Last week we asked the question, “Does God exist?” and we discovered that the evidence overwhelmingly says, “Yes! There is a God.” There are many convincing arguments for the existence of God. We only touched on four of them, but four that you can easily share with your friends and coworkers. You can know God exists by intuition, emotion, reason, and revelation. I have every confidence that any one of you can handle the question, “Is there a God?”

Now suppose someone were to ask you, “What is God like?” What would you say? Is He an all-seeing eye in the sky, such as is pictured on our one-dollar bill? Is He a great big policeman who is waiting to catch us in the act of doing something wrong? Is He a puppeteer that playfully pulls our strings to do His bidding? Is He a vengeful God that sends tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, and lightening from the sky to show His constant displeasure with humanity? Perhaps He is a fatherly old man who gives us what we want for Christmas, if we’ve been good boys and girls? Or maybe He is a distant God who wound up the earth like a clock and then went far away, leaving us here alone to either figure it all out or self-destruct?

Suppose you were to answer this question by supplying a list of God’s attributes, for example that He is loving, patient, just, and so on. Then your friend has a follow-up question for you: “These ideas about what God is like, where do they come from? In other words, how do you know what you know about God?” Today, we’re going to answer both of those questions intelligently.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT GOD?

We never know when someone is going to ask us about God. Your own children will ask some really deep questions about God—straight out of the blue.

What is God like? Is God like the sun?
How big is God? Is He bigger than the mountains?
Why can’t I see God?
Where does God live?
Who made God?

Whew! That’s a hearty handful of questions! How do you respond? “I don’t know, kid, let’s get back to playing Legos. ….Hey, look what I made!”

One father shares this amusing anecdote in Readers Digest:

“While my young son Doug was looking at a full moon, he asked, ‘Mom, is God in the moon?’ I explained that God is everywhere. ‘Is He in my tummy?’ Doug wanted to know. ‘Well, sort of,’ I responded, not sure where these questions were leading. Then Doug declared, ‘God wants a banana.’”

Well, needless to say, there are times when we need to be frank and admit that we don’t know everything that there is to know about God. The finite mind struggles to understand the infinite. There are just some things about God that make our heads hurts. Let me hasten to add that I probably can’t answer every single one of your questions about God.

REASON AND REVELATION

But what can we know about God? Some would contend that God is unknowable. That anything we can say about God is entirely a matter of faith. After all, God cannot be put into a test tube; He cannot give blood samples. Therefore, it is assumed that God is an unscientific notion. Faith and reason are viewed as diametric opposites. But hold on a second. Faith and reason need not be opposed to one another. In fact, reason and faith work very well together.

Last week, we argued the existence of God purely from the standpoint of reason. You see in the world evidence of design (DNA, for example, which contains the genetic blueprint of life). Well, if something is designed, it implies what? That it has a designer. Design demands a designer. That’s just good logic. Creation demands a creator. Law demands a lawgiver. You can see then how believing in God just makes good sense.

But if we want to really know what God is like, our reason can only get us only so far down that road. Then we need something else. It’s called revelation. If the finite is to even begin to comprehend the infinite, then God must reveal Himself to us. That’s where faith comes in. Because we can’t see God—because He is an immaterial Spirit— because we can’t experience Him with our five physical senses as we experience physical realities, we must experience the spiritual God through the “eyes” of faith. That’s where the Bible comes in. It is the revelation of God to mankind that helps unveil the mysteries of the Almighty.

This morning, we’re going to use both reason and revelation to help us to grasp something of the infinite God.

THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD

Now back to our original question: “What is God like?” Let’s start by talking about God’s imitable attributes and then his inimitable attributes. In other words, the characteristics that are unique to God and the characteristics that He has given us the ability to share with Him in.

First, let’s explore the attributes of God that are unique, matchless, and inimitable. God is by definition is an ultimate being. There is nothing and no one greater than God. So what would one expect from an ultimate being?

God is Eternal.

