God Isn't

The title of my sermon is, God Isn't. It's not God is, God isn't. The story of a teacher who had a first grade class. They gave out pencils, pieces of paper, and crayons. And she said, I'd like you to draw and color your favorite thing. And she went over to this little girl who was busy, just really busy. She says, what are you drawing? She says, God. And the teacher goes, well, honey, God, nobody knows what God looks like. And she says, they will now.

So how would you describe or explain God? Could you do it in a word? Could you do it one scripture? 1 John 4.8 tells us that God is agape. God is love. But love is an attribute of God. It helps to describe the character of God. You might even say agape is what motivates God. But if you were to prescribe to the thought that God is love, then all we have to do is worship love, isn't it? All we need is love, as the Beatles said many years ago. But does that really work? I know you may even see a young couple. I have experienced that in my life. They got married, very young, very inexperienced, didn't have jobs. And so the minister, the one I knew at the time, asked, how are you going to live? What are you going to live on? And he said love. They said they would love. Just love each other, and everything would work out. Russell, somebody in the back.

It shook Jeff up when I was talking about love. He lost control of a chair in the back. The minister asked young people, well, you will see how love goes when you can't find it in your refrigerator. There is a reality. To say they were naive is generous.

But see, God is so much more than love. When we make a statement like God is love, we can be guilty of disrespect. Think about it. To be clear, we would be limiting the unlimited because of who God is. We would be guilty of putting God in a box to try to tell you who and what God is is impossible. It really is. It is impossible. And in my view, many come too close to blasphemy by trying to tell you who God is.

Too close to creating God in my image or their image or somebody's image. They have an image of God like the little girl. He's too big for that. It's too awesome that the human mind has a hard time, even comprehending that He is working with them, something we should not struggle with. So today I want to tell you who or what God isn't.

Why is that important? Because in 1 John 3, 2, it says that we will be like Him. We will be like Him when we're changed in that moment in a twinkling of an eye. If our destiny is to one day be apart, as we are now, of the God family, we might need to know what we are not. And what we will not be in the kingdom and what we will not be for eternity. It's easier for me to explain or describe my wife. She's not ugly. She's not distrustful. She's not unkind. There's so many things. She's not nasty. She's not hateful. So by describing what she is not, it also can help you understand what she is.

And with God, it's the same way, which would be easier to do, which would be easier to comprehend. Because people really cannot grasp that big being in the sky. They read a book, The Magic Man in the Sky, they were trying to describe because this man was talking about how many miracles he had seen and that people didn't want to prescribe it to a god but to a big magic man in the sky or serendipity or perhaps something else.

Some people treat God like they do a lawyer. They only go to him when they need something. That is a lot more people than you think, a lot more. There was a map master. He was also called a geographer.

He was considered the best of his time and maybe the best that ever existed in the 1800s, 17 to 1800s in that time. He and his family still have a company today out of London. His name was Aaron Arrowsmith. Look him up sometime if you want. Interesting guy. He drew maps. He drew maps of the United States all the way in England. He hadn't traveled much in the United States, but he still drew because he interviewed trappers, interviewed scouts, interviewed anyone he could get his hands on to tell him about the land.

And he drew these maps and those maps were used even by Lewis and Clark. They were used into the 1800s. 1900s. You may go and see some of his maps today. He found out so much of what he was drawing was correct and he never ever saw most of the land. Amazing! Was it a gift? Probably. Helped a lot of people. But I liked what he had to say.

It's an interesting character. I quote him here. He said, a heathen philosopher once asked a Christian, where is God? The Christian answered, let me first tell you where he is not. And I think we could say that same thing. Because he is everywhere. A.W. Tozer. Anybody ever heard of A.W. Tozer? A.W. Tozer. He wrote an incredible book that I have read more than a few times.

Referenced it many times. He believed everything we didn't know, but he was a religious writer. Over 50 years ago, he wrote this book. And it was called The Knowledge of the Holy.

Knowledge of the Holy. Anybody ever read that? No. Good thing, because I've ordered about five or six copies. And then when I'm here in two weeks, I'll bring and I'd like to donate that to this congregation. Just ask when you read it, pass it on. I couldn't buy all of you a copy. I haven't won the lottery yet.

