Who is God? - Part 2

The following message is presented by John Elliott, a minister in the United Church of God. In the first part of this series, we saw in Scripture that God is conveyed to us in a Godhead concept of two persons that are very one. Two that are one. Now, that's a concept that really baffles humans. What is oneness? What is oneness when you have two?

And humans dive all over that and come up with various theories. And they look in the Scriptures and they want to cut and paste and come up with various things to support their theory. Oneness is a relationship that is attainable by the Godhead, by spiritual God beings. Let me say that again. Oneness is something that is attainable by spirit God beings.

It's not unusual that humans cannot understand something that is spiritual, that is of the spirit, that is between the two-person Godhead. It's a conundrum to humans who are every man for himself. The human state is, I want this for me and me and me. What's this oneness? You guys must be counting. One and one is one. How do you do that?

What Jews did was that they came up with something called monotheism. There can only be one God. Now the Scripture didn't say that so they had to go in and make some changes. Others come up and say, well, maybe this is a bi-entity. You have uni, like the Unitarians, the monotheists.

That's one idea. Then you have the bi, the two and one. You still end up with one. Then you have the tri, the Trinitarians. Somehow we've got to mash three into one. But we're still trying to count one and God is one. There are other ones. There are others that stretch out and say, okay, now, I think God is just everything.

It's all God. It's just an ever presence that's one. What are any of these things? They're man-made concepts to try to wrap themselves around a concept of oneness that is divine.

In the time before and after Jesus, the monotheistic Jews were busy copying the Old Testament for a living. You had an original text and then you had a room full of people who made their money by copying that text very carefully. Over hundreds of years of doing this, you ended up with a sect around...

call it a sect, maybe you could call it a company, called the Maserites, whereby we have the Masoretic text. They were very careful as they copied this in various details. There were several schools. They made little variations among the schools. They were very careful. But you know when you're doing it generation after generation and you're looking at the same words and you have this theory about oneness, you just really want to change something, don't you?

And so they changed 134 places in the Bible. They changed the name of God. And then in another 14 places, they changed the name of God to something else. And they thought, now this fits. You see, coming up with these ideas about who is this individual, which one is that, who is this, how they're one, whose name is this...

If you don't understand oneness, you're going to come up with a whole bunch of humanistic theories. God is spirit.

The point is, it's nothing new that humans try to reconcile God, the names of God, the concept of oneness, to some human-initiated idea. It's very limited. God and Christ are individual beings. Two totally separate beings.

We see in the New Testament, one says to the other, you're my son in whom I'm well pleased. The other prays back, God glorify me with the glory that we had together. One individual doesn't do that to himself. So God is too very... The Godhead is too very distinct to beings. And yet, their roles and responsibilities are unique.

And yet, they have this oneness that once again confuses humans. They also share names in Scripture. And that confuses people. Humans have theories, however. And there's one statement that is used as proof text for one God. It's Deuteronomy 6, verse 4.

Here, God is speaking to Israel as it came out of a polytheistic false pagan culture called Egypt. Egypt had so many gods of so many kinds. They had the god that made the sun. It was a dung beetle. They saw it turn around backward and with hind legs it would grab a piece of dung and roll it into a ball. And they said, oh, that's the god that rolled it up to the horizon and made the sun.

You know, cows and birds and sacred ebeests and all these things. They're not gods. So God brings Israel out of Egypt, comes to Sinai and gives them the Ten Commandments. In Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, right after giving the Ten Commandments, God says, here, O Israel, I'm talking to you now. My people, I've called you out of these foreign concepts. He was going to take them into Cain and he said, beware, there's a lot of other gods there. And Assyria has their own gods and Babylon has their own gods and the Medo-Persians have their own gods. The Greek will have. Everybody's got gods. In fact, when Christianity started, there were so many gods, they just sort of gathered them all up and called them saints. And even today, wherever you go around the world and you have a certain Christian religion, you'll have the local gods, now called saints, typically. But it's all encouraged, you see.

