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The attributes of God, what a subject to even attempt to address. I want to begin this evening with the words of men far better prepared than I to discuss this subject, some of the things that they have said.
Since I came to Northampton, I have often had sweet complacency in God and views of his glorious perfections and of the excellency of Jesus Christ. God has appeared to me a glorious and lovely being chiefly on account of his holiness.
The holiness of God has always appeared to me the most lovely of all his attributes. The doctrines of God's absolute sovereignty and free grace and showing mercy to whom he would show mercy and man's absolute dependence on the operations of God's Holy Spirit have very often appeared to me as sweet and glorious doctrines.
These doctrines have been much my delight. God's sovereignty has ever appeared to me a great part of his glory. It has often been my delight to approach God and adore him as a sovereign God and ask sovereign mercy of him.
Sometimes only mentioning a single word caused my heart to burn within me or only seeing the name of Christ or the name of some attribute of God. And God has appeared glorious to me on account of the Trinity.
It has made me have exalting thoughts of God that he has subsisted in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The sweetest joys and delights I have experienced have not been those that have arisen from the hope of my own good estate but in a direct view of the glorious things of the gospel.
When I enjoy this sweetness, it seems to carry me above the thoughts of my own estate. It seems at such times a loss that I cannot bear to take off my eye from the glorious, pleasant object I behold without me to turn my eye in upon myself and my own good estate.
Once, as I rode out into the woods for my help in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that was for me extraordinary of the glory of the Son of God as mediator between God and man in his wonderful, great, full, pure, and sweet grace and love and meek and gentle condescension.
This grace that appeared so calm and sweet appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour, which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud.
I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust and to be full of Christ alone, to love him with a holy and pure love, to trust in him, to live upon him, to serve and follow him, and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity.
I have several other times had views very much of the same nature and which have had the same effects.". Those are the writings of Jonathan Edwards. Here is a man who loved the attributes of God, loved the holiness of God and the sovereignty of God, something you hear very little about.
A man about 200 years earlier wrote, "...nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.
Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. As long as we do not look beyond the earth, being quite content with our own righteousness, wisdom and virtue, we flatter ourselves most sweetly and fancy ourselves all but demigods.
Suppose we but once begin to raise our thoughts to God and to ponder his nature and how completely perfect are his righteousness, wisdom and power, the straight edge to which we must be shaped. Then what masquerading earlier as righteousness was pleasing in us will soon grow filthy in its consummate wickedness.
What wonderfully impressed us under the name of wisdom will stink in its very foolishness. As a consequence, we must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.
For how can the thought of God penetrate your mind without your realizing immediately that since you are his handiwork, you have been made over and bound to his command by right of creation that you owe your life to him.
Of course, that is from the Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. Here are two men who understand what it is to contemplate the attributes of God and to recognize the centrality of the attributes of God to Christian theology.
There is no way, no matter how long we would stay here this evening or how many scripture passages we would read and how much discussion we might engage in for us to exhaust the subject of the nature and attributes of God.
Indeed, Job said in Job 26 .14, Behold, these are the fringes of his ways, and how faint a word we hear of him, but his mighty thunder, who can understand? So even though God has revealed himself, we know that his revelation of himself is not exhaustive.
God has not told us everything there is to know. And there will be many who will ask you questions about the nature of God, and eventually we come to a point where we simply don't have any more answers because God has not revealed anything beyond that point.
And some will say, well, that means that what you say about God is therefore not true. But that assumes that we have to know everything there is to know about God, and I would submit to you that we as creatures will never know everything there is to know about God.
Or if we possibly could do that, then he would not be God. For God is infinite and eternal and unlimited, and we as creatures are limited and finite in our understanding. So as we look at the nature and attributes of God, we do not suppose or presume to think that we are exhausting the subject, but we will attempt, anyhow, to present the biblical perspective on who God is and what God has revealed about himself.
Now in doing so, in trying to create an outline, we recognize immediately that you simply can't put God upon the examining table and draw nice, neat lines and dissect him or anything like this. Many of the categories that we'll look at this evening will overlap with one another and will be directly related to one another.
And it is very difficult to keep the two aspects of one point from our consideration at the same time, and it's a difficult subject. And so I ask you to really put some effort into concentration this evening and looking with me at the Word of God in regards to the nature of God.
We begin with what I consider to be the most foundational, fundamental revelation of God in Scripture, and that is what I have called his solitariness. That is his being the only God. There is only one God.
And I have put down five subcategories that we could subsume under the topic of his solitariness. We mean by that broadly the fact that he is the only true God, that he is the only true deity. But flowing from the concept of monotheism, the fact there is only one God, there are a number of other issues that we might want to look at.
For example, the fact there is only one God leads us to understand his unity, the unity of God. While we confess the Trinity, we must recognize the Trinity comes from tri-unity, and we must never allow our commitment to monotheism and to the unity of God, the fact that there is only one being of God, to be lost in the discussion.
The Israelites in the great Shema of Deuteronomy 6 .4 would say, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And in so doing they were confessing that there is but one God for them, and that this God is a unity, that this is not a council, this is not a group of beings functioning as one God, but that God's being is indivisible, that God's being cannot be divided up into small parts, or even into three parts, as some Christians want to do in misunderstanding the doctrine of the Trinity.
So we see unity. We see simplicity. This is connected with unity, that the being of God is one. There are not different kinds of being in God, in the concept that you might have a basic being of God, and then a more advanced being of God, or different kinds of being of God.
God's being is one, and hence is simple, and not complex, or divided up, or of different kinds. We see also the uniqueness of God. This is important to recognize, for since God is unique, there is nothing to which we can compare Him.
