Who Is Your God? | Ep34

Transcript

Who is your God? Everyone seems to have some kind of God in his or her life. The God in our life can be determined by how much time, money, and energy we devote to that person or passion. Often, the God we believe in shapes our life.

We pattern our life after the God we serve. That God determines our moral standards and becomes the authority for whatever we do in life.

Who is the God of your life? My God is the God of the Bible. Let me tell you about this God.

First, he is spirit, not material. The Bible teaches in 1 Thessalonians 5.23 that each person is made up of three parts, the body, the soul, and the spirit. Our body does not determine who we are.

Our spirit is the power that enables this body to function. This is why James 2.26 says that death takes place when the spirit leaves the body. When Jesus was on the cross, the Romans really did not take his life.

He said in Luke 23.46, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit. He gave his spirit to God and he breathed his last. The soul is who we really are and that part of us is eternal.

Therefore, we are a spiritual being, not just a material body. Therefore, our God needs to be a spiritual being, not a material being. Jesus said in John 4, verse 24, that God is a spirit and that they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Paul helps us to understand God as he talked with the philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens. And that’s recorded in Acts the 17th chapter. And I want to read verse 24 of that chapter to tell us something about God.

He said, the God who made the world and all things in it since his Lord of heaven and earth does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is he served by human hands as though he needs anything, since he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the earth, face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation that they would seek God if perhaps they might grope for him and find him though he is not far from each one of us.

For in him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own prophets have said, for we also are his children. There Paul gives us a great deal of information about the God of the Bible. Notice what all he said there about this God.

First off, he said, this God does not dwell in temples made with hands. You see, he was standing in Athens. There were temples everywhere.

There were thousands of statues of altars to gods. In fact, one of their own people, people in that time frame came to Athens and said, I believe there are more gods here than there are people here. It was just covered in gods.

And so he’s saying, look, the real God is not in one of these temples. He doesn’t dwell in temples. He also said, it’s not that he really needs us.

He doesn’t need any human hands because he’s the one that provides everything. He provides life and breath and all things. And notice also, he said, he made from one man all of mankind, going back to the beginning of time in Genesis 1. And notice also, he says that they would seek God.

People seek God everywhere. There’s never been a civilization recovered or dug up that did not serve some kind of God. It’s because there’s something in man that says there’s got to be something greater.

And they’ve created some kind of God that they believe in and trust and look to. And so he says that they would seek God if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he’s not far from each one of us. My God that I serve is the God I read about here in the Bible.

And he wants to have relationship with us. He’s not far from us. He wants us to be near to him.

And that God is the God that is of spirit, not material. It is the God of the universe, not just some God that I have prepared in my own mind. A second truth about this God is there’s really only one true God.

Not many, as people describe, not made up of persons of different kinds of gods. But this one true God is made up of three individuals called persons or personalities that make up that one God. And I realize that’s kind of hard for us to grasp and it’s understandable.

We are finite. We’re limited. God is infinite.

But the God of the Bible is a God made up of three persons. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. God the Father is the one who seems to be the executor of the Godhead.

And Paul talks about that in Ephesians 4, 6. One God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all. While Jesus was on earth, he has said that I do nothing on my own initiative. While he was on earth, he looked to his God, the Father, to guide and direct him.

Then there is God the Son. This is God, the God who came in the flesh, who came to be the sacrifice for our sins. For God the Father is kind of the executor.

God the Son is the sacrifice. He came to this earth for the expressed meaning of dying on a cross to pay for our sins. There are numerous passages that tell us that this one who came to this earth is God in the flesh.

In John, the Gospel of John, chapter 1, 1, 3, 4, he said, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God, and all things were made by him. Without him was not anything made that had been made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And then in verse 14, it said that Word became flesh, and we beheld his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father. Jesus Christ on earth was God the Son before he came to earth.

God the Son is that one who came to this earth to be that sacrifice for us. And he has the attributes of God. Not only does the Bible state that he is God, it also attributes to him the attributes of God.

By the attributes, we seem to mean the characteristics that makes him unique. God is eternal. Well, in Hebrews 9 and 14, he’s spoken of as being eternal.

God the Son has all these characteristics. He is the omniscient. He is omnipresent.

He has all these characteristics of God. And yet he came here, as Mark 10.45 says, not to be served, but to serve. First John 2, 1 and 2. John writes and says, Beloved, I write these things that you sin not.

But if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, over the sins of the whole world. Propitiation, that simply means he’s the payment for the sin.

And so he said, John says, that I’m writing this letter to let you know about Jesus Christ, that he is the payment for our sins, and not just sins of Christians, but for sins of the whole world will be offered that. And if they render obedience, God will forgive them of their sins. That’s the great work that Jesus Christ came to serve to do.

