Last week, we begin a new series on the attributes
of God, which are simply characteristics that are true of Him. This series is an effort to be a people who
know God as He has revealed Himself in the Bible. Theologians normally arrange God’s attributes
into two categories: communicable and incommunicable, meaning that some of His
attributes are more shared (communicable)
with us and that others are less shared (incommunicable)
with us. In my estimation, God’s most
important attribute is His holiness, which I think is the sum total of
all of His attributes. All of His
attributes contribute to what sets Him apart from the rest of creation, but
this is especially true of God’s incommunicable attributes. When it comes to this category, I want us to
feel an incredible amount of distance between God and ourselves. In these attributes, I want us to think about
how “unlike” Him we really are. We will begin today with the first of God’s
incommunicable attributes: God’s independence.
God’s independence basically means that God has no dependency
upon anyone or anything and also that He is free to do whatever He
pleases.
We’ll begin by turning our attention to Acts 17:24-25, where Paul confronted
the pagan idolatry of the Athenians and declared to them who the one true God
of the universe was and how they could only come to know and please Him by
repenting and putting their faith in Jesus Christ.
[24] The
God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth,
does not live in temples made by man, [25] nor is he served by human
hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life
and breath and everything. (Acts
17:24-25 ESV)
I.
God’s Independence Means that He has NO DEPENDENCY
That God is independent means that He is not dependent upon anyone or anything for
anything. The context in which Paul
preaches these words was one of superstitious polytheism. Athens was a town full of idols that wanted to
make sure every “god” in existence was represented. They even had built an altar to what they
called “The Unknown God” (23) in case they had missed one! Polytheism carried with it what D. A. Carson
calls a “mutual back-scratching” theology, where one must find ways to keep all
the “gods” happy in order to fare well.[1]
Paul proclaims to the Athenians that there is a
God whom they do not know about, and that He is the one true God of the
universe. He is the Creator (“who made the world and everything in it”),
the Lord (“being Lord of heaven
and earth”), and Sustainer (“He
himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”) of
EVERYTHING. And it is by virtue of His
being the Creator, Lord, and Sustainer of all that He is independent of anything or anyone.
He “does not live in temples made
by man”: meaning He is not confined to a temple nor does He need one. Also, He is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything.” This is the problem with a “mutual
back-scratching” theology: the God of the Bible has never and will never need
His back scratched. God does not need anything from us, not even our worship,
to be who He is. Tozer uses the
following illustration: “Were all human
beings suddenly to become blind, still the sun would shine by day and the stars
by night, for these owe nothing to the millions who benefit from their
light. So, were every man on earth to
become atheist, it could not affect God in any way. He is what He is in Himself without regard to
any other. To believe in Him adds
nothing to His perfections; to doubt Him takes nothing away.”[2]
God never experiences need. As A.W. Tozer says, “need is a creature word,”[3]
and God is no creature; He is the Creator of all. In contrast to God, we along with the rest of
creation are utterly dependent upon God.
We need Him for life and breath and everything. Our life comes from His life and is sustained
by His sovereign will and power. My
heart will not take another beat unless God wills it. When you stop to think about it, everything
in creation is in some way dependent upon some other created thing, and
ultimately upon God. Not God, He needs
nothing to exist to be who He is.
God’s independence is implied in His name,
“YAHWEH,” which comes from the Hebrew
verb, “to be.” He tells Moses, “I AM
THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14). He simply “IS.” This means that He is completely
self-sufficient and self-existent. And
consider the form in which God appeared to Moses: the burning bush. God appeared to Moses “in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush,” yet this fire did
not consume the bush that it was in.
Have you ever been able to build a fire that was not dependent upon certain materials to keep
it burning? Yet here God appears as a
flame that needs no part of the bush to keep it burning; it is a completely
self-existent and self-sufficient flame, independent of anything. It simply is.
Consider one more passage: Romans 11:33-36: [33] Oh,
the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are
his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! [34] “For who has known the
mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” [35] “Or who has given a
gift to him that he might be repaid?” [36] For from him and through him
and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
Whom has God ever needed counsel from? He hasn’t.
Who has ever put God in their debt with a gift? No one ever has because God can receive no
gift that does not originate with Himself to begin with. He created and owns everything! As Paul says, “all things” are “from him
and through him and to him.” This
aspect of God’s independence means that God can never be manipulated. He cannot be bartered with. No one can ever say to God, “you owe me one!”
We need to pause here to ask a question: Does the
reality that God does not need any of us mean that we are insignificant and
meaningless? Far from it! The fact that we even exist in the universe
of a God who has no needs means that even though we are not needed, we are wanted. It is much more meaningful to be wanted than
to be simply needed, to be desired and delighted in than to simply be
necessary.
