The Person of the Father

Ephesians · 2024-04-22 · Jason Wolin · Theology Matters

Ephesians · God. The Person of the Father — sermon from Cypress Bible Church on BibleSlides.

The Person of the Father Slideshow for this message PDF Message Download Just a reminder if you have questions about the message today please feel free to ask the question and we will try our best to answer those questions and post them to our youtube channel. Analogies Introduction Let’s begin this morning by talking about analogies. Analogies are fun. I like analogies. What makes them powerful is that so much is communicated in so few words. For example, let me give you a one analogies I’ve always liked: “Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches to your body.” It’s a great analogy because it illustrates so quickly that accumulating stuff isn’t addressing the real happiness problem. The Danger Now as helpful as analogies are, there’s a danger. Analogies only get at a small part of the reality. Analogies risk being reductionist. So for example, particle physics is a field for the most brilliant minds because it’s so complex and frankly just weird. What even is particle physics? Okay, we could throw out an analogy to help explain. “The universe is full of matter, right?. Well, matter is kind of like a bunch different shaped legos. So particle physics is nothing more than studying the legos of matter and the forces that govern their interactions.” So you’re like. Okay I got the idea. Nobody ever explained it to me that simply. I get it now. That’s a true and perhaps even helpful analogy. But it only gets at the smallest part of what is really contained in particle physics. This is the current equation for the standard model of particle physics. So do you still think that particle physics is JUST LIKE legos? That’s the danger of analogies. What is God Like When it comes to God, we cannot help but use analogies. We have no other choice. But let’s not forget that ultimately God is like nothing. God is like God. God is infinitely beyond us. God is not a God you can figure out or expect to figure out. This is a God wildly beyond your comprehension. That makes us very uncomfortable. We would prefer a God within our comprehension. In fact, subconsciously we kind of insist on it. But if we insist it all has to make sense, we insist on not knowing God. For example, if you said, this equation makes me feel very uncomfortable. I don’t like all the effort it would take to understand that, well then logically you would be saying, “I don’t want to understand reality.” I only want to think about things that make sense to me. If we insist that everything the Bible says about God has to fit into your understanding, we are insisting on the Atlantic Ocean fitting into a pixie cup. It can’t be done. YHWH is not a God that will ever fit in your mind. That’s why, by the way, that God didn’t want images made of him.…

Cypress Bible Church · Full sermon loading below.