God the Father
Tom Shrader explores who God is, moving beyond the question of His existence to examine His nature and attributes. He addresses common confusions about God including people following their own hunches, believing all views are equally valid, and avoiding their own sinfulness. Shrader emphasizes God's sovereignty as His defining characteristic, explaining how it brings worship, comfort in trials, freedom in evangelism, and security in salvation.
“Once you become aware that the main business that you're here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Christianity 101 (2014)
Recorded: April 03, 2014
Duration: 39 min
Themes: sovereignty, worship, comfort, security, freedom, attributes, nature, confusion, new believer, doubting faith, seeking truth, confused about god, struggling with theology, new to christianity, questioning beliefs, wanting security
Scripture: Genesis 1:26, 2 Timothy 3:16, Isaiah 6:1-5, 1 Corinthians 13, Romans 8:28, Romans 9, James 1:2, Romans 8:35-39, Philippians 1:6
Theological Themes: theology proper, divine attributes, sovereignty, trinity, godhead, divine nature, biblical authority, systematic theology
Full Transcript
You have in front of you an outline. Turn it over to the blank side because I'm not going to follow one point on the outline this morning. I got into this based on some things that have happened in the last few months and I decided to go down a different path. I almost didn't bring the outline in, but I thought with the comments there, the nine points in the scripture verses, if you're someone that this is going to bother you can take your own personal initiative and work your way through that.
I want to go in a little bit of a different route as we come to the third week in this series titled Christianity 101. Remind you real quickly that the first week we talked about doctrine. We said doctrine is a set of tenets or beliefs that become a basis driven from authority basis for our life. The second week, last week, we said now doctrine is important, where do we get this doctrine? For us we said we get this from the Bible.
The Foundation: Scripture as Our Authority
Second Timothy, this is where we hung last week, 2nd Timothy 3:16: all scripture is God-breathed and it's profitable, that is useful for four things. The Bible's good for teaching what's right, rebuking what's not right, correction how to get right, training in righteousness how to stay right.
So today we tackle the topic of God. Who is He? Does He even exist? When I was in the midst of my early rehab, I'm at home walking maybe five minutes a day trying to get around, watching a lot of television, documentaries, and I was watching a debate between a scientist engineer type of guy and a theologian, a Christian theologian, and the topic was does God exist? I found myself after a while with this thought that approximately 8% of the American public would say that they are atheists. That number varies, sometimes a little lower, sometimes a little higher, we'll settle at 8.
The Real Question Isn't Existence
It occurred to me as I was watching this debate that more people believe Elvis is alive than believe God is dead. And we're spending all this time about the existence of God, that doesn't seem to me to be the overriding issue. The issue isn't does God exist? The issue is who is God? What is He like? Is He knowable?
So I come now to the scripture and I can quickly be confused and overwhelmed in this process because the Bible teaches us that indeed there is a God and He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Again if you're new to this stuff, this is where you'll want to throw in the towel. This is me the other day, I tried to run a hundred yard, I used the word dash, that would be the wrong word, but I tried to run a hundred yards the other night and I got to 75 yards and I had nothing left. Well you get to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and you're like me in the hundred yard dash, you're going three gods? No we're not polytheists. One God, three persons. I don't get it.
The Mystery of the Trinity
Well you're in good company. They asked Daniel Webster one time about the Trinity, one plus one plus one could be one, and he said I don't pretend to fully understand the arithmetic of heaven now. I don't fully get this. I know it's true because the Bible teaches it. I know every time we come up with an analogy it breaks down.
Think of water which can be in liquid form or solid form or gas and that might be helpful to some degree. The problem with that is that it's not liquid gas and solid simultaneously. So God the Father is eternal, the Spirit is eternal, the Son is eternal, they work in relationship with one another. We see the introduction of the concept of the Trinity as early as Genesis 1:26 when God says, and at this point all we have is a little bit of creation, land, birds, at this point God says let us, plural personal pronoun, let us make man in our image.
