Acts 17:24-27 God on the Loose

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches through his four part series dedicating the church, why it's not about a building.

Let's listen in. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Recast. I'd like to welcome up our lead pastor,

Don Filsack, to get us started. Well, good morning to everybody.

I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here, and I want to start off by welcoming all of us to God's gathering here in Matawan, Michigan.

I'm just glad to see everybody that's shown up this morning. We've come together to worship him.

And I want to remind everybody that he is worthy of our attention. He is worthy of our praise. He is worthy of the time that you have carved out for him in your week today.

He is worthy of our efforts to maintain unity among his people. And he is worthy of our efforts to bring more into the worship of his great name by reaching out to others in our community.

So we have something to celebrate this morning. This is our very last service meeting in this wonderful cafeteria.

So we praise God. Compliments of Dan Skolten. We have the actual number of weeks.

Leave it to somebody who's been setting up and tearing down these chairs every week to tell us exactly how many.

One hundred and ninety four. This is our one hundred and ninety fourth week here setting up and tearing down.

So just very grateful for all that God has done and for that crew. Let's go ahead and give a hand to that crew who has been setting up faithfully for us.

Been awesome and just huge that they've been willing to do that for us. I know that they didn't do it for our applause, but that is just a little bonus to them.

I know that many of you are going to miss all of the encouragements to eat smart, right? I mean, like the veggies and maybe you didn't even notice those anymore.

Maybe that's just white noise to you. Or the great motto over the door, you know, as you exit.

If you were another person, would you like to be a friend of yours? You know, just great theological depth and truth there.

But maybe what you're really going to miss is the real, the real cold in the winters and the blazing heat in this room in the summers.

But my guess is that the thing that you're going to miss the most is those chairs, those chairs.

You might even want to just take one with you. We don't own them. Sorry, you can't take it with you. But we will have some chairs set up for you over there next week.

And I am confident they're going to be more comfortable than these. After the service, we're going to be putting up the chairs, packing up for the kids ministry stuff and the stage and the sound equipment and moving that to trailers and taking that over.

I would just request something. It sounds kind of strange, but if you have not signed up to help move stuff,

I would ask for your help packing up the chairs here. But if you're not signed up and you haven't

RSVP'd for that, we have enough cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. We've got a lot of people who have already signed up to help move the kids ministry over there.

So, you know, if you're one and then we're going to have lunch provided for those of you that have signed up for that. It's not an in and out crowd, but it's just that we've got a lot of people that are going to be able to help do that.

And we've got a limited amount of stuff that we need to move. And so we've got some people who know what goes where and able to help out with that.

So please stay, though, and help pack up the chairs afterwards, because some of the some of the people who normally help with that are going to be busy packing up kids stuff and that kind of thing.

So stay after for that and we should be able to make a good progress on all of that, getting that stuff over there.

Next Sunday, we will be having our very first service and the new building at 25120 Front Avenue.

Dave wants a slow clap, I think you got a slow clap going there. All right. And it's amazing.

I don't know if you put this all together, but it's amazing that that coincides with our annual Thanksgiving service. So we have an annual service that we do for Thanksgiving.

Next week is going to be a unique service. If you've only been with us, if you weren't here last year for that and that we have a very different type of thing, we have open mics and an opportunity for everybody who would like to to stand and publicly give thanks to God for what he has done in your life in this past year.

And we really try to keep that focused on what God has done. And so be thinking about that.

And I know that a lot of people squirm at the thought of getting up and sharing something into a microphone. But just encourage you to think through this week what

God might be laying on your heart to give him thanks for publicly. And it's always one of the highlights of my year is the opportunity to just hear how

God is working in us, in our body here and the types of things that he's doing. So be thankful, be thinking about that.

And obviously be thankful as well as you consider what to give gratitude to God for in this past year.

It's always been one of my favorite times as a church come filled with gratitude and thankfulness this week.

And in line with the move to the building, I would like us to look at another text regarding dedicating the church.

