WHO IS THE LORD
Exodus 5:2
INTRODUCTION:
1. Life’s greatest and most probing question is the same question that Pharaoh asked Moses and Aaron almost 3,500 years ago – “Who is God?”
2. One’s view of God will determine the way he will think, the way he will act, the way he will respond to difficult situations, the path his earthly life will take, and ultimately it will determine the eternal destiny of his soul.
3. ILL: Keith Pierce Years ago, at the age of 19 when I was a new believer in Christ, I set out to tell all of my old friends about the change that God had wrought in my life. One night, I went to a 24-hour Kinko’s to witness to my friend Keith Pierce. He and I had known each other for years and played guitar together in a couple of bands. To my surprise Keith knew more of the Bible than I did! However, the knowledge he possessed was for the sole purpose of trying to disprove it. He did not believe that the Bible was the Word of God. I remember distinctly he said to me, “The God of the Old Testament was an absolute tyrant; the God of the New Testament is a God of love; the two are not even the same!”
4. Could this be true? Does the Bible represent two different God’s? The answer, of course, is a resounding “No!”
5. First, the Bible declares that there is only one God
6. This is the doctrine of monotheism.
7. I Timothy 2:5 “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
8. Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.”
9. Interestingly, the statement in this verse is the basic confession of faith in Judaism. The verse means that the Lord (Yahweh) is totally unique. He alone is God.
10. Second, the Bible declares that God never changes
11. This is the doctrine of immutability.
12. Malachi 3:6 “For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.”
13. Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and forever.”
14. James Montgomery Boice, who for many years was the pastor of the great 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, wrote, “The unchangeableness of God (immutability) means that God is always the same in His eternal being. His will is invariable. His purposes are sure. God is the fixed point in a churning and decaying universe.”
15. Psalm 86:15 “But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth.”
16. Does this God of Whom David speaks sound like a tyrant? “No,” God has always been good, merciful, gracious, and loving!
17. THEREFORE, EVERY PERSON MUST BELIEVE IN THE ONE GOD OF THE BIBLE
WHY?
I. BECAUSE OF GOD’S GOODNESS PS. 33:5
1. Psalm 33:5
2. God’s goodness is that which disposes Him to be kind, cordial, benevolent, and full of good will toward men.
3. A.W. Tozer, in his book “The Knowledge of the Holy,” wrote, “That God is good is taught or implied on every page of the Bible and must be received as an article of faith as impregnable as the throne of God. It is a foundation stone for all sound thought about God and is necessary to moral sanity. To allow that God could be other than good is to deny the validity of all thought and to end in the negation of every moral judgment. If God is not good, then there can be no distinction between kindness and cruelty, and heaven can be hell and hell, heaven.”
4. God is intrinsically good. His goodness originates within Himself. Therefore, by His nature, He is inclined to bestow goodness toward His creation. It is impossible for Him to be anything but good!
5. Mark 10:18 “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.”
6. Interestingly, to the Jews of Jesus’ day the term “Good” was a designation reserved, in the most absolute sense, for God alone. One would never think to say, as we so often do today, “He is a good man.” Only God is good. People are extrinsically good. Any goodness we possess comes as a gift from God’s loving hand!
7. Song: Steven Curtis Chapman If the truth were known, and a light were shown, On every hidden part of my soul, Most would turn away, shake their heads and say, He’s still got such a long way to go. If the truth were known you would see That the only good in me – is Jesus, O, it’s Jesus.
8. First, the Old Testament reveals God’s goodness
9. God’s goodness is shown in His benevolent concern for all His creatures.
10. Psalm 145:9,15-16 “The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works…The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.”
11. The very fact that we have food to eat, clothes to wear, and a roof over our heads is due only to the goodness of God! Since God is immutable, or unchanging, He never varies in His goodness to all.
12. ILL: Photosynthesis Consider photosynthesis. God causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall. Subsequently, chlorophyll-containing plants use the sun’s light to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates, which give off a natural by-product – oxygen.
13. Psalm 34:8 “O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in Him.”
14. Second, the New Testament reveals God’s goodness
15. Romans 2:4 “Or despisest the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”
16. Only the goodness of God enables sinful, fallen, and depraved creatures to come into a personal relationship with a holy and righteous God. He owes salvation to no one! He is not indebted to provide eternal life for even one person (Romans 3:23)! Every person deserves an eternity apart from God in hell! And yet, His goodness causes Him to seek us and offer eternal life to all that believe in Jesus Christ!
