10/6/24 “Why Me, Lord?”
“Why Me, Lord?”
Isaiah 6:1-8
Last week, the world said goodbye to a beloved singer-songwriter by the name of Kris Kristofferson.
Kristofferson was a talented singer – but many would say that his true genius was that of of songwriting.
A few of his songs are probably familiar to you…songs such as “Me and Bobby McGee”, “For the Good Times”, Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”, and “Help Me Make it Through the Night”…among many others.
But In March of 1973, Kris Kristofferson released a song titled: “Why Me, Lord”
It was written after Kristofferson, on a whim, decided to attend a church service with a friend one Sunday morning in Nashville, TN.
Later - In an interview with Ralph Emery - he mentioned that at the end of the service, he felt convicted to go forward and accept Jesus Christ as Lord & Savior of his life.
The song, “Why Me, Lord” was a musical manifestation of that moment of spiritual surrender.
Now…. I don’t know enough about Mr. Kristofferson’s life after 1973 to know whether or not his conversion experience turned out to be genuine – but I do know that the song ‘Why Me, Lord’ has touched millions of people.
It’s a song that reminds us all that we are completely dependent upon Jesus Christ for the salvation of our souls…
and that God’s patience with sinful man – and His perfect Will – are beyond our comprehension.
I got to thinking about the phrase, ‘Why me, Lord’….and the various meanings those 3 simple words can convey – all depending upon the heart attitude of the person saying or thinking them.
For example, one can feel like saying ‘Why Me, Lord’ when going through a difficult situation or season in life.
When things aren’t going the way we want them to, isn’t it tempting to think…. or to audibly cry out ‘Why me, Lord’?
Lord, why did I receive that bad health diagnosis?
Lord, why did I get laid off unexpectantly at work?
Lord, why do my children cause me so much anxiety?
Lord, why is my boss always yelling at me?
Lord, why did I have to hit that deer?
Lord, Why do I have to endure another post-season series loss from the Milwaukee Brewers?!?
….WHY ME, LORD !!!
The phrase ‘Why me, Lord” in this particular context of enduring trials in life generally conveys an attitude of self-pity – a woe-is-me mentality to some degree.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are those moments of deep pain in our lives when asking God why He has allowed something tragic to happen is completely understandable – and completely expected.
Take Job, for instance.
In the course of just one day, Job suffers the loss of all of his children and all of his material possessions.
Shortly after that, he loses his own health to a skin disease that caused painful, itching sores throughout his entire body.
The 3rd chapter of the book of Job has him asking these three words “Why Me, Lord”?
In verse 11 (Job 3:11) Job says “Why did I not perish at birth?”
In verse 16 (Job 3:16) Job laments, “Why was I not hidden in the ground like a stillborn child.”
Job is so distraught that he questions why God even allowed him to live beyond infancy….
Job utters these words at the end of chapter 3: “For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.” (Job 3:24-26)
Perhaps you have experienced a similar kind of grief at some point in your life…and you’ve asked God: “Why Me, Lord.”
There are those tragic moments of grief in our lives when – like Job – we cry out to God in anguish.
…and God understands our hearts in those times of deep grief – and He provides comfort to His children in those times of deep distress.
That is the work of the Holy Spirit…to provide comfort – and even joy – in seasons of deep emotional or physical pain.
But unfortunately, many of us cry ‘Why Me, Lord’ over things that don’t even come close to the hardships that Job dealt with.
One of the problems is that we live in a culture where we are so used to getting most everything we want – when we want it…
….that when the tiniest things don’t go according to our plan…we complain to God.
…When the power goes out from a storm during the Packer game, we cry out: “Why Me, Lord!”
…When we’re at the stoplight in Reedsburg by Casey’s and the oncoming cars are given the green light but we’re still sitting on red – “Why Me, Lord!”
…When your spouse eats your leftovers from your favorite restaurant that you were dreaming about eating all day at work: “Why me, Lord!”
…since I work a lot from home, Lisa may or may not have experience with this particular frustration…I don’t think she complains to God about it though when it happens! 😊
You get the point.
My wife would also say that these are “First World Problems”…
In other words, there are people living in desperately poor parts of this world who have never even seen a restaurant…much less had leftovers from one.
There are moments when it’s appropriate to genuinely ask God why certain things are happening in your life….
and then there are those moments when it is completely inappropriate, petty, and selfish.
So, the next time the barista doesn’t get your soy mocha latte just right, try to resist the temptation to over-dramatize the situation….
