Who is God? How we should think about God? This article discusses approaches to thinking about God, God’s self-revelation in Scripture, and the names of God.

2014. 11 pages. Transcribed by Jeanette de Vente. Transcription started at 0:32 and stopped at 54:26.

God Is School of Theology Series: Lecture 7

Now, that particular lecture last week, lecture six, brought one segment to a close, and we segue now for the rest of this fall to another branch of theology. And that is: the doctrine of God. For a long time it has been referred to in systematic theology as “theology proper.” Will be thinking about God and we will be thinking about who God is and what God is like and the attributes of God.

(Transcription of audio file from 01:17 to omitted.)

Thinking about God – Biblically🔗

Now we are going to begin this evening thinking about God. And before we can look at the various attributes of God—and we will be looking at God’s holiness, God’s righteousness, God’s knowledge, and similar characteristics of God—we need to think together about how we ought to think about God. And because of the world in which we live, because of various philosophical positions (and particularly in 2012 in late-modernity, as some refer to it, or post-modernity), the very way that we know what we know about God—God conveying himself, revealing himself, disclosing himself and committing that disclosure to finite human words, words that are capable of more than one meaning—has given rise to the view that it is not possible for God to accurately and truly disclose himself using the vehicle of human words. So we have got some serious thinking to do for a few minutes tonight. So put your thinking caps on, so we can think through some fairly technical things before we can get to the place that we all want to get to.

The Possibility of True Knowledge of God?🔗

Archetypal vs. ectypal. So we begin with the possibility of true knowledge of God, and a distinction (it actually goes back to the medieval period, it’s a distinction that has been around for almost a thousand years) between archetypal and ectypal knowledge. It is a distinction that is worth keeping. I have given you some definitions. Archetypal knowledge refers to how God knows himself perfectly and in a manner that we cannot. God’s knowledge is different from our knowledge. Our knowledge is discursive; our knowledge is limited. God’s knowledge is omniscient; God knows everything. He knows everything all at once. God’s does not have “Aha!” moments; there are not factors that come to light that alter God’s knowledge of himself. Neither the problem of sin, nor the problem of finitude affect the way God knows. When God knows something, he knows it in a different way to the way that we know something. Ectypal knowledge is the opposite of that. Ectypal knowledge refers to what we know about God, and perhaps more importantly, the way we know, the manner we know about God. Some theologians (John Calvin, for example) in the sixteenth century said that God necessarily has to accommodate himself to our finitude. This is not just a problem of sin; it is a problem of the fact that we are creatures, we are finite beings, and the knowledge that God conveys to us has to be accommodated to fit our human frailty. We are wholly dependent for our knowledge of God upon his self-disclosure; his revealing of himself to us. Now, having said that, what we know about God we know truly. But what we know about God, we know in an ectypal fashion—we know it in an accommodated fashion, we know it in a human way of knowing—rather than in a divine way of knowing.

Well, that distinction between archetypal and ectypal should not keep you awake at night, but it is a distinction that is worth keeping. God knows things in a way that we do not. And our way of knowing is always a human way of knowing. And that should keep us humble in what we know about God. Ultimately this will lead us, right at the very end of this semester to consider something like: our knowledge of God is limited. God is incomprehensible. Not that he cannot be understood at all, but that he cannot be understood fully. His ways are past finding out. “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God.”

Rationale. Now, what is the rationale for knowing God and knowing him truly? How can a finite human being know the infinite, eternal, all-wise God and know him truly? And this is the rationale here—a five or six point rationale—for how is it that we know anything at all about God, or how can God make himself known to us, and how can we be sure that what we know about God is true knowledge about God?: It begins with the consideration of the fact that we as human beings are created after the image and likeness of God. We are image-bearers of God. This makes meaningful communication between God and human beings possible. The image of God in man. Genesis 1:26, 27 is a fundamental crucial text right at the very beginning of the Bible that says that God can communicate with man and man can communicate with God, and that communication is meaningful true communication, because man is made, created in the image and after the likeness of God. That is the first thing.

