Every year at religion, we kick off the year with a back-to-basics lecture line. It’s a great way to give the community a reminder of some of the fundamentals of the faith, especially as fresh families start their year off.
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This time, our back-to-basics emphasis was on the principle of koinonia, or Holy group. Next Sunday’s speech focused on why we should be in awe of God as a community of followers, and it was a strong message. So I’d like to discuss it with you now.
We should be in awe of God because God is sublime. In other words, He doesn’t occur on the same plane of place in time that we do.
God’s spirituality has always been His character. 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 revealed to him that he would be His message to rescue the Hebrews from Ancient servitude, Moses inquired what he should say to him when people inquired about who He was. The comment:” God said to Moses”, I am who I am. ” And he said”, State this to the people of Israel: ‘ I am has sent me to you'”( Exodus 3: 14, ESV).
God meant for Him to always be present wherever people call Him by referring to Him as” I am” in the sense that He is always present wherever He is in the world. 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 be happy that God doesn’t look like us. Numbers 23: 19 tells us”, God is no man, that he should rest, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not perform it? Or has he spoken, and will he not meet it?”
Connected:  , Sunday Thoughts: The Greatness of God’s General Revelation
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We can see the enlightenment of God in His ingenuity and authority over design. The apostle Isaiah wrote:
Who has measured the mountains using weights and the hills using stability, measured the lakes in the wooden of his hands, and cut off the sky with a course? Who or what gives the Lord’s Spirit its weight, and by whom? Whom did he read, and who made him know? Who taught him the course of justice, and taught him information, and showed him the way of knowing? Behold, the governments are like a fall from a bottle, and are accounted as the dirt on the balances, behold, he takes up the coastlands like great sand. The beasts of Lebanon would not be enough for a scorched offering, and neither would it be for energy. Before him, all the countries were regarded as nothing and nothingness, and he treats them as nothing. Who did you equate God to, or how would you examine his likeness to? An hero! A smith overlays it with golden and makes silver chains for it after a carpenter casts it, and a smith makes the chain for it. Who seeks out a skilled artisan to set up an hero that won’t walk if he is too poor for an offering and chooses wood that won’t rot. Do you not understand? Do you not speak? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you ever misunderstood the underpinnings of the world? It is he who sits above the sphere of the world, and its citizens are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a veil, and spreads them like a camp to linger in, who brings princes to everything, and makes the rulers of the world as nothingness. Seldom are they planted, seldom put, little has their stem taken source in the world, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the storm carries them off like grass. Who will you then examine me to so that I can get like him? says the Holy One. Pull up your eyes on large and see: who created these? Not one person is missing because of the glory of his would and the presence of their number by range, calling them all by name, and because he is powerful.
Isaiah 40: 12-26 ( ESV )
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We can also be in wonder because God is inherent. He’s near us, with us, and cares for us.
Isaiah continued:
Why do you say, O Jacob, and talk, O Israel”, My method 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 father of the heavens and the everlasting God. He does no slight or grow exhausted, his understanding is inaccessible. He gives strength to the slight, and to him who has no may he increases stamina. Yet boys shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall maintain their strength, they may attach up with wings like birds, they may work and not be exhausted, they shall wander and never faint.
Isaiah 40: 27-31 ( ESV )
When we allow God to live in us, and we do, we can’t help but be enthralled by our surroundings. As the Apostle Paul wrote:
For this reason, I kneel before the Father, who is the parents of every community in heaven and on earth, but that he may give you, being rooted and grounded in love, the ability to understand what is the breadth, length, height, and depth of Christ, and to understand the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3: 14-19 ( ESV )
Related:  , Sunday Thoughts: Your Worship Matters!
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A church family can be fully awed of God through a knowledge of His transcendence and immanence. Acts 2: 43, ESV ) states that “awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
And as they continued to attend the temple together and break bread in their homes, they each received their food with energizing and generous hearts, praising God and receiving blessings from all the people. And every day, the Lord adds those who were saving to their list.
Acts 2: 46-47 ( ESV )
Here is the entire sermon you can watch:
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