Foundations 2: Who Are We? (Isaiah 51:1-2, 4; Psalm 139:1-5) - Calvary Baptist Cobourg

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The two scripture readings this morning focus our attention on two answers to the question, “Who Are We?” The passage in Isaiah 51 points our attention to the idea that we are so much more than just individuals, so much more than just ourselves. We'll come back to that in a few minutes. We're going to start with Psalm 139 that reminds us that we are unique, individual, human beings. King David, who lived thousands of years ago and who we believe wrote Psalm 139 wrote: “You have searched me, Lord, you know me. You know when I sit, when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You lay your hand on me.” David was writing from a deeply personal place: writing as someone who knows God, and who knows that God knows him. David wrote these words years after having become the King—having been picked out of a crowd to become king, literally having spent his life as the youngest son in his family, having grown up overshadowed by his bigger, older, smarter, better-looking brothers. But God knew where David was. God knew who David was, and when it was time for the prophet Samuel to anoint the future king of the nation of Israel, God pointed out to Samuel “This one is the one.” Having had that experience--having locked eyes with the prophet of Yahweh God, nobody had a better insight than David to be able to write Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. Those words were written by someone who knew that they were seen and known by God... In the town of Cobourg there are about 19.5 thousand unique, individual human beings. In the nation of Canada, there are about 38 million unique, individual human beings. On planet Earth there are over 8 billion unique, individual human beings and God sees every one. He knows every single one. Now, that could be good. Or it could be bad. On the side of the scale that makes us maybe cringe just a little bit is the idea that the God who sees every unique, individual human being is in an unimpeachable position to hold us accountable. Because he knows you. He knows your strengths. He knows your weaknesses. He knows the excuses that we all make and whisper to ourselves, in hopes that we can get away with the things that we think we ought to be able to get away with. In Luke 12 Jesus says: “I tell you, the one who confesses me before people, the Son of Man will also confess that one before the angels of God. But the one who denies me before people, that one will be denied before the angels of God.” I will be held responsible for the choices that I make within God's framework of justice. I will be held responsible for my yes’s and my no’s. I will be held responsible for the paths that I choose, the doors that I open and close. I will be held accountable above all for my response to Jesus, and who he is. I can be held to account because I am known. That's the slightly more daunting side of the being known. The more positive side, that might makes us smile, take a deep breath, relax a little bit, is the idea that we are known because we are loved. It's not that you are loved because God knows how wonderful you are; you are known because you are loved first. God loves me. He chooses to know me. In Genesis Chapter 2, right at the beginning of Scripture, right at the beginning of our story with God, the writer records this: Then the Lord God formed and fashioned the man, the person, the human being from the dust of the ground, and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being... And the Lord God said, “It's not good for the man to be alone. I will make for him a helper.” So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While he slept, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the area with flesh. From the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he built a woman, and brought her to him. In that account of how we came to be, of how God shaped creation, God starts with the decision to make humanity in his own image, to design us after himself. But he doesn't speak us into existence. In the rest of the creation story, God spoke, “Let there be... let there be... Let there be... and there was...” When it came time to make us, he didn't just speak us into existence. He didn't just stand at a distance and say, “OK, let there be.. and there we were...” When it was time for God to create humanity, he got his hands dirty. He put his fingers into the dirt. He modelled it and shaped it into the form that he had chosen for us. “He breathed his own breath into his nostrils.” How loving, how intimate is that? That God would lean down and breathe his breath into our nostrils. And God, when he had created the one human said, “No, this human can't be alone. This is not how this human is intended to live.” So he put the human to sleep, laid him out gently on the ground, unconscious and while Adam lay there, God performed surgery. He removed a section of Adam's side, and God himself healed the wound that was left behind. He took that piece that he had removed from Adam and he shaped it. He built it, he constructed it into another human being—a woman—so that they could be together. These verses communicate so much care. There is so much kindness in the way we were formed. There is so much tenderness. There's so much love. Just as later on, God would hold Adam and Eve accountable for their decisions, without abandoning them, in the same way—God loved Adam and he loved Eve and God loves you. In the words of that great theologian of the 20th century, Bob the Tomato, “God, made you special. And he loves you very much.”

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