The Doctrine of God
Our Baptist Confession • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Introduction
Introduction
The second Article of the Baptist Faith and Message essentially has four parts.
There is a statement about the doctrine of God and then it dives deep into each Person of the Godhead—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Tonight we will only deal with that first portion about the doctrine of God. It reads like this:
There is one and only one living and true God. 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. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience. 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.
Baptist Faith and Message, Article II
If someone were to ask you, as a Christian, What is the most important and urgent knowledge humans can ever possess?
Your answer should be— “The knowledge of the one true living God.
As followers of Christ, what we believe about God is the foundation of our worldview.
It is what sets our worldview apart from all other worldviews.
It is the lens through which we see the world and we live our lives.
Obviously this knowledge is not based upon our own speculation and conclusions or the doctrines of man.
That is why “The Scriptures” come first in our confession.
But with the Scriptures informing us—our doctrine of God is everything.
And yet I fear that many Christians may have only a superficial idea about who God is.
They have a God that is more the product of sentimentality...
“I feel like God is like this...”
Or they have a a doctrine of God they heard and accepted, without studying themselves:
“I heard God is like this...”
Knowledge about God is only true wisdom if it is the knowledge revealed in the Holy Scriptures.
And to attain this knowledge is the highest aspiration of the human soul.
This is why Jeremiah 9:23-24 says:
Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”
God takes delight when our boast is that we understand and know God and obey Him.
So let us seek to know God in the Scriptures tonight.
The One True and Living God
The One True and Living God
The Baptists of the 17th century created a catechism to go along with their Confession:
A catechism is simply a summary of Christian doctrine in the form of questions and answers.
The Baptist Catechism based on the 1689 London Baptist Confession starts like this:
Q: Who is the first and chiefest being?
A: God is the first and chiefest being.
The Bible reveals this first and chiefest being to the the One Living and True God.
And not just that, but The Only One Living and True God.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
This means we are not polytheists who believe that our God is one of many gods.
We are also not henotheists who believe that our God is the best among a multitude gods—this is what Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons are really teaching.
Instead, we agree with the prophet Isaiah:
I am the Lord, and there is no other,
besides me there is no God;
I equip you, though you do not know me,
In many ways, the Old Testament is a record of how God trained Israel to be monotheists.
The cultures around them were pagan and had their litany of gods, but Israel was to be distinct.
Sometimes it took His holy discipline to break them of their idolatry.
But from Genesis to Malachi—God was teaching His people that He is the true and living God—the only One.
Outline
Outline
So then, with all of this stated, here is our outline to learn of the One True God tonight.
1. The Attributes of God
1. The Attributes of God
2. The Activity of God
2. The Activity of God
3. The Triune God
3. The Triune God
4. The Certainties About God
4. The Certainties About God
1. The Attributes of God
1. The Attributes of God
What is this One True and Living God like?
Another way to ask that question would be, What are the attributes of God?
God is intelligent.
Knowing Being
Not a blind force
Not just knowing, but all-knowing or omniscient.
He is not like us.
We have impartial knowledge.
He has perfect knowledge.
He always has and always will.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;
his understanding is beyond measure.
God is spiritual or God is Spirit.
God is a transcendent Being.
He is above and beyond us.
You and I are limited by physical bodies, but He is not.
In fact, this is how God is able to be omni-present—everywhere at once.
He is Spirit.
And if we are to worship Him, we must worship Him accordingly.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
God is personal.
This means two things.
One one hand, This means that He has a personality.
On the other hand, it means that He chooses to relate to us in a personal manner.
We can see these truths together in two verses in Hebrews 4.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
The Lord has a personality.
He is a sympathetic God.
He is a generous God who gives out mercy and grace.
He is a God who helps people in need.
And the Lord is personal in how He relates to us.
He has been tempted as we are because He stepped down into the world He made and walked among us.
And now He wants us to draw near with confidence to His throne of grace.
God is self-existent.
