THE DOCTRINE OF GOD - CHAPTER # 3

GOODNESS OF GOD !!!!!!
MARK 10:18 - Only God is completely good in His nature and actions. His goodness includes all the positive moral attributes such as grace, patience, and kindness.
ILLUSTRATION: When the rich young ruler called Jesus "Good Master," Jesus reminded him that only God could be properly referred to as "good" (verse 18). The good that exists in the world around us truly reflects or expresses the goodness of God (GENESIS 1:10). There is no other source of true good." When God revealed His name to Moses, He described Himself as being "abundant in goodness" (EXODUS 34:6).
APPLICATION: - The goodness of God is illustrated daily in our lives by the many good things that add comfort and enjoyment (JAMES 1:17). Christians should be careful not to take these gifts for granted. (First Reference, GENESIS 1:10; Primary Reference, MARK 10:18; EPHESIANS 2:8).

JUSTICE OF GOD !!!!!!!!!!!!
ACTS 17:31 - The justice of God is the active extension of the holiness of God into matters of decision. It implies that God has the authority and ability to establish the standard for all relationships and that He will be consistent in relating to His obedient and disobedient creatures. The justice of God is both legislative and distributive.
ILLUSTRATION: When Abraham attempted to prevent the destruction of Sodom, he appealed to God's justice: he knew the judge of all the earth would do right (GENESIS 18:25). 
APPLICATION: So today, everyone can have confidence that God will deal with him justly, but the believe may additionally plead God's mercy. (First Reference, GENESIS 3:14; Primary Reference, ACTS 17:31; MARK 10:18).


TRUTH OF GOD !!!!!!!!!!!!
JOHN 14:6 - The word truth is used in Scripture in two ways: true as contrasted with false; and genuine as contrasted with unreal. Although both apply to God, when we speak of the truth of God, normally His genuineness is contrasted with false gods of other religions. The Scriptures in this sense declare Him "the only true God" (JOHN 17:3). ILLUSTRATION: When Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, he challenged them to evaluate the genuineness of the Lord and of Baal (1 KINGS 18:21). The true God answered by fire. APPLICATION: Because the Lord is God, we are obligated to Him in all He demands. (First Reference, DEUTERONOMY 32:4; Primary Reference, JOHN 14:6; ACTS 17:31). 


HOLINESS OF GOD !!!!
LEVITICUS 19:2 __The Hebrew word translated "holiness" comes from a root meaning "to separate or cut off." The primary meaning of holiness implies God's positive quality of self-affirming purity; the secondary meaning implies separation, particularly separation from sin. The holiness of God means He is absolutely pure and absolutely separate from (and above) all His creatures, and also separate from sin and evil. 
ILLUSTRATION: Because God is holy, all sin is offensive to Him. For this reason He had to break fellowship with His own Son when Jesus became our sin-bearer (MATTHEW 27:46). Only through the identification of Christ with our sin as our sacrifice can we be reconciled to God.
APPLICATION: When the Scriptures mention the holiness of God, they also stress the personal holiness of His people. (First Reference, GENESIS 1:4; Primary Reference, LEVITICUS 19:2; JOHN 14:6).  

IMMUTABILITY OF GOD !!!
JAMES 1:17 __Since all changes are either for the better or for the worse, God is unchanging because He is perfect and cannot get better nor become worse. The Scriptures describe God's nature, will, and character as immutable or unchanging. ILLUSTRATION: To be immutable, however, does not mean to be immobile. God also has the qualities of personality and can act, think, create, and make decisions.
APPLICATION: God is unchanging; therefore, Christians can depend on His love and power, because God has not changed since biblical times. (First Reference, PSALM 9:7; Primary Reference, JAMES 1:17; LEVITICUS 19:2).  


LOVE OF GOD !!!!!!
JOHN 3:16 _Love is both an attribute of God and a description of His being. He alone is the epitome of divine love and the source of all true love. His love is unconditional and consistently seeks the highest good of the one who is loved.
ILLUSTRATION: God's love was clearly demonstrated at Calvary when Jesus died for all our sins (1 JOHN 3:1).
APPLICATION: Because God first loved us, we ought to love others as well (1 JOHN 4:11).
(First Reference, GENESIS 2:16, 17; Primary Reference, JOHN 3:16; JAMES 1:17).  

