I. THE SITUATION
A. God’s Perfection
Intro:
1. The March/April 2016 issue of Psychology Today attempted to give readers several reasons to cultivate a sense of awe and wonder with their article "It's Not All About You!" The article mentioned the following secular sources about our need for awe and wonder:
• University of Pennsylvania researchers defined awe as the "emotion of self-transcendence, a feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self."
• A popular theoretical physicist wrote: "Awe gives you an existential shock. You realize that you are hardwired to be a little selfish, but you are also dependent on something bigger than yourself." Being enraptured is a way "to remove the tyranny of the ego."
• Therapist Robert Leahy, PhD writes: "Awe is the opposite of rumination. It clears away inner turmoil with a wave of outer immensity."
• Social scientists have found that when people experience a sense of awe, they feel more empathetic and more connected with others. One scientist concluded, "Wonder pulls us together—a counterforce to all that seems to be tearing us apart."
• The Wharton School of Business evaluated the New York Times' most emailed articles and found that the ones that evoked awe were the most shared.
2. In reality there is only one thing, one person that lives up to that name “awe” and that would be God! This book is not about the attributes of God, that would take another entire series of books. So we must limit ourselves to just a few basic truths about God, that are relevant to our present study.
But we have to keep in mind that at one time, if you want to call it time, there was the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and no one else! I love the way Arthur Pink puts it in The Attributes of God:
“In the beginning God.” There was no heaven, where His glory is now particularly manifested. There was no earth to engage His attention. There were no angels to hymn His praises; no universe to be upheld by the word of His power. There was nothing, no one, but God; and that, not for a day, a year, or an age, but “from everlasting.” During eternity past, God was alone: self-contained, self-sufficient, self-satisfied; in need of nothing. Had a universe, had angels, had human beings been necessary to Him in any way, they also had been called into existence from all eternity. The creating of them when He did, added nothing to God essentially. He changes not (Mal 3:6), therefore His essential glory can be neither augmented nor diminished.
Read that again and let it soak in! Wow! You talk about awesome and stunning and breathtaking and…That would be God! As usual A. W. Tozer in his book The Knowledge of the Holy makes a needed application:
To admit that there is One who lies beyond us, who exists outside of all our categories, who will not be dismissed with a name, who will not appear before the bar of our reason, nor submit to our curious inquiries: this requires a great deal of humility, more than most of us possess, so we save face by thinking God down to our level, or at least down to where we can manage Him. Yet how He eludes us! For He is everywhere while He is nowhere, for "where" has to do with matter and space, and God is independent of both. He is unaffected by time or motion, is wholly self-dependent and owes nothing to the worlds His hands have made.
I have to resist the temptation to go on and on and discipline myself to focus on the purpose of this book. So let’s begin.
1. Holy Holy Holy.
a. Definition of holiness.
Charles Ryrie in Basic Theology notes:
In respect to God, holiness means not only that He is separate from all that is unclean and evil but also that He is positively pure and thus distinct from all others. An analogy may help in understanding this concept. What does it mean to be healthy? It is the absence of illness, but also a positive infusion of energy. Holiness is the absence of evil and the presence of positive right… The absolute, innate holiness of God means that sinners have to be separated from Him unless a way can be found to constitute them holy. And that way has been provided in the merits of Jesus Christ.
We can say at least two things about God’s holiness:
• Transcendency.
• Absolute moral Purity.
Herbert Lockyer in All the Doctrines of the Bible notes:
God possesses intrinsic holiness.
He is holy in His nature. As light is the essence of the sun, so holiness is God’s very being.
God possesses original holiness.
He is primarily holy. He can present Himself as the pattern of holiness because He is the origin and source of it. From the dateless past.
God possesses transcendent holiness.
The holiest angel above, or the holiest man on earth cannot measure the just dimensions of God’s holiness. “There is none as holy as the Lord” (1 Sam. 2:2)…because God’s holiness is His essence, He can never forfeit it. His is an infinite and unchangeable moral excellence.
God possesses efficient holiness.
This facet of the diamond of divine holiness implies that He is the Cause of all that is holy in others…
Tony Evans gives this easy to understand Illustration in Understanding God:
Last fall, we had a problem with our television picture. Both sets transmitted a lot of fuzz. I got it looked into, and the repairman told me we had a reception problem. Our antenna and wiring were just not doing the job. I about had cardiac arrest when the repairman told me what it was going to cost for the rewiring we needed to get good reception. So every time I watch TV, the focus is not that clear. It's not sharp. It's somewhat distorted, and I'm sure you know how irritating that can be. That's what may happen when you try to study God. If your antenna is not working right, you won't get a clear picture. He won't come in clear. He won't be sharp, not because something is wrong with Him, but because something has gone wrong with your receiver. Since Adam's fall, our ability to pick up the "God channel" has been greatly disturbed.
b. The Declaration of God’s Holiness.
The declaration of God’s holiness as found in Scripture, in both the Old and New Testament would take the rest of this book, and then some, to look at all of them.
See Ex. 3:5-6; 19:10-24; 40:9-16/Lev. 11:44-45/Num. 20:6-13/Deut. 23:18 /Josh. 3:4; 5:15; 24:19/1 Sam. 2:2/1 Chron. 13:10-12/Ezra 9:2/Lu. 1:49; 11:2/Jn. 17:11/2 Cor. 7:1/1 Tim. 6:15-16/Heb. 12:10/Jam. 1:13/ 1 Pet. 1:15-16/1 Jn. 1:5; 2:20; 3:3/Rev. 4:8; 6:10; 15:4/etc.
c. Demonstrations of God’s Holiness.
(1) His Creation.
• Angels (Ezk. 28:15/Jude 6).
• Universe (Gen. 1:25).
• Man (Gen. 1:31/Eccles. 7:29).
(2) His Commandments (Psa. 19:7-9/Rom. 7:12).
(3) His Crucifixion.
Arthur Pink in The Attributes of God makes this observation:
God’s holiness is manifested at the cross. Wondrously and yet most solemnly does the atonement display God’s infinite holiness and abhorrence of sin. How hateful sin must be to God for Him to punish it to its utmost deserts when it was imputed to His Son!
d. Deductions from God’s Holiness.
(1) His Transcendence of everything (Ex. 15:11/1 Sam. 2:2/Isa. 44:6/1 Ki. 8:22/Hos. 11:9).
Marva Dawn shared this:
I remember an animated discussion with my high school freshman English teacher over the word awful. I insisted on using awe-full to describe something so exalted as to arouse reverence. She preferred that I stick with the word's common spelling and its usage to designate something dreadful.
We should have looked in the dictionary. My old Webster's lists as its first definition "inspiring awe; highly impressive." Not until its fourth entry does it supply the definition usually assumed in idiomatic English: "very bad, ugly, unpleasant."
But the teacher had the final word that day in class. Even at age 14 I felt that a vital perception was being lost—the sense that something, someone, was higher than we. I longed to verbalize awe-full-ness; my teacher made class awful.
Today teenagers apply the related word awesome to clothes, food, music, and cinematic effects. The word is so overused that when people sing Rich Mullins's "Awesome God," they seem to trivialize the Awe-full One and put the Trinity on the same level as toothpaste and togs.
As our culture has worked hard to establish equality among persons, we've somehow put God into that parity and gradually reduced our sense that this is a breathtakingly transcendent GOD we're talking about.
