God

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Psalm chapter 147. And as I said, we’re going to talk about what we believe about God. We’re going to scratch the surface of that.

And I could have picked tonight almost any passage in the Bible to look at if we’re going to talk about the nature of God. We can find things that tell us about the nature of God on just about every page. But as I studied and looked for a passage that talks about his nature.

I kept coming back to this one. Again, it’s one of many, and it doesn’t tell us everything that there is to know, but it’s a good place to start. And what we’re going to see in this passage is the psalmist was praising God in part for rebuilding Jerusalem.

That’s one of the things that he praises God about, but it was for the rebuilding of Jerusalem. And we don’t know the time frame here. He was either praising God for the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity in the days of Nehemiah, if you’re familiar with that story, when they came back and had to rebuild the walls.

He’s either praising God for his part in rebuilding the city then, or he’s talking about, the psalmist is talking about when the city was captured from the Jebusites under King David. So there’s a gap of about 500 years here that this could be on the either end of. We don’t know exactly when it was written.

We don’t know exactly what he’s talking about, but we know that at some point Jerusalem was just devastated, and the psalmist was writing, crediting God with the rebuilding. And in either of those cases, we know that the people actually went out and went to work, but God intervened, especially in the case of Nehemiah, that the work got done in just 50 some odd days they rebuilt the wall. They knew that God had to be behind this, and so even though they went out and they physically were the ones who moved the stones the bricks, they credited God with rebuilding their city, and they praised him for it.

And as we read what the psalmist says here in Psalm 147, it tells us some things about God, but it doesn’t tell us everything about God, as I already said. It doesn’t tell us everything that we believe, nor does the Baptist faith and message, as we’re studying through that, it doesn’t tell us everything we believe. It hits the highlights.

You know, we had discussion Wednesday night about when was the church founded? What about this particular aspect of baptism? And there wasn’t always 100% agreement.

You know, we believe a lot of things, but when it comes to the things that are actually important, the things that really matter, I won’t say the other things don’t matter at all, but the things that really matter, that’s what we’re covering, some of these foundational issues. And this passage, like I said, doesn’t tell us everything about God. You wouldn’t want to listen to a sermon where I told you everything about God.

We’d be here for the rest of our lives. I’ve been preaching for over 15 years now, haven’t begun to scratch the surface about who God is. I could preach for the rest of my life and still not even scratch the surface of who God is, but we’re going to work on trying to scratch the surface tonight.

So in verse 1, let’s just read through the passage real quick. The first six verses are what we’re going to focus on tonight. Verse 1 says, Praise ye the Lord, for it is good to sing praises unto our God.

For it is pleasant, and praise is comely. The Lord doth build up Jerusalem. He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel.

He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the numbers of the stars. He calleth them all by their names.

Great is our Lord, and of great power his understanding is infinite. The Lord lifteth up the meek. He casteth the wicked down to the ground.

So here in verse 1 where it says, Praise ye the Lord, for it is good to sing praises unto our God, for it is pleasant and praise is comely. There’s some things already that we can see just in that. Now, that’s a command to praise God.

You wouldn’t think necessarily that there’s a lot of theological instruction in there, but there are some things that we can pull out that tell us about God’s nature. And first of all, I want to point out the fourth word in that verse, Lord. Many times in the Old Testament, you’ll see the word Lord in all caps.

When it’s used that way, it’s not a title. In Hebrew, that’s where the actual name of God is found in Hebrew. They didn’t transliterate it.

They just stuck Lord in there when they were doing the English translations, many of the early ones. But they put it in all capitals so we would know what word was there. His name in Hebrew, we would spell it with our letters Y-H-W-H.

In Hebrew, it’s Yad-Heh-Vav-Heh. Those are the letters. And because the Jews had a tradition about not pronouncing God’s name, we don’t know if it’s pronounced Yahweh, Yahweh.

