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  WRITINGS OF JAMES M BOICE
  by James M. Boice
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A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by James M. Boice,
compiled for study and devotional reading.

  Chapters: 3

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 00.00. Library/Content
    2. S. On Knowing God
    3. S. The True God

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  CHAPTER 1: 00.00. LIBRARY/CONTENT
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Boice, James M. - Library

S. Boice, James M. - On Knowing God

S. Boice, James M. - The True God


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  CHAPTER 2: S. ON KNOWING GOD
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On Knowing God by James Montgomery Boice

One hot night in the early years of the Christian era a sophisticated and highly
educated man named Nicodemus came to see a young rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth. The
man wanted to discuss reality. So he began the conversation with a statement of
where his own personal search for truth had taken him. He said, “Rabbi, we know
that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do,
unless God is with him” (John 3:2). With the exception of the word Rabbi, which
was merely a polite form of address, the first words were a claim to
considerable knowledge. Nicodemus said, “We know.” Then he began to rehearse the
things he knew (or thought he knew) and with which he wanted to begin the
discussion: (1) that Jesus was continuing to do many miracles; (2) that these
miracles were intended to authenticate him as a teacher sent from God; and that,
therefore, (3) Jesus was one to whom he should listen. Unfortunately for
Nicodemus, Jesus replied that such an approach to knowledge was wrong and that
Nicodemus could therefore know nothing until he had first experienced an inward,
spiritual transformation. “You must be born anew,” Jesus told him (John 3:7).

Nicodemus’s subsequent remarks showed at least an implicit recognition of his
lack of knowledge in important things. For he began to ask questions, “How can a
man be born when he is old? How can this be?” (John 3:4, John 3:9). Jesus taught
him that true knowledge begins with spiritual knowledge, knowledge of God, and
that this is to be found in God’s revelation of himself in the Bible and in
Jesus’ own life and work, the work of the Savior.

Contemporary Crisis This ancient conversation is relevant to our day. For the
problems and frustrations that Nicodemus faced nearly two thousand years ago are
with us in our time also. Nicodemus possessed knowledge, but he lacked the key
to that knowledge, the element that would put it all together. He knew certain
things, but his search for truth had brought him to the point of personal
crisis. That sounds familiar. Much is known in our time. In the sense of
information or technical knowledge, more is known today than at any previous
time in history. Yet the kind of knowledge that integrates information and
thereby gives meaning to life is strangely absent. The nature of the problem can
be seen by examining the two almost exclusive approaches to knowledge today. On
the one hand there is the idea that reality can be known by reason alone. That
approach is not new, of course. It is the approach developed by Plato and
therefore assumed by much of the Greek and Roman thought after him. In Plato’s
philosophy, knowledge became knowledge of the eternal and unalterable essence of
things, not merely knowledge of changeable phenomena. That is, it was a
knowledge of forms, ideas or ideals. Our nearest equivalent would be the
so-called laws of science. On the surface, this approach to knowledge through
the exercise of supposedly impartial reason seems desirable, for it is
productive — as the technical advances of our day often indicate. But it is not
without problems. For one thing, it is highly impersonal knowledge and, as some
would say, highly depersonalizing. In this approach reality becomes a thing (an
equation, law or, worse yet, mere data), and men and women become things also,
with the inevitable result that they may therefore be manipulated like any other
raw material for whatever ends. An example is the manipulation of poorer nations
by rich nations for the sake of the rich nation’s expanding economy, that is,
the injustice analyzed and rightly condemned by Karl Marx in The Communist
Manifesto, Capital and other writings. Another example is that of communism
itself which, in spite of its desire to better the lot of the masses, actually
manipulates them for ideological ends. On the personal level there is the
science of behavioral technology and the frightening teaching of a man like B.
F. Skinner of Harvard University who claims that individuals must be conditioned
scientifically for the good of society.

