Self Existent

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So we're reading from Isaiah 44, and we're starting at verse six. This is what the Lord says. Israel's king and Redeemer, the Lord almighty. I am the first and I am the last. Apart from me, there is no God.

Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people and what is yet to come. Yes, let them foretell what will come. Do not tremble.

Do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God beside me? No.

There is no other rock. I know not one. All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind. They are ignorant to their own shame.

Who shapes a God and casts an idol which can profit nothing? People who do that will be put to shame. Such craftsmen are only human beings. Let them all come together and take their stand. They will be brought down to terror and shame.

The blacksmith takes a tool and works it in the coals. He shapes an idol with hammers. He forges it with the might of his arm. He gets hungry and loses his strength. He drinks no water and grows faint.

The carpenter measures with a line and makes an outline with a marker. He roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in human form, human form in all its glory, that it may dwell in a shrine. He cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.

It is used as fuel for burning. Some of it he takes and warms himself. He kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a God and worships it. He makes an idol and bows down to it.

Half of the wood he burns in the fire over it he prepares his meal. He roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, ah, I am warm. I see the fire. From the rest he makes a God his idol.

He bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, save me. You are my God. They know nothing. They understand nothing.

Their eyes are plastered over so that they cannot see, and their minds close so that they cannot understand. No one stops to think. No one has the knowledge or understanding to say. Half of it I used for fuel. I even baked bread over its coals.

I roasted meat and ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left shall I bow down to a block of wood? Such a person feeds on ashes. A deluded heart misleads him. He cannot save himself or say, is not this thing in my right hand a lie?

This is the word of the Lord.

Our second reading of the morning is from revelation, chapter four, verses six B. Though I don't think they're marked in the church Bibles. Six B is not marked. But we will start in the middle of six. We will start, yes, until verse eleven.

So, revelation 4611. And if you are using the church bibles, then we are on page 1236-1236 in the centre, around the throne were four living creatures and they were covered with eyes in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion. The second was like an ox. The third had a face like a man.

The fourth was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around. Even under its wings, day and night, they never stopped saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty who was, and is and is to come.

Whenever the living creatures give glory, honour and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say, you are worthy, our Lord and God to receive glory and honour and power. For you created all things and by your will they were created and have their being.

Amen to that. And thank you, John, so much for reading that. It would be great to keep those Bibles open, page 1236. And that will be useful for you and for me, because this is God's word and we want to dive into it. Let me lead us in a prayer as we come to think about what God's saying to us through his word and through who he is today.

Heavenly Father, we learned last week that you are indescribable. We've just sung it. And so, Father, as we come to your word today, we're aware that thinking about the things of you is a bit like trying to drink from the Niagara Falls. There's just so much here that we couldn't take, that we won't be able to take it in for all eternity. And yet, Father, we learnt last week that we can know you truly, even though we don't know you fully.

I pray that knowing you truly today would release us.

Father, there might be someone here who feel like they're in a place that they're sort of trapped, they're needed and there's no way out. Father, I pray you've released them today from that. Father, there are almost certainly those in here for whom we know you, but we create little idols of you and perhaps we even quite like that. Show us how that will be. Life taking and not life giving.

Father, I pray that as we gaze upon you and think about you, that we might fall down like the elders in this passage and proclaim you as king and God above all, giving you all glory and honour and praise. Amen. Amen.

It's life, Jim, but not as we know it. Some of you guys will recognise that quote. Maybe you're Trekkies into Star Trek. And there is Commander Spock speaking to Captain Kirk. It's life gym, but not as we know it.

In fact, if you're really a Trekkie, you probably know that's actually a misquote. He never actually says that in the series. It's from a song that came out about Star Trek many years later. Today we're thinking about a God who has life, but not as we know it. We've been thinking about ways in which God is different to us and why.

That's a really good and a wonderful thing. And what we're going to see today is that God has life in and of himself, and that is different to how we have life. I used to teach science in secondary school. And in about year seven, you learn the things that make something living the way that we classify them. We used to say, it's like saying misses gran, this bring back any memories for anybody?

So m we say m is movement. Things need to move around if they're alive. R they need to respire or breathe. It's more than just breathing, but we can talk about that at a later date. S they need to sense their surroundings.

G they need to grow, get bigger. R they need to reproduce, have babies. E they need to excrete. Well done, Rachel Tanner. You were listening.

