God and the Dalek

For the past week I have been living in Edinburgh with no Internet access and little access to the television. It was only upon my return last night that I finally got to watch last weekends episode of Dr. Who.

For those of you who were unfortunate enough to miss the episode, the doctor's old enemies the Dalek's made a reappearance, they needed the doctors help to destroy the asylum of the Daleks. One of the stranger features of the asylum was the atmosphere surrounding it, full of micro organisms that if you weren't protected from began to turn you into a Dalek.

 

In the usual manner this was one of the problems that the Doctor encountered when one of his companions, Amy, lost her protection from the Daleks. She asks the Doctor what's going to happen to her, how will she know when the process of her becoming a Dalek has begun, at which point someone else interjects and tells her that the process begins when the love gets taken out. The love gets taken out.

 

For some of you maybe this is like your view of God; God is only there to do me harm, the love has been taken out of him. God's judgement is the over riding principle of God you think about, his wrath and his anger, his judgement. Like the Dalek's love has been taken out.

 

But God is loving, God is kind and God is compassionate. God loves us so much that he sent his son into the world to die for us, to take away the punishment that our sins deserve. God has always been loving and kind towards his creation.

 

However love isn't God's over arching characteristic, because above all else God is holy, God is set apart, and that is why sometimes we view God as unloving because of his judgement. God's holiness means he must judge our sin, God's purity means he can't have any trace of defilement and wrong around him and that is why God must judge us. However because God ultimately is not like a Dalek, because there is love in God as well as judgement he gives us a way we can come to him and come to know him personally, through his son Jesus Christ.

God Is.....

Over the past wee while I have been doing some studying in Genesis chapter one, and it got me thinking about some of the things that make God, God. The charachteristics and attributes that make God who he is, here are four of things that I came up with from Geneis 1.

God is Eternal

          The opening words of Genesis 1 are really quite simple, but I think that simplicity can sometimes mask the great truth that the passage is teaching us, we read in verse one, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” In the beginning, there was never a time when God was not, God is eternal he is everlasting, he was there before the foundation of the world and he will be there in the new heavens and the new earth, and he has been there ever since, there never was a time when God was not. There was a time when the earth was not, there was a time when we as human beings were not, there was a time when everything that has been created was not but there never was a time when God was not. For us this is something that is quite difficult to grasp isn’t it? We are creatures who are bound by time, always rushing somewhere or other because we are late for this or that. But God is not bound by time in the same way we are, God is above time, God is beyond time as we read in other parts of the bible that a year is like a thousand days and a thousand days is like a year to God. I suppose this makes the ultimate sense that God is eternal, because if he were not, if there was a time when God was created then the thing that created God would be the thing that deserved worship and praise and glory. But it’s not that way because God was always there, God was never created, he is eternal. As we come to prayer I think it is helpful for us to remember this characteristic of God, that he is eternal, this is the God that we are bringing our requests to tonight, the one who is eternal the one who is without beginning or end, the alpha and the omega. The God we serve the God we pray to is eternal, the God we pray to is eternally consistent, and we know that when we come to him pleading Jesus blood on our behalf he will always hear us because he loves to hear us. So firstly from Genesis one then the God we serve is eternal, there never was a time or never will be a time when God ceases to be, he was not created by something else, God is Eternal.

God is a Creator

          The second thing we see about God from this opening chapter of the bible is that he is a creator and we can read about this in verse 1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” We are told that as well as being eternal God created all that we see around us. In the next few verses the author of the book of Genesis gives a rundown of all the things that God created culminating in the pinnacle of his creation human beings. The point is easily missed that God created them all, everything that we see today God created it, the light and darkness, God created it, the dry ground and the waters God created it, the vegetation of earth all the plants and trees, all the birds of the air all the beasts of the ground and fish of the sea God created them. At the pinnacle of his creation God made humanity, he gave them dominion over all the other things he had created and placed them in charge to rule his world under his rule. This is quite an unpopular idea today isn’t it? So much scientific discovery seems to undermine the notion of a creator God, there seems to be scientific evidence for evolution for natural selection for the big bang theory, but we as Christians believe that we are not the result of a mere accident a mere collision of atoms but we believe that we have been lovingly created by a God who is eternal. This is the God we come to tonight, the God who made us, the God who shaped us, the God who knew us when we were still in our mother’s womb. There is that intimacy with God, as you come to God in your quiet times, as you pray to him inwardly even during theweek don’t be afraid to bear your heart to him because he knows you better than you know yourself, bear all the things that trouble you and concern you and weigh you down because God already knows about them because he made you. Before we leave this theme of God as a creator I want us also to notice how God does his creation, he simply speaks and it happens, we can see an example of this in verse 3, “And God said, let there be light, and there was light.” Here we see something of the power of the creator God all he has to do is speak and it happens. I think most of you will have seen the advert for the new IPhone 4s, and apparently one of the great things about this new IPhone is that you can speak to it and it will do what you tell it to do, so in the advert someone asks how many appointments do I have today? And the phone responds by bringing up the list of appointments, or another asks will I need my umbrella today? And the phone brings up todays weather forecast. In theory you have authority over the phone, you tell it what to do and it does it, but really the phone is only doing what it was programmed to do. Here, we are told there is darkness over the land and then God speaks and suddenly what God says happens, let there be light and there is light. God has authority over his creation, God has power over his creation still, God has not just created the world and left it be, God is the one who sustains the world he has created, he watches over it and still has the power and authority to intervene in its events and bring about his purposes. So as we come to God in prayer, let’s remember that he is the creator and the sustainer of the world around us. When we come to prayer let’s ask in faith believing that the God who made the world, the God who sustains the world is able to do all that we ask, even when the situation seems hopeless our God is a creator and sustainer and is able to intervene in miraculous ways in accordance with his will. So God is eternal, secondly God is a creator and thirdly for tonight we see that God is triune.

