God Is Incomprehensible & Knowable | Doctrine of God Series

Sermon Abstract

This sermon introduces the first two doctrines of who God is; Incomprehensible & Knowable.

God is incomprehensible because he is so great, glorious, and holy that our simple human minds cannot truly comprehend him. For He is so wholly other and separate from every created thing in greatness and understanding.

Yet, God is knowable, because he has chosen to reveal himself to us in ways that we can fathom for he desires that we would know him. This knowledge means can see something on the outskirts of his greatness and understanding that is significant because of his great love.

God does this through general revelation and special revelation. General revelation is displayed through creation and leads to a vague notion of an incomprehensible creator God. Special revelation occurs through the prophets, the scriptures, and most importantly through Jesus Christ the Son of God. This latter revelation leads to salvation and a personal relationship with God.

Lord, help us respond humbly and worshipfully to this amazing truth about who you are, and never lose our thirst for seeing more of your greatness revealed.

 

Sermon Summary

(We use AI to create this summary and transcript from the sermon audio. Although we do check and edit the scripts there may be one or two errors in them due to our process)

Opening Prayer and Introduction

• Opening Prayer:
  • Thanksgiving for God who speaks and reveals himself.
  • A prayer for revelation and growth in the knowledge of God through the Holy Spirit.
  • Prayer was closed in Jesus’ name.
• Series Introduction:
  • Launch of a new sermon series for 2025 titled “The Doctrine of God”.
  • Distinct from previous series, this is a systematic and topical exploration, focusing on a different attribute of God each week.
  • Emphasis: Rather than focusing on personal resolutions or church vision for the new year, the intent is to “lift our eyes” to God himself.
  • Aims to be not only doctrinal and theological, but also practical and transformative.
  • Quotation from A.W. Tozer: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
  • Hope: A transformation in worship and daily living as a result.

Main Topics Discussed

1. The Incomprehensibility of God

Definition and Clarifications

• Key Idea:
  • God is incomprehensible—not in the sense of being unintelligible or unknowable, but in being infinitely greater than human understanding.
  • Our minds cannot fully grasp God’s greatness, glory, and holiness; God is “wholly other.”
  • Quote from John Wesley: “Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and I will show you a man that can comprehend a triune God.”

Biblical Foundations

• Scriptural Examples:
  • Job 36:26: God’s greatness is beyond understanding; His years cannot be counted.
  • Job 26:12-14: Describes God’s power and how even the marvelous things we know are only the “outskirts” of his ways—a mere whisper compared to the “thunder” of his power.
    • Application: Our knowledge is limited to whispers, while God’s reality is thunderous and immense.
  • Psalm 145:3, 5, 2: The Lord’s greatness is unsearchable; David meditates daily on God’s wondrous works but acknowledges he only touches a fraction.
  • Isaiah 40:28: God’s eternal nature, creative power, inexhaustible energy, and unfathomable understanding.
  • Romans 11:33: Depth of the riches of God’s wisdom and knowledge; his judgments are unsearchable and ways inscrutable.
  • Ephesians 3:19: The love of Christ surpasses knowledge.
  • Doctrine of the Trinity: God is one in being and three in person—another aspect that is beyond human intellect.

Practical Outcomes of Incomprehensibility

• Humility:
  • Recognition of one’s limited understanding before God.
  • Speaker contrasts his academic achievements to God’s knowledge, likening them to a child’s picture book.
  • Call to pray, “Lord, humble me,” but with a warning that God often uses circumstances to answer such prayers.
• Worship:
  • Passages concerning God’s incomprehensibility in Scripture typically climax in praise and worship.
  • Admitting our limits in words and understanding should prompt adoration.
  • Speaker references a previous prayer by Andy, highlighting reaching the limits of human expression in worship.
• Summary Statement:
  “We should be humble and worshipful people. God is incomprehensible.”

2. The Knowability of God

How Is God Knowable?

• Foundational Principle:
  • We know God only because He reveals Himself. It is not by our intellect or striving, but by God’s initiative in revelation.
• Deuteronomy 29:29:
  • “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us…”
  • Application: God’s revelation is a privilege owned by His people.

Two Forms of Revelation

1. General (Natural) Revelation

• Definition:
  • What God makes known to all people, at all times, through creation, human consciousness, and the experience of life.
• Romans 1:18-23:
  • God’s “invisible attributes, eternal power, and divine nature” clearly perceived since creation, so humanity is “without excuse”.
  • Across history, societies have universally acknowledged some divine source based on creation (Quote from Cicero via Herman Bavinck: “No society is so barbaric as to deny the existence of gods altogether.”)
• Contemporary Reflection:
  • Modern secular cultures, influenced by scientific perspectives, are adept at “suppressing the truth” about God.
  • Some scientific advances unintentionally highlight the necessity of a “fine tuner” or designer, but such implications are often given alternative explanations (e.g., multiverse theory).
  • Distinction between honest scientific inquiry and willful suppression of divine truth.
  • Practical exhortation: Christians should look for God’s power in creation, using science as a tool for worship rather than opposition to faith.
• Limitation:
  • General revelation provides enough knowledge to render people accountable, but not enough to bring to salvation.

