God Immanent by James Nickel

Transcription

1 I. God, the Almighty Creator is: A. Transcendent. 1. He existed before anything was. 2. By the word of His power all things came into being. 3. He is the great I AM THAT I AM. B. Immanent. 1. This God is concerned and cares for His creation. 2. He continually directs the course of history with everything and everyone in it according to the plans of His infinite wisdom. 3. This God is good. II. The Goodness of God (Psalm 34:8; 86:5; 145:6-7; Mark 10:18). A. Introduction. 1. Even Christians find it hard to believe that God is good. 2. It is easier for us to think of a cruel God, than to dare to believe that God is infinite goodness. 3. Why? If we think this way, it is because we want to justify ourselves for running away from such a cruel God. B. Definition of God s goodness. 1. It is that which makes Him kind, full of good will toward men, tenderhearted, sympathetic, open, and friendly. 2. The heart of goodness is generosity. a). In its essence it is the inclination to do good, to find or make an object on which to communicate itself. b). God is infinite goodness and so communicates Himself to the infinite degree. c). God is more prone to communicate Himself than the sun is to shine! 3. This generous goodness in God has no selfish motive and is not limited by what the recipient deserves, but consistently goes beyond it. 4. Even though God knew that man would make evil use of His generosity, this knowledge did not stop Him from giving bountifully. 5. God takes holy pleasure in the joy of His creation and gives all that is needed for its happiness (Ephesians 3:17). a). God is not a miserly scrooge. b). Infinite cheerfulness accompanies infinite goodness. 6. God is good to Himself, delighting in Himself, loving all His excellencies. a). God is good to His creatures, delighting in His work, and showering them with all that they need. b). Worship is delighting in God like God delights in Himself. C. God is Goodness. 1. God is original, uncaused, unbeginning goodness. a). All goodness in creation finds its origin in Him. b). All our concepts of kindness vs. cruelty originate in God, the absolute goodness by which all goodness is ultimately judged. 1

2 (1) When we say that is not kind or that is not right, we are unconsciously appealing to an absolute by which we judge what is kind or cruel; right or wrong. (2) That absolute is God who is good. 2. God is not only good, but goodness itself. 3. To take away goodness from God would be to undeify Him. 4. God is infinite good, without capacity of increase. He is so good that He cannot be bad! 5. God s goodness is a goodness of nature, not of will. a). His goodness is not a quality He possesses, but the way He is. b). It is not a habit added to Him, but goodness is His essential being. 6. Once God has chosen to act, He must by nature be good in that action; i.e., having freely chosen to create He had to make a good creation, for that is the way He is. 7. Whatever God does, therefore, is good, even if it causes pain and unpleasantness to the creation. 8. Even His judgments are the actions of His goodness. 9. He is unchangeable good. Others may be made perpetually good by His supernatural power, but they do not know unchangeable goodness in their own nature. 10. God is the primal good, in whom is nothing but good and from whom proceeds nothing but good, and the One to whom all good is referred to as its first cause. D. Goodness is God s glory. 1. Study carefully Exodus 33:18, 19; 34:5-7. a). God s glory is God s goodness. b). When goodness passed before Moses, it was the parade of God s attributes. c). Goodness can be looked at as the sum total of God s perfections. 2. Goodness is the focal point of all the attributes of God, determining how they are to be displayed. a). His wisdom is good wisdom. (1) Good wisdom gives itself to us and designs the best for us. (2) Wisdom without goodness would be craft. (3) Without goodness wisdom would merely astonish us. (4) Good wisdom causes us to be delighted in God. b). God s power is good power; acting for us and on our behalf. (1) Without goodness, His power would frighten us. (2) Again, goodness causes His almighty power to be something to delight in. c). God s goodness is the essence of His greatness (Psalm 145:6,7). (1) Greatness without goodness is a monster. (2) Without goodness we have a miserable, miserly, savage God. (3) Goodness makes His attributes glorious. d). When goodness acts on behalf of the one who merits nothing to grant them joy, we call it grace. e). When goodness pities a distressed person, or when goodness defies what the person merits and pardons the penitent, we call it mercy. f). When God patiently bears with enemies that provoke, it is called long-suffering. 2