There is also another problem with the attempt to know reality through reason
alone. The approach does not give an adequate basis for ethics. It can tell us
what is, but it cannot tell us what ought to be. Consequently, the extraordinary
technical advances of our time are accompanied by an extreme and debilitating
moral permissiveness which promises in time to break down even the values and
system that made both the advances and the permissiveness possible.
Interestingly, the same thing was also true of the Greek philosophers, who,
although they were men of great intellect, on occasion led depraved lives. In
recent years the failures of the rationalistic system have impressed themselves
on a new generation with the result that many in the Western world have
abandoned reason in order to seek reality through emotional experience. In the
ancient world, in reaction to the impersonality of Greek philosophy, this was
done through intense participation in the rites of the mystery religions. These
promised an emotional union with some god, induced by lighting, music, incense
or perhaps by drugs. In our time the same approach is surfacing through the drug
cult, rediscovery of the Eastern religions, Transcendental Meditation and other
supposedly “mind-expanding” practices. This modern approach also has several
problems. First, the experience does not last. It is transient. Each attempt to
achieve reality through emotional experience promises some sort of “high.” But
the “high” is inevitably followed by a “low,” with the additional problem that
increasingly intense stimuli seem to be necessary to repeat the experience.
Eventually this ends either in self-destruction or acute disillusionment. A
second problem is that the approach to reality through emotion does not satisfy
the mind. Promoters of these experiences, particularly drug experiences, speak
of a more intense perception of reality that results from them. But their
experience has no rational content. The part of the human being that wants to
think about such things and understand them is unsatisfied. The result of this
situation is a crisis in the area of knowledge today, as in ancient times. Many
thinking people quite honestly do not know where to turn. The rationalistic
approach is impersonal and amoral. The emotionalistic approach is without
content, transient, and also often immoral.

“Is this the end?” many are asking. “Are there no other possibilities? Is there
not a third way?” A Third Way At this point Christianity comes forward with the
claim that there is a third way and that this way is strong at precisely those
points where the other approaches are lacking. The basis of this third approach
is that there is a God who has created all things and who himself gives his
creation meaning. Further, we can know him. This is an exciting and satisfying
possibility. It is exciting because it involves the possibility of contact
between the individual and God, however insignificant the individual may appear
in his or her own eyes or in the eyes of others. It is satisfying because it is
knowledge not of an idea or thing but of a supremely personal Being, and because
it issues in a profound change of conduct. This is what the Bible means when it
says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). And,
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy
One is insight” (Proverbs 9:10).

Here, however, we must be clear about what we mean when we speak of “knowing
God,” for many common uses of the word know are inadequate to convey the
biblical understanding. There is a use of the word know by which we mean
“awareness.” In this sense we say that we know where somebody lives or that we
know that certain events are transpiring somewhere in the world. It is a kind of
knowledge, but it does not involve us personally. It has little bearing on our
lives. This is not what the Bible means when it speaks of knowing God.

Another use of the word know means “knowing about” something or someone. It is
knowledge by description. For instance, we may say that we know New York City or
London or Moscow. By that we mean that we are aware of the geographic layout of
the city, we know the names of the streets, where the major stores are and other
facts. We may have gained our knowledge of the city by actually living there.
But it is also possible that we may have gained our knowledge by reading books.
In the religious realm this type of knowledge would apply to theology which,
although important, is not the whole or even the heart of religion. The Bible
tells us much about God that we should know. (In fact, much of what follows in
this book is directed to our need for such knowledge.) But this is not enough.
Even the greatest theologians can be confused and can find life meaningless.

True knowledge of God is also more than knowledge by experience. To go back to
the earlier example, it would be possible for someone who has lived in a
particular city to say, “But my knowledge is not book knowledge. I have actually
lived there. I have walked the streets, shopped in the stores, attended the
theaters. I have experienced the city. I really know it.” To this we would have
to reply that the knowledge involved is certainly a step beyond anything we have
talked about thus far, but still it is not the full idea of knowledge in the
Christian sense.

