Signs of God's Grace: How We Know God
Dr. James Mayfield
October 12, 2003
Text: Acts 17:22-27a & John 1:18 There are two questions behind today's sermon. The first is: "How do we know God?" The second is: "So what? What difference does it make?" Let's begin with the "So what?" question. What difference does knowing God make in our lives? The biggest difference is the impact of that knowledge on what we worship - really worship. I think it is both interesting and instructive that in the Bible there are no arguments directed at atheists or agnostics. The arguments have to do with whether or not we are worshipping the true God or a false god. The assumption is all humans worship; the only question is: "What do we worship? What god or gods do we serve?" Just because people today tend to use non-religious jargon to think and talk about life does not mean people are any less religious than in Bible times. It is just that the worship done by many is done in a secular style. The issues are basically the same. This means the challenge Joshua addressed to the Israelites long ago remains relevant for us also: "Choose this day whom you will serve." Notice the issue in this challenge is not either to make a choice or not make a choice. The only issue is who or what we will serve. The choice we make shapes our living, and our living determines whether our lives have eternal meaning or at the end of our day are judged by God to have been such a waste of time they are good for nothing but to be thrown in God's garbage dump. To worship God, to have God shape our values, attitudes and actions, we have to know God. But how do we know God? When Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, he said that God makes himself known in the things he has made. The problem is we humans have chosen to ignore God's revelation. Instead of focusing on God, we have focused on ourselves and our desires; and the end result is the mess we are in. Nevertheless, God has chosen to make himself known in the things he has made. Both the most primitive human being and the most sophisticated astronomer looking up at night into a starry sky are filled with a sense of awe. Parents looking at their new born child know something of this depth wonder. There are many experiences and scenes in life that point beyond themselves to a divine source. I am confident this is the sort of evidence Paul had in mind when he wrote that God has made himself known from the very beginning. But as Paul declared so clearly, we humans across the centuries have made wrong choice after wrong choice until we are a long way from being the persons God intended. Because we can be so out of touch with God, we can look on the universe with a sense awe and wonder without any thought of God, much less any sense of the holy presence of God. So, how shall we know God? For us to know God, we first have to want to know God. Jeremiah wrote that if with all our heart we truly seek God, we will find God. Among the Athenians who came to listen to Paul, there were those who were not merely curious about what this Jew was going to say but were there because they were earnestly seeking God. Paul told them that God was not some object or merely another theory or idea to explore. He told them that it is in God that we live and move and have our being. As I understand it, this means our getting to know God is something like a fish getting to know the ocean in which that fish lives and moves and has its being. If the fish is like we are all too often, it can live its life in the ocean unaware that is lives and moves and has its being in an ocean. Certainly, we know what it is to live our lives insensitive to God even though when we pause to think, we affirm God is all around us. The amazing proclamation of the Gospel is that this God whose glory is such we cannot see it with our eyes, this God who is invisible to us chose to make himself known by entering life as one of us. It is as if ocean water became a fish in order to reveal to the fish not only what it is to be a real fish but also to reveal the essence of the ocean. So it is with Christ. As the Gospel of John puts it, that Word that was in the beginning creating all that is, that Word was with God and yet was God, that Word became one of us, so that in our seeing Jesus we not only see who we are meant to be as human beings, but we also see who God is; in Christ we see the essence of God. How do we know God? By knowing Jesus the one who is Christ. It is in what is revealed in and through Jesus that we discover both our true humanity and who God is. Of course, our knowledge of God is always as limited as the fish's knowledge of the ocean. That fish swimming around a coral reef in the warm waters of the gulf knows nothing of the ocean's darkest depths where very different creatures live and move and have their being. And it certainly knows nothing of the icy ocean off Antartica where penguins live and move and have their being. That fish's knowledge of the ocean is imperfect; it knows only in part. And so it is with us. We know God through Christ, and yet, as Paul wrote in I Corinthians 13, our knowledge is incomplete and imperfect. How do we know God? Through the gifts of creation but most especially through the gift of the Word made flesh. What difference does it make? By looking to Christ we are able to see both the best within us humans and a reflection of who God is. The Word made flesh did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped; he emptied himself, taking the form of servant, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. In all this and through all this, he revealed the essence of God is love that is both tough and tender and in the process also showed us how to live. In his resurrection he revealed sin and evil do not win; God is not defeated by the worst we humans can do; there is hope. In all this and through all this, he showed us life, true life, the life Jesus even called the abundant life, the life Paul described as the life of joy and peace. And this life, Paul told us, is marked by faith, and it is marked by hope and most of all by Christ like love. Wednesday I heard a talk by Eddie Larson. In it he said folks who cannot hear the music and see people dancing think the dancers are crazy. Those who hear the music, that is, those who know God, not only dance the dance Christ has taught them, but they are able to recognize God's dancers wherever they are and smile. Let us pray. God, enable us to hear your heavenly music revealed in both the creation and in Christ so that we can dance the dance you created us to dance, the dance Christ has taught us. Amen. Pastoral
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