The Attributes of God, part 4

Q: What does the Bible say about the wrath of God?

The Bible teaches that the wrath of God is a divine perfection that must be understood and respected by the faithful. Scripture presents the wrath of God as a crucial aspect of His character, comparable to His holiness. In passages like Psalm 95:11 and Deuteronomy 1:34, God swears by His wrath as He does by His holiness. This divine attribute reveals God's utter detestation of sin and His righteous response to it, serving as a reminder for believers to meditate on His moral governance. Recognizing the severity of God’s wrath should elicit a proper fear and reverence for Him, which is an essential attitude for serving Him acceptably (Hebrews 12:28-29). Furthermore, this understanding prompts believers to rejoice in the salvation they have through Christ, who delivers them from the impending wrath (1 Thessalonians 1:10).

Q: How do we know God is sovereign?

God's sovereignty is evident in His absolute dominion over creation as described in Scripture. God's sovereignty is highlighted throughout the Bible, particularly in passages such as Daniel 4:34-35, which affirm that God does according to His will among all creation. His dominion is absolute and encompasses all aspects of existence. As the Creator, God has the ultimate authority to shape and control His creation as He sees fit. He exercises this power not tyrannically, but according to His inherent goodness and justice. Each creature's existence is under His sovereignty, and He dictates their purpose and circumstances according to His divine counsel. This profound truth reassures believers that God is both in control and ultimately good, guiding the universe with wisdom and fairness.

Q: Why is understanding God's attributes important for Christians?

Understanding God's attributes shapes our worship, reverence, and relationship with Him. A deep understanding of God's attributes leads to a more profound worship experience. Believers are invited to know the infinite character of God to foster humility and reverence before Him. The Puritan John Howe remarked that contemplation of God's glory helps us grasp some of His divine qualities though never fully. Recognizing attributes such as His incomprehensibility encourages believers to approach Him with awe, as our finite minds struggle to comprehend His vastness. Furthermore, these attributes inform our understanding of salvation, justice, mercy, and our personal relationship with God. The closer we align our lives with His nature, the more fruitful our spiritual lives can be.

Q: What does the Bible say about God’s all-sufficiency?

The Bible portrays God as all-sufficient, requiring nothing external and being complete in Himself. God's all-sufficiency is a foundational aspect of His nature, emphasizing that He is complete, self-sustaining, and in need of nothing outside of Himself. Colossians 1:16 illustrates that He created all things not out of need but to manifest His glory and share His goodness with His creation. This quality reassures believers that true satisfaction and fulfillment come from God alone. As those created in His image, humans find their greatest joy and purpose in His presence. Lamentations 3:24 tells us that the Lord is our portion, stressing how God's sufficiency provides the ultimate state of wellbeing for His people, regardless of external circumstances.

Again, that the wrath of God is a divine perfection is plainly demonstrated by what we read in Psalm 95-11, unto whom I swear in my wrath. There are two occasions of God's swearing, in making promises, Genesis 22-16, and in pronouncing judgment, Deuteronomy 1-34 and following. In the former, he swears in mercy to his children. In the latter, he swears to deprive a wicked generation of its inheritance because of murmuring and unbelief. An oath is for solemn confirmation. Hebrews 6, 16. In Genesis 22, 16, God says, by myself have I sworn. In Psalm 89, 35, he declares, once have I sworn by my holiness. While in Psalm 95, 11, he affirms, I swear in my wrath. Thus the great Jehovah himself appeals to his wrath as a perfection equal to his holiness. He swears by the one as much as by the other.

Again, as in Christ, dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, Colossians 2.9, and as all the divine perfections, are illustrously displayed by him, John 1, 18. Therefore do we read of the wrath of the Lamb, Revelation 6, 16.

The wrath of God is a perfection of the divine character upon which we need to frequently meditate. First, that our hearts may be duly impressed by God's detestation of sin. We are ever prone to regard sin lightly, to gloss over its hideousness, to make excuses for it. But the more we study and ponder God's abhorrence of sin and His frightful vengeance upon it, the more likely are we to realize its heinousness.

Secondly, to beget a true fear in our souls for God, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12, 28 and 29. We cannot serve him acceptably unless there is due reverence for his awful majesty and godly fear of his righteous anger. And these are best promoted by frequently calling to mind that our God is a consuming fire.

Thirdly, to draw out our souls in frequent praise for our having been delivered from the wrath to come. 1 Thessalonians 1.10.

Our readiness or our reluctance to meditate upon the wrath of God becomes a sure test of our heart's true attitude toward Him. If we do not truly rejoice in God for what He is in Himself, and that because of all the perfections which are eternally resident in Him, then how dwelleth the love of God in us? Each of us needs to be more prayerfully on his guard against devising an image of God in our thoughts, which is patterned after our own evil inclinations. Of old the Lord complained, The thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself. Psalm 50 21.

if we rejoice not at the remembrance of His holiness, Psalm 97-12. If we rejoice not to know that in a soon coming day God will make a most glorious display of His wrath by taking vengeance upon all who now oppose Him. It is proof of positive that our hearts are not in subjection to Him that we are yet in our sins, and that we are on the way to the everlasting burnings.

