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"The
Only God"
Exodus 3:1-15
I Is There a God?
A. Is there a God? This is the most basic
question of our universe.
If there
is a God everything must be seen in His light and must be shaped by His
will.
If there
is no God than we are without comfort, hope, and purpose.
B. Is there a God? The atheist says there is
no God. As I was thinking about this sermon this past week I found a
newspaper article in my files which sums up so well the atheistic
position:
All
of the wonders around you are accidental. No almighty hand made a
thousand billion stars. They made themselves. No power keeps them on
their steady courses.
The
top few inches of our land just happens to have topsoil, without which we
would have no vegetables to eat, no grass for the animals whose meat is
our food. No one put oil just deep enough in the earth to keep until we
need it. The inexhaustible envelope of air — only 50 miles deep
— and of exactly the right density to support human life, is just
another law of physics.
But
who invented physics and chemistry? Who made the bank deposits of coal
and zinc and iron and uranium inside the earth? Nobody. It was all just
another priceless accident.
Why
does the earth spin at a given speed without ever slowing up, so that we
have day and night? Who tilts it so that we get seasons? Without the magnetic
north pole man would be unable to navigate the trackless oceans of water
and air, but it just grew there ...
The
sun stokes a fire just warm enough to sustain us on earth, but not hot
enough to fry us, or cold enough to kill us. Who keeps the fire constant?
No one! .. .
Who
showed a womb how to take the love of two persons, and keep splitting a
tiny ovum until, in time, a baby would have the proper number of fingers,
eyes, ears, and hair in the right places and come into the world when it
is strong enough to sustain life? Who?
It's
all accidental. There is no God! ...
This
reminds of the evening a minister went for a walk down the beach with an
acquaintance, a rather well- known atheist. They came across an intricate
series of sand castles. "I wonder who made these?" said the
atheist. The Christian's masterful reply silenced the atheist's godless
talk: "My dear man, no one made them; they simply happened."
C. Is there a God? According to a recent
poll 97% of all adult Americans believe in God. On the other hand, 72%
believe Jesus is the Son of God, 71% believe in heaven, 63% believe the
Bible is God's Word, 41% attend church in a typical week, and 41% pray to
God daily. If 97% of all adult Americans believe in God, how come there
is so much divorce, adultery, abortion, murder, drugs, and crime in our
land? You know what all this tells me? The majority of adults in our
society claim to believe in God — and maybe they really do believe
— but they live like there is no God. Many in our society may not
be intellectual/ mental atheists but they certainly are practical
atheists — people who say "Lord, Lord" but do not have
the Lord at the center of their lives.
Practical
atheism — I prefer to call it secular humanism — tries to do
without God. It tries to get us to live without really and seriously
thinking about God for days or weeks or months. It wants us to live and
walk and work and breathe without God. It wants us to get so wrapped up
in living a comfortable, well-fed, fashionable life that God rarely, if
ever, enters the picture.
D. Is there a God? Guido de Brès in Article
1 of the Belgic Confession of Faith affirms that there is:
We
all believe in our hearts
and confess with our mouths
that there is a single
and simple
spiritual being,
whom we call God.
Guido
de Brès says we believe in this God, the God of the Scriptures, with the
heart and confess with the mouth. Belief in God involves heart and soul,
body and mind; we not only believe it but also live it. Against every
fool who says in his heart "There is no God," we yell,
"But there is and he is the Lord God Almighty maker of heaven and
earth."
II Who Are You, God?
A. We believe in God but Who is this God we
believe in? "Who are you, God?" Our Scripture reading tells us
of the time Moses asked this question? He was in the desert when he saw a
burning bush that was not consumed by the flames. As he came near to
examine the bush God called his name and spoke to him. God told Moses to
go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt. When Moses heard this
he asked, "What is your name?" "Who are you, God?"
(Exodus 3).
B. Guido de Brès in the Belgic Confession
of Faith answers this for us; he tells us what the Bible teaches concerning
who God is: "eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable,
infinite, almighty; completely wise, just, and good, and the overflowing
source of all good."
