Why Should We Study God?

What do you think of when I mention “god”? What does god look like? What is good about god and what is bad?

What is this “knowledge” based on? Where have you gained this knowledge?

J I Packer Knowing God

How important is knowing what God is like? Explain

Do you think that knowing God is difficult? Explain

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all the power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience.

NIV

NIV

Firestone, Deidre. The Knowledge of the Holy Study Guide . Kindle Edition.

3 Key Assumptions

God Exists

This God is the God of the Bible

The Bible is the Revelation of God

Revelation about God

Revelation from God

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in or that you may know the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.

NIV

NIV

The Necessity of Knowing God

What we think about God is the most important thing about us. This reveals so much about who we are as individuals and what we value. It reveals a lot about us as a culture. This is because when we think of god, we often create him in our mind as something or someone similar to us. He loves what we love. He hates what we hate. He is created in our image, with the same priorities, pet peeves and even sin that we have.

An accurate picture of God is to our faith what a foundation is to a building. If the foundation is not solid or out of plumb or made of faulty materials, the whole structure will eventually collapse. Our failure in the Christian life, or error in doctrine, can be traced directly back to one or more incorrect thought about God.

An accurate picture of God is to our faith as the foundation is to a building. If the foundation is not solid or out of plumb, the whole structure will eventually collapse. Our failure in Christian living, or error in doctrine, is traced directly back to our imperfect thoughts of God.

Firestone, Deidre. The Knowledge of the Holy Study Guide . Kindle Edition.

[For example, the late 19th century brought about three men that revolutionized the way people thought about god. Friedrich Nietzsche stated, “God is dead,” implying that whatever concept of god there is, the Enlightenment had killed it. Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution and, based on the limited knowledge of biology and zoology at the time, proved that man was not created but evolved. And finally, Karl Marx applied both theories to his ideas of society and government. What resulted, as Nietzsche predicted, was the 20th century being the bloodiest century of all.

For example, the late 19th century brought about three men that revolutionized the way people thought about god. Friedrich Nietzsche stated, “God is dead,” implying that whatever concept of God there is, the Enlightenment had killed it. Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution and, based on the limited knowledge of biology and zoology at the time, proved that man was not created but evolved. And finally, Karl Marx applied both theories to his ideas of society and government. What resulted was the 20th century being the bloodiest century of all.

WW1: 15 million

WW2: 70 million

Vietnam:

Socialists- 111 million

Hitler: 17 million

Stalin: 20 million

China: 65 million

Cambodia: 2 million

Vietnam: 1 million

North Korea: 2 million

Eastern Europe: 1 million

Latin America: 150,000

Africa: 1.7 million

Afghanistan: 1.5 million

Others: 10,000

The concept of a great God has been so devalued that it has caused a moral tragedy, not only in the world at large, but also in the church. (stats that show believers behave like the world)]

[Scripture repeatedly talks about those who do NOT know God. When the biblical writers refer to those who do not know God, they are also referred to as wicked and/or evil. Conversely, the biblical writers say often that those who know God will obey Him and will live holy lives. For example, the apostle John points this out in one of his letters. He writes in , “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” ]

In his work Knowing God, J. I. Packer gives a warning about the danger of failing to pursue a knowledge of 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.

J I Packer Knowing God

J I Packer Knowing God

In his letter to the church at Rome, the Apostle Paul wrote to communicate the truth of the Gospel and its effectiveness to save all who believe from sin and guilt and change their lives as well. However, before he begins this discussion, he first tells the church of our need for God and the gospel by stating our complete lack of understanding about who God is:

They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused.

NLT

He goes on to show how they built on this faulty foundation, houses of worship to mankind and animals. Wrong ideas about God rot a religion from within. Israel demonstrated this in the Old Testament and the history of the Church confirms it.

However, the person who comes to a correct belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems because they see that they are no greater than the God in whom they trust. That person is left instead with one eternal preoccupation: the worship of God himself. One author has stated that the chief end of man is to know God and make him known. Knowing God should be our first priority in this life.

This is evident in the life of the Apostle Paul. He wrote to the church at Philippi, one of his letters, written from prison:

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

NIV

I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.  Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! NLT

He goes on to show how they built on this faulty foundation, houses of worship to mankind and animals. Wrong ideas about God rot a religion from within. Israel demonstrated this in the Old Testament and the history of the Church confirms it.

Not only did Paul realize that the pain and suffering that he had endured as a follower of Christ was nothing in comparison to the greatness of the one true God, he states that all the “good” he had done in his life was garbage in comparison to knowing Christ and the power of the Father that raised him from the dead.

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The Problem in Studying God

So seeing the great need to understand who God is and what he is like, we set forth over the next 5 weeks to understand this very thing. Yet, when pursuing this knowledge, we run into a problem. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to describe God? If you tried this, you would probably start by comparing God to things on earth that we already know.

If you were to ask me what turkey tasted like, I might say it was like chicken, only darker and richer. If you had never eaten chicken, I would say it was like duck, only less fatty. If you had never tasted poultry before, I might compare it to another meat, like lamb, only much lighter and softer. Somehow, I would find a way of explaining turkey in terms of things you had previously come across. That is the way we explain things.

