Who is God?
Design for Discipleship • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 37:46
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· 170 viewsToday Pastor Chase works through Scripture shed light on the question, "Who is God?" in our next series titled "Foundations of our Faith". Grab your Bible and dive in with us!
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INTRO
INTRO
Who is God?
That is our question and title for today.
But doesn’t everybody worship the same God?
This is a common question and belief that a lot of people have that everyone worships the same God or all roads lead to God.
Islam claims that Abraham is the Father of their religion but it doesn’t mean we worship the same God.
The Koran teaches that Abraham’s promised descendents all come from Ishmael, not Isaac which is false.
The Koran also doesn’t portray Abraham’s Allah as the kind, compassionate loving Yaweh of the Bible.
In Judaism the Old Testament God is ‘the Father’ of the Christian Trinity.
Judaism does not believe Jesus and the Holy Spirit are to be worshipped at all in relation to God the Father.
Because they only worship 1/3 of the Trinity, they do not worship the one true living God.
That is why in our Christian creeds it is written we worship, and are saved by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Who is God?
The Bible teaches that He is all three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit and we’ll come back to this truth a bit later.
Author JI Packer wrote an incredibly profound book called “Knowing God” and in the introduction he writes,
“Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives… we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble… through life blindfolded… with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”
The idea to study about God might be part of the issue why people stop at just the thought of that.
It might seem as if you’re staring at a mountain that looks impossible to climb.
But the good news is, it is not impossible to know about God and it’s even more possible to know Him personally.
But how?
But first, Let’s Pray
In order to know God we need to understand how He’s revealed Himself to us
HOW GOD HAS REVEALED HIMSELF TO US
There are five ways He’s done this:
In the Bible
In Creation
We can see both of these evident in Psalm 19
Charles Ryrie said in his book, A Survey of Bible Doctrine,
“The Bible does not argue for the existence of God, it simply assumes it throughout.”
A great place to start is to look at David’s words in Psalm 19
READ Psalm 19:1-5 - God revealing Himself to us through nature.
a. All can be a witness to the glory of God through His creation.
READ Psalm 19:6-13 - God revealing Himself to us through His Word.
a. God’s Word has the power to give us joy, correction and direction in life.
READ Psalm 19:14 - The power of God and His Word’s to make us desire to please Him and trust Him.
3. God has revealed Himself through our conscience
They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)
God has placed in us the notion of right and wrong but the ability to want to do right to please God only comes as we are saved.
It’s also as though He has placed in us this void that we try and fill with other things, but can only be filled when we are saved and give our hearts, and lives to Him.
4. He has revealed Himself through the Prophets in the past
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways,
5. And of course, God has revealed Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ.
but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.
6. Throughout all the ways discussed, the Holy Spirit has spoken and revealed God’s Word and character to us.
A great question, one that my kid’s have asked is “Who created God?”
The simple answer is no one because God is eternal, which we will talk about later.
But life begins and ends with Him.
In fact, if God was created to exist, then He wouldn’t be God.
So the next practical question is what is God like?
Chuck Colson, in his book, “Loving God” wrote,
“One can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of Him… one can know about godliness without much knowledge of God.”
Before we get into Scripture and the characteristics of God I believe it is important to continue to address some of the practical objections that people have about God.
Chuck Colson in the same book I mentioned lays out some of these:
1) Objection: The Bible is unbelievable.
Truth: We are infinite beings and can not comprehend space and time, let alone creation, outside of the natural realm. God is supernatural, not natural.
2) Objection: The Scriptures don’t really matter.
Truth: Whether we choose to or not, we are individually responsible before God, not to a made up religion or wordly leader.
3) Objection: It’s out of date.
Truth: God’s truth is eternal, time passes, customs change but His truth remains.
4) Objection: We live under the New Covenant so we don’t need to bother to read the Old Testament.
Truth: We can’t appreciate Jesus apart from the history of the OT. Fail to understand the OT covenants between God and His people, and their failure to keep them, then we fail to understand the significance of God’s grace, through the atonement of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross.
5) Objection: The Red letters count more than the Black letters.
Truth: If all Scripture is God-breathed as 2 Timothy 3:16 says, then all Scripture must be given equal weight.
6) Objection: There are so many contradictions and different interpretations that I can’t accept the Bible as literally true.
Truth: The Bible must be read like any other piece of literature in the fact that each book lends itself to a style of writing genre. We must know the context and literary genre as we read each book and passage in order to understand it correctly. But let us also be reminded it is unlike any other literary piece because it is directly from the mouth of God.
7) Objection: I just don’t get anything out of the Bible.
Truth: The Bible isn’t a quick self help book. It is to satisfy our deepest hunger for knowledge about acceptable living and service for our King. It is to satisfy our hunger to know our creator and one true God personally.
There are many other objections but those are some common ones that keep people from studying God and His Word, which ultimately prevents them from a relationship with Him.
Let’s turn our attention now to a very important truth when it comes to understanding who God is.
GOD IS ONE
The truth that God is One.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
In addition to other verses supporting this fact, the 10 commandments shows that Israel was expected to understand that there is only one God, not many.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
And also in the NT book of James...
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
Now understanding that we look back on the question, if God is one, how is there 3 persons in the Trinity?
TRINITY
No where in the Bible does it say the word Trinity but there is evidence throughout that God exists in three persons.
The Father is recognized in Scripture as God.
who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
2. Jesus Christ is recognized as God. (This truth is not found in most false religions today.)
The apostle recognize Jesus as God in John 20:28 when he said to Jesus,
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus also knew things about people that only God would know...
Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?
3. The Holy Spirit is recognized as God.
We saw this in a verse we read in last week’s sermon...
Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”
The Holy Spirit, like Jesus and the Father possess the same attribute of omnipresence. He is everywhere...
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
We can see in Isaiah 48:16 that the Spirit is in an equal relationship with God, the Sovereign Lord...
“Come near me and listen to this:
“From the first announcement I have not spoken in secret;
at the time it happens, I am there.”
And now the Sovereign Lord has sent me,
endowed with his Spirit.
And of course we can obviously see that the Trinity is recognized in:
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Each is referred to “in the name” not “in the names” of.
B.B. Warfield, a pastor and author wrote many years ago,
“The doctrine that there is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three eternal and co-equal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in subsistence or existance.”
Many different denominations and beliefs will say that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not equal and one or the other is more supreme over the other, but this is not true at all.
To understand who God is we must first understand that He is One, existing in three perfect persons.
Since we have already discussed the Father and Son in detail throughout this Design for Discipleship series, and next week Andy will be speaking on the Holy Spirit, we’re going to move into God’s characteristics or Perfections as Charles Ryrie would call them.
GOD’S CHARACTERISITICS/PERFECTIONS
It’s important for us to realize that God has so many other characteristics that I can not cover them all in this sermon, but this gives us a good look at some of them.
As I go through them I want us to see who He is and why we needed His Son Jesus to come and die for us. (From an Answers in Genesis Video)
In Genesis 1:1 we read that God is Supreme, He created us to live with him forever.
But we as humans rejected Him.
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.
b. In God’s eternal plan He became a man so that we can be children of God.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—
2. God is eternal
Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
a. Adam’s rebellion brought sin into the world.
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
b. But in God’s eternal plan, the everlasting God became a man, Jesus (John 3:16) so that we could have everlasting life.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;
3. God is unchanging
God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”
“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.
a. God does not change but we wander and stray like sheep.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
b. But in God’s eternal plan the unchanging God became a man to show us the right way.
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.
4. God is Truth
Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
a. As humans we are not always truthful, in fact we are in darkness, stumbling around in human reasoning which is not grounded in truth.
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
b. But in God’s eternal plan the God of truth became a human to light the way and show us truth.
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
5. God is almighty or all powerful
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless.
a. As humans we are weak and can’t solve all the world’s issues in our own strength.
“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
b. But because of God’s eternal plan, He became a man so we could find strength in Him.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
6. God is holy
Exalt the Lord our God
and worship at his footstool;
he is holy.
a. In the beginning of creation He made everything holy, set apart for His purpose.
b. But we as humans chose sin which is impure and went our own way.
But your iniquities have separated
you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear.
c. Thankfully in God’s eternal plan He, a holy God, became a man, as Jesus Christ so we could be holy through His death on the cross.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
7. God is omniscient, He knows everything
David says in Psalm139...
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
a. We as humans think we have all the knowledge in the world but we know nothing compared to God. Our prideful thinking has led us away from our creator, but we must eventually give an account one day before Him.
Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
b. But thankfully the all knowing God came down to earth, through Jesus Christ in order to teach us, and lead us to His saving work on the cross.
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Relationship with God
In the book, “The Good and Beautiful God”, James Brian Smith, tells about a poem that he read and it was very profound but hard to understand as it is in old english and I’ve already given you a TON of information so I’m just gonna give you the quick layout of it.
It tells of the steps that we take when we approach or hide from God, who is full of love:
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
When God draws near, we tend to pull back because He is holy and righteous and we feel we’re far from perfect.
We draw back because of sin and guilt.
But God sees us fully and completely with eyes of compassion.
As we hesitate, God draws nearer.
God asks, “Why have you sinned, do you need or lack something?”
In our hearts we feel we lack a sense of being worthy.
God says you are worthy because I say you are.
But we feel we still have to earn God’s love so we respond, “Do you realize how messed up I am?”
God smiles and says, “Who made your eyes?”, look at me.
We say, “Yes, you made my eyes but I have not used them in the right way- I’ve corrupted them.” “I’m a mess, give me what I deserve, not what I want!”
God responds by saying, “I won’t disagree with you there, you have failed and deserve punishment for it but that’s what Jesus did. He bore your sin and shame on the cross. So leave it there at the cross and come to me.”
But of course the message of grace makes us feel guilty instead of feeling joy and freedom. So we try in our own strength to do better or make a promise we can’t keep. We feel we actually owe God.
Instead, God says, “sit, rest and feast with me. Enjoy my presence, I don’t need anything from you but a surrendered and willing heart. Let me love you.”
As a result when we understand this we rejoice in His goodness and love and serve Him, not motivated by guilt but by the goodness and grace that He showed us through His Son Jesus.
We do this because we trust that God’s character is unchanging and nothing can separate us from Him when we are in His family.
This question we asked today when we started, “Who is God?” is such am enormous subject that we couldn’t cover it all this time but I hope you’ve gained a little better insight into who He is?
As we leave I pray you leave with these truths:
1. God Almighty is the creator of all and loves you without condition.
2. He sent Jesus His Son to die for your sins.
3. God has reconciled us back to Himself even though we sinned through Jesus’ death on the cross.
4. And in Christ we are a new creation.
5. The Holy Spirit enables us to choose wisely living as a new creation and abiding by God’ Word.
6. God will one day make all things new again and e will be with Him forever!
We don’t need to come to God with false promises but a willing heart and a broken spirit that is open to His Will. ..
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
Let’s Pray