The second thing is Jesus, and Jesus’ incarnation. Our understanding of Jesus’ incarnation is that the second person of the Trinity took to himself human flesh and blood. He remained God, but in addition to being God he was also a man. So that when Jesus spoke, there is only one he. He has two natures—He has a divine nature and a human nature—and we must not confuse the divine and the human natures of Jesus. But there is only one he. So when Jesus speaks, whether he speaks in his divine nature or whether he speaks in his human nature, it is he who speaks. The second person of the Trinity speaks, who is both divine and human. So when Jesus speaks, God speaks. That is meaningful true communication—that the words of Jesus are the words of the only true and living God. You want proof that God can truly communicate with human beings and that communication is meaningful communication, then look to Jesus and the incarnation.

Thirdly: the doctrine of inspiration—where we have been for the last four or five weeks. That holy men of old wrote “as they were borne along by the Holy Spirit,” Peter says. “All Scripture is the product of the out-breathing of God, and is profitable for doctrine and reproof and correction and instruction in the way of righteousness, that the man of God might be thoroughly furnished unto every good work.” The Bible’s inspiration. And as a corollary of that, the inerrancy of Scriptures. Since the Bible is God speaking and God cannot lie, the Bible therefore is an inerrant document of God’s communication. God communicates by inspiration, and in the Scriptures therefore you have true meaningful communication from God.

Then: the Spirit’s illumination. One of the things that the Holy Spirit does is to illuminate, to bring the meaning of Scripture to light, which ensures that true knowledge of God gets through to every generation.

And then another issue: by analogy, we adjust the definition of verbs and nouns and adjectives applied in Scripture to God. Human language is necessarily finite, human language is necessarily limited, but when we apply these words to God, we adjust those words so that there is a direct correspondence, a one-to-one correspondence, between God speaking and our understanding of what it is that God says. So that a consistent body of true knowledge of God, true theology about God, derived from careful exposition of Scripture provides for us a tradition that is true and trustworthy. So that is the basis upon which we can argue for true knowledge of God in human beings.

Knowing God as God Reveals Himself🔗

Now, knowing God as God reveals himself. I am not going to look in any great length at this section. This is a trajectory of where we are going to go in the next six or seven weeks. If you examine Scripture from Genesis to Revelation and pull out from Scripture everything that Scripture says about God—every characteristic, every attribute—pull all of that out and put it into some kind of order, what is it that you get as a result of it? You get things like: God is personal. Actually, he is three persons. And therefore, God is often described in Scripture using personal language; using this big word here: anthropomorphism.

Let me tell you about anthropomorphism. God speaks using human language. God has eyes; God has ears; God has a nose; God has feet. God “repents” in the King James Version, or he is “sorry” that he has made man (Genesis 6:7). Or he “regrets” that he made Saul king (1 Samuel 15:11). We understand these statements as God accommodating himself to a human way of talking. It is like baby talk. It is like God saying, “You can’t possibly understand what I am truly like, so let me use human metaphors and human similes to describe what it is that I am like.”

God is unique. There is only one God. And any suggestion of Polytheism, any suggestion that there is more than one God is outlawed in Scripture. “I am the Lord, and there is no other besides me, apart from me there is no God” (Isaiah 45:5). God is Triune. There is only one God, but there is more than One who is that one God. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but there is only one God. There is plurality within the oneness of God. More of that in the spring of next year. That is where we will be camping out in late January or early February—we will talk about the doctrine of the Trinity. God is active. That is to say, God is living. He is the I AM—that I AM in the divine name revealed in Exodus 3 and Exodus 6. And we are always in his hands. God is eternal. If you think of time, God is outside of time. God doesn’t exist in time. Since Einstein we think of space and time as intimately related to each other. God creates both space and time. Time is a product, a function of space, of the cosmos. And God is outside of the cosmos. He is the Creator. So God is outside of time. There is no sequence of time within God. And therefore God cannot change. If you think of spatial categories: God is infinite. He is outside of space. He is free therefore from all the limitations of creation and of the created order, and the processes of change and decay and the second law of thermodynamics and whatever that characterize creation.

