What Is God Like?

Sermon Transcript

What is the most important thing about you? A.W. Tozer, who was a pastor a couple of generations ago, said, “The most important thing about you is what you think about when you hear the word ‘God.’” Anyone here thinking about an old man on a cloud with a long beard?

Put the word “God” aside for just a second. You do realize that is not his name; right? It’s just a word we use to describe what we mean by the Creator and Sustainer of all things. Instead of thinking about God, ask yourself this question: “Who is the source and sustainer of all things?” Without even using the Bible, we’re going to talk about who the source and sustainer of all things is. We can reason to this conclusion.

The source and sustainer of all things has certain attributes. One of the attributes of this source is that He is self-existing; the uncaused source of all beings. You can’t go on infinite, regressive causes; you have to ultimately get back to a cause that has always existed, an uncaused, first cause or what Aristotle might call “the unmoved mover.” There has to be a being who has always existed. That’s why it’s stupid to ask the question, “Who made God?” It’s because nobody made the unmade or created the uncreated. There has to be a being who has always existed who is the source and sustainer of all things. In the Bible, this Being has been called the great “I AM.” This is the Being who didn’t have a beginning, the Being who won’t have an end, the Being who just “be’s.”

This being is also infinite; unlimited, completely actualized. “Actualized” means the being has no potential to get better; this being is “maxed out” we might say. “Actualized” is another Aristotle word. You and I are combinations of actuality and potentiality; we have the potential to change. But God has no potential; He is completely actualized.

This source and sustainer is also simple; undivided in being, not made of parts. We’re all made of parts. You’re made of parts and I’m made of parts. The church has parts. Everything that is made has parts; it’s composed. And if you’re composed, someone must have composed you; somebody put your parts together. But you can’t go on infinite, regressive composers; you’re ultimately going to get back to an uncomposed composer, a being that isn’t composed. It’s simple: has no parts and has always existed.

This being is also spaceless; transcends space. He doesn’t extend into space, because He doesn’t have matter. He’s immaterial. This being transcends all space.

This being also is timeless; transcends time, is eternal. That leads into the fact that He knows all things; He doesn’t have to wait for things to happen, because He knows what’s going to happen. He is outside time; He can see “the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10). We gain knowledge; He is knowledge.

This being is also immaterial; spirit, not made of matter. Jesus said to the woman at the well at the base of Mount Gerizim, “The true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:23).

And this being is omnipotent; all powerful. But all powerful doesn’t mean that this being can do anything. All powerful means that this being can do anything that is not logically impossible, that doesn’t contradict His nature. For example, this being can’t create a square circle, because there is no such thing. He can’t create a one-ended stick. He can’t create a married bachelor. He can’t create an honest politician! There are some things that are just too hard for God—they’re impossible! But anything that is possible, God can do.

This being is also omnipresent; everywhere present. That doesn’t mean that God is all things. That would be a world view known as “pantheism.” It’s a new-age world view that you’re a god, I’m a god, a tree is god, the podium is god. No. When we say that God is omnipresent, we don’t mean He is everything; we mean His presence and power is holding all things together. His power is present everywhere.

And He is omniscient; all knowing. He knows “the end from the beginning.” He is the ground of all truth. Jesus said, “I am the…truth” (John 14:6). And He said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). This implies that you don’t have the truth and are in bondage. We’re all in bondage if we don’t have the truth. We’re in bondage to our own sin.

This being is also immutable; unchangeable. What’s He going to change to? If He’s a perfect being, any change would necessitate a move from perfection to imperfection. But since this being is perfect, He can’t change. He wouldn’t be the standard of all truth if He could change from a truth to a lie. So He is immutable.

This being is personal; has mind, emotion and will, makes choices. In fact, He made a choice to create the universe and to create you, which implies He has the ability to make choices.