So there is an eternal God, we believe in one God, not polytheist, one God who manifests Himself in three personalities and I don't claim to be able to explain that to your satisfaction but I don't feel inadequate because of it and I know it's true because the Bible teaches it.
Why People Struggle with Understanding God
Now what happens, I made a list of why do people struggle in terms of confusion about God and basically I came up with three reasons here. Number one, people follow their own hunches. I quoted Genesis 1:26, let us make man in our own image and it was Voltaire who said, speaking of that verse, and man has been returning the favor ever since.
Years ago I went to see a movie and the title was Oh God, remember? And God was played by who? George Burns. So there's a tip-off, it may not be the real thing. So George Burns is God and then the other key character in the movie was John Denver. I love John Denver. So it's the night before this kind of a trial and they're prepping John Denver for testimony and John Denver is asking, is Jesus your only son? And George Burns, God says no, no, no, I have many other sons and all paths lead to me.
Now I remember walking out of that theater going, finally somebody's nailed it. And what I did is what many people do, I had this concept of God either somewhat developed or what I hoped God would be and I hunt until I find something that fits into that. So there's a lot of confusion about God because people are following their own hunches.
The Problem with Equal Validity
Here's the second thing that leads to a great confusion about God, it's the idea that all beliefs are equally valid. The Arizona Republic asked a poll question not long ago, is Maricopa County doing an adequate job in disposing of toxic waste? Now I doubt I know one person who's competent to answer that question. So every night whether you're watching O'Reilly or Hannity or Greta or you're watching CNN or whatever it might be, people are constantly, what is your opinion on what happened to the airliner? You don't know, they don't know, but we've elevated this idea of opinion to where you feel like a doofus, nobody will say not sure anymore.
toxic waste—all these things—and then they show the results of the poll as if they're all equally valid.
Let's say today you had an opportunity with this little IT startup company and you are looking for input and maybe even investors. You can have lunch today with either me or Bill Gates. I assure you that I have strong opinions about whatever it is you're going to present to me, though I have no idea where they came from. But if you can have lunch with one of us, my assumption is—at least if I was you—I'd go have lunch with Gates.
If he were alive and you wanted to talk economics and you could have dinner with Milton Friedman or with me, our opinions may be equally strong but they're not equally valid. And so everybody's walking around with some view of God, but they're not equally true.
People Don't Want to Deal with Their Sinfulness
Here's the third reason I think there's confusion about God: people don't want to deal with their own sinfulness. So they create a God and a scenario where all dogs go to heaven, or where they've sinned but they want to make sure they're not Hitler. And even Hitler's going, "Hey, I didn't kill my mom." So that's what you see.
If you talk to guys in prison, you'll talk to a guy that's murdered five people and he'll go, "But I never was a pedophile. They're over there." What happens when I get a real view of God is I get a real view of myself. And it's Isaiah 6.
Isaiah 6:1: "In the year King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord on a throne, lofty, exalted, and the train of His robe filled the temple." And then Isaiah says—many think at this point Isaiah was already a prophet—"I saw seraphim, six wings, two to cover their face, two to cover their feet. With two they flew. And they sing, holy, holy, holy. And the foundations of the threshold trembled at the voice of Him who called out while the temple was filled with smoke."
And then Isaiah said, what does he say? "Woe to me for I'm undone." So look what's happened here. Isaiah is moving along, using our vernacular, thinking "I have it all together, doing pretty well." And then I see a holy God. Now by not comparing myself to you or the other people, but compared to the holy God, Isaiah says, "Woe to me for I'm undone." I don't want to deal with my own sinfulness. I want to minimize that the best I can.
God Gets Applause—Until We Define Him
So when we're talking about doctrine, and when we're talking about the Bible, when we're talking about what we believe, the beginning subject is God.
A few years ago, Reggie White—remember Reggie White, football player, inducted into the Football Hall of Fame—had passed away before his induction. So his son did the acceptance speech. And he said, "I know if my dad were here today, he'd want to thank God." And God in those situations always gets an applause. So they gave God the token applause. We're for God.
