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Truth Detectors [Episode 1]
Message 3
“The Truth About God”
Psalm 139:7-10
Opening Illustration
A young woman brought her fiancé home to meet her parents for thanksgiving dinner. After dinner, her mother told her father to find out about the young man. The father invited the fiancé to his study for a talk.
"So what are your plans?" the father asked the young man. "I am a biblical scholar," he replied.
"A Biblical scholar. Hmmm," the father said. "Admirable, but what will you do to provide a nice house for my daughter to live in?"
"I will study," the young man replied, "and God will provide for us."
"And how will you buy her a beautiful engagement ring, such as she deserves?" asked the father.
"I will concentrate on my studies," the young man replied, "God will provide for us."
"And children?" asked the father. "How will you support children?"
"Don’t worry, sir, God will provide," replied the fiancé.
The conversation proceeded like this, and each time the father questioned, the young idealist insisted that God would provide.
Later, the mother asked, "How did it go, Honey?" The father answered, "He has no job and no plans, and he thinks I’m God!"
* “Who Will Provide?” From sermoncentral.com, contributed by Andrew Chan.
That sounds like a lot of fathers I know … and what I might even sound like some day. A father who does his job right carries a big load.
But that’s not what we’re here to learn about today. I want to shift our thinking from an earthly father to a Heavenly Father … God, our Creator. Maybe some of you in this room today don’t have a Heavenly Father … you have a Creator, you have a judge, but you don’t have a God who is your Father … a relationship of spiritual family. Hopefully, when we are finished with our study today, you will have a better understanding of who God is, what He is capable of , and how much He loves you. But … as we continue in our study called Truth Detectors, and as we seek to better understand the basics of Christian doctrine and faith, you need to remember our starting point. (Do Clapping Exercise)
Starting Point:
In essential beliefs we have unity.
There are some things which cannot be compromised. We must have unity in these areas. Our essential beliefs are defined in our Statement of Faith.
So as we talk about God, we need to begin with our doctrinal statement regarding God, taken from our church’s statement of faith.
Our Statement Regarding God
God is the Creator and Ruler of the universe. He has eternally existed in three personalities: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are co-equal and are one God.
Genesis 1:1,26,27, 3:22; Psalm 90:2, Matthew 28:19; 1 Peter 1:2, 2 Corinthians 13:14
That is a very short statement, but it is packed full of doctrine and some awesome Bible truths. Let’s take a deeper look at those as we seek to better understand who God really is and how He relates to us.
Transition Illustration
I heard about a man who was talking to God. He asked God how long a million years was to Him. God replied, “It’s just like a single second of your time, my child.” So the man asked, “What about a million dollars?” The Lord replied, “To me, it’s like a single penny.” Then the man gathered himself up and asked, “Well, Lord, can I have one of those pennies?” And God said, “In a minute.”
Taken from Michael Hodgin’s 1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking, p.297.
That story gets us thinking about our first Bible truth …
Bible Truths
God is:
1. Eternal (Psalm 90:2, Revelation 1:8)
God has always existed. He is eternal. He has no beginning. He has no end. He has always been, and He will always be. A million years is as a fleeting moment to God. He exists outside of time … he is eternal.
Most of us have some trouble getting our minds around that concept. We simply can’t think eternally. We can’t even remember what happened last week. Think back to the horror of September 11, 2001. We all thought that was something we would never forget … but isn’t it amazing how so many people seem to have forgotten already?
Sometimes I think the only thing that we can do eternally is stay mad … stay ticked off … at somebody. We’re really good at that!
But as we seek to truly grasp a proper understanding of the doctrine of God, we have to begin with this simple truth … God is eternal. No beginning … no end. He simply is. And what’s really interesting is that …
• God proclaimed His self-existence in His name! (Exodus 3:14)
God spoke these words to Moses. This was in the burning bush encounter. God was calling Moses to go back to Egypt and lead his people out of slavery and to the promised land. And Moses said, “Well, if I do go down there and do that, and I tell them that the God of their fathers has sent me, and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’, what do I tell them” And God said, “I AM has sent you.” This expression “I AM” is the English translation of the Hebrew name for God, YHWH, pronounced “Yahweh.” In Latin it is pronounced Jehovah. It simply means, “I AM.” Do you here what God is telling Moses? I have no beginning! I have no end! I AM! So, our God is eternal.
