SECOND LONDON BAPTIST CONFESSION 2.1 (PART 1)
Truth for Life • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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-Tonight we will begin several weeks of theology proper—the study about God Himself. Theology is not something merely for academics or “really smart people.” Theology is important for everyone, and it is practical. C. S. Lewis said:
Theology is practical: especially now...If you do not listen to Theology, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. It will mean that you have a lot of wrong ones--bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas.
-This is what we want to prevent—having a lot of wrong ideas about God. If you are wrong about God, you are wrong about everything else. And yet, we recognize that there is a limit to our finite human understanding. Yes, God is a big subject and He is infinitely more complex than anything else we can even begin to think of. It would be easier to grasp all of quantum physics than it would be to grasp all of God. God is eternal, we are not. God is immortal, we are not.
-And yet, God condescended Himself to give humanity a true and accurate representation of Himself through His Word so that we would be able to recognize and understand something of Him. We understand the limits of what we know of theology, but what God has revealed is true about Him and can be relied upon. Theologians recognize that there is a distinction between what they call archetypal theology and ectypal theology. Archetypal theology is the infinite knowledge of God know to God Himself—only God can truly understand Himself. By ectypal theology is revealed, true, finite theology that reflects the divine archetype. Although limited, ectypal theology does reflect reality, and we can know true things about God.
-Some of these true things are summarized by the creeds and confessions that we have been looking at, and we want to continue looking at these, using the Second London Baptist Confession as our starting point. Chapter 2 of the confession summarizes what we believe about God and the Holy Trinity. As we approach this, I want to give us a warning. We don’t ever want to approach any doctrinal subject as merely an intellectual exercise, but most especially when we approach the subject of God Himself. Any sort of study of God in this manner ought to be approached with reverence and awe and humility—knowing our intellectual and spiritual insufficiency, but rejoicing that God has revealed Himself to us. And this leads us to a profound sense of worship. So, in our study of God, may it lead to praise and honor and glory of our Creator and Sustainer. What does the Confession have to say about God:
The Lord our God is one, the only living and true God. He is self-existent and infinite in being and perfection. His essence cannot be understood by anyone but Him. He is a perfectly pure spirit. He is invisible and has no body, parts, or changeable emotions. He alone has immortality, dwelling in light that no one can approach. He is unchangeable, immense,, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, in every way infinite, absolutely holy, perfectly wise, wholly free, completely absolute. He works all things according to the counsel of His own unchangeable and completely righteous will for His own glory. He is most loving, gracious, merciful, and patient. He overflows with goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. He rewards those who seek Him diligently. At the same time, He is perfectly just and terrifying in His judgments. He hates all sin and will certainly not clear the guilty.
-This paragraph begins with the most fundamental belief that Christians have—THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE, THE ONLY LIVING AND TRUE GOD. There is only One God who is God. From a very early age, the Jews were taught the Shema which gave this most basic truth:
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!
-Although we recognize that there are a plurality of spiritual beings, some of whom rebelled against the One God and took to themselves worship that is due Him, trying to pass themselves off as a god of some sort, they are merely created beings. There is only One God, not many; there is not a pantheon of gods, there is only One God. We will speak later about the three persons within that Godhead, but we fundamentally believe there is only One, True, Living God. Paul made this point as well:
4 With regard then to eating food sacrificed to idols, we know that “an idol in this world is nothing,” and that “there is no God but one.”
5 If after all there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords),
6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we live, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we live.
-There are a lot of things and beings that may try to pass themselves off as God, but they are not. God is on His own level, and everybody else doesn’t even come near to Him. As the old commercial said, accept no substitutes. Author Rob Ventura wrote why this truth is practically valuable. He wrote:
It means that the one God is to be worshipped only and that He is to be loved supremely. Furthermore, it means that in constructing the doctrine of the Trinity this oneness of God must not be compromised. The attributes must not be sub-divided between the different persons. Each of the attributes of God as well as the whole divine essence must be affirmed of each of the divine persons. The singularity of God [belief God is one] practically controls our daily living, religious worshipping, and our doctrinal thinking.
-The confession continues by saying that HE IS SELF-EXISTENT AND INFINITE IN BEING AND PERFECTION. This is a more modern translation of the confession, but the original wording said it this way: [HIS] SUBSISTENCE IS IN AND OF HIMSELF, INFINITE IN BEING AND PERFECTION. One theologian defined subsistence as:
The property by which an entity is capable of existing per se, in itself, or in its own right. It focuses on the aspect of the independence of of the existence of what there is.