Raymond Ortlund shared this:
As a boy, I enjoyed Saturday morning television—Sky King, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers. What annoyed me was the weekend warriors of the Air National Guard flying their F-80 Shooting Stars over the house and interfering with the TV signal. Whenever they broke the sound barrier, the window panes of our family room would rattle. But even the temple shakes at the voice of just one seraph. So we should not think of God's seraphim as chubby babies with wings, like the angels in the art of Peter Paul Rubens. They were more like jet fighters breaking the sound barrier. And as the smoke from the incense altar fills the temple with the felt presence of God, Isaiah is overwhelmed. God is always more than we bargain for.
(2) His Absence from sin (Psa. 25:8/Mt. 5:48/1 Jn. 1:5).
R. C. Sproul in What is Reformed Theology gives this brief summary:
God’s holiness refers to two distinct but related ideas. First the term holy calls attention to God’s “otherness,” the sense in which he is different from and higher than we are. It calls attention to his greatness and his transcendent glory. The second meaning of holiness has to do with God’s purity.
(3) His Abhorrence of sin (Psa. 5:5; 7:11/Prov. 3:32/Hab. 1:13).
We may say, well, it is just one little sin! But let us ask the question:
• How many sins did it take for Adam to fall?
• How many sins kept Moses from entering the Promised Land?
• How many sins did it take to kill Ananias and Sapphira?
Let’s say that I committed only one tiny sin in my life everyday (I wish!). As of this writing I am 64 years old, I was born on July 16, 1953, it is March 07, 2018. That is 23,610 sins! And it only takes one sin to be separated from a holy God.
God hates any violation of his holy character, we have a perverted sense of what sin should be tolerated. A sort of situation ethics or a code of conduct based on a perverted standard.
In Words We Live By, Brian Burrell tells of an armed robber named Dennis Lee Curtis who was arrested in 1992 in Rapid City, South Dakota. Curtis apparently had scruples about his thievery. In his wallet the police found a sheet of paper on which was written the following code:
1. I will not kill anyone unless I have to.
2. I will take cash and food stamps—no checks.
3. I will rob only at night.
4. I will not wear a mask.
5. I will not rob mini-marts or 7-Eleven stores.
6. If I get chased by cops on foot, I will get away. If chased by vehicle, I will not put the lives of innocent civilians on the line.
7. I will rob only seven months out of the year.
8. I will enjoy robbing from the rich to give to the poor.
This thief had a sense of morality, but it was flawed. When he stood before the court, he was not judged by the standards he had set for himself but by the higher law of the state.
Likewise when we stand before God, we will not be judged by the code of morality we have written for ourselves but by God's perfect law.
(4). His Acceptance demands perfection (Mt. 5:20, 48/Gal. 3:10b).
In his book (Re)union, Bruxy Cavey asks the question:
How much sin do you think it would be wise for God to let into heaven? What would be the acceptable level of sin for God to allow into the realm of eternal life? Should God allow 5 percent? Maybe 0.5 percent? Would 0.05 percent be okay?
The answer to that question has to be zero. When Olympic athletes are tested for performance-enhancing drugs, they fail the blood test if they have even a trace of these drugs. Their blood is either clean or not clean. The standard for passing is 0 percent of banned substances. They can't protest, "But I only have traces of the banned substances, so obviously I don't use them too much." The standard is perfection.
When someone wants to donate blood, the blood bank must ensure that the donor's blood is completely free from various things, like HIV. The person cannot protest, "But my blood is mostly HIV-free, and certainly I'm not doing as bad as some people who have full-blown AIDS, so what's the problem?" The standard has to be absolute purity, and for good reason.
The same is true for our relationship with God. God's standard for heaven must be sinless perfection, just as Adam and Eve were when they were first created. Just being a comparatively good person is not good enough. If God were to let us all into the eternal dimension with sin still a part of our spiritual makeup, we would pollute the realm of heaven, starting the whole mess of planet Earth all over again. So God bans sin from heaven. He quarantines the infection and the infected to a different realm. Hell is God's quarantine solution for people who prefer to hold on to their sin rather than accepting Christ's cleansing.
A holy God and sinful man are not compatible. Think of it this way. Say God lived in the bottom of the ocean. Since I cannot breathe under water, I cannot get into God’s realm. I would drown before I could get very far in my journey to Him. A very imperfect illustration, but perhaps you get what I am trying to say.
God is not only holy but demands holiness from others. I do not mind the fact that you fall short of the glory of God because I can identify. I have known a few people who really think they have reached perfection and frankly, I avoid them! Not God! You must have perfection to come into His holy presence.
Holy, Holy, Holy! God is Perfectly Holy.
3 And one called out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory." Isaiah 6:3
There is a splendid moment in the movie Jurassic Park, when world-class paleontologist Allen Grant, who has devoted his life to the study of dinosaurs, suddenly comes face-to-face with real, live prehistoric creatures. He falls to the ground, dumbstruck. The reason is obvious. It is one thing to piece together an informed but nonetheless imperfect image of dinosaurs by picking through fossils and bones. But to encounter an actual dinosaur—well, there can be no comparison.
William Hendricks in an interview notes:
For many people, spirituality amounts to picking through the artifacts of faith that survive from long ago and far away. In that bygone era, humans saw God, heard His voice, and experienced his awesome, at times terrible, power. But that was then. Today, those kinds of gripping encounters with God—with a God who wasn't an illusion, but Someone who was real, Someone you could see, and touch, and feel—well, there could be no comparison.
Such an encounter takes place when the Holy Spirit drives home to our hearts that God is holy.
2. Just as He is.
Thomas Jefferson warned us, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”
We love to sing the song Just as I Am, but God is Just as He is also. He is Just! It is close to the idea of righteousness, in fact the same Hebrew word forms the basis for both the English words, “Justice” and “Righteousness.”
a. It is Intrinsical.
Meaning that it is a part of who God is, He does not try to be just, rather He is just by His very nature. Gen. 18:25/Heb. 12:23).
Tozer notes:
We can define the word attribute as… simply whatever may be correctly ascribed to God [as it has been revealed to us by God]…”
Louis Berkhof notes:
They may be defined as the perfections which are predicated of the Divine Being in Scripture, or are visibly exercised by Him in His works of creation, providence, and redemption.
We must also note there is never a conflict with God in who He is: Erickson notes:
If we begin with the assumptions that God is an integrated being and the divine attributes are harmonious, we will define the attributes in the light of one another. Thus, justice is loving justice and love is love that is just… What we are saying is that love is not fully understood unless seen as including justice. Otherwise, it is mere sentimentality.
It is so wonderful to know that God is just, not according to circumstances or outside influences but according to His nature.
On the fourteenth day of April, 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated. The following morning, placards were pasted up in New York, Brooklyn, and Jersey City, calling upon loyal citizens to meet around Wall Street Exchange at eleven o’clock. Thousands came, armed with revolvers and knives, ready to avenge the death of the martyred President. General James A. Garfield, the future President of the United States, stepped forward and beckoned to the excited throng. Lifting his right arm toward heaven, in a clear, distinct, steady, ponderous voice, that the multitude could hear, the speaker said:
Fellow citizens: Clouds and darkness are round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne! Mercy and truth shall go before His face! Fellow citizens; God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!
The effect of contemplation of God’s ultimate sovereign judgment was amazing. One man wrote:
As the boiling wave subsides and settles to the sea when some strong wind beats it down, so the tumult of the people sank and became still. As the rod draws the electricity from the air, and conducts it safely to the ground, so this man had drawn the fury from that frantic crowd, and guided it to more tranquil thoughts than vengeance.
b. It is Incomparable. Job 4:17/Neh. 9:33
Man’s justice, cannot be compared to God’s because no man has all of the facts about any situation including things like motives.
