HEYO! Last night was a good night. We had a good crew and shared a few laughs together. I learned that some of yall are VERY EASILY distracted, which I suppose wasn't really "new" information. Sister Spatz brought out her favorite game, Dutch Blitz, which is apparently a fast-paced and fun game (I just don't get it). We attempted to play "keep up" with a volleyball, but this was the part where I learned about yalls distractedness.
We played some Nuke 'Em as our main game and not to boast or anything but I did this amazing diving catch which turned into a roll upon landing. Obviously, I didn't get to see it happen (as I was the one doing it), but in my mind's eye it was EPIC. Definitely one of the coolest things I have done in a while.
Our message last night was a continuation of our study of the devotions of the early church. This is all based out of Acts 2:42-47 - "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the LORD added to their number daily those who were being saved."
So far, we have talked about being devoted to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer, and true community, and last night we talked about the second-to-last thing, praising God.
When I was a kid, I did a LOT of reading on my own time. I had this awesome series of books called "Dinotopia" which was about a secret utopian society on an island where intelligent dinosaurs and humans lived together in peace. I highly recommend these books. Anyway, I used to hate the beginning of a book. It was so boring as they introduced characters and setting and plot. I wanted to get to the action. So, I got in the habit of skipping the first 3 chapters of a book, reading it to the end, and then after finishing I would go back and read the beginning. What would happen is I would start reading in chapter 4 and have to ask "Who is that? What is he doing? Who's that guy? Where are they going? Why are they doing that?" Since I had skipped the intro, I had no clue what was happening in the story or how the characters related to each other. And then, when I would go back and read the beginning, suddenly all the pieces would fit together and those questions I asked in chapter 4 were answered.
Many Christians today (and perhaps you, too) prefer to read the New Testament over the Old Testament of the Bible. Sometimes this is because the OT is hard to read or understand, while the NT is pretty straightforward. Other times this is just because that's all the church covers on Sunday morning. The problem is, only reading the NT is like skipping the first 3 chapters of a book, you miss a lot of the setup and background information. You have no idea who anybody is or why they are doing what they are doing. The early church described in Acts 2 didn't have the NT to read and study like we do. They had the apostles' teaching (which would have covered a lot of what is in the NT) and the OT Scriptures. Their knowledge of God, who He is, what He has done, and how He relates to us came directly from the OT Scriptures. And their praises were based on what they knew of God through those Scriptures.
So as we talk about what it means to be devoted to praising God, we're taking a trip back to the beginning - the very beginning. Click here to open up Genesis 1 on Biblegateway.com. Or, if you would prefer, pull out your Bible and open to page 1. Let's see what we can learn about God from the first 3 chapters of the Bible. (For the sake of space in this post, I will not be including most of the verses so you will need to follow along using your Bible or Biblegateway.com)
Genesis 1:1 - "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This is the first sentence in the entire Bible, and it sets the stage for everything else that follows. "In the beginning God..." This verse tells us that God exists already at the beginning of everything, which tells us that He is eternal (has no beginning).
This verse (and the rest of the chapter) also tells us that God is both powerful and creative. We also learn from this first chapter that God's Words are powerful (He creates by speaking things into existence) and that He is orderly - He creates in a specific order, with complexity and purpose.
Genesis 1:27-29 - "So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.' Then God said, 'I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.'" We learn here that God delegates authority and provides generously for His creation. He put mankind in charge of the earth and made sure they had an abundance of food to eat. Here and also in chapters 2 and 3 we see that God is personal - He interacts with His creation on a personal level. He walks and talks with Adam in the Garden of Eden. He is not some distant god with little or no concern for us - He knows us and is concerned about us.
In Genesis 2 God establishes one rule for Adam and Eve in the Garden - they must not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They have free reign over everything else, just not that tree. This tells us that God is moral - He knows the difference between right and wrong and establishes rules for living rightly.
In Genesis 3 Adam and Eve are persuaded by the serpent (imagery for Satan) to break God's rule and rebel against Him. It is in this chapter that we learn that God is just - when rules are broken there must be consequences, or justice. He sets consequences on all the involved parties: the serpent, the woman, and the man (and through this consequence the earth also becomes cursed).
But we also see at the end of chapter 3 that God is loving and merciful, because even though Adam and Eve rebelled against Him, He still provides clothing for them.
And finally, we learn that part of the consequences of rebellion is separation from God. He banishes mankind from His presence (and the Garden). This is because He is holy and mankind's sin was unholy - those two things cannot go together.
So just in the first 3 chapters we have the establishment that God is eternal, powerful, creative, orderly, generous, personal, moral, just, loving, merciful, and holy. We learned how the world was created, how mankind was made special (in God's image), how mankind rebelled against God and received the due consequences, and how God worked through it all. All of these things we learned about God remain consistent throughout the entire Bible and these chapters set the stage for all of history.
Go back and read Genesis 3:14-15 - "So the LORD God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.'" This is God's judgment on the serpent for deceiving Adam and Eve into rebellion. And that last part, "he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel", is an important foreshadowing of something we just celebrated a few days ago at Easter - the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Devil's plan was to kill Jesus (the offspring of Eve) and he succeeded. Unfortunately for him, though, Jesus didn't stay dead. He arose from death, which was the point at which the Devil's demise (his defeat) was realized. Jesus' resurrection was a deathblow to Satan's plans. So, even in the first 3 chapters of the Bible we already have a foreshadowing of God's plan of redemption for mankind in Jesus Christ on the cross. Although we are the ones who broke God's rules and deserve our punishment (death), God entered our world as Jesus and paid the price for us - because He is just (someone needed to be punished), AND because He is loving. John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
Getting back to the point for today, being devoted to praising God, in order to praise God we have to know God. We have to relate to Him somehow. And how can we come to know Him unless we read His Word? How can we praise Him if we don't even know Him?
The early church's praise was born from their knowledge and experience of God. Our praise must be driven by the same thing. We must know and experience God personally before we can be devoted to praising Him.
Remember how God banished mankind from His presence? That was a consequence of their sin. Because of our sin, we also are separated from God and cannot know Him personally. But, because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we can now have our sin removed from us and be reunited with God! We CAN have a relationship with Him and know Him. To try and know God without believing in Jesus as your Lord and Savior is like trying to look up facts about someone on the internet. You may learn something about them, but you won't know them, not really. To get to know them, you have to be in a relationship with them. It is the same with God. We can know about God by reading the Bible. We get to know God when we believe in Jesus, enter that relationship, read His Word, pray, and experience His love and mercy and forgiveness for ourselves. Then, it is out of this knowledge and experience that we sing praises to Him.
So, ultimately, it is as we are devoted to these other things (teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer, and true community) that we then can be devoted to praising God like the early church was. Praise and worship come out of knowledge and experience. The question for you is:
Do you know God?
No comments:
Post a Comment