Sermon #1420[1] Miscellaneous
Sermons
Title: “The Solitariness of God”
Text: Exodus 15:11, Micah 7:18-20
Subject: That Which Distinguishes God
From All His Creatures
Date:
Introduction:
Author
Pink’s excellent book, Gleanings In The Godhead, begins
with a chapter titled The Solitariness of God. And I have
borrowed that title from Mr. Pink for my message this evening. I want to show
you from the Scriptures something of that which separates and distinguishes God
from all his creatures: His solitariness.
Moses
declares it in his song of redemption in Exodus 15:11 - “Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like thee,
glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?”
Micah 7:18-20 is another declaration of
God’s solitariness. “Who is a God like
unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the
remnant of his heritage. He retaineth not his anger forever, because he
delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he
will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast their sins into the depths of
the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which
thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.”
We
all know that God is great in wisdom, wondrous in power, and abundant in mercy.
But in these degenerate days of religious perversion, most people know nothing
of God’s Being, his nature, and his attributes. There are very few who
understand that God is infinite, majestic, great beyond imagination, and
glorious. I want to do what I can to inspire your hearts and my own to trust,
adore, and reverently worship the Lord our God, by showing you that God is
solitary in his excellence and glory. There is no one and nothing in all the
universe like our God. He is infinitely higher and greater than all his
creation.
Proposition: It is the
solitary excellence of God that inspires reverence for him, faith in him, and
obedience to him--Our God is incomprehensibly great!
“Can creatures to perfection
find
The eternal, uncreated mind?
Or can the largest stretch
of thought
Measure and search his
nature out?
‘Tis high as heaven, ‘tis
deep as hell;
And what can mortals know or
tell?
His glory spreads beyond the
sky,
And all the shining worlds
on high.”
Isaac
Watts
Divisions: Tonight
I want to show you six things about
God which show his solitariness, six
things which distinguish him from and set him apart from all his creatures,
infinitely.
1. There Is One God.
2. God Is Eternal.
3. God Is Spirit.
4. God Is A Tri-Unity.
5. God Is Independent And Self-Sufficient.
6. God Can Only Be Known By Revelation.
I. There Is
One God.
·
Deuteronomy 6:4
·
I Corinthians 8:6
·
I Timothy 2:5
·
Ephesians 4:4-6
·
God alone is solitary in his Being. There are many angels,
many men, and many of all other creatures. But God is One. He “only hath immortality, dwelling in the light
which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen nor can see; to whom be
honor and power everlasting. Amen” (I Timothy 6:16). Because There Is One God....
·
--Our allegiance is due to him alone.
·
--Our affections are to be directed to him alone.
·
--And all who know, trust, and worship him are one body.
II. God Is
Eternal.
Angels
are not eternal. Men are not eternal. And matter is not eternal. But God is eternal.
In Genesis 1:1 we read, ”In the beginning
God.” In the beginning there was nothing and no one but God. There was a
“time” before time began, when God dwelt alone in the ineffable glory of his
own great Being.
·
--There was no heaven in which he set his throne and manifested his
glory.
·
There was no earth to be his footstool, which engaged his care.
·
There were no angels to sing his praise.
·
There was no universe to be upheld by the word of his power.
·
There were no men created in his image and after his likeness.
·
There were no hours, days, months, years, or ages.
·
From everlasting , in old eternity, God was alone in his glory.
He is
the great “I Am,” “the eternal God,” who says, “I live forever!” The psalmist says of him, “Thy throne is established of old; thou art from everlasting”
(Psalm 93:2). He is the first and the last, “the
high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity” (Isaiah 57:15).
This great God who is alone Eternal is and
must be...
·
The Creator of All Things.
·
The Possessor of All Things.
·
The Ruler of All Things.
·
The Disposer of All Things.
III. God Is
Spirit.
Our Lord Jesus Christ declares, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him
must worship him in Spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).
The
Bible often ascribes to God terms such as “the
hand of the Lord,” “the mouth of the Lord,” “the eyes of the Lord, the arm of
the Lord, ”and “the ear of the Lord.” But these terms are mere
accommodations of language to help our puny brains understand the works of God.
