Sermon Tone Analysis

TEXT: Isaiah 45:5

TOPIC:  God

Baptist Faith and Message Sermon 2, *Written by Calvin Wittman*

May 11, 2009

 

Introduction: We have come to the second sermon in our series on our doctrinal confession, the Baptist Faith and Message.

Last week we began by examining the Scripture, the single source from which we get all of our doctrine.

This week we move into theology proper as we attempt to say a word about God.

* *

If I were to ask you this morning if you believed in God, I am confident that almost all of you would respond in the affirmative.

But if I were to follow that question up by asking you to describe God to me, to give me a list of His attributes or to speak to me of the essential qualities of His nature, the answers would not be as forthcoming.

You see, while most people claim to believe in God, they are not really sure Who He is, What He is like and How we can know these things about Him with certainty.

The purpose of this morning’s message is to take a closer look at the person and nature of God.

As I sat down to write this message this week, after reading through numerous books and pouring over a variety of volumes on systematic theology, it occurred to me that the task before me was next to impossible.

How do you say all you need to say about God in 35 minutes?

Needless to say I can neither be exhaustive nor comprehensive in my treatment of this topic, but our purpose here is not to teach you all there is to know about any of these doctrines, that would be impossible.

This series of thematic messages is designed simply to familiarize you with the rudimentary or basic doctrines which we as Southern Baptist confess to be true.

My hope is to stir your hearts and to whet your appetite for more so that you will continue to study and learn more of these truths on your own.

We will break our discussion this morning into three sections.

First we will look at who God is not.

Secondly we will look to the scripture to see how God reveals Himself to us and finally we will consider what impact these truths have on our lives.

*I.

Who God is not –*

 

If you were to ask Americans if they believed in God, the majority of them would tell you yes, they do believe in God.

According to a Fox News poll conducted recently (Friday June 18th, 2004) fully 92 percent of Americans say they believe in God, 85 percent in heaven and 82 percent in miracles.

Though belief in God has remained at about the same level, belief in the devil has increased slightly over the last few years — from 63 percent in 1997 to 71 percent today.

But before you get overly encouraged, the same national poll showed that about a third of Americans believe in ghosts (34 percent) and an equal number in UFOs (34 percent), and about a quarter accept things like astrology (29 percent), reincarnation (25 percent) and witches (24 percent).

Overall, most Americans think religion plays too small a role in people’s lives today (69 percent), with only 15 percent saying it plays too large a role and seven percent saying “about right.”

And yet, while most Americans think religion plays far too small a role in people’s lives, they are most certainly talking about other people because the same poll found that only a little more than a third of those surveyed (37 percent) say they attend church, synagogue or other place of worship at least once a week, 13 percent almost every week, 12 percent about once a month and 19 percent seldom attend.

Three percent attend on holidays and 15 percent never attend.

That’s about 40% that rarely or never attend any kind of church.

So you see, not everything is as it seems or appears to be.

While most people in our country claim to believe in God, it is clear they do not believe in the God revealed in Scripture.

The question then should not be: Do you believe in God?

The question should be: In what God do you believe?

You see, when different people talk about God, they are not all speaking of the same person.

Many well intentioned Christians are simply ignorant of this truth.

For example, when the topic of Islam is raised you will hear people say something like, “Well, we all worship the same God, don’t we?”

The answer is unequivocally no.

The God of scripture is not Allah, worshiped by the Muslims.

Ergun and Emir Caner, in their book, Unveiling Islam, put it this way.

“Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God, unless Muslims wish to agree that Jesus is God and Lord.

The popular notion that Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God is blasphemous to all three religions and founded only in modern pluralism.

Jews do not worship Jesus, nor to the Muslims.

For the Christian, not to adhere to the Trinity is not to be Christian at all.

Yes, there is on God and He is in control of everything and everyone.

Yes, according to the teachings of all three faiths, everyone will stand before Him in judgment.

But to say that all worship the same God because we use the same generic (name for Him) is like saying that all references to the name “Mike” must refer to the same person.”

The same is true of the gods worshiped by all other false religions.

