1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be…
Genesis 1:1-3a (KJV)
In the same way that a novel-writer will not attempt to prove that he exists, the Bible does not attempt to prove the existence of God. The first four words of Genesis tell the story; "In the beginning God..." With that the Bible assumes what atheists, and so-called "intellectual" evolutionists, have been wrong about for centuries...God IS!
Protagoras, who lived 2500 years ago, said the measure of everything is man. That’s like saying that the genius in automatic transmissions is the intricate gears, or that the beauty of the Mona Lisa is in paint and canvas. 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!
Just like transmissions could never exist without the excellence of engineering of a man, and the Mona Lisa could never thrill us except it first existed in the mind of a master artist, the center of every original thought and deed of all time and eternity is the One we call God. As Psalm 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, however it is actually unnecessary to try to convince ANYONE. The Bible says in Romans 1:19-20 that the reality of God is apparent to all people even as they behold the things of nature. The fact is that 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 on the street 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. "What did you do that for?", asked the complainer, "Man that hurts!" "You say you have pain in your head", said the man, "I don’t SEE any pain. Show me your pain and I’ll believe it exists!" The man made his point.
Oh, God exists alright! And, so this morning I would simply like to start where the Bible does, with the FACT that God IS, and like Hebrews 11:6 reminds, God ...is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.
In our act of diligently seeking God this morning, please note three STATEMENTS of reality about God....
God is Spirit
24God 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.
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. Self-awareness is a personal quality.
The pantheistic approach to God says that God is in everything, literally. He is in trees, grass, oceans, porcupines...as a component part. Some folks use the excuse for not coming to church that you’ve heard before; "I can worship god out in nature just as well as in church." They’ve substituted seeing God’s creation for being obedient to the Creator, who did say; "Forsake not the assembling together of yourselves, as the manner of some is..." 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 Israel called out from Egypt in bondage...God rocked the kingdom of Pharaoh until he drove them out. God didn’t apply "hands off" when they were boxed-in with mountains on two sides, Pharaoh’s army behind, and the Great Red Sea in front. God’s personal breath blew every last drop out of the way, and His personal family walked over on dry land.
Loren Eiseley (late anthropologist) wrote of falling in his office one day. The fall caused a deep cut on his face, and the blood poured-forth. As he stared at the growing, bright red pool, he said, "Oh, don’t go. I’m sorry." He was speaking to no one, but to a part of himself. He called it a detached sanity to speak to the blood cells and platelets, the living, swimming independent wonders that had been part of him, and now were dying like beached fish on the floor. Those microscopic parts and bits of him had been living in him like he was a galaxy.
He went on, "For the first time, I loved them consciously." Those blood cells were a part of him, and they were perishing. He felt the loss, and spoke to it. It is that way with God. We are billions, and all 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....
God is Holy
The word “holy” itself 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. We sing the hymn, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty". God is different than we are. God is ETERNAL...I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending saith the Lord.
"In the beginning God..." Our God is the author and finisher of faith. Nothing existed except by the creative hand of God. When it says in Genesis that God created, the word "created" is only used in the Bible when referring to God. The word in Hebrew means "to create from nothing". Words used in reference to the creativity of man carries the inference of re-creating, taking what has been created already, and reforming it. God is eternal in His holiness. God is also
OMNISCIENT
The eyes of the LORD are in every place,
keeping watch on the evil and the good.
Proverbs 15:3 (NRSVA)
I used to think the word 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.
God is holy in His omniscience and His…
OMNIPRESENCE
Jeremiah asks the question; "Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord." (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. On the other hand, those who would rather God leave them alone, stay out of their business have God’s permission.
But someday that permission will end; Jesus predicted in 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 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.
God is holy in omniscience, omnipresence and power also.
OMNIPOTENCE
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? Allow this universe of God’s to paint the perspective....Consider the stars:
The average interior temperature of an average star is 36 million degrees F. (and we think Miami gets warm). 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 I had a handgun that shot bullets at that speed of light, I could shoot you, have the bullet pass through you, go around the world 7 times, and pass through you again before you hit the floor. Now if I took that same pistol, aimed it at the nearest star past the sun, and pulled the trigger, the bullet wouldn’t arrive at Proxima Centauri until the 4th of July three years from now!
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, Cal sees 175,000 light years out into space. Our galaxy, known as the Milky Way, has about 100-200 billion stars. That’s our neighborhood. 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? (Psalm 8)
We are incredibly minute, compared to this vast universe. But our size is not the issue; the real issue is how big is YOUR God?
Isaiah 40:12 tells us that God measured out the heavens with the span; that is the distance between the tip of the thumb and the tip of the pinky-finger. God literally holds the universe in the palm of his hand. That’s a BIG GOD!
Application
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; an 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 comforting me when my loved one dies.
• He is able to meet my need when the mortgage comes due too early.
• He is able to take the worry I feel when governments threaten to blow us off the face of the earth, and 13 year old children get pregnant.
• He is more than capable of holding His own when skeptics doubt His existence.
• And He is able to save a sinner like me!
And, more! If He is able to 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 me until the day of judgment, and on into eternity.
God did an amazing job of creating humans within this amazing and vast universe. And the God of this new creation is also the God of new beginnings…baptism, new life, new hope. He is also the God of invitation. He has invited us to come close, to come through the cross and know Him. You are invited to the King’s presence and to his party.
