I Believe... In God Almighty - Cana

I Believe…

Living the Catechized Life

Series Slide

Good morning and welcome to worship on this beautiful day that the Lord has made. As soon as we are through in here, I hope you will make your way down to the Kitchen area and join the rest of our church as we share a meal together and celebrate this Back to Church Sunday! It is good to have everyone back from vacation and travel… maybe life is getting settled down a little and we are getting into our regular routine!

I did want to mention to you about next week. We had planned for Dr. Toploski to be here, but he has had to have emergency oral surgery and was not able to travel to Texas before he goes to the General Conference… what that means is you are stuck with me next week…

And so, I decided to preach a series in conjunction with the launch of our I Believe study on Wednesdays. I also think it’s appropriate that we talk about what it is we believe as Followers of Jesus who call themselves Global Methodists during the season of our convening conference of this new denomination.

So, I am going to be walking through the Catechism of the Global Methodist Church. Since it will really only last 3 weeks, maybe I should say we are going to run through the Catechism.

Now, I know that I have already lost some of you… you’re likely thinking one of two things:

“What, I thought I got away from the Catechism… I still have nightmares of those classes!”

Or

“I ain’t no Catholic! First You make me say I believe in the catholic and apostolic church… now you’re making me study the Catechism.”

To both responses I say, “breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth…. Calm down… It’s not what you think.”

A Catechism “is a text which contains fundamental Christian truths, formulated in a clear way so that their understanding and reception are made easier.”

It comes from the Greek word Cetechesisand it means

-to proclaim loudly

-to make an echoing sound

-to teach by word of mouth.

And, just so you don’t think we’ve made this idea up, we can find it in the New Testament. We just heard the passage read from Acts 18. As the early Church continued to grow, new people began to join. The Disciples and those who followed Jesus were doing what Jesus said in the Great Commission, “teach them all the things I taught you…” and now we find a new convert who has been taught. Beginning in verse 24:

Acts 18:24-25

Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, an eloquent speaker who knew the Scriptures well, had arrived in Ephesus from Alexandria in Egypt. He had been taught (κατηχημένος - katechemenous – catechized in) the way of the Lord, and he taught others about Jesus with an enthusiastic spirit and with accuracy.

A catechism is a statement of faith about what we believe. If you want your own copy of the Global Methodist Church Catechism, you can order a printed copy from Seedbed Publishing, or you can go to GlobalMEthodist.org and download a copy of it.

In that document, it says:

A catechism is an educative and regulative formulation of church doctrine… the learning of the catechism should be viewed, along with baptism and the profession of faith, as a necessary step in approving Christians for membership in the church body.

The Catechism of the Global Methodist Church isn’t based on some new idea or anything like that… in fact, it uses one of the oldest statements of faith as its basis and foundation… the Nicene Creed that we just recited together a few moments ago. If you were to download the Catechism, you would find a few paragraphs of explanation followed by a series of 77 questions with a statement and scripture references to answer them, the first 36 are based on the Nicene Creed and are common for any orthodox church, the final 41 questions are specific to our Wesleyan teaching and understanding of scripture. I will tell you… we will not be able to touch on all these questions in 3 weeks. I’m not sure we could adequately cover them all in a year. In fact, in these three weeks, we will only discuss the first quarter of the questions. But… we are covering them all on Wednesday at 4:00!

So, where do we start? At the beginning with God Almighty.

Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God…” We really don’t have to go any further than that do we?

What we believe as followers of Jesus Christ, as Christians, and yes as Global Methodists, if you consider yourself one, is that we the created worship the uncreated one, from which came all that was, is, and ever will be… Or said by a bunch of early church leaders in 381 AD:

We Believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

Sermon Slide

The United Church of Canada says it this way, “We believe in God, who has created and is creating.”

God’s creative work is not done… and the amazing thing is that we get to be a part of God’s creative work… You and I are made in the image of God… that means that we are a part of that creation. Whether it is creating a beautiful garden in our yard, or you’re helping with The Garden Club, or you’re making babies… You do realize making babies is creating life don’t you… I’m not getting in to the ‘how-to’s’ and all…

that is one of the beautiful ways that God allows us, the created ones, to participate in creation.