WISDOM OF GOD !!!!!
PROVERBS 9:1 _The "wisdom of God" is used in three senses in the Scriptures. First, it refers to the higher perspective by which God understands things that man is incapable of understanding (1 CORINTHIANS 1:25). Second, it can refer to the understanding which a Christian should have in life (4:7). Also, wisdom is seen as a type of Christ, who is our wisdom (1 CORINTHIANS 1:30). ILLUSTRATION: When David said Abner died as a fool (2 SAMUEL 3:33), he meant that Abner died because he followed his own intuition, rather than the wisdom of God, which would have saved him. He was killed as he turned aside in the gate of Hebron. Had he entered the city of refuge, as God had instructed, Joab would have been unable to kill him. 
APPLICATION: A wise Christian will obey the wisdom of God. (First Reference, GENESIS 2:16, 17; Primary Reference, PROVERBS 9:1; JOHN 3:16).  

UNITY OF GOD !!!!!
DEUTERONOMY 6:4 _The fundamental concept of the Shema (the name of this passage, which is the first word in Hebrew: Hear!) is that God is one and not many gods. By definition, there can be only one all-powerful, infinite, limitless God. ILLUSTRATION: To speak of more than one supreme, absolute, perfect, and almighty Being is to say something contradictory. There cannot be two absolutes, for than there would be no absolute. 
APPLICATION: By revelation, we know that only Yahweh is that one God. Therefore, nothing in your life should come between you and God. (First Reference, GENESIS 1:1; Primary Reference, DEUTERONOMY 6:4).   


IMMENSITY OF GOD !!!!!!
1 KINGS 8:27 _Applied to God, immensity means that God cannot be limited by space and is in fact beyond space. Space is the area where physical reality (matter) and being (energy) exist, and to that degree is limited. Where space ends, God still persists infinitely beyond all limits. (First Reference, GENESIS 1:1; Primary Reference, 1KINGS 8:27; DEUTERONOMY 6:4). 

SIMPLICITY OF GOD !!!!
1 JOHN 1:5 _Simplicity means that God is not complex, compounded, or divisible in His nature. Simplicity does not deny the three distinct persons of the Trinity. The three distinct persons all share in the same "essence" of God. Neither does this mean that it is easy to understand all that is to be known of God because (1) _sin has a limiting effect upon human understanding, and (2) _man's understanding is finite, whereas God is infinite. APPLICATION: Jesus taught that one must approach God as a little child to be converted (MATTHEW 18:3). (First Reference, GENESIS 1:1, Primary Reference, 1 JOHN 1:5; 1 KINGS 8:27).     


ANTHROMORPHISMS !!!!
GENESIS 4:14__16 _Adam hid from Yahweh in shame and guilt (3:8); now Cain must hide himself. From thy face shall I be hid is a passive verb from ("I must hide myself from your face"), and is part of his curse. Every one is "anyone" finding me"; it looks to the idea of blood revenge for this death and anticipates other murders. 

DEFINITION OF GOD !!!!
JOHN 4:24 _John gives three description of God. He is Spirit (JOHN 4:24), love (1 JOHN 4:8), and light (1 JOHN 1:5). God is a spiritual being who is invisible and without a body; He is a divine person who reveals Himself in perfect intellect, emotion, and will; He is the source and personification of all material and spiritual life; He is self-existent; He is eternal in relationship to time; He is unlimited in relationship to the immensity of space; He is immutable in His nature; He is the unity of all existence; and He is consistent in His being__that is, He corresponds in actual fact to His nature and attributes as they are revealed to us. (First Reference, GENESIS 1:1; Primary Reference, JOHN 4:24).


NATURE OF GOD !!!!!
1 JOHN 4:8 _The nature of God is His "essence" or His "substance." God's nature includes all that He is that makes Him uniquely God. Any complete definition of God's nature should include the following seven aspects: Spirit, person, life, self-existence, uncangeableness, infinitude, and unity. (See JOHN 4:24 for a definition of God.) Without these things, God would not be God.
ILLUSTRATION: Because God is so difficult to comprehend, Jesus became a Man revealing the essence of the Father and proclaiming truth concerning God (JOHN 1:14, 18). As we read the gospel accounts of the ministry of Christ, it becomes easier for us to understand what God is like.
APPLICATION: The first commandment of the law requires that we love and worship God as He truly is, implying we should study the nature of God (EXODUS 20:3; MATTHEW 22:37, 38). 
(First Reference, GENESIS 1:2; Primary Reference, 1 JOHN 4:8; JOHN 4:24).    


ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD ANTHROPOLOGICAL !!!!!
ROMANS 2:15 _The existence of man as a moral and intellectual being is argument for the existence of a moral and intellectual being called God. This is true because man was created in the image and likeness of God (GENESIS 1:26), and even after the Fall he has the law of God written in his heart (verse 15).
ILLUSTRATION: When people follow God, they often follow of God they see in the lives of others. Paul taught the Corinthians to follow him as he followed the Lord (1 CORINTHIANS 11:1).
APPLICATION: So today, Christians ought to be careful to reflect the character of God in their lives and not become a stumbling block to the gospel. (First Reference, GENESIS 1:26; Primary Reference, ROMANS 2:15; 1 JOHN 4:8).   

 ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD HEBREWS 3:4 _The word ontological comes from the root "being" and is a deductive argument that only indicate the probable existence of God. (See ROMANS 1:20 and PSALM 94:9 for stronger argument.) It reason that the idea of a imperfect human being. Therefore, a perfect and infinite Being who exists must have placed the idea in mankind. (First Reference, GENESIS 1:1; Primary Reference, HEBREWS 3:4; ROMANS 2:15).



TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD !!!!!! PSALM 94:9 _The existence of God is proven by the order and useful arrangement in the universe. The orderly world in which we live clearly demonstrates that a great mind was behind its arrangement. The Scriptures identify God as that great intelligence. (First Reference, GENESIS 1:1; Primary Reference, PSALM 94:9; HEBREWS 3:4).

COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD !!!!!!
ROMANS 1:20 _The argument from cause and effect is one logical argument for the existence of God. As everything that exists must have an adequate cause, so an all-powerful and intelligent God is an adequate cause to explain the universe. The Scripture identifies that "cause" as the creative power of God (GENESIS 1:1; ROMANS 1:19__20). (First Reference, GENESIS 1:1; Primary Reference, ROMANS 1:20; PSALM 94:9)

