Incomparable!

To whom, then, will you compare God? To what image will you liken him? (Isaiah 40:18, NIV)

In Sunday's sermon, Pastor Sam noted that we live in a society that tends towards pluralism. We are expected to maintain a "level playing field" in which our God is deemed no higher than, say, Buddha or Krishna. There is a social pressure to submit not just to the concept of all gods being equal, but an added pressure to deify certain social systems and cultural expectations. In some regards, our lives today are not much different than the lives of the ancient Jews who were exiled to Babylon. And though we laud the accounts we read in the book of Daniel, particularly those where he and his three friends (Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah) stood boldly for the God of Israel, we must also remember that there were many more young men who acquiesced to the pressure and bowed in worship to false gods. When threatened with suffering, those unnamed men lost their boldness.

But what about us? When we are threatened, what do we say about the God we serve? Our pastor gave us a word to stand on: Our God is incomparably great. He cannot be put into a box with the other gods of this world. He cannot be equated to any earthly philosophies or systems. As we read in Isaiah 40:18, there is no comparison.

Pastor Sam said something else that I would like us to reflect on today: The God of the exiles is our God. We must abandon the notion that God is somehow less powerful if His people are found to be 'in exile'. Our sufferings do not diminish God's power. In fact, our periods of hardship are often moments in which the power of God breaks forth in ways no one could have imagined.

What is your response to exile? What is your response to suffering? I pray that our response will always be to worship our great God, and to recognize that He is incomparable.

"LORD God of Israel, there is no god like thee, in heaven above, or on earth beneath..." (First Kings 8:23a)