1. Special (Supernatural) Revelation

• Definition:
  • God’s specific, direct revelation to particular people at particular times, most fully in Jesus Christ and Scripture.
• Hebrews 1:1-4:
  • God previously spoke through prophets, but now has most fully revealed Himself through His Son, Jesus.
  • Jesus is characterized as the “radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”
• John 1:18:
  • “No one has ever seen God; the only God [the Son] who is at the Father’s side, He has made Him known.”
  • Knowing Jesus is to know God; Christ’s love and actions reflect the Father’s heart.
• Contrast with Other Religions/Cultures:
  • Greeks (Acts 17): Built an altar “to an unknown God”—they had no real revelation.
  • Modern society: Many affirm a vague “God,” but lack any substantial understanding due to lack of revelation.

The Central Role of Scripture

• 2 Timothy 3:16-17:
  • “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching…”
  • The Bible is God’s sufficient, authoritative revelation, capable of training and equipping believers for every good work.
• Relationship with the Bible:
  • It is critical to have a hunger and love for the Word as the primary means of knowing God.
  • Christians should approach the Bible like eager children: always asking, searching, driven by curiosity and humility.
  • The entire sermon series will anchor firmly in Scripture rather than personal opinions or speculation.

God’s Desire to be Known

• God’s Intention in Revelation:
  • God’s choice to reveal Himself is an expression of His desire for relationship.
  • Acts in history (creation, speech, miracles, incarnation, crucifixion) all point to God’s intention to be known and loved by His people.
  • Illustration: God’s personal naming of Himself to Moses (Exodus 3:14).
  • Jesus’ mission and death are the ultimate acts of revelation and relational access.

Action Items

1. Cultivate Humility and Worship:
   • Regularly acknowledge the limits of personal understanding and the greatness of God.
   • Make worship a consistent, active response to the wonder of who God is.
2. Engage with God’s Revelations:
   • Practice meditating on God’s works (Psalm 145:5).
   • Actively look for evidence of God’s nature in creation and let it lead to praise.
   • Use science and learning as avenues for worship, appreciating the Creator behind creation.
3. Prioritize Scripture:
   • Build lasting habits of reading, studying, and applying the Word of God.
   • See the Bible as God’s personal and sufficient revelation.
4. Nurture a Childlike Hunger for God:
   • Adopt a posture of eager inquiry, like a child incessantly asking questions out of wonder and desire to know more.
   • Continue pressing into God’s self-disclosure with humility and persistence.
5. Pray for Humility:
   • Pray sincerely, “Lord, humble me,” being open to the transformative processes God may use.

Follow-Up Points & Future Directions

• Series Continuation:
  • The coming weeks will continue to explore God’s attributes (Trinity, Sovereignty, Power, Mercy, Judgment, etc.), always rooted in Scripture as special revelation.
• For Attendees:
  • Be prepared for the ongoing challenge: both to worship God in his incomprehensible greatness and to hunger for deeper knowledge through His revealed Word.

Closing Prayer

• Celebration of God’s eternal greatness, incomprehensibility, and revelations through history and in individuals’ lives.
• Petition for humility, worship, and hunger to pursue deeper relationship and understanding.
• Thanksgiving for God’s desire to be known and His provision of both creation and Scripture as means to that end.
• Prayer concluded in Jesus’ name.

 

 

 

Sermon Transcript

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a God who speaks, who reveals himself. And I pray that during this time you would speak, you would reveal who you are and what you have done in our midst today. May we grow in our knowledge of you, Lord God, during this time, in the power of the Holy Spirit. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

 

So, as we begin 2025, we begin a new sermon series called “The Doctrine of God”. Now, we often preach through books of the Bible. That’s typically how we organize our sermon series. But this sermon series is a systematic, a topical sermon series. And each week we gather, we’ll think about a different attribute of the God whom we worship. Most importantly of all, this is a sermon series focused on God. You know, we could have started the year with “what New Year’s resolution do you have?” And think about ourselves as individuals, or we could have set a vision for the church moving forward, this amazing church. And those would have been perfectly valid things to do.

But instead, in this sermon series, we want to lift our eyes. At the beginning of this year, we want to lift our eyes and focus on who our God is. And I pray as we go through this series, we’re going to be moved to worship him and adore him and love him even more than we already have.

This is not just going to be a doctrinal or theological series, but also practical and life changing, because what you believe about God has a critical impact on how you live. Those people who are doing the Theology for Life theology course with me on a monthly basis in Winchester will recognize this quote. But AW Tozer says, “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us”.