This being is also holy; set apart, morally perfect standard of love and justice. You know this intuitively. Paul said what we know intuitively, that the Gentiles, who don’t have the law, have the law written on their hearts (Romans 2:14). Our Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

You know certain things are right and other things are wrong. Why? Because there is a standard outside of ourselves that tells us that murder is wrong and love is right. If there was no standard beyond ourselves that we are all obligated to obey, then it would just be one person’s opinion against another person’s opinion. You think murder is wrong, somebody else, like Hitler, says it’s okay. If there is no standard on both of you that you are both obligated to obey, then murder is just a matter of opinion.

But we know it’s not just a matter of opinion, because there is a standard outside of ourselves that we are obligated to obey. That standard is the source and sustainer of all things.

Now you can reason your way to every one of these attributes without a Bible. It’s called “natural theology.” Aristotle and Aquinas did this. Jefferson knew this. In fact, if someone were to ask you, “How do you know God exists?” you could say, “I know God by His effects.” If there is a Creation—that’s an effect—I’m reasoning back to a cause, the Creator. If there’s design—that’s the effect—I’m reasoning back to a cause, the Designer. If there’s a moral law written on my heart, that’s an effect, so I’m reasoning back to a moral lawgiver.

We’re always reasoning from effect back to cause. All the effects that you see around you can help you reason back to the attributes I’ve given you.

The last attribute I’m going to talk about is one you need the Bible for. You wouldn’t know that God is triune; three persons in one Divine essence, unless God revealed it to you in special revelation, in the Scriptures. We might surmise that there has to be some plurality in God, because if God were a strictly monotheistic being, say like Allah, how can Allah be love prior to creation? He couldn’t be, because there was no one to love. But in the Trinity, you have a lover, a loved one and a Spirit of love. God is love from all eternity. The need to create? It’s not like He was lonely and needed us. But He chose to create.

In any event, these attributes are the attributes of the source and sustainer of all things. And if you deny this source exists, you’re using attributes of this being to deny it, like logic and reason. He is the ground of all truth and reason. If you say, “I don’t think God exists,” you’re using reason to say that. You’re sawing off the branch upon which you sit.

So this being exists, but it’s hard to get your mind around attributes like this. God is infinite; the source and sustainer of all things is infinite. It would be strange if an infinite God wasn’t strange to us, because while we have some of these attributes in a limited or finite way, it’s hard to imagine what these attributes are like in an infinite way.

So what does God say to us to help us understand who He is? Isaiah was the great prophet who wrote in the 700s BC. Who is God? What is He like? In Isaiah 40:25-26, he will tell us what God says we should do if we want to learn more about who God is. “‘To whom then will you liken Me, or to whom shall I be equal?’ says the Holy One.” This is God speaking. You want to know who God is like? Here’s what He said: “Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, by the greatness of His might and the strength of His power; not one is missing.” You want to know what God is like? Look to the heavens. And Psalm 19 says essentially the same thing.

He said, “Look to the heavens.” So we’re going to look to the heavens. And we’ll see three facts about the heavens. First, the heavens are precisely created and designed. Second, they are unimaginably vast. You’re not going to believe how vast the heavens are. And third, the heavens are dazzlingly beautiful. The heavens are beautiful, which reflect the nature of God.

First, we’ll start with the heavens are precisely created and designed. How do we know the heavens are created and designed? There is something out there known as the “big bang.” Now I know some of you are going to say, “Ah, Frank. You know we are Christians in here, and we don’t believe in the ‘big bang.’” You don’t believe in the “big bang.” But I believe in the “big bang”; I just know who “banged” it.

In fact, the evidence for the big bang, the creation event, is so good that even atheistic scientists are admitting it. The late Stephen Hawking said, “Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.” Most atheists are admitting that space, time and matter came into existence out of nothing. They don’t think it’s God, but let me ask you a question: What else could create space, time and matter out of nothing? It can’t be something made of space, time and matter. Why? Because space, time and matter didn’t exist. It must be something that transcends space, time and matter.

