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Podcast 8 - Attributes of God
0 Playsin 7 hours
Come join us as we discuss some of the attributes of God.
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Transcript
Introduction to Theology
00:00:09
Speaker
Hey guys, welcome back to the Grove Hill Church podcast. Excited to be back with you this week talking about theology, a word that we're trying to help you feel more comfortable with, not be scared about. Theology very simply is your ideas and thoughts about the character and attributes of God.
Is Everyone a Theologian?
00:00:27
Speaker
um We were talking this week with somebody, I think all of us would recognize who I'm talking about in just a minute, but he very boldly said, i am no theologian. And I kept thinking to myself, yes, you are. You are. You have thoughts about God. yeah So if you've studied God, have contemplated God, if you've read God's Word, that kind of puts you in the category of a theologian because you are thinking about who God is and and what god my God means
Understanding God's Holiness
00:00:51
Speaker
to us. And so we're talking about the attributes of God, which is obviously a very big subject. We've got about 20 to 25 minutes here. We could take 20 weeks and probably not exhaust the characteristics of God. There are so many. He's omnipresent. He's omniscient. he you know Just all those different things.
00:01:07
Speaker
I handpicked four of them. If y'all want to wander into some other territory today, that's completely fine. Maybe next week we come back and throw a few more out if we want to. But I want to start off with the idea of holiness because that's the one that kind of rises to the top for me.
00:01:22
Speaker
um So let me start with this question. What is the first thing you think of when we talk about the nature of God? What word? You can use holiness. I won't call you a cheater if you want to use that word. But is there another word that when when you hear God that causes it just to pop in your head?
00:01:37
Speaker
magnificent just kind of puts me in awe so yeah magnificent is mine loving and just for some reason those two to go together with me um that he could be loving and then also at the same time bring justice which is kind of interesting concept spoken like a true former law enforcement officer sure that's potentially where it came from I'm not sure so this is i mean and we and we If you've followed us the last few weeks, we've been doing this series. It's kind of a foundational thing. Foundations of theology, some things to make you feel more comfortable about your faith.
00:02:15
Speaker
Well this is as foundational as it gets. Because if you get what you believe about God wrong, then everything else is thrown off base. And so it's really important that we kind of dig into these a little bit and understand them
Isaiah's Vision of Holiness
00:02:28
Speaker
a little bit better. So Isaiah chapter 6 verse 3, the prophet, he says, says one call to another this is his vision that he had Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of armies. His glory fills the whole earth.
00:02:41
Speaker
And if you know anything about Scripture, when the word is repeated three times, that means it is a perfect holiness. So God is described as being perfectly holy. What does the word holy mean?
00:02:54
Speaker
Set apart, ah but holy in the sense of ah there's no blemish. there's There's nothing wrong with it at all. And ah God has established that. I love in Genesis how before he creates, before he shows his attributes, he says, this is who I am, you know? And so without blemishes, for sure, the the thing that comes to mind.
00:03:19
Speaker
Okay. So holiness, in other words, God is so far apart, removed from his creation, that there's nothing in creation like him. And he exists in that perfection when When Isaiah sees God in this dream, his first response is, whoa. you know i I can't even imagine, can't even conceive of what this must have been that he saw.
Struggling with Holiness
00:03:43
Speaker
How does holiness play a role for you and I as we try to follow Jesus Christ? What what does holiness mean for you and me? Well, I've always struggled with ah my opinion of what holiness is and then what true holiness is. I remember one day organizing my white t-shirts and I was like, oh, this is a good one. This is a bad one. And I was kind of comparing them against each other.
00:04:04
Speaker
And then my wife had bought a brand new pack of t-shirts. And when that brand new pack came within view of the other ones, my good ones looked terrible. yeah And so I was comparing my shirts against each other, not to like the standard of of cleanliness. And so my opinion of holiness is probably way skewed. um god's God's holiness is just like you said, without blemish, right? I could compare myself to John and I could say, well, sometimes John's better than me. Sometimes I'm better than John.
00:04:31
Speaker
But if I compare myself to God, I pale in comparison to his holiness, right? And so for him to ask us to come into that place, invite us into that place, be holy as I am holy, is kind of an interesting concept because we don't see ourselves as anything holy.
00:04:47
Speaker
And he invites us to be a part of that. So um kind of hard for my brain to understand that he would ah put that title on us and invite us to join him in there. The whole concept of holiness is very intimidating. Yeah. um And to your point, we talked about this earlier in our staff meeting today as part of our conversation.