That's the series that we're in right now, the dedication of the church. Last week, we saw God indicate that the

New Testament people of God, the New Testament people of God are the church and they build the church by investing in the lives of others around them.

It isn't a literal building that concerns God. And so we're not dedicating a building. Ultimately, what we're doing is we're dedicating ourselves.

He is most concerned that we dedicate ourselves to the task of loving, caring for and maintaining unity with one another.

That's the thing that he's most concerned with. We are the temple of God, which could leave us with a pretty high estimation of ourselves.

If we if we really were to stop and pause and think about that, being the temple of God as we gather together, that's a pretty glorious and high thing.

But then we now come to a text this morning and we see the Apostle Paul declare emphatically that God doesn't need a temple.

You are the temple of God, folks, but he doesn't need a temple. So he puts us in our right place in the same

Apostle Paul who wrote to us last week that we are the temple, is going to speak to a group of pagan

Greek Greeks in the city of Athens and tell them that God doesn't need a temple.

We ought not to think of God as one who can be contained by a building. He is not a

God dependent on any mortal man, as we're going to sing here in just a moment. But we learn about God in this text, but we also learn about ourselves.

There's going to be something about who we are here, something for us. We like to build temples for God.

We're honest about that ourselves. We like to build temples for him. What God is really into, though, we would tend to like to put him in a box, tend to put him in a building.

But what God is really into is kind of a game of hide and seek with us. Ever thought about that? Kind of a game of hide and seek in the great big world around us.

He wants to be found out there in your week. While we seek to tame him and build for him nice places to meet with us on our terms,

God is wanting to meet with you day by day, moment by moment, hour by hour throughout your week.

And I think it's kind of like this, when it comes to thinking about taming God, C .S. Lewis said this through Mr.

Beaver to Lucy in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. How many of you ever read that book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Many of us have read that.

Well, Mr. Beaver says this to Lucy when she's trying to figure out who Aslan is, Aslan being the Christ figure in that book.

Who said anything about safe? She asks Mr. Beaver, is

Aslan safe? And he says this, who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe.

But he's good. But he's good. And believing both that God isn't safe, but he is good, is the key to walking with God in this world.

Understanding that he's not safe, but he is good. So let's open our Bibles to Acts chapter 17.

If you're not already there, Acts 17. And we're going to just look at verses 24 through 27. Again, Acts 17, 24 through 27.

If you don't have a Bible on your lap or a means to navigate to the Bible on a device, please do me a favor and just raise your hand.

Mike's got some Bibles already open to that passage. And he'd be happy to bring one to you so that you can follow along and see the things that we're saying are coming from God's word.

And again, recast. I say this every week as we read Acts 17, that this is exactly what

God desires for you and I to hear this morning. This is from him and this is him telling us about himself.

So Acts 17, 24 through 27. The God who made the world and everything in it, being

Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods in the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek

God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.

Let's pray as the band gets ready to lead us in worship this morning. Father, I thank you so much that you are indeed a

God who has revealed yourself to us, that you don't dwell in a temple that we need to make a pilgrimage to.

That it's not like each week we come into your presence for an hour and a half on a

Sunday morning and that's it. Thank you that you are a God who is indeed close to us.

Everywhere we go, and that's not something that's to be feared, it's something to be a delight for those who are your children, that our

Father is with us. He delights over us. He is glad over us. So often what we feel in our hearts or experience or think of is your disappointment and your discouragement.

And all you see when you look at us is the love you have for your son, Jesus Christ, and it's in him that we walk, in him we move.

And so, Father, I pray that that would become a reality in our hearts and minds that you would help us to shift from that fear that comes so quickly to our hearts to a delight and a joy over being received into your family.

Father, I pray that that would be a reality for anybody who's struggling with that this morning and that as we have an opportunity to lift our voices, that it would be from that place of being adopted into your family and that you walk with us day by day and that it's in that that we would rejoice and celebrate and lift up our voices together and worship to you.

And I ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, I would encourage you to get comfortable and keep your

Bibles open to Acts chapter 17, verses 24 through 27. If you lost your place there, you can open up there so you can follow along and see that that's the outline of the text of the sermon this morning.