How many real gods do you think there are? Well, let's look right here in Deuteronomy 6, verse 4. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Strongs says, the Lord is only. The Lord is alone. The Lord is united. The Lord is one in that sense.

Now you pluck that scripture out, and then here comes monotheism, Unitarianism, Bina-terrism, Trinitarianism, whatever. Whatever the concept is. But you also can have the... Well, we could use this and say, Oh, look, the Lord, all caps, Yahweh is our God. Oh, he's our God. And the Lord, Yahweh is only one. And so therefore, you can develop this theory. Follow any one of these theories and start using scripture to support your theory. Does it work? Does it work? No. It's foolishness with God. The Shema, which this verse is often called, has the context of the Ten Commandments. Let's look at the Ten Commandments, just back up to Deuteronomy, chapter 5, and verse 7. Remember all the false gods that exist. And today, the world is filled with false gods, religiously and physically, materialistically. I think one of the biggest gods of people today is called a smartphone with apps. And people serve this God. And they do, you know, a bayessence to this God. So, I mean, the world is filled with gods, right? And so here's what God says. Deuteronomy 5, 7. You shall have no other gods. Small g, the word, by the way, is Elohim. You shall have no other gods before me. Verse 9, for I, the Lord, Yahweh, your God, Elohim, am a jealous God, El. Brown Driver Briggs defines El as God, the one true God, Yahweh. You have all these names. The Godhead, though, is the only true God. And it says one. It's the only. Can you think of another real God out there? Think of them. Which one would it be? You think the big old statue over here that you see in Asia? You think another one over there? You think the one that supposedly skipped off a rock here? I mean, which one of these gods is a real God? God, it says. God here is the only one. The context here is that God is a jealous God, and anything except God is nothing. It's false. There is no other God. Can you count one? Can you come up with one? There isn't one. So he says in this context, in the following chapter in verse 4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is the only one. That's what that word can mean. One. The Lord is the only one. He is alone. There aren't two. Everything you just left in Egypt and everything you're heading for in Canaan isn't real. God included in Achilles' heel to any fallacy that goes beyond what he says. That Achilles' heel was made by God. It's found in Psalm 110, verses 1-5. Any other theory that someone comes up with and wants to describe this or that to God, etc., etc., the Father, to Jesus Christ, all these things are stopped right here. Psalm 110, verse 1.

Now, I'm sorry if this gets a little complex, but this is God's proof text for him being our Godhead, not some specific individual. This is given to us as solid proof. Let's look at it. Beginning in verse 1, a psalm of David, The Lord, now this is Yahweh, and it's referring to the Father, said to my Lord, this is the word adon, sometimes translated adonai, The Lord, the Father, said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. Now we know who sits at the right hand of God the Father. It's the one today that is Jesus Christ. Previously, the word, the logos, and God the Father always sat on the throne. They always had the glory, always had, and if you look in Revelation, you'll find they still are sitting on the throne, and they always will have the glory. So these two, one says to the other, Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. Now some would say, oh, YHWH Yahweh here is always the Father in Scripture, and adon, or adonai, is always the word Jesus Christ. You got that? Just hold on to that for a minute and see if that will stand in this passage, because God's about to shatter it. Verse 4, The Lord Yahweh has sworn and will not relent. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. So the Lord YHVH is saying to Adon here, You are a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. We know from the New Testament that is Jesus Christ. Moving on, verse 5. Now here's the kicker. Verse 5, The Lord YHWH, the Lord Yahweh, is at your right hand. Who is at the right hand of God? Yahweh is at the right hand of Yahweh. That's what the passage says. Yahweh is at the right hand of Yahweh. The reason why it's not capitalized in your Bible is because the Maserites in the 8, 7, 800, 900 BC decided to change that word. They didn't like that. It didn't fit with their monotheism. To have Yahweh saying to Yahweh, Sit at my right hand, and Yahweh saying to Yahweh, You're going to reign. You're going to come back and rule and reign. So they changed it. They changed it to add-on to match verse 1. Now that just creates an interesting scenario. By their changing it to add-on, they now have used a name that's 400 times or more used in the Old Testament for the Godhead. That didn't accomplish anything. Let's look at this. 134 times they did this, plus another 14 times they changed. They changed Elohim to Yahweh in 2 Samuel. You just can't mess with the Word of God. Don't be changing the Word of God. Here's what it says. If you try to follow this false human logic that Yahweh is God the Father and add-on is Jesus Christ, go to Psalm 8 and verse 1. Psalm 8 and verse 1, it says the same thing in verse 9, by the way. O Lord Yahweh, our Lord add-on. Uh-oh. Just shot it right there, didn't it? Yahweh is add-on and add-on is Yahweh. Joshua 3, verse 9 through 11. In Joshua 3 and verse 9 through 11, all the names of God used at the same time for the same individual being spoken of. Joshua 3, verse 9. So Joshua said to the children of Israel, Come here and hear the words of the Lord Yahweh, your God Elohim. And Joshua said, By this you shall know that the living God El, which Strong says is God the one true God Yahweh, is among you. Now whose is the ark of the covenant? Verse 11, Behold the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth. Who is the Lord? Lord there is add-on.

