All Things New: God Revealed
Beartown Road Alliance Church
Last week we began a series called All Things New. We’re looking at the amazing transformation that God wants to make in our lives. The purpose of these next few weeks is to restore in us a sense of awe at the nature of God and a sense of gratitude for the way that He loves us. We began with a snapshot of humanity. Not the picture that most of us would like to think that we look like, but a view of reality, a view of the way that Scripture presents man. This picture of humanity, of you and me, is not a popular one. We want to believe that we’re basically good and that we’re OK and that we really don’t need God. We looked at the choice of Adam to sin and the consequences of that in our lives. We are destined to live lives of sin, selfishness, and struggle. Just like our picture of who we are can tend to be skewed, our picture of who God is can tend to be off as well.
On our vacation a few weeks ago, we got to enjoy the beauty of the Adirondacks, it was the first time that I had ever been up into those mountains. It was amazing. I love the mountains. I remember the first time I ever saw real mountains, in high school I was flying into Denver and I remember watching the sun set behind the Rockies and just being in awe of how beautiful they were. When we go and visit the Banks family in Haiti, it’s the same thing. I could sit for hours and just look at the huge mountains off in the distance, there is just something about mountains that I really enjoy. When we moved to Ohio from Syracuse, one of the things that we hated was the landscape of that area. Central Ohio is completely flat. There are highways where you can literally drive for hours and the landscape never changes, its flat as far as the eye can see. It’s very plain and very ugly terrain. When we candidated here, we stopped at my mother’s house in Lewisburg to drop off the kids, and made the drive to Corning up through PA on 15. I think that is one of the prettiest stretches of highway that I have ever been on. We were so happy to see hills and when we got to Corning, we loved the fact that it was in a valley and surrounded on all sides by mountains. We love this area because of the natural beauty. A funny thing happened though. After spending time in the Adirondacks, driving through and enjoying those mountains, when we got back, ours looked smaller somehow. Whereas I would have talked about them as mountains in the past, I find myself referring to them as hills now. When we see something bigger and more impressive, it tends to make everything else pale in comparison.
Just like my perspective on the hills of Corning was changed when I was confronted with the Adirondacks, there are times when I think I know what God is like, I think I have it all figured out and my picture of Him is complete, and then He reveals something more to me or He moves in a situation in some unexpected way and I realize anew that He is beyond what I have imagined, He is bigger than my definition of Him and my perspective is changed.
As we begin our look at God this morning, I want you to understand a few truths as background to these sermons. This is the first.
1) God is bigger than anything we can or will describe this morning.
When Ethan and Catie were little, we used to ask them the question, “How big are you?” And then we’d stretch their little arms out and say “Soooooo big!” Usually this was followed by tickling and laughter. They loved that. Over and over again we’d play the little game. Were they as big as they thought? No, but it was an exercise to impress upon them that they were growing and that they were getting bigger and bigger. When people ask us about God, we can say to them, He’s sooooo big! The difference is that for our kids that answer is and exaggeration, for God, that answer is an understatement.
JOB 11:7 "Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? JOB 11:8 They are higher than the heavens--what can you do? They are deeper than the depths of the grave--what can you know? JOB 11:9 Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea.
There is simply no language that can truly describe the God that we serve. God has chosen to make Himself known to us, He has chosen to reveal Himself to us in many different ways, each providing another piece of the puzzle as we begin to put together a picture of God that is far different than what many people imagine. But what we can understand and comprehend will never be the complete picture, there are aspects of who God is that we will never be able to fathom or grasp, in our humanity. We can know Him, we can see what He has revealed, but God is always bigger and there are aspects of His being that will always be a mystery and that we simply could not handle. We cannot know everything about God, but in His love for us, He has revealed to us all that we need to know about His character, His love, and His plan.
The second background truth is:
2) We cannot change God.
He has not and does not and will not be changed. How do you picture or describe God? You saw in the video this morning some of the different ways that people have answered that question. If you asked a hundred people, you could very well get a hundred answers. All of us seek to describe God and to define God in a way that makes sense to us. Some dumb him down to merely human terms and give Him human attributes that fit what they want their picture of Him to look like.
The French philosopher, Voltaire, noted that “God created man in His image, and man returned the favor.”
There is a desire to worship something that we think makes sense, that we can see and touch, and rather than push many towards God, it has led to many making God who they want Him to be. In Exodus, while Moses was receiving the ten commandments from God, the people of Israel grew impatient. At the first opportunity, when God did not behave and react the way that they wanted, they turned away and formed a god that they could see, in an image that they knew and understood. They had seen the power of God, they had eaten the manna He provided, walked on dry land while God held back the swirling waters of the Red Sea on either side of them, they had followed the pillar of fire that represented the presence of God. They had seen more of God than any people in history and still they chose to make their own image of Him. When Moses returned, he found the people bowing to a golden calf, a lifeless hunk of metal, rather than worshipping the living God who had brought them out of Egypt. We’re no different today. When God doesn’t fit in the box we’ve made, when God refuses to be tamed and to behave the way we decide He should, we have a tendency to redefine and recreate Him in our image and to turn away from the Truth.