For the first three weeks of the 2012 NFL season, replacement referees took the place on the playing field of the regular refs. The team owners had locked out the regular refs because they could not agree on a new contract. The consequence of using college referees to judge pro games was predictable. The replacement refs missed calls, took too long to make the right calls, called too many fouls, and in the process made coaches, players, and fans furious.
The anger came to a head in the third week of the season. An angry Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots, grabbed one of the replacement refs, and was fined $50 thousand by the league. And on Monday Night Football the game between the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks was decided by a call on the last play of the game that was so clearly wrong the whole country was talking about it the next day. The media pointed out that because of the missed call, 150 million dollars changed hands in Las Vegas.
Confidence in the credibility of the game had been marred. Players didn't know what to expect on the field and worried about injuries. Newspapers routinely used the word "outrage" to describe the reaction from millions of fans. ESPN declared, "Let's cut to the chase—the replacement officials have lost control of the game." Even an NPR (National Public Radio) blog chimed in: "It's the talk of the nation today as fans beg for the league and its regular officials to settle their differences so that the 'real' refs can come back."
The truth is the only one who can rightly judge the universe is God Himself. The rest of us are like those replacement referees, we lack all the facts to judge correctly. But God, who is omniscient, does not.
c. It is Impartial. Rom. 2:11/Col. 3:25/1 Pet. 1:17
It means that everybody is going to get what they deserve based on God’s infinite understanding of what we really are and what we have done. He never plays favorites! Joseph Stowell notes:
Our evangelical culture tends to take the awesome reality of a transcendent God who is worthy to be feared and downsize Him so He could fit into our "buddy system." The way we talk about Him, the way we pray, and, more strikingly, the way we live shows that we have somehow lost our sense of being appropriately awestruck in the presence of a holy and all-powerful God. It's been a long time since we've heard a good sermon on the "fear of God." If God were to show up visibly, many of us think we'd run up to Him and high-five Him for the good things He has done.
God does not have his little buddies who He turns a blind eye to their sins because they are his pet students.
d. It is incorruptible. Dt. 32:4; 10:17/2 Chron. 19:7/Job 34:12/Zeph. 3:5.
I was watching Gunslingers the other day, and they had an episode on Deacon Jim Miller – The Pious Assassin. He was given that nickname because he regularly attended the Methodist Church, and he did not smoke or drink – but he ruthlessly killed about 12 men. He was a paid assassin. He was, by the way, born in Van Buren Arkansas. When he was 8 years old he murdered his grandparents but was not prosecuted for the crime. He later left a church service, went and shot his brother-in-law, and rode back to the church service! He was arrested, but got off on a technicality. Later he became a deputy sheriff as a cover for his murders. He was arrested time and time again but always got off by either buying the jury, or threatening them, or it ending in a hung jury.
God is not like that! He cannot be bribed or threatened but will always administer fair justice.
By the way, Deacon Jim Miller was arrested for murdering former Deputy U.S. Marshal Allen Augustus "Gus" Bobbitt of Ada, Oklahoma. He was calmly sitting in jail knowing that he had bribed the jury and would soon be free. A mob, estimated from 30 to 40 in number, broke into the jail and dragged them to an abandoned livery stable behind the jail and hung them all.
God’s justice always prevails in the end, both in time and eternity. Which brings me to my next point.
e. It means that judgment is Inevitable. Ac. 17:31/Rom. 2:4-6/Rev. 16:5-7.
The modern judge can only pronounce the sentence; he does not actually carry out the sentence. But God, not only passes out the sentence, but is His own executioner.
Hal Lindsey in Liberation of Planet Earth says it well:
God is absolutely just. It’s impossible for Him to do anything that’s unfair either to Himself or to man. He executes perfect justice in accordance with His attributes of righteousness. All that is unrighteous must be judged and separated from a relationship with Him (Rom. 1:18/Deut. 32:4/Isa. 45:21).
As Leon Morris has written: The doctrine of final judgment. . . stresses man’s accountability and the certainty that justice will finally triumph over all the wrongs which are part and parcel of life here and now. The former gives a dignity to the humblest action, the latter brings calmness and assurance to those in the thick of the battle. This doctrine gives meaning to life. . . The Christian view of judgment means that history moves to a goal. . . Judgment protects the idea of the triumph of God and of good. It is unthinkable that the present conflict between good and evil should last throughout eternity. Judgment means that evil will be disposed of authoritatively, decisively, finally. Judgment means that in the end God’s will will be perfectly done.
A man in Chester, England fought with his estranged wife and killed her because she threatened to expose his homosexuality unless he gave her more money, something he said he could not afford to do. He hid her body on the edge of a peat bog. Twenty-two years later when he heard that some peat diggers unearthed a skull he assumed it was hers so he confessed. Tests showed that the skull was 1,600 years old, that of a woman who died before the Romans left Britain. The authorities have not been able to find any of the remains of his wife. Now he faces murder charges."
Although this man imagined that he had covered up his crime, God’s justice may be slow but it is sure.
f. It is often Imperceptible. Psa. 73:4/Lu. 18:7-8
Justice in this life doesn’t always seem to prevail, many like O. J. Simpson have gotten away with murder. Or so it would seem, but in reality there is an accounting someday.
Then we also see how many seemingly godly people suffer while often the ungodly do not have a care in the world.
Randy Alcorn shares the following in his book If God is Good:
More people point to the problem of evil and suffering as their reason for not believing in God than any other—it is not merely a problem, it is the problem. A Barna poll asked, "If you could ask God only one question and you knew he would give you an answer, what would you ask?" The most common response was, "Why is there pain and suffering in the world?"
Erickson noted, “God’s justice must not be evaluated on a short-term basis. Within this life it will often be incomplete or imperfect, but there is a life beyond, in which God’s justice will be complete.”
Before his appointment as a Supreme Court Justice, Horace Gray once presided over a case where a man was justly charged. Through a technicality, Gray was obligated to release him, but as he did so he addressed him, saying, “I believe you are guilty and would wish to condemn you severely, but through a petty technicality, I am obliged to discharge you. I know you are guilty, and so do you, and I wish you to remember that one day you will pass before a better and wiser Judge, when you will be dealt with according to justice and not according to law.”
Richard Swinburne, writing in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, says the problem of evil is "the most powerful objection to traditional theism." Ronald Nash writes, "Objections to theism come and go… But every philosopher I know believes that the most serious challenge to theism was, is, and will continue to be the problem of evil."
You will not get far in a conversation with someone who rejects the Christian faith before the problem of evil is raised. Pulled out like the ultimate trump card, it's supposed to silence believers and prove that the all-good and all-powerful God of the Bible doesn't exist.
What people fail to see is the problem of evil and suffering all began with man’s sin! The problem God has, humanly speaking, is that He is just and must justly separate Himself from fallen mankind.
Con:
The Wall Street Journal reported a story about how fake news stories and photos can have a powerful impact on shaping our minds and hearts.
The story quoted Randi Romo, a female photographer whose photograph at an immigration rally had been manipulated by a Russia-backed account. The fake photo conveyed an anti-immigration message while the original photo clearly conveyed a pro-immigration message. Ms. Romo had a powerful warning for all of us:
"We are living in the greatest era of information access. People will watch cat videos endlessly, but they won't take a minute to ascertain whether what they are being told is true or not."