Our God is also …
2. Creator (Genesis 1:1)
There can be no doubt that God created the heavens and the earth. Now, there are wonderful Christians who will argue over how that was done. Some will argue that God created over the eons and that the earth is very old. Some will say that the earth is only four or five thousand years old. Some will argue that these first chapters of Genesis should be taken literally. Others will say that the creation account is a literary framework for creation, and not to be taken literally.
But, in the end, we must all agree with this verse. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Only an idiot would argue with that. Now, before I go any further, I want to warn you that I have a science background. I was, and probably still am, a science nerd. I hold a degree in medical technology, with minors in chemistry and biology. I worked for seven years in the medical field. I have seen every episode of Star Trek … twice! And it is my testimony that the haphazard conjecture and happenstance of evolution, a poor scientific theory that has not been supported by scientific data, does not sufficiently explain our origins. The only thing that it does is demand that we remove any possibility of God from the equation.
Evolution theorists would have us to believe that there was once a ball of snot floating is space, though there wasn’t any space, and at the beginning of time that ball exploded. From it came stars and planets. From the planets came amino acids which mysteriously huddled up to form DNA! Then, from the primordial ooze, one day living creatures sprang forth and developed until we now have us! Idiocy!
Friends, everywhere around us is design! Look at the symmetry of a flower. Look at the complexity of DNA. Look at the defense mechanisms of animals, bugs, and bacteria. God’s fingerprint is on all of it … because in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now, I don’t know exactly how He did it … and I don’t know for sure how long He took … and I don’t care!
But there are two important things that I do want you to know and understand.
• He created from nothing. (John 1:3)
When we create, we take raw materials and make stuff out of them. We take wood, or metal, or clay, or stone … and we create art or useful things. We call them our creations and we’re so proud of them! But we had to start with something … we had to begin with pre-existing materials. Not so with God. He began with nothing. He established and created matter, and He made everything out of nothing. The theological Latin word for that is ex nihilo … some of you may have heard that before.
Another important truth is this …
• He created with the power of His Word. (Genesis 1:3)
It didn’t take any effort or hands-on work. The almighty Creator simply spoke everything into being … through the creative power of His own Word. Now that’s power! And that’s the powerful God that we serve!
Transition Illustration
Many of you know that President Bush testified on Thursday before the 9/11 investigative committee. He hosted the group in the Oval Office of the White House. That would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it? To meet with the President in the Oval Office? But what surprised me the most was the action of two of the members of the committee. Two of them got up, asked to be excused, and walked out of the meeting. They apparently had scheduling problems. One of them had an appointment to introduce someone to somebody else.
Say what? You mean to tell me, you’re blowing off the President of the United States … who blocked off the entire morning to sit before your panel … because you have a lunch date! I’m sorry, folks, but if I had a meeting with the president, and it ran over a little into a lunch date that I had arranged with you … I will most likely be a little late! You know what I mean? Those people had no concept of who is in charge …
Which beings us to our next Bible truth … God is …
3. Ruler (Revelation 19:6)
The Lord God almighty reigns! You know what that means, don’t you? God is in charge! He’s the boss. He’s in control. He is our ruler.
Now, some of us tend to have a problem with that. We don’t like to answer to anybody. We can say with our lips that God is in charge, but so often our lives speak a totally different conviction. We don’t live like God is in charge … we want to live like we are in charge. We want God to work around our schedule, like those yahoos on the 9/11 committee. We want to do our own thing, and God can come along if He wants to.
But, friends, that’s not the order of things, is it? That’s not how we should live our lives, is it? We need to remember that God is in charge … and we’re not!
A couple of important things about God’s power …
• God is Omnipotent – He has all power! (Jeremiah 32:17)
That means there is nothing too big for God. There is nothing that He is not in control of. There is nothing in your life that is too big for God to handle or help you deal with. If you know Him through His Son, Jesus Christ, then you are a child of the Most High God … and you have direct, prayerful access to His omnipotent power.
• God is Transcendent – He is above all things! (Psalm 148:13)
What does that mean? It means that God doesn’t operate on our level. God sees, He understands, he knows things that we do not know and cannot know. Sometimes we look at a horrible thing, like suffering or death, and we can’t see anything good in it. We don’t understand. We wonder, “How can our loving God allow things like that to happen?” But we can’t know some of the mysteries of God. He has the big picture, all of creation and all of the universe, in His hands. He sees and knows and grasps things that we cannot. So we must trust in Him, because He is above all things … we must have faith that God does, indeed, see the “big picture” and He does have our very best interests at heart.
