GETTING TO KNOW THE GOD WE WORSHIP - Part one
The Attributes of God and their Application to Daily Living
Sunday November 05, 2000
The Eternal God, The Self-sufficient God, The Infinite God
Job 22:21-23
21 “Stop quarreling with God! If you agree with him, you will have peace at last, and things will go well for you.
22 Listen to his instructions, and store them in your heart.
23 If you return to the Almighty and clean up your life, you will be restored.
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
What comes into your mind when you think about God?
Do you have Joy? Do you have Love?
Are all of your thoughts Good? What do you think?
Are your thoughts, God you have been so good to me, or are your thoughts, God, why have you not completed the job that you started?
Do you know a lot of people like to blame God for all of the misfortune that comes in their lives.
Too many times it is easier to look at the negative than it is to look at the positive!
Too many times we find ourselves trying to blame God rather than Praising Him for all the good that He has done!
Before we start to blame God we need to take a look at our own lives and make sure that we are where we need to be with God.
We need to read the 139 Psalm and do like it says in the 23rd and the 24th verses and apply them to our lives.
What have we done?
Have we done what we told Him that we would do?
You see this cannot be a one sided deal.
By that I mean we can’t tell God that we are going to do one thing and then turn on Him in mid stream and start blaming Him because He isn’t moving as fast as we think that He should.
You see, we need to put all of our faith in Him and turn over our lives to Him completely
No religion or spiritual experience, no faith or practice can rise above it’s idea of God.
All you have to do is pause and examine the current state of the church in today’s world to realize that modern Christianity simply isn’t producing the kind of Christian who can stand and hang right on and put all of their faith in God and tell God here it is I am putting all that I have in Your hands.
People now live the Christian life largely by habit - by routine quite dully- without feeling.
A lot of people do what they do totally by habit, or by wondering what will somebody think if I don’t do this or if I don’t do that.
They have got their priorities all messed up!
They worry more about what other people will think than they do about what will God think!
There is little sense of majesty, awe, and consciousness of His Divine Presence.
Everything has become scripted and tame like I talked about last week, the canned sermons that a lot of preachers have to contend with.
How many people do you know who truly relish God more than life?
Who are actually obsessed with God?
God has got to be first in your life!
God has got to be first in my life!
It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate.
If we want to bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God as He is."
Let me try to say the same thing more directly - your concept of God is what fuels everything spiritual about you.
Think about your worship.
Do you pray without ceasing like the scripture tells us to do on a daily basis?
Do you think about God always?
When you pickup something to read is it something that you know in your heart God would be proud of you for?
Your life with God, is to worship, what roots are to a plant.
Without roots, you can’t keep flower stems alive for long.
Without God in your heart, worship becomes forced and strained.
It begins to produce feelings of guilt, which causes us to turn up the works of the flesh, which produces fanaticism and increasing emptiness.
Think about your faith.
How many people go through their whole Christian lives trying to muster up more faith in God.
Let me tell you, it can’t be done.
Faith is a by-product of knowing God.
Faith is like the trust you have in a reliable babysitter, that you know because you’ve put her to the test dozens of times.
You know what she’s like.
You know how she acts.
You’ve seen how loving and responsible she is.
You’ve proven her in difficult situations.
You don’t MAKE yourself trust her!
You’ve GROWN to trust her by getting to know her!
When you start to use that same concept with God you will begin to see things happen!
Think about your prayer life.
Prayer is cold and formal and stuffed with dryness when it’s performed as a religious duty or exercise.
Prayer was never meant to be just something you do because you must, and yes you must.
We sure don’t want to fall to the sin of prayerlessness!
Prayer was meant to be in the Presence of Someone you love.
The trouble is we get it all backwards.
We work harder at becoming good prayers than we do at understanding the nature and character of Father God!
Then, because our minds are starved for a true knowledge of God, our times of prayer become stuffed with the shopping lists of our troubles and needs.
Everything turns inward and downward.
This is all so different from the loving relationship Jesus intended.
You see, to have the right kind of relationship with God we need to be with Him, just like two people here on earth that are deeply in love!
Just try to stop two people who are deeply in love with each other, from communicating!
It is impossible to do!
If you have ever fallen love with someone then you know what I am talking about!
We need to have that same relationship with God, that two people that are totally in Love have!
You that have been in love know what I am talking about!
There is no stopping it, there is no stopping that passion, you will do anything to be together and that is exactly how it must be between you and God!
That same feeling has to be present in your relationship with God only it must be even stronger!