If we make the attempt, we must always do so with great care, because of the fact that we may go too far, and in comparing Him to something in the created order, end up teaching a falsehood about Him.
Something that is unique cannot be compared to anything else. That is the definition of uniqueness. And in light of that, any of the analogies that we would utilize will necessarily come short, will necessarily fall short at some point in the description of God.
Now the Bible talks to us about the fact that there is none like God, that He is unique. In Jeremiah 10, verse 6, we read that no one is like you, O Yahweh. You are great, and your name is mighty in power.
In Isaiah 44, verse 6 -8, we read that this is what Yahweh says, Israel's King and Redeemer, Yahweh Almighty. I am the first, and I am the last. Apart from me there is no God. Who then is like me? Let Him proclaim it.
Let Him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come. Yes, let Him foretell what will come. Do not tremble. Do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago?
You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? Yea, there is no other God. I know not any. In the 77th Psalm, verse 13, we read that your ways, O God, are holy. What God is so great as our God? And in the 113th Psalm, verse 5, we read, Who is like Yahweh our God, the One who sits enthroned on high?
And so it is throughout the testimony of Scripture that God is unique. There is none like unto Him in all the universe. We also understand from the fact that there is only one God, His absoluteness. And what does this mean?
I think this is very important. Since God is the only God, since God is the creator of all else that then is, everything within the creation can only find its true meaning, can only be properly defined itself in reference to an absolute center point.
And God, since He is the only God and the creator of all, is that absolute center point. Whenever we attempt to define something, we have to attempt to define something in regards to some center. If we have an object, an object out here, just whatever we might call it, if there is no center point to which we can relate it and everything else that might be in the created order, then we have no way of defining anything.
We have no way of saying there is truth or there is love or there is right or there is wrong without an absolute center point. And God is that absolute. We speak much today of the fact that the philosophies of man are completely relativistic.
You've got your truth, I've got my truth. The word truth doesn't have any meaning in those two sentences. Why? Because man has jettisoned the concept of there being an absolute. In the field of ethics, we have no right and we have no wrong because the idea that an absolute God, an eternal personal God, has revealed what is right and what is wrong has been abandoned.
And so the fact that there is one God, that he by his being has created all else that is, provides for an absolute center, an ability to define and to have order and meaning in this world. And finally we see from the solitariness of God his self-existence.
This is an important thing for us to emphasize over against the eastern philosophies that are simply flooding our nation and are finding a much more ready acceptance amongst our people than anyone ever would have thought and a much deeper inroad into, for example, our public educational system than most Christians have any idea.
God is self-existent. That is, God is not dependent upon anyone or anything else. I have shuddered in horror hearing Christian preachers in sermons speak about how God had to create because he was lonely or he wanted to express his love to man and so he created and there is an emptiness in God that is filled by the creation as if God were dependent upon or in need of anything or anyone.
God is self-existent. Nothing pre-existed him. His existence is not owed to anything or anyone. He is the grounds of all other existence. Now, this is over and against all those concepts of pantheism that are sweeping our nation.
Shirley MacLaine standing on the beach saying, I am God, I am God, I am God. No, she is not. That concept that God and his creation are interconnected and dependent upon one another is utterly foreign to the biblical revelation of who Yahweh is.
Completely contradictory. These are important things to remember. Now, moving to the next point under natural attributes, what we refer to here are those attributes that describe the being of God, his living essence, those things that apply to him as he exists.
For example, spirituality. Our Lord Jesus taught in John 4 .24, God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. The nature of God is spiritual. Spirit. King James has God as a spirit, as if he was one spirit amongst many spirits.
That's not really accurate. God is spirit. His being, if you wish to ask what the substance of his being, if you wish to use that kind of terminology, is, he is spirit. He is not limited to the physical realm, for he is the creator of the physical realm.
He is not limited, as we will see later, to the time-space situation in which we find ourselves as created beings, for he is spirit. He is personal. In that great passage, in one of the greatest revelations of God's being in Exodus 3 .14, God said to Moses, I am who I am.
This is what you are to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you. We are going to come back to this passage again, but the point here is that God is personal. He uses personal pronouns. He recognizes his existence over against the existence of the created order.
God is not an impersonal force. We hear today much about higher powers. There is a higher power. Well, yes, there is a higher power, but it's not just a power. 120 volts surging through the lights above us is a higher power than I'd like to encounter, but I don't worship electricity.
God has great power, but he is personal. He reveals himself as Yahweh. He came in personal form, the person of Jesus Christ. He dwells within us in personal form in the person of the Holy Spirit. And so the Christian God is not a God that is simply a power.
This is in opposition to what I would in all seriousness submit to you is the official established state religion of the nation in which we live, naturalistic materialism. The concept that everything we see around us can be explained by the operation of natural laws.
And it has come to the point where those, many of those who are within the scientific community, worship the very laws they say brought about creation as we see it today. And so there is almost a reverence.
Recently a gentleman that I talked to talked about being in awe before nature rather than being in awe before nature's God. That is idolatry. And so we speak of the personality of God. He is not a set of rules.
He is not a higher force. He has revealed himself as personal, having a will that he is working in this world. And thirdly we see that he is living. Jeremiah 10 through 11. But Yahweh is the true God.
He is the living God, the eternal King. When he is angry, the earth trembles. The nations cannot endure his wrath. Tell them this, these gods who did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.
So we have the description here of Yahweh as the true God, the living God. In fact, he is the source of all the life. The fact that there is life coursing through your body right now that you are able to think, that you are able to write, that you are able to consider with me this evening these things concerning the nature of God is due to the fact that God in his mercy and grace has granted to you every second of your life that very life that is yours.