What comes into our mind when we think about God changes the way we think about everything. And so I’m hoping that as we focus on him, not only will we just worship and adore him, but also our lives will be transformed as well.

 

Part 1 – The Incomprehensibility of God

1 a)The Incomprehensibility of God – Theology Explained

Now, today’s subject is “The incomprehensibility and knowability of God”. I’m going to begin this sermon series by telling you that God is incomprehensible. Now, this does not mean that God is like a drunk man slurring his words, and we cannot understand what he is saying. It doesn’t mean that God is unknowable, that we cannot understand anything about Him. But when we say God is incomprehensible, what we mean is that God is so great and so glorious and holy that none of our puny human minds can fully comprehend Him. God is bigger than our biggest thoughts. He is greater than our greatest theories. He is beyond our deepest imaginations. He is incomprehensible.

That means that we’re starting a sermon series called the Doctrine of God, where I intend to focus on who God is by saying it’s impossible. It’s impossible to comprehend everything that God is. It’s actually not even that God is too big for us to fully get our heads around. It’s actually that knowledge of God is an entirely different category from anything else that we might seek to know. God is Creator. We are created. He is eternal. We are bound by time. He is spirit, ever present. We are physical creatures in one place. God is love. We can love, but he is love. Therefore, to know God is to know someone or something that’s entirely different from anything else or anyone that we can know.

John Wesley said, “Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and I will show you a man that can comprehend a triune God”. That’s a good quote, isn’t it? When we’re seeking to know God in this sermon series, we’re like a worm seeking to understand a man. God is so wholly other, so separate from every created thing, that we cannot comprehend Him.

1 b) The Incomprehensibility of God – Key Scriptures

Well, let’s examine the incomprehensibility of God in the Scriptures through a variety of scriptures, and we’re going to start in the Book of job.  In Job 36:26, Elihu, who’s kind of the final speaker in the Book of Job, well, God is the final speaker. Just before God, this man Elihu speaks and he says: “How great is God beyond our understanding? The number of his years is past finding out”.  You know, God is beyond our understanding because he is eternal. We can’t even count the number of his years.

In Job 26, verses 12 to 14, Job speaks and he says of God, “By his power he stilled the sea. By his understanding he shattered Rahab. By his wind the heavens were made fair. By his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways. And how small a whisper do we hear of him, but the thunder of his power, who can understand?”

I love those verses in Job. There’s definitely a whole sermon in those verses alone. Job describes all these awesome facets of who God is. He talks about the power to still the sea. And Christian readers thinking, “well, Christ, he had the power to still the sea, didn’t he?” He talks about God’s power to shatter Rahab, which is another name for Egypt. So he’s talking about God conquering Pharaoh in Egypt and leading his people out of Egypt into the wilderness into the promised land. The Lord controls the wind. He pierces the serpent, which speaks of God’s power to defeat evil. But Job then says, these are just the outskirts of his ways. We hear a whisper of God, but the reality is that God is thunder in his power. Imagine if we just started whispering truths of God. We’re only just hitting the outskirts of who he is, because who God really is thunder and greatness and beyond what we can whisper.

The incomprehensibility of God is a massive theme in the book of Job, actually. Because what happens in that book is that Job, a righteous man suffers, and three friends come along. Well, maybe they’re not so good friends. Three friends come along and say, “Oh, we know why this is happening. It’s because you’re unrighteous, Job, you’ve messed up, you’ve sinned, you’ve done things wrong”. And Job goes, “No, it’s not that I’ve done things wrong”. And what they learn through the book, and especially when God comes at the end and speak, speaks to Job and his friends, is that God’s ways are often beyond our understanding. He often works in ways that we just cannot comprehend and cannot get our heads around. We see the outskirts of his ways, but the fullness our minds are too small to get our head around. So the incomprehensibility of God, how great he is beyond our understanding, is a massive theme throughout the book of Job.

But it’s not just Job who speaks on this theme. Psalm 145. In verse three, David writes, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. And his greatness is unsearchable.” If you spend your life searching out the greatness of God. And that’s a very good way to spend a life, by the way, to spend your life saying, “I’m searching for God’s greatness. I’m going to look everywhere to see God’s greatness.” Well, David says his greatness is unsearchable. You’re never going to discover it all. There’s a huge pile of treasure in the greatness of God to be found, and you will find a handful of it and be delighted with the handful that you find. But there’s still always going to be more because his true ultimate greatness is unsearchable.

