Sermon Tone Analysis

Bible Text: John 1:1-5

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 The same was in the beginning with God.

3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.

5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Introduction:

Today I would like to begin to talk about the attributes of God.

This may take us several messages to complete, even if we merely graze over them because the subject is so vast and so deep.

Your drivers license, for proof of who you are or who you say you are, lists several things about you.

Your eye color, your birthdate, your hair color, your height.

These are all traits or characteristics of you, they are attributes of you.

Also, sometimes for a job, or to obtain a special type of license, you may need to have a signed document from some character witnesses telling a little bit about your character, whether you are a good person, a trustworthy person, or a dependable person.

These are all attributes of you.

God has, or better we could say, God is His attributes.

God’s attributes answer questions like,

Who is God?

What is God like?

What kind of God is He?

Even, where did God come from?

And so on…

And God has many attributes, and some of these attributes are what we call communicable attributes and some are incommunicable attributes.

You have all likely heard the term, a communicable disease.

It is a disease that can be transmitted from one to another.

And that is what God’s communicable attributes are, they are shared or transmitted on to us, though not in the perfect sense that God possesses or is those attributes.

God is loving, that is one of His attributes, we too can love, but not in the perfectness such as God loves.

God is Just, we too have a sense of justice, but again not in the perfect sense that God is.

God is wise, gracious, merciful, good … And all these we too possess from God, but not to the same degree as God.

But then there are some incommunicable attributes of God that we can not possess, they are not passed on or transmitted to us.

Neither can they ever be.

God is omnipotent, He is all-powerful, we are not all-powerful.

God is omniscient, He knows all things, we do not know all things.

God is omnipresent, He is everywhere all the time, we can not be but in one place at one time.

God is eternal, we are not eternal.

Now, God can give us eternal life going in that direction, toward the future, but we are not eternal heading in the other direction.

But God is from everlasting to everlasting.

And God is everyone of His attributes completely.

He is not made up of one part holiness and two parts righteousness and another part love.

Everyone of His attributes is all together tied to His other attributes.

God is love, but God is all together loving, His love is a holy love, it is a righteous love, it is a gracious and merciful love.

God is Holy, but God Holiness is also a righteous holiness, it is a loving holiness, it is an infinite holiness.

You get the picture.

Now, the first thing we need to understand when beginning a study like this is that we are finite beings, we have definable limits, we have a limited nature and existence.

And God is infinite.

He is without limits, He has a limitless existence and a limitless nature.

And therefore, for us to even think that we can fully comprehend God and His character and nature is not only foolish but arrogant as well.

How can a finite being fully understand and grasp the fullness of an infinite being?

It can’t be done.

But there are some things we can know about God.

Not only from nature.

God reveals much about Himself to His creatures through the things He has made.

The heavens declare His glory., the Bible says.

In fact, the witness of nature is why no one can claim that God has not given them ample evidence of His being.

Turn a couple books in your Bible to Romans chapter one.

Romans 1:19-20

19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

There is enough evidence in what God has created to bring us to at least a limited knowledge of the existence of an all-supreme God.

But also, God has revealed Himself to us from a direct revelation from Him through His Word.

He has told us much about Himself in scripture.

Though even scripture cannot explain God to us perfectly.

Not because Scripture is not sufficient, but because we are not sufficient in our limited existence and language to explain such a God.

In scripture, we often see terms like the hand of God, or the arm of God, the eye of God is upon all mankind, and the like language.

Now we know that God is Spirit, He does not have a hand, an arm, or eyes such as we have, except for Christ in His incarnation, but these are the best ways that we as finite creatures can understand and relate to an infinite God, by things that we can understand.

Although those things will always fall short of fully explaining who or what God is or is like.

Also, God has revealed Himself to us in that we are created in His image, again Romans 1:19, Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them;, He manifests within all mankind a certain knowledge of His existence.

Which is why we see religions even within the remotest parts of the earth and going back as far as we can in archeology, all mankind everywhere has this innate need, a born-in need to worship.

And therefore we inherently possess some things in us that come from God.

An example of this is His moral law.

Every person, barring that they have some mental disability knows right from wrong.

We know inherently, that it is wrong to murder another person.

We know that it is wrong to steal and to lie.

We know these things because God has built them into us by creating us in His image, although now a corrupt image because of sin.

And therefore, with these things in mind, the different ways in which God can and does reveal Himself to us, and understanding that we can never fully grasp the fullness of God, let’s begin to look at some things that we can know about God.

The first attribute that we are going to look at is probably the hardest for us to fully grasp because everything we know is based in time, space, and matter.

because we were created in time, space, and matter.

So it is all we know.

The first attribute is,

I.

The Aseity of God - He is Infinite - From Everlasting to Everlasting

Aseity is the property by which a being exists in and of itself.

It is not dependent upon anything or anyone else for it’s existence.

All other creatures and things in this world or in heaven or even heaven itself has been originated, brought about by something or someone else.

It has a cause.

Everything we know has a cause.

You were caused.

Your mother and your father got together and you were caused.

They were caused.

Anything that we look at today was caused.

And there are many causers.

This building was caused by a builder.

The clothes you are wearing were caused by a clothes maker.

The car you drove here today was caused by a car manufacturer.

The animals were caused by their parents.

The trees and flowers by their seeds.

And we can keep taking it all the way back, all these things were caused by God during creation.

But who or what caused God?

Again perhaps, the hardest attribute of God for us to grasp is the aseity of God.

His infiniteness.

Even a small child has the natural intellect to question this attribute of God.