What is God?

Mention Thanksgiving Service NEXT Sunday night

God is the creator and sustainer of everyone and everything

When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I think a lot of us Christians had our lives flash before our eyes.

Charlie did this “Prove Me Wrong” tour where he would take questions from anyone and everyone and debate his beliefs versus theirs.

Crazy as it sounds, that’s what got him killed.

He studied, he knew what he believed and he was undeterred in the face of any questioner.

When he got killed, that caused a lot of Christians to realize that we fall short there.

We aren’t able to articulate what we believe like he did.

That when we get into simple conversations with folks we stumble and stutter.

We are not firmly convinced we are right.

We were never trained in our churches to dig in our heels.

That’s not been held up as a positive way to do things.

But when it comes to our faith

To issues that are essential for the Gospel .

We have to be firmly convinced.

And we need to be able to articulate them.

So, over the next seven weeks, we will have one Sunday of a Christmas musical

We will have one Sunday with a Christmas message

And we will have five Sundays of a “What is…” series.

Then in January, we’ll start a study of 1 Peter.

Now, just so you can feel my stress, that means there are only seven Sundays until 2025 is done.

Where did this year go?

So we’re going to start at one of the most basic questions, What is God?

We’ll have several texts this morning so get ready to move around a bit.

We’ll start with Romans 1:19-

20, so go ahead and open your Bibles there.

And while you do, let me talk to the kids right quick.

Especially those in the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th grade.

This first question should be so familiar to you guys.

Remember us studying in Wednesday Kids question number 2, “What is God?”

Do you remember the answer?

“God is the creator of everyone and everything.”

We talked about a lot of things and you asked a lot of really good and really hard questions.

So now we’re going to talk about it with everyone.

That’s how important what you are studying in Wednesday Kids is.

Make sure you ask your mom and dad to bring you on Wednesdays and bring a friend when you can.

Learning about Jesus is the most important thing you’ll ever learn.

Now, if you have your Bibles open, hear now the Word of the Lord from Romans 1:19-20

Romans 1:19–20 ESV

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray:

Lord, Your Word tells us that the Holy Spirit will guide us to the truth.

Please Lord, right now, let the Holy Spirit open our ears and open our eyes so we can know you as deeply as we can.

We need you so very desperately.

In Jesus’ Name,

Amen

In Wednesday Kids, for the fourth and fifth graders, we use the New City Catechism.

Don’t let the name scare you, a catechism is simply a question and answer style of learning.

For example the very first question we learn is “What is our only hope in life and death?”

And the answer is, “That we are not our own but belong body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our Savior Jesus Christ.”

Pretty good huh?

If we belong body and soul to God, our life beginning right now and lasting forever will be the best it can possibly be.

The second question is “What is God?”

The Kids’ answer is, “God is the creator and sustainer of everyone and everything.”

But here is question number 1:

How do you know there is a God?

And that’s where you turn to Romans 1:19–20 “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

That’s not very satisfying to someone who is looking for a scientific answer, so we’ll get to that in just a second.

But God’s answer is to simply tell you to stop and pay attention.

God’s word tells us that ever since the beginning of time, if we will stop and be still long enough

Put down our books and devices for a while

And simply stop and stare - we’ll see evidence of God everywhere.

One evening on vacation years ago, the family was at Jekyll Island - that’s probably our most favorite place.

There was a thunder and lightning but not a lot of rain

And so we got in the car and drove down to the pier.

As we turned around in the parking lot, lightning streaked across the sky in front of us and it made me stop.

It wasn’t sky to ground or ground to sky lightning.

It was cloud to cloud.

Every bolt of lightning broke into a handful of fingers reaching from one cloud to a bunch of other clouds.

And like dominoes that someone tapped over, when it went to one cloud, that cloud would spark to the next cloud and the next and the next.

It was magnificent.

While that doesn’t “prove” God, it certainly proves that there is an order to creation.

And that order is so complex, that surely something has to keep it in motion

And something had to start it into motion.

And here’s where you get just a small taste of science.

See, we believe Genesis 1:1 to be true, don’t we.

Genesis 1:1 ESV

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

We believe the universe had a beginning.

And so does science.

In school, most kids are learning that the universe is ~13.8 billion years old.

If the universe is ~13.8 billion years old, that means the universe has a birthday.

A day in which the universe came into being.

Prior to that day, there was no universe.

There was nothing at all - nothing that we see existed.

It was all born that day.

Thomas Aquinas talked about that.

He said that everything that begins, must have a cause.

This is really very simple.

Think of it this way, my tire sensor light came on the other day.

Then it went off - then it came on again.

The pressure in my tire is fine.

Something had to cause that light to come on and it did.

I have a faulty sensor.

Something had to cause the universe to be born.

That something had to be God.

We look around ourselves and see order and a complexity that can’t be explained by random chance.

We see things that had a beginning.

Something had to start all of this.

It has to be God.

Now, here’s where we need to gain a new attitude.

Because we can’t prove the existence of God using science, we feel like have a losing argument.

But now stop and think about this - no one can disprove God using science either.

There is one word that describes those who believe in the existence of God and those who deny the existence of God.

It’s a very familiar word.

