Who is God? Part 1: God the Creator - Eternal & Transcendent

Introduction

Knowing about God vs. knowing God

Chapter 3 of J.I. Packer’s book Knowing God begins:

“What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God. What is the ‘eternal life’ that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God. . . . What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight and contentment than anything else? Knowledge of God. . . . What, of all the states God ever sees man in, given God most pleasure? Knowledge of himself” (p.33).

Now, there is a difference between knowledge about God and knowing God. . . .

A person can certainly have knowledge about God without knowing him. But one cannot know God without knowledge about him.

Our seeking knowledge about God ought to drive us into the arms of God to know him. When this happens, the Christian’s life changes. The Christian himself changes.

J.I. Packer observes 4 things a Christian has when he comes to have knowledge about God that leads to knowing God:

Those who know God have great energy for God.

Those who know God have great thoughts of God.

Those who know God show great boldness for God.

Those who know God have a great contentment in God.

My hope is that at least one of these result as we go through this sermon series on Who Is God?

We begin our series at the very beginning of Scripture. We begin with inquiring about who God is as the Creator.

1. God is Before All Things (Infinite)

Genesis 1:1 NASB95

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

He has No Beginning

When it says, “In the beginning,” it is referring to when the universe—all things physical—began to exist. Note that this means God pre-dated the universe. The implication is quite clear: God has no beginning. He has always existed.

Taught throughout all of Scripture:

God referred to as “the first and the last”

Isaiah 44:6 ““Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me.”

God referred to as “eternal” or “everlasting”:

Deuteronomy 33:27 “The eternal God is a dwelling place, And underneath are the everlasting arms; and He drove out the enemy from before you, And said, ‘Destroy!’”

Psalm 93:2 “Your throne is established from of old; You are from everlasting.” (See also Ps 90:2; Gen 21:33).

Imagine that: God has always existed.

It is difficult to grasp the fact of God’s eternal existence. What can we say to even begin to illustrate it? What kind of picture can we possibly draw to provide us help? I do not think we can. It has to be the most abstract, wonderful concept we could imagine or contemplate.

A being who has always existed, having no beginning and no end. Who can really fathom this?

The practitioners of sermon-writing have often said that there are three parts to every sermon: teaching of the text, then explain the text by illustration, and then apply the teaching. But how can anyone possibly illustrate the infinity/eternality of God?

It would be like trying to grasp the idea of a circle whose center is everywhere but circumference is no where.

Wow! Such a God is worthy to be worshiped, just for the fact alone that he has always existed.

Even Gen. 1:1 gives us a hint that God is to be revered and honored.

He is to be Revered (Elohim)

Gen 1:1 says, “In the beginning God . . .”

The term for God is Elohim. It is actually a plural word, and could mean “gods.”

The context, however, shows us that this definitely not the case. Al of Scripture, esp the first five books of the OT, teach that there is only one God. So what is going on here?

Some have said that it is a reference to the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, many commentators say that the use of the plural word for God is used to show the greatness of God.

The text is teaching us that there is truly only one, great, almighty God who is to be feared, honored, and worshiped. The God of Israel (YHWH) is the main character of this creation narrative. This stands as a contrast with all other so-called “gods” of all the other nations which surrounded Israel.

In other words:

He trumps All Other “Gods”

God, YHWH, has existed from eternity (everlasting to everlasting). All other so-called gods are limited in their existence. They have come into being through the imagination of mankind or by the deceitfulness of Satan. And the stories about them are all made up by the sinful mind of man.

Canaanite gods:

Baal - fertility god who controlled the weather, storms, clouds, lightening

Asherah - fertility goddess, also associated with the sea and temple prostitution

Primary god, however, was El - he was seen as the creator, held title “Creator of the Earth,” said to be “Father of humanity”

Egyptian gods - had gods for creating, fertility, water, sky

The point: YHWH, the God of Israel, trumps all other so-called gods. YHWH is before all other gods. He has existed from all eternity. YHWH is the God of the heavens and the earth (the universe); no other so-called god has any power. They created nothing; they are nothing. They have no objective existence.

Illustration

The New Bible Commentary 1:1–2:3 Prologue: God Creates the World

Genesis is implicitly rejecting other views of the gods and their relationship with the world. Here we have no story of how gods fought, married and bore children; there is but one God, beyond time and sex, who was there in the beginning. He created all things, even the sun, moon and stars, which other peoples often held to be gods in their own right. He required no magic to do this; his word was sufficient by itself. According to the Genesis account, there is one God, the sovereign Creator, to whom all the universe owes its being and whom it is expected to obey

Application

There is only one true God: the God of the Bible who is eternal.