For one, we would expect an ultimate being to be eternal. God is not susceptible to this thing called aging or death, so familiar to us mortals. You say, well, we’re mortal, but don’t we have an eternal spirit living within us? True, but that spirit had a beginning, didn’t it? You haven’t always existed. It is said back in the book of Genesis that God breathed into man the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). But, in fact, God has no beginning or end. Try and wrap you mind around that one! Hebrew 7:3 tells us He is “without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life.” When God spoke to Moses and Moses asked what God’s name was, He said, “I Am Who I Am” (Exodus 3:14). In other words, I am eternal and self-existent.

Because God is eternal, He is also immutable, that is say He can never cease to exist. 1 Chronicles 16:36 tells us God is “from everlasting to everlasting!” God is what you might call a necessary being. He must exist or nothing could exist without Him. He always has existed and He always will exist.

I know it makes your brain hurt. I want to go to the water cooler and dump a bunch of water to cool down my poor brain right now, because it’s just hard to comprehend the incomprehensible God! Ah, that’s where reason fails us, but it’s precisely the point at which faith steps in. Isaiah 26:4 declares, “Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal.” What amazing security we have by knowing a God who is eternal, who cannot be moved, who’s not going anywhere, who will always be around! God is eternal and immutable.

God is All-Powerful.

Here’s another inimitable attribute of God: He is all-powerful. The Greek philosophers had a word for that: omnipotent, which is basically two words joined together—omni, meaning “all,” and potent, “meaning power.” God has all power because He is all-powerful. He is the source of energy and life. The Greek philosopher Aristotle referred to God as the “Prime Mover.” God is the one who got this whole existence started. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). That is where we have a clear demonstration of just how powerful God is—in the creation.

Now, everything we make is put together with existing materials. Every bright idea we come up with is built on previous thoughts and innovations. But God has the power to speak things into existence ex nihilo, that is, out of nothing but His own power. He said, “Let there be light; and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). And a few days later, we see Him creating man. God’s creative power, by the way, is still at work today. Every person who comes into the world is blessed with life because God personally gives it to them. Psalm 139 is an incredible reminder of God’s power:

13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother's womb.

14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous--and how well I know it.

15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.

16 You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.

Isn’t that an amazing passage of Scripture? We’ll come back to it in a moment. To think that God continues His creative work each and every moment of every day is awe-inspiring. Colossians 1:16-17 explains, “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.” 1 Corinthians 10:26 adds, “The earth is the Lord’s and all its fullness.”

If you have any doubts about God’s power, here’s a homework assignment. On a clear night, look out and gaze into the sky full of stars. Then read Isaiah 40:26, “Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power; not one is missing.” God’s power is seen not only in the galaxies, but His ability to provide solutions to real-life problems. God wants us to be aware of His power, yes, but He also wants us to rely upon it. Read Psalm 121 along with me:

1 I look up to the mountains--
does my help come from there?

3 He will not let you stumble and fall;
the one who watches over you will not sleep.

4 Indeed, He who watches over Israel
never tires and never sleeps.

5 The LORD himself watches over you!
The LORD stands beside you as your protective shade.

6 The sun will not hurt you by day,
nor the moon at night.

7 The LORD keeps you from all evil
and preserves your life.

8 The LORD keeps watch over you as you come and go,
both now and forever.

We can rely on God because He is all-powerful.

God is All-Knowing.

Not only is God omnipotent, He is omniscient and omnipresent. That is to say, He is all-knowing and is ever-present. It blows my mind how anyone can dogmatically insist, “There is no God.” To make a statement like that with confidence and surety you would have to be everywhere and know everything there is to know. If you could do that, I’ve got news for you: by definition, you would be God (which, of course, would defeat the entire argument!).

Because God is an ultimate being, He is eternal, immutable, and all-powerful, and He also knows everything. Psalm 147:5 declares, “Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite.” There isn’t anything He doesn’t understand. And, by the way, there isn’t a single thing that anyone can hide from Him. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight,” declares Hebrews 4:13, “Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” There are no secrets God does not know. Psalm 94:11 declares, “He knows the thoughts of man.” You might say that God is an expert on all things you.

