Believe - Who Is God? - Week 1 Series

September 14, 2014

Believe - 1

Well, we are starting week 1 of Believe! I’m really excited about this series because it is going to take us deeper in what we believe, as well as challenging what and how we believe. This series is going to be good for those who have been in the faith for many years, because it will build and hopefully affirm what they believe and even take them a little deeper.

For those who are newer to faith, my hope is that Believe will help explain some aspects of Christianity to you and help you as well to go deeper in faith.

And for those who are on the fence, for those who don’t have faith in Jesus, my hope is that you will learn, and be challenged and Jesus will become real to you by the time we finish.

So, for the first week, my assignment is to tell you all I know about God. Whew! That’s not an easy assignment. It’s so big and so vast and where do you even start. Well, when you’re telling a story the best place to start is in the beginning. So, hunker down, get comfortable . . . and today, I’m going to take you from Genesis to Revelation. Actually, I’m not, but I am starting with Genesis to get us going.

The Bible begins with God and ends with God. There is never a doubt in the Bible regarding the question of God’s existence. It’s just an assumed fact! Think about the very first verse of the Bible, we read, 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1) it’s a given that God created the heavens and the earth. There’s no question about it. The writers didn’t think or write, ‘if there is a god, he must be the one who created the world.’

John wrote in John 1, 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.”

There was not a question or hint of a question regarding God’s existence. I am not here to prove God exists, or as some would say, God was created, or Jesus was created. I’m here to say as John later wrote in Revelation 1 about God, 4 Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come. I love that. So, John is reminding us that God was and is and is to come. In other words, God was present in the past, is present now, and will be present in the future. Not a thought about whether God has ever existed or not. God is alive. Or as the Newsboys sing, and we’ll hear it at a later date too, God’s Not Dead!

The big question we all need to answer is “Who is my God?” What do I believe in? Who do I worship? Remember the people from the world of the Old Testament believed in many different gods, yet, we don’t hear them calling the ACLU complaining about someone worshiping God. There was a general belief in a god, the question was, which god?

Today, we still have many gods, but now we have a greater influence of those who say there is no god, and we must pay more attention to them. Still, the number of people in the USA who believe in God still hovers around 90%. That’s still a huge number, but what we find is that so many people believe in whatever construct of a god they want to believe in.

Some will believe in the god of football.

If there’s a game, that comes first.

If the weather’s nice, that comes first.

If they stayed up too late, sleep comes first.

If they can get away for the weekend, that comes first.

If they can make an excuse for anything, that comes first.

Do you see the pattern? Maybe that describes you. It’s not to step on your toes too hard. A little is good. We fall prey to many different gods. And that’s just to avoid worship. There are the other gods we worship on a daily basis, like power, control, greed, possessions, anger, jealousy, and that list goes on and on.

So, today and over the next weeks, we are looking at what we believe in. And not just a basic course in theology, but then we have to answer the question . . . and it’s the weekly question I have to ask myself as I prepare my messages . . . SO WHAT? So what? What’s the big deal about what I say? What can you take away with you. That’s the SO WHAT! If you can’t answer that, then either you slept, or I failed. That’s pretty black and white, but you need to walk away from here with something concrete.