I'm teaching a class on theology at our small church in Hamlin. We have just come to the section where we will be looking at the attributes of God. What is He like? What does the Bible tell us about Him. You will find the God of the Bible is greater than most would think.
The importance of the right thought about God cannot be overstated. No nation, nor individual can ever rise above their idea of God. And there is scarcely any error in Biblical doctrine or failure in Christian practice that is not traceable to unworthy thoughts about God. All of our proper actions result from right thoughts about God and almost all of our wrong actions are traceable to imperfect thoughts about Him.
In the sixth chapter of the Book of Isaiah, you will remember he had a vision of the Lord high and lifted up. And he also saw the seraphim and in the 3rd verse of that sixth chapter we read,
"And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory."
And then in the 5th verse Isaiah responds to the revelation of the nature of God, the character of God,
"Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."
Isaiah had been made aware of God in all of His holiness and therefore we see a right action by Isaiah. Right thoughts about God lead to right actions and wrong thoughts about God almost always lead to wrong actions.
When Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated as President he wanted to make an impression upon the nation in that time of trauma just after the death of President John F. Kennedy. Johnson wanted to give the impression that he was a President who would be a very active and vigorous.
One idea that was reported was his desire to have memorial set up in Washington to God.
Now, this was a huge idea to even think about if you recall the time this happened.
This was about the same time as the popular "God is dead" theology. In spite of and even because of this, Johnson wanted to set up a memorial to God.
Well, that idea was quickly squashed. Some with theological understanding went to him and said, "Look, Mr. President, by setting up a memorial to God you are suggesting that he is not living, that he's really a dead God." This poor view of God would not have helped restore hope in the nation.
The presence of wrong thoughts about God is really idolatry because at the end of these wrong thoughts about God is defamation on his character.
When you have wrong thoughts about God you're attributing to him something that is not true of him. That is you are in fact making up a new God. You are setting up an idol. It assumes that he is other than who the Bible says He is.
So how important then is the question, "What is God like?" Well, to put it simply, the attributes of God are the properties of the divine being. To use Biblical expressions, they could be called the excellencies of him.
Job asked, "Canst thou by searching find out God?"
He meant the answer to that question to be no. No one can find God by searching and man cannot find God in philosophy, he cannot by arguments for the divine existence prove the existence of God.
He can set up some nice probable arguments that might be helpful to ones who all ready believe for other reasons but that is the limit to which those arguments can go. John Calvin said only a fool debates a atheist.
I have played the fool more than once. Oh yes, you can win a debate, but nothing changes in an atheist. If God does not open the eyes, no one will believe, therefore most of it is a waste of time.
The study of God then is for those that have been born from above into God's family. It's really a study of our Father God, His Son and the working of the Holy Spirit. So what do we know about our God?
Exodus chapter 3 tells us something that is key. Moses asked God "Who shall I tell them has sent me?" And God said to Moses, I Am who I Am." (Or I Am that I Am.) Again, Moses was asking for his name. God said, "I Am."
And what He meant by that was that there is no way in which He could define Himself from the standpoint of His essential being.
If He were to define Himself by something that is part of our universe that would limit Him and so all He can say is that He is the absolute being, "I Am who I Am."
The absolute name of God is simply "I Am". This means He is the self-existing One. You cannot give Him anything. You cannot define Him absolutely. He fills everything and overflows. He is the ontological other. There is God and then there is everything else.
We should analyze this expression, "I Am who I Am," because that is something that gives us a clue to the nature of God. "I Am" is a term that come from the Hebrew word hayah which means "to be." The expression that is used to refer to the Lord God in the Old Testament is the capital letters L-O-R-D which is a word that is a form of the verb "to be." It is an old archaic imperfect-cal form and what it means is "he is." That is God's name, "he is."
Yahweh, Y-A-H-W-E-H is the name the probably most represents the Hebrew references and most of our Old Testament scholars speak of God as being Yahweh. That means simply, "he is." He is the one who is and, therefore, he can speak of himself as "I Am" or "I Am that I Am." So what we have then in Yahweh itself is a testimony to the undying nature of God. "He is" is a testimony to his self-existence. He's the living God. He is Yahweh. He is "I Am," the one who has life in himself. He has deathlessness.
All of us as parents have experienced times when we've had to change the plan we had made for our kids. Or sometimes we just forget our promises that causes a change. We say certain things to our children and they'll come and say to us, "Well, Daddy you said you were going to do such and such." And we'll say either, "I had forgotten that I told you that." Or we'll say, "Well, I now know some things that make it probably unwise to do that. Or, "You have been bad and as a result of that you cannot do it."
We are changeable. God is not changeable. His promises are always to be counted upon and they're to be counted upon because he is self-existent. It is also the ground of his self-sufficiency. That is, he doesn't have any necessary relationship to anyone outside of himself. He would be otherwise incomplete if he had some necessary relationship to someone outside of himself.
Most of our Christian churches, our evangelical churches in one way or another preach a frustrated Deity. They preach a Deity who cannot very well get along without our help.
Appeals in missionary conferences are often, "Come out to the mission field and help God get his work done. And if you don't come then there are people out there who are perishing and who will perish simply because you do not come."
In other words, God is unable to help them unless you help God. And so the idea that is preached is of a God who is frustrated, who is not really sovereign. He's not able to carry out his purposes. He is dependent upon us. This is not the God of the Bible.
The Bible says that, "He is the self-existent God." He is not dependent upon us at all.
I'm in no way against missions. Church planting is a homeland missions effort. I have a desire to see churches planted in our region. But we must have the right attitude when serving God and not think that God needs us. As John the Baptist says in the Gospel of John, "I am not the Christ." We are not the Christ. We are not the answer to people's problems. It is God that saves, not us. Yes, we should have a desire to share God's word, but God will have a way to save his people from their sins, if we are unwilling to serve him.
There is not going to be in heaven any one person who should not have been there. And there's not going to be anyone standing before the judgment seat of Christ lost because of man. You can be sure of that. Our God is not a frustrated Deity and he is not confused.
Isaiah 46: 10
"Remember the former things of old for I am God and there is none else. I am God and there is none like me declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure."
God is indeed greater than most give him credit for.