00:05:05
Speaker
God's command is, be holy as I am holy. And we would rather hear the words, nobody's perfect. Because that that kind of lets us off the hook. But God says, no, your standard for holiness isn't the people around you. It's me. It's my character.
00:05:19
Speaker
And you're talking to a guy who says, man, he is magnificent beyond understanding. How does how does it intimidate you to think about that? Man, it intimidates me because... to your point, Kyle, that God invites me into it, but it's still at the same time, God is a God of justice.
00:05:35
Speaker
And fail to meet the mark. And so it intimidates me because there are times ah to where I look at my own life and I see just a err here, err there.
00:05:47
Speaker
But I love how scripture always comes back that God's holiness, you know, I'm seeing where he invites me into this repentance element after, yes, God's going to show his holiness, but God's also going to show me a path to what it looks like to come under him.
00:06:02
Speaker
um But yeah, man, it's hard. It is really
Holiness and Grace
00:06:06
Speaker
hard. And coming from a former, ah probably very legalist mindset yeah it's very heavy the weight the weight is very heavy and you don't really understand ah the full essence of god until you see his holiness but then his love yeah but yeah holiness ah it can be a little daunting sometimes well and that's a great point because it is it's a heavy feeling this idea of holiness and while it can be intimidating i think it's important that the actual goal of holiness is to draw us to god's grace
00:06:37
Speaker
it's it's the reason the ten commandments were given it's the reason the law existed to say here's the standard oh by the way you can't get there that you're just you're so far removed from it you can't even see the fine print so what we need we needed a substitution and that was jesus christ and so that's the beauty of god's holiness it it points out this need to it so So real quick, yeah after the cross, holiness, right? Because ah when we accept the blood of Jesus for the payment for our sins, ah he wipes us clean.
00:07:08
Speaker
And so he sees Jesus instead of us when he's looking at us. And so that holiness is almost expected at that point. He calls us holy, and he's calling us out of a place of sin and darkness, yeah and calling us up to that standard.
00:07:20
Speaker
And so he's not looking at the little... petty things, but he wants us out of those petty things to kind of meet the request of to be holy. And so it's really not any type of like, oh I'll never be able to get there daunting feeling or it shouldn't be.
00:07:34
Speaker
It should be seen as almost like how much God loves us, that he would invite us to join him up on this this higher level of holiness because of his son. Yeah, yeah.
00:07:45
Speaker
R.C. Spurl, theologian, made this great comment. The greatest need of the church today is a renewed understanding of the holiness of God. I think Sproul nailed it because I feel like most of what we call worship in our churches today falls so far short of what it needs to be because we approach a God whot who doesn't even exist.
00:08:08
Speaker
The God we worship is nothing like the Bible describes God. And if we were to get back to this place where we saw him the way Isaiah saw him in his vision, yeah I think our worship would be radically changed. I mean, if you look at any instance in scripture where God's holiness was shown, people hit their face. I mean, whether it was an angel in the field or revelation, whatever it was, when whenever God's holiness was revealed to anybody, it was an instant falling down and trembling.
00:08:36
Speaker
you know And the first words from whatever being that was said, you know do not be afraid. And so it's you're right. There's a lost respect for how holy god is All three of us have grown up in church to some degree, different kinds of churches, and we have heard people pray this prayer probably most of our life. God, would you show up? God, would you be a part of this service? God, will you be in our services today?
00:08:59
Speaker
What would we do if God really showed up? Man. I've been thinking about this lately. ah The more we see a bigness to God and we see the holiness of God, you know, you go down the list.
00:09:12
Speaker
The more our posture and worship changes. you You fall at the feet of Jesus. There's a reason why. uh people could not look upon the face of god uh in fact uh was it moses i believe that there was a countenance on his face you know there's an element of the person that changes whenever you see the bigness of god he had to put a he had to put a veil on right yeah couldn't even look at him he's yeah and ah to me i see this uh we ask for the holiness of god but we are we ready for the holiness of god
00:09:45
Speaker
But man, I pray that that becomes a prayer in my own life that I pray for that. But I need to be ready and expect it for what God's going to want to pull and pluck from my life.
00:09:56
Speaker
So ah to me, this is where I kind of want to get kind of practical and just say this. If you're a guy and you go to church Sunday after Sunday and you stand there with your hands in your pockets and you never sing praise to God, then I have to question whether or not you even know who God is.
