Why We Must Think Rightly About God

Romans 1:21-32; Isaiah 40

Intro:

1. Who is God?  If you were asked to describe Him, what words would you use?
2. If we profess to be Christians we, of all people must know our God.
3. Meet Pastor Tozer

What I want to say:  Our concept of God affects our thoughts, our choices and our actions. It is the responsibility of every Christian to learn who God is.

I.      No one can rise above their idea of God

A.    How do you understand God?

1.    Agnostic – not sure if there is a God

2.    Atheist – there is no God

3.    Materialist – every phenomenon has a physical explanation.

4.    Polytheist – there are many gods

5.    Pantheist – god is everything; everything is god

6.    Theist – there is a God

B.    The highest thought the human mind can entertain is that of God

1.    Since God is infinite and man is not, to think about Him, then, is the most mind-stretching exercise possible

2.    Meditating on God’s attributes both humbles and uplifts the human soul

3.    We are first humbled by seeing ourselves as we are compared to God

Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 303–312

Shakespeare likely was influenced by Psalm 8 when he wrote this.

O Lord, our Lord,

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

and crowned him with glory and honor.

O Lord, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!  Psalm 8:3-5,9 ESV

C.   You tend become like your view of God

1.    If you believe God is stern and joyless, you will tend to exhibit the same traits.

a)    E.g. the Jehovah’s Witnesses are a particularly joyless cult that does not sing or celebrate birthdays.

2.    But if you believe that God delights in Himself and in His creation, then that delight overflows to those who trust in Him.

3.    If you believe that God is good, loving and kind – you will reflect those traits.

4.    If your understanding of God is deficient, you will reflect a deficient image of Him.

We must think rightly about God because

II.    A false view of God degrades both God and man (Romans 1:18-25)

A.    “The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him” (p. 11)

1.    To be an idolater is not merely to bow to an image but to re-construct God as less than He is.

2.    It is idolatrous to replace God with another object of your hope.

a)    If you place your hope in your job or health or money or another person, you have become an idolater.

Ask yourself this question, “If I were to lose everything in a natural disaster, what would be my first response?”

b)    Job looked to God in the midst of loss of everything:

Though he slay me, I will hope in him;

yet I will argue my ways to his face.  Job 13:15 ESV

3.    Some in our day have taken to referring to God as “she” or “mother”.  What is God’s gender? We know that male and female attributes are found in God since the very fact that both men and women are made in His image, we know He is both tender and fierce. But in all of Scripture God only refers to Himself using the male pronoun.

“ ‘See now that I, even I, am he,

and there is no god beside me;    Deuteronomy 32:39 ESV

ILLUS> Do you remember that song that Johnny Cash sang – The Boy Named Sue? Though it made us laugh we understood that the humor came from the inconsistency between being male and being called by a female name.  The song showed the anger in the boy who felt shamed by being called what he was not.

4.    When we presume to re-characterize God into something He is not, we demean him.

5.    When any person reduces God to a more manageable human scale, they become an idolater

B.    A false view of God destroys people

ILLUS> worship of Moloch. The ancient Ammonite people of Canaan worshipped a god named Moloch.  The god was manifested as a large hollow metal image of a man with the head of a bull seated on a throne with its arms outstretched. A fire was built inside the image and heated until the image glowed red.  Into the arms of this god the firstborn children of the Ammonites were placed.  Some ancient sources indicate that the arms of the idol could be raised so that the screaming child could slide into the open mouth of the god.  Loud drums and music drowned out the screams of the child. God destroyed the Canaanite culture that destroyed human beings because of their idol worship.

1.    Cp. The violence committed in the name of God to those committed in the name of atheism

“We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” Tozer, p. 9

For much of this information I am indebted to Christian apologist, Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity?

a)    A number of books by atheist authors repeat an attack the view of God in general and Christianity in particular by claiming that religion is responsible for great atrocities and the killing of millions of people.

For instance, author Sam Harris calls religion, “the most potent source of human conflict, past and present.”

