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God Knows
A sermon by Dr. John Kinney
Guest Preacher, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Great is our God and greatly
is our God to be praised.
I greet you all with the joy
of Jesus and testify that I am glad to be in God’s service one more time.
This is the day that the Lord
has made and we shall rejoice and be glad in it.
You know how we pray the
Lord’s prayer – and we’ll say “give us this day our daily bread” and our focus
today so often is, “I want to get some bread.” My prayer: we’re being taught in
the church how to get bread. But do you realize that after we say “give us this
day,” we ought to pause, we ought to stop and recognize that the greatest gift
we have today is this day because if you don’t have this day all the bread in
the world won’t matter. So, God, I thank you for this day and this privilege
that is mine to share with this church family.
I want to call to your
attention from the book of Ezekiel in the 37th chapter, verses 1 through 3. We
find these words:
1
The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the
Lord, and set me down in the middle of a valley. It was full of bones.
2
He led me all around them and there were many lying in the valley; and they were
very dry.
3
He said to me, mortal man, can these bones live? I answered, O Lord God, only
you know.
I want to share the thought this morning: God
knows.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, we thank
you so much for the gift of this day. We receive it as gift and not entitlement
and, God, we thank you for this moment created by your hand. God, our desire is
that we might be partners with you in purpose in this moment.
We offer ourselves and
all that we share and we pray by thy quickening Spirit that you will sanctify us
and our thoughts and that you might inspire us in such a way we will be faithful
in the actions we take through the word we have heard. Bless us now, O Lord.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
God knows.
Yesterday I returned from a short vacation. That
vacation allowed me to view so many of the magnificent characteristics and
realities that are evident in our creation. As I was privileged to view
glaciers and see whales, as I was privileged to see mountaintops and see trees,
I became acutely aware of how majestic and mighty our God is because none of us
did that. And in spite of our mishandling of creation, there are signs all
around us that remind us of the greatness of God’s doing and of God’s activity.
If those sights did not humble me, this summer I
had the privilege, along with my wife Tina, to do something that we do every
summer and that is we keep at least some of our grandchildren for a few weeks
and this year we had four of them at various times and it was interesting
because somehow I have deluded them into thinking that Papa knows everything. No
matter what it is, ask Papa. Papa knows.
And I must admit that I am somewhat inclined to
excess when they put so much faith in me – it feels good, you know – and no
matter what they ask I find a way to give them an answer. Now the answer might
be nonsensical but simply because they say “I know, see Papa told me…” And I
tell them the stories I’d said I would never tell. I tell them how I went to
school and had to walk five miles and it was uphill both ways and the
temperature was 20 degrees below zero and I was so thankful and that they need
to be thankful. But they love to hear me get on my pedestal and I know so much.
But they’re starting to grow older now and sometime they don’t say anything at
all, they just look at me.
But this summer, one of my grandsons was inclined
to ask me a question and I was preoccupied and I was somewhat put off and I just
said, “John, I don’t know.” He went back and they were all gathered in the
bedroom, and they were watching and he said “Papa said he doesn’t know.” And so
my granddaughter said, “I told you he didn’t know everything.” He said, “No,
Papa knows, Papa knows” and she said, “He doesn’t know everything.” And John
kept insisting, “But Papa oughta know.” And then she finally said, “Papa is not
God.”
From the mouths of babes.
How often do we assign authority to know to people
who function in basic ignorance?
And we let those who don’t know tell us what we
can be, what we can do, and what we can achieve. And we’re always turning to
those who trick us into believing they know so much to determine how, when, and
where we move.
Look at this text.
The prophet Ezekiel brings a word to a people who
find themselves confined and contained, oppressed and limited by an external
power. They’re wondering where God is, what God is up to, why they’re in the
situation they’re in and, like so many of us, they were freighted with anxiety
about the future, not clear about where they were going or what the future would
hold. But in the midst of this moment the prophet Ezekiel on the fifth day of
the fourth month in the fifth year since Jehoiachin had been taken into
captivity was by the Kebar River with other exiles wondering what God was up to
and how long this season of travail would exist and raising the question, will
trouble last always, and God spoke to Ezekiel and on the updraft of holy
inspiration he left the confines of his captivity and on the pinions of
sanctified imagination he went from exile to exultation and was thrust into the
throne room of glory and God spoke to him and said,
“Ezekiel, I want you to
speak to my people. I want you to tell them that they are going through trouble
and part of the reason they are going through trouble is because they have been
complicit in behavior and thought that did not honor me. I have not abandoned
them but they have abandoned me and their present crisis cannot be blamed on
somebody else. They need to take a good look at themselves.”
