More than God Above

I - Dad did you make the trees?

Y - How do you Imagine God

I want you to draw a picture of God.

How do you picture God?

How we picture God matters a great deal. It impacts how we think about ourselves, our value, our lives, our choices, other people, creation ect.

If God is a watchmaker

If God is a Judge

Impatient Father

Disinterested Creator

A Distant spiritual “mind”

Lawgiver

Puppeteer

Needy desirer of worship

UNknowable

My Buddy

I think most of our ideas about God put him as far out into the margins as we can.

“God of the Gaps.”

I think we spend a lot of time worrying wether there is a god or not. And leave unexamined, what kind of God there is.

G - God with US - God with us means, if you want to know what God looks like take alook at your neighbor

Trans: The Gospel of John deals with this question. How can you know what God is like. and It’s introduction captures it. Its a little bit dense but lets work through it together. Because it tells the story very well and perhaps gives us an idea of what GOD really looks like. or at least how we can know what God looks like.

John 1:1–18 NIV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ ”) Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

Introduces the main theme of John. Answers the question, HOW can we know who God is. How can we know what God looks like

John 1

Answer seems to be - LOOK AT JESUS!

But how do we do that?

J 17

J 20:21 - “as the father has sent me, so I have sent you

Galatians 2:20 NIV

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2

the point of John is, that if you want to know what GOD looks like. LOOK AT JESUS. and if you want to know what Jesus looks like, look at his followers. This ties back to genesis too.

Y - 2 ways we fall short - our God is too far away

We fail to see God in others.

We fail to take seriously our role as WITNESSes

W - Look around you

God revealed himself in Jesus, and he seeks to reveal himself in Jesus’ followers. This is the call. This is the PURPOSE of your life.

As we go may we draw near to JEsus so that we might rflect him...

MY VISION for the church. God’s vision

That when you are not hear, at your workplace, at your game, at school, that you would be CHRIST there. REFLECT him there.

SO that when your friends your relatives face challenges and struggles they come to you, to REFLECT God to them. AND EVENTUALLY through you they connect to Christ himself.

Point:

God is WITH us

God with US starts with Jesus and ends with the church. We are intended to REPERSENT God’s presesnce on earth. IF you want to know what God looks like, look where 2 or three are agathered