We
know these as the attributes of God. Attributes are simply
characteristics or properties of something or someone. Just like the
grass is green and the sky blue, so God is eternal, incomprehensible,
invisible, and so on.
The
first five attributes are negative in character. Each one of the words
has a negative prefix: God is not visible, He is invisible; God is not
finite, He is infinite; He is not comprehensible, He is incomprehensible.
These first five attributes show us how God differs from us humans.
Unlike us humans He does not suffer the limitations of temporality,
changeability, finitude, and the like.
The
second five attributes of God are positive. They speak of God as having
the most possible of the attributes that even humans possess. Samson, for
instance, is a mighty man but only God is almighty. Solomon was known for
wisdom but God alone is completely wise. Joseph brought good things to
his family in Egypt
but God alone is the overflowing source of all good.
C. Neither Guido de Brès nor anyone else
can fully describe God and say Who He is. God outstrips and goes far beyond
all human categories and terms.
When
we speak of God we must do so with real humility and great awe and
considerable reverence, yet we must also remember that God has revealed
Himself to us so that it is possible for us to know Him. In fact, at the heart of the Gospel
lies the fact that Jesus came to earth so that we might know the Father
through Him. In Jesus we have been
allowed knowledge of what God is like (John 14:5-9). This does not mean
that we know everything about God, or will ever know everything, but in
Christ we do know God and have genuine and true knowledge of Him.
III God is Eternal
A. I am planning a number of sermons on the
attributes of God as listed by the Belgic Confession of Faith: We will
study one of these attributes on the second Sunday of every month. Today I just want to spend a few
moments looking at the eternity of God.
We
see the eternity of God in that strange name He revealed to Moses:
"I AM WHO I AM." What does this mean? At the very least it
means that God is self-existent. He is original, the cause, the root, the
great mover, the well-spring of all that there is.
Many
people, especially children, have trouble understanding this. You will
probably recognize the following conversation as sounding like one in your
own home:
"Mommy,
who made me?"
"God made you, darling."
"Well, Mommy, who made the sky and the trees?"
"God made the sky and the trees. God made everything."
"Mommy, who made God?"
One
mother who was approached about this dropped what she was doing and sat
down with her youngster for a little talk. Pointing to her wedding band,
she said, "This is a 'love ring,' which your daddy gave to me when
we were married. Look at it closely and tell me where it begins and where
it ends."
The
youngster examined it carefully and then said, "There's no starting
place and stopping place to a ring." The mother replied,
"That's the way it is with God. He had no beginning and has no end,
yet He encircles our lives with His presence. He is too wonderful, too
great, for our minds to understand. Nobody ever made God--He always
was!"
Somehow
the boy realized that for God to be God, He could not have been created.
He had to be without beginning and without end. He had to be
self-existent. He had to be eternal.
In
a vision God also revealed His self-existence to John on the island of Patmos:
(Revelation
1:8) "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God,
"who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."
B So what? What difference does
it make to my life that God is eternal, without beginning and end,
self-existent?
First
of all, it means our existence. If
God were not eternal, without beginning or end, self-existent, then you
and I would not exist; in fact, nothing would exist. Paul relates our existence to God when
he says, "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts
17:24-28).
What
difference does it make to my life that God is eternal, without beginning
and end, self-existent? We see the second difference in the words
of Jesus to John:
(Revelation
1:17b-18) "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. (18) I am
the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And
I hold the keys of death and Hades.
Jesus
too is eternal, without beginning or end, self- existent. And He says,
"Do not be afraid." John is with the One Who has the power of
being, of life, of all existence, so he no longer has any need for fear.
We
humans are afraid of so much: pain, sickness, cancer, death, bankruptcy,
deformity, loneliness, rejection, unemployment. Because our Savior and
God has power, ultimate power, in His hands we have nothing to fear. My
Savior holds the key and I can rest in His arms.
Conclusion
In
1566 deBres was called to the town of Valenciennes. Support for the
Reformation continued to grow, and the people grew bold, meeting in the
fields in crowds numbering 4000 - 12000 to hear deBres preach. The people
came armed with their pitchforks in fear of the Roman Catholic
authorities. In March, 1567, Roman Catholic authorities captured the town
and imprisoned many Protestants.
