Unique Divinity

Series Intro

Everyone is a theologian whether you know it or not.

Our theology is what we believe about the divine (God) and everyone who has ever lived has a belief about divinity.

Whether they believe in 1 God or many gods, or they believe themselves to be a god, or that there isn’t a god at all.

Those are all theologies.

Theology shapes how we think, how we act, how we parent, how we work, what we value, and pretty much every aspect of our lives.

Theology consist of what we believe about authority, humanity, why we are here, where we are going, and how we should live our lives here and now.

The importance of knowing what we believe is essential for us as we seek to live as faithful followers of Christ in this world.

Our goal in this series is to examine the believes that uniquely shape us as Christians.

The doctrines that set us apart from the world and unite us together as sons and daughters of God.

Andy started us off last week, teaching us about the Unique Authority that guides us as believers, God’s Holy Word.

This week we are going to look at the Unique Divinity that rules and reigns over our lives.

In the next 30 minutes we are going to tackle the doctrine of God, a topic we will literally only be dipping our toe into today.

My Wife

Imagine if someone asked me about my wife.

I love my wife, we have been married for nearly 15 years,

but what if I responded with “My wife is incredible, the most amazing girl I have ever knows. She grew up in California, loves to go skiing and ice fishing. I love her long brunette hair and sarcastic humor.”

My redheaded, Florida native who hates skiing, would never touch a fish, and is not a sarcastic person in the slightest would likely not feel very honored by my words.

I can gush all day about my wife, but unless my words reflect who she really is, she would be justifiably insulted.

I may say I love her, but if I don't really know her how is my love and adoration of her valid?

The same goes for our relationship with God.

Do we know Him in a way that we can speak about Him and tell others about Him in an honoring and worshipful way?

Do we know Him in a way that influences our lives?

Do we know Him in a way that would lead us to a growing and abiding love for Him?

To know God is to LOVE God. And to know Him is to know ONE that is like NO OTHER.

The uniqueness of God leads us to LOVE Him.As Isaiah says in Isaiah 40 18

Isaiah 40:18 CSB

18 With whom will you compare God? What likeness will you set up for comparison with him?

There is nothing in our world that we can compare God to.

It is impossible for us to fully comprehend or fully understand who God is fully.

And yet He has revealed Himself to us in the Word of God in a way that we can know Him in a way that powerfully changes us.

Jewish kids were taught a prayer that would have been prayed in their homes every day. (and is still prayed in Jewish families even today).

It is called the Shema and comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-5

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 CSB

4 “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

In this verse, the unique ONENESS of God was highlighted.

God is not ONE god among many. He is the ONE AND ONLY God.

Unique, set apart, and supreme above ALL other ideas and images of gods thought up by man.

And God is ONE spiritual, eternal being that has no beginning and has no end.

As stated in the Baptist Faith and Message:

He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures.

Not only does Deut 6:4-5 lead us to understand the unique nature of God, it also guides how we ought to relate to Him.

Deuteronomy 6:5 CSB

5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

You might recognize those words.

Matthew 22:37 (CSB)

37 He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Jesus points to this very verse when asked what the MOST important command was to make God happy.

But notice that this “commandment” isn’t a set of rules and obligations, but a response that issues from a deep and growing affection/love for God.

What Jesus was saying and what God said long before was that our aim in life ought to be to LOVE God not to please Him.

Jesus doesn’t list off a moral code to the Pharisee, He calls Him to LOVE God, something the Pharisee had been quoting since he had started speaking words as a child.

But love is not just an emotion we feel (though that is a piece of it).

Love is action, driven by volition.

We do, say, and think lovingly because we choose to love someone or something.

Even when I don’t feel affection toward Pam, I can choose to love her with my words and with my actions. And most likely, my emotions will follow suit.

The Shema is a call/command to LOVE God, and it directs us to 3 ways we are to obey this call/command.