All other gods are idols: Allah, Vishnu, pagan gods, the Mormon god, the Jehovah Witness’s god, etc. All these, because they were invented by humans, are not eternal.

This is not a popular idea in our culture. To state that there is only one true God and all others false is arrogant and/or “judgy.”

As eternal, God is the foundation of all reality

Everything depends upon him for existence. God does not depend upon anyone or anything because he is eternal. God exists unto himself.

He is like the Energizer Bunny - he just keeps going.

Or if you want a scientific analogy: God is the perpetual motion machine

That God is eternal also answers the question, “Who made God?” or “Where did God come from?”

The question assumes that God began to exist, but this assumption is false. The very definition of God includes that he has always existed. He had no beginning, and he will have no end.

I think if you were to ask anyone to think about this for a moment, we would all agree. When we think about God, what do we think of? A created God? I do not know of anyone who thinks about worshiping a created God or one who came into existence somehow. If God came into existence or was made, then he would not be God. And he would not be worthy of our worship as a created thing.

Sometimes our idea of God is entirely too small

Some often view God as an old gray-haired dude sitting on throne. I.e., some view God like a finite, human being. Rather than humans made in God’s image, humans are making God in their image, which are just idols.

J.B. Phillips: “Man may be made in the image of God; but it is not sufficient to conceive God as nothing more than an infinitely magnified man.” [Phillips, J.B.. Your God Is Too Small (p. 42). Old LandMark Publishing. Kindle Edition.]

This is one of the reasons why the second Commandment states:

Exodus 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.”

Because God is infinite and eternal, nothing can possibly enscribe him; nothing can contain him. God is boundless, and to make an image of him is to attribute to him a created, finite status rather than the infinite, Creator status that he is.

Theologian Charles Hodge: “Idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images” (quoted in Packer, Knowing God, 44).

Reason why: God is the eternal God who cannot be confined to a simple, finite, temporal image. Nothing in this physical universe can accurately represent him.

Do you think of God in too small of terms? We must be alert and not succumb to our pluralistic culture’s making of its own personal gods.

Michael Horton in Christless Christianity refers to an “Entertainment Weekly” article:

“Pop culture is going gaga for spirituality . . . [However], seekers of the day are apt to peel away the tough theological stuff . . . and . . . [come] up with a soothing sampler of Judeo-Christian imagery . . . , Eastern meditation, self-help lingo, a vaguely conservative craving for ‘virtue,’ and a loopy New Age pursuit of ‘peace.’ This happy free-for-all, appealing to Baptists and stargazers alike, comes off more like Forrest Gump’s ubiquitous ‘boxa chocolits’ than like any real system of belief. You never know what you’re gonna get.” (p.159).

We must be careful not to make God too small, making him out to be what we think he is rather than the eternal, everlasting God he actually is. Think much more grand, much more awesome!

God is infinite, not temporal like us.

Our conception of God will also be more glorious when we come to understand, not that he is just eternal, but entirely different from everything else.

Genesis 1:1 also shows us that God is different from the physical universe:

2. God is Different from All Things (Transcendent)

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

He is The Creator

This simply stated idea is packed with significant implications. We see, first, that God must be different from everything else just for the simple fact that he creates. There was nothing but God, and then he acts, making the physical universe.

Psalm 33:6 “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.”

Isaiah 45:12 ““It is I who made the earth, and created man upon it. I stretched out the heavens with My hands And I ordained all their host.”

God created all that exists in the physical universe. We see this by the phrase “heavens and earth”: there is the earth and then “heavens” is everything else—planets, stars, galaxies as we know them today.

Interestingly, the word “to create” (בָּרָא) is used in the OT to indicate new activity. When this verb is used, God is always the one doing the action. When Genesis says “in the beginning God created,” it is a statement that strongly implies that there was a time when only God existed and the universe did not.

We actually have a lot of scientific evidence that supports the idea that the universe began to exist, which implies that there is a Creator.

Albert Einstein’s theory of GR > Belgian astronomer George Lemaitre (la me tru) > Fred Hoyle atheist coined it “Big Bang” > Big Bang is grossly misunderstood and described incorrectly

Concept of “singularity”

Alexander Vilenkin (agnostic):

“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning” (Alexander Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One, 176).

Quentin Smith summarizing Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking’s findings: “. . . The definition of a singularity that is employed n the singularity theorems entails that it is impossible to extend the space-time manifold beyond the singularity. . . . This effectively rules out the idea that the singularity is an effect of some prior natural process.” (quoted in Spitzer, New Proofs, 31)

The late agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow:

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

So we have not only a biblical fact of God creating the universe, we have scientific evidence that supports the idea that the universe came into existence. As Christians, we know who this

Now, if the universe came into existence by God, this means that God must be different from everything else. We call this God’s transcendence: God is “wholly” or “entirely” different from everything else.