Wilson, Andrew. Incomparable: Explorations in the Character of God (pp. 43-44). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.

Wilson, Andrew. Incomparable: Explorations in the Character of God (pp. 43-44). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.

Here is

And this is the difficulty in understanding the nature and character of God: God is not like anything. Let me explain: He is not exactly like anything or anybody. This challenge is seen often in scripture. The prophet Isaiah asks the following questions: To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare him to? ( NIV). The psalmist describes God’s greatness as unsearchable:

The psalmist describes God’s greatness as unsearchable:

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable. NIV

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable. NIV

Even God describes Himself similarly:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts.

neither are your mays my ways” declares the LORD

As the heavens are higher than the earth

so are my ways than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts."

NIV

God truly is incomparable. It is kind of like this:

How would you describe snap chat do a Medieval peasant? Where would you start?

However, this is one of the reasons that God inspired men, and possibly women, to write the Bible. It would be against who God is to expect humanity to have a relationship with Him and yet not give them a way to know him. So God used the prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the disciples in the New Testament to communicate a shadow of who He truly is and what He is like. When the Hebrew prophets got a glimpse of God, they used phrases like “appearance,” “likeness,” “as it were,” etc. to describe Him, because they were describing something that they had no language to describe.

God is infinite and we are finite

However, this is one of the reasons that God inspired men, and possibly women, to write the Bible. It would be against who God is to expect humanity to have a relationship with Him and yet not give them a way to know him. So God used the prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the disciples in the New Testament to communicate a shadow of who He truly is and what He is like. When the Hebrew prophets got a glimpse of God, they used phrases like “appearance,” “likeness,” “as it were,” etc. to describe Him, because they were describing something that they had no language to describe.

So where does that leave us? Should we just give up? Is there a work-around to comprehending the incomprehensible nature of God?

The Attributes of God

So in an attempt to climb this wall, we must break down the personality of God into small parts that are easier for us to understand. These individual parts are called the The attributes of God. So, before we begin our study, we should answer the question: What is an Attribute? In The Knowledge of the Holy, A. W. Tozer tells his readers that: “an attribute of God is whatever God has in any way revealed as being true of Himself.” These attributes are more than mere characteristics or qualities like we would describe another person. The characteristics of a person are different from person to person and can change over time in a given person. However, God’s attributes are not parts of the complete idea of God: they are objective and unchanging characteristics of His very nature.

There were 4 old men who had become blind in their old age. These men were for some reason, taken to the zoo and placed next to an elephant. Having never seen an elephant in person or in a picture, these men began to feel around to know what the elephant was like. After a few moments, an argument broke out among the men, as they were placed at different parts of the elephant. The first man said, “An elephant is a snake! Long and curls around things.” The next man said, “No! It is like a tree: upright, firm, and established on the ground,” since he was standing next to one of the legs. The third said, standing at the elephant’s middle, “You are only partially right: It is firm, but it is far too round to be a tree. The elephant is a type of rock!” The final man, grasping the elephants tail scoffed, “Fools! The elephant is obviously like a rope.”

These men were looking at different aspects of the same thing and they cam up with different answers. This is a little like what we do in describing God

Some Attributes of God

One

Spirit

Invisible

Personal

Inscrutable

Incomprehensible

Trinitarian

Self-existent

Self-sufficient

Eternal

Infinite

Immutable

Perfect

Wise

Omniscient

Omnipotent

Omnipresent

Transcendent

Faithful

Genuine

Veracious

Good

Just

Merciful

Gracious

Benevolent

Persistent

Love

Holy

Sovereign

Purposeful

Immanent

Impassable

Truth

Glorious

Majestic

Patient

Jealous

Light

Judge

Order

Blessed

Wrath

Freedom

Will

Severe

All of the attributes of God work simultaneously in the universe and each of our lives as God directs us, works His divine plan for us, and transforms to be more like Christ. We should keep in mind that these attributes do not war within the person of God, but the work together to accomplish His purposes. So be careful when you hear someone over emphasizing one attribute over others (love, wrath, etc).

There is nothing for us to fear, as He is always and only working for our good. Do you believe this? Do you really trust God your Creator and Father to work this way on your behalf? Can you rest in it, no matter what? May God help us to truly see Him.  And, may this study help us to come to that place of faith, where we really do trust Him and really do trust His love for us and then enter into His rest, as we come to know Him better! [Rewrite]

One

Spirit

Invisible

Personal

Inscrutable

Incomprehensible

Trinitarian

Self-existent

Self-sufficient

Eternal

Infinite

Immutable

Perfect

Wise

Omniscient

Omnipotent

Omnipresent

Transcendent

Faithful

Genuine

Veracious

Good

Just

Merciful

Gracious

Benevolent

Persistent

Love

Holy

Sovereign

Purposeful

Immanent

Impassable

Truth

Glorious

Majestic

Creator

Patient

Jealous

Light

Judge

Order

Blessed

Wrath

Freedom

Will

Severe