1) Love Him INTELLECTUALLY Love Him with all our HEARTS.

The Hebrew word for HEART here is more concerned with our minds or the seat of our intellect.

To love God is to KNOW God.

To know ABOUT Him in order that we may begin to understand Him.

What we heard from Andy last week is vitally important to understanding the character and nature of our God. HE WANTS TO BE KNOW!!

God doesn’t leave it to us to try to figure Him out, rather He has REVEALED Himself to us in His Word and through His Son.

To KNOW God then we must know the way God has revealed Himself.

We are going to stick our toes into a theological idea that we could literally spend hours talking about and still walk away confused.

But the doctrine of the Trinity is so important to the Christian faith that it is said to be the foundation of the Christian faith, upon which our faith will rise or fall.

The Baptist Faith and Message says:

The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.

Though we could do a survey of the whole bible and point out all the places we see God’s nature being triune, I want to focus on 1 passage in Ephesian 1.

Chapter 1 is an intro and Paul begins his letter with a POWERFUL and WORSHIPFUL prayer meant to draw our attention to the glory of God revealed to us and acting in and around us as 3 distinct persons.

Ephesians 1:3–14 CSB

3 Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in love before him. 5 He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9 He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ 10 as a plan for the right time—to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in him. 11 In him we have also received an inheritance, because we were predestined according to the plan of the one who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of his will, 12 so that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to his glory. 13 In him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed. 14 The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of the possession, to the praise of his glory.

In the original Greek, this entire passage is one VERY long, run-on sentence.

This is said to be a doxology, basically a song of worship.

Though it would be super difficult to sing, Paul is seeking to direct our emotions to praise God in the unique ways He works in His triune nature.

The passage breaks down into three sections that cover the three persons of God.

Verses 3-6 speak of God as Father

He is the author of creation, the great planner and conductor of everything.

He chooses and predestines things according to His will and directs and orchestrates all as He sees fit.

God the Father is sovereign, meaning nothings is outside of His control.

No plan of God’s can be thwarted; when He acts, no one can reverse it; no one can hold back His hand or bring Him to account for His actions. God does as He pleases, only as He pleases, and works out every event to bring about the accomplishment of His will. Such a bare unqualified statement of the sovereignty of God would terrify us if that were all we knew about God. But God is not only sovereign, He is perfect in love and infinite in wisdom. — Jerry Bridges, “Trusting God”

What we learn about God here, and in so many other places through the Bible, is that His knowledge, wisdom, power, and authority is limitless and matchless.

And in His wisdom, He knows us, loves us, chooses us, and calls us.

For God to lack sovereignty (to not be fully in control) means that He cannot be trusted and the struggles we face in life have no purpose and He has no answers.

To know God as the Sovereign Father guides us to trust Him and to rest in His perfect will.

Verses 7-12 speak of God as Son (Jesus Christ)

Redeemer, restorer, revealer, and creator.

At the direction of God the Father, God the Son was the one who modeled and shaped all of creation.

And, in the plan of God the Father and in obedience to Him, God the Son took on flesh, lived a perfect life, and died on a cross in order to accomplish God the Father’s great plan of salvation for those who would come to Him in faith.

Jesus is God in the flesh, God literally working all things out according to His perfect will.

It was God’s will to save sinners and Jesus is the outworking of that will.

For us to know God as Son is to know Him as savior, Lord, redeemer, and friend.

Verses 13-14 speak of God as Spirit

The eternal presence of God with His people.

In Genesis 1 we are told the Spirit of God hovered over the waters of creation, displaying the presence of God in His handiwork.

Thousands of years later, God was present with His people in the tabernacle and the temples.

The Spirit of God was the one present in those places.

Now we are told that God’s presence is in those of us who have come to know and follow Jesus through faith.

God presence IN US.

The Spirit of God is the powerful presence of God in us, guiding us, directing us, empowering us, and shaping us into the people God the Father has destined us to be and God the Son has made it possible for us to become.

