July 9, 2025 • 52 mins
In this week’s episode of Christendom and the World, we explore how character development in storytelling helps us better understand God’s own character. The conversation moves beyond simply knowing God’s attributes to the importance of personal relationship and revelation through Scripture. We also reflect on the mystery of God's nature, how His attributes are revealed through creation, and why the fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom.
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Episode Transcript
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Our favorite books, movies, and television shows don't necessarily have the most excitingscenes or dramatic endings.
While these certainly don't hurt, what's even more important than the big explosions andthe story twists is something that we experience in our everyday lives with our neighbors,
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friends, and family.
This is called character development.
Character development is essential to any story.
It draws you into the plot as you get to know the personalities, quirks, and faces of thecharacters.
Now, if I describe to you a detective who always smokes a cigar, wears a scrubby trenchcoat, and rambles on while giving the disarming impression that he's incompetent, all
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before he suddenly says one more thing, then anyone who watched this mystery show
the 1970s knows whom I'm talking about.
If I talk about a stubborn, spoiled, and naive girl who grows up on a Georgia plantationuntil she is forced to find her way after becoming a widowed mother during the Civil War,
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then anyone who has seen this movie or read the book can figure out whom I'm talkingabout.
If I talk about a vain preacher wannabe aristocrat
who sucks up to his patroness, then any girl who is as obsessed as my wife is with JaneAusten can tell who this is.
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Character development.
Character development is a reputation.
That's what characters do.
They develop a reputation.
And this is how we know them and continue to remember them.
Now, speaking of my wife, I met my wife Leah through her older sister Bethany.
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her older sister Bethany is married to my older brother Paul.
And when Paul and Bethany first got engaged, that's when I met Leah, and I had alreadyknown her sister Bethany for a while.
And I asked Leah about this enduring trait about Bethany, and it was where Bethany would
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She'd always smile and she looked like she was kind of laughing at me, but it was just theway that she smiled.
And so she would pay me a compliment with an almost sarcastic looking smile on her face.
And it seemed like she was teasing me when in reality she was genuinely saying somethingnice.
So she'd say, I like your shirt, Andrew.
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And uh Bethany would say this with a smirk on her face.
Now my first thought was what's wrong with my shirt?
And when I give an imp...
And so, anyway, when I met Leah, I told her about this trait.
And when I gave that impersonation of Bethany to Leah, uh Leah immediately laughed andunderstood exactly what I was talking about.
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That's Bethany.
She would say something like that.
Now, can we apply this character development, experienced in fiction as well as in reallife, also to God?
Now, to be sure, God doesn't develop.
That is to say, He doesn't change.
This is made very clear in Malachi chapter 3 and James chapter 1.
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But God does have a personality.
He reveals Himself to us so that we would get to know Him, even as He knows us.
The Scriptures don't tell us a mere legend of a mighty deity.
They are also more than simply records about things that He did and said.
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They reveal God to us.
They introduce us to Him and make Him our friend.
In the Scriptures, we get to know God.
We get to know Him so much that we can meet a complete stranger and immediately hit itoff, because we both know the same God.
And yet, knowing God isn't like
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knowing one of our buddies or a character from a book.
Knowing God is knowing our Father through His Son, Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit who speaks through the Scriptures teaches us to know Him.
This is what Martin Luther wrote in his great hymn to the Holy Spirit.
Teach us to know our God aright and call Him Father with delight.
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We know God first by knowing His Son.
Jesus explains it as follows, Jesus also says to Philip in John chapter 14,
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that we have true knowledge of God.
The Scriptures give us this knowledge.
They give us faith.
If you know Jesus, then you know God.
That's because Jesus is God.
He is the eternally begotten Son of the Father.
Only He knows the Father.
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Only He has seen the Father.
And so if you know Jesus, then you know the Father.
You know God.
This isn't simply a knowledge of the correct answers on a test.
It's not just trivia.
No, it is to know God personally.
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And this is because God personally knew us from before the foundations of the world.
St.
Paul says in Romans 8 verse 29,
Therefore, we know Him.
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It's impossible to know God simply by knowing certain character traits about Him.
Let's use an example of someone going on a blind date.
Let's say there's a girl named Suzy.
Her friend Kathy has set her up on a blind date with a guy that she knows and his name is,let's say his name is Joe.
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Suzy tells Kathy about Joe.
He's handsome.
He's tall.
He has brown hair, not too short, not too long.
He has a beard.
He's funny.
He's nice.
He's smart.
You'll like him.
Kathy, then Kathy finally meets Joe.
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And now is it Kathy?
Am I saying?
Yeah, she's, Suzy is setting up, setting Kathy up on the day.
So Kathy finally meets Joe and
She finds that he's handsome and tall with brown hair of reasonable length, but hisfeatures are not as soft as she was hoping.
He also has a beard, but it's not what Cathy envisioned.
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It's a bit craggly and rough.
He laughs a lot, but his jokes are all inside jokes, which Cathy can't understand.
He seems nice, but he also seems to talk about himself all the time.
He's a bit abrasive too.
He certainly knows a lot about all sorts of stuff, but he comes across as arrogant.
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He also has some crazy ideas which go against what Cathy believes.
Suzie wasn't lying about Joe's attributes.
It's just that these qualities don't quite materialize to Cathy in a favorable way.
Or to put it another way, Cathy doesn't like him.
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Kathy could not have concluded that Joe was a good guy based purely on the list ofqualities given to her by her friend, Susie.
She couldn't possibly have known him simply from a file of attributes.
She must experience these characteristics and get to know him.
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In the meantime, Kathy will judge Joe
Using the standards she has already made up in her mind of what it means to be handsome,tall, well-groomed, nice, and smart.
And this is how it is with God.
We all have in our minds an idea of what God should be like.
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He's good.
He's just.
He's loving.
He's merciful.
He's almighty.
He's all-knowing.
But these things
These things alone cannot allow us to know who God is.
When our experience of God does not meet up to our own understanding of His manyattributes, then we either pretend that God isn't how He reveals Himself to be, or we run
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away after a completely different God made in the image of human standards, or we denyGod's existence altogether.
I once paid a man to take away an old piano, an old broken piano that we just needed toget rid of, and he brought his girlfriend along to help out.
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As we were sitting outside watching him tie down the piano to the back of his pickuptruck, I struck up a conversation with his girlfriend.
Since we were in the parsonage right next to the church, the topic of me being a pastor,
came up pretty quickly and so we quickly got on the topic of religion and she was quick totell me that she didn't believe in the existence of God.
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And so I asked her, do you believe that you're going to die?
She answered yes.
I then asked, do you believe there's anything you can do about that fact?
She said no.
I said, well, there you go.
That's God.
You can call him fate.
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You can call him tough luck, chance, or whatever you want.
It isn't that you don't believe that God exists.
It's that you don't like him.
You think he's a jerk.
In other words, you don't know him.
Now, of course, there are many other avenues that you can take in arguing about theexistence of God.
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But that's not really the point.
His existence isn't so much the point.
The point is, do you know Him?
And people, before they consider whether they even know God, they just determine that theydon't like the idea of God.
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And so this is the issue.
Who is God?
How do we know Him?
Do we know Him simply by listing His various characteristics?
On its own, this won't make us know Him any more than Kathy will know Joe.
Instead, we learn the character of God by what He says to us, what He does to us, how Hesays what He says, and how He does what He does.