It is a gift from God. One that we should be very thankful for but very frequently are not. So God is the source of all life. He did not receive his life from anyone else. He is the source of life. He has always had life and it is his to give or to withhold as he sees fit.
We move now to those attributes pertaining to his infinity. What do these refer to? Well, the first and foremost in my mind, the one that to me is most misunderstood amongst Christians that is to me so central to a proper understanding of the rest of the attributes of God and the work of God in this world is God's eternity.
God's eternity. What do I refer to when I talk about his eternity? I refer first to his timelessness. Not his extended existence within time but to his timelessness. Now it is right here that we know that we encounter a great difficulty for we cannot conceive of timelessness.
We are temporal beings. Our thought patterns, our whole way of thinking, our language itself is completely based upon our existence within time. We have never experienced anything outside of time and therefore to speak of God's unique existence outside of time is truly beyond our full comprehension.
Yet we must make the attempt for God has seen fit to reveal himself in this way. For example, the psalmist Moses in the 90th Psalm Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
From everlasting to everlasting. Now to us that simply bespeaks an incredible amount of time. And yet as we begin to think about it, we begin to think about the nature of time and creation and things like this, we begin to understand that surely the way in which God has revealed himself to us is simply an accommodation to our limited ways of understanding.
For if we suppose that God has simply existed eternally, then we are forced to recognize that at some point we must confess that time is as eternal as God, is separate from God, and in fact is superior to God.
For if God is constrained by it and has always been in that situation, then time had to pre-exist God himself. But that is not logical. When God speaks in Exodus 3 .14 and says, I am who I am, when he speaks to Moses in that way, he speaks to us of his eternal existence.
Now if God is timeless, what does this mean to us? Well I have drawn a world famous visual aid on the board. It is simply a straight line. Well, relatively straight. Those of you in the back of the room can see it is planting somewhat to the right.
It is a straight line. If we understand this is time, we understand that time progresses. That despite all of our scientific fancies to the contrary, time is going in one direction. Let's say this is the beginning down here, and here is the end down here.
To confess the eternity of God, the timelessness of God, is to confess that that is time, and the entire board upon which it is written is God. If this entire board represents the being of God, and this within it is time, what does this tell us?
It tells us first of all, that God is present equally and fully in every point in time. It tells us as well, that all points in time are instantaneous to God. It tells us that God is not experiencing a progression of events.
If God were experiencing a progression of events, what would this tell us about God? It would tell us that God is growing and experiencing and changing. And sadly enough, there are many today, because of their unwillingness to confess the eternity of God, and if you are thinking with me, you know what flows from this.
You see the immutability of God. You see the sovereignty of God, the absolute providence of God flowing from this. Directly from this. And so, in an attempt to get away from that, much in modern theology has decided to jettison this.
That God does experience a succession of events. That he is growing, changing. But one must confess that is utterly different from the God of scripture. So we see that all points in time are instantaneous to God.
That time itself then, time and all the actions in time, are what? Creation of God. Time can only be one of two things. It can either be the creation of God, and hence determined by him, and directed by him.
Or it exists separate from God, outside of his control, as a separate entity. Uncreated, and hence equal or maybe even superior to God. The second thing that flows from the eternity of God, is the immutability of God.
Immutability, what does that mean? He is changeless. God does not change. Psalm 102, verses 25 -27. In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, from the heavens the works of your hand. They will perish, but you remain.
They will all wear out like a garment, like clothing. You will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end. James speaks of this in James chapter 1, verse 17.
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. God does not change. God is immutable. If God could change, let's say today God exists in state A, but tomorrow he exists in state B.
There's been a change. Now let's say that we confess that in state B, God is perfect, complete. What does that say about state A? Imperfect, incomplete. If God changes, he can either change for the better, which means he wasn't perfect in the first place, or change for the worse, which means he's now not perfect in the first place.
In either way, we will be denying the very essence of deity himself. So God does not change. He is immutable. Certainly, I recognize that those who wish to avoid the idea or concept that God is eternal and hence provident over all creation, in so doing, jeopardize the immutability of God.
Unfortunately, in our culture today, it doesn't seem to be very important to people, whether you do that or not. We see from this as well that he is perfect. For if he is timeless, if he is eternal, what does that mean in regards to the perfection of his being?
Since he does not experience a progression of events, since he is not limited to time, as if time were something greater than he, and since he is the only God, the creator of all else that is, would he create something that would cause his own being to be less perfect?
Is there a possibility of change in him so as to become imperfect? No. He is perfect. He is complete. There is nothing that he lacks. Of course, we've seen a lot of that before when we talked about his absoluteness and self-existence.
But we also see something that starts striking closer to home when we think about the decrees of God. The decrees of God. What are the decrees? Well, the decrees of God are immutable as well, because God is.
But the decrees of God, such as those which we speak of at the beginning of the Westminster Confession of Faith, where we, in talking about the nature of God and the attributes of God, the men who drew up the Westminster Confession of Faith spoke of the fact that God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass.
Anything that happens within time is a part of the decree of God. We have examples of this. In Ephesians chapter 1 we are told, In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him, who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.
God is described as the one who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. Everything. What this tells us is that when this came into existence, when time is created, God's decrees as to what will happen in our experience as we experience the temporal progression are simply a recognition of God's control over his own creation.
That is, when God created time in its fullness, in its completeness before him, it was he who decided what was going to happen and not someone else. That's what God's decrees are. From his perspective.
From our perspective, we see the decrees working out in time. But if all points in time are instantaneous to God, then the decrees of God simply recognize the fact that when God created time, when God created the universe itself, that it was he that determined its beginning, its middle, and its end.
