Video: What does God look like

The Big Ten: Idol Chatter

Video: What does God look like?

There are lots of different ideas out there about what God looks like, aren’t there? Lots of the paintings that you see are of God as an old, white man with a beard, but if you look to see who has painted those pictures, they’ve mostly been painted by old, white men with beards.

The truth is we really have no clue what God looks like, do we? We’ve got not clue. It would be nice if we could find some clue as to how he looks, like if he would send a Christmas card with his picture in it or something, but we have no idea what God looks like. We don’t really know.

The second commandment was read for us earlier, and the crux of it was, You shall not make for yourself an idol, or some translations say, you shall not make any graven image. Basically, don’t make any idols. Now that may seem easy enough, but the Hebrews had some trouble with this. Because like we talked about last week, while Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments and the other laws, that was just what the Hebrews were doing, making idols. They told Aaron, Moses’ brother, “Make some gods for us. Moses has been on the mountain a long time, he might be dead, we’ve got to move on, but we need some gods to go ahead of us.” So Aaron takes all of their gold and melts it down and molds it into the image of a bull, which was a common image of a god in those days as a sign of fertility and strength. And Aaron says, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And he builds an altar in front of it and says, “Tomorrow will be a festival to the Lord.”

Do you notice what’s going on here? Aaron didn’t make a whole new god, he made the bull as the image of God, of Yahweh. It wasn’t that the people had a problem with God, they just wanted to be able to see him. So they made him into the image of a bull.

What do you think God thought when he saw they thought he looked like a bull? “A bull? Seriously? You think your God who has saved you from the Egyptians is a walking hamburger?” But the people felt like they needed an image, an idol, something they could see and touch. This invisible God they couldn’t experience with any of their five senses just wasn’t cutting it. Never mind that he talked to Moses. Never mind that he brought manna. Never mind all the plagues he brought on the Egyptians. They wanted to see and touch him. Yahweh, their God, was the only god in the region you couldn’t see and touch, and it was strange to them.

There’s another story told in the Apocrypha, which is a collection of writings found in Catholic scriptures. They aren’t really viewed as “scripture,” but more like extra writings. And some of them are really weird, but some are pretty historical. Well one of these writings is called Bel and the Dragon, and it is only one chapter long, but in it is another story about Daniel, the same as the guy in the book of Daniel. And in this story Daniel is friends with King Cyrus in Babylon, and the Babylonians had this idol named Bel that they worshipped. They would take twelve bushels of four, forty sheep, and 300 gallons of wine to it every day. And they king worshipped this idol but Daniel wouldn’t. And king Cyrus asked Daniel why he wouldn’t worship Bel, and Daniel replied, “Because I only worship the living God.” The king said, “Bel is a living god, look how much he eats every day.” Daniel said, “Watch this.” And after everyone brought in their offerings, he scattered ashes on the floor around the altar of Bel, and in the morning, the food was gone, but in the ashes were the footprints of the priests, who had come in and takes the offerings for themselves.

Then there was this dragon, or some sort of big lizard in the region and the king said to Daniel, “You can’t deny that this is a living god.” Daniel said, “With your permission, I can kill this dragon without a sword or club.” And he took some tar, fat, and hair and made cakes out of it, fed it to the dragon, and it burst open and died. And Daniel said, “See what you have been worshipping!”

Weird story, yes, but it shows just to what lengths people went to so that they could see and feel their gods. And invisible God is hard to worship. Our God really hasn’t given us an image of what he looks like.

Now, we have some clues in scripture. Genesis 1:26 and 27 says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…so God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” So somehow, in some way, we must at least kind of resemble God. And the scriptures also tell us that God has some humanlike features, when it says things like in the Psalms 33 when it talks about the eye of the Lord, Psalm 44 asks why God is hiding his face, and Psalm 48 talks about God’s mighty right hand. So he seems to be somewhat humanlike, right?

But obviously no two people are exactly the same, we are very diverse and unique, so what kind of person does God look like? And how could you ever make an image that would do justice to his obvious beauty and majesty and glory and power? It seems like no matter how great of a portrayal of God’s image would be made, it would never come close to matching how awesome he really is.