In other words, the cause of the universe has to at least be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful—to create the universe out of nothing—personal—in order to choose to create—why? To go from a state of nothingness to a state of creation, someone had to make a choice; and only persons can make choices. Also the cause would have to be intelligent, to have a mind to make a choice.

When you think about a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, personal, intelligent cause, who do you think of? God. You say, “How do you know it’s the Christian God, Frank?” We don’t—yet. We don’t know if this is the Christian God or Allah or some other theistic or deistic god. You’d have to see that Jesus rose from the dead to discover whether or not this is the Christian God. We’ll give you evidence later tonight that Jesus rose from the dead. But if Jesus did rise from the dead, then we can say that the same Being who walked out of the tomb 1,993 years ago is the same Being whose divine nature created the universe out of nothing.

We haven’t gotten there yet; we haven’t seen the evidence yet. All we’re saying is that this could be the Christian God. It turns out that since Jesus did rise from the dead, it is the Christian God. We’ll see that more the next time.

So the universe certainly was created. But not only was it created, it also was designed. And this is an argument that scientists have been using for the past 50 or so years called “the fine-tuning argument” for the universe. The argument is that the universe is so fine-tuned that if you were to imperceptibly change virtually any of the hundred or so parameters about our universe, we don’t exist. The universe is balanced on a razor’s edge.

Let me show you. Stephen Hawking, an atheist, said, “If the expansion rate of the universe was different by one part in a thousand, million, million[th of] a second after the big bang, the universe would have collapsed back on itself or never developed galaxies.” In other words, if you were to change the expansion rate an infinitesimal amount at the very beginning, none of us would be here.

And you can’t make any evolutionary sort of argument that “Oh, maybe the expansion rate evolved to this point by chance,” whatever that means. Why can’t you make that argument? Because the expansion rate didn’t change to, by chance, a particular rate; it started, from the very beginning, exactly where it needed to be. If it were any different, none of us would be here.

That value was either designed or it wasn’t. What makes more sense? That it was designed or it wasn’t? Somebody designed it.

Also if the gravitational force were altered more than one part in 1040 compared to the strong nuclear force, stars would not exist and therefore neither would we. What is one part in 1040? That’s one part in 1 with 40 zeros following it. You say, “Frank, I can’t get my head around that number.” I know; neither can I. So let me give you an illustration.

Take the entire North American continent from Central America all the way to Greenland, the 51st state. Stack it in dimes all the way to the moon. That’s 238,000 miles. Then do that on another billion North American continents. Stack them in dimes all the way to the moon. Take all those billions of piles of dimes, put them in one humongous pile, mark one dime red, mix it in the pile, blindfold a friend, throw him on the pile and tell him to pick one dime at random. The chance of him picking that one, marked, red dime is 1040.

Is he going to pick that dime? You’d have to be an idiot to bet on that! Of course he’s not going to pick that dime! That’s the odds of the value being right where it is. Was that value designed or not? It was designed, which means there is a Designer.

You say, “Maybe it happened by chance.” First of all, is chance a cause? Does chance cause things? No; it’s not a cause. “Chance” is a word we use to describe mathematical possibilities. Chance doesn’t cause anything. In fact, what science means when they use the word “chance” is they don’t know. It either was designed or it wasn’t. I showed you just two of about 100 of the parameters about not only our universe but our solar system. Change any one of them, and we’re not here. The universe was created and designed.

Second, the universe is unimaginably vast. We’ll look at our solar system and some parameters about it, how it is designed and vast, and then we’ll look at the entire universe. We are the third rock from the sun. If we were a little closer to or a little bit further away from the sun, we couldn’t survive. If we were closer, we’d burn up, and if we were further away, we’d freeze. We’re in what one scientist called the “Goldilock zone.” It’s not too hot nor too cold; it’s just right.

