God’s grace to Noah & “You can be anything you want to be”

/ Al Ngu, MDiv / Leave a comment

The modern contemporary culture saying you can be anything you want to be. It sounds so appealing and attractive but it runs hollow and dangerous encounter the wisdom of the centuries and of and of the Bible.

God said I will wipe them out because of the continuous evil in man’s heart

Noahic idea of grace speaks loudly of the sovereignty and compassion of God. You know in our culture today people are precisely doing anything they want to, and anything they want to be, in rampant chaotic anarchy style of culture that resulted in the wrath of God. The world was full of sins in Noah’s time and God was grieved seeing the world was so much sin. In Genesis 6, the sons of God saw the daughters of men were attractive. Then and they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said my Spirit would not abide with in man forever, for his flesh his day shall be 120 years. V5, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted He made man on the earth and grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said “I’ll blot out man whom I’ve created from the face of the land, man and animals for I’m sorry that I made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

This passage clearly tells us that we cannot be anything we want to be or do anything we want to. This is exactly what is described that the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. There seems to be no break, they can do anything they want to and this is an egregious to God and to humanity. And God was grieved and regret that he made man and he started of the plan to wipe them out.

Noah represents the minority who remain righteous despite evil all around

However God’s grace was shown to Noah because in verse 8 but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord and God told Noah to make himself an art and bring his family and animals of every kind into the ark to preserve them. And that is the grace of God of preservation.

He was the first, but not the last period it is it is this small group of believers that God caused out in each generation, Abraham in Genesis 12, Israel’s exodus 1 -19, faithful exiles, 2 Kings 19, Isaiah 10 :20-22, until the coming of Christ who though abandoned by his disciples remained faithful to death.

The good news to the world today is that God’s amazing Grace to us to empower us to enable us to live the righteous life he desires which is for our flourishing and also for his glorious name and his love for us. Oh God is faithful and if we respond to his call he will in no way abandon us or forsake. However if we are bent on rebelling against him, the warning of the flood of Noah’s days remains a true possibility to all of us.

Good news is God working in us to will and work for His good pleasure

This is very much in line with what Hebrews 1:3 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Or in ESV says he’s the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Therefore you can see that we absolutely rely on God’s upholding us or sustaining us. But that does not make us a puppet. In sin we are dead in slavery to the world, the flesh, and the devil, while still being responsible for my actions.

Therefore we are responsible for our lives under the sovereignty of God and he works both ways. Our salvation comes utterly by grace but in a way that does not obviate the need for my effort.

Philippians 2:12–13 (ESV)

12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

There are two aspects of it the final thing is we are responsible to act in order to fulfill God’s purpose, but our ability to act comes from God who works in us to will us to give us the willpower to work in accordance with his good purpose. Now without God’s will working in us our determination to act will be futile and will not achieve the salvation that God wants to give to us spirit.

The words “workout your salvation” does not mean we get saved by our works. Paul means salvation in terms of progressively coming to experience all of the aspects and blessings of salvation. The Philippines continued obedience is an inherent part of working out their salvation in this sense. This works at all the result of God’s work within his people to will and work for his good pleasure. Even the desire or the will, to do what is good comes from God, but he also works in the believer to generate actual choices of the good, so that the desire result in actions.

Why is Bible’s account of sin is one of the “great overlooked resources for cultural engagement”?

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There are numerous reasons why the Bible’s account of sin is one of the greatest overlooked resources for cultural engagement.

First, there’s a general disdain towards the whole idea of sin in this world

And the reason for the disdain towards seen as defined in the Bible is caused by the perception of the concept of sin by our culture today. Because people today love to commit sins so to speak, because they don’t want to be controlled or feel constrained by the laws of God in the Bible, example to have sex before marriage. It’s a huge deterrent for cultural engagement today. People do not think biblical concept of sin is in line with today’s understanding of what life is about especially its so influenced and the polluted by the corruption of sin itself, and also by the liberation theology or theory from the Enlightenment. Enlightened philosophers have taught that we need to look into our souls to find our authentic self, and that can only be found from within us not from the outside. This is very much influenced by people like Russoue and Freud and the like who keep telling us that inside each of us is the pure beauty however when a person is only wrong when he is corrupted by the surrounding him. So this generation is misled to think that inherently we are good people, however its the world and society that corrupts us inside. And that’s why for cultural engagement, people stay far away from the bible’s account of sin.

