As we move into the new school year, our schedules change and we often find ourselves with the opportunity to meet new people. And as people of God, we have the opportunity to talk with these new people about our faith, our salvation, and our God. But many times we don’t speak because we are afraid of the questions that might come. But the cure for this fear is to listen carefully, and learn the answers to those most common questions. The less common questions? Those are great questions for Sunday school or a small group class. But we each should understand how to answer the most common questions.
When I talk with people about God and Christ – for I always talk about both God and Christ – there are certain questions that seem to come up again and again. The exact wording varies, but these four questions come up over and over again in one form or the other.
- Who created God?
- Who is your God? In other words, what is the personality of your God?
- Why does God let bad things happen?
- What does God ask of me?
These four questions, worded in different ways, come up over and over again. These are four questions that you will be asked to answer from time to time if you are truly trying to love your neighbors by helping them find the way of life, the way of following Jesus Christ. And so you’ll want to be able to answer these four questions about God.
So let’s begin with the first question: Who created God?
When I hear this question, I know that I have a deep thinking person who is trying to make sense of the Universe. But I also know that that person has not met God, for God to them is just an idea that they are trying to decide to allow into their idea of the Universe – or not. And so the question must be taken seriously.
Our reading from the Old Testament, from Exodus 3, says:
13 Then Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what should I tell them?”
14 God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the Israelites: Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever; this is how I am to be remembered in every generation. (HCSB)
The name of God is “I AM WHO I AM”. In Hebrew, this was written by four letters which translate as YHWH, and are normally pronounced Yahweh. In most English Bibles, you will find that the translators have translated this word as LORD – all capitals. This is to distinguish the proper name of God from the title Adonai, which means"Lord", and is written in our Bibles as L-o-r-d – Capital L, small letters for the rest.
So Moses asks God what God’s name is and God says, “I AM WHO I AM”, which really isn’t very clear when you first hear it, but let’s see what develops.
First of all, God proclaims with God’s name – "why do I need a name?" – I AM WHO I AM – which is a profound statement that everything else in existence needs a name to distinguish it from everything else, but God is far above and beyond everything else and doesn’t even need a name – I AM WHO I AM – God says to Moses.
But this name tells us more. I AM WHO I AM speaks of existence itself. God is existence and creation itself – the Creative principle, that from which everything else flows. God tells us that not only was God not created, but God is the Creator of all things because God IS – or, in the first person, “I AM”. And so the answer to the question of “Where did God come from” is that God is the Creative principle which creates everything else. God IS – I AM THAT I AM – and everything else is created.
And from this concept we can understand some other things about God. Who is God?
First of all, God is a Being. Be-ings are self-existant - creat-ures are created. God is not a creature, created by another. Beings simply exist. And therefore it is probably very important that we seek to understand the personality of this immensely powerful Being, who had the power to create the entire Universe, especially since we don’t even have the power to create one little rabbit. Especially since there is only one true Being.
God is complex. I realize that it is fashionable to say that “God is love”, which a third of a verse buried inside of I John 4 tells us, but God is also much more complex than just love. God is not simply a single emotion. “God is Love” is far too simple a description of God. Reading the Old Testament, it would also be fair to say that God has anger, God has wrath, God has tenderness, God is Justice, God is Mercy, God is Wisdom, and God is Almighty.
A reduction of God down to simply “God is love” is far, far too simplistic an idea when you are talking about the Being that understood how to create the elephant and the whale, the Sun, the Moon, the stars, the redwood tree, and the human brain. “God is love” is a t-shirt slogan for people who limit their understanding to what can be found on t-shirts, but we do not worship a t-shirt God. Our God took several hundred thousand words to describe in the Bible, and then, because God was so much more complex, gave each Christian the Holy Spirit to continue to guide each person in their daily life because our God has so much more to say than just what you can find even between the pages of Genesis and Revelation!
“Who is our God” your friend may ask? Simultaneously our God is the kindest Person in the Universe and the One who destroyed armies and cities in a few minutes. Our God is both beyond the galaxies and standing beside you at the same time. Our God is Spirit and a Man who bled on a cross. Our God controls the power of the Sun’s hydrogen fusion reaction and guides sparrows to find nesting places. Our God is a good God, but not a tame God.
God loves us, but will not be manipulated. God very much wants us to follow Jesus Christ, but is also more polite than any other Person in the Universe, allowing us to destroy ourselves if we wish. God died for us and gave us life, yet is so respectful of our will that we may choose to ignore everything God has done for us and spend eternity away from God. God asks for our worship and yet provides us with everything we need.
This is the personality of our God. This is the character of our God. If you need more, Holy Scripture is waiting for you to read and find out about the character of our God.