They are anthropomorphic terms, human terms to describe the works of the Lord.
But they do not, in any way, represent the nature and being of God.
As
you read the Bible you cannot fail to notice that never once were men given any
kind of physical, visible, tangible representation of God’s Being. Even under
the types and shadows of the Old Testament age of ceremonial worship, nothing
was given as a representation of God’s Being. All the types and shadows of the
law represented his work of redemption through Christ. But nothing represented
God himself. Why? Because God is Spirit. He is the infinite, incomprehensible,
invisible, omnipresent Spirit.
A. Because God
is Spirit, He Expressly Forbids Every Form Of Idolatry (Exodus 20:3-6)
This commandment forbids....
1. The Acceptance Of Any Other
god.
2. The Worship of God through
Any Image.
3. The Representation of God by
Anything Visible.
4. The Use of Religious Images,
Symbols or Pictures.
·
--Pictures of Christ.
·
--Crosses, Crucifixes, Religious Relics.
·
--Angelic Forms.
B. All True
Worship And Service Rendered To God Must Be Spiritual, Heart Worship.
It is not sufficient to come before God on
bended knee, with prostrate body, or with words of praise. We must worship God
with our spiritual nature, our souls, our hearts, our minds, and our wills.
1. We must worship God alone.
2. We must worship God
spiritually.
3. We must worship God
sincerely.
4. We must worship God in
truth, in accordance with revealed truth.
IV. God Is A
Tri-Unity (I
John 5:7)
We
worship One God in the Trinity or Tri-Unity, of His Sacred Persons. We do not
have three Gods. But we have One God, who subsists in Three Distinct Persons,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And these three Persons are equal in
all things.
A. From the
very beginning God revealed that there are three Persons in the Godhead.
1. God the Father created all things through his Son, the Word (Genesis 1:1, John 1:1-3).
2. God the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2).
3. God said, ”Let us make man in our image and often our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).
4. And God promised to send his Son, the Seed of the woman, to redeem
fallen man
(Genesis 3:15).
B. In the New
Testament the doctrine of the Trinity is expressly declared (I John 5:7), and frequently represented to us.
1. In The Baptism of Christ (Matthew 3:16-17)
Here
the Father speaks from heaven. The Son is being baptized in the Jordan river.
And the Spirit descends in the form of a dove.
2. In the Baptismal Formula (Matthew 28:19)
“Go ye therefore (into all the world), and
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name (singular) of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost.”
3. In the Apostolic
Benediction (II Corinthians 13:14)
“The grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be
with you all. Amen.”
4. And Christ himself
plainly declares the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead (John 14:16).
He said, “I will pray
the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may abide with you
forever; Even the Spirit of truth.”
The Word of God sets forth One God in Three Persons. The
Father is God (Romans 1:7). The Son is God (Hebrews 1:8). And the Holy Spirit
is God (Acts 5:3-4). “And these three are
One.”
Note: Though the Son is
voluntarily subject to the Father, and the Spirit is voluntarily subject to the
Son and the Father in the covenant of redemption and grace, for the salvation
of God’s elect, there is no subordination of Persons in the Godhead.
V. God Is Independent And Self-Sufficient.
God is solitary in his Being, in his Eternality, in his
Spirituality, and in his Tri-Unity. And God is solitary in his Independence and
Self-Sufficiency. God alone needs nothing! God does not need you and me. God
needs nothing but himself!
In old eternity, when God dwelt alone in the glory of his
Triune Persons, he was self-contained and self-sufficient, in need of nothing.
He needed nothing to make him happy, glorious, and complete. And he is still
independent, self-sufficient, in need of nothing. The creation of the world
added nothing to God. He is immutable. He
changes not (Malachi 3:6). His essential glory could never be increased or
diminished.
A. God Was Under No Constraint, Obligation, or Necessity To Create the
World.
God who “worketh all
things after the counsel of his own will” (Ephesians 1:11), freely chose to
create the world simply because it was his sovereign pleasure to do so. He
created the world, not to get glory to himself, but to display and manifest his
glory in it.
1. God gains nothing from
his creatures.