God and the Godhead do not sort of parse words and try to describe how that Godhead that functions in a loving, unified way to serve us is broken apart somehow into exclusive names, exclusive roles, that somehow we can follow to understand what God is. We are humans. Add-on here is Yahweh, Elohim, and El. So last year the Doctrine Committee of the Council of Elders made a recommendation to the Council since the Hebrew names of God are not exclusive to the Father or to Jesus Christ.

The Doctrine Committee, the Doctrine Committee, the Doctrine Advisory Committee, the Prophecy Advisory Committee all recommended to the Council that we do not use the statement that Jesus was the God of the Old Testament. Nor really should we use the statement, God the Father was the God of the Old Testament, because the Bible isn't written that way. God didn't write it that way.

And God's Word says otherwise. So now let's proceed in this series from who is God to what is God. You know, we are humans and we would like to know more about our God. What is God? That's the topic we'd like to delve in today. First, the Bible speaks of the invisible God. Well, that tells us something right off. We're not going to know a whole lot about what God is in spiritics. That's a word I've coined, because you have physics, right, for the physical realm. So I think you should have spiritics for the spiritual realm.

All the laws of spiritics. Do you know any of the laws of spiritics? I don't know a single one. We just don't know. We're not spirit. Jesus said spirit beings are sort of like the wind. Ever seen the wind? I have not. You can see what it does sometimes, but it's kind of clear. So we're not given a lot of understanding about what God is composed of, what energy source he has, does he need vitamin C, does he have to eat so many calories a day to have all that brightness?

See, we're just not clued in a lot. In fact, John says that we don't even know what we will be. We just know that we'll be like him. God dwells in what is called the heavenly dimension. It's not necessarily a destination, it's a dimension.

We don't even know where the heavenly dimension is. We as earthlings tend to think, well, if you head north, eventually you'll run into heaven and you'll find God. Nope. God's spirit. He lives in a spirit dimension. And we just don't know much about that spirit dimension. No one has ever been there except Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came and said, I'm the only one that's been there, and I'm going back.

So what can we know about God? In John 1, verse 18, No one has seen God the Father at any time. Take it as it said twice in the Bible, no one has ever seen God at any time. Now, if you're careful with the Bible, when Jesus told the Jews who were trying to kill him that you have neither seen nor heard God the Father, He's talking about them not recognizing Him as the Messiah, and thus they're not seeing and they're not hearing God the Father when they see Him.

But He says to the disciples a little later on, from now on you have both seen and you do see the Father from now on, because they saw Him. He was the representation. But as far as John 1 here in verse 18, no one has seen the Father at any time. That means He wasn't seen by Moses on Mount Sinai.

That means He wasn't seen anywhere, anytime, by anyone, including Ezekiel, whom He showed Himself to. He spoke with Moses face to face. We do have a slight description of the heavenly realm, the spiritics, if it were. You don't get to see the laws of the spirit realm, but you get to see the mechanisms in Ezekiel chapter 1. Ezekiel 1 is a fascinating book, or fascinating chapter, that has about three chapters where God, either through vision or literally, lets Ezekiel see Him.

