Our God!

I. I noticed recently that our new church website has pages entitled: our worship service, our pastor, our officers, our humble building, but no page entitled: Our God. So, I decided to preach a sermon on this and turn it into an article for our website.
II. Exodus 3:13-15
A. “I am who I am.” What a glorious and amazing statement! Apart from Christ, it is perhaps the greatest statement of divine self-revelation ever made! This is the essence of God’s self-disclosure in the OT, just as the incarnation is the essence of God’s self-disclosure in the NT.
1. Before God revealed His grace in Jesus Christ, He first laid a strong foundation of His otherness, His holiness.
2. Grace without holiness leads to human self-importance and a shallow appreciation for grace.
B. But by calling Himself “I am who I am” God reveals His otherness, His self-existence, His unchangeableness.
C. He is who He is. He does what He does.
D. “He has mercy on whom He has mercy... He has mercy on whom He wills, and He hardens whom He wills.” (Romans 9:15, 18).
E. “His dominion is an everlasting dominion. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Dan.4:34–35)
F. Men must say, with the apostle Paul, "by the grace of God I am what I am" (1Cor.15:10). Only God can say, "I am that I am."
III. (Despot)
A. Do you know what a despot is? An absolute ruler, a king with unlimited power, a single person who’s the absolute owner of other persons, those persons having no rights whatsoever over or against that owner.
1. The word that correlates to despot is slave: one asserts absolute authority, the other absolute subordination.
B. Well, remember two weeks ago when we read the story of the old prophet Simeon taking the baby Jesus into his arms, and saying "Now you dismiss your bond-servant, Sovereign Lord, according to your word. For my eyes have seem Your salvation.”? Do you know what the Greek word is which is translated “Sovereign Lord” in v.29? DESPOTES
1. God is a despot, an absolute ruler with unlimited power, a single person who is the absolute owner of all other persons, those persons having no rights whatsoever over or against Him.
C. That relationship that has been the source of so much evil in the world of men, is the source of great good in man’s relationship with God. His will is supreme. He is God, after all.
1. No man comes to God on his own terms. You only come to God on His terms.
2. Being a follower of Christ involves recognizing the ultimacy of His will.
D. Sorry, but God is not very American. He doesn’t run a democracy.
1. Before Him we don’t have the right to our own opinion. Before Him we have no rights. God owes us nothing. Romans 11:35 “Who has given to God that God is obligated to repay him?”
2. Would it be better for God to be more democratic?
a. Would it be more humble for God to allow us to have a share in what He decides? I think not.
b. You see, for God to go along with our ideas and forsake His own would be for God to choose the inferior way, to compromise the good, to compromise His wisdom & knowledge. Not only is God not going to adopt an inferior plan, but it would hurt us not help us if He did. And so just for the sake of love He won’t conform His plan to our opinions, for His will for me is better than my will for myself.
E. But this is really hard for us sometimes, isn’t it?
IV. The Bible record numerous examples of people who really struggled with this.
A. Job
1. Think about the most godly person you know. Now imagine that so much suffering came crashing down on him/her that the person was turned into a bitter, irritable complainer. This is Job.
a. Cursing the day of his birth – Job 3
b. I hate my life! Leave me alone! – Job 7:16
c. Accusing God of being a bully in Job 9:14-24
d. Accusing God of injustice in Job 10:1-17
2. We feel sorry for Job, and so does God, I think. But not before God severely chides him, giving him one of the Bible’s great tongue-lashings.
a. And we stand with Job here. We need to hear God yelling at us in this, not just Job.
3. Job’s rebuke/humiliation: a 124 verse verbal smack-down which you have to read to believe
a. Out of love: That’s so clear when you read the whole story.
(1) Many of us need one of these every once in a while. I know I do.
b. Job 38:2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” -which Job quotes in repenting 42:3
(1) Not calling him by name
(2) Darkening counsel: Job’s insights do not add to the light of God’s counsel, they darken it.
(3) Words without knowledge: Who is this who critiques my holy and wise counsel though he doesn’t know what he’s talking about?
c. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4)
(1) How can we think we know better than the One who created the world?
d. “Who are you to challenge Me, Job? Do you really know Who you’re dealing with here?”
B. Jesus to Mary in John 2:4: “What do I have to do with you?” (Lit. What me and you?)
1. Do you think you are in charge of me? Do you think I need you to tell me what to do?
C. God made us in His image. And one of the ways His image is displayed in us is that we read things, we evaluate things, we critique things, we fix things.
1. But when we begin to turn that natural instinct toward God, evaluating Him, critiquing Him, fixing Him, God pushes back. “I warn you. Don’t go there!”
D. God is not confronting evil people here. Job and Mary are two of the most righteous people who ever lived. That’s the very point. There is NO man who can challenge God.