God is Triune


Thirdly then we see that God is triune from verse 26 following, “Then God said let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” The verbs used here are all in the plural; let us make man in our image. A lot of the early heresies in the early church centred on the person of Christ was he fully God and fully man, could he really have held both identities at the same time. Is Jesus really the same as God the father? One of the early mantra’s of those who denied the deity of Christ was “There was when he was not.” There was a time when Jesus Christ ceased to exist; in effect there was a moment when Christ was created by God. This verse blows this assumption out of the water, the very first book of the bible talks about our God as triune, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God does not say let me make man in my image but rather let us make man in our image. Of course the opening verses of John’s gospel teach us much the same thing that Jesus was with God in the beginning but right here at the start of the bible we are told that God is more than one and of course we believe that God is triune, father son and Holy Spirit. But why does this matter to us tonight? Well it matters because as Jesus died on the cross he was propitiating, he was turning away the father’s righteous anger at our sin, at our wrongdoing. If we are to have confidence as we come to prayer, as we come to God, then we have to know that our sins are forgiven; we have to know that we can come with confidence because our debts had been fully paid. Here wonderfully we see in the opening verses of the bible that Jesus is fully God, that his sinless life is enough for us to come to the father in confidence because we know that he has paid our penalty. It matters also because we are told that the Holy Spirit seals all those who are truly followers of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit will guard the deposit until the day of completion. We all have days when we feel like we can’t hold on anymore but we know that the Holy Spirit has sealed those who are truly God’s and not one of them will be lost. So as we come tonight to the triune God let us come with confidence not in ourselves but in God’s son Jesus Christ because we know that he has paid the penalty fully that we deserve, let us come with confidence because we know that if we are truly converted then the Holy Spirit has been set upon as a seal until that day when Christ returns and takes us to be with him forever. So God is triune and finally for tonight God is sovereign.

God is Sovereign

          Finally for tonight then we see that God is sovereign and we can see this from verse 26, “Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God’s sovereignty is displayed here by his instructions to his creatures; the human beings are to rule over all the things he has created under his ultimate rule. This was a fundamental part of being created in the image of God here in Genesis 1. Fundamentally to be created in God’s image meant to be put in control of the world under his authority. Of course we as humans have made a mess of this instruction and ignored and rebelled against God at every turn but this doesn’t make God any less sovereign over his creation, it doesn’t mean that God is in any less control of his creation than he was when he first created it. God is still powerful to act and all powerful over his creation. Let’s remember this tonight , that we don’t come to an idol who is deaf and mute, an idol who can’t help us in our time of need, we don’t come to an idol who has no control over the events of our lives, we come to the true and living God, we come to the God who is sovereign, we come to the God who even now has the power to act. So God is sovereign.

Musings On Ministry

During the past six months I have been working in Sainsbury's Holywood Exchange, a job I enjoy, a job which God has used to show me my own failings, my own weaknesses but most of all a job that God has used to convince me that full time pastoral ministry is my calling in life.

During these six months I have had ample opportunity to teach and preach in various settings and the biggest regret I have is in not being able to give the time to God's word in order to fully do it justice. I suppose I really should have said no to some of the invitations but I guess that's just me and my desire to take every opportunity to preach.

However it has also filled me with a sense of appreciation of those who are involved in so called "tent making ministries", the desire these men have to do a full time job and then start to prepare for a sermon on Sunday just amazes me, but I suppose the question circling in my mind is, is it right? Is it right that God's word receives the last of my time after Sainsbury's and prayer meeting and so many other things that clutter up our diary? Is it right that God's word is relegated below a national retailer? I don't think it is but at the minute this is what is necessary for me. I know there are many out there who can relate to this frustration. Is it right? Ideally I think not, ideally every minister would be supported by those who he is ministering to but right now we don't live in an ideal world.

Above all these six months have strengthened my conviction that studying, preparing, meditating upon God's word is a real privilege,a real calling in life and has strengthened my resolve that this is what I want to do with my life. These six months have excited me for the prospect of college and the prospect of studying God's word in more detail. They have strengthened my resolve in the sovereign God, the Providences of life may not always fall out where we want them to but they all fall out within God's plan and for that I rejoice in the past six months and look forward God willing to the next three years preparing for a lifetime of ministry.