God is also …
4. One in Three – Father, Son, Holy Spirit
Theology Word – TRINITY
Now we’re going to get into some big theology! This is one of the simplest, yet most profound truths of Scripture. It is something that the best and brightest of our evangelical theologians have struggled with throughout the centuries. And some people still don’t get it. But the simple fact of Scripture exists … God exists in Trinity. He is the triune Godhead, expressed in the persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
How do we know that? Well, first of all …
• All are specifically called God.
o The Father (Romans 1:7)
o The Son (John 20:28)
o The Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17)
We can’t argue with Scripture. We established last week a proper view of the Word of God. It states these facts in various places in the Bible … so we have to do our best to reconcile them. The fact of the Trinity of God is that resolution.
• Genesis provides the foundation for this doctrine. (Genesis 1:26, 27)
Isn’t it fascinating that both the plural and singular pronouns are used in this passage? “Let us make man in our image … So God created man in His image.” We have a plural person and a singular person … all in the same person! Obviously, this doesn’t speak of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the persons of the Trinity. But it does lay a foundation.
Also …
• Jesus affirmed this doctrine in the Great Commission. (Matthew 28:19)
Here, from the very mouth of Jesus, we are instructed to make disciples and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We have an affirmation of the Trinitarian God from the very mouth of Jesus. And, finally …
• Paul taught and explained this doctrine. (1 Peter 1:2; 2 Corinthians 13:14)
In these verses, and in others, Paul expounded upon the understanding of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But how do we understand it? How can there be one in three? How can God be one person and three persons all at the same time? Well, I like to think about it this way. I am one man, but three different persons. Many of you are the same way. Think about a family relationship. I am Geoff Baggett, but I am the son of George and Ruth , the father of Laura Beth and Katie, and the husband of Kim. And, believe me, those are all three completely different personalities. I relate, or related, to them in very different ways. Yet I am one man.
That’s how you can understand the Trinity of God. He is Father, He is Son, and He is Holy Spirit. All three different, yet all three the same. Our God is Trinity.
Closing Illustration
During the Civil War, a young soldier in the Union Army lost his older brother and father in the battle of Gettysburg. The soldier received a furlough and decided to go to Washington and ask the president for an exemption from his military service so he could go back home and help his mother and his sister. He arrived in Washington, went to the front gate of the White House, and asked to see the president.
The guard on duty scolded him, “You can’t see the president, young man! Don’t you know there’s a war going on? The president is a very busy man! You need to get back to your unity where you belong!”
So the young soldier left disheartened. He was sitting on a park bench not far from the White House when a little boy came up to him. He said, “Mister, you look unhappy. What’s wrong?” The soldier looked at the little boy and began to spill his heart. He told him about his father and brother being killed, and the desperate situation at home. He explained that they had no one to help them with the farm.
The little boy listened to his story, then said, “I can help you, mister.” Then he took the soldier by the hand and led him back to the front gate of the White House. Apparently the guard didn’t notice them, because they weren’t stopped. They walked right inside the front door, went by a bunch of generals and other high-ranking officers, and still no one said a word. The soldier didn’t understand. Why didn’t anyone try to stop them?
Finally, they reached the Oval Office … where the president was working … and the little boy didn’t even knock on the door. He just walked right in and led the soldier in with him. And there behind the desk was Abraham Lincoln and his highest-ranking military leader, going over battle plans.
The president looked at the little boy, and then at the soldier, then said “Good afternoon, Todd. Can you introduce me to your friend?”
Then Todd Lincoln, the son of the president said, “Daddy, this soldier needs your help!”
The next day … that soldier was home …
That story leads us to our last Bible truth. God is…
5. Personal (Psalm 139:7-10)
As big as God is, as mysterious as His ways may be, as awesome and powerful as He is … God is still right here … right now. He loves you so very much! And you can have a personal relationship with Him. You can come into His very presence through a relationship with His Son. Let me tell you about that …
Prayer: Gospel Presentation for Lost, Encouragement for Believers.
LIFE Applications
1. Acknowledge in faith that God is our eternal creator.
2. Submit to his “rulership” in your own life.
3. Make sure that He is your Lord (Boss) … not just someone you claim as a Savior.
4. Try to study and better understand the doctrine of the Trinity.
5. Never forget that God wants a personal relationship with you.
6. Make sure you spend time with the eternal creator of the universe every day! He is waiting to hear from you!
