The Two Hands of God

Scripture: Isaiah 28: 14-22

Sermon: The Two Hands of God

Topics: agnosticism, suffering, garden, hands, justice, mercy

Preached: September 9, 2012

Rev. Mike Abma

with a note of thanks to Rev. Fleming Rutledge for insights into this text

Isaiah 28: 14-22

Because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death,

and with Sheol we have an agreement;

when the overwhelming scourge passes through

it will not come to us;

for we have made lies our refuge,

and in falsehood we have taken shelter’;

¹⁶ therefore thus says the Lord God,

See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone,

a tested stone,

a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation:

‘One who trusts will not panic.’

¹⁷ And I will make justice the line,

and righteousness the plummet;

hail will sweep away the refuge of lies,

and waters will overwhelm the shelter.

¹⁸ Then your covenant with death will be annulled,

and your agreement with Sheol will not stand;

when the overwhelming scourge passes through

you will be beaten down by it.

¹⁹ As often as it passes through, it will take you;

for morning by morning it will pass through,

by day and by night;

and it will be sheer terror to understand the message.

²⁰ For the bed is too short to stretch oneself on it,

and the covering too narrow to wrap oneself in it.

²¹ For the Lord will rise up as on Mount Perazim,

he will rage as in the valley of Gibeon

to do his deed—strange is his deed!—
and to work his work—alien is his work!

²² Now therefore do not scoff,

or your bonds will be made stronger;

for I have heard a decree of destruction

from the Lord God of hosts upon the whole land.

THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD

THANKS BE TO GOD

INTRODUCTION

On August 7, 1979, a tornado touched down in the town of Woodstock Ontario. The next day, I went to Woodstock with my dad and my brothers to help clean things up. We had heard that the Christian Reformed Church in Woodstock, Maranatha CRC, was badly damaged, as well as the Christian School next door. When I got to Woodstock it was quite something – the church had been ripped apart by the tornado, and the Christian School had been heavily damaged.

But here is the thing that perplexed me. Little else in the town was damaged. It was as if the tornado had been sent on an errand to obliterate that specific church and school. And as a teenager at the time, it made an impact on me.

This summer, when Shirlene and I were in Japan, we travelled to the northeastern area of Japan – the region that had been ravaged by the tsunami of 2011. We stayed in the town of Yamamoto, between Sendai to the north and Fukushima to the south – or at least, what was left of that town. Here I experienced the inverse of what I had seen over 30 years ago. Here in Yamamoto, the tsunami had flattened everything, like a huge bulldozer, and what remained was total destruction, expect for the odd house here and there.

Seeing these things raises questions, lots of questions:

Why does God allow these catastrophic things to happen?

And why, in the case of the tornado, did one or two buildings get totally

destroyed, while the rest were relatively unscathed.

And why, in the case of the tsunami, did every building get obliterated,

except for a few houses, which were left standing?

Why did this happen?

How could God allow so much destruction?

These are the types of questions that have enough weight,

enough gravitas

to call into question God’s love,

his power,

and even his very existence.

These are the types of questions that can push a person from being a Believer, to being a Skeptic, to being an Agnostic.

PARABLE OF THE GARDEN ( by Antony Flew)

The agnostic philosopher, Antony Flew, describes this in one of his parables.

Flew writes that there once was a garden.

The garden had in it naive Believers and rational Skeptics.

The Believers looked at the Garden and insisted there was a Gardener

who loved the Garden and cared for the Garden.

The Skeptics, on the other hand,

pointed out that the Gardener was nowhere to be found —

that the Gardener, if there was one — was invisible, intangible, insensible.

The Believers continued to insist that there was, in fact, a Gardener,

and that he did, in fact, love and care for the Garden.

The Skeptics, on the other hand,

pointed to all the weeds that had overrun the garden,

and questioned not only whether this Gardener really loved this garden,

but reasoned that this Gardener must simply be the product of the Believers’ over-active imagination.

ISAIAH

That image of a Garden is fitting for our passage tonight.

In just the previous chapter of Isaiah,

Israel is described as a garden,

as a pleasant vineyard,

that God plants, and waters, and guards, and protects.

But suddenly, here in Isaiah 28, the tune has changed.

The Vineyard of Israel, the Garden of Jerusalem,

is being threatened by the Assyrians.

And the rulers of Jerusalem were not seeking God’s help.

They were seeking help from Egypt.

And God was angry.

According to God,

Jerusalem was making a covenant with death.

They were making an agreement with Sheol.

They were taking refuge in a bed of lies.

God warns them that a scourge was coming,

a terror was on its way.

They were about to suffer greatly from the scourge and terror of the Assyrians.

In poetic language, God says,

that the bed they had made would be too short,

the blankets they were trying to wrap themselves in

would be too narrow,

and that there would be no rest, no peace, no shalom for them.

In stirring language,

Isaiah proclaims in verse 22

That the Lord will rise up and rage

to do his deed – strange is his deed!

to work his work – alien is his work!

THE TWO HANDS OF GOD

So here we have these two chapters juxtaposed.

In chapter 27, God is the Gardener who lovingly cares for his Garden.

But in chapter 28, God declares that he will do other work –

alien work,

alien that is from what a Gardener usually does.