…Just be grateful that God has blessed you with a stable job that affords you the opportunity to afford a soy mocha latte in the first place…even if they did forget the smiley-face whipped cream on top.
The other situation when the idea of “Why me, Lord” is sometimes used is in response to God’s call to serve Him in some sort of ministerial capacity.
This doesn’t mean just professional ministry, either.
All believers are called to engage in some sort of ministerial effort…
Maybe its attending a Bible Study…or volunteering at Potter’s Meal…or speaking to your neighbor about your faith…or singing in the praise team…or taking a meal to a shut-in…etc, etc.
Your response to the Holy Spirit’s promptings can either be a positive response of obedience…or a negative response of disobedience.
One of those positive responses is exemplified by Isaiah in our passage for today when God calls him to a specific task – we’ll get to that one a minute.
But the Bible also has a few negative examples of people resisting God’s call to action…
The people who come to my mind right away are Moses and Jonah.
Although Moses eventually did leave his home to carry out God’s plan of delivering the Israelites – at first – he didn’t want to go.
In Exodus 3:10 God says to Moses: “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharoah to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
And in the very next verse, verse 11 (Exodus 3:11) we read: “But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I, that I should go to Pharoah and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’”
In other words, why me, Lord?...there must be better candidates out there for this job.
Later in their conversation, Moses says in chapter 4 (Exodus 4:10) “…O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
Again…”Why me, Lord?”
You’ve obviously got the wrong guy for the job.
Yeah, my brother’s a good talker – send him.
Don’t we sometimes have the same kind of attitude toward certain opportunities for ministry?
Why me, Lord?...so & so is much more talented in this area than I am…they should be serving you in this way, not me!
Unfortunately, when we display this kind of attitude, 4 things become evident:
1) We don’t trust that God will give us the needed resources to do the job.
2) We miss out on the blessing of being able to serve our savior
3) We show our apathy and lack of love toward God and others by not responding in obedience.
4) We miss out on the opportunity to display Jesus to others around us when we don’t step forward in doing His will.
Jonah – remember him? – he had an even more negative response when commissioned by the Lord to carry out a specific task.
God commissions Jonah in verse 2 of Jonah chapter 1 (Jonah 1:2) “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
Then – in the very next verse - we see how Jonah responded to God’s commissioning him (Jonah 1:3) “But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish…”
In Sunday School, we just started studying Jonah and we learned that the Spanish city of Tarshish was the furthest-most point in the known world from where God wanted him to go.
It’s like Jonah wanted to upstage Moses in the realm of disobedience - and instead of just standing there giving excuses to God (As Moses did)
….he just got up and literally ran in the opposite direction…intending to go to the edge of the known world!
Do we do that sometimes?
When God lays on your heart to talk to a specific person about Jesus…do you sometimes feel like running the other way?
When you sense that prompting of the Holy Spirit to visit someone who is ill or grieving, do you intentionally find something else to ‘stay busy’ at…you know, just so you can have a manufactured excuse to tell your conscience….or others.
…the lawn needs mowing, after all.
…the bedroom really needed a fresh coat of paint…
…my grieving friend will just have to wait until I’m less busy to converse with them.
Folks, let’s be very careful about listening to – and obeying - God when He places some task upon our heart.
When we don’t obey in this way – it results in sin…these are called “Sins of Omission”…
These are times in which God calls us to do something, but we intentionally disobey him by NOT acting in accordance with His will for us.
So, the next time God wants you to do something for Him…do it!
This is what we see happening in our passage for today from the book of Isaiah.
This famous passage describes the way in which God commissioned Isaiah to deliver a prophetic message of warning to the Israelites living in the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
It begins in verse 1 (Isaiah 6:1) where we read that Isaiah has a vision of the Lord seated on His throne – with the train of His robe filling the entire temple.
Isaiah also sees angels called ‘Seraphs’ who had 6 wings and were flying around God’s throne…
Verse 3 (Isaiah 6:3) says they were calling out to each other “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord Almighty…the whole earth is full of His glory.”
The place begins to quake and it fills with smoke…
At this, Isaiah is completely shaken himself…
…shaken enough that he almost involuntarily speaks these words in verse 5 (Isaiah 6:5) Woe to me! I cried. I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
In Old Testament times, it was widely understood that to see God with human eyes was a death sentence.
Exodus 33:20 says, “But, He said (God speaking to Moses) you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
Being familiar with the scriptures, Isaiah knew this…and he believed these words…
And his fearful reaction indicates that he took his faith seriously.
