Our Limited View of God

Isaiah 40:25-28

Intro

Some of you will know the name of J.B. Phillips, an Anglican bishop who wrote a number of books. One of his most popular books was a paraphrase of the New Testament. One of his other books was entitled Your God Is Too Small. In that book, Phillips exposed the views of God that we all hold to that are sadly inadequate.

For example:

  • There is the “cosmic policeman,” a view of God in which he is standing just around the corner, waiting for us to slip up and break the rules.
  • Or, there is the “indulgent old man,” a little senile but very friendly.
  • Or the “frantic manager.” In this view, God’s got sweat on his brow because the world is in such a mess, and he is trying to hold it all together.

It is likely that every single one of us here today has a concept or picture of God that is, at least to some degree, very limited. Our views of God may be clouded because of our background, our experiences, or perhaps simply because of our ignorance. Sometimes we don’t realize that we are actually worshiping an idol because it is a preconceived idea of what we think God is or looks like.

Concept of God

A.W. Tozer is right when he says that, “What comes to our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us” (Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy). Since what we believe about God is so vital, we must constantly be on guard against worshipping a god that is smaller than the biblical God. Worshipping a god that is smaller than the real God is in essence idolatry.

Much of our lives and much of our time is spent worshiping a figment of our own imagination, and what we fail to realize is that God exists independently of our views of him. The God who is there exists as he is regardless of our inadequate ways of thinking about him. And our goal as Christians ought to be to bring our understanding of God in line with the truth of who he really is. That truth is found in Scripture and especially in the person of Jesus Christ because Christ came to reveal God to us – Emmanuel (God with us).

I would like you to picture God in your mind, right now. Try to imagine what he is like. Try to imagine his nature and character. Try to imagine his infinity. Guess what? You just pictured a God that is too small. Our highest thoughts of God do not do justice to his greatness. That is why Paul is quick to confess, “How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Romans 11:33-34).

Fascination and Wonder

Pastor, author, John Piper, has an excellent question he asks to demonstrate our innate desire to seek something greater than ourselves. Piper asks, “Does anyone go to the Grand Canyon to enhance their self-esteem? And, if not, why do they go?” If not for enhanced self-esteem, what drives people to the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls?
Anyone who has visited the Grand Canyon and anyone who has stood next to Niagara Falls can tell you that when you are there, you don't feel that self is being enhanced. When you stand there, you do not think, “Give me a mirror so I can look at how awesome I am.” You stand there with no self-awareness. And the reason for this is simple: Self was made to esteem something bigger than ourselves. Self was made to esteem God.

God is Transcendent and Infinite

The word 'transcendence' simply means 'above us'. God is above us - simply profound, yet profoundly simple - He is above everything that we are; every conception of ourselves; God exceeds it to the ultimate. In fact, if you can think of the most perfect thing, if you can think of the purest thing, the biggest thing, and you multiply your conception of the biggest, purest thing in your mind - you multiply it to infinity - you still will never reach how God is above us.

We will never be able to fully understand God, because God is not like us. He is infinite, and we are finite. We exist in time and space, and He exists outside of it because He created time and space. He is the creator, and we are the created. However, we can know some things about God because God has shown them to us in nature and in our own created human bodies. He has also, more importantly, given us special revelation in the form of the Bible, where he has told us about Himself and about His plan for us in the form of salvation.

Look at Isaiah 40:25-28.“To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One. 26 Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. 27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God”? 28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.

Isaiah states that God “brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name.” This is a staggering statement! Conservative scientific estimates say that there are about one hundred billion galaxies in the universe and in each galaxy are approximately one hundred billion stars. That's a hundred billion times a hundred billion! A billion is an incredible number it is 1 with 18 zeros.

  • A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
  • A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive (over 2,000 years ago)
  • A billion hours ago the world may not have existed.

Yet the Bible says that God calls each star by name.

Speaking of stars and galaxies, I read a great quote about Albert Einstein. The quote comes from a scientific relativity theorist by the name of Charles Misner.
Misner writes, “I do see the design of the universe as essentially a religious question--that is, one should have some kind of respect and awe for the whole business. It is very magnificent and should not be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Albert Einstein had so little use for organized religion--although he strikes me as a very religious man. Einstein must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the Real Thing.”

At one point in his life Einstein said, “The scientist is possessed by the sense of the universe causation...his religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”

Einstein was intrigued by the greatness of the creator and stated that he is far beyond our thinking or imagination. In his book on Albert Einstein, author Walter Isaacson told of a dinner party in Berlin where everybody assumed Einstein was an atheist. Everyone was stunned when Einstein responded in the flowing way: “No, I have a deep feeling of faith, a deep religiosity that comes from my appreciation of the way the Lord made the universe.” He continued and said, “I was like a child walking into a library, and you see the books and you know somebody must have written them, and you see them ordered and you know somebody must have ordered them, and there’s a sense of awe that’s manifest in that, where you kind of understand that there’s an order underlying everything and the more you appreciate it, the more humble you become in the fact of it…”

God is not like us. To whom can we compare God? No one is His equal. We get tired. God never gets tired. We have questions about everything. God never has a question come to his mind. Why? He is all-knowing. He is all-wise. He is all-powerful. God is not like us.