To know God as Spirit is to know God as personal, powerful, and present.

Each way God has revealed Himself is essential for us to know Him more fully and to love Him more completely.

“So next time you look up at the sun, moon and stars and wonder, remember: they are there because God loves, because the Father’s love for the Son burst out that it might be enjoyed by many. And they remain there only because God does not stop loving. He is an attentive Father who numbers every hair on our heads, for whom the fall of every sparrow matters; and out of love he upholds all things through his Son, and breathes out natural life on all through his Spirit.” ― Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity

2) Love Him SPIRITUALLY Love Him with all our SOULS.

The Hebrew word for SOUL here is concerned with the essential nature of us as human beings.

Our will and our emotions, the thing that makes us who we are as unique individuals.

It is one thing to know God and to love the idea of Him as an eternal being.

But it is another to know Him as a personal, relational, and affectionate God.

God is not a distant being that is hands off and unrelatable.

He is intentionally personal and affectionately involved.

The fifth century philosopher, Augustine wrote, ‘Our hearts are unquieted until they find their rest in Thee’.

We have a longing in our hearts for something much bigger than ourselves, and that something is God.

To love God spiritually means to love Him with the very core of who we are.

Fueled by our knowledge of Him, we are to love Him with the depths of our emotions, the hopes and dreams of our hearts, and the motivations of our actions.

He is to be the one we look to for guidance, we run to for advice, and we cling to for comfort.

Because God is the Sovereign Father we can trust that everything that happens to us and in the world around us is in some way for good.

He doesn’t mess up, things are not out of His control, and we are firmly in His will.

Because God is the Redeeming Son we can find peace and rest from our constant struggle to justify our existence and to find value and worth in this world.

His finished work on the cross removes the overwhelming burden of our sin and frees us to live in a righteousness that is not earned through work, but is given freely by grace through faith.

Because God is the Powerfully present Spirit, we can find comfort and power to live according to His ways, not in our own power, but through the power of God that lives in us.

To love God SPIRITUALLY means to love Him to the deepest part of ourselves.

3) Love Him PHYSICALLY Love Him with all our STRENGTH.

Strength is found in our bodies, so to love God with all our strength means to serve Him with our whole selves.

Romans 12:1–2 CSB

1 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

Worship is the only appropriate response to knowing God and experiencing His glorious presence.

But that isn’t just singing and going to church.

It is living a life of commitment and devotion.

To love God with all our strength is to love God with our actions, our efforts, and our attitudes.

“Christianity is not primarily about lifestyle change; it is about knowing God. To know and grow to enjoy him is what we are saved for... Knowing the love of God is the very thing that makes us loving. Sensing the desirability of God alters our preferences and inclinations, the things that drive our behavior: We begin to want God more than anything else.” ― Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity

To love God with all our strength means we are continually fighting the temptation to temporarily satisfy our flesh at the expense of turning our backs on God.

Galatians 5:24 CSB

24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

This is not self-denial, but the act of choosing to love GOD with our bodies not ourselves.

This is choosing to worship God with our whole selves not something that makes us feel good for a moment.

“What is needed today is passion, but more defined, a passion for God, a deep desire to know God as He desires to be known. What I see lacking today is this desire to know God on a personal basis. Other things crowd this relationship out until it is barely recognized in the church today. In the evangelical church, we seem to have a great deal of passion for everything but God. We look around for activities that consume the resources of our lives. Instead of looking around at the world, we need to look up to the source of our redemption. We are so caught up with all the modern gadgets and methods that we have lost our passion for God.” ― A.W. Tozer, Delighting in God

Tozer wrote those words more than 60 years ago, and yet they remain true today and are likely the problem is far more advanced.

The pursuit of knowing God more fully is not an intellectual pursuit.

To know God is to love God

To love God is to obey God

And to obey God is to Worship God as those dearly loved by Him.