Verse 5 (Isaiah 6:5) also gives us a very important window into the heart condition of Isaiah when he says, “Woe to me!...I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips….”
The first thing that Isaiah thinks about when encountering God in this vison was his own sinfulness.
…his own unworthiness in the presence of the almighty.
Isaiah knew that he was a sinner…he didn’t try to hide it – or reason his way around it….
He was speaking the words that were being impressed upon his heart in the moment…
…words of humility…words of repentance…words of intense reverence toward God…words of complete and utter surrender and submission
This…THIS…is the positive, obedient way to utter the words “Why Me, Lord.”
Unlike Moses and Jonah, Isaiah truly understood his own depravity to the point that he truly believed that he was not worthy of the task to which God was commissioning him.
Moses was 80 years old when God called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, but he viewed the comfort and relatively stress-free job of herding sheep as a better gig…
Don’t we do that as well?...
Don’t we like to be comfortable and relatively stress-free – if we can help it.
I’ll admit, I like the sound of that.
There are times where I can really see where Moses was coming from when he said…’Why me, Lord’…there must be someone more qualified for the job.
Really – what is being said is - “I don’t want to do it…I like things just the way they’ve always been…I’m comfortable and happy…I don’t want change!
We can easily slip into that mindset of ambivalence and apathy if we aren’t careful…
That’s where Satan wants us…he wants us to be so content with the status quo in our lives that we will naturally resist God’s attempts to grow our faith by moving us out of our comfort zones…
This is where we really grow as believers.
During the Spring of 2016, the Holy Spirit just wouldn’t leave me alone about enrolling in Seminary for the Fall semester.
If I’m honest, my initial reaction was a bit like that of Moses.
“But, God, I’ve built up a successful business
….I’ve put in enough hours over the years to finally have a decent amount of free time with my family….
..But, God..I enjoy performing secular music at the lake every week…
…But God, I I don’t want to give all of this up…
…you must have someone else in mind.
…some young buck…not some old guy in his mid-40’s with an established career…not a guy who is…..very comfortable.
Well, God did have that old guy in mind….
and by the grace of God, I listened to Him that time…(there have been numerous times in my life when I simply haven’t obeyed God’s promptings…)
…and the Lord brought me here….and today in LaValle there will be an ordination service for a man who never imagined he’d be a pastor.
That’s the sort of thing God does if we have an Isaiah-like attitude.
…and, by the way, I love this job so much more than that of being a business owner…
…or any other job I’ve ever had, for that matter!
I’ve experienced more sheer joy getting to know all of you and being your pastor than I could ever have imagined…
But that’s how God works…when we choose to be obedient to Him, we don’t have to worry about being happy…or satisfied…or fulfilled…
All of those things are byproducts of obedience to God.
After Isaiah broke down in a spirit of confession and humility, an angel comes to him with a burning coal and presses it to Isaiah’s lips…
Ouch, right?...It’s a good thing this was a spiritual, not a physical, event!
Heat was (and still is) used to cleanse things…and did you notice where the coal touches Isaiah?....on the lips, right?
Why?....because Isaiah just confessed to being a man of unclean lips.
Isaiah’s speech had not been respectful to God…and here, God sends an angel to cleanse the area of his life that needed spiritual healing.
Isn’t that a beautiful picture of restoration and forgiveness?
What areas of your life need to be touched by a burning coal?
Are there areas in your life where are you experiencing consistent spiritual defeat…
maybe, like Isaiah, it’s your language…maybe its your attitude…maybe it’s an addiction…maybe it’s a lack of patience…maybe its anger…maybe it’s a lack of love for others…maybe its gossip…maybe its jealousy…etc, etc.
Isn’t it wonderful and encouraging to know that God can heal you of this demonic torment once and for all!
Like a hot coal on flesh, it may hurt for a little while…
but when you have been spiritually healed in this way, you are then able to fully understand the freedom from sin that is only found in Jesus Christ.
Finally, In verse 8 (Isaiah 6:8) Isaiah answers God’s question of who will He send to do His work….
Isaiah answers with an exuberant “Here am I. Send Me!”
Here am I. Send Me!
Let those words be the declaration and proclamation of your heart today.
If you find yourselves humbly saying the words, “Why me, Lord”….
Let the words “Here am I, send me” be the next words from your lips.
Remember, God never gives someone a task without also giving them the tools and resources needed to accomplish that task….(Believe me, I know!)
We serve a Holy God who is far above us in every conceivable way…
…yet He loves us dearly - and wants us to experience the joy of living in obedience to Him.
Won’t you do that today?
Let’s Pray.