God: Transcendent & Immanent

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Well, good morning everyone. If you've got your Bibles there, you might like to turn with me in your Bibles to this passage in Romans chapter 11 verses 33 to 36. You'll see by the title of today's sermon, it's got a couple of big words there, God transcendent and imminent. They might be new words for you. When I was thinking of the title I did think of saying God 6 and 7, 6 and 7, but I think it's only the young ones who'd understand that. Us young ones, is that right? So if you're not sure what 6, 7 means, 6, 7, just the Dylan or any other young person, or I've asked our grandkids what that means, they don't know. And I've googled it, no one knows, but it's the in thing to say. Is that right? That's the in thing to say. But anyway, God transcendent and imminent, and we're going to be looking at that. If you're in your Bible, you'll see probably that the heading of this particular passage is a doxology from two Greek word, doxoglory, logos, or word. So it's the word about the glory of God. And this is the word saying how great our God is. Okay, let's face this way. At the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond chasing out, and who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counsellor, who has ever given to God that God should repay him, for from him and through him and to him are all things, to him be the glory forever. Amen. Let's pray. Further we pray the prayer, day by day, three things I pray, to see you more clearly, to love you more dearly, to follow you more nearly, day by day. Sometimes I dream about doing something which is probably never going to happen. And that is just being up in Morrofield Shopping Centre. And just standing there and trying to engage with people, just dialoguing with them about God. What do you think about God and do you believe God and all of those sorts of things? I can't imagine that happening. I can't imagine the Shopping Centre giving me permission to do that. But all the rules and regulations these days would make it too difficult anyway. But anyway, in our society there's been a couple of groups who have actually been out amongst Australians and asked that question. And so, saving me having to go to the Shopping Centre and asking that question, we can depend on a couple of other groups. So, two reliable, what I think are reliable groups once the National Church Life Survey in CLS and the others, Mark McCrindle. Mark McCrindle is a Christian social researcher who does a lot of research, not only in Christian areas but in a whole range of areas. And you've probably heard him or seen him on TV or heard him on the radio. But NCLS asked that question about what do you believe in God? And this is some of their response of Australians today. So 29.4% believe that there's a personal God. Another 31.6% of Australians say there is some sort of life spirit, life force. Another 17.7% say I don't really know what to think. And then the rest make up, I don't really think there is any sort of spirit, God or life force about 20%. So Mark McCrindle has also asked that question and these are his findings from a report that he released in 2017. It's been updated since then but these are the ones that I could find. Faith and Belief in Australia. He says more than two in three Australians, 68% follow religion or have spiritual beliefs. Australians who do not identify with a religion or spiritual belief, however, is on the rise with almost one in three, 32% not identifying with a religion. And then this is an amazing one. More than half of Australians, 52% are open to changing their religious views given the right circumstances and evidence. And this is one which especially grabbed my attention. Younger Australians are more open to changing their current religious views than older generations. Interesting, isn't it? By the way, in another thing in Ed CLS, in interviewing or surveying non-Christians, non-believers, have come up with this statistic and said, acknowledged that most people come to faith through a family member or a friend and yet most non-Christians do not know anybody who is a follower of Jesus. So part of that is, obviously, is just getting out and getting to know some people and looking for that opportunity of sharing our faith with them. Well, this morning we're talking about God and we're going to assume that God exists. However, whether God exists or not is probably another topic all on its own and there's various thoughts out there about how we might be able to prove the existence of God, some arguments like the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the ontological argument. If you're not sure what any of those mean, we've got three very good pastors in the church and you're going to ask them after church what those evidence of God mean in addition to things like personal and experiential things as well. Let me just try doing this. Even though we're assuming the existence of God today, I just want to share a couple of things. I'm looking for somebody down the front who really looks like an atheist. There's so many to choose from. I'm not sure who, but everybody here is a delightful Christian, but once Paulo got his head down, teachers say that people who put their head down get asked. There's nothing embarrassing or anything about this, Paulo. Just come up. You can just stand there. I just want you to do something. Paulo comes to me and he says, I don't believe