When I was assigned to preach on the topic of God - The Heart of Reality, I could only think of two approaches to this sermon. One, to go through all the details in the bible about God, and there will be no end to this sermon. Or I can choose to approach it from the viewpoint that since God is beyond my understanding completely, therefore there really isn’t anything that I can say from up here. But Susan will kill me if I took any one of these approaches, so I shall give it a shot and I will adopt the path in the middle, and hopefully in the next twenty minutes or so, each of us will find a little bit of God that we know in our hearts.
Today, I am not going to talk about whether the Christian god is different from the hindu god or the buddhist god, or whether there is a difference when we refer to god with a capital G or not. I am not knowledgeable in all the various forms of god, so I will just talk about the God I know, from the bible and from my personal experience.
When I first became a Christian, God was this powerful and loving entity that gave and gave tremendously to his children. We are able to ask for anything from Him, as long as it is according to his will and all is good. Then, I grew up a little, and God became different to me. He became this Father like figure, who will reward and punish his children accordingly, depending on what the child has done. There are rules in this family, though the rules are bounded by love. Then I grew a little more, and I realised that all I see are just facets of God, depending on the situation that I am in, and the understanding that I am capable of at that time. The more I read, the more I seek, it seems like I know God less and less, that I am only catching glimpses of Him. So one of my friend told me, if the more you study, the less you know, then it is better for you to not study anymore. But I guess I just need to know, so please indulge me and let us go through this sermon with three questions.
We start off with a difficult question number one, who is God? In the bible, God is called by many names. Each name highlights an aspect of God. For to each of us God plays different roles, filling a part of us that we may not know is missing in ourselves. For example : El Shaddai (All-Sufficient One, Lord God Almighty), Jehovah Jireh (God my Provider), Jehovah Shalom (God is my Peace). I am going to talk about three roles of God that is important to me. The loving God, the creating God and the righteous God.
God is Love, the bible to me is one huge Love story, about God’s love for humanity. It doesn’t matter whether it is the love between two persons in the bible, like Jonathan and David, Naomi and Ruth, or the love God has for His people, such as Abraham and Joseph, or the love God showed, when Christ was send to walk on earth, and ended up as the ultimate sacrifice on the cross. This is a love I will never comprehend, because it is so far beyond my imagination. We have all experienced love in our life, be it the love from a parent or child, from a partner or friend, or even from a pet, but a love where another would lay down their life for you, I doubt that it happens regularly to anyone of us here. If it does, you are very fortunate. We have all loved another in our life, maybe for our family, biological or spiritual, or for that special someone. We understand love as a human concept of wanting the one we loved to be happy, placing his or her welfare above our own, and maybe spending as much time together as humanly possible.
But how do we know that God loves us? Christ walking on earth and dying on the cross is an expression of God’s love, but it does not mean that God did not love us before that. Christ actually serves as a reminder to help us remember God’s love, He came to express love in a way that we could understand. Just like I can shower all my love on my pet, my pet will never fully understand my love. That does not negate my love for it. Similarly, even though I may not completely understand God’s love, I know that He loves me. God’s love is different from human love, human love tends to be dictated by the physical, and often times tied in with some conditions. God, on the other hand, can love us right into our very inner being, from the time we are conceived, till the end of times, His love is not limited by physical, time or space constraints. God is Love.
The ability to create, be it a piece of art or music, a poetry or a novel, or maybe something mechanical, is a gift that brings joy to the creator. To be able to translate an idea in our mind, to something tangible, is a process which is unique to the creator. God as a creator, of all things big and small on earth, gives us a glimpse of His imaginative powers, and a look into how His mind ticks. I look at the birds in the skies, the trees in the forest, the fishes in the seas. All these are His wonderful creations.
But what strikes me most, is when I look into the make-up of each and everyone of us here. Not the makeup on our faces, but the makeup of our cells. Studying science had made me appreciate the wonder of each human being. I do not know how many of us subscribe to the creation theory, the evolution theory or the supposed intelligent design theory, whatever it is, we are either amazingly created, amazingly evolved, or amazingly designed.
When I had to choose my major in the university, my first lecture was on creation versus evolution. Of course creation based on the bible was bashed down during the lecture, and I was hesitant to choose molecular biology as my major if every lecture is going to plant doubts in my heart. I went back and shared with my cell members, and this wise person told me that, perhaps I should take it as a major, and learn as much as I can, so as to understand why the people think that way. Without the knowledge, I would be hampered in my defence of what I believe, and I will not have any credibility to counter their arguments. So I took on cell and molecular biology as a major, and the more I studied about what goes on in our cells, the more I am convinced that such intricacies cannot be a chance occurrence, and I was more assured of my faith than ever. The interaction of our genetic code with the environment made us all to be one of a kind. Looking at each one of us here, it represents to me the diversity in God’s creation. Not one of us can dismiss the claim of our own uniqueness, thanks to God, our creator.