That's what we're going to walk through verse by verse there. So again, Acts 17, 24 through 27. And make yourself as comfortable as you can for the last time in that seat.

You know, I say this every week, but if you need to get up and stretch out in the back, take advantage of that. If you need more coffee, juice or donuts, those are right over there and you're not going to distract me.

In our text this morning, the Apostle Paul is giving a group of Greek pagans. And I use that word pagan as a technical word.

It's a it's a word that's used for those who would worship other gods and would worship idols and would offer sacrifices to idols and that kind of thing.

So the Greek pagans and he's giving them an introduction to the almighty God as revealed in the

Old Testament and in Jesus Christ and so the people of Athens. That's the context of where this is happening.

It's in ancient Greece, in Athens, and the people of Athens worshipped many gods.

They had statues all over the city. They had the Parthenon there where they worshipped various gods.

They had idols, temples, festivals and all of those Greek gods that you maybe studied in grade school or know a little bit about from the

Percy Jackson series or whatever, however you got familiar with them. some of you read that.

Some of you know what I'm talking about. But they passed along stories and practices then based on those myths and fables.

And they actually believed that at times the gods would come down and walk among them and they had all of their stories.

And oh, did you hear it? That village out there, Zeus showed up one time or this this type of thing.

And so many of them believed it. Now, you got to understand that some of us might have in our mind that these were just fables that they told their kids to keep them in line.

Right. Like maybe a naughty and nice list or something like that. But they just told them that to kind of keep them in order or something like that.

And that's not the case. Many of these people literally believed in this pantheon of gods that they really existed.

So Paul is introducing God, the real true living God, to these people who already had an understanding of some sort about the gods.

And they believed in jealous and angry gods. They believed in gods of swift retribution.

But sometimes the the gods would hold longstanding grudges against people and heavy.

They would they would put a heavy yoke of slavery and servitude on the people and that followed them.

And there was a lot of duty involved in it and a lot of hard work that went into offering sacrifices to the gods and goddesses.

In other words, the Greek gods and goddesses were needy and they needed the service of humanity.

And it's in that context that Paul is going to introduce those people to this true and living

God. So Paul begins where we ought to begin when we're talking to somebody who doesn't know God.

He begins at the beginning. God made the world and everything in it. How many of you think that's a fundamental good place to start when you're talking about God with somebody who doesn't have a clue who he is, who's never met him before?

Well, he's the one who created the ground you're standing on. He created all the material world around you.

He begins at creation because creation, I would suggest, is the most obvious and clear display of the power, order and authority of the almighty

God. It's the most evident place that you can see his power manifest itself.

It's the most obvious place where you can see that he is a God of order, where you can see that he has authority.

He is the Lord of heaven and earth, Paul explains. He is over the scene and the unseen world around us, the cosmos above us, the ground beneath us, the starry host above, as the psalmist would say.

All that exists comes from the hand of the almighty God. All comes from him.

And the fact that he's over all things means that he does not, Paul goes on to explain, live in temples made by human hands, made by man.

God doesn't need a temple. He was not some homeless cosmic drifter before the

Jews built him a temple. And he's like, thanks, I needed a place to lay my head. That's not the way that it rolled. He wasn't floating around the cold universe just hoping for a place to sleep this night and a place to shelter from the elements.

That's not the picture that we should have of our God. God established the temple in the Old Testament and the entire sacrificial system primarily as a symbol of a greater temple and a greater sacrifice that was coming.

It was not his house per se, but it was the place where he would come and meet with his people on his terms.

It was a place where he could experience his where we could, where the people of God could experience his power and his authority and be reminded of his holiness.

Anybody ever been confused in the Old Testament when you see all of the rituals and routines of washings and cleansings and sacrifices and blood being sprinkled on anybody ever get lost in some of that stuff?

All of that has one main point. God is so amazingly holy and different than us that for a sinful person to approach him, it requires a blood sacrifice.