there's a God, I believe there is no God. One of the ways I'm not responding is this. I might say, Paulo, this sheet of paper represents all the knowledge in the whole world. I want you to just to draw a circle. If that represents all the knowledge of the whole world, how much is your knowledge? How much do you know? Pretty easy, though. Thank you, Paulo, which is probably more generous than some of us. Somebody who says, I don't believe in God, I don't believe there is a God. If that represents the knowledge of the whole world, how much do you know? I know that much. Then I can say, is it possible that God actually does exist but outside your sphere of knowledge? People need to stop and to consider and to be thinking about that in life as well. There's another man who lived in the 1600s by the name of Blaseau Pascal, Frenchman, philosopher, mathematician, died before he was 40. He came up with what's known as Pascal's wager. This is Pascal's wager. Some people pick holes in this thinking that Pascal was trying to prove the existence of God by using this thought here. But Pascal never said that. Pascal is just saying, this is what everybody needs to consider. You know, the wagers, the wagers are bet or a gamble, and this is what Pascal is saying. Pascal is saying, look, there are two possibilities here. If I'm a believer and a follower of Jesus and there is a God, then I have gained everything. On the other hand, if I'm a believer and a follower of God and it ends up that there is no God, what have I really lost in life? I don't really lost anything. On the other hand, Pascal is saying, what if I don't believe there's a God? And I say, there is no God and there isn't a God. What have I gained or lost? Nothing. But what if I don't believe in God and there actually is a God? Then I have lost everything. And this is Pascal's wager that everybody must face, according to Pascal, lived in 1600s, saying this is the gamble, this is the wager, this is a consideration which you must make. What's the risk of believing or not believing in God? And that's something which comes as a challenge to you and to me to be thinking about that as well. When we're thinking about God, there are two verses that I want us to be thinking about this morning. Well, just by way of introduction, we're not focusing on these. First in Genesis chapter one and verses 26 and 27, it says this, speaking about God, says God said, now we'll make humans, they'll be like us, we'll make them rule the fish and the birds and all other living creatures. So God created humans like himself. He made men and women. You know, the idea, it says in other versions, that God created man in his own image. The problem is, of course, is that often we have turned that around and our tendency is to create God in our image. It's that when we are thinking about God, rather than starting off where God is, we think, oh, what do I think God is like? And what would I like God to be like? And a similar verse over in the New Testament, is Romans 1.25, it says they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served something created instead of the Creator who is praised forever. You see this idea of either not believing that God exists or trying to create an idea or an image of God that actually suits us. Throughout history, we've been guilty, the human race has been guilty of trying to create or to manipulate or to picture of God how we think God ought to be. You might remember, some of us remember or just read about, heard our parents, grandparents talk about in the 1960s, 70s, there was that musical Jesus Christ what? Superstar. So that tried to picture God, to picture Jesus as a superstar. Around the same time there was another musical, I never saw Jesus Christ, superstar, but this one I went and saw a couple of times when I was in Melbourne, another musical called God's Spell. You heard of God's Spell? And God's Spell, around about the same time, read about 1970, based on the Gospel of Mark, pictured Jesus as a clown. And so there's this idea of whether Jesus is a superstar, a clown or anything else that we might create in our own mind or image of what God is really like. So today we are going to be doing some thinking about God. And we certainly are not going to be thinking everything, we're not going to be discussing everything about God. So don't say to me, oh, but you didn't say this because I know if I was covering everything we'd be here every day till next Sunday. Well let me just say these few things were the introduction in thinking about God. Firstly, no one knows everything about God. We try to enhance our understanding by images and by what we think about God. Thirdly, these images and the thoughts that we may have about God may either help or hinder our understanding of God depending on its accuracy. And the best place to go for information about God is where? The Bible. And so we need to have a clear understanding of what God is like to get that best picture of what God is like. We're not going to get it from reading a book or from getting ideas and listening to modern thinking or by listening to our friends or what we would want. But the starting point always has to be this is what the Bible says about God. So today we're looking just at these couple of things, these two things about God. We're looking at these two things. Firstly, that God is both transcendent and that God is imminent. Now these are the two big words which I'm introducing you to. Some of you