In view of the happenings in the world since the beginning of the year, I think it is inevitable that we start hearing questions such as: why do bad things happen, if God loves us, why does He allow so many people to get hurt? It can be a huge natural disaster like a hurricane or an earthquake in another part of the world, or perhaps an unexpected illness or accident that strikes someone we know, that makes us question God. Some of us would say that it is due to the fallen state of the world, some of us would say that God has His plan in everything, and even if we do not know the reason, we should trust in Him. Yet, at times these are but shallow words, especially when loved ones are lost, that one’s faith can be erased completely. I sometimes wonder what moral or ethical codes does God follow, that deals so casually with human lives, which seems so contrary to His loving nature.
I still do not know what the answer to this question is, perhaps some of you can come and enlighten me at the end of the service. However I think we all have the experience of looking back at a bad patch in our lives, and realise the grace of God that brought us through, and that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Believing in God does not insure us against all hurt, but we can be assured that God is with us no matter what we encounter. He knows how we feel when our heart breaks, for His heart has been broken too!
Question number two : Why do we need to know God? For each of us, the reason to know God may differ. Some may be naturally curious and questioning, and seek to know Him to fill a void within ourselves. Some finds the need to establish a relationship with God, some hope that by knowing God, the purpose and the reason for our lives on earth can be answered. At sometime in our lives, we have all asked ourselves these questions: why am I here, how long do I have, and is there more to life than what it is on earth? Perhaps the answers to these questions are to be found by knowing God.
Colossians 1:16
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
To enter into a relationship with someone, we need to know that person, we don’t normally establish close relationships with people we do not know. It is the same with God, we need to know God in order to enter into a relationship with Him. We need to know God, so that we may have a better understanding of ourselves in this world, the good and the bad, the past and the present. And with God’s help to guide us to fulfil His purpose for us on earth, and something beyond for us to look forward to.
We need to know God because in Him, we have a foundation to stand on. Though we may be weak, He provides us with the strength to stand firm in Him. We need to know God because God encourages us to seek Him and know Him.
But in our pursuit to know God, we have to be wary not to allow it to become just an intellectual exercise. We are told to know Him, but that does not mean that we can have the goal of figuring God out as our aim. We can never dissect and compartmentalise God into nice tidy boxes. We can never completely define Him to our own satisfaction, we are simply told to seek Him and know Him. Doctrine is pretty useless when faced with a starving baby, or grieving family member, or any other need in the world. But the love of God found in Jesus Christ always is the answer to every need.
The intellectual understanding of God is only but one aspect of how we experience God, which leads to our final question for the day: How do we experience God? We experience God, not only through our mind, but also through our heart, our soul and our strength. In the absence of a voice from heaven, or a burning bush, or being swallowed by a whale, we all experience God in different ways in our daily lives.
Some of us experience God in our solitude, when all is quiet, and we hear the still small voice of God. Some of us experience God in a vigorous and uplifting worship. Some of us experience God through scripture reading, some of us experience God when communing with nature. Some of us experience God through journaling our thoughts, some of us experience God through contemplative prayer.
But I think one of the most common way to experience God, is through our interactions with people around us. It may be a simple smile, or a greeting of hello. It may be an action of service, like breakfast in church or cleanly vacuumed floors. It may be an expression of gratitude, or love, or even just the simple presence of someone. However, we are often bogged down by so many things, and we do not pay enough attention and we do not recognise it when we have a God-experience. Therefore we feel that God at times is far away from us, and we can only experience Him when we go through certain rituals, and our live is on the straight and narrow, when we have not done too much wrong.
This ties back to our bible reading of the day and who God is :
1 John 4:7-12
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
God is love, and we experience God through loving God and loving one another. We experience God, when someone says to us: hey, I love you and I care for you.
To help us see God in each other, we should remember that God made man in His own image, not in shape or size, not in intelligence, not in eyes or ears, not in hands or feet, but in this total inwardness, that is within each of us. There is God in the young and the old, there is God in the abled and disabled, there is God in female and male.
In here, is our own little Godlikeness, that seeks to overflow from within. If we do not allow this Godlikeness to come out, we will likely starved it and cause loneliness within our hearts. So let us together, in this community of faith, allow all our Godlikeness to escape from us and faithfully follow God along our journey.
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