BE STRONG__AND WORK!! - CHAPTER # 2 - CLASSIC SERMONS

GEORGE CAMPBELL MORGAN
(1863-1945) was the son of a British Baptist preacher and preached his first sermon when he was 13 years old. He had no formal training for the ministry, but his tireless devotion to the study of the Bible helped him to become one of the leading Bible teachers of his day. Rejected by the Methodists, he was ordained into the Congregational ministry. He was associated with Dwight L. Moody in the Northfield Bible conference and as an itinerant Bible teacher. He is best known as the pastor of Westminister Chapel, London (1904-17 and 1933-35). During his second term there, he had Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones as his associate.
# 1 __BE Strong__And Work !! _Be strong . . . . saith the Lord . . . and work: for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts (HAGGAI 2:4)
These words were uttered about 2,500 years ago, yet they come to us and to our day with a pertinence that is almost startling. This is not surprising, for our times have much in common with those of the old Hebrew prophets. There are certain senses__the statement must be made and received guardedly__in which the prophetic writings made a profounder appeal to us than do the apostolic writings. Men today know so much more than they do, with the result that they begin to question the things they know. That was the condition in the time of the prophets. Therefore these prophetic writings are powerful in the conditions addressed, in the principles recognized, and in the appeals made. So from this ancient writing of Haggai we take out these words and find that they are living and powerful words, coming to us not faint and far from that Eastern land and that bygone time, but with an immediateness that leads us to feel that they are verily the word of the Lord to us.
  # 2 __In the book of Ezra we have the account of the laying of the stones of the second temple. Because a decree forbidding the work had been obtained from Artaxerxes, the house of God lay waste for fifteen years. It had that almost appalling aspect of desolation, not of a structure battered and bruised and beaten, and in some sense made beautiful by the tempests and time, but of a structure commenced and never finished. At the death of the king this edict lost its authority, but the people did not proceed with the building, citing difficulty, danger, and poverty as reasons. Yet all the while neither danger nor difficulty nor poverty prevented them from building their own house__houses of beauty and luxury. To such a people the messages of Haggai came, and this brief prophecy of only two chapters tells the story of how he delivered these four prophecies in conjunction with Zechariah, and how the people arose and built the house of the Lord.  
# 3 __In our text three things are found with which I propose to deal: first, the need revealed by the command to "work"; second, the responsibility that rested on the people in view of the need; finally, the encouragement given to them to take up that responsibility and meet that need. The need was to build the house of God. The responsibility was that they should be strong and work. The encouragement was the promise and covenant that God made with them: "I am with you, said the Lord of hosts." 
# 4 __The Need for a House of God _The house of God has been neglected. We can imagine men saying: Why building to our children? The question was answered by the prophesyings of Haggai and Zechariah. One supreme answer was given to all such inquiry. It was the answer of the final, fundamental fact of all human life, the fact of God.
# 5 __In one of his sermons at our Mundesley Bible Conference, my friend John A. Hutton said something which those of us who heard him will never forget, and he said it in such a way that we shall never forget. Speaking of the spies who went to spy out the land of Canaan and afterwards described themselves as grasshoppers, Mr Hutton said that those men thought they were looking at the facts of the case, but they were not looking at facts, they were looking at circumstances. He declared that there is but one Fact, and that is God. All other things are circumstances related to that Fact. That is the underlying truth which made necessary the building of the house of God in that bygone age. God is the age-abiding Fact, the ever and everywhere present Fact, and men who forget Him are leaving out of their calculations the supreme quantity, and therefore their findings are inevitably doomed to be wrong.
 # 6 _A science that forgets God is blind, seeing only that which is near, and at last boasting itself that it has no interest in anything that is far. The philosophy that excludes God is equally incomplete, and therefore incompetent. Science starts with emptiness of mind and perfectly proper attitude. Philosophy starts with a question, What is Truth? That is a perfect fair method of operation. But science proceeding to the discovery of the facts will inevitably finally touch God. The question is whether it will dare to call Him God when it finds Him. That philosophy attempts to account for things and to give us the true wisdom of life must take God into account. The question is whether it will ultimately do so or not.
# 7 _The one fact from which there is no escape is that fact of God. God is not distanced from human life. In Him we live and move and have our being (ACTS 17:28). God is not uninterested in human life. If the great revelation of these sacred writings is to be trusted, there is absolutely nothing in which God is not interested.
# 8 _In passing, let me urge very seriously those of you who have not been reading the Old Testament recently to read it once more, without prejudice, simply to see it as revealing God's interest in the common things of life, the commonplaces of life. It is the Old Testament that teaches you that God puts human tears into His bottle. It is the Old Testament that tells that God knows whether the garment you wear is a mixture of wool and something else or not. The Old Testament tells us that God is interested in the fringes that people wear on their garments. Trivial things, you say. That is our God! He is the God of the infinitely small as well as of the infinitely great, not alienated from any part of human life, knowing our downsitting and our uprising, our going out and our coming in; near to us in the casual as well as in the critical, numbering the hairs of our head. That is the supreme Fact of life, and the Fact from which there can be no escape.
# 9 _The supreme obligation on human life is its relationship to God, therefore it is important to build His house. In the days in which Haggai exercised his ministry, the building of the house was entirely material. The house was the true rallying point for the people, the place of worship, the place where men gathering together did not seek the presence of God, but remembered His presence, recognized His power, reminded their own hearts anew of the abiding fact of His covenant with them and of His perpetual care of them. Moreover, in that ancient Hebrew economy, the house of God was essentially the house of prayer for all nations, as our Lord Himself did say in the days of His flesh, quoting from the ancient prophecies.
# 10 _Then how supremely important it was that the house should be built. There, for fifteen years, having been raised but a few feet in all probability from the ground, the first few courses laid, it had stood desolate, overgrown with verdure, moss-covered, a perpetual revelation of the fact that people who bore the name of  God had largely forgotten Him. The supreme need in that hour was not the rearrangement of policy with surrounding nations, not the rediscovery of a lost art, not increase in commerce; the supreme necessity was that the house of God should be built, the sacramental symbol of the nation's relationship to Him.
