Sermon Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.
Introduction
Good morning. I want to continue our study of the character of God this morning. And the title of my sermon is “Thinking Rightly About God.” William Shedd, the 19th-century theologian, said, “The idea of God is the most important and comprehensive of all the ideas of which the human mind is possessed. It is the foundation of religion, of all right doctrine and all right conduct. A correct intuition of it leads to correct religious theories and practice, while any erroneous or defective view of the Supreme Being will pervade the whole province of religion and exert a most pernicious influence upon the entire character and conduct of men.” Amen? In other words, what we think about God is the most important thought that we can have. It’s not peripheral to our theology. What we think about God is theology. The very word theology means the study of God. And as Tozer said somewhere—I’m paraphrasing—many of the problems that we have today, not only in society but in the church, are rooted in the fact that we have a false view of God. And if our view of God is incorrect, it has influences throughout the church, throughout society. So what we think about God is the most important thought that we could have. And this morning I want to look at three fundamental reasons that we must think rightly about God. Those reasons are: the law demands it, the gospel requires it, and the church needs it.
The Law Demands It
First of all, the law demands it. Look at Deuteronomy 6, if you will. Deuteronomy chapter 6—excuse me, Deuteronomy 5, not 6. We have the giving of the law the second time to the new generation. It’s reiterated. We have the reiteration of the ten words. Starting in verse 6, it says:
I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not [audio unclear] you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.
(Deuteronomy 5:6–8, 13–14)
Here in the law, the first table is the first four commandments: to worship God, to not have false gods, to not take His name in vain, and to honor His Sabbath. The law requires that we think about God rightly. What the law requires is first that we worship God only. That’s the first commandment. I am the Lord your God, worship Me. Not worship some other god. I am the one true and only God. Worship Me. The second commandment says we should not make a graven image. That is to say we are not to limit God by any physical construct, if you will. The problem with an idol is that it is not only false, but it’s a limitation. To think that God is embodied in an image, in a statue, in a tree, in a grove, or whatever the pagan shrine was, is a limitation of the infinite God. So the second commandment requires that we worship God spiritually. That is to say we are to worship Him as a spirit because He is unlimited. He is infinite. The third commandment says we should not take the name of the Lord our God in vain. That is to say we are not to speak of God lightly. We are not to speak of God falsely. Therefore, the first command says worship Me only. The second says worship Me spiritually. The third says worship Me truly. And it’s striking to me that Jesus, speaking to the Samaritan woman, what does He say? He says that our worship must be in spirit and it must be in truth.
This is what the law requires of us. But it can only be done if we begin with the very first commandment, which is to worship the true God. That is to say, we must know who He is. We must know what He is like. That is what this commandment requires. So when Jesus, in Matthew 22, is asked, what’s the greatest commandment? He says it’s this, it’s to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind and all of your strength. That’s the great commandment. Well, you can’t love somebody you don’t know, can you? And we can’t love God if our image of God is beneath what He truly is, because He won’t be worthy of our love. He won’t be worthy of our supreme affection if we have a diminished view of Him. So in order to fulfill the law, we must think rightly about God.
The Gospel Requires It
But secondly, not only does the law demand it, the gospel requires it. The gospel requires it. Listen, the gospel makes no sense apart from a right view, that is a biblical view, of God. It makes no sense. I’d like to quote to you from William Shedd again. He says this, he’s quoting Jesus in Matthew 10. Jesus says, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” [audio unclear] “The revelation which God gave to Moses when he established the Jewish church”—we just read the first table—“announced both His goodness and His severity,” Romans 11:22. “On the entrance of the Israelites into the Promised Land, Jehovah proclaimed both His mercy and His justice, and the blessings of Gerizim and the curses of Ebal. And when the second person of eternity laid the legal foundations of the Christian church in His Sermon” on the Mount, “His divine emotions toward righteousness and unrighteousness were reaffirmed.”
