Sermon Tone Analysis

None like Him

Who is God?

Who is God?

This one little question can reveal a lot about a person’s beliefs, or even the maturity of their faith.

And it’s a question there are many different answers for, depending on who you ask.

If you travel to India and ask the question, who is God, you might get a variety of answers about which gods are favorited by the individuals.

Or if you travel to a post-Christian country, like Germany or most of Europe, you might receive the response “There is no God” which is just another way of saying “We are our own god”.

Wherever you go, whether it’s across the street to your neighbors, the clerk in your local supermarket, or even the vast populations across the world, all mankind has been created by God and for God, and all people worship something.

But without guidance and instruction from the one true God, all of life, all of worship, is in vain.

It is the goal of our sermon series to help build you up and guide you to truth, as God himself has revealed it.

This sermon is a continuation in our series, The Church: Faith and Family.

And the goal, the plan that Marcus and I have set out for and hope to achieve, is the same goal set forth in Ephesians 4. And I quote:

“… he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers

The goal of this series is to help grow the saints of Christ into full maturity in their faith so that they can be free to live how God made them to live.

And part of growing in your faith means tackling the question, “Who is God?”.

And so, Marcus and I sat down and crafted a summary statement of belief that we think accurately portray a solid view of the God of the Bible, that reflects the very views of this church.

You were introduced to it last week, as we covered the first sentence.

(read first sentence).

This sentence speaks to the nature of who God is.

Denying a part of the Trinity leads to false doctrine and thus a worship of a false idea, or false god.

So it is imperative to know that object of our focus and worship is the Triune God, who are One essence yet three persons.

But now we pick up on the next three sentences, which help us understand further who exactly God is in his attributes and character.

(read rest of the statement)

We believe God is the Father, the Son and the Spirit who are One essence existing eternally in a loving relationship with one another.

He is perfect, infinite, eternal, and unchanging.

He is all-powerful, all-knowing, always present, self-sufficient, and sovereign.

He is righteous, holy, just, loving, gracious, merciful, and true.

Amen?

Amen.

But if you were to walk away with one message, one sentence from the entire sermon, that message would be this:

There is no one, and no thing, like the LORD God.

(repeat)

There’s nothing out there that even compares to God, yet alone lives up to his titles and his reputation.

There is no one that can match him in character, in how they exist, in what they perform or are capable of.

And because there is nothing that even compares to the Lord God, he alone must be God.

He alone must be God.

Don’t settle for anything less.

With that said, let’s pray and then jump into the rest of the sermon.

Please pray with me.

(Prayer)

It’s a gargantuan task to preach on all the aspects of God, one for which any man is woefully unprepared.

The enormity of our God is no easy feat to examine in just a mere 30 minutes.

And as if time were not our only enemy here, words themselves fail to capture God in his entirety.

Why?

Because there’s no one like him.

He is one of a kind.

He’s the only God and there is no other.

Truly he is holy, holy, holy, distinct from all creation and all other types of beings: angels, humans, animals, and whatever other classifications we can think of.

And we know that he is distinct because there are some qualities he possesses that are uniquely his.

For example, there is no other being that is truly infinite.

Infinite in time and in space.

God is so big, even the universe couldn’t fit him.

Think about that for a moment.

Here you are, sitting on a pew in a church.

Zoom out a bit, and you see that the church is one building in a town, and that town is on the coast of Washington, which is on the coast of North America.

Zoom out even further and you are just a pinpoint on the surface of Earth, which is one planet in the solar system.

The solar system is one speck in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of countless galaxies in the known galaxy.

We are so miniscule in comparison to the rest of the universe.

Yet we are told that even all of creation, all of the universe itself, cannot contain the Lord God.

(Pause).

What other being or person can say that?

Hmm?

Truly, none.

So there are some characteristics of God that are uniquely his as the supreme divine being.

In theological terms we call those incommunicable attributes, because no one else holds those titles or can do those things.

Incommunicable is just a fancy word that means these attributes are not imparted to others.

They aren’t given to humans or to angels or can be held by any other being.

Incommunicable- Not imparted to others

Some examples of these attributes include God’s

Perfection

Infinite

Eternal

Unchanging

But there are also some attributes which God possesses that his created beings are able to share in.

These are the communicable attributes.

Communicable is just a fancy word to say that these are the things in which God shares.

These characteristics are imparted to others.

Communicable- Imparted to others

Some examples of these attributes include, but are not limited to, God’s

Righteousness

Holiness

Justice

Love

Grace

Mercy

Truth

Have you ever wondered why we as human beings are able to love?

It’s because we were first loved.

We have been given an example of how to love, and so we mimic that example and pass it down from generation to generation.

Without that first example, none of us would know how to love each other, to bear with one another despite our disagreements.

And God is that primary example.

He taught us how to love.

We cannot love apart from who God is.

God is love.

All expressions of love stem from the Godhead himself in how the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, and how the Spirit has been said to be the bond of love between the Father and the Son.

Before mankind could even love there was a precedent for how to love.

As created beings who are made after the image of God, we were meant to carry forth God’s love and his other attributes to all of creation.

That was mankind’s task, their mission.

Now we know that there are twisted and corrupted versions of love because mankind has moved away from love as God has defined it, from who God is in his very person.

I say “versions of love” because they aren’t truly love.