A friend sent me a cartoon out of the New Yorker a while back. It was a picture of a pastor at the door of the church after the service, with people streaming by him, and one guy who was shaking his hand saying, “Good sermon, Reverend, but all that God stuff was pretty far-fetched.” Enough with the God stuff.

Two business partners are Christians, they’ve known each other for years. Lately their competition has gotten a major edge on them, and their business is in serious trouble. There are major decisions to make, decisions that affect employees, lives, families.

When crunch day comes, one of them says, “I’d like to take the first hour and just pray about what we should do.”

The other says “Yeah, yeah, sure we can pray. But we have decisions to make. We’re in trouble. We need numbers, cash and advice.”Enough of the God stuff. This is reality now.

At the beginning of the book of Exodus, the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt. Egypt was the land of their servitude; generations had been born and passed on and still the people were in slavery, oppressed and forced to hard labor. God saw their misery. When the time was ripe, God raised up Moses as a leader, and the people were allowed (momentarily) to leave. Enthusiasm was high as they headed towards the Red Sea.

“Wow! God has saved us! What a miracle! We’ve seen the hand of God at work!”

But when news of the pursuing Egyptian army comes, the tune changes.

“We have no army, no strategy, no plan. Moses, why did you ever take us out of Egypt?”

God delivered the people, miraculously, across the sea.

“Wow! God saved us! What a miracle! We’ve seen the hand of God at work!”

But three days later, just three days…there’s no water. Their immediate response:

“No water, no wells, no strategy, no plan. We were better off in Egypt! Moses, why did you ever take us out of Egypt?”

Enough of the God stuff. This is serious now, life and death. Who will save us?

The word through Isaiah says, “You are like rebellious children.”

There comes a time in most kids’ lives when it seems they are absolutely compelled to do the opposite of what their parents say. Certainly, that’s part of growing up. But sometimes it’s almost ludicrous, isn’t it? Sometimes it seems as though some kids would do the opposite of what their parents said, even if it wasn’t what they wanted! Harry Truman once said…

“I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.”

I don’t think Harry is up for any parenting awards.

My high school rebellion took the form of a haircut. Or rather, the absence of any haircuts at all. My dad sported a trim haircut, even a crew cut at times. In many ways, I wasn’t a rebellious kid at all. But when it came to hair, that’s where I drew the line in the sand.

In the mid-’70s, having long hair was the absolute coolest thing around. My long hair, being curly, took the form of a loose Afro. A bush, my folks would say. It got longer and longer, bushier and bushier. I never wanted to cut it.

In high school, I was listed at 6 foot 4 in the basketball program… because I easily had three inches of hair! I couldn’t pitch a baseball game without my hat falling off on most pitches.

My dad tried to reason with me. My mom said, “Dan, if you don’t cut that soon, some day you are going to look back at your pictures from high school and you are going to be embarrassed!”

Of course, she had no idea what she was talking about. It grew and grew. Now, when my kids look back at our old pictures…well, it’s embarrassing!

God says through Isaiah,

“You’re like a bunch of rebellious children. You’re determined to go your own way, no matter what the cost.”

But…you need to know the truth.

Somebody is called to come and speak the truth. That’s who Isaiah was to Israel…the truth-teller. The truth can be ignored. It can be twisted. Or it can strike deep within us, with conviction. But we need somebody to speak the truth… otherwise we end up saying,

“Enough of the God stuff. This is serious. We need to take things into our own hands.”

Week after week we keep running into the same thing. In Isaiah’s day, Israel kept looking anywhere but to God for its salvation. Kept looking to strategies and espionage and power plays. Kept pursuing “a-lliance instead of re-liance,” as one scholar said.

In the days that this passage is associated with, that alliance was going to be with Egypt. Egypt was the one. Egypt was the savior. Egypt would solve everything.

And so the King loaded up a caravan to go to Egypt to curry favor. Loaded up a caravan that had tributes and bribes, money, gifts, treasures, diplomats, camels, donkeys and sent them…back to Egypt.

How ironic, isn’t it? Some 700 years after the people who followed Moses had kept wanting to return to Egypt, to the very land God had rescued them from, how ironic that now, when things are tough…it is to Egypt that the King goes for help.

Enough with the God stuff. This is serious.

Isaiah looks at the caravan lined up, ready to go, and shakes his head. These are rebellious children indeed. The word is: “Egypt’s help is worthless and empty.” Not a a-lliance…re-liance. Trust in God. But these are rebellious children.

They say to their seers, “Do not see.”

They say to their prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right.”

They say, “Speak to us smooth things.”

The Reformer Martin Luther translated this last phrase as “Preach soft.” Tell us what we want to hear. Don’t bother us with the God stuff.

Preach soft. That would be an easy thing to do. There’s soft stuff all over the culture, all over the church. Stay off of concepts like sin; that’s old fashioned. Look for your own spirituality inside of you. Don’t let people burden you by calling you to any kind of standard for the way you live in relationships, marriages, sexuality, careers. If you find parts of the Bible you don’t agree with, there’s a way around them. Talk about grace, ignore judgment. Stay away from long words like accountability. Just be nice people. Jesus was a nice person, after all. Preach soft.

