Knowing God Series #3
“Our Infinitely Great Self-sufficient, immutable, incomprehensible God”
Introduction
God created us to know Him. \Relationship between the finite and the Infinite is not only possible but it is the foundation of life.
Give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works! Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice! Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually! Psalm 105:1-4 (ESV)
This is the purpose of our life. God seeks those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. God rewards those who diligently seek Him.
I. The nature of God
A. God is Spirit
B. God is personal
C. God is a Triunity (three in one)
D. God is infinite
“His love has no limit, His grace has no measure, His power has no boundary known unto men, for out of His infinite riches in Jesus, He giveth and giveth and giveth again.”
II. The Attributes of God
An attribute is anything that God has in any way revealed as being true of Himself.
Three attributes germinate all the other attributes; infinite greatness, purity and goodness!
A. God is infinitely great in His ability / capacity
B. God is infinitely pure in His morality
C. God is infinitely good in His relationships
A. God is infinitely great in His ability / capacity
1. God is self-existent
The Bible clearly asserts that everything finds its origin in a self-existent God. The wonder of God’s creative acts forms the foundation of belief in God. It is a beginning point from which all other truths sprout. God dragged Job back to creation when he demanded answers concerning his suffering.
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, "Who is this that darkens counsel By words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me! Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, Who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who enclosed the sea with doors when, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; when I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and I placed boundaries on it And set a bolt and doors, and I said, 'Thus far you shall come, but no farther; And here shall your proud waves stop'? Job 38:1-11
God told Isaiah to get up on a high mountain and tell the people to get their focus back on the eternally self-existent Creator.
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, And marked off the heavens by the span, And calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, And weighed the mountains in a balance And the hills in a pair of scales? Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, Or as His counselor has informed Him? With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowledge and informed Him of the way of understanding? Isaiah 40:12-14
The Psalms overflow with references to specific creative acts and wonders in creation. Paul appealed to the Gentiles on the basis of creation and the fact that His God gives life to everything. To diminish God’s direct role in the intricacies of Creation is to diminish our view of Him. I believe that is why Satan works so hard at diverting attention away from God as the ultimate cause of all things. Even well-intended Christians become victim to compromise in the area of Creation. The great I AM, the eternally existent God spoke our world into being and formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into Him His life. God created man as His ultimate creation that would bear His very image. He is the great uncaused cause of all things. He did not come into existence a sometime in the past. He has always existed from eternity past.
2. God is Eternal
This Self-existent God has always existed and always will.
Before the mountains were born, or You gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. Psalm 90:2
The life that God enjoys has always been and will ever be. Before time and space, the self-existent Triunity enjoyed perfect community without beginning and will be without out end.
God alone is the ONLY source of true existence / life -- come to Him for Life
God has been and always will be around – Count on Him.
God sees it all – Consult Him.
God is the infinitely great uncaused cause – Worship Him.
Today, we mine three more gold nuggets from the measureless mine of God’s infinite greatness, righteousness and goodness. These attributes don’t make Him great; they only serve to illustrate His greatness.
3. God is SELF-SUFFICIENT
Everyone strives to live independent. The reality is NO ONE can live completely independent. Everyone must depend on someone else for their existence. Only God lives completely independent of anyone or anything. Since God is infinite in every aspect, one could logically deduce that He would need nothing. Out of the truth of God’s self-existence flows the corresponding truth of self-sufficiency. All that God is, He is in Himself. He needs nothing or no one. Many appeals to serve God find their foundation in faulty thinking. They envision a God wringing His holy hands and pulling out His heavenly hair because He can’t find anyone to do His work for Him. To admit the slightest need in God is to admit incompleteness, imperfection in the divine being. “NEED” is a creature word due to weakness, incompleteness, insufficient knowledge, incompetence, immaturity, decay or inability. We need to change because we are imperfect beings. God is infinite in every aspect, therefore He needs nothing or no one.
• God needs no wise man to impart Him understanding or counsel.
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. Romans 11:33-36
He asked Job, “Who instructed me how to make the world.”
• God needs no worshippers to bring Him glory – He is already glorious.
“Were all human beings suddenly to become blind, still the sun would shine by day and the stars by night, for these own nothing to the millions who benefit by their light. So, were every man on earth to become atheist, it would not affect God in any way. He is what He is in Himself without regard to any other. To believe in Him adds nothing to His perfections; to doubt Him take nothing away.” TOZER
A beautiful sunset is not diminished because no one is there to describe and delight in the dazzling skyline. Neither is it enhanced when millions follow it as it drops into the sea. The majesty of Mt Everest or the Olympics or Cascades is no less spectacular because there is no one to gaze at its glaciers or ski its slopes. Our praise and worship do not change God. He is not magnified by our praise only in the eyes and perception of the people praising. God does not need our praise, our love, or our devotion. Even if everyone is a liar, God is true. He is completely satisfied in Himself. He is not some lonely God who created people in order to fill His lonely days with fellowship with His creatures or a need for worship. The lie that God needs anything is damnable lie fostered by the evil one. God’s lack of need for worshipers does not in any way negate His delight in them only that His delight is not based on need but relationship.
• God needs no workers to accomplish His purpose.