So this can't be God the Father. All the colors that are mentioned here, you have to understand, are using colored stones because they didn't have colored lights. Before Edison, you didn't have a light bulb. Colored lights just didn't exist. So you could take a stone up and hold it up to a light source, a sun or something, and you could say, oh, I see this and it kind of reminds me of a barrel or a sapphire or an onyx, because it's that color.

So we have all these living creatures, wheels within wheels, a spirit that sort of drives the thing, and eyes in wheels. And the wheels, He says, how big are the wheels? They're really huge! And that's kind of the glimpse we get. Let's break in here in verse 26 of Ezekiel 1.

It's like amber with the appearance of fire all around within it. So it's a bright sort of amber light. Verse 28, it's not quite like amber, like the appearance of a rainbow. There's lots of colors. I mean, a rainbow is light. He's trying to say here it's light, like a rainbow is light and bright. In a cloud on a rainy day, so is the appearance of the brightness all around.

This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord, of Yahweh, of God. So God is very, very bright. Did you get any specific descriptions here? Didn't really, huh? We didn't really. We can see what is God through a hazy lens, as it were. And Ezekiel's doing his very best here for us to put into human terms what he's seeing.

If we skip forward to chapter 3 and verse 12, after he's seen this, Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me a great thunderous voice. Blessed is the glory of the Lord from his place. Here's the glory of Yahweh from his place. Ezekiel has seen this. And I also heard the noise of the wings of the living creatures that touched one another, and the noise of the wheels beside them, and a great thunderous noise.

And then he's finished seeing what he saw. God's invisible spirit qualities are not seen by us, nor are they the focus of the Bible. And as much as we might want to know about that, remember what John came down to. This is essentially, if you want to know, show up.

We don't know, but we know that when he is revealed, we'll be like him, for we shall be like he is, whatever that is. We just need to be there and be like him. So since God's invisible qualities aren't going to be revealed to us, let's ask this question. What does God do? Who is he? What is God? What are his plans? What are his intentions?

In the next series, we'll ask, why were you born? What are God's plans for you and me? Today I'd like to examine three components of God. It's what is God? The title of the sermon is, Who is God? Part 2, What is God? I know it's a little confusing, but we're looking at who is God, in the context of what exactly is God? The answer to the question, what is God, actually hides in plain sight. You know how they say sometimes things are just hidden right there in plain sight?

I asked Mary yesterday for a tool that was in our kitchen drawer because I needed to use this tool as we were cooking. And I looked in the drawer, and I knew it needed to be in the drawer. And I closed the drawer, and I opened the drawer, and I looked again, and I looked in the dishwasher and it wasn't there. And I looked in one other place that wasn't there, and I finally said, Mary, where's that tool? She says, it's in the drawer. I opened the drawer, it was right there in the middle of the drawer.

You know, sometimes you just don't see it because you're looking for something else. I had a little different picture in my mind of what I was looking for, and that didn't match it because maybe it was on its side instead of right side up. Sometimes we look in God's Word, and we're looking for something a little different. Usually we're looking for something that's about me. And we miss something that God's saying about something else. When I say hiding in plain sight, it's the world's most popular Bible verse. Can you guess what it is? John 3, verse 16. Let's go there. John 3, verse 16. Here is what God is stated to us, but we don't tend to see it because we're looking for something else.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him but should not perish would have everlasting life. And when we read those words, we're like, oh, good, everlasting life. I won't perish. God loved me.

