THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
This lesson deals with the personality of God. Personality, of course,
is characterized by a being possessing knowledge, feeling and will
power. An idol is devoid of personality, for an idol neither knows,
feels, nor responds. Our God is an individual who is living and has
definite personality characteristics. God is a person, not an
influence or an unseen force or power like electricity. Jeremiah 10:10
says, "But the Lord is the true God, he is the living God...." Acts
14:15 says, "...Turn from these vanities unto the living God." First
Thessalonians 1:9 says the converts "turned to God from idols to serve
the living and true God." We read in II Chronicles 16:9, "...The eyes
of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself
strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect...."
GOD'S INCOMMUNICABLE ATTRIBUTES
God also has some natural attributes which can be either communicable
or incommunicable. First of all we will discuss God's incommunicable
attributes. By incommunicable we mean that God Himself as a spirit
(and as a person) has certain innate qualities which cannot be
transmitted to man, which a man by his natural ability or reasoning or
senses cannot grasp. This is why the unsaved man has a tendency always
to become a self-righteous agnostic or a self-righteous atheist. Since
he cannot grasp God with the mind, he figures either there is no God
or you can't get to know Him.
God has certain natural attributes which have a quality about them
that are uniquely His. God possesses certain basic qualifications: 1.)
He is eternal; we refer to this as His infinity. 2.) He is
unchangeable; we refer to this as His immutability. 3.) He possesses
all power; He's omnipotent. 4.) We speak of God, too, as being present
everywhere at the same time. This is called omnipresence or, as the
classical theologians call it, "immensity." 5.) He has all-knowledge,
which we call omniscience.
In short, God within Himself, as an intelligent living being (the
Author and Creator of all life and the source of all life), is
infinite, immutable, all-powerful, all-present and all-knowing.
God Is Eternal
First of all, God is eternal. To be the true God He must have neither
beginning nor ending. He must be eternal. He must be more eternal than
the universe or the heavens which the pagan Greek philosophers thought
were eternal because they believed in what we call "the eternity of
material." They believed that material things were eternal. The belief
that material things are eternal we will discuss more when we get into
the doctrines of anthropology and creation; but, of course, any man
knows that it takes a great deal more faith to believe in the eternity
of matter (as all dialectical materialists believe) than it does to
believe in the eternity of a spiritual Being.
All right, God is eternal. An idol is disqualified, for it was made by
someone, thus it had a beginning. In Psalm 90:2 we read, "Before the
mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and
the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." In
Genesis 1:1 we read, "In the beginning God...." God has always
existed. It is true that Taylor's so-called "Living Bible" and other
corrupt translations have changed Genesis 1:1 to try to make something
there before God, but this is quite typical of pagan speculation and
the Disneyland type of theology that is being taught in America today.
God Is Unchangeable
God is unchangeable. God is so constituted that He cannot change.
Malachi 3:6 says, "For I am the Lord, I change not." James 1:17 says,
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down
from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither
shadow of turning." God is unchangeable. He says, "The Strength of
Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should
repent." Once God has said something, He is going to do it. lt is true
that the Lord may change His mind about a circumstance that is
flexible about which He has laid down no definite decree, such as the
destruction of the earth in Genesis 6, 7 and 8, but where God has
spoken and committed Himself to writing (and there are more than 1100
promises in writing that you can get you hands on), He does not change
or repent. "For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance,"
Romans 11:29.
God Is Omnipotent
In God's incommunicable attributes is the attribute of all-
powerfulness or omnipotence. If He lacked this, He would not be God.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." That is
creative power. He said, "Let there be light: and there was light."