It’s somewhere in that range. It’s the name you probably hear in English as Jehovah when we talk about the name of God. So when you see Lord in all caps, it’s giving not the title of God that he’s our Lord.

It’s giving his name. And I’m more familiar with the Yahweh pronunciation. but it would be saying then praise ye Yahweh.

Praise Him and it calls Him by name. And even that name tells us some things about Him because in Hebrew that name means that He is self-existent and that He’s eternal. I don’t understand all the ins and outs of Hebrew but I do know that. It tells us that He’s self-existent.

He’s eternal. That means He’s not dependent on anyone. The question who created God, there is no answer because God has always existed. Only things that have a beginning need a cause.

And if God then didn’t have a beginning, he doesn’t need a cause. Nobody created God. Nobody brought God into existence.

God just is. He always has been. He always will be.

It’s impossible for God not to exist. He’s what we call in philosophy a necessary being. It’s impossible for him to not exist. And he’s eternal. He can’t be just like he can’t come into existence. He can’t be killed.

He can’t be destroyed. He just is. And we see that from his name.

We see somebody who just is and who isn’t dependent on any of us. You know, God’s not here because we got together and thought he’d be a good idea. I know society likes to think that that’s how it works because if that’s how God came about, then we could just vote him out and he no longer exists.

We don’t have to worry about him. But God exists whether we worship him or not. God exists.

God is whether we acknowledge him or not. you know I don’t have to acknowledge the law of gravity but it’s it’s there and I’m reminded of that all the time God just is and we don’t get a vote in it we have we have no impact on that and we see that again when Moses was confronted by the burning bush and God spoke to him through that burning bush and told him to go back and talk to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go told him to to tell the Israelites that God had sent him to work toward their deliverance and Moses says who do I tell them sent me? And he said in Exodus 3.

14, I am that I am. Tell the people of Israel that I am has sent you. He’s not saying I have been.

I am now. I will be. I am that I am.

And we might interpret that I am because I am. He just is. So already in that one word, Lord, of verse 1, we get a glimpse of who God is.

While these other pagan countries that were running around that the Israelites were constantly having to fight off, while they were worshiping gods that they went and made with their hands and their little tools that they carved out of rock, I can’t begin to understand why somebody would want to worship something that they made. I’m your creator and I’m going to worship you. That is completely backwards.

It makes no sense. God, in contrast to all these others is not somebody who was made with human hands, not somebody who was dreamed up by the human imagination, but existed before all these things and independently of them. And it says here that he deserves our praise because it talks about praising him.

It says it’s good to sing praises to God. It’s a good thing to sing praises to God. So if you, some of you next week are going to come here for praise night and brother Ken’s going to ask if you have anything to sing and you’re say, oh no, I can’t sing.

It wouldn’t be good. You wouldn’t want to hear me. If you’re praising God, it’s good.

Okay, I don’t care if you’re hitting the right notes or not. If you’re praising God, it’s good, and God is pleased by that. And it says that praise is comely.

So praising him is the proper thing to do, and praising him is a pleasant thing to do. We see both of those things in the passage in verse 1. It’s telling us that he deserves our praise.

It’s only right for us to praise him. Now let’s look at verse 2. It says, while I live, I’m sorry, wrong chapter, the Lord doth build up Jerusalem.

He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel. So again, like I said earlier, they gave God credit for being the one who rebuilt their city. Yes, they did the physical labor, but they gave God the credit because he brought it all together.

And when it says the outcasts of Israel, we think of the outcasts being, you know, sort of those people on the margins of society. If you were back in high school, it’s the kids that sat at the lunch table that nobody else would let them sit with them. That’s not necessarily what it’s talking about with outcasts here.

It’s the same principle, the stuff that was discarded that nobody else wanted anything to do with. He’s talking about the parts of the city because the city had been torn down and just pieces of it discarded and thrown away. And God came in and oversaw the rebuilding of the city.

And that involved taking these pieces that people thought were just rubble and giving them value again. And God does the same thing with us. The things that have been torn down and cast aside, God has an incredible capacity to come into our lives and give those things value.

