Who Is God?

00:00:00.000 | We started this podcast 3,000 days ago.

00:00:09.000 | 3,000 days ago today, and today we reach episode 1600.

00:00:14.200 | It's a big milestone with a fittingly massive question on the table.

00:00:20.000 | They don't get any bigger than this one.

00:00:22.200 | Who is God?

00:00:25.880 | We get this question often, most recently from podcast listeners named Gamal, Olyanka,

00:00:30.800 | Ezekiel, Bobby, Zandy, Matthew, Giovanni, Jerry, Tom, and Esther.

00:00:36.800 | Last time on Friday in episode 1599, Pastor John, you answered the background question

00:00:41.040 | to this one, namely, who does John Piper think he is to answer this question of who is God?

00:00:47.740 | But that's out of the way now.

00:00:49.120 | Now we can address the question itself.

00:00:51.820 | Pastor John, who is God?

00:00:56.640 | When I turn from myself to Jesus and his teachings and to the writings of his followers that

00:01:05.840 | he himself vouched for, guaranteed, and to the Jewish scriptures that Jesus himself endorsed,

00:01:15.520 | and to the world of nature, and to the witness of my own conscience, when I turn from myself

00:01:23.000 | to these places where God has revealed himself, here's what I see in answer to the question,

00:01:31.340 | who is God?

00:01:33.020 | And I would appeal to everyone who's listening not to take my word for it, but to search

00:01:41.240 | out those five sources as if your life depended on it, because it does.

00:01:49.360 | First, here's the first thing I believe I see in those revelations from God of who he

00:01:59.480 | is first.

00:02:02.120 | Jesus says that God is spirit.

00:02:05.800 | John 4:24, "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

00:02:14.680 | In other words, he's not physical.

00:02:17.520 | He's not material.

00:02:20.020 | He does not have a body.

00:02:22.300 | He is invisible.

00:02:23.860 | He's spirit.

00:02:25.920 | Second, God is personal.

00:02:29.840 | This is amazing.

00:02:30.840 | When you think absolute reality could have been anything.

00:02:34.000 | I mean, there was nothing before absolute reality to make it what it is.

00:02:37.640 | To think it's personal, that's just mind-blowing.

00:02:41.180 | He has revealed himself as one who thinks, and reasons, and plans, and loves, and rejoices,

00:02:50.460 | and experiences anger and compassion.

00:02:53.800 | Isaiah 55, 8, "My thoughts are not your thoughts."

00:02:58.280 | Jeremiah 29, 11, "I know the plans I have for you."

00:03:03.080 | Isaiah 1, 18, "Come, let us reason together."

00:03:07.840 | Hosea 11, 8, "My compassion grows warm and tender," declares the Lord.

00:03:14.200 | Zephaniah 3, 17, "The Lord will rejoice over you with gladness."

00:03:20.280 | Numbers 11, 10, "The anger of the Lord blazed hotly."

00:03:24.960 | Amazing.

00:03:26.880 | God is not impersonal.

00:03:29.400 | He's not a substance.

00:03:31.600 | He's not a mere force.

00:03:34.680 | He's not material, like an element or a gas.

00:03:38.000 | He's not just an influence.

00:03:40.680 | God is a person, personal.

00:03:45.680 | From him comes personhood.

00:03:49.480 | This is why human beings are so unique in the world of God's creatures.

00:03:55.280 | He made us in his image.

00:03:58.520 | We are persons.

00:04:00.880 | Third, he revealed himself as absolute, self-existent, independent of all other reality.

00:04:12.440 | I think one of the most important verses in the Bible is Exodus 3, 14.

00:04:19.440 | God said to Moses, "I am who I am."

00:04:24.800 | He said, "Say to the people of Israel, 'I am has sent me to you.'"

00:04:32.120 | The phrase "I am who I am" is a declaration of absolute freedom from being created or

00:04:42.880 | formed or guided or swayed or determined by anything outside himself.

00:04:49.660 | Whatever God is or whatever God does, he himself is the ultimate source and cause of that.

00:04:59.400 | Here are some implications of what that revelation means for who God is, that revelation of his

00:05:07.400 | "I am who I am."

00:05:09.680 | One, it means he never had a beginning.

00:05:13.240 | Nobody made God.

00:05:14.640 | God simply is, always was, no beginning.

00:05:18.120 | Two, God will never end.

00:05:20.800 | He is absolute being.

00:05:22.520 | If you are being from forever, there's no place to go outside being.

00:05:29.880 | You can't not be.

00:05:32.320 | Three, there is no reality before him.

00:05:35.840 | There's no reality outside him unless he wills it to be and makes it.