3 g). When goodness fulfills a promise, we call it truth. E. God s goodness: the foundation of all God s dealings with man. 1. Behind every daily blessing all that we experience of God and all His acts is the free, spontaneous goodness of God. 2. We receive His goodness not because of anything in ourselves, but only because He is good; God Himself is the cause of His goodness. 3. That we pray to God does not place God under any obligation; our boldness to pray and that He hears us is only because of His goodness, a goodness manifested and centered in God the Son. 4. Repentance and faith are not meritorious acts, but responses to His goodness; it is taking a gift from the infinite giver. 5. Unbelief is called the evil heart of unbelief because at its heart it is the lack of trust in the infinite goodness of God; it is slandering the perfections of God. a). All complaint and grumbling is not only suspecting God s wisdom, but is stating that God s good intentions are evil. b). If we dare to believe that God is good, we would run to Him. c). Sin clouded man s ability to see His goodness and sent him running from God to hide in the trees. F. The Love of God is an expression of goodness (Ephesians 2:1-8). 1. Love is the most glorious manifestation of God s goodness. 2. Love among men may be understood as the principle that leads one moral being to desire and delight in another; it reaches its highest form in that personal fellowship in which each lives in the life of another and finds his joy in imparting himself to the other and in receiving back the outflow of that other s affections to himself. 3. In understanding God s love all of that is true, but at the same time, we must understand God is not a man taken to infinity; His love is different. 4. God s love is that spontaneous determination whereby He is ever moved to communicate Himself to sinners. a). This is not an emotion of God as men understand emotions. (1) God is not unfeeling, but does not have feelings or passions as a man. (2) In man emotions are involuntarily called forth by outward circumstances. b). In God we are speaking of deliberate, voluntary choices that rise from the set of His being. 5. This perfection of God has been grossly misunderstood because it has been isolated from all the other perfections of God. 6. God never suspends one attribute to exercise another. 7. God is always all that He is and, therefore, we must understand His love within all that we know of Him; i.e., we are never to isolate God s love from His other attributes. a). Sovereign. (1) God s sovereignty absolutized is a monstrosity. (2) God s rule over the universe is a rule grounded in love, ever giving and ever seeking the best. 3

4 b). Self-existent. (1) He who is unbeginning life in Himself is unbeginning love. (2) He does not love the sinner because of something in the sinner that is lovable. (3) He is the beginning reason and cause of His love. (4) God does not love because of the object loved, but in spite of it; it is the outgoing of goodness, not merely to the undeserving, but goodness that is actually contrary to their desert. (5) Among men something in the loved calls forth love in the lover. (a) God s love is free, spontaneous, unevoked, and uncaused. (b) No reason can be found for His love except Himself. (c) This was such a revolutionary concept that burst on the world in Christ that Christianity coined a new word to describe it - agape (I John 4:10; Deuteronomy 7:7). c). Eternal. (1) A love that knows no end for that which never began can never end. (2) Nothing in the object loved caused the love to begin and, therefore, nothing in that object can cause it to cease. d). Infinite. Arising out of the infinite being of God; a love that knows no limitations or bounds. e). Holy. (1) No sentimental ideas of this love are found in Scripture; it is no indulgent softness but arises out of, moves from, and returns to the Holy One. (2) This love is stern, expressing the holiness of the lover and the bringing of the loved to holiness. (3) The God who is love is also light; if God is going to love, then He must deal with what is darkness. f). Everywhere present. (1) It is impossible to escape the presence of this love. (2) We may lose the sense of love s presence, but we are ever held in its grasp (Romans 8:38-39). g). All knowledge. Knows every detail of past, present, and future of the beloved, and loves in spite of. h). Incomprehensible. We cannot think agape love for it is utterly unlike anything we have known among men (Ephesians 3:17-19). G. The nature of God s love. 1. This love is first exhibited in God. a). God loves Himself. b). Eternal love was before there was a world or sinners to love. c). The Scriptures speak of love that eternally existed between the members of the Trinity (Mark 1:11; John 5:20; 17:24). 2. God loves His enemies, individual sinners, even though He hates their sin. a). He who is self-sufficient does not need us, yet has sovereignly chosen to love and identify 4