Secondly the people’s perception and conception of sin from the Bible is wrong that they look at the Bible’s laws and sin as a legalistic way

They do not understand that when we sin, we do not sin against a set of contractual agreements or laws like the Moses laws etc. But the Bible’s concept of sin is really a personal relational person called God. People do not understand that God is grieved when we sin, that speaks of the love relationship between humans and God. How can God be grieved if he doesn’t love us when we have done wrong? That’s precisely just like us when our kids done wrong, our hearts grieved because we loved them. The whole concept of sin from the Bible is motivated and driven and originated from the love of God. If only people today understand God starting point is love, I think the cultural engagement today with the proper understanding from Bible’s view of sin will be much more widespread.

Thirdly they are running away from God

The whole definition of sin in today’s culture is very much warped according to the idolatry of cultural leadings. Cultural mood is defined by the fallen human nature, the least the greed the corruption that’s rampant in our culture today. So when people deal with culture they do not want to bring sin as defined in the Bible to deal with real life, precisely because they are running away from God. To not to utilize Biblical concept of sin is really running away from God. Just like the prodigal son, he ran away from his father because he wanted money and for his own usage and wanted to do whatever he wants with inheritance. He grieved his father and the father gave him the inheritance with much reluctance and sorrow. That young man left his father and went to squander all his money with prostitutes with women with drinking parties and whatever and he was totally broke. And the parable that Jesus talked about says that that young man hit the bottom of the pit when he was so broke and on top of that a famine came and hit the ground hit the land. He was so hungry he didn’t know what to do so he applied and got a job to feed pigs. And while he was trying to feed the pigs, a realization dawned on him that he was so hungry he could conceivably eat those pigs’ food, it is at that moment he woke up.

He said to himself in my father’s household his servants eat proper food and here I am even longing to eat pig’s food. He woke up and he said I’m going home to my father and I’m not worthy to be his son anymore, and I will serve him as a servant. And the story goes when he gets back to his father, his father saw him from a long distance coming home, he ran out all the way straight to his young son, and he hugged him tight. The prodigal son said, “ Father I’m not worthy to be your son. Take Me Home to be your servant”. The father said to his servants, “Kill the fattest cow tonight we have a big feast, bring the best robes and put it on to my son and let’s celebrate tonight because my son was lost but now he’s found.” This parable story told by Jesus is precisely humans are running away from God and that’s why they want to run away from their sins as define and as in the biblical account.

Conclusion: Redemption brings reconciliation with God

But they don’t realize God’s waiting for the prodigal son to return to him. God is waiting for us to return to him it’s our Father in heaven. They do not realize that there is a hope to be reconciled with God. And God has initiated the redemption act by sending his son to this world to die for us, and whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life John3:16.

God has made a creation of superabundance

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The God who created this earth this universe, this world , is a God of super abundance

The reason he’s a God of super abundance is if you look around this world, this world is full of green trees, fresh air, beautiful blue sea, oceans and brown river and if you live in the four season world like I do in the northeast of America, we see the leaves turned brown, orange, red, yellow over fall time or autumn. Where can you get all this from? There is no coincidence! There can be no diminishing of the greatness and the abundance of God by saying there we come from some kind of atoms that evolve around the centuries! That is so diminishing and so insulting to the God of superabundance and glory.

Supremely the God of abundance was manifested on the cross in Palestine 2000 years ago

And God of super abundance is not just reflected on the way he created the world created Adam and Eve, created all the animals the birds that fly in the sky and the fish that swim in the sea, but supremely the God of abundance was manifested on the cross in Palestine 2000 years ago. To imagine that the God who created the whole universe could possibly or conceivably hang himself because of the Roman soldiers and the Jewish Pharisees priests, dripping in blood and anguish and shame and pain, it’s not only insane and it’s unthinkable and scandalous! Now that is super abundance. The reason he hangs or he allows himself to be hung on the cross bleeding for what? He allowed himself to be hung there so that he can be a redemption substitute for the sins of mankind. Because we have violated the commandment of God, our covenant with God, we pay the price of dying and be eternally condemned. However Jesus Christ the son of God and our Father in heaven love us so much that God gave his only son Jesus Christ to this world to die for us so whoever believe in him shall not perish and shall have eternal life. If that is not super abundance I don’t know what is?

