Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2004 : June 6, 2004
God Is
Trinity Sunday
I recently heard the story of a 15-year-old boy named Bobby who was enrolled in a Christian school, who had one more exam before he graduated. It was the one he most dreaded: religion class. He didn't dread the class, just the exam, because his teacher told the class that it would be an essay exam, which he despised, and worse, that it would only have only one question, and worse yet, the exam would account for one-third of his grade. The dreaded day finally came, and the teacher handed out three blank sheets of paper to each student. The class waited with bated breath until the teacher finally said, "For your essay, I want you to define God. You have one hour." Bobby started writing, "God is...," and then froze. He didn't know where to start. As his classmates wrote feverishly, he just stared at his paper. His classmates were filling two and even three sheets of paper, while his contained only two words: "God is." Eventually, people started to leave, until Bobby, now sweating horribly, was the only one left in the room.
I'm sure we've all been in that situation before. Do you think you could help Bobby finish his exam? How would you define God?
For Bobby, the bell finally rang; the teacher came over and picked up Bobby's essay. Bobby, thinking his life was over, was about to leave when his teacher said, "Bobby, you forgot something." Bobby said, "I know. I just couldn't figure out where to begin." The teacher said, "You began, and ended, just fine -- you defined God as God defined himself, 'I AM.' You just have to write a complete sentence." So the teacher took out his pen and put a period after "God is." Then he wrote an "A" at the top of the paper.
It would be nice to have such an easy teacher, wouldn't you agree? Ever since time began, people have been trying to define God. After sin entered the world, they began making up all kinds of gods to fit what their idea of God was. This morning, on Holy Trinity Sunday, we will let God define himself.
Really, when you come right down to it, it would be impossible for us to define God. It would be like defining gravity. We know that it exists; we know what it does; we can describe what it does, its characteristics and its effect on different objects. But we can't define gravity. We can't define God, either. We can talk about his characteristics, both what we know about him from the universe he created and what he revealed to us in the Bible about himself, but he remains a hidden God -— he is absolutely beyond us. Paul writes to the Romans that every single human being suppresses their knowledge of God because of their sin. As a result, through the ages, there have been literally millions of gods that people have just made up.
Right now it is fashionable to say that just as all roads once led to Rome, so all faiths lead to the same god. People today don't want to be exclusive of anyone's idea of God, so they say that the god of the Muslims is the same god as the god of the Hindus and Buddhists and Christians. If you are so bold as to say they are wrong, you are known as a close-minded, bigoted fool who hasn't made it out of the Dark Ages. Throughout the ages people have come up with countless ideas of who God is, some lasted a long time in peoples' minds, other ideas lasted only a short time and have since become memory. Muhammed invented his idea of God (or was given the idea by a demon) in the 600s AD. Millions and millions of people today still believe in the god of Muhammed 1400 years later. Some worshiped and still worship the sun, moon and stars. Today, for almost 200 years now, people have invented their idea of God and have called him "Chance through Time." They are evolutionists. Chance through time brought everything into existence, they say. In Old Testament times, 1000 years before Jesus came to this earth as man, the entire area of the Middle East, including Iraq, had their idea of God. The Babylonians called him Bel; the Canaanites called him Baal. Basically he was like Zeus, the god of the weather, a storm god. But no one talks about that god much anymore. And we wouldn't know him at all if we didn't have it recorded for us in the Bible.