-What all of this means is that God exists in and of Himself. No one caused Him to exist. Even He Himself did not cause Himself to exist. It is just the brute fact that God exists and does so without any help from outside forces. Consider how God revealed Himself to Moses through a name:
14 God said to Moses, “I AM that I AM.” And he said, “You must say this to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
-God just is. There was never a time when God did not exist, and nothing outside of Himself had any say or contribution in His existence. God just exists because He is God. He is self-existent and independent from anything else. This truth is asserted in other passages as well:
12 Listen to me, O Jacob, Israel, whom I summoned. I am the one; I am present at the very beginning and at the very end.
26 For just as the Father has life in himself, thus he has granted the Son to have life in himself,
25 nor is he served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives life and breath and everything to everyone.
-God just has always existed, and always will exist, because He is life itself. That means that God doesn’t need anything from anybody else. There is nothing that anybody can add to or take away from God. There is nothing anything outside of God that can affect His being or existence in any way. As the Acts verse stated, everything else has its existence because of God, but God’s existence is not dependent on anything else. We need everything from Him, but He needs nothing from us. But knowing this about God ought to give us great comfort knowing that this self-existent, self-sufficient God has eternal resources from which to help His people. If God is sufficient in Himself, He is more than sufficient to supply our needs.
-The confession goes on to say that HIS ESSENCE CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD BY ANYONE BUT HIM. There is no way that small, finite humanity is going to be able to comprehend the fullness of God’s being and existence. This is a truth that the biblical writers, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had to confess about themselves. For example:
6 Your knowledge is beyond my comprehension; it is so far beyond me, I am unable to fathom it.
3 The Lord is great and certainly worthy of praise. No one can fathom his greatness.
-This is why we have to approach this subject with such humility, and approach it so carefully. We are limited. It would be like us humans trying to explain quantum physics to a slug. It is so beyond them. Well, God is so beyond us. And yet He loved us enough to communicate truths to us about Himself. As one author stated it:
Though we have a personal, true, accurate, and comforting knowledge of God as Christians, we do not and cannot have an exhaustive knowledge of Him that removes an awesome sense of vast and eternal mystery.
-To help us understand truth about Him, God condescended to using human language to give us these eternal truths. He used what we normally call anthropomorphism—the use of picturesque human language that normally describes a human truth which is used to convey a greater eternal truth about God. When these words and pictures are used, however, we have to take away any sort of earthly limitation and remember that we may be made in God’s image, but God is not made in our image.
-So, for example, Isaiah 51:9 says:
9 Wake up! Wake up! Clothe yourself with strength, O arm of the Lord! Wake up as in former times, as in antiquity. Did you not smash the Proud One? Did you not wound the sea monster?
-It talks about the arm of the Lord. Does that mean that God has two arms like we do? No. In fact, God has no arms because, as this paragraph emphasizes later, God is Spirit. The term arm of the Lord is talking about God’s military might to fight His earthly enemies. It is a call to God to deliver His people, which God is more than capable of doing.
-Or consider Proverbs 15:3
3 The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on those who are evil and those who are good.
-The verse talks about the eyes of the Lord. Does that mean that God has two eyes? What color are His eyes? Blue? Brown? Green? It’s not talking about real, literal eyeballs. It’s telling us that the Lord has sight and sees everything that goes on in the world. There is nothing that happens that God cannot see.
-But I don’t want this truth of divine incomprehensibility to cause despair in us ever comprehending God. Again, as I have emphasized, God does want us to know Him and so He revealed Himself to us. Will we ever know Him fully? No! But that should never keep us from knowing Him more and more. Because the more we know Him, the more we will learn to love Him and trust Him and worship Him and adore Him. Honestly, the more we learn of God, the more we want to learn. The more we relate with God, the more of Him we want to know.
-You may not think you know a lot about God, but don’t think you are alone in that boat. We are all in that same boat. But the thing is, you can know Him more. A year from now you can know more of Him than you do today. You won’t know it all, but you will know more. My prayer is that you want to know Him more. I can’t emphasize enough diving into the Bible and every day just find one thing about God that you didn’t know before or maybe you forgot. Ask Him to reveal Himself more to you in His Word. And may it lead to greater love and greater obedience.