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I was reading in Deuteronomy the other day and came across this:

2And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: "You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 3 the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. 4But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear" (Deuteronomy 29:2-4).

Huh? It says here "You have seen ..." and lists all the amazing works that God did that they saw. Moses concludes with "The Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear." In short, "You've seen, but you don't see." More disturbing, the reason they didn't see was that "The Lord has not given you ..."

Remember the story of Isaiah 6 when the prophet Isaiah found himself in the presence of God? Poor Isaiah! He almost comes undone -- quite literally. But God deals with his very real recognition of sin with a burning coal. Then we get this interesting follow up:

8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I! Send me." 9 And He said, "Go, and say to this people: 'Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.' 10 Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed." 11 Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said: "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, 12 and the LORD removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land (Isaiah 6:8-11).

Now ... wait a minute! Did I just read that right? Okay, let's see. God calls for a volunteer. Isaiah volunteers. God gives him a message. So far, so good. But the message? "Keep on hearing but do not understand; keep on seeing but do not perceive." Is that right? God even says why: "Lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn and be healed." I see. So that has to be avoided. "Turn and be healed" in this case is not what God wanted.

First problem, then. If Isaiah is telling them that they are blind and deaf, wouldn't they catch on? If he is declaring to them God's truth, wouldn't they see and hear? God told Isaiah, "Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes." Well, to be fair, that wasn't in Isaiah's realm of possibilities. It would simply be true. As Paul said, "The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet ..." (Acts 28:25) and then quotes this passage from Isaiah. So, apparently the answer to my first problem here is "No, they won't see or hear despite the clear expression of God's Word."

Next, we are all quite warmly aware that God "desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4). What then? Well, it would appear that it would be naive to conclude that this is all there is to God's desires. Paul tells the Romans, "So then He has mercy on whomever He wills, and He hardens whomever He wills" (Rom 9:18). Get that? "He hardens whomever He wills."

Jesus spoke of several sinful cities from the Old Testament. "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes" (Matthew 11:21). There is no uncertainty there. If God had caused to occur in Tyre and Sidon what was occurring in Chorazin and Bethsaida, Tyre and Sidon would not have been destroyed; they would have repented. The point? God knew that and He didn't do anything about it. "And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day" (Matthew 11:23). Sodom "would have remained until this day" if God had caused mighty works there. He didn't.

So what's my point in all of this? Is God schizophrenic? Not at all. Is the Bible crazy? Not in the least. My point is this. We need to be very, very careful about forming our theology around things that we like, around things that are comfortable. We need to be ready, willing, and able to shape our view of God from His revelation about Himself, not what makes us feel warmly about Him. If God says, "I make well-being and create calamity" (Isaiah 45:7), we need to be ready to surrender that fuzzy, friendly "smiling guy in the sky" image and redraw it with the one God gives of Himself. We do not have the right to substitute anything for God. That has a clear biblical name: idolatry. If we are to be disciples of Christ, followers of the Most High, we need to follow the Most High wherever He leads us. As C.S. Lewis said of Aslan, "He is not a tame lion." Neither is our God. And if you're totally comfortable with your view of God, beware. You're likely to get that view shaken by His own self-revelation. In fact, I'd suggest if you don't, you're either not listening to God's self-revelation or you're not looking at the real God, or both.

"Today's Little Lift" from Jim Bullington

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