Sermon for CATM: “Jesus, the Answer to Who God is Not!” – October 28, 2007
Last week Maryellen talked about what the Book of Hebrews reveals about Jesus Christ. That God is trustworthy, that God is serious, and that God is faithful.
Today we’re looking at the opposite in a sense: Jesus also reveals what God is not. “Who God is” is crucial for our understanding of the identity and nature of God. “Who God is Not” is important for our understanding of who we are.
So, what does the book of Hebrews suggest that God is not?
God is Not Me
First of all, we learn from the book of Hebrews that God is not me. I am not God. We are not God. In life there is always a danger of misunderstanding God or of drifting away from a right understanding of God, but also to start substituting things for God.
Other powers will hold sway in our lives if we let them. At our most deluded, we may be tempted to believe that famous bumper-sticker: “I used to be an atheist, then I realized I was God”. PPT: “I am God”
What does the Scripture say?
[Unannounced PPT] Heb 1:7 In speaking of the angels he says, "He makes his angels winds, his servants flames of fire."8 But about the Son he says, "Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. 10 He also says, "In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. 11 They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. 12 You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end."
The first thing I notice is that this Scripture doesn’t wax theological when it talks about Jesus. Poetry is the language of the heights and depths of human feeling, and this reads way more as poetry than anything else.
"He makes his angels winds, his servants flames of fire." Angels, as glorious as they are as messengers of the love and judgment of God, angels don’t hold a candle to our Jesus.
Human authorities have a shelf life. As imposing and influential as they can be in the good and bad sense (Think Martin Luther King Jr vs Hitler) they will all perish. The scope of their hopes and dreams however great, is limited by three things: human frailty, sin, and death.
Not so with Jesus.
8 But about the Son he says, "Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom.
Eternally present. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, will forever reign. You will know Him and love Him and worship Him for eternity in a heaven that will forever be filled with praise for our Creator.
Hebrews 1:10 He also says, "In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. 11 They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. 12 You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed.
Were you there in the beginning? Before anything that is was? Jesus, the same One that we love, the same One who lived and died among us and who rose from the dead…this same Jesus made the earth and sky.
In the end, the earth and sky as we know them will perish…they will be worn out like an old pair of jeans. Jesus will roll them up like a house robe. And they will be forever changed.
PPT: “Unleash the goddess within”
When I hear people talk about ‘finding the god” or “finding the goddess” within, I both laugh and cry at the same time, for the same reason…the idea of humans being divine is so ridiculous and demonstrates such a profound ignorance of God that you’d think they have to be kidding, right?
But you know what may be even more ironic? As Christians, we get that Jesus is Lord and that we are his people, his servants, his friends, his slaves even as the Scriptures say and that we are His body here on earth…the body of Christ.
But you know what? I don’t always behave as though Jesus is Lord. In my struggle with sin, if I’m honest, a big part of that is trying to wrestle control of my life way from God. To do my own thing. To be my own boss. That’s just a hop, skip and a jump away from trying to be my own god.
So what’s worse, believing and asserting in sheer ignorance that I’m divine, or believing in my head and heart that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father, and yet behaving like I’m in charge. Jesus said “If you love me, you will obey what I command”. John 14:15 These are hard questions to consider, I realize.
John Wimber said: “Obedience deepens our intimacy with Jesus. If we want to know the Father, we must not only love Him, but also obey Him”.
What else does the book of Hebrews suggest that God is not?
God is not me, but He is also not far away: God is Not Far Away: God is Near
Meister Eckhart was a Christian philosopher. He said: “I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely. I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and the presence of God”.
Hebrews says something kind of weird: “Heb 2:10 In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering”.
We might ask, if God is near, just how close has he come? The answer is this: “Close enough to suffer”. In our worship we mostly focus on the risen Jesus, the glorious and majestic Jesus who triumphed over suffering, over the cross and over death.
That’s not wrong, but there’s something we need to be reminded of again and again. Our Catholic brothers and sisters are sometimes criticized by protestants for not leaving the cross empty…the Catholic crucifix shows Jesus in the midst of His Great Suffering.
But you see, before He rose from the dead. Before He triumphed…He suffered. And although He was fully God and fully human, Jesus was made perfect: he gained the human experience of suffering necessary to be perfectly equipped for His office as High Priest. This is heavy duty: God suffered!
Henri Nouwen, a priest and a Catholic brother in Christ who was a great friend and mentor to many of us here at the mission until his death in 1997 said this: “We fail to see the place of suffering in the broader scheme of things.
“We fail to see that suffering is an inevitable dimension of life. Because we have lost perspective, we fail to see that unless one is willing to accept suffering properly, he or she is really refusing to continue in the quest for maturity. To refuse suffering is to refuse personal growth”.
Why? Why did God chose to suffer? Isn’t that very notion kind of offensive? Wasn’t He above all that?
Wasn’t He situated in heaven, insulated from the agonies and disappointments and misunderstandings of being on this earth? (I’d have stayed there for sure!)
