Word of Salvation – Vol. 33 No. 39 – October 1988
On Being Unique
Sermon by Rev. A. I. de Graaf on Isaiah 40:25-27, Micah 7:18-20
Reading: Revelation 12:1-11
Singing: 180; BoW H.403; 383; BoW H.811
Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,
Most of you must have seen that ad, at least they run it in NSW. It is an ad of some insurance company. It shows a baby girl, just born. A voice says: “Hi kid, we got your number…” and then then numbers begin to appear on the screen: one for Medicare… one for bankcard, one for social security, one for Mastercard, and so on and so on… but then another voice says: “For us you’ll always be Sonja McBride… or whatever the name of the little creature is.
An ad like that can make you think. Many have been the attempts made by tyrants and dictators, or just statisticians and politicians out after votes, to reduce people to mass products. Just put the same uniforms on them, and teach them to goose-step in time, and they all look alike don’t they? People can be reduced to numbers and not only did that happen in concentration camps. In fact people usually got themselves into concentration Camps because they showed that they were not numbers. We may make things on assembly lines, and build blocks of flats that only differ by their numbers, but when God makes human beings in His image and after His likeness, He makes them unique. No two are the same. Even if they look the same – eg. Identical twins… oh the fun of being identical twins and fool teachers into thinking that Peter is Paul… but even they are different, Mum knows, and their future spouses find out, too.
Everybody here in this church this morning can walk to the mirror when you get home and say, “I am unique, there is no one else in the whole world exactly like me.” You know what? This thing becomes ten times more beautiful when – in the marvellous language of love – someone else says to you: “There is no one like you! I love you for being you…!”
Now the Bible says the same thing of God. “WHO IS LIKE GOD!?”
His uniqueness is the source of ours. That is one of the most wonderful things we can say about God: He is not just a power. He is not merely a kind of electricity. Neither is he just some universal feeling or being. He is Somebody. Somebody special! Somebody Unique! That we are unique is because He is, and He shared that wonderful thing with us. One of the worst things we can do to one another is to classify one another dead, to put one another into some “I-know-all-about-your-sort’ kind of file. But that is also the worst thing we can do to God. It is not without reason that the Powerful Commander-General of His heavenly armies is called MICHAEL: “Who is like God”?
Let’s look at that name – and think of: “ON BEING UNIQUE”.
And we hear music:
– First THE TRUMPET SIGNAL OF CHALLENGE.
– Second THE FLUTE SONG OF LOVE.
In Isaiah 40 we hear that clear clarion call: With whom will you compare God?” Later on in the same chapter it becomes more personal: With whom then will you compare ME? A challenge all right, and not an empty one, because we do it all the time. We keep on comparing God with creatures of His, and cut Him down to their size. We make Him “manageable” because religion is big business. Religion the way one human being can make another do what he says. We invent a god and made the god say “boo!” and feel good when people bring us their money.
Nebuchadnezzar was onto a good thing, he thought, with that big image… of course it looked like himself! No wonder he was furious when the God of Israel came and threw a spanner in the works. “With whom do you, little mortal earth worm think you can compare ME?” And Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego might as well have been called Michael for they stood up for the uniqueness of God. With whom do you think you can compare God?
When we try, it never fits. Israel tried a simplified theology (borrowing from their Egyptian ex-masters) when they said (when even Candidate High Priest AARON said, mind you!!): “This calf, that is really what GOD THE LORD YAHWEH is like!”
Moses was furious when he saw it. You see, Moses has met God on this self-same spot a year or so before when God appeared to him in that burning bush. Then it looked as if God had forgotten Israel. Moses was 80 years of age then, and when he was a little boy that that Egyptian king already was throwing little Jew boys into the Nile. Nothing had happened since. Moses had tried to do something about it, impulsively and enthusiastically but the big liberation movement had not come. He had to flee and already for forty years he is looking at the backside of his father-in- law’s sheep. Well, if that does not steady a guy down nothing will.
No miracles, no special signs that God even existed. But then suddenly that voice: “Moses!” And that stunning assignment from the midst of the non-consuming flames: YOU GO AND TELL ISRAEL: I have come at last. And you tell Egypt’s king: “Let my people go…!” But Moses is scared. And he asks: “Lord who are you, what is your Name?” My name?” You want a handle, Moses? I haven’t got any. I just am. If you want to find out what I am like you just look at what I am doing!” The Name “I Am” really is NO name. We cannot compare Him with ANYTHING! He falls outside of all our categories! You watch me at work and you will know who I am! You meet Me and will you find out.
And then that stupid brother of his made God look like a calf! No wonder Moses is furious! Mind you, later on Jeroboam would make TWO calves. Comparing God to things we know is such a big temptation for us! We make God into a fussy book-keeper who sits at a roll-top desk checking whether our deeds are good enough to get us into the reward of heaven.