Let me tell you, I led a young woman to Christ a year ago. And of course, any time you lead somebody to Christ, you want to encourage them to get into the Word, right? Read the Bible, read the Bible, read the Bible. So she goes, reading her Bible. One day she came to me, she says, you know, I’ve been reading the Old Testament. She said, I don’t like the God of the Old Testament. He’s the only one you got. But what I appreciate about her comment was not only her honesty, but she was getting it. She was seeing the God of the Bible. She was seeing His holiness. She was seeing His righteousness, and that troubled her. And you know what? It should trouble us. That God is holy ought to trouble us. Shedd says the two, meaning God’s mercy and severity, they explain each other. The one is unintelligible without the other. The mercy of God is a cheap and unmeaning thing for the self-indulgent man who thinks his Maker to be altogether such a one as himself. The love of God, now hear this, the love of God needs the foil, the wrath of God, to set it off and make it bright and effulgent. A foil [audio unclear] sense of the divine compassion. Did you hear what he said? If we ignore God’s wrath towards [audio unclear] justice due to Him. “The dazzling light of heavenly pity is flashed only from the background of the heavenly purity.”
And so what do we see today? We want to tell people the good news of the gospel and we tell them that God loves them, and it means nothing to them. Because they have lost any sense of sin. And the reason they have lost any sense of sin is because they have no sense of who God is. Because you see, sin is only understood in light of the character of God. Now if I leave here and I go down the road doing 80 miles an hour, I’ll get a ticket. I have violated the law of the state. It’s a crime. Is it a sin? Well, that’s another discussion. If there’s no God, it’s not a sin. It’s only a crime. Because you see, sin is a violation of God’s law. Sin is an offense to God’s holiness. Sin only makes sense in relationship to God. And so because men no longer have the fear of God, and because we have strategically removed God from the public square, if you will, and because in our civil life, many even professing Christians live a godless life, what happens to our ethical standards? They go down and down and down. If God is not holy, there is no sin. If God is not just, there is no judgment. So let me ask you this, then why the cross? Then why grace?
The thing we must understand about the good news, God’s good news, is that the good news only makes sense against the backdrop of the bad news. Otherwise, it’s not good news. And the funny thing about the bad news is that the bad news is rooted in a good God. And we get this all jumbled up. We think the good news means God doesn’t care about sin. We think the good news is God’s easy on sin. That’s the good news. The good news is God doesn’t really care about sin that much. God simply cares about our well-being, our prosperity. I heard a guy on the TV the other day say this. God’s most [audio unclear] God’s highest priority is not you, nor me, nor the world. God’s highest priority is the glory of His Son, Jesus Christ. He is to have preeminence. I mean, you only have to read the Bible. This isn’t hard. This isn’t hard. How could you get this wrong? Colossians 1 verse 15, He, Jesus, Jesus is the topic:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
(Colossians 1:15–18)
What God is doing in human history, even though we cannot really see it so often, is through all the darkness and all the tears and all the suffering and all the things that we do not understand, He is glorifying His Son. That is what God is doing. Ephesians 1 verse 3:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace. … that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ.
(Ephesians 1:3–6, 10)
Jesus is the center of history. Jesus is the purpose of creation. Jesus is the goal of all things. The gospel is not first and foremost about you and me. The gospel is about God’s Son receiving glory because God the Father chooses to give the Son souls as a reward for His suffering. That God decides to glorify His Son Jesus Christ in the eyes of men by removing the darkness from their eyes and revealing to them the glories of the Redeemer, and when men bow down and confess Jesus as Lord, Jesus Christ is glorified. [audio unclear] Jesus is praying. In verse 1, John 17:
Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
(John 17:1–3)
Jesus prays to the Father regarding the souls of men. What is at stake in the souls of men is not just the happiness of those men. What is at stake in the souls of men is the glory and honor of the Father and the Son. We have taken the gospel and we have turned it into a self-help program. And we’ve said the gospel’s about you. The gospel’s about your happiness. The gospel’s about your prosperity. The gospel’s about your security. That is not what the gospel is about. The gospel is about God being glorified in the eyes of men by acknowledging who He is. That’s what the gospel is about. Look what Jesus says, this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God. The gospel is about men coming out of darkness and worshiping other gods, some of which is their own self, and coming and bowing down to the one true God. The gospel is coming out of the kingdom of [audio unclear] denied moral absolutes. No God, no sin. No grace, no cross, no gospel. What we see at the cross is not just the love of God [audio unclear] and the holiness of God. Because if there was any other way for us to be saved, apart from the death, the brutal death of God’s Son, [audio unclear] eyes of the pure God. So foul are our crimes against His majesty. That the [audio unclear] cannot be separated. They all go together. So when we talk about knowing God rightly, we’re not talking about some abstract thing, some intellectual thing, some arcane ivory-tower discussion. We’re talking about the heart of who God is. We’re talking about the heart of the gospel. And there are many gospels out there in the church today.
