Sermon 2 Corinthians 13:14 - “Who is God?”

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard
New Covenant Presbyterian Church
Sermon 2 Corinthians 13:14 - “Who is God?”
September 9, 2018

Listen to this sermon.

This morning I am beginning a series of sermons drawn from Believe, Living the Story of the Bible to Become Like Jesus.  This is part of a combined effort of both the Christian Education and Worship Committees.   Each week the same topic with be the subject of my weekly sermon and Bible Study classes for adults, students, and children.  So there will be one topic each week that we all hear in worship and can talk about in small groups at all age levels.   And our hope is that the entire church will begin “living the story of the Bible to become like Jesus.  Let’s pray.

Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy Heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen. (John Calvin)

According to a recent Gallup poll, 89% of Americans believe in God, https://news.gallup.com/poll/193271/americans-believe-god.aspx.  This should not be surprising.   As we look around our world we see many created things.   This building, the chair you sit in, the windows you look out and the sound system I am using are all designed by humans.  And we can see the sky, sun, moon, stars, soybean fields, and grass lawns which are also created, but not by humans.  We know that the creator is God.   Psalm 19:1 puts it this way, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”   So just by looking at the world, we live in we know that there is a God.

We also know that there is a God because of our minds.   Aristotle asked people to consider the following.   Suppose you take a bottle of cold water from your refrigerator and put it on the kitchen counter.   Suddenly your phone rings and you leave the kitchen to answer it.   You forget about the bottle of water until you return later that afternoon.   Now, is the water still cold?  No, it is now room temperature.  Why?  Because the kitchen is warm.  Why is the kitchen warm?  Because it is a hot summer day.   Why is it a hot summer day?   Because the sun is high in the sky and has been warming the air all day.   Why is the sun high in the sky?   We could keep asking these questions again and again until we get to something that causes everything else, a first cause.  And this we call God.   God started everything going.   God is here today keeping everything going.  And since cause and effect is an intelligible process God must know what is happening and his will is causing it to happen.

So we know that God exists from both our experience and intellect. The Bible assumes all of this.   We read this in Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”   Anyone who opens their eyes and engages in thought will realize that God exists.

The real question we have,  the one the Bible deals with is, “Who is God?”.   We must select the God we will serve.  We read this in Joshua 24:15 “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

So according to Joshua, we are to worship and serve Yahweh, the Lord God of Israel.   This is the creator God who made the world and made you and me.   And this is the only God we believe in and worship.  We read this in Deuteronomy 6:4

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” 

So we believe the one true God, the creator, and we are to pass this belief on generation to generation.

But in the New Testament, we see something a little different.   In 2 Corinthians 13:14 we read,

“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” 

So here we seem to have three gods: the Lord Jesus Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit.   There seems to be a math problem here.   The Old Testament told us that we have one God.   But here we seem to have three Gods.   So what is going on?  Are Christians still worshiping the one creator God?

The answer is yes we are worshiping the same God.  Theologians have come up with a fancy term, “Trinity”,  to describe this.  They tell us that the God we worship has one being, the Lord God of Israel, but has been revealed to us as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.   God has one essence.  But our God is not a God of individualism.  Rather our God is a God of community, a community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

America is a land that values individualism.   We want to believe that we can do it ourselves.   We don’t really need community.   We can go it alone if we want.  We don’t have to worship as part of a church we can worship alone and develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.   But there is a problem with this because our God is a God of community who created us to be in community too.  Listen to this from Genesis 1:26

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”  27 So God created mankind in his own image in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Notice what God said as he was creating us.   God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.”  “Our”!  It was our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who created us.   God exists in community.   God gave us his image by placing us in community.   Men and women are created to be in fellowship with others in family, neighborhoods, and churches.   So the church is created in the very image of our triune God.  We are a community that worships the God who exists in community.

So what should a community, created in the image of God’s community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be like?  What would be the characteristics of that kind of community?    Remember our scripture for this week, 2 Corinthians 13:14,  “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”   God’s community is filled with grace, love, and fellowship.   The church was created in the image of this community.   So church must also be a community of grace, love, and fellowship.   We must treat each other with kindness, be forgiving, offer friendship to others, and care for those in need.

As I said before America is a land that values individualism over community.   We believe in God and think we can act out our belief alone without community.  In my generation, many of us have no real friends.  Our best friend is for many of us the television.   Today there is a new generation whose best friend is a cell phone.  People are with their phones all the time.   They constantly talk to their phones by text messages.   The closest thing they have to community is a group chat or social network.   So as a result of cell phone technology, we are becoming a nation of radical individualists unable to form true communities.

Once people leave school there are few places where they can find real fellowship.   Sometimes they can find fellowship at work if social interaction goes on among people.   Maybe they find community in a bar with people drinking with each other.   Community could be found across the fence in your backyard with your neighbor, but most people are afraid of their neighbors.   So where can you go to meet people, make friends and be a part of a community?  I think the best place for that to happen is right here in church because church was created as a community in the image of our loving, gracious, and communal God. 

So people right here in Middletown are living isolated lives with few if any real friends.  They go to work.  Then they come home to their computer check messages and maybe stream something on youtube.   They are truly lonely because God created them to be in community.   What would be the loving and gracious thing that we could do for them?   I think the most loving thing we could do is to invite them to church where they can find the community they crave.  So the best thing you could do is invite people you meet to come here to a loving and gracious fellowship of believers and be part of a genuine community.
 
So we worship the one true God, our creator.   This God exists in community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.   This community is characterized by grace, love, and fellowship.  The church is created as a community in the image of God.   So church is also characterized by grace, love, and fellowship.   And we can offer this community to a world that is desperately looking for it.  People crave community because they were created to be in community in the image of our communal God.   So let’s love our neighbor by inviting him or her to be a part of our divine community here at New Covenant Church. Let’s pray.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit create for us a community filled with grace, love, and fellowship.   The help us to invite people to be a part of this community satisfying their deepest desires to be in community with others.   This we pray in your glorious name.   Amen.