The axial tilt is 23 1/2˚. Change that slightly and we don’t exist. The earth rotation is 24 hours. Change that slightly and we don’t exist. The size of the moon and its distance from us—change that slightly and we don’t exist. If Jupiter was not in its current orbit, we don’t exist here on earth. Why not? Because Jupiter’s gravitational force is so strong that it attracts most of the meteors and space junk to itself rather than to us. It’s a cosmic vacuum cleaner. Jupiter has cosmic strikes on it that are bigger than the earth! Thank God for Jupiter! If Jupiter wasn’t there, we wouldn’t be here. Saturn also is a cosmic vacuum cleaner.

Pluto has recently been demoted as a planet. That’s size discrimination. And what if Pluto identifies as a planet? What then? In comparison to the sun, you can hardly see Pluto. Compared to Arcturus, another star in our galaxy, earth is invisible and Pluto—forget about it. The sun compared to Antares, another star in our galaxy, is just one pixel in size, Jupiter is invisible and earth and Pluto—forget about them. In fact, if the earth were the size of a golf ball, the star Betelgeuse would be five or six Empire State buildings high.

The heavens are awesome! And this is just inside our galaxy! The average distance between stars in our galaxy is 30 trillion miles. That distance is needed for earth to exist in its present, life-supporting position. If it was a different distance, gravitational forces would cause us to go out of orbit, which means we couldn’t live. How far is 30 trillion miles? Far. It would take you at least two tanks of gas in a Toyota Prius to get there.

Several years ago, my wife and I took our small son at the time to the Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona. If you go out there on a clear night, you can see thousands of stars. It was clear that night, and the guide said that we could see the space shuttle cross the sky at 9:03 pm. The space shuttle was only 150 feet long and would be about 150 miles up. We wouldn’t see the space shuttle! Oh, me of little faith. At 9:03 we looked up and saw an object streaking across the western, desert sky. It was really cookin’. And then it disappeared. Despite the fact we were in total darkness, the space shuttle was so high up that the sun was reflecting off of it, and when it got out of the range of the sun, we couldn’t see it anymore.

When the space shuttle was in orbit, it was traveling about 18,000 miles per hour. That equals five miles per second. You have trouble getting to work in the morning? Take the space shuttle. Thank about how fast that is!

I did a calculation to figure out how long it would take us, in the space shuttle, to go from our star, the sun, to another star an average distance away inside our galaxy 30 trillion miles away. Or how long would it take us to go 30 trillion miles if we could go five miles per second? It would take us 201,450 years. That means if you got in the space shuttle at the time of Christ, started traveling from our star, the sun, to another star in our galaxy an average distance away, going five miles per second for 2,000 years, you would be less than 1/100th of the way there right now.

And we’re going to explore space?! No, we’re not. We’re not going anywhere in space! We can hardly get out of our own solar system! Do you know that it took nine years to get to Pluto?! Think about this: if the solar system were the size of a quarter with the sun in the middle and Pluto on the outer rim, the next, nearest star would be about two, football fields away!

The heavens are awesome! And this is just inside our galaxy! This is not outside our galaxy! And we’re told that there are billions of other galaxies!

Notice what the psalmist says: “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him” (Psalm 103:11). How high are the heavens above the earth? And how many stars are out there? The Hubble space telescope helps us discover that. In 2003, the Hubble space telescope was trained on 1/26,000,000th of the sky. What is 1/26,000,000th of the sky? Go outside tonight and put a grain of rice on the end of your finger, hold it up to the sky at arm’s length and that grain of rice represents about 1/26,000,000th of the sky. So they trained Hubble on this little dot in the sky for 11 days of exposure.

They put together a composite video of what they found. It will start with the constellations and then will zoom out to that little dot in the sky. It’s called Hubble ultra-deep field. You can Google this and see this video; it’s in the public domain. There’s no audio, just video. What you see in this video is nearly 10,000 galaxies in 1/26,000,000th of the sky! Each of these galaxies supposedly has billions of stars of their own! And to go from one star to another star going five miles a second would take you over 200,000 years.

Ladies and gentlemen, I never want to hear any of you use the word “awesome” again unless you are talking about God or the heavens! “That’s an awesome shirt, dude!” No!! What word would you use for this video if not “awesome”?!