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Near the end of His Gospel account, St.
Luke records two disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus on the day that Jesus rosefrom the dead.
They were talking about the things that had gone on in Jerusalem over the past few days.
This great man whom they thought was the one to redeem Israel was killed.
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Now his body is missing and some women have claimed that he has appeared to them alive.
So far these two disciples have everything we might think they need.
They have a missing body and witnesses to the resurrection.
You would think they would be able to figure it out.
Jesus rose from the dead.
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He has proven himself to be true God, the Son of the Father, just as He said.
But they're sad.
Even while they talk about such an amazing thing, they have no joy.
And so Jesus comes along and joins them on the road.
Luke says that their eyes were captured, held, or constrained.
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They couldn't recognize Jesus.
Their eyes were held captive by sin and sorrow.
It didn't matter how much proof they had heard about, Jesus' resurrection was much deeperthan merely some fact or news report, although that was certainly very important and
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fundamental.
But there was only one thing that could open their eyes at that point, and that was
The scriptures, the scriptures which bore witness to the death and resurrection of God'sSon and revealed the face of the Father.
These ancient words of the living God and His amazing acts, His amazing acts which werefulfilled in Christ's works toward mankind, that were written down over centuries.
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These words of the Scriptures were the only light that could shine through their darkness.
And this is why Jesus, though risen from the dead, having conquered all, having defied allhuman expectations, this is why Jesus used nothing but the Scriptures to open their eyes.
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He showed them from the writings of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets.
why He had to die and rise from the dead.
The Scriptures don't merely tell us what God is.
That He's great, that He's mighty, that He has all sorts of other impressive qualities.
These disciples knew that much about Jesus, but all they were left with was a disappointedhope that Jesus would make Israel great again.
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They knew that God was great,
But the Scriptures tell us much more than that God is great.
They open our eyes to show us who God actually is.
So, can we say that the Scriptures present a sort of character development of God?
Well, perhaps a better term would be character fulfillment.
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God's character is unraveled and presented for us in His works, in His words.
His wisdom and His promises.
This character is fully revealed and fulfilled for us in His Son.
Here is the climax of the history of salvation.
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When the Father's personality is brought to light in the person of Jesus Christ, the onlybegotten Son of God.
Throughout the Scriptures, the person of the Holy Spirit is making
this character known.
So I'd like to start a series here on Christendom and the World discussing God's characterto show who God is from what He says and what He does in the Bible.
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The purpose of this is to get to know Him, to get to know His personality.
This is why the Bible was written down.
It is so that we would not only know things about God, but that we would know what
kind of God He is.
What's He like?
How does He talk?
How does He act?
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What makes Him angry?
What makes Him sad?
What makes Him rejoice?
Why does He do the things He does?
Why does He say the things He says?
Who is He?
And so, to begin with this, I'd like to start from the beginning.
In Genesis chapter 1,
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Verse one, right off the bat.
And maybe I'll quiz you, no one's gonna hear you, uh Hannah.
What's Genesis one verse one?
All right, you nailed it.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Can you say it in Hebrew?
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No, you can't say it in Hebrew.
That's okay.
I'll say it in Hebrew.
That's all I'm going to say.
And then He created the heavens and the earth.
So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
But those first few words.
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Bereshit, Barah, Elohim.
I want to talk about those words.
Bereshit is in the beginning.
Barah is uh created and Elohim is God.
And right off the bat, we hear about this unique God.
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Now, keep in mind that the Old Testament
The Bible does not start off saying, once upon a time, there was this God, and he was agood God, and he was a just God, and he was an almighty God, and he had power over all
things.
No, it simply says, in the beginning, God created and introduces him right off the bat.
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Before anything was, that's what in the beginning means, before anything was made, thereis God.
And this is a far cry from all the other creation accounts, from these myths inMesopotamia and in other places, where you have this grand story of
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of the creation of the world coming about through violence, through fighting, throughwars.
then, you know, there's also often through a lot of like sex and stuff like that and uh alot of really bizarre stuff.
And I don't need to get into all of that stuff.
Actually, I would recommend an interview uh between Brian Stecker and my brother ChristianPreuss on On The Line.
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which is a really good podcast.
It's worth listening to.
And if you're enjoying any of the content here in Christendom and the world, which by theway, you should subscribe and like our videos and share them.
But you should also go and subscribe to On The Line with Brian Stecker.
We'll leave a link to his page under the description here.
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But he has an interview with my brother Christian who is a classicist.
He's also a pastor and he has a really good discussion about how the Bible, specificallythe book of Genesis, is very unique and stands apart from all these myths.
And this is really what's key here, is that God is immediately introduced as this God thatis incomprehensible.
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So let's unpack a bit how God is so incomprehensible and unique.
So I quoted the Hebrew to you.
Barashit, Barah, Elohim.
So let's look at...
I already mentioned that Barashit meaning in the beginning, that that is to exclude allthings.
So nothing exists.
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That's what in the beginning means.
Nothing else exists.
And then it says, God created.
Okay, so now let's look at these words Barah and Elohim.
Let's look at the word Elohim.
The word Elohim...
be translated as gods in the plural.
So basically it's god, it can mean many gods or more than one god, but here it's spoken ofas one god and yet Elohim is in the plural.
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this is almost always how God's name, now he has other names in the Old Testament whichwe'll talk about as we go along in this series.
this is that the name for God is almost always uh spoken of in this plural way.
And so right off the bat we see that God is many or more than one, and yet the word bara,uh which means created, is in the singular form.
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It's in the singular number.
Now, Hannah
You have taken grammar, right?
Did you ever, did you take any foreign languages?
You took Spanish, okay?
Do you remember, I didn't take Spanish, but you know, I've studied some Latin and Greekand German, but I would assume that nouns and verbs do similar things.
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Do you remember what nouns do?
That when you have different cases of the nouns, they decl-
They decline.
They decline.
Yeah.
What are verbs do you remember what verbs do?
I think you just said it.
They conjugate.
Yeah.
You got it.
Nice.
Verbs conjugate.
Right.
And so they verbs conjugate in English, but not quite as much.
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Uh, so, you know, you, if they, they conjugate more like when you're going from likepresent to past tense and stuff like that.
Right.
So I, I run and I ran.
So the verb is going to conjugate into rands to be past tense.
In other languages such as Hebrew, it's going to conjugate even in the different persons,right?
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So first, second, third person.
So first person is uh I create, right?
Second person, you create.
Third person, he, she, it creates, right?
So in the Hebrew, uh it conjugates even more than that.
So you have...
You have a bara would be the third person singular masculine, right?
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And then you have a third person singular feminine.
That's a different form.
And it goes on from there, but then you have the, the, the, the third person plural.
So that would be like bar, bar.
So bara would be he singularly created and the, and the third person uh plural would be.
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uh Baru, they created.
now, Elohim, if we take Elohim, which is in the plural form of the verb, or of the noun,God.
and we're going to add a verb to that, what kind of verb would you usually add to it?
A singular one or a plural one?
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If it's a plural noun.
Plural, yeah.
So plural nouns take plural verbs.
But in this case, you have a plural noun, Elohim, that takes a singular verb.
And again, this is almost always the case.
There are some exceptions in the Old Testament.
Usually it's...
when pagans are talking about God and they'll use like a plural verb, right?