God is incomprehensible. He is independent. He is unchanging. He is self-sustaining—the doctrine of aseity. All of these we will expound in the coming weeks. And God manifests simplicity. That is an old word coming from the Latin “simplicitas,” meaning single-minded. What it means is that God’s whole being is involved in everything that he does. It is not as though a part of God is involved. When God does something, his entire being is involved in that action. God is sovereign. God is omnipotent—he has all power. God is omniscient—he knows everything and he knows everything all at once. God is omnipresent—he is everywhere. There isn’t a location in the cosmos or the universe where God is not present. And similarly, God is wise, God is holy, God is righteous, God is good, loving, and glorious. All of these are attributes of God, ways of describing God. Ways that God has revealed himself, disclosed himself in Scripture. And we are going to pull all of these apart, and with a sort of microscope we are going to look at each of these aspects of God’s characteristics, God’s attributes in the coming weeks.

The Reality of God – Philosophically Considered🔗

Now, there are those who have argued that we can know God by our own processes of reasoning simply by employing some kind of rationalistic arguments. And we need to say a little bit about that. The reality of God philosophically considered. And some of you may tune in to this more than others. Some of you have a background perhaps in philosophy, and you have done a course or two in philosophy, maybe at college or university somewhere in the distant past. And maybe you have come across some of this.

Now, we are drawing from something that we said earlier (in lecture two: God Speaks in Creation). Paul in Romans 1 makes it abundantly clear that every human being on the planet that ever was and is and shall be is surrounded by and engulfed by the self-disclosure of God. There is a knowledge of God that can be found in creation. “The 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.” Now, that is not saving knowledge. You can’t be saved, you can’t learn redemption by looking at the moon. You can’t see the gospel simply by listening to a bird sing. But the fact that the bird sings and the fact that the bird exists is in itself evidence of the existence of God. God is placarding his existence. He is bombarding us with this radiation, with this revelation of himself day by day.

Now, the fact that men and women deny that is beside the point. They turn that revelation that God gives and they make an idol of it. That is the consistent teaching of Scripture. So the reality of God, or the awareness of God, is universal. And agnostics, who question the existence of God, and atheists, who deny the existence of God—all of that is notwithstanding. Scripture insists that the knowledge of God is there and that the agnostic and the atheist simply suppress it.

Now, there are classical arguments (so-called classical arguments) for the existence of God. One thinks of the twelfth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas and the famous five ways that Thomas Aquinas propounded. And these of course become particularly important in Roman Catholicism that more or less canonized the theology of Thomas Aquinas. And I want to look just very briefly (I basically just want to mention) at five of these so-called arguments for the existence of God—rational arguments for the existence of God.

The Ontological Argument🔗

One is called the ontological argument, put forth by Anselm of Canterbury. And Anselm of Canterbury put it in this form (roughly—I am translating something from his book: The Proslogion): “Therefore, if that, than which a greater cannot be conceived exists in the understanding alone, the very being than which nothing greater can be conceived (than which nothing greater can be thought), is.” Now, I have to say the ontological argument does absolutely nothing for me; it leaves me entirely cold. It has, however, been the stuff of philosophy. In fact, to this very day philosophers will still take up aspects of Anselm’s ontological argument. It has a very fundamental weakness. Anselm is saying, “In my mind I can conceive of something greater, and that which no greater can be conceived is God.” Well, it is not the Christian God for sure, even if it is a philosophical axiom. And then, whether that existence of the idea of God in the mind can translate into the reality of God (reality as opposed to the thought-life)—whether it can cross over from the mind into reality—is a very important question. In large, Protestant Reformed Christians have not given the ontological argument any great credence.

The Cosmological Argument🔗

The cosmological argument is an argument that is a little easier to understand, for sure. It comes in various forms. Plato’s demiurge is one form of it. Aristotle’s unmoved mover is another form of it. It is the argument based on empirical observation of the universe that to every effect there is a cause. If you see an effect, there must be a cause for that effect. And if you argue all of the effects all the way back, you get to the ultimate cause—the unmoved mover, in Aristotle’s language. “What was there before the Big Bang?” is a form of implementing a cosmological argument. You are asking, “There are causes and there are effects—if the effect is the Big Bang, what was there before that? What caused the Big Bang?” And if you ask that question, you are in a sense employing a form of the cosmological argument. And as you know from Stephen Hawking and others, scientists have proved somewhat resistant to the logical necessity of answering that particular question.