That’s not going to stop David from trying. In verse five, he says, “On your wondrous works, I will meditate”. I wonder whether you make a practice of that as a Christian, to meditate on the works of God. God created God saved the nation Israel. God sent his son Jesus in human flesh. Jesus, who is God in human flesh, died on the cross for my sins and rose again. You’re meditating. You’re filling your brain with all the works of God and just dwelling upon what they reveal about who God is. That’s what David says he’s going to do. In verse five, “on your wondrous works, I will meditate”. And in verse two, David says, “every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.” Every day he’s going to pour forth his blessing towards God, his praise for his name. He’s going to speak and speak and sing of how great God is. And he’s still only going to hit a tiny fraction of how great God is, because his greatness is unsearchable. He knows that even praising him forever, he will just touch a tiny percentage of God’s true greatness.

Isaiah 40:28 says, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary. And his understanding no one can fathom.”

Isaiah mentions many facets of God that are beyond our comprehension. He is the everlasting God. And we struggle to make sense of that because the entire way we think is bound by time. God is the creator. We’ve sung, haven’t we, about how God speaks and the world, the universe, comes into being. Such is his power. We’re mere creations. We create it. We cannot understand fully what it is to be the creator. Isaiah speaks about God’s unlimited energy. He does not grow tired. He does not grow weary. Let me tell you that I often grow weary and tired. If I seek out the greatness of God, eventually my brain is going to go, it’s time to go to sleep now, Duncan. But God is unlike that. So there’s all these facets that Isaiah is mentioning that we just can’t properly wrap our entire heads around. We can understand something of it, but we can’t fully get to grips with who God is.

But most specifically, Isaiah says it’s God’s understanding that no one can fathom. God knows all things. He knows every possible future. He knows everything that would happen, even if it doesn’t happen. He knows you better than you know yourself. He understands every nook and cranny of the universe. You know, we think we’re smart. Scientists think they’re smart when they, you know, invent a more impressive telescope. And they look into the distant corners of the galaxy and say, hey, look. And then you see a picture and it’s kind of fuzzy. It doesn’t look that impressive. Well, God knows all the details of those pictures and places all over the universe. God’s understanding is miles and miles beyond what you can fathom. Absolutely miles! I don’t want to insult you, but your brains are so small compared to how awesome God’s understanding is.

Romans 11:33 says, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable his judgments, how inscrutable his ways”. If you read the Book of Romans, Paul the Apostle has been talking about Israel and the scope of history of mankind, and he’s been talking on the theme of predestination. And he just gets to this point where he goes, my brain is about to explode. What shall I write next? Oh, God is so magnificent. His ways, his understanding, so glorious. Oh, the depth of the riches of his wisdom. I’ve got 1 millimeter down and I’m confused. And there’s still miles and miles and miles to go in terms of God’s understanding and his ways and his judgments. It’s like this great blurting out of praise. He’s so theological, Paul. And suddenly he just kind of reaches the end of himself and just goes, I just got to praise him because he’s magnificent.

Even thinking about God’s love, you know, the love of Christ that we think about every single time we gather on a Sunday, when we take communion, we’re always thinking about the fact that Jesus Christ loved us so much he died for us on the cross. So we think we know lots about God’s love. In Ephesians 3, verse 19, Paul says, “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge”. I’ve been a Christian for a long time. I know all about the love of Christ. No, you don’t, says Paul. The love of Christ surpasses knowledge.

 

1 c. Two applications of this doctrine – humility and worship

So, this Doctrine of God series starts with a big dose of humility. You think you can comprehend God. You think you know God’s greatness. You think you can understand God’s judgments. You think that you know about his wisdom. You think you’ve got a firm grasp on the understanding, on the understanding of God. You think you know about Christ’s love. You’ve only touched the outskirts of who God is. Knowledge of God, even biblical knowledge, which puffs you up and makes you proud, isn’t really knowledge at all. Actually, if knowledge is puffing you up and making you arrogant, is ignorance of how awesome God is. True knowledge of God humbles you to the point of you going, there’s so much more for me to know about who you are, God. It brings you to the point of praise. It brings you to that point of going, God’s understanding is just way beyond me. Oh, the depths of the riches of God’s wisdom. That’s real, true biblical knowledge. Knowledge that utterly humbles you because God is truly magnificent. He is incomprehensible. He’s way, way, way beyond your understanding. He’s so powerful, he’s so mighty, he is eternal. Even the Trinity is beyond our understanding that God is one being, yet three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If you’ve got totally got your head around that, then you’re lying to yourself. God is magnificent. And as we read these scriptures and we learn more about who he is, it humbles us. We need to be humble people.

So the incomprehensibility of God as a doctrine should lead us to two practical places. Firstly, this place of humility. A place a stark realization of how little we know. I was thinking about my master’s dissertation which I handed him last summer, over 65 pages, well, 66 pages of me waffling on about Habakkuk and referencing Hebrew.  To God, that’s like a picture book for two year olds. That’s how I’m thinking about my master’s dissertation and even that is being generous to what I’ve written. That’s how awesome God is. God’s knowledge of himself and God’s knowledge of the Word which we read in the Bible is way, way beyond ours. So we need to come to this place of humility, of just recognizing how awesome God is.