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Because of course pagans believe in many gods.
ah And I believe that there is, uh when Abraham is talking to a bimalak, he'll use, heuses like a plural verb.
But that could be just because he's talking to a pagan or something.
um And so at any rate, so most of the time, this is the case that the plural,
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form of God, Elohim, takes the singular verb.
um The other exception to this, and we'll get into this more, ah is when God says like,let us make man, right?
Or let us go down and confuse their languages.
He's using a plural verb, but he's also, you know,
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referring to himself, but then when it actually describes God doing what he does, likeGod, then God made man in his own image, or then God went down and confused their
languages, it's using a singular verb.
Now, this might be boring to some people, because it's all the, you know, the logic of ofgrammar and words and stuff like that.
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But it's very important.
Because right off the bat, we see how incomprehensible God is.
We're struck with this
You know, this very complex uh order of words, of a noun and a verb, which usually justdoesn't work and is very extraordinary.
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uh so, I mean, just consider this.
Shouldn't the Bible just slow down a bit and introduce this God to us who is plural andyet one at the same time?
Why doesn't it begin with a description of his other attributes or talk about like thesunset or whatever, you know?
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Well, because that didn't exist yet.
In the beginning, nothing's there, then boom, uh God created, God who is plural created asone.
And so all right off the bat, you have hidden there.
It's not fully developed yet, right?
So it's not fully uh unraveled rather.
But right off the bat, you have this incomprehensible God doing something that isincomprehensible.
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And this gets us to the first lesson in the scriptures about knowing God.
The first lesson of the scriptures about knowing God.
Are you ready for it?
This is the first lesson.
It's that you can't
that is you can't buy your own reason or strength, right?
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You learn this in the catechism.
I believe that I cannot what?
She said it.
So Hannah just said, my own reason, I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strengthbelieve in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.
But the Holy Ghost has called me by the gospel.
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And so we, by our own uh understanding, cannot know God.
Right?
Just like Kathy can't know Joe.
Much more than that, we can't know God.
unless he reveals himself to us.
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And this is where we should uh take some time to talk about knowing God versus knowledgeabout God.
So Paul says in Romans chapter 1, he's describing people, he's describing the Gentiles,like those who don't know God, those who don't have uh faith in God.
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He says, for although they knew God, and here he's talking about they had a knowledge ofGod, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their
thinking and in their foolish hearts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
And as Paul says also in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 14, the natural man does not receive thethings of the Spirit of God.
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Why?
because they're foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spirituallydiscerned." And then in Romans 11 verse 33, this was the epistle lesson on Trinity Sunday,
not too long ago.
Paul says, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchableare His judgments and how inscrutable are His ways.
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And so, is that it then?
So we just, read the Bible, we read the first like verse of the Bible and we're like,that's insane.
That's way beyond my understanding.
So I can't know God.
Well, not by the ways that we would want to know Him.
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We assume that we get to know God by figuring Him out first, right?
I mean, and this is, is, I mean, to use that analogy of the blind date, right?
It's amazing how, how much this is, comes very close to home and is related to dating.
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How do people often date nowadays?
What's the first thing that they do?
They take their phone and they download an app, right?
And then they scroll and they swipe.
I don't know.
I've never done it before, but I mean, that's before this is after my time.
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You know what we did?
I guess we had there.
There was like e harmony and there was like match.com and stuff when I was when I wasyounger.
But yeah.
that uh nowadays it's just boop, boop, boop, boop, you know?
But what are you doing?
And even when I was a kid, actually, you, or not a kid, when I was in college, um that'swhen Facebook came out.
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So, and what sometimes what we would call it is stalker net, right?
And that was the, uh okay, so you went to Bethany, right?
uh
I didn't go there, but I remember, uh, my, so my, roommates were all went to Bethany, likemy first year.
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So two of them with my brother and my friend, Travis, we're going to MSU Mankato with me.
And then my friend, Jeremy was finishing up.
He was going all four years at Bethany.
And I think they all had, or at least Jeremy had access to the face.
Wasn't there like a Facebook catalog thing on there?
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Was that still there when you were there?
No, it wasn't.
Okay, so at this time, and this is before Facebook, where you could log on and you couldlook up like everyone's picture.
Just like the directory?
Yeah, like a directory.
It's online where it shows their picture and stuff.
Oh, okay.
So it's called a directory.
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Anyway, so whenever, so, so whenever like my roommate would say, Hey, you know, I met thisgirl.
There's this girl who is about your age and she's kind of cute.
And I think maybe you might like her.
And I was like, Oh really?
Well, maybe I don't know who she is.
And he's like, well, let me just pull up the stalker that.
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And so he pulled up the stalker net and as he called it, which is the directory.
And then he like, show me her picture, you know, and I like, okay.
Yeah.
I think I've seen her around.
Cause I would, I had friends who went there.
And so I would hang out on campus and stuff and, and we would joke about that, but inreality, that is often how it has turned into, right?
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That they, they, they're just going to, they're going to look at some kind of ad.
Like there's the picture, how tall are you?
What job do you have?
You know, these kinds of characteristics.
And not that those things don't matter, right?
Those things do matter.
You know, God does want us to know his attributes, right?
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His characteristics.
And so you should care about those things.
But you can't know someone simply based on that.
And what you're inevitably going to do is you're going to start drawing conclusions aboutthis person based upon your own standards, ah that you're going to judge what you see
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based upon your own standards.
that's not, God doesn't allow us to do that with Him.
Right?
That's why, like, if you're reading the Bible, you're reading Genesis and you're like,okay, I just want like it to...
I want it to just move faster or move more slowly or answer all my questions right away.
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And you kind of get impatient.
I mean, that's actually good for you to go through that because it teaches you to curbyour own sinful, impatient desires.
ah One of the other things too that we got to consider is how we are, so how we by nature,
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expect to know God.
And Paul sums it up in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, where he says, request signs and Greeksrequest, you remember what they request or what they seek after?
They seek after wisdom, right?
Jews seek signs and Greeks seek after wisdom.
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By Jews, he's talking about like the religious people, the people who have the law of God,the people who have the
like the Old Testament, right?
But I think that we could translate that to today as like by Jews seeking signs, as justany religious people, right?
And so religious people, they always want more signs.
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They always want to, you know, whether it's like, okay, well, we want to have like, youknow, some kind of charismatic sign of, you know, are you speaking in tongues or, or are
you having healing and stuff like that?
Or it could be
uh something like, okay, well, we want to see uh more archaeological evidence, right?
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Which is a more respectable sign, I think, to look for, because it should, you know, showthe proof of the scriptures.
But in either case, when you're seeking after signs and you're relying upon signs, that'sjust you, that's a trait of a religious person.
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who's never going to be satisfied, no matter how many signs he sees.
Now, then he says, Greeks seek after wisdom.
Now here he has in mind specifically the Greeks, and we see this in Acts chapter 17, whenPaul is in Athens and he's at the Areopagus, the Mars Hill.
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Luke records that these people, these Athenians always want to hear something new, right?
They're always curious about...
hearing something new.
And so this would describe today, like the philosophers, right?
The people who are not religious, but they always want to hear something that kind oftickles or scratches their, you know, kind of intellectual itch.
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Right?
So they find it interesting.
And again, that's not necessarily bad to find.
God's word interesting or to find questions about God and things like good and evil uhand, uh you know, the physics and, you know, metaphysics and, and other philosophical
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questions, uh you know, about being and existence and all these kinds of things.