That it was he who freely chose to make it work the way that he chooses to work it for the ends he chooses. And he was under no obligation to do it that way. That's the way he chose to do it. Now this also helps us to understand God's foreknowledge.
Now I use that term to refer to the idea that God has knowledge of future events before they take place within time. Surely he does, if we see this. I am not using the term as it's used in the New Testament.
The term as it is used in the New Testament does not refer to what we normally think of when we think of foreknowledge. For the Old Testament background, the term foreknowledge in the New Testament actually refers to the gracious choice of God to enter into relationship with someone.
Never do we read in the New Testament of God having foreknowledge of events. It's people that he has foreknowledge of. But here we're using it more in the philosophical realm and that is, in the standard way of what most people think of, God knowing the future.
Have you ever wondered how God knew the future? Have you ever wondered how the prophets could prophesy the future? If God is going along a timeline with the future indistinct, unclear, or uncreated, if he is experiencing time as we are experiencing time, then I would submit to you there is no way he could know the future.
Not with certainty. You say, well Satan can know the future, can he not? In a sense. But I think that is only due to the fact that he has access to a whole lot more information than you or I. If we had access to as much information as he has access to, then we could make some probably pretty good guesses as to what's going to happen in the future.
But that's exactly what they are. They are guesses. That's how you can know what a false prophet is. He's not going to get it all the time. He may get some, Deuteronomy 18. He may have good enough information to be able to figure out that something is going to happen.
But he's not going to get it all the time. He's not going to get it all the time. In fact, one of the very challenges laid down by God that we'll look at in a little more detail here in a second, from the book of Isaiah, when God challenges the false gods, is tell me what's going to happen and tell me what did happen and the purpose for it.
We'll look at it just in a second. But let's look at this line just for a second and talk about foreknowledge. Let's say here's the burning bush with Moses, and here's the cross, and we'll get real eschatological tonight and say we're down here real close to the end.
If you're a post-millennialist, please forgive us. Let's say that's the sequence of events. Now, back here, God knew about this. God knew about the cross. Ever read Isaiah? God knew about it. How? How did he know?
When Isaiah prophesied the coming of Cyrus, and I know a lot of modern Bible scholars who reject all this, reject even the possibility that Isaiah could have done that because they don't believe miraculousness exists anyways, but when Isaiah prophesied the coming of Cyrus, 100 years before Cyrus came, how did Isaiah know?
Well, God revealed it to him. How did God know? God simply foresaw it? Well, does that mean this existed outside of God's creative action? No. God had created the whole thing. God knew it was going to happen, and there was no chance in the world that it wouldn't happen.
No contingency. Not a popular position today in church in America. No contingency! But if you know anything about the history of theology, you know that I stand firmly, smack dab in the middle, of Reformation theology to make that statement.
Calvin, Luther, Sharnock, Edwards, read any one of them, they'll say the exact same thing. No contingency. God is not at the mercy of faith. God has created time, it exists in him. I would much rather have God in control of determining the actions in time than not in control of determining the actions in time.
I'll take the tough questions that come as a result of that any day over the concept that God might not know what's going to happen. If you'd rather avoid the tough philosophical questions and believe in a God who doesn't know what's going to happen in the future, I'll take the tough philosophical questions and trust in him.
That's a nice trade-off. So God is just as much present, the burning bush as at the cross, as right here with us today. The burning bush is just as much a reality to God. For us, we look back on it because that's where we are.
But not for God. Not for God. So this is how God has knowledge of future events. It's not that he has a crystal ball and looks into the future. He created the future. He's already there. He's present there.
He knew what was going to happen. One of the neatest things about this is there's a purpose then in everything that does happen. This, folks, is the theology that underlies Romans 8 .28. Do you hear me?
Romans 8 .28. We know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love God and them who are called according to his purpose. This is the theology that underlies that. For we can confess that there is a purpose in creation.
Modern man is utterly and completely tetherless, floating around upon a huge, huge sea. We look out at the stars and we see this huge creation around us and we're left this insignificant little blob of dirt.
No purpose. Jacques Monod speaks of the chance roll of the cosmic die that resulted in us. No purpose. No meaning. Just us. But as a Christian, we know there's a purpose in creation because God, who created this, is personal and purposeful.
Isaiah chapter 41, beginning at verse 21. Present your case, says Yahweh. Set forth your arguments, says Jacob's king. Bring in to tell us what is going to happen. Tell us what the former things were so we may consider them and know their final outcome.
Or declare to us the things to come. Sing for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done this. Shout aloud, O earth beneath. Burst into song, O mountains, O forests and all your trees. The Lord has redeemed Jacob.
He displays his glory in Israel. This is what Yahweh says, O redeemer who formed you in the womb. I am Yahweh who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.
Did you hear what he said? He did the same thing up in Isaiah chapter 44, verses 6 through 8. That is, okay, you gods, you who pretend to be gods, here is your challenge. You want to prove you are a god?
Here is how you do it. Here is one of the things that the true god can do. In fact, I would submit, give the same test to a lot of modern theologies. Give the same test. And what is the test? Tell us what is going to happen in the future.
Tell us what is going to happen. They can't. Why? Because they can't see the future. They are not eternal. They don't exist outside the realm of time. But that is not the only challenge. Did you notice it?
Did you notice it? This is the other challenge. Tell us what has happened and the purposes for which it happened. I had read that passage many times before I ever saw it. Tell us what happened. Not just a bold recitation of historical facts, but tell us what happened and why it happened.
See, we can look back on our lives and we can see tragedies or difficulties and we don't know why it happened. And God has never promised to tell us why it happened in this life. But He knows. You see, the whole underlying concept is whatever has happened, has happened for a purpose.