may be well familiar with these words. Just reading the yellow in the bottom is that it's imminent and imminent and imminent and it's important to understand the difference there. The imminent which is the first one which we're looking at today with an A in it means nearby which is different from imminent which means something is about to happen. So what we're saying about God is this, these two things is that God is both transcendent, that God is great, God is mystery and secondly that he's also imminent, that he's very close to us. He's present and active and has revealed himself to us. So let's look at these two things that firstly that God is transcendent, that God is mystery, that God is all-powerful, that God is, well some people say God is unknowable in the extreme. There are some people who are thinking about the transcendence of God take it to such an extreme that they refuse to even use a word that describes God because they say once you use a word we're limiting, we're defining something about God. But that's going too far but we do acknowledge and recognise that God is transcendent, that he is great, infinitely great and that he is infinitely good. Have you ever been in a great cathedral anywhere? We've been in cathedrals in England, Europe and Australia really mostly 99% of the time just as tourists but when you go into a cathedral what's one of the first things you know, one of the things I first notice is this, is how high the ceiling is and that's done by design that when a person goes in into this huge space right above is that we feel what? So insignificant and so the design the architects and the builders have purposely designed the building so that we might feel this insignificance of this, that we're in the presence of this really, really great God. There's many verses in the Bible which talk about how great God is about his transcendence. I've just picked out four, I would have put five and I'll mention a fifth one in just a few seconds. As I-55, 8 and 9 says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither your ways, my ways declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth so my ways higher than your ways are my thoughts, thoughts than your thoughts. Doesn't that tell you something about the greatness of God? Or in John 1, 18, no one has ever seen God but the one and only Son who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father and has made him knowing. John 4, 24, Jesus speaking with the woman at the well says God is spirit and is worship. This must worship in spirit and in truth. Or 1 Timothy 6, 15 and 16, God the blessed and only ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light whom no one has seen or can see to him be glory and honour forever. And if you're taking that, it's another one that I was going to actually include there, it's 1 Corinthians 125, which says the foolishness of God is even above the wisdom of people. The foolishness of God, if there is such a thing, is so much higher than the wisdom of us. So we get this picture of God, of being this great God unapproachable, this mystery and it's so beyond anything of our understanding. So I said that cathedrals have built to help us to feel that sense of insignificance. I'll give another example which gives me a bit of a segue into God's imminence as well as this, is that years and years ago, I was just a little tacker, the way the church started was quite different to how it started today. Now I'm not saying, hear me very clearly when I say this, I'm not saying that one way is right and the other is wrong or one way is better than the other way, they're just different. But when I first, when I was a kid coming into church, all the chitter and chatter happened outside. And then once we came into the church, into this auditorium we say now, but into the sanctuary, where everything was quiet and silent, so it may be some quiet music playing. And the sense was, is that we came in and we settled ourselves down in the presence of God, of the Almighty God, preparing our hearts and ourselves ready for worship. What happens today? Well it's quite different. There's a chitter and chatter before church and everybody's greeting one another and in a real sense it's that Jesus in me is greeting the Jesus in you. The first one's thinking more about the transcendence, the second one about the imminence. God has been active in my life and I want to share something of my life in this last week with you and so all of this is taking place both before and after the service. As I said, one's not right and the other wrong, they're just different and they both have their pluses and their minuses. But this great God who is so far removed from us, is God is also near and not detached, that God is imminent. Here are some verses that just remind us of that and there's many others. Exodus 3311 says, the Lord spoke to Maze's face to face as a man speaks with his friend. Of that verse just grips my imagination. So here we are over a thousand years before Pentecost. God would meet Moses and talk to Maze's face to face as you and I might talk as well and there's that friendship relationship that's going on and I think if that was possible for Moses so many years before Pentecost, how much more now since the Holy Spirit has been given and indwells me that the God who is also transcendent is imminent that I can have that intimate relationship with him in the here and now. Matthew 1.23 says that we'll hear this verse a lot in the