DeBres managed to escape, but during a pause at a hotel was
recognised, betrayed and arrested. He was taken back to Doornik,
imprisoned, and two and a half months later, on 31st May 1567, was hung on the
gallows.
One
might well question the purpose of knowing all this history. Well, such a
statement ("we all believe") gains colour and perspective when
we realise that deBres, together with his persecuted congregation, made
the statement in a time when doing so could mean one's death! They stated
their faith in full awareness that
the Roman Catholic Church was sanctioned by the government to have at
their disposal the horrid tool of the Inquisition, namely, authorities specialised
in torturing in order to force people to recant the Protestant faith and
return to Roman Catholicism. Such persecution was far from easy to
withstand, embracing methods of torture worse than burning at the stake.
Yet in that environment, deBres and the people said, "We
believe." The riches of God's redeeming work of grace in Jesus
Christ was to them well worth the price of persecution, imprisonment,
even death!
That
the faith deBres confessed in this Confession sustained him in the face
of persecution is apparent from a letter deBres wrote to his wife during
his imprisonment, dated 12th
April 1567. This letter reads (in part) as follows:
"My very
dear Catherine Ramon, my precious and most loved wife and sister in our
Lord Jesus Christ... You know well enough that when you married me, you
married a mortal man whose life was not sure for a single minute. Yet it
has pleased our good God to give us about seven years together, and five
children. If the Lord had wanted us to live together longer, He has the
means to make it happen. But it is not His pleasure; so, His will be done
and that be sufficient to you.
Remember too,
that it was not by chance that I fell into the hands of my enemies, but
through the providence of my God.... My God, You have let me be born at a
time and hour determined by You, and through all the time of my life You
have preserved and protected me in the face of unimaginable dangers, and
You have fully delivered. And now, if that the hour has come in which I
must leave this life in order to go to You, Your will be done...
Especially
forget not the honour which God has shown to you by having given you a
man who was not only a minister of the Son of God, but also a man so
esteemed and privileged by God that He honoured him with the crown of
martyrdom. I am joyful and my heart rejoices. I lack nothing in all my
troubles. I am filled with the over-flowing riches of my God.... I had
never thought that God would be so merciful to a poor creature as I am...
Adieu,
Catherine, my dear good friend..."
Reading
such a letter can hardly leave one untouched. One asks oneself, 'how was
it possible for deBres to speak like that, having been persecuted
throughout his life, fully aware of the fact that he is going to die for
the faith, yet speaking of joy, and of not lacking anything in all his
troubles!'
What
this is?? This is FAITH! By the grace of God this man knew
more than biblical facts. He also knew the words of Scripture to be true
for HIM! So he was content, despite his situation. He trusted the
promises of Scripture in such passages as Psalm 57
"Beneath Thy mighty
wings I'll seek protection
Until the storms pass by. To God I
flee -
To God Most High who charts my
life's direction."
He believed that his God led his
life the way it went, God made no mistakes, He worked all for good. So he
could be content. His was the same
faith as is pointed up in the examples of Hebrews 11:
"Others
were tortured, not accepting deliverance [from their tortures], that they
might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings
and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned,
they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword..."
(vss 35ff).
Here
was faith in action, a faith that knows and trusts the promises of God in
the midst of the real struggles of this life. DeBres, together with his congregation
in Doornik, said together that they believed this God. They knew who God
was: God had given His Son to pay for their sins, and now God loved them
so much that they were safe in His hands. This God led deBres' path to
that hotel which led to his arrest, and deBres could say that it was all
okay! Even in the face of death,
he could say he was happy and that he lacked nothing! THAT IS FAITH! These were real people,
like each of us today. They knew the Bible and the God of the Bible, and
worked with His promises, acted accordingly.
This
brings us back to the most basic question of the universe: is there a God?
What is your answer? Are you like the fool who says in his heart,
"There is no God"? Are you like the fool who tries to live
without God? Or, with Guido de
Brès, do you say, "I believe
in my heart and confess with my mouth that there is God who is eternal,
incomprehensible, invisible, immutable, infinite, almighty, perfectly
wise, just, good, and the overflowing fountain of all good."
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