But his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, is a very deep book. And on page 33, Tozer makes a statement. And I quote, Our common habits of thought allow for the existence of need among created things. Nothing is complete in itself but requires something outside of itself in order to exist. All breathing things need air. Every organism needs food and water. Take air and water from the earth and all life would perish instantly. It may be stated as an axiom that to stay alive, every created thing needs some other created thing. And all things need God. To God alone, nothing is necessary. Helps you to understand God. I hope you will enjoy the book. One chapter I do not agree with in the book, but of the others is of great help as he tries to talk about the holy and the qualities of God being omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, immutable, infinite.

Tozer made another statement that I had to meditate on for weeks. Had a problem with it in the book. When you read it, you will probably think about that too. Because he wrote, God possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. God has never learned and cannot learn. Which really makes you think because of Hebrews 5 where it said that Jesus Christ learned by the things he suffered. But then I had to think what he was trying to put across. And when you read the entire book, you will understand he wasn't saying what we would think he was saying because that's automatically what I thought, what Jesus Christ thought. But he was saying that God has seen everything and has experienced everything through eternity. I do not have to kill someone to know what it might feel like or be like to be killed. I don't have to experience it. Right? You don't have to. But there are some things we say we know. I know, even though I never experienced it, I don't want to have sexual relations with a man. I know it. I don't have to experience it. And yet that's what some people reference this as being. God did not have to practice evil to know what it was. And that puts God way above our thoughts. Do you question God? Tozer never questioned God.

So let me tell you what God isn't. God isn't finite. God isn't finite. When you understand that, you will understand God just a little bit better. Finite, according to Webster's, is having bounds or limits.

Something which can be determined, counted, or measured. God cannot be measured. He cannot be counted. He is boundless.

God is not finite. He's infinite. But we can understand finite because that's the world in which we live in.

I have a measuring tape on this little thing here, and I can measure this lectern, and it is 36 and three-quarters inches wide.

There's not a tape big enough to measure God.

We will find that out someday when we are like Him.

It will blow our minds. I have not seen nor heard nor is it in the heart of man the things that God has planned for those who love Him. 1 Corinthians 2.9. Hey, we need to be in awe of God, and that was the beauty of this book when I first read it. Because I've read hundreds of books in my lifetime, but I've never read anything that took my understanding to a greater level than Tozer's book, even though I don't agree with everything that he had. But he had an understanding. Think about it. He cannot be measured. He cannot be numbered. We're going to go through numbers in the Bible study today, because God likes numbers, and He likes to measure things. He measures every week. He measures every month. He put a moon up there so we could do that. He put those moons together so different moons and ones coming up on the seventh that there's going to be a feast. So God, you know, He invented numbers. He invented math. He invented everything that way. But He's so great He can't be measured. With us, we can't help it, but measure things.

Count things. Do things that way. And yet, with God, what have you got?

He says He's counted all the stars.

We're getting into billions and trillions of stars. Okay, so we can't even count the numbers. God not only counts them, He said He names them. Every one of them has a name.

Is that mind-bowing? It should be. It should be. How? How is that done? We, as humans, we don't even have enough names to name the stars because why? We're puny humans. We're puny humans. He gave us a brain, but He made us puny humans compared to Him. That's why He gets upset when somebody wants to propel themselves and make themselves great.

Because He looks down and goes, that's like an ant just walking across the floor.

I could squash it. It could just disappear. And yet, that ant thinks he runs this room. Hmm? That's how we're getting into the mind of God.

God isn't a lot of things.

How do we compare? How do we use God's Word? We use this thing. There's a phrase, religious intelligism.

And they have invented a name to help understand God. Because some things are in the Bible that they can't understand. And so the only thing they can do is pull out a Greek word. Anthropomorphic. Anthropomorphic. You could use anthropomorphism because it's a state of what they think. But anthropomorphic is human characteristics ascribed to God. It's the only thing they can explain. It's the only thing we can because we don't, hopefully, try to define God.

How would you define something that cannot be defined? You can. You can look like an idiot. Or just argue the point and think you are so right. Because they use that phrase when they read that God's footstool is earth.

Isaiah 66.1. The earth is God's footstool. How big is that foot? Maybe it's a colloquialism. Maybe it's just a phrase. No, Isaiah is describing the awesomeness of God and how puny we little humans are. And he knew. Have to do is read the book of Isaiah to find that out. Now, David understood in Psalm 8 and verse 3, he talks about what? The works of God's fingers. Fingers.

Right? Does God have fingers? He's described as having fingers. You know, beauty about God. He can have fingers if he wants to have fingers. He didn't want to have fingers. He didn't have fingers.