Huge contrast and antithesis to the transactional world and culture we live in

This is a huge contrast and antithesis to the transactional world and culture we live in and a calculative mindset that we deal with one another. There’s a sense of which we do things so that we can get things back from others. In itself it’s not the strangest thing, because basically you reap what you sow. However God is expecting us to show more than that.

That’s why we hear of this Samaritan parable in which a Samaritan helped a bleeding Jewish man beaten up on the road. When all the Jewish brethren who passed by that helpless Jewish man bleeding on the road, this Samaritan man who is supposed to be at enmity with the Jewish people, stopped and paused to quickly lift him up, cleaned him up, nursed him and gave him food to eat before bringing him to a local hotel. And he then paid the price of the of the stay of that wounded man for a few days to the hotel in advance and he before he took his journey on his way. He even told the hotel that the expense of the doctor or stay be upon him when he comes back. This may sound super abundance and excessively generous to the world we live in, because in reality we also face economic hardship and the challenges ourselves. However Jesus is teaching us who is our neighbor? Our neighbor are those people who look different from us, whom we usually dislike associating with due to socioeconomic reasons, as in this case this Samaritan man helping a Jewish wounded man on the roadside, while all the other Jewish men who passed by ignored him. This is a startling story illustrating the Super abundance of God.

The first greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and soul

The first greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and soul, the second greatest commandment is love your neighbor as yourself. And when the disciples asked Jesus who is my disciple or who is my neighbor? Jesus told them this Samaritan man’s story.

What Jesus is saying is even the most unlikely people in your neighborhood who needs help go  help them. This is an incredible story of selfless living because of the love of God. Because of the Super abundance of God. Because God rewards those who love thy neighbors.

 There is another place where Jesus said when I’m sick, you came and visited me, and when I’m hungry you fed me, when I’m thirsty you gave me drinks, when I’m in jail you visited me. The disciples then ask when did we do that? Jesus answered when you do this to the least of you among us, you’ve done that for me. Jesus also said to some others while I was hungry you did not feed me while I when I was what I was call you did not call for me etcetera, and Jesus said to them truly I don’t know you.

God did not tell us to love our neighbors out of own strength, but he has done it himself through the cross showing the Super abundant love and empowering, and also giving us strength through the Holy Spirit to carry out his commands. And he promised to reward us greatly including the reward being entering the Kingdom of God the eternal life in the paradise with him.

Our orientation to this world would drastically change if we grasp the superabundance of God and not holding on to our riches and money in our in our bank account only, but stand up to fight for justice and feed the poor and help the hungry.

Amen.

Finding our authentic self and dignity and the Image of God

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I want to talk about the image of God in this world. Scott who wrote Issues facing Christians today brought some powerful thing about the image of God. He wrote that the biblical revelation reminds us that human beings are not self-explanatory.

We derive the meaning from outside themselves, from God in whose image they are made

Now this is very significant essentially, that really just puts human beings into the right pedestal so that we don’t exalt ourselves as if we are god in this world living in self-denial that there’s a higher power we call the sacred power in this cosmos, caused by the enlightenment. During which Reiff and Freud and the Rousseau and all these folks abandoned the sacred order, and put ourselves in charge all the universe. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential thinkers during the Enlightenment in eighteenth century Europe). They have forgotten completely that we derive our meaning from outside ourselves, not from within ourselves. That’s when exactly the modern contemporary cultures teaching that we just need to be authentic to restore our dignity to find our dignity by looking inwards to find our authentic self. They forgot that we did not derive our image, our meaning of who we, from within but we got it from God in whose image we were made. Like Scott said we are not autonomous individuals, creating ourselves constantly by the decisions and choices we make.

