Attributes of God

Robert Compton and his wife have been making pottery in Bristol, VT for decades. They produce beautiful pieces in a variety of ways. To finish a piece, the clay is often heated to over 2000 degrees. And for one process in the middle of this burning, they sprinkle water on the pieces. The cold water hitting the burning hot clay produces spackles that add unique design elements.

In his experimentation with different clays, glazes, and firing methods Robert Compton does…whatever he wants. He is the complete master over the clay in all of his endeavors.

This morning in our sermon we're looking at the names of God from Psalm 86. Specifically we're looking at God's name, Adonai. It means, "my Master." To help us appreciate how David the Psalmist would have used the names of God, I switched out the English translations of God's names for the Hebrew originals. Sometimes it helps us to do this in our minds as we read the Old Testament to cause us to slow down and reflect on how much God's names reveal about him. Here is Psalm 86:

Psalm 86
A Prayer of David.
Incline…

The idea of our current sermon series on the names of God, What is God Like?,  is to use the names of God as a way to think about God.

I feel like I am the last person who should be writing about holiness. Or maybe, in God's economy of first and last, this is exactly what I should write about. But when Daniel Baker first suggested this topic, I have to admit a little trill of fear rushed through me while standing in church that Sunday morning. Growing up, I had always expected that by the time I was this age it would be much easier to be holy. This past year has simply proven that, in my own power, I am entirely inadequate in any form of personal holiness. Any goodness, purity, or holiness in me is only directly proportional to the grace I have been given and look for each day in a growing love of Jesus Christ.

For a recent home group meeting, Eli asked us to think about the attribute of God that had been blessing us specifically lately. I immediately began ruminating on all of the usual attributes: grace, love, justice, mercy, holiness, omniscience, etc. But I wondered how I could pick just one.

To say that God is immutable is to say that he is unchanging. It is to say that he is constant and consistent. It is to say that he is not fickle. The God who reveals himself in his creation and in his Word is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. With this in mind, there are at least four ways in which we can speak of God as being immutable.

"The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father." That's how J.I. Packer opens his famous book Knowing God. 

I sat down to write about God’s creativity – the absolute originality of all that he does, his ability to bring truly new things into existence. I had an idea of how I wanted to begin, but I couldn’t make it right. I couldn’t make it work. As an English major I can never help striving for embellished language, not even as I’m writing this – as if my poetry could somehow climb high enough to convey a God who soars higher than understanding!

Do we worship what we know or what we do not know? This was the distinction made by Christ to the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob concerning the Jews and Samaritans of his day. Jesus pointed out that God, who is spirit, was seeking true worshipers who will worship in spirit and truth.