And the true God is the only one who knows what that purpose is. Now sometimes we get to see. Sometimes we do get to see. But sometimes we don't. And the true God lays down the challenge to the false gods.
You want to win the war here of the gods? You tell us what's going to happen in the future. You tell us what's happened in the past and the purpose for which it happened. They won't do it. They can't.
But the underlying concept, the underlying thought is that God can. God can tell you what's going to happen in the future with absolute certainty. He can tell you what's happened in the past and the exact purpose by which it came about.
That is the God of the Bible. That is the God of the Bible. So obviously, God's decrees are eternal. Whatsoever takes place is at His hand. He has determined it. He has decreed it. And so we see, obviously, if this is the case, that God is supreme.
He is sovereign over all that happens. God is king. He is ruler. 1 Chronicles 29 .11. Yours, O Yahweh, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, O Yahweh, is the kingdom. You are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you. You are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.
2 Chronicles 20 .6. O Yahweh, God of our fathers, are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hands, and no one can withstand you. Job 23 .13.
But He stands alone, and who can oppose Him? He does whatever He pleases. Psalm 115 .3. Our God is in heaven. He does whatever pleases Him. Psalm 135 .6. Yahweh does whatever pleases Him in the heavens and on the earth and the seas and all their depths.
Listen to this description in Isaiah chapter 40 verses 12 -17. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand? Or with the breadth of His hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?
Who has understood the mind of Yahweh, or instructed Him as His counselor? Whom did Yahweh consult to enlighten Him, and who taught Him the right way? Who was it that taught Him knowledge, or showed Him the path of understanding?
Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket. They are regarded as dust on the scales. He weighs the islands as though they were fine dust. Lebanon is not sufficient for altar fires, nor its animals enough for burnt offerings.
Before them they are regarded by Him as worthless and less than nothing. The same prophet Isaiah chapter 43 verses 12 -13. I have revealed and saved and proclaimed, I am not some foreign God among you.
You are my witnesses, declares Yahweh, that I am God. Yes, and from ancient days I am He. No one can deliver out of my hand when I act. Who can reverse it? Isaiah 46 -9. Remember the former things, those of long ago.
I am God, there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the beginning from the end. From ancient times what is still to come. I say my purpose will stand and I will do all that I please.
Can we get much clearer than this? I don't think so. I don't think so. And yet, and yet, as Charles Haddon Spurgeon said long ago, men will allow God to be a kind and benevolent father. Men will allow God to be in his workshop creating the stars and the galaxies.
Men will allow God to be the giver of gifts, but when God mounts his throne, that is when men begin to gnash their teeth and curse and swear for they will not allow for a sovereign God. They will not allow for a God who sits upon his throne and who rules and reigns.
There is nothing, no doctrine of the faith more hated by worldlings than the sovereignty of God. And I would also submit to you that in all of our lives, no matter how much work God has done in our hearts, there still remains that indwelling sin, that rebellion that is ours.
And though we may with glad voice own the sovereignty of God and confess the sovereignty of God, we at many times deny it and still hate it. It was the prayer of people like Calvin and Edwards and others, God, make me to love your sovereignty.
Make me to love your holiness. For in their minds there is an intimate connection between God's holiness and his sovereignty. And I confess as I read the lives of some of the great Christians in the past, and I see them with patience glorifying God in the midst of tribulation, when I see Sarah Edwards upon receiving the news of the death of her husband saying, Oh, may I not do anything that would in any way detract from his glory, the glory of God.
May I kiss the rod, may I thank God that we had him as long as we had. I confess to not being to that point. God is sovereign, God is supreme, and I would submit to you that what we discussed this evening in regards to the nature and attributes of God, if you will step back from the heated theological battles of our day, if you can step back just a little bit from the battle between the Calvinist and the Arminian, you will see that fundamentally and foundationally the difference is right where we are right now.
That is in regards to the nature and attributes of God. If you will pick up a systematic theology written by an Arminian, you will discover that the nature and attributes of God primarily is immutability or his omniscience and normally both will be seriously compromised if they must.
This is where you have to start making your decisions. In teaching on these subjects before I have said to classes look, if you don't want to be with me at the end of the class and it would be over a week's period of time, if you don't want to be where I will be at the end of this class in regards to the doctrines of grace, in regards to the sovereignty of God and salvation, predestination, election, and everything else, you have got to start disagreeing with me now.
Get rid of it now. Chop out Isaiah chapter 40 through 48. Get it out of your Bible. It is the only way you are going to survive. Because this is so fundamental and foundational. When we look at the religions of men, these things simply aren't there.
Why? Because if we look at Paul's discussion in Romans chapter 1 of the nature of sin, one of the basic elements of the doctrine of sin in the Bible is the fact that there is a twisting and turning, a perversion of the creator-creation relationship.
And I would submit to you that probably the deepest root of sin in the human heart is our assertion of our own sovereignty over against our creator. Almost any sin you can think of, I will eventually be able to trace it.
Almost anyone you think of. That's the nature of sin. We wish to place ourselves upon the throne, and any challenge to my sovereignty, and I come up with my dukes. Have you ever wondered those of you who share with me our commitment to reform theology, why in the world it is that Christians, that up until we started discussing this issue were just our greatest chums, just about rip your lips off when you bring the subject up, and say, man, you're a freak, you're a radical, you're weird, I don't want to talk to you anymore.
This is why. Because this strikes at the very root of sin in our heart. The fact that we simply do not wish to confess God, you are creator. I am your creation. You have complete right to do with me as you will.
The rebellious heart will not do that. Will not do that. Now, speaking of creator, let us look at the attributes of God pertaining to creation itself. That God is the creator. God is creator. God is creator.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Colossians were told that, for by Christ all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, for the thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. The psalmist in the eight-night psalm, verse 11, said, the heavens are yours, and yours also the earth. You founded the world and all that is in it.
