If God created everything from nothing then he has authority and because he imagined life, designed and brought it into being with all its complexity and wonder then we have incredible value and real meaning.
. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead shakes us from our delusions and forces us out into the reality of a broken world full of virus, death, fear, loneliness; into a world where people like John Harris are struggling to find support and meaning; into a world desperate to know, ‘He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.’
As we celebrate Palm Sunday we reflect on all we took for granted before the Pandemic, socially and spiritually. Then we ask if we need to take up a new invitation to meet with Jesus.
We started this series on the catechism by asking what our purpose in life is, it’s to glorify God and enjoy him forever. We have explored how we do this, through the word of God contained in the Old and New Testaments because within that word of God is everything we are to believe about God.
We’re ending this short series by asking what is God? Who is this being we are to glorify and enjoy, who is this being we are to believe in because of scripture? Question 4 in the catechism asks, ‘What is God?’ Ans. God is Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.
It’s a difficult answer for us to understand. So many of these terms are abstract. They’re just words and words we don’t use very often at that. We struggle to know what they mean. For example, God is Spirit. What do we mean by that?
Scripture covers a lot of topics, marriage, poverty, religion, money and so the list goes on. Despite the range of issues scripture can be boiled down into two areas. The scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. Scripture teaches us what we’re to believe and how we should respond, or how we should live because of what scripture tells us to believe.
If we believe in a rule-based system, then these rules only serve to condemn us. They don’t show how good we’ve been, they only highlight our failures. Rules, or the law, can only condemn.
John tells us that it was because of God’s love that he sent his Son into the world not to condemn it but to save it through him. This salvation is not earned but freely given through faith in Jesus Christ… ‘that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ (John 3:16)
This morning's service continues are series asking some of the questions people have about God. This morning we ask do all religions lead to God?
We will read John 14:1-6 as we try to answer this, showing why it is important for us that Jesus is only way, the truth and the life.
This story is full of what people could see and how it affected them. The pharisees jealous of the numbers Jesus was attracting, the woman who saw the differences between Jews and Samaritans, the disciples who saw something out of the ordinary. Compare all this to what Jesus saw.