08.07.22 Evening - Baptist Catechism Q8 - Part 1

Good evening. •We are continuing our study of the Baptist Catechism.  •Specifically, we are using the edition found in the white catechism booklets that we give away here at the church. (Published by Reformed Baptist Publications) •And this evening, we come to Question 8.  •And this question has to do with the single greatest theme of Scripture: God Himself.  •Our question this evening is this: “What is God?” Now, I confess that the subject at hand is beyond me.  •It’s beyond everyone.  •And I am humbled before the matter about which I must speak this evening.  •There are better men than I who have taught on this subject and in a much deeper way than I can go.  •This question is deep. It’s deeper than any can go, really. Nobody can fathom what God is.  •But, at the same time, it is so important for us to consider and think about the question: “What is God?” •And we must think through to an answer. And, if it is to be correct, that answer needs to come from God Himself.  •So then, we need to look to the Scriptures if we’re to understand anything about what God is.  This question will be divided into two sermons.  •What I want to do is give a 30,000-foot view of what our catechism teaches about God in His nature and attributes.  •I simply want to affirm and proclaim to you what the Word of God says about God Himself. That’s my plan in this sermon and the next one.  I confess that some of the things that we are going to learn about God will no doubt breed questions in your minds.  •As we will see, God is incomprehensible. We cannot fully know or understand everything about Him, nor can we understand one single thing about Him ENTIRELY.  •So, there will be questions. And I probably won’t answer them. Not in the sermon, at least. (There wouldn’t be enough time.) •But, as always, I will make myself available to talk to each of you about anything you’d like to ask. (Whatever knowledge I have is yours.) So, all I want to do this evening is consider what our catechism affirms about God, and flesh it out a little from the Scriptures.  •As I said earlier, the knowledge and skill of all men are nothing compared to the subject of God.  •But regardless of my limited skill, I can say this: The things we are about to see from the Scriptures are going to knock us to the ground in awe of God.  •We are going to learn that God is simply NOT LIKE US.  •God is God. He is utterly unique.  So, let’s consider the question, “What is God?” •But first, let’s pray for God’s blessing.  (PRAY) Holy God,  You are so high above us. You are majestic and glorious.  You are comprehended by none but yourself.  You are simply beyond us. Beyond what we can fathom in our finite minds.  And so, we ask now that you would teach us about yourself from your Word.  Give us a glimpse of what you are. Show us something of your holiness. Show us something of your glory.  And, revealing yourself to us, change us. Leave us in awe of the only true and living God.  Grant that by understanding more of what you are, that we would have a deeper respect and love and for you.  Change us this evening. And show us yourself.  We ask these things in Jesus’ Name and for His sake.  Amen.  Our question for this evening. I ask that you would read the answer with me.  Q. What is God? A. God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.  •(Let’s do that again.) 1.) In this sermon, we’re going to consider some things about God.  •We’re going to consider some “basic” things, if you can call them that, about what God is.  First, our catechism declares that God is A SPIRIT.  •If nothing else, this means that God has no physical or material body. He is a pure spirit.  •Jesus explicitly tells us this in John 4:24: “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” •So, God has no body. He is a spirit. He is immaterial.  In light of this explicit teaching, when the Bible ascribes physical traits to God, they are meant to be understood symbolically or metaphorically.  •When the Bible speaks about physical body parts and says that God has them (usually in poetic portions of Scripture), what is going on is that God is communicating certain truths about Himself to us in a way that we can understand.  •Hands/arm represents His power and His ability to protect and care for His People.  •His face represents His blessing and kindness.  •His eyes and ears represent His omniscience and awareness of all that goes on in the universe.  •You get the idea: While God does not literally have a body, we do. And so, we understand what is being communicated when body parts are ascribed to God.  •Truths are being communicated in ways that human beings can understand.  •By the way, that’s how the Scripture speaks to us about God in general: In baby talk so we can understand something true about the incomprehensible God.  But the divine nature/essence, God, cannot be seen.  •Only one Person of the Trinity can be see: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  •And only He can be seen because He is truly human and has a human nature. He can be seen because He, the Second Person of the Trinity, took a human nature to Himself and the human nature is visible.  •But GOD, properly speaking, cannot be seen. God is a spirit.  •John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, He has made Him known.” •No one has ever seen God. No one has ever seen the divine nature because God is immaterial.  Notice something interesting about our catechism at this point: It says “God is A spirit.” It does not say “God is spirit.” •Why does our catechism say “A spirit?” •It says “A spirit” because our forefathers in the Faith wanted to clearly affirm that God is a PERSON.  •God has personality. He is not a mere cosmic force. He is a HE.  •He does things with volition and will. He speaks. He acts consciously.  •John 5:17 says, “But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’” •God works. God acts. God has a will. God is a Person.  In summary, so far we see that: •God is an active, speaking, working, volitional, willful, conscious Being who has no physical body.  •Already we are knocked to the ground.  •Why is that? Because we are already faced with the truth that there is nothing like this in all the created world.  •There is nothing like this in all the universe EXCEPT FOR GOD.  •We have already come face to face with the holy God.  •Holy: separate, distinct, unique, other.  •There is nothing else in the whole world that is immaterial and yet a Person.  •God alone is God.  2.) The second thing our catechism affirms about God is that He is INFINITE.  •Now what does “infinite” mean?  •Infinite means that something cannot be measure. And it cannot be contained. It means that something is without boundaries. That it can’t be bound by anything.  •Our catechism is saying that God is beyond material space. That He is not confined to the universe. That He cannot be measured. That He expands beyond the created order.  •That’s what it means that God is infinite.  2 Chronicles 2:6 says,  “But who is able to build Him a house, since heaven, even the highest heaven, cannot contain Him? Who am I to build a house for Him, except as a place to make offerings before Him?” •King Solomon says that the Temple he built for the worship of God is not truly, in the fullest sense, God’s dwelling place.  •And that’s because nothing can contain Him.  •The Temple was simply a place to make offerings where God made His presence known to His People. But the Temple could not contain Him.  •And that is because God is infinite.  Catch that and marvel: God exists both within and outside of the created universe because nothing can contain Him.  •What else in all the world is both in creation and yet not contained within the created world? •We can’t even fathom this: That something is beyond the created world. Or that something is both in and beyond the created universe at the same time.  And God’s infinitude naturally points us to God’s omnipresence.  •He is infinite and cannot be contained. Therefore, He is everywhere.  •Psalm 139:7-12 beautifully states, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.” •He is everywhere. Everywhere that is, He is there. And even beyond the created universe, He is there as well.  •Heaven, Hell, earth, the sea, everywhere. He is with us. He is ever-present everywhere. •Nothing can be hidden from God. His eye is upon the whole creation. There is nowhere that God is not.  •Hear that and worship: There is NOWHERE that God is not.  I want to highlight one more thing about the infinitude of God before we move on.  •And this one is huge for us to see.  •Since God is infinite, since He has no end, since there is no containing Him, that means that He is INCOMPREHENSIBLE to finite creatures.  •Incomprehensible means that we, finite creatures, cannot fully know Him in all the ways He can be known.  •He is only fully understood, fully comprehended, by Himself.  •The finite cannot wrap its mind around the infinite.  •Brothers and sisters, this means that we can know God TRULY, but we can never know Him comprehensively. We can never know everything about Him or fully understand one thing about Him to the fullest extent.  Psalm 145:3 says,  “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.” •God is unsearchable. You can’t get your mind around Him fully.  •Job 26:14 says, “Behold, these are but the outskirts of His ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand?” •Job affirmed that we cannot fully understand even the fullness of the power of God.  •Isaiah 55:8-9 says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” •We cannot understand fully the ways and wisdom of the Lord.  •1 Timothy 6:16 says, God “…alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.” •Paul tells us that we cannot approach God, let alone comprehend who He is in His divine nature.  •Deuteronomy 29:29 says, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God…” •There are things that God has not revealed. Even things about Himself.  Brothers and sisters, the only reason and way that we can know anything about God is for God to stoop down low and reveal something about Himself to us.  •There is no other way.  •He is so far above us and we cannot grasp Him.  •HE MUST HIMSELF SPEAK TO US or we cannot know Him.  •We cannot know everything about God because He is without boundaries and without end.  •He is infinite. We cannot know Him fully. But we can know Him truly.  ILLUSTRATION: (I’m stealing this from Sam Renihan) •If you go up to a redwood tree in California and try to put your arms around it, you can’t. You simply cannot get your arms around something so great and huge.  •Your arms cannot “comprehend” the tree.  •But that doesn’t mean that you can’t touch the tree, see the tree, feel the bark, and know true things about the tree.  •In a similar way, we cannot “get our arms around” God. But we can know true things about Him.  •Though He is incomprehensible, He is knowable. And He is knowable because He has revealed Himself to us in His Word.  Brothers and sisters, we are knocked to the ground again.  •The God we serve is infinite. There are none like Him.  3.) The third thing our catechism affirms about God is He is ETERNAL.  •Deuteronomy 33:27 says, “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms…” •Our God is forever. Period. He has no beginning. And He has no end. He is eternal in both directions.  •As Moses says in Psalm 90:2, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” •We do not serve a god like the god of Mormonism or the other pagan that once did not exist. No, far from it. We serve the eternal and everlasting God.  There was never a time when God was not.  •What a thought!  •Everything we have ever encountered in the created world has a beginning point. It has an origin point.  •Everything we interact with in this world has a time when it came into being. And that means that there was a time when it did not exist.  •But not God. He simply always has been. He is the eternal One.  And only God is eternal IN AND OF Himself.  •Isaiah 44:6 says, “Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.” •God alone can say this about Himself because eternality properly belongs to Him alone.  •Now, let’s be clear: The souls of men live forever. And the dead will be resurrection to either eternal life or eternal damnation.  •But the eternality of souls and bodies only exist in one direction: From the time they came into being and forward. They are not eternal “backward,” so to speak.  •More than that, the eternality of souls and resurrected bodies is a GRANTED eternality.  •That is, GOD GIVES eternal existence to men. But we do not possess this in and of ourselves.  •Only God has eternality in and of Himself.  And since God is eternal, we must affirm that He exists OUTSIDE OF TIME.  •He was before time began.  •Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning (time) GOD…” •God was there before the beginning, if you can try to wrap your mind around that.  •He was there before the beginning, He was there before time existed, and He created the beginning. He created time itself.  •He is, therefore, outside of time and space.  •And since God is not bound to time, but rather is it’s Creator, all of time is at once to Him.  •Though He operates and speaks and acts within human history, He is not bound to time like we are.  •Again, we can’t fathom this. We have nothing to compare it to and no experience to equal it.  Lastly, on the subject of God’s eternality, we affirm that God, the divine nature, DOES NOT DIE.  •1 Timothy 1:17 says, “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” •God is eternal and, therefore, immortal. He cannot die.  •And I bring this up to say to you that though we say, “God died on a Cross” we do not mean that the divine nature died.  •Only the human nature of the Son of God died at the Cross. But God did not die.  •And the only reason that the Son of God died, the only reason that God died in His human nature was to die as a substitute for sinners.  •But God, properly speaking, cannot die.  Brothers and sisters, again I say to you: •There is nothing like Him.  4.) Fourthly, and finally, for this evening, our catechism affirms that God is UNCHANGEABLE.  •Psalm 102:27 says, “…but you are the same, and your years have no end.” •God remains the same. All things in the universe change. But not Him.  •He does not change in His nature. He cannot be added to or subtracted from.  •He ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT CHANGE.  •James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” •Malachi 3:6 says, “For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” •God simply does not change in any way.  God is utter perfection. He is the definition of perfection and goodness and holiness.  •And He is eternally and unchangeably perfect.  And He does not change His mind.  •Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?” •God does not change His mind. Ever. For any reason.  