No, we are images, we are reflections

Now we are mere images we are not the thing we are not god! Can you imagine we images trying to say to the creator God that “we find our authentic self within ourselves not in your image?” That is completely laughable, in fact it’s not even funny anymore, because this is precisely what the world is doing heading towards ,causing millions and millions of millennial generations totally alienated from the image of God. They can’t find themselves anymore.

The dignity of a human humanity is derivative

That’s the important word. We derive our dignity from our created God in whose image we were made in. In other words our dignity is derived from God. Our dignity did not come from our authentic self deep within, it comes from him whose image we bear. We are dependent beings.

The God of Superabundance & Compassion

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Al Ngu

The bible’s picture of human beings is not as wheelers and dealers in the corporate boardroom, signing contracts with the gods or Ultimate reality in order to get ahead, instead, we are joyful children on Christmas morning receiving unexpectedly lavish gifts from loving parents. Free gift, not contractual obligation, is at the heart of God’s picture of reality, just as it is at the heart of the bible’s picture of redemption.[1]

I think it is absolutely fantastic and overwhelmingly rejoicing to see a God of such generosity and of superabundance in contrast to the transactional calculative economy of mankind. What we see of what God has done in Christ Jesus towards us is just something simply lavishly full of grace that we can’t even begin to comprehend. This is the concept of the superabundance God that works in and  the antithesis towards the way humans bargain and grab kind of economy of lifestyle.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to the world, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16) Did you see in this passage that God gives when he loves, not demands. Watkin has described it in like we are just like children joyfully waiting for lavish gifts from our loving parents on Christmas morning. Folks the cross of Jesus Christ is the most glorious and greatest gift of the divine God to humanity, so lavish that the son of God drops blood as a gift to us.

If this principle has followed through, it yields a world in which the poor, the weak, and the aged are not cast aside because they have nothing to put on the table in the great business deal of life, but they are cared for and honored. God gives freely to those who cannot stand on their own two feet, those who cannot cut a deal with him. [2] This is another illustrious communication by Watkin drawing from the Superabundance of God in the redemption of the world through his Son given to this world, that will be the ultimate reality that we live on. And if we do that what he’s saying is the poor, the weak, and the aged will never be cast aside just simply because they cannot contribute to the community in real life.

You see it is truly the case that God delights in freely giving to those who are marginalized, who are in need, who are being bullied by this society. That’s why you see so much in the Bible God demands social justice from his people. Look at what Jesus said, he’s always fighting for the widows, the orphans, and always urging us to give to the poor and helping them. The parable the Samaritan is cutting edge to demonstrate the second greatest commandment to love your neighbor. When Jesus used Samaritan as the neighbor of the Jew, that in itself is ground breaking because Jews don’t mix with Samaritans at that time, Samaritans are being looked down upon socially and societally. So what Jesus is called us calling us to love our neighbors, including people who are very different or socially or economically lower than us. And to help them without expecting anything in return and that’s a kind of love superabundance that Jesus has for us all as he mightily demonstrated on the cross dying for humanity because we cannot keep the covenant of God.

The primacy of the gift provides the pattern for a Society of compassion, of helping the needy when they have no means to pay back, of reaching out to the poor and the ungrateful when they are unable to repay. He lays the foundation for a caring, compassionate society that I suspect we will all like to live in, that we would all like our families to live in, especially in those times when we are aware of our own neediness. [3]

This again shows how our God is a God of compassion of wanting to help the needy when they cannot pay back, and reaching out to the poor and ungrateful when they are unable to repay. That’s the way how our God works, and that’s the way God wants to inculcate in our hearts and spirits, the spirit of Christianity. In this way God is laying down the foundation for a caring compassionate society that he wants us to build, the church must be a caring compassionate society. That’s the kind of society we all want to live in. If we extended politically to our social economic world, I believe therefore a compassionate health care system it’s definitely in place and is needed. We must not let too much of economic market economy drives away the compassion of society. Responsibility goes with the compassionate Society of course, but we must put compassionate society first and foremost because it reflects the compassion of God.

[1] Chris Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory, 64

[2] Ibid, 64

[3] Ibid, 64