5 with us, i.e., to want our love (John 14:23). b). Before we could respond with love to Him, He identified Himself with sinners by giving His Son for them. (1) The cross is the final definition of God s love. (2) The Cross is where the flame of love and the flame of wrath meet together. (3) We can never think of God s love without thinking of the cross (II Corinthians 5:21; Romans 5:8; Ephesians 2:4f; Titus 3:4; John 3:16). 3. The love of God to His church is the same love as expressed eternally within the Godhead (John 17:23-26). a). The Christian lives in the security that God is love; i.e., in all that God does He is love. b). Even when we do not know the why or the wherefore of God s action, we trust in His love for us. c). To live without this confidence is to live in a world of chance and cruel fate which produces torment. d). To know that we are in the hands of Him who ever wills me goodness, who by the immutability of His being cannot will me harm, is to live in rest and peace (I John 4:18). H. The Grace and Mercy of God are expressions of goodness. 1. The grace of God is God s goodness meeting the undeserving sinner; it is the way His love operates toward man. a). Grace has respect to the guilt of man, while mercy to the misery man has placed himself in because of sin. b). Such spontaneous, self-determined kindness of God to man was unknown in the religion and ethics of the New Testament world and so the church coined the word charis to describe it. c). In order to understand grace we must understand the background of Scripture that the word is used against. (1) Man is sinner, a rebel against God s rule, guilty and unclean before God, and deserving of only God s condemnation. (2) As a sinner, man has no hope in himself of receiving anything from God except judgment. (3) Man is totally helpless to save himself. (4) The sinner has no claim upon God except His justice. (a) God is not obliged to pity or to pardon. (b) Any necessity of His doing this is not due to the sinner but due to His nature. (5) Grace is free, being self-originated and proceeding from the One who was free not to be gracious. d). In this condition man waits upon the resolution of God to save him a decision that God need not make. e). Only against this background can we understand grace. f). The grace of God is the love shown to sinners, unasked for, unearned, undeserved, contrary to their merit, and in defiance of their demerit. g). The idea behind grace is undeserved favor at the hands of a superior where there is no 5

6 bond or covenant between the parties and no obligation on the superior to do anything at all. h). The Scripture shows that God s grace alone is the basis on which we receive pardon for sin. (1) We are saved by God s free decision to save us. (2) Nothing in man made Christ come, die, rise again, or ascend as our Savior. (3) The necessity of Christ s coming was because of who God is (Romans 3:24; Titus 3:7; Ephesians 1:7). i). Grace is the eternal foundation of salvation from before the world was until the eternal j). triumph of the church (Ephesians 1:3-2:10). The grace of God is the rest of the Christian. (1) He who saved an undeserving sinner will keep him (I Peter 1:5; Philippians 1:6). (2) When the grace of God is present the result is Ephesians 2:10 and Titus 2:11f. 2. The mercy of God, often called compassion or lovingkindness, is the goodness of God expressed toward the sinner in the misery sin has brought to him; it is the action of love relieving the misery of those who are in the awful consequences of sin. a). God did not have to do anything to the undeserving, but He freely chose to; this is grace. b). Having so chosen, He enters into a binding covenant to save (to bring to full and sound health; to protect) all who come to Him through Christ. (1) Scripture calls the ones who come to Him His elect or chosen ones. (a) God s election is ultimately of Christ, His chosen One (Isaiah 42:1). (b) God s choice of Christ is before the foundation of the world. (c) Hence, this election of God precedes the coming of man to God. (d) Election is a choice that God made before the foundation of the world to save lost sinners in Christ, who because of their nature, can do nothing but run away from Him (Ephesians 1). (2) His action in saving lost sinners and making them His friends is His mercy that is based on this covenant. c). The word mercy, or lovingkindness, has in it the idea of a strong tie between two people, a mutual belonging together, a commitment to be liable to another who is in covenant of faithfulness to a treaty obligation. (1) The word assumes a prior covenant having been made, a covenant between God the Father and God the Son (see Genesis 15). (a) If a tramp came to my door and received food that would not be grace. (b) If he had stolen my money, and then I served him food in defiance of the fact he did not merit it - that would be grace. (2) God did not have to save man but, having done so in Christ, must pity and save all who call upon Him through Christ. d). The goodness of God expressed in mercy means that those who call upon Him through Christ know His goodness as none other (Exodus 34:6; Deuteronomy 7:9-12; II Chronicles 6:14; Nehemiah 1:5; Lamentations 3:22, 23; Ephesians 2:4; Psalm 86:5; 103:8; 6

7 144:2; Luke 1:54, 72, 78; Micah 7:18-19). Please answer the following question: Having thoroughly studied this lesson and having meditated on it, write a psalm giving glory to God for His goodness. 7