bigger was at stake here. Resurrection. People then and now
doubt the resurrection, which is to say, they doubt the power of God to bring
life out of death.
Jesus waited four days. Four days. Why? In my judgment it
was because of the Jewish belief that the soul hovered around the body through
the third day and then on the fourth day corruption set in and the soul took its
flight. For a person to be raised on the fourth day was indeed a resurrection.
On that fourth day he said to them, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one
who believes in me, though dead, shall live. The one who believes in me will
never die.” Jesus walked to the mouth of that grave and said, “Lazarus come out
of there.” And he did. The greatest power of the Mighty God is to bring life in
the midst of death.
He waited at the elevator on the tenth floor. Only one was
running that day. The waiting crowd grew restless. The chatter was endless – the
weather, the sporting events, the workplace. It was the cancer ward and he could
take the small talk no longer for he had family there. He decided to take the
stairs – ten flights of stairs might do him good. As he descended he prayed. God
seemed to be descending like stairs into his soul. Past his mind. Past his
questions. Past his emotions. Past his breaking heart. And when they got to the
bottom floor it was as if he was at ground zero with only one possession – the
peace of God. Amidst the wreckage that cancer brings, a presence had come, a
peace had entered, God was there. The greatest gift of all is the presence of
the Mighty God.
Unto you a child is born; unto you a son is given. And his
name shall be called, wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father,
prince of peace.
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