The Bible says there are tremendous blessings in knowing God:
Let’s look at what the scripture say’s in,
Proverbs 9:10-11
10 Fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in understanding.
11 Wisdom will multiply your days and add years to your life.
Look at what the scripture says, wisdom will add years to your life, it will help you in all your ways!
And again in,
Jeremiah 9:23-24
23 This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man gloat in his wisdom, or the mighty man in his might, or the rich man in his riches.
24 Let them boast in this alone: that they truly know me and understand that I am the LORD who is just and righteous, whose love is unfailing, and that I delight in these things. I, the LORD, have spoken!
This morning I want to state three truths about the God of the Bible:
OUR GOD IS THE CREATOR AND SUSTAINER OF EVERYTHING THAT IS.
The theologians use terms like SELF-EXISTENCE and SELF-SUFFICIENCY to describe what I’m trying to say.
GOD HAS NO ORIGIN. You can always distinguish that which is God, from that which is not God.
Everything but God has a beginning.
When you think of anything that has a beginning, you are not thinking about God.
This is of more than just intellectual importance.
The self-existence of God is one of the reasons mankind is uneasy about Him.
Philosophy and science have not always been friendly toward the idea of God.
Why you might say?
The main reason is that God is too great for man who is not filled with the Holy Spirit to understand!
The reason being, that they are dedicated to the task of accounting for things and are impatient with anything that refuses to give an account of itself.
The philosopher and the scientist will admit that there is much that they do not know.
But that is quite another thing from admitting that there is something which they can never know, which indeed they have no technique for discovering.
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 think that we can manage Him.
God is the Creator and Source of all life!
Jesus said "The Father has life IN HIMSELF."
That’s different from the way anything else has life.
Our life comes from Him.
Apart from God, everything else runs on batteries.
We derive all of our life from Him.
Let’s read in,
John 1:1-5
1 In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God, and he was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 He created everything there is. Nothing exists that he didn’t make.
4 Life itself was in him, and this life gives light to everyone.
5 The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
You see God has always been in charge and He always will be in charge.
That is a lot of what gets man in trouble all of the time.
They spend too much of their time trying to become God.
People want to be God rather than be like God!
The richer and more important that people get the more they seem to think that they are better than God!
Look at the rich young ruler that Jesus tells us about in Matthew.
He was another one that thought he could tell God what to do and when to do it.
Let’s turn to the scripture and read it.
Matthew 19:16-30
16 Someone came to Jesus with this question: “Teacher, what good things must I do to have eternal life?”
17 “Why ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “Only God is good. But to answer your question, you can receive eternal life if you keep the commandments.”
18 “Which ones?” the man asked.
And Jesus replied: “ ‘Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not testify falsely.
19 Honor your father and mother. Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
20 “I’ve obeyed all these commandments,” the young man replied. “What else must I do?”
21 Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 But when the young man heard this, he went sadly away because he had many possessions.
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is very hard for a rich person to get into the Kingdom of Heaven.
24 I say it again—it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
25 The disciples were astounded. “Then who in the world can be saved?” they asked.
26 Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.”
27 Then Peter said to him, “We’ve given up everything to follow you. What will we get out of it?”
28 And Jesus replied, “I assure you that when I, the Son of Man, sit upon my glorious throne in the Kingdom, you who have been my followers will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
29 And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred times as much in return and will have eternal life.
30 But many who seem to be important now will be the least important then, and those who are considered least here will be the greatest then.
You can see that this young man’s trouble was his money.
It was the thing that was standing between him and life eternal.
The man knew that he was lacking something in his life but he didn’t know what it was.
So when he went to Jesus and asked, and Jesus told him, he left and was sad because his love for his money was more important that it was to obey Jesus.
I fully believe that if that man had just obeyed what Jesus told him to do that Jesus never would have made him give up what he had.
The trouble with this man was that he wanted things done his way and most likely with him being rich and a ruler he had always had things his way and he wasn’t about to change.
How many of you this morning have something in your life that you don’t want to give up?
How many of you are blaming God for what you think that he hasn’t done?
You know it is like I said earlier, when God gives you something and then you turn around and go back to your old way of living and the power stops the first thing you want to do is to curse God and blame Him!
You never once stop and realize that you are the one that is standing between your having power and your not having power!
You are the one that has started the game playing, not God!
God has already done what He said that He would do!
Glory to God!
I was once living in a life of sin and I lost everything that I had as far a worldly possessions go.
I was at the bottom!
I might as well been at death’s door.
But I asked God to forgive me for my sins and I asked Him to become my personal savior and to come into my heart and be first in my life.
I made a promise to God!
I told Him that I would live for Him!
Now what would you think would have happened to me if the first thing I did when I started to get back on my feet was to go back to my old ways?
