[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], June 2020]
Ever wondered what God is like? Are all religions worshipping the same God? What sets Christianity a part is its belief that Jesus is God, so what does Jesus tell us about what God is like?
I don’t know if you ever wondered what God is like. Some people say “well, you know, all gods are the same, every religion is basically worshipping the same God”. Now, I know that is not the case because Christianity is the only faith – the only religion – that says that God is Jesus, that Jesus is God. Jesus actually said to his disciples “Look, if you want to know what God is like look at me. If you’ve seen me then you’ve seen the Father.” The writer of Hebrews said that “Jesus was the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of His being”. In other words, if you want to know what God is the like then look at Jesus.
[01:04] Actually, the fact that we can say that says something really important about God. It tells us that God came down to earth. In John it says that he became flesh and he dwelt among us. In other words God moved into our neighbourhood. God wants to be with us, he’s not distant and aloof, he’s not off in space somewhere manipulating us like some cosmic chess player. No, God wants to be with us. It was never his intention for this separation to exist between him and his creation. God wants intimacy with us.
[01:49] Also, what we find out is if you look at the Gospels you learn more about Jesus and therefore we learn more about God and we see God through Jesus has a real heart for the fringes of society, those that people want to reject, those who are the lowest of the low, those who are in poverty, those who maybe don’t meet societal norms, and God wants justice for them, He wants to lift up the down trodden, He wants to rescue those that need to be saved.
[02:23] We know this because Jesus spent so much of his time with them and it wasn’t just preaching to them. He was friends with them, he went to their houses, he ate with them, and that’s another thing that Jesus tells us about God. Jesus enjoyed a good time, Jesus seems to spend most of his time going to parties or eating and meeting with people, socializing, making friends. In fact, one of the first miracles that Jesus did – in fact, it is the first miracle in John’s Gospel – is when Jesus was at a wedding in Cana he turned water into wine and solved an alcohol shortage problem. Jesus liked to party.
[03:06] He had friends but he also made people feel uncomfortable because he challenged people, he challenged the status quo, he challenged people’s ways of thinking. He made them uncomfortable because he wanted them to think deeply about who they were and the world around them. He wanted them to change, he wanted them to get better but he did all with compassion. He did it all with love, he did it all with forgiveness because in Christ there was no condemnation, he wanted to see people grow and change and be a better human being.
[03:47] Jesus also wept. Jesus wept with grieving friends, he wept over the death of a loved one, he wept over a city when he saw its falleness and its despair. Jesus died. Jesus was willing to die in the most cruel way possible, to be beaten and tortured, and to die on a cross for us so that we might be freed from those things that we are enslaved to and we might be freed from the curse of sin, so that we might be free to live, we might be free to flourish and we might be free to love God. But Jesus wasn’t defeated, he rose again, he defeated death, he defeated sin and he left us his spirit so that we might continue in his mission on earth.
[04:55] That’s the real challenge. You know, if I believe in the God who was demonstrated and shown through Jesus then I have to take seriously the fact that Jesus wants to be shown and demonstrated through us. That just as Jesus said that he was a light of the world he also says that we too are the light of the world. We are there to be the radiance of God’s glory, we are there to reflect his likeness, to become more like him and that means I need to have Jesus’s heart for justice. I need to have Jesus’s heart for love and friendship and community, I need to have Jesus’s heart for those on the fringes of society, those that no one else loves. Those who are people that need justice, that need help, that need lifting up. Am I willing to be God’s representative here on earth? If this is what God is like then that should have a huge impact on who I am.
[1] YouTube link: What is God Like?
Bible references: John ch14 v9, Hebrews ch1 v3
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