Back to Psalm 139 for a moment. In the first six verses, David speaks in awe of everything God knows:

1 O LORD, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.

2 You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my every thought when far away.

3 You chart the path ahead of me
and tell me where to stop and rest.
Every moment you know where I am.

4 You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, LORD.

5 You both precede and follow me.
You place your hand of blessing on my head.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too great for me to know!

Don’t you love that? David is writing these things and he says it just blows my mind. I can apprehend it, but I can’t fully comprehend it. That is, I can see that you know everything about me—my goals, ambitions, anxieties, fears, strengths, weaknesses. I don’t even know myself as well as you do! David goes on to talk about God’s omnipresence:

7 I can never escape from your spirit!
I can never get away from your presence!

8 If I go up to heaven, You are there;
if I go down to the place of the dead, You are there.

9 If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,

10 even there your hand will guide me,
and your strength will support me.

11 I could ask the darkness to hide me
and the light around me to become night--

12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from You.
To you the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are both alike to You.

Later, in verses 17 and 18 he says this (I love it):

17 How precious are your thoughts about me, O God!
They are innumerable!

18 I can't even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up in the morning,
You are still with me!

God is Knowable.

And that leads us to the last attribute of God that we have time to look at this morning (we will continue exploring God’s attributes in part II): God is knowable. God who created the universe in all of its magnitude and magnificence, this same awe-inspiring God, is able to be known—by us! And here’s how: He has revealed himself to mankind by giving us this book, the Bible. Here are 66 letters of love, inspired by the mind of God, written through the influence of the Spirit of God, in which the Almighty tells us who He is. But He even goes beyond that. God welcomes us to enter into a relationship with Him, through Jesus, so that we can get to know Him personally.

In Jeremiah chapter 9:23-24, the Lord speaks and says this:

"Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches,
but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows Me,
that I am the Lord,
who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight," declares the Lord.

CONCLUSION

Who is God? What is He like? Can I know Him? There is something deep within us that longs to answer these questions. It is a search for God that begins early in childhood and continues throughout life. The ancient writer Augustine described it this way: “We are restless until we find rest in Thee.” Others have described this longing as a God-shaped vacuum in our heart—a gnawing emptiness that can only be filled by God.

The great science fiction writer, H.G. Wells, author of The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, wrote a lot about distant worlds and the supernatural. But he was never particularly religious. However, after he had studied the history of the human race and had observed human life, he came to this conclusion: “Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honor. But all these things fall into place and life falls into place only with God.”

How do we get to know God? Through Jesus. Jesus, as we will see in a couple of weeks, was the manifestation of God in human flesh. He came to reveal God to us in a very real and personal way. If you know Jesus, then you know God. “He who has seen me,” Jesus says, “has seen the father” (John 14:9). “I am the way, the truth and the life,” he declares a few verses earlier. “No one can come to the father except through me.”

Right now, you may be experiencing a terrible sense of emptiness. You have all of the necessities of life—a place to live, a car, food on the table, a decent job, friends, family—yet still, the emptiness remains. Could it be that you are missing out on knowing the God of this universe? What an exciting proposition that you and I can come to know the living God through Jesus Christ.

Come to Jesus today by faith, believing in Him as the answer to the sin problem, trusting in Him as the Way (John 11:25-26). In that faith you have, repent of your sins (Luke 5:32)—that is, rely upon the power of Jesus to help you turn away from the things that displease Him (see Galatians 5:19-21). Confess Jesus as the Son of God—your Lord and Savior (Roman 10:9). Then, your faith is vividly expressed in the waters of baptism. Romans 6:3-4 gives this wonderful promise:

Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

A new life awaits you today. Won’t you come to Jesus and allow him to make everything new in your life?

© 2006 William J. Sherman.
Permission is hereby granted to print and copy this message, provided no content is altered and no money charged.