In the beginning God.... Genesis 1:1
Many people today are re-thinking the whole concept of faith in
God. For the first time in many
generations those who want nothing to do with church outnumber those who
do. “Nones” (those who check religious
survey boxes “no preference”) are in the majority. Even among those who do check a preference,
or indicate they “belong” to a church, you would be hard-pressed to find more
than a third of them in church on a given Sunday.
A car’s transmission would never have existed without the excellence of
a human engineer putting it together; the Mona Lisa’s beauty never could have
shown from the canvas, except it first existed in the mind of a master
artist.
In just that way, the center of every original thought and deed of all
time and eternity is the One we call God. Man may be the crown of all creation, but he
is still the object of creation, and not the
Creator. For that you need God! As Psalms 14:1 tells us, it is only the fool who has said
in his heart, there is no God.
We do our best to prove to the unbeliever that God exists; but it is
largely unnecessary to convince
ANYONE. The Bible says in that the
reality of God is apparent to all people even as they behold the things of
nature.[2] In fact, the knowledge of God is inherent in
created beings. We KNOW He's real! And any nonsense about Him being dead,
asleep, or never was, is just THAT...NONSENSE!
A man asked another man about God; why do people say God is everywhere?
I don't see him anywhere.
With that the other man picked up a rock and clobbered him with it. Why
did you do that, asked the complainer, man
that hurts! The rock-wielder replied, you say you have pain in your head;
I don't SEE any pain. Show me your pain and I'll believe it exists! The
man made his point.
Without equivocation I say God exists! This morning I would simply like to start
with that, exactly where the Bible does, with the FACT that God…IS.
In our act of diligently seeking God this morning, three STATEMENTS
of REALITY about God....
Statement #1. God is Spirit
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship
in spirit and truth. John 4:24 (NRSVA)
In speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus revealed the great
truth that our God is not impressed with outward displays of
righteousness. He exists in a realm that
provides Him with access to the inner being of any man or woman.
Jesus saw the deep spiritual need of the woman, and he knows our needs
also. It is possible to please God only
when the inner person – that spirit within each of us – is in harmony with the
heart of a spiritual God.
Jesus told us in His earthly ministry that the only way to come to the
Father was through Him. And so that
tells us that it is only possible to worship God by accepting Jesus Christ as
Savior and Lord.
Statement #2. God is Personal
The personality of God is seen in the personal way God has dealt with mankind. From a bush that burned, and was not
consumed, God said to Moses, I Am. Reality and cognizant existence are personal
qualities. God weeps, loves, hates,
cares, creates, and feels loss.
There is one concept of God called pantheism. This says that God is in everything,
literally. He is in trees, grass,
oceans, porcupines...as a component part.
This robs God of personality, making him substance, or part of the
creation. God is personal, and He takes
a personal interest in His creation.
There are those who may still subscribe to the "hands-off"
type of God. This was popular in the
50's and early 60's. They picture God as
a creator who made the world like a craftsman makes a grandfather clock, winds
it up and lets it run by itself...no interference, man can take care of
himself.
But that's not the way it was when the children of
How different is the biblical view of God!
The LORD is
near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. Psalm
145:18
We are billions, and all of us are His creation, and He is a personal
God who loves us consciously. The world
was lost in sin and degradation, and the personal God who loved us came to our
rescue. God is spirit, personal, and....
Statement #3. God is Holy
The word holy means other, or different. Isaiah, in his vision (6:1-3), saw the
angels, the seraphim, and the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted
up...his train filling the temple.
And the angels cried Holy, holy,
holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. God is other, different
than we are.
There are several characteristics that describe God’s holiness:
In
His Holiness God is ETERNAL
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” Revelation 22:13
The Lord is
watching everywhere, keeping his eye on both the evil and the good. Proverbs 15:3
The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the
good. I used to think omniscient
was pronounced "MOM-niscient"!
She had eyes all over; she always knew what I was up to.
God is different, holy, He not only knows WHAT is going on all over, but
he knows the intents, the motives of our hearts. That has implications of judgment. If God knows all, it means that it will be a
day of fearful reckoning for those who have treated His holiness lightly.