They need to excrete, they need to get rid of waste and they need nutrition. Now, here's the thing. God doesn't need to move. He's everywhere already. He doesn't need to respire to get energy.

He's full of energy and life. He doesn't need to sense his surroundings. He already knows all things. We'll think about that in a few weeks time. He doesn't grow because he's already the mostest.

He doesn't need to reproduce because he's not going to die. So he doesn't need to pass on his gene pool. He doesn't need to excrete because he's not taking in nutrients. Christian God has life, but not life the way that we know it. And that's really important because actually a lot of those things are areas where we say something is living because it is overcoming a limitation.

I need to move in order to go and get the food that I need to feed me in order to live. I need to reproduce because I'm not going to live for the next 200 years. And so I need therefore to have offspring. God doesn't need any of that. So what does it mean then, that God has life in and of himself?

Life, but not as we know it? And why is it the most exciting thing? I think it's fantastically exciting. Firstly, how do we know that God's got life in himself? Jesus says, so if you're reading the book of John, in John chapter five, Jesus talks about the father.

He says, just as the father has life in himself, he gives it to the son, that he might have life in himself as well. But what that means is that God is the one who isn't created. He doesn't need to get life from somewhere else. That passage in revelation, what happens is we kind of see a picture of what is going on in heaven now, and we see that within it you've got these crazy creatures that are all described again and again as living creatures. They have life, but not like God has life.

They've got a whole bunch of eyes, they see a whole lot of stuff. If you've got eyes under your wings, there's probably very little that you're going to miss out on. And as they look at the creation, what do they do? Their response is to give God praise and honour and glory. And they're doing it day and night, all the time.

And then I love like verse nine, whenever the living creatures give glory, honour and thanks, which is like all the time, then what's going on? The 24 elders are bowing down and casting their crowns and they're giving God praise. It's this kind of, it's this kind of picture of just escalating eternal praise going to God. Why? Well, verse eleven, you're worthy our Lord and God to receive glory and honour and power for you created all things, says that the honour is going to you because you are the creator of all things, if you like.

Let's imagine that this circle here, sorry for you guys about that, just a circle on the screen. This circle here is everything that you can think of, everything that you can't think of, everything that exists. Every emotion, every idea, every physical thing, the whole universe. The stuff that Beth was talking about last week that's so huge and massive, all of that is there in this circle. God has created it all.

And what that means is that God is actually a separate circle. It should be the other way around. God should be bigger than everything else. I'm limited. Unlike God, he is the only one who is uncreated.

Everything else is created, and then God sits in a sphere of his own as one who is uncreated. And what that means is that creation depends on God. If he creates everything, creation depends on God. But God doesn't depend on creation. We are here because God exists and has life in and of himself.

If we don't exist, God still does exist because he has life in and of himself. Now, some of you guys are going, you're taking a long time to say something really simple. God exists, and we need him to exist. And I'm taking that time because here's the thing. We rely on God.

God doesn't rely on us. And yet, so often we think of it as if he does, don't we? We know that this world needs God. God doesn't need this world. And yet I think to myself, I can't imagine this world without me.

I can't imagine that situation without me. How on earth would business carry on without me at the helm of it? I built it up. How on earth would that family carry on without me looking after it? How on earth would that friendship, that person, get on without me?

How would that creativity? How would the church get on without me? I can't imagine a world without me in so many ways, despite the fact that, of course, this world has existed for thousands of years without me. Fairly easily. Yet actually, I think I am the thing that so much depends on.

Maybe that's true of you as well. We forget that God created all things, and that should free us up for a moment here, because there are so many times where we feel like we're trapped in a situation because it cannot carry on without me. This cannot function without me. And so therefore, I have to do what I am doing. I'm doing this area of service in church.

It cannot function if I stop serving in this way.

We think, wait a second, it's God who this relies on, not me. And that might mean, yes, you're doing an incredibly important job. Please don't mishear me with that. But it means that if you cease to function, it's not that God sits there and goes, oh, and now that's game over. What was I going to do?

No. God creates all things, not you or me.

It doesn't mean things won't change, doesn't mean that we're not doing important things. But it means if you're feeling trapped in a particular area, that's on you, not on God. He's not trapping you in that area. He does not need you, which means that when he uses you, he's choosing to use you. We'll come back to that in a moment.

So God creates all things, which is brilliant, but therefore that means that the glory and the honour go to him. Did you see that verse eleven? You're worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honour and power for or because you created all things. Because you created all things. Therefore, the glory and the honour and the power all go to you.