Even the praises of redeemed sinners add nothing to the
glory of his Being. Hear the words of Nehemiah 9:5-- “Stand up and bless the Lord, your God, forever and ever; and blessed
be thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.”
God predestinated his elect to eternal salvation to the
praise of the glory of his grace, “according
to the good pleasure of his will” (Eph. 1:5). He chose to save us, to show
forth his glory in us, but not that he might increase his glory (Psa. 16:2-3).
We add nothing to him!
Again I say, God gains nothing from his creatures (Rom.
11:34-36). And if God gains nothing from man, then it is impossible for man to
bring God into any obligation to him (Read Job 35:7-8).
2. And God loses nothing by
the wickedness of his creatures (Job 35:6).
As man can add nothing to God’s glory, so man can never
diminish God’s glory. God made all things to show forth is glory, and all
things shall serve their end (Rev. 4:11).
1. The glory of his wisdom and
power shall be seen in all creation and providence.
2. The glory of his love and
justice is seen in redemption.
3. The glory of his mercy and
grace is seen in the salvation of his elect.
4. The glory of his truth and
righteousness is seen in the eternal ruin of his enemies.
B. I am declaring the solitariness of God!
The God of the Bible is so
great that he is self-sufficient in the glory of his own holy Being. There was
no vacuum in God’s heart that had to be filled by man. Had it pleased him to do
so, he might have dwelt alone in his solitary glory forever, without making his
glory known to any.
1. All that we experience of his grace and goodness we
experience because of his sovereign good pleasure alone (Psa. 115:3; 135:6). It
pleased God...
a. To make you who believe his
people (I Sam. 12:22).
b. To put all the fullness of
the Godhead’s grace and glory in Christ (Col. 1:19).
c. To bruise his Son in the
place of his people (Isa. 53:10).
d. To reveal Christ in us (Gal.
1:5).
e. To save sinners by the
foolishness of preaching (I Cor. 1:21).
We thank and praise and adore God for the good pleasure of
his grace toward us! We know that we owe everything to the sovereign purpose of
his grace.
2. But we also know that God is totally independent of his
creatures and self-sufficient without us (Isa. 40:15-23; I Tim. 6:15-16).
This is the God of the Bible. he is still, in this
reprobate religious age, “the unknown
God” (Acts 17:23). Because he is unknown in this religious world, we seek
to make him known. This is a God to be reverenced, worshipped, and adored. “He
is solitary in his majesty, unique in his excellency, peerless in his
perfections. He sustains all, but is himself independent of all. He gives to
all, and is enriched by none” (A. W. Pink).
VI. This great, solitary God can only be known by revelation.
I have offered no arguments
to prove the existence of God, but that is not because arguments cannot be
produced. God’s being is a self-evident truth of creation and providence, so
that all men and women are without excuse before him (Rom. 1:20). But no man
will ever come to know the living God by the light of nature (Job 11:7-8;
26:14).
Illustration:
A savage might find a watch in the sand and conclude that there was a
watchmaker. But he would never be able to know the watchmaker by the watch.
Even so, a man may know that there is a God by the light of nature. But he can
never come to know God by the light of nature.
God cannot be known by man, except as God is pleased to
reveal himself to man (John 3:3; I Cor. 2:14).
A. God has revealed himself to men in the Person and work of the Lord
Jesus Christ (John
1:18; Heb. 1:1-3).
B. God has revealed himself to men in the inspired volume of Holy
Scripture (II
Tim. 3:15-17).
C. God reveals himself to men through the preaching of the gospel (Rom. 1:16-17).
D. Yet, no sinner will ever see and know the living God until God reveals
himself in the sinner’s heart by the irresistible grace and power of the Holy
Spirit (II
Cor. 4:6).
·
Everything depends upon God!
·
And even when we have been made to see and know the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ, our spiritual knowledge, at best, is a fragmentary
knowledge. We need ever to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Application:
I hope that you now see something of the solitariness of
God. There is one God. He is eternal. He is spiritual. He is a Tri-unity. He is
independent and self-sufficient. And he can only be known by divine revelation.
This is my prayer for you and me. “That (we) might walk worthy
of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and
increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10).