GOD QUIZ
ARCHITECT (DISTANT)
DR. JIM DIXON
GENESIS 1:1, PSALM 139:7-10
FEBRUARY 17, 2013
Throughout British and American history there have been many great architects. Perhaps in British history, the greatest architect was Sir Christopher Wren. Sir Christopher Wren graduated from Oxford University with degrees in science and mathematics. He went on to become a professor of astronomy at a college in London. He was best known for his work as an architect, the art and the science of architecture. After the great London fire in 1666, most of the city of London had been burned to the ground. 13,000 buildings were destroyed, including 87 churches. It was Sir Christopher Wren that everybody looked to, particularly for the rebuilding of the majestic structures. 55 of those 87 churches that were burned to the ground were rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. He designed them and oversaw the construction, including for St. Paul’s Cathedral. If you have ever been in London to St. Paul’s Cathedral, you know the majesty, the awe-inspiring nature of that edifice all designed by Sir Christopher Wren. He lived to age 91.
In American history there are a lot of great architects, but perhaps the most famous architect in American History was Frank Lloyd Wright, who died at the age of 92 in 1959. Architectural design seems to be good for your longevity. Wright had broad scope to his architectural designs. He could do traditional. He could do the prairie design, for which he was most famous. He could even do ultra-modern. Some years ago, when Barb and I traveled to Scottsdale, Arizona we wanted to drive up and see the Scottsdale Biltmore designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We marveled at the beautiful structure.
One of the amazing things about Frank Lloyd Wright was that he actually designed a skyscraper that was never built. The architectural renderings are finished. They all believed the building would have worked, but it was a skyscraper one mile tall. Can you imagine? 5,280 feet, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. If they had built it in Los Angeles, the top of the building would have been at the level of Denver. The building would have gone through many different weather patterns as you went to various parts of the building. Architectural design is a pretty amazing thing.
Here at Cherry Hills Community Church, we have been blessed by a number of architects who have helped us craft structures, who helped us worship God and serve God and bless people. Most recently we have built the Chapel and we have built the Memorial Garden. Both of those were architecturally designed by Fentress Bradburn. Kirk Fentress is the head architect and is becoming kind of famous in the world. He has designed some great buildings all over the world. Right here in Denver, Kirk Fentress designed Denver International Airport. When you go out to DIA, look around and realize that the same guy designed our Chapel.
The Chapel is a little unusual for Kirk Fentress. It’s a little more traditional, but Kirk told me once that he viewed it as an offering to God. We view everything around here as an offering to God. Every building, every square inch, is an offering to God. It is God who is the great architect. It is God who designed everything. He founded the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of his hands. He is the great architect. When you look at the galactic systems that span light years, twelve to fourteen billion light years, it is all from God, designed by God. When you look at the mysteries of space: quasars, pulsars, and black holes, novas, and supernovas, it is all designed by God, by his mighty hand and by his incomprehensible majesty of minds. He has designed us. He designed you. He designed me. We are really incomprehensible. We are the crowns of his creation. He is the architect. Is he involved?
This view of God as architect represents a kind of distant view of God. God created it, designed it, built it, but then vacated the premises. He left it to run its course. He designed it with certain laws and he wants it to run until it runs out. It is kind of like a watchmaker or clock maker who designs it and then never sees it again. It is just allowed to work according the principles that it is designed to work by until it ceases to work. God set it up and now has nothing to do with it. That is the kind of distant view of God. What we are going to do today is take a look at this Biblically. Is this view of God Biblical? Gene mentioned that over 2,500 have taken the God quiz. We do thank you. Just a little over 100 of you have this distant view of God. It is relatively rare in our congregation. Yet, there are elements of truth in it. There are elements of truth and some significant errors. We will take a look at it Biblically. I want us to do this by looking briefly at two questions. The first question is: Can you know God? This architect, who designed it all, who crafted and created us … can you know him?
I would like to take a few moments to look at three triumvirates. Triumvirate refers to “three,” based on the Latin word tri. Based on the Latin, triumvirate means three persons in shared governance, three persons sharing power, a triumvirate. Historians identify what they call the first triumvirate was 60 years BC. It consisted of Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great, and Marcus Licinius Crassus. You have probably never heard of Marcus Licinius Crassus, but he was a great soldier, a great general. He was wealthy beyond comparison, one of the wealthiest men in the Roman world. It was Crassus who put down the rebellion of Spartacus. Pompey the Great was indeed great. He was a general, a statesman. It was Pompey who oversaw the Roman forces that brought Judea, Palestine, what today we call Israel, under Roman authority. That was all done by the armies of Pompey. It was Pompey who ruled what was then called Asia Minor.
