When God is Not Among Us

This transcript has been automatically generated

Now, as so often happens to me, and those of you who are old-timers will recall me saying this before, I look at the title some weeks before it comes and I wonder why on earth I chose it. The printer arrived wanting a title. I looked up a Shakespearean quotation on idolatry, sent it off, and then later on in my holiday wondered what I’d let myself in for. In fact, I woke up in front of the television and there was a travel film on. I think it was somewhere in Thailand and we were being shown the local idols brought out of their temples, people pouring water over them and looking for rain and so on.

And as I saw it I suddenly remembered to my horror that I was supposed to be talking about idolatry during September and I wondered how I could make something so far away relevant to you in the city in the busy 20 minutes that you give to St. Helen’s in a lunch hour. Well, what I did of course, because we’re not here to, on Tuesdays, to hear what a person has to say, we’re not here to discover what my ideas on idolatry are, this pulpit is dedicated to the Bible and to the word of God. I went to a Bible dictionary and I gathered together some of the Bible passages on idolatry and I discovered, somewhat to my surprise I must say, that it was astonishingly relevant to the life we live and to the church today in this country. What I’ve chosen therefore to do is to take 4 of these passages, they’re very short, and to present them to you on these 4 Tuesdays. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to how they fit together, whether they’re consistent with one another.

I’m going to take them from very different parts of the Bible, mostly from the New Testament, but we start in the Old Testament today in this passage from Deuteronomy. But I’d like to say that in studying these 4 little passages of no more than 2 or 3 verses, I’ve been reminded of those words of J.B. Phillips, who was the first to put the New Testament into a modern translation after the war. I think his Phillips New Testament is not quite as famous now as it was then, 20 years ago. But he says in one of his writings afterwards that coming to the New Testament Greek and translating it into modern English was rather like rewiring a house when someone has forgotten to turn off the mains. Now I certainly felt that a little bit of these 4 passages.

You might think that Deuteronomy, well written so many thousands of years ago, would simply be of academic interest, that we would study it for 20 minutes and then very quickly get about our business. But I think you will find that it has great power and punch in it and it very much has a word to speak to our own day. Well let me read it again and then, read it and then we’ll get to study it. Deuteronomy 31:16-17. It comes from a rather moving section at the end of Deuteronomy when God is saying farewell to Moses and announcing what he’s going to do through Joshua, his successor.

The Lord said to Moses, behold, you are about to sleep with your fathers. Then this people will rise and play the harlot after the strange gods of the land where they will go to be among them. And they will forsake me and break my covenant which I have made with them. Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they will be devoured, and many evils and troubles will come upon them, so that they will say in that day, have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?

I’m going to start, if I may, with that last phrase which I’ve not been able to get out of my mind. They’re going to cross into the Promised Land and everything is going to go wrong. They’re going to consult with one another, why is it? And then someone is going to make an appalling discovery. He’s going to wake up to his dismay and realise that all that has been happening to them is a symptom.

Of something very wrong. And he’s going to say to his friends, do you know, I think that God has left us. And they’re going to talk to one another and they’re going to say, that’s just what it is. Our God is no longer with us. That’s why everything is going wrong.

Why is it that God is no longer with us? Well, that’s a fairly appalling discovery to make, isn’t it? And that’s why I asked Michael to read to us that very famous lesson of Samson and Delilah, so much loved by the moguls of the Hollywood film industry. You know, they search desperately to find a storey in Judges which has got love interest. Well, this certainly has, though there’s not much love in Delilah, is there, as she tries to wheedle out the secret of Samson’s strength?

I suppose even for— not just in childhood, Samson is always a fascinating figure with that tremendous legendary strength. Must have had a wonderful physical physique, rather like Mike Hazelwood or someone like that in the ’60s. Times as muscular. And nothing that the Philistines could do to capture him was successful. He simply broke away from them again and again.

Whether it was ropes put around him or whatever it was, it was no obstacle to this tremendous strength. And then in that quaint storey, Delilah at last gets the secret about his long hair. Of course, it’s deeper than just having a haircut. That’s just a symbol. The hair growing long was a symbol of Samson’s consecration to God.

