"As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you...But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name." - Isaiah 62:5; 63:16
God is not a man; God is God!
Now that we've got that established, I need to tell ya that I'm feelin' kinda sentimental. So, I wanna talk about this "bridegroom rejoicing" and "Father redeeming" stuff in today's Bible verses.
Now to make sure we root sentimentality in reality (that rhymes :-) "sentimentality in reality") then we need to acknowledge that the Bible reading today says that there's a whole lot that we don't understand about God's ways. In the same way, there's a whole lot my kids will never understand about my ways as their father, just like I'll never understand some of my father's ways and both my grandfathers' ways. So, with that being said, reality is acknowledged.
But now, let's get sentimental.
My dad did a whole bunch of "rejoicing" over me, and it had a pretty powerful positive effect on me, just like today's Bible verses talk about.
For example, I grew up in a small city (I guess that's how it'd be classified) in Tennessee. Kingsport to be exact. Not a whole lot to do in the Fall on a Friday in a small city in Tennessee except go to the local high school football games. I played football. By God's grace, I played a little, even got to play with my older brother where I was a linebacker on defense and he was an end. We had a ball.
Problem was, nobody in the stands seemed to be havin' a ball. Oh sure, they'd cheer if you scored, but there's a lot of plays in a football game where nobody scores. So there were a lot of plays where nobody was cheerin'...except my dad.
He was great. He cheered on every play! But that wasn't the half of it!
He made noise makers. Homemade noise makers. Tin cans. Plastic lids. Filled with gravel. It was great. They were loud. He was loud. Every play.
So loud that people didn't want to sit around him.
He yelled...every play..."Go, Chris!" and "Go, Ben!" and "Go, DB!" (DB stands for Dobyns-Bennett.)
Every play...he yelled...and shook those cans...so that nobody wanted to sit around him...and he didn't care.
Because he wasn't there for the fans.
He was there for his sons...and for the other boys...who had no father to cheer for them.
To rejoice over them.
Pretty powerful stuff.
Kinda like the way God cheers for all of us.
And I know that God's not a man.
But I'm feelin' kinda sentimental. Feelin' like rejoicing over those who've rejoiced over me, my brothers, and some other boys. Even when nobody else would.
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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