It requires something intense to happen in order for us, our sins to be covered and to be washed and to be taken away that even to enter in his presence is a pretty big deal.

So all of that Old Testament thing is is is pointing towards that the temple, the practices there is pointing towards the need for a sacrifice.

And we know that we have received the ultimate of sacrifices. Jesus Christ come in the flesh, lived a sinless life and died and rose again on our behalf.

But even at the dedication of the first temple, so Solomon was the king who he was king when the first temple was dedicated and the first temple was open for business, so to speak.

And King Solomon said this at the actual dedication of that temple there in Jerusalem on the

Temple Mount, where the stones that Solomon had laid still rest today.

Anybody's mind blown by that? There are still stones there that were laid by Solomon's team.

And he said this in First Kings 8, 27. Nobody needs to turn there, but just listen in. And I quote

First Kings 8, 27. But will God indeed dwell on the earth, says

Solomon? Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you.

How much less this house that I have built, said Solomon.

At the dedication, he is kind of pooh poohing the idea that this this house that we built and all of its splendor and all its majesty and all its glory, gold gilded inside this house does not contain your glory.

This house cannot truly contain the Almighty God.

The Old Covenant did an excellent job establishing for humanity a big word, big theological word, the transcendence of God.

Now, transcendence just means that God is so much higher, so much different, so much more lofty than us, so much more holy than us.

How many of you have identified in your life at some point been in awe of the holiness of God? You've just been like, wow, he is different than me.

He is other than me. It's a very important part in our spiritual journey is coming to routinely see

God as holy, as other, as different than us. The doctrine of transcendence is a doctrine, by the way, that has started some rough things in our culture, though.

It started the tradition of dressing up nice for church. OK, so, you know, you know, all kinds of things that you might wear for church, but the tradition of dressing up nice for church kind of comes out of a understanding of the transcendence of God.

Transcendence has made people want to clean up their act before showing up to worship God. Clean up yourself, clean up your clothes, clean up everything before you come into his presence.

Well, some of that is the Old Testament hangover or holdover, not hangover. Sorry, I mean, no,

I was not drinking last night, everybody. So, but an Old Testament holdover from those ideas of the transcendence of God where the priest would do all of these rituals.

And so we could confuse the things that happen in the Old Testament with the things that we must do now. And that Old Testament law is no longer binding on you.

That's why we don't have a ritual fount out there that you must wash your hands and cleanse yourself before you step in.

That's why we're wearing shoes instead of we're walking on holy ground here in this cafeteria, really. That's it's not about that.

And so you know that there's something that's shifted and changed. And we're going to talk about that here in a minute. But the Old Testament specialized in identifying the transcendence, the otherness, the distance between sinful man and God.

And all of those Old Testament laws were showing us that. They were there to demonstrate for us, you know, in our sin, without the sacrifice, how are we to approach

God? And so, you know, people started by trying to clean up their act. And try to reach out to the untouchable holiness of God.

So the temple is a relic of that old covenant that is radically changed in the New Testament. When Jesus died on the cross, many of you know this, but the temple in, the temple that separated the holiest place from the central inner, inner sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

It says in Matthew at the, at the death of Jesus, the sky grew dark and there were, there was a storm and there was thunder and there was lightning.

And the temple curtain was torn in two. What does that imply? Well, the high priest, the highest, most holy person in the entire

Jewish religion was only allowed to enter beyond that curtain one time a year on the holiest day.

And he was to go through all kinds of ritual purification. Then he was to go into that holy of holies, just pass the curtain and make a sacrifice one time a year.

He was permitted in the holiest place, which was perceived to be the very presence of the almighty.

Following God's instructions, what does it mean that that curtain was torn in two?

The access to God was granted to all kinds of people as a result of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The holy of holies was only accessible to the high priest, but now it is accessible to us, all of us, to the sacrifice of Jesus.

And in our text, the apostle Paul identifies that God doesn't need a temple built by human hands.

Further, God is not served by human hands as though he needed something from us. God doesn't need us to build him a place to stay when he stops by Matawan.