Do you think that God would have continued to help me?
No of course not!
That is the very thing that is wrong with a lot of people today, they start to get on their feet or they start to get over a sickness or they start to get over a family problem and bang they turn right back to their old way’s and then saten comes around and try’s to tell them that God didn’t do the complete job for them, and on and on we go.
We have got to come to a place in our lives where we are going to live for God no matter what the cost.
We are going to put God first in our lives and keep Him there!
We have got to quit trying to put the blame where blame doesn’t belong!
God doesn’t make mistakes!
People make mistakes!
Now as we read on, Colossians 1:16-17
16 Christ is the one through whom God created everything in heaven and earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—kings, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities.
Everything has been created through him and for him.
17 He existed before everything else began, and he holds all creation together.
And again we read in,
Hebrews 1:3
3 The Son reflects God’s own glory, and everything about him represents God exactly. He sustains the universe by the mighty power of his command. After he died to cleanse us from the stain of sin, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God of heaven.
Now, this understanding about God’s self-existence and self-sufficiency is very important because it’s precisely here that the background is formed for both man’s uniqueness and his sin.
Because man is created by such a God, man is not his own.
He was never designed to be either sovereign or independent.
He has the image of God in his being.
He exists for God.
He is God’s own.
This is also the root of all man’s sin.
No better definition of sin has ever been given than Isaiah 53:6
6 All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.
Notice, "Turned to his own way"
Sin isn’t just doing BAD things.
It’s doing Our OWN THINGS.
Man makes himself sovereign.
He puts his trust in himself.
Man, who only has breath as God lends it - who grows like the grass in the morning, only to be cut down at night - who disappears like a mist by the highway - thinks he is the end for his own existence!
From all this we may begin to understand why the Holy Scriptures have so much to say about the vital place of faith and why they brand unbelief as a deadly sin.
Among all created beings, not one dare trust in itself.
God alone trusts in Himself; all other beings must trust in Him.
Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its trust not in the living God but in dying men.
The unbeliever denies the self-sufficiency of God and usurps attributes that are not his.
This dual sin dishonors God and ultimately destroys the soul of the man."
2) GOD IS ETERNAL - TOTALLY UNAFFECTED BY TIME PAST OR PRESENT
Revelation 4:8
8 Each of these living beings had six wings, and their wings were covered with eyes, inside and out. Day after day and night after night they keep on saying,
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty—
the one who always was, who is, and who is still to come.”
What separates God from all other creatures around the throne is that you can pick any of those three tenses - "was" - "is" - "is to come" - and God is totally unchanged by any of them.
Push in any direction as far as you want and GOD IS - He is the constant, unaffected "I AM".
Look at what the scripture say’s in,
Isaiah 46:6-13
6 Some people pour out their silver and gold and hire a craftsman to make a god from it. Then they bow down and worship it!
7 They carry it around on their shoulders, and when they set it down, it stays there. It cannot even move! And when someone prays to it, there is no answer. It has no power to get anyone out of trouble.
8 “Do not forget this, you guilty ones.
9 And do not forget the things I have done throughout history. For I am God—I alone! I am God, and there is no one else like me.
10 Only I can tell you what is going to happen even before it happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish.
11 I will call a swift bird of prey from the east—a leader from a distant land who will come and do my bidding. I have said I would do it, and I will.
12 Listen to me, you stubborn, evil people!
13 For I am ready to set things right, not in the distant future, but right now! I am ready to save Jerusalem and give my glory to Israel.
The way we are restricted to the time sequence of life creates confusion and fear for us.
We measure our existence by the number of events we have passed.
We can’t see what’s up the road.
Christian and atheist alike all long for something solid and unfading.
The eternity of God wasn’t just a doctrine to Moses.
It was a foundation.
Consider that prayer from Moses for a minute:
a) Most people feel that this prayer was composed just as Moses was about to die - as the children of Israel were about to take possession of the Promised Land.
Consider their lives up to that point.
They’re a people marked by WANDERING - by HOPELESSNESS.
Abraham was called to leave his homeland without even knowing where he was going.
His descendants wandered in Canaan for years.
Then they were taken into Egyptian captivity (that lasted for hundreds of years!).
After than they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, being punished by God for their unbelief.
God refused to allow them to anchor their lives to anything temporal in this world.
He weaned them away from the illusion of security apart from Him.
That leads to the second lesson from those words of Moses:
b) That God Eternal is the only safe haven from the abrasive grind of years and events on our lives.
Psalm 90:1-17
1 A prayer of Moses, the man of God.
Lord, through all the generations
you have been our home!