One fake new story has been out there for many years, it is that God’s only attribute is love, and that He is too kind to judge anybody and that when all the dust settles He will embrace everyone with His saving love.
3. I Love to tell the whole Story.
"Jellyfish Lake, based on the Pacific island of Palau, was once connected to the Pacific Ocean. But when the sea level dropped, jellyfish became isolated in the algae rich lake and eventually lost their sting."
I think we have a generation with a stingless jellyfish God mentality. Words like Holiness, righteousness, justice, and wrath have been phased out and replaced with a passive, permissive, and pathetic god. But the truth is God is Holy, Just, and wrathful and is unchangeably so.
Most love to tell the story of God’s love and we should tell it, but that is not the whole story. That story includes the wrath of God. And very few love to tell that story today! God is not embarrassed by His wrath, it is a just expression of His displeasure with sin.
Arthur Pink in his book the Attributes of God says it well:
Now the wrath of God is as much a divine perfection as is His faithfulness, power, or mercy. It must be so, for there is no blemish whatever, not the slightest defect in the character of God; yet there would be if “wrath” were absent from Him!... How could He who is the Sum of all excellency look with equal satisfaction upon virtue and vice, wisdom and folly? How could He who is infinitely holy disregard sin and refuse to manifest His “severity” (Rom 11:22) toward it? How could He, who delights only in that which is pure and lovely, not loathe and hate that which is impure and vile? The very nature of God makes Hell as real a necessity, as imperatively and eternally requisite, as Heaven is.
On July 8, 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached the most famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It is rare to hear such sermons anymore. Here is an excerpt from his message:
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock. . . . There are the black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor.
Why does this generation make so light of God’s wrath, is it not because we make so light of man’s sin? R. A. Torrey writes:
Shallow views of sin and of God’s holiness, and of the glory of Jesus Christ and His claims upon us, lie at the bottom of weak theories of the doom of the impenitent. When we see sin in all its hideousness and enormity, the holiness of God in all its perfection, and the glory of Jesus Christ in all its infinity, nothing but a doctrine that those who persist in the choice of sin, who love darkness rather than light, and who persist in the rejection of the Son of God, shall endure everlasting anguish, will satisfy the demands of our own moral intuitions. . . . The more closely men walk with God and the more devoted they become to His service, the more likely they are to believe this doctrine.
When we no longer see that our sin separates us from a holy, just, and wrathful God we are living in a dangerous bubble of lies that is one day going to burst. Ted Koppel noted:
What is largely missing in American life today is a sense of context, of saying or doing anything that is intended or even expected to live beyond the moment. There is no culture in the world that is so obsessed as ours with immediacy. In our journalism, the trivial displaces the momentous because we tend to measure the importance of events by how recently they happened. We have become so obsessed with facts that we have lost all touch with truth.
Now, God says if you violate my holiness and justice, you will inevitably experience my wrath. It doesn’t matter who agrees or disagrees, it is an undeniable truth.
Dorothy Sayers, the mystery writer, was also a devoted Christian. Dorothy Sayers was attempting to explain the moral law of God. She pointed out that in our society there are two kinds of laws. There is the law of the stop sign, and there's the law of the fire. The law of the stop sign is a law that says the traffic is heavy on a certain street, and as a result the police department or the city council decides to erect a stop sign. They also decide that if you run that stop sign, it will cost you $25 or $30 or $35. If the traffic changes, they can up the ante. That is if too many people are running the stop sign, they can make the fine $50 or $75, or if they build a highway around the city, they can take the stop sign down, or reduce the penalty, making it only $10 if you go through. The police department or city council controls the law of the stop sign.
But then she said there is also the law of the fire. And the law of the fire says if you put your hand in the fire, you'll get burned. Now imagine that all of the legislatures of all the nations of the entire world gathered in one great assembly, and they voted unanimously that here on out that fire would no longer burn. The first man or woman who left that assembly and put his or her hand in the fire would discover that the law of the fire is different than the law of the stop sign. Bound up in the nature of fire itself is the penalty for abusing it. So, Dorothy Sayers says, the moral law of God is like the law of the fire. You never break God's laws; you just break yourself on them. God can't reduce the penalty, because the penalty for breaking the law is bound up in the law itself.
See, Mt.3:7/Mk.3:5/Lk.3:7 ; 21:23; Jn.3:36/Ro.1:18 ; 2:5, 8; 3:5; 4:15; 5:9 ; 9:22 ; 12:19; 13:4,5/Eph.2:3 ; 4:31;5:6/ Col.3:6, 8/ 1 Th.1:10; 2:16; 5:9/1Ti. 2:8 ; Heb.3:11 ; 4:3 ; Jam. 1:19-20/Rev.6:16, 17; 11:18; 14:10; 16:19; 19:15.
A Doctrine is all that the Scriptures has to say about any given subject arranged logically. I try to put things in a way that is easy to remember. Here is a survey of Wrath:
• God’s wrath is an Outflow of His violated Holiness and justice (Rom. 2:8; 3:5-6/Rev. 16:6-7). The flow of God’s Holiness is violated which kicks His justice into action, which is the release of His wrath.
• Therefore God’s wrath against the Sinful (Psa. 7:11; 21:8-9/Isa. 3:8; 13:9/Rom. 1:18/Eph. 5:6/Col. 3:6). The greatest sin is unbelief (Jn. 3:36).
• God’s wrath is Merciful (Psa. 103:8/Isa. 48:9/Jon. 4:2/Nah. 1:3). Why slow? To give people an opportunity to repent. A Fortaste now (Jn. 3:36/Rom. 1:18), not fulfilled until a Future Day (Zeph. 2:2/Rom.2:5/Rev. 6:17; 11:18; 19:15).
• God’s wrath is Awful (Psa. 78:49-51; 90:7/Jer. 7:20; 10:10/Lam. 2:20-22/Mt. 10:28/Rev. 6-19).
• A Photo of God’s wrath: The Flood (Gen. 7:21-23); Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:8); Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:24-25); On the Egyptians in the Ten Plagues (Ex. 7:20; 8:6, 16, 24; 9:3, 9, 23; 10:13, 22; 12:29; 14:27); Great Tribulation Period (Rev. 6-19).
• God’s wrath is Final – no appeals! (Mt. 18:8; 25:41/Jude 7/ 2 Thess. 1:9/Rev. 14:10-11; 19:3).
Flamingo Flats, a spicy sauce company located in St. Michaels, MD, wants to spice up your life. It claims as its motto, “Life is too short to eat boring food” and boasts such culinary condiments as “Sting and Linger,” “Dave’s Insanity Sauce,” and “Hell in a Jar.” According to CHILI PEPPER MAGAZINE, Flamingo’s bestselling sauce at one time was “Religious Experience,” which came in Original, Hot, and WRATH.
But the “Religious Experience” is no longer available, I have a feeling the Wrath part was unacceptable to most folks. People today only want a religious experience with a God of love but the whole truth is that God is not only love but light as well.
Note: God never changes, He is eternally Holy, Just, and wrathful (Mal. 3:6/Heb. 1:10-12; 13:8/Jam. 1:17). God is infinitely, eternally holy, just, wrathful and much more, and will remain so. He is what we call immutable.