Many try to make God what they want, others decide that God is simply unknowable and are content to leave it at that. Both views are common, both views are wrong.
The third Truth I want you to understand this morning is probably the most important one for us to grasp and that is the fact that:
3) God can be known.
The God we serve has a desire to be known. He wants His creation to seek Him, in fact, He commands it. When He commands that, it’s with the promise that He can be found, that He can be known. He reveals Himself to us in three primary ways.
A. His Creation.
Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Nature is a testament to God and who He is.
B. His Word
All throughout the pages of Scripture are revelations of the nature and character of God. Some are attributes that we can understand and even reflect to a degree in out lives, others are beyond the scope of our human minds. God reveals Himself to us in the pages of Scripture.
C. His Son
JN 14:9 Jesus answered: "Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
God can be known through a relationship with His Son, Jesus.
So, the Truth is that God can be known, we can understand His basic nature and attributes. He is God. While we will never fully understand the scope of what that means, we can know Him to the degree that He has chosen to reveal Himself to us. And the picture that we will see of who God is, makes it even more amazing that He loves us, when we look like the picture we saw last week.
So keep these things in mind as the background of everything that we will talk about in the next two weeks.
1) God is always bigger than we think.
2) In every attribute, God has not and does not change
3) God can be known.
With those things in mind, this morning, I want to begin our exploration into the nature of God by looking at two of His primary attributes. These are the two things that the rest of His nature flows out of. They are Holiness and Sovereignty. These are the attributes that if we can get our minds around them even to a degree, they will change the way that we think about God forever.
Let’s start with the Holiness of God.
I. Holiness
God is Holy! This is probably the most significant of all of God’s characteristics.
Psalm 111:9 says, “Holy and reverent is His name.” Job 6:10 refers to God as “The Holy One.” I Samuel 2:2 says, “There is none Holy like the Lord for there is none besides Thee.”
While we are called to display holiness in our lives, God is the only One who possesses that characteristic in absolute perfection. Holiness is the foundation to his being. Holiness is the background to everything else declared about God and every other attribute of God has to be looked at through this lens of holiness.
Pastor and author Tony Evans says this about God: “Holiness is the centerpiece of God’s attributes. Of all the things God is, at the center of His being, God is holy. Never in the Bible is God called, ‘love, love, love,’ or ‘eternal, eternal, eternal,’ or ‘truth, truth, truth.’ On this aspect of His character, God has laid the most stress.”
What is God’s Holiness? A.W. Tozer says that this is a concept that is impossible for us to fully comprehend because we have nothing to compare it to. He says: We cannot grasp the true meaning of the divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are capable of. God’s holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered. We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable.
While we can’t truly grasp the true and complete meaning of holiness, we can attempt to define what about God displays this nature. God’s Holiness can be seen in three ways:
1) He is absolutely pure.
There is no sin or evil in Him. Everything about Him is pure and right.
2) He is absolutely perfect
Everything about him is consistent. He never makes a mistake. The way he deals with the world and the way he deals with you and me is perfect. His will for us is perfect. All His ways are perfect.
Psalm 77:13 says, “Your ways, O God, are holy. What god is so great as our God?”
His decisions, His will, His ways, He is absolutely perfect.
3) He is absolutely separate
The word “Holy” in the Greek is the word “Hagios”, and it literally means separateness. It is a separation from sin or any kind of evil or impurity, but it is also a separateness from any other spirit or being. There is none like God!
He is not Holy because of something that He does or doesn’t do, God is Holy because of who He is. He is Holy because it is His nature. He isn’t holy because He conforms to a standard, He is the standard!
We’re called to strive for this standard in our lives. Even though this is an attribute that stands in stark contrast to who we are.
1 Peter 1:15-16 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."
We are called to be holy, not as God is holy, that’s an impossible standard for us, but we are called to be holy because God is holy. We are to bring our lives in line with what He calls us to be because He is the only holy God. It is God’s holiness that makes Him worthy of our praise and it is God’s holiness that makes Him worthy of our love and obedience. We have been set apart by God and are called to reflect the holy nature of God in all that we do.
This is not something that we do naturally. We talked last week about the struggle between our sin nature and our desire to follow God. Personal holiness in our lives is a choice. It is a mindset. It is the daily process of pushing our own will to the back and embracing the will of this Holy and Perfect God for us. Personal holiness means no longer seeing how close we can get to sin without actually sinning, but rather separating ourselves from sin and making the decision to run from it. We can reflect God’s quality of holiness even while never fully being able to attain it.