You can find that interesting and I find it interesting.
That's all great.
uh But, but if you
If all you're doing is just trying to satisfy your own intellectual appetite, then you'renever going to be satisfied.
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And this is so these two things really sum up how everyone looks at God by nature is theywant God to keep proving himself with signs and until they think that they've seen enough
signs or they want God to keep
you know, feeding them with some kind of or satisfying their intellectual cravings andgiving them lot of interesting things to think about, these new things to think about.
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And in both cases, you're never going to be satisfied.
You're never actually going to know God.
Instead, what is the beginning of knowing God?
What's the beginning of wisdom, according to the Bible?
The fear of
the Lord, right?
We hear this uh in Psalm 111, we hear this also in the Proverbs repeated, that the fear ofthe Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
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All those who practice it have a good understanding, his praise endures forever.
The fear of the Lord.
And that's why Genesis begins the way that it does, introducing us to thisincomprehensible God who is
who is plural and yet one, who creates the heavens and the earth.
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And it's right, so right off the bat, we recognize that we stand before this God who wasin the beginning, before anything, and that his essence, his substance, his ways are past
finding out, and yet he comes and creates.
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And that should cause us
to fear Him, right?
This is what God says to Job, you know, were you there when I laid the foundations of theearth?
If we don't begin with that fear of God, that trembling before His Word, recognizing that,wow, this is not just some book of literature for us to, you know, read it until we judge
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whether we like it or not.
But no, this is God actually revealing Himself to us, making Himself known to us.
insulting our seemingly high intelligence and revealing that it really is nothing in theface of His light.
We need to begin with that.
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So now let's return then to this idea of God's attributes.
We listed some of His attributes already.
The Bible doesn't start off by saying
that once upon a time there was a deity named God, and he was a good God, he was a justGod, and he was a loving God, he was a powerful God.
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Instead, the Bible demonstrates that God is good, that God is just, that God is loving,and that God is all-powerful by simply revealing what God did.
Seven times.
when God is creating the heavens and the earth, seven times, he sees that it is good.
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First, he created light and he saw that it was good.
And then second, after making the sky, the sea and the dry ground, God saw that it wasgood.
Third,
After causing the land to produce plants for fruits and vegetation, he saw that it wasgood.
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Fourth, after making the sun, the moon, the plants, and the stars, he saw that it wasgood.
Fifth, after making all the sea creatures, he saw that it was good.
uh And then sixth, after making the land, the animals, uh the animals on the land, he sawthat it was good.
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So six times he sees that it is good.
And then the scriptures slow down.
And near the end of the sixth day, God has come to His grand finale of His creation.
The time has been fulfilled for Him to make known His image.
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His image is another way of saying His character.
So God, He says to Himself now.
He says, let us make man.
in our own image according to our own likeness and that they may have they rule havedominion over the sea uh the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and the livestock in
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the world and the uh and and all over and over all the creatures that move along theground
So God speaks as one God and yet the verb for said...
So he speaks as one God, so it says God said, right?
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uh It says, yomer elohim.
God said.
That's yomer is singular, right?
Elohim is plural.
God said.
So again, it's speaking in that way.
But plural.
plurality of God, yet singularity of God.
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He said, and yet, and yet, God again reveals more fully His plurality.
What does He say?
Does He say, let me make man?
He says, let us make man.
He's speaking to Himself.
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When He's speaking to Himself, God is plural.
But everything God does...
is as one God.
Right?
So here we have again, I mean, it's going to be unraveled throughout the Scriptures, butalready hidden here, we have God as this, God revealing this inner personality, this inner
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relationship, this inner life, this inner work of Himself.
And this is going to be shown as the Scriptures go along as the Father who has begottenthe Son from eternity.
the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son from eternity.
But here, the way He's revealing this to us is He's acting as one God, because He is oneGod, in creating man in His own image.
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So let us create man in our own image, according to our likeness, that is, according toour character.
And then it goes on to say, so God created man
in his own image.
In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.
So there you have one, two, three, and yet one singular act of creating.
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And so what does it mean for them to be made in God's image?
Well, of course it means that they're distinct from the rest of creation, right?
He says that let them have dominion over the fish and the land animals and over everythingthat God has created.
They're not just another animal, right?
uh But to be made in the image of God is really summarized in this crucial detail.
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For the seventh,
and the final time having finished with his creation, God sees that it is what?
good, except this time, the seventh time.
So all the other times, the first six times it says, and God saw that it was good, God sawthat it was good, God saw that it was good.
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And then it gets to the seventh time and it says, and God saw that it was very good.
And that's significant.
That's significant.
It's important for us to slow down and pay attention to those words.
He saw that it was very good.
To be in God's image is to be very good, that is completed, right?
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Like that word very has uh a sense of completion to it, that you're completed before God.
And this is why God doesn't just speak Adam into existence, right?
He doesn't just say, let there be man and poof, there was man.
What did he do?
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He built him.
He formed him out of the dust of the ground, and he breathed into his nostrils the breathof life.
And it's in that way that he makes him in God's image, and in that way God is showing hispersonality.
See, again, it's not just that he made Adam, but how did he make him?
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He formed him.
He carefully uh crafted him.
as a father, as a careful craftsman.
It's like he's taking pride in this crown of his creation.
And then he forms the woman out of the rib of Adam, causing Adam, he says, it's not goodfor man to be alone.
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So the God who just said, he saw that it was good, he saw that it was good, seven times hesaw that it was very good, then says, it is not good.
for man to be alone.
And this shows then that the fact that he causes Adam to go to sleep and he takes out ofhis rib, and he takes his rib out of his side, and he forms that then into a woman.
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That shows God's character.
That God, uh who shares in himself this plurality and yet oneness, he desires this samething for Adam.
Because the two become what?
The two become what?
One.
The two become one flesh.
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And there is a shadow ah reflecting the image of God.
To be good before God.
To be righteous before God.
To share everything with Him.
To know Him.
To love Him.
And so here we find God
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revealing his own personality, his own character, unraveling it more and more as he doeswhat he does and the way that he does what he does and as he speaks what he speaks and the
way that he speaks what he speaks.
And so God, this is how God actually, so if you want to know God's goodness, look at whathe did in that way, right?
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And then with
And then, okay, so he's also just, right?
Okay, well, what does it mean to be just?
It means to make things right, to provide for something that is lacking or has gone wrong.
Now, we might think of it today as retribution, right?
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And that is justice, right?
When someone has done something wrong, he needs to be punished, right?
Something has been stolen, it needs to be given back.
Right?
So when we think of justice, we always think of it in light of sin and something like acrime, something has gone wrong.
But again, this is before the fall.
There's no sin yet.
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And so if you're here, God's justice is shown by him simply providing that which islacking, right?
Which would otherwise be lacking.
So that's why he says like, it's not good for a man to be alone.
So what does he do?
He provides for Adam his wife Eve.
But what he also does is he provides everything for Adam and his wife.
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So if you notice, Jesus says in John 14, I go and prepare a place for you.
And how did he do that?
Well, by his bitter suffering and death, by burying the justice against sin, right?
But in doing this, he is showing that
Our favorite books, movies, and television shows don't necessarily have the most excitingscenes or dramatic endings.
While these certainly don't hurt, what's even more important than the big explosions andthe story twists is something that we experience in our everyday lives with our neighbors,
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friends, and family.