Humans Try to Recreate God

Another thing is this, left to ourselves; we tend to reduce God to manageable terms. In other words, we shrink God in our limited minds. Left to ourselves, there is this great, awesome, all-powerful, all-knowing, holy God and He makes us uncomfortable. So what do we do? We put him in a box. We want to tame him. We shrink Him down to a size so that we can manage Him. Then instead of falling down and serving God we want to manage him and get Him to serve us.

Look at Romans 1:21-23, For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Notice what happens. Generally people know there is a God. But people are uncomfortable with that. So what happens…they try to think of ways to put God in a box, to make Him manageable. This is called Reductionism. Look at Exodus. Here the Israelites had seen everything. The plagues on Egypt. The parting of Red Sea and the destruction of Pharaoh’s army. So Moses is now going up to Mt. Sinai to get the 10 Commandments, but in the uncertainty and the inability to control their situation, the Israelites, even though they had seen the hand of God, reduce God to something that they can see and control. They made an idol out of a golden calf.

What happened? We can’t see this God, so we take something that we have, fashion it, and we will call it God. Then we will worship it, and then create religion around it, and certain rituals. Our idols are not so much a golden calf or a statue that we rub its belly. They are other idols such as our job, the love of money, our boyfriends or girlfriends, our house car, our lust, or whatever else we place ahead of God.

What are we worshipping?

Ultimately what we are worshipping is our own happiness, our own self-fulfillment. That is what is most important. What we have done is created our own god that is to fulfill our own personal agenda. Then when our friends get cancer, our marriage gets a little rocky, our kids don’t turn out like we want them to, we ask “What’s the deal God? I attended church. I gave the offering. I try to read the Bible.” We have a little golden calf.

Another golden calf idol is this health, wealth, and prosperity gospel – which is idolatry. There are some people that are disappointed with God because of this false gospel. They have been taught some things about the Bible that it doesn’t teach. There is a lot more to life than our own self-fulfillment – it’s following God’s agenda, it’s doing his will no matter our circumstances.

Packers 4 Tests

J.I. Packer in his book Knowing God, wrote about 4 tests that we can use to measure ourselves on our view of God. Measure yourself on each of these tests but be sincere and honest with yourself.

1. Those who know God have great energy for God. You have energy to get into his word, energy to serve him, and energy to do things for him.

2. Those who know God have great thoughts of God. What do you think about God when you are alone? How do you see him and what do you say to him in prayer? Are you at times overwhelmed at his presence? Or is he your self-help genie, your private fix-it man? Or is He the creator of the universe, the Almighty holy God that created us and loves us?

3. Those who know God show great boldness for God. Are you bold about your convictions, in a loving manner, and you don’t really care what others think? Or are you worried about letting it slip that you are a Christian, because someone may embarrass you or think something of you that you don’t want them to think? Look at Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, or Rack, Shack, and Benny as in Veggie tales. They were bold in front of the king. God will deliver us, but if we burn, then we burn. We stand by our God. That is boldness (Daniel 3:16-18).

4. Those who know God have great contentment in God. When we have an accurate view of God, of his power, control, and who he is, then when trials and troubles come we will be content in knowing that we will get through this. We will have our ups and downs, but when trouble comes, we can know with certainty that God is there, and He is looking out for us and that he is in ultimate control.

Conclusion

God should get more than Sunday mornings. Every day we need to grow in our relationship with him. We need to recapture the wonder and fascination of who God is. Our concept of God needs to grow and it is through reading and mediating on the Scriptures. It is through pray and communion with our Lord. It is also through the wonders of nature and creation. An area which fascinates me is astronomy and cosmology. The recent discoveries show the awesomeness of God our Creator.

Prayer: “Forgive me, dear Father, for limiting the awesome power you have brought me in Christ. Open my mind and my heart and my eyes and my ears so that I can imagine more, believe more completely, see more fully, and hear more richly all that you have done, are doing, and will do in my life. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.”

Questions for small group discussion

  1. What has been your concept of the Lord? Share from your childhood to where you are now.
  2. A.W. Tozer said that, “What comes to our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” What does he mean by that?
  3. Do you think that we as Christians have lost the fascination and wonder of God? Perhaps explain what it means to you to have a fascination of God.
  4. Why do we try to create God in our own image or way?
  5. Look at J. I. Packers 4 tests and discuss them.

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