Has God Made Himself Known?
Posted by Isaac Butterworth | Filed under Sermons
Romans 1:18-23 (NRSV)
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21 for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.
When our daughter was in Junior High School, she made friends with a group of girls from a community about forty minutes to the south of us. And they invited her to a function their school was having on a certain Friday night. So, I drove her over, and, when the time came, I went back to get her. As we headed for home, she fell asleep, and I had my thoughts to myself. It was a crisp, clear winter night, and there was a stretch of highway where I noticed there was absolutely no light: no approaching cars, no farmhouse vapor lights, no nothing. It was pitch black. Now, I have always had a little interest in astronomy, and I knew that, on a clear, cold night in the country with no light around, you could see stars that wouldn’t be visible in the city and sometimes not even in the country. I pulled the car into a roadside park, turned off the lights, and, as quietly as I could, I slipped out of the car so as not to wake our daughter. It was cold, and I stood there in the night air shivering, but I didn’t mind. My eyes were lifted up to the heavens, and – I’m not kidding you – it was like someone had spilled a saltshaker on a black tablecloth. For a few uninterrupted minutes, I took in the vastness of the night sky. I was in awe, unaware of the hour, unaware of the cold, unaware of anything…until I heard this tiny voice from the darkness in the direction of the car. It said, “Dad, what are you doing?”
It was our daughter, of course. I didn’t tell her at that moment, but I was worshiping…not the stars, mind you, but God. I was worshiping God. Psalm 19 says, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (v. 1). And it’s true, isn’t it? When you and I consider the vastness of the universe, it takes our breath away. We can’t help it. Space is big. Space is huge. And space is the creation of God.
I have read that the nearest star to our sun is called Proxima Centauri, and it’s about 4.22 light years away. As you know, a light year is not a measurement of time; it is a measurement of distance. Light is the fastest thing we know of, and a light year is how far it takes light to travel in a year. So, how many miles is a light year? About six trillion miles, give or take! That means that the closest star to our planet besides our sun is over 25 trillion miles away. What about the most distant stars? Among those stars that astronomers have identified, the farthest from us are some 900,000 light years away. Now, think about that. Any one of those stars could have disappeared from space almost a million years ago, and we wouldn’t know it. We would think it was still there because we would still be seeing its light.
Consider what that means for the immensity of space…. And now, consider what the immensity of space means for the majesty of God. “To whom will you liken me and make me equal,” God asks, “[or] compare me, as though we were alike?” (Isa. 46:5). There is no one like God.
Or, is there? Views of God abound in our society. Some say that God does not exist, that, in fact, it is dangerous to believe that God does exist. Religion, they say, is behind such heinous phenomena as war and hatred. They tell us that convictions about God lead to intolerance and animosity. It is interesting that we should blame God for such things, rather than blame the sinful heart, which Scripture ascribes to the human condition. Could it be that the religious motivations that lead to conflict and contempt among our kind have their source in a misrepresentation of God?
We live in a fallen world – by which I mean that evil and sin are a part of the very fabric of human life. We see it when we look at individual people. We see it when we look at the organizations and institutions they have formed and of which they are a part. And we see it in the web of complex interrelationships that we call systems. The truth is: We have been infected by sin. We have all been infected by sin. We are “prone to wander,” as the hymn puts it. And we are naïve to think that it’s only a simple matter of doing away with God if we want to do away with war and hatred and intolerance.
Not everybody, of course, is an atheist. There are people who believe in God, to be sure, but they have customized him to suit their own tastes. They have redefined him to comply with their own preferences. A typical tailor-made god in our day is usually soft on sin, always on stand-by – genie-like, you might say – to grant us our wishes. Such a god has been domesticated to the point that he, or it, has no standards, no expectations, no agenda – except, of course, our happiness.
This is not the God who reveals himself in the Scriptures. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has rough edges. Psalm 29 calls him “the God of glory” and tells us how he “thunders,” how his voice “breaks the cedars” and makes the mountains shake, how it even “causes oaks to whirl, and [how it] strips the forest bare” (vv. 3, 5, and 9). “It is a fearful thing,” the Bible says, “to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). “Indeed our God,” it says, “is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29).