I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. Job 42:2
Many plans are in a man's heart, but the counsel of the LORD will stand. Proverbs 19:21
I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. Ecclesiastes 3:14
For the LORD of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back?" Isaiah 14:27
Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done,
"Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, 'My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure'; Calling a bird of prey from the east, The man of My purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it. Isaiah 46:9-11
also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, Ephesians 1:11
“Perhaps the hardest thought of all for our natural egotism to entertain is that God does not need our help.” Tozer
We often see Him portrayed as a frustrated Father flying around in a frenzy trying to find helpers and workers to further His cause. How many missionary appeals assert God’s desperate need for us to witness or people will be lost forever? God has proven that His purpose does not depend on people but on His own power. Once again, God’s lack of need for workers does not negate His delight in our obedience and service to Him. Out of love for our children we include them in projects that we could finish in far less time. It takes longer, but the cooperative effort deepens relationship. God delights to include us in matter of eternal importance.
• God needs no warriors to protect His kingdom.
We serve an all-powerful king. This can be a difficult doctrine to digest. It is the finite seeking to investigate the infinite; creatures, who only know dependence and need and strength in numbers, seeking to understand and relate to a God who stands in need of nothing and no one.
“Blessed news is that the God who needs no one has in sovereign condescension stooped to work in and through his obedient children.” TOZER
He needs no one, but when faith is present chooses to work through anyone. The essence of this may be summed up in this sentence.
“God has a voluntary relation to everything he has made but no necessary relation to anything outside of Himself.”
He needs no wise men but enlightens the minds of men to know the very mysteries of the universe. He needs no worshippers but seeks any who will worship in spirit and in truth. He needs no workers but calls laborers into the harvest that we might partner with Him. He needs no warriors but equips us and arms us to engage the enemy and know victory. God needs no one but delights to relate to anyone who comes to Him by faith.
“Such a One is to be revered, worshipped, adored. He is solitary in His majesty, unique in His excellency, peerless in His perfections. He sustains all, but is Himself independent of all. He gives to all, but is enriched by none.” PINK
This truth removes all flecks of pride and ideas that we do God a favor by our wisdom, our worship, our work and our warfare for Him. Our need to be needed flows out of a self-centered focus. It is a variation of the appeal to godhood. We have a need to be obedient not important.
Our service should not be based on some sense that we are indispensable or even deserving. We serve God because He calls and equips us to serve. It is He alone that gives us the opportunity and privilege to walk in His yoke along with Jesus who said, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Our service must be based on obedience and submission to a completely self-sufficient God who delights in including us. This truth should draw us to humble repentance for our arrogance. Our worth comes from relationship with Him and His work in us not from our actions for Him. This truth should generate deep gratitude to Him for qualifying us to serve on His team. Humility and gratitude naturally flow from contemplation of God’s self-sufficiency.
Since He is sufficient in Himself that He is more than sufficient for us. Sufficient love, grace, mercy, power, knowledge…
4. God is IMMUTABLE (unchanging)
We live in an ever changing world. Few things last or stay the same. The one thing that doesn’t not change is that things always change. The whole world constantly fluctuates.
Alvin Toffler wrote a book way back in 1970 called “Future Shock”
“A roaring current of change, a current so powerful today that it overturns institutions, shifts our values and shrivels our roots. Unless we do something to control the rate of change we are doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown.”
We live in a throwaway, ever-changing society from our environment to our moral underpinnings. The result of such rapid change over such short periods of time is “future shock” -- the response to over stimulation which reap physical and psychological consequences.
Life is fickle. People and things are basically unreliable; attitudes, machinery, weather, plans, parents, economy. All of life is mutable. “Mutable” means changeable subject to change. God does not change. An infinite, measureless, limitless God has no reason to change. He is immutable. God Himself stated it as clear as you can get.
I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. Malachi 3:6
David praised God for it.
I say, "O my God, do not take me away in the midst of my days, Your years are throughout all generations. Of old You founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. Even they will perish, but You endure; and all of them will wear out like a garment; like clothing You will change them and they will be changed. But You are the same, and Your years will not come to an end. The children of Your servants will continue, and their descendants will be established before You." Psalm 102:24-28
CONCEPT
The necessity for change is the result of…
A lack of insight, foresight or knowledge
A lack of power or ability or preparation
A lack of maturity or perfection
A lack of durability
If it ain’t broke, there is no need for repair. God is infinite and thus has no need for additions.
God is not subject to subtraction. God is not subject to degeneration. God is infinitely perfect and has no need for change. “All that God is, He has always been, and all that He has been and is, He will ever be.” He does not get better or worse. He does not get smarter or dumber.
He does not get stronger or weaker. His essence (essential nature) or attributes do not change.
Not a particle can be lost from Him nor a speck be added to Him. No improvement necessary, no deterioration possible. He is never moody. His love, His wisdom, His mercy, His holiness, His grace, His faithfulness, His justice, His compassion NEVER change. All of His actions flow out of a perfect unchanging balance of who He is.
His Word or plans never change.
Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God. For, all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off, but the word of the LORD abides forever. And this is the word which was preached to you. 1 Peter 1:22-25
Whatever God said, He will surely do. Whatever promise He makes will come to pass.
God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent;
Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? Numbers 23:19
The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of His heart from generation to generation. Psalm 33:11
Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven. Psalm 119:89
His gifts never change.
for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Romans 11:29
Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. James 1:17
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8
The God we serve is an incomprehensibly infinite God that will never change out of necessity or due to something more powerful than Himself. He is completely dependable because He never changes.
This truth about God provides stability, confidence and assurance.
The unchangeable perfect God promises that the imperfect will someday be like Him.
That will require change; more for some than others.
Some change happens here. More is promised at His return.
We are continually transformed by the renewing of our thinking. Rom 12:2
We are being transformed by interaction with the perfect changeless God.
We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18 (NASB)
We will be changed.
As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly. Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 1 Corinthians 15:48-52 (NASB)
My guess is that we will experience positive change to perfection to the other end of eternity.
Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; Hebrews 12:28