# 11 _Today the house of God is no longer material; it is living, it is spiritual, it is the church of God in the divine economy is an institute of praise and prayer and prophecy. An institute of praise, a living temple of living souls whose eyes are toward the light, whose faces are irradiated with joy, who are living in the midst of the sorrows and desolations of time as men and women who have found mastery over sorrow and desolation in their fellowship with the unseen and eternal.
# 12 _That is true of the Catholic Church, the whole church, and in that function of the church all things that divide us cease to be, and we realize that the building of the church of God is of supreme importance in order that there may be maintained in the midst of the sorrows and sins of humanity a living testimony to the gladness and holiness that are possible to men as they live in right relationship with God. Nothing, therefore, can be more important than this building of the church, the building of it stone upon stone, of living stones brought into touch with the Living Stone, whose preciousness is made over to them that they may share that preciousness and bear testimony in their glad, pure, consenting life to what the Kingdom of God really means in the world.
# 13 _Whereas the house of God today is no longer material but spiritual, the material is still a very real symbol of the spiritual. When the church of God in any place in any locality is careless about the material place of assembly, the place of its worship and its work, it is a sign and evidence that its life at a low ebb.
# 14 _Let us not, however, lose sight of the larger matter, the necessity for the continuation of the building of the spiritual house of God. There is nothing this nation needs more than that the church of God itself should be more clearly seen. Therefore there is no work more important than that of the continuity of the building of that spiritual house which, in the life of the nation, is not to be dictated to by the nation, but to exercise its threefold function of praise, prayer, prophecy, and so contribute to the true essential strength of the national life.
# 15 _The First Responsibility: To Be Strong
These words spoken in the olden days by the prophet indicated not only the need, but the responsibility. The spiritual value of this old-time story is here most marked, most definite. These people were to "be strong"; that is the first thing. And they were to "work"; that was the second. These two things cannot be separated. There can be no work apart from strength; there can be no strength, such as the prophet referred to, which does not express itself in work. "Be strong . . . and work." 
# 16 _This charge to the people was a suggestion of their weakness, the weakness that had prevented, and still was preventing, them from building the house of God. We discover the elements of the weakness in the most simple way by looking at the prophecy. In the first place their weakness consisted in the fact that they were careless about this matter. They said, "It is not the time for us to come, the time for the Lord's houses to be built" (HAGGAI 1:2). That is so startlingly modern that I hardly know what to say about it. It is not the time! The modern man will not speak so simply; the modern man will  say that it is not the psychological moment. That means the same thing. Whenever, in the presence of super abounding need, man says, "It is not the psychological moment," know well that the cleverness of his argument is revelation of the carelessness of his heart. The time is not come; we are waiting for the time, for some moment electric with inspirational opportunity. People who wait for that moment never find it, and do not want to find it.  
# 17 _Another element of weakness to which the prophet drew attention is revealed in the question he asked: "Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your cieled houses, while this house lieth waste?" (HAGGAI 1:4). The second element of weakness in the life of the people was luxury and comfort; they were dwelling in their own paneled houses, perhaps even while discussing over and over in their social gatherings the neglected condition of the house of God. The set time had not come to build it; but the time had come to build their own houses, and to panel them with beauty.
  # 18 __There was yet another element of weakness. We discover it by another question: "Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? And how do ye see it now? Is it not in your eyes as nothing?" (HAGGAI 2:3). The third element of weakness was contempt for that very house which lay unfinished, and contempt for any man who suggested that it ever could be restored to its ancient glory. This contempt was born of a great past, of which the people were always talking, and in which they rejoiced, to the neglect of the present, with its terrific responsibility and its glorious opportunity. The collateral writings to this prophecy reveal some of the reasons for the contempt. The sacred fire was no longer burning, the shekinah glory was no longer manifested, the ark and the cherubim were no longer in their places, the urim and the thummim had been lost, and the spirit of prophecy was silent. All these things were absent. The people looked back to the days when these things were there in all their glory, and they held the present in supreme contempt, both as to its conditions and as to the idea that it was possible to restore the lost glory.
# 19 _I say again, the picture is wonderfully modern. We still have the carelessness which says, The time has not come. It expresses itself often in prayer for revival. The revival is here, if we will but have it so, I pray you talk no more about the indifference of the nation; talk if you will of the indifference of the church to its own evangel, its own gospel, its own living powers. The set time has not come, so men still say. 
# 20 - Then there is the weakness resulting from comfort. The church of God today is suffering from material prosperity within her own borders. Things which our fathers spoke of as luxuries we speak of as necessities. For all spiritual service we are being rendered weak, anemic, enervated by the beautiful houses and the comforts of our lives. The old Spartan heroism of our fathers, the simpler life, and the great poverty, have largely passed away. It is the time to build our own houses and dwell in them. 
# 21 - Another element of weakness present with us is our perpetual looking back and sighing for departed glories, for the voice of preachers of other days, for the prayer meetings that once were held, for all those peculiar manifestations of the presence of God in past  days. The old men are sighing for these and looking with contempt on the present hour, disbelieving in the possibility of  revival and the building of the house of God. 
# 22 - Said the prophet to these men, and now says the Word of our God to us, "Be strong" (2:4). If we would know what our strength is, we may know it by examining our weakness. Over against every element of weakness we are to place an element of strength. Over against carelessness what shall we put? Listen to the voice of the prophet. "Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put ot into a bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways" (1:5__7). One of the first conditions of real strength will be obedience to that command, the consideration of our ways.