A. W. Tozer in his fine book The Knowledge of the Holy writes:
For a moral being to change it would be necessary that the change be in one of three directions. He must go from better to worse or from worse to better; or, granted that the moral quality remain stable, he must change within himself, as from miniature to mature or from one order of being to another. It should be clear that God can move in none of these directions. His perfections forever rule out any such possibility. God cannot change for the better. Since He is perfectly holy, He has never been less holy than He is now and can never be holier than He is and has always been. Neither can God change for the worse. Any deterioration within the unspeakably holy nature of God is impossible.
Again, we think if we declare that God is flexible that declaration makes it so.
In his book Jesus Mean and Wild, Mark Galli references his interview with Stephen Prothero in 1994. During that interview, Prothero said:
Christians traditionally, as they've shaped Jesus, have been worried about getting it wrong, including the Puritans. Americans today are not so worried. There isn't the sense that this is a life-and-death matter, that you don't want to mess with divinity. There's a freedom and even a playfulness that Americans have…The flexibility our Jesus exhibits is unprecedented. There's a Gumby-like quality to Jesus in the United States…that kind of chutzpah is something that was unknown even to Americans in the Colonial period.
I would call it dangerous stupidity myself, and it does not change God in the least.
I read that they are trying to develop a stingless bee. One Canadian scientist warns:
Such a seemingly desirable little creature would immediately become the helpless prey of every kind of bug. The ant, wasp, moth, and other honey-consuming insects would overrun the hives, and the bear, the skunk and the human robber would feast unmolested on the treasure therein stored.
Our sick and twisted generation has sought to produce a stingless God! One, who at best, is helplessly shrugging his shoulders at our sin. But do not be deceived, God is a holy, righteous, just and wrathful God who for those who reject the Lord Jesus Christ’s love, manifested in His death, burial, and resurrection, will one day feel His painful and eternal sting. That need not happen to you, and I pray it will not happen to you. If you put your hand into a fire you will get burned – every time. And if you violated God’s holiness, God’s justice will release His wrath. There is only one hope. I have heard about a fire proximity suit, it is designed to protect a firefighter from high temperatures. There is only one fire-proof suit when we think of the wrath of God – being in Christ! More about this later.
B. God’s Creation.
Intro:
1. Keith Hunt in his book, “Is There Life in Outer Space?” writes:
Despite popular and influential science fiction books and films as Star Wars, E.T., Star Trek, 2001, A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, there really is no scientific evidence for intelligent extraterres-life. Hundreds of millions of tax dollars have been spent trying to find life in outer space… A few people are searching for signals from outer space that would imply an intelligent source. Radio telescopes, linked with computers, simultaneously search millions of radio frequencies for a nonrandom, nonnatural, extraterrestrial signals—any short sequence of information.
2. The truth is, there is life in Outer Space, and the Bible refers to these spirit beings as angels.
3. God’s Creation.
Trans: We have looked at God’s Perfection and now we see that God decided to create, and first on his list were angels.
1. The Inception of spirit beings. [This series is not a study of angels, so we do not want to get bogged down here]
a. They were Created.
• Agent who created them is God (Neh. 9:6/Psa. 148:2-5/Jn. 1:1-3/Col. 1:16/Heb. 1:7/etc.).
• Act of their creation. We do not know the exact time but it was before the creation of the physical universe (Job 38:4-7). The term “sons of God” in Job is a reference to angels in the Old Testament (Job 1:6; 2:1). Notice “all” indicating that at the time God created the universe all of the angels were in harmony, there was no sin at that time.
• Assumptions. They were created instantaneously and simultaneously. They are not a race but called a host; they are innumerable or too many to count (Heb. 12:22/Psa. 68:17/Jude 14/ Rev. 5:11/etc.); they are indestructible, they never die (Lu. 20:36); are incapable of reproduction (Mt. 22:30); they were all initially created good and holy (Job 38:4-7), yet it is a creaturely holiness (Job 4:18; 15:15); they were created with incredible power (Psa. 103/2 Thess. 1:7/2 Pet. 2:10-11/Rev. 4:8, 11; 10:1-11/etc.); and are obviously inferior to God. They are limited by space while God is omnipresent (Dan. 9:21-23). They are limited in their power while God is Omnipotent (Job 1:12; 2:6/Dan, 10:10-14). They are limited in their understanding while God is omniscient (Mt. 24:36/1 Pet. 1:11-12). They were created in the image of God meaning that they have personality – will or self-determination, intellect, emotion, moral reasoning power or conscience, and eternity of being.
b. Their Characteristics.
• They are Persons, as we have already pointed out, created in the image of God meaning that they have personality – will or self-determination (Jude 6), intellect Eph. 3:10/1 Pet. 1:12), emotion (Lu. 2:13; 15:10), moral reasoning power or conscience, and eternity of being (Lu. 20:36), they, like human beings, have a beginning but no end.
• The Place where they abide. There are three heavens (2 Cor. 12:2) and angels apparently can relate to all three places, while their abode is in the third heaven (Isa. 6:1-6/Mt. 18:10; 24:36/Mk. 12:25/Lu. 22:43/Gal. 1:8/2 Thess. 1:7).
• Their Posture. They are spirit beings (Heb. 1:14) thus they are invisible but real; immaterial and yet have some form (1 Cor. 15:38-40). They can become visible and take on physical form (Gen. 18:1-2, 16, 22; 19:1/Mk. 16:5/Ac. 1:10-11) and weird symbolic forms (Ezk. 1:4-14; 10:15, 20/ Isa. 6:1/Rev. 4:6-8). At times it appears that something can happen to human beings allowing them to penetrate into their dimension (Num. 22:3/2 Ki. 6:17).
c. Their Classification.
• Descriptions are many such as elect angels (1 Tim. 5:21); ministers (Heb. 1:14); host (Psa. 103:20-21); chariots (2 Ki. 6:16-17/Psa. 68:17); watchers (Dan. 4:13, 17/Isa. 62:6); sons of the Mighty (Psa. 29:1; 89:6); sons of God (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7); holy ones (Psa. 89:5-7/Job 5:1; 15:15/Dan. 4:13-17; 8:13); stars (Job 38:7/Rev. 13:4); principalities and powers(Eph. 1:21; 3:10; 6:12); etc.
• Designations include Cherub (Gen. 3:24/Ex. 25:18, 19/2 Sam. 22:11/Psa. 18:10/Ezk. 1:1, 28/etc.); Seraphim (Isa. 6:1-6); Living Creatures (Rev. 4:5-9); and Archangels (1 Thess. 4:15/Jude 9/Dan. 10:13). Three angels are named, Lucifer (Isa. 14:12); Michael (Dan. 10:13, 21; 12:1/ Jude 9/Rev. 12:7); and Gabriel (Dan. 8:16; 9:21/Lu. 1:19, 26).
Trans: We cannot believe the Bible and reject the existence of angels. Angels are mentioned in thirty-four books of the Bible for a total of some 273 times (108 times in the Old Testament and 165 in the New Testament).
Charles Herbert Lightoller was tall, sun-bronzed, and handsome, possessing a deep, pleasant speaking voice. His mother died during his infancy, his father abandoned him, and he ran off to sea at the age of thirteen. By 1912, he was a respected seaman for the White Star Line and was assigned to the maiden voyage of the greatest ocean liner ever built, the Titanic. He was just drifting off to sleep on April 14th, when he felt a bump in the ship's forward motion.