He doesn’t depend on anything.
He is complete in Himself.
He is the One who told Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”
I am the One who IS.
I am the One who will always BE.
And He doesn’t need anyone or anything to enable Him to be that.
God is self-sufficient.
He is the Only uncreated Being and He is in need of no one.
Some believe God created us because He was lonely, but that isn’t true.
God has never been lonely.
God is never in want.
Instead, He created us because He desired to glorify Himself through humanity.
Not because He needed some friends.
When He acts, He doesn’t need the energy to do it.
He is omnipotent—or all-powerful.
God is eternal.
There has never been a time when God was not. There will never be a time when God is not.
In fact, time would not even exist unless it was created and sustained by God.
Once again, the “I AM WHO I AM” statement is effective.
It not only shows that God is self-existent, but that He is eternal.
God is glorious.
There is no one like God.
He stands alone.
And the radiance of this one true living God is His glory.
There is no one Bible verses that sums up God’s glory completely.
Instead, all of the Bible verses are revealing God’s glorious nature to us.
What is the glory of God? It is the manifestation of any or all of his attributes.
Charles Caldwell Ryrie
I have heard some say that the glory of God is the weight of who He is.
That is also an accurate description.
God is unchanging.
This glorious God never changes.
This is far different from us.
We change all the time and not always for the good.
But there is no shadow of turning in God.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
There is no regret in the way that we have regret.
And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.”
This means that He doesn’t suddenly shift in moods either.
The ancient pagan gods were said to get angry quickly and often treat humanity as their target, like a child getting angry and smashing his ant farm in the backyard.
Instead, our God is not quick to anger.
This also means that we can count on God to keep His promises.
He does not change His mind about them.
This is not an exhaustive list of God’s attributes.
We could speak of the justice of God.
We could speak of the simplicity of God.
We could speak of the mercy of God.
But these are some basic things we can know about God tonight and we will cover many others as we dive into the individual Persons of the Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
2. The Activity of God
2. The Activity of God
The Baptist Faith and Message calls God the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver and Ruler of the Universe.
Let’s dive into that a bit.
First of all, God is Creator.
This means that He brought all things into existence through the power of His Word.
He did not bring about the world using preexisting materials.
He made the world out of nothing—along with the rest of Universe.
Until He did this, nothing existed.
But then God created and declared the world to be good.
Creation is one of the things that shows us the glory of God.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Secondly, God is Redeemer.
He rescues His people from peril.
He showed this in the Old Testament by redeemed His people from slavery in Egypt:
Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.
But that redemption, wonderful as it was, was only a shadow of the redemption that was to come in Christ Jesus.
In Christ God’s redeeming love for His children is best revealed and fulfilled.
At the Cross, God’s redeeming love is most greatly demonstrated.
Our souls have been blackened by sin, but we do not need to lose heart because God is a Redeemer.
If we turn from our sin and trust in His Son, we will be saved now and forever.
Thirdly, God is Preserver.
God protects His Creation and His Creatures.
There is no creature, no matter how small, that is outside of His concern and His care.
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.
There is not a single atom or molecule that He disregards.
And church—be encouraged that if He cares for sparrows and the atoms that make them up, how much more does He care for you?
Your faith in God as a Preserver is an antidote to worry.
And lastly, God is Ruler.
God is the Lord over all of the Universe.
He exercises His kingly rule over all of Creation.
This sets our faith apart from Deism.
Deism is the idea that God created the world only to withdraw from it.
He created and them became a front row observer.
Instead of being the kid who takes the any farm and smashes it in the backyard, He is made to be the kids who just sits and watches it, but dares not to tamper with their society.
This is not the biblical picture of God.
Instead, God created the world and at every moment He remains its Ruler.
Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.
And because God is Creator, Redeemer, Preserver and Ruler over all, He should get reverence and obedience from all.
As the Faith and Message says, we owe Him the highest level of love, reverence and obedience.
We should love and adore Him.
