Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

[SLIDE 1] New Series.

[SLIDE 2] God

Telling your friend about your spouse or a friend about another friend.

Introducing God -

Some of us have been trained: Start with what we’ve been taught to start with (evangelism practices) - it’s a big miss because we’re assuming a world view, issues and questions that aren’t being asked and use words that have either little or very different meaning to them.

We end up telling people what they should think, believe, and do.

and use words that have either little or very different meaning to them.

awkward.

Most of us don’t know where to start.

Awkward.

Getting Clear

The need to Get clear on how others and us understand and talk about God is not new to us.

[SLIDE] TRUTH: The language people use to talk about God comes from their experience of God in their culture.

In OT, there was a rivalry of the gods.

Ancient societies: Question of God’s existence focused on determining which god was worth of worship and service.

[SLIDE 3] God revealed himself to people in their context, culture, greater context of different religious beliefs.

[SLIDE 4] TRUTH: The language people use to talk about God comes from how they experienced God in them.

[SLIDE 5]Classic Jewish monotheism

There was one God, not like the pantheistic one god

This God was utterly different from the pantheist’s “one god.”

Always active within his world,

he could be trusted to act more specifically on behalf of Israel.

His eventual overthrow of pagan power at the political would be the revelation of his overthrow of the false gods of the nations.

This monotheism was always a way of saying, frequently at great risk: our God is the true God, and your gods are worthless idols and they will be overthrown.

It was a way of holding on to hope.

[SLIDE]Jews - Called God Yahweh.

Yahweh was the true God alone worthy of worship.

Led to prophets speaking out against idolatry, etc.

God’s Other Names

So holy not permitted to speak it so elohim, El Shaddai (almighty), Jehova jireh - provider, etc.

The name YHWH was so sacred that Jews eventually refused to pronounce it,

Instead, they substituted the word Adonai (“my Lord”).

Later translators conflated these two words, adding the vowels of Adonai to the consonants of YHWH to produce the hybrid form Yahowah—or “Jehovah,” as it has become in English.

Modern scholars have reconstructed the likely original form Yahweh, which may be translated as “He who is,” “I will be who I will be,” or (as in the Septuagint) “I am.”

It is in that latter form that Jesus claimed God’s name for himself (; , , ; ).

In the New Testament YHWH is usually translated “Lord,” a practice followed in most other translations for its occurrence in either Testament.

When “Lord” or “God” are used in the Old Testament to translate YHWH the words are written in capital letters—“LORD” and “GOD,” a practice that goes back to Martin Luther.

Reflect his character, power, experience of him and therefore the best ways we should think of him and call on him.

the names of God are closely associated not only with his character but with his power, especially his power exercised on behalf of his people

Cowboy church.

Early Church

Early Christians were charged with being atheists because they denied the existence of pagan gods.

Not resolved until the early church.

Affirmed there is only one God who is over all.

Jews - Yahweh was the true God alone worthy of worship.

Led to prophets speaking out against idolatry, etc.

[SLIDE 6]Post Bible Time

Is Yahweh, only Israel’s god or also the god of humankind that all tribes/nations should worship?

In our era, society and culture, there are many filters these questions are sifted through.

3 Big Questions after the bible times

Is there a God?

If so, which one?

Can we know God?

In our era, society and culture, there are many filters these questions are sifted through.

No GodWhich God?

The Bible nowhere attempts to prove the existence of God, which it simply assumes.

God is revealed as a being who is totally different from anything else in the universe, which is something he has created outside himself.

God is not bound by the constraints of time or space but dwells beyond and apart from them.

For God, “being” and “existence” are synonymous.

The God who reveals himself to us in time and space is the same God who dwells beyond them.

The existence of God is often defended by arguments drawn from logic and experience.

The so-called proofs for the existence of God rely on analogies drawn from the created order, so that God is defined as the greatest being that can exist, as the arbiter of what constitutes justice and beauty, and as the principle that gives meaning and purpose to the created order.

Human minds cannot really “prove” God’s existence, because God surpasses everything that we can imagine or conceive (he is, formally speaking, “incomprehensible”).

Nowadays, most theists prefer to say that the traditional proofs produce a degree of probability that makes it more plausible and more rational to believe in God’s existence than to deny it.

Weird Notions of God

Philosophers created arguments for and against.

Middle Ages/enlightenment: Philosophical denial of God.

Sheriff

Perception and view that science was against faith

Butler

Rejection of theology as way to view the world

Since then, we’ve been trying to argue for the existence of God using their criteria.

Developed systematic theology.

Today in Western Society

Complex situation.

Scientific world view with no room for God

Intellectual belief that a god exists but no need for god.

Denial of science that is viewed as opposed to god.

Fertile ground for old and new religions.

Makes Christian truth suspect.

Rebirth in interest in the supernatural

Just like the biblical community - fertile ground for the spread of Christianity.

Religions

Classic Jewish monotheism, then, believed that (a) there was one God, who created heaven and earth and who remained in close and dynamic relation with his creation; and that (b) this God had called Israel to be his special people.

This twin belief, tested to the limit and beyond through Israel’s checkered career, was characteristically expressed through a particular narrative: the chosen people were also the rescued people, liberated from slavery in Egypt, marked out by the gift of Torah, established in their land, exiled because of disobedience, but promised a glorious return and final settlement.

Jewish-style monotheism meant living in this story and trusting in this one true God, the God of creation and covenant, of Exodus and Return.

This God was utterly different from the pantheist’s “one god.”

This is an important point to note: many, including many scholars, have blithely assumed that because Stoics and others talked about “one god” they were saying the same thing as the Jews.

This God was also utterly different from the far-away ultra-transcendent gods of the Epicureans.

Always active within his world, did he not feed the young ravens when they called upon him?[11]—he could be trusted to act more specifically on behalf of Israel.

His eventual overthrow of pagan power at the political would be the revelation of his overthrow of the false gods of the nations.

His vindication of his people, liberating them finally from all their oppressors, would also be the vindication of his own name and reputation.

In justifying his people, he would himself be justified.

In his righteousness, his covenant faithfulness, they would find their own.

This monotheism was never, in our period, an inner analysis of the being of the one God.

It was always a way of saying, frequently at great risk: our God is the true God, and your gods are worthless idols.

It was a way of holding on to hope.

We can see the dynamic of this monotheism working its way out in the manifold crises of second-temple Judaism, with the Maccabees, Judas the Galilean, and above all the two wars of the late 60s and early 130s A.D. revealing how the creational and covenantal theology and worldview remained at work through the period and in different groups.

[SLIDE 7] In Western Christianity