This means God is uncreated.

He is The Uncreated

More specifically, God is an uncreated, non-physical being.

If God is the one who brought into existence the physical universe, then God himself cannot be physical. Otherwise, we would have something physical existing before the physical universe existed, which does not make any sense.

If this sounds confusing, think of it this way:

Illustration

Recently, my daughter Gloria began making and selling scones and brownies to help pay for an extra dance class she is interested in. Imagine if she had a pan of warm brownies, fresh out of the oven, but never had any of the ingredients to make the brownies: she did not have eggs, water, milk, flour, or anything. She just has a pan of fresh brownies that she made with no ingredients. This does not make any sense does it? How can we have a pan of brownies if we do not have the ingredients to make them?

This is exactly what is meant when we say that God cannot be a physical being. If God is the one who brought all the physical stuff into existence, he cannot himself be physical. You cannot have a physical God before physical stuff exists.

Now, Scripture teaches us that God is in fact an uncreated spirit (non-physical being). Jesus, speaking to the woman at the well, taught her: John 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Paul, in his first letter to Timothy: 1 Timothy 1:17 “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”

God has no physical body. He is pure, uncreated spirit—a non-physical being.

In the context of the OT and the Israelites and surrounding nations, this is a radical idea. This means that God is:

He is Unlike All Other “Gods”

Baal, Asherah, El, and all the other so-called gods were believed to be physical creatures of some sort. Often, they were pictured as humans or animals.

The picture of God that we get in Genesis as an eternal, uncreated spirit who is different from all things physical is a direct challenge to the gods of the time.

The one true God, YHWH, maker of heaven and earth is nothing like the gods of the Egyptians, Assyrians, or Canaanites. He stands above them all. He is more glorious and awesome.

Coming out of Egypt, the Israelites were instructed:

Deuteronomy 4:35 “To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord, He is God; there is no other besides Him.”

The utter foolishness of physical gods is described by Isaiah the prophet in the OT:

Isaiah 44:12–17 “The man shapes iron into a cutting tool and does his work over the coals, fashioning it with hammers and working it with his strong arm. He also gets hungry and his strength fails; he drinks no water and becomes weary. Another shapes wood, he extends a measuring line; he outlines it with red chalk. He works it with planes and outlines it with a compass, and makes it like the form of a man, like the beauty of man, so that it may sit in a house. Surely he cuts cedars for himself, and takes a cypress or an oak and raises it for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a fir, and the rain makes it grow. Then it becomes something for a man to burn, so he takes one of them and warms himself; he also makes a fire to bake bread. He also makes a god and worships it; he makes it a graven image and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he eats meat as he roasts a roast and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire.”

Application

God as the creator who transcends the universe

If this does not stoke a sense of awe and wonder, then I do not know what will.

When we contemplate God as our Creator, who is entirely different from all things, and is uncreated himself who has existed from eternity, this should light a fire so big inside of us that we cannot help but praise Him!

No wonder the Apostle Paul all of sudden in some of his letters just interrupts his own thoughts with praise!

1 Timothy 1:17 “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Romans 1:25 “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”

Contemplation of God as our creator should bring us to our knees and to a place of adoration!

Studying the Bible and doing theology ought to naturally lead us to knowing God more intimately

It is possible to merely learn about God and not really know him. But we cannot really know Him unless we learn about him.

It has often been said that theology and studying Christian doctrine is cold, impersonal, dry, and impractical. I have never understood this mentality. A deeper study of who God is, especially as our infinite Creator, has led me only closer to God. It brings warmth to me. It makes God more tangible and personal. More alive. And definitely more practical.

One of the best books I have read in the past 15 years is New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy by Robert Spitzer. This was not only an intellectual exercise for me; it was an exercise in getting to know God. It brought a sense of awe and wonder of God to my life.

J.I. Packer, in his book Knowing God, anticipates the emotional reaction that says it’s boring and dry to study about God and to think theologically:

“But wait a minute,” says someone, “tell me this. Is our [theological] journey really necessary? . . . I find it boring. . . . Surely a layperson . . . can get on without it.”

Packer’s response: “The questioner clearly assumes that a study of the nature and character of God will be impractical and irrelevant for life. In fact, however, it is the most practical project anyone can engage in. Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. . . . We are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. . . .

Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.” (18-19)

Try riding a bike without knowing anything about a bike.

Try living for God with knowing little to nothing about God.

Contemplating who God is should lead us to knowing God more personally and living for him.

Conclusion

Do you know God?

Challenge for Christian believers as well as unbelievers.