This is called character development.
Character development is essential to any story.
It draws you into the plot as you get to know the personalities, quirks, and faces of thecharacters.
Now, if I describe to you a detective who always smokes a cigar, wears a scrubby trenchcoat, and rambles on while giving the disarming impression that he's incompetent, all
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before he suddenly says one more thing, then anyone who watched this mystery show
the 1970s knows whom I'm talking about.
If I talk about a stubborn, spoiled, and naive girl who grows up on a Georgia plantationuntil she is forced to find her way after becoming a widowed mother during the Civil War,
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then anyone who has seen this movie or read the book can figure out whom I'm talkingabout.
If I talk about a vain preacher wannabe aristocrat
who sucks up to his patroness, then any girl who is as obsessed as my wife is with JaneAusten can tell who this is.
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Character development.
Character development is a reputation.
That's what characters do.
They develop a reputation.
And this is how we know them and continue to remember them.
Now, speaking of my wife, I met my wife Leah through her older sister Bethany.
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her older sister Bethany is married to my older brother Paul.
And when Paul and Bethany first got engaged, that's when I met Leah, and I had alreadyknown her sister Bethany for a while.
And I asked Leah about this enduring trait about Bethany, and it was where Bethany would
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She'd always smile and she looked like she was kind of laughing at me, but it was just theway that she smiled.
And so she would pay me a compliment with an almost sarcastic looking smile on her face.
And it seemed like she was teasing me when in reality she was genuinely saying somethingnice.
So she'd say, I like your shirt, Andrew.
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And uh Bethany would say this with a smirk on her face.
Now my first thought was what's wrong with my shirt?
And when I give an imp...
And so, anyway, when I met Leah, I told her about this trait.
And when I gave that impersonation of Bethany to Leah, uh Leah immediately laughed andunderstood exactly what I was talking about.
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That's Bethany.
She would say something like that.
Now, can we apply this character development, experienced in fiction as well as in reallife, also to God?
Now, to be sure, God doesn't develop.
That is to say, He doesn't change.
This is made very clear in Malachi chapter 3 and James chapter 1.
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But God does have a personality.
He reveals Himself to us so that we would get to know Him, even as He knows us.
The Scriptures don't tell us a mere legend of a mighty deity.
They are also more than simply records about things that He did and said.
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They reveal God to us.
They introduce us to Him and make Him our friend.
In the Scriptures, we get to know God.
We get to know Him so much that we can meet a complete stranger and immediately hit itoff, because we both know the same God.
And yet, knowing God isn't like
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knowing one of our buddies or a character from a book.
Knowing God is knowing our Father through His Son, Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit who speaks through the Scriptures teaches us to know Him.
This is what Martin Luther wrote in his great hymn to the Holy Spirit.
Teach us to know our God aright and call Him Father with delight.
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We know God first by knowing His Son.
Jesus explains it as follows, Jesus also says to Philip in John chapter 14,
(05:17):
that we have true knowledge of God.
The Scriptures give us this knowledge.
They give us faith.
If you know Jesus, then you know God.
That's because Jesus is God.
He is the eternally begotten Son of the Father.
Only He knows the Father.
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Only He has seen the Father.
And so if you know Jesus, then you know the Father.
You know God.
This isn't simply a knowledge of the correct answers on a test.
It's not just trivia.
No, it is to know God personally.
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And this is because God personally knew us from before the foundations of the world.
St.
Paul says in Romans 8 verse 29,
Therefore, we know Him.
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It's impossible to know God simply by knowing certain character traits about Him.
Let's use an example of someone going on a blind date.
Let's say there's a girl named Suzy.
Her friend Kathy has set her up on a blind date with a guy that she knows and his name is,let's say his name is Joe.
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Suzy tells Kathy about Joe.
He's handsome.
He's tall.
He has brown hair, not too short, not too long.
He has a beard.
He's funny.
He's nice.
He's smart.
You'll like him.
Kathy, then Kathy finally meets Joe.
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And now is it Kathy?
Am I saying?
Yeah, she's, Suzy is setting up, setting Kathy up on the day.
So Kathy finally meets Joe and
She finds that he's handsome and tall with brown hair of reasonable length, but hisfeatures are not as soft as she was hoping.
He also has a beard, but it's not what Cathy envisioned.
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It's a bit craggly and rough.
He laughs a lot, but his jokes are all inside jokes, which Cathy can't understand.
He seems nice, but he also seems to talk about himself all the time.
He's a bit abrasive too.
He certainly knows a lot about all sorts of stuff, but he comes across as arrogant.
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He also has some crazy ideas which go against what Cathy believes.
Suzie wasn't lying about Joe's attributes.
It's just that these qualities don't quite materialize to Cathy in a favorable way.
Or to put it another way, Cathy doesn't like him.
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Kathy could not have concluded that Joe was a good guy based purely on the list ofqualities given to her by her friend, Susie.
She couldn't possibly have known him simply from a file of attributes.
She must experience these characteristics and get to know him.
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In the meantime, Kathy will judge Joe
Using the standards she has already made up in her mind of what it means to be handsome,tall, well-groomed, nice, and smart.
And this is how it is with God.
We all have in our minds an idea of what God should be like.
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He's good.
He's just.
He's loving.
He's merciful.
He's almighty.
He's all-knowing.
But these things
These things alone cannot allow us to know who God is.
When our experience of God does not meet up to our own understanding of His manyattributes, then we either pretend that God isn't how He reveals Himself to be, or we run
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away after a completely different God made in the image of human standards, or we denyGod's existence altogether.
I once paid a man to take away an old piano, an old broken piano that we just needed toget rid of, and he brought his girlfriend along to help out.
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As we were sitting outside watching him tie down the piano to the back of his pickuptruck, I struck up a conversation with his girlfriend.
Since we were in the parsonage right next to the church, the topic of me being a pastor,
came up pretty quickly and so we quickly got on the topic of religion and she was quick totell me that she didn't believe in the existence of God.
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And so I asked her, do you believe that you're going to die?
She answered yes.
I then asked, do you believe there's anything you can do about that fact?
She said no.
I said, well, there you go.
That's God.
You can call him fate.
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You can call him tough luck, chance, or whatever you want.
It isn't that you don't believe that God exists.
It's that you don't like him.
You think he's a jerk.
In other words, you don't know him.
Now, of course, there are many other avenues that you can take in arguing about theexistence of God.
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But that's not really the point.
His existence isn't so much the point.
The point is, do you know Him?
And people, before they consider whether they even know God, they just determine that theydon't like the idea of God.
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And so this is the issue.
Who is God?
How do we know Him?
Do we know Him simply by listing His various characteristics?
On its own, this won't make us know Him any more than Kathy will know Joe.
Instead, we learn the character of God by what He says to us, what He does to us, how Hesays what He says, and how He does what He does.
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Near the end of His Gospel account, St.
Luke records two disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus on the day that Jesus rosefrom the dead.
They were talking about the things that had gone on in Jerusalem over the past few days.
This great man whom they thought was the one to redeem Israel was killed.
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Now his body is missing and some women have claimed that he has appeared to them alive.
So far these two disciples have everything we might think they need.
They have a missing body and witnesses to the resurrection.
You would think they would be able to figure it out.
Jesus rose from the dead.
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He has proven himself to be true God, the Son of the Father, just as He said.
But they're sad.