We should revere His name and seek to honor it.
We should obey Him because we love and adore Him and revere Him.
In Moses’ Deuteronomy 6 sermon, he says this to the children of Israel:
You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you.
This should the the response of every Christian to their Creator and their Redeemer.
To their Preserver and Ruler.
It should be both delight and duty.
3. The Triune God
3. The Triune God
The doctrine of the Trinity is an essential doctrine of Christian truth.
In fact, we would say without hesitation that you cannot be Christian and deny that God is Triune.
When we say that God is Triune, we mean that God has revealed Himself to be One God in Three Persons.
Here is how it is stated in the founding doctrinal statement of the Southern Baptist Seminary—the Reformed Abstract of Principles:
God is revealed as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence or being.
Reformed Abstract of Principles, 1858
Being Trinitarian is so core to who we are as Christians, that our very mission is stated in Trinitarian language:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
When we say One God in Three Persons and Three Persons in One God, these Persons are not just modes of God’s existence.
In other words, He is not like an actor in a play who wears three different masks and plays three different roles, but is the same actor.
Instead, we are saying that each Person is distinct from the other, while One in the Godhead.
We are also not saying there are three different gods.
That would be polytheism.
We have already seen that the Bible teaches us that there is one God.
So then the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God.
And yet, the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit are three different Persons.
Many analogies have been proposed to try and explain this mystery.
The Trinity is like a cloverleaf.
The Trinity is like an egg.
The Trinity is like water.
The Trinity is like the ocean.
All of these things break down in some form or fashion and end up landing you in heresy.
You will end up losing that God is one God or you will end up losing that God is three persons.
Instead of analogies that fail us, we would be must better off turning to Creeds that are based on the very word of God.
Probably the most helpful creed ever written is the Athanasian Creed.
Athanasius was a church father in the 4th century who was the bishop of Alexandria.
He is truly a hero of the church who fought for sound doctrine at a crucial time in church history.
He went head to head with Arius, a leader from Alexandria who argued that Christ was created by the Father.
The Nicene Creed was shaped by a lot of Athanasius’ theological arguments.
The funny thing is that he did not write the Athanasian Creed.
It came along around a century after him, from a different part of North Africa.
It was named after him because the creed reflect so much of his theology.
We won’t read all of it because it is fairly long, but here is a sample:
The Father is eternal,
the Son is eternal,
the Holy Spirit is eternal.
And yet there are not three eternal beings;
there is but one eternal being.
So too there are not three uncreated or immeasurable beings;
there is but one uncreated and immeasurable being.
Similarly, the Father is almighty,
the Son is almighty,
the Holy Spirit is almighty.
Yet there are not three almighty beings;
there is but one almighty being.
Thus the Father is God,
the Son is God,
the Holy Spirit is God.
Yet there are not three gods;
there is but one God.
Thus the Father is Lord,
the Son is Lord,
the Holy Spirit is Lord.
Yet there are not three lords;
there is but one Lord.
The Athanasian Creed
This is much more helpful than the egg or the cloverleaf analogy.
This articulates the Trinitarian doctrine presented by the Bible.
That being said, you won’t find the word Trinity in the Bible.
The New Testament doesn’t say, “The Trinity means this...” in any of its verses.
Instead, what we have is a bunch of Trinitarians writing Trinitarian-ly.
They simply give you the truth without black and white definitions.
And we should accept that truth and mostly leave it at that.
The Bible does not explain the Trinity. It simply gives us the facts...the briefer the definition of the Trinity, the better off for practical purposes. God is revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These have personal qualities. Yet God is one. This is the New Testament teaching. Beyond this we tend toward speculation.
EY Mullins
When we are talking about the Trinity, we are talking about the Father, the Son and the Spirit each being a distinct Person.
We are talking about them each having specific roles.
And yet they all have the same essence, nature and characteristics.
This is the reality of the Three-in-One and the One-in-Three.