00:10:10
Speaker
Or if you're a ah woman and the only thing you can do is think about whether or not your dress looks well. or you're a teenager and all you can think about is the text you're getting on your phone and you're supposed to be having an encounter with the holy God of the universe. Yeah. Something's wrong.
00:10:26
Speaker
something and i And I say that in indictment of myself because there's Sundays I come in there and I'm more worried about what are we doing for baptism or whatever. And man, I'd be okay if we just kind of got lost in God for little while. Yeah.
00:10:38
Speaker
yeah I think we're also kind of stuck in the mindset that that's only going to happen when we walk through the doors of a church. um But that can happen when you open your your Bible in the morning by yourself, sitting in quiet.
00:10:49
Speaker
And that's where you really truly learn about the holiness of God um in those quiet times with Him. Or if you listen to country music, it can happen at the end of a dirt road, right? So so let's move on to the next one, a little bit of time here.
God's Eternal Nature
00:11:03
Speaker
God's eternal nature. God's eternal nature, this idea that God has no beginning, no end. Now try to wrap your brain around that one, Pastor. I remember crying as a 12-year-old because I couldn't comprehend that God always was. yeah And I was like, I try to think about it, I try to understand it, and I just remember just weeping going, i don't i don't think there's an answer.
00:11:23
Speaker
And i think there's things that we're not called to completely understand because my brain goes, what was he just sitting in darkness or was he just... their existence is like, oh, I need something. And so just didn't make a lot of sense to me.
00:11:36
Speaker
um But it really is a crucial part of his character because he is existent in all time. And it's just an incredible thought to just know that he always has been and he always will be.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah, i think this whole, you know, whether you're talking about time, space matter, but specifically in the time that you mentioned, ah God is, God was, God will be. And for those that are maybe on the fence and they're like, I don't know if I can believe God will, let me ask you this question. And I would ask this person, you know, walking on the side of the street, I've had some really cool conversations just randomly. yeah ah But some of the questions that I would ask the non-believer is to say, hey, um can something come from nothing?
00:12:23
Speaker
You know, there had to be an ultimate creator. There had to be some origin. So what did it come from? And I believe that it makes total sense. Uh, and I believe scripture backs that up, but I also believe creation backs it up that there was an ultimate creator. and There is an ultimate creator that has sustained us and has to be outside of the the realm of time itself.
00:12:46
Speaker
So it it, to me, there are things that we're not going to know, but there are things that we have that point to one who does know. Yeah. I mean, think about the stability that provides to a believer who really begins to understand the power of that reality.
00:13:04
Speaker
That God was, is, and will always be at the same time, which means there is never one second of your life that God's not in it. Right. Never a danger that He's going to miss being there for you. And that should provide tremendous confidence for us and as we try to, grow again, it's a mind-boggling concept to And just to put it on a primitive level, i think um the illustration I saw earlier was this this concept of God being in a helicopter and watching a
Self-Existence of God
00:13:35
Speaker
parade.
00:13:35
Speaker
You sit down the side of the road, you watch float by float by float, but God sees the whole thing. He's there when it starts. He's there when it ends. He's he's watching the whole thing. And that's... doesn't even begin to do it justice but kind of begins to bring it down to a bottom shelf kind of level for us to understand it um so third one uh god's self-existence what does that mean self-existence you have any idea
00:14:01
Speaker
Self-existence. Yeah. I have a cheat sheet, so I'm happy to read it for you all. Why don't you start it off with that cheat sheet? Let me read a verse of Scripture first. So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than any livestock and more than any wild animal. You will move on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life.
00:14:20
Speaker
That's the wrong book of the Bible. That's Genesis 3.14. So we're going to flip over to Exodus 3.14 now. That was a good one too. That was little bonus reading for you. That's just to prove that this podcast is not rehearsed.
00:14:33
Speaker
Exodus 3.14. God replied to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you. So the idea of self-existence means that God does not depend on anyone or anything for his ability to to be.
00:14:47
Speaker
He just is. um I remember years ago reading Louis Giglio's book about I am. He preached a series on this. And it just blew my mind because ah according to what he said, he read the passage that I just read, got on a plane to fly to the Middle East and was gone for like 10 days, two weeks, or something like that.
00:15:07
Speaker
For the entire time he was gone, he just contemplated those two words, I am. And then came back and preached this entire sermon series. And I was blown away by that reality. I am It just says a whole lot.