Many church historians believed that the Apostle Paul’s ancestors, who moved from Galilee to Asia Minor, to Cilicia, to Tarsus, were actually given Roman citizenship by Pompey the Great because he had the power of the imperium, the power to grant citizenships. Only a general could do that. He had the power to grant citizenship and he was in charge of that part of the world where Paul’s ancestors would have lived. Paul’s ancestors were involved in tent making and in the use of cilicium. They were involved in the making of sails. It may be that they provided sails for the Roman navy and tents for the Roman army and therefore were granted citizenship. We don’t know. Pompey the Great was great.
But Julius Caesar was the greatest of all. It was Julius Caesar who rose to power over the other three. Crassus was killed in battle. Julius Cesar didn’t want to share this with Pompey so they went to war like two civilized people. They went to war and Julius Caesar prevailed in Greece. Pompey lost and fled to Egypt. Julius Caesar pursued him and Pompey died in Egypt. It was there in Egypt where we are told that Julius Caesar fell in love with Cleopatra. In the year 44, Julius Caesar was assassinated. His reign came to an end at 44 BC. “Et tu, Brute?” For Julius Caesar, Brutus was like Judas was for Christ. That first triumvirate came to an end.
One year later, in 43 BC, a second triumvirate came. It was Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Lepidus. It was Octavian who rose over the rest. It was Octavian who rose to power. This three-person shared governance was short-lived. Most of you know, Mark Antony also fell in love with Cleopatra. He met her in 40 BC, fell in love with her, fathered twins by her, then married her, and they had another male child. He lost to Octavian. Octavian rose to power. When Mark Antony died, Cleopatra committed suicide. Octavian took a new title as he was the ruler of all of Rome. He took the title Caesar Augustus. Octavian became Caesar Augustus. It was Octavian, it was Caesar Augustus who was on the throne when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, when Jesus came into our world, when Jesus came and shared our humanity.
With the coming of Jesus, a new triumvirate was revealed to the world. It was an eternal triumvirate. It had no beginning or no end and it was unknown. Nobody knew that God was one essence in three persons. Everybody suspected that God existed, but they did not understand his complexity, his nature. He is three in person—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The love in the Godhead is perfect. There is no conflict here. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a “triumviratus unum,” a triunity—what theologians call a trinity. This is the Godhead.
It wasn’t possible for an average person to know a Caesar. If you lived anywhere in the Roman Empire, you weren’t ever going to know a Roman Caesar. You wouldn’t get to know Julius Caesar or Caesar Augustus, and you wouldn’t ever get to know any of the Roman emperors. You would never get to know Nero or Caligula. You would never WANT to know Nero or Caligula. The reality is that people all over the Roman Empire worshiped them. Emperor worship prevailed throughout the Roman Empire. Every major town had temples built, erected for Caesar worship, emperor worship. People would go there, burn incense, and worship the emperors. But they would never meet them. They would never even expect to know them. How about the trinity? How about the triunity? How about this “triumviratus unum?” Is this a noble God? This God who reigns over us—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—can we know him?
We see what the problem is when we go to Genesis chapter three and we see the Eden account. God has placed Adam and Eve in paradise. There is communion with God. The Bible speaks anthropomorphically saying that Adam and Eve could actually hear God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, an anthropomorphic way of saying that they were there together. There was closeness, there was contact, there was communication. But something happened. Sin entered the world. Bad choices were made. Freedom was abused. Man began to separate himself from God. In the Eden account it said, “Man sought to hide himself from the presence of the lord God.” This distance between man and God was crafted by us.
You move on from Genesis chapter 3 and you come to Genesis 12 and you see God seeking to reach out to his creation. God appears to Abraham in the form of a vision. Abraham has moved from Ur of the Chaldees. He has come to Haran, where his family lives, and he has a vision from God. This triune God appears and speaks to him, calls him to go to a place that was unknown to him, to go to a place where he had never been, to go to a place where he would be blessed, to go to a place where he would become the father of a great people, and indeed the father of many nations. Abraham went by the call of God.
There in what was Canaan, or Palestine, what would be Israel, Abraham encountered God again in the form of Melchizedek. In Genesis chapter 14, God appeared to Abraham in some kind of a theophany, perhaps a Christophany, something divine. Melchizedek was king of righteousness, a king of peace. God was reaching out to Abraham. You come to Exodus chapter 3 where God reaches out to Moses on Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb, and the burning bush. “You shall go and stand before Pharaoh and say to him, “let my people go.” God was about to adopt a whole people. Moses was to be the leader, this by the decision of God. Moses obeyed, reluctantly, but he obeyed.
