What Is God Like?
Text: Isaiah 6:1-7 and Romans 11:33-36
In
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: Amen.
What
is God like? Yes, what is God like? Being asked this question, I am assuming that
your first inclination is probably not to recite and share the Athanasian
Creed. Yes, I assume that you are not
thinking about answering this question with the long creed that we confessed
today as a part of our Divine Service. But
rather, you are most likely thinking about ways to define God by using a
metaphor or a simile or an example.
But
there is a problem. No matter how we try
to define God or visualize God, we can only partly understand God. The reason why? We are finite and small and mortal, whereas God
is infinite and big and immortal. In
other words, God is not like a product that we can hold in our hands and then
examine with our naked eye. God cannot
be put under a microscope or dissected so that we can then write a description
and a review about Him. No way; no
how! We are not big enough, smart
enough, or supreme enough to be able to put God into our hands and then think
that we can fully grasp and understand Him.
Frankly stated, we are supremely arrogant if we think that we have fully
discovered the mysteries of God.
So,
what do we know about God then by our natural reasoning? Well, we can glean several things, but that
is about it. We can look to this world
that we live in and see the fingerprints of a creator in nature and our eco
system – we are not here because of an evolutionary mutation or a biological
accident. We can also examine our own
bodies and conclude that our bodies are extremely complex and are evidence that
we have been knit together by someone greater than ourselves. Simply stated, by viewing the beauty of
creation and the complexity of life – how wondrously constructed and wisely
arranged everything is – a person cannot help but conclude that all of this is ‘not’
the handiwork of mankind or the byproduct of chance, but the work of God. Only the fool says in his heart, “There is no
God.”
Now
considering this, if God is the Creator and Master of all that there is (i.e., the
creator of mankind, the world, and the universe), we can then conclude that we
are nothing more than a small drop in the bucket. Compared to the grand scheme of things, we are
nothing more than a small pawn. Or, we could
say that we are nothing more than a small insect compared to God. Indeed, if God holds this world in His hands,
in comparison, we are nothing more than small tiny insects that inhabit this
earth. No wonder why we can’t fully fathom
and understand the complexities and depths of God. No wonder why we live in fear of God’s wrath
as human beings – we are afraid of being crushed.
We
humans though can try and offset our fear of God and our tininess in the face
of God, through acting big and tough and unafraid. We can construct our buildings, create our
nations, and stand tall; however, we are all wiped to dust when earthquakes,
floods, and hurricanes destroy us. We really
are nothing before God. We are here
today and gone tomorrow; civilizations rise one century and fall apart the next,
only to be remembered in the pages of dusty books lying on shelves.
So
what is God like? Well, God is not like
us and apart from owing our existence to God, we find ourselves living in fear
of God, because He is big and we are small.
He is in charge and we are not.
But
certainly we should be able to know more about God than just this, right? That is the problem though. How can we know more about God when we are
like a bunch of tiny insects trying to understand one who is bigger, grander,
and more supreme than we can comprehend?
Dear
friends, I do not say this to be mean or rude or to cause you discomfort, but
you and I cannot comprehend God. Our
minds are too small, our vision is too weak, and our arms are too short to wrap
around God, which leaves us with the limited understanding that we have been
created and that we should be afraid of God.
All
of this stated there is another way though.
Yes, there is another way for us to understand and know God. That is to say, instead of us trying to get
to know God on our own terms and by our own efforts and by our own limited
intellectual reasoning, what if God came to us and revealed Himself to us? My dear friends, this is what God did. He came to us.
So,
when we are asked the question, ‘What is God like?’ our answer is that God is
like Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus we have
“a man who claimed to be God, said things that only God can say, did things
that only God can do, and accepted worship that belongs to only God.”[1] Yes, Jesus is God confronting us as a
man. Jesus is God expressed in human
terms. To know Jesus is to know
God.
This
changes everything, does it not? God
became man – He became one of us and dwelt in our midst. He taught, lived, and moved among us, which
means that we can behold His glory, glory as of the only-begotten of the Father
full of grace and truth.
As we
behold God in the flesh – Jesus Christ – what should then grasp us then is that
this God-Man did not come to be served by us insignificant peons, but rather,
He served us! He served us by going to
the cross of Mt. Calvary. Do not look
over this too quickly. The God of the
universe died for ungodly people like you and me and considered it well
worthwhile. He died for sinners.
Indeed,
Jesus gives us the answer of what God is like.
He shows us God is holy and just and also merciful and forgiving. Jesus shows us that God does not take sin
lightly, yet still cares for us because He chose to do something about that
very sin – it’s called the cross.
Furthermore
and towards the theme of today’s service, Jesus also shows us that God is
Triune. Yes, from Jesus we hear about
the Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God
now and forevermore. Not three gods and
not three substances, but three persons.
Now,
I would by lying to you if I said that this is easy for us to understand, for
it certainly is not. Again we are back
to where we were before, as mere mortals we cannot totally understand the
complexities of God; however, we confess these complexities of God as true
because Jesus confesses them as true… and Jesus is right because He rose from
the dead. That is to say, there is no
Heavenly Father for us other than the Heavenly Father of the Lord Jesus
Christ. There is also no other Holy
Spirit for us other than the Holy Spirit that is sent by Jesus.
What
this all means for us this morning on this Trinity Sunday is not it is necessary
to wrap our finite minds around the nature of God – to figure Him out and
domesticate Him – but rather to know that God – as revealed by Jesus and the
Scriptures – is living and active for you and for your salvation. That is to say, for today’s Trinity Sunday
Service we do not confess the Athanasian Creed – the doctrine of the Trinity –
for the sake of merely saying it, but we use this doctrine properly when we
believe and know that our Triune God is active for us, all three persons active
for you and for me. Indeed, today we
have heard from the lessons and readings and the prayers that our God – Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit – is alive and active towards us.
Dear
Baptized Saints, consider this!
You
were baptized into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit – one
name, three persons; three persons who are active for you and for your
good!
God the
Father created you. He has given you
your body and preserves you. He provides
for you and protects you from evil. All
of this is done out of fatherly and divine goodness, without any of your
worthiness.
God
the Son has redeemed you a lost and condemned human being. He has purchased you and freed you from all
sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but
with his holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. He has done this in order that you may belong
to Him and live under Him in His kingdom.
And
God the Spirit has called you through the Gospel, enlightened you with His
gifts and made you holy and kept you in the true faith in the Christian
church. The Holy Spirit abundantly
forgives you of your sins through the Word and Sacraments and on the Last Day
will raise you and all the dead to eternal life.
Truly,
our Triune God reveals Himself to us in the Word. We cannot understand Him by our own reason or
strength, but He makes Himself known to us and shows us what He is like and
gives to us what Christ has accomplished.
Today
we confess and believe upon God; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: one
God now and forevermore – for you and for me.
Amen.
[1] Norman
Nagel, Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel:
From Valparaiso to St. Louis (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House,
2004), 153-154.
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