Here in chapter 28 God says he will do other deeds – strange deeds,

that is strange from what a Gardener usually does.

God will allow the Assyrians to come and invade the Garden.

Theologians throughout the centuries have tried to explain these two aspects to God’s work in the world.

The Reformer, Martin Luther,

spoke of God’s proper work of blessing,

and his alien work of rejecting.

John Calvin was more apt to speak of God’s mercy, on the one hand,

and his justice, on the other.

Perhaps speaking of God’s hands, his two hands, is not such a bad metaphor.

Throughout the Psalms,

when God’s people experience a victory or a deliverance,

the psalms talk of God’s strong right hand lifting them up.

And so – and I want to apologize in advance to all left-handed people who may think this metaphor is unfair —

and so, perhaps it makes sense to speak of God’s other hand,

his left hand, as bringing judgment and justice.

The right hand, God’s proper work of blessing, redeeming, delivering.

The left hand, God’s alien work, his strange work,

of judging, and at times, even destroying.

I also think it is helpful to remember that

The right hand of God which does the proper work,

is also doing the ultimate work;

and that his left hand, the hand that is doing the strange work,

is doing his penultimate work,

not his final work – which is that of mercy –

but his next-to-final work – which is that of judgment and justice.

Now I know this does not answer all the questions surrounding the mystery of evil and suffering. I will not pretend to try answer them either.

But I know there are paths we are tempted to take in the face of our suffering,

paths that are …unhelpful and misleading.

Take the path of saying

“It is God’s will” in the sense of it being God’s ultimate will.

When parents face the deep grief of losing a child to cancer,

when a family faces the deep confusion of someone they love ending their

own life,

when we look at the path of destruction caused by a tornado,

or the obliteration caused by a tsunami,

it is not especially helpful to simply say, “It was God’s will.”

Saying that almost forces us to question God’s love for us.

But there is another danger. An opposite danger.

In an attempt to protect God, people will say,

“There was nothing God could do.”

or “God simply is not in control.”

Of course, saying things like this force us to question God’s power and might.

So what can we say?

I think we can say that God works in his world with both his hands.

There is the right hand, which we see, and love, and understand.

It holds us firm, protects us, heals us, delivers us.

We rightly celebrate his right hand.

But he also works in the world with his left hand.

That work perplexes us – because it is strange work.

That work confuses us – because it is alien to our understanding of God.

That work frustrates us and at times even enrages us

What we need is a faith that trusts the work of both hands of God.

PARABLE OF THE STRANGER (by Basil Mitchell)

When Antony Flew wrote that parable about the Garden – defending his agnostic tendencies — the Christian philosopher Basil Mitchell wrote a parable of his own, explaining what faith meant for him.

Basil writes,

It is a time of war.

We live in occupied territory.

We are part of the resistance.

One night we meet a stranger.

We learn that this stranger is also part of the resistance.

We learn that this stranger is in fact the leader of the resistance.

This stranger asks us to have faith in him, no matter what happens.

We are utterly convinced by the sincerity and trustworthiness of the Stranger.

We never have an intimate conversation with the Stranger like that again.

But we do catch glimpses of him every once in a while.

At times we see him with other members of the resistance,

and we are grateful and are assured “He is on our side.”

But at other times we see him with members of the enemy,

wearing their uniform and seemingly doing the enemy’s deeds.

Some members of the resistance mumble and complain.

We are troubled, but, in spite of appearances, remain convinced, “He is one our side.”

There are times we send a message to the Stranger asking for help,

and we receive help, thankful he is on our side.

But there are other times we send messages to the Stranger asking for help,

and we seem to receive nothing.

And yet we remain steadfast, “The stranger knows best.”

That is the life we lead – a life committed to trusting the Stranger.

At times that trust comes easy – we see what the Stranger does,

and we smile and say “Amen.”

At other times the trust is hard – we see what the Stranger is doing and we are confused, it makes no sense, it seems strange, and alien.

CONCLUSION

This, of course, is not simply a parable.

This is what faith looks like for any follower of Jesus.

A while back the magazine Christian Century told the story of Pastor Gerald Britt, a pastor in Dallas, Texas. A number of years ago, he and his wife lost their 11 year old son to scleroderma.

Then recently another son was murdered in Dallas.

A week after the funeral of that murdered son, Pastor Britt was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

When asked how he was handling it all,

Pastor Britt said this:

I have no easy theological explanation for all the losses, all the pain,

all the grief I’ve suffered.

But yet, I choose to stubbornly believe that God is good.

The Bible says over and over that God is good.

So I stubbornly cling to His goodness,

even when things happen to me that are not good.

In the words of the last parable,

Pastor Britt stubbornly trusted that the Stranger is on our side.

Of course, we know that the Stanger has a face.

The Stranger has a name.

The Stranger is the cornerstone that the world rejected

but who has become the sure foundation of our faith.

The Stranger is the one who stretched both his hands,

both his right hand and his left hand,

upon the cross

so that he might embrace all that we are:

all of our triumphs and joys,

and all of our sorrows and afflictions.

We know this Stranger.

We believe in this Stranger.

We trust the work of both his hands.

Amen