The Wonder of Boundaries
God of Wonder • Sermon • Submitted
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I want to talk about the wonderful God we serve.
My prayer is that we all have or can develop a healthy view of God. Mine wasn’t always.
We need to strengthen our relationship with God and deepen our understanding of who He is within the boundaries God has set through his word. This is what God desires of us!
I am just so saddened by what I see in the world. There is a great deal of uncertainty, anxiety and fear in our world. There have also been drastic changes in society and what society accepts as normal and a push for churches to do the same.
What doesn’t help is the popular philosophy of postmodernism.
A philosophical idea where truth is relative and what you define as moral comes from your personal life and experience. There is no singular standard for morality and truth. Everyone defines these for themselves.
Leading to a great deal of doubt in non-Christians and Christians alike, no wonder people question the existence of God, or seek to redefine who He is!
Some are deconstructing their faith in God and then want to redefine who God is
They question the importance of Scripture and say those passages that don’t fit with their new understanding are wrong.
In thinking through these ideas in the scope of this series God of Wonder I was led to consider the boundaries set by God.
In wanting to be acceptable to society and change their view of God some have crossed the boundaries or in some cases refuse to accept their existence in seeking the freedom they desire.
The theologian Thomas Oden states: It is tempting to fantasize that no boundaries are required in either moral discipline or religious community… We are mesmerized by the misconception that freedom opposes all limits, when in fact true freedom lives only within lawful limits. A community with no boundaries can neither have a liturgical center nor remain a community of worship.
A center without a circumference is just a dot, nothing more. It is the circumference that marks the boundary of the circle. To eliminate the boundary is to eliminate the circle itself. The circle of faith cannot identify its center without recognizing its perimeter.
Like a parent God has laid boundaries he has set the limits of our understanding. We don’t get to redefine them if they don’t fit with how we want to live and believe.
Here is a novel thought we are only free within the boundaries set by God. God has made it clear this far and no further.
We do have the freedom to choose to stay within those boundaries, but outside them things get blurred and confusing Giving rise to uncertainty, anxiety and fear!
So this morning I want to begin our study of the God Wonder by considering the wonder of boundaries.
Are you ready for the message God has for us?
Let’s dig in!
God is not like us
God is not like us
The first boundary to consider is that God is not like us.
My Bible and then Pew Bible pg. 382
16 But to the wicked God says, “What right do you have to tell of My statutes And to take My covenant in your mouth?
17 “For you yourself hate discipline, And you throw My words behind you.
18 “When you see a thief, you become friends with him, And you associate with adulterers.
19 “You let your mouth loose in evil, And your tongue harnesses deceit.
20 “You sit and speak against your brother; You slander your own mother’s son.
21 “These things you have done and I kept silent; You thought that I was just like you; I will rebuke you and present the case before your eyes.
Notice the mistake the people the Psalm talks about had made. They thought God was like them.
In deconstructing and then rebuilding their faith and understanding of God they cross this boundary and seek to make God like man.
They have it backwards. God is not like us, His desire is that we be like Him!
Pew Bible pg. 1
26 Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.”
27 So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
We were made in the image of God and we cannot change that.
We cannot make God like us. The Psalm is pretty clear the danger we put ourselves in when we cross that boundary.
This means there will be things we will not understand in this life, when we live with in this boundary we are okay with the tension of not knowing,
God lives in eternity
God lives in eternity
The second boundary is tied to the previous God lives in eternity
Pew Bible pg. 400
1 Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
God has always existed. This is a boundary that many try to cross by arguing against His existence.
Some people expect us to prove God exists. Yet if I could prove he existed there would be no faith.
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
This boundary establishes our faith in God. Our faith lies in having never seen God and that he has always existed just as Moses wrote in the Psalm.
We will see later in this series that some have crossed this boundary by putting God inside time when scripture states he exists outside time.
God does not think like us
God does not think like us
Tied again to the pervious is the next one God does not think like us.
Pew Bible pg. 492
8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.
Simply this boundary establishes that God does not think like us. It reminds us that there will be things that we may not understand about God.
We want God to think like us yet they only way to understand anything is to look at what God has said in His word.
Because God does not think like us he knew the only way to save his creation was to send his son into this world to die on a cross.
A plan in place before creation
Use my pew then Pew Bible pg. 815
18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors,
19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.
This boundary is connectEd to the previous that shows God exists in eternity out side the time of our universe.
Inside this boundary is the peace that a plan has been in place before the creation of the world.
God only knows how things will unfold, the certainty is that it is in his timing not ours.
We will never figure the end out, because his thoughts are not our thoughts.
Thinking how imperfect we are there is also peace in knowing that His ways are not our ways.
Who would want to cross this boundary
Judgment is coming
Judgment is coming
Another boundary to consider is that Judgment is coming, it is an unavoidable biblical fact.
27 And just as it is destined for people to die once, and after this comes judgment,
Death and judgment are certain until Christ returns.
Some have crossed this boundary by saying there is no judgement and God is not going to send people to hell or place of punishment.
After death there will be another chance to live a proper life and receive the gift of eternal life
In crossing this boundary they even deny its existence.
Yet there is no way around it. As Nazarenes it is contained in Article 15 of our manual: “We believe in the resurrection of the dead, that the bodies both of the just and of the unjust shall be raised to life and united with their spirits—“they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”
This was not pulled out the air, it there because more importantly it is in Scripture.
Pew Bible pg. 753
5 But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,
6 who will repay each person according to his deeds:
7 to those who by perseverance in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, He will give eternal life;
8 but to those who are self-serving and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, He will give wrath and indignation.
9 There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of mankind who does evil, for the Jew first and also for the Greek,
We simply cannot get around this boundary.
It also connects to the other boundaries.
Doing away with any of the scriptures that deal with it does not mean the boundary does not exist.
Some are trying to erase the boundary to make God more appealing to the people of the world, yet in so doing where can we come up with justice? Or a standard of judgement?
When we do away with scripture as the singular standard then people can define justice and punishment for themselves.
There is not freedom or peace outside this or any of the boundaries.
Conclusion
Do you see how important the boundaries are?
Aren’t they a wonder?
The wonder of these boundaries is the true freedom found only within them.
Within these boundaries we find peace and security.
We can rest in knowing that the God of Wonder is in control, not humans!