Week Five - Day Three: Self Revealing

Let’s review. Over the last few days we have talked about the holiness of God. We said that recognizing God’s holiness is almost like saying God is God. And by looking at this aspect of God’s character and personality, we’ve been confronted with God’s absolute uniqueness and His moral perfection. We’ve also been confronted with our inability to comprehend Him. Review Isaiah 55:8-9.

It’s not simply that we are unwilling to know Him – although this is sometimes true. But left to our own devices, we are unable know Him. He is too altogether different, and too fantastically pure!

And yet, here we are launching ourselves into a few weeks of examining God’s character and personality. Say what? Before we go any further in acquainting ourselves with God we need to have some hope that this is really a worthwhile exercise. If God is holy, if He is completely other, what hope do we have of acquainting ourselves with Him?

It is certainly true that left to our own devices this is a fool’s errand. But, fortunately, we are not left to our own devices. There are two critically important truths that allow us to relate to God – to actually know Him. We will deal with one of those truths for the next two days. We will look at a second truth that allows us to know God at the end of this week.

How is it that we can know God?

First of all, we can know God because He has revealed Himself to us. He has not left us to our own devices. As we discovered in our first few days together, He has written very large clues about Himself throughout the universe. His handiwork not only betrays that there is a handiworker, but it reveals a great deal about what He is like.

Before You Start Your Day

1. Let’s spend some time this morning with the opening stanza of Psalm 19.

   (1) The heavens declare the glory of God;
         the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

   (2) Day after day they pour forth speech;
         night after night they display knowledge.

   (3) There is no speech or language
         where their voice is not heard.

   (4) Their voice goes out into all the earth,
         their words to the ends of the world.
         In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,

   (5) which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,
         like a champion rejoicing to run his course.

   (6) It rises at one end of the heavens
         and makes its circuit to the other;
         nothing is hidden from its heat.

2. If God really is the creator of the heavens and the earth, what do the heavens and the earth say about Him? We are spending a few weeks looking at the personality of God. What does the design of heaven say about God’s personality?
3. The Psalmist notes that nothing is hidden from the heat of the sun that God has made. What is the Psalmist trying to say? In other words, what does this imply about God?
4. Let’s memorize these 6 verses. (If you have never memorized a section of Scripture like this it may seem intimidating. But if you give some time to it each morning and evening for the next 3 days, you will find it much easier than it seems at first.)