Now God reaches out to the people of God. The exodus takes place—they are moving towards the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey. God travels with them through the wilderness wanderings in the Pillar of Fire, and the Glory Cloud. God decides to tabernacle amongst them as the Shekinah, the presence of God hovers in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle and later in the temple. God speaks to the people by the prophets, and sometimes through evangelic visitation, and unusual figures such as the angel of the Lord. You have these Old Testament events where God is reaching out to the people, giving him his law, giving them moral guidance, theological guidance, and telling them what it would take to please him.
Finally, you have the New Testament and the coming of Jesus where God decides to really reveal himself. God sends his Son into the world. He is the visible image of the invisible God. No man has ever seen the Father; they have only seen the Son who is in the bosom of the father. He has made him known. We beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the father. The Word was in the beginning with God, is God. All things were made by him, without him was not anything made that was made. The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Incredible. Jesus comes to reveal the Father and to help us know the Father.
You have passages like John 14 where Jesus talks to Thomas and to Philip. Jesus said, “Have I been with you so long, Philip, and you do not know me? You who have seen me have seen the father. How can you say, ‘Show us the father.’ Do you not believe that I am in the father and the father is in me? I and the father are one. He who has seen me has seen the father for henceforth you have seen him and you know him.” Jesus came to show us the father and to help us know him, and to know God in his fullness, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Still, I think we all would acknowledge God in his fullness is not completely knowable. He is so transcendent.
You have passages like Isaiah 55: 8-9 where God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, says the Lord God, so are my ways higher than your ways. My thoughts than your thoughts.” The heavens are a lot higher than the earth, 14 billion light years. That is a lot higher than the earth. God is just saying, “That is how much greater my mind is than your mind. That is how much greater my ways are than your ways.”
I think there is a sense in which in our finiteness, we can’t fully grasp, can’t fully get our hands around an eternal God. Yet, to some degree he is knowable through his son Jesus Christ. He offers friendship through Christ. We have this promise in Holy Scripture that if we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, that moment we come to the cross and say, “Thank you for dying for me,” in that moment where we embrace his reign he saves us, secures our soul, and fills us with his Holy Spirit. He sends his Holy Spirit within us, to tabernacle within us. That is knowing him in a mystical way. You have heard that I was five years old when I knelt with my mother in the living room of our home and I asked Jesus into my heart. I said that prayer with my mom and I asked Jesus to forgive me and to be my Savior, and to come and be my Lord that I might live for him. He sent his Spirit into my heart when I was five. In that moment, when I made that commitment, he sent his Holy Spirit to dwell within me, to tabernacle within me. God has lived within me for 62 years.
That is crazy. That is what he does for every Christian. To anyone who accepts Christ as Lord and Savior, he sends his Holy Spirit to indwell us. There is something mystical about that. There are times of intimacy. There are times when you feel so close, when you feel his presence, when you feel him holding you. There are times when you feel him guiding you, times when you feel him comforting you, times when you feel him rebuking you, and there are times when he feels distant. We are fallen. This is an evil world. He is transcendent. This is God wanting to know us. This is God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, wanting to know us.
There is a second question I wanted to say a few things about and that is: Does God know us? He wants us to know him. We can know him through Christ, but does he really know us? He really knows you. God really knows you. He even knew you when you were in the womb. That is what the Bible says. It says in Psalm 139 that God knew you in the womb. He knitted you together in your mother’s womb. He beheld your unformed substance. In his book were written every one of them the days that were formed for you. What an amazing statement. In the Hebrew that could mean either that he has written in his book, even before you have lived out your days, all the days of your life. It could mean that your days of your life are numbered and known. It could also mean, and contextually might mean, that your days in the womb are known to him, the days of your formation (that is what the Hebrew word means) were known to him. He was involved in your formation in the womb and helped craft you. He knew exactly, and it had been written in the book, what would happen to your formation each day until you reached fruition and birth. This is an amazing image. I want you to understand he didn’t just know you in the womb, he really knows you now.
One of my favorite passages is John chapter 4 where Jesus is traveling through Samaria which is between Judea and Galilee. Jesus and his disciples did a lot of traveling. The Jews normally circumvented Samaria. They normally went around it because they didn’t like the Samaritans. They viewed them as half-breeds. The Jews were racist, as were the Samaritans so they had no dealings with Samaritans. But Jesus took his disciples right through Samaria. They came to this village called Sychar, which today is called Aschar, near another town called Shechem, near Mount Ebal, near Mount Gerizim and Jacob’s well. Jesus sent the disciples into the village to get some supplies.