Rejoice, O ye nations, Gentiles, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries. Deuteronomy 32.43 And again we read, I heard a great voice of much people in heaven saying, Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power unto the Lord our God! For true and righteous are his judgments, for he hath judged the great whore which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia! Revelation 19, 1 through 3.

Great will be the rejoicing of the saints in that day, when the Lord shall vindicate his majesty, exercise his awful dominion, magnify his justice, and overthrow the proud rebels who have dared to defy him.

If thou, Lord, shouldst mark, impute, iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? Psalm 130, 3. Well, may each of us ask this question, for it is written, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment. Psalm 1, 5.

How sorely was Christ's soul exercised with thoughts of God's, marking the inequities of His people when they were upon Him. He was amazed and very heavy. Mark 14, 33. His awful agony, His bloody sweat, His strong cries and supplications, Hebrews 5, 7, His reiterated prayers, If it be possible, let this cup pass from me, His last dreadful cry, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? all manifest what fearful apprehensions he had of what it was for God to mark iniquities.

Well may poor sinners cry out, Lord, who shall stand when the Son of God Himself so trembled beneath the weight of His wrath? If Thou, my Reader, hast not fled for refuge to Christ, the only Savior, how wilt Thou do in the swelling of the Jordan? Jeremiah 12, 5

When I consider how the goodness of God is abused by the greatest part of mankind, I cannot but be of His mind that said, the greatest miracle in the world is God's patience and bounty to an ungrateful world. If a prince hath an enemy got into one of his towns, he doth not send them in provision, but lays close siege to the place, and doth what he can to starve them. But the great God, that could rank all his enemies into destruction, bears with them, and is at daily cost to maintain them.

Well, may he command us to bless them that curse us, who himself does good to the evil and unthankful. But think not, sinners, that you shall escape thus. God's mill goes slow, but grinds small. The more admirable his patience and bounty now is, the more dreadful and unsupportable will that fury be which ariseth out of his abused goodness. Nothing smoother than the sea, yet when stirred into a tempest, nothing rageth more, nothing so sweet as the patience and goodness of God, and nothing so terrible as his wrath when he takes fire.

William Gurnall, 1660

Then flee, my reader, flee to Christ. Flee from the wrath to come. Matthew 3, 7, Ere it be too late. Do not we earnestly beseech you. Suppose that this message is intended for somebody else. It is to you. Do not be contented by thinking you have already fled to Christ. Make certain Beg the Lord to search your heart and show you yourself.

A word to preachers. Brethren, do we in our oral ministry preach on this solemn subject as much as we ought? The Old Testament prophets frequently told their hearers that their wicked lives provoked the Holy One of Israel and that they were treasuring up to themselves wrath against the Day of Wrath. and conditions in the world are no better now than they were then. Nothing is so calculated to arouse the careless and cause carnal professors to search their hearts as to enlarge upon the fact that God is angry with the wicked every day. Psalm 7, 11.

The forerunner of Christ warned his hearers to flee from the wrath to come. Matthew 3, 7. The Savior bade his auditors fear him, which, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say unto you, fear him." Luke 12, 5. The Apostle Paul said, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. 2 Corinthians 5, 11. Faithfulness demands that we speak as plainly about hell as about heaven.

Chapter 19 The Contemplation of God

In the previous studies we have had in review some of the wondrous and lovely perfections of the divine character. from this most feeble and faulty contemplation of his attributes, it should be evident to us all that God is, first, an incomprehensible being, and, lost in wonder at his infinite greatness, we are constrained to adopt the words of Zophar, Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is high as heaven, what canst thou do? Deeper than hell, what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. Job 11, 7-9.

When we turn our thoughts to God's eternity, His immateriality, His omnipresence, His almightiness, our minds are overwhelmed. But the incomprehensibility of the divine nature is not a reason why we should desist from reverent inquiry and prayerful strivings to apprehend what He has so graciously revealed of Himself in His Word. because we are unable to acquire perfect knowledge, it would be folly to say we will therefore make no effort to attain to any degree of it.

It has been well said Nothing will so enlarge the intellect. Nothing so magnify the whole soul of man as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity. The most excellent study for extending the soul is the science of Christ and Him crucified and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. C. H. Spurgeon

Let us quote a little further from this Prince of Preachers. The proper study of the Christian is the Godhead, the highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the doings, and the existence of the great God, which he calls his Father.

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-contentment, 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 thought, I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.

sermon on Malachi 3.6.