But then Reggie White's son said this: "I want to take a few minutes and tell you which God." Yeah, then we got to "ooh." We're for God, as long as there's no definition.
We had a kid in our youth program that was valedictorian at Mesquite High, which is the high school right across the street from the church—3,000 students. He was really a bright kid. One summer for light reading, he worked his way through the complete works of Jonathan Edwards. Now I have those. I use them generally as a doorstop. There are literally two books that are this thick in about four-point font.
So he went in, and of course for the valedictorian address, their instruction they gave him was, "What has made you successful as a student?" And so they brought me a video of it. He got up and they read all the awards and all the stuff that goes with it. And he said, "I want to tell you what made me successful. And I want to thank Him. And that was God." And I mean, God gets—He's an applause line. If you're ever giving a speech and you're in trouble, thank God. That just kind of gets you through.
But he said, "I want to talk about us. We are sinners." And you literally could hear a gasp. A gasp. Well, those two go together. And what the Bible comes along and says is, "Here's who God is." And as you begin to see God as He is, you'll begin to see yourself as you really are.
Classic Books About God
So prior to this year, I decided to reread some books. I'll frequently get people who say to me, "Have you got any books that I should read?" And I'll kind of probe a little to see what they know. But I went back and ordered and tried to start over with clean copies of: *Pursuit of God*, *Knowledge of the Holy*, *Your God is Too Small*, *Knowing God*, *Chosen by God*, *Pleasing God*. Now, somewhere in there, you see a theme. And the theme is God.
I was just working through some old material and I think it was Howie Hendricks who said he reads over and over again *The Knowledge of the Holy*, *Your God is Too Small*, and *Knowing God*. Now, if those are new titles to you, let me suggest that there's a couple of good places to start. *Pursuit of God* is great—that's A.W. Tozer—that's a great place to start.
In terms of really giving you points and numbers and lists—I like lists. I saw a list the other day: "30 places in the world to see before you die." I'm a sucker for that. And two of them were in Arizona and they weren't the Grand Canyon. I think the Teepee was one. I just remember going, "I ought to go there." Then it sounded like a dirt road. I went, "Whatever. It'll look like the picture."
*Knowing God* is a classic. There are people in our studies who've read *Knowing God* annually. And there's a wonderful sentence, I think it's on page 29, where J.I. Packer writes this: "Once you become aware that the main business that you're here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord." What he's not saying is your problems fall away, but
Knowing God puts everything in its proper perspective. There is a book that I've recommended on many occasions to you called Foundations of the Christian Faith. It's a 700-page book written by James Montgomery Boice. It's a book that should be on your shelf. For a topic like this, it's a book that I'll go to and either skim or read. I typically photocopy the section so that it's easier to work with in a big book. I'll go to it over and over again. It's a book you should have in your library as a reference book for any topic we're going to discuss or you're going to work your way through.
The Two Categories of God's Attributes
When it comes to God, we talk about the attributes of God. We break God's attributes into two categories: non-communicable and communicable. God's non-communicable attributes are things like immutability, all-knowing, all-powerful, self-existence. They're attributes that are unique to God and God alone. So anything that starts with omni, that kind of stuff.
God also has communicable attributes. Those are attributes that we see perfectly in God and partially in us. What would one of those be? Love. Everybody gets that one right away. So we see God's perfect love. God is love. Then we see a knockoff form of it in our own life.
Understanding Our Imperfect Love
I was on my satellite radio the other day and they took away my 40s channel. I don't know what happened. Now it's Billy Joel. I was trying to find something, scaling down, and I found a station that's just called Love. It's all love music. It's like red Gatorade. You can take about two sips of it and then you want to puke. But it's a lot of stuff about feeling down and love.
I made some notes. I had a group with six guys in it. Five were married. Some had been married months, some a few years. One guy was getting married. So we're having breakfast and I said to the guys who were married, what are the things you've learned? Let's help our buddy out here. The guys were very similar in their answers. They kind of talked over each other.