The Church Needs It
So we need to think rightly of God first because the law requires it or demands it, secondly because the gospel requires it, and thirdly because we need it. Thirdly we need it. A proper view of God is needed in the church. Tozer said, “The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. 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’re going to love God supremely, if we are to obey Him faithfully, if we’re to worship Him acceptably in our calling as Christians, then we must know Him as He is, as He is. The proper knowledge of God, seeing God as He is, is the foundation of our worship. I already alluded to this verse, but I want you to turn to John 4 since we’re in the book of John. It is the foundation of our worship. To quote Tozer again, he said, “Worship is either pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.” As we learned last week, if we worship God other than He is, then it amounts to idolatry. It is false worship. And idolatry isn’t bowing down to a statue necessarily. It simply means saying things of God and believing things of God that are false. They’re not true. They’re not who He is. So if we’re going to worship God in a way that is acceptable to Him, we must worship Him not as we think Him to be, not as we want Him to be. We have to worship Him as He is.
You know, it struck me the other day when God revealed Himself. He came to Moses, you know, when He’s ready to get the people out of Egypt. He comes to Moses and He could have introduced Himself by a lot of names, but He didn’t. He introduced Himself as “I AM WHO I AM.” And it struck me the other day, you know, God is who He is. God isn’t who we want Him to be. He is who He is. He’s not who I would like Him to be. He is who He is. He is. His name is I AM. Jesus says here in John 4, He’s talking to the Samaritan woman. I love this passage, don’t you? The woman says in verse 19, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet”—this is after He revealed knowledge about her He couldn’t have known humanly. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” And Jesus said to the woman, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know.” You don’t even know who you’re worshiping. Now how is that for being seeker sensitive? This woman was a God-fearing person. This was someone who went to church. This was someone who worshiped God. And Jesus looks at her and says, you don’t know who you’re worshiping. “We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.” What does He mean? We know, you don’t know who you’re worshiping, we know who we worship. How could the Jews know who to worship and they didn’t know who to worship? How do we know who to worship? How do we know? We just worship, let me get into a groove, it feels good. We just worship. The Word of God. The Word of God. The Word of God tells us who God is. And like my friend who didn’t like the God of the Old Testament, I think a lot of Christians wouldn’t like the God of the Bible if they’d read their Bibles. “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” We got the spirit part down, I think, sometimes in the modern church, but we substitute spirit, feeling, groove. “For the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” This is a summary essentially of the first table of the law. If you say things about Him that are false, if you say certain things in your worship that are inaccurate, it is taking His name in vain. So we worship the true God, we worship Him in spirit, and we are to worship Him in truth. Jesus says this is what the Father is seeking. This is important to God, you see it? This isn’t peripheral. This isn’t second, third, or fourth. This is the great commandment, to love God with all of our heart, mind, and soul. To worship Him in spirit and truth. That He be God. That we recognize that He is truly the one and only true God. This is the foundation of everything. It is the foundation of our worship. It is the foundation of our service to God. If we have an inadequate view of God, we will not only be engaged in idolatrous worship, but our service will be grumbling. It will be apathetic. True service to God is inspired by God’s love and His mercy and His grace. It’s guided by His wisdom and His knowledge. It’s empowered by His omnipotence and His might. If we’re to serve God acceptably, we have to know Him as He is. [audio unclear]