The spoken word of God carries a power and authority to it far beyond
the decrees of any church that ever was or ever will be. "The word of
God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword," and
when God said, "Let there be light," there was light. Man cannot speak
rain into existence. Man cannot speak lightning or thunder into
existence. Man cannot speak life into existence. God can! Man makes
things out of existing material. God creates out of nonexistent
materials objects that are good and perfect. Notice in Genesis 1:4,
"It was good." In Job 42:2 Job says, "I know that thou canst do every
thing." The Psalmist said, "For he spake, and it was done; he
commanded, and it stood fast," Psalm 33:9. And speaking to Jeremiah,
the Lord said in Jeremiah 32:27, "Behold, I am the Lord, the God of
all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?" Certainly not. He can
do anything or everything. A man said, "Well, can God move an
immovable boulder?" Or, "Could God create a sun so heavy He couldn't
move it?" You know, you have a lot of nonsense going on.
Of course God can't do something inconsistent with His own nature. By
virtue of His nature and by virtue of the divine attributes of His
nature God can't lie. God cannot go back on His word once He is
committed. The Lord can't see your sins under the blood of Jesus
Christ. The Lord couldn't take a saved sinner and put him into hell
after he became a member of the body of Christ. After all, Christ
suffered once for sins, "the just for the unjust." No part of Him is
going to suffer again. So, when we talk about God doing everyhing and
anything, we are speaking within the confines of the limits which He
has laid down for Himself. As a holy being we can be absolutely
certain that God will not do anything to violate His nature which is
essentially righteousness, holiness and goodness. God would certainly
never take an unsaved man and put him up there in heaven where he
would have to come before the throne and sing, "Holy, holy, holy," and
cast his crowns before the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ when he
wanted to throw them at the feet of Buddha. You follow me?
In plainer words, God will be consistent with His nature. God would
certainly not elect 150 million people to go to heaven and then damn
150 billion to go to hell having them to show up at the judgment
saying, "I couldn't get saved because my sins weren't paid for." The
Lord is not going to laugh at them and say, "Well, tough apples. I
just happened to choose the other kind. No provision was made for you
because the atonement was limited." I mean, there are some people
crazy enough to think that, but that would be a violation of God's
essential attributes. God is holy. God is righteous. And although God
is love, He wouldn't force a man to get saved against his will because
that wouldn't be love. That is coercion.
God Is Omnipresent
God's omnipresence is one of His attributes. We call this in classical
scholastic theology God's "immensity." That is, He is present
everywhere at one and the same time. Notice Psalm 139:7-10 where David
said, "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee
from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven thou art there: if I
make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of
the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there
shall thy hand lead me."
The Lord said to Jeremiah, "Am I a God at hand and not a God afar
off?" The same Lord knows where every hair of your head is, and the
same Lord watches the sparrow fall to the ground; Christ said He did.
If Christ said one thing and you said another, your argument is with
Him, not me. You need not pick bones with me and get upset with
Brother Bob. Get in a fight with Jesus Christ.
He said a sparrow doesn't fall to the ground without your Father
knowing it. He said the very hairs on your head are numbered. In
Ephesians 1:23 we read about Christ's body being "the fulness of him
that filleth all in all"; God is everywhere at once. If you could get
to Jupiter, you couldn't hide from God. If you could get to Venus He
would still know which one of your teeth was going to decay first. And
if you got to Venus and back, the Lord would still know about those
pornographic magazines you read in the spaceship going up. You see? Do
you see why a lot of people do not believe in God? They cannot afford
to. In the dirty, filthy, wicked lives they're living they can't
afford a check. They want a check on Sunday morning, some of them.
They'll stand up Sunday morning and say, "Look here, Brother Harris,
I'm a vestryman." "I'm a deacon." Sure, anybody can get a god that
checks on them once a week or twice a week, or if you're real
dedicated three times a week, but what about that Saturday night late
TV show and those video cassettes?
God Is Omniscient
The Bible says in II Chronicles 16:9, "For the eyes of the Lord run to
and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the
behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him." Nothing is hid from
the Lord. He's omniscient, all-knowing. The Bible says in Job 34:22,
"There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of
iniquity may hide themselves." Job confessed, "...No thought can be
withholden from thee." And Isaiah said in chapter 40, "...There is no
searching of his understanding."