17. Acts 14:17 “Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”
18. James 1:17 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
19. Since God is immutable, or unchanging, He never varies in His goodness to all. Every page of the Bible either teaches or implies the goodness of God.
II. BECAUSE OF GOD’S MERCY PS. 103:8-11
1. Psalm 103:8-11
2. Mercy is that aspect of God, which causes Him to show pity and compassion. God manifests His mercy freely to those who are in misery or distress. Literally, mercy is not getting what we deserve.
3. Psalm 34:6 “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.”
4. Clarence Theissen wrote, “Mercy is an eternal and necessary quality in God as an all-perfect being.” As such, it may be stated that God has always been and forever will be merciful. No action on earth, in heaven, or in hell can ever change the tender mercies of our God.
5. First, the Old Testament reveals God’s mercy
6. Interestingly, although some would claim that God acted as a tyrant in the Old testament, the truth remains that the Old Testament has about four times as much to say about the mercy of God as the New Testament.
7. One, God bestowed His mercy on Lot (Genesis 19)
8. One of the greatest displays of God’s judgment and wrath in the Bible is the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet, we can clearly see the mercy of God in the case of Lot.
9. The truth is that God always tempers His judgment with His Mercy. Wherever and whenever God appears to men, He is merciful as well as just. He has always dealt in mercy with mankind and will always deal in justice when His mercy is despised.
10. In the midst of His terrible judgment upon the sinful people of Sodom and Gomorrah, God saved Lot and his family.
11. Genesis 19:16 “And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.”
12. God’s mercy overcame Lot’s procrastination!
13. Two, God bestowed His mercy on David (II Samuel 12)
14. David committed two premeditated sins – adultery with Bath-sheba and the murder of her husband Uriah the Hittite. Under the Mosaic Law David rightfully deserved the death penalty for these crimes. Yet, God showed chose to have mercy on him.
15. II Samuel 12:13 “And David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord hath also put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.”
16. Time does not permit to describe fully the mercy God bestowed upon Jacob, Joseph, the nation of Israel, the Judges, Solomon, and Job, just to name a few. The fact remains that throughout the Old Testament God freely revealed His mercy to mankind.
17. Lamentations 3:22-23 “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”
18. Second, The New Testament reveals God’s mercy
19. The New Testament reveals God as “the Father of mercies” (II Corinthians 1:3), “who is rich in mercy” (Ephesians 2:4), “is full of compassion and is merciful” (James 5:11), and has “great mercy” (I Peter 1:3).
20. Romans 11:32 “For God hath concluded them in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.”
21. Titus 3:5 “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”
22. Tozer wrote, “We who earned banishment shall enjoy communion; we who deserve the pains of hell shall know the bliss of heaven. And all through the tender mercy of our God.”
III. BECAUSE OF GOD’S GRACE TITUS 2:11
1. Titus 2:11
2. Grace means God’s sovereign and undeserved favor. There is a difference between God’s mercy and His grace. If mercy is not getting what we do deserve, then grace is getting what we do not deserve.
3. ILL: The murder of a son Imagine that you have a 6-year old son whom you love dearly. Tragically, one day you discover that he has been horribly murdered. After a lengthy search, the police find and arrest the murderer. You have a choice. If you used every means in your power to have him killed for his crime – that would be vengeance. If however you were content to sit back and let the authorities take over and give him a fair trial, guilty plea, and the legal punishment for his crime – that would be justice. But if you should pardon the murderer, forgive him, invite him into your home, and adopt him into your family – that is grace!
4. Very few people would do that, but God does it every day! He takes the guilty sinner and extends to him the gift of eternal life because of Christ’s death on the cross.
5. God is gracious. The Bible calls Him the God of all grace. Because He is the God of all grace, and because grace is a part of His nature, He is gracious in all his dealings with men. Apart from the grace of God mankind could have no hope for happiness, peace, or especially eternal life in heaven.
6. First, the Old Testament reveals God’s grace
7. The word grace first appears in the English Bible in Genesis 6:8. God’s sadness at the sinfulness of His creation caused His decision to destroy the whole earth.
