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THE CHARACTER OF GOD
By Ed Decker, President of Saints Alive
We talk a lot about God.
Some of it is good talk and some of it isn't. Some of thetime, the way we use the name of God is not just disrespectful, but even downright blasphemous. The Greeks declared that the greatest activity of man was to think. And,from the Christian perceptive, the greatest thinking anyone could do is to think aboutGod. That is the greatest activity of man.As we read the things that men incorrectly say to God and about God, we need to think concerning the true nature and character of God. It is very important that we spend sometime here, because this is where the cults step away from sound doctrine and go off ontheir many tangents from the truth. Most of them break down on the doctrine of God.A. W. Tozier said "Worship is pure or base as one entertains high or low thoughts of God."He also said that "we tend, by some secret law of the soul, to move towards a mentalimage of God. What you think about God will directly affect how you live as well as howyou worship." The sad thing is that too many people have too small a concept of God, aninadequate view of God.Tozier said, "an inadequate view of God is actually idolatry. To worship God or toworship anything less than what God has revealed Himself to be is idolatry."
It fits what we have seen throughout the world.
 
So many millions of people bowing before little stone images of their gods. Were we tomake a statue of Buddha that was 100 times the size of the largest Buddha in the world, itwould still be a little idol, compared to the God who created the whole universe. To whatend? Siddhartha Gautama Buddha still lies in his grave, dead and unrisen.There are many humanists and many philosophers today who seek to study God fromman's viewpoint. We have the study of the philosophy of religion, the anthropology of religion, and the psychology of religion. Man, beginning with the image of himself, as the
 
model, seeks to define what God is like. And man beginning from himself, can onlyarrive at a very small concept of God.This is where we end up in many of our aberration theologies, such as pantheism, deismand a variety of other concepts. J. D. Phelps wrote the book, "Your God is too Small" because he felt that too many people have an entirely inadequate view of God. The morereasonable question is to ask is "What has God revealed to us concerning himself?"If we merely look at it from man's viewpoint we will run into the danger that C. S. Lewistells about concerning a wise mystical barnacle. He tells the story of a barnacle that wasat the bottom of the ocean. One day he gathered his disciples around him and in amoment of religious vision, he got a glimpse of what man was like. And he began toexpound to his disciples what his concept of man was. He said first of all that man doesnot have a shell, that man is not attached to a rock, and that he is not surrounded by water.Well, some of his disciples were able to grasp some of what man was like.But as the time passed, the barnacles began to speculate on the nature of man. And theytaught in their philosophy of man and their psychology of man that man must be, since hehas no shell, a shapeless blob of jelly. And since he is not attached to a rock, he obviouslyhas no location and he must not eat since there is no water surrounding him to float foodto him. And obviously man is far less definite than a barnacle, and from the barnacles'viewpoint, from their own environment and their nature, they extrapolated an extremelylimited and warped concept of man.We have that same danger if we begin with ourselves in order to discover what God islike. It is most probable that we, too, will end up with an extremely limited and warpedconcept of God which will be far less than what He truly is.What we must do in our study is to see what God has revealed to us concerning Hisnature. God has given us the scriptures for one purpose: He gave us the Bible, Hisrevelation, to reveal His nature and character to us. As you go through the scriptures yousee God revealing Himself to us. If you read the book of Jonah, it is relating God'suniversal love for mankind and His desire to bring mankind to a relationship with Him. Inthe book of Genesis, we read, concerning God's creation and also about God's judgment.If you read the book of Hosea, it tells us concerning God's overwhelming compassion andlove for mankind. In the book of Amos we read about God's righteousness. In Micah, weread about God's justice. In Isaiah, we read about His holiness and His redemptive love.In the book of John, we discover that God loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die for us, to redeem us from the curse of sin. As you go throughout thescriptures, God reveals to us who He is and how we can know Him.Let's briefly look at God's personal revelation to us concerning His nature so that wemight have an accurate concept of what God is like, so that rather than worshippingsomething less than who He is, we might lift up God as He has revealed Himself.
 
God is Spirit
We first discover that the Bible declares that God is spirit, life and personality. Jesus tellsus in John 4:24 that "God is Spirit." Now the logical question is "What is a spirit?" InLuke 24:39, after he was raised from the dead, his astonished disciples thought he was aspirit. Jesus told them, "Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see;a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." When he asked his discipleswho they thought he was, he again opened a window so they could see the true nature of God.
"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Simon Peter answered,"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus replied,"Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven." 
 (Matt. 16: 15-17 )This is not something that man had to wait until New Testament days to discover aboutGod. In the book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 4, verse 12, we find something interesting."Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw noform; there was only a voice." They heard the sound of words, but saw no form, only avoice.God's declaration of Himself and His very nature continued in Verse 15:
"You saw no form of any kind the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire.Therefore watch yourselves very carefully." 
Now listen to this, as the Word continues with God's warning to any whowould corrupt His very nature:
"...so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape,whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that fliesin the air,or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars --all theheavenly array --do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshipping things the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.
(Deut. 4:16 -19)
God spoke to Moses out of the fire.
 Moses heard only a voice. There was no man standing there in the flames, but God, whosays He is Spirit was there.
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