Even while they talk about such an amazing thing, they have no joy.
And so Jesus comes along and joins them on the road.
Luke says that their eyes were captured, held, or constrained.
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They couldn't recognize Jesus.
Their eyes were held captive by sin and sorrow.
It didn't matter how much proof they had heard about, Jesus' resurrection was much deeperthan merely some fact or news report, although that was certainly very important and
(13:20):
fundamental.
But there was only one thing that could open their eyes at that point, and that was
The scriptures, the scriptures which bore witness to the death and resurrection of God'sSon and revealed the face of the Father.
These ancient words of the living God and His amazing acts, His amazing acts which werefulfilled in Christ's works toward mankind, that were written down over centuries.
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These words of the Scriptures were the only light that could shine through their darkness.
And this is why Jesus, though risen from the dead, having conquered all, having defied allhuman expectations, this is why Jesus used nothing but the Scriptures to open their eyes.
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He showed them from the writings of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets.
why He had to die and rise from the dead.
The Scriptures don't merely tell us what God is.
That He's great, that He's mighty, that He has all sorts of other impressive qualities.
These disciples knew that much about Jesus, but all they were left with was a disappointedhope that Jesus would make Israel great again.
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They knew that God was great,
But the Scriptures tell us much more than that God is great.
They open our eyes to show us who God actually is.
So, can we say that the Scriptures present a sort of character development of God?
Well, perhaps a better term would be character fulfillment.
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God's character is unraveled and presented for us in His works, in His words.
His wisdom and His promises.
This character is fully revealed and fulfilled for us in His Son.
Here is the climax of the history of salvation.
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When the Father's personality is brought to light in the person of Jesus Christ, the onlybegotten Son of God.
Throughout the Scriptures, the person of the Holy Spirit is making
this character known.
So I'd like to start a series here on Christendom and the World discussing God's characterto show who God is from what He says and what He does in the Bible.
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The purpose of this is to get to know Him, to get to know His personality.
This is why the Bible was written down.
It is so that we would not only know things about God, but that we would know what
kind of God He is.
What's He like?
How does He talk?
How does He act?
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What makes Him angry?
What makes Him sad?
What makes Him rejoice?
Why does He do the things He does?
Why does He say the things He says?
Who is He?
And so, to begin with this, I'd like to start from the beginning.
In Genesis chapter 1,
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Verse one, right off the bat.
And maybe I'll quiz you, no one's gonna hear you, uh Hannah.
What's Genesis one verse one?
All right, you nailed it.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Can you say it in Hebrew?
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No, you can't say it in Hebrew.
That's okay.
I'll say it in Hebrew.
That's all I'm going to say.
And then He created the heavens and the earth.
So in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
But those first few words.
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Bereshit, Barah, Elohim.
I want to talk about those words.
Bereshit is in the beginning.
Barah is uh created and Elohim is God.
And right off the bat, we hear about this unique God.
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Now, keep in mind that the Old Testament
The Bible does not start off saying, once upon a time, there was this God, and he was agood God, and he was a just God, and he was an almighty God, and he had power over all
things.
No, it simply says, in the beginning, God created and introduces him right off the bat.
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Before anything was, that's what in the beginning means, before anything was made, thereis God.
And this is a far cry from all the other creation accounts, from these myths inMesopotamia and in other places, where you have this grand story of
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of the creation of the world coming about through violence, through fighting, throughwars.
then, you know, there's also often through a lot of like sex and stuff like that and uh alot of really bizarre stuff.
And I don't need to get into all of that stuff.
Actually, I would recommend an interview uh between Brian Stecker and my brother ChristianPreuss on On The Line.
(19:24):
which is a really good podcast.
It's worth listening to.
And if you're enjoying any of the content here in Christendom and the world, which by theway, you should subscribe and like our videos and share them.
But you should also go and subscribe to On The Line with Brian Stecker.
We'll leave a link to his page under the description here.
(19:47):
But he has an interview with my brother Christian who is a classicist.
He's also a pastor and he has a really good discussion about how the Bible, specificallythe book of Genesis, is very unique and stands apart from all these myths.
And this is really what's key here, is that God is immediately introduced as this God thatis incomprehensible.
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So let's unpack a bit how God is so incomprehensible and unique.
So I quoted the Hebrew to you.
Barashit, Barah, Elohim.
So let's look at...
I already mentioned that Barashit meaning in the beginning, that that is to exclude allthings.
So nothing exists.
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That's what in the beginning means.
Nothing else exists.
And then it says, God created.
Okay, so now let's look at these words Barah and Elohim.
Let's look at the word Elohim.
The word Elohim...
be translated as gods in the plural.
So basically it's god, it can mean many gods or more than one god, but here it's spoken ofas one god and yet Elohim is in the plural.
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this is almost always how God's name, now he has other names in the Old Testament whichwe'll talk about as we go along in this series.
this is that the name for God is almost always uh spoken of in this plural way.
And so right off the bat we see that God is many or more than one, and yet the word bara,uh which means created, is in the singular form.
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It's in the singular number.
Now, Hannah
You have taken grammar, right?
Did you ever, did you take any foreign languages?
You took Spanish, okay?
Do you remember, I didn't take Spanish, but you know, I've studied some Latin and Greekand German, but I would assume that nouns and verbs do similar things.
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Do you remember what nouns do?
That when you have different cases of the nouns, they decl-
They decline.
They decline.
Yeah.
What are verbs do you remember what verbs do?
I think you just said it.
They conjugate.
Yeah.
You got it.
Nice.
Verbs conjugate.
Right.
And so they verbs conjugate in English, but not quite as much.
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Uh, so, you know, you, if they, they conjugate more like when you're going from likepresent to past tense and stuff like that.
Right.
So I, I run and I ran.
So the verb is going to conjugate into rands to be past tense.
In other languages such as Hebrew, it's going to conjugate even in the different persons,right?
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So first, second, third person.
So first person is uh I create, right?
Second person, you create.
Third person, he, she, it creates, right?
So in the Hebrew, uh it conjugates even more than that.
So you have...
You have a bara would be the third person singular masculine, right?
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And then you have a third person singular feminine.
That's a different form.
And it goes on from there, but then you have the, the, the, the third person plural.
So that would be like bar, bar.
So bara would be he singularly created and the, and the third person uh plural would be.
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uh Baru, they created.
now, Elohim, if we take Elohim, which is in the plural form of the verb, or of the noun,God.
and we're going to add a verb to that, what kind of verb would you usually add to it?
A singular one or a plural one?
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If it's a plural noun.
Plural, yeah.
So plural nouns take plural verbs.
But in this case, you have a plural noun, Elohim, that takes a singular verb.
And again, this is almost always the case.
There are some exceptions in the Old Testament.
Usually it's...
when pagans are talking about God and they'll use like a plural verb, right?
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Because of course pagans believe in many gods.
ah And I believe that there is, uh when Abraham is talking to a bimalak, he'll use, heuses like a plural verb.
But that could be just because he's talking to a pagan or something.
um And so at any rate, so most of the time, this is the case that the plural,
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form of God, Elohim, takes the singular verb.
um The other exception to this, and we'll get into this more, ah is when God says like,let us make man, right?
Or let us go down and confuse their languages.
He's using a plural verb, but he's also, you know,
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referring to himself, but then when it actually describes God doing what he does, likeGod, then God made man in his own image, or then God went down and confused their
languages, it's using a singular verb.
