Who is God to you?
By the grace of God, I had the opportunity to share the Word at our South Bay service for the first time. As such, I also had the privilege to observe the process in which our beloved speakers tirelessly prepare the sermons that edify our church body. Beyond having to juggle preaching meetings with their full-time jobs, family and other ministries, I witnessed the amount of thoughtfulness, prayer and reverence for the Truth that they put into these messages. In the midst of false teachers and social media constantly attacking us, I think we should appreciate how lucky we are to be in a church that is rooted in the Word.
The other piece of thoughtfulness that we may have taken for granted is how the sermons are crafted meticulously to form a coherent, overarching theme for the year. I wonder how many of us had the frame of mind going into each sermon, or in anticipation of the next, that we were in the series of “Shout of Praise”? That it was trying to teach and remind us how we ought to properly worship God, and how we need to get that right before we are able to live out God’s calling in each of our lives? Yes, our theme for the year is “Alive In Calling”, and yes, it wasn’t a coincidence that the Next Gen conference earlier this year was “Kaleō” (which means “to call”).
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The first 2 sermons were an emphasis on the prior series, “But First”. Some of us probably feel like we keep coming every Sunday finding ourselves still “stuck” in Joshua 5:13-15 and can’t wait to move on. But as aptly as God appeared to Joshua when he was eager to take on Jericho, we rightfully spent these sermons on top of a whole series addressing first the holiness of God and how He needs to be revered.
Ps. Sugi explained how God allows us to have such encounters with Him so that we can connect more deeply and personally with Him. Reflecting back on my journey with God, He answered my prayers for an internship during college after being shown how incompetent I am through many failed interviews, to remind me always that He is my sole provider. He created a path for Oviene and I to be able to stay and work in the US after we’ve exhausted every single option, to show how He is indeed above all creations, even our government and its immigration laws. He provided a church community after I struggled to fit into the multiple churches I hopped around, to teach me that church is His body that I commit to, not (just) a social group that I can hang out with. And most importantly, He forgave me when I had become like the world in my delusion that I was being a witness to my non-Christian friends, to overwhelm me with His love and save me by offering me a new life that belongs to Him and is for Him.
How has God revealed Himself to you in your encounters with Him? It’s tempting to stop at the blessing that addresses our struggles, and requires reflection to know who God really is. Because if all we ever know about God is His blessings, then are we worshiping God or a genie? That brings us to what Renaldi preached on, which is the holiness of God.
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Right before the series, I went to Washington, D.C. for the museums that are free to visit. The Museum of Natural History was particularly memorable, as it showcases the biodiversity across the millions of species and the sheer size of some of these creatures that God created millions of years ago, but also how multiple mass extinctions had easily wiped them from the face of the planet. I also found myself in awe of God at a planetarium that visualizes just how vast and massive our universe is. While I was wondering why God went through all that “hassle” to create the world we live in now, I recalled what apologist William Lane Craig said in a debate once, which is “just because He can”. God is all-powerful and infinite, so creating all that is effortless, and so perhaps He did all that just so we get to admire how magnificent He is.
Now, this magnificent God, who is all-knowing and eternal, is also perfectly content in a perfect relationship in the Trinity God: Father, Son, Spirit. Despite that, God wanted to have a relationship with us and so created us in His image, giving us the free will that we abuse to sin and rebel against Him, foreknowing that the Father would have to send His Son to die as a perfect sacrifice to redeem us.
All of us probably heard about the gospel as described above, and perhaps we have also heard testimonies from people in our church of how their lives have been transformed by it. But maybe some of us have wondered why hearing this gospel doesn’t seem to impact us as it did for them. Ephesians 3:19 says that we need “to know this love that surpasses knowledge”. The word “know” is translated from the Greek word ginṓskō, which means to properly be acquainted through personal first-hand experience. As such, it does not just mean knowing in the intellectual sense, which is instead what it will surpass, and rather requires us to pursue a relationship with God. Once we know this perfect love of God, we can’t help but to revere and worship Him.
It is interesting that the first mention of the word “worship” is in Genesis 22:5 ‘Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”’ Abraham was going to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, as the Lord has commanded him to do. I believe that is the true meaning of “worship” – to obey God: to trust Him with all your life decisions (Isaiah 55:8-9), to serve Him with all that you have (Matthew 22:37), to sanctify yourself to be more like Christ for the rest of your life (Romans 12:1-2). Beyond our shouts of praise and singing songs to adore Him, we acknowledge God for who He is – that is, Lord of our lives (or to put it very plainly: He owns us). That is the only way to respond to a holy God.
