God (BFM #2)
Text: Psalm 14:1; James 2:19
By: Ken McKinley
(Read Text)
This is the second in our series on the BFM and it’s the second point. The BFM says, “There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the Universe. God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience. The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.”
The Bible never argues for the existence of God. In Genesis chapter one verse one it simply starts out with: “In the beginning God…” And I would say that all of us here today don’t need to be convinced that He exists. We’ve experienced His love in our salvation, we’ve seen the joy of an answered prayer, we’ve felt His presence in times of loneliness or grieving, we’ve known His guidance in our lives at various times.
But there is an attack on the existence of God today. Evolution says that we were the result of some cosmic accident. Humanism states that we are gods unto ourselves. Our politicians want to remove God from our pledge and our coins. TV tries to demean Christianity and God, or just pretend that He doesn’t exist.
I once heard a joke that there was a man who was an atheist. One day the mans son came home from school and told his father that his friend at school had invited him to come to church on Sunday. The man took his son by the shoulders and looked him square in the eye and said, “Son, we don’t believe in God, we’re atheists. We believe that evolution is responsible for humanity, not some God out there.” The little boy sat quietly for a moment and then looked at his dad and said, “Dad, do you think God knows we don’t believe in Him?”
Out text says that to not believe in God makes a person a fool. And we wonder why it seems to many today are incapable of rational and logical thinking. God does exist, even the devil knows that but there are many today who deny this truth. When I was in college I had to take a science course for my degree. The professor was an atheist. He tried to explain to the class how using just our natural senses, he could disprove the existence of God. He said, “We cannot see God, we cannot hear God, we cannot touch God and we cannot smell God. If something is undetectable by our natural senses then we can safely say that it does not exist outside of our imagination.”
I raised my hand and waited until I was called upon, then I said, “Professor; I cannot see your brain, I cannot hear your brain, I cannot touch your brain, or smell your brain – so according to your so called logic, your brain does not exist.” I failed the class but made my point. And here’s the interesting thing, that professor was fired, a new professor was hired, and it just so happened that this new professors wife was a very active member in one of the local churches, so I was able to retake the class and pass. It may sound simple or it may sound silly, but to me, that is proof that there is a God.
Scripture tells us that God is Spirit (John 4:24). He is not a body of flesh and blood. He is not subject to the limitations of time and space. He is not subject to the results of sin – such as sickness or death. He is a Spirit. Now being a Spirit does means that God is not as some claim, a mystical force that flows through everything. He is not an overwhelming influence felt by some and not by others. God is a Spirit, and yet Scripture teaches that God has personhood as well. He has joy, anger, grief… He acts, punishes, saves and intervenes on the behalf of His creation.
But Scripture also teaches that He is Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, all powerful, almighty, all knowing, everywhere at once. Have you ever thought about that? It will blow your mind if you get too deep… just think about it, God is presently at creation while simultaneously at the end of human history, and also at all points in between.
Let me just list some of the attributes of God given to us in Scripture.
1. He is self existent: That means that no-one created God. He has always been, and always will be, and He doesn’t need anything or anyone to remain in existence.
2. He is immutable: That means that He is unchanging. He is forever the same in His will, in His promises, in His nature, and in His character. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
3. He is infinite: That means that He is not subject to any limitations. He isn’t limited in His power, in His knowledge, in His wisdom, or anything. God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, all powerful, all knowing, everywhere at once
4. He is sovereign, He is holy, He is righteous, He is just, He is merciful, He is loving, He is gracious, and He perfect in every way.
God is more than just the “Big Man Upstairs,” He is the sovereign creator and sustainer of the universe. He’s not some mythical Santa Claus, or a heavenly slot machine that we can manipulate to get what we want, when we want it.
The BFM goes on to state that “The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.” That’s talking about the Trinity, God’s triune nature. He is one God, not three separate gods, One God, in three distinct Persons, or we could say, personalities. It is impossible to fully understand the Trinity, but we believe it because the Bible teaches it. I will get to this as we look at each Person of the Trinity as we go along in this series, so I don’t want to spend too much time on it today. But like I said, the Bible teaches that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God. 3 in 1.
It is this Triune God that is the Creator of all things. Genesis tells us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The Hebrew word for God is Elohim, which is actually in the plural sense, meaning God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all involved in the creation. That’s also why we read in Genesis, when God says let US make man in OUR image and after OUR likeness.
Now we don’t have a lot of time to go into this further today, but we will talk more about God, and about each member of the Trinity in the next few Sundays.
So if you leave here with nothing else, remember this: God is the sovereign Lord of the Universe and He is more amazing than either you or I could ever fully understand.
That’s why the BFM says, “To Him we owe our highest love, reverence, and obedience.”
That’s what Scripture teaches us in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Mark 12:30. That we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. We should love Him with every fiber of our being.
Do we love God in this way?