Now, this might be boring to some people, because it's all the, you know, the logic of ofgrammar and words and stuff like that.
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But it's very important.
Because right off the bat, we see how incomprehensible God is.
We're struck with this
You know, this very complex uh order of words, of a noun and a verb, which usually justdoesn't work and is very extraordinary.
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uh so, I mean, just consider this.
Shouldn't the Bible just slow down a bit and introduce this God to us who is plural andyet one at the same time?
Why doesn't it begin with a description of his other attributes or talk about like thesunset or whatever, you know?
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Well, because that didn't exist yet.
In the beginning, nothing's there, then boom, uh God created, God who is plural created asone.
And so all right off the bat, you have hidden there.
It's not fully developed yet, right?
So it's not fully uh unraveled rather.
But right off the bat, you have this incomprehensible God doing something that isincomprehensible.
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And this gets us to the first lesson in the scriptures about knowing God.
The first lesson of the scriptures about knowing God.
Are you ready for it?
This is the first lesson.
It's that you can't
that is you can't buy your own reason or strength, right?
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You learn this in the catechism.
I believe that I cannot what?
She said it.
So Hannah just said, my own reason, I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strengthbelieve in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.
But the Holy Ghost has called me by the gospel.
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And so we, by our own uh understanding, cannot know God.
Right?
Just like Kathy can't know Joe.
Much more than that, we can't know God.
unless he reveals himself to us.
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And this is where we should uh take some time to talk about knowing God versus knowledgeabout God.
So Paul says in Romans chapter 1, he's describing people, he's describing the Gentiles,like those who don't know God, those who don't have uh faith in God.
(28:22):
He says, for although they knew God, and here he's talking about they had a knowledge ofGod, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their
thinking and in their foolish hearts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
And as Paul says also in 1 Corinthians 2 verse 14, the natural man does not receive thethings of the Spirit of God.
(28:50):
Why?
because they're foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spirituallydiscerned." And then in Romans 11 verse 33, this was the epistle lesson on Trinity Sunday,
not too long ago.
Paul says, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchableare His judgments and how inscrutable are His ways.
(29:17):
And so, is that it then?
So we just, read the Bible, we read the first like verse of the Bible and we're like,that's insane.
That's way beyond my understanding.
So I can't know God.
Well, not by the ways that we would want to know Him.
(29:41):
We assume that we get to know God by figuring Him out first, right?
I mean, and this is, is, I mean, to use that analogy of the blind date, right?
It's amazing how, how much this is, comes very close to home and is related to dating.
(30:04):
How do people often date nowadays?
What's the first thing that they do?
They take their phone and they download an app, right?
And then they scroll and they swipe.
I don't know.
I've never done it before, but I mean, that's before this is after my time.
(30:25):
You know what we did?
I guess we had there.
There was like e harmony and there was like match.com and stuff when I was when I wasyounger.
But yeah.
that uh nowadays it's just boop, boop, boop, boop, you know?
But what are you doing?
And even when I was a kid, actually, you, or not a kid, when I was in college, um that'swhen Facebook came out.
(30:49):
So, and what sometimes what we would call it is stalker net, right?
And that was the, uh okay, so you went to Bethany, right?
uh
I didn't go there, but I remember, uh, my, so my, roommates were all went to Bethany, likemy first year.
(31:11):
So two of them with my brother and my friend, Travis, we're going to MSU Mankato with me.
And then my friend, Jeremy was finishing up.
He was going all four years at Bethany.
And I think they all had, or at least Jeremy had access to the face.
Wasn't there like a Facebook catalog thing on there?
(31:33):
Was that still there when you were there?
No, it wasn't.
Okay, so at this time, and this is before Facebook, where you could log on and you couldlook up like everyone's picture.
Just like the directory?
Yeah, like a directory.
It's online where it shows their picture and stuff.
Oh, okay.
So it's called a directory.
(31:55):
Anyway, so whenever, so, so whenever like my roommate would say, Hey, you know, I met thisgirl.
There's this girl who is about your age and she's kind of cute.
And I think maybe you might like her.
And I was like, Oh really?
Well, maybe I don't know who she is.
And he's like, well, let me just pull up the stalker that.
(32:15):
And so he pulled up the stalker net and as he called it, which is the directory.
And then he like, show me her picture, you know, and I like, okay.
Yeah.
I think I've seen her around.
Cause I would, I had friends who went there.
And so I would hang out on campus and stuff and, and we would joke about that, but inreality, that is often how it has turned into, right?
(32:38):
That they, they, they're just going to, they're going to look at some kind of ad.
Like there's the picture, how tall are you?
What job do you have?
You know, these kinds of characteristics.
And not that those things don't matter, right?
Those things do matter.
You know, God does want us to know his attributes, right?
(33:01):
His characteristics.
And so you should care about those things.
But you can't know someone simply based on that.
And what you're inevitably going to do is you're going to start drawing conclusions aboutthis person based upon your own standards, ah that you're going to judge what you see
(33:27):
based upon your own standards.
that's not, God doesn't allow us to do that with Him.
Right?
That's why, like, if you're reading the Bible, you're reading Genesis and you're like,okay, I just want like it to...
I want it to just move faster or move more slowly or answer all my questions right away.
(33:49):
And you kind of get impatient.
I mean, that's actually good for you to go through that because it teaches you to curbyour own sinful, impatient desires.
ah One of the other things too that we got to consider is how we are, so how we by nature,
(34:10):
expect to know God.
And Paul sums it up in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, where he says, request signs and Greeksrequest, you remember what they request or what they seek after?
They seek after wisdom, right?
Jews seek signs and Greeks seek after wisdom.
(34:34):
By Jews, he's talking about like the religious people, the people who have the law of God,the people who have the
like the Old Testament, right?
But I think that we could translate that to today as like by Jews seeking signs, as justany religious people, right?
And so religious people, they always want more signs.
(34:55):
They always want to, you know, whether it's like, okay, well, we want to have like, youknow, some kind of charismatic sign of, you know, are you speaking in tongues or, or are
you having healing and stuff like that?
Or it could be
uh something like, okay, well, we want to see uh more archaeological evidence, right?
(35:16):
Which is a more respectable sign, I think, to look for, because it should, you know, showthe proof of the scriptures.
But in either case, when you're seeking after signs and you're relying upon signs, that'sjust you, that's a trait of a religious person.
(35:38):
who's never going to be satisfied, no matter how many signs he sees.
Now, then he says, Greeks seek after wisdom.
Now here he has in mind specifically the Greeks, and we see this in Acts chapter 17, whenPaul is in Athens and he's at the Areopagus, the Mars Hill.
(35:58):
Luke records that these people, these Athenians always want to hear something new, right?
They're always curious about...
hearing something new.
And so this would describe today, like the philosophers, right?
The people who are not religious, but they always want to hear something that kind oftickles or scratches their, you know, kind of intellectual itch.
(36:27):
Right?
So they find it interesting.
And again, that's not necessarily bad to find.
God's word interesting or to find questions about God and things like good and evil uhand, uh you know, the physics and, you know, metaphysics and, and other philosophical
(36:50):
questions, uh you know, about being and existence and all these kinds of things.
You can find that interesting and I find it interesting.
That's all great.
uh But, but if you
If all you're doing is just trying to satisfy your own intellectual appetite, then you'renever going to be satisfied.