The Bible says in Matthew 12:36, "...Every idle word that men shall
speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Some
day God will take that car you were in last Friday or Saturday night
and rip the top of that thing back like a sardine can and everybody in
town will know all about it. If there is one thing that Bible makes
clear, it is the fact that God knows what is going on, how it's going
on, when it's going on, where it's going on, who is doing it and why
the're doing it. Now, the heathen know this unconsciously. The heathen
have a knowledge of God which far surpasses the greatest brains in the
men who write for the Scientific American and the scientific journals,
men like the members of the American Association of Scientists. It is
true that we occasionally have on those boards and in that group a
sprinkling of Christians (who use about thirty different versions of
the Bible in order to prove their own authoritv instead of the
authority of the word of God), but that's neither here nor there. The
point is that education is the great force many times in getting a man
to deny his common sense and rationality, and education many times is
the damning factor in a man's life. As a famous educator once said,
"Education without salvation is damnation." The reasons are not hard
to find.
GOD'S COMMUNICABLE ATTRIBUTES
By "communicable attributes" of God we mean those particular qualities
in God that He can convey to a man so that a man can understand them.
There is no way on earth the finite mind can grasp God's immensity or
His eternity or His immutability. Try as we can, we cannot imagine a
being who has always lived and always will live. This is the educated
man's alibi for rejecting God: since he, the finite brain, cannot
grasp or understand the essence of God, therefore, God doesn't exist.
It is like a two-year-old who can't explain the rattles on a
rattlesnake so he pretends that rattlesnakes don't exist and he goes
out and plays in a rattlesnake den. It is stupidity, and whether it's
educated or uneducated stupidity it amounts to the same thing.
Now, here we deal with God's communicable attributes. When we say
"communicable" we mean that God can communicate them--they can get
across. We hear a lot today about "sharing" and "communicating." We
hear a great deal about it from people who do not communicate with God
and God does not communicate with them. (Very unfortunate, but that is
sometimes how it goes.) Now, these are things that God has
communicated to man that man can grasp.
God Is Holy
The first of these is that God is holy. We can understand that if only
by analogy. We can understand that we are sinful, and we are not in
the least like God. We can understand that by studying God's dealing
with nations and with people. We can understand it by studying God's
dealing with sin. We do not have to have a Bible necessarily, although
it is helpful in understanding God's attitude about holiness. Now the
Bible says, "...Be ye holy; for I am holy," I Peter 1:16. And we read
in Exodus 34:14, "...For the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous
God." Notice in particular Exodus 15:11, "Who is like unto thee, O
Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful
in praises, doing wonders," and also Isaiah 6:3, "And one cried unto
another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole
earth is full of his glory." However, you wouldn't have to have these
passages to know that God is no respecter of persons and that God
deals with sin.
As a man said one time, "War is God's judgment on sin here and hell is
God's judgment on sin hereafter." By this we simply mean that if a man
has his eyes open and spends much time in hospitals, jails, insane
asylums, and divorce courts, he will come to the conclusion that God
does not put up with sin. Now, of course, if he's educated this will
help blind him a little bit. If he has enough education so that he
thinks "everything is relative and the factors are complex and you
can't always say what the case will be," then, of course, he can find
a way to get out of it and pretend that it isn't God's judgment on
sin--it's just accident or misfortune or tragic occurrence or "spin
the wheel, place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, around and around
she goes and where she stops nobody knows." Anybody who can read and
write and distinguish a B from a C and a D from an E can distinguish
adultery from fornication and can understand that "premarital sex" is
spelled the wrong way by those who tell it like it ain't. Anybody who
can distinguish a Z from an S or an S from a T can surely see the
difference between right and wrong morally, if they are honest
themselves. God is holy.