I’m going to invite you just to pray a very simple but dangerous prayer right now in your hearts, in your minds, just pray, “Lord, humble me”. But be careful if you pray that prayer because God sometimes uses circumstances to humble you if you pray this prayer. But it’s a good prayer to pray. But Lord, humble me. Why don’t you pray that?

Now the second practical place that the incomprehensibility of God should lead us to is worship. Of course, in Psalm 145, David says, I cannot comprehend God, and therefore I’m going to bless his name forever and praise him day after day. In Isaiah 40, it’s the whole passage of praise. It’s actually comfort to the people of Israel, but it’s a passage of praising God and how magnificent and mighty he is. And if you read Romans 11, which finishes with its outburst of praise. Romans 12 is what about what true spiritual worship is all about. So every time this topic of God being beyond our comprehension comes up in the Bible, it ultimately leads us to worship him.

Maybe we’ve caught a glimpse of that this morning as we sung his praises. God is beyond. God is awesome. He’s so magnificent. My brain has understood this tiny fraction of who he is. And I know there’s so much more. Therefore, I’m going to fall down on my knees. I’m going to bow before him and lift him up and praise him for how magnificent and glorious he is.

I think Andy prayed a prayer last week where he listed all these descriptions of God. And then he said, “I don’t have the words”. So that’s exactly where we should come to in terms of understanding that God is incomprehensible. “Lord, I know that you are love. I know that you are Trinity. I know that you’re my Father. I know that you’re my Savior. I know that you’re creator. I know that you’ve done great things throughout history. Lord, I just want to praise you. Because even that’s just the outskirts of how magnificent and glorious you are.”

We should be humble people and worshipful people. God is incomprehensible.

 

2) Part 2 – The Knowability of God

So let’s just scrap the rest of this sermon series on the doctrine of God. He’s beyond understanding. Let’s just give up. God is incomprehensible, but he is also knowable. How is it possible that created beings like us could know anything about the Creator? Well, the answer is this, only if God chooses to reveal himself. This point is absolutely critical to the Christian faith. We don’t rely on our brain power and our understanding to work out who God is. Instead, we rely upon the revelation that God himself has given. This isn’t who God is. But we could live in a world in which God creates the. Creates the universe and creates us, but has no interest in revealing himself to us. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t want us to know anything. That’s a hypothetical world that we could live in. And if we did live in that world, then none of us would have the brain power to work it all out. But that is not the universe that we live in. That is not the world that we live in, because that’s not who God is. God chose to create this universe. He chose to create you and me, and he chose to reveal himself to people on earth.

Deuteronomy 29, verse 29 says “the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us.” Now that’s a verse that the Israelite nation are saying. They’re saying we are privileged as Israelites because there are things about God that are secret that I’m never going to get my head around, that he might not have spoken. There are things about God that I’m never. The secret things do belong to God, but God has spoken to us, says the Israelites. God has given us his word. Moses has gone up a mountain and received tablets that God himself has carved word into. God has revealed Himself to us. So, so the Israelites are saying, the secret things belong to the Lord, but the revealed things belong to us. And if you’re a Christian, that is true of you as well. The secret things belong to the Lord, but God has revealed himself to us and the revealed things belong to us. To own what God has revealed is a massive blessing and a huge privilege. There are revealed things and they belong to you and me. Now from the Word revealed, that’s where we get this word revelation. You know, this uncovering, this displaying of what’s true. So how can we know anything about God? It’s only by his revelation of himself. And theologians have historically spoken about two types of revelation: general revelation and special revelation.

2 a) General Revelation

So I’m going to talk first about general revelation, which is also sometimes called natural revelation. And general revelation or natural revelation is the knowledge that God gives to all people at all times and in all places. Because God’s general revelation is given through creation. It’s also given through human constitution. What we’re like because we’re made in the image of God, aren’t we? It’s given in human conscience. Basically. General revelation of God is given through the ordinary experience of living in the world. It’s a knowledge, it’s a revelation that’s not just given to God’s holy people, Israel and Christians, but it’s a knowledge of God that’s actually given to all people through the creation of, of the world.

I want you to read with me Romans chapter 1, verses 18 to 23, that speaks about all mankind, all people in the world, and also speaks about general revelation. Romans 1, 18:23 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is, is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to Him. But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”

At the beginning of the book of Romans, Paul is seeking to say, no one is righteous, not one, no one has earned their own way into God’s good books. Everyone has fallen short. And in chapter one he says, the unrighteousness of men is obvious and no one is, has an excuse for that unrighteousness in verse 20 because God’s invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived. Now historically, those verses have proved completely unproblematic. Every culture and society throughout history have believed in God or gods because of creation. Around them, people have looked at the world and the things that have been made and said there must be some kind of divine nature or eternal power behind this. And yet in verses 21 to 23, what they do with that is instead of acknowledging an eternal God and worshipping the God who existed, they’ve created images of things.