There were a bunch of people around the well and a woman was drawing water out of the well. Jesus went up to this Samaritan woman and asked her for a cup of water. She marveled. She said, “How is this that you being a man and a Jew are even talking to me being a woman and a Samaritan? Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Jesus didn’t really respond to that. Jesus said to her, “If you knew who it was who was talking to you, you would ask him for living water. If you drink living water, you will never thirst again. This water that I have to give will well up in you into eternal life.” She said, “Give me some of this water.” He said to her, “Go and call your husband.” She said, “Sir, I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “Truly you have spoken, ‘I have no husband.’ For you have had five husbands and the man with whom you now live is not your husband.”
She said, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.” She asks him a couple of questions. “Is the worship of the Jews at Jerusalem the correct worship? Or is the worship of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim the correct worship?” Jesus said, “The worship of the Jews, flawed as it is, is superior to the worship of the Samaritans. But true worship is in spirit and in truth. It is not geographically located. We worship God all over the earth.”
This woman said, “Sir, when the Messiah comes, he will tell us all of this stuff. When the Messiah comes, he will teach us all of these things. He will set us all straight. He will make it all clear.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he. I am the Messiah.” What an amazing moment. What an amazing declaration. She believed. She went into the village and became an evangelist. Jesus hung out for two days and many, many people accepted Christ. Everywhere she went she made this statement, “He told me everything I ever did.”
I tell you, he can tell you everything you ever did. He can tell me everything I have ever done. He knows us. He knows everything I have done. He knows everything I have thought. He knows all my desires. He knows all my motives. He knows my sins. He knows my longings. He knows my disappointments. He knows everything about me and he knows everything about you. God knows you. Even though at times he may feel distant, he knows you. He is not just the architect. He is not finished with his work. He knows you.
There are times when he does feel distant. I love that passage in John’s gospel, chapter 11 where Jesus arrives in Bethany, about two miles from Jerusalem. He often went to Bethany because his friends were there—Mary, Martha, Lazarus—a brother and two sisters. Jesus often stayed with them and bunked at their house. Jesus arrived in Bethany and Lazarus had just died. Jesus actually foreknew this and had delayed his trip. He wanted Lazarus to be dead before he arrived so he could reveal the power of God in resurrection. What an amazing thing. Jesus arrives at Bethany and Lazarus is dead and the sisters are weeping. Martha runs to him. “Lord if you had only been here my brother would not have died.” Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever felt like “Lord, if you had only been here this would not have happened. Everything would have been different if you just showed up.” Have you ever felt like that? I think we have all felt like that. I know in my life many times I have felt like that. It takes faith to believe that he is still working and has a plan.
“I am done with church. I am done with prayer. I am done with God.” Have you ever felt like that? I bet you have. God understands. What kind of a loving God would let our child die? I don’t know what you are going through. I know that everybody goes through stuff. Maybe you have retired some years ago and figured you would be on a fixed income, but what you didn’t figure on was that it would just begin to shrink. Now you don’t have enough money to live on. You have health problems. You do not feel like you are employable. You are worried for yourself and for your loved ones. You don’t know if the new health stuff is going to cover your medical needs and you are afraid.
Maybe you have just been told you have cancer. It seems like every week folks in a congregation this size hear that message. You have cancer. You are afraid and worried. You don’t want to leave your loved ones, you don’t want separation, and you are crying out to God. Maybe he feels kind of distant. Maybe your wife left you. Just last week, in the midst of the three services, I had three different people come up and ask me for prayer because their wife or husband had just left them and they were crying. It is the world we live in. It is an evil world with enveloping darkness. Christ’s light has come into the world. One day he is going to come again in power and is going to make it right. He understands. Think of the words that he cried from the cross. “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He understands. I think in that moment the sin of the world was poured on him and he felt the separation that sin brings.
Whatever he did, he did it for you and he did it for me. He wants you to know that no matter what you are going through, he is not distant. He is working. He is active. He has given his promise in Romans 8:28. We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him. In everything, God works for good. He wants you to trust this. When you have been there ten thousand years, ten million years, ten trillion years, you will understand and things will look different. Now, he wants your trust and to know somehow, some way, even in the midst of darkness and evil he is working. I can promise you this.
If you don’t know Christ, if you have never accepted him as your Lord and Savior, if you are separated from him, all the events that are happening in your life, by the work of God are meant to draw you to himself. Everything happening in your life is his tug meant to draw you to him. If you are a Christian, and you have given him your heart and your soul, everything happening in your life by his power is meant to make you like him, and to bring you closer to him in a more intimate friendship. This is the longing of his heart. He says, “I will never fail you. I will never forsake you. I am with you always, even to the ends of the age.” Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death he is with us. He may feel distant, but he is not distant. We can know him and he knows us. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.