So we went out on Front Avenue and bought some property and he was there. We went and built him a place so if he's ever in the area he can have a place to go.

Further, he doesn't even need us to serve him, which at one point might sound kind of like discouraging, but it's actually encouraging.

And hopefully you'll see that by the time we come to the application at the end. But God is self -sufficient. He is completely satisfied in himself.

He's fine being alone. He's absolutely fine for eternity past. Don't worry and stress about what was he doing for all of those years.

He's totally fine. You don't need to worry about him. Any notion that he created us because he was lonely or because he needed someone to love or because he needed anything is a faulty understanding of our

God. It's patently false. It's not true. He didn't he didn't design us because he needed us.

God doesn't need you. God doesn't need me. He does not need us. So the only other alternative is pretty amazing.

It's a pretty glorious truth. He doesn't need you, but it's surprising. It's radical. And it's simply this.

God didn't make you because he needed you. God made you because he wants you.

Because he needs you. Because he wants you, that changes everything.

And this is evidenced by the rest of Paul's introduction to these pagan Greeks, introducing them. God doesn't need a temple.

God doesn't need you and your service. But instead. God gives he doesn't need your gift, he wants to give to you, he gives to all people life, he gives us our very breath, he gives to everyone, everything that we have at our disposal.

It all comes from the hand of the almighty God. This, by the way, is not God telling you,

I don't need you. You need me. This is God telling you, I don't need you.

I love you. I don't need you. I love you.

God is not the least bit needy, but he is impressively generous. All that we have, all that we possess, even our very breath and our very life comes from his hands.

He is the great giver of all good gifts. All that is good that you have ever received has come from the hand of almighty

God, who created you and loves you. And further, Paul goes on in describing who this

God is, the God who loves, the God who gives. He is further the God who is sovereign. He is sovereign over nations, histories and boundaries.

The Ming dynasty in China, the Roman occupation of Palestine, the age of exploration that resulted in the discovery of the state of Michigan by Europeans, the expansion of the

British Empire. All of these things were orchestrated by the sovereign God who has created all people, the text tells us, from one man, all from one dude named

Adam that was fashioned from the dust of the earth. And why did

God do all of this? Well, there's all kinds of reasons that people might give and might think up. But verse 27, it's declared.

God wants to be found. He has given us life, breath and everything.

He has created nations and peoples and boundaries and epics and eras so that humankind should seek

God and feel our way in the darkness to Him. That's what He wanted. If God was more agreeable to staying in our temples, then we wouldn't need to seek

Him and feel our way toward Him. If He'd just stay where we put Him, if He'd just stay in our temples, if He'd stay in our buildings, then we'd know right where He was to go meet with Him every week, right?

We'd just stop by and hang out maybe once a week with Him. If He'd stay where we wanted

Him to be. Or more likely, we'd just stop and see Him when we needed something. God refuses to stay in our temples.

He is not easily tamed. He shows up.

I don't know if He does in your week. I know He does in mine. He shows up convicting us of sin when we speak harshly to our spouse.

He shows up moving us deeply with the beauty of a sunset or the sun sparkling off the falling snow.

Anybody looking forward to the first snow? Am I the only one? A few of us? A few of us like that. A couple people are like, no,

I don't know about all that. He shows up in delight over the smile and gurgle of a little baby.

He shows up in the strength that is required to face bad news with hope. He shows up in the daily provisions that we so regularly take for granted.

Food, shelter, freedom, transportation, jobs, family, friends. It all comes from His hand. And He says, do you see me in it?

Do you see me here? Not that the gift is God. That's where we fall into problems, right?

It's to stop at the gift itself and just be like, oh, it's awesome, the internet, or oh, it's awesome, my sweet ride, or whatever it might be, but do you let that pass beyond the thing to the giver of good gifts, to gratitude to the one who gives it?

He loves you. And He wants to meet with you through your week as you offer gratitude to Him for the things that He has given to each and every one of us.

