Every year at church, we kick off the year with a back-to-basics sermon series. It’s a great way to remind the congregation of some of the fundamentals of the faith, especially as new families come in at the beginning of the year.
This year, our back-to-basics focus was on the concept of koinonia, or Christian community. Last Sunday’s sermon focused on why we should be in awe of God as a family of believers, and it was a powerful message. So I’d like to share it with you today.
We should be in awe of God because God is transcendent. In other words, He doesn’t exist on the same plane of space in time that we do.
God’s transcendence has always been His nature. The first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, tells us that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
When God revealed Himself to Moses and told Moses that he was going to be God’s messenger to secure the Hebrews’ freedom from Egyptian slavery, Moses asked God what he should tell the people when they asked who God was. The reply: “God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14, ESV).
In referring to Himself as “I am,” God meant that He is always in the present no matter where in time people call on Him. God is omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and omnipresent (everywhere at every point in time), and we can take comfort from and find awe in those qualities.
We can also rejoice in that God is not like us. Numbers 23:19 tells us, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”
Related: Sunday Thoughts: The Awesomeness of God's General Revelation
God’s transcendence is something that we can see in His creativity and sovereignty over creation. The prophet Isaiah wrote:
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol! A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot; he seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing.
Isaiah 40:12-26 (ESV)
We can also be in awe because God is immanent. He’s near us, with us, and cares for us.
Isaiah continued:
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40:27-31 (ESV)
When we allow God to abide in us — and we abide in Him — we can’t help but find ourselves filled with awe. As the Apostle Paul wrote:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:14-19 (ESV)
Related: Sunday Thoughts: Your Worship Matters!
A knowledge of God’s transcendence and immanence can bring a church family in full awe of Him. As Luke wrote in Acts: “And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles” (Acts 2:43, ESV)
And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Acts 2:46-47 (ESV)
You can watch the whole sermon here:
Join the conversation as a VIP Member