God: Who is He? #1
Notes
Transcript
We continue to day in our topical series on Worship. As we study this topic, I pray that we will grow in our knowledge of God and our love for Him. I pray that we will experience His presence and His grace in our lives. I pray that we will worship Him with all that we are and all that we have. And that we will truly understand what Jesus meant when He said that we are worship God in spirit and truth. (John 4:20-25)
Today's sermon title is God: Who is He? It is important to know who God is. Have you ever wondered who God is? What is He like? How can we know Him? How can we worship Him?
These are some of the most important questions that we can ask in life. The good news is that God has not left us in the dark. He has revealed Himself to us in His creation, His word, and His Son. He has shown us His character, His attributes, and His works. He has invited us to enter into a personal relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ. He has called us to worship Him in spirit and in truth.
ACCEPTABLE WORSHIP DEMANDS that the true God be known. Worship cannot occur where He is not believed in, adored, and obeyed. The object of our worship must be right if our worship is to be acceptable. We must consider the God we worship.
When Paul met the philosophers and religious thinkers on Mars Hill in Acts 17, he faced a situation of unacceptable worship. The Greeks had a statue for “the unknown god.” Paul took that statue as an opportunity to teach them about the true God. He basically said, “You are worshiping without knowledge. Let me introduce you to this unknown God. He can be known. It is useless to speculate about His identity or how to worship Him.”
God has so clearly revealed Himself to us in His Word and through His Son that man is without excuse if he persists in unbelief. Faith, then—and more specifically, faith in God as He has revealed Himself to us—is the fundamental requirement for true worship. Hebrews 11:6
But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
So lets do just that, let us seek Him for who He really is according to what the His Holy Word reveals about Him. This will be a two part message on God: Who is He? within this series on Worship.
Part One: Part Two:
God is a Person The Father and Son are One
God is a Spiritual Being The Father and Spirit are One
God is One God is a Trinity
GOD IS A PERSON
GOD IS A PERSON
What does it mean that God is a person. Theologians often define person as “an individual being with a mind, emotions, and a will.” God definitely has an intellect (Psalm 139:17), emotions (Psalm 78:41), and volition that is has a will of His own (1 Corinthians 1:1). So, yes, God is a person.
God is not just a cosmic force He is personal with a personality. Our attributes of emotion, intellect, and will did not just happen—God made us in His image. Gen. 1:26. He has revealed Himself in the Bible to be a Person. The Bible uses personal titles to describe Him. He is called Father. He is pictured as a shepherd. He is called a brother, a friend, a counselor.
We know God is a person because He thinks, acts, feels, speaks, and communicates. All the evidence of creation, all the evidence of the Scriptures, indicates that He is a person.
GOD IS A SPIRIT BEING
GOD IS A SPIRIT BEING
God is a Spirit. That means He does not exist in a body that can be touched and seen like our bodies. Jesus said, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones” Luke 24:39
Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”
An understanding of these basic realities, Jesus said, is essential to acceptable worship: “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” John 4:24
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The fact that God is a Spirit means He is not limited by a physical form or a human concept. He is a personal Spirit, and He deserves to be worshiped in the whole extent of His everlasting being. The core of this truth is the awareness that nothing and no one is like God. Isaiah 40:18–26
To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him?
As for the idol, a craftsman casts it, A goldsmith plates it with gold, And a silversmith fashions chains of silver.
He who is too impoverished for such an offering Selects a tree that does not rot; He seeks out for himself a skillful craftsman To prepare an idol that will not totter.
Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless.
Scarcely have they been planted, Scarcely have they been sown, Scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, But He merely blows on them, and they wither, And the storm carries them away like stubble.
“To whom then will you liken Me That I would be his equal?” says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high And see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing.
In other words, if you try to make God into something other than a Spirit, something visible and tangible, how will you portray Him? Can you paint His likeness? Can you sculpt His form? Can you cast silver into His shape? How will you design it? What will you use as a reference? How can you capture God’s essence with an idol or an image? You can’t. He is the Lord of all creation, and He cannot be cut from a small piece of wood..
We must be careful not to think of God in human terms. Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man.”
“God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
This means that when the Bible mentions the eyes of the Lord, or the arm of the Lord, and so on, it is using a figure of speech called anthropomorphism. This word comes from two Greek words, anthropos, which means “man,” and morphae, which means “form,” or “shape.” An anthropomorphism describes God using human body parts to help us grasp the idea better. But these expressions are not literal in a physical sense. “God is not a man” (Numbers 23:19).
The Bible uses such word pictures to accommodate our limited understanding, and we must take care not to insist on interpreting them too literally. God is a spirit, not literal flesh and blood. The Bible similarly talks about God’s wings and feathers covering His children. But God is not a bird, either.
First Timothy 1:17 speaks of Him as the invisible God.
Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
John 1:18 says, “No one has seen God at any time.”
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
No one this side of heaven will ever see God. God represented Himself to the Israelites in the Old Testament through the pillar of light and the pillar of fire and through the shekinah glory in the Temple.
At times God manifested Himself in special ways, such as in a burning bush and through visions. But those appearances did not reveal the real essence of God. God is spirit.
GOD IS ONE
GOD IS ONE
Deuteronomy 6:4 was the key to God’s revelation of Himself in the Old Testament:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!
The belief that there is one God was essential to the Hebrew identity and the uniqueness of the Israelite nation. The Israelites, surrounded by many polytheistic cultures, declared, “There is only one God.” Even though they had become a nation while living among the Egyptians (who had a crazy amount gods) they remained faithful to Jehovah as the one true God. God had shown Himself to them as one God, and any Israelite who worshiped another God was put to death.
Jesus confirmed the importance of monotheistic theology. In Mark 12, a scribe asked Him what was the most important of the commandments. He said, “The first is, ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’” (vv. 29–30). Without rejecting His own divinity, and yet at the same time recognizing that there is only one God, Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to give complete loyalty with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength to the one true God.
CONCLUSION
We have seen from the Scriptures that God is a spirit, not a physical being that can be represented by any image or idol. He is the one and only God, who alone deserves our worship and devotion. He is also a personal and knowable God, who has revealed himself to us in his creation, his word, and his Son. He invites us to enter into a relationship with him through faith in Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose again to give us eternal life.
But knowing God is not just a matter of intellectual knowledge. It is also a matter of experiential knowledge. It is a matter of loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It is a matter of obeying God’s commands and following his will. It is a matter of enjoying God’s presence and grace in our lives. It is a matter of glorifying God in everything we do.
So let me ask you: Do you know God? Do you love God? Do you obey God? Do you enjoy God? Do you glorify God? If not, what is keeping you from doing so? What idols or distractions are competing for your attention and affection? What sins or doubts are hindering your relationship with God? What fears or worries are robbing you of God’s peace and joy?
My friends, God is not a distant or unknown God. He is a near and revealed God. He is not a cold or impersonal God. He is a warm and relational God. He is not a harsh or demanding God. He is a loving and gracious God. He is not a boring or irrelevant God. He is an exciting and satisfying God. He is the God who is spirit and one and personal and knowable. He is the God who is worthy of our worship and our praise.
So let us respond to Him today with faith and repentance, with love and obedience, with gratitude and praise. Let us seek Him with all our hearts and find him in His word and His Son. Let us worship Him in spirit and in truth, for he is the God who seeks such worshipers.
Let us pray.