We need someone to tell us the truth. Tomorrow the schools and banks and post offices are closed to honor Martin Luther King Jr. I’m glad they are. King was a man with some of this calling to tell the truth. Over the years I’ve read a great deal by and about Martin Luther King Jr. The last few weeks, I’ve been reading a collection of the actual transcripts of some of his speeches. In fact, on Tuesday, our staff read together the eulogy that he gave at the funeral for the four little girls killed in the bombing of a church in Birmingham in 1963. Even 40 years later, it’s hard to even read it without getting teary.

He was a man who was many things:

• civil rights leader,

• amazing speaker,

• community organizer,

• pastor.

But he was also a truth teller. He told white America that it was a nation of hypocrites that could talk about civil rights, and then only extend them to some people. He told Christian America that it would grieve the heart of God to have brothers and sisters in Christ separated in every way by segregation and racism. He told black America that if the movement became violent or bitter or anti-white, then it was no better than what had been going on for centuries.

In Detroit in 1963, he said, in the way only he could,

“that (God) loves all of his children, and that all men are made in His image, and that figuratively speaking, every man from a bass black to a treble white is significant on God’s keyboard.”

He was a truth-teller. We’re still learning from it...I hope.So, what do we do…to keep from becoming people who say,

“Preach soft. Enough on the God stuff. This is real life”?

The first two things I thought of are amazingly simple. One is what we’re doing right now: We stay in the Scripture. The scripture, as truth handed down, keeps us honest.

You can’t read the Bible and throw out the miracles of Jesus. There’s nothing here about looking inside yourself for salvation; it comes from God. It’s not a book about self-improvement or positive thinking or warm feelings of acceptance. Salvation comes through knowing Jesus Christ. It’s not a feel good book. It identifies sin. It talks about judgment as well as grace. Its truth doesn’t change from year to year or generation to generation.

That’s why we do silly things like read this crusty old prophet, Isaiah. Not because it’s fun, or easy…but because he tells us the truth. He asks over and over:

“Are you honoring God Almighty, the Holy One of Israel? Are you serving him? Are you relying on him?”

You pick up this Bible and you don’t read about a bunch of super heroes. You read about a bunch of people who live, try, fail… and are found by God. To me, it’s one of the great evidences for the authenticity of scripture. If the early church had wanted to paint people or itself in the best light, it wouldn’t have put half of this stuff in here!

God’s very own people commit murder, have affairs, are weak leaders, practice idolatry, grow big egos, sin…and amazingly, in God’s provision in Jesus Christ, there is enough grace to cover it. It’s hard to read the Bible and say, “Enough with the God stuff.”

It’s why we preach through scripture. It’s why we always have Bible classes available. It’s why we encourage small groups to read the Bible. It’s why I sit down in the morning with my coffee and say,

“Lord, what are you saying to me today through the scripture?”

Some days it’s not what I want to hear. It’s often not what I want to do. But that doesn’t change it.

The other thing we do is to act like a community. As the community of Jesus Christ, as a community of grace and truth.

In the community, we can find others who will tell us the truth. Most of our culture is going to tell us what we want to hear, or tell us that whatever we want to think, do or say is okay. In the community of Christ there needs to be truth-telling and grace-giving. We’re not so good at either.

Let me ask you a question on truth-telling: Who is there in your life…that you could count on to tell you the truth? Seriously? If you were headed down the road for a bad choice, who would call you on it? Who is there who will say,

“Tell me how it is that God is telling you to move across the country? I don’t see that as being something from God.”

Who will say to you:

“You tell me you want to follow after Christ with all you’ve got, so how does misleading the shareholders in your company do that?”

Who would say to you,

“I love you. And God is calling you to honor Him and your fiancé by not sleeping with them.”

I know from asking this question, most of us would have to say, “No one.” There’s no one in our lives who will speak the truth, or who we invite to do so.

Who will ask the hard question? Who will call us to accountability?

You men who travel a lot. Who is there who will ask what you watch on TV at night on the road?

Who is there who is not only affirming of you, but who will also love you enough to ask hard questions? Do you have anyone? Anyone? We have to be intentional to get a relationship to that depth. I’ve seen it in action in some relationships here. There are a few home groups who have given each other the privilege, the right to ask those hard questions. It’s tough.

But what’s the alternative? Preach soft.

Enough with the God stuff.

Isaiah’s word comes. And there are three painful verses after the part we read that detail what will happen to those content to live how they want, to fix their own problems, who conclude that the very best option is going back to Egypt.

It’s disaster, it’s painful…like a pot breaking, like a wall collapsing, people will be broken. And yet, again, after the word of judgment comes another word…to the people who are already jumping, literally and figuratively into the caravan to go to Egypt:

“For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel;
In returning and rest you shall be saved;
In quietness and trust shall be your strength.”

Don’t go to Egypt. Return to your land, and turn back to God. Depend on Him.

The caravan is packed and loaded. Enough with the God stuff. This is serious business, we need to take care of ourselves.

The fact is, the caravan will always be parked out front and ready for us to hop on. But the word of God is ever before us as well:

“In returning and rest you shall be saved.”