Or we make Him into a fussy government official getting all het up about some red tape regulations on what kind of hymns we should sing and where exactly to do that. Purity of worship we call that: My, God is so fussy!
Or we compare Him to a nice friendly granddad. When he was a father he still spanked his kids, like Israel of old, but now he is a granddad, and anything goes and there are always sweets in His pockets.
But Isaiah says: Please look up to the stars and get yourself dizzy! Isaiah still says so today now that we know that this universe is millions of times bigger than our forefathers thought. We thought it was one other galaxy, somewhere in the Andromeda constellation, one other big cluster of stars so enormous that to pinpoint our little sun in it is impossible. But no sir, there are thousands upon thousands such galaxies around. And the distance bigger prove all the time. Well, says Isaiah, God, “I AM”, the Incomparable No-Name God not only made all that, but He has it all under control and knows everything that happens on each of these worlds. If He created beings that can think and speak like us in other worlds, He knows every one of them too. By name. Like He knows all our children by name. He knows exactly who all people in Kampuchea are have been, also in the time of Pol Pot who left behind heaps of skeletons and craniums on those terrible “killing fields”. God knows the NAME of every person those bones represent. And He still has His plans with these persons too.
We may think that to die is to become a thing again, but God knows each of us for all eternity. Isaiah says: “Look up and see who created all this…!” Today he might. say: “Get up into your satellite and space station and have an even better look… listen to the millions-of-light-years-away sounds that come whispering into your radio telescope antennas…! God hears it too, and unlike you, He knows exactly where (or whom!) it comes from and what it is. And then Isaiah makes that wonderful jump. He says: How great He is and you thought He’d forget you, little one? If already looking at the universe you discover that the more you see of it the bigger it becomes, rest assured that is what you will find out about God!
If you really listen to Him and look at Him the more overwhelming He becomes. No, you cannot put a handle on Him like the Egyptians thought they could, or like our theology thinks at times it can. None of our labels fit, not the antique ones of calf or cat or firefly or frog, not the sun or the moon or even Life itself. If you want to know who I am, look at what I do, or …look at My Son. To see Him…is to see the Father.
But that gets me to my second point: In Micah seven, the trumpet blast of challenge becomes the flute song of love. A child of God says it to Him. “Oh who is a God like You… pardoning iniquity!?” And there we touch the gospel, the unique character of the Christian religion that sets it apart from all man-made religions in the world.
Christianity has at its centre the gift of God in Christ Jesus: That He is that unique God who pardons iniquity, who calls the rebel to sit at His table and kills the fatted calf for lost sons and daughters. You see, all other gods, i.e. the gods we invented, (and we invent gods to keep people in line!) all these gods and religions work on the principle: “do ut des” – I give You… so you can give back to me”. I am nice, so I can be let into church? I will punish myself, so you will take pity? I will say no to pleasures on earth then you will give me pleasures in heaven. Bargain? Agreed? Well, gods that work on that principle are a dime a dozen.
The Muslim Allah works that way and the Karma-counting life-power of the Buddhists and Hindus does, too. Sometimes in the Christian church we demoted the God of Micah 7 into a kind of Divine bookkeeper and then Luther is honest enough to find it hard to love Him, and another Reformation is necessary. But God gives Micah a glimpse of His being.
Israel was then in deep decline, the O.T. Bride of God had become an unfaithful whore, and one would say that the end of God’s patience had been reached. Surely our patience would have run out a good deal faster…! But Micah sees a God who will send His Son to seek the lost and gather Himself a bride picked up from the gutter. He hears the heartbeat of a love that simply will not let go, and he falls on his knees and says: WHO IS A GOD LIKE YOU? I love you, oh unique and wonderful God!
You know, it is just as silly to say that “to believe there is a god” is nice and religious, as to say that to go to bed with any woman is love. No, what we need is the bridal song: “Who in the whole world is like you!?” And а Christian learns to say that to his Saviour and Lord. He keeps on discovering new reasons for saying it. (Never can we say our theology is finished, for that again would be to cut this incomparable God down to manageable size).
Who is like You? That is the love song of the Christian who looks his Saviour in the face and begins to see something of the endless lengths He went – He CAME! – to get us back to life; we who were dead. You stand on Calvary and see Him on the cross and hear Him cry: “It is finished” and you know this is the God who made the galaxies and he came all this way because he loved me. Loved this crazy world!
And you say it to Him with tears in your eyes: “Who is a God like you, forgiving iniquity and wiping out that terrible debt of Your people?” And then this unique Lord looks at us and our children and He says the most incredible thing of all. He says it to you and to me. To our little ones, to those alive and to those who went before us to where they see Him face to face. “O Lord,” we say to Him, “who is like you?” His answer comes back, loud and clear: ““You are little one! You are, like Me.” Unique! But like Me. That’s how I made you; that’s how I redeemed you. That’s how I call you. So that the world may see!”
Amen