Suppose, for instance, that a person should go out into a starlit field in the
cool of a summer evening and gaze up into the twinkling heavens and come away
with the claim that in that field he has come to know God. What do we say to
such a person? The Christian does not have to deny the validity of that
experience, up to a point. It is certainly a richer knowledge than mere
awareness of God (“There is a God”) or mere knowledge about him (“God is
powerful and is the Creator of all that we see and know”). Still, the Christian
insists, this is less than what the Bible means by true knowledge. For when the
Bible speaks of knowing God it means being made alive by God in a new sense
(being “born again”), conversing with God (so that he becomes more than some
great “Something” out there, so that he becomes a friend), and being profoundly
changed in the process.

All this is leading us, step by step, to a better understanding of the word
knowledge. But still another qualification is needed. According to the Bible
even when the highest possible meaning is given to the word know, knowing God is
still not merely knowing God. For it is never knowing God in isolation. It is
always knowing God in his relationship to us. Consequently, according to the
Bible, knowledge of God takes place only where there is also knowledge of
ourselves in our deep spiritual need and where there is an accompanying
acceptance of God’s gracious provision for our need through the work of Christ
and the application of that work to us by God’s Spirit. Knowledge of God takes
place in the context of Christian piety, worship and devotion. The Bible teaches
that this knowledge of God takes place (where it does take place), not so much
because we search after God — because we do not — but because God reveals
himself to us in Christ and in the Scriptures.

J. I. Packer writes of this knowledge, “Knowing God involves, first, listening
to God’s word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application
to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as His word and works
reveal it; third, accepting His invitations, and doing what He commands; fourth,
recognising, and rejoicing in, the love that He has shown in thus approaching
one and drawing one into this divine fellowship.”1

Why Bother?

“But just a minute,” someone might argue. “All that sounds complicated and
difficult. In fact, it seems too difficult. If that’s what is involved, I want
no part of it. Give me one good reason why I should bother.” That is a fair
objection, but there is an adequate answer to it. In fact, there are several.

First, knowledge of God is important, for only through the knowledge of God can
an individual enter into what the Bible terms eternal life. Jesus indicated this
when he prayed, “And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). At first glance even
this does not seem important enough to the “natural man” to make him want to
know God at all costs. But this is because, lacking eternal life, he cannot
begin to understand what he is missing. He is like a person who says that he
does not appreciate good music. His dislike does not make the music worthless;
it simply indicates an inadequate grounds of appreciation in him. So also those
who do not appreciate God’s offer of life indicate that they do not have the
capability of understanding or valuing what they are lacking. The Bible says,
“The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they
are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are
spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

It might help such a person to be told that the promise of eternal life is also
the promise of being able to live life fully as an authentic human being. This
is true, but it is also true that eternal life means more than this. It means
coming alive, not only in a new but also in an eternal sense. It is what Jesus
meant when he said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me,
though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall
never die” (John 11:25-26).

Second, knowledge of God is important because, as pointed out earlier, it also
involves knowledge of ourselves. Our day is the day of the psychiatrist and
psychologist. Men and women spend billions of dollars annually in an attempt to
know themselves, to sort out their psyches. Certainly there is need for
psychiatry, particularly Christian psychiatry. But this alone is inadequate in
the ultimate sense if it does not bring individuals into a knowledge of God
against which their own worth and failures may be estimated. On the one hand,
knowledge of ourselves through the knowledge of God is humbling. We are not God
nor are we like him. He is holy; we are unholy. He is good; we are not good. He
is wise; we are foolish. He is strong; we are weak. He is loving and gracious;
we are filled with hate and with selfish affectations. Therefore, to know God is
to see ourselves as Isaiah did: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of
unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes
have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5). Or as Peter did: “Depart
from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). On the other hand, such
knowledge of ourselves through the knowledge of God is also reassuring and
satisfying. For in spite of what we have become we are still God’s creation and
are loved by him. No higher dignity has been given to women and men than the
dignity the Bible gives them.