So our existence means that God wants us here and
the fact that God wants us infuses us with true meaning and significance. The idolatry that we want to avoid is that of
ever viewing God as needy, even needing us.
Our service to God must never be motivated by any sense of God’s needing us. If we are not careful, we can approach church
and ministry this way. This is evident
in many worship songs today that seem to place us at the center of God’s
universe. We are not; He is.
II.
God’s Independence Means that He is FREE to
do WHATEVER HE PLEASES
The second meaning that God’s independence has is
that God is free to do whatever He pleases.
He is under no obligations to His creatures to do
anything. One of the clearest places
that we see this truth is in Psalm
135:5-14: [5] For I know that
the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. [6] Whatever the LORD pleases, he does,
in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. [7] He it is who makes
the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and
brings forth the wind from his storehouses. [8] He it was who struck down
the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and of beast; [9] who in your midst, O
Egypt, sent signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants;
[10] who struck down many nations and killed mighty kings,
[11] Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, and all the
kingdoms of Canaan, [12] and gave their land as a heritage, a heritage to
his people Israel. [13] Your name, O LORD, endures forever, your renown, O
LORD, throughout all ages. [14] For the LORD will vindicate his people and
have compassion on his servants.
I
want to first call your attention to verses 5-6. One of the things that makes
God “great” and “above all gods” is that He alone does whatever He pleases. He is completely independent in all that He
does, and whatever He does, it pleases Him or He would not do it. So in some sense, God is always pleased
(happy) because whatever he pleases,
He does.
This seems like a simple reality until you begin
to pay attention to what all God does that pleases Himself in this passage: (1)
He makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth; (2) He makes lightnings for
the rain; (3) He brings forth the wind from His storehouses; (4) He struck down
the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and of beast; (5) He sent signs and wonders
against Pharaoh and all his servants; (6) He struck down many nations and
killed mighty kings; (7) He gave their land as a heritage to the people of
Israel; (8) He sees to it that the fame of His name endures forever; (9) He
will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants. These nine things seem to be the unpacking
of the statement that, “Whatever the LORD
pleases, he does.” These are the
things that He is doing, has done, and will do.
The question that I want to briefly think through
for a second is how God can be pleased with some of these things when scripture
seems to indicate in other places that He is not. For example, this passage says that God was
pleased to strike down many nations and kill mighty kings and yet in Ezekiel 18:23: “[23] Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the
Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?” So which is it? Does God have pleasure in what He does or
not? This is not simply “chasing a
rabbit trail.” This is vitally important
to knowing our God accurately, because as we said last week, inaccurate
thoughts about God are idolatrous thoughts about God.
The answer to this question, I believe, is that
God has the capacity to be both pleased and displeased with the same events
because He views them from two different perspectives simultaneously. Consider the following example: When I was a
child, my parents took my sister and I to a zoo. I was overly excited the entire time and kept
running off from my parents to look at all these wild animals I had never seen
before. My dad repeatedly instructed me
not to get out of their sight out of concern for my own safety. However, I continued to wander off from
them. So at some point my dad decided to
hide just out of sight so that he could see me but I could not see him and
would think that I had become lost. When
I discovered that I couldn’t find my parents, I became terrified and had a near
meltdown. One of best days of my life
had now become a nightmare! Just before
complete meltdown, my dad stepped out and scooped me up. I had learned my lesson and did not wander off
from my parents again for the rest of the trip.
Here is my point: in letting me think I was lost, my dad was both
pleased and displeased at the same time.
It did not please him to see me frightened and crying. It did not please him to see me experience
that. It did, however, please my dad for
me to learn my lesson and become an obedient son who now knew not to put myself
in danger. So my dad was able to look at
one event and be simultaneously pleased and displeased.
So it is with God, only on a much grander
scale. He is able to consider one event
be simultaneously pleased and displeased.
He is able to take no pleasure in the death of the wicked and at the
same time be pleased with what their judgment accomplishes for His people and
puts on display about Himself.
What is mind boggling about God’s independence is
that He is a God who needs none of us and is under no obligation to any of us
and yet is a God who wants us and delights in us and allows us to delight in
and bring glory to Him. He is a God who,
though He needs none of us and is under no obligation to any of us, was pleased
to crucify His only Son to have us. Let
me just say that if you really ponder that, you will find that it is a reality
that does not cause us to make much of ourselves but of God! Let’s just always be careful not to commit
the idolatry of thinking that God is ever under any obligation to us. He is not.
Let’s close with the remainder of Paul’s message
in Acts 17:30-31: [30] The times of ignorance God
overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
[31] because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in
righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given
assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” Will you repent today and
confess your utter dependency upon Him alone for your salvation?
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