next month or so. He shall be called Emmanuel which means what? God with us. Or John chapter 1 and verse 14, the word became flesh and took up residence among us. John 14, 9, Jesus speaking there says, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. And then Colossians chapter 1 verse 15 says about the Lord Jesus says he is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. The old way of understanding that about being the image, the image is like a stamp, you know how you get a stamp in the old stamp pattern, you get stamp and stamp it out and it comes out the same. I guess what's equivalent today might be photocopy I guess, is that Jesus is like a photocopy of the Father, that if you want to know what God is like, have a look at the Gospels about the Lord Jesus and what he was like and we get this picture. So when we're thinking about God, God is transcendent that he's so big and beyond us but he's also right here, right now and for those of us who are disciples, who are followers of Jesus, actually in dwelling us right here, right now. So what do we make of all of this? Many years ago, out of my life, BC I'm talking about, that stands for before children, that I had finished my first year at Theological College and we did a stint of time with open air campaigners during the break. And so what that meant that we did some after school things in schools, we also did some open air things, some things down at Cooparoo and then also down the valley, was my introduction to open air preaching that one of the OAC guys standing up there saying about, we've got this guy here, he's the follower of Jesus, whatever and he's going to come and tell us, I'm thinking, I wonder who that is. And he said, okay, David come up and tell us and that's how much preparation I've had. And then we also, in the holiday time over Christmas, we went into caravan parks doing things with kids during the day and with adults at night. So we did this thing, sharing the gospel with people with open air campaigners. One of the things, one of the stories which we used to tell, one of the lessons that we had, which we put very early for the kids, we used to do it in story form, but bring out these three principles that are just so important for us to understand is this. The first statement we used to make sure kids learned and we learned is that God made the world. We know that the Bible says in the beginning, God created. So God made the world. And then the second, follow on statement from that is this, that if God made the world, then God aims the world. And so thirdly, if God made the world and God owns the world, then God has the right to say what will and what happened and what, how to live in the world. Now, we can talk about that in a global sense, but we also need to bring that back to you and to me personally as well. God made you, God made me. God aims us. And if God aims us, God has the right to tell us how we ought to live our lives. One silly illustration, which, which tells a very important truth, one which we need to understand is that there was a hen and a pig out in the paddock one day. And as the hen and the pig were out in the paddock, his truck pulled up and a worker got out and started erecting a sign. And the sign said something like Australia's classical breakfast bacon and eggs. It's my Saturday morning breakfast. I'm the chief breakfast getter in our home on Saturday morning cooking bacon and eggs. So yesterday morning we went out some dear friends, that's a dear as in precious, not dear as an expensive, but we went out with friends and it's easy for me. I just looked down the menu to find bacon and eggs. And I know what I want. A bit different yesterday. It came as an omelet, but still bacon and eggs. And the hen turned to the pig and said to the pig, look at that. We're famous. Our picture up on the wall, up on this billboard. And the pig turned to the hen and said, it's alright for you. You only have to make a donation. But I have to give up my life. Now, the great Aussie breakfast might be bacon and eggs. The chicken only makes a donation. The pig gives up its life. God wants you to give up your life, not just make a donation. Is that clear? God aims the world. God has the right to say how we ought to live. And what he says, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. Well, that's the God who we worship, the God who we know. The God who is both transcendent and imminent. I want to read that passage again, which he used as our Bible reading, with this fresh in our minds about this great God. And just as an act of worship, just as a recognition of this great God, I'm going to ask you to stand as I read it. I'm only going to read it. You don't need to read it. Just going to ask you to stand while I'm reading it, that worship team can come back if they would like. And just to soak in and to reflect on the reality of these words from Romans 11, this doxology, talking about our great God who's both transcendent and imminent. Let's just soak in these words. Oh, what a wonderful God we have. How great there is wisdom and knowledge and riches. How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his methods. For who among us can know the mind of the Lord? Who knows enough to be his counsellor and guide? And who can ever offer to the Lord enough to induce him to act? For everything comes from God alone. Everything lives by his power and everything is for his glory, for him be glory evermore. And everybody said Amen.