Imitators of God Part 1

They have their cars spread out on the ground and the couch, zooming them along…they are pulling out their superheros and legos and having battles of good vs evil.

The imagination does not stay there it turns to imitation....

One of the things they are really in to imitating is SUPERHEROS, like SPIDERMAN (if you around them long enough you better watch out they might sticky splat you), or they have the lazer eyes like SUPERMAN...

This especially comes out when me and the boys wrestle and they are losing against dad, what happens is they run to the play room to get their superhero outfits on…they grab Batman, Spiderman, Robin.

They come to attack and defeat dad

How you been there? Do you remember when you used to imitate when you were a kid? What did you imitate?

(wait for their answers)

TENSION

The question I have for us today is what are we imitating now? NOW THAT WE ARE ALL GROWN UP? WHO ARE WE TRAILING TO BE LIKE?

OH WE DON’T IMITATE IN AMERICA, WE BLAZE OUR OWN TRAIL,

This is not true, all of us imitate someone, and this is a good thing a lot of the time, it can be bad if we imitate someone bad or evil...

One of the places we all imitate is with our job....

How did you learn you learn you job? By only reading books???

No, learned most of the job through imitating someone else who’s done it already, i

If you are teacher…you learned how to be a good teacher by imitating a good teacher

Lajuan how did you learn to do handy work? Did it just happen one day or did some of your job you learned through imitating another person

With do this parenting, to become a good parent you imitate, mimic another good parent.

Some thing with trying to get in shape.

These are all good but what is the ultimate thing we are to imitate as Christians??

what as Christians are we supposed to imitate?

GOD

God call’s to imitate God “Eph 5:1”

Ephesians 5:1 ESV

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.

Some of us say, “yes!” “I’ve always wanted to be God”

it is often in view of having ungodly power, authority, dominion, worship

This is what you see in movies, books, from dictators past and present (Caesar called himself lord or be like Pharaoh?

Do you think this is what God is meaning when He says be imitators/mimics of God?

Then what does God mean when He says imitate God?

One of the best places to turn is to the first place God reveals His character, which is also happens to be the most repeated and quoted verses in the Bible…(do you remember what the verses are?)

Ex 34:6-7

Exodus 34:6–7 ESV

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Exodus 34:6-7 lays out 5 character traits we are imitate

We will cover 3 today

1 next week

Another in the following week

Why? Why are we to imitate God?

1. Be imitators of God is how we are wired to live....we received peace within ourselves because we are living the way we are wired

2. The two ways we communicate to the world about God is through WORD and WITNESS

Through the preaching of the word, the proclamation of the Gospel

Through our witness, our actions, they saying is true for some people “There are five Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the life of Christians. Many people never read the first four.” they will come to know through your witness

People will see our good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven.

This is how some people are won to Jesus, through our witness....they see something different about you…it is not only about you it is in you

Let’s cover the first one

Compassionate רַחוּם‎ rachum

Some of you have an ESV Bible, which is my preferred version of the Bible and it does not say compassionate but it says merciful which I and others scholars think is not correct. Mercy is similar to compassion but not the same, compassion carries more of an emotional tie to it....YOU COULD MERCIFUL AND FORGIVE SOMEONE WITHOUT AND EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT

- We would all see more this if we read Hebrew…Why? because in Hebrew all words comes from a three letter root family, and from the three letter root word it has brother and sister and grandkid words that though they are different share a similar them THIS IS WHAT WE SEE WITH THE WORD RACHUM.... RACHUM comes from the same Hebrew root family RECHUM which means WOMB.

It is showing there is an emotional tie, A WOMAN HAS AN EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT TO HER BABY NOT JUST A PHYSICAL ONE

God has an emotional attachment to us

Isaiah 49:15–16 ESV

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.

God is compassionate to us

He is kind to us, he has an emotional connection to us..

IS THIS PASSAGE SAYING GOD IS A WOMAN??? ABSOLUTELY NOT

God says to imitate Him we are to RACHUM

What would it look like for us to RACHUM?

It means that you are KIND TO ONE ANOTHER

We would care about what is going on in each others lives…It would not be a surface level relationship, but one of deep intimacy.

One where we knew the heart of another person and not only knew the heart of another person, but if that person’s heart was hurt, we do not just show sympathy or empathy, we get down where they are and by God’s grace help them up.

.that’s compassion.

We are to be people who stick with people and help people in love

2. Gracious חַנּוּן‎ channun

What does grace mean? What’s so amazing about it?

The word grace means to give unmerited favor to someone who does not deserve the favor… we are the place that continually shows favor when no favor was earned

One of the things this means is the church is not place were we have scorecards of who owes another person…that says hey look Eric owes Jack, look how indebted Jack is to Eric....this is the way the world lives.

We are not to be like unforgiving servant in Matt 18, where this unforgiving servant is forgive of a debt that would take an average person 150,000 years to pay off and yet the king forgives him, but do you know what the unforgiving servant does? After he has received favor? He find the person who owes him a 100, not 150,000 years and says if you cannot pay and the unforgiving servant throws the man who owes him a 100 days wages in prison....and who does the king react when he hears this news?