Hopping from his bunk, he soon learned that the Titanic had struck an iceberg. As the horrors of that night unfolded, Lightoller finally found himself standing on the roof of the officer's quarters, the water lapping at his feet, as he helped any and all around him into lifeboats. Finally, there was nothing left for Lightoller to do but jump from the roof into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. The shock of the 28-degree water against his sweating body stunned him. As he struggled to regain his bearing and swim away from the ship, he was suddenly sucked back and pinned against a ventilation grate at the base of a funnel that went all the way down to Boiler Room 6. He was stuck, drowning, and going down with the ship.
Suddenly Psa. 91:11 came clearly to his mind: For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways.... At that very moment, a blast of hot air exploded from the belly of the ship, shooting Lightoller like a missile to the surface of the ocean. At length, he managed to grab a piece of rope attached to the side of an overturned lifeboat and float along with it until he pulled himself on top of the upside-down boat. He turned and watched the last moments of the Titanic. Her stern swung up in the air until the ship was in "an absolutely perpendicular position." Then she slowly sank down into the water, with only a small gulp as her stern disappeared beneath the waves. There were about thirty men atop the lifeboat, and together they recited the Lord's Prayer, then Lightoller took command of the boat and guided them to safety.
There are many testimonies of people who have experienced the ministry of angels.
The problem is that there are also demons, and many today call these demons – angels. They have rejected God and His Word, and, so, have a Satanic concept of angels.
One example is Geddes MacGregor, he was a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. His book Angels: Ministers of Grace advances the idea that angels are a super-race of evolved extraterrestrials. He bases his view on his belief in evolution. He also believes that life exists on other planets, and that extraterrestrial spirits communicate with us as angels.
He does not know it, but he is trafficking with demons!
The main thing is we need to get our information from the Bible not the nut jobs of this world. Juliana Dukes, worked for the Pfizer U.S. Pharmaceutical Group. She found a stray and starving dog far out in the hills of New Mexico. She found the dog’s owner by calling the number on his collar tag. The owners explained that the dog had run off two weeks earlier while they were vacationing in New Mexico. Juliana said she had learned a number of lessons from the experience. One was how important name tags were and most importantly that angels come from within us!
2. Introduction of sin into the universe.
a. The Problem of sin related to angels. It was angels, not Adam, that introduced sin into the universe.
(1) The Presupposition that Ezk. 28:11-19 and Isa. 14:12-23 refer to an angel named Lucifer, who because of his sin, is now, referred to as Satan.
• The Reason for this understanding is the change from “prince” of Tyre being changed to “king” of Tyre, this king is the one behind the earthly prince (Ezk. 28:12); while vv. 1-10 describe a human leader, vv. 11-19 go beyond a mere human being. It goes from a “man” (vv. 2, 9) to a cherub (vv. 14, 16); all of this fits well with what we know about Satan’s sin (Ezk. 28:17 with 1 Tim. 3:6 and Isa. 14:13, 14).
• The Recognition by good Bible teachers. This not some wild speculation but is taught by such Bible teachers as Hal Lindsey, Josh McDowell, Charles Ryrie, Richard DeHaan, Dwight Pentecost, Lewis Chafer, Donald Barnhouse, C. S. Lewis, Scofield, W. A. Criswell, just to name a few.
(2) The Passages:
(a) Ezk. 28:11-19.
Ezekiel prophesized in the sixth century B.C. He was taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon where he prophesied to the Jews who were exiles in Babylon for some 22 years.
Ezekiel chaps 1-24 were written before Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians.
Ezekiel chaps 25-32 are prophecies against a number of foreign nations.
Ezekiel chaps 33-39 are prophecies about Israel’s restoration.
Ezekiel chaps 40-48 are prophecies about the future Millennial kingdom.
So the passage we are focusing on speaks of the fall of Tyre. Obviously 28:1-10 is talking about the human leader of Tyre, Ethbaal III, who was the ruler over the Phoenician seacoast city of Tyre. He is called a “man” in vv. 2, 9. He was arrogant, but still a mere man!
But then the focus shifts to Satan, the supernatural one behind this human leader in 28:11-19. The description given in these verse go beyond any mere human leader. He is called a Cherub in vv. 14, 16. But Cherub is a class of angel created by God (28:13,15). Ezekiel saw a vision of “four living beings (1:5) which he identified as cherubim (10:5, 9).
• Lucifer’s Privileges. His Position of great authority is seen in the fact that he is called “anointed” speaking of God’s favor; a “Cherub” which is the highest order of angels; “who covers” or overshadows, having the idea of leading; and “I place you there” means it was God Himself that gave him this high position (Ezk. 28:14, 16). He apparently lead the other angels in worship of God. His Place was in the very presence of God as indicated by “in Eden, the garden of God”; “on the holy mountain of God”; “midst of fiery stones” (Ezk. 28:13, 14, 16). His Perfection as seen in the descriptions “seal of perfection”; “full of wisdom”; “perfect in beauty” “tumbrels and pipes”; and “perfect in all your ways from the day you were created.” (Ezk. 28:12, 15).
This was a remarkable creature to say the least!
Billy Graham notes, “Lucifer before he sinned was the most brilliant and most beautiful of all created beings in heaven. He was probably the ruling prince of the universe under God…Prior to his rebellion, Lucifer, an angel of light, is described in scintillating terms.”
• Lucifers Pride. “unrighteousness was found in you”; “were internally filled with violence”; “you sinned”; “Your heart was lifted up.” This is where sin first began! His Pink slip. God responded by “casting” him out of his position (16, 17). He still has access to God’s presence (Job 1:6, 9; 2:1,7; Rev. 12:10). His Prophetic future. In the future, in the middle of the Great Tribulation, he will be restricted to the earth where he continues his evil work (Rev. 12:7-13). When Christ returns to set up His earthly kingdom at that time Satan will be confined to the abyss (20:1-3). At the end of this thousand year reign, Satan will be loosed for a short time, then cast again permanently to the lake of fire (20:10).
(b) Isa. 14:12-19
Isaiah wrote in the eighth century before Christ. At that time, the enemy of Israel was the Assyrians. He predicted that the Babylonians would defeat Assyria and take Judah into captivity. But God would eventually judge Babylon as well.
Isaiah 14 is a taunt against Babylon and her king (vv. 4, 22). It is clear that the historic king of Babylon is the focus of 14:1-11. But beginning with verse 12, he pulls back the curtain and reveals who is behind this Babylonian king – it is Satan.
• His Description. O star of the morning, son of the dawn! "Lucifer" is the Latin form of "Day-Star," meaning "light-bearer” or “shining one.” His Downfall. 12 "How you have fallen from heaven… You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! Perhaps our Lord referred to this in Luke 10:17-18? His Desire. 13 "But you said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. 14 'I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' Five times he is said to choose his will. The essence of all sin is choosing our will over God’s. These “I will’s” reveal his pride in which he wants to be the sole ruler of heaven, over both God and the angels (1 Tim. 3:6). His Doom. 15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the lowest depths of the Pit. 16 "Those who see you will gaze at you, They will ponder over you, saying, 'Is this the man who made the earth tremble, Who shook kingdoms, 17 Who made the world like a wilderness And overthrew its cities, Who did not allow his prisoners to go home?' 18 "All the kings of the nations lie in glory, Each in his own tomb. 19 "But you have been cast out of your tomb Like a rejected branch, Clothed with the slain who are pierced with a sword, Who go down to the stones of the pit Like a trampled corpse. He will ultimately be thrust down to Sheol (Rev. 20:3) and spend eternity in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:10).