And this is a reality that we can meditate upon and marvel at, but on some level, we will not be able to fully wrap our minds around it.
We can climb the mountain and rejoice along the way, but we aren’t getting to the summit in this life.
This is the way that science treats human consciousness.
For all our smarts and our technology and our abilities, we still don’t understand human consciousness.
There are fragmented theories about what brings it about, but ultimately the scientists say, “This is beyond our empirical limits.”
It is a mystery of life that is true, but not fully explainable.
The Trinity is much the same in our theology.
And yet, I want to say that while the Bible might not have a verse that uses the word “Trinity,” or a verse that explains all of the intricacies of how the Godhead works, it certainly affirms the truth of it.
It does it in Genesis 1—at the very beginning.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Or maybe my favorite example comes at the baptism of Jesus:
And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
These are just a few examples of how the Scripture confirms the final sentence in the first paragraph of Article II.
4. Certainties About God
4. Certainties About God
There are two great certainties that the Baptist Faith and Message focuses on when it comes to the doctrine of God.
I. God's sovereignty.
I am always sad when I talk to another Christian who seems to believe in a God who means well, but cannot seem to make His purposes come to pass...
...A God who is needy...
...A God who needs some assistance to accomplish His will...
...A God who is not quite sure what He wants done in some given circumstance.
This is not the God presented by the Scriptures.
God is in complete control of the Universe.
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
God is bringing His will to pass in the Universe, even if we may not always understand why He chooses what He chooses.
This is the purpose that is purposed
concerning the whole earth,
and this is the hand that is stretched out
over all the nations.
For the Lord of hosts has purposed,
and who will annul it?
His hand is stretched out,
and who will turn it back?
God has time in His hands.
My times are in your hand;
rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!
The times of every man, every creature, every object—it is all in the hand of God.
The Bible tells us that God has written the end from the beginning.
And we know what that end is:
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
He is governing all things to that end in His perfect knowledge.
And that knowledge “extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures.”
We are all making free decisions, but not one is outside of the plan of God.
Brothers and sisters, this is how I sleep at night.
When we get in a car and put on a seatbelt, we feel safe.
And we should wear seatbelts. That is a good use of your free decision.
But if you get in a wreck and you do not die, you don’t really thank the seatbelt.
You thank God, who is His perfect knowledge, saved your life—as He has planned to do from before time.
And when we think of that day when we will take our final breath—we don’t need to be afraid.
That will be just as ordained as every moment that you have had on Earth, whether it was in joy or sorrow.
For those who have been given some great affliction or someone they love is suffering in some great way—this is how you maintain contentment.
It is knowing that even affliction is part of God’s plan.
And it is for His glory.
It is why you don’t need to stay up late fretting about past regrets.
For even your failures, God has planned to use for good in His perfect plan.
This is much more than a doctrine for theology books.
The certainty about sovereignty is rubber on the road Christianity.
II. God’s Character.
The Faith and Message, Article II, also says:
“God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections.”
God does not sin and God cannot sin.
He is 100%, totally and absolutely righteous.
He is holy and He is the standard for holiness.
God’s holiness is his quintessential attribute.
It gives definition to every other attribute.
This is why it is the only attribute of God that is elevated to the third degree in the Bible...
RC Sproul pointed out that the Word never says God is “love, love, love” or “just, just, just” or “mercy, mercy, mercy.”
But it does say that God is “Holy, holy, holy.”
It says it in Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4.
Because God is holy, we know that He has:
A holy knowledge
A holy wrath
A holy love
A holy mercy
A holy existence
He is infinite in holiness and therefore infinitely perfect in every other attribute.
Whatever may come this week or next...
Whatever is the next thing that makes us joyful or shaken...
We sleep and wake up knowing that God is in control and He is holy.
The world may be cast into confusion, but heaven is not.
God’s throne is occupied by the One True and Living God.
He will not fail.
He will not falter.
We will move on in Article II to the Person of God the Father next time.
