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Sermon Details
- Pastor Name: Jonathan Cornell
- Date & Time: February 21, 2016 | 10:00am
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SERMON SERIES:
Jesus is Greater Than, Therefore
In 1990, the singer Bette Midler recorded a song that made it to the top of the Billboard Charts. It has been remembered throughout the years as one of the top 20 awesomely bad songs of the 80s. The song I’m referring to is called, From a Distance. Now, as your pastor and shepherd of this community, I feel it is my duty to warn you of dangerous and potentially destructive things, particularly in the realm of popular culture. My wife Amy will attest, there few things in the world that get me as worked up as bad theology in popular music. And this one, my friends, may be one of the worst.
From a distance we all have enough; and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs and no disease, no hungry mouths to feed.
From a distance we are instruments marching in a common band.
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace, they are the songs of every man
God is watching us, God is watching us, God is watching us, from a distance.
I remember being on a car trip with a bunch of classmates in college and we were listening to the radio and this song came on and immediately the girls in the car began singing along. Are you serious? Are you listening to the theology of this garbage? God is watching us from a distance? God is not off at a distance. This is not the orthodox biblical faith we cling to, my fellow college freshmen, as we head to the bowling alley. Don’t you remember your catechisms, isn’t there an alarm going off in your heads as you hear these words that are inconsistent with the Apostles’ Creed, let alone the Bible? There wasn’t.
The God we meet in Scripture is not one who sits back comfortably at a distance. The God of the Bible is not the great impersonal watch maker who winds everything up and lets it go. The God we meet in the Bible is intimate and near, and wants to have a personal and transformative relationship with his children.
Now many in our culture these days like to keep God neatly and quietly separate… at a distance. We like the idea that God’s not all that concerned with intimate details of our daily life, but is off somewhere with the angels in an unsoiled heaven, singing uninterrupted choruses—and when we’re in a pinch, the red phone rings and God jumps into action. Truth be told, this is how many of us choose to think about God. God’s not interested in our little sins, our little concerns, our little lives. Jesus, you stay up there with the angels, we’ve got things under control here. As we talked about last week, we don’t like it when God’s will challenges our will.
Download the entire transcript here: Hebrews 1 3-14 Jesus is Greater than Angels
Download the study guide here: Jesus is Greater than Angels SG