So sin, is not the creation of God, nor did it begin with man, but sin entered the universe through this angelic being, Lucifer. Sin, can be defined as, any lack of measuring up to the standard of God, in nature, thought, word or deed.
(3) The Persuasion related to other angels.
• Possible Theory is that after Lucifer rebelled against God he persuaded some of the other angels to follow him in his rebellion against God. Why? Perhaps he thought he could get enough angels on his side to overpower God? Or maybe get them to go along with his scheme to replace God? We are not told exactly what happened.
• Proof Texts can be given to prove that some of the angels did join him and are today called demons (Job 4:18/Mt. 25:41/Rev. 12:1-6/etc.).
Again, when we leave the Bible out of the picture, Satan and his demons, come off as an angel of light and deceive people. They use much of the same language we do, but the meaning is not the same.
For example in the book Ask Your Angels it describes angel activity in three waves: In Bible times, the time of the first wave, angels appeared only to a select few, such as the prophets and patriarchs. The second wave came in the Dark Ages or the medieval period in which angels appeared only to outstanding Christians and significant leaders. The third wave is today, in which angels reveal themselves to ordinary people.
They give steps to have access to angels, which lead to angels honoring your request to reach a higher self. Now get this – the exercise, is called, G-R-A-C-E! It stands for Grounding; Releasing; Aligning; Conversing; and Enjoying the angel contact.
Not exactly what any student of the Bible would describe grace as!
Why God Permitted this rebellion?
We need to understand the purpose of all creation is to glorify God (Psa. 19:1/Col. 1:16 notice “for Him”).
Dwight Pentecost noted, “Creation was brought into existence not only for the benefit of the creatures who one day would walk upon the face of the earth, but for God's glory. This universe was created that it should bear testimony to, and reflect the glory of, an all-glorious God.”
I believe the main purpose was so God could reveal one of His attributes that had been somewhat hidden – His grace.
Grace is for the guilty and mercy is for the miserable. The unfallen angels never experience grace and mercy because they did not need it. The fallen angels did not experience God’s grace and mercy because it was not offered to them.
God created operation humanity, knowing man would fall, but unlike with the angels He, would save some among mankind, revealing His grace and mercy. This would be a testimony especially among the unfallen angels (Lu. 12:8-9; 15:10/1 Cor. 4:9; 11:10; Eph. 3:10/1 Tim. 5:21).
That is why the essence of what we are, is not, trophies of goodness but of grace. God is going to display us like a trophy! Of course, a trophy does not glorify the trophy, but the one who earned it.
6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:6-7
Listen to that verse in other translations:
7 So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:7 (NLT)
7 Throughout the coming ages we will be the visible display of the infinite, limitless riches of his grace and kindness, which was showered upon us in Jesus Christ. For it was only through this wonderful grace that we believed in him. Nothing we did could ever earn this salvation, for it was the gracious gift from God that brought us to Christ! So no one will ever be able to boast, for salvation is never a reward for good works or human striving. Ephesians 2:7 (PassionNTPsa)
During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death.
The debate went on for some time until C. S. Lewis wandered into the room. 'What's the rumpus about?' he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity's unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, 'Oh, that's easy. It's GRACE.'
Con: So there is not only life in Outer Space, but here among us and they are both friend and foe!
It is interesting that Guideposts, publishes a bimonthly magazine, Angels on Earth. Every issue is filled with accounts of people who believe they have been touched by an angel or a group of angels. These stories are from and about ordinary people who have had extraordinary experiences they attribute to angelic contact. You can subscribe to it for $ 16.99.
The problem is if you play around in the angelic realm without being united with Christ, the only kind of angel you will experience is a fallen angel – a demon!
C. God’s Demonstration of Grace through project humanity.
F. B. Meyers said it well, "Man was placed in the world like a king in a palace stored with all to please him... The sun to labor for him like a very Hercules; the moon to light his nights... elements of nature to be his slaves and messengers: flowers to scent his pathway; fruit to please his taste; birds to sing for him; beasts to toil for him and carry him; and man himself, amidst all the luxury, God's representative, His vice-regent. This is as God made him."
1. Creation.
a. There was Amity between God and man.
The word Amity means, “a harmony, a peaceful and good relationship.”
26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Genesis 1:26
30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so. 31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Genesis 1:30-31
God created man in what we call an innocent state. There was perfect harmony between God and His creation. How wonderful life was in the Garden of Eden.
Keep in mind the purpose of this study is an overview of basic truths not a detailed study on these things. We are not getting into:
• Intimacy with Almighty God
• The Ability to reproduce in the context of a loving family.
• Authority to rule.
• Abundancy of blessings like creating for them a perfect planet for life; an inexhaustible supply of food; perfect weather conditions; every conceivable need met; Perfect health; no sickness or death; etc.
• An environment free from Anxiety.
The blessings go on and on…For a detailed study get my book on Genesis vol. 1.
Mike Herman had collected baseball cards during his college years. But finances got tight and he had to set aside his little hobby.
Several years later, after being in a career, he was able to resume the hobby. He writes:
As I opened a fairly expensive pack the other day, I was amazed to find one of the rarest cards of the set sitting there in my hand. It had a real autograph on it. It was one of those serendipitous moments when I wasn't sure if this was really what I thought it was. The shock eventually wore off, and the realization kicked in that I had found something I would have paid hundreds of dollars for if I had not found it in that $5.00 pack of cards.
I wonder how Adam and Eve felt to all of a sudden exist! To meet their creator, to experience each other and the many blessings that God had bestowed upon them.
I had a similar experience on the 7th of May 1974, when I trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior! I, for the first time in my life, existed spiritually. I was met by God Himself! I entered into a world of forgiveness, righteousness, acceptance, adoption, love, faith, and hope. Wow!
Now for our present study, let us focus on the idea that Man was created in the image of God so that he may glorify God by having fellowship with God.
A needed caution:
Tozer gives a good warning, "When the Scripture states that man was made in the image of God, we dare not add to that statement an idea from our own head and make it mean, "in the exact image." To do so is... to break down the wall, infinitely high, that separates that-which-is-God from that which-is-not-God. To think of creatures and Creator as alike in essential being is to rob God of most of His attributes and reduce Him to the status of a creature."
The greatest example of this is the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 2 Corinthians 4:4 Jesus Christ shares in God’s being and is a perfect manifestation of that being.
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Colossians 1:15
3 And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, Hebrews 1:3
Jesus Christ is God/man, always glorified God through nonstop fellowship, He lived as a perfect man lived, using his mind to know God; His emotions to love God, and His will to obey God.
Man was created for the purpose of knowing, loving, and obeying God. That is part of what it means to be in the image of God.
26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Genesis 1:26-27
As one noted:
The word "image" or "likeness" emphasizes resemblance, the correspondence between one thing and another. The word translated "likeness" gives us the interesting picture of a coin that has been stamped in a die, so that what was in the die reappears in the coin. One who examines the coin can tell what was engraved in the die, because the coin bears the image of the die that pressed it. Now, when Scriptures assert that man is made in the likeness of God, it does not say that man is a little god. Rather, it says that by representation and manifestation, there is in man that which was in God, and that which was in God was manifested in Adam as he was created, and in Jesus Christ in His humanity.
So how does man bear the image of God? There is much that could be said here, but for the sake of our study, we will keep it simple.