He throws the unforgiving servant in prison until he can pay the debt and says how could you who has been forgive 150,000 years of debt not forgive the person who owes you 100 days.

Matt 18:35

Matthew 18:35 ESV

So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

We are to be people that when they wrong us we do not keep score cards.

We tear up score cards....not only that we show people favor

It is not earn your way here....it is I did not earn my way into this family and you do not need to either.

It keeps no records of wrongs

It does not say you owe me…it says sit at the best seat at the table.

The past is the past and has been forgiven

This is what it means to be like God…even though people have hurt us, wronged us, we not only forgive them we give them favor…why because this is what has been done to us.

3. Slow to get angry

Lajuan preached on anger in part of his sermon last week and can continue on it because it is in the text of what it means to imitate God and it is an emotion we all feel (maybe today on your way to church you were angry) and the Bible has much to say about it.

Slow to get angry: What does it mean to be slow to get angry?

The word literally means long-nosed

Long-nosed (we view that as a bad thing, we don’t want to be Pinocchio)

The reason they use this word is because the way the described someone who was angry was to have someone with a hot short nose.

This is carrying the meaning that God does not get riled up, hot nosed quickly....Does God get angry, absolutely

To show what it means to be long-nosed, to be slow to get angry is to watch God when He gets angry in Bible

Let’s go to first three places God gets angry and these first three ways God gets angry are often how He gets angry throughout the Bible.

Anybody want to guess when the first time God gets angry? (Hint remember he is long-nosed)

Garden of Eden God responded with the consequences of their actions

Noah God was grieved

1. No it’s in Ex 4 when God calls Moses to lead the nation of Israel out of Egypt, amazing event, the people are going to be delivered…but what happens in Ex 4 that causes God to get angry for the first time?

They will not believe me

Who am I

I cannot speak

Moses gives 5 excuses and it was after the fifth time

God gives Moses 5 chances

God is angry over Moses unbelief and trust in YHWH

(This is one is not transferable to us on how be slow to get angry)

2. Get get’s angry at Pharaoh because of the evil and injustice he is inflicting upon the nation of Israel

He is beating them, enslaving them, pure evil

God gives Pharoah 10 chances to repent, God is slow to get angry…but God eventually takes matters into His own hands because Pharaoh did not relent of his evil and injustice.

3. Ex 32God gets angry when Israel, who has complained over and over about being deliver out the evil of Pharaoh and says over and over that they want to go back that to practices idolatry in Ex 32 when Israel makes an gold calf and God gets angry over idolatry, but only after repeated times God relented.

And you see over and over in the Bible God being slow to anger over and over about unbelief, evil, idolatry

God says to us We are to be people who are slow to get angry, but we are never to be people who never get angry.

Specifically we are to be angry about the second and third thing God gets angry about

Evil/Injustice

Idolatry

The four questions I am going to leave us with today are this:

How often am I hot-nosed when I should be long nosed?

I see injustice

Minor injustice of someone cutting me off in traffic, I lay on the horn or tell them they are number one

Or someone wrongs me and I fly off the handle

Or how hot-nosed am I at my kids? I had this on the day I was writing my sermon....I have a workout bike in the basement and I am on it about 10 minutes into my ride and my boys start doing what boys do, bother each other.....I am telling them hot-nosed to knock it off and eventually I have to get off the bike because I am so angry.

2. How often am I hot-nosed because God is long-nosed to somebody else and it’s not me?

This is the story of Jonah....No god wipe them out take care of them…

This is the story of the Prodigal Sons where the elder son is hot-nosed that his dad was long-nosed, gracious and compassionate to his elder brother who disowned their dad, disrespected their dad, live a wild life (imagine Vegas) and what does dad do....he give

3. How often have I been mute, blind, or stuck over issues that God wants me to get angry at, specifically evil and injustice

How often have I ignored or turned a blind eye to the 3000 unborn babies that are murdered everyday?

How often have I ignored racism or bigotry or oppression?

How often have I ignored the injustice of corporate greed?

How often have I ignored idolatry in the church?

It is often not straight up idolatry, but a mixture like in Israel of a mixture Ashura pools and Baal

Crystals and Racki, and mindfulness, the American dream

Heavy questions.....but good questions…questions that lead to life…but also their is good news

The good news too for us today is that this is the way God is with us.....I deserve the wrath of God, but God’s anger did not fall on me....I have over and over be not gracious, not compassionate, unbelieving, injustice, pro

God says to us go and be like me and how I am with you....go show compassion, go show grace, be slow to get angry...

Why? So you will have peace and people will witness and come to know the prince of peace.

Friends we have a high calling and a way to live that gives us peace and shows the world the prince of peace when we are compassoinate, gracious, and slow to get angry.

SG Questions

What did God speak to you today during the worship time (this includes preaching)?

Why are we to imitate God?

How are we to imitate God?

How compassionate have you been lately? How can you show compassion?

How gracious have you been lately? How can you show grace to others?

How has your anger been? Have you been hot-nosed or long-nosed?

7. What is one action item that God wants you imitate this week

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