And anybody who reads the storey recognises straight away that that consecration had gone out of the window long ago. He’d been playing with heathen women. He’d long ago left the real love of God. And so the haircut is just a symbol of that. At any rate, when it’s cut, he wakes up, the Philistines come upon him, and he thinks as usual that he’ll just toss them aside.

And you get that very sad sentence, he did not know. That the Lord had departed from him.

It’s one of the more pathetic statements, isn’t it, in the Bible? This great strong man stretching himself, not realising that this superhuman strength which was a gift of God has gone from him. And there is in fact nothing sadder, is there, in life than seeing something which has been so strong and effective and beautiful just crumbling into ruins. It might be a great building or it might be a person, somebody near you at home who’s had a great personality or a very effective brain or career. Now they’ve had a couple of strokes and they sit at home and their wives hardly know how to cope with them and they drool at the mouth and they’re unable to speak and life just has no purpose and they’re utterly wretched and weak.

This man who’d perhaps been a great politician or a tycoon in the city or a great athlete, now nothing. That’s the picture here with Samson. And it’s actually spelt out as you see there with his eyes gouged out and grinding at the mill. Well, I thought of that as I read this passage about the people of God. You see, the people of God at this moment when God is talking to Moses are very strong.

They’re just going to go into the Promised Land. They’re very victorious. They’re going to have a wonderful few months and then after those months they’re going to degenerate into feebleness.

Now that’s very like the church in our country in the 20th century. If this world lasts long enough to have another 50 or 100 years, people are going to look back to the church in the 20th century in Great Britain and look at its feebleness. Perhaps no century when the church has been more active and more feeble.

I wonder if those young people who’ve come up to the city in these last few weeks, I wonder if any of them go to church. If they did, what would they see? On the whole they would see feebleness, wouldn’t they? Just a few people gathered, mostly maybe elderly. They might go to a church that is full of activity and entertainment and dances and so on, but would they find God?

Well, the chances are that they would not. There are of course the bright lights that are the exception, but by and large after 2 or 3 generations God is not amongst us. The rot has caught on. The church is enfeebled, it’s not attractive, no one would want to go. It’s obviously not transforming the world, the world has transformed it.

The evils of the world have come in. Now that’s the picture that is given here of the people of God when God is not amongst them because it’s important to say that the church has only one asset and that is God’s presence and if God should choose to take his presence away from the local church then the local church has got nothing. Indeed, it will look particularly pathetic as it’s usually living in a Gothic building or a Victorian monstrosity and its hymns and its garments are usually old-fashioned. Everything about it is old-fashioned but if it has the presence of the living God it’ll still be the most attractive place in the neighbourhood. But if it hasn’t, well, it’s quite irrelevant.

Now with that in mind, I want you to look through this passage with me because there is a kind of relentless logic that has appealed to me as I’ve looked at it. There won’t be time to see it all but I want you to follow through the kind of logic that goes through. We start, you see, with Moses’s death. The Lord said, behold, you’re about to sleep. This very strong, powerful man of God is going to depart from the scene and then the rot is going to come.

Now that’s very characteristic of the way the Bible looks at things. Some of you who are Bible students may remember that very moving that Paul made to the elders of the Ephesian church when he was saying goodbye to them for the last time. The Ephesian church was the strongest in Asia Minor. From that church missionaries had gone out forming the churches of Colossae, Hierapolis, Laodicea, many of the churches of Asia Minor. So it was a real missionary-hearted church.

And as Paul left them after his last missionary journey, he asks the elders to come and meet him one sunny afternoon and they all sit in front of him. And he says farewell, a kind of farewell speech.

But part of that speech is rather horrifying. Verse 29 of Acts 20, he says this, just listen to it. He’s in the middle of all the things that God has done for them and for him. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and indeed from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Don’t you look at the look of horror on the face of the Ephesian elders and deacons and ministers as he says, you know, when I go, the wolves, so to speak— I dare say that’s taken from their ordinary life.

Wolves often used to come down from the mountains and take a sheep or two from a local farmer’s flock. He says spiritual wolves will come down to the sheep, the spiritual sheep, and do enormous damage.