It’s faith.

Just as we have faith that, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”

They have faith that in the beginning, something happened and everything went “Boom.”

And, in my humble opinion, their position requires more faith than my position.

It is very easy for me to look at a new born baby and see the miraculous hand of God in creation.

In God’s design, a mother and a father each contribute a single cell.

That divides and divides and divides and grows just right

Into a brain and a heart and arms and legs and lungs

And a voice

All of that complexity from two little cells.

Somebody designed that.

Their position says that over the last 13.8 billion years, things just randomly happened over time that eventually turned into a baby.

They have to have more faith to believe that.

Simply seeing “the things that have been made,” tells you someone had a blue print to create all of this.

It had to be God.

But now this is where the kids in Wednesday Kids, without fail, ask the same question.

Where did God come from?

That’s a fair question.

If everything that has a beginning, must have a cause, then what “caused” God, so to speak?

And that answer can be found in Isaiah 40:27-31

Isaiah 40:27–31 ESV

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Where did God come from?

Verse 28 says God didn’t “come from” anywhere - “The Lord - the word there is God’s name - Yahweh is the everlasting God.”

Everlasting - has no beginning and has no end.

If you will stop long enough to ponder this, it is mind blowing.

There has never been a moment in eternity when God wasn’t.

There will never be a moment in eternity when God will not be.

What did Jesus’ say? Mark 13:31

Mark 13:31 ESV

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

2 Peter tells us that when the day of the Lord comes, “the heavens will pass away with a roar…” (2 Peter 3:10)

And yet, God and His kingdom will continue.

There is a term that is used in theological circles called “incomprehensibility.”

Essentially, that means…

Isaiah 55:8–9 ESV

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

How can God exist eternally when everything else has a starting point?

I can’t explain it.

But by faith I believe it is true.

Just as others, by their faith, believe that it is not true.

But for those of us who believe in the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength….

Let’s explain it this way.

Have you ever been walking across your driveway and you came across an earthworm?

He’s starting to look a bit dry and you know he’s not going to make it across the driveway.

He’ll either be eaten by a bird or he’ll dry out and die.

So you pick him up and take him to the flower bed and you tuck him under a leaf in the soft soil.

You’ve given him a chance to live.

Now we know worms have very small brains and I don’t know if they are capable of thinking like we do

But suppose in his little worm brain, he is able to ask himself a simple question - What was that thing that just saved my life?

To his tiny mind, we would be incomprehensible.

There would be no denying that we exist

But at the the same time there would be explanation of who were were

Other than, we were their savior.

Isaac Watts wrote a hymn way back when called, “Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed? that went like this

Alas and did my Savior bleed

And did my sovereign die?

Would He devote that sacred head

For such a worm as I.”

You may remember the last line differently.

When everyone had to have their self-esteem bolstered, they changed the last line to “for sinners such as I.”

But that’s not the way Watts wrote it.

Watts understood the incomprehensible nature of God.

I am like that worm crossing the driveway.

Should never have been there.

Turned left when I should have turned right

And now I’m destined to die.

And for some reason that begs any kind of explanation

God reached down through time and space

He showed me my condition

And He showed me how to be saved.

Now, while we are dealing with that incomprehensible situation

He did the same thing for billions of other people, all at the same time, without accidentally missing a single one.

While making each person feel like they were the only person He sent His Son for.

Those that deny the existence of God have never experienced that but we can help.

The first thing we have to do is to make the stand that Joshua made in Joshua 24, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

I know that I know that I know that God created all that is, including me and everyone and everything I love.

I know that I know what I know that God is, was and ever more shall be regardless of what I might think, feel, say or do.

When we speak those things, we must sound convinced because we are convinced and…

Number two, we’ve got to approach God with a humility that our world does not admire.

Our world admires brash, bold and vulgar.

The world admires action and power and confrontation.

But what did Isaiah tell us in Isaiah 40:31

Isaiah 40:31 ESV

but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; t

“But they who wait for the Lord….”

Why wait? Nobody wants to wait.

Why stop and pray and ponder instead of immediately grabbing the bull by the horns and wrestling it to the ground?

It’s because of the incomprehensibility of God.

Since I don’t think His thoughts

Since I don’t act like He acts

I must stop - as hard as it is

As counter cultural as it is

As unpopular as it is

We have to stop in humility before God and ask Him what does He want.

That doesn’t mean we don’t do anything

It does mean we keep living our lives as Godly as we can

And we watch, for if we ask, He surely will answer.

The lost need to see a people convinced that their God will answer.

Our weaker brothers and sisters need to see brothers and sisters who are convinced that God is on our side.

It is time to stand up and stand firm.

The storm is gathering around us.

We must be faithful.

We must be convinced.

Many of you have heard the good news of Jesus over and over.

You know you are the worm on the concrete, unable to save yourself and losing hope by the minute.

But you also know that if you will give your life to Jesus, all of that will change.

What is holding you back?

What is so important that you would reject the love of God

A love deeper and better than any love you have know.

A love that wants to save you and give you a full and eternal life.

We’re going to pray and then we’ll sing.

When we sing, I’d love for you to come and talk to me about Jesus.

Let us pray: