I was looking over the comic book shelves the other day and was amused by one particular title cluttering the racks. SUPERGOD -The title is a perfect example of man's ignorance of God. I love comic books, but comics have been a source of God ignorance for some time. Wonder Woman is grounded in the gods of Greek Mythology, Thor is a Norse god and The New Gods defy the whole idea of God's eternal existence. This of course is not new. Man has been creating gods for thousands of years. Truly, God is not Super, He is GOD!
Having a correct understanding of God is the most important knowledge man can obtain. In his book "The Knowledge of the Holy" AW Tozer wrote, "Among the sins the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is--in itself a monstrous sin--and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness."
Our concept of God will shape our own character and our theology. God has not left the knowledge of Himself up to our imaginations. The Word of God informs us of what is necessary to know about an incomprehensible God.
In Exodus 3:14 God responds to Moses when Moses asks God what he should tell the Israelites when they ask what is God's name and God told Moses, "I AM WHO I AM", and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I AM has sent me to you." All God is is in Himself, dependent on nothing. And all things are dependent upon God as He created all things. God has no beginning. He is not constrained by time, matter or space. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through Him and apart from Him nothing came into being..." Jn 1:1-3
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This opening statement of the Bible tells us before the beginning God was. He has no beginning and has no ending. "Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." Ps 90:1-2 The attribute of God eternal is mind blowing. God isn't some cosmic time traveler moving from one point in time to another. He isn't bound by linear time in any way. He created time. Jesus declared "I AM the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end" For the believer it is easy to understand He has no end because we too are promised eternal life and our understanding of linear time can conceive this truth. But having always been, and being at all points of time concurrently this eternity is an attribute that is God's and God's alone.
David dwelt on God's Omniscience in Psalm 139 "O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquanited with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue , Behold O Lord, You know it all." To quote A.W Tozer "To say that God is omniscient is to say that He possesses perfect knowledge and therefore has no need to learn. But it more: it is to say that God has never learned and cannot learn." Isaiah 40:13-14 asks rhetorically, " Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has informed Him? With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowldege and informed Him of the way of understanding?" God knows all things perfectly and has known all things perfectly before all things came into being.
God is not only existing at all points in time concurrently, He is everywhere all the time. He is Omnipresent. David contemplates again in Psalm 139 "Where can I go from your Spirit? Or Where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me."
The Omnipotent, Sovereign God is wonderfully depicted in Isaiah 40 "It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they planted, scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, but He merely blows on them and they wither, and the storm carries them away like stubble. 'To whom would you liken Me that I would be his equal?' says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these stars, the One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them by name; because the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one of them is missing." And in Revelation 19:6 as the Bible describes the culmination of worldly events a thunderous voice comes out of heaven declaring "Hallelujah for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth."
God is perfectly wise, just and has unlimted Love, Mercy and Grace but we must never forget that not only is He all these things, He is something I cannot begin to adquately comprehend or explain; God is HOLY. The perfect purity of God is unimaginable. All of God's attributes are wrapped up in His Holiness.
"In the Hebrew and Christian scriptures God carries forward His self-revelation and gives it personality and moral content. This awful Presence is shown to be not a Thing but a moral Being with all the warmth qualities of genuine personality. More than this, He is the absolute quintessence of moral excellence, infinitely perfect in righteousness, purity, rectitude, and uncomprehensible holiness. And in all this He is uncreated, self sufficient and beyond the power of human thought to conceive or human speech to utter."-- A.W. Tozer The Knowlege of the Holy
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