Third, the knowledge of God also gives us knowledge of this world: its good and
its evil, its past and its future, its purpose and its impending judgment at the
hand of God. In one sense, this is an extension of the point just made. If
knowledge of God gives us knowledge of ourselves, it also inevitably gives us
knowledge of the world; for the world is mostly the individuals who compose it
written large. On the other hand the world stands in a special relationship to
God, in its sin and rebellion as well as in its value as a vehicle for his
purposes. It is a confusing place until we know the God who made it and learn
from him why he made it and what is to happen to it. A fourth reason the
knowledge of God is important is that it is the only way to personal holiness.
This is a goal that the natural man hardly desires. But it is essential
nonetheless. Our problems derive not only from the fact that we are ignorant of
God but also from the fact that we are sinful. We do not want the good. At times
we hate it, even when the good is to our benefit. The knowledge of God leads to
holiness. To know God as he is, is to love him as he is and to want to be like
him. This is the message of one of the Bible’s most important verses about the
knowledge of God. Jeremiah, the ancient prophet of Israel, wrote, “Let not the
wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not
the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he
understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practice steadfast love,
justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the
LORD” (Jeremiah 9:23-24). Jeremiah also wrote about a day when those who don’t
know God will come to know him. “And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor
and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from
the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their
iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).

Finally, the knowledge of God is important in that it is only through a
knowledge of God that the church and those who compose it can become strong. In
ourselves we are weak, but as Daniel wrote, “The people who know their God shall
stand firm and take action” (Daniel 11:32).

We do not have a strong church today, nor do we have many strong Christians. We
can trace the cause to an acute lack of sound spiritual knowledge. Why is the
church weak? Why are individual Christians weak? It is because they have allowed
their minds to become conformed to the “spirit of this age,” with its
mechanistic, godless thinking. They have forgotten what God is like and what he
promises to do for those who trust him. Ask an average Christian to talk about
God. After getting past the expected answers you will find that his god is a
little god of vacillating sentiments. He is a god who would like to save the
world, but who cannot. He would like to restrain evil, but somehow he finds it
beyond his power. So he has withdrawn into semi-retirement, being willing to
give good advice in a grandfatherly sort of way, but for the most part he has
left his children to fend for themselves in a dangerous environment.

Such a god is not the God of the Bible. Those who know their God perceive the
error in that kind of thinking and act accordingly. The God of the Bible is not
weak; he is strong. He is all-mighty. Nothing happens without his permission or
apart from his purposes — even evil. Nothing disturbs or puzzles him. His
purposes are always accomplished. Therefore, those who know him rightly act with
boldness, assured that God is with them to accomplish his own desirable purposes
in their lives. Do we need an example? We can find no better one than Daniel.
Daniel and his friends were godly men in the godless environment of ancient
Babylon. They were slaves, good slaves. They served the court. But difficulty
arose when they refused to obey anything in opposition to the commands of the
true God whom they knew and worshiped. When Nebuchadnezzar’s great statue was
set up and all were required to fall down and worship it, Daniel and his friends
refused. When prayer to anyone but King Darius was banned for thirty days,
Daniel did as he always did: he prayed to God three times a day before an open
window.

What was wrong with these men? Had they fooled themselves about the
consequences? Did they think that their failure to comply would go unseen? Not
at all. They knew the consequences, but they also knew God. They were able to be
strong, trusting God to have his way with them whether it meant salvation or
destruction in the lions’ den or the furnace. These men said, “If it be so, our
God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he
will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O
king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you
have set up” (Daniel 3:17-18). A weak god produces no strong men, nor does he
deserve to be worshiped. A strong God, the God of the Bible, is a source of
strength to those who know him. The Highest Science So let us learn about God
and come to know God in the fullest, biblical sense. Jesus encouraged us to do
this when he said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and
lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29). This
is true wisdom for everyone. It is the special duty and privilege of the
Christian.

