Knowing God
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Listen to what J.I Packer says in his famous book ‘Knowing God’....There's a difference between knowing God and knowing about God. When you truly know God, you have energy to serve Him, boldness to share Him, and contentment in Him.
The difference between knowing someone personally and knowing about them is as different as day and night! And yet, so often in the church, we spend our lives content to know about God! Acquire more knowledge, learn more information, affirm more doctrines. And yet our hearts remain cold, indifferent, distant to the true beauty and sweetness of the One who calls us to Himself!
So here is what I’d love to do on this third Wednesday of the month, I want to take 30 minutes to introduce one Attribute of God. To be exposed very directly to who God reveals Himself to be in His Word. To think that through together and try to see how it impacts in our lives. And then go to prayer. Take the next 30 minutes to pray about what we’re heard. Ask God to join us to the truth by faith, ask God to open the eyes of our hearts so that this will not simply be head knowledge, but it will stir our hearts! That we’ll have energy to serve, boldness to share and contentment to rest in Him!
So this evening we want to begin by thinking on the truth that God is Self-Existent and Self-Sufficient
Now straight away you’ll realise that those are attributes of God that we as His creation don’t share. They’re known as incommunicable attributes. They are entirely unique to God. We may share partly in love, wisdom, power, knowledge etc. But we know nothing of His self-existence, self-sufficiency.
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Here is the go to text when we think about these attributes of God, certainly not the only text, as there are many! Moses has been charged to go to God’s people and lead them out of slavery in Egypt, and although he knows God at this point in some sense, he asks ‘when they ask your name (what you’re like, who you are), who is it that I’m to say has sent me to do this’?!
And in God’s response, in His revelation of Himself we see these amazing attributes...
Self-Existent
I AM WHO I AM. Now think about the way people are described in Scripture, typically the formula is, Joshua son of Nun, David son of Jesse, or if the connection isn’t a biological one, it’ll sometimes be geographical, Jesus of Nazareth, Saul of Tarsus. People are identified by relating them to their origins! But what if you don’t have an origin?! What if there is nothing that can attributed to bringing about your existence?
We are naturally linked to our origin, everyone knows that we all came from somewhere and someone. But with God it is entirely different. He is the only being in the universe that exists in and of Himself! He relies on no one and nothing for His being!
In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.
Now that’s so difficult for us to grasp because there is nothing else like this! Everything else we can think of, relies on something or someone to exist! But not God! God is who He is, without any reference to anything or anyone else.
And if He relies on no one and nothing to exist, then He is answerable to no one or nothing! Ultimately, every living being is answerable to God, whether we like it, believe it, accept it or not! We exist because of Him, the life we have is a gift from Him. But God has no one that He is a debtor to, no one He owes anything to, no one He is reliant for His being on.
God’s self-existence means that he is not answerable to us or to anybody, and we do not like that. We want God to give an account of himself, to defend his actions. Although he sometimes explains things to us, he does not have to and often he does not. God does not have to explain himself to anybody. (Boice)
Self-Sufficient
I AM WHO I AM
‘Whatever God is, and all that God is, He is in Himself’ (Tozier)
God has no needs! There is nothing about Him that is deficient in any way! There are no gaps, no weaknesses, no frailties, no needs whatsoever! Therefore He relies upon no one, or nothing! All that He is, He is in Himself, and He is full in every way!
Every illustration we think of falls down in this because there is simply nothing like God in His splendor and majesty! You can think the Pacific Ocean, so vast, so full, a source of life to so much! But yet even that mighty ocean could dry up! It can be added too, and taken from, polluted and protected! God cannot be added to, He can never be taken from in anyway that diminishes Him and His glory!
Now we often talk about being self sufficient, and what we mean by that is, we need to in a sense look after ourselves, not be living on hand outs, be able to take care of ourselves. But the reality is, even the most independent person, is wholly God sufficient!
In Him we live and move and have our being () He gives us breath in our lungs, He keeps our heart beating, He provides the rain that waters the ground and causes the crops to grow. He gives the intellect for us to function! We are poor and needy people, every moment of every day!! And He graciously provides for all our needs!!
But He Himself has no needs!! There are some who believe that God created because He was lonely, created because He lacked worship and needed that, created because He wanted people to love Him! So often we see this image of God as an insecure, needy, pretty pathetic old man in the sky just wishing people would like Him!
God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That he chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on his part, caused by nothing outside himself, determined by nothing but his own mere good pleasure; for he “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph 1:11). That he did create was simply for his manifestative glory.… God is no gainer even from our worship
God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That he chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on his part, caused by nothing outside himself, determined by nothing but his own mere good pleasure; for he “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph 1:11). That he did create was simply for his manifestative glory.… God is no gainer even from our worship
A.W Pink...God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That he chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on his part, caused by nothing outside himself, determined by nothing but his own mere good pleasure; for he “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (). .… God is no gainer even from our worship
We add nothing to God, creation adds nothing to God. He is who He is, period!! He can’t be added to, He can’t be taken from!
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
Psalm 50:7-12...
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary;.. ()
We are always recipients from God! And in that knowledge we worship Him! It’s as we come to Him in dependence and need, and come to Him recognising He is full in every way that we actually give Him honor!
You’ll often hear (and I’ve maybe said it myself), that we shouldn’t come to church to receive, but rather we should come to give! Give to God our worship. And we know what people mean when they say that. We live in a consumer world that is driven by self! I want a sermon this long, I want this type of music, I want coffee before church or after church etc. And we want to resist that and realise it’s not about us!! But at the same time, we want to come realising we do come to receive! And God wants us to come to receive! He wants us to come to the fountain of life! He wants us to come to the river of living water, the the well spring that never runs dry!
Through Jesus Christ we come to receive from God and no matter how much we receive, He is still as full as He has always and will always be! There is no bottom to His grace, He doesn’t run out, need topped up, have to rest! He has no needs! He is the only being who is self-sufficient, I AM WHO I AM.
So what does that mean for us?! What difference does God’s self existence, and self sufficiency make to our lives?
It Gives us a right view of ourselves in relation to God ()
It frees us from the burden of being god ()
It encourages us to come and drink of Him for all our needs (John 7:37-39)
It encourages us to trust Him with our entire lives
