Sermon for CATM - January 6, 2019 - Essential Truths The Triune God: Intro-God is Spirit; a Consuming Fire
John 4:21-26; Hebrews 12:28-29
When you read the Bible, when you study the Bible, you learn about God and you learn about you. You learn surprising things about God that expand your heart and mind, and you learn some surprising things about you. How much God truly loves you.
How much your struggles are very similar to the struggles of others. How you are not alone in the world in your desire to do good, but also how you are not alone in your struggle to do the right thing all the time.
You learn from the Bible that life is generally very difficult. And you learn that all who want to live for God also live with struggle.
Today we begin a new series for a New Year. We will be looking at essential truths about the Christian faith over the next few months.
We’re doing this to go deeper. We’re doing this because truth matters, because God cares that we understand what He has revealed about Himself.
It’s part of being a disciple, growing in our interest in and our understanding of Who God is. As we learn more about Who our heavenly father is, we learn more about ourselves as His Church, about ourselves as His beloved children.
So you learn about God, and you learn about you as you study the Bible.
I hope this series, shared by a number of different preachers, Pastor Arleen, Pastor James, Pastor Jan, Hannah Kim, will be a blessing, and will help us to better understand who God is, but more importantly, that we will come to desire to worship with more passion and more commitment in your day-to-day life. And then to have more energy to share our faith with others.
So there are 2 passage we’ve heard read today. On that talks about God being a Spirit, and another that talks about God being a consuming fire. We’re going to spend some time looking at both of these truths.
God is a Spirit
What are you without your body? You are a spirit or a soul.
Who you are, all your characteristics, your personality, your likes and dislikes, those can’t be understood by looking at you.
Those things can only be learned by observation and conversation. Heart to heart discussion.
Our spirit is the core of who we are. It is the center of our volition and our emotions.
We also know that God is a spiritual being. To worship in spirit, then, is to do something that is beyond the physical.
As we think afresh about the Trinity, the triune nature of God, we’re aware that the Trinity is One and 3 in One.
God the Father
God the Son
God the Holy Spirit
The word Trinity comes from 2 other words. ‘Tri’ meaning 3, and ‘Unity’ meaning 1.
When we think about God, as Christians we think of God as Trinity. That’s because God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are presented in the Bible as God.
Yet God is One. This is a mystery on the one hand, but on the other it is a revealed mystery. The Bible presents, shows, reveals the Trinity in no uncertain terms.
There are metaphors that people sometimes use to try to describe the Triune nature of God.
They can be helpful, but they are limited in how well they describe the Trinity. All metaphors and similes about the Trinity are imperfect.
They are: the egg (shell, yoke, egg white), three components that make up a single whole.
H20: it appears as water,steam and ice. It’s all the same, just different forms of the same thing.
Another illustration would be the sun. From it we receive light, heat and radiation. 3 distinct aspects, but only one sun.
These are efforts to try to understand the nature of God, but no illustration will be perfect.
It needs to be understood that Christians don't believe in three Gods. That's an error called Tritheism.
Second, we don't believe that the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are three "forms" of God—like, steam, water and ice. That's the heresy or error called Modalism.
This says that in the OT God appeared as the Father, in the NT God appeared as Jesus, now God appears as the Holy Spirit.
Third, we don't believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are "parts" or "pieces" or God. That would imply that Jesus is 1/3rd God, the Father is 1/3rd God, and the Holy Spirit is 1/3rd God.
You and I live in a three-dimensional world. All physical objects have a certain height, width, and depth.
One person can look like someone else, or behave like someone else, or even sound like someone else.
But a person cannot actually be the same as another person. They are distinct individuals.
God, however, lives without the limitations of a three-dimensional universe. He is spirit. And he is infinitely more complex than we are.
That is why Jesus the Son can be different from the Father. And, yet the same.
The Bible clearly speaks of: God the Son, God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit. But emphasizes that there is only ONE God.
If we were to use math, it would not be, 1+1+1=3. It would be 1x1x1=1. God is a triune God.
But ultimately the best way to understand the Trinity is to simply see it in the text of the Bible.
That said, we thought that it would be a very good idea for us to explore in some depth the nature of the Godhead, the Trinity, God.
We will have different speakers talking about different aspects of the Godhead.
We will spend approximately one month talking about God the Father, another month approximately talking about God the Son, and another month, talking about God the Holy Spirit.
Our prayer is that we will grow together as we explore together.
In the John chapter 4 passage that was read, Jesus is having a conversation with a woman of Samaria.
It is an intentional conversation, and Jesus is connecting with her at a very profound level.
The woman is pointing out some differences between the Samaritans and the Jews. She is speaking what she knows, which is what her community has taught her.