Maybe the closest picture we have of what God looks like was in Jesus himself, God in flesh. But since we don’t really know what Jesus looks like either, that doesn’t really help us a whole lot today. Scripture never gives us a real clear view of what Jesus physically looked like, but we have this picture of a white guy with blond hair and blue eyes and a beard, most of which were painted by white guys with blond hair, blue eyes, and beards.

But it is through Jesus that perhaps we can gain a little more insight into this whole idea of the image of God. In John chapter 14, one of the disciples named Philip says, “Lord, show us the father, and we will be satisfied.” They still had this need to see and touch their God. This faith in an invisible God was hard. But Jesus had said to them in John chapter 10, “I and the Father are one.” So there was something about Jesus that maybe was even more God-like, more telling about what God looks like and feels like.

And then we get the great story at the end of the book of John, after Jesus had risen from the dead, and he appears to Thomas and says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” And at that moment, Thomas believes, and he says, “My Lord and my God!” But Jesus said to him, “Have you believed…because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Could that be it? Could that be what the second commandment is all about? Could it be that God wants us to believe in Him not because we have a little statue of him that we can hold and see and touch, but because of the wonders that he has done?

If you go back to the Hebrews, and their need for an idol, a need to see the God that had delivered them from the Egyptians, I think it is a perfect example. They had been witnesses to some of God’s most impressive miracles. Plagues of frogs and gnats and water turning into blood, and boils and all sorts of rotten things, even the death of all of the firstborn Egyptian sons, while the Hebrews were passed over. And then, as they left, he parted the Red Sea for them to walk through. And when they had no food, he provided manna. And when they had no water, he provided water. But then they get out in the desert and Moses leaves to go talk to God, and the people start grumbling, and their doubts flair up. And they start questioning whether this God really exists. They can’t see him. They can’t touch him. How do they know that he is there?

And I’m reading this story and I just want to scream at them, “What is wrong with you people?! Have you already forgotten what God has done for you? Did you forget how he parted the Red Sea? Did you forget the manna you ate this morning? Did you forget the plagues he sent on the Egyptians so Pharaoh would let you go? How can you question whether this God exists?! Look what he has done! Look what he is doing!”

But their faith is so weak. They are human. They are temporal. They need to be able to see and touch and feel. Don’t we do this today? People say, “I can’t feel God. I can’t see God. I can’t touch God. So how do I know He exists.” And we think, how much easier would it be for us if God would just show up? Send us a post card. Make a guest appearance. Sometimes, it makes it really hard to believe. And we think, I’m just not sure I can buy all of this.

And I wonder if God is looking down on us thinking, “What is wrong with you people?! Have you already forgotten what I have done for you? Have you forgotten how I ordered this world for you? Have you forgotten that I made all of this for you? Have you forgotten how I have richly blessed your life?”

I don’t know, maybe that’s what the second commandment is all about. Don’t worship idols, don’t make an engraved image of any God, not even our God, because not only would the image never do justice to the true beauty and majesty of our God, but because God has purposefully hidden his image from us so that his wonders can shine through. Maybe another way to say it is, God doesn’t want us to worship him just because he is beautiful. He wants us to worship him because of what he has done for us. I’m sure his beauty and his glory would be enough to turn any hardened heart towards him by themselves. But God is not about vanity, God is about love.

So maybe we’re going about answering the question, “What does God look like?” the wrong way. Maybe…maybe God looks like…mercy. Maybe God looks like hope. Maybe God looks like love.

Maybe instead of asking, “What does God look like,” we should ask, “Where have you seen God?” I see God in the random act of kindness from one stranger to another. I see God every time Adelyn laughs. I see God at sunrise and sunset. I see God when I watch my garden begin to grow. I see God when friends are healed through prayer. I see God when his people gather to praise him.

No idols. Why? Because God’s beauty goes far beyond anything we can create. His glory can’t be contained in some piece of stone. It’s everywhere, all around us. So maybe the next time someone says to you, “I wish I could just see God or touch Him, you know, then I would know, then I would believe” you can say back to them, “If you can’t see God, you’re not really looking.” God is here.

Pastor Dan Metzger

Van Buren United Methodist Church

Van Buren, Ohio