Would the real God please stand up? Sounds like a line from an old TV quiz show, doesn’t it? But it’s a good question. After all, the Bible can seem to be quite confusing as to what kind of God we have.
Should we or shouldn’t we? What brings the issue to mind, of course, is that stem cell research has been in the news again lately. The 213th General Assembly (2001) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), affirms the use of fetal tissue for vital research.
Jeremiah is not telling his people that they have failed to be religious. No, what he is saying is much worse. All their religious activity means nothing. It’s like a constant diet of junk food… all calories but no substance.
if we were to take a poll and ask you to list your favorite psalm, I doubt any of us would choose Psalm 130. It isn't poetic. It’s strictly a blue-collar psalm and doesn’t do much to stir our imaginations. But when you’re hurting, you don’t think poetically.
Elation is proportionate to despair. The worse the circumstances, the more dramatic the response when the situation is reversed. When Cyrus the Great ended their exile, the people of Israel didn’t praise Cyrus, they praised God.
Psalm 123 is a brief psalm making a single point: If you want to experience life in all its abundance, regardless of the circumstances, look to the Lord. “In my distress, I cried to Yahweh.”
God said, “They have forsaken me, the spring of living water”—the mountain spring that flows faithful and pure—. “They have forsaken me…, and cut cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
This is not the homily I intended to deliver today. I intended to talk about the wedding feast at Cana, but that was before an earthquake destroyed Haiti--before houses caved in trapping men, women, and children who had little hope of escape.
That put a new spin on things. From this perspective, the hills the psalmist was seeing must have looked less like Mount Zion and more like the hillside outside Los Angeles, where huge block letters spell out the name, “H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D.”
The great prophets of the Old Testament were far less concerned with predicting the future than with proclaiming God’s Word. They confronted everyone with their sinful nature and called them to repent.