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| How's God Feel? (Luke 5:1-11, Isaiah 6:1-18) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Grace, mercy and peace be to you … “I wonder how God would have felt…” In both our Old Testament reading for today and in our Gospel … we see something that we talked about last week. We see people in our readings being confronted with an invitation from God to come and join Him in what He was doing … and those people having the power, the Free Will, to answer Yes, or No. In our Old Testament reading, in the 6th Chapter of Isaiah, after Isaiah’s sins have been dealt with by the coal from the altar of Sacrifice … Isaiah overhears God speaking within His persons saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Now, Isaiah could have just remained silent … or instead of saying, “Here am I! Send me.” Isaiah could have said something like, “O most Holy One, thank You for the forgiveness of my sins … I’d like to volunteer to be sent, but as it turns out, right now, I’m just too busy to get involved … Call me again next time.” I wonder, then, how God would have felt… Or how would have Jesus felt, if, after that huge catch of fish and His own invitation to Peter and the others to become fishers of men … they all would have protested that they all had pre-existing family obligations that prevented them from following Him. I wonder how God would have felt … if they’d all… just said … “No.” You see, none of them HAD to say, yes … Isaiah didn’t have to say: “Here am I, send me,” Peter and the others didn’t have to leave their boats and nets and all those fish and follow Jesus!” They could have all just said, “No” Each one of them had free will, God wasn’t holding out some big prize to entice them to volunteer … neither was God threatening to punish them in some way if they’d decided to decline His invitation. We get more the sense from our readings that these mortals felt honored to be considered worthy by God to be called to be first-stringers on His team. And so when we see God’s invitation come to them … there is no hesitancy in their response. “Send me!” Isaiah responds freely from His heart. “We will follow you.” Say Peter and the others by leaving everything to go with their Lord. It’s a response of “Yes, Lord” from their inmost being. So… how does all this play in our world? We don’t necessarily get to have that “Throne Room” experience with God and all His attendant angels, like Isaiah did. God doesn’t overwhelm you with your insufficiency in His presence so that with Isaiah you are brought to say “Woe is me… I am ruined….I am a man of unclean lips.” Why not? Because your sins have already been atoned for. Through your baptism, the once-and-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the sins of all mankind has already touched your lips, your head, your whole being. And so … your ears have been un-stopped. Your eyes have been granted the blessing of Spiritual sight. You have been given the Spirit so you can read and interpret the Scriptures rightly. So then, like Isaiah, you can hear that invitation: “Who will go for us?” But do you respond, “Here am I, Lord, send me?” Or, maybe in our day your experience is more like that of Peter and his fellow fisherman. You’ve done what you do with all the skill and experience you have at your disposal … but, with no results. Empty handed and out of pride, you clean your nets that have not been dirtied by one little fish. And then here comes Jesus. And HE says, “Now try it my way.” Which makes no sense. And so, you could just say no. You could say, “I’ve been doing it right … and what you want me to do is all wrong.” But faith wins and you do it His way. And His way is better than anything you have ever done your way. And Jesus says to you, “Let’s do that some more…” But what’s your response? “O Jesus, that was just a fluke! It won’t happen again. I’ve got to go back to the tried and true … relying solely on myself…” And to His invitation to join Him, you just say, “no.” You notice the common denominator in both these accounts? Both Isaiah and Peter are brought to the point of despairing of themselves by God. Isaiah says, “Woe is me, for I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips…” Isaiah acknowledges that without God’s Grace and mercy … He is nothing. And Peter, seeing what God can do by His Word, says, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” And so, like Isaiah, Peter also acknowledges His unworthiness. What had God done with both men? He had killed their pride in and of themselves … God had to, before they could be of use to Him. Do we still see this today? You want to see an on-fire disciple in our day, someone whose very presence says, “Here am I, send me!”? Then look no further than a man or woman who has just come to faith. A person that a short time ago was lost, trying to find purpose and meaning in life their own way. Living for themselves … and finding no lasting joy or peace, no matter where they looked. Until… God grabbed them by the collar … and in the pure light of His Word … they found themselves very much like Isaiah and Peter .. in despair … because although they may have had everything in the world’s eyes … they had nothing to offer before God. And in that state of utter despair of their own merits and in their own works, God pronounced them, He declared them, forgiven. And says to them: “Do not be afraid.” And what happens, then? A heart that has felt God’s forgiveness, and then His unconditional love suddenly fill that awful void, can’t help itself but say, “Oh, God. What Joy this is! Here I am, I am yours! And You I shall lovingly and willing serve … all my days!!” And in our readings for today we see that’s what happened in Isaiah, in the year 740 BC, the year King Uzziah died … and also in our reading from Luke, we see that’s what happened in Peter and the others, that year Jesus walked this earth … and we see it still happening even in our own day. And so, the conundrum the often faces the church is … why does the zeal of new converts so often overshadow that of long-time believers?? Or more practically… how does the church energize long-time believers with the zeal and eagerness for the Lord’s work we see in our readings … and in the witness of the lives of new converts in our own day??? The root of the problem goes back to the common denominator we saw in Isaiah, and in Peter and in new Converts … We see in all of them a sudden and acute awareness of their need for God’s Grace. All of them brought by God to a point of utter despair in and of themselves. And then, we see the wonderful in-rushing of the grace and love of God, changing them and their lives … So. If we were to look at our church … as much in God’s Word as it is … how do we fair? How many Isaiah’s, how many Peters, are saying “Here am I, send me?” Jesus warns us in Matthew Chapter 7 verse 1 … not to judge, meaning not to judge another person’s heart. So, when I ask you to look at our church, I can only ask you to consider your own heart, not the hearts of others sitting around you. Is your heart hot or cold for the work of the Lord? Is it in a rut? Does it have the zeal it once had…? Or maybe do you see it even more excited now about what the Lord’s done for you … than ever before? Some have been asked me … “Well, we’ve done “Experiencing God,” We’ve done SMP, we’ve done Peacemaking … what’s next?? I believe what we’re talking about today is “what’s next,” but it hasn’t been written yet … In other words, you can’t get a workbook or Bible study off the shelf at LifeWay or at Concordia Publishing House to address the life-change we’ve been talking about this morning. And so … We maybe writing it, right here. The goal is to bring us all into that relationship with God we see Isaiah and Peter enjoying in our readings today. To be able to lovingly and willingly abandon ourselves to Him and His will for us. And then, in that kind of relationship of love and trust … to let God take it from there. Only He knows where He intends to make use of each one of us. Could be huge … could be small. That’s His call. But no matter what the call, like Isaiah … like Peter … our Job… our only job, is to be faithful to God. Even that is a work God has promised to complete in us by the power of His Holy Spirit. So, that’s why God has given us His Word and His Sacrament. So you and I might be in His presence, even as Isaiah and Peter were … That we might listen to Him and be fed by Him … so that He might invite us and complete the work He intends through us. Be sure of it. He’s madly in love with you! THAT’s how God feels!! In Him. Amen. |