God Is Righteous
God's next communicable attribute is His righteousness. God is
righteous. In Psalm 116:5 we read, "Gracious is the Lord, and
righteous; yea, our God is merciful." And in Ezra 9:15, "O Lord God of
Israel, thou art righteous: for we remain yet escaped, as it is this
day: behold, we are before thee in our trespasses: for we cannot stand
before thee because of this." Among the many passages dealing with
righteousness in the book of Romans we find the great passage in
Romans 10:3-4 which says, "For they being ignorant of God's
righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness,
have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that
believeth." The righteousness of God is the great theme of the book of
Romans. Romans 9:14 says, "Is there unrighteousness with God? God
forbid." Notice chapter 8:10, "...But the Spirit is life because of
righteousness." Righteousness. That is the great theme of the book of
Romans. Romans 6:18, "Ye became the servants of righteousness." Romans
6:19, "...Your members servants to righteousness." Romans 6:20, "...Ye
were free from righteousness." Notice this thing over and over again.
Romans 6:13, "...As instruments of righteousness unto God." Notice how
it keeps cropping up and cropping up and cropping up throughout the
book of Romans. Romans 5:21, "...Might grace reign through
righteousness unto eternal life." Romans 5:7, "For scarcely for a
righteous man will one die." And over and over and over. Notice in
Romans 3 how righteousness keeps coming out. Romans 3:26, "To declare,
I say, at this time his righteousness." Romans 3:21, "But now the
righteousness of God without the law is manifested."
This is what the unsaved man doesn't want--the righteousness of God.
What a man wants is his oun righteousness, and the Bible says in
Isaiah 64:6, "...AII our righteousnesses are as filthy rags." Even
after a man is a saint, a saved sinner, the Holy Spirit has to help
him produce what we call "fine linen" which the Bible says is "the
righteousness of saints."
God is righteous, says Jeremiah 12:1, "Righteous art thou, O Lord."
Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? For some of you people
who say, "Well, I just took that for granted," don't forget: in God's
dealing with us, we often considered Him to be unrighteous, at least
in our attitule or response toward His providential dealings. It is
one thing for a man like me to sit here with my bills paid, in good
health, with food in my stomach and with clothes on my back, and say,
"God is right and makes no mistakes." It's another thing for me to be
in a wheelchair or to have a little girl on a kidney machine having
spent $130,000.00 in doctor bills and then praise God and thank Him
for doing right. Isn't it? Again, edueation is a great hindrance along
these lines. Any education that fails to point out that man is wrong
and God is right is not an education. You can learn more the way Jonah
did--going to whale college and graduating with a curriculum in whale
vomit--than you can in ten universities in this world if they don't
teach you that God is right and man is wrong.
God is righteous. Psalm 145:17, "The Lord is righteous in all his
ways, and holy in all his works." This is the great theme of the book
of Job--Why do the righteous suffer? Wasn't God doing unjustly in
dealing with Job the way He did? Didn't God treat Job wrong in view of
the fact that Job was a just and righteous man and feared God? "Yea,
let God be true, but every man a liar," Romans 3:4.
God Is Merciful
God is merciful. We know this about God. This is a communicable
attribute. God can communicate His mercy to man. Notice Psalm 103:8,
"The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in
mercy."
There isn't anyone reading this file who hasn't experienced the mercy
of God. Whether you recognize this or not or acknowledge it or not is
beside the point. The point is, it has been dispensed to you. There
has been some time in your life when you said, "God be merciful to me"
or "God help me" or "God have mercy on me" or "God get me out of this"
and God helped you and got you out. The fact that you may have
reciprocated by rejecting His Son is your personal matter, not mine.
The fact that you may have reciprocated by studying geology fifteen
years to disprove Genesis 1 is your funeral, not mine. But God is
merciful; His tender mercy is over all His works. The Bible tells us
in Psalm 103:8, "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
plenteous in mercy."
Psalm 86:15 reveals this great truth about God, "But thou, O Lord, art
a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous
in mercy and truth." One of the great attributes of God is His
longsuffering (His putting up with sinners, His mercifulness to bad,
wicked men), mentioned in Numbers 14:18 and again in Exodus 34. He
"sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust," Jesus Christ says in
Matthew 5:45, telling us that often the mercy of God is mistaken for
salvation.