And why does this good God allow bad things to happen? When I hear this question, I know two things about the person I’m talking to: First, they have emotionally experienced evil or death in this world, and second, they are very close to believing in God and may actually believe in God but are angry at God.
When we look around at the world, we see all sorts of evil happening. We see the executions that ISIS is making, we see the evil things that happen in our inner cities, we see children injured and tortured, and we see adults committing terrible crimes. Our evening news is filled with stories of horror, of terrorism, of destruction. And we even read in the Bible of God commanding the destruction of entire cities and the plundering and burning of those cities.
Why does God allow these things to happen? Or even worse, why does God order men and women to do these things?
We always have to remember that we are in the second-best world. In the best world, a place called Eden, evil did not happen. People did not die and horrors did not happen. This was the way things were supposed to be, Good and happy and safe.
But God also understood when Eden was created, that people needed to be able to choose good over evil – or even to choose evil over good – for if God forced us to always do good, we would be robots with choice, without freedom, and that would be evil. So God gave Adam and Eve choice, and after a while, we chose poorly.
God understands much more than we understand that people need to learn wisdom to go with that freedom to make choices. And the only way for wisdom to teach is through pain – either our own pain or observing the pain of others. It is only through learning Wisdom that people will have the good sense to listen to the commands of God. And people have proven time and again that we generally don’t listen to God very well.
God saw that if the original people remained in the land of Israel throughout the centuries, there would be almost continuous warfare throughout those centuries. So God said, “drive them out”. And the Israelites got tired of warfare and left people in the land. And then for 3000 years, the people of Israel have fought against the Philistines and their descendents in a place which is today called “Gaza”. How many millions have died over the centuries? How much blood could have been saved if they had listened in the first place?
Or perhaps you believe that God could have found a different way, a painless way to clear the land. Perhaps you believe that God could find a way to stop all the war and fighting and suffering on the planet today. Perhaps you believe that God could have saved your pet dog, your grandmother, your father, your loved one when they died?
Perhaps God could have. But perhaps any interference would have caused worse problems. As the Jim Carrey movie "Bruce Almighty" shows, making a small change here or there for good can cause immense destruction in other places.
But God has told us how to stop the fighting, the suffering, the trouble and we don’t listen. Have you seen what happens when a group of people truly choose to follow the commands of Jesus Christ, who was God walking upon this earth? In the small towns of America, many people have truly tried to follow the commands of Jesus Christ, with a mixed record of success, but they have tried!
Have you compared the world of small town, Bible-belt America with Syria recently, or with the chaos of India or Pakistan? Have you looked at life in Thailand or Burma recently? How about considering the massacres in northern Nigeria or the troubles in Mexico? You see, when a society truly tries to follow the commands of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, it makes a difference in that society.
God allows bad things to happen because it is the only way we will learn. And to stop those bad things would be for God to become an evil tyrant, taking away our freedom. And God will not do that.
And so we come down to the last question: What does God ask of me?
There are several answers to this question. In Psalm 15, we see that to be close with God there are several things asked:
1 Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent?
Who may live on your holy mountain?
2 The one whose walk is blameless,
who does what is righteous,
who speaks the truth from their heart;
3 whose tongue utters no slander,
who does no wrong to a neighbor,
and casts no slur on others;
4 who despises a vile person
but honors those who fear the Lord;
who keeps an oath even when it hurts,
and does not change their mind;
5 who lends money to the poor without interest;
who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.
Whoever does these things
will never be shaken. (NIV)
But we also see that these things are impossible to do, for they require perfection from us and we all do evil from time to time.
And our reading from James 1:17-27 says much the same thing.
That is why Jesus was sent to us. For under the Old Testament Law, every evil, every sin, everything bad people did required a sacrifice to make things right, a fine, a punishment.
And still there were evil deeds that weren’t paid for, either because the people didn’t realize what they’d done – or they simply had done so much evil in their lives that they could no longer pay the sacrifices, the penalties, the fines.
And so, God sent part of Himself to earth to teach us, to bring us a message of hope and forgiveness, and to pay all he sacrifices, all the penalties, all the fines. God send Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God Himself walking upon this earth, to be the final sacrifice.
As a man, Jesus Christ could act on behalf of all the mortal humans. As God, Jesus was infinitely valuable, and was valuable enough to pay for all the sacrifices. And thus, when the sinless, totally innocent Jesus was sacrificed upon the cross, the debts to God were paid for all time, for all people, even me – and you.
And then, to both prove that Jesus was God Himself – which He had claimed immediately – and to show us that God has tremendous love for all of us – Jesus was brought back to life, and walked and talked and taught and ate in front of over 500 witnesses in at least eleven different appearance, and then He left us once more so we could choose to follow His teachings …or not.