One of the things they said they learned is that she loves me more than I love her. I've learned that with Sandy. I think Sandy loves me, but I know she loves God more than she loves me, or she couldn't do the things that she's had to do in the last 12 weeks. The things that she has to do are disgusting things to take care of me. The other guy said, and they all said this, getting married showed me how selfish I am.
Love's Limitations in Family Relationships
It's the same thing with having kids or grandkids. I love my grandkids. My daughter Haley and her husband Tyler are buying a house five homes away from us. I look forward to that because I think it will make the grandparent thing a little bit easier.
But I find myself with the kids when they come over going, this is great. Look at them. Now they go to bed at 6:30 or quarter to 7. What time do they go to bed? What time are you going to pick them up? The problem is not that they aren't fun and cute. They are, but SportsCenter's on. There's a lot of competing interests.
I did a retreat with our college and early adult students, young men, and we were doing a Q and A. We were talking about getting married and why would you want to get married. One kid said, I want to get married so I can have sex every night. Some of the older guys in the room smiled at that. This is a variation of that. One of the guys said, I was surprised that I didn't want to have sex every night.
Conditional vs. Unconditional Love
One of the guys said, the closest I've ever come to unconditional love was the birth of my first child. But even then I want to be careful here because I had a similar feeling until I sorted it out. When Sarah was born, I thought, here's this little glob, kind of a cross between Gandhi and Churchill. I keep a picture—I keep a baby picture in my office because we had eight grandkids. Every time somebody comes in, they'll go, do you have a picture of the baby? I keep the same picture there and go, oh, that's my—boy, McKinley looks like Reagan. I said, yeah, early on, they all look alike. They don't know and they don't care.
I had this affection for Sarah, but I had to sort it out and go, I don't have unconditional love for her. There are ten kids there. I have this conditional love for her that's based on we share DNA. That's our imperfect love.
God's Perfect Love in Action
God comes along and says, this is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Here's what we learn about love. Two things. From 1 Corinthians 13, we learn love does not seek its own. That's why it's supernatural. My instinct is to think, what about me? Love is to say, what about you? Love never stays theoretical—it becomes action. God so loved the world He gave.
Sandy's in a spring cleaning mode. I looked around—I looked pretty clean to where I was. But Sandy's cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, and I'm totally supportive of this, except I know I'm going to have to do something. She said, it would really be helpful if you could clean a section of the closet in the guest room.
We have, and I'm guessing here, about 40 linear feet of closet space. It may be more than that, but 35 of it is mine. I have a lot of shirts. I love shirts. She said, if you could, in the guest room, get rid of some of those shirts. The last time you wore them, Jimmy Carter was in the White House. I said, well, be careful, because he was in the White House a couple of weeks ago. But could you get rid of those? So I went in, and these shirts are all coming back. They're in great shape.
God's Love in Action
I want to share something that happened at my house recently. I decided to clean out my closet, and I took some old, mostly old Hawaiian shirts, and yeah, I know, a few old boat shirts from Nordstrom, and I set them out in a pile. I cleared this whole section about as wide as this door. Sandy came in and saw them, and she had a reaction that totally blew me away, because I left them in a stack. They still needed some hangers taken out, and I had gotten a long way, but I didn't get it across the finish line.
She said, "Oh, my gosh." I said, "Well, thanks." And I said, "What do you think about that?" because that's her favorite line. This stunned me, and she was serious. She said, "I feel loved."
I said, "Really? Because I can keep throwing stuff out. It's cheaper than dinner and wine." She said, "I feel loved." And I thought, wow, I didn't get that. You'd think I'd get this. I mean, I teach it, and I've seen this movie a hundred times, but you feel loved. She said, "Yeah, that means so much that you would do that." So God is a God of love.
The Foundation of God's Nature: Sovereignty
Here's the overarching concept of God, and the very thing that makes Him God. It's called sovereignty. What makes God, God is His sovereignty. From that book, Foundations of the Christian Faith, James Boyce writes this: "God has absolute authority and rule over His creation. In order to be sovereign, God must also be all-knowing, all-powerful, and absolutely free. If there were a limit to any of these areas, then He would not be entirely sovereign." So He's all-knowing, all-powerful, and absolutely free.