What we don't miss or what we don't see is what He's saying here. Let's notice what God is. God so loved the world. God is love. God is a type of love, though, that we don't understand. God loved the world and the world didn't exist. God loved the world and the world is small. The world is very transient. We only live a few years. We are miniscule compared to a God being. God loved the world by humbling Himself to create something temporary and then to serve it with everything He had, with all of His creative abilities, and then with all of the Godhead, He gave His only begotten Son everything He had, who gave all of Himself everything He had. And why did He do this? He did it to create something that didn't exist, an opportunity for you and me to have all that they have. You and I don't think like this. We can't even wrap our heads around that. You have everything that a God being has. You have the entire spirit universe. And you want to essentially do yourself in, take all of your time, give everything you have so that you can give it away. And all kinds of other people who are miniscule can have everything you have. Your form, your power, all of the things you own, your entire inheritance, and co-share the power. As Jesus said in Revelation 2, As God has given Him the power to reign and rule, He will give us the power over the nations. That is beginning to understand what God is. And we can't really, as human beings, understand this until something happens. We'll get to that in a minute. But He gave His only begotten Son. There's a lot right there. The Son hadn't been begotten yet. This was a plan for His own right-hand individual in the Godhead to experience what you and I experience and be a forerunner, a first fruit, a pioneer, the one that shows the way, the one who gets it done, the one who accomplishes it. That whoever believes in Him should not perish would have everlasting life. Everlasting life being a life in the spirit realm, the spirit world with God. These are huge. The word God here is the word theos. Theos, lexicon, defines it this way. God, theos, is the Godhead. In some cases it's the Father. In some cases it's Jesus Christ. In other things it's the things of God. You see how this continuation of the use of the terms for God are about the Godhead and not exclusive terms? Here, of course, it's referring to God the Father. Let's go now to 1 John 3, verse 16. It says, God so loved the world, is that exclusively God the Father? That He gave His only begotten Son? 1 John 3, 16. Same Scripture, just add a 1 in front of John. By this we know love. God is love, and we're now getting to know God, but it's a process of getting to know God because He laid down His life for us. So Jesus Christ loves the world so much that He gave His life for us. We still don't understand, but here's how you begin to understand God. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

You begin to understand love, and that God is love by becoming love yourself. By following God and taking through God's Holy Spirit, taking on the mindset of the God family, and giving and serving to others who are undeserving, who may be enemies. It doesn't matter, but giving them opportunities as well, opportunities for life and better life. So the first element here that we look at in what is God is, the Godhead is love, as we've just seen from 2 Scripture. The Godhead is love, outgoing love, sacrificial love, humble love, that offers something good to others.

God the Father and Jesus Christ have very distinct identities, as we just saw. One is the Father, the other is the Son. He gave His life. They have various roles. They accomplish various things for the purpose of love, for the purpose of their great plan. They're unified in mind, in service, in leadership, in love for others, but they are two very distinct beings. What describes what God is? Right here in 1 John, let's notice 1 John 4, verse 16. 1 John 4, verse 16. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love.

Now it begins to take it a little bit further than this in our understanding of what God is. God is love, yes. But He who dwells in love dwells in God and God in Him. Ah, this is how we know God. By having the love of God and by God dwelling in us through our spirit, but also us dwelling back in God and being God's, being His children, being part of the body of Jesus Christ as we're stitched together by that Holy Spirit, by the relationship that God gives us. Love binds the participants into oneness. One cannot understand oneness of God without being one with God. See? That's the conundrum that faces humans. They can never explain the oneness of God because they're not one with God. Does that make sense? And how can we be one with God? The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, oneness. The word peace, Greek, ereni, means stitched together. It is by loving, by having God's love through the spirit and the joy and the relationship that we are bound together in one with God. That's how we begin to understand what oneness is because God, His Spirit, His love binds the participants. It's vain to try to define God is one in a humanistic form. Unitarian, binitarian, monotheist, trinitarian, ether, whatever you want to come up with. But you can know what God is. How can you know what God is? God tells you. 1 John chapter 2 and verse 3. Here's how you and I can know this God, know His oneness, know His love.

Now, by this we know that we know Him. Here it is. Here's the formula. By this we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. Jesus Christ summarized all the law of God as being love, the Lord your God, with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might. The next is love your neighbor as yourself. All neighbors, as much as yourself.

That sets us with the mindset of the God family. It sets us off into that direction.

As we go on, He who says, I know Him and does not keep His commandments is a liar. You can't understand God. You can't know who God is. Verse 5, But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in Him. It grows, you see. Our knowledge of who God is and what God is grows. Our oneness with God grows.