00:05:42.160 | Four, God is utterly independent.

00:05:44.720 | He depends on nothing to bring him into being or support him or counsel him or make him

00:05:50.880 | what he is.

00:05:52.520 | Five, everything that is not God depends totally on God.

00:05:58.840 | All that is not God is secondary, independent.

00:06:01.960 | The entire universe, vast, vast, vast billions of galaxies is utterly secondary to God.

00:06:14.480 | Six, he is constant.

00:06:17.200 | He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

00:06:19.240 | He cannot be improved.

00:06:21.840 | He is not becoming anything.

00:06:25.160 | There is no development in God, no progress.

00:06:29.560 | Absolute perfection cannot be improved.

00:06:33.200 | Seven, he is the absolute standard of truth and goodness and beauty.

00:06:41.200 | There is no law book to which he looks to know what is right.

00:06:47.400 | There's no almatech to establish facts for God, no guild to determine what is excellent

00:06:54.000 | or beautiful.

00:06:55.000 | He himself is the standard of what is right and true and beautiful.

00:07:02.200 | Eight, all that God does is always right, always just, always beautiful, and always

00:07:12.000 | in accord with truth, that is, himself.

00:07:16.880 | It fits.

00:07:17.880 | In that sense, it is right and good and beautiful, all things considered.

00:07:25.760 | Nine, therefore, God is the most important and most valuable reality in the universe.

00:07:34.080 | He is more worthy of interest and attention and admiration and enjoyment than all other

00:07:40.880 | realities, including the entire universe.

00:07:44.840 | Now all of that, all nine of those implications of I am who I am, all of that is implied in

00:07:52.040 | God's word to Moses.

00:07:54.840 | Tell them, "I am sent you."

00:07:58.000 | You can see the same implications in many other places in the Bible.

00:08:02.960 | For example, the letter to the Romans.

00:08:05.440 | This is one of my favorite passages, Romans 11, 33 to 36.

00:08:08.920 | "Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable

00:08:14.360 | are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways.

00:08:18.920 | For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor or who has ever

00:08:25.040 | given a gift to him that he might be repaid?

00:08:29.720 | For from him and through him and to him are all things.

00:08:35.020 | To him be glory forever and ever.

00:08:38.240 | Amen."

00:08:39.240 | In other words, God can't be counseled because his knowledge and wisdom are infinite.

00:08:46.260 | God can't be negotiated with or bartered with or bribed because he owns everything.

00:08:53.520 | He can never be put in anybody's debt.

00:08:57.800 | Everything originates with him.

00:08:58.920 | He sustains all that is.

00:09:01.320 | And the display of his glory, his beauty, his greatness, his value is the goal of everything.

00:09:09.480 | From him and through him and to him are all things.

00:09:16.060 | Therefore, to him be glory forever.

00:09:20.300 | And in his fullness and perfection, the Bible makes plain that from all eternity, God has

00:09:28.660 | had a perfect image of himself.

00:09:33.060 | The radiance of his glory, the Bible calls it the exact imprint of his nature.

00:09:39.320 | And this image is so complete with all that God is, the Bible speaks of this image as

00:09:49.240 | the second person in God and uses the language of son of God, not because there's any biological

00:10:00.620 | way that he's a son, like he had sex with Mary and had a baby.

00:10:04.640 | That's not what the Bible teaches.

00:10:07.360 | He's a son, this second person that has always existed in and as the perfect image of God.

00:10:16.080 | This son is a son to indicate that they have the same nature.

00:10:21.920 | They're both personal and love reigns between them.

00:10:27.440 | The Bible speaks of God, the father, loving God, the son, and God, the son, loving God,

00:10:34.320 | the father.

00:10:35.320 | And the Bible points to the reality that this spirit between them, this love between the

00:10:41.480 | father and son carries, as it were, such a fullness of all that they both are, that a

00:10:50.600 | third person exists, stands forth, has always stood forth in God.

00:10:59.860 | So the biblical picture is that there's one God, not three gods, and that this one God

00:11:07.360 | mysteriously exists as God, the father, God, the son, and God, the Holy Spirit.

00:11:15.520 | This is one reason that it makes sense to say, as 1 John 4, verse 8 says, "God is love."

00:11:28.680 | Love has been surging from all eternity in the fellowship of the three persons of the

00:11:37.400 | one God.

00:11:38.400 | Now, if that were not amazing enough—

00:11:41.800 | Lord, we're over our head, I know, I'm just pointing.

00:11:46.480 | Now if that were not amazing enough, here comes the most amazing thing of all about

00:11:54.080 | who God is.