You created the north and the south. Tabor and Hermon sing for joy at your name. And so the Bible confesses that God is the creator of all that is. Everything that is owes existence to God. What does this mean?
Well, we've already seen that this means that there is a complete independence on God's part from all else, for he obviously existed before his creation, and hence cannot be dependent upon it. But we also see from our perspective the complete dependence of all things upon him.
And I cannot help but be amazed, I cannot help but wonder at the graciousness and mercy of God who continues to sustain the life of an absolute rebel at every single one of us. Oh, it's easy to look at those who simply flaunt it in the face of God.
Today I listened to a radio program and the talk show host herself was saying, Yeah, we got God out of the classroom! She was proud of it. As an aside, I would assert that she is therefore taking good responsibility for putting cocaine, marijuana, and speed into the classrooms, but that's another issue.
She was proud of it! And we can all go, yeah. Well, I'll tell you, God sure is merciful, isn't he? If I were God, I'd just send her out. And yet, the same man whose words I read at the beginning this evening, Jonathan Edwards, in that same passage from his memoirs, spoke about the fact that when he had these conceptions, these visions, I hate to use that term in our culture anymore, but these understandings of the sovereignty and grace of God and the magnificence of His holiness, you know what the result always was?
He saw his own sin. Now here was a man that, from our perspective, just lived a godly, godly life. And yet, I would submit to you that the more and more we see of the true God, the more and more we will see our own sin, how deeply rooted it truly is.
Edwards said that the term that was always in his mind was infinite upon infinite. Infinite upon infinite is sin in God's sight. I've had people say, well, who do you think you are telling me I'm a sinner?
I said to one lady who told me that once, I said, ma 'am, there's one of two possibilities. Either you've got an incredibly high view of yourself, or you've got an incredibly low view of God. And it's probably both.
In the beginning, Calvin had said, as long as we don't look up at God, we can be pretty impressed with ourselves. Our righteousness, our good works. But as soon as you begin to look at Him, what before impressed you as righteousness will be seen for the vile filth that it really is.
God is omnipresent. Omnipresence. Psalm 139, beginning at verse 7, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you're there. If I make my bed in the depths, you're there.
If I rise in the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me. 23rd chapter of the prophet Jeremiah, am I only a God nearby, declares Yahweh, and not a God far away?
Can anyone hide in secret places that I cannot see Him, declares Yahweh? Do not I fill heaven and earth, declares Yahweh? God is bigger than that which He has created. And hence the Bible teaches us that He is present in all points of His creation.
Not in a situation of dependence like our pantheist friend would do. Our pantheist might hesitate to walk across the grass for fear of crushing God. Yes, God is there, but not in an interdependent way.
God is omnipresent. God is also omniscient. He has all knowledge. The writer to the Hebrews said, Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
The same psalmist in Psalm 139 said, You know well when I sit down and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways before a word is on my tongue.
You know it completely, O Yahweh. I think there's something uncomfortable about that. It can be a great comfort to the believer to realize that God has that kind of knowledge. We know why He has that knowledge.
We've already seen that. We understand that. Here we have the direct affirmation from Scripture that He does have that kind. But it can also be frightening when we sin. We are deceiving ourselves every time we think that we do something in secret.
For God sees it all. God sees it all. God has all power. He is omnipotent. The psalmist said in Psalm 62 verse 11, One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard, that you, O God, are strong. Job 12, 13, To God belong wisdom and power.
Counsel and understanding are His. Job 36, 22, God is exalted in His power. Who is a teacher like Him? And from Exodus chapter 15, verse 6, Your right hand, O Yahweh, was majestic in power. Your right hand, O Yahweh, shattered the enemy.
All power is His. He is the Almighty. Therefore, all other power is obviously derivative from Him. Including all power that is utilized to commit evil. All power is subservient to Him since He has all power.
Providence. Providence. For example, 141st Psalm verse 10. 141st Psalm verse 10. The psalmist prays, Let the wicked fall into their own net while I pass by in safety. What does that have to do with providence?
Think about it. The psalmist is praying that God would be providentially active in watching over him and in the results of his life. Surely the psalmist must have felt then that God is active in the world providentially.
Which is what providence is. Providence to me is simply the outworking of God's eternal decrees in time. Providence to me is the outworking of God's eternal decrees in time. It is our experience of the eternal decrees in time.
The Bible says something very difficult in Exodus 4 .11. In the interview with Moses, Yahweh says to him, Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, Yahweh?
There are certain rather popular quote unquote Bible teachers in our land today who would accuse you of direct blasphemy and heresy to say that God is in any way connected with sickness or disease. And yet God says, Who gives him sight or makes him blind?
Remember what happened in John chapter 9? Jesus and the disciples are passing by the blind man. The disciples thought like a lot of today's health wealth gospelers. Lord, who sinned? This man or his parents?
That he should be born blind? I remember the first time it struck me what they were actually saying. He was born blind. They said, Who sinned? This man or his parents? How could he have sinned? Believe it or not, there were rabbis who believed that you could sin in the womb.
That you could commit sin in the womb and therefore blindness was the punishment of God for a personal sin. What did Jesus say? Neither one. He was born this way so that the works of God might be worked in him.
And I know I've heard so many sermons in which the people have well, there's no punctuation in the originals. We need to move it down here and try to rearrange sentences so that the fact that God was active in bringing the situation about could be erased.
We don't want anybody thinking we think God was a part of this. God says in Isaiah chapter 45 verse 7 I form the light. I create darkness. I bring shalom bara ra. I create calamity ra is evil. I, Yahweh, do all these things.