And she’s talking about God being worshipped in Samaria at Mount Gerizim rather than as the Jews did at the temple in Jerusalem.
William Barclay said that “the Samaritans tended to adjust history to suit themselves.
They taught that it was on Mount Gerizim that some of the key events in the Torah (the 1st 5 books of the Bible) happened.
They tampered with the text of scripture and with history to glorify Mount Gerizim.
“The woman had been brought up to regard Mount Gerizim as the most sacred spot in the world and to despise Jerusalem.
“What was in her mind was this. She was saying to herself: "I am a sinner before God; I must offer to God an offering for my sin; ‘I must take that offering to the house of God to put myself right with him; where am I going to take it?"
“To her, as to all her contemporaries, those who lived when she lived, the only cure for sin was sacrifice. Her great problem was, where was that sacrifice to be made?
By this time she is not really arguing about where’s better to worship God: Temple on Mount Gerizim and the Temple on Mount Zion. All she wants to know is: Where can I find God?
“Jesus responds by saying something that she would have found surprising. Jesus says that WHERE you worship God isn’t going to matter.
Perhaps it mattered up to that point, before Jesus revealed the Father in His fullness. “Jesus says:
“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.’
“Jesus' answer was that the day of the old man-made rivalries was coming to an end; and the time was on the way when men would find God everywhere.
She did not need to offer sacrifice in some special place; true worship finds God in every place. True worship is not limited by location.
As a Spirit, God is not limited to a geographical location. With the coming of Christ, the separation between Jew and Gentile was no longer relevant, nor was it as important to go to the temple to worship.
God is not bound by anything physical. It’s declared by the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts that God doesn’t dwell in temples or churches made by human hands.
And God doesn’t care where we worship him. But God does care that we worship him in the spirit and in truth. True worship in which our souls can meet God.
The woman really wanted to know “Where can I find God?” And she’s asking this of Jesus. “Where can my soul meet God?”
The irony, that we won’t get into right now, is that she is standing with, conversing with, looking into the eyes of Who? God. God in the flesh. Just wanted to point that out.
Later on in the story she comes to realize this in part. She comes to understand, because of what Jesus shows her about her life, that Jesus is the Messiah.
That irony aside, the question behind her statements is one of yearning. It’s one of wanting to be at peace with God.
Her heart longs for God. Our hearts long for God. But there’s a big difference between this woman and you and I. If you are a follower of Jesus, you worship God in Jesus.
Your spirit, that part of you that is not in how you look, but is really what makes up who you truly are, is the part of you that worships God.
Your body is engaged in worship, but it’s your spirit that is drawn into the presence of God.
Worship is a whole- life response to the object of our worship. When we truly worship something, it affects the way we live.
Our attitudes and actions reflect that we believe the character and conduct of God to be worthy of praise and adoration.
And we worship God through singing, teaching, and tithing. And also in our daily lives through prayer, Scripture reading, acts of kindness, gratitude, pure thoughts-bringing our thoughts in submission to Jesus, and the like.
https://www.compellingtruth.org/true-worship-spirit-truth.html
And again, do you need to come to church to worship God? No. But it’s a very good place to be because what’s really happening here every Sunday is that we are coming together on purpose to unite our spirits in true worship of God Who is Spirit.
We need to do this. At all times the people of God have needed to do this.
One of the reasons we need to do this is that private spirituality very quickly, when it’s not connected to the body of Christ, starts to deviate.
And it starts to deviate so that our image of God starts to get distorted. And then what we offer God can become NOT true worship. Not offered in spirit AND in truth.
False worship is selective worship. It chooses what it wishes to know about God and omits the rest.
The Samaritans took as much of Scripture as they wished and paid no attention to the rest.
They believed the Torah but rejected the rest of the Old Testament.
So they rejected all the great messages of the prophets and the supreme devotion of the psalms. They had a truncated or ‘clipped’ religion because they had a truncated or ‘clipped’ Bible.
Of course no one person, outside of Jesus, can ever come to perfectly understand all truth.
But it is total truth that we must aim at, not the grasping of fragments that suit us and our viewpoints.
We come to church to worship in part because we need each other to help us to stay in the truth. God is Spirit, and if we want to worship God, we must do it in spirit and in truth.
God looks at the heart. God is Spirit and we worship Him in Spirit - from our inmost lives, and we do this with a commitment to the truth of God revealed to us in the Word of God, that is, Jesus, and the whole Bible.
Now the second point I mentioned is that we want to consider another aspect of God. At one point in my learning about God I latched on to the important truth that God is love.
And I went around thinking that the greatest self-definition of God is that He is love. The most important thing about God is that He is love.
And love is a big and warm and embracing idea. Perhaps the best word ever. So it’s fitting that God is love.