Steven Pinker writes that “religions have given us stoning, witch-burning, crusades, inquisitions, jihads, fatwas, suicide bombers, and abortion clinic gunmen.”

Religions and Christians are demonized as the cause of most of human misery.

The Salem witch trials are often used as an American example of the excesses of Christianity.  How many people died?  Less than twenty-five. Nineteen were executed and several others died while being held.

The Crusades, were a response to Muslim aggression across the Middle East and into Europe.  They were a fight for the survival of Europe.  Without them the Koran might the holy book associated with Europe not the Bible. Christians fought to defend themselves from Muslim conquest.

The Inquisition is estimated to have executed about 2,000 people over a period of 350 years.

Witch trials in Europe, according to atheist Carl Sagan, killed “hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions”. In reality, the number might have been 100,000.

Make no mistake the loss of human life is always tragic – I am not excusing wrong-headed thinking but I want to show the reality of the claims of those who attack Christianity.

b)    At the same time we hear almost nothing about the suffering that atheism has caused.  Richard Dawkins tells us, “What matters is…whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does.” So we are led to conclude that individual atheists might to bad things but evil is not ever done in the name of atheism.  Let’s look at some of the facts.

ILLUS> No doubt most of you have come across the name of Joseph Stalin in your studies. Stalin was the atheist communist dictator in Russia from 1922 to 1953.  He implemented a campaign of terror against all his enemies that not only closed churches and sent Christians to die in forced labor camps. The number of his victims? Twenty million. Note these were his own citizens and not in a time of war.

- Under atheist communist Mao Zedong the most murderous regime in world history killed seventy million Chinese citizens.

-These two make Nazi atheist, Adolf Hitler look like a beginner with his ten million murders. All this in the name of atheism.

c)    Rejection of God is motivated by self-centered thinking. If atheism is compassionate, where are all the atheist charities? Where are the hospitals named “Godless General”?  I do not say this to look down on atheists but to show the reality. For the last 2,000 years it has been Christians who have taken the lead in relieving human suffering. We were there caring for the sick and dying during the Black Plague when 1/3 of the population of Europe died. We began the Red Cross. We founded hospitals. We feed the hungry. We clothe the naked. All because we attempt to reflect the God we serve.

d)    Does it matter if you think rightly about God? Absolutely!!!

2.    You cannot know right from wrong without God

ILLUS> If your car was to break down late at night in the most violent prone neighborhood in Chicago and as you stood there with the hood up you heard the voices of a group of men coming nearer. At that moment would it matter to you whether they were coming from a strip club or a Bible study?  Even those who want to set God at a distance must confront the fact that you cannot know right from wrong without a standard.  Where does that standard come from?  A system of ethics requires a moral standard that comes from outside of a person. A moral standard requires a standard setter

a)    It is possible to be relatively good without believing in God but that is living above what you believe.

b)    Does it matter if you think rightly about God?

We must thing rightly about God because…

III.   Eternity is at stake

A.    A false view of God condemns people to eternity in hell

1.    The gospel is robbed of its power when God’s attributes are re-defined as mere human traits with their limits and aberrations.

These things you have done, and I have been silent;

you thought that I was one like yourself.

But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.  Psalm 50:21 ESV

2.    If God is just like any human being, why should there be any awe of Him?

3.    If He is just “the Man Upstairs”, then you can take Him or leave Him depending on your mood

4.    But if He is Almighty God who upholds all things with His word, you and I are constantly dependent upon Him for every breath.

5.    If God is not the Judge of all mankind to whom we will give account for our lives, why would anyone feel the need to trust in Him?

B.    Joy is waiting to lift the soul

1.    A false view of God robs people of hope and joy

2.    If God is not almighty, omnipotent, omniscient, holy, righteous, faithful and true, what hope do we have?

3.    Joy is the result of having your deepest needs met – even while outward circumstances ebb and flow.

Concl:

1. We must think rightly about God because it is more than theoretical knowledge. It is the practical information needed to live each day.
2. I want to challenge you to embark on this journey with us to know our God.