Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Tonight I want to begin us on a Wednesday night series that will last a few months.

I’m titling it, back to the basics.

While I think God is looking to do great things here and there will be some more modern methods employed to reach out and see souls saved there are some things that should not and cannot be updated or turned into something different.

The methods of the church change but the message of the church must stay the same.

That message is the life giving and life changing message of Jesus Christ.

That message leads us into a relationship with God and as we express our faith in the message it also means we are accepting some other things from the Bible to be true.

So as we begin this series of back to the basics I want you to know, you’ve probably heard this before.

I pray that these lessons are great reminders of the doctrines of scripture and that you will see or hear something in a light that you hadn’t before as the Lord enlightens you to scripture.

Tonight’s lesson will be about Knowing God.

Let’s pray and get into it.

PRAY

Open your Bibles to

One of the greatest things about the Christian life is the fact that we have God who desires for us to know Him so that we may have a relationship with Him.

We can only do that if He reveals himself to us.

I. God has revealed Himself to us

We don’t have to guess, wonder, or make up our own version of God.

We have the ability to know exactly who He is and what He desires of us.

We can do that because He has revealed himself in a couple of different ways.

First, He has revealed Himself through Creation

A. He reveals Himself through creation

We can simply look around us and see the beauty of His handiwork.

It’s made plain to us in scripture how the universe and the world came to be.

He spoke the universe into existence.

Then when He made it all He called it very good.

It is this important truth that helped me as I was coming back to my faith.

I found a love for apologetics as I listened to someone provide support for Creationism and poke holes in the theory of evolution.

I’m thankful for the many Christian scientists out there who are working at proving more and more that there is a creator God who spoke everything into existence.

We all understand that no one was there when the universe started.

We as Christians must admit that we don’t KNOW and can’t PROVE it without a shadow of a doubt.

It requires faith.

I believe that’s on purpose from God.

Because without faith we cannot please Him.

When we believe in Creation professing our faith in a creator.

When a person chooses to believe in evolution, they are choosing to believe in chance.

Belief in the creator leads to an important conclusion: We are created for Him, not for ourselves.

We do not exist to please ourselves, but to please God.

God has revealed Himself through creation.

He has also revealed Himself throughout History.

B. He has revealed Himself throughout history

There were two times in world History when the entire world knew the revealed truth of who God is.

-In the Garden of Eden

-In Noah’s Day

Before the flood that destroyed the earth Noah was preaching and telling everyone that God’s judgement would one day come and they should find refuge in the ark.

Sadly, only Noah and his family believed God and were saved by their faith.

C.

He has revealed Himself through the human conscience

Have you noticed that the Bible never sets out to prove the existence of God.

It simply assumes His existence.

This biblical assumption is based on the fact that God hard wired into our hearts the knowledge of a creator when He made us.

It has been observed that no one was born an atheist.

All around the world people know there is some God and they have a sense of right and wrong.

That sense can be molded and twisted by the environment but it is there nonetheless.

People can and do reject the knowledge of God but it is not because there is no evidence from both within and without to support the truth of God’s existence.

The Bible has a word for people like that

D. He has revealed himself through the Scripture

Nature gives us a general revelation of God and it is the Bible that provides us specific revelation of God.

E. He has revealed Himself through His Son

Jesus Christ came as God in the flesh to reveal to us who God is.

God has revealed Himself in many ways because He wants us to know Him.

II.

God Exists as a trinity

A. The Bible clearly tells us that there is One True God

Here are some other examples as well that emphatically state there is one God

“I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me...”

“One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”

The Bible also teaches that God exists as a trinity.

Meaning Three in one.

The Bible refers to this as the Godhead.

There is one God who exists simultaneously in three persons.

Each coequal, powerful, and coeternal.

The trinity is impossible to explain not because it is false but because it is a concept that our finite minds have difficulty wrapping our heads around.

Multiple times though we see the three parts of the trinity mentioned at the same time.

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One of the earliest revelations of the Trinity is given in the first chapters of the Bible.

It also gives us insight into the make up of us as mankind.

A. We are made in the image of God

We don’t resemble God in our physical bodies.

Rather we resemble him in the sense that we have a body, soul, and spirit.

We were created his likeness in a number of ways

-Mentally

-Mentally

We were created with intelligence and rationale.

-Socially

We were created with a need for interaction and fellowship.

-Morally

We were created with responsibility to live according to right and wrong.

-Spiritually

We were created with a spirit that will live forever even after our bodies die and withe the capacity to have a relationship with God.

These all make up our likeness to God.

Adam’s mental intelligence is seen as he names all the animals

We see Adam and Eve’s social need in their relationship with each other

We see their moral responsibility in that God gave them a specific command and the free will to choose to obey or disobey and in the fact that they indeed made a choice.

We see their spiritual capacity in their personal relationship with God, which was later severed through sin.

God is so much greater than our minds can comprehend and yet He made us in His image for a relationship with Him.

III.

The Bible Tells us about God’s Characteristics

More than existing as a triune Godhead the Bible tells us about other characteristics of God.

We call them attributes

A. Some of God’s attributes are unique to God alone

Theologians call these the non-communicable attributes.