He can be, say, do anything he wants. When we understand that, we'll understand the awesomeness of God. But too many times we want to bring him down here to an earthly level.

As he tried to tell, as he tried to tell Solomon, you can't build a house that contains meat. You just had an essence of him. And that was more than they could stand. That's more than they could take. It's just an essence of him. And he would show up in the essence.

The heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon, and the stars. David was trying to put together that God just, he just point.

He could move a star. He could move. He could make one. He could do anything. When he created them, he just did this. God gave him that revelation in Psalm 8, verse 3.

He understood. He knew from being in the military, you move a man over here, and he goes. You point over here, he goes. He does. He's saying that, God, look at those stars. Look at everything there. If he wanted the earth to have five moons, it'd have five moons.

What would we do if we got up in the morning and there were five moons? Yeah. It sure makes us rethink, well, it blows the world's mind. Oh, the world's coming to pieces. We've got to do it. He chooses not to at this time. He has a purpose for all this being worked out. It is why David had to write, What is man? Thou shalt be mindful of him. When he understood, God was giving him this understanding of what he can do and how great and awesome he is. And David felt a little bit of that when he had to, as a teenager, kill a bear and a lion. With what?

It wasn't a sling. Did he do it with his bare hands?

Don't know what he did.

But he didn't need a sling. When he fought a giant, God said, God said, go out there. God put that in his mind. You think he said, who is this uncircumcised, philistine, defies the armies of the living God and his brothers and everybody go, what's wrong with this boy? Yeah, but he knew.

You think if he just whispered it, that Saul was going to let him go out there? No. Saul saw something. Saul at one time had God's spirit. Saul knew it!

He knew it. He knew something was powerful. That's what scared him to death the rest of his life. What is man that thou shalt be mindful of him? Do you think God wants you to be mindful of him?

Why were we created in his image? Why? It was his plan. A horse is not in his image. A cow is not in his image. And I like that cows are not in his image because I like to eat cow.

Yes, but God made us so that we could in the best of us, the greatest of us, can begin to understand God. Or let me put it another way. We can try to understand God. And he wants us to try to understand him. That's why he said, we're going to be like him. We're going to be like him.

That's why I think this message to me is important. It helps me to see. It helps me to focus. God is not finite, which means he is limitless.

See, it is impossible for a limited mind to grasp the unlimited. I don't know if you have ever met someone that understands a science to such a degree that when they're done, you can't even understand what they're talking about. And that's not anything compared to the greatest mind compared to God.

It's impossible for a limited mind to understand the unlimited. The same way it's impossible in many ways for an unconverted person to understand the Holy Spirit and what it's trying to teach. And that's why we can't mock that because they don't understand.

You're getting into the area of God.

It's not their fault. Just like it's not my fault because I don't ever understand everything in this Bible. I've tried 50 years. I don't understand everything. My old black Bible I've had for 50 years or 40 something years. It still has question marks all through it because I haven't figured that out. God has not revealed that to me yet. Half of those question marks have been answered in that Bible. The other half, I have to wait on God because it's too deep because man has not been able to answer those things.

He says in 1 Corinthians 2.10 that we may have the mind of God. And we can understand these things. We can understand it once we have the mind of God. And there are people who have had a great understanding. God isn't, or God isn't, is not limited by matter, space, or time. Thought about that? That's not limited by matter.

There's no bone. There's no flesh. Space. He can be here. And he can be a trillion miles away and not even a second.

He's not limited to what a Ford Maverick can drive.

He's not limited by any car, by any plane, by anything.

That's hard for most people to see. How he could walk through walls when God was resurrected.

Where'd you go? How'd you do that? One day we're going to know how he did it. Why are we going to know? Because we're going to be doing it. Because we're going to be like him. That's survival. I'm not selling you a bill of goods. I'm not selling you eternity. I'm not selling you any of it. It's here. It's what the Bible says.

God gives us a brain. And it depends on who you read, who you study, and I've studied all this at one time. There was a favor saying that we only use 10 percent of the capacity of our brain. We only use 10 percent. Well, they found out that's not really true. That may be 20, it may be 30. Some may say 50, and some may say 75 percent of our brain. It depends. Depends on who you read. Okay. But if we have 100 percent, we use 100 percent of our brain, we're still not even in the ballgame.

Not even close.