00:15:20
Speaker
I mean, only God could do that. Only God could take two words and go, let me tell you about my entire existence in these two words. So what do you think of when you hear those those words, I am who I am? What does that reveal about his independence?
00:15:32
Speaker
It's super comforting to know that he is not affected by the things around him. We as human beings, you know, you may be a confident individual, but if I pick at you every single day, you might start losing that confidence. You might self-conscious, all these types of things, but God isn't affected by those types of things. Even back to your helicopter analogy, we might be affected positively or negatively by one of those floats coming through in that parade. yeah But since he sees the thing as a whole, he just has this general understanding. And so it gives me confidence that in all of our fallibility and our doubts and our accusations of God, that he's not going to change.
00:16:09
Speaker
He's the same. Yeah, we talk about, as believers, being poured into that analogy of you know are having our cup filled. yeah ah God's cup, there is no... you're not Nothing's being poured in that changes God's nature.
00:16:24
Speaker
it God is who He is, and everything comes from Him. Everything good, everything. um And those things that God has in His power, I really don't see anywhere that...
00:16:40
Speaker
over the course of humanity that that's ever been changed. and And it won't ever change. But to me, to see that God is, was, and always will be, it's just very, it's comforting as a believer who does go through this in life, knowing that he doesn't have to be filled up, that he has everything that flows from him.
00:17:01
Speaker
should be able to take away some of our anxiety for sure. All right, so this next question has been debated for centuries by theologians and philosophers, and the two of you are going to resolve it here. Oh, right.
Why Does God Desire a Relationship?
00:17:13
Speaker
um If God doesn't need us, why does he want us? Why did he create Because of love See, he solved it in two minutes. That was the key word is want.
00:17:26
Speaker
yeah he He wants to engage with us. He wants us to be a part of his plan. um And it's true. It comes down to love. If he didn't love us, there would be and no need for us. And so um that's why he gives us that free will so we could either choose to to walk away or we can choose to appreciate what he's done for us and and love him. Yeah.
00:17:49
Speaker
So how does God's characteristic that He is self-sufficient, that He doesn't need anybody, how does that just smack our culture in the face with this push towards independence and self-sufficiency?
00:18:03
Speaker
It hits pretty hard. That's a succinct answer right there, baby. And to me, and it's a bigger element of art theology. yeah Theology, the study of God.
00:18:16
Speaker
ah People put themselves in the place of God. ah they They put themselves in that place of, well, I am God. you know they they That's why they try to find flaws in the person of God. yeah ah They want to see themselves as God. There's a pride element there that kind of sneaks in, think, with all of us, but especially with people who have I want to call it a God problem because they see themselves in the light of God. and And we see it in the Ten Commandments. There's a reason why God makes that rub there like, hey, it's me and it better be me or else, you know.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah, and that's probably why, especially in Exodus, Deuteronomy, some of those early books, God worked so hard to establish, I am the God, the one true God. There is no other. All this other stuff is just a waste of time and energy.
00:19:10
Speaker
let Let me remind you who i am. All right, let's move on quickly. We've got one more that want try to cover
Immutability of God
00:19:15
Speaker
today. Malachi 3, verse 6. I made sure I got the right book this time, okay? um It says...
00:19:22
Speaker
Because I, the Lord, have not changed, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed. I have not changed. This speaks to a word, we don't use it very often, immutability.
00:19:34
Speaker
Immutability, which is simply that. God never changes in His nature. He never changes in His character. He never backs off of His promises. What does that do for you as a believer? How does that help you as you walk day to day in your life?
00:19:47
Speaker
I get the image of a lighthouse and that lighthouse doesn't move around telling the boats where to go. um The lighthouse is a place of security, letting you know where the point is.
00:19:57
Speaker
and it stays. It doesn't wander. It's not affected by the storms. It's always there. And so um it's oh he whether we think it's a good characteristic or a bad characteristic in our human eyes when we're looking at God, ah we can always know that He is the same. And so um although the world may change, our opinion may change, culture may change, Scripture doesn't. And culture has changed so much yeah yeah that Scripture sometimes looks offensive to people. when it's just a standard. It's just a a loving standard that God has. yeah Yeah. Postmodern culture for sure says truth is relative.
00:20:34
Speaker
And ah the truth, the way the truth in the life, it's never changed. And scripture has proved it time and time again where it's God proving himself ah throughout all of his revelation of himself, you know, from the Old Testament to the New, that ah he is unchangeable. It's just really, really complicated confiding for me to to know I can go to.