The third person of the Godhead is God the Holy Spirit, who is the revealer of God’s will. The primary work of the Holy Spirit was to guide the apostles and prophets into all truth. Jesus told his apostles this in John 16, 13.

When he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth. It’s through the Holy Spirit’s power that he guided these apostles and prophets to write down what God wanted written down. Paul describes that in 1 Corinthians 2, and basically says every word there is the word that God wants it to be there.

It is interesting. The Holy Spirit let every person write in his own personality. Paul wrote like Paul.

He was an educated man. He wrote like an educated man. John was a fisherman.

He did not have the education that Paul had. So John wrote in simple Greek. When people study the Greek language in the New Testament Greek, after learning the grammar and all those details, they usually begin translating some of John’s writings because John was a simple man and he used simple terms.

And yet the Holy Spirit put a sanction upon it. John was just as inspired in the words that he wrote as Paul was in the complex words he used. You see, the Holy Spirit’s power was to reveal and work through these men.

These men, apostles and prophets, received revelation from God according to Ephesians 3, 5, and 6. But God guided them through the Holy Spirit to convey those messages from man to man without making any mistakes. That’s inspiration. Inspiration is simply the Greek word that means God breathed.

God breathed through these men so that they could be guided to write what God wanted written. And when they wrote it down, it was the inspired word of God. That’s the reason Paul says in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, all scriptures given by inspiration of God is profitable for doctrine, or approved for correction, or instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly furnished into all good work.

God’s word is inspired and that was the word of the Holy Spirit. The Father seemed to be the executor with all the plan. The Son came as a sacrifice to die to pay for our sins, and the Holy Spirit came to reveal God’s word to us so that we have the record of all of that.

The third statement that I want to make about the God I believe in, the God of the Bible, He is the creator of everything. And Genesis 1, 1, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens of the earth. Now, technically speaking, He was God the Son, He was the creating force.

But the point we’re going to look at is God of the Bible is the God of creation. He’s the one who created all things. You know, it doesn’t matter how far back in time you want to go, there are only two possibilities at the beginning.

That which was life or that which was non-life. I don’t care how many millions of centuries you want to go back, at the beginning, there are only two possibilities. Eternal things, life things, or material things.

Science tells us that life cannot come from non-life. So if we go all the way back to the beginning, and there was nothing there that was alive, then that could not produce life. But when you go all the way back to the beginning, God is alive, therefore He could make material things and live things.

And so, though God of the Bible is the God who created all things, that He is there from the beginning, and He’s guided and directed it. What God did was for preparation throughout eternity. Before the world’s ever began, He knew the plan.

He had a plan. He made man, man’s sin. Man needed to be reconciled to God so that God could have fellowship with Him.

See, God made man because He wanted to have fellowship with man. That’s what we see in Isaiah 43, verse 7. And He knew that man would sin, so He had a plan. Christ, His Son, the Son of God would come as a sacrifice.

But then man needed to know about that plan and that way of coming back into fellowship with God. And so the Holy Spirit revealed that plan. And so the God of the Bible is the God who is Spirit, not material.

He is the God. There’s only one God made up of three persons, the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And third, He is the creator of everything we have.

As we take the Bible to become our standard, we can recognize that it came from God. And we can be blessed by that because the Bible answers three great questions of life. Where did I come from? Why am I here? And where am I going? Those are the three greatest questions that you can ask yourself.

The God of the Bible answers all three of these questions. You have many choices as to what God will govern your life. You can put a lot of money and time and energy.

You can develop a God in your own mind. But that God that you create cannot answer these three questions. Only the Bible God can answer the three great questions.

Why not let the God of the Bible be your God? After all, you have been made in His image. What a great blessing that is to know that we have a nature like God and that God created us not just body, soul, and spirit, but of the soul that will live eternally. Our bodies will go back to the grave.

Our spirit, the life that makes this body function, will depart, but our soul will spend eternity either in heaven or hell. And that soul has been made in the image of God and He wants to have fellowship with us. He’s made it possible for us to spend time with Him.

What’s your choice? Why not choose the God of the Bible and read the Bible to learn about Him and how to live your daily life? Thanks for joining us this week and spending time in God’s Word. Special thanks to Mac Graham, John Kachelman, and LightWay Media for recording, producing, and making this podcast possible. If you’re ever in the Littleton, New Hampshire area, we’d love to have you join us for worship and Bible study on Sunday afternoons at 4 at the Senior Center.

You’re always welcome. For more information about this podcast, visit lightwaymedia.com/meditating-on-the-Word and find the link there to email me to subscribe to my free weekly newsletter with more information you can use in your personal Bible study. Be sure to like, subscribe, and follow us on your favorite podcast app so that you never miss an episode.

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“Meditating On The Word” is hosted by Wayne Burger, recorded by Mac Graham, and produced by John Kachelman III and LightWay Media. Follow us on social media to get updates and information when available.

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