God is greater than the mind itself because he created the mind. The mind was just this little thing he put in Adam. He created. He put it in there. It's just a little thing. He knows exactly why it works. He knows exactly why your brain doesn't work sometimes. And sometimes our brain doesn't work, does it? We're going, what's wrong with this thing? Oh, God knows. That's why God doesn't have a brain like this.

Because God's brain is so much greater because he knew. He still knows everything. A.I. Some people say, well, A.I. and this artificial intelligence is going to take over the world. No, it's not. No, it's not. God's going to let it go, however. He'll, hey, you want to play with this? You want to have another God here? You go ahead and have another God. You got to understand, A.I. is not the first God that people thought would run the world.

We had many of them who thought they could run the world. Never could never run the world first.

He found out how to be a vegetarian the hard way.

So I don't want to be vegetarian. I don't want to be. I don't need to eat grass.

God cannot be conceived by our minds. His greatness isn't finite. Nothing on earth can define God. The least bit. Because everything is limited. And God isn't. Everything on this earth is limited. Your time on this earth is limited. God's not. And he even says, you want to get away from that? Would you like to join me? I remember the old country song growing up. I heard it on my dad's radio. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. God says you can have eternity. It's something I have and you can't have unless I give it to you.

I did hear this week. I was telling Mary about it. I heard this guy describing it on the... gave his name and everything, but I was just driving and then the story just hit me. He's a billionaire. And so he has some type of cancer that's terminal. So he has decided since he has the money, he can hire researchers that he is. He now has a Petri dish set aside. He is cloning himself. He is going to be the first clone. Nobody can stop him because he's rich enough. He's going to clone himself and he thinks he has enough time that he can become that person, the same person from that clone. And then he will replicate this same process many times so he keeps clones set aside for body parts so that he can take those body parts and live forever. Healthy body parts being put in all the time so that he will stay alive forever.

He wants to be God. He wants to be God. He wants to be like God.

Amazing. Do you think it's going to work?

Boy, people would love for it to work, wouldn't they? Because then the only thing that keeps a lot of people grounded is they might die.

What was it? Napoleon said? Napoleon said, I love religion because without it these people would come and kill us.

It keeps people moral as they might die. And religion tells you you're going to die. But then they tell you you can go up to heaven.

God's love and mercy isn't limited either.

Am I correct?

His love and mercy isn't limited. I believe that. It's limitless.

It's yours.

It's yours. We're wanting to be like God. Can we have that mercy that He has? Hestid, says in the Old Testament, shows mercy for God so loved the world, even those nasty, disgusting Samaritans, that He gave His only Son to die for all those. For the most wicked person that has ever lived, He'll let him die because He wants them to have a chance at eternity. That blows our minds.

We're not supposed to understand that yet.

You may say, oh, I can forgive. I can...

It has a limit. It has a limit.

Psalm 103 and verse 17. Psalm 103 verse 17. The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. Isn't that a beautiful thing? Mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. Upon those who fear Him... You fear Him?

Then you will have everlasting mercy. If you don't, you won't.

You say, why do I struggle with man? That's why He took him from living a thousand years down to 120. He said, I'm not going to strive with him anymore. I've got to put a limitation on him because they just love to be evil. That's what He said in Genesis. Everlasting, forever, eternal, always. Do we understand that?

We must. We have to understand it because we have all these love songs that say, I love you forever. And this is human love, and I'll love her forever and ever and ever. Amen.

No, we don't. You can say it. We don't. So how long is that going to be? Let's take 50, 60 years. That's about as long. I did hear somebody that they were married. I saw a picture of them. He was 103 and she was 102, and they've been married like 82 years.

Now, to me, that's about forever.

Right? I mean, my understanding, I mean, we can say, you can say all these things, oh, until the oceans fall away and all the mountains and all this stuff on it. You can't understand that. About 80 years. 70, 80 years. That's about it. God says, that's nothing. God says, you don't. 70, 80 years. That's a blink of my eye. Why? Because he's God.

God isn't material. There's nothing material about God. He's spirit. He can make himself immaterial. He did it many times. The Old Testament, New Testament, he can do it, but no, he's not. There's no carbon. There's no organic matter. Not with God.

With God, is there any atoms there?

We don't know. Can you measure spirit? Christ said you certainly couldn't. You can see it blow through the trees like wind, but you can't see it.

Imagine that. God isn't human. Not in the least.

Humans live by time. God doesn't.

God created time for humans, didn't he? You want to argue that? I don't think Bible, you can't win that argument.