What is the proper course of study for one who is a child of God? Is it not God
himself? There are other worthwhile areas of learning, it is true. But the
highest science, the most mind-expanding area of all, is the Godhead. Spurgeon
once wrote:

There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the
Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its
immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we
can comprehend and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go
on our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.” But when we come to this
master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our
eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the... solemn exclamation, “I
am but of yesterday and know nothing.” . . . But while the subject humbles the
mind, it also expands it. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so
magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continuing investigation of
the great subject of the Deity.2

Every Christian should confidently pursue this goal. God has promised that those
who seek him will find him. To those who knock, the door shall be opened.

Notes 1. J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press,
1973), p. 32.

2. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, Vol. 1, 855 (Pasadena,
Texas: Pilgrim Publications, 1975), p. 1.


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  CHAPTER 3: S. THE TRUE GOD
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The True God by James Montgomery Boice

It is evident that we need more than a theoretical knowledge of God. Yet we can
know God only as he reveals himself to us in the Scriptures, and we cannot know
the Scriptures until we are willing to be changed by them. Knowledge of God
occurs only when we also know our deep spiritual need and when we are receptive
to God’s gracious provision for our need through the work of Christ and the
application of that work to us by God’s Spirit.

Having established this base, we nevertheless come back to the question of God
himself and we ask, “But who is God? Who is this one who reveals himself in
Scripture, in the person of Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit?” We may
admit that a true knowledge of God must change us. We may be willing to be
changed. But where do we begin?

“I Am Who I Am”

Since the Bible is a unity we could answer these questions by starting at any
point in the biblical revelation. We could begin with Revelation 22:21 as well
as with Genesis 1:1. But there is no better starting point than God’s revelation
of himself to Moses at the burning bush. Moses, the great leader of Israel, had
long been aware of the true God, for he had been born into a godly family.
Still, when God said that he would send him to Egypt and through him deliver the
people of Israel, Moses responded, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to
them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is
his name?’ what shall I say to them?” We are told that God then answered Moses
by saying, “I AM WHO I AM. . . . Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has
sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:13-14).

“I AM WHO I AM.” The name is linked with the ancient name for God, Jehovah. But
it is more than a name. It is a descriptive name, pointing to all that God is in
himself. In particular, it shows him to be the One who is entirely
self-existent, self-sufficient and eternal.

These are abstract concepts, of course. But they are important, for these
attributes more than any others set God apart from his creation and reveal him
as being what he is in himself. God is perfect in all his attributes. But there
are some attributes that we, his creatures, share. For instance, God is perfect
in his love. Yet by his grace we also love. He is all wise; but we also possess
a measure of wisdom. He is all powerful; and we exercise a limited power. It is
not like that in regard to God’s self-existence, self-sufficiency and eternity,
however. He alone possesses those characteristics. He exists in and of himself;
we do not. He is entirely self-sufficient; we are not. He is eternal; we are
newcomers on the scene.

Self-existence means that God has no origins and consequently is answerable to
no one. Matthew Henry says, “The greatest and best man in the world must say, By
the grace of God I am what I am; but God says absolutely — and it is more than
any creature, man or angel, can say — I am that I am.”1 So God has no origins;
his existence does not depend on anybody.

Self-existence is a hard concept for us to grapple with for it means that God as
he is in himself is unknowable. Everything that we see, smell, hear, taste or
touch has origins. We can hardly think in any other category. Anything we
observe must have a cause adequate to explain it. We seek for such causes. Cause
and effect is even the basis for the belief in God possessed by those who,
nevertheless, don’t truly know him. Such individuals believe in God, not because
they have had a personal experience of him or because they have discovered God
in Scripture, but only because they infer his existence. “Everything comes from
something; consequently, there must be a great something that stands behind
everything.” Cause and effect point to God, but — and this is the issue — they
point to a God who is beyond understanding, indeed to one who is beyond us in
every way. They indicate that God cannot be known and evaluated like other
things can.

A. W. Tozer has noted that this is one reason why philosophy and science have
not always been friendly toward the idea of God. These disciplines are dedicated
to the task of accounting for things as we know them and are therefore impatient
with anything that refuses to give an account of itself. Philosophers and
scientists will admit that there is much they don’t know. But it is another
thing to admit that there is something they can never know completely and which,
in fact, they don’t even have techniques for discovering. To discover God,
scientists may attempt to bring God down to their level, defining him as
“natural law,” “evolution” or some such principle. But still God eludes them.
There is more to God than any such concepts can delineate.