How many stars are out there in the whole universe? The University of Hawaii researchers had an estimate, and even if they’re off by a magnitude, it’s still amazing. The number of stars out there are equivalent to the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of all the earth times 100,000. And to go from just one star to another star at five miles per second will take over 200,000 years.

God says, “You want to know what I’m like? Look to the heavens.” When you look at a universe that has the number of stars equivalent to sand grains on 100,000 earths, does that make you feel insignificant? It shouldn’t. Why? Because as amazing as the heavens are, they aren’t made in the image of God. But you are. In fact, the heavens were made for you. God didn’t have to create, but He chose to create. And He said, “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him.” When you look at this virtual, infinite expanse, you know that God’s mercy exceeds the height of the heavens above the earth for you.

Not only is the universe precisely created and designed and is unimaginably vast, but third, it also dazzles us with God’s beauty. I’m going to show you some images from the Hubble space telescope, which require no narration. (Beautiful!) You really think there is no source or sustainer of all this?

You want to know what God is like? Look to His effects. Look to the heavens. They are precisely created and designed, are unimaginably vast and dazzlingly beautiful.

Ladies and gentlemen, what is the most important thing about you? It’s what you think about when you hear the word “God.” And God says, “You want to know what I’m like? Look to the heavens.” What do you see? You see they are created and designed. You see the universe is unimaginably vast. The number of their stars is equivalent to the number of grains of sand on 100,000 earths. It’s over 200,000 years at five miles a second between the stars. And those are just the stars; we’re not talking about the planets. There are more planets than stars. And it’s beautiful.

But there’s a problem. This is who God is. We’re supposed to get an idea of what God is like by looking at an infinite universe. That means He is infinite in every attribute—including justice.

That’s bad news for all of us. Why? Because if God is infinitely just, we’re all in trouble. That’s because we haven’t been infinitely just. At every college campus I go to I hear students say, “We want justice!” Yeah, keep asking for it; you might just get it. And if you get it, you’re not going to like it!

But thankfully in addition to Him being infinitely just, He is also infinitely loving and merciful. Psalm 103:11-12 says, “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” How has He “removed our transgressions from us” if He is infinitely just? If He is infinitely just, He has to punish us.

There is only one way He can avoid punishing us. He has to find an innocent substitute who volunteers to take our punishment upon Himself. Where is He going to find an innocent substitute? Not in any one of us; we’re all fallen, we’ve already sinned. We can’t be the innocent substitute. The only way He can find an innocent substitute is to look to Himself. So as humanity He came to the earth, He allowed the creatures who rebelled against Him to torture and kill Him, so He could take our punishment upon Himself. That means when you repent of your sins and trust in Him, you’re not only forgiven, but you’re given His righteousness.

That’s why Jesus is the only way. It’s not just some arbitrary thing where God says, “I just said I’m the only way.” No. The only way an infinitely just Being cannot punish us for our sins is if He punishes an innocent substitute in our place. That’s why Paul said in Romans 3:26, “…that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” It’s not an arbitrary claim; there’s no way an infinitely just God can do this unless He punishes a substitute, who is Jesus.

And Jesus proved He was who He was by rising from the dead. And there are evidences that He rose from the dead. We’ve been looking to the heavens to get an idea about the majesty of God, but the writer of Hebrews said about this Jesus: “Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power…” (Hebrews 1:3).

Who is the source and sustainer of all things? Jesus is. And when He came to earth, He took those attributes and put them into human form so we could relate. Not only do you look to the heavens, you look to Jesus.

So when you look to the heavens, what do you see? You see an infinite expanse—stars equivalent to sand grains on 100,000 earths and 200,000 years between stars at five miles per second. You have a Being of infinite justice, but also a Being of infinite mercy and love, who created this universe so you could experience his mercy and love and be reconciled to Him.

But then there is still the question: where was this infinite God when my friend, Charlie Kirk, was gunned down right next to me? We’ll talk about that later as well.