Surprised by God II
Scripture Texts: Job 5:8-16
Introduction.
Last week Gary V, the director of the Lynden Chamber of Commerce, posted an article about our country’s 250th anniversary celebrations. He acknowledged God as our creator and our nation as being under God.
Down in the comments someone wrote:
“God is man’s creation, an imaginary sky fairy, the bible [is] fiction.”
If God is man’s creation, if God is a figment of our imagination, then you would expect God to be more like us, to look and think like us, created in our own image. This imaginary God would never surprise us, He would only be an echo of our thoughts and ways. This God would be predictable.
If God is only our creation, then He can never surprise, correct, or judge us. The God of Scripture continually surprises, confronts, redeems and transforms people in ways we would never have invented.
No human mind would conceive or create a God like the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is unpredictable, full of surprises, saying and doing things completely unexpected. In fact, if you really think about it everything God does in and through and for us is an unexpected surprise.
Anything good that God does is truly a surprise. We deserve nothing good and only judgment. The surprise is that God doesn’t treat our sins as we deserve, that He doesn’t count our iniquity against us, that He doesn’t remember our sin against Him forever.
God delights in acting in ways that no one anticipates. As Isaiah says,
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways”
(Isaiah 55:8-9).