Sermon Discussion Questions:
1. The sermon emphasized that God is not simply greater than us, but fundamentally different from us as our Creator. Why is that distinction important? What happens when we think of God as merely a bigger, stronger, wiser version of ourselves?
2. Which of God's attributes discussed in the sermon do you find most comforting? Which do you find most difficult to comprehend or accept? Why?
3. God is completely self-sufficient. He doesn't need us, our worship, or anything else in creation. How does that truth change the way we understand God's love for us and His decision to create us?
4. In Isaiah 40:27–28, Israel complains that God has overlooked their circumstances. God responds by reminding them of His eternal nature, power, and understanding. Why do you think God answers their complaint by reminding them of who He is? How might that help us when we feel forgotten or neglected?
5. We sometimes expect other people to possess qualities that belong to God alone—such as unlimited wisdom, power, or availability. How might these unrealistic expectations damage our marriages, friendships, parenting, or relationships within the church?
Knowing your story matters.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. - Gen 1:1
God is transcendent and God is immanent.
God’s Transcendence
God is not like us. We think we grasp God’s transcendence because one of the titles God uses for Himself is “Father.” So we think about the gap of distance between a parent and a child in respects to wisdom or knowledge or power and assume that the gap of knowledge or power between us and God is like that, but just on a supersized scale.
We must not think of God as highest in an ascending order of beings, starting with the single cell and going on up from the fish to the bird to the animal to man to angel to cherub to God. That would be to grant God eminence, even pre-eminence, but that is not enough; we must grant Him transcendence in the fullest meaning of that word. Forever God stands apart, in light unapproachable.
He is as high above an archangel as above a caterpillar, for the gulf that separates the archangel from the caterpillar is finite, while the gulf between God and the archangel is infinite. The caterpillar and the archangel, though far removed from each other in the scale of created things, are nevertheless one in that they are alike created. They both belong in the category of that-which-is-not-God and are separated from God by infinitude itself. - A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
Listen to this repeated refrain
There is none like you, O LORD; you are great, and your name is great in might. - Jer 10:6
O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven above or on earth beneath, - 1 Kings 8:23
Therefore you are great, O LORD God. For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. - 2 Sam 7:22
There is none holy like the LORD: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. - 1 Sam 2:2
God is a in a category of being that is wholly different than our own. The highest angelic being, and the most powerful satanic intelligence, are just as much in the category of “creature” as you or I.
9 Go on up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good news;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good news;
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah,
“Behold your God!”
…
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance?
13 Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD,
or what man shows him his counsel?
14 Whom did he consult,
and who made him understand?
Who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge,
and showed him the way of understanding?
15 Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as the dust on the scales;
behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.
16 Lebanon would not suffice for fuel,
nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
17 All the nations are as nothing before him,
they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
18 To whom then will you liken God,
or what likeness compare with him?
- Isa 40:9, 12-18
Self-Sufficient
In the beginning, God created
Which means, God is Himself uncreated. He is the uncaused cause, the unmoved mover. God has no birthday. God needs nothing, is dependent on nothing, is conditioned by nothing. He is pure, full, and complete in of Himself. God existed prior to creation and in that state lacked nothing. God creates not out of a deficit seeking satisfaction, but out of the superabundant generosity of Being.
For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. - John 5:26
An elementary but correct way to think of God is as the One who contains all, who gives all that is given, but who Himself can receive nothing that He has not first given. - Tozer
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. - Acts 17:24-25
It may be stated as an axiom that to stay alive every created thing needs some other created thing and all things need God. To God alone nothing is necessary. - Tozer
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
- Is 40:28
We do! But not God. Our exhaustion, ignorance, hunger, fragility—all of it underlines what the immortal, self-sufficient God is not like.
God is not like Santa Claus in Elf who can only fly his sleigh, or Tinkerbell in Peter Pan who will only live if people believe in faeries.
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.” - Lewis
Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things. - Rom 11:35-36
“I am who I am” - Ex 3:14
God is who He is. He derives His existence from nothing but Himself. If I were to ask you, who are you? How might you answer? You may say something about your job, your family, your nationality. But those are all conditional statements. You could have had another job. You could have been born in a different family, different country. You could have had a different brain chemistry, a different personality. There was a time where did not exist, and you were brought into existence. You are a creature, so you are inherently dependent, conditional.
But God? He who depends on no one? Who is Absolute Being? Who has life in himself? While it is true to say that God is love, or God is a King, or God is a Savior—this is not the same thing as you or I saying “I am a banker” or “I am an extrovert.” When God tells us elsewhere that He is Lord, that He is a consuming fire, He is saying that He is these things absolutely. As in, there is no way He could be otherwise because He is who He is, and all that is in God, is God.
When Aslan is asked who he is, his response: “Myself.”
Eternal
For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy… - Isa 57:15a
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. - Ps 90:2
Your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting. - Ps 93:2
Unchangeable
Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
27 but you are the same, and your years have no end.
- Ps 102:25-27
Omnipotence
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. - Rom 1:20
I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever,
for his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;
35 all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
and he does according to 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
Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. - Ps 115:3
Omniscient
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
10 declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
- Isa 46:9-10
But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. - Matt 11:30
Omnipresence
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
- Ps 139:7-8
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’; - Acts 17:28
Ineffable
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
- Rom 11:33-34
Immanent
God is transcendant, but God is also immanent. There are attributes of God that He alone possesses, but also attributes that correspond to His creatures, like His love, wisdom, justice, righteousness, etc. These are shared with His people, though we never possess them in the total, perfect way that God does.
How do we possess these things?
We are made in God’s image, so these are qualities and attributes of God that we participate in, in our creaturely, derivative way.
God wants relationship with us because God is relationship.
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. - Gen 1:26
God is triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. - John 1:14
Application:
What happens when we forget this?
We exalt the creature to the status of the Creator
Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” - Dan 4:30
Poor Moses is conflated with God by Israel in the wilderness, so they blame him and expect him to provide what only God can give.
We treat other people as if they should be all powerful, all knowing, and all present.
We bring God down to the status of the creature,
God is not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? - Num 23:19
Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
- Isa 40:27-28
"The purest and strongest love among men is but a very weak reflection of the love which is in God. And that teaches us to understand the incommunicable attributes. From them we learn that in God love far transcends the love of creatures.
For the love in God is independent, unchangeable, simple, eternal, and omnipresent.
It does not depend upon us. Nor is aroused by us. But flows free and pure from the depths of the divine being. It knows no variation.
Neither falls nor rises, appears nor disappears, and there is not even the shadow of turning about it.
It is not merely a property of the divine being alongside of other properties or attributes, and never gets into conflict with these others, but it also coincides with the divine being himself.
God is love, he himself, wholly and perfectly and with his whole being. This love is not subject to time and space. But stands above it. And comes down out of eternity into the hearts of the children of God. Such a love is absolutely reliable. Our souls can rest in it. Every need Including death itself. And if such a God of love can be for us, who can be against us?" - Herman Bavinck