While we walk this Earth, we will always have our sin nature and when we come face to face with the Holiness of God, our sins and that sin nature are magnified. When I was a teen at Delta, I got a new pair of shoes for the summer. They were white K-Swiss, I had wanted a pair for a while because these were the shoes that all the cool people were wearing. There was only one problem. They were so new, so pure white, that my socks looked ridiculous. My socks hadn’t looked dirty before, but next to the white of the shoes, they were filthy and I tried to get those shoes dirty as quick as I could so no one would notice. We can make the right choices, we can live a godly life, we can look clean, but we will always be sinful and dirty when held to the standard of the Holiness of God. That’s why Jesus died. The only way, as Isaiah wrote, to remove the scarlet stain of sin and bring it to a pure snow white that mirrors God’s holiness, is through Jesus.
God is the definition of purity, God is the definition of perfection, and God has no equal, He is separate and unrivaled. These are results of the attribute that really defines His nature. The Holiness of God.
The second attribute that I want to look at this morning is the:
II. Sovereignty of God.
This is an attribute that flows out of His holiness. Because God is Holy, perfect, pure and separate, He can exercise Sovereignty over His creation.
The sovereignty of God can be defined like this: God’s absolute right to do all things according to His good pleasure. .
He can accomplish anything because His sovereignty also incorporates other aspects of who He is like His omniscience (he knows all), His omnipresence (he is everywhere) and His omnipotence (he is all powerful).
God is in control. There is nothing that happens apart from His knowledge. There are no circumstances that are beyond His reach. He was not surprised by the shootings at Virginia Tech last week. He did not have to regroup and reevaluate to see what He wanted to do. The sovereignty of God means that we have the assurance in all things that God is on the throne and that history and creation are heading in the direction that He ordained from the beginning of time towards that point where His glory will be revealed and He will fully redeem that which He has created. We can live life with the confidence of knowing that He is in complete control.
When Adam sinned in the garden, God had a plan. When Joseph was in prison, God had a plan. When Daniel was being persecuted, God had a plan and He showed His sovereignty over history by laying out for Daniel exactly what was coming. He told him that Babylon would fall to the Medo-Persians. Then the Greeks would rule followed by the Romans and that is exactly how it played out. Centuries before it was history, it was God’s plan.
The same is true today. When sickness strikes, God has a plan. When tragedy strikes, God has a plan. Not only does He have a plan but his plans can never be thwarted or slowed down or stopped. He is Sovereign! Only a sovereign God could make the kind of promises that he makes to us.
RO 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
God doesn’t promise comfort all the time, God doesn’t promise a life free of pain, but in His Sovereignty He promises to use anything and everything to move us towards where He wants us to be. Only God could make that promise, only God could keep that promise. This means we have to trust Him even when we don’t understand what He’s doing.
ISA 55:8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.ISA 55:9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
The biggest question that comes from the Truth that God is sovereign is “why does evil exist?” Why did God allow troopers to be shot this week? Why did God allow 9/11 to happen? Why does God allow child abuse and murder? I wish I had more time to address this but I will do my best in the time that we have. Understand this: God does not cause evil. Evil is not a result of God moving or a result of His indifference. God does not cause man to sin.
JAS 1:13 When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
The existence of pain and evil in this world is a result of God giving us a choice. Chip Ingram writes in his book, “God as He Longs for You to See Him,” Human freedom means we have the willful opportunity to say Yes and to love god, but we also have the willful opportunity to say no and to do what is wrong. God thought that it was so important to maintain our dignity that he gave us the opportunity to freely love or reject him, knowing that our freedom would result in pain. But He allowed it, knowing before the foundation of the Earth that the only remedy for that pain would be Jesus.
Evil and pain exist because we have the choice to follow God or to reject Him. God does not cause evil, but He allows it as a result of our rebellion and as the consequences of our sin. That means that the reality is that as a part of the fall of mankind, the choice to sin that we talked about last week, bad things happen to good people. But praise God that because He is sovereign, we can face trials and pain head on knowing that He will work things out for our good and for the glory of his name.
Look at the life of Job. If you want a picture of the sovereignty of God, look no further than this book. God allows Job to lose everything, to experience pain and tragedy in ways that none of us have ever dealt with. As Job sits and talks with his friends, God is silent. As they go back and forth on the nature of god and if Job should continue to trust Him, God remains silent. Finally, as Job begins to question God and His wisdom, God speaks.
Read Job 38 and Job 42:1-3
Job’s response was humility and repentance. He understood at last the sovereignty of His creator. We may not understand everything God does, but because He is sovereign we can trust that He is in control and what peace there is in that Truth.
We are beginning to piece together a picture of the God that we serve. There is nothing that we can compare Him to in our limited understanding. Next week we’ll continue to look at the incredible truths that God has revealed to us to draw us to himself and give us a glimpse of His majesty and splendor. But I want you to leave here this morning knowing that you serve a Holy God. There is none like Him, age to age the same, without beginning and he knows no end, and in his holiness, he exercises complete sovereignty over the world that he spoke into existence and he wants us to know Him.
God is not what many have made him out to be, he is always bigger, he is always more.