It's there in your Bible. I've heard very few sermons on it. I know it's a little late, but it's there. It's there. God is provident. When there's a disaster, is God caught off guard? Oh, well he just permitted that to happen.
Could he have stopped it if he wished to? If you have the ability to stop something and you don't what does that mean? God is provident. The moral attributes of God. Goodness goodness. 2 Chronicles 6 41.
Now rise, O Yahweh God and come to your resting place you and the ark of your might. May your priests, O Yahweh God be clothed with salvation, may your saints rejoice in your goodness. 27th Psalm verse 13.
I am still confident of this. I will see the goodness of Yahweh in the land of the living. Psalm 31 verse 19. How great is your goodness which you have stored up for those who fear you which you bestow in the sight of men on those who take refuge in you.
Psalm 69 16. Answer me, O Yahweh out of the goodness of your love in your great mercy turn to me. Psalm 147 verse 5. They will celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness.
God is good. God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food. That's a pretty good prayer. There's a lot of theology packed into that God is great. God is good. So you should thank him for your food.
When we say though that God is good. We need to be careful about what we're saying. When we say that God is good are we saying there is a standard of good that exists outside of God to which God lives up to it?
I don't think so. I think what we're saying is that God is the very standard of what good is. People say, wait a minute, I've heard atheists just go nuts when I say that. That means whatever God says is good is good.
It's completely arbitrary. God could have created a world in which murder and rape was good and prayer and worship was bad. Yeah, he could have, but he didn't. He didn't. Besides that, I would submit to you that it's impossible for an absolute, eternal and infinite being to be capricious or arbitrary.
You hear what I'm saying? If you are infinite, eternal, and absolute then capriciousness and arbitrariness is no longer a possibility. God is good because he's goodness itself. God is holy. God is holy.
Exodus 15. Who among the gods is like you, O Yahweh? Who is like you? Majestic in holiness. Awesome in glory. Working wonders. 1 Chronicles 16 29. Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due his name. Bring an offering and come before him.
Worship Yahweh in the splendor of his holiness. Psalm 29 2. Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due his name. Worship Yahweh in the splendor of his holiness. Sound familiar? I even repeated it twice. Psalm 93 5.
Your statutes stand firm. Holiness adorns your house for endless days, O Yahweh. Isaiah 29 23. When they see among them their children the work of my hand, they will keep my name holy. They will acknowledge the holiness of the Holy One of Jacob, and will stand in awe of the God of Israel.
And how could we possibly forget the incredible vision of Isaiah chapter 6 of his prophecy. Isaiah chapter 6. In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of his robe filling the temple.
Seraphim stood above him, each having six wings. With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, Yahweh Sabaoth.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the threshold trembled, the voice of him who called out while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, Woe is me, for I am ruined.
I am undone. Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King Yahweh of hosts. Three times these holy angels say, Holy, holy, holy. Perfection of holiness.
Part of God's holiness is referent to his complete otherness from everything else. Part of the concept of holiness is a complete separation, a complete otherliness. There is a complete separation in God from not only all that is other than God but from all that is in any way opposite of his own glory of his own being.
Holiness describes a consistency of God in regards to such things as righteousness truth, right justice. The idea that there has ever been or could ever be something unholy in God is completely foreign to the scriptures, completely against what the scriptures teach about God.
I don't know that I, I know that I cannot and I don't know that I ever will be able to express in words the holiness of God. I've read books about the holiness of God and when I got done with it what I realized was that all I had was a vague feeling about what the holiness of God is, because whenever I read people who I know have have really gotten a hold on it, about the closest you can come is when someone else knows what the holiness of God is.
You sort of look at each other and you go, you know what I mean? And they go yeah I can't express it. I know that it's intimately connected with his sovereignty, it's intimately connected with his immutability but I don't know that I can explain it.
I don't know that I can express it but I do know that if a time in your life has ever come where God in his grace, and I believe fully and completely that it is a gift of God's grace it cannot be debated, it cannot be won in argument format it is a work of God but I believe there comes a time, I know there came a time for me when I all of a sudden saw God differently and his holiness became something that was an object of my love, not my dread.
I don't mean that in a familiarity sense, I still have a great dread of God and his holiness. Look at Isaiah that's right that's right because when you really see God's holiness you see your own lack thereof but it didn't it was no longer something that just simply disinterested me.
There was a time in my life when I would openly confess the discussion of the holiness of God would not really have flipped my switch it was just sort of like, well okay, yeah, God's holy but at the same time I could learn to love God as a sovereign God and I can't explain to you how it happened but if it's happened to you, you know what I'm talking about and if it hasn't you think I'm just wandering around the room talking about weird and strange things but if it's happened, you know it you know what I'm talking about and you know that you were changed you know that you haven't been the same since then you look at God and yourself and the world differently and there just seems to be a connection between people when that's happened to them because you talk about things and you go, yeah, yeah that's right.
I don't know how else to describe it but I know that when Jonathan Edwards talks about weeping for an hour in the woods it's because of a sense of the holiness of God. I've never wept for an hour in the woods probably because my heart's too hard.
I don't spend enough time in the woods thinking about it but I know what he's talking about. I know what he's referring to the holiness of God. God is holy in such a way that all of men's concepts of the gods or gods will never have this because there is something in man that innately fears and runs from the holiness of God.
Isaiah says, I'm undone Peter's staying in the boat. Jesus comes to see what does Peter say. I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out of here Lord. I gotta get out of here. I gotta run. When the church starts proclaiming the holiness of God truly and completely and his demands and claims upon our lives as sovereign lord and ruler.