Think about that.

He made time for humans. We can't understand, and he says with him, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Can you understand how an hour is like a day?

I've had moments that way.

Yeah, having to wait at the DMV. You know? Felt like it was a day, but it was only a few hours. But with God a thousand years is like the total of man's existence is six days.

We can't understand, but we will, because then we can grasp eternity. God, even if you wanted to, you can't give him a birthday cake. Why? Because he was never born. You can't give him a funeral because he's never done anything. See, that's how we understand things. God never had a birthday.

Wow, isn't that amazing? I mean, it's beautiful. But this is who. He is so great, so awesome. That's why Isaiah goes in, Ezekiel goes in. All these prophets go in to try to tell you, because he just gave them this little bitty sight into him.

And they saw it, and it was awesome. Hey, I'm going to do the best I can to describe it, which is not very good. It's the best thing we got. It's the best we have.

I'm going to wrap this up.

You know one of the most beautiful things you and I can do, and I speak for myself, and many of you hopefully have experienced it, or if you have not, you will, because it's so very, very important. Just to go out on a clear night and see the stars.

And then, you know what's beyond those stars?

Space. Deep space. Incredible pictures that go deep and deep and deep. This is just the foreground of God's throne. We can't even go back. We can't even get that far. We can't get to that third heaven. We just get this.

And if you have time and you have a 5G or you have 4G, go in there, turn all the lights out, and get these pictures from YouTube, or get them from these places, and look. Just sit there and look at it, because that's what God has surrounding him.

All the time.

And we can't even reach it. All we can do is just go to the very end and use the most powerful thing we can get and then try to get something.

That's what we do. That's the best we can do. But, you know, it is awesome to help us understand that. It is awesome to see it. Just to sit there and just watch. Watch. Because they have some beautiful photography now. That's just awesome. From our probes that have gone out. That's what God hangs out. Isaiah 51, verse 8, said, My righteousness will be forever. My righteousness will be forever. That's why he's called the Ancient of Days. He's been hanging around this stuff for eternity. And he says, you know what, some day, you won't be bound by Earth's atmosphere. You won't be by oxygen. You will be bound by that. Because I'm going to give you a turn. You're going to be like me, and you're going to be able to travel through space like this so you can understand the awesomeness. See, we're not done. God can't learn, but we can, because we have. We will still be able to go, wow, I thought I knew you. Oh, it's so much bigger. So much bigger. Rather than time marks the beginning of created existence. You thought about that then? And because God never began to exist, it doesn't apply to Him. Time doesn't mean anything. God doesn't wear a Rolex. He doesn't have a time axe. He doesn't need a watch. He'll never wear a watch. Why? Because He doesn't keep time like we do. Oh, He made time. He will change time. He will change everything. When He comes here, and this earth is burned up, and everything is spirit, and the kingdom comes to here, everything will be changed. Time will not be as we understand it. That's why I had to be spirit to understand it. I had a guy tell me one time after I gave a sermon at Feast on the last day about it, he said, I don't know if I want that.

I kind of like the earth the way it is.

I was speechless, and I'm never speechless. But that's what He wants. God will give Him that. If that's what He really wants, and He can't get the picture, God will let Him have it. He'll let Him have this as this is it. Yes. He's not going to deny Him, so He'll get the earth as long as it exists. Isaiah 57 and verse 15. And that says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity. God's trying to explain. He inhabits eternity. He always exists. He always will.

Finally, in the last scripture, Isaiah 46 and verse 9. It says, For I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me. Now, you may say, well, wait a minute. There's the Son, and there's like, you know, there's, wait a minute, there's God the Father, and there's God the Son. There's none other like me. No, they're one God. They're one person.

That's hard for people, but what does the rest of the verse say?

There's none like me declaring the end from the beginning. You just can't take part of the scripture and go, oh, well, yeah, I found fault with that. Declare. There's no one else who is eternal who can declare the end from the beginning. Even when we have eternal life, we can't declare it because we had a beginning.

He and the Word never had a beginning.

That is an awesome, awesome thought.

Moses taught us in Psalm 90, so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. God will never be limited by numbers. Why did he inspire Moses to write that? So that we can see just how awesome he is. When we number our days, and he promises us eternal life where days will never be numbered, we see just how truly awesome he is, and we see the awesomeness of his promise.

We have just begun.

In two weeks, I'll be back to tell you again what God isn't.