And you know this if you, if you read any kind of history. Every culture in history has things that they worship and venerate and honor and they’re never the true God. They’re kind of, oh, there’s a big volcano, that’s scary, let’s create a fire image and worship that, or there’s water, let’s bow down to the rivers. That’s what people have done throughout history. So they’ve recognized that there’s something going on, that the creation displays that God has an eternal power, but they haven’t worshipped the true God.

There’s a theologian called Herman Bavinck who’s written a book called “Doctrine of God”. It’s quite a heavy read, but it’s certainly a big influence on some of the sermons I’m going to preach over the next few weeks. He wrote this book around 1900 and he quoted a man called Cicero from Roman. And Cicero said that “no society is so barbaric as to deny the existence of gods altogether”. Isn’t that an interesting quote? No society so barbaric that they would deny the existence of gods altogether. And when I’m reading Bavinck and Cicero, I’m thinking, I wonder what they would say if they wrote it now in 2024. I wonder whether they would still quote those same people and say the same thing. Looking at our culture, in which atheists of course, do seem to exist, where creation doesn’t seem to point to God’s divine nature and eternal power, but scientific theories like evolution without God.

Now I’m going to answer for Bavinck, even though I don’t know what he would say if he wrote. But this is what I think Bavinck would do if he was writing today and talking about the fact that no society could be so barbaric to have no gods. I think if he wrote in 2024, he would point back to verse 18 and he would say we now live in a culture that’s very, very good at suppressing the truth. That’s what it says in verse 18. It says eternal power to God’s divine nature and eternal power have been clearly perceived, but there’s a suppression of truth that’s happening in verse 18. I think we live in a culture that’s very, very good at suppressing truth. I think you can see this in the scientific world. I’m not a scientist. I’m probably going to say something naive and say silly, but I will do my best not to.

Several scientists have recently pointed out that even if you fully believe in the Big Bang theory and fully believe in the theory of evolution, the very precise physical constraints required in order for life to exist, and certainly the complexity and beauty of life on this planet strongly implies an intelligent fine tuner. I’ve read that in a scientific paper written by an atheist, actually this week, read my Bible, read scientific papers I didn’t fully understand. But this one paper said even if you believe these things, there’s such precise constraints required for life like this to exist on a planet that it implies that there’s a fine tuner. In order to explain that maths, what this author does has proposed a theory of multiple universes. So he looks at how precise you need to get to have a world like ours on which life exists. He’s looking at this world and he’s seeing there must be some kind of fine tuner, or there must just be lots and lots and lots of universes because the math adds up so that we need multiple universes in order to arrive at this destination. Now, as I say, I’m not a scientist. I can’t comment on what he’s writing on. And the person writing whose name I can’t remember is far, far smarter than I am. And I could get lost down a rabbit hole. But what I’m trying to say is that I believe. Romans 1:18-23. I believe that actually what happens in the world of science when people who don’t believe in God do it is they see things that are true and then they try and find another theory to get around the existence of God.

There’s a suppression of truth happening. I think science is a wonderful thing, a God given thing that we ought to pursue. But I think there’s a suppression of truth that’s happening in that environment as well. Well, that we need to just be aware of. I believe that God’s divine nature and eternal power are clearly perceived in the world around us. But humans in their unrighteousness are very good at suppressing that truth.

I’ve got a non Christian friend who says to me, I really wish I could have faith. It’s such a wonderful thing to be a believer. I really wish. But every time I challenge him on that and say, well, why don’t you put some effort in? Why don’t you come to church? Why don’t you take a step to really find out whether faith is real? He always stops. He always says no. In other words, he doesn’t really want to have faith because it means changing the way he lives. It means making sacrifices. So actually what he’s doing is saying, I wish something, but I’m suppressing that at the same time. And I think there’s lots of people in this world who suppress truth. God has revealed something of himself in general natural revelation. Therefore human beings are without excuse for not believing in God.

And one practical application of these verses in Romans one is that Christians should practice looking for the power of God in creation and worshipping him for it. Don’t take sky and sea, trees and plants, beetles and badgers and other human beings for granted, but worship God for His own awesome creation. Look at the world around you and say, wow. Your divine nature, your eternal power in the world created around me. And science, if done right, is an act of worshipping because it’s discovering more about the God who’s created this awesome universe. Therefore, Di, you can keep doing chemistry, it’s okay. However, there is a limit to general revelation. General revelation, looking at the world around us does not bring us to a saving knowledge of God. Therefore, God has revealed Himself in general revelation to all people.