E. “Who are you, O man, who answers back to God. Shall the pot say to the potter: Why did you make me like this? Does not the potter have the right over the clay?” (Romans 9:20-21)
V. God is I AM WHO I AM. This means there can be no adjusting of God.
A. HE IS WHO HE IS, & we must let Him be who He is, not try to change Him or adjust Him to fit our preferences.
B. Part of me wants to change God. Part of me doesn’t like certain aspects of the way He is.
1. We have a few things we’d like to add, and a few things we’d like to take away. I’d like to remove the doctrine of hell, for instance, and a few of the commandments.
2. But you can’t pick and choose about God. He is who He is. We must accept Him as He is, or reject Him to our great peril.
C. But we give much too much credit to our instincts, and we are far too influenced by our preferences. We are constantly tempted to believe what we want to believe.
D. Sure, as Protestants we believe that each believer must read the Bible for himself and not just believe whatever the church authority says.
1. However, there’s a terrible danger with this.
2. The holy God does not tolerate us adding our own ideas to what He has said. See the warnings of adding to what God has said in Rev.22:18-19. “God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city.”
3. So, yes, we have to read and interpret what God says in His word, but we need to do so with fear and trembling, being very careful to try to avoid reading our own ideas or preferences into or out of God’s word.
E. God — as He is — is far better than our best reinventions of Him or reinterpretations of Him. Our improvements are actually only and always deprovements.
F. In our society being yourself is the highest value. But the Bible tells us that the highest value for us is to let Him be Himself. We change, we shift, we go through moods. God is who He is.
G. I admit and agree that there are some things the Bible tells us that just seem wrong.
1. But who is to be trusted to make that judgment? Me? Are you kidding? I have been wrong about so many things! I know so little! And I’m so influenced by my own impressions and prejudices! I should never be trusted to figure out exactly what’s right and what’s wrong!
H. It’s foolish to assume that everything God tells us is going to sound right.
1. Yes, some of the things He asks of you to do are difficult. Some of the things He asks you to believe are difficult.
2. As it says in Is.55:8-9 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts."
3. We need to have a keen sense of "How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!" (Rom.11:33)
4. Sin affects our thinking. Our viewpoint is corrupt. Our prejudices and mind sets are often in direct opposition to the Lord's truth. But the things of God are much easier to accept when we live in constant recognition of the fact that my perceptions about things might not be right: “Show me, Lord. Help me to have the mind of Christ. Give me the openness so that I might receive your correction quickly.”
5. And when you find yourself at odds with what God says, you have to be willing to say: “Let God be true and every man a liar.” (Romans 3:4)
6. If you don’t come to God as He is, then you don’t come to the true God. The problem with a new and improved God is that one doesn’t exist. So if we improve God from how He reveals Himself in His word, we end up with a God who doesn’t exist.
7. Do you really think we’re going to come to the end of history and find out that God was wrong & man was right?
VI. Conclusion
A. This is for all of us. There is no room for finger-pointing and condemning others here.
1. We mock Him every time we sin. Every time I get bummed out that things didn’t go my way, I am questioning the wisdom of God. We’re all in this together!
B. God allows us to struggle.
1. But there’s a good and a bad way to struggle. There’s a humble way to struggle and an arrogant way to struggle.
2. The Bible is full of godly men struggling with God, and wicked men struggling against Him.
3. Job himself is a good example of this. In the midst of his suffering and his complaint he says: “How can a man be in the right before God? If one wished to contend with him, one could not win the argument once in a thousand times. He is wise in heart and mighty in strength — who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded?” (Job 9:2-4)
4. Whose ideas are you going to bet on being true? God’s or yours? When you act, you choose which you are betting on.
5. Amy Sayers’ testimony: As a young woman, she struggled with God, but she bet on God being right and coming through, as opposed to betting that God was wrong and she was right.
C. The proof
1. It isn’t hard to figure out that God’s mind is trustworthy, that He knows more and better than we do.
a. As God said to Job, “Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind?” (Job 38:36)
b. How can we think we’re smarter than the One who created the human mind?
2. But what about God’s heart? How do we know we can trust His heart? How do we really know God is out for our good?
3. Mankind has been plagued by this question of whether God is really for man throughout history. Has He really given us what’s best?
4. Satan raised this question in the garden, trying to convince Adam and Eve that God was really withholding the best stuff, and he could tell them how to get it.
5. But the proof of God’s loving heart is that He sent His Son into human flesh, to live in our world and experience our woes and bear the burden of our sin upon the cross.
6. Romans 8:32 “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
7. He gave His Son and thereby proved that He is for us.
8. Now there is no more question about whether God is for us. And if God is for us, who can be against us?