There has been many a man who thought because God got him out of a car
wreck or got him out of a hospital that it meant God had accepted him
spiritually. In the sense of redemption and salvation, of course, this
is not true. God accepted the prayers of Cornelius as a memorial. He
accepted his good works as a "memorial" before God, but the man was
still unsaved. You should read Acts 10 to learn that where God is
often merciful and compassionate, putting up with man's devilment and
allowing certain things to happen, His mercy doesn't last forever and
at death you either die under His mercy or you die under His wrath.
His wrath is there and you can know it and you can feel it.
The Bible says in John 3:36. "...He that believeth not the Son shall
not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." Again, Romans
9:22-23, "What if God, willing to shew his wrath and to make his power
known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to
destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on
the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory." So,
when we speak of God's mercy we must never forget to speak of His
wrath. God is a complete being and a balanced being. He's not just all
love, peace, hug and kiss you, and let you get away with hell on
earth. The Lord is not going to do it. Hebrews 12:29 says, "For our
God is a consuming fire."
God Is Jealous
Nahum 1:2 says the Lord God is a jealous God. Now, it is hard for the
unsaved man to figure this out. As a matter of fact, I Corinthians
2:14 says, "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned." It is impossible for an
unsaved man to figure out how God, if He is God and perfect, could be
jealous. But this is ignorance on the part of the blinded sinner in
failing to realize that every attribute of man is magnified a thousand
times in God. After all, if the Bible is correct (and we say it with
no doubt in our own mind that it is) then God made man in His own
image, and if this is true then the attributes which can be found in
man will be found also in man's Creator. Every attribute manifested by
human beings will be magnified a million times so that it would be
impossible for you to imagine the intensity. No man reading this book
can imagine the agony Jesus Christ felt when he knelt in the Garden of
Gethsemane and contemplated becoming sin, turning into sin for sinful
man, becoming a curse under the Father's wrath, after He, Himself, the
Lord Jesus Christ, had never had an impure thought one time in His
life.
The attributes of God are magnified hundreds of thousands of times.
Although jealousy can turn to bad things and wicked things ("Wrath is
cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?"
Prov. 27:4) and although jealousy and envy are two of the worst
emotions ever felt by man and can cause untold damage, they are still
part of a genuine nature which, if used properly, are correct and
holy. Now, let me explain myself. It was jealousy that caused Satan to
covet the throne of God--Isaiah 14:10-14. It was jealousy that caused
Cain to knock Abel's brains out and that made him a murderer. It was
jealousy that caused Joseph's brothers to sell him as a slave into
Egypt. It was jealousy that caused the brethren to rebel under Moses
when God had chosen him as their leader. It was jealousy that caused
Saul to try to kill David because he knew that the people had
attributed to David greater accomplishments in battle than to himself.
The motive behind the crucifixion was jealousy. They were jealous of
Christ's authority and His power and His knowledge of the word. They
were jealous of His audience--the people listened to Him. They were
jealous of His ability to get permanent, lasting results. Jealousy,
per se, not connected with anything is neutral, but jealousy turned
the wrong way is one of the most destructive, Godless forces on the
face of this earth. Do you know why China, Africa and Europe would
like to see America become an international socialist country? Because
they are jealous of our welfare and our money and our power and our
industry and our standard of living, which we did not get through a
capitalistic system. We got it through honoring God and the word of
God. When we cease to honor God and the word of God we'll be just like
any other pagan nation on the face of this earth scrubbing around for
a living.
But jealousy is a genuine motive. It was given to guard things that
are right. When Paul spoke of his jealousy in II Corinthians 11:2 he
said, "For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy." When the Bible
says, "The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy," in James 4:5,
it means the Holy Spirit is concerned about His private property which
belongs to Him. It is jealousy, in part, that keeps families together.