So while it is talking, when it says outcast, it is talking about the building materials in Jerusalem. There’s a deeper principle involved here that God is able to take something that nobody else sees value in and give it value. I’m thankful that he does that in each of our lives.

And God brings order out of chaos. If any of you have ever been somewhere after a natural disaster, you have an idea of what this looks like, whether it’s a fire, whether it’s a tornado, and you look there and it just looks like absolute chaos. Imagine somebody that comes into an area where a tornado has been through and the houses are just splintered down to where they’re like matchsticks and they’re just scattered.

The pieces are just scattered everywhere. And imagine coming and putting each of those little pieces back together as they were and as they should be. It’s kind of what it’s describing here.

God is able to bring order out of the chaos. Out of the chaos in Jerusalem, out of the chaos in our lives, God brings order and he gives value. you.

Let’s look at verse 3. It says, He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds. Now, both of these phrases describe the activities of a doctor.

When it says healing, he healeth the broken heart, that word healing means that he would stitch something up. I went and looked at these words in Hebrew because I wanted to see if there were shades of meaning there that don’t come across in English. And sure enough, it indicates what they would do if they were stitching up a wound, that healing was needed.

And so Jesus, God, comes and is able to heal those wounds as a doctor who would come and stitch and suture in order to make somebody well again. And then when it says that he binds, binding up their wounds. Binding means applying pressure.

It’s kind of the idea that we get when somebody applies a tourniquet. Somebody’s been shot or somebody’s been cut and the artery’s bleeding out in the leg and they come and put a tourniquet on it to put pressure to hold the blood in, to hold everything together long enough for the life to be saved. That’s the idea that we get here from this idea of God binding up the wounds, God coming and putting the pressure where it needs to be to hold everything together.

And I think we all get to those points in our lives where we need somebody to come and stitch up the wounds and we need somebody to hold everything together. And God is not only able, but he’s willing to do that for his creatures, for us. So as we look through these first three verses, what emerges is a picture of a God who is so great.

A God who’s so great. You look back at what the word Lord means, what the name of God means. We get the idea of a God who is so great that he doesn’t need to care about us, but a God who’s so good that he does anyway.

If we want to begin to understand who God is, we start there. He’s so great that he doesn’t have to care about us, but he’s so good that he does anyway. And the passage, as we go through these six verses, it bounces back and forth between these two themes.

We see verse 1 describes his greatness. Verse 2 transitions into verse 3 that talks about his care for us, his love, his tenderness. Then verses 4 and 5 return to talking about the subject of his greatness and verse 6 goes back to his care again.

It’s these two things that it bounces between, the passage bounces between these things that we would look at and think they’re contradictory. That on the one hand, God is up here. And on the other hand, God stoops down here to care for us.

But what we see is that they’re held together. They’re not really contradictions. They complement in each other, and they tell us who God is, that the creator and sustainer, the ruler of the universe, is willing to care about us.

I think that’s incredible. He’s the greatest being that there is, and yet he loves us. I don’t know why, other than it’s his nature.

I look at me, I don’t even love me every day, okay? Because I know what’s in my heart, I know what’s in my mind, I don’t always love me every day. I sure don’t understand why he does, but he does.

Now let’s look at verse 4. It says, he telleth the number of the stars. He calleth them all by their names.

What this tells us is that God knows all the stars. God knows all the stars, for starters. His knowledge is far beyond our capabilities.

You know, we’ve got all these multi-million dollar telescopes that you’d think we’d be able to see everything, but every few years they spend another several million dollars of money on building another telescope, and they see things that the last one missed. We’re constantly learning about how big the universe is. We’re constantly, they’re constantly discovering stars and nebulae and planets and black holes and all sorts of things out there that they didn’t know were there.

And the list of them constantly grows. Well, guess what? God has known they were there all along.

