WE CAN NEVER know God fully.  He is infinite but we are finite. But those who have been given the DESIRE can know Him. They are, in fact, the only ones who CAN know Him.

By our sinful nature we hate God, and are in rebellion against God. Certainly by his sinful nature man does not love God. Yet ALL men will have a god they love. It might be made of stone or wood; it might be some occult spirit among the fallen angels, reigned over by Satan; or it may even be Self. But MAN will have a god he loves even if he has to make him up in his fantasy world of imagination.  That is the sad fact.

I recently read an autobiography of a Hindu who had marvelously been converted to Christ. As a boy, he was in line, and being trained to be a guru, a most highly respected Hindu leader, and eventually to be looked upon as a god himself.  The Hindu’s religion offers them many gods, perhaps thousands. As a boy, this Hindu worshipped his cow and spent loving hours every day with this cow-god. The Hindu believer is also under the influence and guidance of spirit gods. They don’t know it, but they are demon spirits. This boy went for many years with this cow as god. But one day this cow attacked him, and would have gored him if he had not been on a chain. This really shook the boy up. How could a god he worshiped turn on him like that?

It started him to thinking, but he kept on for many years and became a Hindu guru. Then a devout Christian girl of eighteen, evidently with much wisdom and zeal, witnessed to him in spite of his extreme anger toward anything to do with Christianity. He hated it. He hated the God of the Christians. But, long story short, the true God revealed Himself to this Hindu guru, who was now a young man. He planted His love and Spirit in him, and he became what he had vowed never to become. That is the power of our infinite, all-powerful God.

Jesus said, “He that hateth Me hateth My Father also.” (John 15:23)

The ungodly not only hate God and are rebellion against Him, they hate instruction, even the instruction based on God’s Word. This is what the God of the Bible says:

“Seeing thou hatest instruction, and casteth My words behind thee. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentest with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. Thou givest thy mouth do evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set [them] in order before thine eyes. Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.  “Whosoever offereth praise glorifieth Me: and to him that ordereth his conversation [manner of life] aright will I show the salvation of God.” (Psalm 50:17-23)

THE HUMAN HEART

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

                                              (Jeremiah 17:9)

And the apostle Paul says, “. . . the natural man receiveth NOT the things of God, NEITHER CAN KNOW THEM,  because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

This does not look too good for the touted “free will” of natural man, does it? Every thing is against it—Satan, the world and the flesh. THAT is why a NEW born-again will comes with the new birth from above. This is the work of God, for all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, with true love in their hearts, with new hearts, too!

BORN IN SIN

ALL men are born in sin, since Adam was their representative and he fell in the Garden of Eden and disobeyed God.  Just one form of this sin is seen in feminism, which destroys lives and marriages. The “feminist” is one that can be referred to in the above Psalm 50, one who hates instruction, not bowing to authority, rebelling against the instruction of God regarding His institution of marriage.  You don’t hate God’s instruction and build a happy life! Men or women. Never!

THE BIBLE

The Bible, unlike any other book of any other religion, is God-inspired and can be depended on for proper instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be completely and thoroughly furnished unto all good works. (See 2 Timothy 3:1.)

The God of the Bible has used His own Word to reveal Himself to man, so it must be taken seriously as God’s own Truth and His Instruction Manual. His Written Word is in full agreement with His Logos, Living Word, Jesus Christ Himself. And add to that, the Holy Spirit Who teaches us, and by Whom we are born-again and have God and His Christ revealed to us, thus making us CREATED new creatures in Christ Jesus. (See 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Eph. 2:10.)

Can we just leave it there, and that be “enough of God” for you to know? The Bible doesn’t. It describes Jesus as the Good Shepherd who dies for His sheep, not for goats. It describes this Jesus as telling certain Jews they did not believe because they were NOT sheep. It lets us know that ALL that the discriminating, sovereign God the Father chose before the foundation of the world certain elect ones to become the loving bride of His Son, Jesus Christ. And Jesus says He dies for them to save them from their sins so they can live with Him in love forever. This Bible states Jesus will not lose a single one for whom He died, who were GIVEN to Him by God the Father. We love a TRIUNE God! To those who will never love Him, truth is actually “hidden.” (See Matt. 11:25; 13:10-17.)

MORE OF MAN

Since natural man, with his natural, fallen will, hates God; since the natural man CANNOT understand the things of God until he is “born-again,” (a work of a sovereign, discriminating, electing God), then MAN who loves another God, loves a god of his own imagination while hating this true sovereign God of the Bible.

I heard on television one of the Prosperity Gospel preachers saying if God did not want him prosperous, meaning materially rich and wealthy, then he would be looking for another god. Truth is, he had another “god” but was just calling him the true God.

And I have heard of others, when told of the sovereign, electing, discriminating God of the Bible, they would say, “My God is not like that.” (Order by request our booklet, “My God Is Not Like That.”)

Those fallen MEN who repel the God of the Bible, not even seeing Him revealed there, are preaching “another gospel” and leading souls astray,—and getting wealthy doing it, because the natural man likes to have his ears “tickled,” and he will choose any day the preacher who makes him “feel good” rather than the one who has a Holy Spirit convicting message from God. The God who he chooses NOT to believe! What do YOU think of the God of the Bible?

Oh MAN, who or what is YOUR God (or god)?
Though wolves or devils assail, God’s sheep shall prevail.

 

“All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me . . .

. . . And I will raise him up at the last day.”

(See John Chapters 6,10,17.)

       

A JERRY BRIDGES QUOTE

“Some years ago, I surveyed the entire New Testament looking for instances where various Christian character traits were taught by precept or by example. I found twenty-seven. It may not surprise you that love was taught most often, some fifty times. It may surprise you that humility was a close second with forty instances. But what really surprised me is that trust in God in all circumstances was third, being taught thirteen or more times.”

—Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins: Confronting

the Sins We Tolerate, (NavPress, 2007), p. 63

 

“Grant me, for the glory of Thy name, patiently to suffer whatever afflictions await me; that I may never despair because of my many tribulations, but  wholly resign myself to the good pleasure of Thy purpose.”

(Thomas a Kempis)