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Sunday, May 17, 2020

God Is There

The message give in the Sunday morning service in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, May 17, 2020.  The Bible verses used are Acts 17:22-31.


            The Apostle Paul is in Athens.  Paul traveled a lot, spreading the message of Jesus Christ wherever he felt God leading him to go.  He’s in Athens, in Greece, and he walks around the city, trying to get a feel for the place.  
            At this time the people of Athens did not have the idea that there was one God.  They thought there were lots of gods.  Their idea was that the gods went in for specialization.  There was a god for this, a god for that, a god for just about everything you could think of.  And Paul sees statues and idols and such to honor all these different gods.  And then, Paul sees one that has this inscription, “to an unknown god.”
            See, the people of Athens wanted to make sure they had all their bases covered.  They were worshiping every god they could think of, every god they knew about or even suspect might be there.  But they thought, well, what if we missed one?  So, just to make sure, they thought they’d better also put something up to honor this unknown god, too.  Just to play it safe, you know?
            We read that, and maybe we think that sounds like of strange.  Maybe even silly.  How can you worship an unknown god?  How can you worship a god you don’t know anything about?  In fact, why would you even want to?  What we be the point of it?  “O unknown god--please do--um--whatever it is you do.  Please help us in--well--in whatever way it is you can help us.  Please give us the benefit of--whatever it is that you can give us the benefit of.”  How strange would that be?
            And yet, how many people do you know who do that today?  How many people are there who worship a God they don’t really know?  In fact, how many of us, as Christians, can really say that we know the God we worship?
            Now, on one level, this is inevitable.  In many ways, God is beyond our ability to understand.  God is greater and bigger and more of--well, everything, really--than we could ever get our minds around.  We can describe God--we can use words like holy and righteous and all-powerful and all-knowing and all-wise.  He can use words like omnipotent and omniscient omnipresent.  We can talk about the trinity--God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  But how in the world that works, how God does what God does, how God can be what God is, we really don’t have much of a clue.  The only way we could fully understand God is to be God, and of course we’re not.  We’re not anywhere close, and we never will be, at least not while we’re on earth.
            We cannot fully understand God, but we can understand enough.  And so could the people of Athens.  So Paul started telling them about God, this God who was unknown to them.  And the things Paul tells them about God are important for us to know, too.
            He starts out by calling God “the God who made the world and everything in it.”  That’s one of the most basic Christian beliefs that there is, but let’s think about it.  “The God who made the world and everything in it.”  Everything you and I will ever see or hear or touch or taste or smell was made by God, or at least it was made from the things God made.  There was nothing in the world, there was not even a world for there to be nothing in, until God made it.  
            That tells us what power God has.  But it also tells us something else.  It tells us that God existed before the world began.  I mean, if God made it, then God must have been here before it, right?  And so, logically, God will still be around after the world comes to an end someday.  This tells us that God is eternal, with no beginning and no end.  Just that is a hard thing to understand.  But it’s true.
            Paul goes on to call God “the Lord of heaven and earth.”  So, not only did God create everything, God is in control of everything.  After a lord, any lord, is someone who has power and control over whatever he’s lord of.  So, by calling God “the Lord of heaven and earth”, Paul says God has power and control over heaven and earth.  Nothing can ever happen, either in heaven or on earth, that God does not allow to happen.
            Paul goes on to say that God “is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything.”  We maybe need to think about that a little bit.  After all, don’t we talk all the time about how we need to serve God?  How can we be serving God if God is not served by human hands?  How does that work?
            Well, I think both statements are true.  We do serve God, but God does not need our service.  I think we serve God the way a little kid “helps” Mom and Dad around the house or in the yard or in the field.  Mom and Dad don’t need the help--in fact, they could probably get things done faster if the kid was not there.  But they allow the kid to help, partly out of a desire to teach, but mostly just out of love.  They love their children and like having them around.  They like seeing them try to help, even when their “help” is not really much help at all.  I think that’s how our service to God is.  As Paul says, there’s nothing we can do for God that God could not do without us.  But God allows us to serve, partly out of a desire to teach us, but mostly just out of love for us.  God likes seeing us try to help, even when our “help” is not really much help at all.
            Paul goes on to tell them that God “made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth, and he marked out their appointed time in history and the boundaries of their lands.”
            Again, that points to God being eternal.  We think of that as meaning God lives forever, and it does, but it means more than that.  It means that God stands outside of time.  God can see the entire sweep of human history all at once.  God knows everything that has happened, everything that is happening, and everything that is going to happen.  God sees the rise and fall of empires.  God saw it all before it ever happened.  And God knows how it all comes out.
            I think that should give us hope.  More than that, it should give us confidence.  We’ve all been kind of discombobulated by this coronavirus.  A lot of things we could on, that we considered a fixed part of our lives, are not there now.  And we don’t know if some of them are coming back--maybe they will, but maybe they won’t.  And that leaves us feeling really strange.  It leaves us feeling out of sorts.  Everyone’s trying to keep going, and everyone’s doing the best they can.  In fact, most of us are handling things pretty well, really, as far as I can tell.  But still, it bothers us.  When something that we thought would always be there is gone, it shakes us up.  We’re not sure what we can trust any more.
            If you feel that way, know that you can trust God.  We may not know what’s going to happen or when or how.  But God does.  None of this has come as a surprise to God.  And God knows exactly how it’s going to all come out.  You and I may not know how to handle this.  We may feel like we’re flailing around, trying to figure out how to handle it.  But we don’t need to.  God already has it all handled.  God has it all figured out.  We can trust that.  We can trust God.
            And after that, Paul says this:  “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”
            There’s our answer.  If we’re struggling with handling things, there’s our answer.  Reach out for God.  Find God.  God is not far from any of us.  All we need to do is reach out for Him.  If we do, we’ll find Him.  Because God is right there.
            God is as close as anyone and anything you can imagine.  God is our closest friend.  God is our closest relative--after all, we’re His children.  God is as close as our next breath.  God is as close as our fingertips.  God is as close as our innermost thoughts.  All we need to do is seek Him.  All we need to do is reach out for Him.  God is right there.
            That, my friends, is the God we have.  A God who is all-powerful.  A God who is eternal.  A God who is in control of everything.  A God who stands outside of time itself.  And yet, a God who loves us so much that He treats us as His children and allows us the privilege of serving Him.  A God who has everything figured out, even when you and I don’t have a clue.  A God who, as awesome and incredible as He is, is as close to us as our breath.
Our God is not an unknown God at all.  Our God is right here with us.  Leading us.  Guiding us.  Helping us.  Caring for us.  Handling whatever needs to be handled.  All we need to do is trust him.  All we need to do is reach out for Him, and we’ll find Him.  Because he’s right here.

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