Home   |   Sermons   |   Articles   |   Beliefs   |   Our Namesake   |   Photos

Omnipotence and Will

Preached at St. Barnabas Church, Bellville, TX

Epiphany 4, 2009

by The Rev. Stephen E. Stults

Collect for the Day:
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God,
who dost govern all things in heaven and earth;
Mercifully hear the supplications of thy people,
and grant us thy peace all the days of our life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our Collect for the day reflects the true nature of God, namely, He “who dost govern all things in heaven and earth.” Note please, that it doesn’t say that He governs some things in heaven and earth, but all things in heaven and earth.

Let us ponder this assertion for a while. This is a pretty big statement. It says that God rules everything that goes on, not only on Earth, but also in Heaven. This means that God rules, or controls, influences and directs, all things that happen on Earth. Thus, it flies in the face of man’s supposed self-autonomy and self-determination. It sets back our pride, our arrogance, our universal smugness. It belies sayings like that of the Renaissance, which was that “Man is the measure of all things.” Oh, really? When we really begin to ponder this statement in its universal enormity and even begin to get a tiny inkling of the real meaning of God's governing "all things," it opens a whole new vista into God’s true magnificence and glory.

Don’t get me wrong. Like any reasonably educated modern man, I celebrate Man’s achievements. Things like art, modern medicine, technology, high finance, and great science all testify to man’s accomplishments. These are all good things. Also, being a lover of world history, I also love the Renaissance era. One of my all-time favorite college classes was Renaissance art history. It was, in many ways, a tremendous time in the history of the world.

That being said, it was also a dangerous time. Many in the “establishment,” notably the Roman Church, saw it as a time of rebellion, a time of breaking away from time-tested norms and mores of society. Many viewed this as dangerous as people were now celebrating freedom from “old” forms of thought and frames of reference. To cop a phrase from 1980’s corporate-speak, they “broke the paradigm.” Our own Protestant Reformation was such a movement, influenced perhaps by the idea that something new and better was possible. The Reformers, men such as Luther, Cranmer, Bucer, Zwingli and others, knew that the time was ripe to reform the Church.

Yet, amazing as it was to the people of that era, as they saw old norms changed and “new” norms embraced, it should be even more amazing for us looking back on that period. Why? Simply because out of that time of incredible change and incredible turmoil, God wrought His will. Difficult, yes; painful, yes; but out of that Reformation period came a new expression of Christianity that eventually was to sweep over the entire world. Thus, we, having the benefit of history, can look back and exclaim with wonder and awe, “What hath God wrought!”

The reason I use this example of the Renaissance and the Reformation today is that it clearly shows God’s hand in history, bringing about His Almighty Will. This same exercise of Omnipotence and Will is seen clearly in our Old Testament lesson from Zechariah, as God speaks through the prophet to illustrate His divine Plan for Israel.

Again and again the Lord seals what He will do by saying, “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts…”; using this language a total of nine times in this section of Zechariah.

We know from Scripture that the Word of the Lord, spoken, is powerful and efficacious. Recalling the earliest event in history, the Creation, we hear the voice of the Lord calling all things into being as Scripture tells us, “And God said….”

In this passage from Zechariah, the Lord is promising to perform mercy and restoration to His People. Looking at what the Lord is promising, we see several things. First, we hear the Lord’s first promise as He says,

Again the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; I was jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I was jealous for her with great fury. “Thus saith the LORD; I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth; and the mountain of the LORD of hosts the holy mountain.” (Zechariah 8:1-3)

In other words, the first statement or promise that we hear from God is that He is “jealous” for His people with “great fury.” He has a fierce love for His People that will not be denied. He promises to return to Jerusalem, making it a “city of truth” and “the holy mountain.”

Next, after he promises restoration of His Presence, the Lord promises restoration of life to Israel, so much so that both old and young will be seen on its streets again, old men with their staffs and boys and girls playing. God will gather them “from the east country and the west country” and cause them to “dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.”

The reason that this prophecy is so amazing is its context. That is, Zechariah was speaking to a captive people, still under the sway of the Persian empire, away from their homeland. There was a remnant left in Jerusalem, to be sure, but only a bare minimum. The majority of the people had been carried away, captive, as a result of their gross infidelity towards God.

We only need to read the 8^th chapter of Ezekiel to get a clear picture as to why this great punishment happened to Israel. Reading from the prophecy of Ezekiel:

He stretched out the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my hair; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven, and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the north gate of the inner court, where the seat of the image of jealousy was, which provokes to jealousy.” (Ezekiel 8:3)

Then He said to me, "Son of man, lift your eyes now toward the north." So I lifted my eyes toward the north, and there, north of the altar gate, was this image of jealousy in the entrance. Furthermore He said to me, "Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations." (Ezekiel 8:5-6)

First of all, the Jews had set an pagan idol at the north of the gate closest to the great altar. They had defiled the Holy Temple of God with this pagan, probably satanic statue, right in front of the Temple!