And that is lovely to think of, but, unfortunately, not complete. The “God is” statements in Scripture include, of course, that God is Love.
But the Bible also says that God is light. Pastor James Cheyne is going to be sharing on that topic next week. God is light.
God is the one Who exposes the darkness, Who illuminates, lights up understanding. God is the One who reveals by the very fact that He is light.
The book of Revelation even says that in the New Jerusalem in heaven God is the light of the city: Revelation 21:23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.
So we have, as the self-definitions of God, that God is love and we have God is light. That’s pretty great. What more do we need to know about how God understands Himself?
Well, the Bible says that God is a Consuming Fire: “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire.’” ?Hebrews? ?12:28-29? ?NIVUK?? ???
This is also found in Deuteronomy 4:24 and 9:3 where Moses is speaking to warn the Israelites against idolatry.
Because God is a ‘jealous God’, He will not share His glory with worthless things, worthless idols.
Idolatry provokes God to righteous anger which is justified when His holiness is disrespected.
In Deuteronomy 9:3, Moses again refers to God as a consuming (or devouring) fire who would go ahead of the Israelites into the Promised Land, destroying and subduing their enemies before them.
Here again we see God’s wrath against those who oppose Him depicted as fire that utterly consumes and destroys anything in His path.
This may surprise or shock you, if you are not familiar with the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. It appears to be much tougher language that Jesus uses, or that other authors of the New Testament use.
In fact, Jesus confronts religious leaders with a passion and with language that reflects some of the intensity that we find in the Old Testament.
So what do you and I do with the fact that the Bible says that God is a consuming fire, and that God is jealous. Jealousy is seen as a negative emotion, therefore how in the world can the Bible say that God is jealous?
To answer that is to come to a deeper understanding of the nature of the relationship that God has with the Church universal. What does the word ‘jealous’ mean?
In regard to relationships it means to be upset and angry because someone you love seems or is interested in another person.
Suppose there was a man in this church who was married. Had been married for a while to his wife who he loved.
Suppose then his wife had an affair or a string of affairs with other men.
Suppose again that that husband didn’t particularly care
when his wife went off with other men. Didn’t care that she formed emotional and sexual alliances with other men. What would you say about the quality of the husband’s love?
In truth, if that husband, or put the whole story in reverse and the man was having affairs, if that married person didn’t care,
was not jealous that their spouse was cheating on them, that would demonstrate that they did not, in fact, love their spouse as they ought to.
We would see that lack of care as a deficiency in the marriage. And we would see the one who is cheating as someone who has broken the vows of marriage, of matrimony. They have been unfaithful.
How does this relate to God being a jealous God, a consuming fire? It’s simply this: God is a covenant-making God. He promises to love, to protect, to be a covering over us.
His promises in this regard are everywhere in Scripture. Just to name one, Romans 8:38-39 says: “...Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God is a covenant making God who chooses to enter into a covenant of love with us. There is an entire book of the OT dedicated to this theme.
What’s that book? Hosea! It discusses God’s relationship with His people Israel who behave like an unfaithful spouse.
God enters into a covenant of love with us. That is one of the things that baptism signifies.
We tell people who come to us wanting to be baptised that baptism is like a marriage. It is a one-time absolute commitment to be in a profound and intimate relationship with God.
Some folks, when we say that are very clear that that is not what they want, and they lose interest in being baptised.
God makes a covenant with me and with you. He promises to love you and to never let anything on His part get in the way of His faithful love to you.
e loves you enough to be jealous for you. He doesn’t want you to waste your life on anything false.
Things like idols are false. Giving our heart’s allegiance to any other god. That’s idolatry.
In His mercy He takes us from those things, adopts is into His family, secures our footing in Him by giving us the Holy Spirit Who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance in Christ, our eternity with God in heaven, in the new earth and the new heaven.
He loves you enough to be jealous for you. He wants your worship singularly focussed on Him. That aligns us with what is true.
And that focusses our lives in the best possible way to live well and on purpose in the midst of the struggle that life is.
So God is a Spirit. God the Father has no body. He draws you by His Spirit to place all your trust in Jesus, and He confirms that covenant by the blood of Jesus, God the son, God in the flesh.
The sacrifice of Jesus is God’s ultimate proof of His love and His faithfulness to you and me.
And what does He want in return. The Bible says we love because He first loved us.
He wants your love.
He wants your heart’s devotion.
He wants what is fitting - your worship - Because he is, after all, your Creator and Redeemer, and He is the Creator and Sustainer of all things.
So may we grow in our communion with God, His spirit reaching out to our spirits.
Our spirits responding in love to His enormous affection expressed to us in His amazing grace. And may we forever worship the only true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
