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Week Of: November 1, 2009 Title: Your God is Too Small – The Presence of God Series: Systematic Theology – Part 5 Scripture: Psalms 139:1-10 1. Down through the ages people have tried to describe what they mean by God. As we well know God is a hard to conceptualize because He is so great and grant that we cannot wrap our minds around what and who He is.
2. Look at your handout for a few ways mankind has thought about God (reprinted at bottom of notes).
3. Theo is the Greek word for God. - theism is belief in a god. It sees the universe as coming from a single source-god. - atheism, of course, is no god. It is usually a faith that cannot grasp the reality of god. -monotheism is belief in one god.
- polytheism is the belief in many gods. These are concepts that most Jews, Christian, and Moslems are familiar with.
Terms we might not be familiar with are: -Deism- this comes from the Latin word for “God.” A deist believed that God created the world, but abandoned it once He created it. Most folks believe that Thomas Jefferson was a deist. - Pantheism is the belief that God is all and all is God. Hinduism and Buddhism are pantheism. - Panentheism is belief that God is in all things. 4. The Christian perspective is a Triune God that we believe to be monotheistic—just one God. However, He did not just simply create the world and then abandon it, but made it and dwells in it. We believe in the immanence of God in His creation. Meaning that He is very much a part of His creation, John 1:14 says that the “Word became flesh and dwells among us.”
5. Let me throw another fancy word at you. We believe that God is a part of lives like Luke says in Acts 17:28 “In Him we live and move and have our being” but we also believe in the transcendence of God. Meaning that God is separate and distinct from His creation. Isaiah 66: 1 says that “heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.” I Kings 8:27 says: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest Heaven cannot contain you.”
6. But how can something be with you, a part of you and yet separate and distinct from you? Maybe this might illustrate for you…a sponge is the universe and God is the water. The water is present everywhere in the sponge, but the water is still completely distinct from the sponge. God is with us, but yet He is distinct from us.
7. From a biblical perspective, the presence of God is thought to express itself in at least three ways. The first one is what we don’t want to experience. It is called punishment.
8. I personally believe that God doesn’t have to actively seek to punish us. Most of the time our own sinful attitudes and behaviors are our punishment and our demise. Sooner or later if the mercy and grace of God doesn’t spare us, we get what we deserve. It hurts, and becomes a very painful lesson in life.
9. But the Bible does speak of a punishing God that actively seeks out sinners to punish them. Amos 9: 1-4 says “Not one of them shall flee away, not one them shall escape. Though they dig into Sheol, from there shall my hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down. Though they hide themselves on the top of Mt. Carmel, from there I will search out and take them, and though they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them.”
10. A gentleman by the name of Herman Bavinck writes the following:
“When you wish to do something evil, you retire from the public into your house where no enemy may see you; from those places of your house which are open and visible to the eyes of men your remove yourself into your room; even in your room you fear witness from another quarter; you retire into your heart, there you mediate. (However God) is more inward than your heart. Wherever, therefore, you shall have fled, there He is. From yourself, whither will you flee? Will you not follow yourself wherever you shall flee? But since there is One more inward even than yourself, there is no place where may flee from God angry but God reconciled. There is no place at all whither you may flee. Will you flee from Him? Flee to Him.”
11. But this distinct and wonderful God who is a part of His creation is not just about punishment. In fact, punishment is the least important thing God does. God is a presence in His creation to sustain, guide, and keep it going as He wants it to go. The Bible says in Colossians 1: 17 “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” The writer of Hebrews also speaks of Christ as “upholding the universe by his word of power” (Hebrew 1:3).
12. You and I think that at times our world and our lives are flying apart, but without the presence of God our lives would be sheer chaos. You and I would be fragmented. Don’t ever say that things cannot be worse… because they can. Only by the presence and grace of God are things going as good as they are.
13. But God is not here just to keep things glued together or to operate as He wants them to—he is here to bless us. The writer of the Psalm says: “in your presence there is fullness of joy, in your right hand are pleasures for evermore” (Psalm 16:17).
14. Usually when the presence of God is mentioned in the Bible He is mentioned to bless. For example, 2 Corinthians 3:17says: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Romans 8: 9-10 says: “you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you…if Christ is in you…your spirits are alive.”
15. Remember God is distinct but yet richly a part of our existence, yet when the Bible mentions God’s presence in a positive way it is the power to bless and bring abundant life. Where God’s presence is there are abundant blessings. Why? Because He loves His people.
