It was a concern to Moses that the children of Israel come to know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to love Him. To know God is to love Him for the heart is naturally drawn to God when He is understood in all of His glory and goodness. That God should be loved is a constant theme of Scripture in both the Old and New Testament. There is a moral oughtness. We should love God. There is the command of Moses in Deuteronomy 6 and other passages, and there is the command of Jesus recorded in three of the gospels.
“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matt. 22:37).
“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment” (Matt. 12:30).
“And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself” (Luke 10:27).
But it is no longer easy to love God because sin has come to steal away our love for God by changing our thoughts about Him. There are many unworthy thoughts about God. It is thought by some that God does not exist. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good” (Ps. 53:1).
Robert Ingersoll was a famous atheist in another generation. He would give public lectures and challenge God by saying, “If there is a God, may he prove himself by striking me dead right now.” When nothing happened, he would give his lecture. “You see, there is no God,” he said. And then someone challenged him by replying, “You have only proved that He is a gracious God.”
Then Vice President George Bush represented the United States at the funeral of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Bush was deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev’s widow. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid, Brezhnev’s wife performed an act of great courage and hope, a gesture that must surely rank as one of the most profound acts of civil disobedience ever committed; she reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband’s chest.
There, in the citadel of secular, atheistic power, the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong. She hoped that there was another life, and that that life was best represented by Jesus, who died on the cross, and that the same Jesus might yet have mercy on her husband.
George Bernard Shaw was a renowned free thinker and liberal philosopher (1856-1950).
As a great playwright, he influenced the minds of many. In his last writings we read, “The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt. It’s counsels, which should have established the millennium, led instead directly to the suicide of Europe. I believed them once. In their name I helped to destroy the faith of millions of worshippers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now they look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith.” Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.
On March 9, 1967, the news broke that Joseph Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, had defected from Communism and Russia. Many people were startled. Her statement, given to reporters who met her plane in New York, told why she defected: “I found it impossible to exist without God in one’s heart. I came to that conclusion myself, without anybody’s help or preaching.
That was a great change because since that moment the main dogmas of Communism lost their significance for me. I have come here to seek the self-expression that has been denied me for so long in Russia.” That woman’s struggle was a terrible one. To leave Russia she had to leave two children in Moscow and realize that it would be, as she said, “Impossible to go back.”
It is thought by some that God does not care. Have you not heard of the madman who lit a lamp in the bright morning and went to the marketplace crying ceaselessly, “I seek God! I seek God!”
There were many among those standing there who didn’t believe in God so he made them laugh.
“Is God lost?” one of them said. “Has he gone astray like a child?” said another. “Or is he hiding? Has he gone on board ship and emigrated?”
So, they laughed and shouted to one another. The man sprang into their midst and looked daggers at them.
“Where is God?” he cried. “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. We are all his killers! But how have we done this? How could we swallow up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the horizon? What will we do as the earth is set loose from its sun?”
So wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in 1889. Nietzsche’s point was not that God does not exist, but that God has become irrelevant.
Men and women may assert that God exists or that He does not, but it makes little difference either way.
God is dead, not because He does not exist, but because we live, play, procreate, govern, and die as though He does not exist or care for His creation.
During the days of the founding of America and the French Revolution in Europe, many people accepted the concept that God does not care for His creation in a personal and practical way. There was a comfortable feeling that the universe could operate very well on natural laws alone without any thought of divine providence.
There was no need for miracles. There was no need for a substitutionary Savior from sins. There were natural laws and reason to live by. Some actually believed that “Every day in every way they were getting better and better.”
The years passed and the idea of a disinterested God gained acceptance.
In 1936, Arthur Guiterman wrote the following poem:
“First dentistry was painless;
Then bicycles were chainless
And carriages were horseless
And many laws, enforceless.Next, cookery was fireless,
Telegraphy was wireless,
Cigars were nicotineless
And coffee, caffeineless.Soon oranges were seedless,
The putting green was weedless,
The college boy hatless,
The proper diet, fatless,Now motor roads are dustless,
The latest steel is rustless,
Our tennis courts are sodless,
Our new religions, godless.”
It is thought by some that God is unloving but, oh, how wrong they are. Longing to leave her poor Brazilian neighborhood, Christina wanted to see the world. Discontent with a home having only a pallet on the floor, a washbasin, and a wood-burning stove, she dreamed of a better life in the city.
One morning she slipped away, breaking her mother’s heart. Knowing what life on the streets would be like for her young, attractive daughter, Maria hurriedly packed to go find her.
On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing, pictures. She sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain, and spent all she could on pictures of herself. With her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janiero.
Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up.
When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable.
Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, anyplace with the reputation for streetwalkers or prostitutes. She went to them all. And at each place she left her picture — taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo she wrote a note.
It was not too long before both the money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home. The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her small village.
It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear. Her laughter was broken. Her dream had become a nightmare.
A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds for her secure pallet. Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation. “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” She did.
The love of God is greater than the love of a mother for her daughter. God says to individuals, “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” Anyone can go home to God by way of the cross.
“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading,
Pleading for you and for me?
Why should we linger and heed not His mercies,
Mercies for you and for me?Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home
Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,
Passing from you and from me;
Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming,
Coming for you and for me.Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!O for the wonderful love He has promised,
Promised for you and for me!
Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon,
Pardon for you and for me.Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!”
It is thought by some that God is not willing to save the lost, and that, too, is not true. The Bible says very plainly that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. The prophet Ezekiel was commanded to say to the people, Ezekiel 33:11, “As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”
The problem is not God’s willingness to save sinners. Jesus said, John 6:37 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. No one who has ever come to Christ, no one who has ever called upon the name of the Lord has been turned away. But who will come? Who will live? The heart is very hard and stubborn. There are spiritual chains that bind the heart to committing acts of self-destruction.
“Why do people smoke knowing that cancer kills?”
“Why do people drink knowing they are harming their liver?”
“Why do people engage in inappropriate relationships for a momentary thrill that brings shame to the soul after the principle of pleasure is satisfied?”
“Why will we die needlessly having lived recklessly?”
It is not the doctrine of divine election that drives people from the Bible, from gospel preaching, and from God Himself. It is a rejection of God’s revelation and love manifested in a rebellious heart that would rather be angry and petty and self-centered. God is willing to save any soul that calls upon Him. But who will call?
Listen to the promise of the prophet. Jeremiah 33:2, “Thus saith the LORD the maker thereof, the LORD that formed it, to establish it; the LORD is his name; 3 Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”
The conclusion of the matter is this. Unworthy thoughts about God must be replaced with Biblical thoughts so there can be gospel obedience.