It speaks primarily of a God-ward personality, consisting of mind, emotion, and will. Animals have personalities but not God-ward, they are also conscious but not self-conscience. As Blanchard notes:
Blanchard, "Man is not a chemical fluke or an atomic accident. Nor is he an educated ape; he is as different from other animals; as animals are from vegetables; and vegetables from minerals. All other living creatures are conscious; man is self-conscious. If a giraffe could say, "I am a giraffe" it would cease to be a giraffe."
• Adam was given a mind so that he could primarily know God. He exercised this capacity when he named all of the Animals. Adam also named his wife (Gen. 2:23; 3:20).
In 1873, Hudson Taylor wrote a letter to a fellow-worker going through a difficult trial. He encouraged him with these words: The one thing we need is to know God better…Oh, to know Him! Well might Paul, who had caught a glimpse of His glory, count “all things” as dung and dross compared with this most precious knowledge! This makes the weak strong, the poor rich, the empty full; this makes suffering happiness, and turns tears into diamonds like the sunshine turns dew into pearls. This makes us fearless, invincible. If we know God, then when full of joy we can thank our Heavenly Father, the Giver of all… Oh to know Him! How good, how great, how glorious— our God and Father, our God and Saviour, our God and Sanctifier— to know Him!
• Adam was given emotions so that he could primarily respond to God’s love. He exercised this in relationship to Eve.
One follows the other, when we know Him, we cannot help but love Him. A group called The Teddy Bears, had a hit song in 1958 called “To Know Him is to Love Him”
Just to see him smile makes my life worthwhile
To know, know, know him is to love, love, love him
Phil Spector was fooling around with a guitar and piano. Inspired by the inscription on his father's tombstone, "To have known him is to have loved him," Phil Spector penned the words to the song "To Know Him Is to Love Him." So, in the summer of 1958, seventeen-year-old Phil Spector and his friends made the recording, which was sold to Dore Records. By that fall, it was the number 1 record on both the Billboard and Cashbox magazine charts.
We might say the same about God: To know Him is to love Him.
• Adam was given a will so that he could primarily obey God. He has the opportunity to exercise this in relationship to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In the eleventh century King Henry, Duke of Bavaria, grew weary of the pomp of court life and the cares of being a monarch. As he visited the Abbey of Verdun, he asked the prior there if he would be accepted into the monastery as a monk. The prior, Richard, told him that the first vow would be one of obedience. The monarch promised his willingness to follow his will in every detail. The prior said, “Then back to your throne and do your duty in the station God assigned you.”
Adam had a will, it was given so that he might obey God. It is the same with us, He has given us assignments – what gifts we have; where we will use them; how effective they will be (1 Cor. 12:4-6). Our place is simply to rejoice in God’s will for our lives (Eph. 2:10).
God made fellowship possible between the mind of Adam and the mind of God, the heart of Adam and the heart of God, and the will of Adam and the will of God. For Adam, fellowship was the exercise of these three capacities of his personality God-ward.
The John Phillips Commentary series has this:
Man stands alone. Physically, he alone of all the creatures on the globe walks upright; mentally, he alone has the ability to communicate in a sophisticated manner; spiritually, he alone has the capacity to know the mind and will of God. Thus, God created Adam. Then God crowned Adam (1:28-31). He crowned him in three ways; first by bestowing upon him a posterity—"Be fruitful and multiply" (1:28a)… God crowned Adam with a position (1:28b) giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing… Finally, God crowned Adam with a possession (1:29-31). He gave him paradise to enjoy.
There was a time when man had a perfect fellowship with God in a perfect place. Charles Ryrie in Basic Theology:
How can we express Adam’s original condition? Some use the word innocent, but Adam was more than innocent, which seems to connote only the absence of wrong. Adam’s original holiness was positive; yet it was not equal with God’s— it was creaturely.
Maybe you have seen the TV drug store commercial featuring scenes of an idyllic town with hauntingly beautiful music and the soft-spoken announcer who says, "Beyond the reach of cell phones and super highways, there's a place called Perfect. In a town called Perfect the only crime is not having ice cream on your pie."
The scene switches to a dog coming up a white carpeted staircase. His muddy paw prints magically vanish behind him. The soft voice says, "Carpets never stain." In another scene two women in white hats sit in a manicured garden sipping tea while the waiter stands over them with an umbrella. The announcer says, "A town where everyone gives 110 percent, even when tipping."
Finally, after many such scenes the voice says, "Of course, we don't live anywhere near Perfect." One of the Walgreen's thousands of stores appears on the screen as we're told that's why they exist, as a place to find everything needed for "the real world."
It is true no one lives in a perfect world but it is important to realize at one time Adam and Eve did.
b. The Ability to choose.
God did not want robots that had no choice but to love Him. Tony Evans writes:
In order for man to function authentically as God’s image-bearer with a moral will, the possibility of evil must exist. For God to have negated that possibility would be for Him to nullify the very thing He created—namely, beings with the ability to choose. And choice, of necessity, requires options. By allowing His creatures to have choice, God made evil and sin possible. But mankind made it real by making wrong choices.
2. One Obligation.
God’s has revealed to us His perfect character in His Law.
Adam was given only one law (Gen. 2:16-17).
Later we have the Mosaic Law and the Sermon on the Mount. God’s law expresses His Holiness (Rom. 7:12).
Man is not left to wonder or speculate about what God is like and what He wants, it is spelled out in His Law. Again, Hal says it well:
The Law of God, which is summarized in the ten commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, expresses the overwhelming purity of God’s holy character. All the laws that God has ever given to men tell us what we’d have to be like if we were to try and approach God on the basis of our own merit. But according to James and Paul, we could keep every single point of the law and yet stumble in just one small area and that would be enough to disqualify us from enjoying fellowship with God for even a moment. What a commentary on the magnitude of God’s holiness.
There was only one law in that garden.
16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." Genesis 2:16-17
Obviously, the creation is obligated to obey his Creator.
So there we have the Situation – God’s Creation, a perfect couple, in a perfect place, in perfect fellowship with God for His glory, with only one Obligation Proclamation, and man’s Possession. PS: Again if you want to look at this in more detail, get my three-volume book on Genesis.
All of this reveals just how good God has been, even after the Fall, and He is good to us every second of every day. Tony Evans notes:
"In His goodness, God not only created you, but He also created everything for you. In other words, God didn't create the plants, animals, or fish just to have them around. He created them for the benefit of mankind. The earth was created to give us a home to enjoy. Every day when you get up and see the sun shine and say, "What a beautiful day!" God sits back and says, "How do you think that happened? Today didn't just jump up here by itself. It's a beautiful day because I'm a good God." You eat that fried catfish and you say, "Umm, that sure was good." God says, "Hold it. If you read Genesis 1, you will find that I created the water and the dry land. I separated the dry land from the water. I created every fish in every body of water. So whenever you eat catfish, don't just say, 'It was good.' Say, 'God is good.'" Every time I pick up a piece of fried chicken, I am reminded that God is good. Every time you see a rose, God says, "I don't want you just talking about how pretty those roses are, or you miss the point. The point is I know what I'm doing when I make flowers because I am a good God." When it rains and you say, "It's a bad day," God says, "Hold it! Hold it!" Why? Because Acts 14: 17 says He gives the rain and makes the seasons change to bring satisfaction to the human race. No rain, no vegetation; no vegetation, no vegetables or fruit. So the next time you enjoy a vegetable or a piece of fruit, you ought to pause and have a time of prayer and thanksgiving because our good God causes it to rain."
Johnny A Palmer Jr.