11/01/2009 Sermon Study Words (Handout)
-Theo is the Greek word for God. Theology is the study of God. -Theism is belief in a god. It sees the universe as coming from a single source-god. -Atheism is no god. It is a faith that cannot grasp the reality of god. -Monotheism is belief in one god. -Polytheism is the belief in many gods. These are concepts that most Jews, Christian, and Moslems are familiar with. -Deism- this comes from the Latin word for “God.” A deist believes God created the world, but abandoned it once it was created it. Most folks believe that Thomas Jefferson was a deist. -Pantheism is the belief that God is all and all is God. Hinduism and Buddhism are pantheism. -Panentheism is belief that God is in all things. -Immanence of God- Christian term -Transcendence of God- another Christian term
Week Of: November 8, 2009 Title: The Beauty of the Lord Series: Systematic Theology – Part 6 Scripture: Psalm 27:4; Exodus 20:4-6 1. Has it ever occurred to you how different and similar human beings and God might be? I know that the book of Genesis says that we are created in the image of God, but what does that mean? What kind of image are we talking about?
2. I really don’t believe that God looks like a human being.
One, human beings are physical and therefore limited to time and space, God is not.
Two, Jesus plainly states that God is Spirit (John 4:24), not limited to one place or the other.
3. What are some of the differences between human beings and God? Obviously, there are many:
►We are finite, God is infinite,
►we are limited by time and space He is not,
►we are flesh and blood He is not,
►we are limited in what we can do, and He is not,
►we are limited in our knowledge and wisdom, He is not,
►we are sinful and He is not,
►we are seen and heard with human eyes and ears, and He is not,
►we can be comprehended He cannot,
►we are selfish and self-centered, He is not.
4. In fact, we really know more of what God is not, than we know what He is. We know He is not like us, therefore, He is Holy. Holy just means different, out of the ordinary and not for ordinary use. God is Supremely Holy and we are not. You might say we are but He is not. Or He is not and we are. J
5. However, as Christians we are supposed to be as holy as we can be. In that sense, we are supposed to be different from everyone else. There is neat little verse in Hebrews that goes like this: “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be Holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.” The Holiness of God cries out for us to be holy just as He is Holy. But while God is Supremely Holy (as you guessed it), we are not.
6. But there are other ways we might be similar to God; one is His wisdom. Paul says in Romans 11:33 “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out.” The psalmist describes God’s works as having all been made in wisdom (Psalm 104:24). We humans sometimes act foolishly because we don’t have all the facts, while God acts wisely because He knows everything. We humans sometimes act foolishly without enough facts, simply because we are too foolish to care. God is never foolish and always acts wisely. He is Supreme Wisdom, while we can be only wise in the best of conditions and situations, partly because we don’t always have enough information and sometimes because we simply don’t care.
7. Ah! What about goodness! The psalmist says that: “the Lord is good” (Psalm 100:5). “O give thanks to the Lord for the Lord is good” (Psalm 106:1). Psalm 34:8, “O taste and see that the Lord is good!” But what is goodness? One theologian describes goodness as that which is worthy of approval. Therefore, according to Jesus and the psalmist, God is the ultimate standard of what is worthy of approval. God is the Supreme Good. We can only be good as we reflect the goodness of the Supreme Good. But God is Supremely Good.
8. But who decides what is good and therefore worthy of approval? God does! God decides what is right and it is called righteousness. God decides what is good and it’s called goodness. God and God’s word sets the standards for these two things and not us. When we decide what is right, it is called self-righteousness. When we decide what good it is a perversion of what God knows to be good.
9. Another thing is that the Bible tells us that God is the source of all the good in the world. “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).
10. Do you recall what the writer of Genesis says about everything that God created in Genesis 1? He created the light and called it good. He created dry ground and called it good. He created lights of the sky and called them good. Everything that God created He called good. Why? Because the only thing that the Supremely Good God can create or make is good.
11. God cannot create anything that is bad because he is Supremely Good.
12. Now stay with me! Either out of this goodness comes love or God’s unconditional love creates this goodness. It is which comes first, the chicken or the egg. I believe that God is supreme unconditional love and His goodness comes out this love.
13. But anyway, God’s mercy is God’s goodness and love toward those who are in distress! God’s grace is another attribute of God which is God’s goodness toward those who deserve only punishment.
14. God’s patience and His slowness toward anger is His goodness toward those who continue to sin when they know better.
15. On and on the attributes or the characteristics of grace, mercy, patience, justice, faithfulness, truthfulness, wisdom, order, peace, knowledge, perfection, and power flow out of God’s goodness and love.
