The Cry of God for His People

“In the beginning, God”

There is no other rational starting point for life than God and God’s original intent was to walk and to talk with His own creation.

He was passionate about it too.  Remember Michaelangelo's painting - you notice God reaching out to Adam and you see how outstretched God’s arm is. Every muscle on His face is contorted, and His hand is reaching as far as possible to make contact.

By contrast, Adam lackadaisically lets a limp hand dangle with apathy in an attitude that seems to say, “if it meets it meets.”

As generations came and went, God sought one in the midst of all creation, one who would understand His heart and be willing to be clasped in His hand --

•Adam
•Abraham – friend of God
•Enslavement in Egypt–God heard their cry
•Build a tabernacle
•Four generations later – David
•Build a temple

Funny thing happened –
When David began to prepare for building the temple and when the temple was built – notice a change in attitude?

From being owned by God – it was as if they now owned Him. From journeying with Him – they now had to journey to Him. As God became immovably housed, spirituality became localized, and life became disconnected from worship.

Everything that distorted worship began right there.

•Book of the Law was lost
•Sacrificial system became corrupted
•Priests lost the nobility of their calling
•People lost God when His glory departed
•Tent and alter were replaced by a power-seeking ecclesiastical authority

 God had desired to be tabernacled in each individual worshiper before they gathered for worship with one another. Stephen’s sermon, that he paid for with his life, says it all, "the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands.” Bodies were to be the temple of God.

Malachi was a passionate plea to take a hard look at how worship had lost its worth and God’s longing for His people had been thwarted, and a weariness had set in.

John in Revelation saw no temple in the eternal city - God was not “house-bound” any longer!

 

Cry of loneliness is felt by all...

This is a cry that is felt by all, though better suppressed by some. Our experience of loneliness is universal, and love alone is not the answer.  There is a “beyond” in all of us that love does not satisfy – as wonderful a privilege as love is.


 Author Denis de Rougemonts said, "Love ceases to be a demon only when it ceases to be a god."


In other words, love becomes a scourge when it is idolized as en end in itself.
Yet we still pursue it like a hunter and assume that “that thing called love” is our final trophy. Exalting it in our songs and talking of it in platitudes that it can never equal. As grand an experience as love is , it is not the final answer to loneliness.


We have seen four great gains over the past generation that we have welcomed with a promise and yet disappointment has accompanied each one.

1. Never before have we had such means to instantly transmit content or create desire.
• The incredible has actually happened when men have taken to letter writing because it is called e-mail

2. Age of technology has delivered a bill of goods for which the cost is exacted more in the loss of our peace of mind than in our bank accounts.
• Were intended to free up time for leisure, but less time is spent in building relationships while more                 time is invested in using those conveniences.



3. Medicine has brought us vastly improved means to preserve life, and yet we have lost the definition of life     itself.
• We talk about the right to die when we are mature and hurting without having been given the right to              live when we are fragile and needy.

4. Human sexuality has never been more studied, offered up, and pandered to in public.
• yet, we have never been more confused about what is right or, for that matter, even normal in such                 expressions.

Increased communication capacity, technological advances, progress in medicine and sexual liberation have, all in their own way, only made us a more captive and trivial culture. And still the cry of loneliness is heard from millions of hearts, and love alone is not the answer.

Why then do we suffer the condition of loneliness, and what is the answer?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5VycDIAzoo

The Cry for a Reason for Suffering

David Hume, a Scottish skeptic from the 18th century had this very interesting quote -

"Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow”


Which of us has not looked at a deformed child, swallowed hard with pity, and pondered the purpose behind it?

Which of us has seen a mother who has lost her child and not wondered why?

Habakkuk – “why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong?”
Jeremiah – “I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper?”

  I have never been in a conversation with a skeptic who failed to raise this as the principal reason for their skepticism. However, there is a blatant oversight and that is that the skeptics who have raised the question must also give an answer to the same question. How do they explain the problem of pain? Not only must they give an answer, but they must ultimately justify the very question itself – all that, while  leaving God out of the picture Here the voices get silent and their own answers border on the irrational

G.K. Chesterton:

“When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven’s name to what?” The Christian does not deny that a meaningful answer must be found, but has the one who denies God found a better answer to the problem of evil? With a touch of humour, and in recognition that many answers come close but not close enough. Chesterton went on to say, “My problem with life is not that it is rational, nor that it is irrational…but that it is almost rational.” Just when we are able to form a cohesive framework, someone or something pokes a hole in it, and we take a step back.”

Ravi Zacharias:

Some time ago I was speaking at a university in England, when a rather exasperated person in the audience made his attack upon God.

“There cannot possibly be a God,” he said, “with all the evil and suffering that exists in the world!”

I asked, “When you say there is such a thing as evil, are you not assuming that there is such a thing as good?”

“Of course,” he retorted.

“But when you assume there is such a thing as good, are you not also assuming that there is such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to distinguish between good and evil?”

“I suppose so,” came the hesitant and much softer reply.

“If, then, there is a moral law,” I said, “you must also posit a moral law giver. But that is who you are trying to disprove and not prove. If there is no transcendent moral law giver, there is no absolute moral law. If there is no moral law, there really is no good. If there is no good there is no evil. I am not sure what your question is!”

There was silence and then he said, “What, then, am I asking you?” 

 
Father Copleston vs Bertrand Russell:
The Famous 1948 Radio Debate on the Existence of God:

  Copleston asked Russell if he believed in good and bad. Russell admitted that he did, and Copleston responded by asking him how he differentiated between the two. Russell said that he differentiated between good and bad in the same way that he distinguished between colours “But you distinguish between colours by seeing, don’t you? How then, do you judge between good and bad?” “On the basis of feeling, what else?”

(full debate -http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p20.htm)

  In short, the problem of evil is not solved by doing away with the existence of God in the face of evil; the problem of evil and suffering must be resolved while keeping God in the picture.