A few years ago, I was six. Quite a few years ago, I was six. I had a great friend and his name was Andrew Ninnis. And Andrew and I used to enjoy doing all sorts of fun things together, including Lego. And so I just want to take you back to a snapshot of six year old Ben and six year old Andrew.

And we'd had a great time building Lego. It was always star spaceships that I would make and so I made some great Lego starships. And then, of course, the time to go home would come and mum would come and so I'd stand up and I'd take the Lego spaceship that I've created and say my goodbyes and Andrew would say, can I have the Lego back? And I said, no, no, I made this. I made this.

This is mine. At which .6 year old equivalent of world war three begins to ensue. And he says, you made it, but you made it with my Lego. It's my Lego that you made this with. Whose does this spaceship belong to?

Of course, then Andrew's mother, being wise and seeing a teaching opportunity, comes in and says, well, Andrew, he made it with your Lego that I bought with my money.

Whose does the spaceship truly belong to? The spaceship's a silly example, isn't it? But actually, within our world, there's all sorts of similar. Who does this bit of land truly belong to? I was here first.

Now, I was here here first. I purchased it. I was given it then have to look far before six year old Ben and Andrew is being recreated in all sorts of other areas. So who does things belong to? Ben and Andrew.

They're arguing. Andrew's mother comes in word of wisdom, and what does snotty Ben or Andrew, I can't remember which. Let's say it was me because it probably was. What do I say? Well, it's God's really trump card laid down, by which I mean it's God.

So therefore, please could I take it home?

And yet, actually, there's a truth there, isn't it? You can carry on going back. You can say, well, okay, Ben used his creative mind to create this incredible spaceship. Andrew's got the Lego. They're his bricks because they were given to him by his mum, who paid money for them.

But then the bricks themselves were designed by somebody who's part of a company that probably was financed by somebody else. And they use plastics that come from the grant. Where does this actually belong and where does the glory for the spaceship go? Does it go to Ben or does it go to Andrew or to Andrew's mum? Where does the glory go?

You are worthy, o Lord our God, to receive glory and honour and power for you created all things.

When the Bible says the cattle on a thousand hills of the lords, they are the Lord's because he created them. He didn't go to Bakewell market and say, hey, can I pick up a few thousand million cattle for a few thousand hills? He didn't pay for them, he didn't rear them. Well, in some ways he did pay for them and rear them, but actually, more fundamentally than that, they're his because he created them from nothing. He created them and therefore everything that is part of those cattle on the thousand hills belongs to the Lord.

Now, you might think I've got relatively little interest in cattle, but this is true of all things. That means that those things that we take credit for, those areas that I say that's mine, I've done that, I've made that. Are areas where God says, actually, the glory, the honour, the ownership of that belongs to me. Yes, you've built that company or that family. Yes, you've built that relationship.

Yes, you've made that huge difference, difference in that area. But you've done so building with my lego. You've done so building with the stuff that I've put in place. You build an amazing thing with your hands. You're building with bricks that God has put together.

You create an incredible algorithm in your mind to solve some sophisticated something. You're doing so using the intelligence that God has created. In fact, the very fact that you are doing anything ultimately, is because God has created you. Think about it. The very fact that you are here today is a result of thousands upon thousands of people meeting and falling in love and having babies and dying and moving on over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

See, we are very quick to try and claim glory, to claim honour for things in our lives, when actually God says, look, I have created all things.

Where is it that you're taking credit for something that really should be credited to the Lord? Now, I'm not saying that we never say, look, there is a job well done. I'm not saying that we never congratulate one another on doing things and God using us. Of course he does, and that's a really important thing. But where is it that you're saying that I have built this, so this is mine and perhaps even this is mine to the exclusion of God.

God, you don't get a say in how I run my family diary because I put a lot of effort into this. This and it's mine.

God, you don't have a say on my career, actually, because I've worked hard. I built this from scratch. It's mine.

God, you don't have a say on my free time. Do you know how hard I worked so that I could retire with a decent pension?

God, you don't get to challenge the way that I run that bit of church life because it's mine. I've worked on it hard.

The living creatures with the armpit eyes look at you and they say, what are you doing? God is worthy to receive glory and honour and power because he created all things you're building with his Lego bricks. Well done, you. But his is the credit.