It says he tells the number of the stars. He calleth them by their names. God has known all these things from the moment of creation.

He dreamed them up before he ever brought them into existence. And we will never catch up with knowing as much as God does. Now, for him to know the number of the stars, how many there are, for him to know all of that is impressive enough.

But when it says he tells the number of the stars, that telling is not just an accounting term. It’s not just talking about counting the stars. One, two, three, you know.

That’s not all telling means. The word telling, the word behind it in Hebrew, implies allotment or placement. That means he told the stars where to go.

I mean, the stars are so massive. Look at how much suffering the sun has caused over the last few days. It’s been miserable out here, hasn’t it?

It’s like 300 degrees in central Oklahoma. The other day, it was hotter. The heat index was higher in Pawnee, Oklahoma than in Death Valley.

And our sun is not even the biggest star out there. And yet God controls them all. Tells them where to go.

God’s in charge of them. He put them in place. There’s a song that I love.

Came out several years ago. Hear it on the radio called My Redeemer Lives. And it starts out by saying, Who told the sun where to stand in the morning?

Who told the ocean you could only come this far? Who taught the moon where to stand until evening and whose words alone can catch a falling star? And it talks about our Redeemer.

He lives and he’s the one who did all these things. It’s impressive enough that God knows what’s out there. But even more than knowing what’s out there, he put it there.

He’s bigger than all the stars. He’s bigger than all the universe. He controls all of it.

And then you go to the second part of verse 4 where it says, he calleth them all by their names. That’s not just like me calling you by your name because that’s your name. That’s talking about him naming them.

And in the Bible, naming implies ownership. That’s why God changed people’s names sometimes. Not only was he giving them another meaning and another mission in life, but he was also saying, you’re mine.

We name things that belong to us, right? I do. I name my children because they’re mine.

I name my pets because they’re mine. Charla thinks I’m crazy, but I name my truck because it’s mine. I keep telling her that’s a guy thing, but it’s mine, so I name it.

It wouldn’t make sense for me to name your truck, would it, June? because it’s not mine. I’m not going to change the name you gave it.

Naming implies ownership. Everything about verse 4 tells us that he is in total control of the universe, that he’s the king, he’s the ruler, he’s in charge. And then verse 5 says, great is our Lord and of great power.

His understanding is infinite. Now first we need to realize that this word Lord is different from the one in verses 1, 2, and 6, because we don’t see it in all caps. Okay, that word is his, the one in all caps is his name Yahweh or Yahuwah, however it’s pronounced.

This word in lowercase is Adon, where we get the word Adonai. Some of you heard songs with that word in the title. That is a title.

Adon or Adonai is a title, and it means master or Lord. And so already they’re switching it from talking about his nature to saying he’s in charge of us. By calling him Lord, this time they’re actually saying he is our Lord.

He’s our master. He’s our sovereign. Now that’s hard for us to understand because we’re Americans and nobody tells me what to do.

But back in ancient times, they had kings and princes who were absolute rulers. If they said, off with your head, it was off with your head. Had absolute power over life and death.

That’s what he’s saying God is to us. He rules over us. It’s a title and it’s an acknowledgement of his rule.

And then this verse has two words for great. The word great is in there twice and it’s two different words. The first describes his greatness in terms of quality and the second describes greatness in terms of quantity.

Now what that means is when it says great is our Lord, it’s talking about he is great. And then when it says he’s great in power, it’s talking about he has a great amount And we use the word great the same way in English. We can say that was a great meal. Some of you ladies have cooked things and brought them for the potlucks back there that were just great.

And I’m talking about the quality. They’re just, I mean, delicious. That’s what I’ve heard people say, make you want to slap your mama.

I mean, they’re that good. I’ve never understood why we have to be violent just because something’s delicious. But there you go.

Some of you have made great meals. I also cook great meals. That’s not bragging.

That’s a statement of fact. My cooking is sometimes good, sometimes it’s not. I love cooking, but I don’t always have time to do it.

