God in a Box

Boxes come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, depending on what you are putting in them. We like things we can pack well, pad, keep from rattling around and breaking, keep contained and controlled. It's amazing the kinds of things we put in boxes, and the kinds of boxes we put things in. Sometimes the boxes can become as important to us as what we put in them. Sounds kind of silly, but in reality . . . well, you can probably think of ways to finish that sentence.

So, what kind of boxes have you packaged God in? Does God tend to stay there? How do you respond if you hear rumors, or actually run into evidence that, God has been getting out? What do you do about an untamed and often unexpectedly innovative God? If you were living at the time of Jesus' earthly ministry, you might have a good feel for this.

Jesus had a way of getting out of the box and ruffling the feathers of everyone, sometimes in ways that were experienced as amazingly refreshing, sometimes in ways that some found very concerning. Some even suggested that Jesus was part of a Satanic deception. When God gets out of the boxes we have made for Him, it creates all kinds of issues for us.

So, do we expect God to get out of he box? Do we welcome it, or resist it? What are our favorite boxes? Traditions? Doctrinal Understandings? The way our culture has shaped our understanding of things? Our own prejudices or fears?

Jesus was clearly out of the box. He knew the box. He had helped build much of it. But He also knew what the box was for. It was simply a container, it was not the contents. It's job was not to keep God within the box, but simply to hold things. The box is not the end in itself.

This is what Pastor Jon invites us to consider this morning as we look at Jesus acting out of the box in scripture, and think about how He is acting out of the box all around us now.

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Luke 5

NIV

27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

31 Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. . . ”

36 He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.

John 3

NIV

3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.[a]”

4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”