Perhaps, too, this is why even Bible-believing people seem to spend so little
time thinking about God’s person and character. Tozer writes,

Few of us have let our hearts gaze in wonder at the I AM, the self-existent Self
back of which no creature can think. Such thoughts are too painful for us. We
prefer to think where it will do more good — about how to build a better
mousetrap, for instance, or how to make two blades of grass grow where one grew
before. And for this we are now paying a too heavy price in the secularization
of our religion and the decay of our inner lives.2

God’s self-existence means that he is not answerable to us or to anybody, and we
don’t like that. We want God to give an account of himself, to defend his
actions. Although he sometimes explains things to us, he doesn’t have to and
often he does not. God doesn’t have to explain himself to anybody. No Needs The
second quality of God communicated to us in the name “I AM WHO I AM” is
self-sufficiency. Again it is possible to have at least a sense of the meaning
of this abstract term. Self-sufficiency means God has no needs and therefore
depends on no one.

Here we run counter to a widespread and popular idea: God cooperates with human
beings, each thereby supplying something lacking in the other. It is imagined,
for example, that God lacks glory and therefore creates men and women to supply
it. He takes care of them as a reward. Or again, it is imagined that God needs
love and therefore creates men and women to love him. Some talk about the
creation as if God were lonely and therefore created us to keep him company. On
a practical level we see the same thing in those who imagine that women and men
are necessary to carry out God’s work of salvation as witnesses or as defenders
of the faith, forgetting that Jesus himself declared that “God is able from
these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Luke 3:8).

God does not need worshipers. Arthur W. Pink, who writes on this theme in The
Attributes of God, says,

God was under no constraint, no obligation, no necessity to create. That he
chose to do so was purely a sovereign act on his part, caused by nothing outside
himself, determined by nothing but his own mere good pleasure; for he “worketh
all things after the counsel of his own will” (Ephesians 1:11). That he did
create was simply for his manifestative glory. . . . God is no gainer even from
our worship. He was in no need of that external glory of his grace which arises
from his redeemed, for he is glorious enough in himself without that. What was
it moved him to predestinate his elect to the praise of the glory of his grace?
It was, as Ephesians 1:5 tells us, “according to the good pleasure of his will.”
. . . The force of this is [that] it is impossible to bring the Almighty under
obligations to the creature; God gains nothing from us.3

Tozer makes the same point. “Were all human beings suddenly to become blind,
still the sun would shine by day and the stars by night, for these owe nothing
to the millions who benefit from their light. So, were every man on earth to
become atheist, it could not affect God in any way. He is what he is in himself
without regard to any other. To believe in him adds nothing to his perfections;
to doubt him takes nothing away.”4 Nor does God need helpers. This truth is
probably harder for us to accept than almost any other. For we imagine God as a
friendly, but almost pathetic, grandfather figure bustling about to see whom he
can find to help him in managing the world and saving the world’s race. What a
travesty! To be sure, God has entrusted a work of management to us. He said to
the original pair in Eden, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and
subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the
air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28). God
also has given those who believe in him a commission to “go into all the world
and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). True, but no aspect
of God’s ordering of his creation has a necessary grounding in himself. God has
chosen to do things thus. He didn’t need to do them. Indeed, he could have done
them in any one of a million other ways. That he did choose to do things thus is
therefore solely dependent upon the free and sovereign exercise of his will and
so does not give us any inherent value to him. To say that God is
self-sufficient also means that God does not need defenders. Clearly, we have
opportunities to speak for God before those who would dishonor his name and
malign his character. We ought to do so. But even if we should fail, we must not
think that God is deprived thereby. God does not need to be defended, for he is
as he is and will remain so regardless of the sinful and arrogant attacks of
evil individuals. A God who needs to be defended is no God. Rather, the God of
the Bible is the self-existent One who is the true defender of his people. When
we realize that God is the only truly self-sufficient One, we begin to
understand why the Bible has so much to say about the need for faith in God
alone and why unbelief in God is such sin. Tozer writes: “Among all created
beings, not one dare trust in itself. God alone trusts in himself; all other
beings must trust in him. Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its
trust not in the living God but in dying men.”5 If we refuse to trust God, what
we are actually saying is that either we or some other person or thing is more
trustworthy. That is a slander against the character of God, and it is folly.
Nothing else is all-sufficient. On the other hand, if we begin by trusting God
(by believing in him), we have a solid foundation for all life. God is
sufficient, and his Word to his creatures can be trusted.