When a man doesn't care who messes around with his wife and a woman
doesn't care who messes around with her husband, you have got a home
that is no more a home than a garbage dump. People say, "Do you have
to talk that plain?" You do for this generation! They're tough as a
rhinoceros' hide. Folks say, "Do you have to be so blunt when you
talk?" I should probably be more blunt. After all, I'm dealing with a
nation of adulterers, cutthroats, murderers and thieves. That's
probably as mild as you can put it for a lot of folks. I'm dealing
with a congregation of people who have seen people stabbed, shot,
poisoned and murdered in their living room eight and ten times a week,
sometimes five times a night.
Now, you have to face the Biblical facts: God can be jealous! God will
not tolerate His children messing with the world! God loves His
children and wants them for His own. Any parent who is not jealous
over the safety, welfare and security of his child is not a normal
parent. Any parent who is a normal parent and has what the Bible calls
"natural affection" resents the world trying to train his child its
way instead of the parent's way. A normal parent resents ungodly,
carnal, filthy, wicked, perverted school teachers trying to teach
their morals as the correct standard of morals for their child instead
of the standard of morals the parents desire to be taught in the home.
God is merciful. God is a consuming fire (His wrath) and God is a
jealous God. Joshua 24:19 says, "And Joshua said unto the people, Ye
cannot serve the Lord: for he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he
will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins."
God Is Love
God is love. You don't have to tell the average American that because
the average American has been so soaked with this God of love that he
thinks that God is nothing (to quote Joseph Parker) but a "great big
kiss." The average American has had such a milksop god of love that he
can read John 3:16 without shedding a tear. There is one thing America
doesn't need any more: it does not need a god of love. The last thing
under God's heaven it needs is a god of love. This country has been
brainwashed and soft-soaped with this iced tea, pink lemonade god of
love business for so long that you have born again, saved people who
don't think that God would even kill a sinner. He kills them every
day. It is true that the Lord has no pleasure in "the death of him
that dieth" and that the Lord is longsuffering, "not willing that any
should perish, but that all should come to repentance," (II Peter
3:9), but the same God who said that also said, "See now that I, even
I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I
wound, and I heal...lf I whet my glittering sword, and my hand take
hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies...." The
same God said, "To me belongeth vengeance," and "...A fire is kindled
in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume
the earth..." (see Deut. 32).
The same God who said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me..."
(Mark 10:14) said, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye
escape the damnation of hell" (Matt. 23:33). The same God who said,
"Blessed are the pure in heart" (Matt. 5:8) said in John 8:44, "Ye are
of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do."
So, when we talk about "God is love," we don't have to spend a great
deal of time on it. Every American has had that stuff soaked into him
so that he thinks God wouldn't lift a finger against him if he lived
like the devil. The Lord will kill you.
Romans 8:13, "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die," is
written to a Christian. First John 5:16, "There is a sin unto death"
for a Christian. You unsaved people, "He, that being often reproved
hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without
remedy" (Prov. 29:1). "Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest
not what a day may bring forth" (Prov. 27:1). Don't give us this stuff
about "God is love," "crying in the chapel," "He'll meet you with arms
wide open, he'll pardon you"--He won't pardon you apart from blood
atonement, and your blood is no good. It is going to rot in the
ground. Your flesh is no good--it will decompose, ashes to ashes, dust
to dust. Your righteousness is not going to get you anywhere but to a
hole in the ground.
All right, "...God is love," I John 4:8, but love is not God. First
John 3:16 tells us God is love as does John 3:16. "God so loved the
world that he gave"--past tense--"his only begotten Son." "Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us"--past tense--"and
sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (I John 4:10). All
the real love that God ever had to show for this world was manifested
at Calvary. "So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy," Romans 9:16. God has chosen
to show mercy to the unregenerate world at Calvary, and if you want
God's love and God's mercy you go to Calvary; there you will find
God's wrath and God's blood in the same place. As a matter of fact,
it's called "God's blood" in Acts 20:28.