But it gets worse…Next the Lord tells Ezekiel:

Furthermore He said to me, "Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations." (Ezekiel 8:6)

The prophet is told to look through a hole in the temple wall and to dig into it. There, he sees a door. Going through it, he finds this:

So I went in and saw, and there – every sort of creeping thing, abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed all around on the walls. And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in their midst stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan. Each man had a censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up. Then He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his idols? For they say, 'The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.'” (Ezekiel 8:10-12)

It goes on and on. The prophet sees women weeping for the pagan god Tammuz and then twenty five men with their backs to the Temple of the Lord and their faces to the East, worshipping the Sun! The Lord then asks Ezekiel:

And He said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence; then they have returned to provoke Me to anger. Indeed they put the branch to their nose. Therefore I also will act in fury. My eye will not spare nor will I have pity; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them." (Ezekiel 8:17-18)

In fact, the apostasy becomes so bad that the Lord actually withdraws His Glory from the Temple, as the Ezekiel sees the cherubim fly away from the Temple, in Ezekiel 11:23.

We know from Scripture what happened to Israel and Judah. The Lord would stir up Judah’s and Israel’s enemies. By the time of Ezekiel, the Assyrians would have already carried away and dispersed the Northern Kingdom, Israel, accounting for the “ten lost tribes of Israel.” Next, Judah, with her two remaining tribes would be carried away by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, to be a captive people for 70 years. The next great event in history was the fall of Babylon to Darius the Mede (Persian). Eventually, the Jews would return to Jerusalem, but only to find a shell of a city, with no protecting wall and no Temple.

This is why today’s prophecy is all the more amazing. Here is Zechariah prophesying that peace and prosperity will indeed return to Jerusalem. In their Commentary on the Old Testament, Keil and Delitzsch note this, quoting Jerome:

Jerome observes, with reference to this: “By the separate words and sentences, in which Israel is promised not only prosperity, but things almost incredible in their magnitude, the prophet declares, 'Thus saith the Almighty God;' saying, in other words, Do not imagine that the things which I promise are my own, and so disbelieve me as only a man; they are the promises of God which I unfold.”

That is why the Lord says to Zechariah (and to us): Thus saith the LORD of hosts; If it be marvellous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, should it also be marvellous in mine eyes? saith the LORD of hosts. {marvellous: or, hard, or, difficult} (Zechariah 8:6) In other words, using language that God Himself uses elsewhere in the Old Testament, He says, “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?”

That brings us to the crux of today’s lesson from Zechariah. God caused the chastisement of the Jews at the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. After a period of suffering and Israel’s resultant repentance, He caused the Babylonian Empire to fall to the Persians and later, Israel to be restored under Darius. The point is this: Israel didn’t choose God; God chose Israel. For some mysterious reason known only to God, He chose the Jews to be His peculiar People.

But you may say, “All well and good, preacher, but what about us? After all, we live in the New Testament era. We’re all about choice and free will and justification by grace through faith. Surely we make our own destiny, choosing God or not.”

Well, yes and no. Choice and free will still operate, to be sure. We are justified by grace through faith. Yet, in the mystery of God, all of us in this room have been given that faith. In short, we have been chosen by God. He has called us to Himself and has given us the grace to respond to His Call. Beyond all our comprehension and certainly our deservings, God has chosen to give us His Kingdom, a place of everlasting habitations. Why? We don’t know. Why did He choose the Jews? We don’t know.

What we do know is that we, like the Jews in today’s lesson, have been called to receive a blessing in God’s Omnipotence and Will. This blessing involves not only having God Himself, in His Blessed Holy Spirit, residing with us our entire earthly life, but also receiving life everlasting forever, with Him. It is this blessing that we celebrate today, and every time we celebrate God’s presence with us in holy worship. We are, indeed, despite any outward circumstances, the most blessed on all people.

Quoting from Pastor Stephen Cole, of Flagstaff Christian Fellowship:

An African proverb states, “There is only one crime worse than murder on the desert, and that is to know where the water is and not tell.” God has led us to Christ, the living water. He has blessed us with His salvation and He promises to bless us even more abundantly in the future. But He didn’t save us so that we can sit in the lifeboat feeling warm and cozy, oblivious to the lost of the world. He saved us so that we may become a blessing to others. If you’re saved, but you don’t have your focus on blessing others, you’ve only got half the picture. He blessed you so that you may become a blessing.” (Read more)

May we all be a blessing to others as God has blessed us.

AMEN!

Return to Top

All material on this site is copyright © 2011 St. Barnabas Anglican Church, except where an author is named. In such cases, the author retains all rights.