By this we know that we are in Him. Now, verse 6, kick it up another notch. He who says He dwells in Him ought also Himself to walk just as He walked. You've got to be like God to understand God, to know God.

In John 17, verse 21, Jesus shows us that to understand one God, you have to be one with God. It's a spiritual union of the Godhead that they will share with us.

The oneness of God, the unique oneness, is of God only. But God wants to share that with you and me. John 17, 21. Jesus is praying to the Father. He says that they all may be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us.

That's hard to define. It sort of breaks apart monotheism, polytheism. It breaks apart all the concepts of Trinitarian and Binitarian and Unitarian.

We are distinct individuals like God as distinct individuals.

But there is a spiritual state that we are invited to and desire to have to be one in them that the world may believe that you sent me.

Verse 22, and the glory. Here it's referring, the glory of God is referring to the power of the Holy Spirit here. And the glory which you gave me I have given them that they may be one just as we are one. That Holy Spirit provides us with that mindset of love and joy and unity if we allow it to grow, lead us, develop us. The second point I'd like to bring out about what God is, the second element is the Godhead is truth. The Godhead is truth. Now, truth is a non-variable component of what God is. It can't be varied. There's no shadow of turning with God. There's no sort of, well, I said this, but, or we're going to do this, but we'll do something else.

To know God is to have His love and His truth and be His love and His truth. That's the only way you can know it. A good understanding have those who do God's law, not those who know it. No, we have a good understanding as we do God's law. It's hard to explain to someone how tithing works or how keeping the Sabbath works or how preparing for the Sabbath works. Almost anything that God tells us to do, it's hard to explain it to somebody who doesn't do it.

It's only through doing it that, oh, wow, I begin to realize here there are many layers and levels to this, and it all expands out and it all sort of attaches to all that God teaches. In Psalm 15, verse 1, David asks the question, who will be in the kingdom? And God here is very emphatic about who will and who will not be in the kingdom of God. It really shows us this important element of what God, the Godhead, is.

Psalm 15, 1, Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle? Who may dwell in your holy hill? Verse 2, He who walks uprightly, who works righteousness and speaks the truth in his heart. You have to walk uprightly and do right in God's eyes and speak the truth in your heart. Otherwise, no kingdom of God.

In Revelation 21, verse 5, God speaks at the conclusion of the Scripture of the Bible. Revelation 21, verse 5, Then he who sat on the throne, God, the Godhead has always sat on the throne, the Godhead always will sit on the throne, said, Right, for these things are true. Don't confuse God's truth with human logic. Human logic makes sense to humans. God's truth is truth. Human logic is professed by teachers. The Bible calls them false teachers. It makes sense to carnal human nature, but it's false. It's not true. God wants us to speak the truth in our heart, and He says, Right, for these things are true. It doesn't matter how enlightened society gets, or just how wonderful and loving they all get, sort of casting aside what God's laws, what His truth is. No, God is truth, and what He has written is truth. It's interesting, in Romans 3 verse 5, Paul made a statement. It's a great statement. After looking and seeing all of the Apostle Paul had seen, and all the people he'd been around, and all the discussions that people had in the Greek world, the Roman world, throughout Asia Minor, etc., all these ideas, he says this, Let God be true, but every man a liar. Now, it's not just sort of a nice statement. We should take that to heart, and make it a principle that we live by. Let God be true. This is truth, and any variation is false.

This is true, no matter what. No matter how tempting something else is, alluring it is. No matter how many false, lying wonders come along with it, and miracles. This is truth. And if we don't understand that God is truth, and that we need to be like God and be truth, then we're only here for a short time, and something will sweep us away.