Love and mercy show up in the same place where God's wrath against sin
is manifest and God's jealousy for righteousness is manifest: at a
painful, shameful, wooden, nail-pierced, whip-marked, bloodstained
Cross. Apart from that you can daydream about the "love of God" as
long as you like, but you will only be a self-deceived fool in the end
and will disobey the commandment, "Let no man deceive you" and "Let no
man deceive himself." And again it is written, "Be not deceived." If
you think the love of God in this age can be obtained without meeting
God's requirements, you are deceived by Satan. "So then it is not of
him that willeth," (you can't decide how God is going to have mercy on
you) "nor of him that runneth" (you can't work your way into it) (Rom.
9:16). God has showed you mercy and God has showed you the place where
He had mercy upon you, and until you come to that place, the sword of
God's wrath has its point against you. God will not put away that
sword unless you come to the place where He put it away in the
helpless, bleeding back of the "Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world" (John 1:29). And if that sounds new to you, it only goes
to show that you have been a pagan for a long time and it is about
time you got the wax out of your ears. "Evil communications corrupt
good manners," I Corinthians 15:33. With the crowd you've been hanging
out with and the library you've been reading, it's no wonder you don't
know anything. All right, God is love. That is not all. God is
faithful.
God Is Faithful
Concerning God's faithfulness, notice Deuteronomy 7:9, "Know therefore
that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth
covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments
to a thousand generations." Deuteronomy 34:4 says, "And the Lord said
unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and
unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee
to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither." We
have a great promise for the Christian in the New Testament in regard
to God's faithfulness. First Corinthians 1:8,9 says that God will
"...confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of
our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto
the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord." We may not be
faithful, but thank God, God is faithful and will "confirm us" unto
the end. Notice Philippians 1:6, "Being confident of this very thing,
that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the
day of Jesus Christ."
We can know about God's faithfulness. We can experiment with it. We
can learn about God's faithfulness by claiming His promises. We can
put Him to the test. In II Timothy 2:13 we read these words, "If we
believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself." Now,
look at that tremendous promise. That promise says if a man believes
in Jesus Christ, gets saved and is born again and later the agnostics
and the skeptics continually talk to him until they talk him out of
his salvation, it doesn't make any difference: "If we believe not, yet
he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself." If you were ever saved,
you are still saved. If you were ever born again, God cannot deny you
at the judgment seat of Christ. There is no way Christ can point His
finger at a born again child of God and say, "I tell you, I know you
not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity" (Luke
13:27). He knew you. There is no way God can take a member of the body
of Christ whom the Holy Spirit has put into Christ and tell that
member to get out of the body of Christ, for "he cannot deny himself,"
II Timothy 2:13. That is God's faithfulness, or as the song says "Thy
faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with
thee." The Lord is faithful who hath promlsed.
Conclusion
God is compassionate, I Kings 8:23, "And he said, Lord God of Israel,
there is no God like thee, in heaven above, or on earth beneath, who
keepest covenant and mercy with thy servants that walk before thee
with all their heart." God is true, Jeremiah 10:10, "But the Lord is
the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king: at his
wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to
abide his indignation." God is uncorruptible, Romans 1:23, "And
changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to
corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping
things." God is gracious, Psalm 116:5, "Gracious is the Lord, and
righteous; yea, our God is merciful." God is invisible, I Timothy
1:17, "Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise
God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen." God is upright,
Psalm 25:8, "Good and upright is the Lord: therefore will he teach
sinners in the way." God is perfect, Matthew 5:48, "Be ye therefore
perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." And to
wind it up and put the capstone on, there is none like Him, Exodus
9:14, "For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart,
and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that
there is none like me in all the earth." There is nobody like Him,
Deuteronomy 33:26, "There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who
rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky."
In view of the fact that our God is a great God, King of kings, Lord
of lords, Who has a name that is above every name, in view of the fact
that our God is God of gods, the Creator, the Redeemer, the Saviour,
we should love Him. We should worship Him. We should fear Him. We
should serve Him. We should obey Him. And "the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom," Proverbs 9:10.