You can say, you know, you know God a little bit. But if we knew God, if we could see God the way God is, do you think we’d be standing around in the worship service looking at our phones? Do you really think that? Do you think if we knew God and understood who He really was, that we’d be bored with God? That we’d have to be cajoled to read the Bible? That we’d have to be, you know, guilt-tripped to go to a prayer meeting? The problem with Christianity today is that we filled our lives with so much junk. And then we give God this little piece. We give Him an hour on Sunday morning or maybe an hour on Wednesday night. And of course, whenever there’s a crisis, we call on Him. But a lot of Christians are infantile in their knowledge of God, infantile. And I don’t mean to sound harsh, I don’t mean to sound judgmental, but when you see all the symptoms, you have to look for the cause. And so what happens, it’s happening in the church, it’s happening all over the place, is that because there’s a lack of genuine worship, genuine reverence, genuine excitement, if you will, what the Bible calls zeal for God and the things of God, what happens is the church is trying to replace it. We’re trying to drum it up. We’re trying to produce in the flesh and by human means a sense of excitement about God. Let’s get excited about God, let’s come to church and get excited. I read the other day, a guy got up in the pulpit wearing a Superman suit, because he was going to preach and tell people how to leap over tall buildings of difficulty. I mean, this is the kind of nonsense that goes on, with people even in the church who have lost any reverence for the God of the Bible. And so they’re substituting carnal excitement. And in the Old Testament it’s called strange fire. It is a fire that God has not ordained. It is a fire that is humanly contrived, and it is carnal, and it is worldliness with a spiritual veneer. Is anybody hearing me? Is anybody hearing me? This is not to say that we should not be exhorted to worship God. It’s not to say we shouldn’t encourage one another. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the church is being invaded with carnal substitutes for the real thing.
If we’re walking with God, if we’re growing in our knowledge of God, I’m not saying we’re never going to be exhorted to worship or exhorted to pray or anything like that, but if we have a real sense of God in our lives, it will evidence itself in our worship, in our prayer, in every aspect of our lives. I understand how hard it is to walk with God, believe me. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s easy. Everything in our culture is godless. It’s godless. Even the good stuff is godless. You get what I’m saying? Godless just means less God. God’s not part of it, not in the picture. And we are conditioned by that. As much as we don’t want to admit it, we are conditioned by our environment. We must know God truly to worship Him acceptably. We must know God truly if we’re going to serve Him with zeal, and we must know God truly if we are going to be holy. And 1 Peter, what does Peter tell us? Let’s turn there. Let’s turn to 1 Peter chapter 1, and then we’re going to close. Verse 13:
Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.”
(1 Peter 1:13–16)
Don’t stop there. Don’t stop with grace. Don’t stop with hope. That is to say, what we believe about God has a direct relationship to our sanctification. He says, be holy as what? As I am holy. Not as your spouse is holy or your pastor is holy, and he’s not that holy, or some cultural icon is holy, or some old 19th-century preacher is holy. The standard of holiness is God. How do we know this holy God? How do we know what He’s like? The only way we can know the true God is through His Word and His Spirit. And here is the application of this sermon. To know God, you must read your Bible, meditate on your Bible, you must study your Bible, you must saturate your brain in the Bible. There is no other way, because this is the revelation that God has given us of Himself. If we want to know Him, we must know His Word. There’s no other way. Yes, we can see God’s power in nature. We can see wonderful things in nature about God. But anything we see in the created order about God must be filtered through what the written Word of God says. Any experience we have of God in the Spirit must be filtered through the written Word of God. This is the standard. This is the gateway to glory. And if we would see the glory of God, we must be a people of the book. Do you want to know God? Do you? Some of you aren’t so sure. Maybe that’s a good thing you’re not so sure. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe that means you have a little fear of God, and maybe that’s the beginning of wisdom.
Closing Prayer
Let’s stand and pray. Father, the prayer of my heart is the prayer of Your servant Paul, that You would grant unto us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of You. I ask, Father, that the eyes of our heart would be enlightened. Lord, remove the veil. Father, I pray that You would forgive us for treating You lightly, for speaking of You lightly. I ask, Father, that You would restore to us again a reverence for Your name. I ask [audio unclear] put in our hearts through Your Spirit the true meaning, the true meaning of the Lord’s Prayer, where You tell us to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” I thank You, Lord, that You are who You are. I thank You that whether we acknowledge it or not, You are God. Whether we submit or not, You are God. I thank You that You are unchangeable. I thank You, God, that our fleeting emotions and passions and thoughts do not alter You. You are true. O God, put in the hearts of Your people a hunger for You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.