God is willing to meet with you. God does all of this so that we would seek

Him. He's given us life, breath, and everything. He's created nations and people so that we should seek

God and feel our way in the darkness toward Him. And He's given us all of these good things to see

Him. You see, we could build a building with some vague and unbiblical notion that we've built a building for God.

We didn't build a building out on Front Avenue for God. The reality is He's built a building for us.

He's built a building for us. He doesn't need protection. He doesn't need a heating system. He doesn't need four walls to protect

Him. He doesn't need a roof over Him to meet with us. But He knows we do.

He knows we need protection from the elements. He knows that we'd be on the verge of hypothermia if we just sat here in what we're wearing right now in this place without walls and heat.

He knows what we need, and so He's given us something. He doesn't need a building to meet with us.

As Paul concludes verse 27, we're searching for Him, we're looking for Him.

And He's actually not far from each one of us. God is not here with us simply because we came to this church gathering.

God doesn't need a building. He doesn't need anything from us. But instead, He is pleased to give us many blessings with a purpose that we might seek after Him and find

Him in this world that He has created. We know His generosity and good blessings around us, the things that He gives to us.

We know His power by what He has created. We know His order by the organization of life and the various scientific systems that we've identified through observation.

So let me land this message on four extended applications from this short text. The first is don't box

God up. Don't put Him in a box. Don't put God in a temple. If you've been guilty of thinking of your

Sunday morning as a trip to meet with God at His place, start this week by shifting that thinking.

Believe and take in His Word. Take it in this morning. He is telling you about Himself and He says outright that He does not live in temples made by mankind.

Let that sink in as we move to this new building. Let that be on your mind. He does not dwell out there.

We've not made a building for God. He's made a building for us. He is the generous one and our part is to say thank you to Him for the good gifts that He gives.

So first, don't box Him up. Second, be encouraged by the freedom of not being needed. Let that set you free.

Let that be something that unchains you. God doesn't need your service, but He does want you.

He wants you and He wants you to live a life of gratitude toward Him. He's not the almighty taker.

He's the almighty giver. He needs nothing from us. He gives you and I everything that we have.

What could we give to Him that He doesn't already possess? Have you thought about that? What could you give to God that He doesn't already have?

Talk about a tough guy to buy for Christmas. My luck, I'm going to get

God on the staff Christmas gift draw. How do you buy for that guy? But honestly,

I share this application to us to free us, hopefully. Some of you are probably on the treadmill of performance right now.

You've been on that this week. You've been working and you still don't feel like you've done enough and that's probably partly because you haven't.

At the end of the day, you can't. You can't do enough to earn God's favor, but He's standing there with good gifts to give to you and ultimately

He gives you the greatest gift of all. He offers it free of charge and says, come to me empty -handed and just submit to the way that I've provided and it's yours through Jesus Christ, through His sacrifice.

So are you here and you're spending your life trying to give God something that's already His? Is that what you're doing?

How about offering Him just some gratitude? How about just saying thanks?

How about pursuing Him with delight in your life? How about seeking after Him, looking for Him in your day, looking for Him in your week?

Feel your way toward Him in a world where He is the hider and you are the seeker.

He's not far from you and He wants to be found by you in the simple things that you see throughout your day.

And He's there if you would just open your eyes to see. Do you see

His hand everywhere that you turn in your day? Do you catch whispers of His voice in the wind through the trees?

Do you see His eyes twinkle in the stars late at night? Do you see His reflection in the snorting out -of -control laughter of those around you who bear

His image? Are you looking for Him out there in your week? Or have you tamed

Him into a master who stays home and demands that you bring Him stuff every week?

Is that all God is to you? He's so much more than that. He doesn't want to just meet you here.

He's not waiting for us to meet Him out at Front Avenue. It's a place where we get to be reminded that others are in this journey together.

He does indeed meet us there, don't get me wrong, but no more than He meets us in other places as well.

And that's where I want you to consider in your mind this is the third application. The first being don't box Him up. The second being be encouraged by the freedom of not being needed.

The third is consider the transition. I'll have to bear this out for a minute but you can write it down. The transition from transcendence to imminence.