And years ago, as a single father of two, I learned that if it was going to be cooked, it was going to be cooked by me, and I didn’t have time to cook every night. So what I learned to do was to cook enough stuff for an army so we could eat on it, and we could put it in the freezer, And eventually we’d have enough stuff that we could just rotate, and I might only have to cook twice a week. And I’ve never learned how to cook in small quantities.

So anytime I make a meal, it’s a great meal in terms of quantity. That’s the difference in the words. It may not be great in quality, but it’s great in quantity.

Well, they’re saying he’s great. He is great in quality. He’s like that delicious meal. He’s great.

And then the second word is talking about his power, and it’s great like a meal that I would cook. It’s huge. it’s abundant it’s running I mean the you can’t contain it all you understand the difference there between those two greats I hope so so God by nature is higher than we are he’s mightier than we are and his power is more abundant than ours then it says his understanding is infinite there’s nothing he doesn’t know which is at one time very just awesome and at the same time very frightening that God knows everything that I think, everything that I feel, the things I don’t even want to admit to myself, he knows all of it.

But you know what? He also knows what my needs are, and he knows what my hurts are, and he knows what my dreams are, all the things that I would want him to know, he knows before I ever even tell him. His understanding is infinite.

And then verse 6 tells us, the Lord lifteth up the meek, he casteth the wicked down to the ground. And we can learn from this that God cares about his creations. He’s not just caring about the big, the powerful, the wealthy, the smart, the good-looking, the humble, and the lowly.

He cares about as well. God cares about all of us. He lifts up the meek, the ones that nobody else lifts up.

God lifts them up. And it says he casts the wicked down to the ground. He’s a just God, and he’s a holy God, and he’s a God that will judge sin.

But on top of that, even that shows his care as well, because God cares enough about the meek and lowly. He cares enough about the innocent. He cares enough about the vulnerable to protect them from those who would do them harm.

When somebody’s out to harm others, God’s not going to let them get by with that. Eventually, they’re going to be called to account. So we see in all this God’s greatness and his goodness.

And there are four truths that we need to keep in mind from this. First of all, there’s one true God who rules the universe. We believe that there’s one true God.

His name is Yahweh or Yahuwah, as I’ve already said. That means he’s self-existent and he’s eternal. He’s the master of the heavens, as it says in verse 4. There’s nobody else who’s in charge of the universe.

He’s the greatest there is, verse 5 teaches us. He’s unique. He’s sovereign.

There’s nobody else like him. And that’s one of the central principles of Christianity. There’s only one God and there’s nobody else like him.

Second of all, he’s perfect. There’s one true God who rules the universe and he’s perfect. he’s infinite every good attribute we could give that we could talk about he’s infinite in those his power is infinite his wisdom is infinite his love is infinite his justice is infinite and all four of those things are and and more are talked about in this passage he’s perfect and third of all he loves us he loves us I think that may be the most incredible part of this whole thing he loves us we don’t deserve the love of a god like this but he loves us anyway and then fourth of all because of all this, because of who he is, and because of what he does, and because of how he loves us, he deserves our praise.

He deserves all the praise, all the worship, all the devotion that we could ever give him. It’s good for us to praise him because he deserves it, and we should start with thanking him for what he’s done for us. We should never forget to praise him just for who he is.

So we see these attributes reflected in this passage. These are things that we believe about God. We see these things reflected in the Baptist faith and message as well in what it says about God.

And we’re going to look just very quickly tonight at what our statement says that we believe about God. Section 2 on page 7 of your little booklets, if you’d like to read along with me, page 7, section 2. It says, there is one and only one, 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. Okay.

And I could, I could spend all night. That’s not a joke. I could spend all night talking about each of the points here, but I want to hit the highlights, especially as they correspond to what we’ve talked about tonight in this passage.

First of all, it starts out that there’s only, there’s one and only one living and true God, intelligent, spiritual, personal. He’s the creator, redeemer, preserver, and ruler of the universe. So that’s saying that we are, first of all, we’re monotheists. We believe in one God.