2 b) Special Revelation

But he’s also revealed Himself in special revelation, which is sometimes called supernatural revelation. It’s God’s revelation of himself in extraordinary ways, not in the ordinary life that we all live, but in extraordinary ways. So special revelation includes God’s Miracles in history. It includes his divine speech through the prophets in the Old Testament and the apostles in the New Testament. But most clearly, God’s special revelation comes through the person of Jesus Christ. The Word incarnate. God himself in human flesh. I want to read to you Hebrews, chapter one, verses one to four, which says this.

“Long ago and at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. And he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”

What Hebrews 1 teaches is that God has spoken supernaturally over and over again throughout history, long ago and at many times and in many ways, God has spoken. And that’s the special revelation we have in the Old Testament. Moments where God has spoken through Acts, miracles, but also through the prophets who spoke and said. Thus says the Lord.

But in these last days, there is a greater revelation. There’s something more wonderful and more special. The Old Testament’s magnificent. I love it. We love preaching the Old Testament in this church. But in the New Testament, there’s a greater and a more fuller revelation of who God is. Because God speaks by His Son, Jesus Christ. Verse 3 says that Jesus Christ radiates the glory of God. He’s the radiance of the glory of God. So in the person of Jesus, all God’s majesty radiates out of him. You look at Christ and you see God in human flesh. You see the glory of God. All that is good and magnificent and glorious about God is radiated and proclaimed by Jesus. Because in Christ, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. In fact, Jesus is the exact imprint of divine nature on human flesh, for he is God the Son.

The same idea is expressed in John, chapter one, verse 18, which says, “no one has ever seen God, but the only God who is at the Father’s side, He has made him known”. Do you see what the verse is saying? No one has ever seen God the Father, but the only God, God the Son, who was at the Father’s side in eternity, he has come. He has been born. He has made God the Father known. So none of us in this room has ever seen God the Father, but we have Read about in the Gospels, God the Son, Jesus Christ. And so we know what God the Father is like through God the Son, who is the exact imprint of God the Father’s nature. What this means is that when Christ died on the cross and you see the mercy and the love of Christ, that he loved us so much he would die for us on the cross. What you’re seeing is the love of the Father through the Son giving his life. It’s not like the Father’s angry and horrible and hates us and the Son loves us. No, the love shown by the Son on the cross shows us how much the Father loves us. We see the radiated glory of God the Father in the work of the Son. There’s no separation. You can’t come to the Father except. Except by the Son. You can’t know the Father except through knowing the Son.

This is good news indeed. This is fundamental part of the gospel of Christianity because in other cultures, in Athens, for example In Acts chapter 17, they had an altar. And this altar in Athens said to an unknown God. The Greeks knew there were gods or there was a God, but they didn’t know who he was. He was unknown to them. The Greeks didn’t know what God was really like, so they kind of invented loads of stuff. You’ll notice that the Greek gods are really like kind of superhuman beings, aren’t they? Like, they’re just ridiculous, the Greek gods. They’re clearly human beings inventing gods because they go, you know, I think God’s a bit like me, but maybe a bit stronger and a bit better looking. I’ll make a statue of that and worship that. So the Greeks didn’t know what God was like. They, they built altars to an unknown God. And people in Farim, many people will believe in a vague notion of God, but will know absolutely nothing about what he’s like. Well, that’s not what we have in this church. That’s not what we believe. We proclaim good news. God can be known because Jesus Christ, God the Son has come and shown us who God is. To know Jesus Christ is to know God. To learn from Jesus is to learn from God. To read about Jesus is to read about God. To worship Jesus is to worship God. God the Father has spoken to us by God the Son.

So God’s special revelation of himself includes miracles, includes the prophets especially comes through Jesus Christ. This light explosion of God’s glory radiating into the world. And therefore we receive this special revelation through the scriptures. Jesus isn’t here in the flesh anymore, but we can Meet him and read about him and discover him through the Word of God. We love this book because this is God’s word, Word to us, revealing who he is, especially in the descriptions of Jesus Christ in the Gospels, describing Jesus, life and death and resurrection from the dead. Since God is incomprehensible, we must rely on what God has given to reveal himself.

So when I stand in this place and preach, my goal is never simply to say, this is what Duncan thinks things. I’ve thought really hard about this. I’ve sat under a tree and meditated and I worked it all out. No, my goal is to proclaim to you God’s Word. For this is how he has revealed Himself to us. We are reliant on his special revelation in Scripture. Now look at what the Bible says about itself in 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 to 17. “All scripture is breathed out by God. Profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work”. This book comes from God. It is breathed out by Him. Now, the breath of God throughout Scripture is associated with the Holy Spirit. So we believe that this book was written physically, by human hands, at least most of it. But the author was the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God. This has been breathed out from God. So this is. This cannot contain error because this has come from the God who is truth, who is perfect. This has been breathed out by God. And what that verse also says is that this book is sufficient to teach you all that you need to know so that you can be complete, equipped for every good work. This book is sufficient to teach you, to approve you, to correct you, to train you in righteousness so that you may be equipped for every good work.