The distance of God and transfer that in your mind to the closeness of God, His imminence.

He is right here. He is close to each and every one of us. A strong theological twist happened in the plot of history between the

Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament highlighted the transcendence of God, His otherness,

His distinctness, His holiness. And the New Testament brought to us the incarnation of God in His imminence.

God is now close to us through Jesus Christ. In this we find that God is everywhere.

He certainly was everywhere in the Old Testament but we experienced Him differently then. God is now everywhere playing hide and seek.

And our philosophy of worship here at Recast is driven by this interplay of transcendence and imminence.

When Dave and I first sat down and Recast had never even had a meeting we talked through this very distinction between transcendence and imminence.

That's why it's been fleshed out here for eight years and why we do some of the things that we do. The philosophy of worship here is impacted dramatically by this difference.

We believe that God is indeed higher, more powerful, more holy and even unapproachable by sinful man.

But in Christ He is drawn near to us. He is drawn near to us.

In the Old Testament the people of Israel dared not even touch Mount Sinai as God was giving the law to Moses lest they be struck down by His holiness.

They didn't even approach the mountain where God met with Moses. And now in the New Testament Jesus says to His followers in conclusion, reach out and touch the wounds in my hands, the wound in my side.

He is close, He is tactile, touchable, approachable, near. Our God is imminent and He is present and He is with us.

And that is how He is ready to relate to you this week. Not in flesh, not touchable in that sense but close.

So close. You don't need to come to a building to meet with God. You don't need to dress in your

Sunday best to enter into His presence. You don't need to get into the worship flow of feeling and emotion with flawless music and just tight transitions, right

Dave? Just tight transitions that are going to keep us in the flow. Oh no, that comment from Dave really messed up my flow in worship.

No, that's just real life. That's real life. That's what we're literally driving for here.

We don't practice those transitions. Those just kind of happen. But it's all part of what we do here and it's intentional.

Leaving the lights on. Some churches will try to get you in the flow and the mood of just taking this thing in and dim the lights so you don't have that awkwardness about being in it.

We leave the lights up because it's not about the stage and what's going on up here. It's about us being together with our

God. So those are the kind of things that are being impacted by the reality of the belief that God is imminent with us.

It's one of the reasons I feel comfortable dressing in whatever I want to wear on Sunday morning because guess what? God was with me all night long in my

PJs. He's with us wherever we are. He's with me when

I'm all sweaty and stanky in my workout gear. He's there.

So we just kind of intentionally make the threshold of the church low. It's not a lot of steps to get up in here to worship

God. You get it? That's what we're driving for. It's not that we're just like, oh, well we think it would be really attractive to this next generation if we didn't dress up for church.

A lot of people might perceive that and that might be what you think is the reason and that's not the reason at all. There's actually a theological reason why we try to keep it just real and authentic here.

It's all part of an understanding of who God is and how He rolls. I think

God might actually even sometimes think it's a bit cute that we would think about cleaning up our act before we would come to His presence because He's like, oh yeah,

I wasn't watching you before. I wasn't seeing what you were wearing before but now, surprise, you're like wearing a suit.

That's awesome, dude. Hey, that's cool. I didn't talk with Dave about this before but I'm going to say it anyways.

I think it's a bit cute that we practice worship before we worship Him. We have a worship practice.

Consider what that sounds like to Him. I just kind of wonder what that sounds like to God. Oh, this is the practice. I'll wait for the real thing.

I just show up on Sunday morning and take that in but I'm not there when you're practicing.

Are we worshiping while we practice Him? Do we even practice? Conundrums, right,

Dave? Maybe a little bit, not so much. So here at Recast, we don't take ourselves too seriously because we're just not that big of a deal.

We aren't. God is with us when we wake up. He was with us just last night while you looked super gross sleeping with your mouth open and stanky breath and all.

He was there. He's with me when I run and I sweat like Frosty the Snowman in the greenhouse at the end scene.

You know what I'm talking about. And He meets me there. He meets me there when I run. He meets me on a hiking trail in the

Smokies every year. He meets me while I'm driving to a meeting and praying. He meets me in the coffee shop as I'm studying.