I think we easily forget the importance of leadership in the church. The church of course is a divine institution, it’s going to continue whatever man does because God is there. But the church is also a human institution on earth and therefore it depends upon leadership, it depends upon strong men. It’s one of the things I pray for, that our work here on Tuesdays will be blessed with the raising up of many who will be strong for God and who will influence things and keep the church, the crusader class, whatever it may be, from degeneration. But when that strong man is taken away, and these strong men of course are God’s greatest gift to the church, then very often degeneration follows very quickly because most people are living on a fairly superficial level, level.

Most people aren’t able to stand up to it when the leader goes.

And so there’s the first, the first step, if you like, in this little paragraph. You’re going to die, then the people will go after false gods. Now look how that is described in the 3rd line. The people will rise and play the harlot after the strange gods of the land. That’s of great interest, isn’t it?

You see that they know now the one God. They’ve got a very pure monotheism. They are worshipping as God wants them to worship. But when God’s presence is withdrawn from them, then they’ll fall back into idolatry.

Now most of us have been brought up on a wholly false philosophical basis in our education, one of gradual progression, you see. So most of us were taught that in religion idolatry is primitive, belongs to primitive people, and gradually we refine our religion until it becomes more and more respectable. Of course, that’s absolute nonsense. The Bible says that there isn’t that kind of evolutionary graph going like that, but that God gives man the truth and man falls back from it. That idolatry is always a sign that people once knew better but have fallen back.

Evolution actually, not only as a philosophy but as a scientific theory, has been receiving some very strong knocks this last week, as you probably realise if you’ve been reading the accounts of the British Association meetings in York. And if you read the book, the review in the Times yesterday of Dr. Hoyle, Professor Hoyle’s latest book on evolution, he and another distinguished mathematician point out that mathematics has never been used to test the theory of evolution. About time after 100 years that it was. They reckon that the chances of our coming from primaeval slime are 1 to the power of 440,000, which means 1 with 40,000 noughts after it. Says the reviewer, it is big enough, they say, to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution, and they conclude their book with a chapter on God.

This is 2 distinguished atheists.

Well, no whisper of that has reached the Natural History Museum as yet. Of course, your kids are still being told the usual nonsense about our coming from primaeval slime and so on. But you see, that has misled generations of children in our country, isn’t it, to imagine that evolution is the way that the world works. We gradually evolved and progress and get better. Whereas the Bible says, on the contrary, if we leave God out of it, we slip back, back into paganism, back into violence, back into ignorance.

And that’s what happened here. And it’s described as playing the harlot. Now there are 2 reasons for this, and they’re both of absorbing interest. First, because all idolatry in the Old Testament world was linked with cult prostitution. There was this very, very close link between heathen religion and immorality, between idolatry and immorality.

Now what we’re going to discover next week is that when we turn into the pages of the New Testament, we find that this link between idolatry, the worship of false gods, the neglect of the true God, always goes with immorality.

So that the Bible thinker, when he sees immorality beginning to flood into our society, and to flood into his own life and he finds that he’s quite unable to get rid of it.

The Bible thinker says, hmm, it’s no good fighting the immorality, there must be at the root of this idolatry.

Second reason why the Bible writer uses this language is because the fundamental way in which the relationship between God and his people is described in the Old Testament is that of a close, well, lovers if you like, lovers, marriage. God and his people, a covenant, they love one another. God has committed himself to his people Israel and they’ve committed themselves to God. And therefore for them to go in for idolatry, to put God away from his first place, is adultery, harlotry. That’s why every Jew When he woke up in the morning, said Deuteronomy 6:4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength.

That’s at the heart of it.

So that idolatry, right back there at the beginning of the Old Testament, is not a matter primarily of images and little idols. It’s primarily a matter of ceasing to love the Lord my God with all my heart, beginning to let other things come into life and to love them instead of Him, And if that happens, then immorality and all these evils come back.

Most significant piece of teaching which we’ll follow out this month.

Now what’s the next thing that happens? Well, let’s follow it out. Verse 17: Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them. First of all, God’s anger. Now notice that this is against the background of God’s love and patience.