Let's step back now and see if this doesn't connect dots we've talked about over the years. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose." For that statement to be true, and we know it is, He has to be all-knowing, He has to be all-powerful, and He has to be free from any maverick molecule or force of nature that could usurp His plan. That's His sovereignty.
Boyce continues: "The sovereignty of God is greater than any one of the attributes which God contains. Others may seem more important, love for instance, but a little thought will show that the exercise of these attributes is made possible only through the sovereignty of God. God might love, for example, but if He were not sovereign, circumstances could thwart His love, making it useless to us. In the same way, God's justice. God may desire to establish justice among human beings, but if it were not for sovereignty, justice could be frustrated and injustice prevail."
God's Active Role in Creation
Here we are. God spoke this world into existence and didn't step away and say, "I wonder how it'll turn out," but He's intimately involved in each of our lives and in the operation of the universe. Using biblical terms, He's the potter, we're the clay, and He acts independent of us or any force.
If you are in Redemption Church, last Sunday we dealt with Romans 9. Romans 9 has a section that's somewhat difficult for people to get their arms around. It is where we talk about God's sovereign choosing and God says, "Jacob I loved, Esau I hated." Hate there is not an active intervention into hating Esau; it's simply withholding the love from Esau that He's given to Jacob. He said, "Here's what I want you to see: same mom, same dad, still in the womb, I made that decision at that point."
Paul's next line is, "Is there injustice with God?" Because he knows our reaction to that. Our reaction is to say, "That's not fair." But He's God and He does as He pleases. I will tell you from my own personal experience that the sooner you come to grips with sovereignty, the more blessing you will feel from that.
Four Blessings of God's Sovereignty
Again, I'm going to take from Boyce's book. Let me give you four blessings from this sovereignty.
Number one: it inevitably deepens our worship of the one true God. A God that is held captive to your whim or mine is not much of a God to be worshipped. When we see God as He really is, all of a sudden our worship for Him gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So Tozer's critique of our theology is that it doesn't descend low enough, speak to our sinfulness, or ascend high enough, speak to the holiness of God.
Here's the second blessing. This is huge. Sovereignty gives comfort in the midst of trials, temptations, and sorrow. There is a lady who comes to the P&L study on Wednesday morning, and her hair is about like Clarkie's, not that color but that length, and it has grown out to that. She's just coming out of chemo.
Personal Testimony of God's Sovereignty
When I finished yesterday, she sat there, and it's kind of that moment where she was waiting for people to leave, and she began to cry. She said, "I've been a Christian for 17 years. It was five years ago that I came into the study, and I was introduced to the concept of the sovereignty of God." So that may be you here today, that you've been around church all your life and going, "I never heard this stuff." Well, you need to find a new church.
She said, "It was right about that time that I had this aneurysm, and then subsequently to this has been the cancer." She didn't say this has been easy, but what she said is the sovereignty of God and the understanding of God has allowed me to be able to find comfort in the midst of this. In other words, God didn't blink.
When I look at whatever it is—earthquakes, disappearing planes, 9-11 is a great example—9-11 was either caused by or allowed by God. God could have stopped that. He could have. He didn't. Did He cause it? I don't know that. Was He moving those? I don't know that. Here's what I know: this is not beyond His control or scope or plan.
Finding Comfort in God's Control
Now, 9-11 is that big corporate event. We have our own 9-11, our own aneurysms and cancers and deals that don't work and the boss downsizing and relationships that pull apart or whatever it might be. The sovereignty of God and the fact that God's in control provides me great comfort in the midst of that.
What I know, what I feel. And we know, Romans 8:28, "And we know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose." That does not mean every deal closes. That means that God takes the circumstances of life, even sin, and uses it for our own good and for His glory. James 1, verse 2, "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials." Here's the key word, "knowing the testing of my faith produces endurance." So God's sovereign, God's in control.