He meets me during a family movie night. He's never apart from His children. He's never far from you.

He's right there. He is. So at Recast we seek to shed the pretense that this is the only place where He will meet with us.

And we seek to shed the notion that God is only transcendent, far off and lofty.

You see, I think we experience His glory, His grandeur, His holiness, His otherness only as He draws near us and imminence.

If He doesn't draw near to us we don't really have a clue what He's like. But He draws near and as we seek for Him that we actually find

His goodness and His grace and the blessings that He provides us each and every day. So lastly, where will you find

Him? Some of us may be hearing this for the first time that God is close and just wanting to be found by you.

He has given you good things as hints at finding Him. He has blessed you to highlight the way to gratitude, to really see

Him in His goodness. The result of sin is that humanity fell into a deep fear of the

Almighty. He is holy and we are not. So the very first thing that Adam and Eve did was to hide their nakedness and then when

God came in the garden to talk with them. Just think about that. God would come down and talk with them from time to time.

He would come visit, hang out with them. They hid.

They ran from Him. And our default setting ever since that day has been to hide from the

God who loves us. But if we would just open our eyes to the good around us, we should be shaken away to the idea that somebody out there has goodwill toward us.

Someone out there seems to like us. Someone out there gave us noses to smell and then made fresh bread smell great.

Do you know what I'm talking about? The nose works in conjunction with the fresh bread.

Are you getting what I'm saying? There's a design and there's a way that there could be good smells with no nose to smell it.

Or there could be noses with nothing good to smell. Aren't you glad that He made those things together?

I don't even like to smell a nice baking apple pie with coffee in the morning.

I actually love to smell coffee all the time. Some of you know what

I'm talking about. Some of you are like, gross, what? No, I love coffee. He loves us.

So who do we thank for the good that we have in our lives? I would suggest that you seek out God so that you can thank

Him. Feel your way from one blessing to another and find that seeking and feeling your way to the very throne of the

Almighty. Or you'll find a chain of things to thank Him for that lead you ultimately into His presence to say, oh, there's where the rabbit, that's where the trail of crumbs leads to the

God who gives. And the greatest of all gifts He has given to us is the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ.

In His death He drew so close to us in our sin and brokenness that He who knew no sin became sin for us so close that He took our sin on Himself.

And He took the righteous and just wrath of the Father on Himself so that all who call

Jesus Christ Lord and ask for His salvation will be set free. So as we come to the tables of communion this morning, take a moment to consider how much

He has given to you. He is the giver of all good things. He has given you life,

He has given you everything. And for those who are in Christ He has given eternity. So rejoice, recast, your

God has come near to you and He will not be contained in a building. He will meet you this week along the way in the grace.

He will provide for you, He will meet you as you live in this world. Seek God, feel your way toward Him.

He is not far from each one of us. So let's pray for the very last time in this building that God has gifted us with for 194 weeks.

Let's pray. Father, I rejoice that You are a God who meets with us. You have been faithful to meet us in this old, old cafeteria.

You were faithful to meet us in the storefront. But You are even more faithful to meet with us day by day and moment by moment.

We are the church gathered but here in just a few minutes we are going to be the church scattered and we're going to go out to our lives and our workplaces to our neighborhoods and by Monday morning we're going to be spread all around this place, all around this county and even a few other counties around and over the next week we're going to travel even further than that.

I pray that we would travel and as we travel we would keep our eyes open. We would be seekers who recognize that You are hiding around every corner.

You're in every laugh and every tear and every aspect of our lives,

Father, You reveal Yourself in faithfulness. And Father, I do thank You for this building and how it's become an idol for our church.

But Father, it would be a mighty and powerful tool that You would use to allow us to reach out to more in our community, to bless our community and to be grateful and thankful.

Father, I pray that You would move each one of us to thankfulness and gratitude even this week as we have a national day to give

You thanks. I pray that each one of us would be moved to deep gratitude for even the simple things in our lives.