First Baptist Church

I recently received an email forward, the content of which I first heard used as a sermon illustration more than twenty-five years ago.  A fifth grade teacher in a Christian school asked her class to look at television commercials and see if they could use them in 20 ways to communicate ideas about God.  The class’s report was as follows:

• God is like BAYER ASPRIN – He works miracles.
• God is like a FORD – He has got a better idea.
• God is like COKE – He is the real thing.
• God is like HALLMARK CARDS – He cared enough to send His very best.
• God is like TIDE – He gets the stains out others leave behind.
• God is like GENERAL ELECTRIC – He brings good things to life.
• God is like WALMART – He has everything.
• God is like ALKA –SELTZER – Try Him, you’ll like Him.
• God is like SCOTCH TAPE – You can’t see Him, but you know He is there.
• God is like DELTA – He is ready when you are.
• God is like ALLSTATE – Your in good hands with Him.
• God is like VO-5 hair spray – He holds through all kinds of weather.
• God is like DIAL soap – Aren’t you glad you have Him?  Don’t you wish every body did?
• God is like the U.S. POST OFFICE – Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet nor ice will keep Him from His appointed destination.
• God is like CHEVROLET – The heart of America
• God is like BOUNTY – He is the quicker picker upper and also, He can handle the tough jobs and won’t fall apart.
• God is like MAXWELL HOUSE – Good to the very last drop.

Some of these ad slogans were much more recognizable in the early 1980s, but nevertheless the truth comes through loud and clear!

People are distraught these days over all sorts of things, all the while either failing to recognize, or forgetting altogether about God’s sovereignty.  There is everything from the “name it and claim it” pseudo-theology that is rampant which teaches people that they are basically the captains of their own fate, both here on this earth and for eternity, all the way to the embodiments of evil we see in some of the world’s religions such as radical Islam.  It is a confusing time in which to live.  However the most profound truths are so often the most simple, just as these 5^th graders saw truths about God reflected in the popular slogans of the day.

In the 30^th chapter of Proverbs, the wise King Solomon writes of the simple yet profound and magnificent realities he has observed.  He writes, “There are three things which are too wonderful for me.  Yes four which I do not understand.  The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a virgin.” (Prov. 30:18-19)  He goes on to write, “The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their food in the summer; the rock badgers are a feeble folk, yet they make their homes in the crags; the locusts have no king, yet they all advance in ranks; the spider skillfully grasps with its hands, and it is in kings palaces.” (Prov. 30:25-28)

The wonder of God is all around us.  Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse, the long time pastor of the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia wrote extensively about how all of life was an illustration of the character and truths of God – from the smallest of things to the largest of things.  Even those problems, even the confusion, even the hurt in life all are God’s ways of trying to tell us and teach us something.  Maybe the challenge for us is to listen a little more closely whether it be in next Sunday’s sermon or in the most mundane activity of your week, God is speaking – are you listening?

In Christ,

Pastor Allen Raynor