16. Can you see the beauty of the Lord? You might say that God’s beauty is the sum total of all His wonderful desirable characteristics. These things and more is the beauty of the Lord.
17. So all these attributes of God (mercy, grace, love, goodness, patience, justice, faithfulness, truthfulness, wisdom, peace) all flow from God to His creation. And they gather most clearly in human beings – who are created and reflect supremely the character of God.
Week Of: November 15, 2009 Title: Series: Scripture: Notes not available for this sermon.
Week Of: November 22, 2009 Title: Returning To Thank Jesus Series: Thanksgiving 2009 Scripture: Luke 17:11-17 1. With all the sickness around, it is very easy to feel isolated from other people because we feel like we may get what they’ve got. H1N1 virus has had folks spooked because of the fear of getting sick, yet that fear is absolutely nothing compared to the fear that folks had during Jesus’ day of leprosy.
2. In the time of Jesus, a person suspected of leprosy was barred from Jerusalem and most walled communities. A leper could not come within 6 feet of anyone who did not have leprosy. If the wind was blowing from a person of leprosy toward a normal person the leper had to be over 400 feet from the normal person.
3. To make it worse, the religious community had nothing to do with a leper. If a leper so much as put his or her head into a religious person’s house, that house would be declared unclean and contaminated. Rabbis wouldn’t touch anything that an infected person so much as came close to much less touched. When lepers approached, most people would tuck tail and run because the disease was terrible.
4. Yet, in the Gospel of Matthew, an infected man came before Jesus and knelt saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean,” and Jesus touched and healed him.
5. In our scripture in Luke, the lepers stayed a distance, I am assuming over 400 feet, and yelled “Jesus, Master, have pity on us.” To which Jesus responded, “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” which they had to do in order to be declared clean and cured. The scripture says as they went they were cleansed. Only one (a Samaritan) came back and thanked Jesus for the healing and praise God.
6. Now the question that occurs to me is, were the other nine lepers ungrateful or were they just doing what Jesus told them to do by going to the priest? Another question might be, did the lone cleansed leper come back after he and the other nine went to the priest to be declared clean? I don’t know, Luke doesn’t tell us!
7. However, I do know that Jesus certainly gives us the impression that they were ungrateful, because He asked where were the other nine, and if this Samaritan foreigner was the only one who returned to give praise to God?
8. Jesus is telling us that we need to give thanks to God for what He has done or is doing in our lives. Giving thanks and praise to God is one of the fundamental attributes and privileges that any child of God can have. In fact, you show me a person who consistently refuses to find thanks in their hearts and I’ll…well, I just don’t see how they can be right with their maker! Do you? How could someone be a Christian and not be thankful, right?
9. Well, how do we know that we are thankful enough? I mean the other nine lepers could have been thankful, but they just weren’t thankful enough to go out of their way to come back to Jesus.
10. Sometimes we are thankful to God, but we just don’t go out of way to thank Him or to express how much we are thankful to Him. Have you ever forgotten to thank God for what he has done in your life? Haven’t you prayed earnestly that God would answer a certain prayer and then noticed that your level of thanksgiving wasn’t always up to your level of desperation in the asking? Before it was please, please, please help me….but then after He helps you the thanks is like a tip of the hat or a nod of the head to God.
11. Not too long ago, we purchased a new refrigerator and wanted to sell the old one on swap and shop or whatever it’s called. Anyway, we received a phone call from a lady that said they were desperate to get another one because their refrigerator was not even keeping her ice cream frozen. We told her the price and she asked us if we would come down some because they were strapped for money. I said we’d knock off $50, and she agreed to the price.
12. In the meantime, after thinking about it, we decided to just let her have it—free. So when they came to pick it up, Sharon told the lady she could have it for free, and she was so overwhelmed that she just kept thanking her and thanking her for the refrigerator. There was no doubt in our minds that she was thankful. You might say that her level of thanksgiving matched her level of need.
13. We just need to be sure that when God answers our prayers that our level of thanksgiving at least matches our level of need. We don’t ever want to take the goodness and graciousness of God for granted, do we?
14. And then, are you ever guilty of treating God like we sometimes do one another? For example, it is really easy to have this kind of attitude toward other people, which says I know you’ve been real good to me in the past and I appreciate that, but what have you done for me lately? Now I know that most people are not that obvious but isn’t that an attitude that some people have?