Because God is sufficient, we may begin by resting in that sufficiency and so
work effectively for him. God does not need us. But the joy of coming to know
him is in learning that he nevertheless stoops to work in and through those who
are his believing and obedient children.

Alpha and Omega A third quality inherent in the name of God given to Moses (“I
AM WHO I AM”) is everlastingness, perpetuity or eternity. The quality is
difficult to put in one word, but it is simply that God is, has always been and
will always be, and that he is ever the same in his eternal being. We find this
attribute of God everywhere in the Bible. Abraham called Jehovah “the
Everlasting God” (Genesis 21:33). Moses wrote, “LORD, thou hast been our
dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or
ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting
thou art God” (Psalms 90:1-2). The book of Revelation describes God as the
“Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 1:8; Revelation
21:6; Revelation 22:13). The creatures before the throne cry, “Holy, holy, holy,
is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Revelation 4:8). The
fact that God is eternal has two major consequences for us. The first is that he
can be trusted to remain as he reveals himself to be. The word usually used to
describe this quality is immutability, which means unchangeableness. “Every good
endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of
lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).

God is unchangeable in his attributes. So we need not fear, for example, that
the God who once loved us in Christ will somehow change his mind and cease to
love us in the future. God is always love toward his people. Similarly, we must
not think that perhaps he will change his attitude toward sin, so that he will
begin to classify as “permissible” something that was formerly prohibited. Sin
will always be sin because it is defined as any transgression of or lack of
conformity to the law of God, who is unchangeable. God will always be holy,
wise, gracious, just and everything else that he reveals himself to be. Nothing
that we do will ever change the eternal God.

God is also unchangeable in his counsels or will. He does what he has determined
beforehand to do and his will never varies. Some will point out that certain
verses in the Bible tell us that God repented of some act — as in Genesis 6:6,
“The LORD was sorry that he had made man.” In this example, a human word is
being used to indicate God’s severe displeasure with human activities. It is
countered by such verses as Numbers 23:19 (“God is not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or
has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?”); 1 Samuel 15:29 (“The Glory of
Israel will not lie or repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent”);
Romans 11:29 (“The gifts and call of God are irrevocable”); and Psalms 33:11
(“The counsel of the LORD stands for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all
generations”).

Such statements are a source of great comfort to God’s people. If God were like
us, he could not be relied on. He would change, and as a result of that his will
and his promises would change. We could not depend on him. But God is not like
us. He does not change. Consequently, his purposes remain fixed from generation
to generation. Pink says, “Here then is a rock on which we may fix our feet,
while the mighty torrent is sweeping away everything around us. The permanence
of God’s character guarantees the fulfillment of his promises.”6 The second
major consequence for us of God’s unchangeableness is that he is inescapable. If
he were a mere human and if we didn’t like either him or what he was doing, we
might ignore him knowing that he might always change his mind, move away from us
or die. But God does not change his mind. He does not move away. He will not
die. Consequently, we cannot escape him. Even if we ignore him now, we must
reckon with him in the life to come. If we reject him now, we must eventually
face the One we have rejected and come to know his eternal rejection of us. No
Other Gods

We are led to a natural conclusion, namely, that we should. seek and worship the
true God. This chapter has been based for the most part on Exodus 3:14, in which
God reveals to Moses the name by which he desires to be known. That revelation
came on the verge of the deliverance of the people of Israel from Egypt. After
the exodus, God gave a revelation on Mount Sinai which applies the earlier
disclosure of himself as the true God to the religious life and worship of the
delivered nation.