And since that day the world has changed. Christianity is the largest religion in the world and growing rapidly in the toughest parts of the globe – South America, India, China, Sub-Saharan Africa. And where Christianity has gone, society has changed, mostly for the better.
Europe changed from a land of barbarians who sacrificed men and women to a center of the world civilization. America has become the world’s moral and ethical policeman. China is beginning to find a place for the individual in a land where only the state had rights a hundred years ago. Korea sends out missionaries around the world, and Nigeria calls back to America to keep up our moral standards.
On the margins, there is bloodshed, and there have been regrettable episodes such as the Crusades, but where Christianity has triumphed, especially through peaceful evangelism, bloodshed declines rapidly and a stable society forms.
And so, my friends, what God asks of you is two-fold: To live according to the commands of Jesus Christ, and to tell other people of the God that walked upon the earth 2000 years ago, to change this world through the wisdom of God’s teachings, by loving your neighbor and by working towards becoming holy yourself.
And if you are not so holy?
God is forgiving. If you will choose to follow God’s Son Jesus Christ, God knows that you can be healed, be taught, and become holy. And so, to begin with, God has a simple question: Will you choose to follow Jesus Christ and His teachings?
Have you compared the world of small town, Bible-belt America with Syria recently, or with the chaos of India or Pakistan? Have you looked at life in Thailand or Burma recently? How about considering the massacres in northern Nigeria or the troubles in Mexico? You see, when a society truly tries to follow the commands of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, it makes a difference in that society.
God allows bad things to happen because it is the only way we will learn. And to stop those bad things would be for God to become an evil tyrant, taking away our freedom. And God will not do that.
And so we come down to the last question: What does God ask of me?
There are several answers to this question. In Psalm 15, we see that to be close with God there are several things asked:
1 Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent?
Who may live on your holy mountain?
2 The one whose walk is blameless,
who does what is righteous,
who speaks the truth from their heart;
3 whose tongue utters no slander,
who does no wrong to a neighbor,
and casts no slur on others;
4 who despises a vile person
but honors those who fear the Lord;
who keeps an oath even when it hurts,
and does not change their mind;
5 who lends money to the poor without interest;
who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.
Whoever does these things
will never be shaken. (NIV)
But we also see that these things are impossible to do, for they require perfection from us and we all do evil from time to time.
And our reading from James 1:17-27 says much the same thing.
That is why Jesus was sent to us. For under the Old Testament Law, every evil, every sin, everything bad people did required a sacrifice to make things right, a fine, a punishment.
And still there were evil deeds that weren’t paid for, either because the people didn’t realize what they’d done – or they simply had done so much evil in their lives that they could no longer pay the sacrifices, the penalties, the fines.
And so, God sent part of Himself to earth to teach us, to bring us a message of hope and forgiveness, and to pay all he sacrifices, all the penalties, all the fines. God send Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God Himself walking upon this earth, to be the final sacrifice.
As a man, Jesus Christ could act on behalf of all the mortal humans. As God, Jesus was infinitely valuable, and was valuable enough to pay for all the sacrifices. And thus, when the sinless, totally innocent Jesus was sacrificed upon the cross, the debts to God were paid for all time, for all people, even me – and you.
And then, to both prove that Jesus was God Himself – which He had claimed immediately – and to show us that God has tremendous love for all of us – Jesus was brought back to life, and walked and talked and taught and ate in front of over 500 witnesses in at least eleven different appearance, and then He left us once more so we could choose to follow His teachings …or not.
And since that day the world has changed. Christianity is the largest religion in the world and growing rapidly in the toughest parts of the globe – South America, India, China, Sub-Saharan Africa. And where Christianity has gone, society has changed, mostly for the better.
Europe changed from a land of barbarians who sacrificed men and women to a center of the world civilization. America has become the world’s moral and ethical policeman. China is beginning to find a place for the individual in a land where only the state had rights a hundred years ago. Korea sends out missionaries around the world, and Nigeria calls back to America to keep up our moral standards.
On the margins, there is bloodshed, and there have been regrettable episodes such as the Crusades, but where Christianity has triumphed, especially through peaceful evangelism, bloodshed declines rapidly and a stable society forms.
And so, my friends, what God asks of you is two-fold: To live according to the commands of Jesus Christ, and to tell other people of the God that walked upon the earth 2000 years ago, to change this world through the wisdom of God’s teachings, by loving your neighbor and by working towards becoming holy yourself.
And if you are not so holy?
God is forgiving. If you will choose to follow God’s Son Jesus Christ, God knows that you can be healed, be taught, and become holy. And so, to begin with, God has a simple question: Will you choose to follow Jesus Christ and His teachings?
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