Actually in the verses just before verse 16 and 17, God has told Moses to commission Joshua. God in effect says, look, my hand is still upon my people, I’m going to give them a new leader and I’m going to hold on to them. So he’s given them an assurance that he’s not going to let them go, he’s going to be patient. But here in verse 17 he says that nevertheless, despite his love and patience with them, His anger is kindled against them and they will have to suffer punishment in the, in the immediate present.

The anger of God is a very real thing.

It’s sad that many people have tried to cut it out of the New Testament. I’ve been having to restudy Mark’s gospel to teach our Read Mark Learn students because now that Jonathan has gone, I’m going to miss him tremendously, he’s been teaching this group every Wednesday night for the last 5 years, I’ve got to teach them myself now. So I’ve had to go back to Mark’s Gospel. And one of the things that has very much moved me is the way that Mark pays attention to the way that Jesus looked at people. Again and again Mark gives us an eyewitness account of that amazing face of Jesus looking on people.

In Mark 3, for example, when he has healed a man with a withered hand, sorry, Mark chapter we read this. I’ve lost it. I’m all— sorry, Mark 3:5. I told this. He looked around at them.

That is these Pharisees and scribes who are objecting to His healing. He looked around them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.

I’ve been gathering together all these looks. Never once does it say in Mark He looked at them with a beaming smile. You know, the sort of vicar’s smile, sort of fatuous.

And it was much more powerful than that. He looked at that rich young ruler and loved him even though he turned away, never came back to a lunch or a service. It was too strong for him. He couldn’t, he didn’t want that. Jesus looked on him and loved him.

And he looked around these people with anger and this is the picture here, isn’t it, in verse 17. He says, I’ll hide my face from them. Do you remember that ancient blessing, is it in Numbers, where we’re told that God lifts up the light of his countenance upon us and gives us peace? Lovely picture of God facing us and giving us peace. Now he turns his face away from us.

What happens then? Look at verse 17: I will forsake them, hide my face from them, and they will be devoured, and many evils and troubles will come upon them. Well, that’s exactly it, isn’t it? You see, God turns his face away from his people and so the dike is open and the floods come back.

I was down at Lynton on part of my holiday. I was having a Devon cream tea. There wasn’t much cream actually, but anyhow, it was a tea. And in the little place where we were, there were pictures of the flood at Lynton. Some of you may remember it in the 1950s.

Astonishing power of that water carving its way through that little town, flattening buildings, pulling up roads, destroying. Now here’s the same picture. God turns his face from his people and the floods of evil and trouble and sin flood back.

And then what happens? Well, the people then wake up and they say, have not these evil things come upon us because our God is not among us? Well, there we are today. Let me summarise this in a simple way. What is at the heart of this idolatry here in Deuteronomy?

Why it is harlotry? It’s unfaithfulness. We’re given here a picture of what happens when the church ceases to love God with all its heart. Am I speaking to Christians this morning who’ve lost their first love?

Because if so, you’re very damaging, you’re stopping the work in the city. We shan’t spiritual reawakening in the city while you’re around, you’ve lost your first love. If the Christians will get back their first love, if we all begin to obey the first commandment, after all you can’t get away with breaking the first of God’s rules, can you, if you’re a Christian? That’s number one. Love me with all your heart and life and soul and strength.

If we would do that, by his mercy and grace, Then he would turn his face to us as Christians and bless us, and the evils would go that have been plaguing the church, and the church would begin to transform the world again.

Let’s pray.

Our God is not among us.

O gracious Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we dare not say those words. We ask you to have patience with your church. We pray that you may not deliver your church in this country up to evil. We pray that you will raise up leaders who will be strong men like Moses, We pray above all that you will rekindle in our hearts that first love. We pray that we may put aside idolatry.

We pray that those other things that we love so much may be put in second place under you. We pray that we may repent and come back to you. We pray that your people in the city may be of one heart and one mind. We pray that we may put aside those things that displease you, immorality, unfaithfulness, and we ask that you will lift up the light of your countenance upon us and bless us.

So we call upon you to draw near to us on these Tuesdays so that when we go out of this church we know that you’ve been with us and that behind the human words and the human fellowship we’ve discovered the presence of the living God.

We ask that for Christ’s sake. Amen.