(37:13):
And this is so these two things really sum up how everyone looks at God by nature is theywant God to keep proving himself with signs and until they think that they've seen enough
signs or they want God to keep
you know, feeding them with some kind of or satisfying their intellectual cravings andgiving them lot of interesting things to think about, these new things to think about.
(37:43):
And in both cases, you're never going to be satisfied.
You're never actually going to know God.
Instead, what is the beginning of knowing God?
What's the beginning of wisdom, according to the Bible?
The fear of
the Lord, right?
We hear this uh in Psalm 111, we hear this also in the Proverbs repeated, that the fear ofthe Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
(38:14):
All those who practice it have a good understanding, his praise endures forever.
The fear of the Lord.
And that's why Genesis begins the way that it does, introducing us to thisincomprehensible God who is
who is plural and yet one, who creates the heavens and the earth.
(38:35):
And it's right, so right off the bat, we recognize that we stand before this God who wasin the beginning, before anything, and that his essence, his substance, his ways are past
finding out, and yet he comes and creates.
(38:57):
And that should cause us
to fear Him, right?
This is what God says to Job, you know, were you there when I laid the foundations of theearth?
If we don't begin with that fear of God, that trembling before His Word, recognizing that,wow, this is not just some book of literature for us to, you know, read it until we judge
(39:21):
whether we like it or not.
But no, this is God actually revealing Himself to us, making Himself known to us.
insulting our seemingly high intelligence and revealing that it really is nothing in theface of His light.
We need to begin with that.
(39:44):
So now let's return then to this idea of God's attributes.
We listed some of His attributes already.
The Bible doesn't start off by saying
that once upon a time there was a deity named God, and he was a good God, he was a justGod, and he was a loving God, he was a powerful God.
(40:08):
Instead, the Bible demonstrates that God is good, that God is just, that God is loving,and that God is all-powerful by simply revealing what God did.
Seven times.
when God is creating the heavens and the earth, seven times, he sees that it is good.
(40:35):
First, he created light and he saw that it was good.
And then second, after making the sky, the sea and the dry ground, God saw that it wasgood.
Third,
After causing the land to produce plants for fruits and vegetation, he saw that it wasgood.
(40:56):
Fourth, after making the sun, the moon, the plants, and the stars, he saw that it wasgood.
Fifth, after making all the sea creatures, he saw that it was good.
uh And then sixth, after making the land, the animals, uh the animals on the land, he sawthat it was good.
(41:21):
So six times he sees that it is good.
And then the scriptures slow down.
And near the end of the sixth day, God has come to His grand finale of His creation.
The time has been fulfilled for Him to make known His image.
(41:45):
His image is another way of saying His character.
So God, He says to Himself now.
He says, let us make man.
in our own image according to our own likeness and that they may have they rule havedominion over the sea uh the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and the livestock in
(42:11):
the world and the uh and and all over and over all the creatures that move along theground
So God speaks as one God and yet the verb for said...
So he speaks as one God, so it says God said, right?
(42:32):
uh It says, yomer elohim.
God said.
That's yomer is singular, right?
Elohim is plural.
God said.
So again, it's speaking in that way.
But plural.
plurality of God, yet singularity of God.
(42:52):
He said, and yet, and yet, God again reveals more fully His plurality.
What does He say?
Does He say, let me make man?
He says, let us make man.
He's speaking to Himself.
(43:12):
When He's speaking to Himself, God is plural.
But everything God does...
is as one God.
Right?
So here we have again, I mean, it's going to be unraveled throughout the Scriptures, butalready hidden here, we have God as this, God revealing this inner personality, this inner
(43:35):
relationship, this inner life, this inner work of Himself.
And this is going to be shown as the Scriptures go along as the Father who has begottenthe Son from eternity.
the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son from eternity.
But here, the way He's revealing this to us is He's acting as one God, because He is oneGod, in creating man in His own image.
(44:05):
So let us create man in our own image, according to our likeness, that is, according toour character.
And then it goes on to say, so God created man
in his own image.
In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.
So there you have one, two, three, and yet one singular act of creating.
(44:31):
And so what does it mean for them to be made in God's image?
Well, of course it means that they're distinct from the rest of creation, right?
He says that let them have dominion over the fish and the land animals and over everythingthat God has created.
They're not just another animal, right?
uh But to be made in the image of God is really summarized in this crucial detail.
(44:59):
For the seventh,
and the final time having finished with his creation, God sees that it is what?
good, except this time, the seventh time.
So all the other times, the first six times it says, and God saw that it was good, God sawthat it was good, God saw that it was good.
(45:21):
And then it gets to the seventh time and it says, and God saw that it was very good.
And that's significant.
That's significant.
It's important for us to slow down and pay attention to those words.
He saw that it was very good.
To be in God's image is to be very good, that is completed, right?
(45:49):
Like that word very has uh a sense of completion to it, that you're completed before God.
And this is why God doesn't just speak Adam into existence, right?
He doesn't just say, let there be man and poof, there was man.
What did he do?
(46:10):
He built him.
He formed him out of the dust of the ground, and he breathed into his nostrils the breathof life.
And it's in that way that he makes him in God's image, and in that way God is showing hispersonality.
See, again, it's not just that he made Adam, but how did he make him?
(46:34):
He formed him.
He carefully uh crafted him.
as a father, as a careful craftsman.
It's like he's taking pride in this crown of his creation.
And then he forms the woman out of the rib of Adam, causing Adam, he says, it's not goodfor man to be alone.
(46:59):
So the God who just said, he saw that it was good, he saw that it was good, seven times hesaw that it was very good, then says, it is not good.
for man to be alone.
And this shows then that the fact that he causes Adam to go to sleep and he takes out ofhis rib, and he takes his rib out of his side, and he forms that then into a woman.
(47:25):
That shows God's character.
That God, uh who shares in himself this plurality and yet oneness, he desires this samething for Adam.
Because the two become what?
The two become what?
One.
The two become one flesh.
(47:46):
And there is a shadow ah reflecting the image of God.
To be good before God.
To be righteous before God.
To share everything with Him.
To know Him.
To love Him.
And so here we find God
(48:07):
revealing his own personality, his own character, unraveling it more and more as he doeswhat he does and the way that he does what he does and as he speaks what he speaks and the
way that he speaks what he speaks.
And so God, this is how God actually, so if you want to know God's goodness, look at whathe did in that way, right?
(48:36):
And then with
And then, okay, so he's also just, right?
Okay, well, what does it mean to be just?
It means to make things right, to provide for something that is lacking or has gone wrong.
Now, we might think of it today as retribution, right?
(48:56):
And that is justice, right?
When someone has done something wrong, he needs to be punished, right?
Something has been stolen, it needs to be given back.
Right?
So when we think of justice, we always think of it in light of sin and something like acrime, something has gone wrong.
But again, this is before the fall.
There's no sin yet.
(49:17):
And so if you're here, God's justice is shown by him simply providing that which islacking, right?
Which would otherwise be lacking.
So that's why he says like, it's not good for a man to be alone.
So what does he do?
He provides for Adam his wife Eve.
But what he also does is he provides everything for Adam and his wife.
(49:39):
So if you notice, Jesus says in John 14, I go and prepare a place for you.
And how did he do that?
Well, by his bitter suffering and death, by burying the justice against sin, right?
But in doing this, he is showing that
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