THE MYSTERY OF GOD

Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today, says about how people view God today, “We are said to live in a postmodern era, in which logical proofs for God's existence and rational explanations of his character are no longer of interest to people.” Yet, classic books that present evidence for the Christian faith like C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict still sell well as do newer books by Lee Strobel. This fact causes Galli to say, “It seems we have a God-given longing to make sense of God, and all the postmodernism in the world cannot kill it.”

We have attempted, in our congregation, to address this need to understand who God is. First we offered an adult class last fall studying Charles Colson’s book The Faith. That class covered a number of areas of the faith that we need to understand. This summer, we are looking at the nature of God more specifically through a sermon series: Facts You Can Believe.

• First we will have four messages on Facts You Can Believe About God.
• Then we will have four messages on Facts You Can Believe About Jesus.
• Finally we will have four messages on Facts You Can Believe About the Holy Spirit

Unraveling the nature of God has been a mystery since God first began to reveal himself to people. Consider, for instance, how God revealed himself to Israel when the Lord told Moses that he would allow the nation of Israel to hear him speak: On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. “Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently….. (Exodus 19:16-18)

Sometime later God promised Moses that on the nation’s journey through the Sinai wilderness “My presence will go with you.” The Lord told Moses, “You cannot see my face for no one may see me and live…. There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen” (Exodus 33:20-23).

So God is a mystery to us. If we were to see him like we see people, God tells Moses, we would be so overwhelmed by him that we could not live. So God hides from us, and the mystery gets even deeper when we begin to view God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Jesus came to reveal God to us and he left the Spirit to be God’s presence in us. Yet, God remains a mystery to us.

Yet God is also a magnet, drawing us to himself. Paul tells us, “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 men are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Even those who claim to be atheist are consumed with discussing God — even if just to denounce him. God has imbedded a yearning for him within the very nature of man.

So we who lead and preach in the church need to preach and teach on the essential facts that people need to know and can believe about God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We dare not pretend that we can help people know everything about God. How, after all, could we do that when we cannot come even close to knowing everything about God? How could we do so when even after Jesus has come to reveal God to us, it is still not a full revelation? There is still much about God that we cannot fathom.

So why preach about God and the revelation of him through Jesus Christ and through seeking to grasp the presence of the Spirit in our lives? Why? Because God’s work in our world and our lives is Good News. Mark Galli says it like this: “For while the God of the Bible can be an elusive one, he is elusive precisely because he wants to share more and more of himself with us…. He wants to reveal himself … as God Almighty, Holy and Wondrous, the God who in his infinite love revealed himself to us in Christ and started us a journey of love that will never end.”

So the essential task of church leadership continues to be making God known to people. Let that be your consistent challenge as you lead and work in the church.