January is a month for new beginnings and in true ‘Sound of Music’ style, we began tonight’s sermon starting at the very beginning, singing ‘Do Re Mi’! Our new sermon series is on ‘The A-Z of Christian Faith’, looking at essential ingredients of our faith. The beginning is always a good place to start and God is, after all, the Beginning of everything; He is ‘the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.’ (Rev 22:13) God actually has no beginning; He always was, always is and always will be (as Aaron Shust’s song ‘Always Will Be’ says!) Ps 90:2 says ‘Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God’, and although it’s difficult for us to conceive of God having no beginning or ending, His eternal nature is just one aspect that makes Him wholly different to us! God is eternal; He exists outside of time, and the Bible simply tells us that at the beginning of time, there God was, creating: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ (Gen 1:1) ‘In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.’ (Ps 102:25)
We may not be able to fully understand this truth, but it’s a crucial one to grasp, because it’s fundamental to our understanding that God is far above mankind; He is transcendent; He is completely different to us in so many respects. The fact of the eternal nature of God means He is unrestricted by time; He does not face the restrictions of time or place that affect us and constrain us in so many ways.To Moses, He revealed Himself as ‘I AM’, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (see Ex 3:11-15), and we see, as Job did, that ‘the number of His years is unsearchable’ (Job 36:26)
If we’re to start at the very beginning, we will always encounter God; Jesus is described as the ‘author and finisher’, the ‘pioneer and perfecter’ of our faith (see Heb 12:1-2). He is also the One who will bring all things to completion (see Phil 1:6). Jesus really is both the A and the Z of our faith!