God is truth. So let God be true. In your mind, always let God be true, and every man a liar that comes with anything else. Now, let's realize that there's one alternative to truth, and only one. There's only one other alternative to God's truth. There aren't ten. There's one. It's found in Revelation 21, verse 8. It just says this, All liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

There's the alternative to truth. It's death. Who's going to be in the lake of fire? All liars! Except the ones that had green lies and blue lies and white lies and nice lies and cute lies. No, all liars! Who's the father of lies? Satan the devil. In chapter 20 of Revelation, verse 10, Satan the devil is thrown in the lake of fire. All liars will have their part in the lake of fire, which is the second death. So that's the only alternative when we think of what God is. God is truth. The third point is God is right. God is always right. God, His word, His laws, His ways, they're always right. It doesn't matter what society brings up. It doesn't matter how compelling society is, how inclusive, how tolerant, how loving, and whatever society is. God is right. He is absolutely correct. No margin of error. No fringe. No gray areas. God is right. And righteous is the state of doing and being right. In contrast, humanity is corrupt. God is right. Humanity is not. But humanity will sell itself off as light and right. Once again, we need to know our God. We need to know who He is and what He is.

He is love, He is truth, and He is right. He is inviting us to be in the Godhead with Him. Let's look at Deuteronomy 32, verse 4.

Deuteronomy 32, verse 4.

Some of the descriptions of God and Jesus Christ would just say, the Godhead, include these.

Deuteronomy 32, verse 4. He is the rock. Now think of the rock. There's an island in the Mediterranean called the rock, Gibraltar. And when you look at the rock, it rises out of the sea. It's about all there is there is a rock. Now, one thing about that rock is, it doesn't move. You can have a really big ship and decide, you know what, I'm just going to knock that rock off. What do you think is going to happen to your ship? The rock is going to be fine. That's what God is. He doesn't move. He is love, He is truth, He is right. He doesn't change. There's no shadow or turning or little variance with God. God is the rock. His work is perfect. For all His ways are justice, a God of truth, and without injustice. Righteous and upright is He. So we see here this vital element of God is being right. And He's not going to move from that position. You and I need to see that humanism is wrong. Set your mind on these things as a fact. God is love. I need to be love. God is truth. I need to be truth. God is right. I need to be right. You know, I make it a daily part of my prayer to begin by asking God for His kingdom to come, for His will to be done, and help me today to be an agent of right and truth and love.

It puts the focus on what it is our day is to be about. Love and truth and right. And say, whoa, I need to be different than society because look at the next verse. Verse 5, they have corrupted themselves. They are not His children because of their blemish, a perverse and crooked generation. This world is perverse. It's crooked. It's all over the place. But it's not love, not true love. It's not truth, and it's not doing right. And the end is destruction. So again, God is absolutely correct. Put our mind on that. He is right. There's no margin of errors. Any other philosophy leads to death, leads to the lake of fire. So in conclusion, we've taken a look here at who God is and what God is so far. Let's go back to the beginning passage in Deuteronomy 6 and read a few verses of Deuteronomy 6. Here was Israel coming out of Egypt now and coming to this new God, as it were, a God they hadn't known, the one true God, the only real God, the God alone, as it were, the only God. In chapter 6 and verse 1, let's read this to not only physical Israel coming into a Promised Land, but the Israel of God, the Bride of Christ coming to a Promised Land that we are given, a heavenly country that we seek, the spirit dimension that you and I will enter when Christ returns and to have the glory and shine like the sun as He does. Deuteronomy 6 and verse 1, now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded you to teach you that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess. This is spoken to God's people, and in the new covenant we are crossing over from the physical realm to the spirit realm. You can read of this in 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul talks about the flesh cannot inherit the spirit realm, but we will be changed. Verse 2, that you may fear, that you may deeply respect the Lord your God. This is our God to keep all of His statutes, His commandments. Verse 3, therefore hear, O Israel, or O Israel of God, the new covenant church. Be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you. Verse 4, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is only, He is united, He is alone, the true God. Verse 5, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strengths. In these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. God has written His laws in our minds and in our hearts in the new covenant through the Holy Spirit. These are to be there. These are to guide us and also to compel us, to drive us, to motivate us, to be like God. When God and Christ dwell in your heart and you perform the commandments of love, then you understand who God is and what God is. You can only do that by being at one with the Godhead. Next time in Part 3 we'll examine who is man, examine who and why we temporarily exist.