Yes, the incomprehensibility of the divine nature should teach us humility, caution, and reverence. After all our searchings and meditations, we have to say with Job, lo, these are parts of his ways, but how little a portion is heard of him. Job 26.14. When Moses besought Jehovah for a sight of his glory, he answered him, I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, Exodus 33, 19. And as another has said, the name is the collection of his attributes. Rightly did the Puritan John Howe declare, The notion, therefore, we can hence form of his glory is only such as we may have of a large volume by a brief synopsis, or of a spacious country by a little landscape. He hath here given us a true report of himself, but not a full, such as will secure our apprehensions, being guided thereby from error, but not from ignorance. We can apply our minds to contemplate the several perfections whereby the blessed God discovers to us His being, and can, in our thoughts, attribute them all to Him, though we have still but low and defective conceptions of each one. Yet so far as our apprehensions can correspond to the discovery that he affords us of his several excellencies, we have a present view of his glory.

as the difference is indeed great between the knowledge of God, which his saints have in this life, and that which they shall have in heaven. Yet, as the former should not be undervalued because it is imperfect, so the latter is not to be magnified above its reality. through the scripture declares that we shall see face to face and know even as we are known 1 Corinthians 13 12 But to infer from this that we shall then know God as fully as He knows us is to be misled by the mere sound of words, and to disregard the restriction of that knowledge that our finiteness necessarily requires.

There is a vast difference between the saints being glorified and their being made divine. In their glorified state, Christians will still be finite creatures and therefore never able to fully comprehend the infinite God. The saints in heaven will see God with the eye of the mind, for He will be always invisible to the bodily eye. They will see Him more clearly than they could see Him by reason and faith, and more extensively than all His works and dispensations had hitherto revealed Him.

but their minds will not be so enlarged as to be capable of contemplating at once or in detail the whole excellence of his nature. To comprehend infinite perfection, they must become infinite themselves. Even in heaven, their knowledge will be partial, but at the same time, their happiness will be complete, because their knowledge will be perfect in this sense, that it will be adequate to the capacity of the subject, although it will not exhaust the fullness of the object. We believe that it will be progressive, and that as their views expand, their blessedness will increase. But it will never reach a limit beyond which there is nothing to be discovered. And when ages after ages have passed away, he will still be the incomprehensible God.

John Dick, 1840.

Secondly, from a review of the perfections of God, it appears that he is an all-sufficient being. He is all-sufficient in himself and to himself. As the first of beings, he could receive nothing from another, nor be limited by the power of another. Being infinite, he is possessed of all possible perfection. When the Triune God existed all alone, he was all to himself. his understanding, his love, his energies, found an adequate object in himself. Had he stood in need of anything external, he would not have been independent, and therefore he would not have been God.

He created all things and that for himself, Colossians 1, 16, yet it was not in order to supply a lack. and that he might communicate life and happiness to angels and men, and admit them to the vision of his glory. True, he demands the allegiance and services of his intelligent creatures, yet he derives no benefit from their offices. All the advantage redounds to themselves. Job 22, 2 and 3. He makes use of means and instruments to accomplish his end, yet not from a deficiency of power, but oftentimes to more strikingly display his power through the feebleness of the instruments. The all-sufficiency of God makes Him to be the supreme object which is ever to be sought unto. True happiness consists only in the enjoyment of God. His favor is life, and His lovingkindness is better than life. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in Him. Lamentations 3.24

His love, His grace, and His glory are the chief objects of the saints' desire and the springs of their highest satisfaction. There'll be many that say, who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou off the light of thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased. Psalm 4, 6, and 7.

Yea, the Christian, when in his right mind, is able to say, although the fig tree shall not blossom, Neither shall fruit be in the vines. The labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat. The flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. Habakkuk 3, 17 and 18.

Thirdly, From a review of the perfections of God, it appears that he is the supreme sovereign of the universe. It has been rightly said. No dominion is so absolute as that which is founded on creation. He who might not have made anything had a right to make all things according to his own pleasure.

In the exercise of his uncontrolled power, he has made some parts of the creation mere inanimate matter of grosser or more refined texture, and distinguished by different qualities. but all inert and unconscious. He has given organization to other parts and made them susceptible of growth and expansion, but still without life in the proper sense of the term. To others he has given not only organization, but conscious existence, organs of sense, and self-motive power. To these he has added in man the gift of reason and an immortal spirit by which he is allied to a higher order of beings who are placed in the superior regions.

Over the world which he has created he sways the scepter of omnipotence. I praised and honored him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation, and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou? Daniel 4.34 and 35.

John Dick. A creature considered as such has no rights. He can demand nothing from his Maker, and in whatever manner he may be treated, has no title to complain. Yet, when thinking of the absolute dominion of God over all, we ought never to lose sight of His moral perfections.

God is just and good, and ever does that which is right, nevertheless. He exercises his sovereignty according to his own imperial and righteous pleasure. He assigns each creature his place, as seemeth good in his own sight. He orders the varied circumstances of each according to his own counsels. He molds each vessel according to his own uninfluenced determination. He has mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardens.

Wherever we are, His eye is upon us. Whoever we are, our life and everything is held at His disposal. To the Christian, He is the tender Father. To the rebellious sinner, He will yet be a consuming fire.

Now unto the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only wise God, the honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. 1 Timothy 1.17

The Attributes of God, part 4

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about the wrath of God?

How do we know God is sovereign?

Why is understanding God's attributes important for Christians?

What does the Bible say about God’s all-sufficiency?

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About Arthur W. Pink

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The Attributes of God, part 4

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about the wrath of God?

How do we know God is sovereign?

Why is understanding God's attributes important for Christians?

What does the Bible say about God’s all-sufficiency?

Sermon Transcript

About Arthur W. Pink

Comments

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