2 Before the mountains were created,
before you made the earth and the world,
you are God, without beginning or end.
3 You turn people back to dust, saying,
“Return to dust!”
4 For you, a thousand years are as yesterday!
They are like a few hours!
5 You sweep people away like dreams that disappear
or like grass that springs up in the morning.
6 In the morning it blooms and flourishes,
but by evening it is dry and withered.
7 We wither beneath your anger;
we are overwhelmed by your fury.
8 You spread out our sins before you—
our secret sins—and you see them all.
9 We live our lives beneath your wrath.
We end our lives with a groan.
10 Seventy years are given to us!
Some may even reach eighty.
But even the best of these years are filled with pain and trouble;
soon they disappear, and we are gone.
11 Who can comprehend the power of your anger?
Your wrath is as awesome as the fear you deserve.
12 Teach us to make the most of our time,
so that we may grow in wisdom.
13 O LORD, come back to us!
How long will you delay?
Take pity on your servants!
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives.
15 Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery!
Replace the evil years with good.
16 Let us see your miracles again;
let our children see your glory at work.
17 And may the Lord our God show us his approval
and make our efforts successful.
Yes, make our efforts successful!
"Lord, may the knowledge of Your eternity not be wasted on me!"
We live our lives quickly and frantically on the very edge of eternity and before an Eternal God.
God is the only safe dwelling place for the human heart.
He’s my proper home.
Measure every idol, past time, priority and affection under the measuring stick of the Eternal God.
Again, this is where the urgency of the Christian faith takes its shape.
What is a man to do with the idea of eternity.
AT THE SAME TIME WE LONG FOR IT AND DREAD IT!
We are created by an eternal God - His image still cries out in our souls for permanence and eternal life.
Yet that same image, in the nagging voice of conscience, tells us we’re not ready for eternity.
We’ve been found guilty.
Man is "ground up between the upper millstone of HOPE and the bottom stone of FEAR."
Let’s look at what the scripture says in,
2 Timothy 1:9-10
9 It is God who saved us and chose us to live a holy life. He did this not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan long before the world began—to show his love and kindness to us through Christ Jesus.
10 And now he has made all of this plain to us by the coming of Christ Jesus, our Savior, who broke the power of death and showed us the way to everlasting life through the Good News.
People don’t understand life and they don’t know what to do about immortality.
They think they understand these things but they don’t.
Paul says Jesus shines the light on both these subjects. The Gospel changes everything.
All is made clear.
Paul says the whole issue of how man will deal with eternity is brought into focus in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Each person settles eternity in meeting Jesus Christ.
He said He gave eternal life to those who came to Him in trust and obedience.
3) OUR GOD IS INFINITE IN EVERY FACET OF HIS BEING
When we say God is infinite we mean that he knows no bounds.
Everything that God is and all that He does is totally without limit.
Again, this is totally above our ability to grasp.
Everything that we measure, weigh, count or number speaks of finiteness.
Words like BIG, LITTLE, GREAT, MOST, MORE, etc., even when used in the Bible are only condescension’s to our little heads.
They’re all meaningless when applied to God.
The truth of the infiniteness of God should be fuel for great faith, trust and love on our part.
Because God is infinite, all that flows out of Him is infinite as well.
a) His POWER extended to my little life is infinite.
There are no big needs versus little needs when they are brought to an infinite God.
b) His HOLINESS is infinite - He never gets used to small moral blemishes.
He never grows accustom to imperfections.
c) His MERCY and GRACE are infinite - "Where sin did abound, grace did much more abound" - the person who has known the debilitating grind and wretchedness of guilt knows that the infiniteness of God’s mercy is no academic truth.
Abounding sin is the terror of the world.
Infinite grace is the hope of mankind.
Scores of years ago, Joseph Hart meditated on this very attribute of God - his infiniteness, and wrote these words:
"This, this is the God we adore,
Our faithful, unchangeable Friend,
Whose love is as great as His power,
And neither knows measure nor end."
4) CONCLUSION
We desperately need a transforming vision of what Our Heavenly Father is like.
This alone keeps everything from going stale in the church.
"Acquaint yourself with Him, and be at peace"
Do you see the truth in those words?
They remind us of a need we often ignore
Do you grab your Bible in the morning understanding you need that information far more desperately than the excitement that comes from reading the morning paper with the latest figures on The Stock Exchange?
The answer to that question will totally explain the leanness you feel in your soul.
As long as you have that leanness in your soul, you will always be looking to fill that void.
Let me tell you this morning, there is nothing that will fill that void but Christ Jesus.
You can look the world over and try all sorts of things, but Jesus is what you need!