And for thirty-three chapters the prophet speaks
to the people and tells them about their failure in faith and behavior. He
speaks of doom and speaks of doom to other nations and it would appear that
there would be no hope anywhere and we just need it to collapse but in the 33rd
chapter, there’s a shift and from the 33rd to the 37th
chapter the prophet begins to speak about a recovery, about a restoration and
this 37th chapter we find these words that shows him a valley of dry
bones and God raising the question, can the bones live again, and then him
giving the answer, only you know.
Now as preachers, we like to preach the other part
of this. ‘Cause then it says I’m gonna breathe breath into them and God begins
to move and you heard the bones rattling and then the bones start coming
together and then we sing the song and like to testify how the toe bone’s
connected to the foot bone; the foot bone, the ankle bone; ankle bone, leg bone;
leg bone, the knee bone; knee bone, the thigh bone; thigh bone, hip bone – you
know the story – and we get it all back together.
But look at the powerful suggestion in those
words: God, only you know.
Look at the movement in the text. First of all,
there is an experience of the powerful presence of God. And what it reveals to
us: that the powerful presence of God will not always make you comfortable. We
live in a time of romanticized religion and Christian triumphalism where we
always want to be able to go to church, feel good, and we don’t want to be
disturbed, we don’t want to be moved from our complacency – what I want is a
kind of a sanctioning of where I am and an endorsement that God is pleased with
me and we’re the best country; we’re the best people; we’re so wonderful;
everybody else is wrong and, God, don’t you like us because we’re right.
But the truth is that a little bit of God might do
that. But when you feel the powerful presence of God and you study God’s word,
oftentimes your experience of the presence of God does not lead to celebration,
it leads to conviction where you are made aware of the reality around you. God
does not operate in a dream world. He does not countenance denial or delusion.
God will shake you up and wake you up and make you look at stuff you want to
deny about yourself and about your reality.
When the presence of God spoke to him, it showed
him a valley of dry bones. The valley is the symbol of a place that is deep and
it’s a threatened position. The valley was the place that could not be
protected. That’s why you captured the high ground. The mountain was the place
of God encounter and power – empowerment. The valley was the place of threat
and a place of potential destruction. So it says, where are you? I’m in a
valley. I’m in a threatened zone. What is the character of the valley? The
valley is full of dry bones. Bones were the symbol of death. Water was one of
the principles of life. Anything that was dry was dead and, if it was very dry,
it was real dead.
Look what the scripture just told you. You need
to recognize that you are having a valley moment and there’re the signs of death
around you and there’s evidence that there will be no life here.
But then the text takes you out of a perception of
the reality. And maybe we start our worship of God by taking a good look and
experiencing the powerful presence of God where we can no longer exist in a kind
of sanitized spirituality that leads to the passive acceptance of the legitimacy
of our present behavior and location. And maybe it means that we might have to
stop destroying people and perspectives that force us to see ourselves
differently than the way we like to see ourselves.
He speaks and shows a valley of dry bones. He
speaks the condition. I could give a litany of conditions but we have to do
that for ourselves. Where are my valley places? Where are the bones? And I
like that it says many. Guess what. That means that no matter who you are you
probably got some bones among the many.
The reality is they speak but the amazing
character of the Spirit of God is this: God never shows you a problem without
speaking hope and promise. God never beats you up to beat you down. If God
confronts you, it’s to challenge you to change and to expose to you a destiny
beyond your particular moment. Look what happens.
He showed him the valley of dry bones and then he
said, “Can these bones live again?” Look at the significance of this. In the
interrogation, can these bones live again, he just established that what you’re
seeing doesn’t have to be this way. Can these bones live again lets you know
that there was once life where you see death and once I can establish there was
life where I see death, to use the big words, what I’m seeing is not an
ontological or eternal necessity. In plain language, it doesn’t have to be this
way.
Too many of us will allow a negative moment to
begin to define who we are and what we can be and we pitch our tent in the
valley of negativity and hopelessness when God is saying, can these bones live
again. It does not have to be this way. It was not always this way, and, if it
wasn’t always this way, that means this is a moment in my history, not the
nature and the definition of my history and there’s another possibility in this
moment. In that case, whenever the present is it may force you to see the
reality but it will always speak to a possibility and too often when we’re going
through a negative valley moment we pitch our tents in our negative and we start
defining ourselves and living into a future defined by the trouble rather than
the triumph that God has promised.
Can these bones live again?
There’s thing I like to say: Your situation and
your location are not the basis of your identification and, once you know that
your situation and your location are not the basis of your identification and
that your identification is in your creation, then there will be situation that
sets a limitation on your destination.
Now, what does that mean? All of us have to go
through situations, and we have to find ourselves in locations, but who I am,
what I can be, and what I can accomplish is never defined by my situation or my
location. Who I am is not defined by where I am and what I can be is not
defined by the parameters of my situation because my identification is not in
this situation but in my creation. And when I understand my creation, I will
never allow a situation to place a limitation on my destination.