Anyway, my point is that we believe in a creator God who is still in the process of creating… God is actively working to make all things new!

The next question deals with who God, the one true, holy, and living God is… It gets into the Trinity, but since I’m going to talk about the Holy Spirit and Jesus in the next couple of weeks… let me just say that God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, distinct but inseparable, eternally one in essence and power. I know, it’s hard to wrap our head around, and every illustration has its weaknesses. But here are two easy ones:

Water… water exists in the forms of solid, liquid, and gas… I know we now know that plasma is a form that water exists in, but don’t let science mess up my good illustration… Water is water, whether it is an ice cube, a liquid in a glass, or steam rising from a pot… it is still water.

Here’s another example. I am Jay – and I am a father, and I am a son, and I am a husband. These three parts of me are distinct, but inseparable. I responded to my parents in one way, by children in another way, and still my wife in another way… I am one, but I exist in three forms.

I know, you can tear those illustrations apart, because they ultimately fail in comparison to the God-head. But, hopefully you can begin to see how the God as the Trinity works, even though we will be speaking about God the Father Almighty, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit separately.

So, HOW is God Almighty?

God is infinite in power, wisdom, justice, goodness, and love.

Isaiah reminds us that God says,

Isaiah 55:8-9

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD.

“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.

For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so my ways are higher than your ways

and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

God is wholly other… God is transcendent… God is beyond the created. The Dictionary of Theological Terms defines this concept as:

[transcendent] … emphasizes the distinction of God from His creation, and His sovereign exaltation over it. In the popular phrase of Barth, God is “wholly other.” He is not part of the universe. He is not the sum of the parts of the universe. He is not the soul of the universe. He is the eternal, uncreated, absolute, self-contained, self-existent, sovereign Creator by whose will and power all things exist. They depend on Him for their being; He depends on none.

(Cairns, Alan. 2002. In Dictionary of Theological Terms, 491. Belfast;

Greenville, SC: Ambassador Emerald International.)

Well, I’ll let God speak to this. Turn with me to Job 38:1-12.

Sermon Slide

If you remember, Job has been through every bad thing you can imagine in life as he is tested, by Satan… but he does not turn from God… he does question God, and here is God the Almighty’s response…

Job 38:1-12

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

“Who is this that obscures my plans

with words without knowledge?

Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Tell me, if you understand.

Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

On what were its footings set,

or who laid its cornerstone—

while the morning stars sang together

and all the angels shouted for joy?

“Who shut up the sea behind doors

when it burst forth from the womb,

when I made the clouds its garment

and wrapped it in thick darkness,

when I fixed limits for it

and set its doors and bars in place,

when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;

here is where your proud waves halt’?

“Have you ever given orders to the morning,

or shown the dawn its place….

God is beyond you and God is beyond me. Our Catechism explains that “God is the creator, Sovereign, and preserver of all things.” In God, all things live and breathe and have their being.

And yet… the author of Romans reminds us…

Romans 5:8-11

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

Sermon Slide

Yes…

God is the creator of all that was is and ever will be… and

God the Father Almighty is Transcendent – God is away from us… God is wholly other than us…

and yet, God is immanent… God is closer than our next breath. The season of Advent and Christmas reminds us that God is with us… Emmanuel.

God became flesh and dwelt among us… made his home among us… pitched his tent in our camp… but that’s getting into Jesus, and I’ll save that for next week.

You know, I keep talking about this being the Catechism of the Global Methodist Church… but here’s the thing. This isn’t about some denomination. This is what we as followers of Jesus Christ believe. This is what we as First Methodist Church of Corsicana believe. This is what I believe…

I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

I hope that is what you believe…. If that is what you believe, I want you to say it with me…

I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

And to loosely quote Al Pacino in “The Scent of a Woman”

“We’re just getting warmed up.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is just the beginning!

Would you pray with me…