15. And don’t we have that with God, sometimes? Yes Lord you’ve been real good to me over the years but what have you done for me lately? I don’t know but it seems to me that we take the goodness of other people for granted and sometimes treat God the same.
16. But then, there are times that people are so good to you that it forms a bond of friendship and love that’s not based on what have you done for me lately, but that is based on who you are and who they are…and it becomes a lasting friendship of love and appreciation.
17. And I think that is the way it should be with God…. “Lord, you have been so good to me that if I had a thousand life-times on this ole earth I would not have enough time to express all that you’ve meant to me.’
18. So based on this bond of friendship and love you try to go around with thankfulness in your heart…not just on turkey day but every day of the year.
19. And this thankfulness turns into “adoration.” Adoration is the next level of thankfulness. It is love in the extreme in which we go beyond just loving someone, to worshiping them. We hold them in the highest regard and literally we sing their praises. It is something that we should reserve for our maker and our God alone. It is something in which we realize that the object of our adoration has given us all, and we are giving our all to Him. Adoration is beyond being thankful… it is worship, and that is more than just a once-a-year occurrence. It is a lifetime vocation.
Week Of: November 29, 2009 Title: The Glory of God Series: Systematic Theology – Part 12 Scripture: Psalm 19:1-4; Luke 2:8-9; 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 1. In Psalm 19, the Psalmist writes “the Heaven declares the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” I wonder what he would have written if he had the Hubble telescope to view the universe as we do today.
2. The Bible is very sure that God’s creation proclaims the beauty and the sheer glory of its Creator.
3. But what does glory mean? Well, sometimes glory means honor or an excellent reputation. For example, Isaiah 43:7 is speaking of Israel when He says, “Whom I created for my glory” or you might say “my honor.”
4. In another usage, glory means the bright light that surrounds God’s presence. Theologians theorize that “since God is spirit, and not created energy or matter, this visible light is not part of God’s being but something that was created.” Henceforth, the glory of God might be defined as the created brightness that surrounds God when he reveals Himself.
5. The glory of the Lord is the brilliance of the Lord when He reveals himself in creation whether in the heavens or upon the earth. Since it’s the beginning of the Christmas season, it is good to note that when the angel revealed itself to shepherds in the field “the glory of the Lord shone around them” and they were scared. The fear is always the fear of something small and little standing in the presence of something that the little cannot even begin to grasp.
6. In addition, a star according to Matthew was accompanying Jesus in Bethlehem and announcing His birth. Most babies today are announced by sending a simple birth announcement to family and friends—Jesus was announced by a blazing inferno of heat and light-a star. That is an amazing birth announcement.
7. John spiritualized the birth of Christ by saying: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but darkness has not understood it.”
8. We don’t know what Jesus looked like but the life of Jesus must have been a thing of beauty, John 1:14 says: “…we have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Grace here is the grace and beauty of someone who is wonderful to behold and watch (like a ballerina). In Jesus’ case someone who truly lived a beautiful existence.
9. Matthew, Mark, and Luke had an interesting experience in the life of Jesus; it is called the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-13). In it Jesus, James, Peter, and John take a hike up Mount Tabor. There Jesus was transfigured or changed so that He gave off a brilliant light. The light was to be a preview of His resurrected body, and again the glorious glory of God. It was a way of saying that Jesus was a bearer of the glorious light of God to men. And that Peter and James must witness to the fact.
10. Quite amazingly, God wants us to reflect this glory. In 2 Corinthians 3: 17-18 Paul writes “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveil faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, (a reference to Moses coming down from Mount Sinai after spending time with God. Moses who by the way had to cover his face because of the glory of God was all around him to keep from scarring the children of Israel to death) are being transformed into His likeness with ever increasing glory, which come from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
11. Though we do not find ourselves surrounded by visible light, unless we are on stage or something to that affect, when we are at our best, there is brightness, a splendor, or beauty about the manner of life of someone who deeply loves God.
12. But you say that’s ridiculous. Maybe, but have you ever seen a bride at her wedding glowing with joy? If fact, we would say that so-and-so was “simply radiating.” Maybe when we are at our best as Christians…maybe then we are radiating a light that comes from Christ.
13. It is as Paul who says in 2 Corinthians 4: 6, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
14. Now this might sound farfetched but just like the moon does not have any natural light of its own, we don’t have any of the glory of God of our own but we simply reflect the light of the “son.”
15. You may not understand nor agree with what I am trying to say this morning, but isn’t there something different about someone who is in love with God and simply tries to reflect the goodness of that lover.
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