God has more for me than the valley that I’m in.
That’s why “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
…” And you begin to dream and look what he says: when God exposes the
possibility … Look what the prophet says. He actually speaks a word of
promise. He doesn’t say George Bush knows. He doesn’t say the presidential
candidates know. He doesn’t say that IBM knows. He doesn’t even say that the
Baptists know. Or that Virginia Union knows. Or the professor knows. He says,
God knows. What a powerful, powerful statement because too often we allow those
who can’t know to deceive us into thinking they do know and then we limit our
future to what they know.
If you know so much and
you’re all that, can you tilt the earth at 23 and a half degrees, cause it to
rotate a thousand miles an hour, complete a rotation in a 24-hour period, and
cause a sunrise and a sunset?
If you know so much,
can you create an element on the periodic chart or do you have to discover those
elements or combine those elements or synthesize those elements in order to make
an element?
If you know so much,
can you cause the earth to revolve around the sun at over 66,000 miles an hour,
maintaining the necessary critical velocity to maintain the relationship between
the earth and the sun such that life could sustained on this earth. If you went
one mile too fast, you’d be drawing out of the gravitational pull, hurled into
outer darkness, and you would be destroyed. If you went one mile too slow,
you’d be drawn into the gravitational pull and you’d be destroyed by the sun but
somehow this earth maintains a relationship with the sun by maintaining the
necessary critical velocity to keep it possible for us to sustain life on this
earth. Now who did that?
If you know so much,
can you really do all of that. I’m deeply impressed. I have a very high
anthropology, but my grandson helped me to understand: Papa is not God.
If you know so much,
Can you put the crisp in lettuce?
Can you put the crunch in an apple?
Can you put the sweet in an orange?
The tart in a lemon?
The wet in water?
The blue in the sky?
Can you put the spin in a tornado?
Can you put the wind in a hurricane?
Can you put the cry in a baby?
Can you put the moo in a cow?
If you know so much,
can you put the puff in a cloud?
If you know so much,
can you form a hollow, contractile organ weighing 3 to 5 ounces, place it in the
center of your chest, cause it to beat rhythmically 70 times a minute, 4,200
times an hour, 100 thousand times a day, 36 million times a year, in one 24-hour
period emit enough energy to lift one ton 42 feet off the ground and only take
time to rest in between beats? If you’re all that, do that.
Do you see it? Who did all of this?
Some scientists thought they were smart and they
got together and said, you know what – we can do what God did. We can make this
thing. We can do it. And they went to God and told God, “God, we don’t need
you anymore. We’ve mastered creation.” He said, “You have?” “Um-hum, yes we
have. We can do this.” He said, “OK, show me how you’re gonna do it.” And
they took some dirt and began to work with the dirt and He said, “Ahht, make
your own dirt.”
The reality is: It does not say “In the
beginning, computer ...” It does not say, “In the beginning, any force or power
…” It says, “In the beginning, God …”
Any anything that was not in the beginning, no
matter what it is, still was not. Y’all got that? So no matter what you is,
you got some was-not in you.
And why would I want to trust my will-be to the
was-not? I stand on the God who Is.
If you know so much, can you wake yourself up in
the morning? And somebody’ll say, “No, no, I didn’t wake myself up, the alarm
clock did or I set my cell phone and it buzzed and went off.” If the alarm
clock woke you up, then logically I ought to be able to go to the cemetery, set
off the alarm clock, and everybody get up. The alarm clock did not wake you, it
aroused you to awareness of your awakened condition. The life in me and the
life in you is a gift of God and we want to be careful that we don’t remake the
great God of life into a god of death by making God a presence that sanctions
our comfort rather than calls us out of the valleys into the fullness of life.
God knows.
And I hate to disappoint some people who always
want to tell me in books, magazines, newspapers, over email that I didn’t ask
for, and over the airwaves how much they know and what my future is gonna be.
I’ve got good news: God knows.
The good news is that God knows and the news goes
beyond that because once I really understand that God knows, that my future is
in the hands of a God who loves me, who cares about me, who blesses me, that I
may be going through a valley and the doctor may have one answer but God
knows. The lawyer may have one but God knows. All of the statistics
may have one answer but God knows.
My days are in God’s hands and because I know God
knows I can tell you some things I know:
I know “God so loved
the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever would believeth in
him would not perish but have everlasting life.”
I know that God woke me
up this morning and started me on my way.
I know that nothing can
separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
I know God is a very
present help in the time of trouble.
And I know he didn’t
bring me this far to leave me.
And I know God has
never failed me yet.
I don’t know what you claim to know, but I thank
God – God knows.
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