I wonder whether your relationship with the Bible reflects that truth. I wonder whether you love this. I hope you love this because in this book, you meeting with God, discovering who he is, and being trained and corrected and trained for righteousness so that you might be equipped for every good work. God has good works for you to do. His Word is going to train you to live those things out. This doctrinal teaching on God’s incomprehensibility and knowability through Jesus Christ, through the breath of the Holy Spirit, through the Scriptures, should lead to a hunger to know God as much as possible to feed on the Word. Hey, if my master’s dissertation is a two year old picture book, right? What do kids do? They’re constantly hungry to know more and more, aren’t they? They ask really annoying questions and they keep asking and asking and they never shut up. And parents get to that point where they’re like, oh, just be quiet. Well, that’s what we should be like. We should be like, I don’t know what, I don’t have kids, so I haven’t worked out what age they. But the age where they ask loads of questions. That’s what we should be. As Christians like, hungry to know more and more of God, knowing that he’s beyond our comprehension, we’re never going to fully understand him, but therefore desperate to learn more and more about him, feeding on this as much as we possibly can. Please Christians, drink up this wonderful provision that God has given and never grow tired of learning more about a magnificent God.

We will be totally reliant on the Scriptures for every other part of this series. When we talk about God as Trinity, when we talk about God as Sovereign, when we talk about God as all powerful, when we talk about God’s mercy and judgment, we will use this book because this is the special revelation that God has given to us. So I say again, it won’t be Duncan going, hey, I’ve worked it all out. This is what God is like. I say, this is what God has given in the Word. Let’s find out who God is through what He has spoken and revealed to us.

3) Part 3 – God wants to be known by us

But I want to finish with what I think might be the most wonderful point of this sermon. God, though beyond our comprehension, wants to be known by you. The reason he created this universe and the reason he gave us general revelation in creation and, and the reason he gave us special revelation throughout history and in the Scriptures is because God wants you to know Him. He didn’t have to do it. If he didn’t want you to know him, he wouldn’t have bothered. But we can say that God truly wants us to know Him. He desires us to know him so much that he created a world that speaks of his eternal power. He gave us ears and mouths and eyes and invented language so that we could communicate with one another and with him.

He revealed his name to Moses the prophet. If you ever read the Book of Exodus, this is an aside, but if you ever read the Book of Exodus, the Pharaoh is never named at any point in the whole Book of Exodus. Pharaoh is kind of this nameless guy. He’s the most powerful man on earth, but he doesn’t really matter. But God in Exodus 3 says, My name is. I am who I am. I name is Yahweh. It’s a revelation of the name of God that He gave to Moses that He gave to us. He knows our name, which is magnificent. But he revealed to us his name so that we might speak with Him.

God wants to be known so much that he has spoken through generations of prophets. He wants to be known by us so much that he came to Earth in human flesh, born at Christmas, as the ultimate revelation of who he is. In fact, He. He wants to be known by us so much that Christ, God himself, died on the cross in order to reconcile us to Him. It was about relationship. It was about knowing one another, being together. And God wants us to know Him. So he gave us Scripture so that we would. God is incomprehensible, but knowable. More than that, he wants us to know Him. My prayer is that this sermon will stir us to worship because he’s beyond comprehension. It would stir us to humility because our minds are too puny to properly comprehend Him. But it will also stir us to hunger for knowledge of him because he wants us to seek and find Him. That’s our God.

Can we stand? I’m going to finish this meeting in prayer together.

O Lord God, you are the everlasting God. No beginning in time and no end. You are eternal and magnificent. We cannot count or number your days. You never grow tired or weary. Your understanding is unsearchable, your greatness unsearchable. Your mighty deeds are just the outskirts of how magnificent and glorious you are. And, Lord, you have done great things, magnificent things in history and in our lives. But that’s just. That’s just the fringe of who you are and how brilliant you are. So we worship you and praise you, Lord God, with our whole hearts. Would you humble us, Lord, to bow before you in adoration at the things we can understand and yet always acknowledging that you are so. So great and so mighty and so other and so holy that we cannot fully comprehend You. Make us worshipful people. We pray. We thank you that you are a God who wants to be known by us. And so you have revealed yourself through the creation of the world. I pray we be people who enjoy your creation, knowing more about you as we live in this world. But we thank you that you’ve also given us your Word, the Word made flesh in your sin, son. Jesus Christ and the Scriptures, your Word given to us, breathed out by you to train us for righteousness so that we might be equipped for every good work. Lord, make us like hungry young children, asking question after question after question, eagerly desiring to know more about you, but also to grow deeper in our relationship with you because you want to be known by us. You are incomprehensible, yet knowable. And for that we love you and adore you. We pray these things in Jesus name, amen.