The Teleological Argument🔗

The teleological argument. This is a deductive argument. Again, things reveal order and design. The most famous form of this is in the form of William Paley, eighteenth century. Supposing you are walking along the beach and you are a primitive, and you discover something that you have never seen before in all of your life—you discover a pocket watch. And it is one of these pocket watches perhaps with the glass back, and you look inside and it reveals order. Intricate order and design. Nature does not produce a pocket watch. The intricacy of the design argues for a designer. It was an argument refuted by David Hume. “In a universe of an infinite number of particles but an infinite existence, every possibility may occur,” Hume argued. You know, it assumes in the argument that you reach an end point. “But why should you reach an end-point?” was Hume’s answer. “Maybe the universe is of infinite duration, and therefore there is no end point, logically speaking.” That was Hume’s response to William Paley’s argument from design. Stephen Hawking in The Grand Design argues that it is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of “Who created God?” which is assumed in the argument. He is actually using a very similar argument to David Hume’s argument.

The Historical Argument🔗

Another argument for the existence of God is the historical argument (it is not a terribly strong one): that man has always believed in God in every society and in every culture. Go to any society, study any culture, and there has always been some kind of theism. Man has always been a religious being. But its Achilles’ heel is that the subjectivity of that argument—the fact that man subjectively feels as though there is a God—does not actually mean that there is one. “Man is more than capable of self-delusion” has been response.

The Moral Argument🔗

And then fifthly: the moral argument. C.S. Lewis, for example, gave this considerable weight, and support to some extent, and argued that if the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of man was an accident too. And if so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents—the accidental byproduct of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and the astronomers as well as for anyone else. But if their thoughts (that is, the thoughts of materialists and astronomy) are merely accidental byproducts, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It is like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset. Now, he makes the moral argument in A Case for Christianity. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud for double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might as well try to imagine a country where two and two make five. In other words, man has a basic conscience. In every society (no matter what the society, no matter how primitive that society maybe) there is always a conscience, there is a revelation of a moral conscience. And that argues for a Creator who is himself moral.

Now, what do we make of these arguments—the so-called rational arguments—for the existence of God? If you turn the page, you will see in the left corner our dear friend Dr. R.C. Sproul, who is a classical apologist and has some time for these arguments for the existence of God. And then in the other corner is Cornelius van Til, who also has some time for these arguments, but understood in a completely different way. I don’t for my part that any of these arguments are sufficient in themselves to prove the existence of God. I think that all of these arguments in one form or another assume a theistic proposition within the argument, and are therefore inconclusive as arguments for the existence of God. If you come to Scripture, for example, I think Scripture begins with the assumption that every man knows God, and really has no time whatsoever in doing a kind of pre-evangelism argument for the existence of God. If we think of natural theology (and if I define natural theology for a moment as gaining knowledge of God’s existence through philosophical rationalistic arguments), Scripture begins in Genesis 1:1 with “In the beginning, God.” John begins his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word.” Even Paul in Athens: “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” And I don’t think that Scripture itself attempts to rationally argue the existence of God. These arguments I think are fundamentally wanting in their basic structure.

The Bible’s Revelation of God – Biblically Considered🔗

Models for Thinking about God🔗

Now, let us move on. Models for thinking about God.

Evangelicalism. Let me talk about the Evangelical model for thinking about God. How should we think about God? Well, you gather all the information that the Bible has to say about God and you synthesize that information into a coherent structure. That has been the Evangelical way; that has been the Reformed way of getting at a doctrine of God. A basic controlling principle here is that there is no unChristlikeness in God. Every attribute, every quality of God is also a quality of Christ. Or every quality, every attribute of Christ in terms of the person of Christ is also an attribute of God. And various people have said that. Karl Barth has said that in a slightly different way, and perhaps leading to a slightly different conclusion. But I have quoted someone (who otherwise I would not be citing, because he would not be orthodox on so many things, but this particular statement I think is one worthy of pondering): “God is Christlike, and in him there is no unChristlikeness at all.” And that is a very fundamentally important point. When we are thinking about God, we must never make God to be unlike Jesus. i.e. God being angry and Jesus being reconciling, or something of that nature.

Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Then, Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy (Orthodoxy meaning Eastern Orthodoxy or Russian Orthodoxy), in which the doctrine of God is derived employing tradition—the tradition of the church fathers, the tradition of the sayings and councils of the Church—and viewing those sayings and pronouncements of the fathers and of the church as Spirit-given and having authority.

Rationalism. And a third way of getting at the doctrine of God would be a rationalistic way: viewing the Bible as useful, but fallible and capable of error. And therefore employing philosophy—the philosophy of the current age and whatever happens to be trendy in academia and in sociology—and adjusting therefore the Bible to the philosophies of the day. That would be like saying a statement which begins, “God cannot possibly do such and such.” That statement is based on current philosophical, sociological, scientific prejudices. Or, “Of course the Bible shows primitive unenlightened concepts and world-views.” Or, “The influence of the ancient Near Eastern culture radically distorts what the Bible says at this point.” Or, “Jesus was a man of his day, and the incarnation meant that he too employed primitive ways of thinking.” Now, all of those are distortions. That is a rationalistic approach to understanding God.

But all of those approaches are being employed in some form or another, not just in the world at large, but in the churches at large too. And the only sure and safe way is what I call the evangelical way: gather what Scripture has to say about God and synthesize that material together.

Where to Begin?🔗

Now, there’s an important question to ask at this point as we begin. (You can relax a little now. All of that stuff that we have just done is necessary stuff and was meaningful to some more than to others, I am sur. Some of you might have been more taken with those arguments for the existence of God than others). But now we want to begin properly down the road of the doctrine of God as the Bible reveals itself. And the question that has been asked (the answer to which affects the way we go from here on) is: do we begin with the doctrine of God in itself, or do we begin with the doctrine of the Trinity? Do we begin with God? And we say, “God is holy and God is righteous and God is loving and God is gracious and God is omniscient and God is omnipotent and God is omnipresent” and so on, and we look at all of those and then at the end we say, “And yes, God is three. God is Father; God is Son; God is Spirit. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, but there is only one God. Three persons, one God.” And some will begin with the Trinity right at the very beginning, so every attribute is considered from the doctrine of the Trinity. And others begin (as I will begin) with the doctrine of God and lead up to the doctrine of the Trinity.

Now, why choose one over the other? There are various theologians and they are probably more or less equally divided. I mean, Orthodox Reformed friends of mine—theologians who do it one way and others do it the other way. I want to do it the way God reveals himself historically, because the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t revealed until the New Testament. That is not to say that God was not triune at the time of creation; that is not to say that God in Genesis is not triune. But God in Genesis reveals himself as one. And God reveals himself as three in one in the pages of the New Testament. So there is a historical process to the revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity, and I am going to keep that in mind as we look at the doctrine of God. So we are following what I call the traditional order. However, having said that, I want you to note the Barth statement: “Everything we attribute to God is equally to be attributed to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.” Although we won’t come to a study of the doctrine of the Trinity until January or February.

(Transcription of audio file from 43:09 to 43:21 omitted.)

And then another little statement which I have already made, but I want to emphasize it once again: the whole doctrine of God must be seen in the light of Christ. Now, there is more to God than Christ. The Father is God, the Spirit is God. But it is important as a controlling mechanism when we think about God that Jesus’ statement in John 14:9 and John 1:18—“No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” The Greek word there is the Greek word from which we get our English word “exegesis.” Jesus exegetes the Father. Do you want to know what the Father is like? If a child comes up to you and says, “What is God like?” The best answer that you can give is, “God is like Jesus,” because there is no unJesus-ness in God. God is like Jesus. Jesus exegetes God to us. For, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”—Jesus’ words to Phillip in John 14:9. So our God must be Christ-shaped and Christ-faced.

The Names of God🔗

Now, we need to move quickly. I am going to go down to the names of God. How does God reveal himself? And he reveals himself on the pages of Scripture by giving names. He gives himself a name.

El🔗

And the most basic name that God gives himself is “El”—he gives his name as Elohim, for example. The basic Semitic root “El.” And El in Hebrew means “strong,” or “power.” So when God gives his name as El, or joins El to perhaps another word, the basic thought is one of power and strength. So in Genesis 1:2, for example, he reveals his name as Elohim. He is the Creator God; he is the God of such strength, of such power, that he can bring the universe into being. Now, let us look at this a little more closely.