8. Genesis 6:6-8 “And it repented the lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repeneth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”
9. The word grace in verse 8 comes from the Hebrew root word chen, which literally means “to bend or to stoop.” This word speaks of the condescending or unmerited favor of a superior person to and inferior one. Simply, grace represents the idea of a person of supreme authority bending or stooping down to rescue a person having no authority.
10. ILL: The Prince of Wales A small boy outside of Buckingham palace wanted to talk with the king but was sternly rebuked by the guard at the gate. He wiped away a tear with a dirty little hand as a well-dressed man passed by. The kind man stopped and asked the boy to explain his trouble. When he heard the story he took the little boy by the hand and said, “Here, son, hold my hand and I will get you in to talk with the king. Never mind those soldiers.” As the little boy took the hand of his new friend, all the soldiers snapped to attention and presented arms as they passed by. Past the guard he was led, along carpeted halls, through wide flung doors, and on through a glittering throng right up to the throne of the king. He had taken the Prince of Wales hand, the son of the king. Through him he had gained acccess.
11. God condescendingly stooped down into a sinful and wicked world to rescue Noah from the coming destruction. What a picturesque example of what God does in the lives of each person whom He saves!
12. Second, the New Testament reveals God’s grace
13. Paul writings are replete with the topic of grace. He wrote, in Ephesians 1:6, that God’s grace “hath made us accepted in the beloved.” He also wrote that Christians have been “justified freely by his grace” (Romans 3:24), and “are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:4).
14. Ephesians 2:8,9 “For by grace are ye saved through; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
15. This grace came only through Jesus Christ.
16. John 1:17 “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”
17. Charles Ryrie wrote, “Although grace was manifest in the Old Testament, it was but a candle compared with the brightness of grace that appeared at the incarnation. Grace is the basis of our salvation, justification, election, faith, and spiritual gifts.”
18. All that we have in Christ Jesus we owe to the grace of God.
IV. BECAUSE OF GOD’S LOVE I JOHN 4:19
1. I John 4:19
2. The love of God is the greatest reality in the universe. It is simple enough for the smallest child to comprehend, yet boundless enough for the greatest scholar to ponder eternally!
3. It is the foundation upon which the hope of the world rests. But it is a personal, intimate thing, too. God does not love populations, He loves people. He does not love masses, but men. He loves us with a mighty love that had no beginning and can have no end! God personifies love and has never existed apart from it. As a matter of fact, before He ever created a creature to whom he could display His love, He was love!
4. Spurgeon wrote, “When did Christ’s love begin to work for us? It was long before we were born, long before the world was created. Far, far back in eternity, our Savior gave the first proof of His love to us by espousing our cause.”
5. However, what exactly does love mean? Theissen wrote, “Love is the perfection of the divine nature by which God is moved to communicate Himself.” The fact that wrote us a book about Himself and sent His Son to the earth to die for us proves His love for us!
6. First, the Old Testament reveals God’s love
7. God bestowed His love in choosing the nation of Israel to be His people!
8. Deuteronomy 7:6-8a “For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all the people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because the Lord loved you!”
9. God displayed His love when He redeemed Israel from the bondage of the Egyptians.
10. Hosea 11:1 “When Israel was a child, then I loved him and called my son out of Egypt.”
11. God exhibited His love through numerous instances of chastisement toward His people.
12. Proverbs 3:12 “For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.”
13. Second, the New Testament reveals God’s love
14. God has shown His love in offering salvation to those who believe.
15. I John 3:1 “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.”
16. I John 4:9-10 “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
17. The greatest verse in the entire Bible concerning God’s love is John 3:16.
18. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
19. This verse describes God’s “great love wherewith he loved us” (Ephesians 2:4). The sacrifice of God’s Son for man’s sin forever unquestionably proved that “God is love” (I John 4:8).
20. ILL: Jesus loves you It does not matter where you put the accent. You may say – Jesus loves you; or, you may say – Jesus loves you; or, you may even say – Jesus loves you! The message is still the same – Jesus loves you!
CONCLUSION:
1. The Bible knows nothing of a God, Who acts tyrannically or cruelly towards those whom He created. Rather, the Old and New Testaments reveal a good, merciful, gracious, and loving Heavenly Father, who gave His Son to be the sacrifice for sin, and in Whom men may place their trust.
2. Psalm 86:5 “For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.”