When that happens you're gonna see a completely different church. The vast majority of the folks attending today ain't gonna be there the next Sunday. Righteousness and justice, God is just. Job 8 .3, does God pervert justice?
Does the almighty pervert what is right? No. Job 36 .3 I get my knowledge from afar. I will ascribe justice to my maker. Psalm 7 .6, arise oh Yahweh in your anger. Rise up against the rage of my enemies.
Awake my God, decree justice. Psalm 9 .8 he will judge the world in righteousness. He will govern the peoples with justice. Righteousness and justice are a part of the very nature of God. Psalm 33 .5, Yahweh loves righteousness and justice.
The earth is full of his unfailing love. His chesed beautiful beautiful word in the Old Testament. Psalm 99 .4, the king is mighty. He loves justice. You have established equity in Jacob, you have done what is just and right.
God is just. God is righteous. He will punish sin. The final outcome of the creation itself will be one that is in perfect line with justice and righteousness, can we see how that's going to happen? Can we see clearly exactly how the final end of the creation will be that which results in justice and righteousness prevailing and being the final outcome?
No we know that it will happen but we can't always when we look at things around us know exactly how it's going to take place. But we have his promise that it will. The God of scripture is a God of wrath.
Oh yes. Many modern theologians think this concept went out with the enlightenment. Psalm 7 .11, God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day. Psalm 21 .9, at the time of your appearing you will make them like a fiery furnace, in his wrath Yahweh will swallow them up and his fire will consume them, listen to this next verse.
Psalm 76 .10 listen closely. Surely your wrath against men brings you praise and the survivors of your wrath are restrained, God's wrath is not simply a unfocused uncontrolled rage. It is the perfect compliment of his love.
It is just as much a part of his nature as anything else I have said so many times before if when you look at the cross of Calvary if you do not see there the wrath of God you have not seen the cross.
If all you see in the cross is love, you've missed it. The height of God's love is seen there. Yes, but it's true height will only be appreciated when you recognize that at the same time the height of his wrath and hatred of sin is expressed there just as clearly, just as clearly Prophet Jeremiah says in chapter 23 verse 19, see the storm of Yahweh will burst out in wrath a whirlwind swirling down the heads of the wicked and it will happen and God will receive praise and glory in the exercise of his justice.
God is love, we all know that, that is the favorite watchword of those who would deny his wrath his justice his holiness, his sovereignty his providence and everything else, oh God is love. What kind of love are we talking about?
We're talking about a love that would nail his son to the cross of Calvary. We're talking about a love that will chasten you if you are a believer that will bring tribulation and difficulty into your life to conform you to the image of Jesus Christ.
That is the kind of love that we're talking about. We are not talking about sloppy agape. We are talking about real love. Love that has an end in sight and does what is right to reach that ultimate end the final and complete betterment of the object of love.
We know little about love in our nation. God's love he is love. But you'll never fully appreciate his love unless you appreciate his wrath, his justice. People want an unbalanced God. They want a God.
That's all the nice warm fun stuff but nothing else unbalanced, we do not appreciate a human being that is unbalanced and yet we want a God that way. God is love. We need to understand what his love is all about.
God is a God of mercy and grace too. Psalm 25 verse 6 says remember O Yahweh your great mercy and love. For they are from of old the term chesed translated loving kindness in the new American standard, unfailing love in the NIV is found more times in the Old Testament than the word love is in the new.
There is a perfect balance in scripture between the love of God and the holiness of God and the justice of God. That is why in our nation today where so little notice is taken of the Old Testament outside of simply devotional readings once in a while where it has been so stripped of reality and historical foundation that most people do not believe that what it says needs to be taken seriously.
That is the reason that we have such an unbalanced view of God. It is the New Testament that speaks so much of the love of God. When one sees the background of that when one sees the holiness of God that underlies all that in the New Testament then one is struck with awe and wonder at the cross.
That is what disgalls me so much about so much evangelical preaching today. Don't talk about sin don't talk about the holiness of God, don't talk about repentance just off from Jesus that's wonderful.
But Jesus just didn't walk out there and say hey here I am he said unless you believe in me you will perish like one. He is gracious, he is merciful. And the only way that we will really understand the depth of his mercy and grace is to understand the depth of sin and holiness and righteousness in God our own sin, God's holiness his hatred of that but finally truth.
Exodus 33 19 Yahweh said I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you and I will proclaim my name Yahweh in your presence speaking to Moses and he says I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.
I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. You say what does it have to do with truth. It sounds more like mercy and grace, yes it is primarily in regards to mercy and grace. But I would submit to you as well that the only way we will ever know truth experience truth, be able to grasp hold of truth is to worship the God of truth, the same God who says to Moses I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.
If you don't believe God can do that, you are not talking about the true God, you are not talking about the God of the psalmist in Psalm 31 5 into your hands I commit my spirit, redeem me oh Yahweh the God of truth.
Yahweh is the God of truth. It is Yahweh who revealed himself to Moses said I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. Psalm 43 3 send forth your light and your truth. Let them guide me, let them bring me to your holy mountains, the place where you dwell.
Isaiah 45 19 I have not spoken in secret from somewhere in the land of darkness. I have not said to Jacob's descendants seek me in vain, I Yahweh speak the truth, I declare what's right. Of course where else could you possibly go.
But to John 14 6 Jesus answered I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to me, comes to the Father except through me. You want truth? Oh yes, I'm a truth seeker. I run into so many people, I'm a truth seeker.
Then go to the source of truth. Go to the one who makes defining truth possible, the absolute God. Oh no I want to keep seeking truth. No you don't. I want to keep running from the holiness of God. God is holy, that's true.
That's true. The God of scripture. We can only in awe bow before Him.