He is not the god of the Mormons - they believe that as we are he once was and as he is we shall someday be.

He is not the god of the Jehovah’s Witnesses – they deny the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit and teach that the doctrine of the trinity is heresy.

He is not the god of the New Agers – they believe God to be a higher force or some sort of cosmic energy.

The God you and I believe in is not some nebulous, indeterminate blob of spiritual energy.

He is not the god of sentimentality often referred to by Hollywood – Al Mohler, Richard Land and Chuck Kelley, in their commentary on the Baptist Faith and Message comment that, “The sad truth is that many Americans have only a superficial idea of God.

The God they imagine is not the living God of the Bible but more the product of sentimentality.”

And the list could go on and on and on, for you see, while many people believe in a god, they do not all believe The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God revealed in scripture.

So if we look just a little below the surface we can see that who God is depends on who you ask.

How then do we know who our God is and on what authority can we claim to found our beliefs?

This brings us to our second consideration this morning –

 

*II.

Who is God and How can we know Him?*

 

The word “Theology,” is derived from two Greek words, “Theos,” which means God, and “logos,” which means “word.”

So in a very literal sense theology is simply a word about God.

It has come to describe the entire body of thought and study about God.

As Southern Baptist our theology about God is rooted and grounded solely in scripture and is articulated in our confessional statement, The Baptist Faith and Message.

It says:

 

“There is one and only one living and true God.

HE is an intelligent, spiritual and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe.

God is infinite in Holiness and all other perfections.

God is all powerful and all knowing: and his perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures.

To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience.

The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence or being.”

This is a summation of our theology of God.

As evangelical Christians our theology does not come from church tradition, as some in the Roman church would have us believe.

It does not come from community, as the pundits of postmodernism would like us to believe.

Our theology does not come from the fertile imaginations of religious zealots or from some ecclesiastical hierarchy.

Fundamental to our faith is the understanding that God is a God of revelation and it is in scripture that He has revealed Himself to humanity.

As we studied last week there are two types of revelation, general revelation, where the evidence of God is clearly observed in nature; and special revelation, which is scripture, God’s chosen method of self disclosure to humanity.

This is an important truth about which each Christian should be clear.

If we are not clear about where we get our knowledge of God, then whatever knowledge we have of Him will be suspect.

The scripture is the only certain word we have about God and it tells us that we are made in His image.

This is important because when many people think about God they try to think of Him in human terms, or anthropomorphically.

They try to think of Him in sentimental ways or understand Him through the lens of their personal experience, always trying to envision Him within the confines of how they would understand another human.

But instead of understanding God within the confines of human personhood, we need to recognize that we are a finite and fallen replica of His infinite divine and perfect person.

We are created in His image, He is the creator, we are the creature and all we can ever know about God is what He has chosen to disclose to us in Scripture.

What then does God reveal to us about Himself in Scripture?

Obviously, as we have stated, time will not permit us to cover this topic exhaustively so, for the sake of our study, allow me to say several things that God tells us about Himself in scripture.

1.

He is the only true God –

 

The scripture is clear, there is only one true and living God.

Isaiah 45:5 says, “I am the Lord, there is no other; there is no God but Me.”

As Christians we are monotheistic, that is, we believe there is only one God.

Polytheism believes in many God’s.

Pantheism believes that god is in everything and that everything is God.

Atheism says there is no God, but Biblical Theism says there is only one God and there is no other god beside Him.

He is unique.

The Bible tells us that He is a person; which says He is intelligent, knowable and has a personal will.

Now before we go any further we need to stop for a moment and consider that while there is only one God, He reveals Himself to us as a triune God, that is, one God in three persons.

This doctrine of the Trinity is central to a biblical understanding of Who God is.

Although the term Trinity is not used in scripture, neither is the term rapture.

These are simply terms the Church has assigned to speak about things the Bible asserts as being true.

The Doctrine of the Trinity asserts that God is one in being or essence who exists eternally in three distinct coequal persons.

We find scriptural references to the triune nature of God both in the Old and the New Testaments.