Who I Am - Infinite
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“Infinite”
“Infinite”
We are beginning a new series this week. “Who I AM”
For the next 15 weeks or so we are going to be looking at the Attributes of God.
Our understanding of God, who and what He is forms the foundation of life. Whether you are a believer in Jesus or not, God forms the world that we live in and everything around us.
This is NOT only a Judeo-Christian Thing. All of the major religions of the world recognize “God.” Now all except Jews and Christians worship a small “g” god. They worship a god but it is not “Yaweh” of the Old Testament and Jesus, God with skin on of the New Testament.
Some reference points for you...
14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
16 “Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob— appeared to me and said: I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt.
“I AM” most closely represents the Hebrew understanding of Yahweh, in English we choose the name
“The Lord”
You might ask if this is going to be a boring study in the Old Testament that tells me what I should already know about God.
Lord, I hope not… If it is getting that way, please someone sound off
My intention is to take 15 Attributes of God, relate them to the Old Testament and New Testament understanding of them.
Then our application each week is to make a connection to our lives today.
I hope to answer the question each week, “So what…” How does this connection with God’s attributes help me in my fear, in my despair, in my failing health. How does help me celebrate that I am loved by God, An infinite God who knitted me together in my mother’s womb and sent His Son to die for me individually. You see our God, unlike any others He...
KNOWS ME BY NAME
How does also help me keep in context when you are in a good place, when your life and all of its various pieces and parts are “going great.” I hope that we realize that whether in our highest of highs or lowest of lows God’s fundamental nature does NOT change.
How does it help me live a relationship with Jesus that that shines to my community and draws others to Jesus.
Unfortunately, we tend to want to boss God around and tell Him how he should act based on the VERY LIMITED knowledge that we have of Him.
Yet he is full of Grace and Mercy for us, His creations, He is full of patience, has broad shoulders and can bear anything that we throw at him. His will and his ways point us, in everything to a personal relationship with His Only Begotten Son, Jesus!
“God’s Infinitude.”
This week we are going to look at how big our God actually is… The theological term is
“God’s Infinitude.”
I hope I have chosen a much more manageable term,
“My God is bigger than Yours.”
Well, how BIG is God? We have no words to describe actually how big he is.
Let me give some manageable terms…
“My dog is bigger than yours.”
“My big brother can beat you up.”
“My Dad is smarter that yours.”
“My momma makes more money than yours.”
None of them quite get to how big God really is…
There is a notable exception in our culture today… that exception comes from our modern day Prophet, Buzz Lightyear! When he says…
“TO INFINITY AND BEYOND…”
A created, animated, voiced character on the screen seems to grasp, infinity more better than 6000 years of history, the law, the prophets and 100’s of thousands of theologians, the coming of Jesus and 2000 years of being and making disciples
Our only available reference to God and His character is what we read in scripture…
As we will do frequently during this study, we will use the Old Testament, and the New Testament.
Let’s begin… During the next four months that we are doing this study, its really going to be helpful for you to bring your own Bible, underline and make notes, and write down questions that need to be answered.
At some point we will, open back up Sunday School and have opportunities to connect with each other.
Your own bible will give you those reference points.
Let’s look at some scripture
1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
After you accept the leadership of Jesus in your life. It is your responsibility to “set your hearts on things above.” in the very Throne Room of God. Where Jesus sits, God the Father and God and God the Spirit dwell.
As I’ve said 100 times before and and will keep saying until you start telling me… “we are to set our hearts on things above.”
Our citizenship is in Heaven… we are on temporary assignment to here on earth. We have a Visa giving us 40-50-80 or hundred years but we are still citizens of heaven. Because we have set our HEARTS ON THINGs ABOVE
Verse 3 is an important verse… circle, underline, highlight
“For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
“For you died…” Literally, when you stopped having vital functions. Because your life is NOW HIDDEN with Christ in God you have BRAND new life. A life that has the responsibility to be Heaven sent not early focused.
Christ and God are now linked, inseparably. Christ is God incarnate. The incarnation is best described looking at scripture.
5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
Scripture is clear… regardless of the form, Jesus is God. Jesus the Son is as INFINITE as God the Father and the Spirit are INFINITE. Without beginning or ending!
Jesus Christ is the complete manifestation, or the complete appearance of the Father. As Jesus Himself as recorded in John 14.9.
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
In some cases… well in a lot of cases we humanize Christ so much that we forget He is the incarnation of God, the INFINITE ruler of the world and everything in it.
In our minds Christ is our brother, our homey, our neighbor, our bro, our hangout friend, our confidant who’s has some similarities with God. YES, YES, YES, He is everything
Instead our focus should be on the Father when we see the Son. The INFINITE FATHER and SON joined together in eternity past, in our present and in entering into our forever future!
You probably ask I have not seen the appearance of the Holy Spirit. He too is part of this presence of God in eternity. There is a formula if you will to the presence of the God the Spirit.
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.
16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him
Here it is in a simple, yet impossible form:
· God is love
· Whoever lives in love, lives in God.
· If you acknowledge that the Father sent His Son to be the Savior of the world
· Yes, Yes, and, Yes… Then V:13
13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
The three members of the Trinity are forever bonded together in the Spirit of God and we can participate in that by living in LOVE!
We seem to have wondered far and wide of the INFINITY of God. Listen carefully!!
Being a follower of Jesus is a gateway into the presence of God… Then you’re on a journey into infinity.
To put it another way… We think we know infinity because we see the stars and galaxies, we acknowledge:
the earth weighs 13 trillion, billion tons,
the human body contains 30 billion cells,
we know that the richest person on earth has $113, 000,000,000. That’s 113 with 9 zeros after it.