But how can we know that? Can we actually know God? The answer would be “No,” if God had not made himself known to us. The Bible says that “in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:21). We cannot find God on our own. We cannot discover him. The only reason we can know God is that God has made himself known. He has revealed himself to us. And it’s a good thing he has. A lot is at stake. Your eternity – and mine – is at stake. When Jesus defined eternal life, he defined it in terms of the knowledge of God. In John 17, verse 3, our Lord said this. He said, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” It is essential, you see, that we know God. Our very life depends on it.
But how can we know him? The Bible says there are three ways that God has revealed himself to us. First of all, he has shown us himself in the way he has made the world. We saw that in the passage we read from Romans, where Paul wrote, “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made” (Rom. 1:19f.). The created order shows us the greatness of God.
A second way God has revealed himself to us is through the way he made us. He implanted within each of us a conscience, a sense of right and wrong. Again, the Apostle Paul wrote: “When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when…God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.” (Rom. 2:14ff.). Our conscience, implanted in us by our Creator, shows us the goodness of God.
A third way that God has made himself know to us is through the Scriptures, which, of course, we call the Word of God. God communicates with us – he talks to us – through the Bible. The fact is, while we can know about God’s greatness through nature and while we can know about his goodness through the presence of our conscience, the Scriptures are the only way we can know about God’s grace. It is the Bible that tells us about the salvation God has worked out for us through Jesus Christ. It is in God’s Word that we learn that he is a God who saves. It is through his Word that we are summoned to faith in Christ. And it is by his Word that we are assured of our redemption.
So, can we know God? Yes, we can, but only because he has chosen to make himself known to us.
Perhaps one of the reasons people deny that there is a god or trade in the God of the Bible for a more manageable model – perhaps it’s because the God revealed in Scripture imposes certain requirements on us. If God is God, then we cannot acknowledge him and, at the same time, continue to marinate in our self-absorption. While some people imagine God to be a kind of cosmic bellhop, eager to jump at our every command, the true God calls us to a life centered not on our own needs but on the needs of others. In God’s economy, there is to be justice for everyone – even for the last and the least – and there is to be mercy. And under his watchful eye, we are to make love a way of life. Deuteronomy 10:17-19 says, “The LORD your God is a God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.” We see here God’s character, and we ask, What is it to me that God is like this? And to our question, God answers, “You shall also love the stranger.” We will return to this matter in the course of our series, but let’s underscore the principal here: God reveals to us what he is like, not for the sake of our curiosity. He tells us what he is like so that we will know what we are to be like. We are to embody his love, his mercy, his justice, and his righteousness.
What this means is that, since we have this knowledge of God, we must then acknowledge him. The prophet Hosea wrote, “Let us know, let us press on to know the LORD” (6:3). If we acknowledge God, it will mean that there are some duties that fall to us, some responsibilities that we cannot escape, dare not seek to escape. We have to make room in our busy lives for the neighbor, especially the neighbor in need.
And you do this. You do it in more ways than I can number. When we had the Thanksgiving outreach effort in November, everyone, it seemed, got involved. We collected over a hundred and twenty bags of food. We had dozens of people getting in their vehicles on a cold, rainy Saturday to deliver the food and the frozen turkeys. It was amazing to behold, and it was very inspiring. I think it’s one of the things you do best. You respond with compassion to the neighbor in need.
Along with that, I think one of the challenges we have is to reach people not only with goods but also with the good news. In fact, this is to be our primary focus as a community of faith. Jesus himself said, “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17, KJV). And, if that’s true – and it is – we are called to get the message of salvation in Christ to our neighbors both near and far. We need to develop creative ways to invite the people around us into the faith.
To acknowledge God also means that you and I ought to set a priority on knowing God better. In the words of Colossians 1:10, our lives ought to “bear fruit in every good work…as [we] grow in the knowledge of God.” So, let’s do this: Let’s pay attention to the signs of God’s majesty in nature – in little things and in big things. And let’s find more opportunities to be awestruck by the glory of God revealed in the creation.
And let’s give special priority to knowing God through his Word. I urge you to discover a Bible-reading plan that you can use this year. I encourage you to join a Sunday School class and to attend worship regularly. I challenge you to seek to learn what you can about God in the pages of your Bible. Jeremiah 29:13-14 says, “When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the LORD….” Then, let’s seek him, and let’s do it with all our heart.
Photo Credit: New Shot of Proxima Centauri by ESA / Hubble & NASA
