Sermon Tone Analysis

! Three Forgotten Perfections of God

 

!! Psalm 113

* *

*Introduction:*  This message will, in all honesty, go against the prevailing wisdom regarding the makeup of a successful sermon today.

If you were to read the fashionable books on powerful preaching, they would tell you to speak to the /felt needs of the people/.

Today’s message, however, will be about God – not what He has done for us, but Who He /is/.

Why?

Many writers over the last 100 years or so have identified a chilling trend in the church  Unchecked, it will lead to a church that is savourless salt—what Christ Himself described as worthless.

A.

W. Tozer described the trend this way:

 

/“It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.

The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him—and of her.”/

 

~* Have you ever been /overwhelmed/ at the idea of Who God is?

He /is/ an overwhelming God.

The trend is a low view of God.

The answer is a proper view of God, arrived at only by studying His self-revelation in the Scriptures.

As Arthur Pink wrote:

 

/“The foundation of all true knowledge of God must be a clear mental apprehension of His perfections as revealed in Holy Scripture.

An unknown God can neither be trusted,   served, nor worshipped.”/

In this Psalm we have three of the attributes of God presented in beautiful poetic language.

• This is not a dry, cold, technical chapter.

It starts and ends with /Hallelujah!/

 

• What /are/ the attributes of God? (Not a list, what is the definition?)

 

- The /Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible /defines God’s attributes as:  “Inherent characteristics of God revealed in Scripture and displayed in God’s actions in biblical history.”

- These attributes are, together, the /essence/ of God.

They are “qualities or characteristics inherent in or ascribed to someone or something.”

Another technical term for the attributes of God is His /perfections/, since He possesses each of these attributes in its perfection or ultimate form.

• Can you list some?  (omnis, immutability, simple, eternal)

 

- As I said, there are three in this Psalm.

As we look at them, let’s consider what Spurgeon said about this sort of study:

 

“Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued, investigation of the great subject of the Deity.

The most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ and Him crucified and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity.”

*I.*

God is /self-existent/  *113:1-3*

 

• These verses exhort us to praise the name of the Lord.

- Now, that statement means so much more for the Hebrew than it would for us.

For them a name was not simply a convenient way to identify another individual; it was often a summary of that person’s defining characteristics.

A name was not a /title/; it was a /total/.

- The /name/ was so important that often when God called a person for a special purpose He gave them a new name.

- When Solomon built the temple, he built “an house to the /name/ of the LORD my God”.

 

- So, what is the /name/ of the Lord that we are to praise? 

*Ex.

3:13-14*; *Ex.

6:2-3*, *Ps.

68:4*; *Ps.

83:18*, *Isa.

42:8*

 

• His /name/ is *Yahweh* -- "the unchanging, eternal, self-existent God."

It is the name that proclaims that God is the Self-Existent One.

 

- Theologians call this God’s /aseity/.

The term comes from the Latin /a se/, meaning “from Himself”.

In other words, God’s existence comes only and entirely “from Himself”.

- As we talk about this, remember that many Christian theologians and philosophers consider this to be God’s “primary attribute”.

• This means that God has the ground of His existence in Himself, and unlike man, does not depend on anything outside of Himself.

He is *utterly independent* in His Being, in His virtues, and in His actions; and causes all His creatures to depend on Him.

The idea is embodied in the name Jehovah.

*Acts 17:24-28*,* Rom.

11:33-36*, *Ps.

90:2*, *Col.

1:17*, *Rev.

4:11*

 

J.

I. Packer puts it this way:

 

/“Our Maker exists in an eternal, self-sustaining, necessary way—necessary, that is, in the sense that God does not have it in Him to go out of existence, just as we do not have it in us to live forever.

We necessarily age and die, because it is our present nature to do that; God necessarily continues forever unchanged, because it is His eternal nature to do that.

This is one of many contrasts between creature and Creator.”/

• As we consider this, the implications are glorious!

*A.*

God has no potential.

- He is literally “all He could be”.

Pure actuality.

He will never improve, because He cannot be improved upon.

He will never increase in power because He has all power already.

He will never learn, because He has all knowledge.

- He will never be surprised, disappointed, deceived, worried or tired.

- All that He ever was, He is and always will be!

Our God is /exactly/ the same God who created the universe, who parted the Red Sea, who thundered from Sinai, who walked on water, who paid the penalty for all sins for all time!

He hasn’t aged a second, He hasn’t diminished in strength, He hasn’t changed!!

 

     *B.*

God has no needs.

- Think of the incredible size and complexity of the universe.

Think of the planets orbiting around suns which are themselves orbiting through galaxies, which are themselves orbiting through the universe, which may well be only one of countless universes . . .

all of this added NOTHING to God!!!

 

     *C.*

God has no possibility of nonexistence.

- As One Who possesses within Himself the power of existence, He is a /necessary being/.

That is, it is impossible for Him NOT to exist.

He cannot not be!

We can rely on Him fully, for He always IS!

 

     *D.*

God has no cause.

• Here is a completely unanswerable argument against evolution [hold up an ink pen].

If there is something now, there can never be a time when there was nothing.

Something had to exist which has the power of being in itself.

- That’s not man.

There could be a universe in which we do not exist.

It is possible for us not to exist.

Only God has the power of /being/ – of /existence/ – within Himself!

 

• “Who created God?”  Is He self-created?

No!

He is /uncaused!/

• When we consider that existence itself is an attribute of our God, the only appropriate response is what the Psalmist suggests:  PRAISE HIS NAME!!

 

            - Who is to praise God?  /All His people./