But the GOD of infinity created all of those and so much more. What we see as infinite, we try and limit God to those things. He made those things He is not limited to those things.
God is infinite!
The words boundless, unlimited and infinite are misused in every way if they don’t describe God alone!
C.S. Lewis said, if you laid out paper in all directions as far as you could see, took a pencil and started making a mark. Where you started is where time began and where you lift it up is the end of time. The paper that you have left is eternity.
God is INFINITE!!!
Okay Jeff, I get it… God is infinite. But what if he didn’t know everything.
IF he knew almost everything?
Then the whole foundation of His infinity breaks down. He would no longer be perfect. His complete understanding would no longer be complete. But it must be...
5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.
You may have a “Charley Horse” in your head for a couple of weeks after trying to follow this, but it’s a mighty good cure for this little cheap god we have today.
This little cheap god we’ve made up is one you can pal around with—“the Man upstairs,” the fellow who helps you win baseball games.
That god isn’t the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He isn’t the God who laid the foundations of the heaven and the earth; he’s some other god.
We educated Americans can create gods just the same as the heathen can. You can make a god out of silver or wood or stone—or you can make it out of your own imagination.
And the god that’s being worshiped in many places is simply a god of imagination. He’s not the true God. He’s not the infinite, perfect, all-knowing, all-wise, all-loving, infinitely boundless, perfect God.
He’s something short of that. Christianity is decaying and going down into the gutter because the god of modern Christianity is not the God of the Bible.
I don’t mean to say that we do not pray to God; I mean to say that we pray to a god short of what he ought to be. We have got to think of God as being the perfect One, the one without limits.
To understand His limits or His “unlimits” God takes pleasure in everything he does… That’s kind of egotistical.. It is because He is the author, programmer, code writer of everything made. AND IT’S PERFECT WITHOUT ERROR. There are no accidents in His creation.
When God created the heaven and the earth and all things that are upon the earth, He kept saying, “It was good”
From Genesis 1...
4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
And He looked and saw...
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
How dare we, all of us not acknowledge God and the creator and infinite steward, of infinite guide, caretaker of the universe that we can do it better OUR WAY!
Redemption, the sending of God with skin, is not a heavy work for God. God didn’t find Himself in a fix and have to rush off somewhere and try to get “foreign policy” straightened out with the archangels.
God did what He did joyfully. He made the heaven and the earth joyfully. That’s why the flowers look up and smile, and the birds sing and the sun shines, and the sky is blue and rivers trickle down to the sea. God made the creation and He loved what He did!
He took pleasure in Himself, in His own perfection and in the perfection of His work.
And when it comes to redemption, I repeat that this was not a heavy task laid upon God by moral necessity. God wanted to do this. There was no moral necessity upon God to redeem mankind. He didn’t have to send His Son Jesus Christ to die for mankind. He sent Him, but at the same time Jesus did it voluntarily. If God was willing, it was the happy willingness of God.
1 But now, this is what the Lord says— he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.
3 For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead.
4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, and people in exchange for your life.
A mother doesn’t have to get up and feed her baby at 2 in the morning. There’s no law compelling her to do it. The law probably would compel her to take some care of the little tyke, but she doesn’t have to give him that loving care that she does.
She wants to do it. I used to do it for our little fellows, and I enjoyed doing it. A mother and a father do what they do because they love to do it.
It is the same with this awesome, eternal, invisible, infinite, all-wise, omniscient God, the God of our fathers, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the God we call “our Father which art in heaven.”
He is boundless and infinite; He can’t be weighed or measured; you can’t apply distance or time or space to Him, for He made it all and contains it all in His own heart.
While He rises above it all, at the same time this God is a friendly, congenial God, and He delights in Himself. The Father delights in the Son...
17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
The Son delighted in the Father:
25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.
I hope that we’ve been able to scratch the surface and explore been able to explore the INFINITY of God enough to at least give you a basis in which you can have a discussion with yourself and others about how big our God really is.
He really encompasses all of our little ‘g’ gods.
— If you “worship” the beauty around us, commonly called pantheism. God made it… All
— If its your thing, to worship the things that you have or the things that that you want, that is “coveting” and the 10 Commandments will have something to say about that .
— If it’s your thing to worship your free time, worship your spouse and family above the Lord God, then let’s talk about the First of the Ten Commandments...
1 And God spoke all these words:
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me.
PERIOD!!!!!
It’s interesting then, how do we mere humans grasp and understand the INFINITY that God is.
If you are a believer we at least have a framework to understand how BIG God really is. He is infinite but He is personal. He knows the beginning from the end and everything that is the middle. Yet cares for our every step.
— He knows how and why the Covid-19 started and ends. He didn’t cause it. But the powers and principalities of the our current world have won a battle with the human race concerning this dreaded disease.
Not exclusively in the number of deaths that have occurred but in the division that this has caused among brothers and sisters and family members.
If you have yet to acknowledge Christ as your Savior, your options are really few. He is either a distant unknowing , uncaring force in the universe or doesn’t exist at all.
So how do we as believers bridge this gap and bring people into communion with each other, into an understanding of who God is and attributes that he has.
— Pray and ask God to give us a Biblical understanding of who God is.
— Pray the we develop a sense that regardless of what is happening in our lives or the lives of our world that “God has this.”
— Pray that we find people that build us up and encourage and not not continue to breakdown.
The INFINITY OF GOD is one of the more difficult ideas to grasp about God. This series. Will not get any easier. But I hope as journey over the next few months allows us to build our faith in The God of the Universe and how much he really does LOVE us.
A final thought before communion...
So what…
We are going to celebrate that union, that communion that we have with each other in the elements today.
COMMUNION
Servers please come forward for communion.