We believe in one God who rules over everything. We’re not polytheists. We don’t believe there are multiple gods, as some religions do.

We’re not henotheists. That’s a fairly new word for me. Henotheism is the belief, like in Mormonism, that there are multiple gods, but we only worship one.

But they still believe there are multiples out there. We don’t believe that. We believe there’s one.

We’re not panentheists. Panentheists believe that God is sort of in everything in the universe the way a mind is in a body. He’s out there, but he’s not a personal being we talk to.

He’s part of the universe. We don’t believe that. We believe he’s a personal being.

We’re not pantheists who believe God is just in everything, and everything is God. There are religions and philosophies that teach that. We believe that God is a personal being, somebody we can talk to, someone who has a will, someone who has feelings and thoughts, etc. We’re not deists.

Deists believe that God is like the watchmaker who wound up the watch after he created it and he wound it up and he let it go. And that God sort of watches over the earth, but really doesn’t interfere, doesn’t show up supernaturally in human history. We don’t believe that.

We believe God is involved. We believe God cares about us. We believe God is at work in human history.

Then it says God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. He’s powerful and all-knowing. His perfect knowledge extends to all things past, present, and future, including the future decisions of his free creatures.

So God knows what we’re going to choose, but we’re still free to choose. This tells us he’s infinite in every divine perfection. I’ve already talked about that.

His power is limitless. His goodness is limitless. His holiness is limitless.

All of these attributes, they’re consistent. They work together in his nature. And I know when we talk about he’s so powerful, the question comes up sometimes, well, can he make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?

No. The way I say this is God can do anything that’s consistent with his nature. God is a God of order and logic, and God doesn’t work within the realm of stupid questions.

Okay? God can’t make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it any more than he could make a square triangle. Okay?

It just doesn’t work definitionally because it’s illogical, and God is where logic comes from. God can’t sin. We need to be careful the way we say this, because we say God can do anything.

Can God sin? No. The Bible’s clear.

God can’t sin. He can’t lie. He can’t deceive.

He can’t sin. And so what I’ve taken to saying is that God can do anything that’s consistent with his nature, with who he is. I think I’ve mentioned to you before that a problem that was presented in philosophy at OU to us was called the Euthyphro Dilemma that was taken from Plato’s writings, where Socrates and Euthyphro have this discussion.

Do the gods say what’s right because, Is it right because the gods say so, or did the gods say so because it’s right? And the few Christians who would admit they were Christians in my classes were confronted with this question. Well, is right because God says so, or does God say so because right is right?

And if you say God says so because right is right, then suddenly there’s a higher moral law that even God is subject to. If you say, well, it’s right because God said it. Oh, so if God decided it was okay to lie, that would be okay too.

No, neither of those were right. And I wish I’d thought of it then. It was several years after I was out of college.

I realized neither of those are the option. There’s a third option. God says it because it’s consistent with who he is, with his nature.

He is good, therefore goodness is right. He is truthful, therefore the truth is right. He is faithful, therefore faithfulness is right.

You see where I’m going with this? It’s his nature. God can do anything.

The only limits on God are his own nature. God’s not limited by anything else he can do anything that it’s in his nature to do is it in his nature to lie? no so he can’t do it because he can’t stop being God okay it says to him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience the eternal truth 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 now in the coming weeks we’ll address the members of the trinity I’m not going to get off into that tonight we are almost finished But this just goes along with what we believe and what the Bible has taught us tonight, that God deserves our worship.

God deserves our worship. We owe him our worship. Now, it doesn’t make him any less God if he doesn’t get it, but he deserves it.

And we should give it to him. So I want to head toward the ending here by saying that the greatest pursuit of our Christian life is to honor God. Now, I’m speaking specifically for Christians here.

Nothing about this message really has been geared toward non-believers as far as what they’re supposed to do.

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