00:21:04
Speaker
yeah how How do you think there are some ways that people misunderstand this attribute?
Changing God to Fit Preferences
00:21:10
Speaker
i mean how how does it so Maybe a misunderstanding of what this means, how does this ah impact people in a negative way towards God?
00:21:17
Speaker
I think people want to change God to their liking, and so they can't change God. um But they want to say that, oh, he would be so loving that he would accept homosexuality, right? yeah And they want to change God, and churches are doing that right now, where they're saying, oh, he's he loves so much that he's overlooking these sins when that's not the case, and so that's frustrating to people.
00:21:38
Speaker
But how unfair is it if we served a God who did change? Hey, here's the line. Oh wait, things are changing. Here's the line, right? And we're always constantly chasing after something.
00:21:49
Speaker
When he's standing there with us his arms open, the cross has been paid, everything's been done, and he's wanting us to join him in this place of safety, security, and healthy. And we want to change him to fit our needs.
00:22:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think prayer is another element too about ah some people try to get the hang up. Well, why do we pray then? You know, does it change God's mind? yeah ah I believe what it does is it...
00:22:13
Speaker
sometimes unintentionally on our part, uh, but through God's grace and God's goodness, he, Changes our mind to follow after his and it's not necessarily Oh us changing God's mind. I think we're just always or we're trying to pursue relationship with him and he in turn says hey you're following in the right footsteps to follow plan a not plan B Where you're wanting to so so how do we help our church family?
00:22:42
Speaker
move from a place of knowing about who God is to a place of intimacy and knowing God, really, truly knowing God? How do we get them to engage these characteristics, characteristics this nature of God that we're talking about?
00:22:58
Speaker
I would say you have to trust them because a lot of times we find these things out in Scripture and yet we don't obey. like we're still We have reservations about it. Well, when you don't engage with someone on a very intimate level, ah you're never going to learn them. And so it'd be like if I just kept my wife at arm's distance our whole marriage, we would i would never truly know her yeah and I would never truly understand her.
00:23:22
Speaker
um But I have to let myself get extremely close. And sometimes that means getting hurt by her or or me hurting her. But through that, we learn to really know each other. And so a lot of people like to stay arm distance away from God. Hey, I'll worship in on Sunday.
00:23:37
Speaker
I'll even do a quiet time, but going to keep them out here a little bit. Sometimes fully submitting is being super vulnerable and going into places that you have to trust someone like you've never trusted them before to find out who they really are.
Deepening Theology for Worship
00:23:50
Speaker
It's one thing to know the nature of God. It's another thing to to feel the attributes of God in the sense of feeling His, you know, His mercy, His grace, all those things that God kind of outpours.
00:24:05
Speaker
And that only happens through the allowing of time. You know, we talk about, you know, church world, you hear church talk about boxing God in. Well, whenever we don't give God any time of the day, that's boxing God in. So we're not allowing His...
00:24:20
Speaker
uh, his presence, who he is to wreck our lives. So whenever we allow him to kind of like intersect that part of our lives and we're saying, Hey God, here's my family.
00:24:31
Speaker
Here's my time this week. Uh, then he starts to do a work and you see the attributes start to wreck some stuff, but man, if we're not opening ourselves up practically to his investment in our life, yeah, we're now never going to see change.
00:24:45
Speaker
So let me wrap it up with this. um Growing in our theology and having a better theology leads to better doxology. In other words, the more we know our God, the more intimate we become with him, the deeper our worship is allowed to go because we understand more fully who it is that we are.
00:25:03
Speaker
laying our lives out in front of and who we are are dedicating and com committing ourselves to close with this verse revelation 4 8 says holy holy holy is the lord god almighty who was and is and is to come this is the great god that we worship and serve this is the god of this book It's the God we're trying to put forth at our church. And so we love talking about him here on a weekly basis. We're thankful for you joining us.
00:25:25
Speaker
hope you're enjoying these conversations and you'll give us feedback. Let us know how we can be a better service to you and in these dialogues. um Thanks for watching. Click links that are on wherever. I don't know where they are, but...
00:25:39
Speaker
Click them and like them and follow them and share them and help spread the word about this podcast. And again, if you have suggestions about things you'd love to hear from, we'd love to be more valuable to you. So let us know.
00:25:50
Speaker
Have a great week and we'll see you Sunday.