Didn’t He create everything and have every possible power and tool available to Him to keep Him far, far away from my suffering? Isn’t He the high and lofty One, seated on the Throne of Power and ultimate authority?
Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.
Unannounced PPT’s: Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin.
He 2:18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
But now, He knows. He knows from the inside out. Every last and darkest struggle that you have, he understands. This year when my brother died of cancer and my son’s kidneys stopped working so he ended up in hospital for five weeks…and my dad developed bladder cancer and my mother developed more skin cancer and my sister’s car was totalled by a man with a car full of unseatbelted children and infants who decided to run a red light…when all this happened within six months…He knew.
He knows, and with all His knowledge and companionship He’s walked with me through every hardship. He waited patiently for me when I screamed at Him for the injustice of it all. And understanding that He knows, and loves, and knowingly shakes His head as One so terribly, personally familiar with the human condition…you know…it makes a huge difference. That Jesus…knows.
But what makes the biggest difference is that He is near. And His nearness brings us back from the brink. Warren W. Wiersbe is a pastor and author who said: “When you and I hurt deeply, what we really need is not an explanation from God but a revelation of God.
“We need to see how great God is; we need to recover our lost perspective on life. Things get out of proportion when we are suffering, and it takes a vision of something bigger than ourselves to get life’s dimensions adjusted again”.
God came close enough to suffer. He is close enough to you to understand all of your past and present suffering. He is close enough to fill our suffering with His presence and to thereby greatly relieve our suffering.
But our suffering is not the final word, just as Jesus’ own suffering and the shedding of His precious blood was not the final word. His suffering was for a purpose.
Unannounced PPT Hebrews 9:14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
He suffered that we might be free, and that we might be free to serve the living God.
Pause
We’ve talked about what Hebrews reveals that God is not: God is not us, yet He is not far away from us at all.
What do you think might be the most important thing that the Book of Hebrews shows us about what God is?
He is Worthy of Our Worship
Worship is simply loving God. Coming to Him on His terms, coming to Him through Jesus Christ, coming to Him corporately on Sundays and coming to Him daily on our own simply to bask in His goodness and love.
Thomas Kelly, an American Quaker missionary, said this:
“There is an experience of the love of God which, when it comes upon us, and enfolds us, and bathes us, and warms us, is so utterly new that we can hardly identify it with the old phrase, God is love. Can this be the love of God, this burning, tender, wooing, wounding pain of love that pierces the marrow of my bones and burns out old loves and ambitions - God experienced is a vast surprise”.
Worshiping God is not boring. Not in the slightest. Worship services can be boring. Especially when we substitute encountering God on His terms with our own formulas, with the rituals that make us feel comfortable and safe.
About four years ago we actually stopped holding worship “services” here at CATM. If you were here you may or may not have noticed that something changed back then. I was convicted in my spirit that we were selling ourselves short by locking into the same patterns week after week.
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Focussing on good worship music and kind of going through the motions. I remember telling Kerry: “I have lost all interest in holding worship services. God is calling us to something richer and deeper”.
Kerry told me to run with it. I had no idea how to run with it. Then God sent Maryellen to us, and that’s when things from my perspective started to change. God gives vision and then He sends the people who will work with Him to fulfill that vision.
You see, worship means being honest with God. It means coming to Him wanting something real. Wanting something authentic.
Look around you for a second. This may be surprising, but you are not in a service.
You are in an encounter with the living God. You are gathered with the living Body of Christ here in this place and in the midst of an intimate meeting with God, an interlude with the Lover of our Souls!
God is here. You are not even remotely alone. And most of what’s happening here is not visible to us. Not because of my words…perhaps in spite of them…God is reaching in, calling you and calling me to something that transcends this moment and yet places us firmly in this moment and in this holy space.
God wants to break in and He wants us to experience His love. He wants, right now, to enfold you, to embrace you, to warm you, to call your name tenderly.
He wants you to see Him for Who He Is in Jesus…The radiance of God’s glory, the Heir of All Things, Creator and Sustainer, Merciful and Faithful High Priest, Crowned with glory and honour.
But also Intimate Friend. Lover of your soul. Brother. The One who speaks to you, who calls you to recognize yourself as one who is beloved.
I quote Henri Nouwen one last time when he said: “The spiritual life is a life in which you gradually learn to listen to a voice that says something else, that says, "You are the beloved and on you my favour rests."... I want you to hear that voice.
“It is not a very loud voice because it is an intimate voice. It comes from a very deep place. It is soft and gentle. I want you to gradually hear that voice. We both have to hear that voice and to claim for ourselves that that voice speaks the truth, our truth.
It tells us who we are. That is where the spiritual life starts - by claiming the voice that calls us the beloved”.
The Book of Hebrews show us that God is not us. We are not God. God is very, very near to us. God is worthy of all our worship. All our love.
Let’s pray. God, thank you so much that You are near to us. That You reveal Jesus to us and You save us from our delusions. Thank you that in Jesus Christ you draw near to us. Holy God, we worship You. We love You. We give you our lives afresh today. Cleanse us and heal us, and make us wholly Yours. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
