Enjoy the Attributes of God – Session 7

God’s Communicable Attributes, Part 4

Reading: Job 38: 12-38 (a God unlike us)

AUDIO

Lecture Handout

Handout – Session 7

Lesson Notes

• Introduction
  • Re-cap term “incommunicable” – attributes God doesn’t share (communicate) to others, or shares to a very limited extent
  • We talked about two in session 3
    • God’s self-existence – He necessarily exists, unlike everything and everyone else which exists by His will
    • God’s self-sufficiency – He possesses everything and needs nothing from His creation
• Divine Presence (Omnipresence)
  • God isn’t limited in His existence by space – He is spirit, not body
    • Grudem, “God’s spirituality means that God exists as a being that is not made of any matter, has no parts or dimension, is unable to be perceived by our bodily senses, and is more excellent than any other kind of existence.”
    • God isn’t made of flesh and blood, matter or energy
    • References to body parts of God are metaphors to help us understand!
    • “God is spirit” – John 4: 24
      • We don’t know exactly what that means. What we do know…
      • He doesn’t have size or dimension, or specific location
      • God is not like anything in creation – why He forbids graven images – Deuteronomy 4: 15-20
      • God wants us to think of Him as He is, not a limited version of Him defined by a shape or object
  • God is everywhere present – all of Him! – Without division!
    • Grudem, “God does  not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with His whole being, yet God acts differently in different places.”
    • God created all of space – Genesis 1: 1 – He existed before space and stands apart from it
    • He occupies all the space He created – Jeremiah 23: 23-24
    • He isn’t limited by His creation – 1 Kings 8: 27 – “heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you”
      • There isn’t a spatial place with more of God’s presence
      • But He displays His presence more fully in heaven than elsewhere to bless and shine His glory
      • Likewise in Old Testament times, He made His presence particularly known bringing blessing and protection for His people from above the Ark
    • 2 implications for us
      • There are no secrets from God, because He is present everywhere we try to hide – Psalm 139: 7-12 – there’s no such thing as a private sin – there will be accounting for every crime and sin
      • He’s here to help and strengthen His people – He’s present during bad times and will be with us to provide whatever we need – Matthew 28: 20
  • God will dwell among us in the New Jerusalem – Revelation 21: 1-4
• Divine Eternity (Omnitemporality)
  • We’ve previously discussed how God has perfect knowledge of past, present, and future, but is there something more to God’s relationship to time than simply knowledge?
  • Modern physics believes that space, time, and matter are inextricably linked, you can’t just have one or two of these. Since God created space and matter, fully in habits them, yet stands apart from them, is His relationship with time similar? 
  • Yes! He created time, fully inhabits time, yet stands apart from time in ways difficult for us to comprehend because we’re hopelessly time-bound
    • God is not limited in His existence by time
    • Exodus 3: 14 – “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'”
    • John 8: 58, Jesus claims the identity of God, “Before Abraham was, I AM”
    • God is the eternal present tense – all time is equally present to Him
    • Whereas we live in a sequence of moments, God is present in all time
    • Psalm 90: 1-4 – God is from everlasting to everlasting, before creation (also Psalm 93: 2)
  • God is clearly eternal, He had no beginning and He existed before time and space existed
    • Theologians have debated the implications of this for centuries
    • Obviously we don’t have definitive answers on some of these questions, hence the debates!
    • Does God experience moments or a flow of time? Certainly it would seem so from biblical passages describing His specific action in time as well as His past, present, and future behavior
    • How could God relate to us personally if He doesn’t experience time?
  • It seems that His relationship with time is similar to His relationship with space
    • He is timeless and apart from created time, because He is eternal
    • Just as He fills all of space, He fills all of time
    • He enters His creation – both space and time
    • He is omnitemporal – present in all moments of time without division
  • Grudem, “God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time.”
    • 2 Peter 3: 8 – to God, 1000 years are as a day and a day as 1000 years
      • A generically long period of time is always as if it just happened
      • An extremely short period of time is always present to God
    • Isaiah 46: 9-10 – God stands above time and sees it all and can act decisively within it to accomplish His will (see Galatians 4: 4-5)
  • God can act in time because He is sovereign Lord of time and uses time to display His glory
• Divine Infinity
  • We’ve just talked about God’s infinity with respect to both space and time, but His infinity goes way beyond that…
  • God never runs out of power or wisdom or any other good thing to do something
  • Psalm 147: 5 – His understanding is beyond measure
  • Isaiah 40: 27-31 – God does not grow faint or weary
  • Whatever we think about God – He is more
    • Whatever we picture or conceive of, no matter how great, He is more
    • We are in no way infinite, so there is a degree to which we can never fully comprehend any of God’s attributes!
    • That in itself is cause for praise!
• Divine Invisibility
  • Grudem, “God’s invisibility measn that God’s total essence, all of his spiritual being, will never be able to be seen by us, yet God still shows Himself to us through visible, cretaed things”
  • John 1: 18 – no one has ever seen God, also 1 Timothy 6: 12-16
  • In the Old Testament, God did sometimes take a visible form – to Abraham, as a pillar of fire, etc.
  • Christ reveals the invisible God – John 14: 9, Colossians 1: 15-20, Hebrews 1: 1-4

Closing Praise & Prayer

Revelation 22: 1-4 – we will one day see God!

The River of Life

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship  him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.