God said, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out
of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not
make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;
you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the LORD your God am a
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third
and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to
thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:2-6). These
verses make three points, all based on the premise that the God who reveals
himself in the Bible is the true God:

1. We are to worship God and obey him.

2. We are to reject the worship of any other god.

3. We are to reject the worship of the true God by any means that are unworthy
of him, such as the use of pictures or images. At first glance it seems quite
strange that a prohibition against the use of images in worship should have a
place at the very start of the ten basic principles of biblical religion, the
Ten Commandments. But it is not strange when we remember that the
characteristics of a religion flow from the nature of the religion’s god. If the
god is unworthy, the religion will be unworthy too. If the concept of God is of
the highest order, the religion will be of a high order also. So God tells us in
these verses that any physical representation of him is dishonoring to him. Why?
For two reasons. First, it obscures his glory, for nothing visible can ever
adequately represent it. Second, it misleads those who would worship him.

Both of these errors are represented by Aaron’s manufacture of the golden calf,
as J. I. Packer indicates in his discussion of idolatry. In Aaron’s mind, at
least, though probably not in the minds of the people, the calf was intended to
represent Jehovah. He thought, no doubt, that a figure of a bull (even a small
one) communicated the thought of God’s strength. But, of course, it didn’t do so
adequately. And it didn’t at all communicate his other great attributes: his
sovereignty, righteousness, mercy, love and justice. Rather, it obscured them.

Moreover, the figure of the bull misled the worshipers. They readily associated
it with the fertility gods and goddesses of Egypt, and the result of their
worship was an orgy. Packer concludes,

It is certain that if you habitually focus your thoughts on an image or picture
of the One to whom you are going to pray, you will come to think of him, and
pray to him, as the image represents him. Thus you will in this sense “bow down”
and “worship” your image; and to the extent to which the image fails to tell the
truth about God, to that extent you will fail to worship God in truth. That is
why God forbids you and me to make use of images and pictures in our worship.7
“My Lord and My God” To avoid the worship of images or even the use of images in
the worship of the true God is not in itself worship. We are to recognize that
the true God is the eternal, self-existent and self-sufficient One, the One
immeasurably beyond our highest thoughts. Therefore, we are to humble ourselves
and learn from him, allowing him to teach us what he is like and what he has
done for our salvation. Do we do what he commands? Are we sure that in our
worship we are actually worshiping the true God who has revealed himself in the
Bible?

There is only one way to answer that question truthfully. It is to ask: Do I
really know the Bible, and do I worship God on the basis of the truth I find
there? That truth is centered in the Lord Jesus Christ, as seen in the Bible.
There the invisible God is made visible, the inscrutable knowable, the eternal
God disclosed in space and time. Do I look to Jesus in order to know God? Do I
think of God’s attributes by what Jesus shows me of them? If not, I am
worshiping an image of God, albeit an image of my own devising. If I look to
Jesus, then I can know that I am worshiping the true God, as he has revealed
himself. Paul says that although some knew God they nevertheless “did not honor
him as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1:21). Let us determine that this
shall not be true of us. We see God in Jesus. So let us know him as God, love
him as God, serve him as God and worship him as God.

Notes 1. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 1 (New York: Fleming
H. Revell, n.d.), p. 284 2. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York:
Harper & Row, 1961), p. 34.

3. Arthur W. Pink, The Attributes of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House,
n.d.), pp. 2 - Leviticus 4. Tozer, p. 40.

5. Ibid., p. 42.

6. Pink, p. 41.

7. J. I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 41

Author

James Montgomery Boice held a B.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary and a
Doctor of Theology from the University of Basel in Switzerland. He was the
pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and the author of many
books, including the three volumes in the series, “Foundations of the Christian
Faith”. This article is taken from volume one of that same series, entitled The
Sovereign God.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-james-m-boice/
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