Psalm 119:137 tells us that the Lord's judgments are upright and
righteous. The God who knows everything
that goes on will judge accordingly. Eternal, Omniscient, and…
In
His holiness, God is OMNIPRESENT
Jeremiah asks the question about God being everywhere all the time:
Can anyone hide from me in a secret place? Am I not everywhere in all the heavens and
earth? says the Lord. Jeremiah
23:24
Knowing that God is everywhere can be bad or good. It depends on your relationship with
Him. A person who has a daily fellowship
with God, and surrenders daily to do His will, has a desire to be constantly in
His presence, because that fellowship is sweet.
On the other hand, those who would rather God leave them alone, and stay
out of their business, have God's permission.
But someday that permission will end! Jesus predicted on that Day of
Judgment men and women who have avoided the presence of God in their life will
call and beg for the mountains to fall in on them to drive out the presence of
a holy and righteous God of judgment.
But there is the positive side of the omnipresence of God. It is found in the comforting of His Holy
Spirit. Jesus said we would be His body
here on earth; we would do the things that He did, and greater. When you consider the omnipresence of God you
find that His presence sometimes takes the form of human compassion and
ministry, initiated by heavenly means.
In Evanston, Ill, 16 ladies from a church arranged their schedules to
care for a lady named Martha, a 26-year-old with ALS (Lou Gehrig's
disease). They bathed her, fed her,
talked to her, prayed for her, and witnessed to her. She had not accepted Christ, but when she saw
His love, living in the lives of these women, the presence of a loving God
caused her to give her life to Jesus.
She was baptized and gave her testimony in her church before she died. Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipresent, and…
In
His holiness God is OMNIPOTENT
A Sunday School teacher was questioning her pupils after a lesson on
God's omnipotence. Now children, she asked, is there anything God can't do? The Pastor’s son thrust his hand into
the air. The teacher, feeling certain that he had missed the point of the
lesson, asked half-heartedly, well, just what IS it that God can't
do? Replied the boy: I
heard dad say yesterday that even God can't make EVERYBODY, at this church
happy![4]
Omnipotence means there is no power that originates anywhere but from
the throne of heaven. Perhaps, in the
age of nuclear power, space shuttles and power at our fingertips we may miss
the enormity of the power of God. How
big and powerful is YOUR God?
Our star, the sun, is 93 million miles away. Traveling at the speed of light (186,000
miles per second) it takes 8 minutes to get there! If we launched a rocket at that speed of
light, aimed at the nearest star past the sun, it wouldn't arrive at Proxima Centauri
until Thanksgiving of 2025. That's the closest
star!
The scientists tell us there are 8,000 stars we can see with the naked
eye. The Hale Telescope in Mt Palomar,
The nearest galaxy outside of our neighborhood is the "Megallanic
Cloud", about 130,000 light years away.
Those are two of the closest neighborhoods for us. Are you ready for this? The radio telescopes indicate there are over
800 million galaxies. THAT WE KNOW
OF!
The total amount of stars that computers have been able to record is one
quintillion (a 1, with 18 zeroes following).
It is no wonder the Psalmist asked, What is man that thou art
mindful of him? We are
incredibly minute, compared to this vast universe.
But how big is YOUR God? Isaiah
40:12 tells us that God measured out the heavens with the hollow of his hand.
Here is an application for you and me today. I believe in a God as big as the Bible has
described for us. I believe He is
Spirit, and personal, and that he is holy; God is the eternal, omniscient,
omnipresent, and omnipotent King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I also believe He is love!
And a God who is that big and powerful and loving is capable of
ð comforting me
when my loved one dies.
ð He is able to
meet my need when the mortgage comes due too early.
ð He is able to
take the worry I feel when governments threaten to blow us off the face of the
earth,
ð and 13 year
old children get pregnant.
ð He is more
than capable of holding His own when skeptics doubt His existence.
ð
And,
more!
If He can create a universe as wonderful as we live in, and hold it all
in the palm of his loving hand, He is able to keep you and me until the day of
judgment, and forever!
In the name of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen!
Our Prayer
Father, you
are the certain and central reality of the universe. Your power and grace are without
measure. In a world of turmoil and
uncertainty our God is a Rock and a Redeemer!
Grant us a
glimpse of You. As you did with Your
servant, Moses, when you had him hide in the cleft of the rock – allow us to
sense Your glory and power as you pass even now.
We are a
needy people. We ask for faith to
strengthen our belief in You, and our trust in Your providential care.
We ask so
that we may be people of faith, strong faith in a world that has lost
faith.
Do this, we pray, O Lord, that we may be strong instruments of peace and grace in Your Almighty, All-knowing, Ever-present hands.
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