There is a reason why we don't hear about Baal anymore outside of Scripture -— because he doesn't exist. That was shown very dramatically in the prophet Elijah's time. When the Israelites came out of slavery in Egypt and headed for the promised land of Canaan, they had to deal with Baal, who was the biggest god around -- everyone in the area believed in some form of Baal. Eventually, the Israelites, after repeated warnings by God, fell into idolatry and started following this god. And God finally had enough. He had Elijah propose a showdown between himself and 450 prophets of Baal. They went up onto Mt. Carmel and prepared their sacrifices. The winner would be obvious -- whoever answered with fire from heaven would show himself to be the real, true and only God. The prophets of Baal started first. They prepared their sacrifice; they started calling on Baal in the morning to send fire from heaven. Nothing happened. By noon they were desperate. They started cutting themselves until their blood flowed thinking that Baal would take notice. Still nothing. Eventually, exhausted, they gave up. Really, they had one major problem. It wasn't that the sacrifice wasn't good enough; it wasn't because it was arranged improperly. Baal had great difficulty revealing his power because he wasn't there -- he didn't exist. But Elijah's God did and does exist. Elijah prepared his sacrifice and poured all kinds of water all over it which even filled a trench around it. Then Elijah humbly called on his God, and immediately fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifice, the wood it was on, the stone the wood was on, and even the water in the trench and even the earth around it. Finally, everyone said, "The LORD, he is God. The LORD, he is God."
Every other god in this world besides Elijah's God have one huge thing in common -- they don't exist. Muslims, Buddhists, those who worship the Almighty Dollar, even evolutionists who have denied the existence of God, all of them will get a very rude awakening one day when they die and meet their maker -- and he won't be the god they expect.
The Bible tells us there is only one God. He describes himself in the words before us this morning: "The LORD." That word in Hebrew actually means, "I am." So, is it any wonder that God chooses that name for himself -- "I AM"? He is the only God there is. He himself said through the Psalmist, "I am God, and there is no other." "I AM," which is what the word "the LORD" (in all capitals) means, is what God says is his name. Is it any wonder then, when Jesus said, "Before Abraham was born, I AM," that the religious leaders of the Jews picked up stones to kill him? They realized that he was calling himself God, the only God that exists. The definition, "I AM," shows that God is constant; he "doesn't change like shifting shadows." That's important for us, because it means that we can trust everything God says. Since he is constant, he is absolutely faithful to everything that he is and everything that he says. So he is faithful in justice and faithful in mercy.
When sin entered the world, God could have thrown the whole thing away and started over. But when he made the first gospel promise, he showed that he was in for the long haul. That is vitally important as we see how often we have failed our God. Maybe today you have already shown your need for your God to be your Savior. Did you wake up thinking that you'd rather worship the pillow-god in bed instead of the real God in his house? Did you wrestle with your kids in getting them ready for church, so that some unkind words passed your lips? Or maybe you were one of the kids who encouraged those words out of your parents' mouths. When this life gets difficult, and you find yourself faced with sickness or surgery or trouble, do you trust in your self to get out of it or to cope with it? You can insert any particular sin that you're having problems with. Any and all of them spell very bad news for us -- they spell DEATH. Eternal death -- eternal separation from God. And because God is faithful to himself and his Word that "the soul that sins is the one that will die," God must condemn us to death. We deserve nothing else from God. So we see that it is very true when he says in our text: "he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation." Don't be deceived; God is not mocked. When he says you are playing with fire when you go against him, that's exactly what he means. And that fire would be the only thing in our future, and it would be certain. Would be. But remember -- God is faithful. He describes himself as the Father, the one who created us and keeps us from harm. The one who is a consuming fire, which fills us with fear when we realize how often we have disobeyed him and his will. But he is also "the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin." In his mercy alone, God the Father sent his Son into this sin-corrupted world. And God the Son did something truly amazing. Jesus, the God who fills heaven and earth, the God who knows everything, sees everything, can do anything he wishes, who is the great I AM, the God who is everything and fills everything in every way, became nothing. Listen to Philippians 2:5-9 -- Jesus "made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death -- even death on a cross!" God became man and became nothing so that you could be called God's child, an heir of heaven, assured of your forgiveness because Jesus died for every one of your sins. And to assure us of it, God the Father and God the Son sent God the Holy Spirit into your heart to bring you to faith in Jesus, who now is raised from the dead and seated in glory in heaven. The Holy Spirit continues to guide you in this life and will bring you to heaven.
That is the God of the Bible, the only God there is, the LORD, the great "I AM." What a joy to know that God -- the Father, the Son and the Spirit -- has done everything for your salvation! In your forgiveness, you can live each and every day for that God. What a joy to know God, the God who "IS." Amen.
