Who God Is!
Take Me to Heaven: Part II
Greetings!
I can’t stand it when things don’t work the way they’re supposed to! It’s incredibly frustrating when something, no matter what it is, doesn’t function the way it was designed to. The other day, I was extremely irritated when I sat down to watch my favorite National Geographic show, ‘Life Below Zero,’ on the Disney+ app on my Apple TV, but it wasn’t working. I know this is a trivial matter, but please bear with me. By the way, if you haven’t watched the show, you absolutely must! It’s about the lives of subsistence livers in the wilderness of Alaska, and it’s fantastic! But I digress.
The point of the story is this: I wanted to watch my favorite show, but the platform used to watch it was not working, and I became frustrated. No, wait, that’s a lie. By the second day of my Disney+ app not working the way it was supposed to, the way it was designed to, I found myself so frustrated that you might even say I was angry. You see, I had become so accustomed to this app working the way I thought it was supposed to that when it stopped functioning correctly, I stopped functioning the way I was supposed to according to God. I malfunctioned, became useless, and even became an idolater, as at that moment, watching “Life Below Zero” became more important to me than honoring God.
But there was a solution, and I found it. By the way, I’m sure you’re all thinking the same thing: why didn’t he just reset the app? Well, my answer to you is this: where were you last week? But again, I digress. That was the solution, by the way. The app simply needed a reset. I needed to erase and reinstall it. And I think the same thing needs to happen with some in the Christian church today. There are a lot of us who need to hit the reset button. There are a lot of us, right now, who are malfunctioning and not working the way we are supposed to, the way we were designed to! (I understand that because of sin, none of us are functioning the way we are supposed to, but we have the Holy Spirit in our hearts. We are able to submit and obey, to practice righteousness, in our pursuit of holiness to a degree, and He has revealed His will to us as a guide through the Bible.) There are a lot of us, right now, who need to unplug (namely from our social media platforms) and refocus our thoughts and discussion away from our opinions on political and/or social matters and onto the truths found in the Gospel as communicated to us through God’s Holy Word. We need to stop being distracted by the things of this world and focus on our calling as followers of Christ. We need to stop being…
“…conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of [our] minds…”
Romans 12:2a
Ask yourself: “Self, if someone visited my Facebook/Twitter/whatever account, would they know that I am a Christian? What message am I communicating about what is most important to me? Is Christ the most important thing to me?”
We usually talk about what we hold most dear.
How does one become transformed by the renewal of their mind? Well, the answer certainly isn’t to kick back on a flotation device while the current of culture sweeps you away down the river of worldly values and contemporary beliefs. The answer is to swim against the tide, putting out of your mind the worries and complaints of this world, and replacing them with the promises and delights of knowing God through the gospel. Only then can you have a proper response to the happenings of the world. We must view the world through the lens of Scripture.
“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy or praise, think about these things.”
Philippians 4:8
There is nothing more true, more honorable or just. There is nothing more pure, more lovely or commendable. There is nothing more excellent or more worthy of praise than the gospel. There is no one more worthy of being at the center of every thought that crawls its way through our hopefully redeemed minds than Jesus Christ!
We need to see God for who He is. We must view God as He has revealed Himself to us, through the lens of Scripture. We cannot know God truly unless we renew our minds daily through careful devotion to and love for the truths found only on the pages of His holy Scriptures!
Well, I’m not about to write my own systematic theology, and I certainly couldn’t fit it into the context of this blog even if I wanted to. But here we go, not with the first page of O’Neal’s approach to systematic theology, but with a quick understanding of who God is.
Let’s start with an ever un-popular truth. There is only one living and true God (Deut. 6:4; Isa 45:5-7; 1 Cor 8:4) He is an all knowing spirit, who infinitely transcends all space, yet fills all space, (1 Kings 8:27; Isa 66:1; Acts 7:48, 49; Ps 139:7-10; Jer 23:23; Acts 17:27, 28) whom we can never fully understand (Ps 145:3; Ps 147:5; Ps 139:6, 17; 1 Cor 2:10-12; Rom 11:33; Ps 145:3; 147:5; Ps 139:6; Rom 11:33) Therefore we can never know too much about him, which should excite us to no end! He is perfect in all his attributes. He is one in essence, but exists as three separate persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt 28:19; 2 Cor 13:14) each person of the trinity is fully and equally deserving of all worship and praise.
“Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
Isaiah 6:3b
In English, we use italics, underlining, or inflections when we want to emphasize something. However, in the Bible, emphasis is often achieved through repetition. When Jesus wanted the disciples to pay attention, he would say, “Truly, truly.” This repetition communicated to the disciples that what Jesus was about to say was very important. The only example of something being repeated three times in all of Scripture is in reference to the holiness of God. God alone is holy. What does it mean that God is holy, holy, holy? Simply put, it means that he is different or “other.” This “otherness” is what the Apostle Peter is referring to in his first epistle when he says:
“as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct,”
1 Peter 1:15
We should be different in all our conduct. Our reaction to circumstance, should not mirror that of the secular world. We (Christ followers) recognize that God is still on his throne. (2 Sam 7:16; Ps 45:6; Ps 103:19; Isa 6:1; Isa 66:1; Matt 5:34; Matt 25:31; Heb 12:2; Rev 4:10; Rev 20:11; Rev 22:3) He is sovereignly ruling over everything. (Job 38-89; Acts 4:24; Ps 135:6-7; Ps 147:15-18; Job 37:11-13; Ps 33:10-11; Prov 21:1; Prov 16:4; Prov 16:33; Ps 115:3; Ps 135:6; Isa 45:9-10; Rom 9:19-21; Ps 33:11)
Christian! You should find great comfort in this!
He will,
“…accomplish all his purposes.”
Isaiah 46:10
“When we understand the character of God, when we grasp something of His holiness, then we begin to understand the radical character of our sin and hopelessness. Helpless sinners can survive only by grace. Our strength is futile in itself; we are spiritually impotent without the assistance of a merciful God. We may dislike giving our attention to God’s wrath and justice, but until we incline ourselves to these aspects of God’s nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace.” Rc Sproul,”The Holiness of God”
RC Sproul, The Holiness of God
Its this appreciation for him that leads us, to want, to be different.
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
1 John 2:15
The word world in this verse,
“is not a reference to the physical, material world but the invisible spiritual system of evil dominated by Satin and all that it offers in opposition to God, his word, and his people.”
The MacArthur Study Bible
Be careful what side of the line you are standing on, Christian! Be careful that you do not have a foot in each camp. Keep both your feet firmly planted on the solid foundation of Christ. He will keep you grounded on the always rewarding truths found only in God’s Holy Word!
Next week we will take a look at, “who man is.”
Love you, thinking of you, whoever you may be,
mike
PS… By way of reminder. We are looking at the gospel. Setting our minds on the Truths of the Gospel: God, Man, Christ, Response….Today, we hopefully gained a better understanding of who God is. Next week we will take a look at who man is.