But there's more to this, because this isn't just a rebuke, this should be wonderfully freeing to us. You see, if it's true that God is in a world of his own, if he's the uncreated creator who doesn't depend on his creation and he has life in and of himself, then that means that when he is interacting with us, when in fact he is creating us, he is doing so well again, verse eleven. You created all things by your will. They were created. In other words, the God who knows all things, right?

Who knows you perfectly. Remember last week? We don't know ourselves perfectly. He knows us perfectly. He knows you perfectly.

He knows those faults. He knows those bits about which you're a bit coy. He looks and he says, do you know what? I knew all those things and I didn't need to make you. It's not that I had some need that was there, that needed fulfilling.

I was lonely or I was tired, or I needed any of this. Misses grandmalarky. No. He said, I chose to make you.

You sit there and you're very aware of your own faults and you think God has stuck with you, that he saved you. And he said, hey, I'm going to save them. Oh, man. Now, it's a lot of hard work.

He says, no, I didn't have to make them. I didn't have to design them.

I did. So, not out of necessity, but out of love. He loves us. What incredible love of a father to us.

By your will, they were created very, very quickly. Let's just take a moment to think about the alternative to a God like this, the God who we create. We heard about it in Isaiah, didn't it? Didn't we? This is the God who actually sits firmly in this bottom circle, the bits of creation.

And we heard the kind of joke, oh, we take a bit of wood and we cut it in half, and half of it we burn, and then we make a God out. What stupidness does that idol maker do? And yet this is what we do when we create little idols, little gods from creation. Now, it might not be quite as obvious as taking an axe and splitting a bit of wood, part for burning and part for heating, but we're taking things of this world and we're attributing to them God like status. In fact, even as I'm saying this, I'm reminded, what is it that our banknotes are made of?

Banknotes are made of? I think somebody will correct me. They used to be made of paper, of trees. How often do we idolise money? That really is an error, isn't it?

Where we take a wood, cut it in half, half of it we go and make charcoal, the rest of it we make little notes that we end up worshipping and saying, actually, this is going to function like a God for me in my life.

How many times is it that actually, when we are going through hard times or things are difficult, we think, if only somehow I'd got a trust fund or the lottery or something, that would answer all my, my questions, all my difficulties, if I just had enough money. Maybe you're one of our new PCC members elected last week. If that's you, it's very easy to think, oh, if only, if only the church had, you know, a million pounds, that would answer lots of questions. You need to be very careful that we don't idolise money, taking half of the bit of wood and burning it, taking the other half and worshipping it. Because what does an idol that's part of this creation do?

An idol that's part of this creation will only ever take from us. It needs building. The builder ends up, we heard, with a sore arm, the builder themselves needs food and drink to sustain them in order to pour out their effort into creating a little God that drains life from them as they work for it again and again and again. Such a God needs them. Such a God needs sacrifices, whether material or as we create little idols, career, money, family, I don't know, sex, what your idol is, I'm sure there are.

Then, because our hearts do this, those will only ever take from us, demand more from us. Why? Because idols themselves need propping up. They don't have life in and of themselves. So we pour ourselves out to them again and again and again.

Compare that with the God who has life in himself, who then chooses to create you.

And then what does Jesus offer? He says to us, I have come that they might have life and life in all its fullness. The God who has life in and of himself, uniquely, can offer you life. He doesn't need anything from you.

But even more than that, and very, very briefly, we're going to remember in a few minutes time, what does the God who has life in and of himself do so that you might have life. The God who had life in and of himself chose to give up his life so that you and I might be able to, to share in his eternity. The God who is worthy of all honour and praise and glory, who created all things, including the very atoms of the cross he was nailed to, gave up his life so that we may enjoy him for all eternity. Because he had to remember. He chose to.

By your will, all things were created. There's so much more that a God who has life in and of himself means to us, but there's not less. What an incredible God we have today. Let me lead us in a prayer. Heavenly Father, we, oh, we're so quick to forget, to forget the goodness of a God who makes all things.

We try and carve off a bit of glory for ourselves, either because we create an idol or we idolise ourselves. And yet in so doing, we miss out. We miss out that you, the God who is life in and of yourself, share that with us. Father, what more glory could we want than that the God who has life in and of himself, will give it up for me? What higher status could I possibly want that the God who had no obligation to make me chose to do so simply out of love?

Father, would that release me from, from idols that just drain? Would that release us from feeling like we need to grab glory, Father. Would that help us to lift our eyes to see what those beings saw and proclaim, you are worthy, Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power because you created all things. And by your will, they were created and have their being. Glory to you.

Amen. Amen.