00:11:55.760 | In His perfection and independence and fullness, He is not only completely righteous and just

00:12:04.440 | and holy, but overflowing.

00:12:08.200 | He is overflowing with His own beauty and goodness and joy so that His creatures can

00:12:17.320 | know Him, love Him, enjoy Him, be with Him forever.

00:12:23.240 | In other words, the love that God has always enjoyed—enjoyed is the right word—in the

00:12:31.320 | fellowship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, God aims to share with His creatures.

00:12:40.880 | To do this, God the Father sends God the Son into His creation to be born as the God-man,

00:12:52.920 | Jesus Christ.

00:12:54.860 | This is what the Gospel of John means when it says, "In the beginning was the Word,

00:13:00.860 | and the Word was God, and the Word was with God, and the Word became flesh," that is,

00:13:11.200 | became a human being, "and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the

00:13:17.040 | only Son."

00:13:19.040 | And you see the switch in categories from Word to Son, just to make clear that that's

00:13:23.680 | who we're talking about, the eternal Son, that other second person in God.

00:13:31.020 | We have seen the glory of the Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

00:13:37.240 | The Son of God has always been God, and now He is also man, the God-man, Jesus Christ.

00:13:47.200 | Why?

00:13:48.200 | Why this so-called incarnation of God?

00:13:54.080 | Because all of God's human creatures had failed to worship and love God and obey God as we

00:14:00.640 | ought.

00:14:01.640 | We deserve to be punished.

00:14:03.720 | God would be perfectly just to punish us all in hell because of our failure and our rebellion,

00:14:09.120 | but in the fullness of His God-like love, planned way before the foundation of the world,

00:14:18.720 | He is not only just, but He is merciful, and He intrudes Himself into the world to rescue

00:14:27.560 | His own creatures who deserve punishment from His punishment.

00:14:32.960 | He rescues us from His own wrath by His own mercy.

00:14:37.680 | The Son of God becomes human and is punished in our place.

00:14:42.560 | Here's how the prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament scriptures, the Jewish scriptures,

00:14:48.280 | put it, Isaiah 53.5, "He was pierced for our transgressions.

00:14:54.000 | He was crushed for our iniquities.

00:14:56.920 | All we like sheep have gone astray.

00:14:58.960 | We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us

00:15:03.960 | all."

00:15:05.400 | The New Testament puts it like this, "God so loved the world that He gave, He gave His

00:15:12.400 | only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life," John 3,

00:15:20.280 | verse 16.

00:15:21.960 | Whoever believes, whoever trusts, whoever receives, whoever treasures Jesus Christ as

00:15:29.120 | Savior and Lord, Jesus becomes His substitute, bears God's punishment, provides God's

00:15:39.880 | righteousness, secures eternal joy in fellowship with God.

00:15:46.000 | So who is God?

00:15:47.000 | He is the Creator, Sustainer, Governor, and Judge of the universe.

00:15:53.680 | And in His justice and mercy, He devised a way from all eternity for sinners like us

00:16:01.040 | to be forgiven and to be adopted into His eternal family as the children of God and

00:16:07.920 | as a kind of bride for His Son, Jesus Christ, so that by sharing the joy God has in Himself,

00:16:19.560 | our joy in Him would show the fullness of His own glory.

00:16:26.640 | I invite you, I urge you to embrace Jesus and all that God is for you in Him.

00:16:36.000 | Jesus is who God is.

00:16:42.840 | Absolutely glorious.

00:16:43.960 | It is not just about knowing about God, it's all about knowing God Himself.

00:16:49.080 | That's the invitation, an invitation to participate in the very life of God Himself through the

00:16:53.800 | life and through the works of His precious Son.

00:16:56.360 | That is so good.

00:16:58.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:16:59.000 | Thank you for listening.

00:17:00.820 | You can ask a question of your own.

00:17:02.020 | You can search or browse all 1,600 of our past episodes, or you can subscribe to the

00:17:05.800 | podcast.

00:17:06.800 | Do all of that online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:17:11.800 | Well speaking of who God is, God has a plan for creation, and that plan for creation shapes

00:17:17.240 | our lives.

00:17:18.600 | It shapes what we do.

00:17:20.180 | It shapes what we don't do.

00:17:21.400 | It sets our hopes and structures our aspirations.

00:17:23.960 | Now we're going to return on Wednesday to hear Pastor John explain how all of this works.

00:17:30.520 | I'm Tony Reinke.

00:17:31.520 | Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor

00:17:35.320 | John Piper.

00:17:36.320 | We'll see you on Wednesday.

00:17:36.820 | [music]

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Who Is God?

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