Component of place names. That El is sometimes used as a suffix in a place name. Bethel—house of God. Penuel—place of God. Now, Bethel and Penuel tell us that God did something in these places. In Bethel, God appeared on the top of a ladder to Jacob. In Penuel, he appeared face-to-face with Jacob. This is the place where God did something, and did something significant.

Patriarchal names. He is the “God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” He is the “God of our fathers.” God reveals himself as involved in the lives of human beings—of significant human beings, of particular human beings, like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He makes a covenant with them. He makes promises, and he makes threats, and he exhorts. Who is God? God is someone who came to Abraham and made a promise. God is someone who came to Isaac and renewed that promise. God is someone who came to Jacob and renewed that promise again. That is who he is; he is the God who makes promises.

Plural form. It predominantly appears in a plural form. Elohim. The suffix “I am” (“-im” in Hebrew) is a plural. It’s like adding an “s” onto something, which makes an English word a plural. In Hebrew “–im” means it is plural. Now, God reveals himself as plural. And you think Trinity. Of course, you read Genesis and you say, “Isn’t it amazing that God’s name would be plural! There is only one God, but his name is plural. So there it is: the doctrine of the Trinity.” The only problem with that is that no one—no Semite, no Jew, no Muslim—who only has the Old Testament has ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever come to the conclusion that there is more than one who is the one God. No Jew, no Muslim, with only the Old Testament has come to the conclusion of Trinity, of plurality within the oneness of God. And therefore I am personally a little shy, a little reluctant of reading too much into the plural name of God, because plurality in Hebrew can also mean the plurality of intensity, or the plurality of majesty. You know, like Queen Victoria would say, “We are not amused” when she was a widow and alone. But it was the plural of majesty, or the plural of intensity. The one in whom Godness is in concentrated form.

Specific Jewish Designation🔗

Now, the specific name that God gives to himself is YHWH. Or as we used to say: Jehovah. And some of your translations may still say Jehovah. This is a name that the Jews never pronounced. They were in fear of taking the Lord’s name in vain, and therefore they never pronounced this name. There is an added problem in that ancient Hebrew did not have any vowels. You learned to read by custom and by tradition. And when Hebrew sort of began to be spoken no more, and especially after the return from exile in Babylon, there was a danger that they could not read the ancient Scriptures anymore, because no one really understood Hebrew anymore. And a group of people known as the Masoretes went back and added vowel points, which are those dots and little squiggles that you see in this case underneath, and sometimes above the text. These are added by the Masoretes. They don’t belong to the original scriptures in any way, but they were written in in order to help us pronounce these words. And YHWH in our English Bibles always appears with capital letters, LORD. If it is Lord in lower case it is Elohim, and if it is LORD in upper case in your Old Testament it is the divine name YHWH.

Now, that divine name was given at the burning bush, and along with it came that statement when Moses asked God (God was saying to Moses, “Go back to Egypt” and so on), “Who shall I say sent me?” And God says, “I AM THAT I AM.” Or possibly, “I WILL BE, THAT I WILL BE,” as the ESV footnote seems to suggest in Exodus 3:14. Now that is a very, very, very, very significant revelation on God’s part. God gives his special name. He gives his name to Moses. This is a name that is associated with the redemption of God’s people from Egypt. This is a redemptive name. It is almost like saying: this is God’s gospel name. YHWH, or Jehovah. This is the name that sounds in Hebrew like the verb “to be.” “I am,” or “I will be. I have existence.” Moses says to God, “What is your name?” And God says, “I AM.” You see, all the other gods have one fundamental problem: they don’t exist. “But I do,” God says. I have being. I exist. God is unchanging. I AM WHO I AM. He never comes into being. “I always am.” He always has being. He always has had being. Inexhaustible being. You remember, it was a burning bush that was not consumed. There was a visual display of the meaning of this name. It burned and burned and burned, but it was never consumed. God has inexhaustible being. Look at Isaiah 40:28: “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.” With this thought: “He does not faint or grow weary.” How does God reveal himself? He reveals himself as the I AM THAT I AM. He always is. He always exist. He is never consumed. He is inexhaustible. He does not faint. He does not grow weary. That is our God. That is our God!

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