Maybe this is me, but I don't waste any brain cells on trying to figure out what's God doing? Why would God do that? Why would God allow my heart to be clogged and need new veins and arteries? Well, I'm guessing it's got something to do with gravy and fries and lack of exercise. Hard to blame God on that. What can You teach us in the midst of that?
God's Sovereignty Brings Freedom in Evangelism
Two more things real quickly. Number three is that God will provide encouragement and joy in evangelism. The sovereignty of God says that God decides before the foundations of the earth who will be saved. Now for some of you, big deal, got it, and it produces tension, and I'm all over that, and one of my favorite topics, frankly.
I had not been a Christian very long when I felt this duty, responsibility, and desire to share the gospel. But all of a sudden, your accepting the gospel becomes a measure for me in evangelism, so that I found myself dealing with people who were asking questions, and I found myself giving them the minimum possible lowest denominator answer that wouldn't push them away. I wouldn't tell an untruth, I just wouldn't tell the whole truth.
Well, all of a sudden now, it's not an excuse to be a jerk, but I learned a long time ago, if somebody calls and they want to get together and they want to talk about Christ, whether they respond to this gospel or not is not as a result of my presentation, but it's based on the Holy Spirit's work in their life, and there's great joy in that, freedom in that.
The Security Found in God's Sovereignty
Here's the last thing before I let you go: sovereignty will afford you a deep sense of security. In Romans chapter 8, again at the Redemption campuses, we were just teaching this this week, and I was not teaching, I was sitting there with my Bible as Tim talked about what we'd looked at the previous week. "Who will bring a charge against God's elect? What will separate us from the love of Christ? If God's for us, who can be against us?"
Romans 8:35, "What will separate us from the love of Christ?" And then Paul kind of speculates here, "tribulation, distress, famine," and all these things "we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us, for I'm convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other created thing..." Let me stop right there for a second. That would include everything other than God, because everything other than Him is a created thing. "I'm convinced that these and any other created thing shall not be able to separate us from the love of God."
Now what I noticed as Tim was reading, that there is a three-time occurrence. You see it in verse 35, "What will separate us from the love of Christ?" Verse 37, "We overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us." Verse 39, "What can separate us from His love?" The driving force in our relationship with God is His love for us.
Common Questions About the End Times and Security
We get two questions. We do a Q&A. Are these the end times? Earthquakes in Los Angeles, earthquakes in Chile, are these the end times? Yes, don't know when, maybe another thousand or two thousand years, but we've been in the end times since Jesus left. So we're in the end times. Should you buy water and save it? I don't know, that's between you and the water guy, I don't know. Are we in the end times?
The second question we'll get is, as a Christian, can I lose my salvation? And the question presupposes that you're a follower of Christ, so we can say no, because your faith is not about you hanging on to God, but about Him hanging on to you, and He does not grow weary. Philippians 1:6, "He who began the good work in you will continue it till the day of Christ Jesus."
Summary: Knowing God the Father
Here's our summary of God the Father: we need to know Him and He is knowable through this book, that He becomes a lifelong subject of study. While I'll never fully understand or comprehend Him, because He's infinite, and I'm finite, I can begin to know Him, and the implication there is, I can have a relationship with Him, and the more I know Him, the more I'll love Him, and the more I'll love Him, I want to know Him.
I see that humanly. I love Sandy, you know, met her, kind of clicked right away, you know, I love her. I don't, what does that mean, why do you love me, and then we had one of those sessions, why do you love me, I don't know, you're funny, well Seinfeld's funny, you're cuter than Seinfeld, you know, I don't know, I love you. And whatever that love was, it'll be two years ago, this May, we got married, whatever that love was, it's deeper now than it was then, primarily because I've gotten to know her, and the more I know her, the more I love her, and the more I love her, I want to understand her and know her, and that becomes the relationship.
The same thing is true of God. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind. The more you love Him, the more that you'll want to know Him. Well what do You want me to do? Love everybody else. So that's God the Father. Next week we look at Jesus and the uniqueness of Him.