But what about those texts that seem to say that God changed His mind? •At this point, J.G. Vos is helpful. So I’ll just quote from his commentary on the Westminster Larger Catechism: If God is unchangeable, why does the Bible speak of God “repenting” or changing His mind, as for example in the case of the city of Nineveh in Jonah 3:10? God Himself never changes; God’s creatures change, and the result of this is that the relation between them and God changes. In the case of Nineveh, for example, God did not really change His mind. It was the people of Nineveh who really changed; they turned from their wicked way. God did not change His mind, for the whole series of events, including Jonah’s preaching, the Ninevites’ turning from their wickedness, and God’s “repenting of the evil that He had said He would do,” was all part of God’s original plan.  In other words, even before Jonah arrived at Nineveh, God planned and intended to “change His mind” following the Ninevites’ change of their conduct. But when God “changes” His mind according to plan, it is clear that He does not really change His mind at all, but only changes His dealings with His creatures. •Now, I admit that there is more to say on that topic, but that is a great, brief, summary answer. •But know this: God does not change. And He does not change His mind.  God’s unchangeableness means a few more things for us to consider:  •He does not learn.  •Isaiah 40:4 says, “Whom did He consult, and who made Him understand? Who taught Him the path of justice, and taught Him knowledge, and showed Him the way of understanding?” •That’s actually kind of funny. God is asking, “Who has ever taught me anything?” The answer is, “No one.” •If God cannot change, then knowledge and information cannot be added to Him.  •He knows all things in and of Himself.  •In fact, we could say that God knows all things because He has ordained all things in and of Himself, independent of His creation.  •He doesn’t change. So all knowledge is from Him.  Another thing to consider: If God does not change, then that means that God, properly speaking, does not “exist.” •Don’t panic! To “exist,” properly speaking, means “to come into being.” •To come into being means that a change has occurred: Something has to go from the state of non-being to being if it “came into being.” •But God does not change. He does not go from one state to another. Therefore, we can affirm that God does not “exist” like other beings.  •Rather, God subsists in and of Himself. His being is in and of Himself. And He is pure being.  To use the language of Scripture, God simply IS.  •Exodus 3:14: God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.” •God simply is. He says “I AM.”  •He is not becoming. He simply IS.  •He is not changing from one state to another, from one mind to another, from one emotion to another.  •No, far from it. GOD JUST “IS.” He needs nothing.  •He is dependent upon nothing.  •He is dependent upon no one.  •He just is. And He always has been.  •And He has always been exactly what He is.  •He is the unchangeable God.  5.) Brothers and sisters, what do we do with all of this? •I think there is only one proper application: •Bow down before Him.  •Isaiah 40:18 says: “To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with Him?” •Confess that there are none like Him.  •And get on your face and worship the God who is worthy of your worship simply because of who He is! This is all so incredibly humbling to consider.  •And we’ve only barely begun to scratch the surface of what God is.  •God is magnificent! God is astounding! God is God! Psalm 50:21 says,  “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.” •Brothers and sisters, it is a terrible sin to assume that God is like us at all.  •The only ways that we are like God are the ways that we are a tiny shadow of some of His perfections.  •But the things we’ve considered this evenings are in NO WAY like us.  •Do not commit such a great sin as to assume that God is like you! •He is not! He is GOD! And He alone is God! Brothers and sisters, we are physical.  •We are finite. We are comprehensible. We are only in place at one time. We can be measured.  •We have a beginning and an end. We are bound to time. We change every second. We change our minds. We learn. We are dependent upon so many different things. •Brothers and sisters, all that is to say, WE ARE NOT GOD.  •He is beyond us. He is glorious. He is unique.  •Worship Him! And worship Him in humility! And worship Him because, in Christ, God lowered Himself and united Himself to a true, created human nature.  •And, in that nature, He subjected Himself to physicality, finitude, limit, time, mutability, and all the rest.  •And why would God lower Himself so much to become a man?  •Why would God subject Himself to something so beneath His majesty? TO SAVE US.  •To save the very ones who have offended against His majesty.  •To bear our sins as our substitute and die on a cross.  •To give us a righteousness that we could never possess in ourselves.    •And to rise on the Third Day as the victorious Savior of sinners.  Worship this God.  •There is not God like our God in His nature OR in His acts.  •Worship this God. For He is worthy beyond all we can imagine.  •Amen.